Psalm 67:1-7 — "Let the Nations Be Glad" — Rick Graumlich

This is a recurring theme in my preaching, but I want you to know this.

I want you to think about this, church.

It's this question.

What have you been created for?

What have you been created for?

What are you made to do?

Why are you here?

Why are we here?

What are you doing?

If you've heard my preaching much, you know the answer is going to be you're made to worship God.

You're made to praise him, to sing his excellencies, to glory in his majesty, to worship him.

And part of that is in you taking the good news and sharing with others so others can worship him.

This is why we're created.

To be in relationship with our God, our creator God, and to worship him.

There's a famous quote in the book Let the Nations Be Glad by John Piper, where he says, missions exist because worship doesn't.

Missions, global missions, international missions exist because worship doesn't.

The reason we have global missions isn't primarily because there are just poor and needy people around the world, or there are people who kind of need a help up, or they just need an encouraging message.

The primary reason that we do missions is because there are people who are not worshiping the created, the God that they were created to worship.

They're worshiping false things.

So the Lord has sent his people, as we looked at last week, the great commission, to go and make disciples.

A disciple is a follower of Jesus.

Disciple making is helping others follow Jesus.

And the church has given this mission to go and do this.

To go to the nations, that there might be worship.

Lord willing, next week we'll get more into the state of modern missions and what we can do to obey the Great Commission faithfully and all those things.

But this morning, my aim is that we understand why all that matters.

See, again, if we view missions, global missions, international missions, as a task to accomplish.

Just something we have to get done.

We look at it for an achievement.

We're going to go and spread the gospel to all nations, and that's the mission.

Just get all the Bible translated to all the languages and go.

Any kind of sign of a change, we'll go ahead and just baptize them and move on and do these things.

We're just looking to get the mission accomplished.

When we make missions just this all-out marathon, just getting to the finish line, that's all that's important.

We forget why we're doing it.

Now we don't completely forget.

It's not like it just leaves our head.

Our head remembers, but our heart forgets.

Our heart forgets that we're doing missions because we're made to adore God.

And we want to see others adore and worship him forever.

See, God is a revealing God.

As I said in my prayer, he condescends, he comes down.

He's not like us.

He doesn't owe us anything, but he comes to us and reveals himself in a sense, and he shares who he is and what he's like so that we might have a relationship with him.

Let's just know about him.

And not even have just kind of a spiritual relationship.

We just kind of know him and we acknowledge some spiritual realities.

But then our physical lives just go and do our thing.

He's loved us so that we would know him.

And as we know him, man, he is worthy of our praise.

He's worthy of our praise.

God is the source of our joy, he's a source of all joy.

And God is just and God is powerful, and God provides and is to be worshipped.

And Psalm 67 tells us that what the nations need, what people need is God.

Now I would imagine most of you sitting here this morning, that's not a new revelation to you.

It's not something you've never thought about before for most of us.

But it's true.

I want to remind you what the nations need, what the people in Iran need, what the people in South America need, what the people in Indonesia need, what your neighbor needs, what you need is God.

And it's an awesome, holy, privilege church, that we as Christians, as God's people, as the church, are called to tell the nations about Jesus.

So part of the gospel, so we say, is the bad news.

Right?

In the sense, there's a holy God.

He's just, he's holy, he's righteous.

It's awesome.

Bad news is you're not holy.

You're not just, you're not righteous.

You do not deserve to have this relationship with God.

And worse, there's nothing you can do about this.

There's nothing.

There is no amount of obedience, there's no amount of works, there's no amount of money you can give.

This is why you're you're spiritually, you're hopeless in this condition.

But God, in his love, has come.

And the amazing thing is he didn't just come and say, listen, I'm just taking a bunch of people to heaven.

Who wants to go?

Sign up.

Get on board.

Do these five things.

Just say this with your with your mouth.

That's all you gotta do.

No, see, our sin is more serious than that.

The reality of our sin, the weight of our sin.

That the only way that this could happen, that a holy and righteous God, pure and perfect, could have a relationship with us, is if that our sin is dealt with.

It's dealt with.

He can't just linger.

God's too just.

He can't overlook our sin.

He can't just say, Well, it's not that big of a deal.

You're not as bad as you could have been.

Don't worry about it.

No, he's just.

He's a righteous God.

He couldn't say, well, just pay it off.

No, because that's gonna take eternity.

It'll never be enough.

The only way this works out is if he sins a substitute, a sacrifice, someone who can stand in their place and take their judgment for them.

But it can't just be another person.

It has to be a perfect one.

And there is no perfect one.

So God sends Jesus, the Son, perfect in all of his ways and all that he does.

He sends him to be the atoning sacrifice, to be the Lamb, to be the one crucified.

