It’s Time to Consider God’s Blessing
It's Time

Transcript

Now, speaking of God's blessings, that's the title of our message today, “It's Time to Consider God's Blessing.” Our series theme, as we've read each week, comes from Haggai 1:2; 2:4-5 (ESV) “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord…

Yet now be strong… Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord… My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not.”
So God says it's time to be strong, do the work and be fearless and leave the results up to Him. What we're talking about today is how God wants to bless His people, if only we would trust Him, if only we would come under His blessing.

He desires to be a blessing to His people. Now, we throw that word around a lot today. In fact, it's really kind of moved outside of the Christian world into the secular world. People are saying something about blessings all of the time these days. I mean, even if you just visit Walmart, the greeter at the door will say as you're leaving, “I hope you have a blessed day.”

I've thought about it; when they say, “I hope you have a blessed day,” is this person a Christian? Is that why they're saying that? Or are they telling me to have a nice day?

Or maybe, they're actually saying, “I'm praying that God will bless you.” I don't know which one they mean; I hope it's that last one. Then, we see Hollywood movie stars accepting their Oscar up front, and they'll say, “Thank you for the blessing.” They'll speak of blessings like that.

I don't know if they're saying it because they feel like God blessed them with an Oscar, or if they're saying it in order to look more humble. Aw, shucks, I didn't really do anything, but, you know, I've been blessed like that. Or maybe they were looking for a compliment, I've been blessed and now you need to tell me how great I am.

I don't know what they're thinking. Maybe they're thinking the best thing and they're thinking, God bless me. You know, we throw that word, “blessing,” around a lot. What does it mean to come under God's blessing, to really think about that?

So this past week, we were studying this, and I started thinking about what I needed to learn and that's kind of how I approach preaching every week as I'm studying God's word. God, what do You want to teach me? What can I learn this week? I had a question;

I was thinking, What's the difference between the way God blessed people in the Old Testament and the New Testament or is there a difference? Is God blessing the same way or is there a different way? That was a question I had.

Do you ever think like that? Is there a difference about the way God blesses and what does it really mean to come under God's blessing? I got so worked up about it that I bought a theological book, “The Biblical Theology of God's Blessing.” My goodness, it was a thick book and I read the whole book this week. So, I hope you’ve got your seat belts on. I can't tell you everything that I learned this week,

but I think just from Haggai it will be sufficient. We can come up with some considerations, some answers to how it looks and is there any difference between the Old and the New Testament about the way God blesses his people. Dr. William R. Osborne, in his book,

Divine Blessing and the Fullness of Life in the Presence of God: "A Biblical Theology of Divine Blessings," writes this,

“While blessing has climbed the pop charts of Christian terms used outside the church in recent years, it seems that few within the Christian community pause to wonder whether or not this popular notion of blessing is biblically accurate.” That's what we hope to accomplish today, that we have a biblically accurate view of what it means to live under God's blessing. Are you ready? Let's look at it today, in Haggai 2:18-19. That's all we're going to “unpack” today

and believe me, it's power packed. It's enough there. In those two verses, God spoke through the prophet Haggai and He told him to teach the people of Israel to understand what it means to live under God's blessing. I believe today, we can understand what it means to live under God's blessing. As we look at the text, I think we'll see three considerations for understanding what it means to live under God's blessing.

Let's look at the text:
Haggai 2:18-19 (ESV) 18 Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider: 19 Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing.

But from this day on I will bless you.” This is God's word. We're looking for three considerations to understand what it means to live under God's blessing. Here's the first:

1. Consider the blessing of God’s presence.

Consider the blessing of God's presence. The Israelites had returned from Babylonian exile. They had been in exile for 70 years. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, had destroyed Jerusalem. He had destroyed the temple

and so, they're in exile. But then, King Cyrus of Persia overthrew Nebuchadnezzar. He overthrew the Babylonians, and he instructed the Israelites to return back to their land and rebuild the temple, but they became discouraged. For 16 years,

they started working on it. But then, they quit because they were discouraged and they were afraid because of some threats from people around them. For 16 years, they had focused on rebuilding their own houses to the point where they had built luxurious paneled houses. Now, this is all in chapter one in summary. Okay, but now here they are and they finally come around.

They had neglected God's temple, which is symbolic of God's presence. That's symbolic of His presence. They had neglected His temple, but now they've come back around and they're back to work on the temple again after 16 years of not working on it. That's what's going on. And so he's brought them to this point and he says to them twice, he says, “consider.”

He says it twice. It's like bookends around verse 18. He begins with the word and ends with the word, “consider.” “Consider from this day onward” and then he finishes it with

“...of the Lord's temple was laid, consider:” You see that he mentions it twice. That word, “consider,” in the Hebrew literally has the idea “to put,” “to place” or “to set upon one's mind and heart in a careful fashion and really chew on it, really meditate on it, think about it.” To consider carefully, to really give it careful consideration.

Dr. Richard Taylor, in his commentary on Haggai, writes this, “Again the prophet calls on the people to "give careful thought" (śimu na’ lebabekem). These words appear twice in v. 18. The repetition underscores the urgency of the prophetic call for repentance.”

To repent of something means to think about a thing and then to agree with God's name for the thing. So, repentance means to have a change of mind. What God calls sin, I'm going to call sin. And what God calls righteousness, I'm going to call righteousness.

What God calls wrong, I'm going to agree with Him and call it wrong. What God calls right, I'm going to call it right. That's an idea if you've thought about it under God's instruction, you give careful thought and you've repented now of sin and wrongdoing, and you've turned the other way. He says to think this through and from this day onward. What day?

Well, remember, Haggai's really good at giving us dates. He's really good at putting dates on his diary of when God speaks. And he says here, in verse 18, “Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month.” That's what he says now.

The ninth month in the Hebrew calendar is the Hebrew month of “Kislev.” Kislev. Kislev. On the 24th day of Kislev, what would that be? That'd be like, according to the Gregorian calendar, that'd be like December 18th in our calendar, like December 18th.

Consider this day, December 18th, from this day forward. Consider since you've started work on the Lord's temple, since you've got back to work since the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid. See, they got back to work on it. And since that has happened now. Okay, well, when did that happen?

When did they start back on the work? Well, he tells us back in chapter one, since that day when you first. So here's the day I want you to consider, but consider back to that day. Well, how much time has passed? And so if you look at Haggai, chapter one, verse 14 and 15, they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, on the 24th day of the month in the sixth month in the second year of Darius the King.

So now it's the ninth month, the same day, the 24th day of the ninth month. But they had started back in the sixth month. That's three months. They've been working on God's house now for three months, but they still haven't felt blessing. He wants them to think about it.

He wants them to think about it. They probably thought, as we often think, that somehow we're in a transactional relationship with God, that if we give to God and we pop it in the slot and pull the lever out, pops blessing, like God's some kind of in a transactional relationship with us, like he's some kind of celestial Santa Claus. If we just climb up in his lap, then he'll give us what we've asked for. But God has not called us to a transactional relationship.

He's called us to a personal relationship. He's called us to know him, to know his presence in our life. And so here they are. They've been back at work for three months. They've already turned in their commitment cards.

They've already made their first offering. In fact, for three months they've been doing it and nothing's changed. Why God? Why would you do that? Because He cared more about their repentance than He did their gift or their service.

He wanted them to have the right thinking towards Him so that they would focus on Him and on His presence. I really think that's what's going on here. But now, I think they're getting in the right frame of mind. As we read the earlier verses in chapter two, He'd already asked them to “consider” several times and they're thinking about it.

But, It's not quite like that; you can't deal with God like He's your banker, like you make a deposit and get interest or something like that. That's this transactional relationship; He wants me to know Him, to pursue Him.

So, He's trying to teach Israel something - I want you to seek My presence rather than my presents.

