Psalm 67, let's read through
this Psalm together. In verse one it says, God be
merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon
us, Selah. Now, I just want to comment before
I read the next verse, that normally in the Psalms, when you read
them, it's addressing the Lord in prayer, or it's speaking as
a truth being declared to us. And this verse, as I point out
later in this Psalm, seems to be a mixture of those things,
because he says, God be merciful unto us, as if he's talking about
God rather than to God. It's not quite clear. Is it,
oh God, be merciful to us, or is it, God be merciful to us,
speaking as if, you know, sometimes we do, we speak of God in the
third person. But let's go on, because we'll
see that the shift in the psalm, it's meant to be blended like
that, I think, in order that we might see that this is both
a declaration of the truth and a supplication being made to
God. So he says, God be merciful to us and bless us and cause
his face to shine upon us, Selah. That thy way may be known upon
the earth by saving health among all nations. So that's the reason,
that's the sort of, if you want to say it this way, from verse
one, the general, and in verse two, more specifically, that
thy way may be known upon the earth. So that's the way he's
asking God to be merciful, to bless, and to make his face shine. Verse three, let the people praise
thee, O God, Let all the people praise Thee. Now you can see
that this is definitely a supplication being made to God. Let 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 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." So that's the extent of
this psalm, not very long. And when I first read these psalms,
sometimes it seems like I didn't get anything out of it until
I read it more than five or ten times, and then it begins to
sink in very, very slowly. But this psalm is a wonderful
psalm, as everything God has written obviously is. It's just
our, or I could say, my own personal dullness not to see things immediately. So the first thing I want to
point out is that this psalm is a declaration, a prophecy,
and a prayer. As I said in the very first part,
he says, God be merciful to us and bless us and cause his face
to shine upon us. It seems to be speaking about
God as if the psalmist is speaking to a congregation of people.
And there's nothing wrong with that. The gospel, the epistles,
and the New Testament are always talking about God in that way,
addressing the church of God. And so in that sense, we can
see that this psalm is being addressed to a number of people
called us, that little word us in verse one. And not only though
is it a declaration or a statement of what God will do, or a plea
for God to act mercifully and bless and shine his face upon
us. But it's also a prayer. So it's
not just addressed to the congregation, but the psalmist is speaking
to the congregation and to God. And in that way you can see that
the psalmist is a mediator, a mediator between God and men. And that
is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
one mediator between God and men. He's the mediator of the
New Testament. It says in Hebrews chapter 8
and several places in the book of Hebrews. So when we understand
it that way, we see then that this psalm is talking to a people. a people who he is speaking of
in relationship to God as God being merciful to them, blessing
them, causing his face to shine and so on. And in this way, the
people are blessed. They do receive God's favor in
him showing himself to them. And in fact, what you see as
we go through this psalm, you'll see this, that The Lord is using
language here of a covenant relationship between God and His people. We recognize that even in the
first verse. He says, God be merciful and
bless and cause His face to shine upon us. The phrase that God
would be merciful to us in our unrighteousness, that's taken
directly from the covenant God promised in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For example, in Jeremiah 31,
verses 31 through 34, you can read about the new covenant. He will make a new covenant with
them. He will put his spirit within them. He will remember
their sins, every one of them shall know the Lord. He will
be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities
will He remember no more. So that merciful there, in this
verse, in Psalm 67, also relates to that same promise, which we
understand to be the promise of God's everlasting covenant.
Now, the covenant, you know, was made by the Lord Jesus Christ
in his blood. In Hebrews 13, 20, he speaks
of the blood of the everlasting covenant. So the Lord Jesus Christ,
therefore, has to have, he has to shed his blood in order for
the things prayed for or declared here in prophecy to be fulfilled.
Okay, so for God to be merciful and blessed and cause His face
to shine in everything that follows, in order for this to happen,
Jesus Christ had to shed His blood for us. He had to shed
His blood for us according to the conditions set down by God
the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in the everlasting
covenant of God's grace. And what a covenant that is.
