Tonight, we are looking at Psalm 67 as we continue our journey through some of the Psalms. And so I would ask you to turn in your Bibles, just as it's my job to be up here to teach the meaning of the word of God. It's your job to listen. And to follow along and to make sure that what I am saying is in agreement with what God has revealed. Psalm 67, the title to the chief musician on Neganath, a psalm or song. And then the psalm itself, God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. Selah. that thy way may be known upon the earth, thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O God. Let all the people praise thee. Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon the earth. Selah. Let the people praise thee, O God. Let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. And thus we have God's holy and inspired word. The 67th Psalm begins with the psalmist asking God to bless his people. He prayed, God, be merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine on us. But you might have noticed that the blessing of God's people was not the final end of what the psalmist was looking for. He didn't want God to bless the Jews of old just so that they could sit back in luxury, sipping iced tea at the side of their wells or next to their vineyards. No, he wanted God to bless his people, according to verse two. so that the ways of God might be known among the nations and that God's saving health might be spread throughout the entire world. He wanted God to bless his people so that his people would make his salvation known upon the earth. Now what this means is that Psalm 67 then is a missionary psalm. A psalm that looks forward to the advancement of world missions under the banner of Jesus Christ. It's a psalm in which God's people, in which God summons his people to rejoice and to bring the nations together before his throne. Now to emphasize this point in the psalm, Psalm 67 has a very interesting structure. Commentators call it an inclusive psalm and they call it that because if you look at verses one and two where David or the psalmist prays for God to bless his people and then extend that blessing to the nations that those same ideas come up in verse seven again. So the psalm begins and ends with exactly the same point. But what's particularly interesting about this psalm is it doesn't have just one of these inclusions in it, but it actually has two. And you'll notice that the middle section of this psalm, in verses three through five, where the psalmist is talking about the necessity of the nations actually praising God, that verses 3 and 5 are word for word identical. It's not one syllable of difference between them. And so this has the overall effect of really zeroing in on the nations of the world coming before God and singing his praises. As I said a minute ago, this psalm begins with a prayer that God would bless his people, starting with mercy, that is, showing them the forgiveness of their sins. And the blessing that's asked for at the beginning of this psalm is an allusion to the high priestly benediction that God commanded Aaron to use to dismiss the children of Israel as they were going back to their tents. That's found in Numbers chapter 6, where God says to Aaron that he's to put his name upon them, saying, The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. But what does it mean for God to bless his people? I suspect if you ask most people that, that they would conjure up in their minds all sorts of ideas of vast temporal gifts. A loving spouse, obedient children, good health, a great job, great health, a car, and so forth. And they would associate these things so much with blessing that if they did not have these things that they would in fact feel unblessed. One of the students that we have in the seminary is an older black man and I think he's probably the happiest man that I've ever met. Every time you see him, he's got this huge ear to ear grin on his face. And when you ask him how he's doing or how his week has been, his answer is always the same. He says, I'm blessed. I'm blessed. He doesn't say it once. He says it twice. And he doesn't mean that he's blessed because God has given him a lot of material things. Now, he considers himself blessed because he has God's unmerited and undeserved favor through Jesus Christ. To him, that's far more important than having the world and all its riches. For him, it really is having everything. That's all he needs. Now, certainly, the Lord does bless his people with temporal blessings. We don't want to deny that. In fact, I'm sure we're all very thankful that he is so generous to us, even though we do not deserve it. But we also understand that there are no guarantees when it comes to temporal things in our sinful world. It's a sad fact. of life that moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break through and steal. And sometimes the Lord takes things away from us for one reason or another. As we see in the book of Job, the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The one thing that God never takes away from His people is the blessing of His grace. The Apostle Paul was very clear about this when he wrote to the Philippians, and he said that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. And so there is no risk whatsoever losing God's grace. And what does this show us? It teaches us that we need to take our eyes off of the gifts that God gives to us, the things that we enjoy, and instead focus on the God