Guitar Ballads and Blessings | Psalm 67

This message explores Psalm 67 and challenges us to rethink what it means to be blessed by God. Echoing the ancient priestly blessing from Numbers 6, the psalm asks God to be gracious, to bless His people, and to make His face shine upon them—but it immediately reveals the purpose behind that blessing: “so that” His ways and salvation may be known throughout the world. God’s blessings are not simply about receiving the things we want or measuring how much He loves us by our circumstances. Instead, His blessings are purposeful gifts that should lead us to praise Him, recognize Him as the giver, and point others toward Jesus.

This message reminds us that we are blessed to be a blessing. A healthy response to God’s blessings is reflected through lives that are loving, serving, generous, gracious, prayerful, faithful, and obedient. Rather than focusing only on what God can give us, we are called to ask how what He has already given us can be used for His glory and the good of others. Whether individually or together as a church, our prayer can confidently be, “God, bless us”—not simply for our own benefit, but so that our generosity, service, encouragement, and love will help more people know and follow Jesus.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, so if you have Psalm 67, you're there. If not, you can follow along the screen. We are going to open and close our time together reading this Psalm. Here it is. May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face shine upon us, so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy. For you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. The land yields its harvest, God. Our God blesses us. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him. I want you to repeat this word after me. Ben Gina. Let's try that one more time. Ben Ginaot. Great. That is a Hebrew word, and it refers to Psalm 67. It means a song to be sung accompanied by a stringed instrument. So I am going to bring that into modern-day terms for all of us to understand. And we are going to call Psalm 67 a guitar ballad. That's how you can feel that one. Maybe the acoustic guitar, maybe electric guitar, depending on your taste in music, what you're into. But for our purposes today, we'll understand that it was to be sung in this ballad, in this driving, this bring-it-home sense, so to speak. It's a powerful psalm in many ways, but we got to understand where it's coming from in order for us to get as much out of it as we can, because this Psalm 67 is a throwback to an earlier part of the Old Testament of your Bible. And sometimes songs do that. There are songs that we listen to, maybe songs that we love that refer to historical events. Maybe you're thinking of them even now in your mind, maybe a favorite song growing up, or maybe on the radio, or songs that you even share with your kids, and you say, Man, when I was growing up, this song was talking about this, or maybe you watched a VH1 behind the music back in the 1900s, and you know what I'm talking about, and you're familiar with that. This song is a throwback. I think of a specific song every time I think of Psalm 67, and it's gonna sound bizarre, but go with me. In 1971, an artist named Don McClain wrote a song that you're familiar with, and I'm gonna sing a little bit of it, so bear with me. Ready yourself. And it goes a little something like this, and you're welcome to join in when you pick up on it. You ready? Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Bye bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. Them good old boys. We'll cut it off there because we're in church.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

I think of that song because that song's a throwback. He wrote that song talking of times that were, and there's a line in there that says, The day the music died, and he's making a reference to a storied plane crash of three artists who, after a concert, after an event, had boarded this small plane and they were killed in a plane crash. And those were Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and an artist named Richie Vallens. If you've ever seen the movie, it came out, I believe, a few decades ago, called La Bamba. It chronicles the story of Richie Vallins. Those three artists were killed in a plane crash, and it affected the songwriter, Don McLean, so much that he penned those words in an homage, in a throwback to that story. Psalm 67, as it says, May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us, is a throwback to a specific prayer of blessing found in the book of Numbers, chapter six. Now, are you ready for a dorky dad plus pastor joke? Here it is. The book of Numbers is full of words.

