God's covenant with Abram, blessing to all families of the earth
1 Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who treates you with contempt. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
4 So Abram went, as Yahweh had told him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
5 Abram took Sarai his wife, Lot his brother’s son, all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they went to go into the land of Canaan. They entered into the land of Canaan.
6 Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, Canaanites were in the land.
7 Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” He built an altar there to Yahweh, who had appeared to him.
8 He left from there to go to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to Yahweh and called on Yahweh’s name.
9 Abram traveled, still going on toward the South.
10 There was a famine in the land. Abram went down into Egypt to live as a foreigner there, for the famine was severe in the land.
11 When he had come near to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman to look at.
12 It will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ They will kill me, but they will save you alive.
13 Please say that you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that my soul may live because of you.”
14 When Abram had come into Egypt, Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
15 The princes of Pharaoh saw her, and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
16 He dealt well with Abram for her sake. He had sheep, cattle, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
17 Yahweh afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
18 Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this that you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife?
19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now therefore, see your wife, take her, and go your way.”
20 Pharaoh commanded men concerning him, and they escorted him away with his wife and all that he had.
blessing of Abraham coming to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus
1 Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified?
2 I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?
4 Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain?
5 He therefore who supplies the Spirit to you, and does miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
6 Even as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.”
7 Know therefore that those who are of faith, the same are children of Abraham.
8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Good News beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you all the nations will be blessed.”
9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham.
10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
11 Now that no man is justified by the law before God is evident, for, “The righteous will live by faith.”
12 The law is not of faith, but, “The man who does them will live by them.”
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,”
14 that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
15 Brothers, speaking of human terms, though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been confirmed, no one makes it void, or adds to it.
16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, “To descendants”, as of many, but as of one, “To your offspring”, which is Christ.
17 Now I say this: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which came four hundred thirty years after, does not annul, so as to make the promise of no effect.
18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by promise.
19 Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
20 Now a mediator is not between one, but God is one.
21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law.
22 But the Scriptures imprisoned all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
26 For you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.
27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise.
great multitude from every tribe tongue and nation around the throne
9 They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book, and to open its seals: for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood, out of every tribe, language, people, and nation,
great multitude from every tribe tongue and nation singing holy holy holy
9 After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no man could count, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.
not ashamed of the gospel, righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith
16 For I am not ashamed of the Good News of Christ, because it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes; for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.
17 For in it is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith. As it is written, “But the righteous shall live by faith.”
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Pastor Ray preached from Psalm 67, a seven-verse psalm he called "the spreading circle." He traced its connection backward to the Aaronic blessing in Numbers and to God's promise to Abraham, and forward to the New Testament and the missionary call of the church. The sermon's central question was why God blesses his people, and the answer ran through every verse.
What was said
Psalm 67 opens with a prayer that sounds, at first, like it is only asking God to bless us, a prayer that Pastor Ray admitted would make him nervous if he heard it from someone else. But the language is a deliberate echo of the Aaronic blessing from Numbers 6, where God instructs Aaron to carry his blessing to the people. The psalmist takes that familiar priestly benediction and modifies it, shifting from the intimate name Yahweh to the more formal Elohim, and from "you" to "us," signaling that something larger is in view.
Verse two shows what that something larger is. The blessing is not being asked for so it can be hoarded. The reason given is "that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations." The psalmist has taken the Aaronic blessing and aimed it outward, toward everyone outside the covenant community. Pastor Ray tied this directly to God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, that Abraham would be blessed so that he would be a blessing, and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed.
Paul understood that promise the same way. Galatians 3, cited during the sermon, argues that those who are of faith are sons of Abraham, and that in Christ the blessing of Abraham was always meant to reach the Gentiles. The spreading circle, Pastor Ray said, has to start somewhere, and it started with Abraham believing God. Anyone who has placed faith in Jesus has been drawn into that same circle.
Psalm 67 is built as a chiastic structure, a Hebrew literary form where the central verse carries the greatest weight. That center point is verse four: "Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on earth." Pastor Ray read this as both a command and a longing. God is a righteous judge, and the nations have reason to be glad precisely because he is the one doing the judging, not us.
