NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH



NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH

June 5, 2016

Blessing No.10: Infrared Blessing

Mark Batterson

I don’t usually start messages this way but I want to do a little experiment this weekend. If you are willing to take part, go ahead and close your eyes. I want to do a word association test. When I say ‘the face of God,’ what comes to mind? More specifically, what expression is on God’s face?

Now, you can open your eyes and one last question. Was He smiling?

We will come back to that in a moment. I want to invite everyone at all of our campuses to stand as we read God’s Word. Numbers 6, the priestly blessing, blessing number 10, here was go.

22 The Lord said to Moses, 23 “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

24 “‘“The Lord bless you

    and keep you;

25 the Lord make his face shine on you

    and be gracious to you;

26 the Lord turn his face toward you

    and give you peace.”’

27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

The past two weeks we have talked about the Lord bless you and the Lord keep you. If you missed those messages, I encourage you to catch up online. This weekend, I want to take about this beautiful phrase, the Lord make his face to shine upon you. And I want to do something I’ve never done. I want to translate this blessing into emoji. I did not learn this in seminary and there is a little risk right here because emojis are subjective. And it is tough to translate Hebrew into emoji for here we go.

I think the blessing starts with the Vulcan emoji. The Jewish priest would hold both hands above their head as I mentioned two weeks ago. That is where Leonard Nimoy who played Spock in the original Star Trek series got the idea for the Vulcan salute. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish home and it was his one-handed blessing, if you will, and his phrase was live long and prosper. So Vulcan emoji. The Lord bless you. This is multi-dimensional so let me throw a few out. I think this is smiley face with smiling eyes. Let’s start there. That is the blessing of God. He is the God who is for us and the God who is with us. And I might just add in a thumbs up and a fist pump just to add an exclamation point. The Lord keep you, flex biceps! The Lord make his face to shine upon you, I think this is face blowing a kiss. And in case you care, this one gets texted to my wife frequently. And be gracious to you, winking emoji. The Lord turn his face toward you, smiling face with heart shaped eyes. And give you peace, let’s go all in right here, I’m seeing a party popper, hand-clap, rainbow, cupcake, face with tears of joy. Right now, my seminary professors are either rolling over in their graves or rolling over with laughter emoji!

It may seem like now I’m taking this blessing a little less seriously but I would submit that I’m taking it a little bit more seriously because a few moments ago, I asked you to close your eyes and I asked you what you saw when you think of the face of God. I want you to know that God is not neutral face emoji. He is not disappointed face. He is not angry face. He is smiley face with smiling eyes.

AW Tozer said what comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. So if God was texting us, and He has texted us, it’s called the Bible, we would find a ton of smiley faces with smiling eyes because you are the apple of his eye. He can’t take his eyes off you. He smiles on you all the time.

In two weeks, we will have our baptism by the bay and I want you to know when we huddle up with baptism candidates as they go public with their faith, I have one prayer that I have prayed for years and I say this to everybody who is taking that step of faith, that step of obedience. I say I hope that you can see and feel and know that God is smiling on you. Do you remember when Jesus was baptized? The Father said this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. He said that with a smile on his face. And when we act in obedience and in faith, we put a smile on God’s face.

I want to put a smile on God’s face. May the Lord make his face shine upon us.

I want to focus on shine but before we get there, there are two lines of this blessing that talk about the face of God. The Hebrew word is a plural word so it is multi-dimensional. In regards to time, it can refer to the split second before or the split second after something happens. So it is almost a parenthesis in time. In regards to space, it regards to the place right in front and the place right behind, so it is a parenthesis in space. Put it in scientific terms, the shortest possible time is 5.4 times 10 to the negative 44 power. Any shorter than that and quantum mechanics can’t tell if something is simultaneous or not. Then the shortest possible distance is 6.4 times 10 to the negative 34th power. Anything shorter and quantum mechanics can’t tell the difference between here and there. Here’s what I’m getting at, God is 5.4 times 10 to the negative 44th power before and after and God is 6.4 times 10 to the negative 34th power ahead and behind.

He is the God who is all around us all the time. Right before, right after, right ahead, right behind. I like how AW Tozer said it:

God is above but He is not pushed up. He is beneath but He is not pressed down. He is outside but He is not excluded. He is inside but He is not confined. God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside all things embracing, and inside all things filling. That is the eminence of God.