unknown 4:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

You're welcome. In the book of Numbers, chapter six, we find what is commonly referred to as the priestly prayer of a man named Aaron, or what you may hear in modern terms called a benediction. And I'll read it for you because some of us are going to be familiar with it. It might ring true. You may have heard it in a number of different settings in your life. In Numbers chapter 6, here's what we find in verse 22 The Lord spoke to Moses, uh, saying, Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel. You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them. Had you heard of that before? The Lord bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. You have heard this benediction, but where it comes from is a unique place because the book of Numbers is almost a travelogue story of the early Israelite people. For historical context here, the people of God were taken captive and they were in a place called Egypt. And under the leader Pharaoh, they were captives and were not allowed to leave until a man named Moses came along, and God had charged Moses with going to Pharaoh and telling Pharaoh, it's time to let God's people go. And Moses wasn't great in front of people. He he wasn't terribly uh confident in his words or his stage presence or his demeanor. So he recruited his older brother Aaron to be kind of a mouthpiece, a vocal leader. And so they went before Pharaoh and God did what God did, and you can read about it in the book of Exodus in your Bibles and released these people from Egyptian slavery, and they they were headed out and on their way to a place that is commonly referred to as the promised land. It was a piece of geography that God had told his people he was going to give them. And with average walking speed, with that size group of people, it was about a 40 to 50 day journey, depending on how fast they went. And they turned that month and a half journey into a 40 years long journey. And they they essentially, we refer to it as they wandered in the wilderness. But here's really what happened there. It wasn't like they were just walking in a circle for 40 years. It wasn't a constant foot in front of the other wandering. Here's what happened: the Israelite people was growing as a people on this journey, which meant they weren't just traveling the whole time. A lot of it is actually spent them posting up and setting up encampments to where they would live their lives on this journey. And they would have different places, they would do that, so they could eat and drink and take care of things, and they had interactions with different people. And so, in this travel log of the Israelite people's journey that we call the book of Numbers in your Bible, you'll see the Israelite people are they're growing. The population is growing. I would say it like this as they were going, they were growing. So not only was their population growing, people were having kids, and it's interesting to think about that. There are some who were young adults when they were rescued from slavery in Egypt, who by the time they hit retirement age finally made it to the promised land, and the bulk of their adulthood was spent in the waiting. Side note for everybody: if God ever has you waiting, don't give up. There were others who were born in the wilderness and grew up waiting and finally made it to adulthood, and they finally got into the promised land. So if you can picture it, oftentimes we think of it as this big long line at Disneyland, and they just had to wait there for 40 years until God let them in because they didn't spend money on the lightning lane. Like that's not what's happening here. They were growing as a people, which meant as they were forming as a people group, as the Israelites, as what we would call them the people of God, chosen by him for this time and place and purpose. They were also learning how to be a people. And because of that, they needed leadership. And so as Moses stepped into that position as kind of tag you're it from God, he recruits his older brother Aaron because he says, Look, I'm not that much of a vocal leader. I need somebody to help actually from the front, as a communicating leader, guide our people. And here's what's interesting about number six the most important thing to these people was being in right relationship with God, being in right standing with God. And so there's a word in the Old Testament of your Bible. It's called priest. It means mediator or go-between. This voice who could go before God, bring messages to the people, and then bring sacrifices from the people to God, because in the Old Testament, that's how that worked, and that's how God had kind of ordained it, so to speak. That's the word we use in church, set it up to be like that. And so Aaron, because of his leadership abilities, his ability to communicate and be in front of people, and who he was, as he was put in that position of high priest, which basically meant he was the first overall pastor to the Israelite people in this role. And as a result of that, his responsibility was to guide them into the ways of God, to follow God's way, to be obedient to him, even in the waiting of the wilderness. And so they're managing all the emotions and the stuff that goes on when you have got a very large group of people wandering and waiting and trying to figure out how to just behave right. And that's where