Why would Jesus tell them that? He says that the way we pay attention to His words can either bring more blessing to our lives, or cause us to miss out on His blessings: “For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken away from him” (v. 18).
In other words, every single one of us has the capacity to have hearts like all four types of soil Jesus talked about in His parable: hard, rocky, thorny, productive.
I must be attentive to how I’m listening to Christ’s words…
…with a prepared (plowed) heart
…not preoccupied with worldly things
…ready to obey what He says
…ready to share the blessings of what I hear with others
Lord, my heart is ready. Speak to me. I am ready to hear, ready to obey, and ready to share. Give me more insight into what You are saying to me.
Blessings and woes: the positives and negatives of the Christian life. Jesus listed these back-to-back to remind us that we need to keep both of them in mind, sort of like two rails that keep us on track.
It’s interesting to note how many of these blessings and woes are opposites of each other. It comes down to this—
there are blessings for seeking the Kingdom of God,AND there are woes for seeking our own immediate pleasure.
Notice the contrasts Jesus lists:
You are blessed when you seek heavenly rewards; you experience woe when your focus is earthly treasure (vv. 20, 24).
You are blessed when you are driven by a hunger for God; you experience woe when your god becomes your selfish appetites (vv. 21, 25).
You are blessed when you acknowledge your sin, weep over it, and repent from it; you experience woe when sin is laughed at (vv. 21, 25).
You are blessed when you are hated by the world for loving God; you experience woe when you are loved by the world for loving sinful pleasures (vv. 22, 26).
I think C.S. Lewis captured these thoughts well when he wrote in Mere Christianity, “Give yourself up and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. … Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
Blessings for seeking Jesus and His kingdom;woes for seeking only your own kingdom.
So how do we live blessed? Here’s what Jesus taught us (vv. 27-49)—
☐Love your enemies
☐Always do good, even (especially!) to your haters
☐Bless those who curse you
☐Don’t fight for your rights
☐Be an impartial, liberal giver
☐Treat others the way you want to be treated
☐Love and give to others without expecting a return
☐Be merciful
☐Don’t be judgmental
☐Give, give, and give some more
☐Look in the mirror at yourself first before looking out the window at others
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Thus Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did (Genesis 6:22).
Noah did ALL that God commanded him to do. Noah was asked to…
… remain pure in a depraved, everything-goes generation
… build an ark in a place nowhere close to water, when it had never rained on the earth, let alone flooded
… gather animals from all over the world
… secure food for himself, his family, and all of the animals he had collected
… convince his family this ark was needed to escape the world-wide flood God was sending, and
… keep convincing his family to hang in there with him for the next 100 years!
And Noah did all of this: Everything that God told him to do.
“No matter how unusual, or unconventional, or even unheard of, if God commands I must fully obey. I must do according to all that God says.” —Craig T. Owens
In doing so, God saw that Noah was “righteous before Me in this generation” (Genesis 7:1). This allowed God to pronounce a blessing on Noah and his family (9:1).
God’s blessing always follows our obedience.
God doesn’t say, “I have blessed you, now obey Me.” But He says, “If you obey Me I will bless you.”
Here’s a prayer we should consider offering—
Holy Spirit, help me to obey all that You are instructing me to do. May my obedience be as pleasing to my Heavenly Father as Noah’s obedience was. May God be glorified by my full and quick obedience, and may others be drawn to Christ as they see the blessings that follow my obedience. No matter how unusual, or unconventional, or even unheard of, may I be quick to obey. In Jesus name I pray. Amen!
[Each chapter in the Book of Proverbs contains thoughts that fit into a theme; they are not just random thoughts gathered together. In this “Saturday In The Proverbs” series, I will share a theme that I see in each chapter. But the cool thing about God’s Word is that you may see an entirely different theme. That’s great! If you do, I would love for you to share it in the comments below.]
He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy (Proverbs 29:1).
God gives us SO MANY opportunities to experience His blessings, but when we continually flout His laws, we squander what we could have enjoyed.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Jeremiah 24
[These are notes from Oswald Chambers’ lecture on Jeremiah 24.]
