The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Psalm 67 is a missionary psalm, a prayer that the gospel would be spread to the Gentiles. God shines his face on his people so that we, in turn, can make his salvation known among the nations. The blessing that comes to us as believers can come to others as well as we share the good news of Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In Psalm 67, David prays that all nations would praise the God of Israel. And David's prayer will be answered in two ways: by the nations seeing how God has blessed his people, and by those people spreading the gospel. Let's turn to Psalm 67 as we study David's plan for the whole earth to know the salvation of our God.

Dr. James Boice: Some of the psalms that we have in the psalter are very popular psalms, and they come immediately to mind. You mention the psalms and you think of Psalm 23. Most people can recite that; a lot of Christian people can anyway, they've learned it. Or we think of Psalm 14 or Psalm 100 and so on. We come in this study to Psalm 67 and I want to begin by saying that it is not a popular psalm.

I want to prove it. I'd like to see a show of hands of all the people who have memorized Psalm 67. That doesn't prove anything, of course. You haven't memorized the next one either, and that's also very popular. No, it's not popular. And the way I would like to prove it is this: I work through a lot of volumes on these psalms in preparation for this because the psalms have a number of difficult interpretive problems connected with them.

I guess the shelf of books that I work through normally, week by week, in preparing these sermons has in it 20 or 25 books on the psalms. Now, those are not all the books on the psalms that I do have. There are some specialized volumes I only come to from time to time, and there are some that are waiting. I have a whole library on Psalm 119; when we get to that, we're going to just have to take time to work through that.

But of these 20 or 25 that I work through every week, I found something very interesting. I find that very little is to be found in any of those volumes about this psalm. A normal psalm, I suppose, would be 20 pages in some of them; others deal with it more quickly. And so when I work through one of those sets in preparation for a study like this, it sometimes takes me a whole day to go through the material before I begin to write the particular study that we're going to have. But it did not take me very long to go through the books on this one. Some of them hardly have anything at all.

I have in my library, not counted in the 20 that I'm mentioning, five volumes of studies on the psalms by Martin Luther. Do you want to know how much time he spends on Psalm 67? Zero. He doesn't even mention it. He just passes over Psalm 67 entirely.

Well, I say that in order to point out that there is a great exception. And the exception is John Stott. John Stott has published a little book which is entitled *Favorite Psalms*. So he's selected psalms out of the psalter, the 150 psalms in the psalter. He selects 37 of the 150 for inclusion in this particular volume of favorite psalms. Would you do that? If you were going to publish a volume on psalms, pick out 37, would you pick this one? I know you wouldn't; you don't even know what's in it. But John Stott does. And I mention that in order to say I think I know why.

The reason is that Psalm 67 is a missionary psalm. It talks about the expansion of the knowledge of God to the Gentile nations, and John Stott is very interested in missions. He spends most of his time these days in the Third World, very concerned with the growth of the church around the world. And he's been very active in the Lausanne Committee on Evangelization and those meetings, and he speaks in many, many places. He has an evangelistic missionary heart, and so he includes this psalm.

Alexander Maclaren said something about it. He said, "This psalm is truly a missionary psalm because it anticipates the universal spread of the knowledge of God throughout the whole world." Charles Haddon Spurgeon struck the same kind of a note when he said, "The great theme of the psalm is the participation of the Gentiles in the worship of Jehovah."

So you and I ought to be thankful for this psalm. It's because of the teaching in it and the prophecy that's been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of that glorious gospel throughout the world that you and I know God. If it weren't for these truths, we would not know him. We would be just like those Gentiles that Paul described when he was writing to the Ephesians: without hope and without God in the world. So we ought to be interested in it for that reason alone.

The structure of the psalm is very simple, but it's worth noting because it supports the interpretation I've given. If you notice the New International Version, you find it falls into three stanzas. And that's good; that's right. That's exactly the way it should be done. The first stanza in verses 1 and 2, and then you have a middle one, verses 3 to 5, and then you have a third one, verses 6 and 7. You don't have to be a mathematician to realize the middle one is the longer one.

Now, that's the one that deals primarily with the missionary message, the expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles. That's the one that gets the emphasis; that's why it's longer. So what you have are the first two verses sort of set this up, and then you have the middle portion, and then you have two verses that wrap it up.