you get things, like you will find uh laws that are often referred to as the Mosaic law, law given to Moses to pass down to the people. And you'll see these things come up in certain books of the Old Testament, and Numbers chronicles a little bit about how they interacted with those behaviors. And so in Numbers 6, you have God telling Moses, here's what I'm gonna give you for Aaron to do. And it became this benediction. May the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. It sounds beautiful to hear, but it was so important to the Israelite people that it stuck in that society and it stayed with them for a century. So much, and this is gonna sound a little Indiana Jones-esque, so if you like this sort of thing, you'll appreciate this story. In the sixth century, you're talking centuries after this priestly prayer, this benediction was given by Aaron to the people. Archaeologists were on a dig, and they had found, in the sixth century, they had found uh this uh uh burial plot that was built in the sixth century. The archaeologists had done this dig back in the 70s, but uh. And it was this old Jewish burial complex that was built in the 6th century, and this is gonna sound a little grotesque, but just bear with me here. They, as they excavated it, incidentally kind of dug up these bodies that they found in this Jewish burial complex, and in it, some of the people buried had these amulets around their neck. Amulet is just like a Disney Jr. word for necklace that you put something in. If there are any, you know, parents of kiddos with the little ones, and you watch Disney Princess stuff, you're like, amulet, where have I heard that before? It's there. It's Disney Junior princesses. You're welcome, that's where you heard it. It just means fancy necklace. And some of the folks found in this burial complex were wearing these amulets, and in them were these miniature scrolls. And when they pulled out the scrolls, they found may the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. They found inscribed on these miniature scrolls, worn by these people, they were buried with this benediction of blessing from the very first high priest of the Israelite people, Aaron. Now, what does that mean for us? It means the people of God took God's blessings seriously. So much that the author of Psalm 67 pulls from it to supply the people with a remembrance song that says, May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us. Because here's here's the perspective that matters. And we all have it. We all have a perspective concerning blessings. And we'll get to that in just a moment. But the Old Testament, when you read that, the people of God, the people who whose primary aim in life was to be in right standing with God, they saw the blessings of God. They saw asking for God's blessing as this request for God's divine favor to rest on them. And it was so important to their lives that some of them for centuries would have that benediction that Psalm 67 pulls from, inscribed in scrolls and worn around their necks at all times, and even buried with them. So here's the task for all of us as we learn how to apply this to our lives. What is our perspective when it comes to the blessings of God? Because all of us have some form of interaction with his blessings and some form of perspective. Because some of us are like, ooh, I don't, I'm not comfortable asking for blessings because God seems pretty busy with the whole, you know, being in charge of the world thing. And I don't know that God cares whether or not I get that new car I've been wanting. And so I'm a little uncomfortable with it. Let me put everybody at ease. It is absolutely okay to ask God for blessings. We have just read people who have done that. It is okay to even be a little uncomfortable with the conversation because your perspective might be uh, you know, not fully formed, and that's okay too. Because asking for blessings, a desire to be blessed, a desire to be blessed, that's normal. That's a normal thing, and it's okay to say that. But why? Because see, we got to take inventory for a moment. Like some of us are we're we're I don't want to ask God for blessings that seems to burden him, or I don't want to ask God for blessings because that seems selfish, and and maybe I shouldn't posture myself like that. Or maybe some of us, our perspective towards blessings is well, God, God seems to bless a lot of other people, and then some not so much, and the people that I see getting blessed don't look like they should be blessed. And the people that I see who should be blessed, they they're not getting very blessed, you know. So maybe God is God's messed up on this blessing thing. Maybe he's got his blessing barometer off, and it's not it's not coming out. And I think oftentimes it's because we see blessings as earthly achievements or acquisitions that make us feel better. That for us, a blessing is more about something we want instead of something God has. And if we can adjust our lens a little bit and see blessings for what they are, it allows us to interact with it. Now, some of us are in the room or watching online and we're thinking, I have no problem asking for blessings. In fact, I do it all the time. I treat blessings like an Amazon wish list. Because I think that's what they do nowadays. But back decades ago when Robin and I got married, and I don't know if this is still a thing, but when you would uh get