In The Wilderness: #BLESSED

Let's read together. If you'll find that in your bulletin or on the screen behind me, let the people of God read the word of God.

The Lord spoke to Moses, "Tell Aaron and his sons, 'This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: "May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace." In this way they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.'" — Numbers 6:22-27

The Lord spoke to Moses, "Speak to Aaron and tell him: 'When you set up the seven lamps, they should light the area in front of the lampstand.'" So Aaron did this; he set up its lamps to give light in front of the lampstand just as the Lord had commanded Moses. This is the way the lampstand was made. It was hammered of gold, hammered from its base to its flower petals. The lampstand was made according to the pattern the Lord had shown Moses. — Numbers 8:1-4

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

The Problem with "Blessed"

Now the words blessed and blessing are lots of Bible words, and these are ones that are actually still very current in our vocabulary. And yet while these words are everywhere, I think they've become meaningless to us. We say "bless you" when somebody sneezes. When we gossip about someone, we say "bless their heart," right?

It's been co-opted in particular by the prosperity gospel and prosperity preaching. Blessed is shorthand for the prosperity message and we see it everywhere. There's a TV show called The Blessed Life, or Joel Osteen, who's the pastor of the largest church in America, told Oprah in his Texas mansion that Jesus died so we might have an abundant life—talking about material possessions.

Blessed is a hashtag we attach to photos of our vacations, up in the mountains, at the beach. Hashtag blessed. It's the humble brag. It says something like this: "I totally get it. I'm down to earth enough to know this is crazy. God gave this to me. Don't know why—just blessed, right?"

It's a loaded term because it's confusing. We mean two different things often by this word. We mean on the one hand gift, but oftentimes we also mean reward. And when those get mixed up, that gets kind of dangerous. You can say, "What a blessing from God"—saying something like, "Thank you, God. I could not have secured this for myself. You did this." Or you could say something like this as a reward: "Thank you, me, for I'm the kind of person who gets it right."

Gift or reward—that's why it's become such a meaningless word for lots of people, I think.

Has Your Life Turned Out as Expected?

Blessed may feel like a meaningless word for you. I want to ask you this question, especially those of you who have been Christians a long time or been in church for a long time. If you think back to the early days of being a Christian, and I pulled you aside—we weren't in a church setting, you didn't feel like you had to make up something—and I ask you this question: Has your life turned out like you expected? What would you say?

I mean, some of you are already shaking your head no. All those phrases that we grab onto, which are scriptures, which are good words, are true—that Jesus would fulfill the desires of our hearts or that He knows the plans He has for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future. These are things we write down and memorize or we have them up on a sticker, and we've often automatically filled in what we think those look like.

Jesus would provide a spouse. Jesus would provide kids. Jesus would provide believing kids. Jesus would give us health. He would give us success in life. We'd have friends. I mean, right? These are not bad things, are they? But if we're honest, a lot of us say, "I'm not sure this is the abundant life that I thought I was signing up for. Does God really want to bless me? Did I do something wrong? What's wrong with me?"

And I think maybe we ought to ask: Do we really understand this word blessed or blessing?

The Aaronic Blessing and the Israelites

The passage we just read from Numbers chapter six is one of the most famous blessings in the Old Testament. I say it regularly at the end of our service: "The Lord bless you and keep you. Lord, make his face to shine upon you." These words are really familiar. It's called the Aaronic blessing—not ironic, but Aaronic—named after Aaron, who was the priest who was commanded to say these things over the people.

Now I want you to remember though, which people—because this makes a big difference. This was said at the end of every tabernacle service over the Israelites who spent years and years wandering in the desert because they were disobedient. They didn't trust God. They were filled with complaints, and what should have been a ten-day to two-week journey from Mount Sinai to the promised land took forty years.

I am sure if you could pull aside one of those Israelites and say, "Is this what you expected? Is this what you expected when you started out at Sinai?"

This is the kind of confusion that makes it a meaningless word for many people, and it feels like a meaningless word for us. But the irony of this is that this word in the Bible is packed with meaning, and I want to recover that today with you.

This particularly shows up in the book of Genesis. Over and over, we see the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and right before they die, they gather their children around and they give a blessing. This is really significant for us to think about because this blessing has four parts that we need to understand to grasp what God means by blessing.

When the Father would gather His children, the first part of this would be a statement of longing, a statement of delight, something like this: "I long for your good and your prosperity." That's a subjective statement said over another person. But that's not all. The second part goes from the subjective statement to the objective. The father then divides up his property. In other words, what he is doing in giving the blessing is not just saying some good vibes, but he wants to actually secure the things that he's said by what he's giving. He's giving material goods that help fulfill the things he's just said over that person's life. It's an act that achieves that good.

So this is what God means when He says, "I will bless you." He says, "I delight in you, but I also will achieve that good. I will be expensively present with you. I will provide for you." And you can see that right here in Numbers 6. The first line of what we read:

The Lord bless you

That's a statement of prosperity, of wish. But then:

He will protect you

That's a statement of how God is going to deliver on that. He's going to be with them. He's going to be fully present to them.

Number three: the ancients also took this as something substantial or permanent. For example, one of the patriarchs here is Isaac, who has twin boys, Esau and Jacob. The famous story about this is that Jacob deceives his father and gets the blessing that was intended for Esau. He dresses up as Esau—his father's blind—and he comes in with his arm hairy like Esau's, a goat skin on his arm. He smells like Esau's clothes. He makes his voice sound like Esau. He steals the blessing, and when he does, he gets away with it at first.

But when the real Esau shows up, he comes in saying, "Make me something good to eat." And Esau comes in to get the blessing. It's fascinating because Isaac is like, "I already gave it away." He starts shaking. He's so disturbed by this. He's like, "I've already given it away and I can't undo it."

Now that's not how we think of blessing. We think of it as like you just said some nice words. No, no, no. That's what he's saying. There's something substantial that I did, and he will be blessed, and I can't change that. It's permanent, substantial.

And the fourth part of this is that it's also profoundly personal. If you hang around CTK very often, if you hear me preach regularly, I say this about the Bible: so many of the uses of the Bible are y'alls, right? It's almost always plural. Except for here. Numbers 6 is not plural. It's singular. In other words, this is what God's telling Aaron to say over Israel: "The Lord bless you and you and you and you and you and you and you"—like by name, like individual blessing. This is profoundly personal.

Those four things: it's a subjective statement of desire, it's an objective provision, it's substantive or permanent, and it's incredibly personal.

Why Has "Blessed" Become Meaningless?

So if that's the case, why has this uber meaningful word—blessed or blessing in the Bible—become so meaningless today? Why is it "bless your heart" and "bless you" when you sneeze? Why do we think about this wrong?

Well, I think it's this: we've swapped the price tags. We've confused some categories here. We've mixed up the material blessings of God's hands with the blessing of God's face.

I'm going to use those two phrases. Whenever we talk about God, we're talking in anthropomorphic language, right? We're talking about human attributes toward a God who is a spirit and doesn't have a body like us. But I want to think about God's blessings of His hands versus the blessing of His face.

When we talk about God's hands, we think about the blessings like material provisions, financial advantages, what some people call luck. This is what most people mean when they talk about blessings. Like, you ever had an older family member who, when you're complaining about what you didn't get for Christmas, said something like this: "Count your blessings."

And right, we use that plural because we mean all the good stuff that you got, all the material provisions that you got. How can you be complaining when you have all this? The reality is I think that this is what we most want from God. This is what we think we most want from God. And I want to ask you, why would I say that? Why would we say this is what we think we want from God? The answer is because we are so quick to forget what He's provided. We are so prone to forget the things that God has given you and provided for you. This is why we have to be told to count our blessings. We're so quick to forget the ways God has shown up, the answers to prayer, the unlooked for gifts, the ways that God has provided for you in ways you never deserve.

The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon said it this way: "We are too prone to engrave our trials in marble and our blessings in sand." Let me say that again. We are too prone to engrave our trials in marble and our blessings in sand. What does he mean by that? If you've ever been to the beach and written something in sand, you know, you go out the next morning, it's gone. The wind or the waves have taken it. That's so much what we do when it comes to remembering the ways God has been faithful to us, the ways He's provided for us, our daily bread. We're so quick to forget those things.

