You often hear people talking about how God’s blessing flows on their lives. But sometimes, we can take a narrow view of what God’s really up to.

  A Deep Truth of the Bible

It’s great to be with you again today and this is the second message in a series that I have called "Blessed to be a Blessing". The society in which we live tells us it’s all about "you"; it’s all about "me". I buy the newspaper reasonably frequently and the one that I buy on Friday, once a month, has a glossy magazine inside it called, "Wish". It’s full of expensive watches and expensive holidays and expensive dining experiences and coffee and real estate and it’s so glossy; it’s so seductive.

Sociologists talk of the phenomenon of "cocooning"; of wrapping ourselves in comfort. For so many people in the West, that’s what they are trying to do. To somehow ignore everything else that’s going on; to hide from all the problems in the world and imagine somehow, that we can be satisfied in the cocoon of luxury. There’s an airline that for a long time, had an advertising campaign for it’s business class and the by-line of the advertising campaign was, “It’s all about you”. And that’s it isn’t it? To cocoon ourselves in these luxury things and experiences and ignore the pain and the starvation and the sickness that’s going on in the rest of the world.

There are billions of people in poverty today. There are billions of people who don’t have enough food and some of those people are listening today. I had feed-back recently from a listener in a Liberian refugee camp, in Sierra Leone and there, life is purely about survival – food, water, avoiding disease, keeping away from war. And when I am talking about God’s blessing, the one thing that I’m conscience of is the need to speak into both ends of that spectrum.

A man who I really admire, who taught me a lot, a man called Barry Chant, was a great influence on me. He’s a lecturer at the Bible College I attended, and I have a great respect for this man. One of the ministry classes we were in, there were a small number of students and we were having a discussion and we were talking about the tendency in some parts of the church to preach what some people call a "prosperity doctrine" – to believe God for a bigger car and a bigger house.

Now Barry has been ministering around the world for over fifty years and when we came to this, his face became very serious and he said this:

If you are going to preach on God’s blessing and God’s prosperity, then what you say has to apply to the poor and to the rich. It has to work in the West and in the developing world and if it doesn’t, it's not God’s truth.

You see, God doesn’t have favourites. Sure, God plants us in different places, in different circumstances but if we are going to talk about God’s blessing in this series "Blessed to be a Blessing", I am really conscience of the fact that what we say, what we uncover in God’s Word, has to apply to everybody. Now, that’s always really stuck with me and what I want is never to open my mouth and speak unless I’m speaking God‘s truth.

Today we are going to look at two deep truths of the Bible – God’s Word, God’s very heart. We are going to talk about God’s blessing and particularly look at the story of Abraham. One of the things that strikes me about the Bible is that when God blesses people He expects them to take that blessing and bless other people. And that’s the first deep truth. It’s this: a blessing is only really a blessing if it flows in and out. Let me say that again: a blessing is only really a blessing when it not only flows into us from God, but it also flows out again. That’s the first truth.

And the second is this: the birth of a blessing in our lives can often be very uncomfortable and painful, and so we often miss exactly what God is up to and what’s going on. I wanted to put those two truths right up front because that’s what we are going to be talking about today. I believe that God is a God of outrageous blessing but so often we don’t understand how He blesses and what He expects. We need good teaching on God’s blessing – Biblical, profound, truth.

God’s blessing is God’s favour. It’s when He intervenes in our lives for the good – it can be Spiritual, it can be emotional, it can be physical healing, it can be in relationships and even material. I weep when people reduce the blessing of God just down to the next big, expensive car that they want to buy. I know some people will get upset with me saying that but it’s a matter of priority. God is a God of blessing but we are blessed in order to be a blessing. A blessing has to flow into us from God and out from us to others, otherwise it’s not a blessing at all.

Let’s have a look at the story of Abraham and we clearly see how God works. We are going to Genesis, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. If you have a Bible, grab it:

"The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation,” – listen to this – “and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and in you all the peoples on the earth will be blessed." So Abram left as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran and set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh, at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land and the Lord appeared there to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

So Abram built an alter there, to the Lord who appeared to him. From there he went toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an alter to the Lord and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

See, there are a few aspects to this story. Firstly, God said, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household. Leave everything you’re comfortable with and step out. And if you do that, I will bless you. I promise, I will make you a great nation. All the peoples on the earth will be blessed." The point of the blessing was not just that Abram would be blessed but that all the peoples on the earth would be blessed, through him. That’s huge! Ultimately Israel was blessed in that they received the Promised Land and you and I were blessed in that Jesus Christ was physically a descendant of Abram.