engaged, you're you're ready to get married, you would go and you would sign up for what was called a wedding gift registry. Does anybody know? Is this still a thing, maybe, or maybe you did this? And basically you would go to a store and you'd walk in and you'd go to customer service and say, Hey, we're getting married, we are doing our gift registry here, and they would say, Great, and they would give you this like scanning device, and they would tell you, go scan the things you want and then turn it in. So then when people go to view your registry, they'll see the things that that you want. And we were given some wonderful advice. We were told, listen, if you scan it and say you want it, you're not telling people you're expecting them to get this for you. You're just saying you want this and you might as well shoot for the moon. Because here's what happens when you get married. You get married and and you you wake up together and you look at each other and you say, Great, let's go, let's go make breakfast. And you go downstairs and you're like, we don't have silverware, we don't have plates, we don't have towels, we don't have anything. I thought all this just showed up. Like for some of us, we didn't know we had to buy our own toilet paper. We thought toilet paper magically appeared in the bathroom once a month when we needed it. And then we got married and we realized, oh, you gotta buy this stuff for yourself. So the advice we we were given was take the scanner and scan everything because you might get it. So we registered at Target, Bed Bath, and Beyond. I tried to get Robin to let me register at a car dealership. She said, No. Um, she said, you can't do that. I was like, you don't know. They told us to ask for anything. And so we walked into Target with that scanning machine and we did one of these.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Robin's like, you don't even like that. I'm like, I know, but if we get them, we'll get them.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Some of us are like, I ask for blessings, like I'm scanning for a gift registry before I get married. We're like, God, bring it on. And and that's the thing about our perspective and our interaction with God's blessings, is for a lot of us, we're not even sure where we land. And it's it's something we don't actually talk about much. We just kind of say it. You ask somebody, hey, how are you doing? Oh, blessed beyond measure. What do you mean? I don't know. I've just been told to say that when I was in church for the last 30 years of my life. Some are like, God bless you, and you're like, I don't even know what that means. I don't know either. They told me to do it when somebody sneezes. In the South, we have a phrase, bless his heart. Now that can mean a number of things. And so for a lot of us, it's just something we don't often talk about. But what is important is how we see God's blessings because our perspective towards blessings is going to impact or determine our posture towards blessings. And so we need to understand why God gives blessings because he is a good God, he is a gracious God, he is a holy and just and mighty God who desires to bless his people. In fact, he told Moses, Moses, hand this message off to Aaron and pray a blessing over his people. It was God's idea. Sometimes we think it's our idea for God to bless us. Like God was sitting up there in heaven one day, and somebody came to him and said, Hey, God, I want to run this by you. Here's my elevator pitch. What if you just started giving us stuff that we wanted? And he was like, Yes, that's a genius idea. We'll call that blessings. Thank you, human. No? It was God's idea to bless us. But sometimes he blesses us in ways we don't see coming. And so, in order for us to understand how to interact with God's blessings, We need to have the proper perspective. Because sometimes we think, well, God, if He loved me enough, He would bless me with the things I want. And so we treat our view of blessings as a gauge to whether or not God loves us. But how many of us have been at stages of life where we had asked God for this thing and he didn't give it to us? And then X amount of time later we look back, hindsight being 20-20, and we think, thank you, God, for not giving me what I asked for, that would have been bad. Or other times we ask God for things and we want God to meet our expectations with certain blessings and he doesn't meet them. In fact, he exceeds them by giving us something we didn't even see coming. So if the barometer for God's love is him blessing you with the things you want, that's completely skewed because oftentimes God blesses us with things we don't even see coming. In fact, every single one of us who professes faith in Jesus was blessed with something we didn't even know our soul was looking for at one point, which was a rescue from self. And God in his loving mercy, grace, and kindness showed us that what our soul was looking for was rescue and redemption and acceptance into the family of God, into the kingdom of God through salvation. And so here's the perspective needed to have a healthy interaction with God's blessings. You need to understand that blessings are on a purpose. Blessings are not some arbitrary thing. We're not just blessed to be blessed. We're blessed for a purpose. And blessings are for the purpose of praise and pointing people to Jesus. Don't mistake certain blessings in