Psalm 67
Jan 16, 2022 2022-01-16 Ben Hoyer Psalm 67A message on Psalm 67 and its prayer that God's face would shine upon us, illustrated through Mary, Hezekiah, and Abraham, showing how God's favor brings safety, new life, change, and saving power noticed by the nations.
Read transcript
Auto-generated from the audio — may contain errors.
I've been looking at, if you didn't get one of these, I hung them up on our little clipboard thing. It's the readings for January. What we're going to do this year is follow the lectionary for the whole year, which the lectionary goes according to the church calendar. So this is like the first Sunday after Epiphany. And the church has laid out these like texts to look at each week. And they take an Old Testament, a Psalm, a New Testament, and a gospel reading for each
week. And lots of churches all over the world will follow a lectionary, maybe not exactly the same as the one we're doing, but definitely there are churches all over the world looking at these texts at the same time. And it's fun to recognize that we're apart one of our core values is lineage, that we're not the first to follow the way of Jesus. We come in a long lineage. And so it's fun to be reminded of that as we look at the text together.
And actually the text I want to look at for us this morning is the one that we use for the call to worship. It's Psalm 67. And I'd love for you to look there with me. Psalm 67. Remember that the Psalms are like the hymn book. I don't know if you grew up in the church, but the church that I grew up in, we had a
book here with all the hymns in it and you had the prayers at the beginning and then the hymns that you would sing. And the Psalms, most people agree are the hymn book of Israel. Most of the reason they think that is because there's this nice round number of 150 that the Psalms appear in the Psalter almost completely out of context.
They're not placed in any chronological order that we can tell. And we actually wouldn't know if they were in chronological order because there's very few contexts about what's happening. We're not 100% sure who wrote most of the Psalms. So a lot of them are attributed to David. Most people think that that probably means they were written while David was king. Some of them certainly buying him, but also lots of them for him. Then he would be led in together.
So the Psalms are, there's 150, they're arranged not chronologically, but in some places they're arranged topically. Like we have this whole group in the 130s that we call the Psalms of ascent, that they're all Psalms about going up to important places. A lot of them have markings in them at different times for the way that a group of people might say them together. They're all very poetic. So most scholars think that the Psalter was used in worship like a hymn book for the people
of Israel. And near as we can tell, especially in the first century, memorizing the Psalter was the first thing that children did in school was memorize 150 Psalms. This is why when Mary goes to sing a prayer of praise that's recorded, she naturally uses phrases from the Psalms because their prayers and their worship language would be
colored by their memory. They would remember phrases from the Psalms because as children they had memorized all 150. I didn't come from a tradition that memorized a lot of Bible verses. Anybody come from a tradition that memorized a lot of Bible verses? Does that stick with you? I'm curious? Yes. Yeah. I think it's something I wish had been a part of my life. I can remember Bible verses okay now, but not where they're from or.
And I like the idea of memorizing the Psalter. Ahada. Professor, Professor Celesca in seminary who was a professor of the Old Testament and had gotten his PhD from a Hebrew seminary, a Jewish seminary. He was the only non-Jew studying there. And he said he was also nearest he could tell the only guy there who did not have the Old Testament memorized.
Of course, in first century we figure by the time you were a disciple you were expected to have the Psalms, the writings, the prophets, the whole Old Testament memorized. I was surprised to find from one of my professors that they still do that in a lot of at least the one where he was. A lot of the rabbinical PhD students had the Old Testament memorized. So the Psalms have been important for our people as long as our people have been a
people. And you know, they kind of are like this a contextual thing that maybe we don't look at a lot, but I want to look at Psalm 67 mostly because these first two lines grabbed me so much this week when I was looking at the texts. So it says that in the heading it says to the choir master with stringed instruments, a Psalm, a Psalm, a song. It would be fun and will be fun one day to hear how it's sung originally.
But it opens and says, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. Then mine hasn't looked in the little break the word sela because your copy have that. You know, it's interesting about that word sela is a transliteration of the Hebrew meaning they didn't translate it.
They just took the sounds that the Hebrew letters make and wrote them into English. They transliterated it. And the reason they did that is because they can't translate it because it occurs really here. The way they figure out the meaning of the Hebrew words is they look at it in several different places and lay it against other words that they know. It's the context that it appears in that they figure out the meaning. Well the word sela only occurs like this. No other places.
And so they don't really know what it means except the way that it's used, it seems to imply after lines where you might pause and stop and think, might give space to absorb the idea that come at you in the song. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. I asked you about places where you sit because when I read that phrase, may God make his
face shine upon us. You know, this last week my whole family was in the house together for the whole week. And so I spent time in lot sitting in lots of spaces. And there is one space on this couch in our TV room that I thought of right away because at the right time of the day, I haven't really been there at this time of day much, you know. But I found out at the right time of the day, you can sit in this spot on the couch and
the sun has warmed the couch really nicely and it comes in on you. And the light is kind of perfect to read and you're like enveloped in this warm, comfortable space with the right kind of light. I was thinking about the request of the song that, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. And the idea of the creator God, the origin of light and light and warmth, directing its
attention just upon you, may the God make his face to shine upon us. And about what it would feel like to receive the attention, favor, countenance of God. And what would spring up in the space of that kind of countenance?
