Psalm 67 -- A Missionary Psalm

“God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.”
Psalm 67: 1-2

Psalm 67 is about missions! It’s a cry for God to bless us. But unlike so many who cry today for God’s blessing, the Psalmist is not thinking only of Himself. He has a much greater goal in mind. He prays that God would bless us and be with us, so that through us the nations might hear and know and worship God as He deserves to be known and worshiped!

Now, as I think about that, I realize that this is always the motive behind God’s blessing. God does not bless us so we can hoard the blessing to ourselves. He blesses us so that we might be a link in the chain of events He uses to bless others – and especially to bless them with the Gospel of Christ.

What was it He said to Abraham when he called him to follow Him by faith? He said, “I will bless you and you will be a blessing and all nations on earth will be blessed through you!” (Gen 12:3) Wow! Think about that. God doesn’t bless us so we can look in the mirror and say, “Gee, isn’t it great to be blessed?” God blesses us so that other nations and people we’ve never met can be blessed through us! How? By hearing and responding to the Gospel of Christ that we preach and that we send out into the world through missions!

That’s why I like to say that Psalm 67 – in addition to being one of my own personal favorites – is a missionary Psalm! It’s a call for us to realize that all God is doing in our lives today – all of his blessing, all of the advantages we have known as Americans is for this purpose: to make His glory known, and to enable us to carry the news of His glory (..the Gospel) to the ends of the earth so that,....”all the peoples” and “all the nations” may hear and be glad in Him!

God blesses us, that all the ends of the earth might fear Him! (Ps 67:7)

Pastor Scott Lee