Let the Nations Praise You

I’m excited to be with you this morning and I invite you to open up with me to Psalm 67. On behalf of the entire missions team, I do want to thank you for thinking about us and praying for us while we were up in New Bedford and you are going to hear from some of the team later on in this service. My goal is to not spend more than 35ish minutes preaching because I want them to be able to share with you, specifically share with you how the trip that we just came back from lines up with what we are going to read in Psalm 67. What I want to do this morning is pose a question: What is the purpose of Gospel mission? Why do we evangelize? Why do we go to the mission field? And keep in mind, the mission field doesn’t have to be some far off place like New Bedford or Mexico or China, every Christian in this building enters the mission field the moment they exit these doors. What is the purpose of missions? It’s praise! It’s worship! That’s the goal of missions, that’s the pursuit of all that we do. Our greatest desire should hopefully be that God is glorified above all things and because He is not, that is why we go. Now you might be thinking, “Hang on, I thought that salvation was the goal of missions. I thought that we spend money and send people because people are lost.” But here’s the thing, all salvation will inevitably result in and lead to praise. In fact, if praise is absent, salvation is absent. We were made to praise and we are sent for praise. Not praise to ourselves but praise to Him that has called us and sent us. James Hamilton tells us that, “Praise is the purifying purpose for which we were made. Praise is our response to God’s unmatched greatness.” Or you might be familiar with this quote from C.S. Lewis: “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” To go on missions simply for salvation sake is important, it is critical but salvation without praise is not the prize. We go because we desire above all else to see God glorified in the nations. In Psalm 67, we see what some commentators refer to as a missionary Psalm. What we see in these 7 verses is the message that we must proclaim, the people and purpose for which we go, and where all this is heading towards. Or if you look in your notes, you see the path that we will follow this morning. In these verses we see a pleading people, a joy-filled people, and an anticipating people. We’ll work through those in just a moment, let me give you our big idea for today: The purpose of missions and evangelism is that God is glorified amongst the nations. As the people of God go out into the world and proclaim the truths of the Gospel, we become a joy-filled community that lives to praise the Lord Jesus Christ. The blessings of God given to His people now is a foretaste of the greater blessing that is to come. Let’s pray and then let’s read Psalm 67.

Psalm 67 NASB95

For the choir director; with stringed instruments. A Psalm. A Song. God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us— Selah. That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For You will judge the peoples with uprightness And guide the nations on the earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.

A Pleading People

So I mentioned this when we were going through the Psalms just before we got to Noah that we often have an assistant when breaking down these Psalms that are written into the text which helps us to break down the Psalms into teachable sections. You probably notice in your Bibles that after verse 1 and verse 4, we see this little word: selah. Selah is often thought of as a musical term since remember these Psalms are songs, the hymn book of ancient Israel and the early church. It is often thought of as a point for the reader to stop and meditate on what they have just read and that is exactly what we are going to do today. So, let’s look at verse 1. In the NASB translation that I am reading, we have 16 words. Not a lot but it says more than what it looks like. Might I propose that in this verse, we see the message that we must proclaim to the lost. Look again at what the Psalmist says here: “God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us.” These words, these are clearly a reference to Numbers 6:24–26 which is the Aaronic blessing to the nation of Israel. This was the blessing by which the priests would bless the tribes of Israel and it was to be a call and reminder for God’s favor to be upon the people. “The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.’” In Psalm 67 we see the psalmist lift that language, that imagery out of Numbers 6 and it continues to be a needed blessing, a needed call and prayer for the people. This is something that you and I should continually ask for. We should ask that God would be gracious to us, that He would bless His people, that He would have his face shine upon us or continue to show favor to us. You see here in these words, we see the common need of both believer and unbeliever. Some translations swap gracious out with merciful and it really conveys the same message. In order to reap any blessing from God, God must be merciful to the person. The Gospel is a gracious, merciful message of God to lost sinners. In verse 1, we see the reminder that the ground is leveled at the foot of the cross. If God is to bless a people, He must first be merciful and gracious to that people. Charles Spurgeon puts it like this: The best of saints and the worst of sinners must unite at this point. You see why I said that the first point that we make is that we must be a pleading people. And I look at this from 2 ways: The first is that we must plead that God would show grace and mercy. If that does not happen, there is no salvation. The unsaved man, unsaved woman, cannot come to the cross with all their ducks in a row and their head held high. They don’t come to the throne of grace with a list of demands. They don’t come to Christ with an attitude of, “If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” kind of attitude. No we come as a beggar begging for bread. Before God blesses a man greatly, He must first bruise him mightily. Before God builds, He must first tear down. God will not share the center of your heart with something or someone else. We all stand ripe for judgement. We have all sinned and rejected a holy and righteous God who make no mistake, would rid the earth of you in no time at all. Were it not for God’s grace and His mercy, you very well may not be here at this moment. Yet praise God for the message of 1 Timothy 1:15 “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.” In missions, in reaching the lost, we must let men and women know the state of their souls and also the willingness and gracefulness of the Savior. Yes we very well may be the chief of sinners but there is a God who can save even the greatest sinner. In order for that to happen, God must be gracious. The issue is that there are so many people out there who reject God and do not recognize just how deeply in need they are of mercy and how deeply they are in need of God to show favor to them. Man lies to themself about the existence of God, many claim and act like He does not exist, but does not Romans 1 clearly teach that God makes Himself known so that all men and women are without excuse? We go on missions partially to help man stop lying to himself! Allow me to share with you these couple of paragraphs from someone that I truly believe is one of the greatest minds and apologists that God has ever given to the Church: Dr. Cornelius Van Til. Van Til so greatly captures the state of the lost and where so many of us have come up short in our missions and evangelism. Van Til, directly addressing the lost and unbeliever says:

