Joel Kim

Whenever the Psalm is sung, the hearers cannot help but remember the words of blessings from the book of Numbers.

This is where we pause for a sec and ask the question, what do these words of Psalm 67, these words of blessing, teach us?

Well, it begins by teaching us that all blessings come from the Lord.

God, the creator and redeemer, is the one from whom all blessings flow.

Notice the emphasis here and the repetition.

May God be gracious to us.

May God bless us and may God make his face to be known on earth.

Just in case you missed the point, the passage in Numbers that records this blessing ends with the Lord summing up the blessings by simply saying, I will bless my people.

Actually, the text is even more emphatic.

If you look at the original, what it says is, I myself will bless them.

And the question for us is, why is there so much emphasis on where the blessings come from?

Perhaps it's because of our natural tendency to look for blessings in all the wrong places.

whether it's in relationships and the perfections of marriage or singleness, whether it's financial security and the zeros in our account, whether it's status, whether it be our workplaces or in our church, whether it be education and the letters behind our name, whether it's any form of success, however you form them, we desire to feel blessed from having and owning these things without recognizing that they're merely spiritual illusions.

They have no meaning.

This is where we have to hear again what James says in 117.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming from the Father of lights, we're told.

But this is where we come to recognize not only that all blessings come from the Lord, here we get to ask the question, what is true blessing?

What is true blessing?

Here, blessing according to Psalm 67 can be summarized this way where we're told true blessing comes from a face-to-face relationship with God, experiencing his presence and favor in our lives.

Let me say that again.