Well if you’ll take your Bibles in hand and turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 67. Psalm 67 in your pew Bibles. You can find that on page 481. This is the last installment of our “Summer in the Psalms” series. I hope that you have found this series edifying and helpful to you and that this last sermon will be no exception. Of course we are looking forward to next week’s launch of our new churchwide teaching theme in the morning, but don’t forget that Wiley will also be starting a fresh sermon series in the evening through the book of Lamentations, and we’ll be celebrating around the Lord’s Table together as well.
But for our last summer psalm, we’ll be looking at Psalm 67. This is rightly known as a missions psalm. John Piper wrote a famous book on missions whose title comes from this psalm – Let the Nations Be Glad! You can even see the mission-mindedness in the structure of the psalm. If you look down at verse 1, you can see it begins with a request for God to bless us, and it ends where it begins with confidence that God will bless us. Much like a mission trip, it starts and ends at home, but throughout the psalm, the thoughts of the psalmist fly with great concern to all the peoples of the earth. There is much to say about missions from this psalm, but it’s also rich in other Biblical references. You could say that this psalm is really a poetic retelling of God’s promise to Abram in Genesis chapter 12. There God says to Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.”
It’s also fitting that we finish our morning series on The Lord’s Prayer as we come to this psalm because we can see all of the same themes from The Lord’s Prayer here in this psalm. Just a couple of examples. Verse 7 asks for God’s name to be hallowed when the psalmist prays that all the ends of the earth would fear Him. “Thy kingdom come” is a petition for the Gospel to be propagated throughout all the world which we see in verse 5, asking for all peoples to praise God. Verse 6 is an acknowledgment of the fact that God is the giver of our daily bread as the psalmist gives thanks for the blessing of the harvest. And you could go through each petition of The Lord’s Prayer and find a corresponding petition in this psalm, so this psalm is also a model for our prayers.
But as we look at this psalm together this evening, we’ll be looking at it under three headings. In verses 1 and 2, we’ll see a benedictory spark. A benedictory spark. In verses 3 through 5, we’ll see a boundless salvation. And in verses 6 and 7, we’ll see a boldness in service. So a benedictory spark, a boundless salvation, and a boldness in service. So now let’s give our attention to God’s Word. Before we read His Word, however, let’s go to Him in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we ask that now You would be with us as we come to Your Word, that You would help us to understand what it is that You are revealing about Yourself in this passage. We ask that You would speak now as Your servants listen. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Psalm 67. Hear now the Word of God:
“To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm. A Song.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
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. Selah
Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!
The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!”
Amen. May God add His blessing to this the reading and hearing of His holy, inerrant and infallible Word.
Well let’s begin with a benedictory spark. As we read the passage, you don’t have to be a Bible scholar to have noticed that verse 1 sounds very much like the most common benediction that we hear pronounced at the end of a worship service. It’s the benediction that Aaron pronounces over the people of Israel in Numbers chapter 6, verses 24 to 26. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” And look down with me at verse 1 where we see very similar language. “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.” Do you see it there? Each of those phrases comes directly from the Aaronic blessing in Numbers. There is a significant difference though. Aaron says, “The Lord be gracious to you,” and the psalmist says, “May God be gracious to us.” The psalmist has turned that well-known pronouncement of blessing into his own prayer.
So let’s jump right in to application, shall we? If you are ever struggling to pray, maybe better said, when you are struggling to pray, it is always, always safe to cling to the promises and blessings of God and to turn them into your own prayers. This is what we mean when we talk about pleading the promises of God. Are you wondering if salvation is actually for you? “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” “Father, I believe in Your Son that You have given to us. I do not want to perish, but have eternal life.” We can pray these promises. Do you wonder if it’s possible to kill that sin that seems to have such a grasp on you? “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.” “Father, provide the way of escape that You have promised. Help me to resist this temptation.” We can turn God’s promises into our prayers back to Him.