David says in 2 Samuel 23, this is all my salvation, all my desire,
what God has given to me in the everlasting covenant He made
with me in the Lord Jesus Christ. OK, so I want to point that out. First of all, that this psalm
is not only a prophecy, but it's a prayer. It's a prophecy and
a prayer concerning things in the new covenant, the everlasting
covenant, not new in the sense that it didn't come, not new
in the sense that it came as late in time, but was from everlasting,
even though it was revealed, newly revealed in the New Testament
and newly fulfilled. So in that sense it's a new covenant
because in the law we thought that was the covenant and we
didn't see any end to it until... God revealed the gospel, and
in the gospel then we see God's everlasting covenant of grace.
And then we also see that that was promised in the Old Testament,
even though we were unaware of it until the Lord made it known.
So here we see the prophecy, we see the prayer, and we see
that it's concerning this covenant of God's grace made in the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in this psalm speaks as the mediator
between God and us. Second thing I would like to
point out here where it says, God be merciful to us and bless
us and cause his face to shine upon us. Now, how does God cause
his face to shine upon us? Well, I hope that you're reminded
of 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6, where he says, God, who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. So God shines upon us. He causes his face to shine upon
us when the light of the gospel shines in our heart. And we know
that's by the spirit of God. When the gospel light shines
in our hearts to give us the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, we see Christ
we see the mystery of godliness in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that's the fulfillment then of this declaration and prayer in
verse one, God be merciful to us and bless us and cause his
face to shine upon us, Selah. So this is a very concise statement
of the new covenant. It's a concise statement of the
fact that God's glory the blessings of that covenant are seen in
the Lord Jesus Christ, which He is seen, Christ Himself is
seen in the Gospel. So that the Gospel, when God
illumines our hearts with the Spirit of God, under the hearing
of the Gospel, and shows us the things that God has freely given
to us, remember 1 Corinthians 2 verse 12, the Spirit of God
is given to us in order that God would show us the things
freely given to us of God, which are all in Christ. Therefore,
we can see that verse one is a compendium, a very concise
statement of all of the truth of the gospel concerning Christ
and God's everlasting covenant in him. All right. Now, what
I'm saying here, I did not put in the notes. So if you if you
if you look at the notes, you won't find it there and you'll
have to refer back to the recording. All right, the second thing I'd
like to point out about verse one, or maybe not the second
or third or fourth thing, but when he's addressed here as God,
understand that we cannot approach God, we cannot know God, we can't
come to God except it be in the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope we
have such a firm persuasion of that, that it's so firmly embedded
in our God-given persuasion, which is our vision by faith,
that spiritual sight that God gives to us. We see this clearly.
That when God speaks here, God be merciful to us. He's speaking
to us as the mediator because we only know God in Him so that
we can say that this is also speaking of our great God and
Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're appealing to Him. We're
appealing to the Lord Jesus Christ to be merciful to us. And our
thoughts are like an ocean or a river. We're overflowed with
the truth, the depth of the truth of God's Word. the depth of the
truth of God's word because here at once we're seeing in our mediator
both God and the one who fulfills the covenant, God in Christ.
And so this is a great opening verse to what follows. Now notice
the next part here, he says in verse two, that thy way may be
known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Now
the way, what is God's way? Well, once again, I'm going to
appeal to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am
the way, the truth, and the life. When the disciples, the 11 apostles,
were with Christ before he went to the cross, after that last
supper, and he was talking to them, and he told them, if you
believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are
many mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And he was going on,
and his disciples, Philip, I think it was, asked him, Lord, we don't
know where you're going. How can we know the way? And
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes
to the Father but by me. You do know the way if you know
Christ. Christ himself is the way and the way of God is not
only our way to God, but we see in Christ all of God's ways. We see his mind. We see the the
goodness of God, his character. We see his will. We see his work.
