Hope you all have been having a wonderful Independence Day so far, you know Independence weekend and glad you all are here this morning. Glad we got a little bit of a break from the rain making it easier to manage to get here but I'm filling in for Pastor Joe this morning. He's getting a much needed rest and vacation. I'll be praying for he and Laura and the family as they're away.
He'll be back with us again soon. And we're taking a break from the life of David this morning. In Jesus I get an opportunity to look at Psalms. I like to do so.
It's a glorious book. A lot of glorious truths and nuggets to be found there. And this morning we're going to be looking at a pretty unknown psalm in the grand scheme of things. Psalm 67.
So I look at my son Grant and I'm going to Psalm 67 this morning. See I'm with the times now. I get it. So yeah, we're going to look at Psalm 67 and what inspired the decision to go to Psalm 67 is thinking about the significance of what we're celebrating this weekend.
What this weekend is all about. I don't know how often you think about the blessings that we enjoy in this country. But I would dare say that always when we get to Independence Day we are by nature prone to think about just we are blessed beyond measure in this country. And especially in light of this year such a big 250 years of independence.
So we're grateful for that. And so I was thinking about the fact of God how God has had his hand on our country from the very beginning. And thinking about that was true even before we officially declared independence from Britain and fought that battle thinking about how God was at work and planning seeds among the colonies. The Great Awakening was a few decades before the American Revolution.
And in so doing God was spiritually preparing the hearts of those that were going to be founding the country. You know there was revival taking place. The spirit was at work. And then when we got to the time of actually formulating a constitution and working through those deliberations the fact that the founding fathers had enough sense to think, wow, maybe we ought to seek the Lord's willingness and cry out to the Lord and pray to the Lord asking for his discernment on how to lead the country.
We've seen the Lord's goodness and relative unity and peace and prosperity that has been preserved by the Lord throughout the course of our 250 years. And of course probably the first blessing that we come to our start of the first thing that will come to our mind when we think about blessings is we have unprecedented freedoms in this country. Freedoms that I would know other country can say in terms of the amount of freedoms we have. So we can give great thanks for that.
And so we're thinking about the nature of blessing this morning and Psalm 67 sure enough is a look at God's blessing on his people here and receive God's word. Psalm 67 beginning in verse 1. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face the shine upon us. That your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you O God, let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you O God, let all the peoples praise you. The earth is yielded to the inscrease.
God our God shall bless us. God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him. This is indeed the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. So in the tradition of grace life I'm going to look at this passage in three distinct categories. We're going to start with history, a history lesson with regards to Psalm 67 and I've entitled this a pattern of the Lord blessing the undeserving. As is often the case in the book of Psalms we actually are provided with no clear historical context for the writing of this particular Psalm.
We don't even know who exactly wrote it. It might have been David, but we don't know. But what we do gather from its opening words is this Psalm is a prayer as many of the Psalms are, not all the Psalms, but it's a prayer dedicated to seeking the Lord's blessing. The language used in verse 1 is rooted in a prayer of blessing that happened hundreds of years before all the way back in number 6.
And we're going to look at that now in verses 22 through 26 and it says this. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his son saying, thus you shall bless the people of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face a shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Those are familiar words, right? If we spend any measure of time in the church, we imagine we have heard that. It is a very common benediction that is used in the worship of Christians.
And it's remarkable that this prayer is something which originated not with man, but God's a very command. Because when we typically think about prayer to God, we think about it being initiated by ourselves, oftentimes out of desperation. But it's common for us to pray to the Lord and ask for his blessings on our own. Think about it, we're selfish by nature, right?
But what probably doesn't occur to us is the Lord delights to pour out his blessings on his people. To the point that he invites and even encourages us to seek his kindness. And that's in fact what he's doing in this psalm. He's basically begging for us to seek his blessings and to seek his goodness.
And what makes this God-ordained prayer even more profound is to understand the historical context in which it was given. So we're back in the context of Numbers. The people of Israel were gathered at Mount Sinai. They were in the course of their 40 years in the wilderness, having departed out of the wilderness.
Having departed out of Egypt being delivered there. And they were preparing to continue to move forward into the Promised Land. And the Lord knew that they would need his presence. They would need his help if they were going to safely arrive and succeed in their mission.
