(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Drive Time Devotions
and our look at Psalm 67 today.
Psalm 67 one says,
may God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine upon us.
In that one verse are three of our greatest daily needs
and they're prayed for in this prayer.
God be gracious to me.
God bless me and God make your face shine upon me.
And that's what I want to dig into together
in these next few moments today.
Those three specific prayers.
Beginning with God be gracious to me.
The Hebrew word for gracious is ha-nan.
The idea behind the word is that God bends down
to meet our need.
The graciousness of God, he doesn't have to do it,
he chooses to do it.
Now, when you and I think of grace,
we of course think of the greatest grace that we're given.
The grace of forgiveness, the grace that comes
because Jesus gave his life for us on the cross.
It's interesting as you study both the Old and New Testament
there are many kinds of graces that God shows us.
In fact, at Saddleback years ago,
we did a series on the ways that God expresses his grace.
And in that series we talked about God saving grace,
but we also talked about sustaining grace.
Sometimes you need grace to get you through
what you're going through.
We talked about his healing grace.
The grace to heal you from the hurts
that you've had in your past.
In fact, that song, Rick Machau's song,
healing grace came from that message.
We talked about God's liberating grace,
how God's grace sometimes frees us
to be all that he means for us to be
in life and ministry and relationships.
We talked about God's restoring grace.
How sometimes you think you've lost it all
only to find that God can restore you to a place
that you never expected.
Maybe you need God's restoring grace right now.
He wants to show you that.
We talked about God's transforming grace.
God's grace, by his grace,
is making you more and more like Jesus every day
in your thoughts, in your actions, in your words.
That's his transforming grace.
In the New Testament, the word grace,
caris, and the word gift, they're the same word.
And the truth is God wants to give you
the gift of his grace today.
I don't know if you've ever had the experience
of receiving a perfect gift.
And you open it up and you think, that's it.
That is exactly the gift I was looking for.
You may have known you wanted it,
you may have asked for it,
it may have been a complete surprise,
but you look at it and you know,
that is just the right gift for me right now.
Well, God gives gifts like that.
Grace is a gift like that.
No one gives better presents than God.
And he wants to give you that gift today.
God be gracious to me.
He wants to pour his grace on your life today.
Grace is not some past event
that just happened when you were saved.
Grace is something he wants to pour
on your life every single day.
Ephesians 1, 7, and 8 says,
in him we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of our sins,
in accordance with the riches of God's grace
that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
I love the word lavished in that verse.
It's not one we use very often.
It's a word that reminds us
that you do not have to feel beaten down and worthless
because God has lavished his grace upon you.
This word lavished, it implies an abundance
of both quality and quantity.
It's not a little bit of quality,
it's an abundance of both quality and quantity.
It's not an abundance of that which is second rate,
it's an abundance of both.
Would you rather have a slice
of the very best apple you've ever had
or an entire mushy apple?
When you're lavished with something,
you don't have to make a choice.
You're given the whole orchard
and free delivery to your door
every day the rest of your life.
That's what grace is.
It's an abundance.
It's more than you'll ever need
of what you've always wanted.
And God wants to show his grace into your life today.
So pray that prayer, God, be gracious to me.
It's a powerful prayer.
And then the second prayer in that verse is God bless me.
God's blessings flow from God's grace.
I mean, you can say every blessing in my life
flows from your mercy, Lord, everyone.
Without your mercy, there would be no blessing.
I've talked to some people who actually think it's wrong,
it's prideful to ask for God's blessings
as if somehow you're expecting something of God
or you're demanding something of God.
Well, the psalmist here prays for God's blessing
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
So obviously it's a good thing
to look to God for his blessings.
In fact, it can actually be a form of spiritual pride
to not ask for blessings.
It's as if I'm above it all
or I can handle it all on my own.
No, ask God for his blessings.
He wants to bless you.
And he wants you to look to him
as a loving heavenly father who will bless you.
Now, the last part of this psalm
reveals something very interesting.
