Psalms 112:1 Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!
There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love, however, if we want to experience His blessings we need to observe the qualifications that He’s given us in His Word. Psalm 112 details a whole list of blessings, but the key to receiving them is verse 1.
“Blessed is the man that fears (puts his trust, honors, in awe of His majesty) the Lord, and delights greatly in His commandments. (Takes pleasure in what God says and obeys Him).”
Adopt that attitude toward Him and be assured, blessings are on the way! Your offspring will be mighty on the earth (vs 2), wealth and riches shall be in your house (vs 3), even in darkness the light shall shine on you (vs 4), you shall not be shaken (vs 6) in the midst of evil you will have no fear of bad news because your heart is set upon Him (vs 7).
Now I don’t know about you, but I want to live in the blessings of God!
Let’s live a life that God will bless, honor the Lord with our whole heart, and delight in obeying Him!
Psalms 112
1 Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!
2 His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
3 Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.
4 Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.
5 It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice.
6 For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever.
7 He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.
8 His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.
9 He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor.
10 The wicked man sees it and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]For the past two weeks we’ve been building life lessons derived from the Exodus wanderings and from Paul’s exhortations to the church in Corinth. Notice carefully that Paul says, “these were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”…
…that is, written for us today! – admonitions from Paul to learn lessons from the history of the children of Israel.
Paul exhorts the church at Corinth about grumbling and complaining. He reminds the believers of the judgments that befell the 10 spies who brought a bad report of the land – and were struck down by a plague, and terrible fate of Korah and those aligned with him that came against Moses and Aaron and were swallowed up by the ground under them.
Here we have a stark word. Here we see the Lord testing Israel: “He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.” [Deuteronomy 8:16]. Yet Paul says that they put Him to the test. A great irony occurs when God is testing us, and we despise His discipline, thereby testing Him.
The Apostle Paul continues his warning to the Corinthians against idolatry by referring to Israel’s celebration/worship of the golden calf. Aaron’s proclamation, “These are your gods (plural) O Israel” could be one of the earliest declarations mixing the worship of the true and living God, YHVH, with idols. This is called “syncretism”. Dictionary.com defines it: ” the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.”
The Apostle Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 10:6 against desiring evil as they did, would seem to point to the obvious sins – lying, stealing, adultery, fornication, etc. – and following their deliverance from slavery, many of the children of Israel were certainly guilty of some of these. But this passage in Numbers describes a type of sin we don’t normally consider: it was simply their desire for the foods they ate in Egypt.
When I was in school, it seemed they ran a “fire drill” at least once a year. A long, loud, kind of scary bell would sound and we knew it was either a real fire, or, more likely, just another drill. We were formed into lines, ushered down the halls, and out the doors we went. Of course, the point was practice….so we would be prepared for a real fire.
The children of Israel are facing yet another test, this one, even more severe than hunger– dehydration – which, unabated, quickly leads to a miserable death. Yet, now, every day they are also seeing the miracles of God, who is feeding them regularly with manna, and surrounding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Once again, they fail the test, even in the midst of their daily witness of miracles. So even though the test is more severe, the evidence for trust is that much greater.