The sins were placed on him.

And he endured the judgment.

It's the only way this works.

It's the only way that we can be reconciled, that we can be redeemed, that we can be saved, is because of the work of Jesus Christ.

And he's done it.

That he's done it.

He's done that very thing.

He came, he lived the perfect life, sinless in all of his ways, went to the cross, enduring the shame and the scorn and the wrath and the weight of sin for us, church.

It's beautiful.

And now we're free in Christ.

No longer are we under the old covenant toiling and trying to work for our salvation.

No longer are we looking to the heavens saying, maybe if I do enough, I can appease God.

He's forgiven us in Christ.

And now we have this amazing opportunity to take the good news.

This good news that nobody deserves, that nobody's worthy of it.

Take it to those around us and say, You're dead in your sin, but there's hope.

Your life in this world is meaningless, but there's hope.

The things you're chasing and you're running after in your life, they're empty.

But there's hope.

There's hope in Jesus.

And he's come for you.

He has come for you.

So the psalmist begins.

May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face to shine upon us.

Say loud.

That your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

When you think about the Great Commission, when you think about God's mission to have the good news spread around the globe.

This verse tells us how that's going to happen.

This is the how of global missions.

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us that your way may be known on earth and your saving power among all nations.

This sounds really similar to the erotic blessings in numbers six.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

What was a declared blessing by the priests in numbers six is now a prayer of God's people.

Lord, shine upon us.

Be gracious to us.

Bless us.

And why is all this to happen?

Why are they saying, Lord, be gracious to us and bless us and show us your favor?

So that so that the nations would know.

That your way, God, may be known on earth.

Your saving power among all nations.

This blessing, this prayer, it's all answered in the person of Jesus Christ.

That Christ would come.

And so God would be gracious and bless.

Show his favor, shine upon them and us.

See, God has a way.

There's not all these different ways to salvation or ways to heaven.

If a pluralistic system worked like that, or synergistic system where, yeah, just kind of, if you start out and you mean well, and you can be a Muslim or you can be a Jew or you can be a Christian or you can worship your own thing or any kind of Eastern religion, just whatever.

But if your heart's in the right place, you'll get there.

And I know that sounds kind of absurd.

You know, we're we're a Bible preaching church.

Most of us know like you can't do that, it doesn't work that way.

Just kind of spot that absurdity right out.

But I just want to, this is for all of us.

I just want to press in a little bit.

How often, though, we take God's word and we say, this is God's word.

We gotta obey it.

But there are some things where I'm just not gonna do it.

When it comes to my money, I'll be, I won't be, you know, I won't be scrooge, but, you know, I gotta take care of my family.

And I gotta, the Bible says I gotta leave an inheritance to my children.

So I'm gonna make sure I do those things.

And you start to prioritize money over other things.

You hold to God's word, but then you think about your schedule, and you got a lot going on.

You have responsibilities, you're an important person.

People look to you to get things done.

And, you know, there's other people, there's retired people in the congregation, they can do the discipleship.

They can meet with other people, they have time for that.

I have a family, I can't do those things.

You know, the Great Commission's good, and we need to send missionaries.

That's right.

We should do it.

But there's also these megachurches all over the place.

They have plenty of money, they can do those things.

There's denominations, they can do those things.

I'm not saying we're doing the same thing as pluralistic, but what we are doing is saying, I'm gonna take parts of Scripture, I'm gonna choose what I want to obey.

I'm gonna say yes to this part, and I'm gonna say no to this part, or no, not in this season.

When you realize that there is this way of God that's to be known on the earth.

And what that is, is a life fully surrendered, dedicated to Jesus.

Because he has the power to save.

And when he saves us, we're his.

We belong to him.

As Romans says, we now go from being slaves of wickedness or slaves of sin to being slaves of righteousness.

We belong to him.

He is ours.

Everything we do now is to be submitted to him.

See, Psalm 67 is, if you will, pregnant with his promise.

They're in the old covenant, but they're looking to a better covenant.

This is what Jeremiah 20 or 31 says, Jeremiah 31, beginning in verse 31.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them, and I will write on their hearts.

I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And no longer shall each one have to teach his neighbor, and each his brother saying, Know the Lord, for they shall know, they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.

Jeremiah speaking of the new covenant that is to come.

And eventually the eternal covenant that we will experience or the eternal life that we have in Christ.

Excuse me.

The author of Hebrews picks up this same theme in chapter 8.

Says, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old, than the old covenant that he mediated.

For it is better.

The new covenant is better, since it is enacted on better promises.

Hebrews 8.

See the how of missions is that there will be a people in the new covenant who will be transformed.

They'll be made new.

And then what they will do is they will go and they'll share this good news with others.