Now this required a lot of obedience. This man was seventy five years old. Most of us are heavily into retirement aged seventy five – not that I know, I’m not quite there yet – but it was no obstacle to him. Abram was quite wealthy yet he set out into the unknown; he set out into God’s blessing and to be a blessing. I always admire this man because he had no Bible; it wasn’t written then. I don’t know how God talked to him, but somehow God did and Abram believed Him and he set out. He left his father’s house, his comfort, his people, recognition, his own country, his home on a promise from God.

"Step out of your comfort zone, Abram, follow me to this land that I will show you." He didn’t even know where he was going, there were no planes, trains or automobiles or air conditioned business class. This was God’s promise: "I will bless you so that you will become a blessing to all the nations." Aged seventy five, he went on an uncertain journey on God’s promise. So what happens next?

 

Stepping out into the Blessing

Okay, today we are talking about God’s blessing and the two deep truths: firstly that a blessing has to flow. A blessing isn’t a blessing unless it flows into us from God and out from us to other people. And secondly, when God starts to birth a blessing in our lives, it’s not always comfortable and it’s not always convenient and it doesn’t always feel like a blessing.

God’s promise to Abram was a huge blessing. Remember, Abram was seventy five years old; the greatest sadness of this man’s life was that he had no children. To the Hebrews, the two great signs of God’s blessing were lots of kids and lots of land. If you had those you were blessed, if you didn’t you weren’t.

God not only called Abram out of his comfort zone but He promised him those two blessings. Firstly in Genesis, chapter 13 verse 14, it says this:

The Lord said to Abram after Lot had departed from him, “Lift up you eyes from where you are and look north and south and east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if anyone could count the dust then your offspring could be counted. Go; walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I am giving it to you."

And again in Genesis, chapter 15, verse 4:

Then the word of the Lord came to him. “This man will not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them,” then God said to Abram, “so shall your offspring be."

The guy is seventy five; his wife Sarai is about the same age. These are huge, impossible promises: the land that God is promising him is inhabited by the Canaanites; they’ve been childless for all these years, and yet God calls Abram and Sarai out of their comfort zone into the absolutely impossible – He sends them on a long journey.

When you read the story out of the next few chapters of Genesis (and I encourage you to do that) the two things that leap out are these: firstly it was an interminable journey – twenty five years! It went on and on and on and on. We are talking "God" and "blessing" and we think an hour, a day, a week at the most. Twenty five years! What was God thinking? Not even twenty five years in the comfort of their own home, but twenty five years of rough and rugged time on the road in tents, with all their animals and possessions and servants travelling with them. Imagine the organisation and the difficulties and the discomforts all for some vague, impossible promise of blessing.

And the second thing that leaps out at you as you read the story of Abram and Sarai are their imperfections. They didn’t do this perfectly, they made lots of mistakes. Abram took Lot with him. God didn’t ask him to take Lot with him. They had to separate and Abram had to give land away and then he had to rescue Lot from captivity, putting God’s plan in risk again. And they doubted God over and over again. And then Abram and Sarai think, ‘Well, God’s not showing up so maybe we’ll give Him a hand.’ So Abram sleeps with a woman, a servant, Hagar and has Ishmael. They laughed at God’s promises. They said, “God, do you understand how old we are?” Twice Abraham lies about Sarah; says she is his sister not his wife and she ends up in some king’s harem.

Abraham was not some super Christian, you know, who did everything perfectly – just a simple, ordinary human being with an extraordinary faith in an extraordinary God. After twenty five years God gave them a son and God told them to call this son Isaac, which means "he laughs". You see God had the last laugh, "he who laughs last, laughs best". And they were blessed to be a blessing. They were called out of their comfort zone into God’s promises – so called "blessings" – in order to be a blessing to all the nations. But all they saw for the first twenty five years was heartbreak and trial after trial on an interminable journey.

You see how easy it is to make a mistake when God is birthing a blessing, to mistake that birth of a blessing for a curse? We go to God and ask Him to bless us and – listen to me, here’s a deep truth – often it gets a whole bunch worse before it gets better. In a relationship, if you pray for your husband or your wife or your children: "God bless them, improve our relationship, deal with that thing in them that I can’t deal with." The most likely thing that is going to start happening is that it will get worse. They’re going to start acting up and then we give up.

