Psalm 67 – Why God Blesses His People

May 10, 2026 | Pastor's Blog, Psalms

Timeless Biblical Truth.

God blesses His people so that others will have faith in Him.

  1. Believers pray for God to bless them so that others see His salvation (1-2).
  2. Everyone should praise God for His providence (3-4).
  3. Everyone should praise God for His blessing in the harvest (5-6a).
  4. Believers pray for God to bless them so that others will fear Him (6b-7).
“Any attempt to measure the moral influence of the Bible would be presumptuous. We must be content to indicate some of the ways in which it has been at work, if possible without injustice to the moral teaching of Greece and Rome and of other civilizations. Some of its simplest lessons have been among the most far-reaching in effect, lessons which could have been learned from elsewhere, but were in fact taught to most western men by the Bible, either directly or indirectly in the simple moral instruction of the Church. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness; speak the truth, hold to your word, help other people, look after the poor, the widow and the orphan—the simple elements of personal ethics on which a decent society depends—these are not specifically biblical, but they have been drummed into us through the Bible, and, despite St. Paul’s excellent psychology in the seventh chapter of Romans (‘I had not known coveting, except the law said, Thou shalt not covet’), there must have been multitudes of beneficial moral decisions taken ‘because the Bible tells me to.’ That for centuries, generation after generation of Europeans and Americans have learned by heart the Command-ments and the Beatitudes and the Parable of the Good Samaritan is a major, though incalculable, factor in their history. . . . When every necessary qualification and ad-mission has been made, it remains surpassingly true that the Bible has been the preeminent source of moral reform, individual and social, for the western world.” S. L. Greenslade: The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 3, pp. 507, 511.

Questions for Second Milers

  1. According to this psalm, why should believers pray for God’s blessings?
  2. What qualities of God are revealed here in His blessing Israel?
  3. What are the appropriate responses for: (a) individuals and (b) groups? How do you respond to God’s blessings?
  4. Why would thinking about God’s nature and His activity in the world lead to rethinking our responsibility to Him? “That’s very perceptive for an acknowledged agnostic. Many of us want a word from God, but we don’t want the Word of God. We know enough to own a Bible but not enough for the Bible to own us. We pay the Bible lip service, but we fail to give it ‘life service.’ In a world where the only absolute is that there are not abso-lutes, there is little room left for the authoritative Word of God as revealed in the Bible.” Howard G. Hendricks: Living by the Book, p. 23.

“Goethe was right when he wrote: ‘Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us self-control is disastrous.’” Eugenia Price: The Wider Place, p. 34.

“‘Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee,’ Psalm cxix. 11. It was not the Bible in his hand to read it; not the word of his tongue to speak of it, nor in his head to get a notional knowledge of it; but the hiding it in the heart, that he found effectual against sin. It is not meat in the dish, but [in the] stomach, that nourisheth; not physic in the glass, but taken into the body, that purgeth.” William Gurnell: The Christian in Complete Armour, 2:269. (Written in 1662-1665).

“After captivating an audience at Yale University, the late novelist Ayn Rand was asked by a reporter, ‘What’s wrong with the modern world?’ “Without a moment’s hesitation she replied, ‘Never before has the world been so desperately asking for answers to crucial questions, and never before has the world been so frantically committed to the idea that no answers are possible. To para-phrase the Bible, the modern attitude is, “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we are doing—and please don’t tell us!’

The Bible Church of the Lakes