February 20/22 Psalm 67

Good morning NPA, what a blessing it is to be with you today! Thank you Pastor Doug for leading us in worship, and worship team. You are very appreciated! Before we even look at the passage that I will be preaching from this morning, I want to take a moment to open in a word of prayer. If you will bow your heads and hearts with me for a moment, let’s pray. God, we just want to lift the rest of today’s service before You right now and ask that Your hand would be upon it. Reveal Yourself to us through Your Word, guide the words that I am speaking so that the message I bring is Yours, and not from a human mind. Touch each heart here today where they need to be touched and remind each person that you are with them in their situation, whatever that may look like. We thank you and praise you, for you are an awesome God. Amen.

For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Katie and I and my husband Josh are intern pastors here at NPA. We’re both studying at Vanguard Bible College to become pastors and have been so blessed to be able to learn so much from each of you here already. I’m starting a new series this week. You may recall that last year starting in October some of us students did a series of sermons on Titus. Well, we are starting a new one working through some of the Psalms, which will be very exciting I’m sure. For today I have selected Psalm 67, so if you will turn with me in your Bibles or follow along on the screen, we will dive into the Word of God.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (Psalm 67)

God be gracious to us and bless us,And cause His face to shine upon us—Selah.2 That Your way may be known on the earth,Your salvation 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 will judge the peoples with uprightnessAnd guide the nations on the earth.Selah.5 Let the peoples praise You, O God;Let all the peoples praise You.6 The earth has yielded its produce;God, our God, blesses us.7 God blesses us,That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.

Why should we praise God?

Have you ever been praised for something that you were really proud of yourself for? For example, maybe you had a project you worked really hard on and poured your heart into - a car you spent months fixing, a piece of artwork that you spent hours putting careful detail into, a meal that you slaved over to make sure it tasted just right. When someone notices the work and care that you put into your project, the good quality of what you have done, it touches your heart to receive praise for it, right? How much more does it touch your heart when you receive praise for a part of who you are? For example, perhaps you helped a friend out and they thanked you and praised you for your servant heart. Or maybe someone praised you for your sense of humor, after you’ve said something funny. It feels different, doesn’t it? Throughout this Psalm, the theme focuses on praising God - probably unsurprising considering it is categorised as a praise Psalm. This is, in fact, an emphasis of many portions of the Bible, from the Creation account in Genesis to parts of Revelation at the end of the Bible, we are told again and again to praise God. In Psalm 67, the Psalmist says “let the peoples praise you” and then repeats it with even more emphasis “let all the peoples praise you!”. Clearly this is an important thing for all people to do, so important that even in a song of praise we find commands for us to praise God. Well, what does it even mean to praise someone? The Merriam Webster dictionary describes praise in two possible ways: either to express a favorable judgement of something, to commend it or to glorify a god or saint especially by the attribution of perfections. I think in this case the second definition fits best, “to glorify God, especially by the attribution of perfections”. To find some more depth to what the Psalmist means, I did a quick word study on this particular Hebrew word for “praise”. The definition that I found is “to extol the greatness of a deity or the deity’s works as an act of worship”. So how do we put these understandings together? To glorify God and the greatness of His works as an act of worship.

So we are commanded throughout this Psalm to praise God, which we have discovered means to glorify God and the greatness of His works as an act of worship. Great! But, as any curious person would ask, the question that I asked is: why? Why should we praise God? Should we praise God because, like it says in verse 6, the earth has yielded its produce and everything is going great? Or should we praise God because God blesses us, as it says in verses 6 and 7? If we look closer at this Psalm we will see a far deeper reason for why we should be praising God. While praising God for what He does is right and good, where does that leave us when it seems like there is nothing to praise Him for? When the bills are due tomorrow and there is not enough money in the bank account, or when the kids are all sick and you are exhausted from trying to care for them and stay on top of everything, or when a new restriction is released and it looks like you’re stuck in your house again, or when you lose someone you love even though you prayed for them like you have never prayed for anything else? Should we be praising God even then? This Psalm does not give a certain time that we should praise God, this command is a blanket at all times kind of necessity… so what is it that makes God worthy of praise even when it seems like He is doing absolutely nothing and the world is falling to pieces around you? I think there are two options in this Psalm for why to praise God, the first we already discussed - we can praise God for what He does. The second is the reason we should praise God even in the hard times - we can praise God because of who He is. God’s character itself reveals that He is worthy to be praised! Why does this matter so much? While actions may change, or our perception of what God is or is not doing may change with our circumstances and relationships, God’s character is something that is constant. He never changes; we can trust that if we find a praiseworthy part to God’s character today then His character has always been that way and always will be! Looking at this Psalm, I can see 3 trustworthy and unchanging facets of God’s character that are not only worthy of praise, but demand praise as a response from us as we marvel at how good our God is. The first facet of God’s character is that our God is the upright judge.