And the first image that came to mind was sitting in that space on the couch. O Z and the Wall. The next thing that came to mind was Gabriel to Mary or what he says to her when he visits her, God has found favor with you so you will be with child.
That the direction of God, this happens several times in the scriptures where the attention, the focus of God, makes, like conceives children in wounds. Elizabeth, Mary most miraculously, but also in Elizabeth and Sarah, that the favor of
God, the countenance of God, the attention of God is generative, like it creates things. And at several points in the story of scripture, markedly, like, notably, like, write it down and make measure of it, that the favor of God, the countenance of God, the attention of God will focus on these people and generate life. It's interesting that, like, in this Psalter, this phrase had been coined and put some music
and memorized from one generation to the next and translated over and over and written down and remembered this one little phrase, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make its face to shine upon us. I think the reason it grabs hold is because when the face of God shines upon you, one,
new things are created. What a beautiful prayer for you at the beginning of the year. God may your face shine upon me. You blessed me and your face behind upon me this year. This favor and attention. Right? Then I, so I thought first, when I thought of may your face kind of funny, I thought of
the warm, safe space on my couch. Then I thought of sweet Mary with the angel Gabriel. Then I thought of the story of King Hezekiah. You remember King Hezekiah. Kind of a medium king, not great. He gets sick and God tells the prophet a prophet, go tell Hezekiah, he's going to die if this
sickness is not getting better. Hezekiah immediately realizes he would like to not die and goes into the temple to the wall and says, good Lord God, please, I don't want to die. Like immediately. So much that then before the prophet can leave the king's palace, God talks to him again and says, go back and tell Hezekiah that I have heard his prayer and he'll live 15
more years. And that's exactly what happens and Hezekiah becomes a good king. I thought about this when I read, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us. I thought first of the warm, safe spot on my couch, then of sweet Mary, then of King Hezekiah because good heavens, if God pays attention to you, not only are you safe, can new things
start, but existing things can change. Even the intent of God can change. God sends through the prophet, he sends the prophet to King Hezekiah and says, you're going to die. Hezekiah goes to the temple of God and pleases him and says, please don't let me die.
And God's face is upon Hezekiah. He hears him and is attentive and then changes the course of Hezekiah's life. What a prayer for us at the start of the year. God may you bless me this year. God has made your face shine upon me where I am safe, where new things start, where things can change. And last, I thought of old Abe, I could call him Abe, I'll be poor with him.
Oh no, I'm just not talking about it. And then I thought of old Abraham.
Now, God turns His face upon Abraham nears we can tell for no good reason. Then He wants to. Abraham is not a devotee of the God of creation and life, it doesn't seem like. Abraham didn't ask for God to come and pay attention to him or give him any particular thing. The story starts that God called Abraham and God's attention and his face looks upon Abraham
and then he commits to Abraham to give him certain things and Abraham says, okay, I'll take them. And because Abraham says, okay, God, I'll take what you have to offer me, everything in his life changes and God bless old Abe, he tried to mess it up. Like we talked about, maybe David wasn't a great example, neither was Abraham. He has this one way in which he is a good example.
And when God's countenance when his face shines upon him and by some fortuitous, prerogative of God that bends in the favor of Abraham, Abraham puts aside his foolishness and receives good things from God. And such is the prerogative of God that Abraham, though he on repeated occasions, made boneheaded
decisions and missed opportunities, yet the favor of God, the face of God continued to shine on him and good things worked out for Abraham. He's buried in the cave of MacPella and celebrates in the resurrection of the dead, the face of God. Finally, sometimes we'll just find you. Drop in your lap opportunities and then we just say, okay, what a prayer for us at the
beginning of the year. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us where we are safe, where new things can start, where old things can change and where the gift of God is found when his face shines upon you. No wonder they put this one in the sultur.