And it will be evident in their lives.

No longer will they be slaves to sin.

No longer will they be worshiping the things of this world.

No longer will they be striving in their own efforts to be made right with God.

They will be new.

And this new way will be known on the earth.

And with that, the power to save.

And this makes sense.

If you think about church history for the last 2,000 years, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, it's amazing how self-evident this is.

When you think about it, the reality that a message is come and follow Jesus, but there's no temporary security in that.

There's no physical comfort promised in that.

As a matter of fact, you're kind of told you're going to suffer a lot.

It's going to be difficult.

People will hate you.

But yet, again and again and again, people's lives are transformed.

They were dead in their sin, now they're alive in Christ.

It just keeps happening year after year, decade, century after century, it just keeps going.

That the Lord's ways might be known and the power of salvation known to all nations.

So the prayer, Psalm is verse 1 and 2, this prayer that God would be gracious to us.

It's not so that we can just live comfortable lives, so that we can be safe, but rather that the power of the gospel would be known in our lives and evident to the world around us.

And they would look and they would say, Man, I don't know what they're doing, but it's working because they have joy.

They have this sense of calling and this sense of contentment.

It's like they have this relationship with God.

He's going to use his people to spread the gospel.

And the why.

The why of missions, verse 4 through 7.

For praise, for worship.

Let the people praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

Let all the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth.

Saila.

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.

Let all the ends of the earth fear Him.

God, this is the why.

A people praising God, a heart for praise for all the people.

As one commentator, Jim Hamilton put it, praise is the purifying purpose for which we were made.

Praise is our response to God's unmatched greatness.

We're made for this.

And just as God has been gracious to you and He's shown you love and mercy, so we take that to others.

We want others to see this as well, to know God and to glory in Him.

We see that there is a blessing for those who submit to God.

And in a sense, Psalm 67 is speaking of the kingdom to come.

A heart of praise.

Look at this in verse 4.

Let all let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

There's people singing and being glad.

When you look at the nations now, is that what you see?

Do you see just people just delighted and they're rejoicing in God?

And you might be a skeptic and you might think, well, if God hasn't been able to accomplish his mission, you know, it's taken him 2,000 years, it's still not done, I just don't know.

It's a terrible mentality.

Rather, we look to the sufficiency of God, his word, and his spirit.

He will fulfill his mission.

But there is joy and gladness, not as people get to do what they want.

They don't sing for joy when they get their way.

But rather when God judges them, when he's governing the people with equity and he guides the nations upon the earth, when his rule and reign is realized and embraced, followed after, then there's rejoicing.

When we submit to God's ways, there's life that comes with that.

And so the nations will know God judges justly, but he is a kind and gracious God.

He will guide the nations and it brings about this praise.

The people praise you, O God.

Other people praise you.

It's easy to take a passage like this and just say, Okay, are you praising the Lord?

And there's everyone Know it, and if you're just doing better at praising the Lord, then the nations would know.

Just be a better praiser of God.

Just go be better at this.

And then maybe there's like a rebuke you need in that, genuinely.

Like you just need to praise the Lord more.

Get after it.

But also there's a there's a meditative aspect to this, there's a reminding one another.

There's a, hey, remember what God has done in our life.

Remember how he has shown us his mercy and his grace.

And praise him.

And how often our praises don't come forth.

We know the blessings of the Lord.

We know the privileges to be in this land where there's so many wonderful Christian resources and there's so many Christians to encourage us.

And we we know the blessing of having God's grace and mercy for us.

All those things are good.

And we value those, we treasure those.

As Christians, we love those things, of course.

But how often, at the same time, do we let the things of this world?

We just let football, right?

We let food or whatever kind of creep in and kind of kill or kind of quiet our praise.

We're thankful for salvation, of course.

But we spend more time complaining about what we don't have.

We spend more time scheming for the things we want or how we wish things were.

We look around and we just think, man, if the people around me were just better, if I just had better people around me, if they were more mature, more godly, more righteous, more whatever, then I would be this way.

Or my life would have gone this way.

We're losing sight of what the Lord has called us to, share the gospel.

We're losing sight of what the Lord has done for us.

His mercy and his grace.

See, this rejoicing of the nations, this praising of the people.

They won't be praising the Lord because he answered all of their prayers the way they want it.

They won't be rejoicing in him because he just gave them everything they wanted.

But rather because he is enough.

That he is the one that their hearts were made for.

And now they're no longer separated from their God.

They're no longer worshiping the things of this world or worshiping false gods.

They're worshiping the God of the nations, the creator of the universe, the one who's lavished his mercy upon us, the one who's revealed himself in creation, revealed himself in his word, the one who's given us his spirit.

