THE BLESSING OF THE LORD !

THE BLESSING OF THE LORD ! He said: And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments (WORDS) which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these BLESSING shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice (WORDS) of the LORD thy God. BLESSED shalt thou be in the city, and BLESSED shalt thou be in the field. BLESSED shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. BLESSED shall be thy basket and thy store. BLESSED shalt thou be when thou comest in, and BLESSED shalt thou be when thou goest out. THE LORD shall cause thine enemies that raise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. THE LORD shall command the BLESSING upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hands unto; and He shall BLESS thee in the land which THE LORD thy God giveth thee, THE LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the (WORDS) commandments of THE LOED thy God, and walk in his ways. And all the people of the earth shall see that thou are called by the name of THE LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee. And THE LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which THE LORD swear unto thy fathers to give thee. THE LORD shall open until thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain upon thy land in his season, and to BLESS all the work of thine hand: and thou shall lend unto many nations, and thou shall not borrow. And THE LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shall be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the (WORDS) commandments of THE LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them (Deuteronomy 28:1-13). When God declared that BLESSING to Israel, He wasn't coming up with something new. He was simply telling them what was included in THE BLESSING they had inherited as the seed of Abraham. The apostle Paul, exclaims, "if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." All the promises that God made to Abraham are fulfilled by Jesus and given to us. We are first of all heirs of a promised land. (Galatians 3:29). He was confirming to them the original BLESSING-- the one He had first released on mankind in The Garden of Eden. That BLESSING had actually belonged to the Israelites all along. It was their birthright, but because they didn't have faith in it and hadn't lived according to its principles, it hadn't been operating in their lives. And for the most part that is what is happening in many Christians believers of the New Testament lives. The same is true of the curse God talk to them about in the last part of (Deuteronomy 28). "But it shall come to pass, if thou shalt not hearken unto the voice (WORDS) of THE LORD thy God, to observe to do all his (WORDS) commandments and his statues which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: Curse shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Curse shall be thy basket and thy store. Curse shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shall thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out (versus 15--19). That curse wasn't anything new, either. It has been operating on the earth for thousands of years. Ever since Adam's sin, it has overtaken anyone not protected by THE BLESSING. So when God described that curse to the Israelites, He wasn't saying, "if you don't keep My rules ,(WORDS) I'm going to destroy, and here's how I'm going to do it." He was saying, "The curse is out there. Because of the fall of mankind. It's already on the world; and if you go the way of the world instead of walking in THE BLESSING, it's going to overtake you." That seems very simple to me. We don't have any trouble understanding that if it's raining outside and we want to keep dry, we have to stay inside.