Now, look at something else about it. There's a little device that the psalms use that scholars call *inclusio*. It's a Latin word and just means inclusion. It's sort of like an envelope that you put something in. And what that really means is that sometimes in the psalms, you have a verse, and then you have some more verses, and then you have a verse that repeats the one that came before. And so it's sort of a way of setting it apart. It's like bracketing it, or blocking it if you're using a computer.

That's a way they did that. And we've got two of those here, one within the other. The obvious one is verses 3 to 5. You notice that verse 3 is the same as verse 5. "May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you." And verse 5 says the same thing: "May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you." So that's a way of setting that little section apart and calling attention to it and emphasizing exactly that. May the peoples praise you, that is all the peoples, all the peoples of the world, not just us Jews. So you get that kind of emphasis.

And then I said it's a little block section within another block section. The psalm itself is the greatest one. That's not quite so obvious because the words aren't identical. But the beginning part says, "Be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us." You get to the end, it's saying the same thing: "God will bless us and all the ends of the earth will fear him." So at the beginning, there's a change that says "may this happen," and then at the end, it says "it's going to happen," but it's the same sort of thing. And it has to do with the expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles.

Now, that's what we want to look at. Let's start at the beginning: "May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us." Now, you don't have to know a whole lot of the Old Testament to realize right off that that's an allusion to the Aaronic blessing that you have in the sixth chapter of Numbers.

When we were doing our detailed study of the life of Moses, which took us all of last year, we came to that in due course, and were studying that blessing. It's one of the great poetic passages of the word of God. We don't want to take time to analyze the blessing itself, but it's beautifully structured and it's highly poetical. I find it to be that even in English, and certainly it's more so in the Hebrew language.

And you know the way it goes: "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." Now, all of that isn't mentioned here in the psalm. But when the psalm says "make his face to shine upon us," any Jew who was used to hearing that blessing, as he certainly would again and again from the priests in the tabernacle, would certainly understand that that is what it's referring to: the great blessing of the priests upon the people of Israel. "May God bless you and make his face shine upon you."

So in a sense, what this psalm is from this point on is a study of what that means. What does it mean if God really is to bless his people? Well, I'll anticipate what it means by saying what it means is that they're going to be a blessing to other people because this is a missionary psalm and because of the blessing that God has poured out upon his people, they're going to be a blessing by taking the knowledge of that true God to the world. So we don't have to wait till the end of the sermon to apply it. Has God blessed you? You better say yes. You're alive, you're in good health, you have clothes to wear, a place to live, and food to eat. He's blessed you, right? Plus you know something about him. Well, you better be a blessing to other people. And the way you're to bless them most is by telling them about the God who has been a blessing to you.

Now, that's kind of where we're going. And so you see right off, although very little is written about it, you see how practical it is. Now, let's just ask what this means, to have the face of God shine upon us. Well, a shining face is the opposite of a scowling face, or a dark face. You know, sometimes we use the word darkness, we don't speak of shining; we say scowling. It's like a storm cloud was hovering over a person's face. They're angry at me for some reason. Well, in the Hebrew idiom, the opposite of that is a shining face. It's a happy face; it's one that looks with favor upon us.

And if you're talking about blessings, that's a great blessing, isn't it? To have God look upon you with favor, considering who you are and what you've done and the fact that you've been in rebellion against him? You really hate the God who is there, at least before he works in your heart. That's what God says our nature is like. You have to believe him; if you don't believe him, then you're insulting him because you say he can't be trusted. So you have to start from that point. But that God who has every right to scowl upon you, and worse than that, pronounce a judgment upon you, send you into hell, eternal condemnation, has shined upon you, displayed his blessing upon you by sending Jesus Christ to be the Savior, by sending his Holy Spirit into your mind and heart individually so you might come to know that Savior and trust him. And God has shined upon you in a great way if you've really come to find salvation in Jesus Christ.

It's important to understand that that's what we're talking about because you see, when the people are going to go to the Gentile world, that's what they're going to tell them about the nature of that God and the way of salvation. Not just material things. You know, when we talk about blessing, that's what we think about. You know, if you pray and use those words, "O God, bless us," that's probably what you mean. You know, the prayer goes, "Bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more. Amen." That's the way we pray. And what we mean by that is that we want the crops to come in, we want to be sure we keep our job, we want to get the raise if possible at the end of the year, we want the bonus. We don't want the refrigerator to break, although it's on the verge of breaking down. We don't want the car to break down. You're going to help us with all that. "O God, bless us," you see.

