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P S A L M S
PSALM LXVII.
This psalm relates to the church and is calculated for the public. Here
is,
I. A prayer for the prosperity of the church of Israel,
II. A prayer for the conversion of the Gentiles and the bringing of
them into the church,
III. A prospect of happy and glorious times when God shall do this,
Thus was the psalmist carried out by the spirit of prophecy to foretel
the glorious estate of the Christian church, in which Jews and Gentiles
should unite in one flock, the beginning of which blessed work ought to
be the matter of our joy and praise, and the completing of it of our
prayer and hope, in singing this psalm.
| Prayer for the Prosperity and Extension of the Church; Conversion of the Gentiles. | |
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To the chief musician on Neginoth. A psalm or song.
1 God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and
cause his face to shine upon us; Selah.
2 That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among
all nations.
3 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise
thee.
4 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt
judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth.
Selah.
5 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise
thee.
6 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even
our own God, shall bless us.
7 God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear
him.
The composition of this psalm is such as denotes the penman’s
affections to have been very warm and lively, by which spirit of
devotion he was elevated to receive the spirit of prophecy concerning
the enlargement of God’s kingdom.
I. He begins with a prayer for the welfare and prosperity of the church
then in being, in the happiness of which he should share, and think
himself happy,
v. 1.
Our Saviour, in teaching us to say, Our Father, has intimated
that we ought to pray with and for others; so the psalmist here prays
not, God be merciful to me, and bless me, but to us, and
bless us; for we must make supplication for all saints, and be
willing and glad to take our lot with them. We are here taught,
1. That all our happiness comes from God’s mercy and takes rise in
that; and therefore the first thing prayed for is, God be merciful
to us, to us sinners, and pardon our sins
to us miserable sinners, and help us out of our miseries.
2. That it is conveyed by God’s blessing, and secured in that: God
bless us; that is, give us an interest in his promises, and confer
upon us all the good contained in them. God’s speaking well to us
amounts to his doing well for us. God bless us is a
comprehensive prayer; it is a pity such excellent words should ever be
used slightly and carelessly, and as a byword.
3. That it is completed in the light of his countenance: God cause
his face to shine upon us; that is, God by his grace qualify us for
his favour and then give us the tokens of his favour. We need desire no
more to make us happy than to have God’s face shine upon us, to have
God love us, and let us know that he loves us: To shine with us
(so the margin reads it); with us doing our endeavour, and let
it crown that endeavour with success. If we by faith walk with God, we
may hope that his face will shine with us.
II. He passes from this to a prayer for the conversion of the Gentiles
(v. 2):
That thy way may be known upon earth. “Lord, I pray not only
that thou wilt be merciful to us and bless us, but that thou wilt be
merciful to all mankind, that thy way may be known upon earth.”
Thus public-spirited must we be in our prayers. Father in heaven,
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. We shall have never the
less of God’s mercy, and blessing, and favour, for others coming in to
share with us. Or it may be taken thus: “God be merciful to us Jews,
and bless us, that thereby thy way may be known upon earth, that by
the peculiar distinguishing tokens of thy favour to us others may be
allured to come and join themselves to us, saying, We will go with
you, for we have heard that God is with you,”
1. These verses, which point at the conversion of the Gentiles, may be
taken,
(1.) As a prayer; and so it speaks the desire of the Old-Testament
saints; so far were they from wishing to monopolize the privileges of
the church that they desired nothing more than the throwing down of the
enclosure and the laying open of the advantages. See then how the
spirit of the Jews, in the days of Christ and his apostles, differed
from the spirit of their fathers. The Israelites indeed that were of
old desired that God’s name might be known among the Gentiles; those
counterfeit Jews were enraged at the preaching of the gospel to the
Gentiles; nothing in Christianity exasperated them so much as that did.
(2.) As a prophecy that it shall be as he here prays. Many
scripture-prophecies and promises are wrapped up in prayers, to
intimate that the answer of the church’s prayer is as sure as the
performance of God’s promises.
2. Three things are here prayed for, with reference to the
Gentiles:–
(1.) That divine revelation might be sent among them,
v. 2.
Two things he desires might be know upon earth, even among all nations,
and not to the nation of the Jews only:–
[1.] God’s way, the rule of duty: “Let them all know, as well as we do,
what is good and what the Lord our God requires of them; let
them be blessed and honoured with the same righteous statutes and
judgments which are so much the praise of our nation and the envy of
all its neighbours,”
[2.] His saving health, or his salvation. The former is wrapped up in
his law, this in his gospel. If God make known his way to us, and we
walk in it, he will show us his saving health,
Those that have themselves experimentally known the pleasantness of
God’s ways, and the comforts of his salvation, cannot but desire and
pray that they may be known to others, even among all nations. All upon
earth are bound to walk in God’s way, all need his salvation, and there
is in it enough for all; and therefore we should pray that both the one
and the other may be made known to all.
(2.) That divine worship may be set up among them, as it will be where
divine revelation is received and embraced
(v. 3):
“Let the people praise thee, O God! let them have matter for
praise, let them have hearts for praise; yea, let not only some, but
all the people, praise thee,” all nations in their national
capacity, some of all nations. It is again repeated
(v. 5)
as that which the psalmist’s heart was very much upon. Those that
delight in praising God themselves cannot but desire that others also
may be brought to praise him, that he may have the honour of it and
they may have the benefit of it. It is a prayer,
[1.] That the gospel might be preached to them, and then they would
have cause enough to praise God, as for the day-spring after a long and
dark night. Ortus est sol–The sun has risen.
Acts viii. 8.
[2.] That they might be converted and brought into the church, and then
they would have a disposition to praise God, the living and true God,
and not the dumb and dunghill deities they had worshipped,
Then their hard thoughts of God would be silenced, and they would see
him, in the gospel glass, to be love itself, and the proper object of
praise.
[3.] That they might be incorporated into solemn assemblies, and might
praise God in a body, that they might all together praise him with one
mind and one mouth. Thus a face of religion appears upon a land when
God is publicly owned and the ordinances of religious worship are duly
celebrated in religious assemblies.
(3.) That the divine government may be acknowledged and cheerfully
submitted to
(v. 4):
O let the nations be glad, and sing for joy! Holy joy, joy in
God and in his name, is the heart and soul of thankful praise. That
all the people may praise thee, let the nations be glad.
Those that rejoice in the Lord always will in every thing give
thanks. The joy he wishes to the nations is holy joy; for it is joy
in God’s dominion, joy that God has taken to himself his great power
and has reigned, which the unconverted nations are angry at,
Rev. xi. 17, 18.
Let them be glad,
[1.] That the kingdom is the Lord’s
(Ps. xxii. 28),
that he, as an absolute sovereign, shall govern the nations upon earth,
that by the kingdom of his providence he shall overrule the affairs of
kingdoms according to the counsel of his will, though they neither know
him nor own him, and that in due time he shall disciple all nations by
the preaching of his gospel
and set up the kingdom of his grace among them upon the ruin of the
devil’s kingdom–that he shall make them a willing people in the day of
his power, and even the kingdoms of this world shall become the
kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ.
[2.] That every man’s judgment proceeds from the Lord. “Let them
be glad that thou shalt judge the people righteously, that thou
shalt give a law and gospel which shall be a righteous rule of
judgment, and shalt pass an unerring sentence, according to that rule,
upon all the children of men, against which there will lie no
exception.” Let us all be glad that we are not to be one another’s
judges, but that he that judges us is the Lord, whose judgment we are
sure is according to truth.
III. He concludes with a joyful prospect of all good when God shall do
this, when the nations shall be converted and brought to praise
God.
1. The lower world shall smile upon them, and they shall have the
fruits of that
(v. 6):
Then shall the earth yield her increase. Not but that God gave
rain from heaven and fruitful seasons to the nations when they sat
in darkness
(Acts xiv. 17);
but when they were converted the earth yielded its increase to God; the
meat and the drink then became a meat-offering and a drink-offering
to the Lord our God
(Joel ii. 14);
and then it was fruitful to some good purpose. Then it yielded its
increase more than before to the comfort of men, who through Christ
acquired a covenant-title to the fruits of it and had a sanctified use
of it. Note, The success of the gospel sometimes brings outward mercies
along with it; righteousness exalts a nation. See
2. The upper world shall smile upon them, and they shall have the
favours of that, which is much better: God, even our own God, shall
bless us,
v. 6.
And again
(v. 7),
God shall bless us. Note,
(1.) There are a people in the world that can, upon good grounds, call
God their God.
(2.) Believers have reason to glory in their relation to God and the
interest they have in him. It is here spoken with an air of triumph.
God, even our own God.
(3.) Those who through grace call God their own may with a humble
confidence expect a blessing from him. If he be our God, he will bless
us with special blessings.
(4.) The blessing of God, as ours in covenant, is that which sweetens
all our creature-comforts to us, and makes them comforts indeed; then
we receive the increase of the earth as a mercy indeed when with it
God, even our own God, gives us his blessing.
3. All the world shall hereby be brought to do like them: The ends
of the earth shall fear him, that is, worship him, which is to be
done with a godly fear. The blessings God bestows upon us call upon us
not only to love him, but to fear him, to keep up high thoughts of him
and to be afraid of offending him. When the gospel begins to spread it
shall get ground more and more, till it reach to the ends of the earth.
The leaven hidden in the meal shall diffuse itself, till the whole be
leavened. And the many blessings which those will own themselves to
have received that are brought into the church invite others to join
themselves to them. It is good to cast in our lot with those that are
the blessed of the Lord.
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