We see his glory. We see everything that we need
to know or can know about God in the Lord Jesus Christ. He
is the way. And so so here he says in the
first verse, be merciful to us, bless us, cause your face to
shine. that thy way may be known upon
earth, thy saving health among all nations." So here, the prayer
is not just for the psalmist, as some of these psalms are,
God be merciful to me, the sinner, you know, as in Luke 18, 13,
or in Psalm 51, or Psalm 32, but here he's saying us, he's
talking about make your way known upon earth, thy saving health
among all nations. And right away, whenever you
see that word nations in scripture, most of the time, especially
when it's a gospel sense here, you can apply it to the salvation
of God that He desired, God Himself desired, and the Lord Jesus Christ
desired. that would be given to his people
throughout every nation of the world. And this is phenomenal,
isn't it, that the Lord Jesus Christ would send his apostles
throughout the world to preach the gospel to every nation under
heaven. In Matthew 28, 18 through 20,
that's what Christ commissioned his disciples to do. He said,
go into all the world and preach, let me get the words just right
here by reading it. I know it's familiar, but it's
worth looking at carefully. He says in Matthew 28, 18, Jesus
spake to them, saying, All powers given to me in heaven and in
earth, go ye therefore and teach all nations, there's the Gentiles,
you see, every nation under heaven, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you, and lo, I
am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. So
this Psalm is about that, isn't it? We saw this also in Psalm
66. And the prayer here is that Christ, who is the way, may be
made known upon the earth, thy saving health among all nations. Now, this also is a gospel term,
isn't it? I'm going to see if I can find
the quotation. There are a couple of versions
or translations, versions, whatever you call them, of scripture I
want to read from Isaiah 53. If you have a Bible, you can
look at Isaiah 53 and in verse 3 through 5, I want to read from verse three through five.
I think it's verse three through five. But let me also turn in
the King James Version because it's slightly different, but
these versions I'm going to read to you from, I'll explain in
a second why I want to read them. It's in Isaiah 53 and in verse,
yes, in verse three through five. Let me read this first in the
King James Version. It says, he is despised and rejected
of men. a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him." So
the Lord Jesus Christ was despised by men. In the song we sang on
Sunday, Holy, Holy, Holy, one of the verses in there is, though
the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see, we did not see his
glory. If they had known they would
not have crucified the Lord of Glory in 1 Corinthians 2, verse
8, or maybe 2 Corinthians 2, verse 8. But anyway, here he
says, he is despised. The Lord Jesus Christ was despised,
and he was rejected of men. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief. We hid, as it were, our faces
from him, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. He was despised
by men, and we did not esteem Him." In other words, we know
now that He was despised because He was doing the will of God.
Therefore, He should have been exalted by us, and honored, and
praised. But we didn't esteem Him. Verse
4, we were ignorant. Verse 4, "...surely He has borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows." That's why He was a man of sorrows
and stricken or acquainted with grief. It was because He bore
our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken
and smitten of God and afflicted. We said, well, God's doing this. That was our attitude towards
it. He's getting it for some reason. Like Job, his friends
looked on, they tried to tell him, this is why it's coming
on you. They were wrong. We'd had the same misinterpretation. Verse 5, but he was wounded for
our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. Now the reason
I'm reading this here is because in Psalm 67 it says that thy
way may be made known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations."
And here he says what that health is. We're healed by the stripes
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But let me read this now from
another translation. And this was a translation that
J.P. Green, Sr. translated from the
original Hebrew and Greek. He says, In this translation,
and it's called the literal translation of scripture, so he tries to
be as close as possible in his choice of English words to the
original language, even though it may not flow as dynamically
as some of the translations of the Bible that we have in our
modern day. So this is called the LITV or
J.P. Green Senior's literal translation. He says in verse three, he is
despised and abandoned of men, a man of pains and acquainted
with sickness. And as it were, hiding our faces
from him, him being despised, and we did not value him. Surely
he has borne our sicknesses. and he carried our pain. Yet we esteemed him, plagued,
smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his wounds we ourselves are healed." So
the last verse is very close to the King James Version, but
the other two verses, you can see the emphasis on the sicknesses.
And I read that because in Matthew 8, verse 17, when the Lord Jesus
was healing people, in verse 17, Verse 16, it says in Matthew
8, when the evening was come they brought to him many that
were possessed with devils and he cast out the spirits with
his word and healed all that were sick that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying himself took our
infirmities and bear our sicknesses. So in J.P. Green Sr.' 's literal
translation of the scriptures, you see here, he translates it
in such a way that it highlights the fact that Christ bore our
sin And it made him sick in that sense. Just like in Matthew 8,
17, when he healed people, it signified Christ bearing the
sins of his people in order that he might heal them. And it says
in Isaiah 53, verse 5, that with his wounds or with his stripes,
we are healed. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him. He was beaten. He was beaten. That's the chastisement for our
healing. And this is consistent with everything
else in scripture. That Christ died that we might
live. He was beaten that we might have peace. He took our sicknesses
that we might be healed. And that's the health that's
being spoken of in Psalms chapter 67. That thy way may be known
upon the earth, thy saving health among all nations. In other words,
the gospel. the gospel of Christ's substitutionary
sufferings and death, his sin bearing, curse bearing, substitutionary
death as our surety and our redeemer. He did all that in order to save
us from our sins. That's the message being preached
here and prayed for and also prophesied of in this psalm.
The psalmist is telling us what God would do in Christ and the
certain results of that, that the gospel would be preached
in all the nations and God's people would find mercy and blessing
and God's favor in his face in Jesus Christ would be known to
them. All right. Let's go on. Psalm 67, verse
three. He says, let all the people I'm
sorry. He says, let the people praise
thee, O God, Let all the people praise Thee. There's actually
a hymn. I was trying to find it. I couldn't
find it. There are some hymns with those
words in it, but when I learned it from, I couldn't find a tune
to it. Let all the people praise Thee. Let the people praise Thee, let
all the people praise Thee." I love those words, maybe because
I had heard that hymn in the past and had turned it over and
over in my mind. Sometimes scriptures like that,
if you've heard something once before, and again, and again,
and finally you hear it in the context of the explanation of
it from the Gospel, it carries a much greater weight, doesn't
it? And so it is with the hymns that we sing. When we sing a
hymn and it teaches a gospel truth, it naturally becomes a
favorite of ours because it helps us to understand that in a way
that is memorable. And so these words in verse three,
let the people praise Thee, O God, let all the people praise Thee.
Notice the word let. in that verse. Let all the people
praise Thee. It turns out that that word let
means something that someone else does for us. We can't do
it ourselves. It's a verb, it's an action word,
and it means that we're the ones being acted on, and God's the
one who does the action, or the one here doing the work is the
Lord Himself. He says, let the people praise
Thee, O God, let all the people praise Thee. God has to give
us praise. God has to give us praise. And
what is praise? What is praise? Well, praise to God is praise
to God for Christ, isn't it? We cannot praise God. We can't
praise God aright. Our praise will not be accepted
by God unless we praise Him according to the truth He has revealed
in Christ. It says in 1 Peter 2, And verse
5, let me read that to you so I don't misquote it. In 1 Peter
chapter 2 and verse 5, He says, you also as lively stones
are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer
up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. So our sacrifices of praise and
thanksgiving are acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And so that
this prayer, let the people praise thee, is asking God, first of
all, to give us a cause to praise. Praise is speaking out from our
hearts to God because of what he's revealed himself to be in
Christ, his work, that message of the gospel. And we find it
a cause for admiration and adoration And so we are thanking God for
the revelation of His goodness to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. How could God be so good that
He would reconcile us to Himself by the death of His Son? Those
are the kinds of things that cause us the love of God. It says in Romans 5, verse 5,
is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given
to us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ
died for the ungodly." And he just goes on and pours it on
there in Romans chapter 5, all about the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts by the ministry
of the Holy Spirit. showing us, continually causing
us to be restrengthened and reapply ourselves to Christ, to God's
word in the gospel of his son, what he did for us, that the
revelation of God's love to us before we ever knew him, is greater
than the revelation of it after we knew Him, isn't it? So we
see God's love to us established from Scripture and in the Gospel,
in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His life and in His death and
resurrection and ascension and His exaltation and His intercession
and the promise of His coming and our hope, everything Even
our expectation for eternal glory, all of it is established even
before we had one thing to do with it, before we even knew
about it. And then this revelation is given
to us with persuasion by God and the operation of his spirit
in us so that when it comes to us then we see a reason now to
praise God. We have some, there's something
in us now that causes us to praise. We don't have to force this.
We don't have to join a club or some dumb thing like that
where religion says, all right, now let's all praise the Lord.
You know, I don't have anything. I'm an empty vessel. How can
I? come up with a reason to praise God. I can't think of hardly
anything. I'm so spiritually dead. I can't think of anything to
praise the Lord. But when God saves us as sinners
and shows us our salvation is in Christ, then we have something
to praise Him for, and that's what He's saying here. Given
the fact that He's asking God for mercy, blessing, His face
to shine on us in Christ through the gospel of His Son, and that
His way would be made known, His saving health among all nations,
now let all the people praise Thee, O God, let all the people
praise Thee. All the people here that are
being spoken of is not every person on earth. There are people
who will arrive at the judgment seat of Christ and he will say,
I never knew you. But there are those God has foreknown,
he says in Romans chapter 8, 29, for whom he did foreknow. He knew before the foundation
of the earth and then predestinated them to the adoption of children.
He predestinated them to be conformed to the image of his son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brethren. He predestinated,
he called, he justified, he glorified them. He knew them, he loved
them. They are the all people spoken
of here. And it's interesting that in
John chapter 17, if you want to look at that scripture, John
17 in the prayer of the Lord Jesus, he says to his father,
he says in verse nine, I pray for them. I pray not for the
world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine."
So now Christ is praying for those who belong to the Father. He says, I pray for them. I pray
not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for
they are thine. The ones he's praying for are
his fathers. It's clear, right? Now look at
verse 10. And all mine are thine, and thine
are mine. And now we have what was called
the intersection of two sets. When I was in, I don't know,
fourth or fifth grade, they had this new math concept about sets. It was during the development
of the Apollo space program. And I couldn't figure out what
in the world did they tell me about set theory when I was in
the fourth or fifth grade. And I know why now. It's because
of this verse right here. Everyone that belongs to the
Father also belongs to Christ. And everyone that belongs to
Christ belongs to the Father. And there are no people that
belong to Christ that do not belong to the Father. And there
are no people that belong to the Father that do not belong
to Christ. They are the same people. They
were the fathers before the foundation of the world when he chose them
in Christ. And they were given to Christ
before the foundation of the world in the new covenant when
Christ was made the surety for his people from everlasting. And he was then the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. And then before the foundation
of the world, he loved the church and in time, And by pledge before
the foundation of the world, he gave himself for the church. OK, the point here is that in
Psalm 67, verse three, the people that all the people praise thee
are those people, those of the fathers, those of the sons. They are the people. They're
the people that the Lord is interested in. They're his creation. Ephesians
2 verse 10. We are his workmanship. We are
the work of God. We're his creation. We're the
work he's interested in. He will be glorified in his work,
in his people. And so if we understand this
psalm now to be speaking about these people here from verse
one to verse three, we can see it's the covenant people of God,
isn't it? All right, let's go on. Verse
4, Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt
judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
Selah. Now, first of all, let me re-emphasize
this. The word let here underscores
our dependence upon God to give us this praise. So we can each
personally take these words as a personal prayer. Let the nations,
let the people, let me praise you. But also notice that in
this prayer, the Lord is expressing his own desire. And not only
his own desire, but the desire of his church. And that is that
all of his people in every nation throughout all of the world would
come to the light of Christ, would be brought to the light.
Remember in Luke 15, the shepherd is missing one sheep from his
fold and he goes out and he seeks for that sheep. He finds that
sheep, he picks up that sheep, he puts it on his shoulders and
he brings that sheep back to the fold. This is the Lord Jesus
Christ. in his coming into the world,
in his laying his life down for his people. He says in John 10,
verse 16, other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, them
also I must bring. And they shall hear my voice
and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. And he said in
Luke 15, when he found that one sheep, that he brings it home
and he calls his friends, rejoice with me. He says there's joy
in heaven. more over one sinner that repents
than over 99 who did not need repentance. This is speaking
of the nature of all of God's people. They're all that one
sheep. They were lost. Jesus Christ
is a son of man who came into the world to seek and to save
that which was lost. So therefore, he says, oh, let
the nations be glad and sing for joy. All of the church, the
congregation of the Lord, His people, the people, the nations,
all the nations, these are synonyms for the congregation of God,
the church of God. They have joy, just like the
angels in heaven, with the saints, with Christ, rejoicing over him
because he found and brought his sheep that was lost. And
so they themselves find themselves to be the sheep that was lost
that he brought. And so the nations, let the nations
be glad, let them realize what Christ has done, and sing for
joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern
the nations upon earth. The Lord Jesus Christ, for the
joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God. He actually
accomplished this. He he saved his people from their
sins. He obtained their eternal redemption.
He sanctified them with his own blood. He perfected them forever
by his one offering. He he has given them his own
righteousness, which he worked out in that life of obedience,
even the obedience unto death. OK, but he says here, This is
the reason for their glad joy. This is the reason they're glad.
This is the reason they sing for joy. For thou shalt judge
the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.
Now, God can't do anything that's not righteous. Everything God
does is righteous. And so it almost goes without
saying that if God did it, it's righteous, it's just. In Psalm
145 and verse 17, he says this, let me read that to you. He says
in verse 17 of Psalm 145, the Lord is righteous in all his
ways and holy in all his works. So there's no question that the
judge of all the earth will do right, is there? We know that
he's right. The problem we have is that because
I'm a sinner, how can God do right and spare me? That's really the question, isn't
it? And if you remember in Psalm 51, that was the great revelation. In Psalm 51, verse 14, he says,
deliver me from blood guiltiness, from the guilt of murder. O God,
thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of
thy righteousness. In Psalm 51, 14, if God delivers
me from the guilt of my sin, death, the guilt of committing
murder, O God, thou God of my salvation, then my tongue shall
sing aloud of thy righteousness. So now back in Psalm 67, O let
the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge
the people righteously. In Daniel 9, 16, Daniel also
prays that God would, in righteousness, he would forgive his people.
This is the great mystery, isn't it? How God can be just and justify
the ungodly. This was the stumbling block
of John 8, the woman taken in adultery, when Jesus said, neither
do I condemn thee, go, sin no more. And this is the great banner
of victory held out to us in Romans 8, 33. It is God who justify
it. Who is he that condemneth? It's
Christ that died. No one can lay anything to the
charge of God's elect. God himself justifies us. And here he says that thou shalt
judge the people righteously. judges his people righteously,
the people, again, his people chosen in Christ, adopted, predestinated
to the adoption of sons, redeemed by the blood of Christ. He judges
them righteously. He justifies them in the blood
of his Son. And no one can raise an objection
to God's judgments concerning his people. If God justified
them, we have to shut our mouths, don't we? It's not just that
we stop talking because we will suffer the consequences of opposing
God. It's that He did right in doing
that. His judgments are right, they're
holy. And when God justifies a sinner,
it's on a righteous ground, a foundation, which is Christ's own righteousness
shed in His blood, His obedience unto death. His blood justifies
us from all sin. Romans 5, 9 speaks of that. All right, so this is why the
nations of the earth, the redeemed of the Lord here in this psalm,
this is why the nations are so glad and sing just like David.
They are so glad, they sing for joy. He judges righteously. He governs the nations upon earth.
God stands up for His people and no one, not even Satan himself,
can lay anything to the charge of God's elect. All of those
who stood to accuse the woman in John 8 were sent out in silence
because they were guilty. And only Christ is the righteous
one and He justifies His people. And He did it by His own obedience
and in His own blood. So, there, if you want to take
up the The conundrum, the problem is not with God being just and
righteous. The problem is that we can't
see it, that we cannot rise to the level of God's purity, that
he would justify us on the basis of Christ's blood and righteousness.
But because the Bible tells us this, then we have the most sure
foundation of it. All right, look at verse five.
Let the people praise Thee, O God, let all the people praise Thee."
There we have it again. It's doubled, isn't it? Each
of these verses, in verse 5 and in verse 3, double the prayer
to God. Let the people praise Thee, O
God, let all the people praise Thee. And this verse is doubled
in this psalm because it's certain, because it's important. It's
certain because God doubled it, but it's also doubly significant
because it's prayed for twice. We need God to reveal to us the
mystery of godliness, which is Christ, God manifest in the flesh,
Christ come in the flesh in order to accomplish our salvation.
And then he goes on in verse 6, "...then shall the earth yield
her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us." Now,
throughout Scripture, especially in the New Testament, we see
this. The Lord Jesus Christ frequently speaks of the salvation of his
people as a harvest of souls that are produced as fruit from
the seed that he planted by his gospel through the ministers
of his gospel that he sent to plant that seed. So there are
different kinds of earth, different kinds of ground. The hearts of
men are different. And remember the parable of the
four different kinds of ground and how the seed was sown on
the wayside and then on the thorny ground and on the the rocky,
the stony ground, and then on the good ground. And each one
of us by nature are the wayside hearer, the stony ground hearer,
and the thorny ground hearer. And if God isn't gracious to
us to show us that that's our problem, and that we need him
to plow our hearts and plant his gospel seed there, we'll
remain as stony, thorny, wayside hearers, won't we? But when the
Lord plows our heart and shows us that we're sinners and we
have no plea, In ourselves, we find ourselves and identify with
those who are stony, wayside, thorny ground hearers. But when
God shows us our sin, then we see, yes, Christ is all. That's when the seed penetrates.