The psalm then mirrors its own opening on the way back out. Verse five repeats verse three word for word, and verse six shifts into the only past tense in the whole song: "The earth has yielded its produce." God has already provided what his people need. Pastor Ray paused on that, noting that the blessing being described is not only spiritual but material and physical. God has given us what we need for today.
The psalm closes in verse seven with the reason behind all of it: God blesses us so that all the ends of the earth may fear him, meaning revere him and place their trust in him. Pastor Ray was direct about what this rules out. If any group of people comes to mind as irredeemable, he said, that is the same mistake Jonah made with Nineveh. The blessing God gives his people is not an end in itself, and it is not meant to make others fear the church. It is meant to make them revere God.
Pastor Ray closed by connecting this back to the Great Commission, pointing out that the missionary mandate is not just a matter of telling people what to do. The charge is to make disciples by doing what was commanded, not only by talking about it. The spreading circle grows by living the thing, not performing it.
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Pastor Carl described the Aaronic blessing from Numbers as a priest carrying God's blessing to the people. How does knowing that blessing was meant to flow outward, not just rest on the people who received it, change the way you think about the blessings God has given you?
Ray pointed out that the psalmist shifted from the personal name Yahweh to the more formal Elohim, and from 'you' to 'us', drawing a circle that includes others approaching God. What does that movement from the intimate to the inclusive say to you about how God's blessing is supposed to work?
And how are y'all? How is everybody? Doing okay? Would you stand with me? We're gonna sing some of these are are well known, well known songs.
Let's sing em like we mean em. What blessed assurance it is to know Christ.
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his praising my savior all the day long. Perfect submission, perfect delight. Visions of rapture now burst on my side. Angels descending, bring from above.
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. This is my story. This is my song, praising my savior all the day long. This is my story. This is my song praising my savior all the day long.
Perfect submission, all is at rest. I and my savior am happy and blessed, watching and waiting, Amen. How
about his eyes on the sparrow? This one goes low. That one goes low and goes high. This one really goes low and goes high. But hey, don't sparrows
Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart be lonely and long for heaven and home When Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is he. His eyes on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. His eyes on the sparrow, and I know he watches Sing because I'm happy.
I sing because I'm free for his eyes on the sparrow. And I know he watches me. Let not your heart be troubled. His tender words I hear. And resting on his goodness, I lose my doubt and fear.
Though by the path he leadeth, but one step I may see his eyes on the sparrow. And I know he watches me. His eyes on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free for his eye is on the sparrow.
He watches me I draw the closer to him. From care he sets me free, his eyes on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. His eyes on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free for his eyes on the sparrow.
And I know he watches me.
Amen. Y'all can have a seat. This morning, during the announcements, my microphone went haywire, and I just threw We're still gonna announce. Monday nights at First Be is happening down the hall. Tomorrow night, six, music meal music and a message down the hall.
And that is a good, safe spot to discuss the gospel. It's so good. So Carl brings a message. The band plays the music, and the meal is provided by whoever. And you can do that.
If you want to, you can cook a Monday night meal. We have some folks that do it every, first Monday of the month. Felix and Guadalupe do that, but there are three of them a month, sometimes four, that are up for grabs. If you want to prepare a meal for that crowd, you can. Also, connect hours the same way.
There's a ladies fellowship that meets down the hall on Thursday nights at six All ages are welcome. It's a homegrown ladies fellowship and Bible study. It's a good group of people that love one another, and pray for one another, and study the Bible together. Fun stuff. The women's retreat.
That is supposed to be March 16 through the nineteenth. I have not heard any more about this lately, but Moss Avery Lodge, if you want to do that, talk to Nancy Toracciano. She is pretty easy to find. The high school ministry of First B is combining with the ministry of several other churches in town at 06:30 in the evenings at the Tribe Ministry Center, right across from Hullgrocer in the Little Square buildings there near the creek. That is where Tribe Ministry Center is.
It's happening. And that's the largest group of high schoolers that I know of that meet consistently. And there are some of them that just say, I'm going to be there no matter what. That's really, really good. Would you pray for Student Ascent?
That's the ministry of Banded Together Churches to reach the hearts of the high school. Young Adult Bible Study. Aaron Anderson is the point person for this one. The location changes, so it's constantly moving. Every Sunday night, they're somewhere else.