It's a great exercise for our hearts. If you want something to do this afternoon that is good for you, make a list from 2022. How has God been faithful? How has God shown up for you? We're so quick to remember all the bad things, but remembering all the good things—Ann Voskamp with "1,000 Gifts"—count your blessings. Remember the ways God has provided.

But it's a bad idea to think that the blessings of His hands is all that's meant by blessing. For example, we preached through the beatitudes last spring. And the beatitudes, I call them the beautitudes because it's a picture of the beautiful life. But every line begins with "blessed are" and then goes on to describe circumstances that we would never associate with material blessing. Hungry and thirsty, poor in spirit, mourn. Even there, it just tells you this is way bigger than what we think of the blessings of His hands. This is what we think we want from God—financial prosperity, everything to work out. But the reality is we want something different. And if we're really thoughtful about this, we'll recognize that this is good, but there's something better.

The Blessing of His Face

It's the blessing of His face. Now twice in this passage, it speaks about the face of God in Hebrew. And when I was growing up, I heard this blessing a lot. We actually said it at the close of my youth group to one another:

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance toward you and give you peace.

I never knew what countenance was. In Hebrew, it's actually the same word as face, just like it before. I don't know why they substitute that—maybe to sound poetic or something—but it's twice in this. The emphasis is on the face of God shining, lifted up, turned toward His people. And here's my big idea again: what we think we want is the blessings of His hands. But you know what our heart longs for, really deep down? It's the blessing of God's face. God's face turned toward us.

Remember Jacob and Esau, the patriarchs, twin boys, the sons of Isaac and Rebecca. Esau was the firstborn and there had been a prophecy given before the boys were born in utero. It told Isaac and Rebecca that the younger son is the one who's to be blessed and the older one will serve the younger one. But as the boys come out and grow, dad starts to play favorites. Isaac dotes on his son Esau, and he forgets the prophecy and disregards what's being said there. He dotes on him.

What happens in Jacob's life is what happens in all kinds of families when there's favoritism. Jacob grows up to be this needy and angry young man. And what he wants is his father's face, his father's blessing. So when Isaac is old and blind, he tricks his father out of the blessing. And what's bizarre about this is when you think about Jacob scheming to dress himself up as Esau and to slip in there and get the blessing, you got to recognize this is not a dummy. He's got to know. I mean, he's known as actually a trickster, a very wily smart person. He's got to know I'm not going to get away with this for very long. So why would he do that? If he knows my dad's going to find this out eventually, and my brother's going to find out this eventually, and I am not going to get away with this, why would he still go through with that?

And I think it's because of this.

I think it's because Jacob growing up needy and angry just longed to hear his dad say, even if it was under false pretenses, "I love you, I'm proud of you." He longed, even if it was a lie, to hear that benediction, that blessing pronounced over his life. And of course what happens is immediately Esau does find out, his dad Isaac finds out, Jacob has to leave, and he gets none of the financial rewards. He never sees his mom or his dad again. And this is a heartbreaking story.

One of the things about that story in the Bible is it always hits. There's lots of American novels actually that are based on that story because that story deeply resonates within each of us. We know what it's like to long for someone to say over our lives: you matter, you're significant. Tim Keller puts it this way: we want someone of great worth to say over our lives that we're of great worth.

So you know why we always think what we really want is the material provision of God? Because we live in a materialistic society that thinks that's the best. What we really want deep down is the face of God. The face of God toward us, the blessing of His face.

The Search for a Father's Approval

Most famously, Andre Agassi demonstrates this. He came out with a memoir in 2009 called Open that describes his story of rising to the top of the tennis world. Eight grand slam titles, very famous as a showman on the tennis court. He kind of slumped later in his career and still came back. And he's known as one of the elder statesmen of the tennis world.

And in this memoir and then subsequent interviews, we find out more about what kind of motivated and drove Agassi. He said that he hated tennis with a dark and secret passion. Now why? Because Agassi's relationship with tennis was defined by, dominated by, and therefore ruined by his relationship with his dad. He said, "Tennis is something I didn't choose. My father kind of pushed it on me. I felt fear to not do it—not any sort of form of abuse, but in the form of just having the pressure of the world on my shoulders."

