Coming to the Place of Blessing

This is North Way tape number 517. This message was presented on Wednesday evening, July the 2nd, 1986, by Pastor Jay Passavant of North Way Christian Community. Psalm 1. Psalm 1 tonight is going to be just the focal point of what we're going to talk about. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. Not so the wicked. They're like the chaff that the wind blows away, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. I want to begin by asking a question that I know might sound very obvious, and I don't mean it to be rhetorical, the question really is an honest one. Do you want blessing in your life? Do you really desire blessing? Do you really desire it now? Now hear me. I mean, is this what you want in life? Do you want blessing? See, in our church here at North Way, there are hundreds of people who really don't want, don't desire. When the Bible uses the word desire, it's talking about a passionate word. They don't really desire blessing, because if they did, they'd be out. Let me ask you, when you get hungry and you desire something sweet, what do you do? If you're like me, I'll scour the kitchen first, and if things fail to meet my low standards of sweets, I'll get in the car if it's 11 o'clock at night, and go down to the stop and get some class ho-hos or something. If I desire it, I will do it. I'll pay the price. Do you know what I'm saying? I want to submit to you tonight that desire is very important in God's eyes. Much of the church, much of the church at large, and even our church, lacks desire. If you believe that, say amen. It lacks desire. And without that, you won't go anywhere in God. Do you know that? If you have no desire to grow, God will give you the desire of your heart. And yet, in the book of Psalms, over and over again, the Bible talks about how God wants to honor desire. He says in Psalm 20, verse 4, May the Lord give you the desire of your heart. Make all your plans succeed. Psalm 21 is my birthday psalm. Do you have a birthday psalm? There's no one here over 150, right? But, Psalm 21 reads, O Lord, the King rejoices in your strength. How great is His joy in the victories you give. You have granted Him the desire of His heart, and have not withheld the request of His lips. God wants to give you that desire. He wants to... You know, I just want to make this point tonight. If you don't have a desire in God, get one. Ask the Lord to put something in you that you just have to have. Because it's vital to things changing in your life. He just goes on. He said, You welcomed Him with rich blessings, and placed a crown of pure gold on His head. This is David speaking. He asked you for life, and you gave it to Him. Length of days, forever and ever. Through the victories you gave, His glory is great. And you've bestowed on Him splendor and majesty. See, God wants to give you desire. Psalm 37-4 we looked at. Psalm 145-19. They all talk about God wanting to grant desires. Jesus said in Mark 11, verse 24. Who knows what that's talking about there? Faith verse? Turn to Mark 11. No one knows what it is? Great. Alright, let's turn there. 23 and 24. Alright. Mark 11-24. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you've received it, and it will be yours. Who's got a King James Bible tonight? Who's a real student of the Word? Walt? Alright, read that verse for us, would you? 4, I think it is. I don't know if I understand everything he said, but he did say, Whatsoever you desire, believe that you shall receive it. I want to say tonight, beloved, if you don't desire blessing, then you might as well go out and get a long drink of water. Because it's not going to matter. Things won't change. It won't break loose in your life. Now, what do we desire tonight? Well, what we're talking about is blessing. Blessing is happiness in the simplest definition. You know, when we read blessed, I think in the living Bible, the Beatitudes are translated happy. But blessing also includes the idea of favor. Favor. You know, I was sharing with Carol today that one thing that I just, I can't get over in the Bible. I can't get the thought through my mind, is how God chooses people. Do you see that? I mean, He just chooses them because He chooses them. There was no reason for God to choose David. He just chose him. And He said that, right, in what I read in 1 Chronicles. I chose you out of the pasture to be a ruler over my people. Now, how many of you tonight know that you're here as a child of God, if you know the Lord Jesus, because God chose you. That's what election is about. So, whatever happens, beloved, if the business falls to the ground, if your husband walks out on you, if you never have the baby you're longing for, you're chosen in God. And you have reason tonight to give thanks for your blessing. And I've often said that a staggering thought is if you take a circle and put 50 dots in it, and those represent all the people of the world, one of those dots will be red, and that's you. You're one of 50 in the world that's been chosen. That's what the statistics would say today, to be a son or daughter of God. Now, beyond that, I'm discovering, listen, that we can ask God for favor. Pat Robertson said in one of his books, it might be Secret Kingdom, he said, I asked the Lord for three things. Do you know what they were? Good memory? What else? No. What were they? Anyone remember? I don't remember either. I just found this waiting. Wisdom was one of them. He asked for wisdom. The second one was anointing, and the third one was favor. Favor, who? Before God. Would you all grant me a blessing and ask God to favor me? I would appreciate that, as I wait before the Lord. But I'm also going to ask the Lord to favor you. To favor you, His children, His people, this church. I asked the Lord today for favor on this church. And you know what I find? When you ask God for favor, for blessing, for grace, He pours it out. He wants to do that. The Bible says that blessed was Jesus. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, John 12, 13. Titus 2, 13 says that we are looking forward to the return of our blessed hope, the Lord Jesus. So, being blessed is a very biblically well-established position in God that we need to seek on a consistent basis. In fact, the book of Revelation says, eternal blessing, 22, 14, is for those whose robes are washed in white. So, tonight, blessing then is what we're seeking, which is happiness, favor. Blessing is when the extraordinary becomes the ordinary. Who needs that in their life? How would you like to see the supernatural becoming the everyday? Glory to God. I want to see that. And I know it's happening. I know God is causing things that you wouldn't have believed to happen. He's providing for His children. Do you know that? He is opening doors that were never opened before. He's providing funds that were never there before. We needed money this week. Can I go ahead and just say this? Last week, all of you know that we're paying for these renovations now over an extended period of time. And we got the note from our financial administrator, who is Andy, that said, that's her title, folks. Come on. You can't put that on a t-shirt. It won't fit. But it said, we needed 13,202 or 207 in our offering last week, or we would not be able to pay our bills, to pay the creditors, the people we've committed to, and all the other things, the mission things. The week before that, the offering had been $11,000. The week before that, $8,000. And the week before that was $15,000 and significantly more. But that was the fifth Sunday of the month, which is not everyone's best Sunday to give, right? That's sort of the end of the barrel. Plus, you know, at least one of our big givers was gone, right? Who knows? We prayed, and we said, Lord, you've just got to show us your power here. You've got to give us what we need. The offering came in. Do you know what it was? $7,000. Isn't that great? I was so thankful to God. To me, it was as great a miracle as if he'd given $20,000 or $30,000, because he was just saying to me, okay, I know what you need. I'm here. You keep seeking me and keep being obedient. Now, we have a responsibility. We have a responsibility that much. Anyhow, I just want to encourage you. Now, to me, beloved, a year ago, that would have been supernatural. And now we're just seeing it. We're seeing it. I could tell you about some healing. Same thing. Blessing is what we're after. The blessing of God. Fruitfulness is blessing. I'll give you how many illustrations of that. Prosperity is described as blessing. Wholeness and peace and provision. If you desire blessing in your life, then the Bible says that many different things have to happen. And I had today to just zero in on two things to bring you to the place of blessing. Now, how many of you are with me so far? You want to come to the place of blessing. That's about 50%. I want to give you two things out of Psalm 1 that you can do to open to blessing in your life. These aren't the only things you can do, but these are the two, in my estimation, most foundational. If you don't do these, I'm confident that you'll struggle to receive the blessing of God. Here they are. You know, I don't know about you, but I'm finding more and more that I need to learn to simplify things. Do you find life gets very complicated? How many of you have doomsday at bill-paying time? Well, you know, when you walk in, and others have eulogized my roll-top desk and the way of accumulating things I have there. But I know that I need something to simplify my record-keeping and simplify what I'm going to do. I need a simple exercise plan. How many of you know, when you go to the Nautilus thing, and they give you 87 exercises to trim you down, that you'll keep about 5 of them? Anything that's complicated, we just don't tend to do. But the simple things, we grab hold of. Jesus said all the laws are fulfilled in this one. What was it? The law of love. He simplified it for us. The problem is we still can't do it without it. I want to, tonight, just give you two simple things that you can do to begin to come into the place of blessing. Here they are. Number one, it's in Psalm 1, verse 1. Despise deception. Do you want to write that down, Paul? Despise deception. God has so impressed me, beloved, over the last weeks with the ease with which we slip into deception. I read some time ago, and I think I've even told this illustration here, but it's worth repeating, that experimenters