Transcript
Thank you. Well today we begin a brand new series of sermons and we've entitled this series Love Came Down at Christmas. I got the idea for this title of this Advent series from one of the oldest of the blessings that appear in the Bible. It was given by God to Moses for Moses to share with his young assistant Aaron as a blessing for the people and we find it in the book of Numbers. This blessing,
think about it for a minute, this blessing is 1,200 years ahead of the profoundest moment in human history when the word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. Well 1,200 years before the birth of Christ and yet this blessing becomes an amazing prophecy in itself, an amazing gospel passage that introduces us and prepares us for that moment when love came down, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. And so it's very
old and yet this 1,200 year old blessing, 1,200 years before Christ is an amazing description of what was to happen 1,200 years later. Here's the blessing. In the book of Numbers chapter 6 it starts this way, the Lord spoke to Moses saying speak to Aaron and his son saying thus shall you bless the Israelites. You shall say to them 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 his countenance upon you and give you peace. And in the last line after the blessing and so shall you put my name on Israel and I will bless them. Let's pray together as we seek to understand this amazing blessing. Lord, be our teacher, teach us as we move through these next weeks of Advent and prepare for the birth of Christ to help us understand this ancient prophecy of that moment and
help us to understand what it means for us today in Christ's name we pray, Amen. I don't know but does it seem odd to you sometimes that the oldest statement is the best in explaining the newest event? Here is an old blessing and yet it's a profound description of what's going to happen 1,200 years later in Bethlehem. It's often how it is though that the best explanations are the oldest and the simplest. In 1962 my hero
Karl Barth, who by the way had just retired from his post at the University of Basel and he was in his 76th year and he decided to move into a wider ministry and he started that wider ministry by making his one and only trip to America. And so Karl Barth came to America and he came and spoke at Princeton and I was so grateful. I was a youth pastor here at this church then I went back
to Princeton and I heard him speak. I even got an autographed copy of the Roman brief from Karl Barth on that trip and I had a chance to hear him give his great lectures on Introduction to Evangelical Theology at Princeton University Chapel. He also spoke at the University of Chicago and the reason he wanted to come to America was he wanted to see Gettysburg. That was the one thing he wanted to see in America. The one
site he wanted to go to was Gettysburg because he was very interested in the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and so he did he went to Gettysburg but of course he also gave these two great sets of lectures and Time Magazine put him on the cover of Time during that visit because he was a very famous man and they interviewed him and one of the most famous moments in the interviews that Karl Barth had during
his time in America was when one newsman said to Dr. Barth, Professor Barth, he said, now Professor Barth you've written so many books. You, after all, wrote the Church Dogmatics we've been covering this many for the radio audience. I'm now holding my hands out about four, three feet, three and a half feet, three and a half feet of books that he wrote just the Church Dogmatics itself. He was amazing theologian, the great theologian of the 20th
century. And so the newsman said that Dr. Professor Barth, if you were going to summarize your theology or is there any way you could sort of explain the heart of your theology to us? It would help us a lot. He could give us just a, you know, press or always looking for a one liner that would just sort of explain it all. And Barth was totally prepared. He was he was not at all embarrassed by that
question. He said, oh yes, I can do that easily. And so here's what he said. If I were going to explain, you know, explain this whole theology and how I put it all together and why I can do it easily, he said, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. Yeah, that's it, Dr. Barth, yeah, that's it, that's it. That's a children's song. It's a song children sing in Sunday school. He must
have known that, but it's also a great reformed statement of the gospel. Jesus loves me, this I know. Why do you know it? Because the Bible tells me so. Karl Barth was a man of the Bible, a man of the text. It's the text. And so that was his statement. Notice the simplest began becomes a description of the profoundest. And that's what we're going to do in these next weeks. My colleagues and I, Tim Snow and
Kay Broweleit and Ken Kierstead get to share in this series with me. That's been a tradition we've had that Advent I share with my with my other pastors. And then I get to speak again on Christmas Eve. And then I get to give the final sermon on the Sunday after Christmas on this last line that so you shall I put your my name on you. But we get to look through this great blessing and go
through it word by word, see the profoundness of this blessing, this old, old blessing as a statement of the newest event. Today, I get to focus on three words. The Lord bless. I just get three words, three words today. I'll leave the rest for the others. The Lord bless you. Three words. First, Lord. The word for Lord here is Yahweh. Yahweh is a very special word for Moses because when Moses stood by a burning bush before
he went to Egypt to lead God's people out of that captivity, up till then the word for God was either Adonai, El Shaddai or Elohim. Three words really mean great or large. That's all the words really mean in Hebrew. But God was always called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And so Moses meets the Lord as a theophany. He meets the Lord at the burning bush. He's standing there and the Lord tells him that he's
going to use Moses to set his people free. And Moses says to God, who shall I say sent me? How shall I describe you? And here's the answer he got. I am who I am. I will be who I will be. In other words, I speak for myself. And so when Moses went to the people, he said, Yahweh sent me. Yahweh is the third person singular of I am the to be verb. I am. In other
words, 'He is', sent me. The one who speaks for himself sent me. And that became the holy name for God throughout the Old Testament. The holy name for God is Yahweh. He is he speaks for himself. Pascal understood this in the Pensées, this wonderful little book in the 16th century that Pascal wrote of just his thoughts. And he has this wonderful whimsical line where he says, an artisan may speak of riches. I mean, you know, a
worker who works on rich things can talk about riches. Or a lawyer may speak about war or may speak about kingship. But it takes a rich man to really speak well of riches. And it takes a king to speak of some great gift that he's just bestowed as a king. In other words, you can a lawyer can talk about what it's like to be a king. But, you know, really, it takes a king to explain what
it's like to be a king. And then this last line from Pascal, and God speaks well of God. God knows how to speak about God. He knows how to speak for himself. He knows how to make himself known. And Pascal saw that. And we see it in this great blessing. God speaks for himself. Who shall I say sent me? Yahweh. He is the one who speaks for himself. I am who I am. I will be who
I will be. I will speak for myself. And so that's the holy name of God. And that's used in this blessing. The God who speaks. Isn't it interesting that in John, the 1st chapter, this is picked up by John when he says the word, the speech became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. So it is blessing prepares us for that moment when the word becomes flesh. God speaks for himself in his son.
And then the second word bless. This is a wonderful word, and I have to do a word study with you. And if you want to take notes, by the way, there's a whole page of empty space for notes on today's bulletin. You can take notes on this. There are two Hebrew words for bless that are translated by the English Bible with the word bless, B-L-E-S-S. And you should learn both words. The one
word is the word that appears in Psalm one. Blessed is the man or woman that walks not in the way of wickedness, but walks in the way of the Lord, in the Torah of God, in the way of God. And that is the Hebrew word ashre. If you want to write it down in English, A-S-H-R-E, ashre. And that is a very important Hebrew word used a lot in the Book of Proverbs when
it talks about being blessed by God. That's the word our Lord has in mind when he starts his Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount and says nine times, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those who are pure at heart. Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake. Blessed are the peacemakers. He has nine blessings. And what he has in mind, though
he uses the Greek word makarios because he's speaking to people who understand Greek, yet he has the Hebrew word in mind, ashre. And here's what the word means. That word in Psalm 1 means to be on the right road, to be where you were meant to be. And that is the biblical understanding of happiness. That's why if you have a New Testament, it'll give you the Beatitudes. They'll say happy are the poor in spirit because makarios
in Greek means happy. But Hebrew word ashre means to be where you were meant to be. That's the biblical doctrine of success, not to necessarily be rich. That is a perversion of blessing. Unfortunately, some modern-day Christians have slipped into that perversion. You may not be rich, and that may not be what your blessing is, but you're blessed if you were where you were meant to be. If you're on the right road, you're blessed. That's what
it means to be blessed by God. And so sometimes in a sad moment in your life when you were where you were meant to be, you look back on it and are grateful. And you say, I was blessed that I was there. I was meant to be there. And so when you're able to say, I'm where I'm supposed to be, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, that is the mark of a happy person. It may
have nothing to do with my prosperity or my wealth or anything else. It's where I'm supposed to be, and that is ashre. And that's a wonderful word. The other word that's translated blessed is the word that appears in Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. There, the Hebrew word is barak. If you want to write that down, B-R-K, barak. And that is the great
word for worship in the Old Testament, too, because that word literally means to bow. You heard it in the New Testament text where Paul is telling about how Christ emptied himself, came down to the cross, and God has exalted him and given him a name above every name that at the name of Jesus Christ, every knee should bow. Barak, Paul is writing in Greek, but he's thinking again, also, that wonderful Psalm 103. We bow before the
Lord when we worship him. When we worship him, we acknowledge his greatness, we bow. That's barak. The word barak, when it refers to us, means to bow. But that's the word that's used in this blessing. This blessing in Psalm, in Numbers 6, uses the word barak. So like the Hebrew language, I've got to teach you something else about the Hebrew language. The Hebrew language, words do double duty when they refer to God and when they refer
to us. So here, when the word barak refers to us, it means bow. When it refers to God, it means stoop. And that's what the blessing is saying. God stoop to you. What an amazing, what a radical idea that God should stoop to us. We're supposed to stoop to him. We're the ones that are supposed to bow. And by the way, remember last month, we've been looking at the stories before the grand story. In all of
our stories before the grand story, none of us, none of the Jews expected that God would bow to us, even though this blessing is there. We all thought that God would reign and win the victory for us. That he would conquer the evil doers, but bow before us and even bow before the evil doers and die on the cross. Nobody expected that, except this blessing says so. This ancient blessing says so. It says that God stoops
to us to get down to where he can see us face to face. He stoops down and that's what this blessing says. The Lord, let me literally translate this blessing. And so he said, this is how you will bless the people. You shall say the Lord, the God who speaks for himself, stoops to you and keeps you. Stoops down, kneels down for you to find you. Our Lord did it in the Thursday night of Holy Week
when he stooped down and watched the disciples and notice that even at that point, Peter says, no, you will never do this. No one is ready for this. It's a total surprise. And yet it was here in the blessing. It was there. The gospel was here. It saw it that God bows down. God stoops down before you. Did you know that? And the word you is used here. Notice not them. The Lord blessed them. It's personalized
totally. In fact, in the literal Hebrew, it's bless your sons and daughters. Bless you, son and daughter. Bless you personally. Come down close to you personally. We wonder why God chooses this way. This seems so totally personal, so totally individual. This coming down to find each one of us at one at a time. But this is what happens. One at a time, he finds us. You know, I had an interesting experience with some few years ago.
Somebody came into my office that I think was mentally confused. And as I listened to this person talk, they said, you know, Reverend Palmer, I think you need to know that the CIA is watching me. And not only that, the FBI is watching me too. And I know it's true often with people who have some paranoia will often think that the CIA or the FBI or somebody is watching them. And this person actually felt they were
watching him through his television set. He says, they're watching me. I know they are. The CIA is watching. And I decided to use a rather blunt approach with this person. And I said, maybe it's a mistake, but I'm going to say to this person, I said, you know, I don't think the CIA is watching you because I think they have bigger fish to fry than to keep track of you and me. I included myself too. I
said, I don't think they're watching me. I don't think they're watching you. I think they have bigger fish to fry. I use that phrase. And you know, that young man who said that to me was comforted by that. He said, thank you, Pastor. I never thought of that, that they do have bigger fish to fry. They've got the communists to keep track of. They've got the terrorists to keep track of. And they can't watch me. Thank
you. And it helped, I think, for a while, maybe. But then I said to him, you know, I don't think the CIA is watching you. But I'll tell you who is watching you. Your Heavenly Father is watching you. He watches you. He knows your name. He can find you. And that is good news. And that is not a deception. That's the truth. The CIA is not watching many of us in this room, believe me. But God
is watching every one of us. He knows our names. That's what this blessing is saying. The Lord watch you over you. The Lord bless you, stoop down to find you, to look at you one by one. It seems so inefficient that God would do that. And yet we've just baptized all these little children. And we realize that God has given us a pattern for that in the way he entrusts the life of a little child into
the hands of these amateurs that stood in front of us. I mean, they're not even experts. They haven't even been through enough schooling to really raise children. And yet here they are entrusted with all these wonderful kids. Why not entrust these kids to us who are grandparents and no more and have all this wisdom? And yet they're not entrusted to us except for a few hours. And then we have to give them back. But they're entrusted
to these amateurs. These young people get to raise these amazing kids and are given that tremendous entrustment, that tremendous stewardship. It's a pattern that God set. But it's sort of symbolic of what he has done. He has stooped down to find us. He knows us. And he knows us by name. I put on the front of the bulletin a quote from Francis Collins. This man is creating a tremendous stir in America right now. He is a
medical doctor and also has his PhD in physiology. And he is the head of the whole American genome project that's tracking the DNA and the genome genetic code of every human being in the world and of all time. He is also a famous scientist. He is the one who cracked the genetic code of cystic fibrosis. And because of cracking that, it's now a real possibility that cystic fibrosis can be cured. And this man cracked it. Some
people think he may get the Nobel Prize for that. But his name is Francis Collins. And he's a Christian. And he wrote a book called The Language of God. Because, of course, that's his whole business, is the genome language of God. And he wrote this. After my conversion to belief in God, I spent considerable time trying to discern his characteristics. I concluded that he must be a God who cares about persons. Or the argument about the
moral law would not make much sense. So deism wouldn't do for me. Deism is just sort of there's a vague God out there but he doesn't care about anything. I also concluded that God must be holy and righteous since the moral law calls me in that direction. But still, this seemed awfully abstract. Just because God is good and loves his creatures does not, for instance, require that we have the ability to communicate with him or to
have some sort of relationship with him. In other words, personally, one by one. I found an increasing sense of longing for that. However, and I began to realize that that's what prayer is all about, is what I realized that God, and isn't it marvelous, this word Barak enters you into the prayer vocabulary of the Bible, to bow before God because he has stooped down to us. He knows your name, folks. This same Karl Barth who said,
Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. When he explained the ministry of the Holy Spirit, he put it this way. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is that moment in your life when you realize that God's love is also for me. It's also for me. That was in this great blessing. It's also for you. God knows your name. And this blessing gets us ready for heaven. It gets us ready for that
great moment when God came to us as a child, came to us and stooped before us because he knows us, because he loves us. Heavenly Father, thank you for this amazing blessing that is ours and that it's good news and that it shows us that you know us and you care about us. May we experience that. And in personal and concrete ways, in Christ's name we pray. Amen.