Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them…
– Leviticus 9:22a
I’m just going to stop right there. This verse goes on, but just get this picture of Aaron as priest lifting up his hands toward the people and blessing them. And we see this at different points in Leviticus and Numbers in different places in Scripture, where the priests pray a blessing over God’s people. They literally work for the good, for the blessing of God’s people.
Leviticus 9:22 pictures the role of believers in blessing others.
And I picture this in Leviticus 9, and then I think about how God has made followers of Jesus a holy priesthood. And that means a lot of different things, but certainly one of those things is we are consecrated, appointed, anointed by God to be a blessing certainly to his people, to build up other brothers and sisters in Christ, to be a channel, a conduit of God’s blessing toward others, certainly in the church and then beyond the church.
I think about Romans 15, when Paul is talking about his passion to spread the gospel among the unreached, among people who’ve never heard the gospel, gentiles who are unreached by it, who don’t know the name of Jesus. And he says, “God has given me grace to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the gentiles in the,” listen to this, “priestly service of the gospel of God.” Paul views himself as a priest standing between God and unreached people, people without Christ, and saying, “I want to be a channel of conduit, of God’s blessing by spreading the gospel to them.”
And I just want to encourage you to see your life today this way. You are certainly a recipient of God’s blessing. Oh, I’m a recipient of God’s blessing, the privilege of being a priest in his house, of dwelling with him, of knowing God. But not just a recipient; you and I are appointed, consecrated, and anointed by God to be a conduit of his blessing to others today.
Leviticus 9:22 challenges us to live as conduits of God’s grace and love.
So view your life this way. Look at the people around you today wherever you are, wherever you go, and let’s pray. God, use our lives today as channels, conduits of your blessing to other people. God, we pray for this in our homes where we live. If we live with anyone else, God, we pray that today you would use us as a blessing to them.
Help us to bless, encourage, build up, and be a source of edification and your goodness toward each person in our home today, beyond our home, in school and work and neighborhoods and the community where we live, people we interact with that we don’t even know. God, we pray that you would help us to be a blessing to them today. We pray specifically for brothers and sisters in Christ. God help us today to be a blessing to them, to pray for your blessing on them, and to be channels of your blessing in their lives.
And God, we pray this for people who don’t know Jesus that we’re around today. God help us to bless them, encourage them, help us to point them to you. And God, we pray in light of Romans 15, that you would help us to carry our priestly service by making the gospel known among the nations so that they might be blessed by it. God, we intercede, we pray today. We come before you with this priestly privilege.
Prayer for the Barma People
And we ask, O God, for your blessing on the Barma people of Chad, God for this, 158,000 Muslim men, women, and children in a country that’s so hard to reach with the gospel because there’s so much opposition to the spread of the gospel to them. We pray, God for your blessing on them. And also for the spread of your goodness and your grace in Jesus to them. God, please hear our prayers, and use our lives however you want to make the gospel known among the Barma and thousands of other people groups like them.
O God, we pray that you’d help us to experience the full privilege of being a holy priesthood by being channels, conduits of your blessing in others’ lives today in the way we pray for them and act toward them. In Jesus’ name, we pray according to your Word in Leviticus 9:22. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
