I will remember to turn my mic on. There we go. Yeah, turn in your Bibles to Psalm 67. It's going to be our passage for this morning. We've been going through as a church this summer, a series in the Psalms, and we've been doing this as our second year, and we're in book two. Book of Psalms is divided into five books. And so we're finding ourselves towards the end of book two. When I was given this psalm, this psalm is a missional psalm, and that was what Matt had put in the email to me that, hey, this is kind of the focus, and I think you'll find this as you read into the psalm. And I'll confess, first time I read this psalm, I wasn't so sure that I saw mission in it. But as I read more and just kind of let the words wash over me time and time again, I came to realize a lot of the truth that is here is directly connected and indeed is the foundation for evangelism. But evangelism is the scariest 10-letter word in the church, right? How many of you have ever tried to share the gospel, and then at some point in the conversation you just feel like, I am in over my head. I do not know what the right answer is. I've been there. And so as a result of that uncomfortability, that embarrassment, or a host of other reasons, we avoid overt evangelism. We want to spare ourselves that uncomfortability, that pain. We want to spare our friend the embarrassment of uncovering some differences over religion. Maybe we want to preserve a relationship with a family member. Or maybe we just frankly don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to have that person's opinion of us change. We want to come across as peaceable and agreeable. So frankly, evangelism, whether it's word or deed in the public square or the private square, it's difficult, even under the best of circumstances. But today, we're not gonna explore the top three techniques to dissipate fear, enhance your scripture memory, remember all the apologetics that you'd ever need to answer every single question. Those are good things, but that's not what we're talking about today. We're not talking about special breathing practices for relaxation, silver bullet passages, or situational advice. No, instead, through the lens of Psalm 67, we're gonna explore the very core of evangelism and why it matters. A little bit of background, Psalm 67, it frankly is one of the more obscure psalms in the collection. There's only seven verses, and this psalm of praise is written to be sung. We know that from the heading, if you read the heading, to the choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm, a song. So you can probably infer that David wrote this psalm, but again, we have no historical or biographical information to say that with any degree of certainty. Martin Luther, he wrote five large volumes on the psalms, one for each book, but he skipped this psalm entirely. It's easy to pass over this song in favor of Psalm 67 or Psalm 68. Both 66 and 68 are a little bit longer. They use a lot more vivid imagery. They're more popular, as it were. But that would be a mistake. Psalm 67, it's a true gem, and it packs a lot of truth specifically about God and his glory. So let's start digging into this passage. It begins by echoing a passage familiar passage and theme, familiar to us as Christians, but especially to the audience of the time. If you look, verse 1, it's a reversal, a slight reversal of one of the most well-known blessings given by God to the nation of Israel, which is found in Numbers 6, 24 through 26, the Aaronic blessing. Let's read that passage together. It says, 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. This passage in Numbers, it was recited often by the priests, and it was crucial in reminding the people of Israel that God is the source of all good things. The key difference between Numbers 6 and our passage today, Psalm 67, it's the position of the author. And number six, the blessing was given to the priest to speak in front of the whole people. The priests were the intermediaries between God and the nation of Israel. But here in Psalm 67, you see the author switch positioning just a little bit. He includes the word us, so he's including himself as part of the blessing. So as we consider Psalm 67, I think it's very crucial that we understand who is the us that this passage talks about. In a nutshell, the us referenced here, it's the chosen people of God, which in the historical context of Islam would clearly be the literal nation of Israel, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And often when we think of Israel today, we think of the pharisaical tradition remains a dominant force in Judaism today, that Israel was created to be a set apart theocracy. Now that's true, but it doesn't go quite far enough. In both Genesis 12 and 22, we see that from the beginning, God planned the nation of Israel to be distinct and set apart, yes, but through whom he planned to bless all the other nations. So just as the priests were designed to be holy and set apart, so Israel was designed to be a holy intermediary between God and the rest of the nations. Essentially, Psalm 67 is written from the reference point of a chosen person. Those around the world who have surrendered their life to God's call, we've been grafted in. You think of Romans 11 where it talks about the Gentiles being grafted in to the nation of Israel. Six months ago to the day, or a lifetime ago, Matt led us through a study on 1 Peter 2, 11 through 12. That passage reads, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So in the broader context of Scripture, we can clearly see that those whom Christ has redeemed are part of the us here in Psalm 67. So Psalm 67, verse 1, we start with three petitions. And the psalmist is going to pause mid-sentence to allow us for some contemplation. So let's look at each of these requests to kind of better frame the context of this psalm. The first request is a request for grace. Depending on your translation, you'll see, may God be gracious to us. Some will read, may God be merciful to us. And while different, both grace and mercy are necessary for salvation. God's mercy is demonstrated in that he doesn't wipe sin and those who commit it from the face of the earth. But His grace is manifested by giving us, and by the us I mean the entire world, the opportunity to have fellowship with God through the sacrifice of Jesus. In this opening line, the psalmist acknowledges humanity's need for mercy and grace, and calls for God to pave a way for us to know Him. We can't get there on our own. Before we can experience God's blessing in our life, we must be made new, able to walk in relationship with our Creator. As Spurgeon stated in his commentary on this verse, forgiveness of sin is always the first link in the chain of mercies experienced by us. So first we see a request for grace. Secondly, we're gonna see a request for blessing. Now, that's a really broad term. As Spurgeon says, it's a very comprehensive and far-reaching prayer. The blessing of the Lord Almighty, the Alpha and the Omega, the Creator of the universe, the psalmist is asking for that person, that divine being, the controller of all, to bless his people. This facet of God's character, it's one of His first that's on display. If you remember all the way back to creation, He creates man, and then He blesses him by giving him a woman. And it's a continual theme throughout the Bible. you put yourself in the shoes of the choir or the assembly that would have heard this song, where would their minds have gone? They would have been thinking of God, God's preservation of Noah perhaps, perhaps the preservation of his people as he led them down into Egypt, and then how God plundered the Egyptians for them and rescued them with many mighty acts as he called them back to the land that he had promised them. So, God codifies these promises to his people in Deuteronomy 28, 1 through 14. It's a little bit of a longer passage. It is going to be up on the screen, but as we read this, consider the all-encompassing nature of what it is to be blessed by God. And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They will come out against you one way and then they will flee before you in seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. The Lord will establish you as a people, holy to himself, as he has sworn to you. If you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, and all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. And what a tremendous, tremendous list of blessings. So we see first a request for God's graciousness, we see a request for God's general blessing to flow onto His people, and third, and most importantly, we see a request for God's presence. This final request speaks to our greatest need, and for those of you that were there at Brian Hoke's Elder examination, his doctrinal overview, I love what he said. Our greatest need is not for our sin to be forgiven. Our deepest need is actually to have a deeply personal relationship with God. Now, the only way that we can get there is for our sins to be forgiven. But the phrase, make his face shine upon you, that we see here in verse one, it's one of the most famous anthropomorphisms in scripture. That word is hard to say three times fast, or just once. But an anthropomorphism, it's the attribution of a human quality to a divine being. So we know that God the Father, he's spirit, he does not take form, and yet here the psalmist is ascribing to him the most human of qualities, a face. This is to help the singers and us as an audience that's reading this psalm perceive this deeply personal nature of God's favor. Our most distinct, our most individual traits, they're displayed in our face. That's why we have such a hard time wearing masks today. We don't want to veil our faces, right? So each of these requests, They build on each other, right? So first we see a plea for grace, and then a broad appeal for blessing and favor, and then we end with this familiar blessing from the Torah that the Lord would shine his face upon us, his people. Before we move on, I think it's important to note that all three of these requests the psalmist has asked of the Lord, they're already promises of the Lord from other passages in Scripture. The people of Israel had passed down for generations the words that Moses had written down in which God had promised again and again that he would deal graciously with his people. if they kept his commandments. We just read a partial list of some of the blessings in Deuteronomy 28, Psalm 67, it's a transliteration of number six we talked about, the Aaronic blessing. So in verse one, the psalmist, he's taking pre-existing promises, and he's converting them into prayer requests, which I think is so instructive for our lives. Whenever we're struggling with fear, with doubt, we need to cast ourselves on the promises of the Lord. Take those promises, convert them into prayer, and then we will know that we are praying according to God's will. We see that exhortation time and time again in the New Testament, pray according to your will, or even in the Lord's Prayer, not our will, but your will be done. But by converting these promises of the Lord, we can know with 100% certainty that we are asking according to the Lord's will. So then, moving on, the author places a strategic rest right here at the end of verse one. We get a dozen words in, and he has the musicians pause. And by doing so, he's building anticipation for what's to come, and he's helping his audience dwell on what has just been asked. Where is this song gonna go? You can picture the audience hearing it for the first time. It gives us space to contemplate what God's grace, blessing, and his face mean to us individually. But then it leads us to the main question and the main point of this song. Why does God give so generously? if you haven't skipped ahead, the answer comes immediately in that very next verse, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all the nations. The point of all of this, the creation, the fall, Christ dying in his resurrection, the preservation of the church through the ages, this local assembly, And the blessings that we experience in this life, all of them, the point of all of this is so that you and I can live, is it so that we can live victorious and pleasant lives? No, no, that's not the main point, that these things are