deu28-01

9 SEPTEMBER 2007

“BLESSED!”

Deuteronomy 28:1-6

We are bringing this series in Deuteronomy to a close.  We began a journey in Deuteronomy to address the matters of true worship.  

One of the words that we hear so often is blessed and blessing.  I want to tackle these words for us and hopefully give us an understanding of our situation with and before God.

From the outset, if we read this text carefully, we will discover that blessing is connected to responsibility.  God does not just indiscriminately bless irresponsible people. 

The condition is “IF 

If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; 2 all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God:[1]

No doubt, you have wondered why someone else is blessed, over and over again.  There is a direct connection, correlation between blessing and obedience.

There is no place that you are that God cannot bless you.

We too often believe that God is confined to a specific place. 

A church,

a nation.

Some of us have been blessed, even in strange and uncomfortable places because God is in every place.

Blessings are ahead of us.  WE must be careful in declaring “I’m Blessed” as if it is something we can control

As if it is something that has already happened.

God is not through blessing you.

I have told you often that most of us are more superstitious than we are religious.  We treat the blessings of God like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Chasing leprechauns.  You never really find it.

We are so easily satisfied and satiated when we get new things.  God’s blessings are beyond the things of life.  The blessing is the relationship that God affords us to commune with God.

It is like people who teach, “Receive the gift of the Holy Ghost”  The Holy Ghost itself is the gift.  The gift that bestows gifts.  The gift is the relationship. 

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[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1996, c1989 (Dt 28:1). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.