What Does It Mean To Be Blessed?
Blessed, Broken, Given • Sermon • Submitted
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· 19 viewsWe were all created by God for a purpose and a reason. We were not haphazardly created as an afterthough or to be manipulated by God. We were created to be loved and to love in return.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to our online service today!
I hope that you have been enjoying our music from the archives!
Today, we are going to be continuing with the series that we started last week talking about bread.
And if you missed last week, go back and watch last week’s service when you get time and you will see the sandwich I made on camera.
Not really—I didn’t make a sandwich and also we didn’t spend the entire service talking about bread.
We actually looked at Jesus and the feeding of the 5000 and what Jesus did with the bread.
And what I hope we came away from that service with was how Jesus used the bread as a metaphor of what God desires to do in each and every one of us.
In the miracle of the feeding of the 5000, we say that Jesus took the bread and he first blessed it, then he broke it, and then he gave it to the people.
And that is the main point that we are looking at over the next few weeks.
Being blessed, broken, and given, and how our Christian life and Christian walk should really be an example of just that.
How are blessed by God.
How we must allow God to break our will and the power that sin has over us.
And how we must allow God to use us and give us back for His use and His purposes.
And this morning, I want to spend a little more time looking at the idea of being “blessed.”
What does it mean to be blessed?
Imagine for just a minute that an alien landed on our planet and observe how we use the word, ‘Blessed’ and determine it’s meaning solely by how it is used on social media.
The alien might conclude that being “#Blessed” is about:
having beautifully made lattes
perfect kitchen remodels
Instagrammable vacations
beautiful spouses.
But all of that has nearly nothing to do with what the Bible means by blessing.
Many of the things we associate with a blessed life—health, provision, beauty, and more—are, of course, gifts from God.
But they are more just hints and shadows of the real and true blessedness.
To get a good understanding and rethink how we think about blessing, we’re going to have to go back to the beginning in Genesis 1
And I am going to read through several verses of that chapter, but not the whole chapter.
And while I am reading listen to what the Scripture says about blessings.
So, Genesis 1, starting in verse 1 . . .
Scripture Focus
Scripture Focus
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
10 God called the dry ground “land”, and the gathered waters he called “seas”. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”
25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
It Was Good and It Was Blessed
It Was Good and It Was Blessed
As miraculous as the creation account is, there are two key takeaways that I want us to focus on this morning.
And they were “And God saw that it was good....And God blessed them....”
Goodness and Blessing
Both repeated over and over in the Scripture.
And both give us an idea and understanding of what “being blessed” by God is really all about.
The overall point we need to first understand is that our origin story is rooted in the origin story of the whole universe.
God established blessing from the origins and foundations of the world.
If we want to understand who we are and what makes us blessed, we have to go back to the creating, ordering, and blessing of the world.
When the Bible tells us the story of the beginning, it begins with a Person, and that person is God.
It says, “In the beginning, God…”
In other words, all things have their origin in God.
Which is different from how people in the ancient world typically viewed God and creation.
In the ancient world everyone knew that some god or collection of gods were responsible for the creation of the world.
They were not like people in our day, who imagine the world as a series of automated processes or random incidents with no divine involvement.
For people in ancient times, the questions were not “Did god make this?” and “How?” but rather “Which god made this?” and “Why?”
And this is important to understand because the questions of which god and why are massively significant, because these are the questions the Genesis account answers definitively.
To the question “Which god made the heavens and the earth?” many of Israel’s ancient neighbors would answer with names of regional gods who were power hungry and jealous, making deals to gain more jurisdiction and stopping at nothing—even murder—to rule over all.
To the question “Why did they make humans?” the answer would be that humans were made to be slaves of the gods—to do work the gods didn’t want to do.
This is not very good news and it doesn’t sound much like a blessing does it.
And when we start to compare the Genesis account to the other ancient accounts, we can see how Scripture reveals a different kind of God than what the people were used to.
In particular, there are three things that set the God of Genesis apart from the gods of the day.
First, there is only one God.
Genesis reveals that YHWH is the supreme, sovereign God.
In contrast to the many other ancient Middle Eastern beliefs, one God stands apart as the sole sovereign ruler over all creation: YHWH.
Genesis depicts no division of divine jurisdiction between Gods.
Israelites did not have a separate god of the sea, god of the land, or god of fertility. There was and is only one God.
Also, God not only exists but God also acts and acts alone.
There are no rivals and no one else adding input or ideas.
There is simply God, who speaks, forms, makes, calls, and blesses.
Secondly, the sole sovereign God creates the world on purpose and with purpose.
While that might seem obvious to us, it was not for ancient readers.
As we noted previously, some ancient beliefs saw creation as the result of a bloody battle among the gods, the result of mutated divine excretions, or the gods’ way of getting cheap labor around the universe.
The God of Genesis, however, sets out to make the world carefully, deliberately, methodically, and even poetically:
Genesis 1 and 2 were meant to be a purpose story, a song about why we’re here and why it matters.
And what does Genesis say about why we’re here?
It tells us we are here because God called us into being.
God made us on purpose and with a purpose in mind.
Not for labor or slavery but for divine relationship with the creator.
Thirdly, God blesses what He makes.
Not only is God the sole sovereign and an intentional creator, but He is also the God who loves and blesses what He creates.
This is different from other ancient accounts of the beginning of the world.
From the very beginning the God who creates also blesses what He has made.
And why wouldn’t He? After all, He meant to make it. He called it good.
The word good has many meanings, but in some usage it has resonances with what we might call “beautiful.”
In a very real way, all that is good and beautiful in the world is the result of God’s blessing.