And they will worship him and they will praise him.

And so they will declare his excellencies one to another.

And there will be a joy.

The people will enjoy God, and they will be satisfied in him.

No more will they be looking, comparing themselves, looking for satisfaction in other places.

They will be satisfied in God.

And with that comes this blessing, this fear as we fear the Lord.

This is a reverent fear, as verse 7.

Speak, let the ends of the earth fear him.

You can't properly worship the Lord if there's not a sobriety, a reverence for the Lord.

Yes, he is our father.

Yes, Christ is our brother.

We're in the household of faith.

We're adopted into the family.

But there is to be a right fear and reverence to the Lord.

He is the creator.

He's sovereign.

He's all powerful.

He does what he pleases.

And we worship him.

And when we do that, it elicits praise from our lips, praise from our hearts.

And we will see people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

As Revelation chapter 7 says, after this I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one can number.

Revelation 7 · chapter mention

Nobody could count that high.

From every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne, before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hand, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.

If you are a Christian, you will be there one day.

You will see this one day if you're a Christian.

The nations gathered, multitudes, people, every tribe and people and language, every background, they're all gonna be there.

And they're not gonna be waving their own flags, they're not gonna be declaring their own excellencies.

We're all gonna be there doing one thing and only one thing, declaring that salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, the Lamb who is sacrificed for us.

The Lamb that the nations need to hear about.

The one that we've been entrusted we have the privilege and been entrusted to share with others.

This is what we're gonna do.

This is the glory that we will share in one day.

And so we're living here in this kind of already but not yet.

The new covenant has come.

Christ has come and inaugurated, he's begun the new covenant, and we're in it.

Well, yet we're waiting for the kingdom to come fully.

Yet we're living in it.

We're telling others about Jesus.

And we're saying to the Lord, make your face, may you be gracious to us and bless us and make your face to shine upon us, so that your ways and your excellencies, your nature, your character, your truth may be known on the earth.

For there is no other name given under heaven by which man can be saved.

Only Jesus Christ.

So we go so that they might worship.

We go so they might know.

It's easy to feel excited about missions when someone's speaking about missions or preaching on missions.

But the Lord is calling each and every one of us to this task.

There is not a Christian who does not have a role to play in the Great Commission.

Do you feel that's a subjective word, feel, but do you feel this call on your life?

Do you feel it?

There's all kinds of ways it works out.

I love how the story of when William Carey was going to India.

His friend Andrew Fuller, who stayed back in England, is trying to support him.

And Carey says, I'll go, and you hold the rope.

So there are those who go, and there are those who hold the rope for those who go.

Those are the two kind of roles we have to play.

Some will go, the most of us will hold the rope for those who do.

But nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to sit on the sidelines.

That's not your call, that's not your commission, that's not your role.

You're either going, and my prayer is that the Lord would raise up from our church men and women of God to go to the nations, that they would leave the comforts of cute little quaint Mount Vernon, that they would leave the security of proclamation church, that they would go to those who have not heard, to those who are walking in darkness, that they would go.

And there is no amount of energy in a sermon, there is no kind of build-up in a missions presentation that can sustain that kind of call.

It's a calling from the Lord, and you must believe the Lord will sustain you as the church holds the rope.

It does us no good to kind of whip us all up into a missions frenzy, go do a couple short-term things here and there for a little bit, let those things die out and just get back into our comfort zone.

But we we go and we send for the glory of God.

Do you feel the call of the Great Commission on your life?

Does your heart does your heart love the nations as God does?

Does your heart, do you think about all the peoples of the world, the traditions, the cultures, the languages, the people?

God has come for them.

He loves them.

Does your heart love the nations as God does?

Are you excited, Christian, about proclaiming the glories of God and seeing his name worshipped around you?

Is that something that excites you?

I want to see others worshiping Jesus.

Or are you kind of stilled?

Kind of plateaued in your emotion about this, kind of callous about this in your own heart.

There's like a wonderful book on missions by Andy Johnson, who's a missionary in Turkey, and he says, the glory of the gospel, not the neediness of man.

The glory of the gospel is the self-sustaining fuel for global missions.

We don't sin because there's just a need.

We don't stay because there's a need.

We don't sacrifice because there's a need just physically.

But it's for the glory of Christ.

They too would be found, that they would glory in him, that they would worship him.

So we must feel the call and answer the call.

We must love the nations.

We must encourage one another all the more to be excited, to share the good news of Jesus, to be faithful and sharing him with others.

That the nations would praise him, that we would praise him, that our children would praise him, that God would get his glory.

That is our mission, church.

That is what God has put us here to do.

That is what gives us life.

That's what we're made to do.

So let's be faithful in that.

Let's pray.