And that is exactly what the psalmist is doing here. I think with a little imagination, I like to think that this psalm was written on a lovely Sabbath afternoon. The psalmist has attended and participated in worship, but in those glorious moments wedged right between Sunday lunch and afternoon nap, he stops to meditate on that benediction that was pronounced and that perhaps is still ringing in his ears. Have you ever thought about the benediction? Is it just a nice way to end the service? Just a tradition? What’s actually going on in the benediction? Well in the benediction, your pastor is proclaiming the very blessing of God upon you. We are declaring God’s promises over you. We raise our hands to symbolically represent the idea of laying on of hands, which we find in Scripture represents transference of something from one to another. You’ll remember from our recent Leviticus series that the priest would lay his hands on the head of the goat on the Day of Atonement, on the scapegoat, which represented the sins of the people being transferred to that goat. When we have an ordination service, we have ordained elders laying hands on those who are ordained. And there is a representation there of that ordination being passed on to other men. In the benediction, God’s blessing is being transferred to you. It reminds you of who you are. One author writes that, “The benediction is a blessing that seals the Church in the name of the Lord. In giving us His name, He brings us into His care and gives us a share in the household of faith.” God declares in the benediction over you that you are His and He is yours. It is a reminder as you leave church on Sunday that God has promised to be with you.
But why do we need that blessing? Well for many reasons, surely, but in this psalm we see it as because as Christians God has not just called us into the Church, He also commissions us. He sends us out to get to work. So we could say that this psalm is about to answer the question, “What comes after the benediction? What is it for?” That, perhaps, is the question the psalmist was meditating on that Sabbath Day, and that’s what the rest of this psalm answers. “God be gracious to us,” it says. “Bless us. Make Your face to shine upon us so that Your way may be known on earth, Your saving power among all nations.” So the psalmist is not praying selfishly for blessing. He’s saying, “God, give us more blessings, not so that we can flaunt it or compare it with other nations, but so that Your ways and Your saving power might be known everywhere.”
So if that is the point of God’s blessing, this might be a good point to stop and ask a question. “How have God’s blessings enabled you to make Him known, when you think of the blessings that God has given you?” Perhaps a Christian education, wisdom, finances, flexibility in your schedule, a certain influence, even a passport that gets you into almost any country in the world – How have you used those blessings to make Him known? Could anyone recognize that you are a Christian based on how you steward God’s blessings? Put another way, if being a Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you? “Well, detective, what’s the latest on the Johnson case?” “Well, we bugged the house but we haven’t heard any sign of hospitality or Bible studies, no spiritual discussions, prayer, or even a song of praise.” “Did you find any Bibles?” “Oh, we found them, but, whew, they haven’t been picked up in months.” “What about the bank accounts?” “Oh yes, we’ve looked at the bank accounts. Amazon. Amazon. Amazon. Some restaurants. Some travel. A whole bunch of streaming services. Amazon.” “So no tithe? No missions giving? No other signs of generosity at all?” “Well, nothing that we can identify.” “Well, keep the case open, but as you know, we can’t convict on charges of being a Christian based on church attendance alone.”
Brothers and sisters, God’s blessing, His blessings to us have a purpose, and that is to make Him known. We are not just called into worship, but we are also blessed and sent out on mission every Sunday. The benediction that we hear after each service is designed to ignite within us a desire to make Him known and to remind us that God Himself is blessing us towards that very end. So let’s resolve not to let the benediction pass us by again without it reminding us that it is God Himself sending us out on His mission.
So we’ve seen a benedictory spark, now let’s turn to a boundless salvation. Look with me at verses 3 through 5. “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!” So as we look at this section, you get a good sense of the structure of the psalm. So the structure is something like the setting of a fine jewel. Everything around it is designed to showcase that jewel, to draw your eye to that jewel. And now we’ve already mentioned that the psalm begins and it ends with us and a prayer for God to bless us. We’ve seen that here. And then we’ve noted now that verses 3 and 5 that we have just read are the exact same. They bookend this central idea. These middle verses are the entry and exit point of the key idea. “Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You.”
It should be noted now how remarkable this is. In the ancient world, God’s word, generally understood to be bound by geography or belonging to a profession of some sort or to a people. An example – you know the prophet Jonah who was a very reluctant missionary. He got on a ship to flee from God, and as the storm began, you will remember, everyone on that ship cast lots to determine who was at fault; who was the cause of this storm coming upon them. And the lot fell to Jonah. And what’s the very next thing that they do? They begin peppering him with questions. “What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country and from what people are you?” Doesn’t that seem like an odd line of questioning on a boat that might be about to sink? But these sailors weren’t just making small talk by asking about family and his job. They were actually trying to triangulate which God it was that they needed to appease by determining his country, his occupation, and his people.