But 06:30 in the evenings, young adult Bible study. That's good. The gathering is coming up pretty quickly here. It's just a couple of weeks off, two, three weeks off. If Gathering Women's Retreat is March third and fourth.
Is that two weeks away, really? That's when it is. Yeah. You can sign up for it right there at jacksonholewomensbiblestudy.com. More information is there.
This is for Will Graham is coming to Idaho Falls. In anticipation of that one time event, they are asking churches to kind of prepare themselves for this event. March third and tenth, there'll be a church prep briefings taking place here, and then Christian Life and Witness Course, which would be good in your everyday life all the time anyway. But it's in anticipation of this coming up, those dates right there. So if you want to know more about it, you can call the church office.
And Nick knows more about it than anybody else. Talk to him. And I think that's it. Is that the last announcement, Blake? Oh, there's one more.
Steve Baldock has one. He's going be handed a microphone as he walks down the aisle. Perfect. Steve is one of our elders actually, moderator this go round. Yeehaw.
Yeehaw.
Morning everybody. So the elders decided every now and then we should probably come up front and say hi and just, you know, so you know who the elders are in the church and whatnot. But and also share things that are good that are happening in the church and things that we think you might find beneficial to you. And Brad Yates talked at the early service about small groups. They call small groups, cell groups, life groups, whatever.
And they can take all kinds of forms like Aaron's Bible study. Yep. You know, that ends up being it's a small group, you know? And I just can't tell you how much they have meant to me. I belong to the same one here at the church for, gosh, I think, like seventeen years now.
We have lived and died together. I mean, we literally have Yes. Through through life, you know, the good times and the hard times and whatnot. We meet once we we my group, we meet once a week. We do like a a book study sometimes or Bible study.
It can be, you know, really regimented or not so much. But it's just I I don't know about you, but I don't get enough loving. I don't get enough spiritual growth on just Sundays. It's easy for me to come in because I don't like people. So it's easy for me to walk in here and look, get all dressed up and sit down and, you know, say hi, hi, hi, and then leave.
But I don't grow much there. And so by I think small groups is a good way to grow. So rather than develop some sort of huge programs, say, hey, come join us. If you're interested in small groups, contact me. I got a mailbox in the back, you can give me your name and number, you can just grab me up to the service or whatever and we'll see if there's one like that you'll fit with or shoot, if we need to, we'll make another one out That's right.
So that's about it. Just to encourage you, do everything you can as in this day and age, we need to bump ourselves up spiritually. We need to get stronger to deal with what we've got going.
Anybody else? Any anything else I've forgotten? Now I belong to Jesus. Would you stand with me, and we're gonna sing this one, hymn number five zero one, if you're looking for a looking for a hymnal. They're right here.
Jesus, my lord, will love me forever. From him, no power of evil can sever. He gave his life to ransom my soul. Now I belong to him. Now I belong to Jesus.
Jesus belongs to me. Not for the years of time alone, he lifted me up from sorrow and shame. Now I belong to him. Now I belong to Jesus. Jesus was my soul for Jesus has saved me, freed me from sin that long had enslaved me his precious blood.
I belong
the longer I serve. Every single time we sing this song, I think of Freeman Kuhn and Freeman was he was the head deacon at the church I grew up in. He's an older man. And I love the guy so dearly. His praying voice was a mutter.
He was so much. He spoke like this. And the pastor would call him. He sat right where David's sitting right now. He he'd say, Brother Freeman, would you lead us in prayer?
He'd say, That was a marvelous matter, as well. I sat over here on the other side, and I said to my dad, Daddy, I can't hear him. He said, He ain't talking to you. When he sang the longer I served, he had a very nasal singing voice. When we practiced this between services, I sang it like Freeman, and it cracked Judy up so bad.
If she stops playing, y'all keep singing. Okay?
Love that song. Since I started for the kingdom
Y'all can have a seat. I'm gonna invite the ushers to come forward and worship through giving time of the service. This is a chance to make an offering of what it is that God has blessed us with. God almighty, we thank you for the blessings of this day. We thank you to be assembled in your name with people who are coming here to praise you.
Lord God almighty, I pray that we would be active participants in working out our salvation. Lord, you say that you're doing that progressively. For those of us who are being saved, yes, we have a hope in heaven for sure. Blessed assurance. But at the same time, Lord, we're working it out.
