Psalm 67
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Announcement:
Announcement:
Good Friday
Sunrise Service
Easter Sunday
Recap:
Recap:
Eugene Peterson "People look into mirrors to see how they look; they look into the Psalms to find out who they are. A mirror is an excellent way to learn about our appearance; the Psalms are the biblical way to discover ourselves. […] A mirror shows us the shape of our nose and the curve of our chin, things we otherwise know only through the reports of others. The Psalms show us the shape of our souls and the curve of our sin, realities deep within us, hidden and obscured, for which we need focus and names."
Intro:
Intro:
Today we are going to be in Psalm 67.
It’s a song
It’s one of the shorter Psalms
And in a sense one of the simplest Psalms
You don’t have to look very far
It is stated right in the first 2 verses
You don’t have to have a theology degree to understand it
It’s straightforward and simple
But, I will say, the truth it shares, when accepted, will shape your understanding of your life, your family, and God’s purpose for the church in the world.
So, simple in nature, massive in implication
For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A psalm. A song. 1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us— 2 so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. 3 May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. 4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. 5 May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. 6 The land yields its harvest; God, our God, blesses us. 7 May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.
Ok, so right out of the gates, here is the primary truth...
“God blesses his people for the sake of his praise among all peoples.”
Now, verse 1 is actually a petition to the Lord based on a high-priestly blessing that we see in Num 6:24-26.
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.” ’
The petition is threefold.
It’s “Lord we need your grace.”
Be gracious to us
Lord we need your blessing.
Bless us
Lord we need your presence
Make His face shine on us
Grace
This is the unmerited love and undeserved compassion of the Lord.
This is essentially asking God not only to not give you what you deserve (condemnation) but also give you what you don’t deserve (salvation, presence of God)
It is in His grace that we have been saved
Blessing
The first question is, is this Psalm talking about spiritual blessing or physical/material blessing?
The answer seems to be yes.
Most certainly the psalm has to do with spiritual blessings like the gift of God’s love toward us, the gift of His grace, the gift of His presence in our lives.
But then in vs 6 there’s references to physical, material blessings like crops and harvests.
So in addition to spiritual blessings, there’s a picture of physical and material blessings.
Now, if you remember last week we talked about the prosperity gospel and how it’s promises are earthly. But here this Psalmist is asking for earthly blessings.
So, is that wrong, is that bad?
Well, it can’t be. It’s here in God’s Word.
So earthly possessions aren’t bad, and even asking God for them isn’t bad
Problems don't arise because we need things or love things; problems arise when we get confused about what we need and get disordered about what we love.
So, verse 1 is here to show us what we truly need
it's reorienting our affections to what should captivate our hearts.
So, at the core of God’s blessing is that we get God
But there is another step to it, there are other blessings outside of that. So what do we do with that?
Well verse 1 is an incomplete thought.
There is no period after it.
There’s a comma.
The problem is, we don’t like the comma
We want just verse 1 version of Christianity.
God give me give me give me
Give me grace, give me blessings, give me security
But it doesn’t stop there.
Verse 1 flows into verse 2.
Verse 2 can't happen without verse 1.
And what I love about this is, it’s rooted in God’s promise in his covenant to Abraham.
So this is repeated, it’s an insight into the character of God
And a reminder of the plan of God
1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
God’s plan to save the nations was His motivation in blessing Abraham and making his name great.
And this promise and plan permeates throughout all of Scripture
Centuries later Paul writes to the Gal and tells him that it’s this promise that is the gospel.
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”
Even later in Rev 5 we see a picture of how it all ends
13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
So from Genesis to Psalms to Galatians to Revelation we see the flow of Gods plan and purpose.
That God blesses us so that His name and way may be known on earth. So that His saving power may be praised among the nations
So that His name may be exalted by every creature
So here is what this means and here is what must happen, we have to stop trying to figure out how we can fit God into our stories.
He isn’t a plug and play kind of god
He isn’t a tool for our lives that we get to pick up only when needed
He isn’t our spiritual santa clause ready to grant our list of demands
The gospel isn’t about self improvement
It isn’t about religious affiliation
It isn’t an additive to your list of activities
The question isn’t how does God fit into our lives.