He regularly introduced his son as the future number one greatest tennis player in the world. And he pushed his son over and over, got high-speed tennis machines firing balls at his son, gambled even at an early age on his son's matches, pushed him really, really hard. And Andre describes going to the tennis camps as going to prison camp. And he went along with it all wanting so much for his dad to be proud, to earn his love, to get his approval.

He admits in the interview, "I never had ownership of tennis. I was scared later on and I prayed. I played because I didn't know what else I was going to do." And he was working for one thing: the blessing of his father. Who's going to say, "You, I love you. I delight in you—not for what you do, but for who you are"? He wanted the face of his father, someone of great worth to say his life was of great worth.

And we all want this. The pop psychology machine tells us that we shouldn't—that it shouldn't matter what other people think, right? We're told this line: "Hey, it doesn't matter what anybody thinks, it just matters what I think about myself." That don't work. I think about half of social media is people posting pictures and posting accomplishments and posting insights and just begging over and over: "See me, bless me, bless me. Don't you see my life has value?" It's a black hole. And the face of God is really the answer to that longing in every human heart.

The Face of God

Listen to the blessing:

The Lord make His face to shine toward you. The Lord lift up His face toward you. — Numbers 6:22-27

What is the face of God? It's different from His normal everyday omnipresence. There's something deeper there. When my kids were little, we had little boys. I remember them sitting in my lap and reading a book or having a conversation, and I remember this happened many times. Little hands grabbed my face and turned it toward them. What do they want? They had my attention. I'm reading a book, I'm with them, but what they wanted was the eyes, the face. They're like, "I see you, I'm with you."

And again, anthropomorphic language for God, but this is what is pictured for us: in the face of God turned toward us, His engagement, His presence, His eyes.

Now, I got to confess this to you. One of my liabilities as a pastor are these eyebrows. I've always had these eyebrows, and if you've noticed, I can look really intense and kind of angry. People tease me about having resting Bradford face. Or I've been up here while there's a baby being baptized and I'm like this, and people are like, "Do you hate this child? Why are you so angry?" And sometimes I worry about that because I'm afraid my face is communicating to you something about what God's face is like.

The face is shining. The face is turned toward and shining. I went to two weddings, performed one, went to another one this weekend, saw lots of glowing, shining faces, right?

That's the moment we take pictures of the bride and groom they're at their happiest. We know what a shining face looks like. It's a face of unbelievable delight, right? That's His face turned toward us. That's what God's face is toward us.

This is why David in Psalm 27, which was our call to worship, says this about God's face.

My heart says this about You, God, seek His face. Lord, I will seek Your face. Do not hide Your face from me. Do not turn Your servant away in anger. You've been my helper. Do not leave me or abandon me. God of my salvation, even if my mother and father abandoned me, the Lord cares for me. — Psalm 27

There've been so many people who've also talked about this experience. This is what God's like. He's not intense and angry. His face is shining upon His people.

Again, Charles Spurgeon says this:

Some of us know at times what it is to almost be too happy to live. The love of God has been so overpoweringly experienced by us on some occasions that we almost had to ask for a stay of the delight because we couldn't endure it anymore.

He's talking about an experience of God's face—of that being like, this is who God is toward me.

The Problem with God's Face

Now, if you know your Bibles, you know that the face of God—this sounds really good, but it's also kind of a problem. And I wonder how Moses thought about this. I mean, here he is in Numbers, and God is telling him, "Okay, I want you to pass on this blessing. Tell the priest to say this at every tabernacle service: the Lord's face shine upon you." This is the same Moses just a couple of years before at Mount Sinai, where he's up on the mountain of God and says, "Show me your face." And God says, "Nobody can see my face and live."

And I'm sure Moses thought, "Now, what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to tell the people God's face is shining on them. How is this going to work?"

Let me make this clear. The reason that we say God's face is a threat to his people is because God is holy. God is holy, holy, holy. But I need to make sure you don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Because I think sometimes when people hear that in this or another context—we say God is holy and He can't be with sinners—we think something like this: God is disgusted by you. You are repulsive to Him. You're a stinky lot of miserable sinners and God is just done. Like, get them out of my presence. And that is not at all what's pictured for us in scripture.

Is God just impatiently done and repulsed? That's not what it means when God is holy and we're sinners and our sin and his holiness can't coexist. It means more like fire and water. You can't put fire and water in the same place. They can't coexist together at the same time. But it certainly doesn't mean that God is repulsed and wants nothing to do with us.