your life as being determined by God's mood. God's not moody with his blessings, he's meaningful with his blessings. He blesses on purpose for a purpose, for the purpose of praising him and helping others see who he is. So it's not this arbitrary thing that he doles out because some days he feels like it and some days he doesn't. No. It is meaningful, it is purposeful. Blessings carry a purpose with them. And blessings are for the purpose of praise and the purpose of pointing people to Christ. In fact, Psalm 67 says, What? May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. I'm gonna give you two words to hold on to. And in verse 7, so that all the ends of the earth will fear Him. You need to understand something about the purpose of fearing God because you read it and you think, well, we want to be blessed so that people will be afraid of God. No. There's a difference between fear and frightened. Most of us equate fear with frightened because we think of scary movies or things that scare us. Fear of God is a sobering recognition of who God is and who we are and responding accordingly. It's really rooted in humility. God, you are God. There is nothing I can do to change you. You change me. God, there's nothing I can do to make my way to you. You are holy. I am imperfect and flawed. In your love and mercy and grace, you rescued me. Your salvation is what I have received. God, your way is always better. Your might is always stronger. Your wisdom is always greater. Your ways are unmatched. Fear of God is a recognition of his majesty, his might, his grace, and his mercy. It is a humbling and sobering recognition of who God is, who we are, and responding accordingly, which resonates this belief-moving posture that blessings are for the purpose of praise and pointing people to Jesus. And you should enjoy the blessings that God gives you. Oftentimes people approach a conversation like this and think, oh, well, then I can't enjoy the nice things that God gives. No, no, no. You could and should enjoy the blessings that God gives you. You also could and should acknowledge where they come from. See, understanding that blessings are for the purpose of praise and pointing people to Jesus means that when God does bless us, we focus on the giver more than the gift. And we acknowledge where the blessing comes from. And I'll say it like this, and if you want to write this down, you can take this with you. You are blessed to be a blessing. You are blessed to be a blessing. Christian, you are blessed to be a blessing. Blessed with the salvation you have received in Christ, so that you can acknowledge where that is from and live it out and bless others as you live out the work of the gospel in your life. And that goes even beyond that, not on just an individual level, but on a corporate, collective, Christian community level. Church, we are blessed to be a blessing. We are blessed to be a blessing. Is that our understanding of blessings? Is that our posture? Is that our heartbeat? Is that what we desire? Because you're going to notice something in Psalm 67, and you'll read it even into the words of number six in this priestly benediction, that there are things that show up in your life when you have this perspective towards God's blessings, that it is a sober awareness of who God is, where the blessings come from, for the purpose of praising Him, thanking Him, and then responding to it in such a way that your life points people to God. You're going to see things that show up in a blessed person. A blessed person is loving, serving, generous, gracious, prayerful, faithful, obedient to God's word. Do you know why? Do you know why blessed people are loving, serving, generous, gracious, praying, faithful, obedient people? Because they recognize where those blessings come from. They recognize what the purpose of God's blessings are. We could and should enjoy them. And we could and should recognize where they come from. Understanding that you are blessed to be a blessing. And it extends to our Christian community, as we said, because it's very similar with churches. And we we desire to do this. If you remember, if you've been here about a year and a half ago, we introduced a four-word prayer into our church. It has not gone out of style. It will not go out of style. Some of you can say it with me. Those four words are God bless your church. The reason we have prayed that is to acknowledge that it is God's church and every blessing is from Him, so that people would say it with me, know and follow Jesus. That four-word prayer hinges on those two words, so that. Understanding He'll dole them out in His time and in His fashion for His glory and our good. And so as a church, we see the same thing. Blessed churches are loving churches, are serving churches. Blessed churches are generous churches, are praying churches, are faithful to the mission, are obedient churches in his word, following his way. We desire to be blessed so that we will be a blessing. In fact, we have been doing that all year as a church. Earlier on in the year, we partnered with a group called Restoration 225 here in San Diego to bless foster care families in the greater San Diego area because of the generosity of our church. We provided so many items for them. They opened up a brand new care closet so that more foster care families would have more resources as they love the kids entrusted to their care. Sunrise Church did