That is the face of God. The Psalmist said it this way in Psalm 139:5

You hem me in behind and before.

Every time I hear that verse, I have a little flashback. I was about five years old and I was in single bed in my bedroom in New Hope, Minnesota, and our family had a little tradition at night, sort of like the Walton family, if you are old enough to remember that, they would say goodnight to each other. So lights out and I would say goodnight Mom and goodnight Dad and good night Don. And my brother Don would say goodnight Mom and goodnight Dad and goodnight Mark and goodnight Bigfoot. Every time! It scared me to death! That was my childhood fear, so you can guess what needed to happen next. My parents would come in and they would do a Bigfoot check. They would check under the bed and in the closet. Fear is irrational because if he was in the closet or under the bed, he wasn’t Bigfoot, he was Littlefoot. And they would do one more thing before leaving, they would tuck me in. I’m talking mummy style. You know what I’m talking about. You have to be under the covers because that’s the only place you are safe.

The Psalmist said you hem me in behind and before. When I think of this blessing, when I think of this verse, I think of the God who tucks us in, the God who watches over us, the God who turns his face toward us, the God who keeps his eye on us.

By the way, Psalm 145:18

The Lord is nigh to all who call on him.

The word ‘nigh’ is plural. In other words, it means God is near in every way imaginable to the greatest degree possible.

If you are walking through a tough time, listen, number one, you are not alone and my guess is that most of us have found ourselves in that spot at one time or another. Maybe you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I have an exhortation for you this week, do not fear evil. His rod and his staff, they will comfort you. He is preparing a table in the presence of your enemies. He is the God who will comfort you. He is the God who will anoint your head with oil and his goodness and his mercy will follow you all the days of your life.

I know you might be in a spot right now where there is no evidence of God’s faithfulness and you wonder where He is. Have you ever gotten up on a cloudy day and wondered where the sun is? It is still shining but there is cloud cover. I love it when I take off on a place on an overcast day but then you break through the clouds and the sun is still shining. Listen, this too shall pass. Jesus said in this world you will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world. He is the God who is for us and the God who is with us. And I know from personal experience sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is hang in there.

The Lord make his face to shine upon us. Let’s talk about this word ‘shine’ this weekend. In 10 days, I will check off life goal number 109 from my life goal list. I will get up around 3:00 a.m. and I will begin hiking to the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park and I will watch the sunrise. It is the highest peak on the eastern seaboard within 25 miles of the ocean and it is one of three places that stakes claim to this unique privilege and that is if you see the sun rise there first, you are the first person in America to see the sun rise. And I thought a long time ago, at least one day of my life, I have to be the first person to see the sun rise. It’s gonna be fun! If you follow me on Instagram, there will be a sunrise picture that day. I have seen some amazing sunrises over the years.

Again, I love to see the sunrise on a flight at 30,000 feet. I remember the first time I visited Colorado, we flew in at night to Denver Airport and then we drove to Frisco so we saw the shadow of mountains but I had never seen them in the flesh. The next morning I woke up and saw the sunrise over those summits and it was spectacular. And at the top of the list no doubt was the two day hike from rim to rim across the Grand Canyon. The sun came up and began to paint the Canyon walls in pinks and purples and oranges. I’m not sure you’ve even seen the sunrise until you’ve seen the sunrise in the Grand Canyon. If Crayola asked me to name a crayon, I would probably do the Grand Canyon purple pink surprise!

The word ‘shine’ has multiple meanings in the Hebrew. The most basic, the most intrinsic meaning is to dawn. Sunrise. It is that simple. I think it is one of those daily miracles that we take for granted. Here’s the challenge, the sunrise happens every single day. Have you ever seen it? God is so good at what God does that we just take it for granted.

Thomas Carlisle said, ‘Imagine a man who lived in a cave his entire life, stepping outside for the first time to watch the sunrise.’ Carlisle said that man would walk with astonishment at a sight we daily witness with indifference.

John Dunn said it this way. There is nothing that God has established in the course of nature which therefore is done every day but would seem a miracle and exercise adoration if it were done but once.

