Joy To The World! Why God’s Glory Demands A Global Choir - Psalm 67 Series

Introduction: Making missions a delight

I am on a quest in my spiritual life at this time to convert more and more of the things I do from mere discipline to the expression of or pursuit of joy. The man who can’t stand being around his wife but who forces himself to take her out on dates anyway out of sheer duty is severely deficient in love. His goal should be to convert what is now mere duty to the activity of desire and delight. God is not honored when we obey or serve Him out of mere duty alone. That does not show Him to be the great, satisfying, joy-giving delight that He is. The core of love is desire and delight. And so progress in the Christian life comes in great measure by converting areas of mere duty into thing you really want to do. And that goes for everything you do in the Christian life – reading your Bible, prayer, coming to church, loving people, giving to the church and to the poor, fulfilling your vocational calling, etc.

Today we are going to study how to do that in the area of missions. I think if I asked for a show of hands for how many are committed to world missions, probably every hand would go up. But if we were honest with ourselves, probably a significant number of us would have to admit that our commitment comes much more from mere duty and discipline than from desire and delight. I pay my taxes because I’m supposed to. I eat banana splits because I want to. And my goal is to make my commitment to and involvement in missions more like my commitment to banana splits than like my commitment to paying taxes. And one of the best places to learn how to do that is in Psalm 67.

I. The Mission: Joy to the world!

The core of this psalm is the middle section - vv.3-5. There we hear the psalmist singing his version of “Joy to the World.”

3 May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. 4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth. Selah 5 May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.

A. Praise and joy

All three verses are saying essentially the same thing, because praise is an outburst of joy. Praise is nothing but the expression of joy in God. And when you understand that, you can see that these verses are just saturated with joy. 3 May the peoples express joy in you, O God; may all the peoples express joy in you. 4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy, … 5 May the peoples express joy in you, O God; may all the peoples express joy in you.

Six times in a row the psalmist prays for the same thing. You don’t have to be a great theologian to be able to interpret this. He really, really, really, really wants all peoples in all nations everywhere in the world to be overflowing with exuberant joy in God.

Last week I talked about hell as a motive for evangelism. But there is a higher motive than that – joy. The reason I say that’s a higher motive is because if someone just avoids hell, that, by itself, doesn’t point to God as an all-satisfying treasure as much as if someone is shouting for joy in God. The highest goal is whatever glorifies God most, because God’s glory is the best thing there is. And what glorifies God the most is when His creatures see Him and are thrilled by what they see. So the highest goal of missions is to generate shouts of joy in God in every language in every place.

B. His highest glory is our greatest good

The following is a quotation from an atheist in the London Financial Times. Why should [God] . . . expect us to worship him? We didn't ask to be created. … We know that human tyrants, puffed up with pride, crave adulation and homage. But a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects. So why are all those people on their knees every Sunday? The only incentive that writer can think of for God to demand praise from us is that he has a defect – a need to be praised to boost His ego. It doesn’t occur to him that if it’s true that God is the greatest and highest good there is, and God knows that the best thing that could ever happen to me- the most beneficial thing; the thing that would generate the deepest joy and greatest satisfaction in my soul; would be for me to see His glory for what it is and experience it and be so filled up with joy that the happiness spills out of my mouth(which is the definition of true praise); then the kindest, most loving thing God could ever do would be to call me to that.