May God Be Gracious to Us

TAPESTRY COVENANT

We profess that we are believers saved by grace through faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are committed to loving God and each other, learning and growing in the Word, and living out the reconciling and unifying gospel blessings in our lives by being witnesses to our neighbors wherever the Lord places us.

We commit to the assembling of the Saints in worship of the Triune God. We commit to engage in regular fellowship with our brothers and sisters by carrying one another's burdens and being diligent in encouraging and exhorting one another in the name of Christ.

We commit to supporting the vision and mission of Tapestry Church utilizing our time, talent and treasure. We commit to submitting to Christ through the faithful leadership of the elders and pastors as they seek to serve in obedience to the scriptures, equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

We hereby affirm these covenant vows by God’s grace.

SERMON TEXT

Psalm 67 ESV

To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm. A Song. 1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah 2 that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. 3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! 4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah 5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! 6 The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. 7 God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!

INTRODUCTION

Start

Prayer

DELIGHTING IN GOD’S WAY

The foundation of Tapestry Church is not fellowship, friendship, good works, or good people: we believe that God’s way in Jesus Christ is the way to live life.

We come together to delight in God and his way. We do this through walking on paths of the trail.

Trail #1: Pursuing God’s Character

Note the God-centeredness of Ps. 67. We learn to delight in God’s way by meditating on God’s character and nature.

“…the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.”

- A.W. Tozer

How do we guard against falling into our own concept of God? We meditate on what God has revealed about himself in his word.

Psalm 67 teaches us that:

(1) God is the God of all people and all creation.

(2) God is the God of powerful salvation.

(3) God is the God of intimate relationship.

Trail #2: Pursuing God’s Grace

Two reasons we need grace: (1) in our sinfulness, we can’t know God unless he gracefully speaks to us & (2) his holiness would destroy us and keep us from a right relationship void of his gracious salvation.

"[God’s grace] is the eternal and absolute free favour of God, manifested in the [giving] of spiritual and eternal blessings to the guilty and the unworthy."

- Abraham Booth

The deeper we meditate on the grace of God in the gospel, the more we will delight in God’s way.

Trail #3: Pursuing God’s Promise

The Bible is a story of God’s promises to restore and redeem. (Starting with the seed of the woman in Gen—working through the Old Testament.)

The connection with Acts and the spread of the church

Psalm 67:2 ESV

2 that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

Acts 28:28 ESV

28 Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.”

God has kept his promise! The gospel connects all of the promises of God in Jesus Christ.

Let’s commit to being God’s people by delighting in God’s way through pursuing his character, his grace, and his promise.

DISPLAYING GOD’S WAY

Acts 28 leaves us with the beautiful picture of God’s promise being fulfilled, but it also leaves the story open for the rest of the church to fit into the mission of seeing every tribe, tongue, and nation come to know God’s way. As we delight in God’s way, we also display God’s way.

We display God’s way with a right inward focus.

We won’t display God’s way the right way if we focus on the mission before focusing on the message.

The logic of the Psalm: may God be gracious to us SO THAT his way will be known by nations.

“It is when the people of God are alight with joy and praise, and are themselves ruled and guided by him, that his ways and his salvation will be known among the peoples around.”

- Michael Wilcock

We will not see eternal fruit if we’re only planting worldly seeds.

Two inward commitments for the church:

(1) We must commit to being ruled by God’s grace. (Not an out of balance gospel).

(2) We commit to pursuing God’s blessings. (Not the prosperity of the world.)

We display God’s way with a right outward focus.

(1) Remember there is one God.

The universal nature of humanity vs the tribal divisions of our culture.

The universal nature of God’s judgement.

(2) Remember there is one way.

“No one comes to the father except through me.”

“God has a set way and method of dealing out mercy to men, and it is the duty and privilege of a revived church to make that way to be everywhere known.”

- Charles Spurgeon

God’s universal rule over all people and only path for reconciliation should lead us toward a desire to see his name known among the nations.

We display God’s way for the purpose of God’s praise.

“Missions exists because worship doesn’t...Seeking the worship of the nations is fueled by the joy of our own worship. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. You can’t proclaim what you don’t prize. Worship is the fuel and goal of missions.”

- John Piper

The more we delight in and prize the gospel of Jesus, the more the delight will flow into display.

CONCLUSION

This morning, we will conclude our sermon with our benediction but before we sing I want to read from the passage and hare another quote from Spurgeon:

Psalm 67:4 “4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah”

“Some sing for form, others for show, some as a duty, others as an amusement, but to sing from the heart, because overflowing joy must find a vent, this is to sing indeed.”

- Charles Spurgeon

Prayer