An Abundant Life

Intro

Start by playing “pre-blessed video”

Now, this video is made in jest. It is designed to be funny. But at the same time it is highlighting a few things that I think we sometimes do with the idea of what it means for something or someone to be blessed.

This morning we are in the 2nd of our six part message series “Doomed to Repeat”. And if you were with us last week you know that we are spending six Sundays looking at Israel’s journey from captivity to the promised land, but in reverse.

And we are doing this because as we have just entered into a new year. Many of us would like to see 2021 be better than 2020. And I don’t just mean the absence of a pandemic or other difficult situations, I mean in our personal lives I think all of us want a new year to bring new positive change to our lives.

But like Israel, so often it seems as though despite our desires, we end up making the exact same mistakes in the new year that we made in the previous ones that we told ourselves we weren’t going to make again. It is as if we are doomed to repeat the mistakes and sins of our past over and over again.

But as I mentioned last week in our opening message, this doesn’t have to be the case. We don’t have to be doomed to repeat the past. Rather, it is possible to move forward.

So this morning I want to look at what I believe all of us want as we move forward and that is to be blessed in the coming year.

But what does it mean to “be blessed”. This is a concept that I think we have twisted to mean something that God never intended it to mean and I believe the video this morning pokes fun at some real beliefs we have about being blessed.

I think this is due to the overuse and misuse of what it means to be blessed.

So it is important that we examine the concept of being blessed biblically so that we can see what it does and does not mean, as well as how we can experience God’s blessings.

Because at the end of the day, it will be God’s blessings that propel us forward and prevent us from repeating the mistakes of our past.

Power in the text

As I mentioned, to do this we are looking to Israel’s journey. Today we are looking at Deuteronomy.

This is the last book of the Pentateuch, or the first 5 books of the Bible often attributed to being authored by Moses.

Deuteronomy is the last book because it was the last time Moses would lead Israel. He is about to die and pass the baton on to Joshua as we saw last week. And at this point in Israel’s journey they had been wandering in the desert for 40 years.

A journey that should have taken 11 days became 40 years because of their lack of faith. And now they are finally about to enter the promised land under Joshua’s leadership and so Moses is going to address the people one last time.

To share with them once more what God wanted to do for them as well as what he expected from them.

Deuteronomy 30:1-20 NLT “In the future, when you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the LORD your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions. 2 If at that time you and your children return to the LORD your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. 4 Even though you are banished to the ends of the earth, the LORD your God will gather you from there and bring you back again. 5 The LORD your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again. Then he will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors!

6 “The LORD your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! 7 The LORD your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate and persecute you. 8 Then you will again obey the LORD and keep all his commands that I am giving you today.

9 “The LORD your God will then make you successful in everything you do. He will give you many children and numerous livestock, and he will cause your fields to produce abundant harvests, for the LORD will again delight in being good to you as he was to your ancestors. 10 The LORD your God will delight in you if you obey his voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.

The Choice of Life or Death

11 “This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not beyond your reach. 12 It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ 13 It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ 14 No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.

15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.

17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 20 You can make this choice by loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the LORD, you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Now, there is a lot packed into these 20 verses and we don’t have time to get into all of it, but what I want you to notice here more than anything else is what God is saying his desire is for his people.

It is that they would be blessed with a life unlike anything they could have imagined for themselves.

They had been slaves for 400 years and wanderers for an additional 40. But after all of that, God desired to bless them beyond their wildest dreams.

Big idea

We learn a lot about God’s character here, and what his desire for us today is based on his interactions with Israel and it is that God wants to bless his people with an abundant life.

In this passage this morning God mentions prosperity at least 4 times.

Deuteronomy 30:5 NLT 5 The LORD your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again. Then he will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors!

Deuteronomy 30:15 NLT 15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster.

We rightly shy away from anything that sounds like a false prosperity gospel, but we need to see what God says about how he wants to bless us and how he wants us to live. The key is how we define an abundant life and prosperity.

Why this matters

It is important that we understand this because unfortunately what tends to happen is that we view everything in extremes.

Either we believe that we can simply name it an claim it. Or if I want a million dollars and a private jet all I have to do is declare it and if I have enough faith it will be.

The prosperity gospel is a lie from Satan himself that gets us to believe that God wants us to have whatever our hearts desire. Which as a parent I recognize that would be a terrible way to raise my sons.

Why in the world would God want to do that to his children? All that does is produce selfish, self-focused spoiled brats for children.

However, at the same time there are some in an effort to avoid being linked to the destructive prosperity gospel, they view God as this cold, distant, unconcerned, and uninvolved heavenly Father who would rather see us struggle than bless us.

This too is a lie. All this does is produce frustration because it leaves us wondering what benefit there is to serving God if all he is going to do is watch us drown ourselves with no desire to help us in our times of need.

No, God wants to bless each of us with an abundant life. He wants us to prosper. But we have to understand what that prosperity looks like

Because for many of us, when we think of abundance and prosperity we think of big houses, big cars, and big bank accounts. Why? because that is what the world says is abundance and prosperity.

However, we should not be in the habit of using the world’s definitions and ideas as our litmus test for anything.

Application

But there is more to this than simply defining what it means to be blessed by God, we can’t ignore the connection here between God’s blessing and our obedience.

Our obedience to God will be met with God’s faithfulness to bless us, but those blessings may not look like financial prosperity. Prosperity as defined by God is measured spiritually.

We are invited out of death and into life—the benefit of knowing God, loving him and being loved by him. Moses warns that our responsibility is to “choose life” by choosing God’s ways and obeying his commands.

Deuteronomy 30:15-19 NLT 15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.

17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!

God wants to bless each of us with an abundant life. And while this can certainly mean financial and material blessings, it is always first grounded in spiritual abundance.

Some of you want God to bless you before you are willing to choose life. You want to hold on to those things that lead to death while reaping the benefits of life.

You want to know why you seem to be doomed to repeat the mistakes of your past? It could be that you haven’t yet chosen to lay those things down and choose life. Because choosing life will alway require letting other things in your life die.

Flesh eating bacteria can kill you. It starts small, like a red swollen maybe painful spot on your skin. But if left untreated it will consume your body. The only way to stop it from spreading is to cut the infected tissue away.

And the longer you let it fester, the more tissue that has to be removed. And the removal isn’t easy, it is painful, but it is necessary if you want to live.

Your past can sometimes be like that infection. But you don’t have to let it consume you, but you have to make the choice to choose life and remove what is killing you in the first place.

Closing

Moses explains that the commands God is setting forth are not “too difficult” or “beyond [our] reach” (v. 11). This was true to the original audience, the Israelites, but it is especially true for us today since we are on this side of the cross, empowered by the Holy Spirit of God in us to know and obey God.

Satan wants us to believe that God’s commands are terribly burdensome and the end of your happiness. He wants you to believe that God is withholding joy from you in the limitations he places on you.

But that is the exact opposite of reality. … What the enemy knows, and we often fail to see at first, is that moving beyond God’s merciful limits is not the freedom of self-determination that we think it is—it’s selling ourselves into bondage.

Whenever we obey a command of God in faith, he sets us free or keeps us free from the blinding, oppressive, destructive slavery of sin and increases our capacity for joy.

The commands of God are not burdensome; they are the only way to life and true freedom