So the word ‘shine’ means to dawn. The sunrise. It means to ignite. It is synonymous with the favor of God. But at its core, it means to give light, to give sight.

My goal this weekend is that we walk out with a little better understanding of what this blessing means. It is beautiful. It rolls off the tongue and it sounds nice. But what does it mean? The Lord make his face to shine upon us. Let me get theological for a moment. The apostle John in his first letter uses two three-word descriptors of God. He says God is love, that’s in Chapter 4. In Chapter 1 he says God is light. Three word sentences but yet can you imagine a more complex sentence? Are there any words that could speak more volume than those descriptors?

Here’s what I think, if we don’t understand the nature of light, we might not understand the nature of God. So let’s go back to the beginning in Genesis 1:3

God said, “Let there be light.”

The famous composer Leonard Bernstein said the best translation of Genesis 1:3 is not God said but God sang. But whether He said it or sang it, He flipped a switch and there is light. But let me give a little different translation, my personal translation. God said let there be electromagnetic radiation with varying wave lengths traveling at a speed of 186,281.7 miles per second. Let there be ultraviolet and infrared light. Let there be gamma rays, x-rays, radio waves and microwaves. Let there be light and health and color. Let there be photosynthesis and fiber optics. Let there be CDs and DVDs. Let there be satellite communications. Let’s stop right there. Light is the basis of everything. I am not an expert on the study of light so I will need our Georgetown Campus to fact check me this weekend. They are pretty smart people. This might sound theoretical but I think it is incredibly practical. So hang in there.

Albert Einstein said that science without religion sis lame and religion without science is blind. I don’t want to be either one of those things. So let’s juxtapose these two ideas because I think when we are studying light, we are studying the nature of God. So, light is the basis of everything. You have the periodic table memorized right? Just kidding! But there are lots of elements. In fact, we are continuing to discover new elements. Those elements absorb light at different rates. That is what makes them different from each other. It is light that differentiates those different elements. The entire food chain, do you like to eat? The entire food chain is based on photosynthesis, which is a function of light. It is fiber optic cables that carry telephone calls and television signals at the speed of light. Light is the basis of color and the basis of health. Light therapy can help you with seasonal affective disorder. Light in the form of lasers can heal muscles or cut through steel. Lasik surgery can begin to correct your vision. You name it, light does it.

The Lord make his face shine on you. Is it possible that there is more to this blessing than meet the eye? Light is the basis of time. It is the basis for the atomic clock. Light is the basis by which we measure, whether you are surveying a landscape or building a cityscape, it is lasers that ensure accurate measurement. And of course we measure space in light years. Now, the miraculous thing and the serious thing about light is that it has no volume and no mass, except in the quantum realm. And of course nothing is faster than the speed of light.

Snap your fingers. In the time it took you to do that, light circumnavigated the globe half a dozen times. Fast!

Here’s my point. We see such a thin slice of reality. We are only able to perceive with the human eye light between .4 microns and .7 microns. So the color red is the longest wave length at .7 microns. Anything longer is infrared. And then violet is the shortest wave length at .4 microns and anything shorter is ultraviolet. But once you get outside that visible spectrum of light, light begins to do amazing things. I don’t have time to talk about gamma rays or x-Rays or even radio waves but let’s talk about microwaves for a moment. Microwaves can track a moving object via radar. It is what meteorologists use to forecast the weather. It is what air traffic controllers use to land planes. It is what police officers use to bust you and enforce the speed limit. It is microwaves that cook food much quicker than a conventional oven. And if you have the NFL Ticket with Direct TV, it is light that corresponds with that satellite dish so that you can watch your favorite team any weekend. Now, within that spectrum of microwaves, there is a frequency of ranges. The F band is used for television broadcasting, the L band is used for GPS and military. The S band is used for weather radar and blue tooth devices. The X band is used for space communications and the Q band is used for satellite communications.

Here’s my point. When you think of light, when I think of light, I tend to think of just the light that I can see, this very thin slice of reality from red to violet. But that is a tiny fraction of what light is and what light does. And when we read this blessing, when we receive this blessing, the Lord make his face shine on you, it sounds so simple but all those things that light does, the light of God can do in your life supernaturally.