The estimate a Christian must hold of his own value is what he is worth to God. You cannot judge whether you are right with God by His blessings because “He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” [Matthew 5:45]. God is not meant to bless us; the vital question is—What am I worth to God? In times of affliction am I giving way to self-pity? am I badgering the throne of God for Him to bless me, or am I saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him” [Job 13:15]? …
The question, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” is the call for Jeremiah to state clearly to himself what it is he sees. ‘Two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord’—these symbolize the people as they appear before God. They have been trying to bring wrong things to the altar, and now God is saying He will destroy the evil and wrong out of the nation.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1). This verse refers to an abiding law, individually and nationally: we cannot consecrate to God anything that is sinful. We cannot present our bodies “a living sacrifice” to God unless we have been cleansed from sin; He won’t have them. The call in this verse is not for sanctification, but for the service of the sanctified. We could never begin to be of worth to God in service until we have been through what is represented in the atoning sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why the majority of us are of no worth to God. We are of no value to God until we enter into the experience of instantaneous, continuous sanctification, then our “spiritual act of worship” is the offering of ourselves “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” and we no more bother about ourselves.
From Notes On Jeremiah
This is, without a doubt, a challenging word from Oswald Chambers that deserves some time for us to thoughtfully consider it.
Can God use me? Am I allowing the Holy Spirit to continually and instantaneously stamp the image of Jesus more clearly in my life? Or am I saying, “I’m good like this. I don’t need to go any further”?
God wants to use us for His glory. Are we allowing ourselves to be in a place where we can be used “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”?
[Each chapter in the Book of Proverbs contains thoughts that fit into a theme; they are not just random thoughts gathered together. In this “Saturday In The Proverbs” series, I will share a theme that I see in each chapter. But the cool thing about God’s Word is that you may see an entirely different theme. That’s great! If you do, I would love for you to share it in the comments below.]
There are earthly riches and there are heavenly riches. There are temporary gains and there is eternal wealth. This Proverb helps direct us to true riches that last forever.
Good character and a good reputation are better than money (v. 1)
God alone decides what is truly valuable (v. 2)
Prudence helps you avoid bankruptcy (v. 3)
Humbly fearing God is the path to eternal wealth (v. 4)
A perverse pursuit of wealth is a hard and painful path (v. 5)
Better godly children than gobs of money (vv. 6, 15)
Debt enslaves (v. 7)
Cutting corners to make a buck will come back to bite you (v. 8)
Generosity leads to more blessings (v. 9)
Don’t pay attention to those who scoff at God’s ways (vv. 10, 24, 25)
A grace-filled, pure lifestyle will get you noticed and rewarded (v. 11)
God rewards those who do things His way (vv. 12, 17-21)
God had an important message to deliver to not only the people currently alive but all the people who would walk the face of the Earth from that moment onward. God chose Ezekiel to deliver this message.
But here’s the important concept for all leaders—A leader cannot take people anywhere unless he has gone there himself.
And it’s corollary—A godly leader cannot take people anywhere that God is blessing unless he lets God take him there first.
If a leader tries to take people where he hasn’t been himself, at best he’s a tourist; at worst he’s a hypocrite.
When God prepared to take Ezekiel to where He needed Ezekiel to take other people, God wanted Ezekiel fully engaged:
Son of man, LOOK with your eyes and HEAR with your ears, and FIXyour mind on everything I show you; for you were brought here so that I might show them to you. Declare to the house of Israel everything you see (Ezekiel 40:4).
A mark of a godly leader is one who lets God take him “there” before he tries to take anyone else there.
This is part 25 in my series on godly leadership. You can check out all of my posts in this series by clicking here.
If I were to ask you if we should we pray for our friends in need, I think I’d probably get a universal “yes.” Even non-Christians might say we should “send good thoughts” or “best wishes” to our friends.
But if I were to ask, “How long should we pray for them?” we might get a lot of different answers.
What about if we’re praying for a friend to get a job (and he gets it), or a friend to be healed (and she is), or a marriage to be restored (and it is)—do we stop praying then?
