Episode 1. Is God's Blessing Really for Me?
Listen to the radio broadcast
Download audio file
Laying hold of God’s blessings can be a real struggle. Not because we don’t want to be blessed by God. But because there are a whole bunch of ideas floating around out there – imposters that …
Laying hold of God’s blessings can be a real struggle. Not because we don’t want to be blessed by God. But because there are a whole bunch of ideas floating around out there – imposters that pretend to be what God’s blessing is all about – that aren’t from God. So – is God still a God that wants to bless us?
It’s just so exciting for me to be able to be with you again at the start of a new week. Something wonderful about a fresh new week, new possibilities, new things to see and do and discover. Here in Australia many people talk about Mondayitis, you know that disease of grumbling about having to go back to work on a Monday.
But I don’t know, with all the pressures and challenges you and I face day after day there’s something invigorating about seeing what God is going to be up to again this week. And for me, the subject we’re talking about on the program over these coming days just makes me want to leap with joy.
This little series we’re in it’s called, “A Journey Into The Blessings Of God” and if you were able to join me last week you’ll remember that we started to look at the story of Ruth in the Old Testament. A lot of people have heard about Ruth, she has a whole Book, albeit a small, one dedicated to her in the Old Testament.
Now, Ruth had a hard journey, an uncertain journey but there were re a couple of choices she made along the way that meant that her journey was one that took her deep into the blessings of God which is why I thought it would be such a great idea to kind of pull alongside and follow Ruth around for a little while and that’s what we’re going to be doing again this week on the program, indeed the next few weeks.
Now have you ever heard some preacher get up and talk about the blessings of God and thought to yourself, “Here we go again, some guy who’s going to try and convince me that God is this kind of sugar daddy who’ll shower me with money and gifts and trinkets and that new car and that promotion and that raise I’ve been after or whatever?”
I remember visiting a Church one Sunday, I had the morning off from preaching and worship leading at our own small Church. So Jacqui, my wife, and I decided just to kind of go and visit somewhere else. So we went to quite a large Church not far away from where we lived, in fact just a couple of suburbs across. It turns out that that Sunday morning they had a visiting preacher speaking, a well known TV preacher from overseas.
The place was packed to the gunnels. Anyhow this preacher proceeded to preach one of those messages, “God wants to shower you with all these worldly blessings …” And at the end everyone was asked to take up their wallets or purses and lift them up in the air while the preacher prayed that we would all become millionaires.
Now, I was completely gobsmacked. Jacqui and I stood there looking around and everyone we could see in this large crowd of Christians had their purses or their wallets up in the air, their eyes closed praying to become millionaires. I wanted to scream out, “NO!’”Although I managed to restrain myself. I was quite a new Christian then and a visitor to this Church after all.
We stood there, Jacqui and I, looking around completely dumbfounded at what was going on. And all I could think of in that moment was Jesus, hanging there on the cross bleeding and suffering with not a cent or a denarius to His name. No possessions, no bank account, no superannuation fund, not even the clothes on His back because the Roman soldiers were down on the ground below gambling for His tunic.
Not even His own life did He hold back from you and me and here was this crowd of Christians, so called, praying to become millionaires. Even in those early days deep in my spirit I knew there was something wrong, desperately wrong if all these people could be duped into believing in this sugar daddy, trinket pedalling god. So let me assure you when you hear me talking about the blessings of God this is not what I am talking about.
Ruth … let’s recap her story for one moment. Ruth is a Moabite woman. Moabites are sworn enemies of Israel. Way back there in the Old Testament times an Israelite family, the family of Elimelech, his wife Naomi and his two sons flee from the Promised Land because there’s great famine there and they go a settle in the land of Moab because there was food there.
Years went by and the sons grew up and they took Moabite wives. One of the sons married Ruth and the other married another Moabite woman. But the father, Elimelech and his two sons died leaving three widows, his wife Naomi and his two daughters-in-law. So here were these women destitute, remembering as we saw last week that women had no rights, no income, no ability to own land back in those days. Without men they would quite simply starve particularly, let me say, for the Israelite woman, Naomi, there in Moab.
So Naomi decides to go back to her people in the Promised Land, in Bethlehem in Judea, to find some support there. One of the daughters-in-law turns back and stays in Moab, her land, her people but the other one, Ruth, decides to follow her mother-in-law Naomi back to Israel. Now for Ruth, she was going to a foreign land. Sure it was Naomi’s home, her people, she was one of God’s people, an Israelite, but for Ruth this was a foreign land.
But this is what she says to her mother-in-law in making her decision. The Book of Ruth, chapter 1 beginning at verse 16:
Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you. Where you go I’ll go, where you lodge I’ll lodge, your people will be my people and your God my God, where you die I will die. There I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me and more as well if even death parts me from you.
Isn’t that beautiful? But here’s the thing, whether Ruth realises it or not her decision was to have huge ramifications for her because her decision involved accepting the God of Israel, the one true God and going to dwell in His Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. Was Ruth expecting to be blessed? Well who knows what she was thinking. It seems to have been more out of personal allegiance to her mother-in-law, Naomi that she took the choice to go to the Promised Land. But in that place there would indeed be blessing.
I know so many people who’ve made that choice, the choice to turn to God, to walk into His Promised Land and yet these same people don’t expect in any way that God would bless them. For many their lives remain a mess. For many they labour through each grinding, punishing day wondering what if any benefit they’ve derived out of their decision to follow Jesus.
Is God a God who wants to bless us or not? Well, is He? Have a listen to what God said to His people through Moses. The Book of Numbers, chapter 6 beginning at verse 22:
The Lord spoke to Moses saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the Israelites’ and you shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’ So they shall put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them.
Does God want to bless His people? Absolutely He does. No not by making us all millionaires, not by ruining our lives with trinkets from this world but with a deep blessing of Gods grace. His peace, His joy, His protection and His comfort. Not just here and now but for all eternity, living our lives in a rich and wonderful relationship with Him.
Friend, God is a God who wants to bless us with the riches of heaven that we can scarcely begin to comprehend. That blessing is as much for you as it is for me and for anyone who will lay down their own life and accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. But that blessing friend involves a journey, we’re meant to journey into Gods blessing and that’s what we’re going to be looking at tomorrow on the program as we draw alongside Ruth.
Comments