When they start acting up, when it gets worst … praise God! When things take a turn for the worst after we’ve prayed for a blessing in that area, thank God, because God is up to something good. That’s His way. The birth of a blessing often is a difficult birth because that’s how we learn and grow and walk in faith. It’s a deep truth that the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we often miss out on exactly what God is up to and what’s going on. When someone taught me that, when I finally learnt that, it made a huge difference to my life. We need to stop putting our trust in circumstances we can see and put our trust in the God we can’t see.

When God starts something He will finish it! Even though we bumble through it imperfectly, like Abraham and Sarah, even though we lose heart sometimes, even though we even laugh at God and say, "Look God, this is impossible", God wants us to learn this lesson today. It’s one of the things that He will use mightily and powerfully over the rest of our lives.

God’s blessings so often involve change in people and in circumstances and in attitudes and when they start breaking forth, it feels risky and uncomfortable and uncertain and sometimes it even feel worse. When you are in that situation, I pray that the Holy Spirit will bring this back to you. God is a God of blessing and we will sometimes suffer incredibly as His blessings come to pass. It seems to be so often His way.

 

Believing the Promise

God is a God of blessing and I truly believe that He wants to bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. Abraham was the case in point. Right from the beginning, God promised that Abraham would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. At that time he had no idea what that meant. He spent twenty five years wandering after that promise. Finally, finally a miracle – a son, Isaac. But what about this other huge promise, that through Abraham God would bring blessing to every nation on earth?

Well, let’s roll forward a little bit now, to the New Testament, about fifteen hundred years on and the writer of the Book of Hebrews says this – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it at chapter 11 and verse 8:

By faith, Abraham, when called to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going. By faith he made his home in this land, like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were his heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, who’s architect and builder, was God.

Isn’t that beautiful?

By faith, Abraham, even though he was past the age and Sarah, herself who was barren, was enabled to become a father because he considered Him faithful who had made that promise. And so, from this one man and he was as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the sea shore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised but only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted they were aliens and strangers on the earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return, instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for He has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God said to him, “It will be through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead and, figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

See, this is a beautiful story! Abraham stepped out, he wandered for twenty five years, he finally had a son but he never saw the promises of blessings to all the nations. See what it says in Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 13: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” Now we are going to go back to those two profound truths of God’s blessing that I talked about at the beginning of the program.

The first is this deep truth: a blessing is only a blessing if it flows in and out. That’s the first one. And the second is: the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we can miss exacting what God’s up to and what’s going on.

Now the story of Abraham brings these two truths together. It was uncomfortable for twenty five years, but even more so, he never saw the major promise come to fruition. The promise from the beginning to Abraham was this: ‘I will make you into a great nation’ He never saw that. It didn’t happen until after he died. And again, ‘All the peoples will be blessed through you’. He never saw that.

Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. He suffered for that blessing but never fully saw its fruition. Through Abraham, Israel received the Promised Land and through Abraham you and I receive Jesus Christ because Jesus was descended, physically, from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on.

Jesus is the greatest blessing of God to all humanity and Abraham had no idea. He had to suffer those twenty five years so he could be part of that blessing but he never saw the end of it. God blessed him in order that God’s blessing could flow through him, down to the centuries, to you and me, here and now. And that is utterly amazing.

Do you see how limiting it is when we want God just to bless us, and somehow we imagine that blessing stops with us? It’s not God’s plan. God’s blessing is only really a blessing when it flows down to us from Him and out from us to everybody else. He wants us to be the place where His flood tide of blessing brings life to the rest of the world. Look what Jesus said about exactly that: John chapter 7 verse 37:

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice (notice: He said this in a loud voice so everyone would hear) “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.

See, there’s an "in" and an "out". Are you looking for something? Are you parched and needy and dry? Come to Jesus and drink; put your faith in Him.

And whoever believes in Him, rivers of living water will flow out of them.

It’s one of the greatest passages in the Bible. It’s powerful. It’s the crux of being a disciple. We are blessed to be a blessing! Rivers – Nile and Ganges and Murray and Mississippi and Amazon – rivers! Again Jesus said:

Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use, it would be measured to you.

God blesses us so that we can be a blessing. Whether we are Abraham or just some little person living in this century – we are blessed to be a blessing! It is a double sided transaction. When we limit God’s blessing to just flowing in, that’s a very, very sad thing.

You and I are blessed to be a blessing.