A Study in Psalms - Psalm 67

Tonight we begin our summer of Psalms, and this is actually the fifth year that we've done this. There's still a lot more Psalms to go. So before I get into Psalm 67, I just want to... why Psalms? Why should we read a Psalm every day, which I... I command you, I beg you to do that. Why should we memorize these Psalms? Why should we meditate upon them? Let me give you six things real quick.

P-S-A-L-M-S. Number one is P. P, it prompts us to praise and pray. My prayer life has changed. My praise life has changed. It prompts us to praise. You know, the Psalms have inspired thousands of hymns and choruses. One of my favorite hymns is A Mighty Fortress is Our God from Psalms 46. We sing the chorus quite often here from Psalm 90. I'm sorry, praise to... I'm sorry, from Everlasting. And there's also a hymn, O God, Our Help in Ages Past from Psalms 90. Psalms 103, there's a great hymn, Praise to the Lord Almighty.

In Psalms 101, verse 1 says, I will sing of the loving kindness and justice to you, O Yahweh. I will sing praises. How's your praise life? Is it just a few songs on Sunday, or do you praise throughout the week? Many of you have come to me with CDs and songs and groups. There's a lot of Christian music groups that are taking up the Psalms now, and it's just some wonderful Psalm music out there. But it also prompts us to pray. Psalms 5, which we'll look at in a few weeks, it says, Give ear to my words, O Lord.

Consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry. My King and my God, for to you do I pray. How's your prayer life? Okay? It's Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that German theologian who Adolf Hitler killed right before the end of the war. He said, The more deeply we grow in the Psalms, the more often we pray them as our own. The more simple and rich will our prayers become. So number one, it prompts us to praise and pray.

Number two, S stands for it sanctifies our sinful souls. The ancient church designated seven Psalms to what we call penitential Psalms. Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, and we'll look at Psalm 130 later this year and Psalm 143.

You all know Psalm 32. David, after confessing his sin with Bathsheba, said, Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man whom the Lord counts no iniquity and whose spirit is no deceit. Just last Wednesday, Lance quoted another Psalm that you all ought to have memorized. Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24. Before you go to bed at night, it says, Search me, O God, know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. Is there any grievous way in me and leaving the way everlasting?

So Psalms teaches us to confess our sin, to pray. You just cannot read the Psalms and not confess your sin. A, number three, answers and assures us in life.

You know, Psalms comforts us. It strengthens us. We are looking at a world full of depression, suicide, euthanasia, drugs, alcohol, all on the increase. How do you cope in this increasingly wicked world? Well, Psalms helps us. We will look at Psalm 4, how to navigate in this chaotic world.

We'll look at Psalm 42, how to overcome depression. We'll look at Psalm 58, have you ever experienced injustice?

And we'll talk about one that's really hitting me lately. The old age Psalm, Psalm 71. We'll look at those Psalms.

And it gives us answers, it gives us hope. Number four, L stands for learn to love the language of poetry. You know, we love the narratives, don't we? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and Genesis. We love prophecy, Daniel and Revelation. We love the doctrine books, Ephesians through Jude. But we struggle with Job and Psalms and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Because they have metaphors, they have figures of speech and they have symbols. And we don't know how to handle them. But as you read Psalms continually, you learn and learn to grow, to love the language.

Hebrew poetry, that's been translated into English. Five, M, the Messiah prophesied and proclaimed. When Jesus met with his disciples in the last few words of Luke 24, 44 and 45. He said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Diedrich Bonhoeffer said, Christ is the secret of the Psalms. The Psalms prophesied Christ's ascension, his betrayal, his death, his deity, his exaltation, his kingship, his obedience, his priesthood, his resurrection, his sufferings and his supremacy.

Christ is all through the Psalms. And lastly, S stands for special language and literature. The Psalms is like no other literature. It lifts us to a position where we can commune with God, captivating a sense of his greatness of his kingdom and a sense of what living with him in eternity will be like. Gordon Fee said that. You know there's 150 Psalms, which means it's the longest book in the Bible. There are 2,461 verses out of the 31,173 in the Bible. So that means 7.9 or round up, 8% of your Bible is the Psalms.