I want you to seek the Blesser rather than the blessing. I want you to seek the Giver rather than the gift.

I want you to know Me. I want you to come into My presence. The whole thing about rebuilding the temple wasn't because God needed a temple. There's nothing that can contain God. He's too big.

He's everywhere at the same time. But the temple was a symbol of His presence. God's people recognized that; they'd forgotten and had put their own house first. Now, He's calling them to repentance. I think the three months that went by without blessing was so they could think, Wait a minute. It was never about just the temple.

It was always about getting our attention back on Him and putting Him first. Even in chapter two, earlier, in the instructions to be strong, do the work and be fearless. Look what he says. Haggai 2:4-5 (ESV) “…Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt.

My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not.”

Be strong. Do the work. Be fearless, because I'm with you.

He's calling them to His presence to know Him personally so that they would seek Him.

<p class="transcript-paragraph" data-start-time="807520" data-end-time="822922 I remember how I was talking to you about that tension. I wanted to work out in my own mind and heart what was the difference. Or is there a difference in the way God deals with blessing in the Old Testament and blessing in the New Testament? I started thinking about it.

I think this is a timeless principle.His blessing has always been connected to His presence. That the greatest blessing of all is to know Him through His Son, Jesus. The greatest blessing of all is Jesus.

Look what he says in Hebrews, chapter 13. We're going across the Bible bridge into the New Testament now. Hebrews 13:5 (ESV) “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Don't love money.

Love Me, because I'm with you now. I will never leave you nor forsake you.

This is what He's saying here, so this is consistent. It's the same God of the Old Testament and the New Testament. He wants to bless you, but you really refuse His blessing by your decision to live outside His blessing in a place where He can't bless your unholiness, He can't bless your unrighteousness.

He won't because He's holy. Yesterday we had a birthday party. It was a double birthday party for my wife and one of my grandchildren. My granddaughter, Mackenzie, or Kenzie as we call her now, turned nine years old on Tuesday, February 18th and Robin had a birthday on the same day.

I don't know what age it is when young ladies don't want you to talk about their age. Kinsey's happy to say she's nine years old. “Put nine candles on my cake.”

We didn't do that for Robin; we didn't want to start a forest fire.

Robin's not here. She might watch this on the video, though. So y'all pray for me. But, it was beautiful.

We had a good time yesterday. We have ten grandkids, five boys and five girls. The whole house was full of love and laughter and chaos.

We brought the cakes out. Two cakes, one for Robin, one for Kenzie and we sang “Happy Birthday.” They blew out their candles and then we asked them the question that we always ask, “Do you want cake first or presents?”

What do they yell? They always yell the same answer. “Presents!” So we scoot the cakes away and we bring out the presents. We taught our children this and now our children have taught our grandchildren this, that you have to read the card before you can open the present.

This is especially difficult for the young ones. They see all these presents stacked up and somebody hands them an envelope with a card, but they really want the presents. We've taught them, not only do you have to open the card (you can't just open the card and throw it) you have to read the card. If you can't read, you have to get one of the older cousins or your mom or dad beside you to read it aloud.

Oh, my goodness gracious, I gotta go through this whole card. Especially, if they get one from Mingie and Papaw, that's what they call us. Robin always puts hearts and all kinds of stuff. The little boys are like, Oh my goodness, I gotta read all this lovey dovey stuff out loud before I can open my presents.

But you know what has started happening? I noticed it big time yesterday. Some of the older cousins have been doing this ever since they've had a birthday with us. Now they're making handmade cards; I never told them to.

It's unexpected. The little cousins especially love reading the handmade cards they got from the older cousins. They all know that they have to read them. We have to read the cards before we can tear into the gifts.

Church, why don't you read the “card?” You just want the blessing. You just want the gift. Why do you just want to rip into the gift?

Why don't you read the “card,” you know, the “love letter” that He wrote to you, the One that tells you about Him? It's from Him. We want the blessing without the Blesser. We want the gift without the Giver.

