Summary: We’re in the midst of the counting of the omer, the 50 days between Passover and Shavuot. Each day, the people of Israel read Psalm 67, a psalm that speaks of a future that has now happened: international knowledge of God’s ways and salvation. It’s happened because of the work of one man: Yeshua.
An 18th century amulet containing the Hebrew text of Psalm 67.
Psalm 67 is a short but remarkable psalm, containing just 8 verses - 50 Hebrew words, a word for each day of the omer count – that speak of a luminous future when the whole earth knows God:
May God be gracious to us and bless us.
May He cause His face to shine upon us—Selah
So that Your way may be known on earth,
And Your salvation among all nations.
Let the peoples praise You, O God.
Let all the peoples praise You.
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
For You will judge the peoples fairly,
And guide the nations on the earth. Selah
Let the peoples praise You, O God.
Let all the peoples praise You.
The earth has yielded its harvest—
God, our God will bless us.
God will bless us,
and all the ends of the earth will fear Him.-Psalm 67
I’ll sum up this psalm in a sentence: “Let the whole world know and praise God.”
The first few lines are, to me, most stirring:
So that Your way may be known on earth,
And Your salvation among all nations.
Let the peoples praise You, O God
What is “Your way”? I take this to mean the ways of God; the Bible, especially the moral instruction of the Torah.
What is “Your salvation”? Literally, God’s power to save people. I take this to mean Messiah: the name Yeshua literally means “Yah saves.” As the gospels record it, “You shall call his name Jesus [Yeshua; “Yah saves”], for he will save his people from their sins.” God has saved billions of people on earth through the work of his servant, the Messiah.
Psalm 67 asks God to bless Israel so that God’s way [the moral instruction of the Bible] would go global, and that God’s salvation [the Messiah] would be known in all nations.
What’s absolutely remarkable is that this has happened. And not just in some airy spiritual sense, but in a tangible and measurable way. Today, in every nation, God’s ways and salvation are known. This has happened because the Bible has gone out from Jerusalem into all nations.
Shlomo Riskin, the Orthodox Jewish chief rabbi of Efrat, Israel, said that Jesus taught the fundamentals of the Jewish Bible to the whole world.
Jesus made the God of Israel known to the whole world. The New Testament records that what became Christianity was originally called הדרך, HaDerech, the Way, a kind of Judaism unlike any other because it had realized the identity of Judaism’s long awaited Messiah.
The Way exploded onto the world 2000 years ago, changing it forever.
Governments, law codes, civil courts throughout the world warped into a newer and more godly form. Nations formerly idolatrous turned to the one God; the polytheistic gentiles turned to the God of Israel. The former temple prostitutes turned to chastity and fidelity. The slaves found freedom in Israel’s God and Messiah. Whole societies changed, governments turned, nations becomes the kingdoms of God.
Artifacts of this global revolution remain with us today. The United States Supreme Court has, at its peak and center of the building, a statue of Moses holding the 10 commandments.
Why does the highest judicial court in the most powerful nation on earth have Moses and the tablets featured front and center?
Why is Moses’ law a foundation for the law codes of Western civilization?
Why are the gentiles looking to the Torah?
Jesus.
Jesus brought the values of the Hebrew Bible to the whole world.
This brings us back to Psalm 67:
So that Your way may be known on earth,
And Your salvation among all nations.
God’s ways, especially the principles in the Torah, have been amplified to a worldwide audience. It happened through God’s salvation – Yeshua, Jesus – who commanded his disciples to go into the whole world and teach God’s ways.
During this season of counting the omer, Jesus showed himself alive, risen from the dead:
Yeshua showed Himself to be alive to his disciples after His suffering through many convincing proofs, appearing to them for forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
The disciples were counting the omer with all of Israel when the Messiah showed himself alive for 40 days after Passover, living with them and teaching them about the Kingdom of God.
How fitting, then, that all Israel recites Psalm 67: that God’s ways and God’s salvation would be known in all the earth.
These have taken place because of the work of Yeshua.
And because of it, the nations are glad, and the earth has yielded a great harvest: billions of people calling on the God of Israel.
Blessed are you, Lord
Who commands us to count the omer
And Who has made Your way known in all the earth
And your Salvation in all nations
Through Your servant Yeshua
The precious Vine of David
So that all the nations will praise You
And the ends of the earth will fear Your name
To You be the glory forever!
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