who gives us these things so richly. We need to think about our God. We need to think about the greatness of our God. Now, God blessed the Israelites according to Psalm 67 and the priestly benediction that we referred to a little while ago. He also causes his face to shine upon his people. He causes his face to shine upon us. Now, what does that mean? Well, obviously, this is not talking about physical face because the Trinity doesn't have a physical face, but it's talking about looking at God with the eyes of faith. And when we look at God with the eyes of faith, we see that God's face is turned toward us. He's not looking off to the side as if he's disinterested in what we're doing. He's not looking away from us as if he's unhappy with what we're doing, but rather his face is turned toward us because it is his purpose to shower us with the things that we need every day. And this is evident also in the fact that not only is his face turned toward us, but his face is also shining, as the writer of Psalm 67 says. Just as the rays of the sun give light to the earth, the brightness of God's countenance assures us of his favor. His shining face confirms to us that he has brought us into a wonderful covenant fellowship with himself. And why does God do this? Well, it's partly for the sake of Abraham, because God told Abraham that he would make his children as numerous as the sand on the sea and the stars in the sky. And yet, as we saw earlier in verse two, says that that's not the end of it all, because God also gives us all these blessings and causes his face to shine upon us so that those who do not know him at this point might come to know him through us. By hearing of God's mighty acts, by seeing the great kindness that He shows toward His people, they would be brought into the same covenant fellowship that we enjoy. Now, the middle section of Psalm 67 is the longest of the three parts of it. It's also the focal point of the entire psalm. And its message is relatively simple. The psalmist in verses three through five summons the nations of the earth to praise God, to be glad and to sing for joy. But how will this happen? How will the nations of the earth come to know the Lord in such a way that they will want to sing his praises? I think there are two answers to this given in Psalm 67. We've already seen the first answer a little bit. Namely, if God blesses his people according to the blessing that's asked of him, then the nations will see how God deals righteously with his own. At the very least, that's going to make them curious. They're going to wonder why God's people prosper, why God's people are blessed even when they don't have anything. Now, we actually see the same thing today. Your unbelieving neighbors and co-workers no doubt know that you are a Christian. You probably talk to them about the Lord. They see you getting up on Sunday morning and Sunday evening to go to church in your suits and ties and so forth. And so they know what you stand for. But then things come along troubles such as the accident that Jay had a few months ago or the unexpected unemployment of the breadwinner of the family or maybe the death of a child. And while your neighbors and coworkers are watching you, they see that your faith is not shaken in these circumstances. Your faith remains calm and steadfast. You cleave to the Lord and you cleave to His mercy. And they can't understand how you can face such troubles without giving up. They want to know how you, like our seminary student, can count yourself blessed even in the face of deprivation. You know, the Apostle Paul was a man who knew a lot of trouble in his life. He described some of that trouble in Second Corinthians in the first chapter. He says, for we would not rather and have you ignorant of our trouble, which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure above strength in so much that we despaired even of life. That's pretty bad. And yet, did the apostle Paul give up? No, actually, what he tells us is exactly the opposite. When he realized that his strength was waning, he fixed his hope in the Lord and he found strength in God. The next two verses in 2nd Corinthians tell us about this. Paul says, but we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which raiseth the dead, who delivered us from so great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust that he will yet Deliver us. And so you see there that the Lord had caused his face of blessing to shine on his servant, even in the hour of his greatest affliction. Well, you have no doubt felt pressed out of measure from time to time, maybe even beyond your strength. Maybe you've despaired of life itself, as Paul says. And yet, like Paul in such times, the Lord gives you great hope in himself. So when your neighbor, who knows you're a Christian and sees you go to church every Sunday, sees you accepting God's harsh providences with gratitude, what do you say to your neighbor? Peter answered this in his first epistle. He says, but and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye. And be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, just like Paul had done, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh Your reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. The Lord calls you. To set him apart in your heart. To sanctify him. And to be prepared to testify of the blessings that he has so richly poured upon you. You know, we might criticize the evangelism of Arminians because their theology