We want a transactional relationship with God, but He refuses that relationship. He wants to have a personal relationship. He wants you to recognize Him as Father and He wants you to recognize Jesus as Lord and Savior.

That's where the blessings flow. Consider the blessing of God's presence. Here's the second consideration:

2. Consider the blessing of God’s provision.

We're in verse 19 now. He begins it with a question. He'd asked questions earlier. We studied those last week. It always makes God's people nervous when God asks some questions.

Remember when God asked Job some questions over there in the book of Job? ‘Stand there like a man. Let me ask you some questions. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?’ Job's knees started shaking. You know, we always have a lot of questions for God, but when He asks us questions, that's a different matter.

Here's the question. “Is the seed yet in the barn?” That's the question. Now, this is the seed for planting, I believe, that He's speaking of.

I don't think this is the seed for eating. I think He would have said, ‘Is the grain still in the barn?’ I think he would have said that. ‘Is the seed still in the barn for planting? Is the seed yet in the barn?’

It seems to me, because of the context, He goes on to say, 19 “Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing.” It seems to beg a negative response that the seed is no longer in the barn. You could read that from the context, but we could also read it from the calendar, because what is the date? Well, it just so happens that Haggai tells us it's Kislev 24,” 520 BC.

He didn't say 520 BC. He said “the second year of King Darius of Persia,” which we know from extra biblical sources, is around 520 BC. He's given us this. We know it's around December 18th. If you do a careful study of the seasons in Israel, Israel is not like North Carolina.

You don't wake up one day and it's 70 degrees and you wake up the next day and it's 19 degrees. That's North Carolina weather we're talking about.

But here it's more like dry season and wet season; they have multiple planting seasons and harvest. So, where does December fall? How hard is it to answer this question, “Is there seed yet in the barn?” Walk out there and open the barn door.

Is there any seed in there? That's, that's how easy it would be to answer the question, but the farmer would know if he had put seed in the soil or if it was still in the barn. December 18th, as it turns out, is the sowing season. In fact, October, November, December are the sowing seasons for wheat and barley.

They would come up in the Spring. The first harvest would come up in the Spring for those crops. If the seed's still in the barn on December 18, which is right at the end of sowing season, that means that the farmer had no faith. For sixteen years, we read in Haggai, the crops had been blighted by God because of the people’s disobedience. They hadn't been putting Him first.

So, maybe the seed was still in the barn for some of them. I'm afraid to put it out there. I might need to eat the seed this year. That might have been true; they started working on the foundation of the temple.

They've put it in the soil, but it hasn't broken through yet. That's an interesting season for a farmer. He spends his time, his effort and his money to get out there, work the soil and put those little seeds in there. Have you ever considered those little seeds, crammed full of DNA, that even today, science can’t reproduce ? It's almost like magic or something.

You could put it in the ground and it becomes a plant. Think about what God has done, the miracle of a seed, the blessing of a seed. They've been planting stones to build the foundation. They've been carrying stones, sweating and building the temple.

For three months, they've been doing it. They've been doing it since the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month. Now it's the ninth month and they don't have anything to show for it. They have to be getting discouraged. Come on, God. I've been serving.

I had somebody tell me this week, “Man, the minute my wife and I put down a number that scared us and dropped that card in, my car broke down and my refrigerator is acting up. God, shouldn't You be taking care of my car and refrigerator right now?” See, God cares more about your character than He does your comfort.

He cares more about bringing you into His presence and recognizing that He's your provider, instead of focusing on the provision. Sometimes, He lets three months go by with nothing to show for it because He's making you more like Jesus. He's making you a man or a woman of faith. His blessings are connected to the way He's trying to fashion us so that we live continually under His presence as provider. We have to be careful about transactional thinking.

If I do this, I get this. If I do that…No, it's more like, I give out of generosity, I give out of joy, I give out of obedience because that's what it looks like to live under God's blessing.

