“Glory to the Precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Deuteronomy 33: 28, 29  Then Israel shall dwell in safety, The fountain of Jacob alone, In a land of grain and new wine; His heavens shall also drop dew.

Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, The shield of your help And the sword of your majesty! Your enemies shall submit to you, And you shall tread down their high places.”

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Hallelujah

Receiving God's blessings - as a pattern

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we see that Joseph sold grain to the people struggling due to the famine. What kind of a person are we today?

Because in Proverbs 11: 26 The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.

Proverbs 11: 30 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, And he who wins souls is wise.

How are we gathering grains daily. In Egypt because Joseph collected the grains and kept it when the famine came in Egypt and in the other lands he is able to sell the grains. In this manner, God is showing us Joseph as a pattern so that we will gain souls.

In Haggai 1: 5 - 11 Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!

“You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”

Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways! 

Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified,” says the Lord. 

“You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says the Lord of hosts. “Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. 

Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. 

For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.”

Each of the above verses is showing us that if we do not anything for God and we do God's work for our own needs, God will send a famine upon everything that belongs to us.

We see that God is blessing Joseph through Moses in Deuteronomy 33: 13 - 17 And of Joseph he said: “Blessed of the Lord is his land, With the precious things of heaven, with the dew, And the deep lying beneath,

With the precious fruits of the sun, With the precious produce of the months,

With the best things of the ancient mountains, With the precious things of the everlasting hills,

With the precious things of the earth and its fullness, And the favor of Him who dwelt in the bush.

Let the blessing come ‘on the head of Joseph, And on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers.’

His glory is like a firstborn bull, And his horns like the horns of the wild ox; Together with them He shall push the peoples To the ends of the earth; They are the ten thousands of Ephraim, And they are the thousands of Manasseh.”

In this manner, we read that God blesses the sons of Israel through Moses. The blessing that God gave was upon the head of Joseph.

Therefore, God is saying in Haggai 2: 15 - 19  ‘And now, carefully consider from this day forward: from before stone was laid upon stone in the temple of the Lord— 

since those days, when one came to a heap of twenty ephahs, there were but ten; when one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty baths from the press, there were but twenty. 

I struck you with blight and mildew and hail in all the labors of your hands; yet you did not turn to Me,’ says the Lord. 

‘Consider now from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid—consider it: 

Is the seed still in the barn? As yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have not yielded fruit. But from this day I will bless you.’ ”

My dear people of God who are reading this, Joseph possessed all the blessings that God gave him. But in the sons of Israel why the generation of Joseph were not blessed. This is the time to think of the previous things in our life. Joseph was honest, disciplined, even in the path of tribulation he walked in the path that was pleasing to God. Also he had patience in him. In his life, even when God lifted him up in Pharaoh's palace, he did not have pride in him. When he saw his brothers he did not show any grudge. He understood that whatever happened before was the doing of God. He had humbleness in him, he had God's mercy within him, he was not adamant, he had God's wisdom in him and he also had God's love in him. Therefore, God is blessing him.

But God is telling God's children think of everything that has happened in the previous days because since the day that we have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ's blood God begins to put the foundation to build us as God's church. But God is asking is there seed and grain in the barn? As yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate plant, and the olive tree have not yielded fruit. 

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the seed and grain that God has given us is not in our soul because we have given our soul to fleshly thoughts, worldly thoughts and wordly deeds by spending our time in different ways. Because we do not sit in the church and inquire in his church to see his glory and because our thoughts are scattered in many different directions the birds of the sky are eating them up. Also because the grape vine plant, Christ's fruit the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree none of these fruits and their deeds are within us God strikes us, our church and our land with with blight and mildew and hail and plagues in all the labors of our hands. Therefore dear people of God, in this day let us all not involve ourselves in unfruitful deeds of darkness but rebuke them and leave all the dead deeds and live with the fruits of the spirit good character, righteousness and truth definitely God will bless us from today.

May the Lord bless you all.

Let us pray. 

-To be continued