found that if you put a frog, a live frog, in a beaker of cool water, it'll just swim around and be real happy. And if you turn the flame way up, real high under that beaker, the frog will jump right out. But if, indeed, you very slowly turn the heat up in the Bunsen burner, and just let that temperature go up about one degree every few seconds or so, do you know that frog won't even know in 20 or so minutes down the road that thing will be so limp that it'll die, because it'll lose all of its energy. It will be deceived in lethargy until it dies. Well, I think that's just the classic strategy. The classic strategy. Despise deception, that's what I say. The enemy just wants you to slip into deception. I want to give you here three ways that I see that he does that. And they have to do with diluting the things of God. I mentioned this, I came over this Sunday morning, but I am amazed at how we are diluted in our sharpness before God, the things that dilute us. Here's three of them. Number one, the counsel of the wicked. Look at the end of verse one. Partway into verse one. Where do you get your input? Well, I get USA Today. Pittsburgh Press. Six o'clock news. None of that's really going to build your spirit. It's not going to bring you into the place of blessing. Now, there's nothing wrong necessarily at all with those things, except that, beloved, if those begin to be the place where you get your counsel, where your attitudes are shaped, and they are, well, it's not so bad. I guess it's not so bad to go out and have a good time and my kids have to learn how to relate, so they need to go to the movies with these other kids. So if they see some stuff that's a little violent, we begin to just absorb into us the values of our culture. Recently a brother I was talking to said, not from this fellowship, but a good friend, was saying he was moving to a new job. Moving his family, moving his location. I said, well, how did you come to that decision? He said, well, I talked to the leadership in the company, my boss and his boss and so on. They said that it was really the best move for us, in terms of my career. It would sure establish me in my position in the company and open some doors of opportunity for me. And then also I considered the fact that the city we were moving to is much more appealing than the one I'm moving from. It was down in one of our southern states. And you know what he didn't say? He didn't say, I sought the counsel of others in the body of Christ. I sought my friends who know Jesus to talk to them about the implications. You know what, beloved? If we seek counsel from the world, we will get the wisdom of the world. And the wisdom of the world will lead us down the paths of destruction. And they won't lead us into the fulfillment, the blessing of God. Where do you get your counsel? Where do you get your counsel? What do you feel about AIDS? Where are you getting your counsel? If you listen to the prevalent thinking on the matter of most of our media, it's fine, AIDS, it's fine, let's all have a big time of it. In fact, those who are cautiously establishing some codes of conduct for people with AIDS are viewed as being parochial and small-minded and become, in the eyes of the media, the violent ones. Yesterday on the news, when the Supreme Court decision came down, which the gay activists held as being violently anti-them, what they accused Jerry Farwell of was the very thing that they said that he didn't want, which was inciting hate. You see? Because he was saying that this was a righteous decision, a decision that would begin to put an end to some of the things that were going on. You see, but where do you get your counsel? Where are your values formed? These are the key things to coming into blessing. Let me go on quickly. Secondly, it says to not stand in the way of sinners. Blessing does not accompany those. In my mind, when it says stand in the way of sinners, it's talking about actions here, going along with sinners. How many of you have found the Lord Jesus in the last two years? Just wave your hand real quickly, okay? Fifteen or more of you? Twenty of you, maybe? Did you find that when you did that, took that step of faith, that the way of those that you were with, the way they conducted themselves, the things they did was still appealing to you? You know what? Usually it's not for people who come to the Lord. You know that? Recently. But it's the rest of us that have a problem with it. The rest of us have walked with them for a long time. We start to get into a struggle with it. And we start to envy those who are prospering outside of the kingdom because they're pulling a few strings here. I was talking to a guy recently about getting a building contract. And he was saying, yeah, the reason so-and-so got the contract was because they did some shaving over here and did some deceiving things and they got the favor of someone in the government and got the contract. I was playing it straight and I lost out. And I could see there was bitterness in there toward God. But what would happen to him if he walked in the way of sinners? Would he come into God's blessing? No, it says later that he'd be like the chaff which the wind blows away. The way of sinners, beloved, is