My wife and I are reading through the Psalms in our evening reading and occasionally a nugget of the Psalms jumps out of the page. Don’t you love it when, after years of reading the “Old Book” passages become alive, reinforcing old teachings or simply warming your heart.
This is the book of Psalms, and it is rich.
I pray I can communicate a portion of the blessing we receive from this wonderful book.
Psalm 67:1-3
1 To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm. A Song. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
2 that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!
One of my grandbabies came over to visit us for few moments a couple days back. He is a little two year old that, along with his brother, my wife watches a couple times a month. He is an energetic youngin’ and we always, with all our children and grandchildren, need a hug when the come and when they leave. I am tending to become a huggy guy!
Nevertheless, this little buckaroo gave us our hugs, but while in Gramma’s arms, turned his head and started having an attitude. He turned his face away from Gramma. He was expressing a natural reaction to some issue he was upset with Gramma about. I think it was candy related! It didn’t last long for my wife let him know it wasn’t acceptable to act like that. No candy was wrestled out of my wife’s pantry by that behavior!
But I digress. When we see a phrase in our first verse about making God’s face shine upon us, this indicates His face is not shining upon the author. There was anger being expressed, and the author knew it.
He is requesting that God turn His face to him. Now I am not in any way trying to portray God as a demanding little child, that wants something we have, but I seek only to communicate that the act of having a face turned away speaks of loss of relationship. My wifey and Theo have a great relationship, but at this time, he had his eyes on something else.
God is not turning away for some selfish desire, but because of our sin against Him. We have offended Him.
Yet notice the Psalmist speaks of God making His face turn to us. With Theo, Gramma had to explain the situation, and require Theo to “face” her. For the Psalmist, all of this action is passive, the only active participant is God Himself.
God makes His face turn to us. Does this not scream of the crucifixion, of the free will offering of the Savior, of His work to satisfy the Father and to make the wall of partition fall down between us, of His making peace between us?
Even the purpose of this “making God’s face shine upon us” is not simply for our benefit but consistent with the Great commission, that God’s ways would be practiced by all on the earth.
Matthew 28:19-20
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And what is the natural response to this observing of God’s ways? Praise. All the people to praise the goodness of God, in that He made His face to turn to us. He did not wait for us to be good enough, or to bring more and more sacrifices, but He took action, and is waiting for the natural response of His people to praise Him and thank Him.
Take a few minutes this morning to praise Him for His many acts of mercy, for His face to shine upon us in the person of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Truly it is impossible to not be thankful, and to praise Him when we sit before Him and think on His love and mercy towards us in Christ Jesus!
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Considering the Bible 