God is the Upright Judge

We see this even in the very words of the Psalm in verse 4: “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For You will judge the peoples with uprightness...” Some other words that we could use alongside or as synonyms to upright would be honest, honorable, virtuous, a person with integrity, righteous. All of these point to the sort of judge that I would want to be judging my case, wouldn’t you agree? This is a judge whose integrity I don’t have to question - He is not going to take a bribe from the Prosecutor or come with a bias against me. Some judges, especially in shows about lawyers, are just really grouchy people and seem to take perverse pleasure from sentencing people harshly, whether they deserve it or not. But, as Psalm 67 assures us, our God is not like that - He judges with uprightness! That’s wonderful, and certainly a character trait that is worthy of praise - after all, what human judge can we honestly say judges uprightly one hundred percent of the time? They all make mistakes, but not our true Judge!

This is such an important facet of God’s character that we see it talked about several other times in the Bible, though we will focus on just one other today. In Revelation 20:12-15 it says “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” We see here that there are records of our deeds - the good, the bad, and the ugly - and all people, even those who have died, will be judged by God according to their actions. We can almost picture God in this scene, entering the court room in the long black robes of a judge, settling in behind the bench, and all the evidence is brought forward. It’s enough evidence to take up whole books and all of it points to you as guilty. That time when you were a kid and you back-talked your parents, or you didn’t clean your room when they told you to. That time when you were in college and you made a snide remark about another classmate, or when you entered the working world and called your boss a name behind their back. Every bad thought, intention, and action… even if all of your deeds are examined, the bad vastly outweighs the good and reveal your true guilt. Just one of these things would be punishable by death and you have pages upon pages of crimes! Before the Judge condemns you to eternal imprisonment and death, however, He awaits the final piece of evidence to be brought forward - the only evidence your defense lawyer is submitting. It is the book of life, and written in it… is your name. The Judge peers at your name on the page, closes the book, and slams down the gavel, His declaration of “Not Guilty!” echoes through the silent court room. Pause with me for a moment and let’s ask a question. How is this justice? All the evidence said you were guilty, that your condemnation was the only obvious choice! So, how could an upright judge, like God is supposed to be, someone truly honest and seeking true justice let you get away with all that you have done? Is your name being present in that book of life truly so powerful that it can erase all of the other evidence brought forward? The simple fact that your name is written in that book of life means that someone already paid the price for your crimes - all of them. Jesus paid the price that you should have had to - death - and your record has been wiped clean; He has made you righteous and innocent. So, let me ask you… would a truly upright judge ignore that evidence and sentence you to death? No! An upright judge would see that the price has already been paid, the other evidence is now inadmissable in court, and the prosecutor has no case against you. By merit not your own, you are not guilty, and not condemned. Romans 8:1 declares without leaving any room for argument - “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So we see here that God is an upright judge, even to the point of not condemning those who should have been condemned but have accepted the gift of eternal life through Jesus and are thus rendered innocent. We see also in this passage in Revelation that those whose names are not written in the book of life are condemned to the lake of fire, the second death. This is also a reflection of God’s upright justice, because we know that He does not want to make this condemnation! John 3:16, one of the most well known verses in the Bible, says ““For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” God, our Judge, loves every person so very much that He made the ultimate sacrifice… and yet as our upright judge, He must condemn those who do not accept the gift of His Son, of eternal life, and do not have their names written in the book of life. How it must pain Him to make that judgement, but His uprightness is neverfailing - the final call for those whose names are not found in the book of life is “Guilty”!

Our God is the upright judge - always - this facet of His character never fails, even when it breaks His heart. This faithfulness and righteousness should cause us to praise Him! The second facet of His character this is revealed in this Psalm and shows that He is worthy of praise is that our God is the Good Shepherd.

God is the Good Shepherd

While God’s character as the upright judge is sometimes a little difficult to swallow, it points to His goodness and faithfulness. Psalm 67:4 continues on from talking about this facet of His character to another facet which reveals that He is worthy of praise. “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For You will judge the peoples with uprightness And guide the nations on the earth.” Earlier in the book of Psalms, David describes God as a shepherd. Psalm 23:1-3 “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.” God guiding His people is used here in reference to Him being the good shepherd. This makes sense, if you think about what shepherds did. They guided their sheep to safe pastures, a place where the sheep could eat and drink and rest. The shepherd’s staff, a well-known tool, allowed a shepherd to guide his sheep, catching those who were attempting to wander off and ensuring that they remained on the path that the shepherd knows is good and safe. Because we know our God is good, we can assume He is a good shepherd. Handy thing is, we don’t have to just assume. Jesus states this fact outright in John 10:11-18 ““I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. “He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. “He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”” Not only does God being the good shepherd mean that we can trust Him and that He will guide us down good paths, but it means that He is the best shepherd there is. Guys, we are not in the care of some amateur shepherd who cares about their sheep but doesn’t know that there is a wolf out there trying to kill us off! We have the expert, the shepherd who literally laid down His life for us, and this is who guides us. God does the best job of shepherding us that anyone could possibly do, even when we fight him tooth and nail… not that sheep have those, don’t mind me mixing my metaphors (chuckle). He knows the best path for us to take that will lead us to safe pasture, to good pasture, and He leads us “in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake”. No wonder we are supposed to praise Him - this is worthy of praise! So we’ve covered two of the three facets of God’s character that reveal He is worthy to be praised - Our God is the upright judge and the good shepherd. The third facet of His character that shows He is worthy of being praised is that our God is the saving God.

