We are gonna find ourselves tonight in Psalm 67. So as you're turning to that, let me pray and ask God to bless our time together. Heavenly Father, we need you to open our eyes so that we can see the truth of your word. We need you to open our ears so we can hear from you tonight. We ask that your spirit would work in our hearts to make Jesus more beautiful and more believable to us. Draw us near to you, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. So Psalm 67, we're gonna read through the entire psalm to get the context, gain some encouragement from the heading, and then we're gonna focus in on the first two verses. So Psalm 67, to the choir master, with stringed instruments, a psalm, a song. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face 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 has yielded its increase. God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and let the ends of the earth fear him. Anonymous. Based upon the heading, we don't know who wrote this psalm, and we don't know the identity of the choir master. The identity of the writer and the choir master is insignificant as long as the Lord is being praised and glorified. So parent, child, employee, employer, husband, wife, pastor, elder, Christian, in whatever role you happen to be in, take encouragement from this. Lead, follow, work, care for, teach. Do whatever it is you're called to do as unto the Lord and bring him glory. You don't need to receive an employee of the month plaque. Child of the week honors aren't what matters. Best boss coffee mugs are not where you should put your focus. Best mom or dad ever t-shirts aren't ultimately important. Growing your following, feeling good about yourself because of the size of what you're leading, or the number of clicks you get on your social media posts, shouldn't be what you're striving for. Be okay with being anonymous. Honor him, honor the Lord, give him praise, give him glory. Worship him, fear him alone. When you do that, when we do that, any earthly honor we receive pales and doesn't become an idol or a vital piece of our identity and results in the praise of the Lord. Let the peoples praise you, oh God. Let all the peoples praise you. Having hopefully gained some encouragement from the heading, let's get to our verses for tonight. We're gonna look at just the first two verses of the psalm. We're gonna break it into two sections, a prayer and a purpose. So the prayer, verse one. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. Upon hearing this, we, along with the original audience, should quickly make the connection to the Aaronic blessing from number six. 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. The context of that blessing from Numbers is in Israel's wilderness camp. Following the creation and purification of the camp, God's blessing goes out from his dwelling in the center of the camp, spreading out to the ends of the encampment. The light of his favorable disposition towards his people shines upon them. All of Israel's life, health, prosperity, security, and wholeness come from their relationship to the Lord. Notice, however, the psalmist changes the priestly blessing being given from the priest into a prayer. Mr. Anonymous is pleading for this blessing to happen to us. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. In the context of the psalm, us is the people of Israel. But as people grafted into Jesus, the true Israelite, it's the prayer of the church, and we are right to pray it. So, unbeliever, call out to God. Ask him to forgive you, be gracious to you. He desires your repentance. He desires that you turn and live. Ask him for a new heart. He will hear you. Christian, confess your sin to the Lord. Ask him to be gracious to you, despite your constant inability to keep yourself unstained from the world. He is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Church, pray that God will be gracious to us. He is good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon him, Psalm 86. It is for this reason that Jesus' body was broken and blood spilled. Matthew 26, 28, this is my blood of the covenant, which has poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. The storehouses of his heart are always open and stocked with all the grace a sinner will ever need. Psalm 134 tells us, with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. God, please be gracious to us. In addition to asking God to be gracious to us, we are right to ask for His blessing. This blessing would include the earthly and temporal things summed up in Leviticus 26, rain, harvest, produce, peace in the land, victory in battle, being fruitful and multiplying through offspring, and storehouses of resources. These temporal blessings are not unholy, irrelevant, or insignificant. They are precious gifts, expressions of God's fatherly favor. The main blessing looked for from the people of God, however, is God's own presence, God himself. I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you, and I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people. Leviticus 26, 11 and 12. This prayer for God's blessing is all-encompassing. Bless us spiritually. Bless us materially. And as we think about this blessing, we need to consider the offspring God promised to Abraham, the one through whom all the people of the earth would be blessed. We experience this blessing in our union with Jesus. They shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. We