Episode 130 Psalm 67 Let The World Know

Dan: [0:00] Hi everyone and welcome to Training for Life Redeemed. I’m Dan, I’m here with my father David Jackson.

We continue our series looking through Psalms. Today we’re up to Psalm 67 and you’re going to give us a reading of that and then we’ll dive into what we’ve got.

Psalm 67

⁰ For the director. With stringed instruments.

A composition. A song.

¹ May God be gracious to us and bless us

May he cause his face to shine on us. Selah

² To cause your way to be known in the earth,

your salvation among all nations.

³ Cause the peoples to praise you, O God.

Cause the people to praise you, all of them.

⁴ Let the nationalities rejoice and sing out,

for you judge the peoples uprightly,

and the nationalities on the land, you lead them. Selah

⁵ Cause the peoples to praise you, O God

Cause the people to praise you, all of them.

⁶ The land has given up its produce.

God, our God, blesses us.

⁷ God will bless us,

and all the ends of the earth will fear him.

[1:02] All right, Dad, thanks for reading.

It’s good to hear. Now, this psalm starts off with the whole idea of God being gracious to us and blessing us and his face shining upon us, which is similar to Israel’s blessing of the Lord’s face shining upon you and what they would say to each other. And so here they are, I guess, as a group singing that God blesses us. us.

[1:26] Can you give a bit of context? How is God being gracious and blessing them? How does his face shine upon them? Because I’m going to then talk about what does that then mean for us today? How does he do the same thing now?

David: Yeah, so the process, whenever we read the Psalms, we’re going from David, or whoever wrote the Psalm, to Jesus, then to us. And this is almost a workshop in how to do that.

So back at Mount Sinai God appoints Aaron to be the priest, the high priest, and in Numbers chapter 6 he orders Aaron to bless the people of Israel and to put God’s name on them. [2:10] So, you know, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord shine his face upon you and give you his peace. The Lord be whatever merciful to you and so forth. That’s the Aaronic blessing, to you, to you, to you. And the idea of putting God’s name on those people.

So there’s a big theme through Israel, our identity. What is our identity?

Our identity is that we are the people of Yahweh. So Israel is my people I am their God it’s all about God and he gives us this new identity.

I was having a conversation with a fellow a little while ago: we hear alcoholics anonymous will tell an alcoholic you are always going to be an alcoholic and people take that on board and say you know I am an alcoholic. That’s my identity. And my answer to that is, no, you’re a believer in Christ. Your identity is that you have been named, baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your identity is, I am a Christian.

[3:23] I have a problem with drunkenness, which is a choice and a behaviour. That’s not my identity. My identity is what God says is my identity.

And so there’s a beautiful verse in Revelation 2, I think it’s 17, where when we are raised from the dead and we get to new creation, there’ll be a white post. I really like this one. There’s a white post and it’s got my name on it.

[3:51] But it’s a name that I don’t know yet. It’s the name Yahweh God gave me before the creation of the earth.

So when God wrote the story, he wrote in my identity. And my identity was to be a person Jesus would redeem. So that name, which only I have, yeah, each individual believer has it. There’s not two David Jacksons in the same group like there was in my year seven class. That was a very sad story for my teachers. So my identity, putting the name of God on me as my identity as a believer in Christ, that changes everything.

So here is our mission.

For these guys, Aaron was going to do that for Israel as a priest mediator. Now you have Israel coming into kingship, into a kingdom with David as king, and they’re saying, the Lord bless us.

So it’s not Aaron putting the name on us, it’s us going directly to Yahweh and saying, put it on us.

I almost liken it to this. We just went and saw the movie Napoleon. [5:08] And Napoleon, very famously, when it came to the coronation, instead of the pope putting the crown on the emperor, he just picked it up out of the priest’s hand.

He’s an atheist. so he took it off the priest and stuck it on his own head. And it’s us going to Yahweh and saying please give us your name and the blessings that go with it. And that’s not something we earn so you’ve got God’s enemies as it were sinners, broken (think of Israel before David, the book of Judges) coming before Yahweh and saying please be gracious to us bless us and the blessing is that we would be your people That’s the beginning of the song. But then it goes on the last couple of lines there.

“Cause your way to be known to the land, the earth, and your salvation among all nations.”

So now give us your name and let us be the Aaronic priest to the nations. And God said Israel will be a nation of priests.

[6:13] So here we go. David’s on his throne. We’re ready to rock.

Dan: And so if we follow that idea of being God’s children, as this main blessing.

So Israel are God’s people, and then you talk about Jesus being God’s son, and then we inherit and become co-heirs with Christ.

David: And we get that land. But we take the name.