The question is, how do we fit in God’s story
Connecting verse 1 to verse 2 in our lives is essential in becoming biblical Christians
The flow of the N.T. Christian is that we are saved and we are sent.
A gospel this impactful, this life changing cannot stop at you.
A gospel that terminates in you is no gospel at all
The other day I picked my girls up from school and it was a Friday and every Friday wren gets her grades back from all of her tests that she’s done that week. So they get in the car and I ask her how she did. She pulled out her folder with a really big smile and said look daddy. As she’s grinning ear to ear I’m flipping through and it’s 100 after 100. We throw a little party in the car, we are excited. Essie is back there, she hooping and hollering and Wren says, “I can’t wait to tell mom.” We had to go over with Essie, Like hey this is Wren’s news to share not yours but Wren was so excited, I think even more than just getting 100 on everything she was most excited to share the news with us and watch us light up and celebrate with her
This is what the gospel does.
Jesus sat down, He took the test for you, and you’ve Aced the test because of Him! Now, go tell the world!
This is the story of the gospel and its woven all throughout Scripture.
We are to go and tell all the nations, every person, about the saving work of Jesus.
As a believer this is your story, not because it’s actually yours but because it’s God’s story for your life.
David Platt says it like this:
"God's purpose is to be known among the nations. Let's expect, then, the blessing of God to follow the purpose of God. God's blessing is not payment for services rendered; it's power and joy for a mission accomplished. When we move toward the lost, we're not earning God's blessing; we're jumping into the river of God's blessing that is headed to the nations."
When we take the gospel of Jesus to the world around us, we are jumping into the river of God’s blessing.
Where does that river lead?
Vs. 3 “Let the peoples praise you, God.”
Who? What poeples?
ALL OF THE PEOPLES!
Not just you and me. ALL!
It doesn’t stop with you and me
“May the nations be glad and sing for joy.”
God wants you to know Him but I don’t believe it stops there
I believe that God ultimately wants you to enjoy Him!
So the invitation is to know so that you can enjoy
You want to talk about a blessing?
What a blessing to be invited into the story of God, to know Him, and to enjoy Him!
“May the nations be glad and sing for...” what? for joy!
C.S. Lewis says “delight is incomplete until it is expressed.”
How silly of us to delight, truly delight in something, but do nothing with it.
I would argue that you cannot fully delight in anything if you don’t express in some way your delight for it.
Say Perry builds a brand new restaurant and you decide to visit. You sit down and they serve you the best meal that you’ve ever had in your entire life.
What would you do?
You’d start telling people
You’d probably blast it on SM
You’d keep going back
You would express your delight
If you truly delight, you surely express
Our delight in the Lord results in an expression of praise
Our God wants to be enjoyed! He wants to be delighted in.
And that joy when properly experienced, overflows out of us, and cannot possibly be contained.
Hear me closely this morning
Miserable Christians make miserable witnesses
A God that you don’t enjoy is a God that you don’t share
But, when He becomes our ultimate joy, how could you keep that to yourself?
You can’t!
So again, we are saved and we are sent.
We know Him, delight in Him, and sent to tell about Him
This is why and how the church became the church.
Church isn’t about denominations and religious rules
The church sprouted out of a delight in Jesus, who He is and what He had done and a overwhelming joy to be a part of His story
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus comes, establishes His kingdom on earth, goes to the cross to redeem His people (bless His people) and then says, now you continue on with the story.
You! Me! The church. I will bless you with the power of the Holy Spirit so that you may bless all the earth.
In a nutshell this is what a biblical, healthy church looks like.
It’s filled with people who know and delight in the Lord
And people who are sent. Who go and witness to the nations.
Think of all the dying or dead churches you know.
they are either filled with people who have no delight in the Lord
Or they are not reaching their community their people the earth with the gospel of Jesus
Or both
What kind of church (people) would we be if just allowed Christ to flow to us but not out of us?
What if we stopped putting a period where God put a comma?
What kind of church (people) do we want to be?
The kind where we have no delight in the Lord and the gospel ends with us?
Or the kind where we are blessed with joy that is completely fulfilled in Christ to the point where it overflows out of us into every area of our life?
How do we live a life of praise?
By knowing the Lord, enjoying His presence, and allowing our delight in Him to spread to the nations.
May the Lord bless you, may He keep you, may He make His face shine upon you, and may He give you peace.