are blessed to be able to say without doubt that God is with us. When we are in Christ, there is no question mark. Romans 8 tells us that all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, and that we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. Our adoption is something we should never take for granted. We should tremble with amazement that we, of all people, should be blessed and called the children of God. Now, there is a real distinction between the natural son of God and the adopted children of God. But as R.C. Sproul puts it, once the adoption takes place, there is no difference in the status of membership in his family. He gives to all his children the full measure of the inheritance that belongs to the natural son. We are indeed blessed. We are in need, and we ought to cry out to God to be gracious to us and to bless us. Indeed, the beginning of all blessings to mankind is the favor or the mercy of God. In the words of Albert Barnes, there is no higher blessing than his favor. There is none that comes from him which should not be regarded as mercy. And the third part of this prayer from our anonymous writer is the outflow of God's mercy, that his face would shine upon us. From what I've read, the verb in Hebrew translated upon us is more literally translated with us. This literal translation gets to the primary blessing that we saw from Leviticus 26. Like the other parts of the prayer, it's right and good when we pray that God would make his face shine upon us. God has promised his people that he will never leave them, never forsake them. When we are asking for his face to shine upon us, we are asking him to be true to his promise. Be with us, walk with us, pour your goodness and grace into our lives. What an amazing request. that people who are radically corrupt before being regenerated by Christ can boldly come before God and say, be gracious to us, bless us, let your face shine upon us. Simply astounding. In our sin, a prayer like this is teetering on blasphemy. We have no right of our own to ask. The request must be based on Christ's merit. One word of caution here is to be careful of false humility. If you're one who says, I can't pray like this. I'm not worthy to ask. I'm not worthy that he should bless me. You're right. None of us are worthy. We don't go before him because we believe we're worthy. We go before him because we believe he is worthy. To not go boldly says that we don't believe him. To be worthy for us. The psalmist trusts, and he's bold in his prayer. We should be bold as well. In Christ, we are God's beloved children. He takes joy in us. He seeks to bless us. Christian, would your life be different if you lived each day with the image of God's shining face in your mind? Would you live in a greater joy knowing that forgiving our sins brings him glory and that our growth in holiness pleases him? The prayer from verse one leads into a purpose in verse two, the second point that I mentioned earlier, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Up to this point, the prayer in verse one could be seen as self-serving. Lord, bless us, take care of us, shine on us. Verse two gives any prosperity we have a purpose bigger than us, is that all may know him. It puts a halt on prosperity preaching that stops with asking God to be gracious, bless, and be with us. We are so prone to stop reading after verse one and claim it as a life verse. But the purpose of our blessing isn't for us. I heard a pastor make a similar point from Psalm 1-3, which reads, he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Prosperity preaching uses that verse a lot. but they have failed to recognize. Trees are nourished from the stream. They don't eat their own fruit. The fruit that falls from a tree is for the sustenance of another. So we need to believe God and call out, be gracious, bless us, shine on us. so that he is known throughout the earth, and that all nations might know his saving power. In practical terms, this could work out with us blessing others with the blessings that he has given us. We can give to the missionaries our church has partnered with. We can support like-minded parachurch organizations. We can give of our time and our energy to the church, and we can also give our time and our energy to our unbelieving friends and neighbors. Let others know by our actions that we serve a good and gracious and kind master who delights in blessing his children. Most importantly, as we heard this morning, we need to speak the good news of the gospel to a world that desperately needs to hear it. Brothers and sisters, to whom much is given, much is required, Luke 12, 48. Cry out for blessing, then use the blessings you have for the work of the gospel. If you're young, use your youth while you can. The days of pain are coming. If you've been given riches and prosperity, use it for His glory. If you're in your right mind, use it for Him. We have been given much. Look at what you have and use it for Him. God raises up and prospers men and women and nations for one reason, that they might share the gospel with the result being, 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 the earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would be gracious to us and bless us and let your face shine upon us. As you bless us, teach us to be good stewards of what you generously give and to willingly share with others so that your name may be known throughout the earth. Amen.