Last Sunday I preached the Aaronic Blessing, one of the richest passages in all of Scripture. It is the blessing Yahweh commanded the priests to pronounce over Israel, likely as the people departed from the tabernacle after presenting their offerings.

The blessing consists of three lines, two of which speak of God’s face turned toward His people. It would have been fitting to conclude the sermon with the beatific vision, but I chose instead to emphasize verse 27, where Yahweh summarizes the blessing by saying, “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel.”

Those kinds of decisions are among the hardest parts of sermon preparation. A passage often contains several faithful avenues for exposition, yet a sermon cannot travel all of them. Faithful preaching requires a particular emphasis, and no biblical text can be exhausted in a single message.

That means every sermon leaves behind a few treasures in the cutting room floor.

One of those treasures from this sermon is this: God blessed the nation of Israel through individual Israelites.

That observation becomes beautiful when we consider both the immediate context of Numbers and how it is echoed in the New Testament.

The Aaronic Blessing is not randomly attached to the laws concerning the Nazirite vow. Rather, every section of Numbers 1–6 builds toward this great benediction. The census in chapter 1, the arrangement of the camp in chapter 2, the Levites’ census and responsibilities in chapters 3–4, the laws concerning purity and sin in chapter 5, and the Nazirite vow in chapter 6 all prepare Israel to depart from Sinai and enter the Promised Land as Yahweh’s covenant people.

Each command comes through Moses to the people and is ultimately answered by God Himself, who blesses Israel through His appointed priests.

There is an especially beautiful correspondence with Numbers 2. There God commanded the tribes to camp facing inward toward the tabernacle. Their faces were literally turned toward God’s dwelling place. In the Aaronic Blessing, however, they receive the assurance that Yahweh’s face is also turned toward them.

Israel lived, in a sense, face to face with God.

Yet this profoundly corporate blessing is delivered to each individual Israelite. Hebrew makes this especially clear by using the second-person singular throughout the blessing. The nation is blessed one person at a time.

This pattern continues throughout the New Testament.

We often imagine that emphasizing individuals necessarily weakens the community, or that emphasizing the community diminishes the individual. Scripture refuses that false choice. Individuals are meant to belong to a covenant community, and that community is composed of real men, women, and children known by God. The community gives each person identity and place; each person gives the community a face rather than allowing it to become an anonymous mass.

The kingdom of God advances in the same way today. Christ is gathering one redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, yet He gathers that people by calling individuals out of darkness. As Paul writes, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). Every conversion is deeply personal, yet every convert is immediately joined to Christ’s body.

The Aaronic Blessing reminds us that God’s love is never merely individual or merely corporate. He places His name upon a people, yet He blesses each member of that people. His presence dwells among us together, and His gracious face is turned toward each of His saints.