Now, it's not wrong to include those things. Those are part of the blessing of God. But they're only part of it, you see. And if the greater blessing, which is the blessing of knowing God, entering into a personal, favored relationship with him so his face actually shines upon us, if that isn't present, well, then the other things aren't even a blessing because they can actually become a curse. Remember what Jesus said? He said you can gain the whole world and lose your own soul. And I notice that there is a correlation between wealth and a lack of godliness. I don't know if you've noticed that. There's exceptions, of course; there have been many people who have lots of money and who use it wisely and who are given the gift of administering the money. That's a great gift and they do it and encourage God's work and promote it. But generally speaking, that isn't the case.

A person when they're young becomes a Christian in college, perhaps, and they take all these things seriously. And they even say in church in a devout mood someday, "Lord Jesus Christ, I want to follow you wherever you want me to go, and I want my life to count for you, and everything I have is yours, and I want you to bless me in that." And God does, and he blesses them. And then they get a good job and they begin to get promotions and they make money. And you know, the more money they make, the harder it is to keep on track with God. Not that it can't be done, not that it's ever categorical, but it's difficult. And so they get to the point where, well, they're working all the time and they can't really do anything in the church because they're so busy. And after all, you know, when you're making more money, you get more things to take care of. You've got the second house and you've got the three cars and it takes a lot of time to do that. And they become less and less useful in Christian work. I am sure that's why God doesn't give more of us more money. If God thought I could handle it, he'd give me more money. "God, don't you think I can handle it, please God?" No, he doesn't. He gives us what we're able to handle.

And so when we're talking about the blessing of God, let's not get caught up in the idea that it's things. God does bless us with things; look at all the things we have. But the important thing is that the face of God might shine upon us and he might be favorable to us and that we might know him.

Well, that Aaronic blessing is found other places in the Old Testament, in other psalms, for example. It's referred to in Psalm 4:6, 29:11, 31:16, and about three times in Psalm 80. We haven't even come to that one yet, but we will. Very important, obviously.

Now, as I said a moment ago, the direction this is going is in the direction of Gentile salvation. Here are the Jews that are being blessed, and that's what they're praying for, that's what the Aaronic blessing is all about. "The Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you," spoken to Jewish people in fellowship with God. But notice where this psalm goes. You have that in the first verse, but the next verse says, "May your ways be known on earth, your salvation among all nations." At the very least, what that is saying is we can't keep the blessing to ourselves. The blessing has to be shared. And what it also says, and I'm going to suggest it as the way the blessing comes to the Gentiles, the way the blessing comes to other people is from those who have been blessed actually telling them about the gospel.

Remember that story of the lepers outside the walls of Samaria when they were being besieged by the Syrian army? Everyone was starving in the city and God delivered them one night by causing the enemy soldiers to hear the sound, the sound that sounded like an army crashing down upon them with the horses galloping and the chariots making all the noise, and they panicked in the night and ran away. And so in the morning, there was nobody there.

The lepers, who were outside the city, weren't allowed in, weren't allowed into the camp, they were sort of in no man's land, limbo. They finally said to themselves, "Let's go into the Syrian camp and at least ask for food. The worst thing they can do is kill us; we're going to die here anyway." They go into the camp and no soldiers. Everybody gone. But there's all the food and all of this, and they gorged themselves on it for a while and they take everything they can, take it away and bury it, hide it, a great fortune. And then they come to themselves and they say, "It's not right that we keep this blessing to ourselves. We're not behaving right, brothers. And we ought to go tell the people in the city." So they go to the city and they say, "Syrians are gone." Very simple message, you see, but it's one they were waiting for in the city and they come out and of course the people are delivered. Now, that's the pattern that we have here.

Now, as I said, verses 3 through 5 are the important part, the heart of this, although as I've indicated, it's set up by the first two verses. It's just said, "May your ways be known on earth, your salvation among all nations." It picks right up on that verse 5. Yes, "May the peoples," plural, the nations, it's not the people of Israel, it's the peoples of the world, "praise you, O God, may all the peoples praise you." And it goes on to talk about that just a little bit.

Now, we want to ask, here is this great prayer that all of the nations of the world might praise the true God, that they might come to know Jehovah, the true God, the God of Israel. Everybody has a right to worship any god they want, but there's only one and he is who he is. And that's the question: who is he? And the answer is he's the God of Israel. So how do they come to know this God? Well, the psalm suggests two ways.