We're working it out. So God, I pray that you would do what only you can do and that we would live a yielded life, that we would give back to you from what you blessed us with to see your kingdom and your gospel advance. In Jesus name, amen.
Hello, church family. Blake, thank you for helping me to sound great this morning. Thank you. I'm happy to be here, and it's a privilege to serve God through music. Amen?
I had in mind to sing another song. It's called Thank You by Ray Bolt. And there's another song that I like from Ray Bolt. It's called The Anchor Holds. But for some reason, I I felt yesterday I was, like, in the bubble.
I couldn't I couldn't figure out that song. So here I am. I'm I'm choosing a song that I'm it's exactly how I feel at this moment. Cornerstone. Pastor Carl sings this one at 09:00 quite often, so so the lyrics are good to my heart.
I need to sing that one one more time. It's so good.
When darkness seems
This is the beautiful beautiful promise that we have in Christ.
When he shall come with trumpets
Amen. Praise the Lord. Please always keep me in your prayer. The more I wanna serve God, the more sometimes I feel attacked by Satan. He's the he's at work very strong, but we are I am in Christ's hands.
Amen.
Amen. Alright. So, Psalm 67. Psalm 67. We're going, just, before we wrap back up into our harmony of the gospel study.
This is one I've I've been thinking of for several weeks. It has a lot of touch points with the things that we've heard for the last month. And so I just thought, you know what? I'm gonna do it. Psalm 67, the spreading circle.
Actually, that's a nickname that Derek Kidner, he's wrote a great commentary on the Psalms. And this is Psalms one through 72, but he's got two or three volumes of it. It's really good. The spreading circle. I went to CIU, which is a missionary send in school.
So it's very near and dear to my heart. That's part of what drew us there is knowing that their motto is to know him and make him known was the motto of the school. Our motto here being to love God and love people through Christ, with all we are, loving God and loving people through Christ. And this, I think, is very, very good. It's an Old Testament passage, but it's based on all the way back, not just to the law and Moses and Aaron, but beyond that, all the way back to Abraham believing God.
And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Psalm 67. Most people think it's a Psalm of David. It may be. I'm not sure.
Doesn't matter. It's biblical for sure. It starts off this way. God be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. Now, I emphasize the us there, and I I I'm usually a little hesitant to do that, but this has a purpose.
I know where the rest of this psalm is going. It's only seven verses long. This is not Psalm one nineteen. We don't have to go through the alphabet 12 times. Psalm sixty seven one says, God, be gracious to us.
God's grace, unmerited favor. Show us, lord, your unmerited favor. That in itself is an is a statement of humility. Be gracious to us. We don't deserve it.
Right? God, be gracious to us and bless us. Show us your favor and cause his face to shine upon us. God, be gracious to us. Bless us.
Cause his face to shine upon us. So what else does that sound like? If you're thinking about it, I just kind of gave you a hint. I said back to Moses and Aaron, Aaronic, not the ironic blessing, but the Aaronic blessing. The Aaronic blessing is from Numbers six twenty four through 26.
Do you all remember it? Is it just a fairly common benediction to close the service that I do sometimes when we don't have a slide before I send you all out of here? Yes, it is that. But it's this. It's a spirit informed paraphrase of the Aaronic blessing, which is this.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Now, God says to Moses and says to Aaron, when Aaron blesses the people, have him bless them in this way. And he's saying, Aaron, as priestly service for you, you carry my blessing to the people.
The Lord bless you. The Lord keep you. During COVID, when we were not meeting in the building, but we were online, there were a couple of different renditions of this. I remember Carrie Job's rendition of it, of the blessing. This is the blessing.
And we, Carl and I, learned it and have sung it. Florine's joined in sometimes. We've sung it for funerals, and we've sung it for weddings. And basically, it is this blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you.
Make his face to shine upon you. Be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you or lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So this sounds like that, doesn't it? God, be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us.
The differences are this. Numbers says, Lord Yahweh, y h w h, the tetragrammation. Yahweh, it is the intimate and personal name for God. So these are from his covenant chosen people in the Old Testament when God has made his promise to Abraham and then four hundred years later gives the law through Moses. And when he's leading the people out, this is how he's going to bless them.