He is holy, holy, holy. And that's why I'm sure Moses hearing this thought, "Now how does this work? You're Holy God." The mystery of this—about the face of God shining upon sinners—is answered in the passage. And I'm sure Moses was like, "Okay, I'll try to get my head around this one because it's caught up in this little phrase: make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you."

And Moses is like, "Yes, it's got to be that. It's got to be some form of God's graciousness that allows us to have His face."

Grace and Sacrifice

I want you to remember that this blessing was set at the end of every tabernacle service. Now, in case you don't know what happens in a tabernacle service, there's a lot of killing of animals. There's a lot of sacrifice that happens in a tabernacle service. And so the blessing comes after there's been a sacrifice for sin.

People always wonder: how were people saved in the Old Testament? If you read in Hebrews 10, you know what this is about.

The law is only a shadow of the good things that were to come in Christ, not a reality itself of those things. So the law could never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices that they offered year after year. Otherwise, they wouldn't have stopped being offered since the worshipers purified once and all would no longer need them. But in the sacrifices, there's a reminder of sins every year. It's impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to take away sins. Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifice over and over. But this man Jesus, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever on the cross, sat down at the right hand of God. — Hebrews 10

This is all what's pictured in the sacrificial system of the Old Testament.

The Blessing of Esau and Jacob

Remember the Esau and Jacob story? One of the weird details of that story is a little statement that mama makes. Rebecca—so I said, Esau was Isaac's favorite. Jacob was his mom's favorite, Rebecca's. And so this whole scheme to steal the blessing from your brother was actually being orchestrated by their mother, Rebecca.

She's the one who was helping him figure this out and Jacob was a little unsure, like, is this gonna work? What happens if I go into my father and deceive him? He catches wind of what's going on and instead of blessing me, he curses me instead. He actually pronounces curses over me. And Rebecca says something there really bizarre, probably offhand, really rash. She says this:

Let the curse fall on me. Let the curse, if that happens, I'm the one who's going to take the blame. I'm the one who's going to be cursed.

And what Rebecca says in a flippant way, probably in a rash unthinking way is what Jesus says over us in a purposeful way, in an obedient way and a sacrificial way. Let the curse fall on me. And this means that everything that we deserve like Jacob, the cursing of God falls upon Jesus and everything that he deserves. The blessing of God, the face of God falls upon us, comes to us. Why? So that you ever, ever, ever will have the face of God towards you.

The Tabernacle Picture

This is actually what's pictured for us in the tabernacle. There are two rooms: on the left is the holy place, on the right is the Holy of Holies. Remember I said the book of Numbers is filled with it—it's like TV, it's not just radio, not just AM talk radio. It doesn't just describe, it visualizes for us. So in chapter eight, Moses is to tell Aaron, make sure that you've got the golden candelabra with the seven lights on it facing forward in this holy place part of the tabernacle.

Now that doesn't make sense unless you look at the diagram because what is the candelabra shining light upon? You can see the little table right there. This is the picture of the temple. Same thing though. The candelabra is shining upon this table that's got twelve loaves of bread on it. Now this would have been set up and taken down over and over in the book of Numbers. Only the priests were allowed in here, but all the people saw this when it's being set up and taken down. It's like TV. It's telling them, wow, look, this is meant to remind you the light of God. The face of God is ever shining on this table. And what's on the table? There's twelve loaves. I wonder what those represent. Oh, us. The twelve tribes, right?

This is what is being pictured for them: that the light of God is shining on His people and nothing changes that or takes that away. Not their disobedience or their distrust. None of that takes that away.

But remember a blessing is not just a subjective wish. It's not just good vibes from God about how He feels towards us. It's also objective. And that's also in this passage. God doesn't just say, Hey, I feel this way toward you. He actually does something that communicates that and secures that. It's right here in verse 27:

They will pronounce My name over the Israelites.

I want you to think about all this name stuff. This name stuff is big in the Bible. In the Bible, there were generations upon generations, generations upon generations before they knew God's name. And they called Him just Elohim, just a generic word for God. And so the earliest names of children in the Bible, lots of them have the sound "el" built into them because of that. People like, oh, the name. And then after God reveals Himself at the burning bush, He reveals Himself as Yahweh. I am that I am. And so generations after that, the phrase Jah appears in Hebrew names. Why? Because they're like, the name. We know the name. We can call our children by the name. We have the name.