The Pamphlets, Tracts, and Offprints of Cornelius Van Til Why I Believe in God (Updated Edition)

The point is this. Not believing in God, you do not think yourself to be God’s creature. And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God. That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there. Now if you actually are God’s creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him. In that case it is even an insult to Him. And since you have insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you. God and you are not on “speaking terms.” And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist. If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses. And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him. You have, as it were, entered upon God’s estate and have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission. You have taken the grapes of God’s vineyard without paying Him any rent, and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.

I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand.

What Van Til is saying here is that mankind has lied to themselves about the existence and the exacting nature of God but we as Christians at the expense of offending, have not made man’s need for grace as clear as it should be. We should be begging the lost to come to Christ. The second way that we are a pleading people is that we should plead with the lost that they would come to the Savior. That they would recognize the cost that is required and the grace that is offered. There is no blessing outside of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We see the message of evangelism: That God is gracious, He alone can bestow blessings, and we must have God’s face looking favorably upon us. This cannot happen by our own doing, it is solely a gift of God. Have you recognized this gift? Have you recognized your need for mercy and grace? If you haven’t, I call on you this day to come to Christ, the Savior of sinners. I wish we could spend more time on this but that’s just verse 1, we have 6 more to go.

A Joy-filled People

In verse 1 we saw a pleading people, now in verses 2-4, and we could argue 2-7, we see a joy filled people. The Psalmist has the desire that God’s way would be known on the earth and salvation among all nations. Really that in itself is the goal of missions. We long for the day when the nations gather in worship of the King. Notice in these verses that nothing is happening by a singular person. In verses 2-4 we see 3 references to the nations and 3 references to peoples. What does this tell us? It emphasizes us the importance of community. What this means is that the fullness of joy that is experienced in worship with God happens in community. The church was designed to be a community. All through Scripture, from the very beginning of in Genesis we see that God places an emphasis on community, relationships, and fellowship. What we see is that the completeness of joy that comes to the Christian cannot be completed until the peoples and nations are brought together. Now before we go too much further in this, I want you to think about what might be going through your mind if you were a Jewish man or woman hearing this for the first time when it was originally written. When we look at the history of the Jewish people, we often see that they were shut off from the nations. They were very exclusive and it was often easy for them to overlook the part of God’s promise to Abraham that his seed was going to be a blessing to the nations. The thought of the Gentiles being brought in and praising God seemed unheard of to these ancient Israelites and yet this is what the Psalmist isn’t just telling the people, he is looking forward to the day when it happens! I challenge you all later to look at what happens in Acts 11 when Peter is speaking to the elders of the church in Jerusalem about Cornelius and his family, a family of Gentiles, being saved. At this point in the history of the church, there still seems to be this misconception that salvation was solely for the Jews, that Christ was solely for the Jews but what happens in Acts 10 and 11 completely turns that upside down. This is not just a salvation for one people; it’s a salvation for all peoples! Peter begins explaining to them what happened at Cornelius’ house in Caesarea and Peter says in Acts 11:15-17

Acts 11:15–17 NASB95

“And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as He did upon us at the beginning. “And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He used to say, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ “Therefore if God gave to them the same gift as He gave to us also after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”