And he is close to his chosen people. They see the pillar of fire by day smoke by day and fire by night. The intimate and personal name for God in numbers. In Psalms, it's replaced by Elohim, which is less personal. It's actually more, less intimate, but more formal.
It's almost like saying mister God. It's like from somebody that you have great respect for, but you don't know him as well yet as you might. The spreading circle. Intimate and personal name from God from those who know him. And then, bless us God.
We're approaching you. It's less personal, less intimate in the name. Numbers says, you. So, Aaron is the priest who is pronouncing it to the people but in this, the Psalmist says, us. I like that.
I really, really like that. I also like it when Peter in first Peter says, I exhort you as a fellow elder among you. It doesn't say, I'm the first pope. I'm sorry. It doesn't say, listen to me because I'm his favorite, or I'm the oldest one of the disciples.
It he's saying, listen because I'm a fellow elder among you. It's a humbling of himself. And then he goes on to say, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Carl's gonna touch, I think, on this this coming week. You're going from, you're the Christ, son of the living God.
Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. Write around to, in two sentences, Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. Peter has been humbled. Yahweh to Elohim, you to us. So let's see it again.
This spreading circle, the psalmist is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he's praying a blessing for whom? God be gracious to us. And God bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. This to me makes me uncomfortable. If I were in your position instead of my position right now, I'd think Ray has flipped his wig, and he's gone full on prosperity gospel.
And he's doing it from the Old Testament, for crying out loud. I'd be willing to hit the door. But God be gracious to us. There's a purpose. The spreading circle has to start somewhere.
Right? It has to start. God's message received into a heart is a start. Now, Selah is the way that closes out. Selah says, it's a musical direction.
I put four possible options. If you look this up in 12 different places, you'll get 15 different responses. Okay? Selah is a musical direction. It's not included in any of the psalms that aren't set to music.
When you see at the beginning of a psalm and it says, a song for the strings or a song for the harp, a song for whatever, the trumpet. Selah means stop right here for a moment. It might be tacit. You know while you're playing along in the piano and it says tacit. Just let that ring for a minute, then start playing.
No chord, NC. Pause for a moment. Ponder that. Let that sink in. My favorite one, and I think that this is if they asked me, I'd say let it ring.
Just hear that chord and just let it ring. Alright? Let it ring out. On the piano, a selah. I'm not real good at the piano.
But the selah might be pushed down this and let it ring. Right? It just rings. So Selah. God be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us.
You can almost see the psalmist having been blessed by the priest, and it's ringing in his ears. He's thinking about it.
Wow.
Is it an ungodly prayer for prosperity? No. It is not. Part of the reason that I can say that is because it's in the Bible and the prosperity gospel is not. Okay?
Prosperity gospel is hogwash. Psalm sixty seven two is how we know that it's not an ungodly prayer. God bless us. Be gracious to us. Show your face.
Show us who you are. Let us have some clarity about who you are and how you are that your way may be known on the earth. That's good. That's how you know it's not a prosperity gospel just for us to amass and hoard a blessing. So that your way may be known on the earth, so that your salvation, Lord, may be known among all of the nations.
All of the nations out the goyim. This is everybody outside of the people who already know you. May your name be magnified among those who don't even yet know you, that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations. So the psalmist has taken that Aaronic blessing, and he's modified it to include others. It's not may the Lord bless and keep you.
It's may the Lord bless and keep you so that you may be able to take care of los demas, the others, every other, all tribes, tongues, nations, the great commission's already resounding. We're only in verse two. There are only seven. Don't worry. So it's an echo of God's promise to Abraham too.
It's not just the Aaronic blessing. If you listen to it, God says to Abraham in Genesis 12 and have y'all been reading the first be in the Bible stuff? It's so good. I mean, this is the this is my favorite way I have ever tried to get through the Bible. And I have tried to get through the Bible.
During seminary, we had to read it. I'm sure I read it all the way through in seminary. I'm positive because I know that I had to and I did. I always gave up in Ezekiel for some reason. It was just too hard.
Him laying on his side for so long was just too hard for me. But this part has come up over and over and over again in that Bible reading plan that God is faithful. And what it took was when God spoke to Abram and said, go forth from your country and from your relatives everything you've known and leave your father's house and go to the place that I will show you. And God says, his Abrahamic covenant, I will make you a great nation. That's going to happen.
And I will bless you, and I will make your name great. Why? So that you shall be a blessing. That's good. And I will bless those who bless you.
Those who receive the message and the blessing that goes through you, I will bless those who receive it. And those who reject, those who curse you for trying to bring them a blessing, they're going to receive a curse. And in you, all of the families of the earth will be blessed. That forecasts Revelation five:nine and Revelation seven:nine where it says, And there they were, a great multitude from every tribe, tongue, and nation gathered around the throne, and they were singing, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. God chose Abraham to be a great nation.
You gotta start somewhere. If you're gonna save the world, you gotta start somewhere. And it started with Abraham believing God. God chose Abraham to be a great nation and to be a carrier of his blessing to the nation. So Paul picks that idea up.
He knew his Old Testament. He knew his Bible history very well. And in Galatians, when people were stepping away from faith and grace and going back to law and practice, Paul, his great treaties to the Galatians says, think about this. Even so, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. God justified him because he trusted him.
He trusted him. He put his faith in him. He believed him. You can say it any way you want to. But he believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. It's by faith, by grace through faith. Galatians three eleven. He continues, now know this, that no one is justified by the law. It's not because it's evident.
The righteous one shall live, how? By faith. By law? No. All of us fail under the scrutiny of the law.
But do we trust God? Has he provided a way? He has. The righteous man shall live by faith. If we go on to Galatians three verses later, in order that in, what?
Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. That's all of the others. This is hit upon, like I said, for the last three weeks. We studied the gospel. I asked you to ruminate on it.
Bring me the gospel in 10 words or less. Really concentrate on what the gospel is. And it's for everybody. Even though we are damnably wrong, God almighty has given Jesus so that we may have eternal life, so that we may be reconciled to him, so that the blessing of Abraham might come to los demas, everyone else, the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the spirit through faith. It's through faith.
If you have placed your faith in Jesus, then you're a part of this spreading circle. You have you have come into the camp. You've come up under the tent. You are a part of the spreading circle of blessing that came from God through Abraham. Amen.
Now, the psalmist, we're only up to verse two, but we're going forward from there. Let's recap. God, be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. Let that ring out. Why?
Because we want for them to know your way, Lord, on earth. On earth as it is in heaven. We talked about that last week, Lord's Prayer. That your way may be known on the earth so that your salvation may be known among all of the nations. Ponta, Ephne in Greek.
It's all of the nations. All of the nations. Everyone outside. Israel was supposed to be this great light to the Gentiles, to the nations. And sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't.
This psalmist definitely got it. So Psalm one and sixty seven one and two says that. So where does it go from here? Well, verse three, since that was one and two. It says this, let the peoples praise you, oh God.
Let all the peoples praise you. Let, in English, we see that and say, let all the peoples praise you or let the peoples praise you. And we think, we're saying, God, allow this to happen. In a way, maybe. But this in Hebrew and in Greek, in the Septuagint, it's a third person command.
So in English, we don't usually do this. Third person commands, we don't normally do in English. And it's a command to someone else that is not present or not listening. I said this in the first service, and I'm a grammar nerd, and everybody knows that. They don't know that Pascal is just as much a grammar nerd as I am.
And she said, I asked my Greek professor on Thursday about those third person commands. He said, We don't normally do that in English, but we have a couple of old translations from other languages that do it. She gave me a couple of examples that I didn't have. We usually translate it let, but in my mind, in our English minds, we're saying, Let it be that the peoples that praise you, God, is a way of saying, Allow it to happen. In a way, that's true.
But let them is nations. Be praising God. They're not present. They might not even be listening, but it's a third person command. Marie Antoinette, in her famous line, The people have no bread.
They bring the and she says, Let them eat cake. It's a command to eat cake. She didn't know anything but cake and bread and everything else. And she lost her head. So let it be said, so let it be done.
That's the other one that in English, we hear that sometimes. It's antiquated language. We don't usually do it in English. But if you think about it, well, here's a more definitive proof that I'm a nerd, but Chiastic construction. So we've set this up.
We've God bless us, and God be gracious to us, and show us your face so that they may know your way on earth, so that your salvation is. Let the peoples praise you. Let them, all of the peoples praise you, is building up to the most important part of this psalm. The chiastic construction comes from the Greek letter chi, chi. That x right there is why we call it chiastic.