We get to consider His provision. It's December, so the answer to the question, “Is the seed yet in the barn?” is no, it's in the soil.

Now, I don't know, sometimes little kids might do it, and sometimes you might feel like doing it, but have you ever planted a seed, go out there a week later and see that nothing has popped up yet? Maybe, if I just dig one up, I could see if it's actually working. I fertilized the soil, I watered it, and I prepared it. I’m just going to dig that one up right there.

Oh, I should have never dug it up. It's got a little white root coming off of it. I should have left it alone. I want you to hear this.

”Never dig up in doubt what you planted by faith.” Never dig up in doubt what you planted by faith. Never dig up in doubt what you planted by faith. It's tempting because there's always a delay when you take a step of faith and you plant a seed. There's always a delay before the harvest comes.

There's always a delay. It's God's way of doing things, but He is the provider. He says, ‘Have you considered your crops?’ Then He names these kinds of crops that are all yielding nothing. These crops that you don’t worry about planting seeds for every year, but the kind you tend to during the year.

You tend to them, you fertilize them, you prune them and you work them.They are the kind of crops that are perennials. They really describe how their economy is going. The vine, that's grapes, that's wine. The fig tree, the pomegranate, the olive tree.

Just not having enough olives would affect many things. That's how they lit their lamps; they lit their lamps with olive oil. That's how they cooked their food. That's how they made all the anointing recipes for the temple.

We already know from previous verses that they've been coming in about 50% of expected harvest for sixteen years now. The harvest is just not coming through. Have you noticed this, Israel?

Have you noticed your perennial crops and your seed crops are not producing? It makes you want to dig them up, doesn't it? It makes you want to leave it in the barn. But trust Me, because from this day forward, I'm going to bless you.

Consider, think about it and repent, because what I really want you to recognize is that I'm your provider. You see, Israel had a covenant with God; He was their provider if they would obey Him. It says in Deuteronomy 28:2-6 (ESV) 2 “And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.

3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. “

God wants to bless us. In fact, if you look at the whole Bible from beginning to end, you consider the story behind the story. Theologians call this the “metanarrative;” the overarching story behind every story. I could summarize the metanarrative in the Bible in one word.

The one word is “Jesus.” That's the whole book; it is to prepare us to know, follow and believe in Jesus. That's the whole book. Metanarrative is the story behind the story. You could break it into four phases very easily.

The metanarrative goes from creation, to man's fall, to God's redemption through Jesus, and then, off in the future, restoration and renewal, the new heavens and the new earth. The way God has blessed in these seasons has consistently been that He blesses us physically and spiritually as we live in the fullness of His presence.

This is what Dr. Osborne wrote in that book I was referring to earlier. He said that divine blessing in the Bible is always physical and spiritual because it is fixed upon the reality of the fullness of life in the presence of God. God is a God Who wants to bless. And when you live in the fullness of life through Christ Jesus, in His presence, blessings flow.

So let's bring it across the “Bible bridge. ” We've read the Deuteronomy passage. It was a conditional covenant for Israel based on their obedience. But in the New Testament, it's based on grace and belief in Christ. And it says this in

Ephesians 1:3 (NIV) “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” How many blessings? Every one of them. Every blessing is ours in Jesus and not just spiritually.

If He gives you the spiritual, the physical is lesser and so it's already in view.

In fact, this is why He says in Philippians 4:19 (ESV) “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” He will meet every need. Indeed, I can say, as David said in the Psalms, “I've been young and I've been old, but I've never seen God's people go hungry. I've never seen God's people go looking for bread.” I've been poor and I've been in seasons of blessing,

but we've had a roof over our heads, food on the table and we've been able to take care of our family. There's been seasons where we were afraid, but God has always provided. Faith always precedes God's provision. There's always a delay between the seed planted and the harvest.

This is a principle in nature, it's a principle in the spiritual realm. This is what God's trying to teach the people of Israel and it's what He's trying to teach us. “Don't dig up in doubt what you planted by faith.” Get the seed out of the barn when it's planting season, sow it and watch God bring a harvest, thirty, sixty and a hundredfold, but you have to put it out there for God to use it.