a way of compromise. And do you know something? Deceit is the bird that lands on the limb of compromise. Deception or deceit is the bird that lands or lights on the limb of compromise. It's compromise in your life that allows the bird of deception to come. Remember that. Number three, the Bible says not to sit in the seat of mockers or scoffers. And to me, beloved, this is talking about our tongues. Our tongues. What we say can cut off the blessing of God. Do you know that? We don't talk a whole lot around here, probably not enough even about confession. But I just want to say that you can cut off God's blessing in your life by what comes out of your mouth. The Bible says in Proverbs that the power of life and death is in the tongue. And there's a story. We're too late on time today. But mark down your notes there. Judges 11, around verse 20, where Jephthah is going to go and he wants to take on the enemies. I forget which ones it was that were attacking Israel. And he says, God, I'm going to go out and I know you're with me. I'm going to defeat these enemies. And if you're with me, I make a vow that the first thing that steps out of my house, I commit to the Lord as a sacrifice. Remember that story? And so God grants him great favor. And he goes out and kills these enemies. And Israel is delivered. And he's coming back rejoicing. And who comes running out of the house first thing? His daughter. Well, that's a tremendous story. And I remember reading that and saying, God, this is just awful. But what's the point of that story? Well, the point is, with his own confession, he sealed that terrible fate that his daughter came under. The power of death was in his tongue. And, beloved, the power of life is there as well. If we sit in the seat of mockers, if we're constantly pulling down, criticizing, judging, we're not going to come into the blessing of God. A lot of Scripture says this. And Jesus speaks in Matthew 13, about verse 36 in there. He says, Out of the heart the mouth speaks. If out of your mouth is coming, well, I'm never going to get better, or I'm never going to get out of debt, or I'm never going to get married, or I'm never going to... That's coming out of your heart. That's saying what you believe in there. Or this church isn't going to be that, or my neighbor's never going to be, or whatever. And so we want to believe God and speak it. Listen to this. What we speak and believe, what we speak and believe is the spiritual raw material of which the Holy Spirit creates. What we speak and believe, and if we speak the Word of God and believe it, it's the spiritual raw material. Do you need a miracle? Then speak what the Word of God says and believe it, and it becomes the raw material of which the Holy Spirit fashions His blessing. All right. So the first thing we want to do is to despise the deception. If we don't despise the counsel of the wicked, if we don't despise the way of sinners of compromise, if we don't prevent ourselves from sitting in that mocking place, we're never going to come to the place of blessing. Now, how many of you see something in one of those three that you know, God, you've got to check me on this, Lord, right? Okay. I know when I was reading it, and I've read this psalm a thousand times probably. Well, 500, okay? But the Lord really made clear to me, this isn't, we don't do these things if we want to be blessed. But then there's that but there. You see it in verse 2? But, we don't do these things, but we do this. Our delight is in the law of the Lord. Hallelujah. And on His law, He meditates day and night. And this is the second and final point. That we delight in the law. Despise the deception, but delight in the law. See, the rest of Psalm 1 is just the promise of what God's going to do. He's going to plant you like a tree by streams of water, and you're going to yield fruit, and everything that you do is going to prosper. Hallelujah. And the Lord is going to watch over your way, the way of the righteous. But let me just touch on this business of delighting, then, in the law of God. This is all I'm going to do tonight. To me, beloved, to delight in the law, there's just three things I want to touch on. Here's the first one. You cannot delight in this book if you do not read it. Okay? Let's not be real spiritual about this. I was just, one of my magazines today, I saw CompuBible, or something like that, where, you know, the latest thing I know is a computer program of the whole Bible. I read, I don't know if you read this, brother, but, you know, in 10 or 15 years, when we all have our own terminals that operate basically by one touch, that pastors are going to have to be a lot more innovative, because you'll be able to get the same sermon notes and illustrations and outlines that we get, and so you can go home and say, I heard that, I know where he got that. This computer thing, it's like it's going to come and take away the creativity of the Holy Spirit. If you don't read this, it's not going to be something you can delight in, is it? How many of you have a plan? Let's be real honest here, folks. How many of you have a plan? I'm not asking if you're keeping it yet. How many of you have a plan to read through the Bible in a year? Okay. Well, let's