And Psalm 67 is a perfect chiastic construction. It's a Hebrew way of thinking. Greeks picked it up. The name comes from the Greek. But a, b, c was verses one, two, three, and then four is d, and then we're going go c, b, a.
So it's like a mirror. It's looking in a mirror. In Hebrew thinking, what's in the middle is the most important. So in English, if you take any speech class, they're gonna give you some version of this. Tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.
So for us, lead strong, finish strong, and have a middle that supports both. Well, the middle is what's most important here. Psalm sixty seven four is the main point of this whole song. So far, it's been couplets. Number one is a couplet.
Number two is a couplet. Number three is a couplet. Number four is a triplet. And to say lah, let it ring. Let the nations be glad.
It's saying, nations, give praise to God and be happy and joyful about it. Let the nations be glad. Let the nations sing for joy, for you, God, will judge the peoples with uprightness. You gods are a righteous judge. Oh, will not my lord do what is right?
We wanna have the certainty that David had that God is going to act in accordance with who he is. He is gracious and he is merciful. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness. It's not up to us to judge. You're the one who should be judging them.
And you, Lord, guide the nations of the earth. You will judge and you will guide the nations on this earth. So let those nations be glad that you are their one. You are God. Let that ring out.
That's the main point of the whole psalm. And then we'll back away from that point in reverse order, just the way we built up to it. The pinnacle is this, let the nations be glad. John Piper wrote a book a while back. It's a real big kind of a push for missionaries to just surrender all and go.
And it's called Let the Nations Be Glad. Selah. Ring out. Pay attention to that. Pause for a moment.
Ponder that. Let it sink in. Let it ring out. The clicker quit quickly. So what do they have to be glad about?
When I think of that, especially in our world today, we are more connected than we've ever been. And we see people that are very different from us. Even in our own hometown, we see people that are very different. We see people who identify themselves very differently from us, just right across the street, sometimes in our own household. And so it's saying let every people group, the nations.
It's not geopolitical boundaries, okay? It's every group of people that identifies together. Let the nations, let all of the nations, all of the peoples be glad and sing for joy. Is this thing It's working still. Thank you.
He's got batteries on the ready for me. I think I've got a couple up here that you brought during the first service for something else. So what do they have to be glad about? I am going to go to Romans. We did this a few weeks ago too.
Romans one sixteen and seventeen, we covered a couple weeks ago about the gospel. I'm gonna go up to verse well, it looks like I'm only going to 17. I thought I was going to 20. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of salvation, for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.
The righteousness of God is that he has made a way. Though we fall short, he has made a way for us to be reconciled and made right with him. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written. But the righteous one will live by faith. Now y'all heard that two times already during this sermon, and it comes up a lot.
It comes up three times in the New Testament, several times in Psalms. The righteous one will live by faith. That's both. The righteous one will live eternally and have a blessed assurance. The righteous one will live eternally by faith because they have believed they will live.
That's one way of looking at it. But the other way is on earth as it is in heaven. The righteous one will be living out their faith on this earth. Only be redundant when you need to say something more than once. So this verse does that.
This is sixty seven five. Y'all just heard it in sixty seven three. It's exactly the same thing. Like I said, the chiastic instruction is perfect. Goes to the middle and then wraps away from it.
Let the peoples praise you, oh God. Let all the peoples praise you. All inclusive. Every people group. Let them all praise you, Lord.
If you're sitting that in your heart and you have thought, not them. You're missing the point of this psalm. You're missing the point of this psalm. Though you were a stranger and though you were a part of the kingdom of darkness, even if you grew up in church. Right?
God has removed you from the darkness and brought you into his marvelous light. Your desire should be his desire, and his desire is that all of the peoples would know him. That all of the people groups would know him. They don't have to clean themselves up to come in first. They don't have to change what they think, feel, say, or believe first.
God will transform and God will change. We should be paying attention to what God is doing in our own life. Let all the peoples praise you, oh God. That's 67.3. It's also 67.5.
And 67.6 has the only past tense statement in the whole song. And it says this, The earth has yielded its produce. God, you're you're God of earth and outer space. You know everything about everything, and you provide, and you have provided. The earth has yielded its produce, and wow.
It has already happened. We already have the blessing that we need to be able to know that God blesses us. That's sobering thought. I have what I need to be able to do what I need to do one day at a time. Right?
I have today what God has given me. The earth has already yielded its produce. It's kind of interesting that this is not a spiritual thing. This is very much a physical thing. It's tied to material blessings that God has provided for us.
Now, the prosperity part that I was talking about in the beginning, God bless us and be gracious to us and show us who you are. Show us your face with some clarity. Let us see what you really like. If we realize that God has done that by what he has given us. He's blesses us.
That's what he does. That's who he is. God blesses us. This is beginning of Psalm 60 seven:seven. God blesses us.
Dwell on that for a minute. Let that ring. It doesn't say that right there, but it'll say it at the end of the verse. God blesses us. Wow, if we woke up this morning, had breath in our lungs, praise God.
Why is it though that God does bless us? Well, according to how he blessed Abraham, it it was so that he would be a blessing. I think that's probably the direction this psalm is going. It says, Psalm 67 says, God blesses us that all of the ends of the earth. That's another way of saying all peoples, all nations, all people groups, so that everybody may fear him.
Now, if you see the word fear and you think immediately fear, terror, fright, the Bible uses it that way sometimes. Actually, that's the most common way. The Bible has two different definitions that it has for fright. One of them is terror or fright. That's the most common.
That's why angels always have to say, Do not fear. So spectacular. The message they bring is so awe inspiring and so terrifying in some ways. Just think about this. It is a little bit terrifying that God has a plan and we're part of it.
That's plan A. There's not any plan B. You will be my witnesses. That's what it's about. Do not fear, though, brings us to this.
The second, numerically second, is to place total trust in or to revere. To fear God. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. To recognize that he is almighty and good, and we can take part in him blessing the world. That's good.
So that's the sense in which it's meant here. And I think this is the close. 60 seven:seven is this. God blesses us so that they may revere him. God blesses us so that they may revere him.
Not so that they may fear us. And I'm afraid that we, as the church, have done that. We've alienated people. We've alienated the aliens. If you have in your mind a group of people, whatever that group is, honestly, don't care what it is.
If you have a group in your mind that you think they are irredeemable, that's the Ninevites for Jonah. Read Jonah. I don't wanna go to those people. I knew you were merciful and that you would save them. I didn't want them saved.
Damn them. That's what the Bible is saying in Jonah. And if we have a group in our mind that we think are irredeemable, God blessed us so that they may revere him, so that they may fear him, so that the nations, all of them, may revere him. We have a lot of issues individually and collectively. I I pray that we would not be an obstacle for anyone coming to Christ.
God has provided the way. And like I said, it's a little fearful that it's up to us to include the nations in the spreading circle. But it is up to us. God has given us a missionary mandate. He has said, as you are going, be going with the gospel, baptizing and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you.
Teach them to do that by doing it. Okay? That's the way. It's not just by telling them to do it. This might come up next Sunday, actually.
But to say, Do as I say, not as I do, is a hypocrite. Do as I say, not as I used to do, is a teacher. Selah. Let that ring for a while. God Almighty, you're so good to us.
You're so good to us. I pray, Lord, that in recognizing that you are so good to us, may we be good to others. May we carry your blessing, really. May we, like Abraham, when given the choice or when given the opportunity, he and Lot on that hillside, Lot, you tell me what it is that you want, and I'll go with whatever. I'm fine.
I put myself last. And you go ahead. And then when it goes bad for our friends because they don't quite get it yet, like it didn't go well for Lot, would you still give us a heart to pursue them in love, to redeem what we can of the time? Would you give us a heart for the nations, Lord? Starting with our neighbor in our house and next door.
But God, I pray that you would give us the sustained strength to just be able to keep on going on that good old gospel way. In Jesus' name, amen. Would you stand with me? And we're gonna go, 'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus. Abraham believed God.
Believe. Pistis is trust, faith, or belief. It's also faithfulness of God. So it is sweet to trust in Jesus because he is trustworthy. Oh, for Ray to trust him more.
Oh, for Bob to trust him more. Oh, for us. For for us to trust him more. God almighty, I pray that you would bless and keep us, that you would make your face to shine upon us, that you'd be gracious to us, that you would turn your face towards us and you would give us peace. And, Lord, further than that, that we would carry that to others so that they may know and be glad.