You have to act in faith. “Consider this.” Think carefully about it. Are you trusting in God's provision? Are you trusting His timing for God's provision?

As I was thinking about the Israelites building the temple, they were carrying these big stones that had been pulled down by the Babylonians. They're probably scattered over the Temple Mount. Some of them may have been used for their own houses. I don't know. But, they're trying to find adequate stones; it's hard work and they're lifting them.

It made me think of my trips to Uganda. I've made several mission trips to Uganda and many of you have joined us on these trips. I've seen the Ugandans, who don't have much, but they've been blessed with rocks. I mean, everywhere you go, any farm you see, they've put a fence of rocks around it because when they were trying to farm the land, it’s like the land grows rocks. It's surrounded by the Virunga Mountains, which are volcanoes.

There's rocks everywhere. They would come to church and Pastor George would say, “Bring your rocks. We're laying a foundation.” They would come to church and they would carry like a stack of rocks on their head. That would be their tithe, that would be their offering.

Every Sunday, they'd come to church and you'd see them walking, carrying rocks on their heads. That's just how they carry things. They would do that and they would lay a foundation. I can see the Israelites doing that. They've been doing it for three months.

God, when are you going to provide for us? When are you going to keep your word from Deuteronomy? I think He put that little pause in there, that little three months, so that they would think about Him, seek His presence and cry out to him, God, if You don't do it, we can't make the seed grow. We can plant it, but we can't make it grow.

We can be strong, do the work and be fearless, but we can't produce results. So, they're crying out to Him and that's what He wanted. He wanted them to focus on Him as provider. He wanted them to focus on Him, which leads us to the third consideration:

3. Consider the blessing of God’s purpose.

Consider the blessing of God's purpose. Consider the blessing of God's purpose. We're on the final part of verse 19. “But from this day on, I will bless you.” I think God told them exactly when the blessings were going to begin.

Starting today, Kislev 24, in the second year of King Darius, December 18th, 520 B.C., I'm going to start blessing your socks off. They might have had a little bit of PTSD because of sixteen years of lack. They might be thinking, Well, He might bless us today, but tomorrow, we might be like the Israelites out in the wilderness when He started dropping manna on us every day.

He told them on the sixth day to gather a double load and then don't gather any on the Sabbath. They went out there looking for it, anyway, because they didn't trust God that He would keep His word. Maybe they felt like, Okay, we're going to obey God, we're going to keep working and here come the blessings. But now we're not sure. That's like PTSD from a season of lack.

You're like in the “depression era mentality.” Okay, I trusted God a little bit and He did take care of me, but man, He could hit me again. You're thinking of God transactionally again, instead of as Father who wants to bless you if you will come under His care, seek His presence, trust His provision and recognize that He has a purpose. Now, what's the purpose for blessing us? What's the purpose? “From this day on

I will bless you.” Let's think about it for a second. What did He tell Abraham? Abraham is the father of the faith, the father of the Jewish people. In Genesis 12:1-3 (ESV)

he says, 1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse,

and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” I'm going to bless you to make you a blessing so that you will be a blessing. Did you catch that? God has a purpose for His blessings. He wants to bless you, but He wants you to become like Him, to become like Jesus.

He blesses you so that you might be a blesser. This is what He said through Abraham, but, He's really saying more than that. Abraham probably didn't understand it. We look at it, now, from the lens of the New Testament and there's another place in Genesis where He says that through your Seed I will bless all nations. Capital S; that's Jesus He's talking about.

The greatest blessing of all is coming through your lineage, Abraham. Through your lineage will come King David and then through the lineage of King David will come the Messiah, Jesus. To this temple Israel, this temple you're building, you don't know it, but, from this day forward though, for the next 500 years, I'm going to put into place all of the preparations necessary for Jesus to walk in this rebuilt temple and teach in its courts.