And New Testament Christians, you are baptized. We baptize people into the name: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us to pray in the name. The name stuff is so important. It's ours because of adoption. God adopting us into His family, not just saying I have these great feelings towards you, but now you get to be called by my name.

Adoption and Inheritance

My sister and her husband, Kenneth and Emily, the Mulders, they have seven children. Yeah, I know we have six, that's a lot. They've got more than we do. They have four biological ones, and then they adopted three children. But you know what's funny about their family? How many of them do you think are named Mulder? All of them. They don't distinguish. They don't introduce them as like, here's our real children and here's our not. They're all their children. And how many of them do you think get to live at the address where the Mulders live? All of them. And how many of them you think when their parents, my sister and her husband pass away, will receive an inheritance from the Mulders? All of them. That's right.

If we do that, if we do that, how much more our Father makes no distinction between those who are biological and natural and those who are adopted. In scripture, we're told that Jesus is the only son of God.

He's the only one who's rightfully the son of God. We would say he's the only one that's the real son of God, but God wouldn't because he's adopted us. How many of us get the family name? Come on, y'all, all of us. How many of us get to have a future home together in a new heavens and new earth? And how many of us get an eternal inheritance that we've already received a down payment of in His Holy Spirit that lives inside of you? Amen. That's exactly right.

You know, every Sunday, Pastor me or somebody else will pronounce a benediction in our service at the end of our service. And it's one of my favorite parts, and it always breaks my heart when people leave after communion because they miss out. I know you may think that's a fancy way of closing out a service—like, you don't know how to do it any other way, so you just figured this would work. But it's not that at all.

We say these passages of blessing because we're saying over you the name and the objective reality and the subjective heart of God towards you. We're reinstating that over every week for you. The right way to receive a benediction is like this: you can do it with your hands down, whatever, but you're receiving something. What is being said over and over again is true of who you are. It's a reminder. I need this. I've forgotten who I am this week and I need to remember it. It's a statement of His delight and longing and of His securing all these things for you.

The Tennis Story

Let me close with one more tennis story. Andre Agassi's kind of nemesis during the 80s and 90s of the tennis world was a man named Boris Becker. They faced off five times in Grand Slam semifinals and another quarterfinal. They made glorious matches, but here's the thing: Agassi beat Boris Becker 10 out of their 14 meetings.

When Boris Becker came on the scene, he had this unbelievable serve. Agassi said, "Boris Becker beat me the first three times we played because his serve was something the game had never seen before. So I went to watch tape after tape of him and stood across the net from him three different times and started to realize he had this weird trick with his tongue. I'm not kidding. He would go into his rocking motion about to serve, same routine. Just about when he was about to toss the ball, he would stick his tongue out, and it would either be right in the middle of his lip or in the left-hand corner. If he's serving in the deuce court and he put his tongue in the middle of his lip, he was either serving up the middle or to the body. If he put it to the side, he was going to serve wide. I could tell every time."

He went on after this to exploit that trick and won 10 out of 11 meetings afterward. It wasn't until after both of them were retired that they had a beer together. He said, "I couldn't help but say, by the way, do you know that you used to do this thing with your tongue and give away your serve?" Boris about fell out of his chair. He said, "I used to go home and tell my wife all the time, 'It's like he reads my mind.'" Little did he know, Agassi was just reading his face.

Reading the Face of God

You know, as people who have the face of God ever ours because of Christ—this is our gift. This is what we do in coming to worship. This is what we do when we take the Lord's Supper. When we have the blessing pronounced over us, we are learning and growing and learning to read the face, to read like, this is actually how God is toward us. This is what's coming my way from the Lord. His light shining toward us. His favor ever on us.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you. These words are too good to be true, and it's hard for us to take this in and really believe it. Father, we pray that you would press these things more deeply into us, that you would help us to live as people who already have the face of the Lord turned toward us, shining upon us, the name placed over our lives. We pray, Father, we would live more and more into the reality of whose we are in Christ. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's stand and sing these truths back to each other.