Psalm 67

Psalm 67, short Psalm, focus is praise. Verse 1:

(ESV) By the way, if you'll stop there for just a moment, I believe this was God's intention all along for the nation of Israel, that they might be the nation that shows forth the goodness of God so that all the other nations would come to Him. That is not what happened, but I believe that was God's intention. And that's what the prayer of the psalmist is at this point. He goes on, verse 3:

You know what this Psalm reminds me of? Very short Psalm. Excuse me again. Got a little bit of a tickle. It reminds me of a prayer or a prophetic prayer about that period of time that we call the Millennial Kingdom. And that's a period of time, biblically speaking, where there will be, excuse me, a thousand years, which is where we get a millennium of peace upon the earth.

Let me put up a slide that shows you a timeline, and I know some people differ on the exactness of this timeline, but this is the way I see it. On the left-hand side, we are on the Church Age. We're in that period right now. We are living in this period called the Church Age. The next prophetic event on the calendar is the catching away of the church, which is referred to as the rapture. Paul talks about that in Thessalonians, how we'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). That word, caught up is where we get our word, rapture. And then we have that seven-year period referred to in the Bible as the Great Tribulation. I believe that during that time, the church will be with the Lord having the marriage supper during those 7 years. And then, at the end of the tribulation period is what we have, we call the second coming of Jesus Christ because it's the time He (Jesus) first comes for the church, but He doesn't actually come to earth. Paul says we're going to meet Him in the clouds, meet Him in the air. Then Jesus comes to the earth at the end of the tribulation period, rescues Israel from the mounting nations that have come against her to destroy her, and He ushers into with the destruction of those nations, a period of ruling and reigning from Jerusalem, which is called the 1,000 years of peace or the millennial kingdom. It's a time when Satan will be bound and out of the picture. Okay. And that sounds like rain. Yeah. It's one thing about having an onion shed for a building. We hear the rain. Yeah. Anyway, God is enriching the earth, by the --- way. You've got the Millennial Kingdom going on, that 1,000 years of peace, and this is going to be an unprecedented time of peace on the earth. And one of the things that we learn from the Scripture is that all of the nations of the world are going to stream to Jerusalem because that's where the Lord will have established His throne. One of these prophetic passages is in the Book of Micah. Let me show it to you on the screen. It goes like this.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples (look at this) shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, (that we may, excuse me) that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decided for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; (In other words, the implements of warfare will be turned into instruments of agriculture.) nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore… That's a beautiful prophetic passage about the Millennial Kingdom and the time of peace. But it says, and this is just one of many prophetic passages in the Old Testament that speak of the nations of the earth streaming to Israel, particularly Jerusalem, where Jesus Himself will reign, will rule and reign. By the way, David will also be ruling and reigning around Jerusalem, and Jesus will be ruling upon the earth from Jerusalem.