That's His purpose, because the overarching “metanarrative” of the whole Bible is Jesus. He is preparing that great blessing for you; He is coming. They don't know all that, but He does and He says, “from this day on,” from December 18th, 520 BC, from the 24th day of Kislev in the second year of King Darius of Persia's reign, “I will bless you.” Boy, what a blessing it is!

God's eternal purpose has been realized in Christ. Ephesians 3:11-12 (ESV) 11 “This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” It was always His purpose to give us the greatest blessing of all, which is His one and only Son, Jesus and so He's preparing a temple, a place for Him to come, the One who will replace the temple with His own body and become our temple. Lord Jesus.

I told you about our birthday party yesterday. May I say to you something you may not know about the way I've given gifts. I've rarely, if ever, given my children the gifts that they asked for. This has been very perturbing to my children, I must confess to you. When my son, Stephen, turned 5 years old,

instead of buying those big clunky Duplos that he liked, I bought him a nice set of Legos that was so difficult to build that he would have to ask for my help. He had to follow the instructions. I did that to him. When my daughter, Erin, turned five, I bought her a 35 millimeter camera. It was purple.

I had to teach her about F stops and film and how you opened it and how you put it in. Parents, talk to the young people; they don't know what I'm talking about.

I bought my oldest son a guitar when he was 18 years old. He was getting ready to go off to college, and I bought one for my son, Jonathan, as well, because I would have to teach him how to play. That's my deal..

That's two of my favorite things: photography and playing guitar. Could you think of maybe the theme I had for not giving them what they asked for, instead giving them what I wanted to give them? What would the theme be? I had to think about it myself as I was studying this week and this popped in my head; the Holy Spirit just reminded me of something.

I always tried to give them a gift that was part of me, whether they wanted it or not, so that they would have to spend time with me. I would have to teach them how to do it, because I love building things. I love photography and the guitar. My son, Stephen, who you may have noticed up here with a guitar around his neck earlier, used to tell me from his earliest days, “Dad, I'm not like you. (That was always great to hear) I'm a drummer.”

Stephen texted me after the first service; I was in my office getting a drink of water and my phone buzzed. I looked and he wrote, “What I wanted for my 18th birthday was a new set of cymbals. Instead you gave me a guitar.” I wrote back to him, “I know, but look at you now.” You know what I think God wants?

He wants to give you a piece of Himself. He wants to give you something that the only way you can use it is to learn from Him. The only way to really understand the blessing is to know Him better.

This is the way a father gives. He gives of himself. I'll close with this and I want you to think about God's blessing on your life right now. Paul writes to the church at Rome in

Romans 8:32 (ESV) “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” If He gave us Jesus, everything else is ours if we will trust Him and come under His care. What's the answer to my question?

God wants to bless. He wants to bless us physically and spiritually with all things as we walk in the fullness of life in His presence. Let's pray. Lord, I pray, first of all, for that person that doesn't know what it means to live under God's blessing today. You've been living apart from God.

You've been choosing your own way. Today, would you repent of your sin and say, “Lord, I'm a sinner, and I agree with You. I name it for what it is.

I've been living on my own. I've been living according to my own decisions. But today I turn my life over to You. I believe You died on the cross for me. Jesus. I believe You were raised from the grave and that You live today.

Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin. Make me a child of God. I want to follow You all the days of my life as my Lord and Savior. I give my life to You.

All that I am, all that I have is Yours.” If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing, He'll save you. He'll give you the greatest blessing of all. He'll give you Himself and all blessings flow from that, from Jesus. Others are here today.

And your seed's still in the barn. Your answer is, ‘I'm afraid I might need it. I'm hanging on to my time, my gifts, my talent, my treasure. I'm afraid.’

Would you repent right now and say, “Lord, help me to sow what You've given me. Help me to be a blessing. Lord, I pray You'd bless me to be a blessing. We pray it all now in Jesus’ name, Amen.