If light is the basis of everything, then this blessing is THE blessing. It is an infrared blessing. It is an ultraviolet blessing. It is a blessing that goes beyond what we can perceive with the naked eye. And that is why the writer of Corinthians said eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, mind has not conceived what God has prepared for you.

Perhaps there are blessings in categories that you didn’t know exists. He is able to do immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine. What I’m saying is, this blessing is all I need. This blessing is all I want whether I know it or not. It is all I need and all I want and all I have to do is receive it.

I want to challenge you this weekend to receive it.

We started in Genesis, let there be light. Let me end in Revelation. It says that there is a new heaven and a new earth and a New Jerusalem and it says it shone with the glory of God. Another derivation of that word ‘shine’ and it is perfect reflection. Its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel. Then it talks about the wall of the New Jerusalem and it begins to throw out all these different precious stones from emerald green to blue sapphire to blank onyx to ruby red to yellow topaz. It is the colors of the rainbow so you begin to picture the beauty of heaven. Then at the very end, it says this, the city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it. Why wouldn’t it? Because the One who created light in the first place is there! And it says they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun for the Lord will give them light.

Are you tracking with me? In the beginning, God said let there be light. And light is the basis of everything. And then the priests come along and pronounce this blessing, the Lord make his face to shine upon you! It is the God who created light who begins to shine in our lives, in the darkest places in our lives and what is it He begins to bring? Healing, power, vision, all of these things that light does. And then we get to the end of the game, and oh, we don’t need the sun or the moon anymore because God Himself is giving us light.

So what do we do with this? Philippians 2:14 says

14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the universe.

How beautiful! God says I’m going to shine on you and bless you and then it says we begin to shine like stars in the universe. The word ‘shine’ here means to reflect. Anybody notice the night sky this week? I did because I was out of the city where you can actually see the stars and I was pretty sure there was something different in the moon so we Googled it and I’m pretty sure I saw Mars. During the month of June, if Google is correct, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter are all visible to the naked eye. The moon has an albedo of .12, only 12 percent of the sunlight that hits the moon is reflective. Isn’t that amazing! Yet it is still so bright. It is this beautiful nightlight that God has given to us.

What does that have to do with anything? I want to suggest that the goal here spiritually is an albedo of 1. 100 percent reflectivity of the glory of God in our lives.

Let me take some pressure off. This is going to feel so good. It is not your job to manufacture anything. Nothing. It is our job to reflect the glory of God, the goodness of God, the joy of God, the love of God, the grace of God, the wisdom of God. As God begins to bless us and move in our life, all we do is begin to reflect. Christianity is not about what you can do for God. That is religion. Christianity is about what God has done for you in the person of Jesus Christ on the cross and through the empty tomb. And because of what God has done for us, all we have to do is begin to reflect his glory and his goodness. We begin to reflect who He is.

I really like this word, bioluminescence. This is fascinating to me. There are new studies that show that we are bioluminescent. Do you know that studies have found that we shine? Here is the challenge, it is a thousand times weaker than what can be perceived with the naked eye. But there is a shine. I’ve met people that it feels like they glow. Then I read about the transfiguration and it says that Jesus, his face and his clothes were white and it must have been a thousand ntimes greater than what is normal happening. I can’t explain it but that’s because I’m human. And Moses, when he came down from Mount Sinai, it says his face radiated.

The goal here isn’t to get the spiritual tan. The goal is to simply reflect the glory of God.

II Corinthians 3:18

18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

I want to speak a blessing over your life. As I pray for you, I have a distinct sense in my spirit, I normally don’t do this, but there are many people who have a very dark place in their life that has not seen light in a long, long time. And the effect of that is there is no growth. It is a part of your life that so desperately needs the love of God and the light of God. Here is what I believe. If you would open up your heart and let God begin to shine in that part of your life, I know God’s light can begin to bring these miraculous properties that light does. He can begin to work in your life and bring healing and power and do some things in your heart that are unbelievable.

So I want to speak this blessing over you. Not the priestly blessing but Isaiah 60:1

This is my closing prayer.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,

    and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.

Nations will come to your light,

    and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Then you will look and be radiant,

    your heart will throb and swell with joy;

And everybody said Amen!

Transcribed by:

Ministry Transcription

margaretsalyers@

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