is more man-centered than God-centered. They often fail to give adequate answers for their hope. But then we have to ask ourselves, what about us? What do we do? In the book of Acts, we see thousands of people coming to faith at a time on the day of Pentecost and subsequently. And sometimes the Apostle Paul would go into villages and towns and he would plant churches and there would be thriving churches there after just a couple of weeks of intense ministry. And yet we don't see that today, do we? And we ask, is the Lord still in the business of saving men? Is He still in the business of starting churches? Or is the problem that we fail to see the evidence of God's blessing in our lives? And therefore, we fail to communicate that blessing to others. We cross all of our doctrinal T's and dot our theological I's. When we get right down to it, do we really know and understand what it means to be blessed by God? This past week, there were a lot of pictures or posters or whatever you want to call them on Facebook showing how various people see other people. You've seen these things obviously. Some of them, young mothers, how people view young mothers or how they view college students or how they view firemen or policemen or whatever. Well, one of the things that was posted was how people view Calvinists. Armenians see Calvinists as being prideful. Legalists see Calvinists as being drunks. We see ourselves as being worms. But one of the pictures was, what does the world see when it sees a Calvinist? And the picture there, sadly, was of a man with his head buried in the sand. If we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will bring the world to Christ, then we have to pray for ourselves. We have to ask the Lord not only to bless us with the light of his countenance as Psalm 67 does, but also to increase our appreciation of his blessings. And of course, we have to also understand that God blesses us so richly so that we can then lead others to that same blessing. Now, there's a second answer to the question we raised earlier about how God calls the nations to serve him. The psalmist in Psalm 67 says that God calls unbelievers to praise him, not just for what they see in us, but also for what God does for them. And this is stated, I think, most clearly in verse four. The psalmist says, Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon the earth. Now, at first, that doesn't seem like a very convincing reason for the nations praising God. We praise him because he has shown us mercy for the sake of his son, Jesus Christ. We deserve punishment. Jesus suffered the punishment in our place, and therefore God no longer holds our sins against us. But the psalmist wants the Gentiles to praise God for his judgment. That sounds like it would be a better reason for trembling and shuddering and fearing than praising God. But I want you to look at that verse again and think of it in the context of this psalm. It's not just that God judges the nations, but it's that God judges the nations righteously. When Gentiles come to the Lord confessing their sins and crying out for mercy, God shows them the same shining face of his favor that he shows to the children of Abraham. And the Gentiles rejoice in those blessings. They can take comfort in His promises. They find that the same Jehovah is just as much their God as anyone else's. The Lord also governs the nations. Chance is not in control. God is. And God reigns in the person of His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things and by whom also He made the world. He governs the world for His own purposes. He blesses His people. He makes His people a blessing to others. He showers us with peace and prosperity. As a gentle shepherd, He leads us through dark valleys. Yes, He brings all things to their appointed ends. And it's his will that secures the praise of those whom he has set apart for everlasting life. You know, that's a lot to praise him for. It's no wonder, then, that verse four ends with the word Selah. Selah is a pause. It asks you to stop and think about what was just said. The psalmist wants you to reflect upon what he had just said about the Gentiles praising God. He wanted them to consider what it would be like when people from all over the world, from every nation and tribe and family and kindred, would join together celebrating the removal of the curse and the outpouring of God's blessings through Jesus Christ. Now, beloved, we should take that Selah pause because unlike the people for whom Psalm 67 was first written, we live in the days that it prophesied. Within 300 years of the time that Jesus ascended into heaven, the gospel beat back the paganism of Rome It took a few more centuries to conquer Europe, and now it fills the world. While there still are some unreached people, the number of people that have not yet heard the gospel is getting smaller every day. And we can praise God for that. Now, the third part of Psalm 67, beginning at verse 6, begins somewhat unexpectedly. The blessings that we've been looking at in the first five verses are spiritual. And yet, verse six says that the Lord not only gives spiritual blessings, he also gives his people a plentiful harvest. Nothing had been said about a plentiful harvest so far. Nothing had been said about material blessings of any sort. And so it almost seems that this is out of place in the psalm. But there are three reasons why the psalmist introduced the blessings of harvest here. The obvious reason is that an abundant harvest testifies to God's goodness toward His whole creation. Psalm 145, verse 9 says, The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. And Jesus also said that His Father maketh His Son to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. This benevolence, or common grace as we sometimes call it, should arouse men from their slumber to turn to the Lord in repentance. After all, all men deep down inside know that they do not deserve these favors. In fact, they deserve exactly the opposite of what God gives them. And yet, by itself, this common grace cannot change men's hearts. Another reason why the psalmist mentioned the harvest is that the Lord particularly blesses his people with material blessings. He tells us in his word how to live and how to work. His Holy Spirit works within us to make us diligent workers so that we serve the Lord out of the heart and not just perfunctorily. And then God also blesses us when we follow His commandments and rely on His grace. Listen to the blessings of the covenant as they're stated for us in the first few verses of Deuteronomy 28. And it shall come to pass If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe, to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kind, and thy flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. Now, naturally, we should serve God and keep His commandments simply because we want to glorify Him in our obedience. And yet to sweeten all of this for us, the Lord also induces us to obedience by a promise of a great reward. And yet even here we realize that this too is a manifestation of God's grace, because what God gives us is always far, far, far greater than anything that we deserve. And a third reason why the psalmist mentioned the harvest. Is that the Bible often uses imagery of a harvest for the gathering of his people. Jesus, for example, said in Mark, Chapter four, for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself. First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." And he explained that what he was talking about there was not how to grow plants, but it was a lesson on the kingdom of God. And on another occasion, he said, the kingdom of God is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in the field. And so you see, in a psalm that anticipates the gathering in of the Gentiles to praise God, the imagery of a farmer gathering his crops in is a great reminder that God keeps His Word. He promises to feed us, and He does. He promises to bless us with every spiritual blessing in Christ, and He does. He promises to gather the nations of the world into the household of faith through the seed of Abraham. And Jesus did that when he died on the cross. He said, and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. Now, the last verse of Psalm 67 repeats the ideas that we find in the first two verses. that God blesses his people and thereby makes himself known to others. But I want you to notice that there, even though the ideas are basically the same, there's a huge difference in how they're stated. For example, in verse one, the psalmist prayed for God's blessing. God be merciful unto us and bless us. And to make this clear, a lot of the newer translations put the word may at the beginning of this verse. May God be merciful to us and bless us. And yet, when we come to verse 7, it's not a prayer anymore. It's a statement of fact. It's an announcement. It perhaps could even be called a prophecy. God shall bless us. There was no doubt in the psalmist's mind that God would fulfill what he had declared to be his purpose. And the same thing is true with verse 2. If you look at verse 2, that's given as the purpose for God blessing us in verse 1. But when we come down to verse 7, it's not stated as a purpose anymore. It's also converted into an announcement or a prophecy. And the psalmist says, and all the and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. God's promise to Abraham will be fulfilled. Of that, there is no uncertainty. Now, what does that mean for you? Well, it means that when you engage in summoning men to praise the Lord, that is, when you engage in the work of evangelism that God calls us all to do, you should have no doubt whatsoever that God will use his word to gather men into his everlasting kingdom. You should expect a plentiful harvest. Now, like Moses, we tend to question whether or not we're up to the task. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I question whether I'm competent to get out of bed. But we have to remember that the missionary enterprise is never about us. We are nothing but vessels or instruments of God's grace. The missionary enterprise instead is about the Lord doing his work through us. It's about him bringing to pass his desire to bless his people out of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. And beloved, there is nothing that you or I or anyone else can do to mess that up. And we see that in the book of Revelation. As John is surveying the vision that God had given to him, he sees the fulfillment of this missionary mandate in Psalm 67. Listen to how he describes it. He said, After this, I beheld and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb. clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood around the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might Be unto our God forever and ever. Amen. And so, congregation, may the Lord glorify himself by summoning all men to his praise through you. Amen.