First of all, by his blessing upon his people. That's really what these verses are talking about. And it's really what "bless us" here means. You've blessed us, and so may the world looking on see our blessings. Now, John Stott runs with this. As I pointed out, he says more about this than most of the other commentators. And he speculates this way; he's sort of speaking on behalf of the people. He says, "If only Aaron's blessing would come true. If only God's mercy and the light of his smile were to be upon them and with them always, surely then the nations would see for themselves. Then the nations would have visual proof of the existence, activity, and grace of God. Then the nations would come to know his way and salvation and experience themselves that God that rules righteously and leads his people like a shepherd." That's what verse 4 is saying.

If that principle operated in those days—may the Gentiles look on and see how God blesses the people who know him and worship him and honor him and love him—that principle certainly holds true today. We claim to know God as the church of Jesus Christ. We claim to have the blessing of God in our lives, calling us to faith in Christ, enriching us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Isn't it right to say, "May the world look on and see the blessing on the church and say, well, God certainly does make a difference for those people. I wonder what's in it; perhaps I should look into it and see"? Now, I am well aware that the world in its sin doesn't like that and is hostile to God, doesn't like the gospel. And so even though God blesses, there's great resentment there. But you see the principle is that whether they like it or not, the world should be able to look on and say, "Well, there's something there that's different." And then as God works, that should be one of the tools that he actually uses to reach people.

There's a second way in which the nations are to find out about the God of Israel, and that's the obvious one: they have to be told. And the people that have to tell them are the people who have been blessed. It was the Jews, they were to be a missionary people in the Old Testament, and today it's the church. If God has blessed us, we have the responsibility of telling other people about it. Suppose you have a blessing materially, something goes well in your company or goes well in your work, and somebody says, "Boy, you sure hit it lucky." You have to be able to say, "No, it's not luck, it's not even me, God's blessing. But I tell you, the blessing of God in my life goes far deeper than that. I mean, that could be gone tomorrow, and God nevertheless is a good God who has blessed me." That's the way the testimony should be given. And Christians do that. The tragedy of our time is that so few do it. We sort of live with the blessings, put our arms around them, we're happy God's blessed us, but we don't recognize the responsibility of telling other people from whence the blessings come.

Now, look, I want to go back to this idea of the priestly blessing, this blessing of Aaron. And I want to ask this question: when Aaron blessed the people—"the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you"—how was that blessing actually communicated? What's the mechanism by which the gracious favor of God was imparted to the people? Was it magical? A lot of people who think about blessings like that: something magical. That's what you need a priest for. The priest stands there and says, "God bless you," and so you're blessed in sort of a mechanical way. Is it done like that? Magic?

Is it done in a mechanical way by imparting something to the people? Some people look at the communion service like that. It's important that you actually get the bread. You have to hold it; somehow it comes along with the bread. Is that the way the blessing comes?

I want to suggest that the way the priests of Israel blessed the people was by teaching them about God. It's quite all right for Aaron to say, and right that he should say, "May God bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you," but the obvious question is, "Who is that God?" And that was their job. In the tabernacle in the old days, the law was laid up in the most holy place right alongside the Ark. It was there as a treasure that it was the responsibility of the priests to minister to the people. We think of priests in a different way today. We think of them standing between men and God, offering sacrifices and all of that, and it's true, they did offer sacrifices. But the sacrifices were simply visual demonstrations of the reality of the good news of the gospel. And so if somebody said, "Well, what's that all about? Why are you killing the lambs?" they had to be able to say, "It's the idea of substitution. We're guilty, we should die. God has given an innocent substitute in our place. This points forward to the great Lamb of God who will come."

And so you see the ministry of the priests was a ministry of teaching. That's the way the blessing was imparted. Now, I want to give you some texts that show that. And the first, interestingly enough, is the text in Romans that we're going to come to next Sunday morning. I hadn't planned it this way, it just fell out this way, but Romans 15, verses 15 and 16, are words of Paul writing to the largely Gentile Christians in Rome, describing his ministry to them. And here's what he says: "I have written you quite boldly on some points as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ to the Gentiles. Now, notice, with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit."