ordained so that God, creator of the universe, omnipotent, just, the everlasting, that he would be able to be known by the eternal beings that he's created. And that his saving power would be proclaimed among all the nations. To sum it up, this psalm, indeed all of scripture, the point of all of this is about glory, God's glory. It's about properly ascribing to God the glory and honor due his name. The followers of Christ through the ages have recognized the centrality of glory. You think of the Westminster Catechism, the very first question, what is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So we see that God's blessing is ultimately for God's glory. And these blessings were not given to a group of Israelites some 3,000 years ago like me. for us, and as we've established, the us in this context is those who have surrendered their life to Christ and have been raised with him to new life. We've been granted spiritual blessings, thinking of Ephesians, and we've taken nothing of the numerous blessings we have and experience by living here in America today. And finally, we've received the spirit of adoption as sons, through whom we cry, Abba, Father. So God, through his son Jesus, he bridged all those gaps. He's paid all of our debts that we owe. And he's promised to give us, his chosen people, a reward at the end of so that we could serve as living stones, proclaiming the way of salvation to the entire earth. This is the most important thing we need to evangelize. The most important thing we evangelize, it's not so that our families will be there, it's not so that God's peace will go forward on the earth, it's not even just simply to obey the commandments of scripture, to be clear. But the reason we evangelize through word and deed is to give glory to God. We love God because of his redeeming work in our lives, and that love, it should create an intense zeal. Paul expounds on these truths in Romans 10. Let's turn there. It's not gonna be on the slide, but let's turn there. I like to hear the pages ruffle every now and again. Turn to Romans 10, and we're gonna start in verse eight to just get a little bit of a running start into the passage. What does this say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. There's a lot there in seven verses, right? I mean, we could spend a lot of time unpacking all of that. Five minutes left, so we're gonna keep it brief. In this passage, Paul laid out the usual path of salvation. Salvation is through the hearing of the Word. But he starts at the very end. He starts here, instead of starting with the proclamation. And then he works the logical chain backwards. To confess, or to proclaim Jesus, it requires belief. Belief requires hearing, and hearing requires somebody preaching, somebody who is sent. Somebody who God's chosen people, one of God's chosen people that is sent. So tying this back to Psalm 67, as God's chosen people, we are the ones that have been sent. We are the ones that are called to faith. We're the chosen elect, we're the royal priesthood, we're the ones that are ordained to fulfill the call of this psalm, Matthew 28, Romans 10, many other passages. God has come on us in the form of his Holy Spirit and uses broken vessels like you and like me to proclaim his glory, his worth to the nations, whether that's in the Pacific Islands or in our very own neighborhoods. Now why did God choose broken vessels like you and I? It comes right back to the same answer, for his glory. He wanted to use broken vessels so that his power would be made perfect in our weakness. So ultimately, the entire story of the universe, from creation, David, Jesus, his resurrection, and then ultimately, the far fulfillment, the new heaven and the new earth, all of history is the glory of God. Question one that you've probably run into if you've reached out to unbelievers or even in your own hearts. I know I've thought about this a fair amount. Is God a giant narcissist? How can God rightly demand all the glory? That just doesn't seem right. I know that's not right for me. doesn't stem from some root of pride or arrogance. We run into these questions often. There's three things that I think we should note when we face these questions. One, we need to approach with humility. So when we're faced with difficult questions about God, anything else in this world, I think it's important to reflect on what we know to be true about God and about us as humans. What do we know about God from the scripture? We know that he's all-knowing, all-powerful, all-righteous, he's completely good, he's perfect, he's just. But importantly, God, he's not defined by the human definitions of his attributes. No, his perfect nature defines those attributes for us. So then we need to contrast. We have God, who's perfect. What about us? Well, we're finite, right? We had a beginning. We're sinners. We're unloving. We're hypocritical. We have limited understanding. We are capable of recognizing the difference between good and evil, and yet, barring God's redemptive work, we're completely incapable of choosing good. So there's a massive disparity between who God is and who we are. And so a correct understanding of God and man, it should act as a healthy check on our own egos and make us slow to prematurely judge God because we recognize the limitations of our comprehension. So secondly, we need to search the scriptures. We've been given the word of God right here. There's a hundred of them in this room right now in our own language. And this is the important, ultimate source of truth. That's why the doctrine of inerrancy, infallibility, are so important. This is our source of truth. So as we read the Bible, we discover the facts about our nature and God's nature, like the ones we just recited. And then through other scriptures, like Isaiah 55a, we see that God's ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. And then from other passages like 1 John 3, 5, or 2 Corinthians 5, 21, we see that it is impossible for God to sin. And so just looking at a couple of passages like that, we recognize, well, no, God is not in sin to be consumed with his glory. But third, and finally, we need to recognize that God's design in his consuming desire for his own glory is for our good. Some of you may be familiar with Christian hedonism, a phrase that was popularized by the ministry Desiring God and Pastor John Piper. This catchphrase, it was designed to kind of succinctly and maybe provocatively capture the truth that mankind was designed in such a way that by pursuing God's glory, we would achieve maximum joy for ourselves. This foundational truth, it perfectly illustrates why, or God's care for His people. He didn't just save us to act as robots. No, He desires a people that genuinely love Him, seek His glory in the context of a deep, personal, and two-way relationship. And what love by our Heavenly Father that He would link His glory, His eternal glory, to our joy. Returning to our passage, what's the natural result of God's ways and power being proclaimed? Look at verse three. We see praise. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. You see, praise to God, it's the natural result of God being made known by his people. But notice here that it's not just the chosen people of Israel, or in our context, it's not just us who believe on Jesus. No, God is broadening the scope of this psalm to include the entire world. This calls to mind that future day when every tongue and every knee will bow and confess that Jesus is Lord, right? But Christ will physically rule over the nations and will experience, if you look at verse 4, the nations will be glad, they will sing for joy, we will experience perfect justice and God directly guiding the nations on the earth. So the psalmist is acknowledging these future realities and yet he's calling on the Lord to make it so even now. We know that the ultimate fulfillment of this passage is not yet, but we should still be striving for God's justice and his saving grace to be known, that the entire earth would praise his name and give him glory. Moving to the final stanza, we see the refrain is repeated, let the peoples praise you, oh God, let all the peoples praise you. So through repetition, the choir is calling on the assembly again to praise the Lord. And in verse 6, we see a picture of God reversing the effects of the curse. You think back to Genesis 3. Eve was specifically cursed in childbirth because of her sin, and Adam, the ground, was specifically cursed because of Adam's sin. But look again at verse six, where God's blessing is counterbalancing the curse. It's no accident here that it says the earth has yielded its increase. And then it's even more fully described by using twice the phrase God shall bless us. God shall bless us. You think back to the passage we read in Deuteronomy 28, verse 11, it speaks directly to the curse of Genesis 3. It says, the Lord will grant you abundant prosperity in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock, and the crops of your ground. Now, our lives don't look fully like Deuteronomy 28. I don't know anybody here who has large herds of anything, except for maybe pigs, right? But we can look at the history of the Israelites, right? And we can see the path of their history. We see God's tremendous blessing made them the central of the Middle East at that time, the height of Solomon's reign. There was no richer kingdom on earth. And yet we see, very quickly, they fall away and their disobedience is punished, both physically and, more importantly, spiritually. You'll often hear a phrase like the prosperity gospel, this belief that if we're saved, everything will be easy and we will experience the blessings. And often they will point to passages like Deuteronomy 28 or even Psalm 67 and say, see, we are blessed. But the people who are proposing this prosperity gospel, they're grasping at the wrong passages. They're ignoring passages that promise future suffering because of our commitment to Christ, like 1 Peter 4.11. It says, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. Yet amidst all those trials, we can rest secure knowing that Psalm 67 or other passages, like Ephesians 1, 3 through 4 that we've already alluded to, have already come to pass. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, past tense, he has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. That is the best promise of all. It's one that's already happened. We noted past tense here. To those of us that we believe, we've been given every spiritual blessing already. In closing, let's turning back to Psalm 67. Has God been gracious to you in your sin? Have you experienced his blessing in your life? Do you have the joy of a personal relationship with your creator? If not, I would urge you to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, repent and turn from your sins. But if these things are true, if you have experienced God's blessing, if you have the joy of a personal relationship with him, then our joyful duty, it's clear. We must speak of the joy we experience in following Jesus. We must tell of his justice among the nations, his sovereign hand that holds kings, presidents, warlords, and orphans alike. We gotta proclaim his provision on the earth, declare his righteousness and peace, of which there is no end. Don't wait for perfect knowledge or the perfect opportunity or the perfect feeling. We must be ready in season and out of season to proclaim the glory of our Savior. Let's pray. Lord, we are thankful that you have called for yourself a people. that you have reached into a broken world, one that we marred by our sin, that we were unable to escape. You sent your son to die on the cross for our sins. He was bruised for our iniquities. A chastisement of our sins was upon him. You have covered all of our insufficiencies, and there are many. And so we pray that as we go forward, that we would continually dwell on your glory, that we would call to mind passages like Psalm 67 and be reminded that we don't live for our own. We've been bought at a cost. We've been redeemed, and we owe you all the glory. So help us to lean on your Spirit to continue to grow in the knowledge of you and the work that you've done in our lives. I thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. And pray in light of the things we've seen and heard from the Word of God.