However, if you know your history, if you know your story, from the time that they left Egypt, most of the Israelites' attitudes and actions had demonstrated consistent rebellion from the Lord. Their time in the wilderness had been filled with bitterness and grumbling. And even while they had been stationed at Mount Sinai, there were two monumental events that happened at Mount Sinai. The delivery of the Ten Commandments up at the top of Mount Sinai on the bottom.
While they're getting the Ten Commandments, sure enough what's happening. They are guilty of blasphemy, creating the idol of the Golden Calf. And so what had become abundantly clear is the Israelites had done everything to disqualify them from any reason, to expect any measure of favor from the Lord. And yet, the Lord was still just as committed to take care of them as he had been from the very beginning.
So there's one other historical context besides the Aaron blessing. Psalm 67 also embodies and reflects the promises given to Abraham. We're familiar with Father Abraham. Back in Genesis 12, again this will be familiar with words.
This is what it says in Genesis 12. Now the Lord said to Abraham, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse.
And in you, all of the families of the earth shall be blessed. Once again we find here that God extends his favor to the undeserving. Now we're not told anything of the consequence about Abraham when the Lord first appeared to him. Later then he was living in Mesopotamia at the time.
But when we get to Joshua 24, we're given a little bit of a context of where Abraham was spiritually. And it says Abraham's family was serving other gods. So we conclude Abraham was a practicing idolatryer. When the Lord intervened, called him and committed to establishing a nation through him.
So clearly once again there was nothing within Abraham that would cause the Lord to choose to work through him in such a mighty way. And this becomes a recurring pattern. We see what the Israelites and the wilderness, we see what Father Abraham and then we see a couple other quick passages due to the Lord in the seven. The Lord is talking to Israel.
This is what he says, it was not because you were more a number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and shows you for you or the fewest of all peoples. You were the least impressive of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. Israel is put in their place.
They say, hey, don't get too big for your britches. It is only because of the Lord's steadfast love, his faithfulness to his promises that he has been so good in blessing the people of Israel. And then one last passage, now extending to the church and the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, speaking to the fact that the church is also by its very nature unqualified. First Corinthians 1, for considering your calling brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful and not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world. Even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
So what we are to glean from all of this is that while it is good for us to recognize just how blessed we have been, we must resist allowing these blessings to fill us with any sense of pride and entitlement. Because we can't take any credit or glory for everything that we enjoy. Every single blessing we have comes explicitly from the hand of God. And that is a needed reminder because from my perspective, too often we have been guilty of idolizing being American.
We so love being here that we have gotten to the point of even worshiping America at a time as collectively as a nation and that mentality has spilled into the church to some degree. And so we are to take to heart and realize that every blessing that we have is an opportunity for us to give thanks to God rather than to be filled with self. So there's our history lesson how we come to theology. The Lord's manifold blessings should move us to praise and proclamation.
Rather than pride and entitlement, we should be moved to praise and proclamation. When we examine Psalm 6, 7, one of the things that immediately stands out as the writer was seeking only spiritual blessings from the Lord. Why do I make that qualification? It's important for us to recognize because our typical default mode is to fixate on the physical, right?
On the temporal needs that we have rather than on the eternal ones, the spiritual realities. But the only reference made of any kind of material blessing throughout this Psalm is verse 6. And in this what the Psalm highlights, the earth has yielded its increase. He's saying God has been faithful to provide us with crops year after year.
He has provided food on the table for us year after year. And so he's acknowledging that. But he was reflecting on the Lord's faithfulness to do that to meet their physical needs in order to give him confidence that the Lord would continue to take care of them in every regard, including the greater needs of their spiritual well-being. And that brings us back to number 6, the prayer from Utter by Aaron and the priest.
And let's look at some of the nature of these blessings spilled out for us. Verse 24, the Lord bless you and keep you. We should recognize the Lord has been faithful to protect us. We're all here this morning.
God has protected us individually. He's protected our families. He's still He protected our country. He is a God who provides protection.
The Lord be gracious to you. Verse 25, God showers us with grace, grace upon grace. That's a promise. That's a blessing that we receive.
And may the Lord, verse 26, give you His peace. God is the source of peace. And that's a great blessing that we can enjoy. A peace that passes all understanding.
As Paul tells us in Philippians 4. And so those are some of the blessings that we see. But then we turn once again to one other aspect of number 6. And what we see that he was specifically asking for this.
This is the part I skipped. May the Lord, verse 25, May the Lord make His face shine upon you. Verse 26, may the Lord lift up His countenance upon you. What is He doing?