Just to put the importance of this into perspective, imagine the people of God living in exile in Babylon, not feeling very “#Blessed.”
They strain their eyes to see something of God’s hand and train their ears to hear something of God’s voice, when all of a sudden they remember: This world was made by God!
This tree, this stream, this flower, this fruit—everything that flourishes around them—flourishes because God has blessed it.
The blessing of God on the material world would have been a source of consolation and a spark of worship in an otherwise difficult land of exile.
And think about our own difficult times in life.
When we don’t feel particularly “#Blessed.”
We can also look around us and realize that all of this was created by God.
And all that God created is good—including us.
And God blesses what God creates.
God loves what God creates.
Meaning that even though we struggle, God loves us.
And God is, in fact, with us.
Regardless of what we are going through or suffering with.
We are blessed by God!
We Are Blessed and Beautiful to God
We Are Blessed and Beautiful to God
But I wonder if we see ourselves this way?
I wonder if the problems and the issues we face in life cause us to not only question it but also fail to even see it.
Maybe we do a little bit on a good day.
But I believe we often struggle to see ourselves as good or beautiful, let alone both.
We’re too aware of our shortcomings or our plainness. We say to ourselves, “ I’m not really good; I’m a bit of a mess, actually. And beautiful? Well, I wouldn’t say that. Maybe just ordinary.”
The Genesis story grounds us in God and tells us that this line of thinking is not true.
Again, remember that God Himself made us on purpose and for a purpose and blessed us by calling us good and beautiful. That is our true story.
Also, remember that being blessed is not a state of mind—it’s a story of reality.
It’s an origin story. It’s the story of how we began and why.
It’s the story of God the creator calling us into being on purpose and for a purpose.
It’s the story of God taking delight in us and naming us as good and beautiful.
It’s the story of God the redeemer pursuing us, calling us, and returning us to who He made us to be.
The God who called light out of darkness calls us out of darkness and into light.
In doing so, He brings us back to the beginning, to our beginning. This is where it starts: We are blessed.
But maybe that’s not where your feel like your story is today. Maybe that’s not what others have told you about yourself.
Genesis also tells us a few more stories of God blessing people.
In Genesis 12, God calls Abraham and blesses him.
But in Genesis 16, God interrupts a female, an Egyptian slave on the run, and blessed her.
And putting things into perspective, being a female Egyptian slave meant that in the Israelites eyes, she was an outsider.
In her day she would have been considered the opposite of blessed.
To be a female in the ancient world meant being regarded as valuable only insofar as you were useful…to a man.
Whether for offspring or pleasure or domestic labor, a woman’s usefulness was something she had to prove.
She was thought to possess no intrinsic value.
To be Egyptian, in the eyes of Israelites, meant being an enemy.
Later generations of Israelite children, listening to these stories of their heritage, would have marked this slave as belonging to the wrong group.
To be a slave meant having no freedom and no future.
Slaves had no rights, no inheritance, no destiny.
There was no reason we should even know her name. She should be uniportant to the story, an outsider, invisible to God.
However, she does have a name and her name is Hagar.
And Hagar is on the run because Sarah, barren wife of the newly blessed Abraham, was jealous and resentful toward her.
Genesis says that Sarah was harsh with Hagar.
Things had gotten so bad that Hagar thought fleeing into the wilderness with no provisions and no plan would be better than staying in that house.
To make matters worse, Hagar was pregnant with Ishmael.
So she goes to the desert and was prepared to die in the desert.
Hagar thought it was over.
She was sure no one would help and no one would come to her rescue.
But God thought differently.
God found Hagar by a well in the wilderness.
She had stopped at a spring for what could have been one last drink.
And then an angel of the Lord met her there and the first thing the angel did was call her by her name.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
So when the angel found her the angel asked Hagar two questions:
Where have you come from?
Where are you going?
The same questions God asks us many times when we are wandering in the desert ready to just die.
Where have we come from and where are we headed?
However, when God asks a question like this, He’s not launching an interrogation; He’s staging an intervention.
These two questions were about origin and destiny.
Hagar thought she knew her origin and her destiny, where she had come from and where she was going.
But God was about to rewrite her story.
God told Hagar to go back to Abraham’s house, not because God condoned Sarah’s mistreatment of her, but because there was no other way for Hagar to be saved.
She would die in that wilderness—and so will we if we stay out there.
Look at what the angel says next though . . .
10 The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.”
This was Abraham’s blessing.
This was the promise that was restated when God made a covenant with Abraham in the chapter right before the Hagar story—that his offspring would be like the stars, too many to count.
Right from the start, God made it clear: He wants everyone to be able to get in on the blessing. He desires all to be swept up in his saving and redeeming love.
And when Hagar finally understood this, she was in awe. She had seen God! Hagar responded by naming God...
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
Altar/Challenge
Altar/Challenge
And the point is, do we realize that God sees us.
And I am not talking about God seeing all of the bad things we do and sins we commit.
I am talking about God seeing us—seeing our struggle—seeing our plight.
God sees us and God wants to intervene.
To help us.
To bless us.
And maybe you think you missed the blessing.
Maybe you find yourself on the run from a place of pain and suffering, convinced that God does not see you.
Again, that is not true, but I want to ask you this morning where have you come from and where are you going?
God has a purpose and a plan, but we have to be willing to let God’s plan play out.
Are we willing to do that this morning?
The first part of the plan is coming into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
The second part is submitting fully to God and letting the Holy Spirit lead and guide us.
Have we done that today?
Can we do that today?
God is calling us, will we answer?