Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Benedictus

In the eighth sermon by Dr. Rayburn on the book of Numbers, we have an excellent exposition about the concept of the Benediction in the worship service. We learn what it is, why it is, and the benefits of the practice. The whole sermon is good, but I especially liked this passage from Dr. Rayburn's sermon:

The history of the Christian ministry bears witness not only to the universal practice of bestowing God’s blessing upon his people this way as the conclusion of services of worship but of ministers understanding very well that they were, in so doing, communicating God’s blessing and favor directly to his people. Here is Charles Simeon, the great Anglican pastor in 18th and 19th century Cambridge.

“I feel that in pronouncing [the benediction] I do not do it as a mere finale, but that I am actually dispensing peace from God and at God’s command. I know not the individuals to whom my benediction is a blessing; but I know that I am the appointed instrument by whom God is conveying the blessing to those who are able to receive it.” [Moule, Charles Simeon, 85-86]

I spoke last week of the way worship allows us every Lord’s Day to reenter reality and to have that reality – that counter-reality to the imagined reality that so many accept and believe and which we ourselves are so sorely tempted to accept – I say to have that reality impressed afresh upon our minds and hearts. Here, in the benediction as part of that worship, we are reminded that God alone is the source of all that we long for; he and he alone can give it to us and keep it for us; and that, therefore, the hope we place in other things, in other people is misplaced, futile, and bound to disappoint us, a very important thing to hear and understand as we leave the church and reenter our daily life. We are also reminded that the Lord stands ready to bless his people; that he will bless them if only they are faithful to him. The three-fold repetition of the Lord’s name, the emphasis placed on the Lord’s blessing being in the priests mouth in vv. 23 and 27, all of that is no doubt necessary precisely because we are so inclined to look for our blessing in all the wrong places and because the Devil will be very happy to give us a kind of blessing from other sources that can distract us from looking for real blessing from the only one who can give it to us.

In Jeremiah 2:13 the Lord laments this very tendency on the part of his people.

“My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water.”

In other words they looked elsewhere for their blessing and found only the cheap and temporary imitation. [Duguid, 88]

In any well-ordered worship service, everything that is done is important and valuable. Everything renews faith, hope, love and our lives in some way. Everything addresses our need in some significant way. But not everything, every Sunday, has subjective power over our hearts. Our sins may be forgiven because we have asked for that forgiveness in Jesus’ name – and that is the truly important thing – our sins may be forgiven but we may not feel the freedom from sin and guilt that is the appropriate consequence of such forgiveness. We may have sung God’s praise and glory – and that is absolutely important for us to do – but we may not have felt the divine majesty in our hearts. Sometimes we come to the end of the service and still our hearts have not been lifted up and our spirits raised, however we may have heard the Word of God and traversed the gospel ground once more. And for the real believer, whose faith is often downcast because of his own sins and failures or because of the afflictions of life, that blessing being granted to him at the end of the service and resting upon him, the Lord’s name being put upon him in that way, is a matter of the greatest conceivable importance whether or not we feel the effect of that blessing in our spirits. Who can possibly say what difference it would make to our lives not to have the blessing that has come to us from the sermons we have heard, the prayers we have offered, the Lord’s Supper’s we have participated in. We cannot know how God pours his help, his forgiveness, his strength, his provision into our hearts by the means that he has appointed to communicate his favor – so many of which are concentrated as parts of the service of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day. And the benediction is another of those parts. No one can say what a difference it has made to countless multitudes and generations of Christian people through the ages to have the Lord blessing them, to have that benediction granted them in that divinely appointed and ordered way, that way the Lord himself promised would be his way of smiling upon, keeping, being gracious to, and blessing his people. Must we not believe, can a believer of the Bible here in Numbers 6 not believe that this benediction as often as it is offered by a minister and received by a congregation is a means of some blessing granted by God to his people every time it is uttered? Have you so much of that blessing that you care to have no more? Are you sated with God’s blessing? Or, rather, do you want as much of it as you can possibly obtain and so are jealous to take the fullest advantage of every opportunity to obtain more of that blessing?