He is saying the greatest of all the blessings. And we have so many blessings. We can't even count them all. But it is this.
It is the Lord Himself. That is our greatest blessing. And that is the nature of that very prayer. When He is saying, God lift up your countenance upon us, shine your face upon us.
He is asking and inviting the Lord into His life and greater measure. It's a request for the Lord's presence. And the fact of the matter is all the blessings in the world that we have will not mean anything if we don't have a relationship with the Lord. And even more significant, if we have that relationship with the Lord, we don't really need anything else.
That is our greatest need. That is our greatest blessing. And so we can rest in that glorious truth. And so those are some of the blessings.
And then I want to come back one more time to the fact of the promises that were made to Abraham and the promise to be a blessing to him. Because we are in the line of Abraham. And we are the recipients of the same blessings that he received. How do we know that?
Galatians in chapter 3, this is what it says, beginning in verse 7. Know then that in those, it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. If we have professed faith in Jesus' rise and we put our faith in him as our Lord and Savior, we are part of the family of Abraham. And the scripture for seeing the God would justify that Gentiles by faith preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, and you shall all the nations be blessed.
So then those who are faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on the works of law are under a curse. It is written cursed to be everyone who does not abide by the things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous will live by faith.
But the law is not a faith rather than one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. It is written cursed to everyone who hangs on the tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promise spirit through faith. Now we have so much greater insight of the fullness of the kinds of blessings that we experience.
We talked about the fact that we've experienced his peace, we've experienced his grace, we experienced his protection, but we also see that we've experienced the most glorious deliverance, right? That we have experienced being justified by him. That means we are righteous in his sight through Christ himself. The fact is that we have been set free from his wrath.
We deserve his curse. He is a holy God. We deserve to be punished by him. Not only now, but for all of eternity.
But yet we are learned through the promise, through the blessing that we have been set free from that curse. We no longer have to experience his wrath. And we have been set free from bondage to sin. We have been redeemed, redeemed, paid for with the price of Christ's broken body, his shed blood.
We have been set free and to live for him. And so these are all part of the part and parcel of all of the blessings that we can enjoy and we can delight in and we can rest in and we should celebrate. We should celebrate them and testify to them. We should bring us to the opening of Psalm 67 coming back to the opening.
How does the psalmistar, he prays for blessing, right? Verse 1, may God be gracious to us and bless us. Make his face is shine upon us. Listen to this.
Why? Not just so we can enjoy blessings that your way may be known on earth. You're saving power among all nations. What he is saying is, Lord, please bless us, not for my sake, but for your sake, Lord, that your way may be known that people can see your goodness, your kindness, your compassion, your mercy, all the blessings that you bless us with, and they can want that for themselves.
That they could be anxious to know you. That your glory would be made known across the city and the state and the country and the world. That is what he is praying for is that God's glory would be manifest through these blessings. That God would be honored, that God would be celebrated.
First and foremost, through us to begin with those who have received those blessings, that we would testify, that we would sing his praises, that we would give thanks, but then that would spill over. And other people would want to know Jesus and would come to know Jesus. And that's what the purpose of God's blessings is, that he would be glorified in it. And now we come to the application.
The application. We are called to be conduits rather than cisterns. Those are two things that hold water. A cistern is something that collects the source of water and keeps it contained.
A conduit is something that connects two bodies of water. What we are called to understand is that our blessings from the Lord are never intended to be an end unto themselves. We are not to be in the business of seeking the Lord's blessing for ourselves or for our families or for our friends or for our nation just for its own sake, so that we can enjoy them. That is not the purpose.
The Lord's design and has always been the design is for us to pass those blessings on to others. That he blesses us so that it would spill out of our lives and touch and impact other people. And that they would be blessed likewise. And so there's the question that this text begs of us, are we in a selfish survival mode just hoping to receive and store up blessings from the Lord for ourselves?
Or are we actively seeking to be a blessing to other people? That's what the Psalm invites us, challenges us to do. Because the commission that was originally given to Abraham, he said, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you a great nation.
But I'm going to do so that you will bless others. You will bless all the families of the earth. And we are the recipients of that, right? We're part of that family line.
We're part of those nations that have been impacted by it. And so that same commission that was given to Abraham has now been given to the church. It's the purpose of the church to be a blessing as we have been blessed. We are to share the blessings that we have experienced from the Lord, whether it be physical blessings or financial blessings.