Now, he's using priestly imagery, isn't he? He's talking about the Gentiles being an offering acceptable to God, just like the priests would bring an offering acceptable to God, and so on. That's what he's doing. But you see when he talks about his priestly duty, it's not to offer up a sacrifice. He's just using the figurative language. His priestly duty is to proclaim the gospel of God. In other words, to tell people about God. That's how he fulfills the priestly function. And then as the people hear that and believe, they become the offering, what he describes in the 12th chapter as a living sacrifice. We don't need another dead sacrifice; all those sacrifices have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He died once for all to bring us to God. We don't need that anymore. All we need is a living sacrifice, and so the duty of the priests is to teach people so they become exactly that. That's what Paul's saying.

Here's a second text. It comes from Exodus, it's the 19th chapter, verses 5 and 6: "Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Now, the important thing about that is that it's a prophecy of a time when all of the people of God will be priests. Now, the priesthood was very carefully guarded in ancient Israel. The tribe of Levi was the tribe of the priests, and the high priest came from the family of Aaron within the greater tribe of Levi, and nobody could intrude upon that. You couldn't just decide you wanted to be a priest. It was something that was set apart, and people who took on the priestly office and offered sacrifices when they weren't authorized to do so were judged by God. So not everyone was a priest. That was well established. But here in Exodus, way back at the beginning, second book of the Bible, Moses is looking ahead to the day when all God's people are going to be priests. Well, you say, "How is that going to be? Are they going to offer up sacrifices?" No, no. The way they're going to become priests is by telling other people about God.

And that leads me to the third of the three verses. It comes from the New Testament, it's 1 Peter 2:9-10, and when I read it, I'm sure you'll recognize that Peter is referring to the text in Exodus. He knows that verse. He picks up on the language. Here's what he says: "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." That's what comes exactly out of that text in Exodus. "A people belonging to God." Why? Why are we a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God? So we can wallow in our blessings? No, no. "So that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

In other words, our task is to tell the world about God and Jesus Christ who has made our salvation possible. You see, there's a wonderful balance here. Spurgeon speaks about it in one place. He says that it's a balance between desiring the salvation of the world and doing something about it. Every Christian should want people to come to know God and find salvation in Jesus Christ. That's fine, and we ought to pray that that will happen, that God will bring many to know Jesus Christ. But we don't just pray; we act as well. And if God lays the burden of a neighbor upon your heart, somebody for whom you should pray, then he's also laying upon you the burden of doing something about it. You need to pray and think and work and find out ways in which you can communicate the gospel to that person.

And who's to say the church was doing that? If we were all doing that, we were faithful in doing that, whether the vision of this psalm might not be precisely, exactly, and 100% fulfilled. That all of the peoples of the earth might actually come to know God and praise him. You say, "Highly unlikely." Well, think back to the early centuries of the Christian era. In 300 years, the gospel spread throughout the known world. And it didn't do it by great programs or all kinds of money. They didn't have great programs, never heard of a program. They wouldn't know what the word meant, and they didn't have any money. Most of them were slaves. But the gospel of salvation literally spread throughout the world within a few decades. Actually, it had reached India by the year 60, 30 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It got to China shortly after that. And actually triumphed in a certain sense in the Roman Empire within 300 years. The empire went outwardly, at least, in a Christian direction. Think what a difference it would make if the people of God blessed by God today would actually do that. Think how many would hear and believe.

Well, we come to the very end. The last two verses talk about God's blessing on the land by causing it to yield its harvest. Now, at first glance, that's a little bit surprising. Nothing up to this point talked about harvest. I don't know why this is suddenly thrown in. It's true we've had it earlier; it was in Psalm 65 there was this wonderful description of how God blesses the land, enriching it, causing it to produce all its crops. But that fit there, and here this is sort of strange. You say, "Why in the world is that here?" Well, the answer, I guess, obviously, is if you're talking about the blessing of God on an agricultural people, the way God shows the blessing is by prospering the crops. That's the chief way in which they would be prospered. So they're asking that God would do that.

Now, the tenses here are a little bit puzzling, and I won't go into it in great detail. Most of the tenses in this psalm are puzzling, and if you read what little the commentators have written about it, you'll see that they're trying to sort that out. All through the psalm, the tenses are in the imperfect, the Hebrew imperfect, and usually that's translated as a present tense except that the translators are probably right here to make it what's called an optative, that is, a wishful translation: "may God do it, may God do it," like that. The problem is when you come to verse 6, this suddenly is in the past tense. "The land has yielded its harvest." And you'll find in some of your translations that it says that. It's a literal translation. Well, is that the way it should be? Well, that would be one way of thinking of it. Yes, the land has yielded its harvest, God has blessed us, therefore God will bless us. You could read it that way. But most of the commentators today think that sometimes that past tense is used in a future sense: "he will have done it," like that. And because the flow of the psalm is along that line, they translate it that way here. But you see the point is that the blessing of God is connected with the expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles.