It reveals the truth that blessing flows from praise.
Listen to verses three to six.
Those verses say, "May the peoples praise you, O Lord, O God.
May all the people praise you.
May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples and you rule them justly
and you guide the nations of the earth.
May the peoples praise you, O God.
May all the peoples praise you.
And then the land will yield its harvest
and God, our God, will bless us.
God will bless us
and all the ends of the earth will fear him."
So you hear the order here.
May the peoples praise you.
May the nations sing to you.
The peoples will praise you.
And then our God will bless us.
We sometimes think that praise flows from God's blessings.
And obviously we should praise God
for the blessings that come into our lives.
But it's actually the opposite that's true.
God's blessings flow from praise in our lives.
That's the power of praise.
It starts with praise.
You praise God for what he has done in your life,
for what he is doing in your life,
and then more blessings flow from that.
That's how God's blessings work.
So God, be gracious to me.
God, bless me.
And then this third prayer.
God, make your face shine upon me.
I love this.
It has this idea of living
in the joyful light of God's presence.
And this phrase, the face of God,
it points to the presence of God.
When the face of God shines upon his people,
that means that God takes pleasure in his people.
Matthew Henry said of this verse,
this seems to allude to the smiles
of a father upon his child.
When a father is proud of a child,
his face shines in that joyful enjoyment of God's creation.
Now, when it comes to human relationships,
you may be having some struggles with this.
It may be that your husband or your wife
or your kids or your boss,
they don't smile upon you.
Their face is not shining upon you.
They don't look with favor upon you.
But I want to tell you this today.
You have the smile of God.
In Jesus Christ, in trusting him,
you have the smile of God.
You can survive the frowns or the rejection of any person
when you realize, I have the smile of God upon my life.
Now, that doesn't mean
that their rejection doesn't matter.
That doesn't mean that their rejection doesn't hurt.
But ultimately, the pleasure that we need in relationships,
the pleasure that we're seeking,
the ultimate expression of it is this blessing
of the smile of God upon our lives,
that God's face shines upon us.
So right now, just for a moment,
just visualize yourself looking into the face of God.
I know you can't see his face.
God is not seeable.
So you have this vision of light, but what do you see?
Do you see light?
Do you see joy?
Do you see his enjoyment of you?
God's face shines upon you.
2 Corinthians 4:6 says,
"For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,'
made his light shine in our hearts
to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
and the face of Christ."
So you have this sense of the face of Jesus
looking at you right now, shining on you right now.
That's the answer to this prayer.
God, be gracious to me.
God, bless me.
God, make your face shine upon me.
One way to think about these three is
by the grace of God,
we've been given the blessing of God
through the shining face of God.
Now, one more thing in this Psalm.
Verse two shows us why we pray for these needs
to be met in our lives.
Verse two says that your ways may be known on the earth,
your salvation among the nations.
God's face shining upon you, it's not just for you.
It's for God, for his enjoyment of you,
but it's also for all the people around you
that they would know him.
God's grace and blessings, they are not just for us.
They're that all people would know him.
God showed his grace so that those around you
could see and experience his grace.
He's giving you his blessings so that others can see
that he is a God who blesses his children.
Now, this Psalm is a prayer.
So I want to end by praying the truths of this Psalm together.
Would you pray with me?
And we just pray, Father,
would you be gracious to me this day?
Would you bless me this day?
Would you make your face shine upon me this day?
I ask this not just for myself, but for you,
so that your ways would be known,
so that your salvation would be made known,
not just amongst those who are closest to me,
but spreading out to all the nations.
Father, it's my prayer that all the peoples
would praise you, that even the nations would praise you,
that they'd sing for joy because you're a good God.
You're a God who rules with holiness and justice.
You're a God who guides us,
who's willing to guide all the people,
all the nations of the earth,
and praise you for who you are.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Tomorrow, we're gonna look together at Psalm 68
and remind ourselves that our God is a God
who bears our burdens.
(upbeat music)