Wednesday, January 2, 2013

God's Promise to Those Who Generously Support Missions

Psalm 67 (ESV)
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
   that Your way may be known on earth,
          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 earth. Selah
Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You!
The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear Him!
This has always been one of my favorite texts in all of the Bible. Really, it's a pretty simple text, and one need not peruse a multitude of commentaries to get the essence and thrust of this heartfelt plea for God to be supremely glorified in all the earth.

The psalmist, aware of the flow of redemptive history, rightly understands that God has always purposed His people as the very instrument or conduit through which His blessing is spread and dispersed throughout the world:
  • In Genesis 1-2, God blesses His people and commands them to "be fruitful and multiply". In doing so, God's vice-regents will display His reign throughout His creation.
  • Even after the Fall of Genesis 3, this pattern of God blessing His people and subsequently commissioning them "occupy" His world for the sake of His name in the account of Noah in Genesis 9.
  • In one of the most important sections of the Bible, God chooses Abraham to become His means of bringing His blessing and reigning presence to all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3).
  • At another crucially important juncture in redemptive history, God tells the people of Israel that the very purpose He has redeemed them out of their slavery and bondage in Egypt is that they might - as His chosen ambassadors - extend His reigning blessing to the surrounding nations (Exodus 19:5-6)
However, in these promises, there is one prerequisite stipulation that must be kept if God's purpose of blessing the nations through His people is to be carried out: obedience.

For example, though God makes unilateral and unconditional promises to Abraham in Genesis 15, we see that these promises will only come to pass if Abraham "serves [Yahweh] faithfully and lives a blameless life" (NLT). [Cf. Deuteronomy 7-9, etc.].

This is the great tension we find all throughout Scripture: God is sovereign, and His plans cannot be thwarted; and yet, we see throughout the same Scriptures that man has been given a responsibility in the carrying out of God's great and glorious purposes.

Unfortunately, one of the great dangers in the camp of many Calvinists is an unbalanced approach to the Scriptures that focus solely on God's sovereignty to the neglect of mankind's responsibility and role in the great purposes in redemptive history. The reasoning is that since God will save His elect anyways, there is really no great urgency required. Such thinking is wicked and unbiblical, and will result in the forfeiting of much of God's blessing upon one's life.

"God, be gracious to us, and bless us; make Your face to shine upon us!" Why? "So that His ways may be known throughout the earth."

In Hebrew parallelism, God's "way" is how He deals with and demonstrates to His people His "saving power." Simply put, God has powerfully saved His people to be put on display for the nations to see God's glorious and merciful ways towards mankind (cf. Psalm 51:13, NET). The surrounding nations were to look at Israel, and say, "Wow, what an amazingly gracious and merciful and all-wise God is Yahweh, the God of Israel!"

This is why the psalmist asks for a blessing from God. The believer wants God's blessing so that the peoples (NET = "nations") might praise Him (note, the Hebrew verb "praised" can also be translated "confess [sin]").

Why has God prospered us in North America? Not so we can live posh, comfortable, self-indulgent, disobedient lives. No! A thousand times no! God has blessed us financially so that we might contribute to His great and all-consuming cause of bringing praise to His name among the nations.

I love how the psalmist relates the conversion of the nations [through the faithful, obedient proclamation of God's "way"] to a bumper crop harvest. In the old covenant, a sign of God's blessing upon Israel was a bountiful harvest. In the new covenant, the sign is not merely an abundant harvest of fruit or wheat, but an abundant harvest of souls.

Reader, how are you using God's material blessings? Are you spending them upon yourself, or are you wholeheartedly, unreservedly, and uncompromisingly giving "beyond your means" (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:3) to the great cause of the expansion of the gospel of Christ? Remember a characteristic of those who are "righteous" is that they distribute their monetary treasures freely for gospel purposes (2 Corinthians 9:9).

I can personally say that as our generosity increases, so too does God's blessing upon us. He loves to bless those who truly believe and live out Jesus' words, "it is more blessed to give than receive" (Acts 20:35). As our church has gone against "reason" and increased our foreign and local missions' giving, we have seen that indeed God has a great harvest. I am still convinced that had we not been obedient to His word in this regards that we would still be treading water, trying to make ends meet, seeing no conversions or baptisms. Dear Christian, as you give sacrificially to the cause of the spread of the gospel, God's blessing is promised.

It is not enough to ask God to keep us from being liberal in our theology. We need to ask Him to make us liberal in our giving.

Read Psalm 67 over again. Better yet, memorize it. Still better, act upon it. Pray that your church would increase its missions' budget, to support those called to preach the gospel.

God is sovereign, yes. But, are you being obedient?

A simple equation: no gospel = no salvation = no praise of Christ among the nations (read Romans 10:13-17; 15:8-21). What is holding us back? Will we continue to forfeit God's blessing?

Let all the nations praise You, Jesus, let all the nations praise You.

For the glory of God in Christ among the nations,
Pastor Ryan