Psalm 20 and 21 appear to be companion psalms: with Psalm 20 being David’s prayer of petition, and Psalm 21 being his prayer of praise. But there is also something quite interesting in each of these psalms about the placement of the word Selah.
Remembering that Selah means some sort of pause, I find it very interesting where David tells us to pause in both of these psalms. In Psalm 20 we see the prayer request “may” either 6 or 7 times in the first five verse, but the Selah pause is right in the middle of them. Why would David start making his requests to God, tell us to pause in the middle, and then continue making his requests?
I believe this Selah means to “pause and consider” that…
God invites us to participate with Him in fulfilling His plans.
God loves us so much that He wants to hear from us.
God is powerful enough to grant what we ask of Him.
It’s as if in the middle of all of his petitions, David says, “Hold on a second. Do you realize what we are in the midst of doing? We are actually communing with the All-Knowing, All-Loving, All-Power Creator and Sustainer of the Universe!!”
In Psalm 21 David is offering up a prayer of praise for God’s answers to his prayers (note the similar language in Psalm 20:4 and 21:2), and once again he tells us to Selah pause right in the middle of those prayers of gratitude.
I asked earlier, “When do we stop praying for a friend or for ourselves?” Is it when we get the job, or experience the healing, or have the breakthrough or restoration? What if the job, the healing, the restoration was just the beginning of what God wanted to do? The Selah in Psalm 21 is an accentuation: an explosion into so much more!!
David prayed for victory in battle, but God gave him an everlasting victory; David prayed for long life, but God gave him eternal life (21:4); David prayed for blessings on his battle, but God gave him His eternal blessings (21:6).
Jesus said our Heavenly Father has gifts for us beyond our asking (Matthew 7:11), and the Apostle Paul said the same thing in Ephesians—
Now glory be to God, who by His mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes. (Ephesians 3:20 TLB)
These two Selahs tell me:
Don’t quit praying when times are tough.
Don’t quit praying when you’ve prayed a long time.
Don’t quit praying when it seems like God has answered.
Keep on praying. Always. About everything!
Please join me this coming Sunday as we continue to look at the Selahs in the Psalms. You can join me in person or via Facebook Live.
In Psalm 7, some guy named Cush is giving David trouble. How much trouble? David felt like Cush was a lion about to rip him apart!
We would naturally expect David to cry out for God’s help from this tormentor (which he does in the opening verses), but then what David does next is quite unexpected—he asks to God to search his heart to see if he might be the cause for Cush’s attack:
Have I done something wrong?
Is there guilt on my hands?
Have I done such an evil to cause him to attack?
Have I somehow robbed Cush of something?
This introspection in God’s presence was apparently a regular habit for David. He made this a regular habit when the heat was on, and also when he was at peace (see Psalm 139:23-24).
Not only did David want to make sure his hands were clean, but he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t carrying a grudge against Cush. A grudge is a feeling of anger or resentment toward someone who has wronged us. But the most devastating thing about a grudge is that it takes our eyes off God and places them on our tormentor.
In other words, as long as we hold a grudge, we continue to give our tormentor power over our lives.
So after asking those introspective questions, David writes Selah. One definition of this word—which is probably quite appropriate here—is pause, and calmlythink of that.
After this Selah pause of introspection in God’s presence, David must have felt clear of any guilt (because we don’t see him repenting, as is his habit), but we also see him being very careful of not holding on to a grudge against Cush.
David then begins to affirm in the remaining verses that God is more than capable of handling evil people and keeping the righteous protected. David determines that he will give thanks to the Lord because of His righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Most High (v. 17).
Here’s an important thing for anyone who has been injured by someone else to remember—
By holding on to a grudge, you’re holding yourself in bondage!
How can your hands be free to receive God’s blessings if your hands are full of the grudges you are holding?
Learn from David’s Selah these two lessons when someone torments you:
Ask God: am I to blame? If so, repent. If not, ask question 2.
Ask God: am I holding on to a grudge? If so, let it go so your hands are free to receive God’s blessings!
Join me next Sunday as we continue our look at the Selahs in the Psalms.
What various hindrances we meet
Craig T. Owens 