Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation.
The Psalm For August 20th 2023, is Psalm 67. May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face to shine upon us. That your way may be known on Earth, you're saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, oh, God, let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nation's upon the earth. Let the peoples praise you, oh, God, let all the peoples praise you. The Earth has yielded its increase. God, our God shall bless us. God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him here into the reading. This psalm begins with a prayer of asking God's blessing on Israel. It says, may God be gracious to us and bless us and to make his face shine upon us that your way may be known on Earth you're saving power among all nations. It's interesting that the request for God to be gracious and to bless us has a purpose, that your way may be known on Earth, you're saving power among all nations. They're saying bless us. So the rest of the world may see how glorious you are. That all the peoples might know you. And then it goes on to say, let the peoples praise you, oh, God, let all the peoples praise you. This is kind of the conception of spreading the message of God throughout the Old Testament, that the people of Israel would be so different. So unlike the rest of the world, that all the nations would look at them and say, Whoa, who has a God like their God, he is greater than any god. We see that in the way that Moses and Egypt worked that the plagues were combat with the gods of, of Egypt. We saw that in the book of Daniel, where there was a constant sort of fighting between Nebuchadnezzar and the gods of Persia, and the true God and he always came out on top. The idea is, is that God would bless the people, and then the people would see how powerful God is. So they moved to that verse three, let the peoples praise you let all the peoples praise you. It continues, let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you judge the peoples with equity, and guide the nations upon the earth. Let the peoples praise you, oh God, let all the peoples praise you. So the next move in the Psalm is to say that God is not just the God of Israel, but over all of the nations and He judges everyone equally, not as in putting Israel first. But all the peoples of the earth are judged equally. Finally, it moves on to the last section. The Earth has yielded its increase God our God shall bless us, God shall bless us let all the ends of the earth fear him. This is the Earth has yielded its increased. This is the blessing that people expected from God, that the Earth would produce the fruits of of labor and provide for God's people, that God would bless them through the land that he had given them.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai