The Aaronic Blessing and You

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Your Father, the Lord, is blessing you and keeping you. Doesn't that make you feel safe? Doesn't that give a totally positive outlook on your life, where you're at and where you're going to go in your future? The Aaronic blessing. What I love so much about this blessing is it didn't originate with man. The words that I'm going to be sharing with you today, this blessing, actually proceeded from the very essence of God Himself. I think a great place for us to begin would be to read together from the book of Numbers chapter 6, beginning there in verse number 22, to set the stage. And then what we'll do is we'll go back and I'll begin to take apart the different phrases, giving them application, also helping you to understand some of the original Hebrew words that these phrases come from to add color to your understanding. It's going to be an awesome teaching today. Let's get ready. Hear the word of God. Beginning in verse once again, number 22. Then the Lord, or then Yahweh, spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, 'Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, 'Yahweh bless you and keep you.'" And I just want to make the point that whenever we read in our Bible in the Old Testament, God's name, the Lord, with the letters capital L, capital O, capital R, and capital D, that actually comes from the four original Hebrew letters, YHVH, meaning that when we go back to the ancient text, we don't actually read the word Lord. What we actually have there in the original manuscripts are the letters YHVH, which are God's personal name, that most Semitic scholars believe is pronounced a breathy Yahweh. It's God's covenant name. So this blessing that we're looking at today is coming not just from some God in the sky somewhere. This blessing is coming from a person. God has a name. God said to Moses, "Moses, your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they knew me as God Almighty. They knew me as El Shaddai." It was a title. But then the Lord said, "But by my name," and then he breathed it out to Moses, "Yahweh. They did not know me." Then the Lord said, "This Yahweh is my memorial name forever." So this blessing that God blesses us with today is His personal covenant name that we're being blessed, beloved, by our Father God, who is, get it now, a person, he has a name. So once again, picking up in the text, going back to verse number 22. "Then Yahweh, then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, 'Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, 'The Lord, Yahweh, bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.' 'So they shall invoke my name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them.'" The first point that I want you to get is that this blessing didn't originate in the priest. The priests were just God's agents. The Lord Himself, Yahweh Himself, gave the blessing. The Lord told Aaron and his sons exactly what words to say. This is not just wishful thinking. This blessing comes from God Himself, and by faith, beloved one, you can incorporate this into your life, being confident of God's love for you and the destiny and purpose that He has for you. It's all favorable. It's all good. So once again, the Lord said, "Thus you shall speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, 'Bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them.'" So He's saying to the priests, "This is what I want you to say over my people. This is what I want you to say over my chosen ones." And you are one of His chosen ones, those of you that belong to Jesus. So that this blessing that God has spoken over Israel, He speaks over your life today in Jesus because we have become one, Jew and Gentile, in Messiah, and the whole church is now the Israel of God. I'm not saying that people that are Gentile are Jews, but I'm saying that in the prophetic sense, the church is now the Israel of God. Once again, don't misunderstand, the church has not replaced Israel, but in a spiritual sense, the whole church is the Israel of God. God's chosen people. Then we have the blessing beginning in verse number 24. "Yahweh bless you and keep you." And this is just an understanding of God's purpose for you. There's favor on your life. The Lord bless you and keep you. It comes from the Hebrew word, YHVH. And it carries with it the word picture of a king stooping down and presenting one of His subjects a gift. It's love. It's favor. It's grace. This is how God's disposition is towards you and I. "Yahweh, and then we read 'Vayishmercha' in the Hebrew." And this means, we're reading in the English, it says, "The Lord bless you and keep you." So the word keep you, or protect you, comes from the Hebrew word, "Vayishmercha." And there's great symbolism here. It reminds us from the biblical time frame of a shepherd that would corral his sheep to protect the sheep, to protect the sheep. Remember, Jesus said, "I am the shepherd." And Jesus said, "And none of the sheep that the Lord gave me," in John 10, "has vanished or has been taken away from me. I keep them and protect them." So I want you to be comfortable and confident. We live in a world that's so full of dangers all around, all around. We're reading of people getting murdered and terrorist attacks and illnesses and car accidents and all types of things that are happening in this world that would in the natural incite fear. But God is saying to you, "Don't call a conspiracy what the world calls a conspiracy, and don't fear what the world fears, for I alone am to be your God. Fear me alone." And the Lord says, "I'm protecting you from all these things." So we've read here, the Lord bless you, Yahweh, God's name, and may God protect you, and He is protecting you. So be comfortable right now in this. You can receive this deep in your spirit. God has blessed you, is blessing you, and will bless you, and He is protecting you. "The Lord make His face shine upon you." So this comes from the word 'panav lecha,' meaning face. In other words, the Lord's face is toward you and I. He's looking at us, church, with eyes of love. His face is shining on us. His strength, His glory, His goodness, and His smile. His love, beloved, is directed towards you and I. And then we continue to read here with this word I want to focus on, "The Lord be gracious to you." So we saw, "The Lord make His face shine on you" in verse 25, "and be gracious to you." And this word gracious carries the idea once again of a king stooping down in kindness, in mercy, in tenderness towards an inferior. And it's just this sense that God, who could smash us with His fist if He wanted to, because of His power, instead He's exactly the opposite. He stoops down to be kind towards us and to be gracious to us, though we've done nothing to earn it or deserve it. And then we continue on, verse 26, "The Lord lift up His face towards you, lift up His countenance on you." And this is the idea of a father lifting up his child and just like beaming as he's looking at his child. This is how God feels. It's hard for us to comprehend how God feels about us, that He would really get such delight out of just the fact that He created us in His own image. He created you and I to have a relationship with Him, and there's something in us that's so valuable to Him, that He sent Jesus His son to die on the cross for you and I, to purchase us by His blood for the Father. So the Father is holding you and I. He loved you, beloved, before you even knew Jesus. That's why Jesus came to die for you because the Father loved you and I so much that He sent Jesus to die for you and to bring us back to Himself. He holds us up like a father proudly holding up his child, just beaming with adoration. That's how it is. We don't understand this. Father, right now I'm praying for revelation for the entire church, for myself, for all of us, to understand how you feel towards us, Daddy. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Dustin Roberts: You're listening to Discovering The Jewish Jesus, and Rabbi Schneider will be right back. But first, I want to invite you to take Rabbi's teachings with you wherever you go with the Discovering The Jewish Jesus podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and many more. You can listen to all of Rabbi's powerful messages anytime. Stay rooted in God's word. Just search for Discovering The Jewish Jesus on your favorite podcasting platform today.
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Rabbi K.A. Schneider: And then we continue on here. It says, "The Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace." This is shalom. And this Hebrew word shalom, which is where this word peace comes from, it means complete wholeness. It's not just the absence of conflict or the absence of war, but the Hebrew word shalom, peace, it means wholeness: spirit, soul, mind, and body. This is what God desires for you and I, beloved ones, that we would have peace, that we would walk whole, that we would be complete in Messiah Jesus. The Bible says, "In Him," speaking of Jesus, "you have been made complete." And think about it. When Jesus had risen from the dead in John, at the end of the book of John, His disciples were gathered in a room. They were huddled together in fear because all they knew was that this one that they had left everything for to follow had been crucified, and they were totally confused, living in dread and fear. In this room, huddled together, not knowing what to do, shaken, rocked. And all of a sudden, as they're huddled together in fear in the room, what happens? King Jesus supernaturally walks through the wall, enters the room, stands before them, breathes on them, says, "Receive the Holy Spirit." And then He says, "My shalom, my peace I give to you." The gift that God has given us, church, you and I are His kids, is His own completeness, His own shalom. Jesus said, "In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world. My peace I give to you." I want you to hear me as we go back to this prayer once again. This is not just poetic pleasantries. This is not just wishful thinking. This is not like going to the drugstore and buying a greeting card that's full of nice, trite sayings. This comes, listen now, from the essence of God's heart. God desires, beloved, that you and I would walk in confidence in these things. Father God says, "In my name," listen now, "I have blessed you." I have blessed you, listen, "and I will keep you." I want you to walk in this confidence that you're blessed and that you're safe and kept in this world of darkness and danger that we're living in. And then the Lord continues, that Father God, listen, He is always looking at you and me. We're never outside of His love. We're never outside of His care. We're never outside of His protection. But 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every second that the clock ticks, He's looking at you. And He's looking at me. We're protected, blessed, and safe in Him. And He's holding us up the way He relates to us, as I said, is the way a proud father is lifting up their newborn baby, just beaming at their baby because they're so proud of their baby. Listen, we need to understand that God delights in us. Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians that we should pray to understand, listen, the riches of the glory of God's inheritance in the saints. In other words, there's something in you and I that is so valuable to God, so precious. We need to ask for revelation so that we can understand this. You are very special. You are very important to God. Now, I want to go back and read this prayer again, but this time, I want you to receive it in the present. Let's begin. Your Father, the Lord, who has become your Father in Jesus, is blessing you and keeping you. Doesn't that make you feel safe? Doesn't that give a totally positive outlook on your life, where you're at and where you're going to go in your future? To understand that right now, presently, God Himself, your Father, has blessed you and will continue to bless you going forward, and He's keeping you. Let's continue on. Your Father God, Yahweh the Lord, has made His face shine on you. In other words, there's favor on your life. Wherever you go, Father God is looking at you to favor you and to bless you. This is a disposition that if we receive it, we're going to have confidence and we're going to move mountains in this world because we're walking in the very confidence of knowing that God Himself is with us. Remember, Jesus said to us, "I am with you always." That's what we're saying here. Let's continue on. The Lord make His face shine on you. Get it now. And be gracious to you. From the Hebrew word, meaning a king is stooping down to present to someone that He loves, that's His inferior, that has no claim on anything, and yet the king is so dispossessed to love, to be kind to this individual, He blesses them with a gift. This is how it is in God, in His attitude towards you and I. He's gotten down to where we're at. This is why Jesus, who was God Himself, listen, Jesus God Himself, what did He do? He lowered Himself to become a man clothed in flesh and blood, and then died on the cross for us. He stooped down to us. Why? Because He wants to be in relationship with you and I. Continuing on. The Lord lift you up with His countenance. This is once again, this is the idea of a father proudly lifting up a child and just beaming. Father God, once again, I want you to understand, you and I, we really matter to God, church. This is why it's so important that we recognize that when we realize each day that we're in a battle, this world is a battlefield. We're in a battle zone. I mean, every day on earth, we're at war. This is why the Bible tells us in the book of Ephesians, "Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against spiritual powers of darkness." You and I are in a war down here, and Father God is wanting you and I to choose to love Him because He loves