Why would God bless you? Have you ever ask that question?
• I’ve not, until I was prompted to think about this, while preparing this sermon.
• Well, we can say, God bless me because God loves me. He is a good God.
• Yes, that’s right. So He wants to give us a good life. That’s all?
• God bless us because He wants us to have an abundant life – one that is rich, successful, comfortable, or plain happy?
Is that it? Something seems to be missing. Why should God bless me for?
• Apostle John says in 1 John 2:17 “The world and its desires pass away….”
• At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”
• No wonder King Solomon, the wisest man on earth, wrote Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
So when we pray, “Lord, bless me! Bless me!” it cannot be just for a good life!
• It makes no sense because everything in this good life will pass away.
• God can give us success, happiness and comfort, and make us really rich (if He wants to – He made Abraham, David, Solomon very rich),
• But this is not the ultimate reason why God blesses us.
Psalm 67 reveals one fundamental reason WHY God blesses you. [Read Psalm 67]
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, Selah
2 that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.
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.
6 Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us.
7 God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him.
This psalm is a prayer. It’s not wrong to ask God to bless your life. We need that.
• This is the prayer of Jabez – “Bless me, Lord!” Jabez, an obscure person who appeared only in one verse – 1 Chron 4:10 “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.
• Bruce Wilkinson wrote the book ‘The Prayer of Jabez’ in 2000 and it became an international bestseller, selling 9 million copies. I believe it was a phenomenon because this is the cry of the human heart.
• The Lunar New Year is coming and we’re going see people flocking into the temples to pray for blessings. Everyone wants BLESSING.
But Psalm 67 goes deeper than the prayer of Jabez. It tells us WHY God blesses his people.
• Verses 2-3 say, “That your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. 3 May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.”
The Psalmist asks for blessing so that the world will know His ways and His salvation, so that the nations will praise Him, and be filled with gladness and joy.
• The Psalmist is praying, “Lord, bless me, so that I might glorify you, and testify to a lost world how great, how loving, how good, how generous a God you are! Let the world know you are a gracious God who is willing to bless.
The psalmist did not pray, “Bless me so that I can have a comfortable life.”
• He did not say, “Bless me so that I don’t have to struggle so much to make a living; so that life will be smooth-sailing and I can be successful.”
• There is nothing wrong saying such prayers, but ultimately this is not why God blesses us.
• This is a greater purpose than just making us happy and having a good life. Everyone else is praying for this. We are no different from the rest if the END of God’s blessing us is to be happy, rich and comfortable in life.
• God blesses us, first and foremost, so that we can bring glory to His Name.
When God calls Abraham, this is what He says in Gen 12:1-3
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
• This is the reason God bless Israel, so that they will glorify Him among the nations.
When King Solomon dedicated the Temple of God in 1 Kings 8 he offered a long prayer, asking for God to listen to the cries of the people when they pray in the Temple - 1 Kings 8:55-61
55 He stood and blessed the whole assembly of Israel in a loud voice, saying:
56 "Praise be to the LORD, who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through his servant Moses. 57 May the LORD our God be with us as he was with our fathers; may he never leave us nor forsake us. 58 May he turn our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep the commands, decrees and regulations he gave our fathers. 59 And may these words of mine, which I have prayed before the LORD, be near to the LORD our God day and night, that he may uphold the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel according to each day's need, 60 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other. 61 But your hearts must be fully committed to the LORD our God, to live by his decrees and obey his commands, as at this time."
• Solomon asks for blessings, so that all people everywhere might know that there is one God, and only Yahweh, the God of Israel is God.
What is the purpose of all these? What is the goal?
• See verse 4, the focal point of this psalm (it is the literary centre; heavily emphasized in the original language).
• Ps 67:4 “May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth.”
[Much of Hebrew literature is structured with a central point in the middle, and ideas that parallel each other the further away you get from the centre. This structure is sometimes subtle, but in Psalm 67 it is particularly obvious: Verses 1-2 parallel with verses 6-7, and verse 3 and 5 parallel each other, leaving verse 4 the literary centre of the Psalm.]
When the people know God, when they are ruled and guided by Him, men will experience gladness and joy in life.
• Those who are not will walk in darkness, still bound by their sin and false idols.
• If God is the centre of everything, then to be led and guided by Him is the source of joy imaginable. It is the best thing that can happen to you and me.
The Psalm begins by asking that God will bless us, and ends by underlining that He will indeed bless, through an abundant harvest of food.
• At the beginning, he says “so that people may know God” and concludes by once again giving the reason for the blessing: That all the ends of the earth will fear Him.
So this Psalm begins and ends with the reason God bless us – that His Name be made known.
• Let God be glorified, so that His goodness, His mercy, His gifts and blessings, can be recognised and praised by people.
• This is a fundamental biblical truth, but unfortunately we don’t hear this very often.
It becomes so easy for us to think of God as a heavenly social worker, the One who’s up there to serve us, to provide for us, to comfort us, to care for us.
• We focus on man’s needs SOLELY, and end up perceiving God as a tool to meet our needs.
But God is at centre of everything. It is His glory that drives His purposes.
• In 1640s the theologians and pastors at Westminster, England met to pen down the core beliefs of the Christian faith in the documents called Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechism, to educate lay persons in matters of doctrine and belief.
• A shorter version called the Shorter Catechism is done in a simple question and answer format to facilitate memorization.
• The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is, “What is the chief end of man?” And the answer is: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
• This is a good one-liner summary of the truth of the Bible. God does not exist to meet our needs; rather, we exist to glorify Him.
So why would God bless you? God blesses you so that you might fulfil your chief end: to glorify Him among the people.
• The Lord says in Luke 12:48 “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
• So let us testify to the world the goodness and blessings of God in our lives.
• That is our chief end in life. When we do that, we are going to experience gladness and joy.
Conclusion:
Do you know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord? For without him, you have nothing literally.
• All other blessings - health, wealth, life itself - are brief, temporary, of no lasting value. He is the only way to a meaningful and blessed life.
Those of you who do know Him, do you crave God’s blessings? I hope you do!
• Be like Jabez, knowing that unless God blesses you, you have nothing of value at all. But understand why you want to seek His blessings.
• It is not about self. You missed it if you are only thinking about self.
• Remember our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
So ask God to bless you in such a way that you can bring glory to Him.
• Ask God not to give you any temporal blessing that won’t give Him glory.
• Ask God to bless you in such a way that people who have never praised God might do so because of you.
• Ask God to enable you to witness how good your God is, to those who are without hope, without God in this world.
• Ask Him for all this, so that God might be recognized and His Name praised.
I believe that is what truly makes us happy. Psalm 67 says so.
Have God blessed you? What has God blessed you with?
If they are not just for our selfish enjoyment, then think about ways you can use these blessings to glorify God.
