GOD’S CHALLENGES AND BLESSINGS FOR BELIEVERS
Text: Deuteronomy 11: 26-32
Introduction
Life naturally involves passing from one stage of life to another. Today as graduates, you are moving from one significant life stage into another. As you leave college, you are finally entering into the stage of life in which you control completely all of your choices. You control the direction of your lives by the choices that you will make. This is an exciting and wonderful time in life for you as a person and as a believer. The incredible life adventure of making your own way in the world and discovering the plan God has for you is filled with joy, wonder, miracles and blessings beyond description.
It is also a journey filled with opposition, enemies, struggles and potential failures. That is why God provides through his word direction, instruction, and promises to guide us and then journey. His word also provides us with many examples of people just like us preparing for the faith journey of stepping into a new stage of life. These examples help us see how God’s promises apply real life circumstances. These examples build our faith by showing us God is faithful to fulfill his promises to provide for our needs.
One of those examples is found in Deuteronomy 11:26-32. In this passage of Scripture, God is giving them a clear succinct summation of his promises and instructions to them that will prepare them for the journey of possessing the land he has promised them as their home. Israel has been redeemed from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. Any analogy between slavery and school will be left to you by the way. Israel has been promised a home of abundance and provision in which to build their families and their nation. In order to possess this land of abundance, they will have to step out in faith on God’s promise to them. They will find bounty, beauty, and a place in which they can flourish as a people and as individuals. They will also fund choices to follow God’s plan or different life philosophies. They will find hardships, enemies, and battles.
God gives them a detailed set of instructions and promises on how to live and make life choices. Then this passage he sums up his instructions to them. He gives him a set of challenges and a set of blessings. These challenges and blessings are directly applicable to you because you were facing a similar faith journey is the children.
God challenges you to …
A. Be Wise!
First God challenges his people to be wise. God asks them to “behold” what he sets before them. He wants them to stop and pay attention to the nature of his instructions for them. He asks them to “behold” that he is saying before them a blessing. This is a critically important challenge to anyone facing a major decision or new stage of life.
The foundation for every choice is the perspective with which you approach the decision. In fact, the perspective you use an approaching a decision often determines the outcome itself. God is challenging his people to approach every decision with the wisdom to understand that He loves them and has their best interests at heart in His plans for them. This is a constant theme in His instructions to his people throughout their history. It will be a constant theme in His instruction to you as well.
God understands that all of the worldly philosophies and choices they will face as they encounter other people and religions and Canaan will directly challenge his character as God. This began in the Garden of Eden with the first sinful choice. Satan confused and deceived Eve by creating doubt that God loved her. He lied to her by insinuating the idea that God was holding out benefits and blessings from her life. This doubt was the catalyst that caused her to search and then choose a way different than his instruction.
We face the same challenges today. Every decision make will require you to choose to do it God’s way or the world’s way. You will make choices with your finances, your relationships, your sexual purity, your free time, and your professional life. In each of these areas, the philosophies in today’s society will tug at you to mortgage your future or sacrifice your integrity because it is more appealing than God’s way of doing things. Be wise enough to understand that this is a challenge to the basic truth that God gives you His instructions because He loves you.
God understands this fact of living in a fallen world and therefore challenges us to be wise and remember that He sets before us blessings. God’s plans and instructions for your finances, relationships, professions, and person lives are designed to lead you to the blessings that He has for you. I challenge you to be wise enough to have a daily quiet time. It is in this time that you deepen your relationship with Jesus. This is the best time to learn that He loves you and has blessings for you because you are deepening your understanding of His person.
I also want to challenge you to be wise enough to be a learner. I can sum up your college career into statements. First you should have learned that you do not know everything. Be wise and train yourself to always be a learner. Second you have learned the tools to learn anything. You have been taught the skills to think, reason, and research. You are equipped to face any question, decision, or unknown and find the path God has for you. You will face these choices and God’s blessings when you are wise.
B. Be Worthy!
Next God challenges his children to be worthy. In verse 32, God commands his children to “be careful to observe all the statutes and judgments which I have set before you today.” He is commanding them to be holy and therefore worthy of his blessings. Always remember that God has called us to be holy. The word holy means set apart. God establishes His people to live out His instructions and then blesses their obedience for a specific reason. God has chosen to use His people to reveal Himself to the world. The world around us is drawn to search for Him when they see who He is through the lives of his people. Therefore the message that we live out is vital. In order to clearly communicated God is we must live out His message. We must live out His instructions so that the world around us can clearly see the path to Jesus.
God then blesses the obedience of his people and the world around us is drawn to a loving God when they see His blessing. God calls us to be worthy of His blessing by calling us to be holy. In the new stage of life you are facing, no one will be looking over your shoulder. No one will be controlling your choices or directions but you. Be wise enough to remember that God loves you and wants to bless you. But you must be worthy enough to receive his blessing by choosing to be holy.
C. Be Workers!
God also challenges his children to be workers. In verse 31, He tells his children that he is giving the land of Canaan to them to “process it and well and it.” He is giving them the land of Canaan as a home. He is challenging them to defeat enemies and build the nation. He is challenging them to build families and homes. He is challenging them to build cities, and farms, and businesses that will succeed. He is challenging them to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
I want to challenge you to be workers! God made His children to be builders. Even in the garden of Eden, God commanded Adam to tend and cultivate the garden, as well as to be fruitful and multiply. Jesus told us that the same works He did during His ministry on the earth, we would do even greater works. James cautioned us that we would be known by our works. We do not work to make ourselves worthy, but we work because God has promised to bless us as we dwell in and possess “the land.”
Work hard in your graduate schools. Work hard in finding a job and work hard in it when you find it. Build a marriage and a family. Find a church and work hard in your church. Be a builder by working hard wherever God leads you.
D. Be Warriors!
Finally, God challenges His children to be warriors. He commanded them possess the land and they had to go to war to do so. God has raised you up and challenges to go be warriors. Let me take you back to your decision to come to Williams Baptist College. You and your families sacrificed for you to attend Williams because of the desire to have a biblical worldview as part of your foundation for the future. You sacrificed to attend here and finish here because you believed in the calling to be trained to make a difference for the kingdom of God as adults. As you leave today, remember why you came – to be trained to be a warrior.
You men who are going to preach –preach hard and with passion. If you are going to be a teacher, be a teacher who changes the lives of the students you influence. Teach them that God is the creator and that He has made them special with a loving plan for theirs lives. If you are going to be a lawyer, then fight for the rights of christians to be salt and light, for the rights of the unborn, and serve your clients with integrity. If you are going to medical school, then fight for the unborn, for ethical medical research, and for those who cannot pay.
Vote biblical values. Advocate for biblical principles among those who you live and work with and around. Build ministries that are life-changing. Go and be a soul winner for Jesus Christ. Live with the passion of a warrior!
God’s Blessing to you
God promises His people a blessing. Remember where we began. God asks them to look and see that He has set before them a blessing! It is God’s desire to bless you as His child. Romans 8:32 makes this clear as well: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”
Time will not permit me to go through all of the ways He wants to bless you. In Deuteronomy 28, God delineates them in great detail. Suffice it to say that He makes it clear that He wants to bless you in every area and aspect of life. God wants to supply your needs from His riches in glory! If you will be wise, be worthy, be a worker, and be a warrior, God will bless you and make you wealthy – spiritually, relationally, financially, and eternally.
