Blessing In, Blessing Out // Blessed to be a Blessing, Part 4

One of the things that Jesus always managed to do – was turn everything on its head. Love your enemy, is just one of his startling sayings. And the same is true, when He talked about God’s blessing. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a man called S D Gordon. Sometime in the late 1800's or early 1900's he wrote a book called Quiet Talks on Power. In that book he uses a simple and powerful example to describe the consequences of expecting all of God’s blessings to flow into our lives without letting any of them flow out again. He uses the picture of the Dead Sea. Now the Dead Sea is that body of water where all the rivers flow in but none of them flow out and as a result it's dead. Nothing can live in it, not a thing; no fish, no plants, no birds, and the water is incredibly hard and brackish. He makes this point in his book, that if we expect all of God’s blessings to flow in and none of them to flow out then our lives become like the circumference of that Dead Sea. It's an interesting point. This week on the program we're talking about God’s blessing, getting it balanced, and a powerful understanding of exactly what God means by blessing and how it works in our lives. Now our generation is born to consume. We are consuming the planet right down into the ground, we just can't help ourselves. I know lots of people who try and buy their way to happiness. Hey I used to be one of them. God blessed me with a new car, God blessed me with a salary increase, and I’m going to believe God for more. No doubt God does those things. God’s blessed me with things that I've needed along the way and even things that were just kind of ‘icing on the cake’ kind of things because he felt like it. Now that's nice but they're not the main thing. The Bible says: The love of money is the root of all evil. I regularly speak on this subject because quite frankly our failure to get a grip on what God means by blessing is one of the greatest maladies in society today and let me say it really bluntly, even amongst God’s own people, people who say, "Yep, I believe in Jesus." If we think that God’s blessing is all about stuff flying to us and stopping there, we're missing the whole point. Over this week we've seen that God started His plan for blessing right from the beginning, right from creation. You know he created all of creation and then he created male and female, man and woman, and he gave everything to them and said, "Here, it's yours. Bless, prosper, go for it, it's all yours." But it didn't take Adam and Eve long to interrupt that blessing. They rejected God, they turned their backs on him and so now we live in a fallen world. We're living out the consequences of humanity's rejection of God. Why is there suffering? Why is there pain? Because way back then we turned our backs on God and you and I, we've done it too, in our own ways we've turned our backs on God. And yesterday we saw that for blessing really to be a blessing, for Gods blessing really to be Gods blessing, it has to flow in and out. Now I want to continue on with that a bit more today and unpack it a bit more. If you were with us yesterday you heard me read this passage from the 6th chapter of Luke: Blessed are you who are poor because yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you'll be satisfied. Blessed are those who are weeping now because you'll laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject you because of me. Rejoice in that day, leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven for that’s how their fathers treated the Prophets but woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you for that is how their fathers treated false disciples but I tell you, listen to me, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. You see, this is the heart of Jesus; this is the heart of God. It's not to have a whole bunch of wealthy people running around saying, "I'm wealthier than you." It's not about people having a big party and say, "Life’s good." While there's poor and hungry and starving out there. It's not about fame and fortune and recognition. We're missing the point. Particularly, let me say this, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others, we are blessed in order to be a blessing. You know something? it's like a double sided book-keeping transaction. And when you're doing book keeping (if you've ever studied book keeping) double sided entry into the book, if the two sides of the ledger don't balance, the whole thing’s out of whack. And it's a bit like that with God’s blessing. If we think it's all about God pouring his material blessing into us, even his spiritual blessing into us but us then not sharing that out, the whole thing ...