"May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him." Psalm 67:1-6
One of the interesting things
about the Holy Land is you've got the Jordan River going right down and on
either end you have large bodies of water. On one end you have the Sea of
Galilee. On the other end you have the Dead Sea. And you can't imagine two bodies
of water that are more different than one another. The Sea of Galilee is the
place that we always think about the fishermen with their nets. From all the
stories in the New Testament, a place of abundance where people can earn their
living by catching the fish there. They provide for their families and provide
for others, because of the life that's in Lake Galilee. But, you go to the
other end of the Jordan River and you find the Dead Sea. A place that has so
much salt content in it that large life, life that we would consider useful and
part of our abundance, just doesn't even exist. It's dead in that regard. They
both receive the same water. They both receive the same abundance, but the key
difference is, Lake Galilee receives, but it also has an outlet and the water
flows through it. But in the Dead Sea there is no outlet and so the water just
accumulates, year after year, century after century, getting more and more
salty and less and less hospitable to life. I think that is a good image for us
to ponder about our lives.
Which are you like, Lake Galilee or are you like the
Dead Sea? God is pouring all this abundance into your life. How much of it
leaks out? How much of it is passed on? Because one of the things that you can't
escape is that a basic rule of life is that you have His life in you and as you
receive abundantly and as you pass that abundance on in some measure to others that life is the blessings of that life is shared by other.
So when God looks at your life, what does he see? Does he see something that's
full of life, where his blessing to you pass on through and become blessings in
the lives of others or is there something stopping it up and making it become
more and more inhospitable to the life of the Spirit? You are blessed to be a
blessing. So as you focus on this what worship means and as you thank God, will you recommit
yourself to being a channel, a channel of good things to the incredible
variety of people that God has put around you? Because even as you share this
life with others, you receive it more abundantly in your own life.
That is the central truth of this great Psalm! It elevates the role of worship in your life and the life of your church. Worship done right will change your world!