And furthermore, whatever the tense of verse 6 is, the tense of verse 7 is certainly future: "God will bless us." He has blessed us, he is blessing us, and he will bless us. And therefore, may all the ends of the earth come to know him. It's no small thing to anticipate the blessing of God because God's a great God and his blessings are great blessings. Go back to Deuteronomy and read how God says he's going to bless the people. You know those chapters, really the core of that great book. It goes on and on about the blessings and the curses. Here's the blessings: "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, then the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God. You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock, the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You'll be blessed when you come in and you'll be blessed when you go out." It goes on that way.

And then the latter half of the chapter, on the other side, describes the curses if you don't go in God's way. That's no small thing, this matter of God's blessing and God's curse. But you see, the greatest thing of all, the greatest blessing of all, is to know God. And so I go back to the way the psalm began. It began with a prayer that God might be gracious and make his face shine upon us. Do you remember the prayer of Moses that's recorded in Exodus 33? That was a critical period in his life and the life of the people. It follows immediately after their sin with the golden calf and Moses's intercession. It's a very moving thing. But at the end of that, in the 33rd chapter of Exodus, Moses has a prayer to God and he asks God for three things. First of all, that God would teach him his way so he might know him and continue to find favor with him. And then secondly, that God would remain with the people and never take his presence from them. And then thirdly, that he might look on God's face and see his glory. All of that in verses 12 through 18.

God answers and God says, "Yes, I'll do the first two. I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you. I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, I'll have compassion on whom I will have compassion." But God said, "This thing that you've asked last can't be done. You cannot see my face because no one can see my face and live." That's profoundly true, of course. Not one of us could bear, for even a fraction of a second, to look upon the face of God as we currently are. He's the thrice-holy God; we are still sinful men and women. To see God in his glory would immediately consume us.

But the day is coming when we will look upon God in his glory. They say in theology that's the beatific vision: to gaze upon the face of God, to know him even as we are known. And that's what we look forward to. We taste it now, just a little bit, because if by his grace we've come to know him, we in a certain sense have come to look upon his face, finding out a little bit of who he is, what his character is like. And as we do that, actually to come to love him. That's how you can measure whether you know him: if you love him, you know him; if you are indifferent to God, you really don't know him.

But one day we are going to see him face to face, and in that day two wonderful things are going to follow. First of all, we're going to be like him. That's what John describes, only he's talking about Jesus. He says we're going to see him face to face, and when we see him, we're going to be like him in all his wonderful perfections, not as we are now, but as Jesus is. That's the first thing. And secondly, we're not going to be the only ones that see him. You read Revelation, you're going to find that there's that vast company of all those thousands upon thousands, myriads upon myriads of human beings drawn from every people, tongue, and nation all over the world who, by the grace of God and the instrumentality of his witnesses, human witnesses, you and me, have come to know Jesus Christ and trust him.

I don't know whether anything can possibly add to the joy of looking upon the face of God, but if anything can, it's the joy of knowing that other people are there looking upon the face of God too because we were faithful to tell them about the gospel. Let's not deprive ourselves of that joy. We have time to do that now. That's our opportunity while life lasts, and that's the important thing you can do. You can make all kinds of money; what does that matter? It's all going to be gone. You can become famous; what does that matter? Fifteen minutes of fame and it's all over, according to some people who analyze it. But to tell others about Jesus Christ and have them in heaven one day gazing upon the face of God as he shines upon them in his glory, to have done that—that's something that's worthwhile.

Our Father, we are people who live with a very limited vision. It's this world in which we live and our own lack of a knowledge of you and lack of devotion and obedience and piety. We just sort of frame our lives by the culture in which we live. We think that if we make it here, we've made it, and forget that we could make it here and lose our souls and therefore really lose everything that ever matters. Our Father, help us to begin to think as you would have your people think, in the glory, in the gospel, and to anticipate the day when we'll be in your presence and see you face to face. And quicken in us a desire to bring other people by your grace and by your power to that same knowledge even as we think of them now, individuals that come to our mind. Help us not to be found faithless in that final day, but those who have been faithful, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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