That's why you need to read it every day. It has the most authors, at least 7 of them. At least 7 authors, there may be more, we don't know. We know 100 of the Psalms were written by the authors. There's 50, including tonight's Psalm, we don't know who wrote. It took the most years to compose. It took almost 1,000 years to compose the Psalms. So if you read one Psalm a day for 2 years, at the end of those 2 years, you'll have read through the book of Psalms 5 times. So, let's talk about Psalm 67.

Psalm 67, I call this a missionary Psalm. And that's why tonight we went from Mississippi to Myanmar. I thought this would be the perfect Psalm. Now, usually I take some time to talk about the superscription. I think 114 or 116 of the Psalms, right by your lettering there, it has something, and this says to the choir master with the stringed instruments, a Psalm, a song. It doesn't tell us who wrote this one, but we believe this is one of the oldest Psalms, probably written 3,000 years ago. But I'll talk more other Wednesday nights about the superscriptions.

Many people call this a harvest Psalm because verse 6 says the earth has yielded its increase. And the harvest Psalms are Psalms 65, 66, 67, and 68. But it's a missionary Psalm. John Stott calls it a missionary Psalm. McLaren calls it a missionary Psalm. And I believe it's a missionary Psalm. You have 4 simple points in your outline there, and we'll cover them quickly. The psalmist's prayer, verse 1. The psalmist's purpose, verse 2. The psalmist's passion, verse 3 to 5. And the psalmist's prediction, verse 6 to 7.

So let's look at the psalmist's prayer. Verse 1 is just a prayer. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face to shine upon us. So I have 2 simple points there. Show us your grace and show us your goodness upon us. The us there is Israel. And these are very familiar words. Do you remember these words? These words are copied from Aaron's high priestly prayer in Numbers 6, verses 24 to 26. You may remember that. God told Aaron to say this, The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to us.

Many Psalms like Psalm 4, Psalm 29, Psalm 31, and Psalm 80 share that high priestly prayer like Psalm 67, verse 1. And the psalmist is asking God to bless Israel. Israel was to be blessed and to be a blessing for the whole world. God told Abraham in Genesis 12, You know, I will bless those who bless you and in you all the families of the world will be blessed. Isaiah 49, verse 6 says, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the world. That was God's plan to use the nation of Israel, His chosen people.

And we see in Psalm 67, if you go to the last verse, it says, God shall bless us, let all the ends of the earth fear Him. That was God's plan. That God would be gracious to Israel, bless them, and make their face shine upon them. So that's sub point 2, shine your goodness upon us. I'm told in many synagogues they have a seven branch candle stand or a menorah. And in many times, Psalm 67, the words of it are imprinted upon that menorah. And it shows that God's face is shining upon His people. And when it says shine your goodness upon us, that's a metaphor for God shining His favor upon the people.

It also says this in Psalms 80, three times it says in Psalms 80, in verse 3, 17 and 19, Restore us O God, let your face shine upon us that we may be saved. When the Psalmist here is asking God to shine His face upon Israel, he isn't asking for victory like a lot of Psalms. He's not asking for money. He's not asking for lands or help. He's asking that God would enter into a personal relationship with His people, bless them, and then they would bless the other nations. But we know what happened. From Israel it went to us.

2 Corinthians 4, 6 says, For God who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. You know Israel failed to take that blessing, and they failed to be a blessing to the nations. And so God has given us that blessing and asked us to take that blessing to the nation. Our prayer at Christ Community Church is a Psalmist prayer that God would continue to bless Christ Community Church and use it in Argentina, to use us in Ecuador, to use us in Myanmar, to use us in Russia, to use us in Uganda, and of course here in the United States.

Let's look at verse number 2, the Psalmist purpose. So we go from the blessings to Israel in verse 1 to an emphasis on nations outside Israel in verse 2-6. If you took time to go through it, the word nations is in verse 2, it's in verse 4 twice, and then he has peoples twice in verse 3, once in verse 4, and twice in verse 5. So the emphasis is shifted from Israel to the nations of the earth. It's also interesting about the name of God in Psalm 67. You know I was looking up today, the name Yahweh is listed in 132 of the 150 Psalms.

Only 18 Psalms I could not find Yahweh in them. This is one of them. Because the name of Yahweh is absent here, and that's the name that the Jews would use. So it's interesting here that the name for God here is Elohim. Six times. The focus is not on Israel but on the nations. And here the purpose of the Psalm is that God's revelation be known, and his salvation be received. He says that your way may be known on earth. Israel was supposed to be a light for the nations. And we see a glimpse of the Queen of Sheba.

Naaman, the Syrian king, the widow of Zarephath, and of course Nebuchadnezzar. Just a few Gentiles in the Old Testament came to Christ. And you remember in Luke 4, when Jesus is preaching in Luke 4, he mentions Naaman, he mentions the widow of Zarephath, and they try to take Jesus up to a hill and kill him. They didn't love their neighbors. They didn't love the nations. They hated them. Yet someday in the Millennial Kingdom, some great day, Isaiah 2.3 says, So the Psalmist's purpose is he wanted Israel to be blessed.

He wanted them to know about the ways of God. And he wanted them to have salvation. That's Subpoint 2. It says, The Psalmist prayed in verse 1 for Israel to be a blessing. And here in verse 2, to be a blessing to the Gentile nations so they could have the same blessing that Israel had. The nations needed to know about the one true God. Or the nations of the world needed to come and hear and believe the gospel and be saved. Is the Psalmist's purpose your purpose? Is it ours? That God's way may be known throughout all the earth?

Israel failed God's way and failed to give God's saving power to the Gentile nations. But God had another plan. One commentator said, It's our responsibility now.

And Jesus gave us a command in Matthew 28 to go in the world, make disciples, baptize them, and teach them the Bible. We exist and have a purpose. 1 Peter 2.8 and 9 says, a very familiar verse you know, But you, you have Jesus Christ in you, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you might proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Why do we go to Mississippi in March and just be able to share with a few houses, a few people?

Why do we go to Myanmar and train 17 pastors? It's our purpose. Not just our prayer, it's our purpose. But it's also point number three, it's our passion.

The Psalmist had a passion in verse 3 to 5. And you see there, the same words in verse 3 and the same words in verse 5. This is called an inclusio. There's two types of inclusios. This is a perfect inclusio and then there's an imperfect inclusio. So you actually have two inclusios. In verse 1 it talks about being a blessing and verse 7 it talks about God shall bless us. That's an inexact inclusio or imperfect inclusio. But here we have a perfect inclusio. This is quite common in Psalms. Probably most of you know Psalms 8, right?

Psalms 8 begins with, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth. So Psalms 8 verse 1 says that verse and then it ends with Psalm 8 verse 8 with the same verse. That's an inclusio. And you'll see these quite often in Psalms. And this one talks about let the peoples praise You, O God. Let all the peoples praise You. And it's a call that all the peoples of the earth should praise God. How are the nations of the world to come? How has the United States, our neighborhood, our work, our schools come to know?

James Boyce, one of my favorite preachers who's home in heaven says there's two ways. Number one, the power of God in His people or us.

The nations of the world were supposed to watch Israel and want the same blessings that Israel had. But Israel failed and in many cases were failing. It may be said without fear or contradiction that the greatest hindrance to evangelism in the world today is the failure of churches to supply evidences in their own life and work of the saving power of God. Our lives are to be evidence of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Somebody asked, if being a Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

The second way the nations are to come and praise God according to James Boyce is the power of God's Word through His people.

So it's your lives that you live and the power of God's Word. Simply put, we do evangelism. Tom Mason had a slogan in our evangelism class many years ago. Take the initiative to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leave the results to God. To praise God, these nations need to know God. They need to know God. We have to share the gospel with them. Paul writes in Romans 15, verses 15-16, that he was a minister of Christ Jesus in the priestly service. 2 Corinthians 5.20 says we are ambassadors.