When he's shown us that, then we know that the gospel has gone
deep into our hearts. And he says then, in the same
context in Matthew 13, that the good men, or the husband men,
sent his workmen out to plant his seed, but when he did, after
they planted the good seed, that the enemy came and planted tares. And they both grew up, and the
workmen saw that the tares grew up among the wheat, and they
said to the husband men, the owner of the field, what should
we do? Should we go out and uproot the tares? He said, no. Wait,
wait until harvest. And so he explained that parable. He said, in fact, let me just
read it to you because the explanation is very concise and clear. In Matthew 13, I'm gonna read
this to you, where Jesus explains that parable of the wheat and
the tares. He says, he that soweth the good
seed is the son of man. That's Christ. The field is the
world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, but
the tares are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that
sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world,
the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered
and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world.
The son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather
out of his kingdom all things that offend. and them that do
iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire, there
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, then shall the righteous
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father, who
hath ears to hear, let him hear." So Christ is describing the salvation
of his people as a harvest that occurs at the end of time. And
so here in Psalm 67, he said, God, the earth shall yield her
increase and God, even our God, shall bless us. He's speaking
about the harvest of souls, the increase, the fruit of the earth
that comes on the first account, on the first reason is because
Christ as a seed fell into the ground and died at the cross.
And secondly, because the gospel of what Christ accomplished in
his death is preached as seed, and the Spirit of God as the
divine seed that births children to God is put in our hearts,
and therefore we ourselves are born of God through that gospel
seed because of Christ who died for us on the cross. And that's
what he's speaking of here in Psalm 67. The Lord will send
forth his gospel, O let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for
thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
Christ justified his people in his own blood, is risen, ascended
to heaven, risen and reigns, and intercedes and sends his
gospel by his ministers, and that gospel is the seed planted
in the people. Now praise thee, O God, they
all praise thee, And the earth yields her increase, and God,
even our own God, shall bless us through that same gospel by
the Spirit of God, all concerning the work and person and work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then finally, in Psalm 67,
verse 7, God shall bless us, all the ends of the earth shall
fear him. All the ends of the earth is
speaking of the same people. God's gospel, Christ's gospel
is gonna go out through all the earth and the church is glad
because it makes Christ glad. He died to save a people. And
all the ends of the earth shall fear thee because when we truly
fear the Lord, we stand in reverential awe of him that he would save
us by Christ from our sins in spite of ourselves. Himself doing
all the work according to truth and righteousness at the highest
possible cost to Himself, making known all of His perfections
and His glory, and all of the glory belonging to the Lord for
our eternal salvation. That produces fear in us. That fear is something that is
part of this new covenant. God promised He will put I will
put my fear into their hearts and they shall not depart from
me." In other words, the fear of God causes us to trust Christ
only. We don't trust ourselves. We
fear to trust any but Christ. But we do love to trust Him,
don't we? We find all of our comfort and
our joy and our peace and hope. and our assurance and love, everything,
every fruit, every fruit from Christ, divine, we bear as branches
through faith in Christ. And this is all by the work of
his spirit concerning his work for us. his eternal work that
he accomplished on the cross, and now sits in glory to administer
for our salvation, and the calling of his people, all the people,
through every nation throughout the world, and this becomes the
prayer of the church, and the ministry, the work of the church,
is to declare this gospel of Christ the way, through whose
blood and whose stripes we have the health of his salvation. What wonderful words are in this
psalm, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word.
What a blessing it is to hear again of our Lord Jesus Christ
who saved us from our sins with an eternal salvation, clothed
us in his glorious, bejeweled, everlasting righteousness and
given us as a result of his righteousness everlasting life and eternal
glory according to your will of grace and love unspeakable,
immeasurable, and yet we receive by your Word the declaration
of this to ourselves, and by your Spirit we're convinced of
this. And we pray, Lord, that you would increase our faith,
you would cause us to abound in hope by the power of the Holy
Spirit, And we would understand through the love you had to us
in Christ that we would adore you and love you more. And as
the psalm says to us, let all the people praise thee. Lord,
we ask that you would give us this grace that we might be enabled
to praise you with our heart and with our mouth, with all
of your people. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.