So this song, God Bless Us, this would be a great song to sing when you’re getting baptized. Yeah. You know, I’m coming. We take the name at our baptism. [6:45] So you are baptized into the name. You’re immersed into the name because you’re leaving your past behind and you’re taking on a new identity and all that language that goes with that

Dan: much the same as with a wedding way yeah traditionally the woman would take on the name oh yes husband

David: and that’s because and we’ve got to sort of go back in history here the name was the name on the allocated block of land so the the Jackson estate, when a woman marries her husband, the land is in the male line and she now is part of that.

[7:27] So her address is Jackson, as it were, or Judah or Issachar or whatever she married into, because you can’t run a marriage at two addresses.

And that’s the way it works. So belonging to the land, So we’re the bride of Christ. Where does he live? Yeah.

Dan: New creation, heaven?

David: Yeah. We moved to his property where he says he’s prepared a place for us. And there’s the place with our name on it.

It’s a great picture. And that’s why in our culture, I would say, we maintain that tradition because it’s a tradition that looks to the future of what Jesus will do for us.

Dan: So Dad then goes on as you were saying to start talking about you know made all the nations praise you basically because of the blessings that we’ve got yep uh and so Israel were meant to be a nation of priests who are on mission to everyone around them the Moabites the Syria Egypt Greece everyone turkey everywhere you go uh so Tonga how did how does that then relate so they’re going to to be talking about this, they’re coming into the point where they did do that for a little bit, under David kind of, under Solomon for a little bit, and then it all crumbles afterwards.

David: And Jesus, the wheels always fall off. That’s right.

Dan: [8:53] So they were struggling. They weren’t really achieving what they’re talking about here. And at the time, they had great intentions.

They’re about to do that, and probably that generation did, who were singing this at the time or who are writing this.

And so we then come full circle. You know, Jesus definitely brings about the blessings to all the world through him. And we have the inclusion of the Gentiles in the new Testament.

And that’s kind of, you know, Paul talks about that being the mystery of the gospel is that the Gentiles are included and all that kind of stuff.

So for us then. [9:26] Today with the blessings that we have and being in the name of christ we are then on mission too, how does this sermon relate you know throughout that kind of process to us and our mission

David: so the psalm ends the song ends the land has given up its produce god our god blesses us uh god will bless us all the ends of the earth will fear him what it’s saying is you guys out there in the nations, you’ve got your gods and you think they’re all these fantasies that you want to believe. Look at us.

So we’re not dealing with wishful thinking. We’re not dealing with fantasies of, you know, I don’t believe that tree exists, therefore it doesn’t exist.

I have conversations with people who say, I don’t like the idea of there being an eternity, right? I don’t want there to be an eternity i just want to cease to exist and that’s your ticket to suicide and you go well sorry mate just because you want reality to change doesn’t mean it will. you what’s his name Francis Schaefer was on a boat with a guy who was an existentialist and he his question was I was, are you a feature in my dream or am I a feature in yours? So how do I know that reality even exists? So Schaefer went over, boiled the kettle, held it over his head and said, do you want to find out?

[10:56] Are we dreaming or is this real? And the guy suddenly changed tone and, you know, the whole discussion changed.

Reality hits us in the face when we want to live a fantasy. and then we get, you know, you get a broken nose.

[11:12] What Israel is saying in this song, what God’s people are saying is, you live your fantasy, let’s ask you, how’s that working out for you? And then come and check out how this works.

So if you want to see, but in order to check out how it works, you’ve got to meet God’s people who are actually keeping the covenant. If God’s people are faithful, you will see those blessings.

[11:36] Now, we’re not talking prosperity theology. You might see them being persecuted and suffering, but you will see that life works the way God designed it to work if you come and see people who are obedient and committed to Christ.

Even in suffering, you will see that this is how life works.

Come and see what happens when you do reality God’s way. And to do that, you’ve first got to come to him and say, be gracious to me.

[12:04] Get rid of the sin questions, change your attitude, repent, and then come and it works. This is the life that works. And that means Christians, the world has got to be able to see how we live. That’s the scary part.

We’ve got to keep the covenant, not like these fellas where the wheels kept falling off. We’ve got to keep the covenant.

Marriages work better without adultery. You live longer if you honour your parents you don’t tell the world to go jump in a lake you live longer if you obey the laws of the land.

[12:43] Here we are, watch how it works because that’s God’s design for life and he will give you that if you will change your attitude come to Christ, come to God’s king and come under this covenant and change your identity from being an enemy of God, to being a person who bears his name. So this is a gospel song.

Dan: [13:07] Well, that brings us to the end of this episode. If you would like to come and grab the study notes that go along with it, you can head over to trainingforliferedeemed.com/130, we are up to. Wow.

So come and check that out.

Otherwise, hit the subscribe button, all those types of things.

Come and join us again next week when we head into Psalm 68.