So what we are finding here in verses 3 and 5 is actually quite extreme. This God is not just the God of Israel. This is the one, true and living God who is sovereign over all the world, over all occupations, over all peoples. “Let the people praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You!” And that plural that we see there after people – “the peoples” – is not a typo. It’s meant to draw our attention to the fact that these are people beyond Israel. If the psalmist had just prayed, “Let all the people praise You,” we could misunderstand that and read it ambiguously and think that he is referring to all the people of Israel. But adding the plural there gives us no doubt. We can’t miss his point. His desire is for all peoples to praise God. This is a prayer to God that the good news of God’s redeeming love would go forth across the entire globe. The blessings of God are not for hoarding in one place. We are to press them into service to make Him known. The good news of salvation is for all peoples.
Spurgeon writes that, “Our love must make long marches and our prayers must have a wide sweep. We must embrace the whole world in our innercessions.” I’m so grateful that that’s our pattern here at First Presbyterian Church when we gather corporately to worship. We heard that already this evening in the ruling elder prayer. We pray for our missionaries every week. I wonder if that is your pattern privately as well. And if these verses are pointing us towards the global boundlessness of salvation, then surely salvation is boundless in the smaller details as well. “Let our city praise You, O God. Let our whole city praise You. Let our neighborhood praise You, O God, our whole neighborhood. Let my family praise You, O God, my whole family. Let my heart praise You, O God, my whole heart.” Every corner of the earth, and even every corner of your heart is in dire need of this boundless salvation.
So we’ve noted the outer structure, right? A prayer for blessing on us. And then on the inside, we’ve seen these central pillars here about the praise of the peoples. But what is this structure all pointing to? What’s the culmination of all this? What is wedged right there in the middle as the core, the central idea, the very center of the psalm? Look down with me at verse 4. We find Christ Himself. The One who gladdens the nations. The One who judges the people with equity and guides the nations upon earth. This is a picture of the exalted One who will judge the peoples. The resurrected One who has conquered sin and death. The One who, having accomplished our salvation, ascended on high. He is the One who sits at the right hand of the Father. This Judge is Christ Himself who was unjustly judged and condemned by wicked men and He will come again at the last day in great power. The fact that He is seen judging the peoples here demonstrates that He has all authority and power. It has all been given to Him.
Matthew 25 speaks of this when it says, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” Now this verse started with the phrase, “Let the nations be glad.” How often do you associate gladness with being judged? Those words don’t seem to go together very naturally. Even when we know we are innocent, it’s nerve wracking to go before a judge. Whenever we come before an earthly judge, there’s always a chance for there to be an error in his judgment, or that an earthly judge might be judging you according to an unjust law. If you’ve ever been in the position of being the judge, you know how hard it is to judge fairly. Even when we do our very best to judge a situation, even with our own children, the answer almost always comes back, “That’s not fair.” And of course every parent must, as their parents before them, respond with, “Life isn’t fair!” It isn’t easy to judge fairly. We have a man in this church whose name is Judge Fairly, and if you asked him, I would bet he would tell you that it’s not easy to judge fairly!
So how can the nations be glad while being judged? Look again at verse 4. Because Christ judges the people with equity. If you are trusting in Him today for your salvation, you can take great comfort, and indeed find gladness in the fact that Christ judges equitably. Your salvation is sure because your sins have been paid for in full by Christ’s life, death and resurrection. And it would be unjust to require you to pay for it again. So we see here Christ’s supreme authority as judge, and that is reason for gladness.
But we also see another reason for gladness in this verse. Look back again at the text. Christ will “guide the nations upon earth.” And this word that we see here for “guide” is the same word that we find in Psalm 23. Having made us to lie down in green pastures and alongside quiet waters, it says, “He leads me in paths of righteousness.” That’s the same word. That leading – “He guides me in paths of righteousness.” Here we see something of the tenderness of our Good Shepherd. He is not just a distant Judge; He cares for our needs. He leads us gently and carefully. He is the one that looks upon the multitudes with compassion. He knows our frame. He is a great High Priest who is able to sympathize with us. He is the One who calls to all who are weary and heavy laden. He is the One who gives us rest. This Jesus is the One who gladdens the nations and who causes them to sing for joy. And the fact that this Jesus is both Judge and Shepherd brings gladness, that ought to teach us something. That ought to teach us that bowing the knee to Jesus is not a cause for despair. It’s not a reason to be miserable. It’s not something that we ought to do begrudgingly. Bowing the knee to Jesus is actually a delight. We, along with the nations, ought to be glad and to sing for joy. Boundless salvation is a cause for joy.
So we’ve seen the benedictory spark and we’ve seen boundless salvation. Let’s now turn to boldness in service. Look down with me at verses 6 and 7. “The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!” So we see first an acknowledgement of provision from God. There has been a harvest. The earth has yielded its increase. This is a yearly reminder of God’s continuing faithfulness. We sing something very similar. We heard the melody played already this evening. “Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness, to Thy great faithfulness mercy and love.” Reflecting on what He has done gives us confidence in what He will do. With God there is no disclaimer. Past performance is not predictive of future results. No such disclaimer exists with God. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He has been faithful, and so the psalmist continues with boldness and confidence. “God, our God, shall bless us.” God’s faithfulness is the grounds for our boldness in our evangelism, in our prayer, in our preaching, in our missions work, and everything that we do at His command. We can have boldness in service because we serve a faithful God.
And that’s really good news when our commission is to make His way known on earth and His saving power to all people. Doesn’t that feel like an impossible task? In some sense, it’s my literal job at Minister of Missions and it is incredibly overwhelming. What could we possibly do to get closer to the goal of all the ends of the earth fearing God? The church has been at this for 2,000 years. What hope is there for us to be making progress? As most of you know, some of our church members went on a mission trip this summer to Brussels, Belgium. It is a beautiful city and it was a joy to share in the work of our missionaries there with the Brink family and the Bacon family. And we were staying pretty close to the citycenter, and right downtown, not too far from where we were staying, stands a cathedral. We walked by it several times during our week there – the Cathedral of Saints Michael and Gudula. It’s a beautiful, gothic style cathedral with twin spires and stained glass windows. Everything that you would expect from a European cathedral. And it was Henry I who was basically the king of that region under the emperor who ordered the groundbreaking of that cathedral in 1226. And it would be almost 300 years later in 1519 that construction was considered complete. Three hundred years of construction. That’s hard for us to fathom when our country is just about to celebrate 250 years. Three hundred years of construction on a single building.
So if you were to count a new generation every twenty years, it would have taken fifteen generations to complete that work. Fifteen generations to complete the work. You can imagine the moment that first generation realized, after a couple of years of working, that they were never going to see the finished product. Why even bother continuing? “Well, we have orders from the king.” For over 200 years, generation after generation worked on building that beautiful cathedral with little to no hope of seeing the finished result. But each generation was faithful to do their part. One broke new ground and began the foundation. Another was cutting the stone blocks. Another one put those blocks in place in the walls. Another carved fine decorations for the facade. Another just carried the stones up to the construction site. Completing that work for any of them was an impossible task. Each worker played their part because they had orders from a king.
Even though the task of neighborhood evangelism, much less global evangelism seems to us impossible, even though it seems unlikely for us to see every tribe and tongue and nation learn about salvation in our lifetime, we could have joy and boldness and confidence in our service because we have orders from the King. With each prayer, with each word of encouragement, with each missionary and church planter that we send from our own ranks, with each dollar given to the work of missions, with each Gospel conversation we have, with each seed that’s planted on each short-term mission trip, God is using all that to build His kingdom. Even if we can’t see it all yet, none of us – no matter how profound and visible or simple and unseen – none of it is lost in service to the King. So we must have boldness in service.
The reason we can have that boldness is right there in verse 6. “God, our God, shall bless us.” This is not just some God. We are talking about our God. We belong to Him and He has given Himself to us. He is using us to build His Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. No matter how impossible that construction project may seem, His plans will surely come to pass. I wonder if there are people here this evening who have never called this God, “our God.” How we pray that tonight would be the night that you call Him your own; that tonight would be the night that you go from knowledge about God to being able to call Him your own. “God, our God, shall bless us.” Let’s pray.
God, our God, how grateful we are for the many ways You have blessed us in this church. Lord, we ask that You would help us to use those blessings for Your honor and glory. Help us not to squander a moment of our time or a dollar of our money, but that we would press it all into service for Your honor and glory. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.