Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Back in the early 1960’s, Walt Disney began scoping out land in central Florida that he could buy to build a second amusement park.

The success of Disneyland in Anaheim, California had brought with it a crowd of businesses, hotels and other urban sprawl around the park itself; Disney wanted a lot more control over the land surrounding his new park, Walt Disney World.

The name of the park is actually a tip-off to what Disney had in mind for his Florida attraction—he wanted to build not only a theme park but a working city along with it.

He called his idea the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, and he wanted it to be a city where new advancements in zoning, roadways, commerce, architecture and so on could be tried out (he also considered calling it “Progress City”).

In order to get the flexibility he needed for that kind of leeway to create his own zoning laws and building codes and so on, he petitioned the Florida State Legislature to create the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a separate municipality that was under the complete control of Disney and his company.

The legislation was passed in 1967, one year after Disney himself had died, and so the project never took off the way he envisioned.

The Disney company did use some of his ideas to build the town of Celebration, Florida inside the Reedy Creek district.

(Last April Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation to abolish the Reedy Creek Improvement District after the Disney Company declared that it was going to engage in direct political activism in response to the passage of the Parental Rights in Education Act that prohibited teachers from presenting sexually explicit materials to elementary school children in Florida—a situation that would have utterly horrified and revolted Disney himself!)

Though he might have had the best of intentions, Walt Disney’s vision of creating a community utopia that bore the fruits of cutting edge technology and innovation was ultimately doomed to failure, wasn’t it?

Because any attempt at building utopia—whether through advanced technology and zoning or through economic or legislative power—will ultimately be pointless apart from the blessing of the hand of God:

Proverbs 11:11 (ESV)

11 By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown.

Walt Disney tried unsuccessfully to create a city that would be an example of the blessings of technology for all the world to see.

The psalm before us today says that God is creating a people that will be an example of the blessings of His grace for all the world to see!

Psalm 67:1–2 (ESV)

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.

This is another psalm (like the last three) that is meant for public worship (it’s addressed to “The Choirmaster”), and it carries on the theme of God’s blessings to His people that we have seen in Psalm 65 and 66.

It’s arranged in a form of structural poetry called a chiasm (from the Greek name of the letter we call ‘X’) because the verses repeat themselves from the top down and the bottom up.

Verse 7 matches verse 1, verse 6 matches verse 2, and so on.

Read verses 1 and 7 back-to-back and you’ll see the structure:

Psalm 67:1 (ESV)

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah

Psalm 67:7 (ESV)

7 God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!

So the theme of the psalm is pretty clearly laid out here—God has a purpose in His blessing His people that goes beyond just blessing them for their own sake.

He blesses His people so that the world will fear Him.

Put another way, God intends to glorify Himself in the way that He blesses His people.

We are called to display God’s wisdom and glory and grace and love through the blessings of salvation that He has poured out on us so that the world will see His power and praise Him for it.

We are fond of saying here that the church is meant to be “an object lesson of the Gospel” to the world—this psalm is one of the primary reasons we say this.

Far too often I think we are content with the understanding that God has blessed us with His salvation for our own sake—and this is certainly true as far as it goes.

But if we are content to have a man-centered understanding of the work of God in our salvation, we will ultimately become short-sighted, selfish and introverted in our faith—it’s all about me, it’s all about what God did for me.

Of course we glorify God for what He has done for us.

But Psalm 67 is a powerful reminder that you and I have ultimately been saved by God’s grace for the sake of His own glory!

When God spoke through Ezekiel to Israel about the deliverance He was going to work for them, he said

Ezekiel 36:22 (ESV)

22 “...Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came...

This is the same truth that the psalmist builds Psalm 67 on—that God blesses His people so that His Name would be great among the nations.

So the way I want to say it this morning is that

The Church cultivates GOSPEL BLESSINGS in order to harvest the NATIONS

Let’s look through our passage to see how this is so.

Look at verse 1 with me:

Psalm 67:1 (ESV)

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah

Right here at the beginning of the psalm we see

I. The blessing SECURED (Ps.

67:1; cp.

Numbers 6:24-26)

Here is the description of the blessing with which God blesses His people so that the nations would see His ways and His saving power.

This verse is based off of the blessing that God instructed Aaron to give the children of Israel in Numbers 6--

Numbers 6:24–26 (ESV)

24 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

See how this lines up with the first verse of Psalm 67?

Psalm 67:1 (ESV)

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah

It’s as clear as can be, isn’t it?

God blesses His people so that they may be a blessing!

And while the saints in the Old Testament had only glimpses of God’s grace and blessing and favor, you and I have the fulness of God’s blessing revealed to us—we have

The GRACE of God in CHRIST (John 1:16-17)

Consider the magnitude of the Grace of God revealed to you in the work of Jesus Christ on your behalf!

Jesus Christ died in your place, becoming sin so that you might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor.

5:21)—as the Apostle John would write in His Gospel:

John 1:16–17 (ESV)

16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Moses gave Israel the instructions to bless their children with “may YHWH be gracious to you...” but that was a promise, a down-payment as it were, on the grace and truth that was poured out on us through Jesus Christ!

He fulfils the blessing of God’s graciousness to us, and He is the fulfillment of the blessings promise of

The DELIGHT of God in YOU (2 Corinthians 4:6)

The Old Testament blessing asked that the LORD would make His face shine upon His children—in Jesus Christ the shining face of God is turned fully and permanently upon you!

2 Corinthians 4:6 (ESV)

6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Consider the magnificence of the blessings of God that have been poured out on you in Jesus Christ!

The penalty and power of your sins have been placed on Him, and His death, burial and resurrection have freed you from them forever!

And now you live in Him—who you are and what you love and where you go and what you do is all found in Jesus Christ.

And because you now live in God the Son, then God the Father’s love and delight and joy in you is supernaturally directed at you by His Holy Spirit!

And these blessings of the Gospel—your atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God the Father’s delight in you because of your union with Christ—these blessings go on to completely transform your life.

There is no part of your existence that is not impacted in one way or another by the blessings of your salvation in Christ—in other words, you can’t help but demonstrate the power of the Gospel to transform a life!

In verse 1, we see the blessing secured.

And in verses 2-4 we see

II.

The blessing DISPLAYED (Psalm 67:2-4)

Psalm 67:2–4 (ESV)

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

Look again at the way the psalm is structured—verse 2 matches with verse 6.

In verse 2, God’s ways are made known on the earth:

Psalm 67:2 (ESV)

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

And in verse 6, God’s blessings are made known on the earth:

Psalm 67:6 (ESV)

6 The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us.

As God pours out His blessings on the people who have received His grace and favor and shining countenance, their lives display the blessings of that grace.

In the Old Testament, Israel was meant to draw the nations to herself because of the blessings they displayed.

It was a

COME and SEE pattern (vv.

2-3; 1 Kings 8:41-43)

This “Come and See” pattern flows all through the Old Testament.

From God’s deliverance of His people out of Egypt.

In the middle of the ten plagues that He brought on Egypt, God says to Pharoah