Expository Presentation 1

· Good morning, guys. Before we even look at the passage that I will be preaching from, I want to take a moment to pray. If you will bow your heads and hearts with me for a moment.

· God, we just want to lift the rest of today’s class before You right now and ask that Your hand would be upon it. Reveal Yourself to us through Your Word. 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 my message today I have selected Psalm 67, so if you will turn with me in your Bibles we will dive into the Word of God.

Passage

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 uprightness And 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 a part of who you are before? Maybe 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 touches your heart, to receive recognition for something about you that is praiseworthy, doesn’t it?

· Throughout this Psalm, the theme focuses on praising 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.

· Well, what does it even mean to praise someone? The Merriam Webster dictionary describes praise as: “to glorify a god or saint 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.

· Ok, great! But, as any curious person would ask, the question that I asked after discovering this 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 maybe 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 you’re broke, 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!

· Looking at this Psalm, I can see 3 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! Some judges 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! This is 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 even in the last book of the Bible. 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 deserve death, yet somehow because our names are written in the book of life we get off scott-free.

· How is this justice? All the evidence says you are guilty, that your condemnation is the only obvious choice! So, how could an upright judge, someone 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 He has made you righteous and innocent. An upright judge would see that the price has already been paid, the other evidence is now inadmissible 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 the 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. There are other aspects of this facet that could be discussed, but we don’t have time today for that. Maybe in another sermon.

· Still, we see that our God is the upright judge and this facet of His character never fails. 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

·Psalm 67:4b continues on from talking about this facet of His character to another facet which reveals that He is worthy of praise. “And guide the nations on the earth.” Earlier in the book of Psalms, David describes God as a shepherd.

· Verses 1-3 of Psalm 23 say “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 a good shepherd. This makes sense. Shepherds guided their sheep to safe pastures, a place where the sheep could eat and drink and rest. The shepherd’s staff 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. This is also what God does.

· Because we know our God is good, we can assume He is a good shepherd. Jesus also states this fact outright in John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” 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 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. 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 a Saving God

· The Psalmist both starts and ends this Psalm with a similar idea. We read in verse 1 and 2 and also verse 7 two phrases showing cause and effect. I find these verses so intriguing! “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 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.

· Even before that original blessing, we see in Genesis 12:2-3 a conversation between God and Abram, the ancestor of the Iraelites where God promises to bless the nations through Abram. 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.

· John 3:16, which I think all of us know, sums this up so perfectly. Who did God love? The world. Not just Israel, 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.

· 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 a saving God.

Conclusion

· While it may be easy to focus solely on God’s character as a Saving God because of all this facet does for us, the other facets we’ve talked about are just as important to who God is and just as beautiful. 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!

· Why should we praise God even when we can’t see Him doing anything that seems worthy of praise? 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 and still reaches for us today in each moment. What else can we do except praise Him?

Application

· So, right here and right now, I want to invite you to just take a moment and turn your gaze inward. Forget about those around you, it’s time for self examination. Do you have a reason to praise God right now? I know we’re in class, but really think about it, set aside the sheet that you’re grading me on and focus on this moment. 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 out of your seat 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, our Saviour. 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!