Matthew 5.13 says we are salt and light of the earth. Sadly though, many Christians don't see themselves as ministers, as ambassadors, as salt or light. So Romans 10.17 says that faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. You have to share Christ. You have to open your mouth with Him. David Sills wrote a book about missionaries and he said, When you love the Lord, you long to glorify Him and see the nations fall at His feet in worship. When you love your neighbor as yourself, you share the gospel with him and seek to meet his needs in every way you can, which includes seeing him fall at Jesus' feet in thanksgiving for salvation.

So we looked at may all the nations praise God and then secondly, may all the nations rejoice in God.

And that's verse 4. The nations, if they have saving faith, if they have salvations, only then can they be glad. Only then can they sing for joy. 1 Peter 1.8 says, Though you have not seen Him, Jesus, you love Him. Though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and you rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with joy. You know, the countries we do missions work in are not rich. I think you can pretty much see that in Mississippi. Those are some of the poorest people in the United States.

Yet, when you go to Argentina and you're eating a Milanese steak dinner that costs $6, you realize that they don't go out to eat because the price of chicken or steak is doubled. They have the number one inflation in the world.

When you go to Russia, when you go to Uganda, you have the most incredible missionary experience because they have joy. Their joy is not in houses. It's not in money. It's not in cars. But in the joy of the Lord. And you will never forget the first mission trip I went on with Christ Community Church in 1994.

To be with those Russian brothers and sisters, you'll never forget it. It's joy. And that's the goal. That the nations can have joy. That the nations can come and worship Christ. John Piper wrote probably one of the most famous mission books called Let the Nations Be Glad. And it says missions is not the ultimate goal of church. Worship is. Do you understand what he's saying? We're not going to be doing evangelism in heaven. We're not going to be having our Tuesday night prayer meeting in heaven.

We're not going to be doing Bible study in heaven. We're going to be doing worship. We're going to be praising our Almighty God the Savior. Missions exist today because worship does not exist. Worship is the ultimate, is ultimate, not missions. Because God is ultimate, not man. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and the goal of missions. It's the goal of missions because in missions, we simply aim to bring the nations into the white hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.

It began when Christ gave the Great Commission in Matthew 28. And it continued in March in Mississippi. And in Myanmar. Next month, we have 17 people going to Ecuador. I hope you're praying for that team. I hope you're praying for open hearts and open doors. Let's move on to point number four, the Psalmist prediction. Verses 6 and 7. It says at some point, then God will bless us. And God will build His kingdom. It says there, the earth has yielded its increase. God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us.

You know, this was written 3,000 years ago, looking forward to a great harvest. And when God dealt with Israel in the Old Covenant, He often expressed His blessings in terms of the harvest. We have the Harvest Psalm, and we won't take time tonight, but Deuteronomy 28 is the blessings passage and the cursings passage. God told Israel, if you obey these blessings, it's verses 1 to 14, He's told Israel, if you're faithful, I will bless you. And I think in Deuteronomy 28, verses 1 to 14, eight times He talks about blessing them.

He says, I'll bless your crops. I'll bless your fields. I'll bless your livestock. I'll bless your food. I'll bless the babies in the wives' wombs. If Israel was faithful, they would be blessed. But Israel was not faithful. So when you look at verse 6, it's in the past tense.

And commentators argue about this. Should it be in the past tense? The New King James Bible says, Then the earth shall yield her increase. It's a prediction that someday there would be a great harvest. So this psalm looks to the future, and it looks to us and a spiritual harvest. There can be no greater blessing than being part of God's spiritual harvest. If you have Jesus Christ in your heart, you're part of that spiritual blessing. You've been blessed. And now you need to bless others with that same spiritual blessing that Israel was supposed to do.

I think it's safe to say that if you live in the United States, and you have Jesus Christ in your heart, you are probably blessed more than 99% of the peoples in the world, right? I think we can admit that, okay? It says God is going to build His kingdom. It says, Let all the ends of the earth fear Him. Now, fear is godly awe and reverence before God who judges all nations. Philippians 2.12 tells us that we're to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. All believers are to fear God, not wanting to offend Him who judges, but as we believers are to live a life of sanctification.

God is going to build His kingdom. John 4.35 says, You know, tomorrow is June 6th. So I think you know that marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, right? God bless those men, just a few of them left alive. But I'm told that on that day, only 160,000 soldiers, maybe 73,000 Americans and British and Canadian, a total of 160,000 of them stormed that beach. But the operation was actually called Operation Overlord. And there were 2 million people involved in that operation. So if you did the math, only 8% of the people stormed the beaches.

But there were over 1.8 million other people doing all kinds of other stuff involved. Everybody was involved is the point. You know, we have 17 people going to Ecuador. Just a few people from Christ in Me Church. That's actually a really big group. But, and we have 2 elders going to Myanmar in October. But everybody is to be involved in missions. Psalm 67 is a missionary psalm. And you know, you raise the money instantly for the Ecuador team. But we need to be praying for those 17 people that they won't have any spiritual warfare or last minute medical emergencies or families.

We need to pray for the 3 churches in Ecuador that we'll be working with. And they're going to have vacation Bible schools and they're going to go to the homes of non-believers at night. God is doing an incredible work in Ecuador. I don't have time to talk about it tonight. We are supporting 5 pastors in seminary in Ecuador. Just incredible work that's going on. So let me just finish again.

Psalm 67 says, May God be gracious to us and bless us. And make His face shine upon us. You have Jesus Christ in your heart tonight. You've been blessed with salvation. Verse 2 says, That your way may be known on earth. Your saving of power among all the nations. Be involved in missions. Be involved in evangelism. Get into the evangelism training class. We have prison ministry here. We have park to park on Saturday. We have something called release time where they share Christ with the students in the Azusa school district.

There's so many opportunities you can avail yourself to. And then verse 3 again. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let all the nations be glad and sing for joy. For you judge the peoples with equity. And you guide the nations upon the earth. Let all the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase. God our God shall bless us. And God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear Him. You know, my favorite verses in the book of Revelation are Revelation chapter 7 verses 9 and 10.

And I long for that day. And this psalm predicts that day, point 4. That someday it says, After this I looked, and behold, there was a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all the tribes, and peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Psalm 67 predicts that great day when there will be people from every nation, every tribe, every language, every tongue.

I hope that the psalmist's prayer is your prayer. I hope the psalmist's purpose is your purpose. I hope the psalmist's passion is your passion. And I hope that you'll be involved in that prediction and seeing souls come to Christ, churches planted, and pastors trained. We just went to a few houses in Mississippi. We're training 17 pastors to shepherd the flock in 17 villages in Myanmar. But we pray, we go, we train, so there can be a great harvest. We need to be found faithful when Jesus Christ comes.

May Christ's community church be used in a mighty way in what it says in Psalm 67, that your way may be known on earth. Let's pray. Father, thank you for just a few minutes we can open up the Word of God in Psalm 67. But I praise you, I've been a blessed recipient of the greatness of this church being a missionary, being able to go to the world, because the people of Christ's community church from its initial beginning were serious about missions, serious about doing evangelism, serious about training pastors and planting churches.

So Father, I just praise you for tonight, the testimonies from Mississippi. We pray for every house that we worked at, every house that was worked on, that the work would not be finished, that those people that were shared with, that they would get in church, that they'd come to Christ, and that we continue to remember them and pray and lift them up. Father, we pray for these 17 pastors in Myanmar. Father, they have it difficult, they are so poor. We just pray for their harvest of food, that they'd have wonderful abundance of crops, that you'd bless them with rain and food.

But Father, you use those 17 pastors to shepherd the flock in a difficult country where there's a civil war going on. And Father, we uplift our Ecuador team, that's going to go in about six weeks, that you'd use them in a mighty way to work with three churches to share the gospel, to strengthen those churches, to meet with those pastors we're training. Father, we pray that if there'd be one or two people out here tonight, that they'd be interested in release time, one or two people interested in sharing the gospel in the men's and women's prisons here in California.

Father, that people would be interested in going in the parks and going door-to-door sharing Christ. May we, Father, may Psalm 67 be our prayer, may it be our purpose, may it be our passion, and may we be part of the prediction of a great harvest, which we know it is. In Jesus' name, amen.