Psalms 67
How many of you would like God to bless your life? Should you ask God to bless your life? Or is that selfish.
Jabez prayer: 1 Chronicles 4:10

Fundamental reason is closely related to Psalms 67.
During this morning we will consider three questions about the psalm.

1. Why should God Bless You
Jabez 1 chronicles
Aaron numbers 6: 22-27

Look back at Psalm 67 and let’s look at WHAT the person praying did not ask for.

1st: He did not pray for things so that he would not have to go to work or to work less
He is not saying, “Bless me so that I can be comfortable.”
2nd: He did not ask for things that would make him to be envied by others
He is not saying, “Bless me so that I can be successful in the eyes of the world.”
3rd: He did not ask for things so he could be a blessing unto others. Although that does not sound bad.

Will we glorify God when He answeres our prayers?
Oh the people that I have heard, as they would promise God: “O God, make a way, heal me, provide for this need, save our marriage,…….. and God I will serve You and I will work for You as long as I live!” But after God answered their prayers they soon forgot and failed to glorify God with their lives.

What better purpose could we have in this life.
What better reason for living.
What better reason for getting up another day.
Living Testimonies That Offer Up To God Continous
Praise and Glory.

This was the spirit of the apostle Paul:

Philippians 1: 12-21 ’But I would ye should understand brethern, that the things which have happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel .. So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in

Paul’s entire purpose was to exalt and glorify and magnify God, even in his sufferings. Even in bonds he was known as one that gave God praise and exaltation. Recall the 16th chapter of Acts when he was placed in prison in Philippi, at midnight he praised God in song rejoicing. In his pain, he exalted God.

This psalm goes deeper than that.. Let’s read 1-2
This psalms begin by asking for blessing n finishes with blessing
1 kings 8:60: The Israelites have just completed the building of the temple. King Solomon offers a lengthy prayer, in part asking that God would meet His people’s needs. He then gives the reason why God should bless His people in this way: “so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God and that there is no other.”
John 12:27-28 & Mark 14:32
e.g.: let us look to the greatest example there is to be found, Jesus.
Mark 14:32 ’And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane, and He saith to His disciples,….
Jesus came to earth to GLORIFY HIS FATHER and in His death, He did exactly that, even though it required His sufferings and His death.

“I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

So why should God bless you? God blesses you so that you might fulfill your chief end: to glorify Him

2. Glorify his name amongst whom?
Verse 2 n 3

God blesses us so that we might glorify His name among whom?
– Among those who are already believers?
– Among those who call themselves Christians?
– Among other Malayalees?
– Among those who are similar to yourself?

Why do you live?
What are your goals and desires?
Are they are selfish, self centered?
Do you truly desire to glorify God with you life and with whatever you have.

People / peoples… Grammar mistake?
Revelation 7:9-10
Thus, for us the task of missions is not complete until there is a true church among every people group on this planet. We must, therefore, reach out not only to those in our own culture, but also to those who are different from us; we must spread the gospel in our own neighborhoods, and also cross-culturally. With thousands of people groups yet unreached with the gospel – with millions of people having no Christian witness from anyone in their own culture – we must focus mission efforts on reaching these unreached groups.

Thus God gives us the mandate, and He promises to bring to empower us to fulfill that mandate, so that believers will come to Him from all the nations

3. What is the impact on the people’s?
Verse 3 n 4 answer this question,

note that verses 3 and 5 are not only parallel but identical.

verse 4 is the literary center of this psalm
Peter – ‘joy inexpressible’

Animists, Moslems, Buddhists, nominal Christians – all those who are without a vital relationship with the only living and true God – do not have what the Apostle Peter calls “joy inexpressible,” the deep gladness and joy of knowing God Himself.

For if God is at center of all things, if He is the most beautiful, most loving, most powerful of all beings, recognizing who He is, being in relationship to Him, being led and guided and governed by Him, is the source of the greatest joy imaginable.

Conclusion

In conclusion, let me ask you three more questions:

1) Do you know Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as Savior and Lord? For without him, all other blessings – health, wealth, life itself – are brief, temporary, of no lasting value. He is the only way to true blessings. If we reject Him, as the author of the book of Hebrews writes, our prospects are only a terrifying expectation of judgment. So recognize Him! Savor His goodness and beauty! Ask God to break through your thick head and tough skin! Ask Him to remove your heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh! Fall before Him, saying, “Could you save even me?” And He will do so; a broken heart He will never despise.

2) Those of you who do know Him, who recognize Him as your Lord and Savoir: 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.

3) But why do you seek God’s blessings? Do you acknowledge that your chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever? Ask God to bless you in such a way that you can bring great 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 peoples who have never praised the only living and true God might do so.

Ask God to enable you to witness boldly and lovingly to the thousands you encounter every month who are by nature children of wrath, who are walking in darkness, who are without hope, without God in the world.

Ask God, “Is it I, Lord? I will go, Lord, wherever You lead me.”

Ask God to help you send and support others.

Ask Him for all this, so that God might be recognized and proclaimed as supreme in every language on this planet, to the great joy of all the peoples.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy