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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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Oh

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You hear each spark in me

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You've always waited too much

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To give us a message

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Cause one of the blessings comes through angels

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One of the healing comes through tears

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One of the thousand sleepless nights

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Of what it takes to down your gear

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And what it trials of this life

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Are your mercies there this time?

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We've heard your voice, you hear

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We cry in anger when we cannot feel your ear

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We doubt your goodness, you hear

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We cry in anger when we cannot feel your ear

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We doubt your goodness, you hear

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We cry in anger when we cannot feel your ear

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We doubt your goodness

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We doubt your love

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As if every promise from you

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But it's not enough

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And all the while

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We believe, as long as we have faith

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To believe

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Cause one of the blessings comes through angels

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One of the healing comes through tears

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One of the thousand sleepless nights

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Of what it takes to down your gear

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And what it trials of this life

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Are your mercies there this time?

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Our friends betray us

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And darkness seems to win, we know

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But it reminds us that

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That this is not, this is not our home

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It's not our home

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Cause one of your blessings comes through angels

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One of the healing comes through tears

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One of the thousand sleepless nights

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Of what it takes to down your gear

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What if my greatest disappointment

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Or the aching of this life

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Is the revealing of a greater thus

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This world can't satisfy

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And what it trials of this life

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The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

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Are your mercies there this time?

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During my sabbatical I had the great opportunity last week to worship with my brother and sister in Christ,

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Jamie and Leanna Velasquez down at Life Point Church in BG and I was very blessed,

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I only sung two songs of worship while I was there and he said sing out your hearts cause we only have two songs today

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and I tried really hard to sing out my heart and when I was done I wanted to sing some more so then I sang in my car on the way home from church

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and I was very blessed and I listened to some of our podcasts this week and some of our praise we are very blessed in that regards.

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Speaking of blessings, I want to...

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It's one of them like, okay I can put it down there but I don't want the people online not to be able to hear me.

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Are we good? Hello?

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Everyone sounds okay.

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Alright, we'll know then.

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So I already kind of spoiled the surprise coming back.

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It's not this one.

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Try that.

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I already spoiled the surprise and give me a little hooter holler and overcome the feedback as we go to Deuteronomy chapter 33.

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Thank you very much.

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Yes, it is all of Deuteronomy chapter 33.

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The beginning part and the ending part are the most important.

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We will read the middle so that when we get done after next week or whenever that works out that...

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RG did you break my sound system last week brother?

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It is not this mic.

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Just turn the monitor off.

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It's got to be going toward the mic so it's got to be the monitor.

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Very good. Look at that. We fixed it. You can still hear me right?

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So here we go. We are going to read Deuteronomy chapter 33 with an eye toward blessings.

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The title of the sermon today is blessings subdivided.

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You see it up there are subdivided blessings.

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But there is another word that I did not reveal in the title.

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Here it comes. The big reveal.

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The word is unilateral.

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Probably half of us don't know the definition of that.

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I am not picking on anybody when I say that because until yesterday I had the wrong definition of that word.

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I will explain that later.

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If you think you know it you might not actually know it.

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Some of you probably do.

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Here we go. Deuteronomy chapter 33. We are going to do the whole chapter.

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I will not stop and break everything down as we go through.

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Much of it will just make sense to you.

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You don't necessarily need to break down to understand what the whole is saying.

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33.1. Now this is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the sons of Israel before his death.

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So now he has been told he is going to die.

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Before he actually dies he is going to pronounce a blessing on Israel.

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He is basically going to work his way through all the tribes.

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So when you hear the names we are pretty much looking at the names of the tribes.

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You will notice that Simeon is missing.

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If you know enough Bible scholars to know that he was one of the twelve tribes he is kind of missing.

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That is because even by this time his blessings are blended in with another tribe.

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He remains that way throughout the history of Israel from this point on.

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Verse 2 says,

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And he said, The Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from Seir.

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He shone forth from Mount Peran and he came from the midst of ten thousand holy ones.

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At his right hand there was flashing lightning for them.

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Indeed he loves the people, all thy holy ones are in thy land and they followed in thy steps.

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Everyone receives of thy words.

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Moses charged us with a law, a possession for the assembly of Jacob.

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And he was king in Jeshurun.

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Now that he is God, God, so you could say and God was king in Jeshurun.

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Which means Jeshurun is another word for Israel basically.

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And when the heads of the people were gathered, the tribes of Israel together.

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That is when he was king.

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May Reuben live and not die, nor his men be few.

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So he is pronouncing the blessing for Reuben.

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And this regarding Judah.

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So he said, Hear O Lord the voice of Judah and bring him to his people with his hands he contended for them.

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And mayest thou be a help against his adversaries.

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I want to stop here for one second.

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Notice the difference between those two tribes.

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Reuben live and not die, nor his men be few.

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Judah, bring him to his people with his hands he contended for them and mayest thou be a help against his adversaries.

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Those are two different blessings.

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Now you'll notice that they are all a little bit different.

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That's what I want you to see there.

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Levi he said, Let thy thumim and thy urim belong to thy godly man.

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So Levi was the priest.

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Whom thou didst prove at Massa.

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With whom thou didst contend at the waters of Meribah.

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Who said of his father and his mother, I did not consider them and he did not acknowledge his brothers.

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Nor did he regard his own sons.

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For they observed thy word and kept thy covenant.

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Talking about Levi.

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They shall teach thine ordinances to Jacob.

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That's all of Israel really.

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And thy law to Israel.

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They shall put incense before thee and whole burnt offerings on thy altar.

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O Lord bless his substance and accept the work of his hands.

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Shatter the loins of those who rise up against him.

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And those who hate him.

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So that they may not rise again.

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So again that is a completely different blessing than the other two tribes have received.

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Twelve.

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Of Benjamin he said, May the beloved of the Lord dwell in security by him.

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By God.

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Who shields him all the day.

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And he dwells between his shoulders.

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And of Joseph he said.

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Now remember Joseph sort of has the two sub-tribes.

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Because Joseph was not one of the tribes.

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He came out of Israel and his two sons became the two half tribes.

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But of Joseph he said.

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Blessed of the Lord be his land with the choice things of heaven with the dew and from the deep lying beneath.

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And with the choice yield of the sun.

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And with the choice produce of the months.

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And with the best things of the ancient mountains.

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And with the choice things of the everlasting hills.

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And with the choice things of the earth and its fullness.

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And the favor of him.

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That's God who dwelt in the bush.

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Let it come to the head of Joseph.

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And to the crown of the head of the one distinguished among his brothers.

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At the first born of his ox.

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Majesty is his.

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And his horns are the horns of the wild ox.

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With them he shall push the peoples.

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All at once to the ends of the earth.

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And those are the ten thousands of Ephraim.

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And those are the thousands of Manasseh.

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And those are the two sons of Joseph.

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And those are the ten thousands of Ephraim.

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And the thousands of Manasseh.

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So different blessings for the two different sons of Joseph.

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Eighteen.

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And of Zebulun he said.

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Rejoice Zebulun.

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And you're going forth.

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And Issachar in your tents.

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They shall call peoples to the mountain.

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There they shall offer righteous sacrifices.

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For they shall draw out the abundance of the seas.

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And the hidden treasures of the sand.

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Now those are different blessings than any of the others have thus far received.

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They're all uniquely different.

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And of Gad he said.

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Blessed is the one who enlarges Gad.

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He lies down as a lion.

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And tears the arm.

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Also the crown of the head.

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Then he provided the first part for himself.

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For theirs the ruler's portions was reserved.

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And he came with the leaders of the people.

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He executed the justice of the Lord.

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And his ordinances with Israel.

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And of Dan he said.

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Dan is a lion's whelp.

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That leaps forth from Bashan.

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And of Naphtali he said.

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O Naphtali satisfied with favor.

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And full of the blessing of the Lord.

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Take possession of the sea and the south.

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Twenty-four.

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And of Asher he said.

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More blessed than sons is Asher.

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May he be favored by his brothers.

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And may he dip his foot in oil.

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Your locks shall be iron and bronze.

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And according to your days.

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So shall your leisurely walk be.

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There is none like the God of Jeshurun.

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Who rides the heavens to your help.

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And through the skies in his majesty.

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The eternal God is a dwelling place.

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And underneath are the everlasting arms.

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And he drove out the enemy from before you.

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And said destroy.

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So Israel dwells in security.

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The fountain of Jacob secluded in the land of grain and new wine.

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His heavens are dropped down due.

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Blessed are you O Israel.

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Who is like you.

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A people saved by the Lord.

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Who is the shield of your help.

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And the sword of your majesty.

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So your enemies shall cringe before you.

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And you shall tread upon their high places.

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The first thing I want you to see in this text.

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Ties directly into the title.

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God blesses his people.

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Seems like a given right.

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But we're going to look a little bit more in detail today.

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About how God blesses his people.

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And I want you to see that he blesses his people.

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Unilaterally.

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Subdivided blessings.

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So I understand we have to get the meaning of the words right.

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Subdivided means it's broken down in parts.

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So everybody gets the whole.

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And then certain parts of the blessings.

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Are emphasized with certain people.

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Subdivided.

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Unilaterally.

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I have always used this word.

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For 53 years of my life.

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Plus I have used this word.

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I probably learned about third grade.

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So 40 some years of my life.

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I use this word to mean across the board.

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Does anybody here think that's the definition of unilaterally?

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Like it affects everybody the same.

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That's how I've always used it.

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I say well you did it unilaterally.

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It means it affects everybody the same.

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So actually the definition of unilaterally means.

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A one sided decision.

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Made by somebody without taking anyone else's opinion into account.

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That's what unilaterally actually means.

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Now that will affect everybody.

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So if you're talking about God.

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If God makes a decision.

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For example he made a decision to send his son to pay for sins.

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God made that decision.

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God did it.

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Nobody else could do it.

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Nobody could entreat God to do it.

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He just did it.

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He just asked Christ for sins.

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It wasn't up to us.

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We didn't get any input.

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And so God's blessings are both sub divided and unilateral.

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And even the sub divided blessings themselves are unilateral.

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In this text we see God blesses his people unilaterally and sub divided.

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And these are some of the things we see.

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In verse 26 we see that it says God is king.

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He is the holy one.

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His lordship is supreme.

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God is sovereign.

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He rules everything.

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And ultimately he would have a people who would recognize that sovereignty.

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He tried to have it in Israel.

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And you could even say he did have it in Israel in many cases.

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But the bottom line is the prophet Jeremiah points forward to a people where God said they will be my people and I will be their God.

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And I will give them a heart.

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Basically God would set it up so that there would come a people who would recognize his kingship.

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That's God's unilateral, all affecting everyone and he's the only one who decided, unilateral blessings.

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Now individually if we accept that blessing and God is our God and he is our lord and he is our king.

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Then it's a sub divided blessing because I can go into the woods and not take any of you with me and there God will still be my king.

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He will still be my lord.

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So when I'm alone in my prayer closet and the door is shut and the sounds of the world are muffled and me and God are talking.

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You're not there.

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I mean I might be praying for you.

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I might remember you.

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I have experienced you.

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But at that moment when it's God and I it is a unilateral, sub divided blessing.

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Here it also says in verse 27 that God is a dwelling place.

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In fact it says his everlasting arms are beneath him.

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And so God has a desire to sustain his people.

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We get our sustenance from him.

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You may think you eat to survive but the truth is if you didn't eat at all ever and God wanted you to live you would live.

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If you didn't drink any water at all ever and God wanted you to live you would live.

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And the bottom line is hell is a lot like that.

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People don't die in the sense that we think of dying.

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They go on eternally without what they consider to be sustenance.

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No good thing.

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That's what it's like.

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And they also don't have God there to sustain them.

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But they are sustained nonetheless.

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God is a dwelling place and his everlasting arms are beneath him.

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Jesus said it this way in John 4.

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He said, but whoever drinks of the water I will give him will never be thirsty again.

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The water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

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God wants to sustain you from the inside completely.

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Unilaterally he has made that decision and subdivided he would sustain you with no other sustenance.

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He would sustain you if he sustained no one else.

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This text says that God has a physical coming in verse 2.

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That God would come.

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He comes across the skies.

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He comes down like lightning.

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But he comes physically into the presence.

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And we have story after story after story of him fighting on behalf of the Israelites.

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We saw the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and so on.

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God comes physically and we know that God came physically in the presence of Jesus Christ.

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In fact, Paul wrote to Colossi, for God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in him.

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And Jesus spoke, my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one can snatch them out of my father's hands.

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I and the father are one.

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And so God has a physical presence. Unilaterally he chose to have a physical presence amongst his people.

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And then individually because there were people in crowds that listened and people in crowds that didn't.

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People that wanted to have him hung and people that didn't.

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00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,000
And so it's unilateral but it's also subdivided.

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00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:04,000
God gave clear direction.

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00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:07,000
See, they got the law of Moses and then we got it later.

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Thousands of years later we also got it, right?

344
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,000
But the bottom line is God gave very clear directions and then Jesus was quoted as saying this.

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He said, he who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.

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And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

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00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:26,000
It means make known myself to him.

348
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:32,000
And so the bottom line is we have clear direction given by God and that was described here in verse 3.

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God beckoned people unto him. He's calling them to come and follow him and to live according to his teachings and so on.

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Especially through Moses.

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And Jesus would say of those Jews who believed in him, come.

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He says, if you continue in my word, you are truly disciples of mine and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.

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And also if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

354
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,000
God beckons people.

355
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:03,000
Unilaterally we say salvation is available to everyone.

356
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:07,000
That's unilaterally. God made the decision. You didn't. I didn't. Doesn't matter.

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00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:12,000
Listen, I've been trying for years, almost going, you know, we started playing this church 20 years ago.

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This coming year we start playing this church and I've been preaching the gospel and preaching to myself as well and to all of us that we need to share the gospel.

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We tell people about Jesus.

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00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:27,000
But the fact is if you don't tell people about Jesus, salvation will still come to those who are meant to be saved.

361
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:32,000
Nonetheless, because it is a unilateral decision of God that he will save souls.

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It is also an individual decision.

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So I submit to you that if you refuse to share the gospel, it is possible that when God is beckoning you, you are declining.

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Moreover, he charged them. It says God charged them.

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00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:54,000
In verse four, we of course have the great commission, the last words of Jesus on earth.

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We also have Acts 1, 8, you should be my witnesses.

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It also says here in verse five, he was king. God was their leader.

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And later they would call a human king to be some kind of a substitute, a worthless really substitute, warned of what he would do.

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They still would call a human king. You don't want a human king.

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You don't want a boss or a leader or a god of any of your own making. Trust me.

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That's no good.

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00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:29,000
Romans 10, not verses nine and ten where it says, believe in your heart and speak with your mouth that he is Lord.

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But in verse 12, it says, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon him.

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Hear it. He is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon him.

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00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:52,000
Do you get it? Unilaterally, he is Lord of all, subdivided, abounding in riches for all those who call upon him.

376
00:26:52,000 --> 00:27:00,000
This text very clearly says that God blesses his people both unilaterally, which is a one sided decision.

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He does it because he's God, because he loves you, because he wants to, because he's pursuing you, because he's caring for you.

378
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:09,000
You're breathing still today as a blessing from God.

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00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:14,000
He does it unilaterally, but also he subdivides those blessings.

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00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:19,000
Even there we can see it clearly in the text, but we're not done.

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Very clearly, God's unilateral blessings are subdivided.

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And I haven't talked all that much about it, even though I argued for it in what I just shared with you.

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But they are clearly shown in this text and throughout the Bible as subdivided.

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If you're following along in your Bible, go with me real quick to 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

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Now I could have done a whole bunch of verses, but when I was kind of mentally practicing out this sermon in my head,

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if I do all that I might do on this topic, we would be here for a lot longer than we normally are.

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So we're going to use this one because it's very clear.

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1 Corinthians chapter 12, and we're going to begin in verse 27.

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Now Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, and he's already talked about how we suffer when each other suffers,

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and we're united together in living together.

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And now he says in verse 27, now you are Christ's body and individually members of it.

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Here it, unilaterally you are Christ's body, but subdivided you are individually members of it, 28.

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And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles.

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Now before we say this is not an order of what's better, right?

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Doesn't mean first, so he first appointed apostles, meaning the best thing in the church is an apostle, right?

396
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:40,000
It's not like that. It's a list.

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God appointed apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helps administration, various kinds of tongues.

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Okay, so in other words, God subdivided his blessings and gave them out individually to groups of individuals

399
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who will enact those blessings.

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You follow my train of thought?

401
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,000
So if you be a prophet, you're going to act like a prophet.

402
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,000
You be an apostle, you're going to act like an apostle.

403
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:10,000
If you be whatever, God does those things to do what he wants to do through that individual person.

404
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:14,000
By the way, before you go, I want to be an apostle or a prophet,

405
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:19,000
you should probably know that every single last one of them died for the faith.

406
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:26,000
Okay, so everybody wants to like, there's people out there right now on the church building that says led by Apostle Bob, right?

407
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:31,000
Apostle Bob might want to take into account the fact that they all died for their faith.

408
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:35,000
And if he truly is an apostle, he too will die for his faith because that's part of it.

409
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,000
That's part of the process, right?

410
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,000
So before you yearn to be one of those things, let's be very careful.

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I don't want to get ahead of myself.

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Then it says in verse 29, it says, but all are not prophets, are they?

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All are not teachers, are they?

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00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:51,000
All are not workers of miracles, are they?

415
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,000
All do not have gifts of healing, do they?

416
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,000
All do not speak with tongues, do they?

417
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,000
All do not interpret, do they?

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00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:02,000
And I'll stop there, but we'll use 31 eventually.

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The bottom line is this is only one of the texts, you can go look in Romans 2, where it talks about spiritual gifts.

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And so very clearly to individuals, God has subdivided his blessing into at least and minimal spiritual giftings.

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So the spiritual gifts of people, I have a spiritual gift of service and help,

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I have a spiritual gift of administration, I have a spiritual gift of preaching and teaching,

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or evangelism, or whatever your spiritual gift might be,

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God has subdivided his blessings into those spiritual gifts.

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00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:39,000
Moreover, he has subdivided them into different roles in the church.

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So we have pastors and we have deacons, and then we have teachers and we have, and so on, right?

427
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You read about that in Ephesians 4 roles.

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Moreover, he has called people, all of us, unilaterally, to be witnesses,

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and poured out his Holy Spirit in people so that they can witness,

430
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:59,000
and then subdivided the areas in which we witness.

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00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:02,000
He doesn't let you be everywhere.

432
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:07,000
He has given the unilateral access to the highway of holiness, we all can walk in holiness,

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but then subdivided his grace and mercy to deal with our individual temptations, which will lead us off the road.

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00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:20,000
And you don't need help dealing with my temptations, nor do I need help dealing with your temptations.

435
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:26,000
I need help dealing with my temptations.

436
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:33,000
The mind of each individual to tear down strongholds, and again, you don't need help tearing down my strongholds,

437
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:36,000
you need help tearing down your own strongholds.

438
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:39,000
He's given us access to the armor of God, as every Christian has,

439
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:43,000
but again, the shield of faith which quenches the fiery darts of the wicked one,

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that shield of faith that you have, you don't need that to quench my fiery darts,

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you need it to quench your fiery darts.

442
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,000
God has unilaterally imputed the righteousness of Christ to every Christian.

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Every Christian gets the righteousness of Jesus.

444
00:31:56,000 --> 00:32:00,000
But you don't need the righteousness of Jesus to cover my sins,

445
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:04,000
you need the righteousness of Jesus to cover your sins.

446
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:07,000
And I don't need the righteousness of Jesus to cover your sins,

447
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,000
because your sins aren't sending me to hell.

448
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:18,000
If I was going to hell, it would be by my sins, and the righteousness of Jesus imputed covers me perfectly.

449
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:23,000
The list goes on into an area talking about works in keeping with our faith,

450
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,000
obedience, vision for forward movement.

451
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:32,000
God gives us clear direction and leads us forward for our lives, for the things that we need to do.

452
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:39,000
God has given of Christ and of His Holy Spirit to literally be with us every single day.

453
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:43,000
And the Holy Spirit down payment in me, though He is the same Holy Spirit,

454
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:49,000
will behave and respond in a different way in me than it will in you, because I need Him to.

455
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:57,000
Moreover, because I am created for Him to.

456
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:03,000
The first Corinthians 12, 27 to 30 basically supports fully the premise that God unilaterally,

457
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:08,000
that means He does it without your input or without anyone's say that it's okay,

458
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:15,000
provides subdivided blessings to the individual and to the church and even by family.

459
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:19,000
In our family over the years we've discovered a number of these things,

460
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:22,000
and probably missed ten times as many as we've discovered.

461
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,000
When I was about to become a Christian, Sherry asked me, she said,

462
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:27,000
what does it even mean to become a Christian?

463
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:29,000
Because she wasn't a Christian either.

464
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:33,000
And I said, well I don't know, but this one thing I know is going to change everything.

465
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,000
And from that moment in time, that's exactly what it has done.

466
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:39,000
And every time I have ever resisted it, changing everything about me,

467
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:42,000
being willing to be whatever it was that God wanted me to be,

468
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:47,000
I have drifted off course, fallen off the highway of holiness and failed in my relationship with God.

469
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,000
But when I have allowed God to change whatever God needs to change about me,

470
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,000
to use me in whatever way He sees fit, it's always worked.

471
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,000
And it's the same way in our family.

472
00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:00,000
And I've told that story to my kids, and I've told it to most of my grandkids,

473
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:01,000
the ones that are old enough to understand.

474
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,000
And that has become a Stevenson saying.

475
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:04,000
What does it mean to be saved?

476
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,000
Well one thing it means for sure, it's going to change everything.

477
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:14,000
That is a blessing from God, a subdivided, intentionally provided blessing to our family.

478
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:18,000
Now it may be the same for you, but if I try to apply it to you,

479
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:19,000
then we're going to have a problem.

480
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:20,000
We'll talk about that in a minute.

481
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:26,000
God also gave us huge blessings in the area of dual realization.

482
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,000
My wife became a follower of Christ a couple weeks after I did,

483
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:33,000
and she committed her life totally to Christ, and she was more committed to Christ than me.

484
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:34,000
Praise God.

485
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:36,000
And I was more committed to Christ than she is.

486
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:38,000
So God speaks to me, God speaks to her, and I'll come right over and say,

487
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:39,000
I've got to tell you something.

488
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,000
She'll be like, I've been already thinking that.

489
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:42,000
Or she'll say, well I've got to tell you something.

490
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:44,000
Yeah, God told me that too.

491
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:48,000
And some of them were so perfectly timed that there's no way the other person could.

492
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,000
She was holding the pamphlet in her hand when she said,

493
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:55,000
yeah, I was just thinking that same thing when I told her that I thought God was calling me to go to Great Lakes Christian Bible College.

494
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,000
And she said, okay, well that's exactly what I was going to tell you,

495
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:02,000
and here's the pamphlet that I got for you, so this will get you started.

496
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:07,000
God provides dual realization, and that's a thing in our family, husbands and wives.

497
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:10,000
And I've got two married daughters, and their husbands and wives,

498
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:12,000
they've got to be speaking to both of them.

499
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:14,000
But again, that is Stevenson.

500
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:16,000
I don't know if it works for you.

501
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:20,000
What are your intentional subdivided blessings?

502
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:23,000
Redemption of things and people is the thing we do.

503
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:26,000
We get a car that's broke down, we pray about it, we can redeem that car.

504
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:30,000
We're redeeming our house, we're redeeming relationships, we're redeeming people.

505
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:37,000
Somebody's in real need of help, and we try to show up because we want to redeem that person.

506
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:42,000
I found out during writing this sermon that God has given me on many occasions

507
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:47,000
the opportunity to harvest someone who's already ready to be saved.

508
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:51,000
And freakishly I discovered that I, which I already knew the first part of this,

509
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,000
but then later I discovered why God had done it.

510
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:59,000
Freakishly I discovered that God has led me to lead three women working in restaurants,

511
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:03,000
all named Kendra, to Christ.

512
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:07,000
Which goes back to 25 plus years ago, my wife plays a character role-playing game,

513
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,000
and her name is Kendra.

514
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:13,000
And I'm going, how does that even connect?

515
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:15,000
That doesn't make any sense.

516
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,000
And then I went through all the names that I could remember of all the people

517
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:21,000
that I personally, individually led to Christ, and there's no two that are the same.

518
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:28,000
I've never led personally to Christ alone privately to Michaels, or to Bob's, or to Chris's, or to Tom's.

519
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:32,000
No two, but three Kendras.

520
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:38,000
And so God was already working their life and said, here's a Kendra for you, Dan.

521
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:43,000
These are Stevenson's subdivided blessings.

522
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:47,000
We sat around our dining room table, and I think Amalia was still there at that time,

523
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:49,000
and we talked about what our family animal would be.

524
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,000
And we were like, we don't need an animal, yeah, I mean, there's cool things about having a family.

525
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:53,000
And we chose the mongoose.

526
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:56,000
The mongoose is a symbol of our family because, two reasons.

527
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:59,000
One, the mongoose fights snakes every day, every opportunity he gets.

528
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:03,000
And that old serpent who is the devil, we like fighting him.

529
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:07,000
And we like to kill him off, but that's not really in our doing, right?

530
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:08,000
That's up to God.

531
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:14,000
Secondly, because when the serpent bites, the mongoose is mostly immune to his poison.

532
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,000
First to his fangs, and if his fangs do get through, he's immune to the poison.

533
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:19,000
The serpent can't touch us, right?

534
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:23,000
Now, ultimately, if we let the serpent stay too long, bite us too long, if we don't deal with him appropriately,

535
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:25,000
then he can, and our family animal is the mongoose.

536
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:29,000
And that's a subdivided blessing that God gave us.

537
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:35,000
God told me at one point in time when Alicia was very young that God would take care of our kids, and he has.

538
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,000
And we've claimed that promise on a number of occasions, sharing like, well, what do we do?

539
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:41,000
I don't know, but I know God's going to take care of them.

540
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:45,000
So what I'm asking you is, do you have subdivided blessings for your family?

541
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:50,000
Because what I'm telling you is, if you don't have subdivided blessings for your family, you're not in the kingdom of God.

542
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:54,000
Ho! Hold up.

543
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:56,000
You're telling me I'm not saved?

544
00:37:56,000 --> 00:38:02,000
Listen, I'm reading my Bible, and the Bible says that God unilaterally blesses,

545
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:08,000
and he subdivides those blessings down by people, by family, and by church.

546
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:16,000
Gifts of healing. Gifts of prophecy.

547
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:21,000
God also subdivides the blessings down by church, our church, the church that you're meeting with right now,

548
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,000
but the building is not the church.

549
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:30,000
Every time I hear somebody say, I saw a church, they mean a church building, I want to say, you meant the building, right?

550
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,000
You didn't see the people standing there.

551
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:36,000
Caitlin shared earlier, I knew what she meant, you all knew what she meant, and it was okay, but I didn't correct her,

552
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:40,000
but she said, drove by several churches, and like they went to, probably none of the churches were actually there,

553
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:42,000
just buildings that represent the church, right?

554
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:44,000
The church is the people. We are the church.

555
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:49,000
And our church would be New Heights Fellowship Baptist Church, that's the name, it's about reaching new heights in Jesus, that's the motto.

556
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:54,000
We realize that everybody's on a journey, and day in, day out, we're helping people to try to get to the next step.

557
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:58,000
You're helping me get to the next step by letting me preach this sermon.

558
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:00,000
This is how we work around here.

559
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:05,000
And if you want to join the church for some other reason other than that, you just don't need to.

560
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:07,000
You don't.

561
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,000
If God is calling you to be a part of a church where everybody works together,

562
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:14,000
the best they know how, in their own failings, in their own struggles, and with their own difficulties,

563
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:20,000
and the best they know how, in the subdivision of their blessings, unilaterally provided by God,

564
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:24,000
to reach the next step in Jesus, then yep, this baby's for you.

565
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:25,000
And you're it.

566
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:26,000
And that's the kind of church that God...

567
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:31,000
Now, am I saying that other kinds of churches, and there are many other kinds of churches, are bad kinds of churches?

568
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:32,000
No.

569
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:37,000
We just identified a subdivision of a blessing that God was providing, and we harnessed ourself to it,

570
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:45,000
not because we wanted it, not because we liked it, but because God provided it to us.

571
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,000
And we chose a key verse, which was 1 John 1-3,

572
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:50,000
We proclaim what we have seen and heard, that you may have fellowship with us,

573
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:52,000
and our fellowship is with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ,

574
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,000
which means we are supposed to be proclaiming what we have seen and heard.

575
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:58,000
You don't have to tell them everything that the Bible says, like Tony Tate was telling me this morning.

576
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,000
Sometimes you only get 20 seconds.

577
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:04,000
Tell them what you've seen and heard as best you can during the 20 seconds,

578
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:06,000
because that might be all you get.

579
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:08,000
And that's the kind of church that God was creating.

580
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,000
He subdivided that blessing to us.

581
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,000
We, Tony and I talked about very early, Deacon Tony and I talked about very early on,

582
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:16,000
that we want to be a church seven days a week.

583
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:17,000
We want to be a church all week.

584
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:22,000
A church at work, a church in the yard, a church in a restaurant, a church where we want to be that church all week.

585
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,000
When we're divided, we're still the church, come back together as the church,

586
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,000
talk about how we were at the church in the seven days intervening.

587
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:29,000
That's the kind of church this is.

588
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:35,000
If that's the kind of church God's calling you to, then He's calling you to that subdivision of His blessing.

589
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:36,000
But there is another kind.

590
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:40,000
There's a big kind of church that's got a paid worship band.

591
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:43,000
Big kind of church's got lots of lights, lots of flash and bang.

592
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:48,000
They'll step in and pay your bills anytime you need them to, because they're rolling in dough.

593
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:51,000
There's all other kinds of churches out there.

594
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:55,000
This is not the kind of church where everybody around here has got a whole bunch of money.

595
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:59,000
This is the kind of church where everybody around here is following Jesus, hopefully seven days a week.

596
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:00,000
And that's the goal.

597
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:02,000
And then when you fail, you get back up and do it again.

598
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:08,000
We have team leaders and teams, not committees, because we don't want Robert's Rules of Order to govern what we do.

599
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:09,000
We just use it as a guide.

600
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:11,000
Jesus governs what we do.

601
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:17,000
We have core values, basic beliefs that we believe, a budgeting method that's different than any other church on the face of the planet.

602
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:20,000
And believe me, I've checked.

603
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:25,000
The bottom line is these are subdivided blessings that God has given to us as a church.

604
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:33,000
The text clearly shows that God unilaterally blesses and then he subdivides those blessings into a format of his choosing.

605
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:37,000
And then we have the problem.

606
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:42,000
Because at the moment of the subdividing of the blessing comes great power.

607
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:51,000
And then to quote a good Marvel movie, great power comes great responsibility.

608
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:58,000
If the God of heaven will gift you with something, I guarantee you he did not mean for you to put it on the shelf in your closet.

609
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:06,000
If the God of heaven will pour his blessing into your life, I guarantee you he did not mean for you to tell no one.

610
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:13,000
The power of these blessings, I could have made a list that was 30 pages long, but I'm going to give you just a few that the Lord laid on my heart.

611
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,000
First of all, they are faith inspiring.

612
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:21,000
These blessings that come from God and God says I'm going to do this and you go, hey, I think God said he's going to do this.

613
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:24,000
And now we're going to follow what God said.

614
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:28,000
They make it so that we know better than any Antichrist teaching.

615
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:35,000
There is no religion in the world that can come and speak to me some religious truth or some other thing or some other way of believing about God

616
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,000
or believing about Jesus or whatever.

617
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:42,000
I know for a fact that it's not because I am living the subdivided blessings of God.

618
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,000
God said to me, go and I will go with you.

619
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:48,000
So I go wherever he says he'll go because when I get there, he's going to be there.

620
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:55,000
And if I don't go where he says to go, then when I get there, he's not going to be there or at least not going to have the promise that he'll be there.

621
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:58,000
You say, well, God is in you. Yes, God is in you.

622
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,000
The unilateral blessing of God is his presence.

623
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:07,000
But the subdivided blessings of God is will he do what he has told you he would do when it needs to be done.

624
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:14,000
Those blessings for every tribe were different and different parts.

625
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:18,000
This faith inspiring subdivided blessing.

626
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:27,000
Isn't it awesome to think that God put your blessing in your life, not just, oh, you inherited it or you thought about it or you thought, oh, this would be cool.

627
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,000
Or you came up with a plan and acted it out.

628
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:32,000
Suddenly, you're the top CEO of the company or something.

629
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:37,000
No, God put your blessings in your life.

630
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:48,000
Scripture says with regard to spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit gives one or more Holy Spirit gifts, exactly the one or more spirit gifts that are needed for that individual.

631
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,000
That is faith inspiring.

632
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,000
Also, it's greatly comforting.

633
00:43:53,000 --> 00:44:00,000
God's fulfilled promises reminds us that God is real and he takes care of those who follow him.

634
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:05,000
And every time you look back on one of these, your memories overcome your loneliness.

635
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:14,000
Does it hurt? Does it hurt when things are said that you don't like, when things go on that you don't like, when health conditions persist that you don't like, when your loved ones are going through something you don't like?

636
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:15,000
Yes, it hurts.

637
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:25,000
But you can in that moment remember that you have God's subdivided blessing for your life, that God intentionally gave you exactly what you need.

638
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,000
It inspires gratitude.

639
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:31,000
We've been talking about that because we're heading into Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving dinner.

640
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:35,000
The subdivided blessings of God give us reason to praise.

641
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:40,000
Hold on now, because the unilateral blessings of God give us reason to praise.

642
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:41,000
He saved me.

643
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:47,000
You ever notice how we're praying, we're praying blessings and somebody's got to pray, thanking God for Jesus on the cross?

644
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:49,000
Well, we ought to, don't you think?

645
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:50,000
I mean, that's how we got saved.

646
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:51,000
Jesus hadn't gone on the cross.

647
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:54,000
We wouldn't be saved, at least not under the present system.

648
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:56,000
I guess God could have chosen to do it another way.

649
00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:00,000
Jesus even thought that God could have chosen to do it another way and said, if there's another way, let it be another way.

650
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,000
And God said, no, it ain't going to be no other way.

651
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,000
And Jesus said, OK, well then let's go.

652
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:05,000
All right.

653
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,000
So we always pray, thanking God for Jesus.

654
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:08,000
And we can all do that.

655
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:12,000
So if you've got nothing else to pray for, thank God for Jesus saving you.

656
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:13,000
Right?

657
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:20,000
But you've got something else to pray for because you have subdivided blessings that are specific for you apart from anyone else.

658
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:29,000
You need to figure out what is it that God can do, will do, is doing through you that he's not doing through your neighbor?

659
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:37,000
Because that will give you that fulfilled promise reminds you in the midst of the darkest hours that you have reason to praise.

660
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:45,000
For those of you who cannot sing in worship, I submit to you that you cannot sing in worship not because you don't like the sound of your own voice, not because you don't know the notes.

661
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,000
I did that for years.

662
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:48,000
Whatever.

663
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:49,000
Not because of any of those reasons.

664
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:50,000
Not because you're shy.

665
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:51,000
That's not true.

666
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:52,000
It's not because you're inhibited.

667
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:53,000
That's not true.

668
00:45:53,000 --> 00:46:00,000
Because when you get to heaven, after you've seen it fulfilled and you stand before God, you will see praises at every opportunity you possibly can.

669
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:06,000
And not because your voice is going to somehow be regenerated, but because you will have realized at that point in time that you have a reason to be joyful.

670
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:17,000
A reason to be joyful before God because God provided you personally with the personal blessings by air mail, by personal delivery of his Holy Spirit into your heart.

671
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:20,000
And you've got to go, I've got to do something.

672
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:23,000
And the Bible says 200 plus times that you're supposed to sing praises.

673
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:28,000
And you're going to go, well, if I can't figure out what else to do, I guess I'm going to sing praises.

674
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:30,000
And you're going to sing praises in heaven.

675
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:38,000
And you're going to be singing praises on earth at the point at which you realize you have been giving blessings apart from everyone else.

676
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:47,000
You are not saved because I was saved or somebody else was saved or this church was started or the Word was preached or the Bibles were printed.

677
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:57,000
You are saved because Jesus Christ went to the cross not for me, not for the world in the unilateral sense, but in the subdivided personal he died for you sense.

678
00:46:57,000 --> 00:46:59,000
And that's enough reason to praise.

679
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:06,000
The Bible goes beyond that because you have your spiritual gifts, because you have your blessings spoken by God into your life,

680
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:12,000
because you have the Hartley possibilities or the Tate possibilities or the Mitchell possibilities.

681
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,000
You have the miracles of God, the blessings sent into your life specifically for you.

682
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:19,000
And that is reason to praise apart.

683
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:21,000
It's also reason to praise together.

684
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:22,000
I get that.

685
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,000
It's nice when everyone else is singing because the fact that I don't sound very good is kind of covered up.

686
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,000
That's why it's great that we can sing together.

687
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:37,000
But the bottom line is we are inspired with gratitude because we have those praises that are ours.

688
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:43,000
Your miraculous healing will bring you to the point of praise more than anyone else.

689
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:49,000
And before you say, well, I've never been miraculously healed, if you're saved, you've been miraculously healed.

690
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:56,000
In fact, if you're saved today, you probably would no longer be on the earth if you are not saved.

691
00:47:56,000 --> 00:48:04,000
These powerful subdivided blessings accomplish specific things.

692
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:06,000
They often have specific kingdom purposes.

693
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:08,000
So I have the spiritual gift of serving.

694
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:10,000
When I serve, I feel lifted up.

695
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:12,000
By the way, I do not have the spiritual gift of service.

696
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:13,000
Deacon Tony does.

697
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:14,000
I do not.

698
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,000
But Deacon Tony has the spiritual gift of serving.

699
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:21,000
When he serves, when you let him serve, when he finds a way to serve, when he advances the kingdom through serving,

700
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:23,000
he gets that atta boy from God.

701
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:24,000
That's awesome.

702
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:28,000
But on top of that, he also gets to serve someone else and make a difference.

703
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:30,000
That's awesome.

704
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,000
These blessings don't have to be spiritual gifts only.

705
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:35,000
They can be skills, talents, etc.

706
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:42,000
Position, where you live, geography, your experiences.

707
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,000
They accomplish certain specific things.

708
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:49,000
They overcome suffering in someone else's life or in your own life.

709
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,000
And the last one I listed, although again I could have gone on with a dozen more,

710
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:57,000
is that these specific blessings promote others' blessings.

711
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:58,000
You get that?

712
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:07,000
When you operate in your blessings, you create awareness of the subdivided blessing in someone else's life.

713
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,000
Somebody said to me, dude, there's something about you.

714
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:15,000
You have this unique ability to notice, see things that no one else sees.

715
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:18,000
And I was greatly encouraged.

716
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:20,000
Because it's not a spiritual gift really.

717
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:23,000
Unless you kind of could say discernment, but not really.

718
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:25,000
But it's a blessing from God.

719
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,000
And I was greatly encouraged.

720
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,000
And I told them I was greatly encouraged.

721
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:35,000
And I realized that they were acting in a specific subdivided blessing for them from God.

722
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:37,000
That they could encourage me.

723
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:38,000
You see?

724
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:39,000
And it spirals up.

725
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,000
And it becomes the Kingdom of God.

726
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:44,000
But at the same time, I'll stop there with a list of power.

727
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:47,000
But I'm going to talk to you briefly about the list of dangers.

728
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:49,000
And then we're into our conclusion.

729
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:54,000
The dangers of these particular blessings are many fold.

730
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:56,000
And I did not list them in order of importance.

731
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:58,000
Because I don't even know what the order of importance is.

732
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:00,000
I think every one of them is completely destructive.

733
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,000
The first one is envy.

734
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,000
You can envy someone else's personal blessing.

735
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:07,000
Someone else's subdivided blessing.

736
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:08,000
You can desire it.

737
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:12,000
You want it.

738
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:17,000
But if you're functioning in your own subdivided blessing and feeling the blessing of God,

739
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:19,000
at work in your life, you won't go there.

740
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:24,000
Because you'll be too busy doing what it is that God has called you to.

741
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:27,000
That's easy to deal with.

742
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:28,000
Realize you have one.

743
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:29,000
You're like, well I haven't discovered one yet.

744
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,000
Okay, then work on discovering it.

745
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:34,000
Rebellion.

746
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:42,000
Basically, we can appropriate our personal blessing without recognizing the unilateral nature of God's blessings.

747
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,000
What does unilateral mean again?

748
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:46,000
One-sided.

749
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,000
He is sovereign.

750
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,000
So we go, well I have the ability.

751
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:53,000
I was sitting down with a friend of mine talking just recently.

752
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:54,000
He was talking about a pastor.

753
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:55,000
He was called the pastor.

754
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:56,000
He knew he was called the pastor.

755
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:57,000
He was serving in a relatively small church.

756
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:58,000
30, 40 people.

757
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:01,000
Not totally unlike this.

758
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:02,000
It was a country church.

759
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:03,000
And he started a blog.

760
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:06,000
Him and another guy talking about Christian things.

761
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,000
Video blog or maybe it was a podcast.

762
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:11,000
But anyway, it got real popular.

763
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:13,000
And then they monetized it.

764
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:19,000
It got to be eventually to the point where he was making more money with his podcast than he was pastoring.

765
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:25,000
And so he left pastoring to do the video audio blog thing.

766
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:30,000
And he became a full-time podcaster, blogger.

767
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:38,000
And I said, it got to that point in time in the story and I was like, something went wrong.

768
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:42,000
You started with, there was a pastor called to a small country church.

769
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:46,000
And you ended with a blogger podcaster.

770
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:49,000
So what he didn't understand was, here's a subdivided blessing.

771
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:56,000
I'm called to a small country church, which maybe leaves me the time to also be a podcaster, blogger, whatever.

772
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,000
And so I could spread the gospel throughout the world.

773
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:01,000
Not unlike what we do with our podcasts.

774
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:05,000
And if it was monetized and we were making the money, I could put the money back into King Advance, whatever.

775
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:09,000
So instead of seeing it as a subdivided blessing, personally for me, he walked away from his calling.

776
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:10,000
Now I'm not there.

777
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:11,000
It's not my calling.

778
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:12,000
No, he's got to sort that out.

779
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:18,000
But don't tell me in the same conversation, three sentences apart, I'm called to I'm not doing it.

780
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:20,000
And this is what people do.

781
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:27,000
We rebel against God because we have our personal blessing and we forget that God is the one who set it up.

782
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:28,000
God is the one who gave it.

783
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:29,000
God is the one who made it work.

784
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:34,000
So now I want to do it my way or I want to do it outside God's auspices.

785
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:40,000
You might be here in the room, for example, and you might be like, awesome, throwing stuff away, mudding out.

786
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:43,000
Ruined stuff, putting stuff in the dumpster, chopping it up, whatever.

787
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:44,000
That might be your thing.

788
00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:45,000
You're like, I'm awesome at that.

789
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:46,000
Right.

790
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:48,000
And every opportunity that comes up, you do that.

791
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:50,000
But you've never used it to serve Jesus.

792
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:52,000
You've never gone out and shared the gospel that way.

793
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,000
We have a disaster relief team that goes all over the world and does that very thing.

794
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:57,000
Why are you not with them?

795
00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:59,000
Why don't you go once or twice a year?

796
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:04,000
And while you're doing that, tell people about Jesus because they see people getting saved all the time.

797
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,000
You're like, well, I didn't even know about it.

798
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:09,000
Yes, that's one of the problems that we have with this whole thing is ignorance.

799
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:13,000
We don't know what our self-divided blessings are or what they can do.

800
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:15,000
The bottom line is rebellion is a very real possibility.

801
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:18,000
We begin to think like I'm all that in a bag of chips because I can make this look perfect.

802
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:20,000
I can do this or I can make this happen.

803
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:23,000
If I say the right thing, they'll do what I want them to do, whatever.

804
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:27,000
And you forget along the way that God is the one who set the whole thing up.

805
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:34,000
And God will not allow the blessings that he gave to be used in any way other than kingdom advance that honors him without ramifications.

806
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:36,000
And you will reap what you sow.

807
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:43,000
Misuse then follows the logical thought right with that.

808
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:46,000
Instead of being obedient with our blessing, we use it in some other way.

809
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:49,000
Instead of trusting God with our blessing, we use it in some other way.

810
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:58,000
Instead of we stretch its application so we go get a job doing what we are gifted to do rather than doing it for God's kingdom, that kind of thing.

811
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,000
We do it for personal gain.

812
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:05,000
We get people to do what we want them to do, manipulate them, et cetera, by doing that thing that is our gift.

813
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:11,000
Disunity, we judge other people because I'm particularly good.

814
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:14,000
R.J., I'm going to use you. You would not do this. R.J. would not do this.

815
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:17,000
But R.J. fixes cars for a living.

816
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:22,000
You sit down with R.J. and not only does he fix cars for a living, by the way, before he ever fixed cars for a living, he was already good at it.

817
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:24,000
He's been trained all the way along.

818
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,000
But he's always been kind of good at fixing cars.

819
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:28,000
Don't give Puffy a head now.

820
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:37,000
And you can sit down with R.J. and you say, well, I was working on my car and it was getting bad gas mileage and I did this and this and this.

821
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:41,000
And R.J. is not the guy who's going to go to you, well, that was stupid. You should have done this.

822
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:44,000
Or what kind of idiot does that?

823
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:52,000
And that's what we do. We get this gift and this personal blessing from God and we look at other people and how stupid they are because they can't figure out what we think is just obvious.

824
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:59,000
And as Deacon Tony once said to me a long time ago, and I'm using that saying again now and it came up to me several times during my sabbatical, common sense is not common.

825
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:06,000
Listen, your common sense inside your subdivided blessing is not common to anyone else because they ain't got it.

826
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:10,000
You can do what you can do because God made you able.

827
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:12,000
You literally decided to make you able. Now you're able.

828
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:14,000
You look at other people and go, well, they should just do this.

829
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:17,000
Would it just work perfectly fine?

830
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:22,000
Which is why he who has the no sin, let him cast the first stone.

831
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:28,000
Because when you look at somebody else, they're not functioning inside your subdivided blessing.

832
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:32,000
Get it?

833
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:36,000
It cannot create disunity as a gift from God.

834
00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:42,000
Legalism cannot arise out of these blessings that God has given you because they come from God.

835
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:44,000
And that's not the kind of God we serve.

836
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,000
Some people wind up trapped.

837
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:48,000
This happens in two cases in particular.

838
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:53,000
One, when the blessing that they received was for a season and now they're stuck on it.

839
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:59,000
They're still trying to do what God gave them to do for a while and they're still trying to do it, beating themselves up, still trying to do it, still trying to do it.

840
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:03,000
And now that season has passed and God's no longer blessing in that way and they're still stuck there trying to do it.

841
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:09,000
That's how Sherry and I wound up living in our house in Michigan with both houses going in foreclosure because we were still trying to live in Michigan,

842
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:12,000
which God had told us to do, but for a season, we didn't understand it was for a season.

843
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:19,000
So we're still trying to live there and 450 plus resumes and applications between the two of us later, we couldn't find a job to save our lives.

844
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:22,000
About to have Aaron.

845
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:28,000
And it's because we were still trying to inhabit the season that God had put us in, but now that season was over and he was moving us on.

846
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:35,000
And finally I got smart enough, broken enough to say, God, what the heck? What is going on? What did we miss? What are we not doing?

847
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:37,000
And God said, well, you're moving.

848
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:42,000
And I'm like, well, no, no, we were living right where we're supposed to be living. I'm pretty sure.

849
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:45,000
I was sure until you just said that. Now I'm not at all sure.

850
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:49,000
And that's what we do. We hold on to the season that God blessed us with that.

851
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:53,000
And now it's gone and we're still trying to hold on to it till trying to make it be what we want it to be.

852
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:57,000
And what that results in is doubt. And anything that is of doubt is not of faith.

853
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:01,000
Anything that's in faith does not work for the kingdom.

854
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:09,000
And then the second one is signs, signs and signs. We love to interpret signs.

855
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:16,000
Even I was talking with my brother over the sabbatical, brother in Christ, and he said outside the church, not doing ministry.

856
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:18,000
He was ministering to me, if anything.

857
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:25,000
And he said, well, God's always closing doors and open doors. And if the door is open, that's a good sign.

858
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:27,000
It's the way that God wants you to go.

859
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:31,000
That, by the way, right there, that's a heathen helping a crap. That is not how God works.

860
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:34,000
You can't find it in Scripture anywhere.

861
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:38,000
God is a God who is with his people. He's sovereign. He's in person. He's king.

862
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:45,000
He subdivides the blessing specifically for you unilaterally in sovereignty in his own authority.

863
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:48,000
Your best thing to do is just believe in God and do what God wants you to do.

864
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:51,000
If you choose based on signs, you are looking for trouble.

865
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:58,000
Say, but I don't feel like it anymore. Or he or she said, and I'm bugged by it. Whatever. None of that means squat.

866
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:01,000
What matters is what God says, what God does, what God is.

867
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:04,000
And then who you are in Christ. That's it.

868
00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:08,000
The last one is the most dangerous, and that is ignorance.

869
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:14,000
If you are willfully untrained or unfocused in the area of walking in your own blessing, shame on you.

870
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:20,000
We talk about spiritual gifts. We give spiritual gift surveys, which is just one tool.

871
00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:23,000
But you could literally go to your wife, go to your brother, go to your sister and say,

872
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:28,000
what do you think my spiritual gifts are? And that alone would give you a place to start.

873
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:32,000
What do you see in me that you don't see everywhere you go?

874
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:35,000
What's unique about me? What's different about me? What is God doing?

875
00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:38,000
What shape do you see when you look at me?

876
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:42,000
If you are willfully untrained or unfocused in the area of God's specific blessing for you,

877
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:48,000
you're slacking off as a Christian and you've got to stop and start living for Jesus the way you promised you would at salvation.

878
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:52,000
If you've never experienced what I'm talking about, you need salvation right now.

879
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:57,000
That brings us to our conclusion. Let me just kind of go back over those couple of points real quick.

880
00:58:57,000 --> 00:59:04,000
So first of all, the first point was that God blesses his people unilaterally, meaning it is a one sided decision.

881
00:59:04,000 --> 00:59:11,000
And then he does so subdivided to individual believers, families and churches.

882
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:18,000
God's unilateral blessings are shown as subdivided to individuals, the church and the family.

883
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:24,000
And then that brings us to the conclusion. Like you always got to ask yourself, what the heck do I do about this?

884
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:31,000
What should I do about the fact that God has individually, unilaterally and subdivided blessed me and I don't know what to do.

885
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:36,000
Well, the conclusion goes something like this. First of all, this is all, all of this, everything that we read,

886
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:41,000
all of chapter 33 is about God's sovereignty. Moses spoke for God. All those blessings come from God.

887
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:45,000
They go to God's people because God said so. It's all about God's sovereignty.

888
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:49,000
So first of all, recognize that God is in charge. You are not here today by accident.

889
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:53,000
Your attention right now, if your attention is divided between what I'm saying and what God is saying

890
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:58,000
and something else that is going on, that is not by accident. It's time now to decide that God alone is in charge.

891
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:04,000
Not what Pastor Dan says, but what God says. Not what I think, but what God says. Not what I want, but what God says.

892
01:00:04,000 --> 01:00:14,000
God is sovereign and he is in charge and he unilaterally blesses. God's grace, it is by his grace that he gives gifts to the undeserving.

893
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:21,000
And so when you start to feel legalistic, when you start to feel judgmental, when you have been willfully untrained or unfocused,

894
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:27,000
when you have envy over someone else's blessings, when you have misused your own blessing intentionally or unintentionally,

895
01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:33,000
realize that it is by God's grace that he gives these gifts to the undeserving and it is his sovereign grace.

896
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:42,000
God gives exactly the right specific blessing to the right person for his purposes and for his kingdom in exactly the right moment.

897
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:49,000
It is for the advancement of the kingdom and the personal edification of the person that he is blessing.

898
01:00:49,000 --> 01:00:58,000
So they can personally sacrifice. The unfortunate truth is that some of these blessings are not very pleasant.

899
01:00:58,000 --> 01:01:06,000
When God was talking to Ananias about going to heal Saul after he was blind, he said to him,

900
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:14,000
I will show him how much he must suffer. Sometimes it isn't good.

901
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:23,000
But out of the suffering, out of the difficulty, out of the trials, whatever, comes a blessed you that is able to be used by God in a way that would not have otherwise been true.

902
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:31,000
So the action plan goes like this. Number one, you need to receive. You start by receiving the unilateral blessing of God.

903
01:01:31,000 --> 01:01:36,000
He died on the cross for your personal sins, for you personally. If you were the only human being in existence,

904
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:43,000
he would let you nail him to the cross so you could later accept him as Christ. Jesus. Receive.

905
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:49,000
But not only receive that unilateral blessing, but also receive your specific blessings.

906
01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:55,000
Your blessings intended for you subdivided. What does that look like down to a me platform? Receive.

907
01:01:55,000 --> 01:01:59,000
That means take a spiritual gift survey. That means study. That means read the Bible. That means pray.

908
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:04,000
That means work in what might be your gifting until you figure out that that's not quite your gifting.

909
01:02:04,000 --> 01:02:09,000
That means live out your blessings until at some point in time God says, okay, that season has passed and something else is happening now.

910
01:02:09,000 --> 01:02:14,000
But never until then. The rule of thumb is if you have received a certain set of blessings from God,

911
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:19,000
you continue to operate in that set of blessings until God specifically says to you otherwise.

912
01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:25,000
That's how it works. Otherwise you're saying no. So you receive.

913
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:32,000
Secondly, you recognize. Ask God, what is it? Like manna in the wilderness. What is it?

914
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:39,000
Recognize the blessings that God has given you. Like as I was going back and looking at it over time,

915
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:46,000
the ability to redeem things and people or the dual realization between Sherry and I or that I would be completely changed.

916
01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:50,000
I am so totally a different person than I ever was before I got saved. And so should you be?

917
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:57,000
And so what does that look like? Recognize that God has done something and then work in that blessing.

918
01:02:57,000 --> 01:03:02,000
Right? Apply it. Use your blessings. This is what we're called to.

919
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:08,000
And then be in the church that God has put you in so that you can personally use your blessings as part of a larger group of people.

920
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:13,000
Personally using their blessings so that you can be the church that God has called you to.

921
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:25,000
Remember God's intention for these blessings. What is he doing?

922
01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:30,000
I told you when we read 1 Corinthians 12 through 30 that we would use this verse one more time.

923
01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:42,000
And 31 says this, 1 Corinthians 12, 31. But earnestly desire the greater gifts and I show you a still more excellent way.

924
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:47,000
And the truth of that verse and the truth of that passage is that these gifts that we have been given,

925
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:55,000
these intentional personal blessings that are for my life, for your life, Charlie for your life,

926
01:03:55,000 --> 01:04:04,000
those blessings are to be acted out in love. Love is the key crowning piece. Love is what gets it done.

927
01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:10,000
If you've got the blessing to preach but can't preach with love, if you can't stand up in this pulpit or in some pulpit somewhere

928
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:16,000
and preach the Word of God unadulterated, unchanged, exactly what it is, exactly what we need to see, even when it's inconvenient,

929
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:22,000
even when you realize they might stone you tomorrow, well if you can't do that, then you're wasting your gift of preaching.

930
01:04:22,000 --> 01:04:32,000
Because all that we have, all the blessings that we're called to, all the subdivided blessings to us, these are exercised in love.

931
01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:37,000
In Deuteronomy 33, 29 then the last verse that we read, it says,

932
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:44,000
Blessed are you O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, who is the shield of your help and the sword of your majesty.

933
01:04:44,000 --> 01:04:52,000
So your enemies will cringe before you and you will tread upon their high places. You hear it?

934
01:04:52,000 --> 01:05:01,000
Because God unilaterally chose them out of Egypt, he then subdivided the blessings down which Moses listed out for them.

935
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:09,000
He subdivided the blessings out and because of their subdivided blessings, they would tread upon their high places.

936
01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:18,000
False religion is nothing to us. It's worthless. If you think you can come to God by your devotion, that's worthless.

937
01:05:18,000 --> 01:05:23,000
If you think you can come to God by acting a certain way or by making certain sacrifices, it's all worthless.

938
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:30,000
God unilaterally chose to save you, all you have to do is receive and begin to apply and live out what you have received.

939
01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:34,000
False religion is nothing to us. We will tread upon their high places.

940
01:05:34,000 --> 01:05:39,000
Evil spirits, demons, flesh, lies, villains, and all kinds cannot stand against us.

941
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:48,000
The gates of hell shall not prevail against us. Not because, against the church, not because unilaterally Jesus died on the cross,

942
01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:55,000
not because God said, I'm going to send my Holy Spirit to be in you, all of that is true, but because we have individually been blessed.

943
01:05:55,000 --> 01:06:00,000
Because God individually chose us unilaterally and then subdivided a blessing to us.

944
01:06:00,000 --> 01:06:07,000
And this is because God blesses his people unilaterally. God's unilateral blessings are subdivided.

945
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:15,000
And we choose to receive his blessing, to recognize that blessing, and apply that blessing, and to be the church in love.

946
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:25,000
I'm asking you, will you do that? Your mind is either somewhere else, or it's right now asking, what are my blessings?

947
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:30,000
Now I can go around the room if you want. I can give every one of you one. Right now.

948
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:38,000
In fact, it's true, even some of you I only know recently, I could still name a blessing that I see at work in your life already.

949
01:06:38,000 --> 01:06:44,000
And if you can't at least get one, you come to me later and I'll give it to you.

950
01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:48,000
Your blessings are yours. They're given to you.

951
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:59,000
And you bring them into the church, and the collected sum of the blessings equals up to the unilateral overarching total blessing that God has sent to the church.

952
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:06,000
We will go in the direction that God will take us, because I will go, and Chris will go, and Josh will go, and Tony will go, and Amalia will go, and Arjun will go.

953
01:07:06,000 --> 01:07:09,000
And we will all go in the direction that God will take us.

954
01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:15,000
And we will go together in the direction that God will take us, because God is our God, he is our King.

955
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:24,000
He will crush our enemies before us, and we will stand united in our unilaterally given subdivided blessings.

956
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:33,000
But if you're going, yeah, I want to be part of this church, but you don't know even one of what your blessings are,

957
01:07:33,000 --> 01:07:39,000
then the first thing you're going to have to do to be part of the church is to figure out what they are.

958
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:42,000
At least enough to apply them. You don't have to know them all. I don't know them all.

959
01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:45,000
As I said, I could have listed a bunch more. I was discovering one.

960
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:53,000
I discovered the whole redeeming things that are lost and how God had sent several people,

961
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:57,000
pretty much everybody that I've ever led to Christ in a one-on-one, they were already ready.

962
01:07:57,000 --> 01:08:00,000
Like literally all I had to do was ask, and they accepted Christ.

963
01:08:00,000 --> 01:08:03,000
So I'm not even planting the Gospel in those circumstances.

964
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:08,000
I'm sharing the Gospel, and they're going, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, that makes all good sense to me.

965
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:11,000
Okay, will you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, begin to live for Him beginning now?

966
01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:16,000
They're like, yep, yep, I'll do it, I'll do it, because God has already done it.

967
01:08:16,000 --> 01:08:19,000
And I didn't even recognize that until I was writing this sermon.

968
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:24,000
So you can miss them, but you better find one, because how are you going to apply it?

969
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:29,000
The gallons of paint from your past painting projects really aren't doing you any good.

970
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:34,000
You may never touch up that wall, and eventually they'll be useless.

971
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:37,000
They're just sitting on the shelf in the shed or in the garage or whatever,

972
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:42,000
but your gifting from God, your blessing that God has given you, the unique person that God has made you,

973
01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:46,000
your shape, your spiritual gift, your heart, your aptitude, your passions, and your experiences,

974
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:50,000
those things, they are not useless, never meant to be.

975
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:52,000
You are who you are, yes.

976
01:08:52,000 --> 01:08:58,000
To some it may seem obnoxious at times, to others it'll seem needy, whatever.

977
01:08:58,000 --> 01:09:03,000
But you are who you are because of your uniquely subdivided blessings.

978
01:09:03,000 --> 01:09:09,000
Now get busy using those blessings, and let's make the Kingdom of God what it was meant to be in the first place.

979
01:09:09,000 --> 01:09:15,000
A whole bunch of people following a sovereign God who called them out of a darkness, out of a slavery,

980
01:09:15,000 --> 01:09:24,000
and made us free, free, free, and gifted us and made us able to lift each other up and more.

981
01:09:24,000 --> 01:09:29,000
Two closing illustrations.

982
01:09:29,000 --> 01:09:35,000
This is near and dear to my heart. I'm not sharing it from personal experience, but there is another story that I could have shared that is the same.

983
01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:42,000
There was a young man who went to school one day, and they were having the Olympics or Field Day, what it's now called,

984
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:46,000
and he ran the 50-yard dash, and he got first place.

985
01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:50,000
He was the fastest kid in his class or pre-classes or whatever he got, first place.

986
01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:57,000
And they gave him a blue ribbon, beautiful blue ribbon, and he was very excited to get it.

987
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:01,000
But on his walk home from school, he gave it away.

988
01:10:01,000 --> 01:10:07,000
So he went home and told his mom, he said, I got a blue ribbon today, first place, 50-yard dash.

989
01:10:07,000 --> 01:10:10,000
Mom's like, where is it? And he goes, well, I gave it away.

990
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:15,000
She's like, kind of wondering whether he really got the 50-yard dash, you know, did he really just tell her story?

991
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:20,000
But she knew he was not one prone to lie, and she said, so where is the blue ribbon?

992
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:28,000
She said, well, I was walking home with Charlie, and he was crying because he didn't get a blue ribbon in anything.

993
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:32,000
And I felt bad for him, so I gave him mine.

994
01:10:32,000 --> 01:10:36,000
And she says, well, that's pretty cool, you know, why did you do that?

995
01:10:36,000 --> 01:10:43,000
And she said, well, he said, I don't need it. I already know I got first place.

996
01:10:43,000 --> 01:10:49,000
When you have discovered the unilateral blessings of God, you're saved.

997
01:10:49,000 --> 01:10:55,000
When you have discovered the personal blessings of God, you are enacting those blessings on a daily basis.

998
01:10:55,000 --> 01:10:58,000
You are unleashed. And then you won't have to go back.

999
01:10:58,000 --> 01:11:02,000
You'll never, ever go back and debate your salvation again.

1000
01:11:02,000 --> 01:11:06,000
Because God will literally be in you and fighting your battles on a daily basis.

1001
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:10,000
And how can you deny that? That's the abundant life he let us in.

1002
01:11:10,000 --> 01:11:14,000
He did not lead us to an abundant life. Well, you know, this really sucks, but at least I'm saved.

1003
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:16,000
That's not abundant life.

1004
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:21,000
The abundant life is you walking in the gifting that God has given you every day, doing whatever you can.

1005
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:24,000
And sometimes it sucks and sometimes it doesn't by our own estimation.

1006
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:26,000
But in God, it never sucks.

1007
01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:33,000
Because as the song from Lauren Daigle says currently, if it's still bad, it ain't over.

1008
01:11:33,000 --> 01:11:36,000
If it's not good, it ain't over yet.

1009
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:40,000
Because he works all things together for our good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

1010
01:11:40,000 --> 01:11:45,000
So if you're still going and it's still bad in your life, you still got problems, things still aren't right,

1011
01:11:45,000 --> 01:11:47,000
God's not done yet.

1012
01:11:47,000 --> 01:11:53,000
And you can only know that if you know that he is your shield and he is your sword and he is your gifting at work.

1013
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:55,000
And he is your blessings on a daily basis.

1014
01:11:55,000 --> 01:11:57,000
And he is doing it right that you're right there.

1015
01:11:57,000 --> 01:12:01,000
You're like, wow, God did that.

1016
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:03,000
And you probably won't be that surprised.

1017
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:08,000
Actually, once you've identified what the blessings are, you won't be that surprised because, you know, he saved you.

1018
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:10,000
You know, he's in you and he's already been working.

1019
01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:13,000
And so each time you'd be like, yes, Lord, thank you. Praise the Lord.

1020
01:12:13,000 --> 01:12:15,000
You did it again, Lord. You did it again.

1021
01:12:15,000 --> 01:12:18,000
Find your blessings and walk in them.

1022
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:47,000
And then you won't need a blue ribbon because you already have known.