It's a really good prayer. It would be a great prayer for you to pray even just this week. It's not long. It's half a sentence. You could pray it in the morning. Every day this week, hey God, may you be gracious to me and bless me. Would you make your face shine upon me today? Now, what's interesting, one, I love that, we could stop there, but we won't because
the psalmist says it, right? Psalmist, the person who wrote the psalm keeps going. So there is more for us. But we've stopped now, we've say love, and we've thought about that the first part. And then it says that in order that, your face shine upon us, in order that your way may be known on earth and your saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth. Say a lot. This is when you, if you were to look up this psalm and tell you what do people say about Psalm 67, this is what they don't really talk about the face shine upon us that much, though
they ought to, federally, write that down somewhere. They talk a lot about this portion that this psalm is about the universality of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that God is for everyone. And that's appropriate because at the time when these psalms were written, all of the gods were tribal. And this gave divine importance to their conquering other worlds or other kingdoms so that people
could see how much better their God was than the other one. But this was unique that the other nations didn't need to become Israel, but that God had saving, what does it say, saving power in and amongst all the nations. And I was thinking about that for you and I, if we have this face of God shining upon us, which gives us this safe place, generates new things in us, changes the directions of
other things, and finds us, according to the prerogative of God, unbidden and unasked for. If we have this face of God that's shining upon us, then what will happen, and I've seen it happen, maybe you have, other people will take notice because this saving, this face of God shining upon you, whether we're talking about Mary and Elizabeth, or we're talking about Abraham or has a tie-up, the face of God has this capacity, the psalmist calls
it this power to save you. And the way I think about that, literally, we use the word save in the church a lot and don't think about what it might mean practically or pragmatically. And here's one of the things I want to think that the face of God shining on you this year and how that might save you, it gives a significant direction to your life, purpose and gravity.
Think about Mary or has a caya or Abraham and what they're doing in the world, and then the face of God shines upon them, and now what are they doing in the world. Think about who Mary is, and then the face of God shines upon her, and now think of who
she is in the world. Abraham even has a caya, medium king, great king. If by the grace of God he answers your prayer this week and his face shines upon you, or
if by some kindness of the God, his face has shone upon you at some point in your past, everything can be different. The space you take up in the world can be different. The direction you are heading can be different. The wake of the influence in your life can be different.
The wake and significance of your actions can be different. When the face of God shines upon you it can save you from insignificance, from aimlessness, from reasonable, rational despair.
It can save you. The face of God shines upon you and can save you. The psalmist is saying, when there are those walking around in the world on whom the face of God has shone with its power to save, the world will take notice. That's what the psalmist is saying.
It could be for you, this week even, that the people's praise you, God, that all the people's praise you, let the nations be glad. The last thing here in verse 4, where you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth. I was listening yesterday while I was doing work, I was listening to Dr. King's last sermon
he gave or message at the trash workers union where they were getting ready to strike, part of the poor people's campaign. And then I listened to a little explanation of the way that he used the idea of the beloved community throughout his ministry. And it's like hope that there could be a world where justice isn't just the imputation
of the will of the powerful, but it is, equitably dispersing dignity to all the image-bearers of God. The idea that there could be a world like that is so hopeful to the degree that it is credible. And it has been a credible hope for the people of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from
the beginning, that they would have a God who sets up an equitable reign that lasts forever. And what the Psalmist is saying is that there are those walking around in the world on whom the face of God has shown, who have been saved, and now in that salvific position, in that being saved position, they live under an equitable reign. And even to the degree that they have the capacity, experience equity among them.
So I'm saying like if you and I can be people who this year ask for the face of God to shine upon us, we will be saved and might glimpse equity among ourselves. Okay, last, then we're done. Sorry, Psalms are good. Let the people's praise you, O God, let all the people's praise you. The earth has yielded its increased God, our God shall bless us.
God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him. Remember that this says that the earth has yielded its increase, that the creation springs out of the mind of God, the gospel reading that they assigned for today that we won't go into. But I'll just give you the brief version. It's from John chapter two, and it's the first miracle of Jesus in John chapter two, which you might remember his mother changes his mind about when his time to demonstrate
his miraculous capability comes, and it's because he's at a wedding. And the weddings are three day long events, and they plan for these three day long events for at least a year. Part of the long engagement period is saving up enough money to throw a party for the whole town for three days, and they get to a point in the wedding where the whole town has drunk all the wine. And there's no wine left because they've been drinking for three days.
And Mary pulls the Savior of the world into his active ministry with the request, makes some more wine for the people. And he doesn't make like a little bit of wine for the head table. He makes, and the amount is intended to communicate an overflowing abundance of wine. Like that Jesus' first miracle in the world is to bring people who have already had too
much wine, more wine. Right? Because the earth yields forth its abundance. The God is not only severe and exacting, but also celebratory. And celebrates its abundance. The image of the promised land is always one dripping with milk and honey, where vineyards are, or the grapes are unreasonably large to produce wine that is unseasonably good.
The Psalmist says that we can praise God because he will bless us. Psalm 67 is a good prayer, worth your time and attention. I hope that as you mull it over this week, you would engage with it in the way our people have for generations beyond count, with heart and authenticity, with vulnerability before
the God that says, hey God, may you be gracious to me and bless me. May your faith shine upon me with the power to save and to rule equitably. May you bless me from the abundance of the earth, and may my neighbors take notice, the Lord, of your great goodness, that is for them as well as me. That is a good prayer for us to see.
Let's sing, Psalm about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.