God is the Saving God

The Psalmist both starts and ends this Psalm with a similar idea. We read in verse 1 and 2 “God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us— That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.” Later, in the last verse of the Psalm, verse 7, we read “God blesses us, That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.” I find these verses so intriguing! Both of these contain cause and effect. “God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us”. Why? “That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.” And then we have “God blesses us”. Why? Again, “that all the ends of the earth may fear Him”. What we see here is the mission of God laid out clearly for us to see. He desires to save all the nations! In verse 1, this line is a reference to old history for the Israelites, and the Israelites hearing or reading this Psalm would know that. We find the full blessing, which is named the Aaronic blessing (not ironic, Aaronic), in Numbers 6:23-27 ““Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them: 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.’ “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them.”” This blessing was for all of Israel, a blessing of right relationship with God as He smiles upon them, and of peace. This Psalm continues from this to include a reason for this blessing - the salvation of the world. The interesting thing about this reason for the blessing is that this is not the first place this was found. Even before that original blessing, we see in Genesis 12:1-3 a conversation between God and Abram, the father of Isaac, the father of Jacob also known as Israel. This passage is also known as the Abrahamic blessing. “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”” Even from the beginning of the nation of Israel we see that God intended to reach the whole world through this one nation and how He blessed them. Looking back on what we talked about with God’s character as an upright judge, we know that He desires to see every person saved. John 3:16, which we read earlier, sums this up so perfectly ““For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Who did He love? The world. Not just Israel, not just that pretty little tropical island that nobody knows the name of where that really cool guy lives.... the whole world. And God’s plan to save the whole world shows brilliantly even in the very first book of the Bible. He will use Abraham and his offspring to bless the nations around them, He will use Israel to show Himself to the earth, and He will use Israel to bring the Messiah who would sacrifice Himself for all nations. When God makes a plan, He doesn’t think small scale - He thinks God sized! These sections of Psalm 67 shine a light on the third facet of God’s character that reveal He is worthy of praise at all times - our God is the saving God. Honestly, I saved this facet for last because it is so easy to focus on this part of God’s character that we forget about the rest. Can you blame us though? This part of God’s character saved us from what we really deserve! This part of God’s character continues to reach out to each person in this very lost and sad world and tell them that He is just waiting for them to say “Yes” to the gift of Jesus.

Have you said “yes” to the gift of Jesus? If you haven’t but you want to, I invite you to find one of the pastors after the service, Pastor Feller, Pastor Jonathan, Pastor Naomi, or I think anyone else in this congregation. We would all be thrilled to talk with you about Jesus! After all, what kind of God that is worthy of praise is not also worth knowing? Not my God! If you had to know only one person, it should be my God, who longs to know and save you.

Conclusion

While it may be easy to focus solely on God’s character as the Saving God, the other facets we’ve talked about are just as important to who God is and just as beautiful. The amazing grace of the Saving God would not mean nearly as much without the hard justice of the Upright Judge who must uphold the consequences of sin. The gentle - and sometimes not so gentle - guidance of the Good Shepherd leads us to live in light of the Upright Judge who seeks righteousness from His children and the Saving God who rescued us from heading down the wrong path that led to destruction. Each of these facets of God’s character are just that - facets, one part of who He is, a glimpse at the picture that is so much larger we cannot even begin to fully comprehend it! Even these three do not paint a complete image of the amazing God that we serve, they just offer us with plenty of reasons to praise Him for Who He is. Why should we praise God even when we can’t see Him doing anything that seems worthy of praise? Well, aside from the fact that we can only see from our very limited finite perspective and know that He is constantly at work in praiseworthy ways… We should praise God at all times because of who He is. Our God is the Upright Judge who will never judge wrongly. Our God is the Good Shepherd, who guides and cares for His sheep and even lays down His life for them. Our God is the Saving God who went to the ultimate lengths to reach us as we dangled from a precipice of our own making and still reaches for us today in each moment. What else can we do except praise Him?

So, right here and right now, I want to invite you to just take a moment and turn your gaze inward. Forget about the person to your right or left or 2 pews behind you, it’s time for self examination. Do you have a reason to praise God right now? How can you praise our amazing God, who is the Upright Judge, the Good Shepherd, and the Saving God in this moment? Maybe you just feel led to raise your hands, or bow your head, maybe you need to move into the aisle and kneel before the incredible God we serve, maybe you need to stand. Either way, we should not be leaving here today without expressing our worship and adoration of our Maker, our Master, our Creator. He is worthy of praise at all times and in all seasons, not just because of what He does but because of Who He is! So let’s take some time and I invite you to join me and praise our God! After a little bit the worship team will come up and lead us in a song to close the service out with a final note of praise, but let’s take a moment now to just praise God for who He is and thank Him!