put our other hand over our eyes. It's tough, isn't it? It's tough. Around Leviticus 16 is where I usually fall. But can I suggest something right to you right now? Today is July the 2nd. We're one day past the halfway point. I'll just make a suggestion. If nothing else, if you start tonight, go home and read Psalm 1, Psalm 2, read all the way through the Psalms and Proverbs, and three chapters a day in the New Testament, and you'll read Psalms, Proverbs, and the whole New Testament in the next six months. Won't that be exciting? At least get that much under your belt. Psalm a day, Proverbs in December, or you can read Proverbs a day too, and three chapters in the New Testament every day, and you'll sail right through. Read the Word. Get it in your mind and in your spirit. I want to read something to you that blessed me today. We're talking about meditating on the Word here. Who's ever heard of George Mueller? Who would say that George Mueller had a fairly successful life of faith? If you've never heard of him, let me just tell you that he was a man who lived in the 1800s, died about 1898, I think it was. In his daily prayer journal, he logged, listen to this, 50,000 specific answers to prayer. Not bad, huh? 5,000 of which were answered on the very day of their asking. He went on 17 preaching tours, in which he spoke to more than 3 million people, but the thing that he's known of more than anything is the raising up of tremendous orphanages and places to care for children. He was called the Father of Orphans. Anyhow, I read this article. Listen to this. George Mueller was a man of prayer. It was not unusual for George Mueller to pray two to four hours a day. But this is what he said. The Lord taught me that the first business I needed to attend to every day was to have my spirit happy in the Lord. Well, that's not very spiritual. You should be humbled. My first concern shouldn't be thinking of ways to serve and glorify the Lord. What? George Mueller. But rather, how to get my spirit happy. We need this for prayer meetings, don't we, brother? You ought to see the way people come into prayer sometimes at 6.30. And how to nourish my inner man. Trying to speak truth to unbelievers or minister to Christians or relieve the distressed or behave in other ways as a child of God may be done in a wrong spirit if I'm not first happy in the Lord, being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day. Now listen, here's what I'm getting at. For at least ten years before I understood this, my practice had been to give myself to prayer as soon as I was dressed in the morning. I'll be real honest, that's been my habit. That's the first thing I do, is to pray. But later, I saw that the most important thing to do was to read the Word of God and meditate on it. In this way, my heart could be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, and instructed. And this meditation time on the Word of God was the door through which I entered into rich communion with the Lord. There's a lot more in this, I don't have time to read it. He goes on to say that for the next 14 years, he started by being in the Word for the first hour and then prayed for two. And then's when he really began to see the great miracles. I just want to conclude here. I feel as though reading the Word, meditating on it, we all know what that means, but I like to do this. I take something out and I try to just record something that's put out to me and just come back to that verse. I could do that consistently and show you things. And number three, to me, delighting in the Law of God is obeying it. And if God shows you something in the Word, don't stand... Right, read it, record it, and obey it. Obey the Word. Do what it says. Jesus said, how can you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things I can do? I want to say to you tonight, don't embark to seek blessing from God if you don't want to obey what He's going to say to you. How many of you know, how many of you know when God, have you come to the point of maturity where you know God is leading you to do something? Are you at that point? And you read that there, and it says something like, forgive him, or go out and do likewise, or whatever it is. But you know the Lord is speaking through something, and you say, God, I'm going to look somewhere else here. That's right, I was supposed to be in Isaiah 13 today, Lord, not 12. Obey the Word of the Lord. Jesus said in John 13, that those who love me, say it, keep my commandments. They obey the Word of God. You want to come to a place of blessing? Do you? Hello. Despise deception, delight in the law. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you tonight, that I believe, that blessing is at the very door of many that are here tonight, God. Blessing like they've never known. And I pray, Father, that just something tonight would minister to them, as you did to me today, God. That you want to bless, God. You're a loving Father, and your desire, your delight is to bless your children, God. To grant them favor and grace and provision and healing and health. And I pray tonight, God, that you'd bring many to the place of blessing. In Jesus' name, Amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.