that. Also, later on in the spring, we partnered with the Salvation Army, where our church gave a literal ton of things to support the adult rehabilitation center that we have here in San Diego. There's only X amount throughout the country. And it's adults who are getting back on their feet. They had struggled with things like substance abuse and hard times, some of them even homelessness. And the Salvation Army has said, we want to come up with a solution. We're going to develop these centers. And our church locked arms with them and said, we want to support you guys. We gave them a literal ton of things to support people who are often just forgotten about or discarded because, quite frankly, oh, those folks are a little bit messy. And our church said, No, no, no, no. God bless your church. So that. So this church gave towards that. We have school supplies for teachers and staff and snag those on your way out. In just a few months at Thanksgiving, there's going to be a group of people, a culinary team and a road team, a delivery team and a culinary team. And they're going to work in tandem at Thanksgiving. So that on Thanksgiving morning, there will be a team of people right here in this church who are assembling Thanksgiving meals for people in our community who don't have people to gather with for Thanksgiving and won't get out of their homes. And we want them to know we see you and we care about you. And so this church will do that. Why? Because we believe blessings are for the purpose of praise and pointing people to God. So we are blessed to be a blessing. That's our posture. This last week we exercised that belief with a school called Flying Hills School for the Arts. We have families here whose kids go there and we have a relationship with them. In fact, our kids' director, Mackenzie Plum, her husband is on staff at the Flying Hills School for the Arts. And it's a big school. It's kindergarten through eighth grade. So they've got a ton of teachers. And so if you've been here, you know we've collected items for them. And we actually had handwritten notes for every single staff member. We gave them two because the kiddos wanted to do cards for them. And then as adults, we also did cards. So every single staff member at Flying Hills School for the Arts, and I'm talking custodian to principal aftercare, office aid, everybody, if your name was on the roster, you got two handwritten notes of encouragement and prayer. And we took them and we took them a bunch of snacks to just fill their kind of teacher lounge for the semester and love on them. And we brought a pallet size worth of school supplies. They sent us videos going through it and they're cheering and they're so excited and they're emotional. And we got to do that as a church because of the generosity of our church. And this week I received this email, and I want to read it to you. Because you are blessed to be a blessing. Dear Sunrise Church, I wanted to send a quick and heartfelt thank you for the beautiful notes shared at our staff meeting today and for your generous donations to Flying Hills School of the Arts. In a public school setting, we don't often receive messages of this nature. We live in a time when we are understandably careful about the words we share, wanting to respect the many different beliefs and backgrounds within our community. That made your messages of hope, prayer, and care especially meaningful to me. As a fellow Christian, I personally appreciated your thoughtful words, your prayers, and the time and effort you put into uplifting our staff as we begin a new school year. Your kindness was a beautiful reminder that our community is surrounded by people who care deeply about us. Thank you for thinking of teachers supporting our school and starting our year with such beautiful messages of encouragement. With my sincerest gratitude. Teacher at Flying Hills. Church, we are blessed to be a blessing. A Christian, you are blessed to be a blessing. That is our prayer. God bless your church. What are those two words? So that people will know and follow Jesus. We started our conversation this morning reading Psalm 67. We are going to end our time together reading this song, reading this guitar ballad as a prayer. If you would, on screen behind me, read it aloud with me. May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face shine on us, so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. The land yields its harvest. God our God blesses us. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear Him. God, we close our time thanking you for your word and echoing this four-word prayer. God bless your church so that many more will know and follow your Son Jesus. It is in your name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church. We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you. If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online, there's a link right here that you can follow and it'll take you to that payment portal. Everything that you donate helps not only go towards reaching people in the greater San Diego area, but also all around the world through our commission partner. If you want to get further connected, whether in person or online, you can email this email right here, and either myself or one of our team members will be there to answer it and help you get connected in any way that you can. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time.