us so much, and He's just asking us to trust in His love, to believe that He loves us, and to respond to Him while we have a choice here on earth in faith and love. He's looking at you and I. He desires that you and I will love Him back. Listen now, the way that He loves us. As I have often said, people that are in heaven, they have no choice but to praise God. That's all the people are doing in heaven. It's involuntarily. You can't volunteer. You can't do anything in heaven but praise God. It's just as natural as breathing. And people that are in hell, it's just the opposite. All they can do is curse God. They cannot praise God in hell. All that is in hell is cursing. But between heaven and hell, we have the earth, and while we're on the earth, listen, we have a choice. The Lord said, "I have put before you life and death. Choose life that you would live." Father God loves us so much. He's beaming at us, but He's asking you and I to believe that and to respond back to Him by loving Him while we're in this battleground here on the earth. And then the Lord says to us, "And I'm giving you my peace. I'm giving you everything you need to walk in this victory."
Rabbi K.A. Schneider: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with His countenance, and the Lord give you, beloved one, His peace. I want you to know, as I just spoke that over you, those of you that have open hearts, you just received something. Because the Bible tells us when the Lord spoke this word to Moses and to Aaron, and said to Aaron and his sons, "Speak this over my people," the Lord said, "When you speak this over them," the Lord said, "I'm going to put my name on them and bless them." I want to encourage you to receive this blessing. Memorize Numbers chapter 6, verse 22 through 27 and believe it is who God is to you. You don't have to wonder if He loves you or not. You don't have to wonder if He blessed you or not. You don't have to wonder whether His favor is on you or not. It is. Believe it. Walk in it and receive it. And I would encourage you also to memorize it and speak it over your loved ones. Speak it over your husband, wife, friends. Beloved, I don't think there's anybody on the planet that has spoken this prayer over his loved ones as much as I have. Maybe there is, but I speak this over my children, over my wife, every single chance I get. And by the grace of God, I've seen His blessing on their lives. We are facing such chaos in the world around us. Beloved, the only hope left for people is the God that created the world, and you and I are His ambassadors. We are the ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I are Jesus the Messiah's ambassadors. We have to do something, beloved, to prepare the world for His return by preaching the gospel. When you support me and Discovering The Jewish Jesus, you are literally taking part in preparing the earth's atmosphere for the coming return of the Lord Jesus. You see, Jesus said when the gospel is preached to the ends of the earth, then He will return. People more and more are recognizing that they can't hold on to anything outside of themselves, that everything around them is unstable, that systems are falling apart, that governments are collapsing, economic systems are collapsing, people's moral code is collapsing. The only thing that's sure, beloved, is God Himself, who is our Rock. And I want to ask you to support me as I continue to preach the gospel of King Jesus around the world, declaring this reality and this truth. You see, beloved ones, Jesus is counting on you, and He's counting on me. We're His voice, peace, we're His mouth. Jesus said, "You shall be my witnesses." I want to ask you, would you be faithful? Would you support me? And would you support Discovering The Jewish Jesus? I want you to know, beloved, your financial help makes a big difference and it's effectively being used to spread the gospel. And now, Dustin, could you tell our brothers and sisters in Christ about how they can partner with and join us?
Dustin Roberts: I'd be happy to, Rabbi. Friends, if you believe in the mission of Discovering The Jewish Jesus, partner with us today. Give us a call at 800-777-7835. Or give online at DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com. You can also text the word give to the phone number 88777. And today, I'd like to remind you, the Fall Holy Days are here. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it begins at sunset this Sunday, September the 20th, and it continues through nightfall on Monday, September the 21st. Yom Kippur reminds us of humanity's need for atonement. And it helps us appreciate more deeply what Jesus accomplished through His sacrifice. It can be a really beautiful time if you take advantage of this season to meet with God. It can be as simple as setting aside intentional time with Him, and you might pray, you could fast, or repent, or thank Him for His mercy. You could even read Scripture connected to atonement. Either way, whatever you do, it's a time for believers to consider where God may be calling us to change and to seek forgiveness, to get right with Him. So I want to encourage you, take the time this year to celebrate God's Fall Holy Days. I believe they'll really bless your life. And as Rabbi shared today, may God bless you and keep you. I'm your host, Dustin Roberts, and this program is produced and sponsored by Discovering The Jewish Jesus. Join us tomorrow as Rabbi Schneider reveals how God can use your story to make an eternal difference right here on Discovering The Jewish Jesus.