Share our ice cream like Gil shares his ice cream with his neighbors and friends, right? We are to share all kinds of blessings. But most of all, we are to impart the hope of the spiritual blessings that can be found in a relationship with the Lord and so doing introduce people to Jesus. And that is the heart and the soul of this psalm.
It is the commentators who are consistent in their evaluation. They say, this is a missionary psalm. I'm out because I don't feel called by the Lord to be a missionary. I don't sense God sending me out.
Guess what? We're all missionaries. We're all missionaries. Whether we're doing it outside the United States or we're doing it here.
But we are missionaries to our neighbors, to our friends, to our family, to the people in our workplaces. To the people in our workplaces, to the people in the grocery store, wherever we encounter people we are called to be missionaries. And the core of the psalm is a focus on the desire for God's blessings to be experienced and enjoyed by others. The heart and soul is the middle, verses 3 through 5.
Let's look at that again. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. He's looking beyond himself.
He's looking even beyond Israel. He's saying, I want to see your glory manifest all over. I want people to be enjoying you all over. Verse 4, let the nations be glad and sing for joy.
He says, let they know of your goodness. They say in the case of your goodness to such a degree that they delight in you, that they rejoice, that they find hope. All of these things, peace for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God.
Let all the peoples praise you. And so that's what we are challenged to take to heart, is to be intentional, to be missional in our thinking, to get outside of ourselves, outside of our little boxes, outside of our little calendars, and to look and to think and to pray along the lines of being missional in every regard. Psalm 33 12. Blessed is the nation, whose God is the Lord.
Right? We should want that for America. We should want it in greater and greater measure. That means we should be intentional, be consistently praying for America.
We need revival in this place. We need for our spiritual hunger to be revived, and so we are called in response to this song to be praying for our nation with earnest desire to see people come to know Him, to see the churches renewed and strengthened and to be bright lights in the darkness of this place. So that's part of the calling that we have. And we are also to be missional and praying for those we know we have lost people in our lives, whether it be friends, whether it be family, whether it be neighbors.
We are to be praying for them intentionally. And then we are called to snot simply rest and praying, but then to go forth in the power of the Lord in evangelism. We are called to be missional in action and to introduce people. And so again, the last question we have to rest with is how much are we burdened for the spiritual well-being and the blessing for the lost?
Is that evident in our lives? Are we truly burdened? Because if we're truly burdened, not only are we going to be praying hard for people, but then we're going to seek to take action for people. And we're going to introduce people to Jesus.
And what a great privilege and honor we have as followers, because we have been blessed with so many things I've already talked about. But one of the things I haven't mentioned yet is this Holy Spirit, Galatians 3 mentions that we have the Holy Spirit. He is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit as a blessing, and this brings us to the final verse. Listen to the great opportunity that we have in people's lives.
2 Corinthians 4 verse 6, For God who said, Let light shine out of the darkness. That's the act of creation, right? Has shown in our hearts new creation. We've been made new creations renewed, right?
Has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. What he is saying is God has done such a mighty beautiful work of blessing in our lives that we have the privilege of knowing him and being known by him and knowing his glory and tasting of his goodness. And then that can spill out. That light that is in our hearts can spill out and we can bring people face to face with Jesus.
Bringing them to face to face with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. And as we share God's word with people, we are introducing people to Jesus Christ. And in so doing, we can be the ultimate blessing in their lives. And that's what we're called to do.
May we do that in earnest, sisters and brothers of grace life. Lord, we thank you for the hope that we find in this passage. Lord, we thank you that you have indeed blessed us immeasurably. Lord, we can never have enough time to count all the blessings, Lord.
And sometimes we can be so short-sighted and not see the fullness of the blessings. But Lord, continue to remind us time and time again as we interact with your word, as we reflect Lord. May we taste of your goodness each and every day in greater, greater measure. May we have a greater and greater appreciation for you.
May we have a greater and greater desire to glorify you and honor you in all that we do through our families, through our friendships, through our work, Lord, in every regard help us to honor you. And Lord, we thank you for the privilege we have to be able to be a blessing to other people in every regard to share the love of Jesus and word and indeed help us to be faithful in that. May we not simply rest our laurels just delighting in our blessings. Lord, may we be burdened for others.
May we love them so much that we can't wait to share of your goodness and testify to how wonderful you are in your steadfast love and your faithfulness to your promises. And we pray these thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.