Untitled Sermon (20)
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May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples with equity
and guide the nations of the earth.
May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
The land yields its harvest;
God, our God, blesses us.
May God bless us still,
so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.
I guess that sometimes as HG leaders we are tempted to think that what we are doing is focused on a vision for each individual in our group.
We’ll perhaps pray that ‘x’ will come this week, hear God’s word and find help therefore in his or her situation. Or feel closer to God in faith.
Not bad things incidentally to be praying.
It sounds a lot like v1 as prayer.
May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
But this Psalm, and perhaps we in our vison of rour groups, need to be a little more God-centric and universal church centric, than individualistic centric.
v1’s request for blessing and God’s face to shine on us, is not followed by,
so that our faith is stronger and our life feels more stable.
Instead,
so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
Our vision for God people at GC is to recieve grace and blessing not for an easier life,
but so that the world - the nations may ‘know’ God.
This Psalm has been sung and prayed for centuries before Jesus was born - and it’s not
a stretch to consider the completion of the Bible both New and Old Testament as the beginning of the fulfillment of this prayer.
For it is through scripture that ‘the nations’ can ‘know’ our Gracious God.
And so we teach it!
Pauls wirtes to Timothy in
2 tim 3 15-17 “from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
The blessing and grace we call down from God in this Psalm is not blessings of a comfy life - but blessings to obey God’s will,
live the life he calls us to,
complete the good works he’s prepared - so that…!
The nations see and hear, and can also know - through the scriptures that Jesus is Lord.
Here then follows a bigger vision for our prayers as we pray for our Home groups:
May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples with equity
and guide the nations of the earth.
May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
In the OT, God’s covenant people bore witness to the surrounding nations by their political and material success. Achieved by obedience to God.
Jesus developed that covenant into being a people marked not by geography or race, but by faith in the Lord Jesus by the HS.
But even material blessing in the OT was not soley for the ISraelites to feel comfy!
The land yields its harvest;
God, our God, blesses us.
May God bless us still,
so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.
When we pray for our groups later - use this Psalm,
elevate our vision of what HG’s are for,
they are ot just to help each other through trials big and small to acheieve a more comfortable life,
They are more, so that we all acheive the good works God has called us to,
so that the world may hear and see,they may also then fear the Lord,
Know him in His word.