God has done a remarkable thing in world history! How do the people respond to this? Luke writes in Acts 11:18 “When they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, “Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.”” While studying for this message, verse 18 grabbed me in a way that it never had before. Here were these men that came from a long line of men who would have been against Gentile inclusion and yet God has done something so significant, the Gospel has so impacted their lives and way of thinking that the only response that they have is to glorify God! That morning they couldn’t believe that the Gentiles would be grafted in and now here they are praising God that its happened! Through Christ, we see the living out of Psalm 67 happening in the life of the church. We see a community coming together who have a world of differences and yet they are more closely connected through Christ and the Gospel than with the unbelieving man or woman who looks just like them. To be on mission is to pursue the building of a community. We pursue missions because we desire to worship with a community that is made up of all peoples, tribes, nations, and tongues. We pursue missions because we know that it is only through the worship of the Lord our God that true eternal gladness can really happen. John Piper famously said, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.” That’s what we aim for in missions. We aim that the nations would rejoice and be glad in the Lord our God. Let me just take a second and ask you, are you glad in the Lord? Do you sing for joy to the Lord or are you singing because you know that’s the Christian thing to do? To truly live as a servant of Christ is to live a life that is marked by joy. Jesus says in John 15:9-11

John 15:9–11 NASB95

“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

John says in 1 John 1:4 “These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.” The Christian life isn’t the removal of joy is the fullness and completion of joy! So often we hear people object to Christianity because they think that if they come to faith in Christ, they won’t be allowed to do anything fun anymore. To steal a line from the great theologian Billy Joel, the mindset for so many is, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun. You know that only the good die young.” We would take a second of pleasure in exchange for an eternity of endless, perfect, untouched by sin joy. C.S. Lewis summarizes the problem like this: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Here’s the thing though, if you were to look at the lives of practically any unsaved person, and I mean really look into their hearts and their lives, they’re miserable! All the money in the world, all the fame in the world, all the drink they can drink, and sex they can have hasn’t brought them the fullness of joy that can be found in the poorest of Christians. I remember an interview by Tom Brady years ago where he had just won his millionth Super Bowl and he said that he remembered sitting in the hotel and just thinking, “Is this all there is?” Now there was a guy who on the surface had everything, money, success, fame, and yet he’s missing out on what he really needs. You see Tom Brady is just living out what Bono was singing about in the 80’s. We can climb the highest mountain, we have ran through fields, we have scaled city walls but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. There is the problem of the entire human race: they have not found their joy. They have searched high and low and found nothing of eternal value. But at the cross, freedom and joy is found. That’s why we go on missions.

An Anticipating People

One last thing, I promise this will be quick. In verses 5-7 we see an anticipating or expectant people. We see people that have trusted the past and present faithfulness and goodness of God and look forward in eager anticipation of the future blessing of God. Let’s read it one more time, Psalm 67:5–7 “Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.” We do missions with the eager expectation that the harvest will be plentiful. We have the sure promise of God that the elect in Heaven won’t be a select few, they will be a number beyond what we can count. We know that one day the Lord of the Harvest will come and separate the wheat from the tares. We know that the greatest blessing of our lives is still to come and this is a blessing not just for the people of God, it is the whole earth that will benefit. A new heaven and a new earth is coming! The whole of creation is going to benefit from the return of Christ. One untouched by sin, untouched by suffering, untouched by death and on that day, all of the earth will stand in awe of the King of Kings. The Psalmist talked about the joy that was found when there was a great harvest and yet we know that a day is coming when God Himself will return for His people and gather them to Himself. On that day the greatest harvest to have ever been carried out will at last happen and we are to look ahead to that day with the full expectation that it will come. We are to look forward to this day with joy, we are to long for the day of Christ’s return. In many ways, it is our coronation day. On that day, God will fully bless his people and finish the building of His Kingdom. Are you ready for that day? Are you ready for the day when the Lord of the harvest brings home His laborers and the harvest? We go on missions because we know that the King is coming and He seeks a people that are ready. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. The thought of reaching the nations for the Gospel is an impossible task but we serve a God through which all things will be possible, including reaching the unreachable. All we can do is be faithful to the task that we have been given. Do we truly believe Scripture? Do we truly believe that God will be glorified by the nations? Do we truly believe that Christ is returning? Do we truly believe that God’s salvation will reach every people, tribe, nation, and tongue? If we know that to be true, what is stopping us from evangelism? What is holding us back from missions? Let God find in us a church that is faithful to the task of reaching the lost and let us trust Him with the results. J.I. Packer writes, “When we evangelize, our trust must be in God who raises the dead. He is the almighty Lord who turns men’s hearts, and He will give conversions in His own time. Meanwhile, our part is to be faithful in making the Gospel known, sure that such labor will never be in vain. This is how the truth of the sovereignty of God’s grace bears upon evangelism.” Our labor in New Bedford was not in vain. Your labor to your neighbor is not in vain. God will be praised by the nations, will He be praised by you? And will you play a role in reaching the nations with the Gospel? What I want to do with the minutes we have left is give 3 people just a few minutes to talk about 3 specific elements of our trip to Massachusetts. 1. How did God show grace to us and to the people we ministered to? 2. How was the joy of the Lord seen in New Bedford? 3. What can we do in the future to prepare more people for the day the Lord returns?

(Student and leader discussion)

Prayer