Blessed To Be A Blessing - Exodus 12:1-3

How many of you have felt you have been blessed during the last nine days?

What are we supposed to do with those blessings?

Too often we think the blessings that we have received are all about us, ways that God is simply enriching our lives for the sake of us.  We come into unexpected money and automatically start thinking to ourselves okay, now I can get a new dress, now I can get those shoes I’ve been wanting, or now I can get that new television, “now I can take that dream vacation” or “now I can move into a new house,” or “now I can join the country club.”  Maybe we don’t actually plan on spending any of those financial blessings right away.  Many of the blessings that we have experienced in the last week aren’t financial though…they have come in a home spared from damage, a quick visit from an assurance adjuster, free meals, disaster supplies, or the kindness of a fellow scorch member or a neighbor providing a meal for us.  We consider all of these blessings and we figure we have been blessed for a reason, we deserve it, God must love us more than everyone else.

God’s Word, though, from the beginning, paints a different picture of how blessings are to be understood.

God comes to a man named Abram.  Abram and his family, along with and under the guidance of his father, Terah, had moved from the city of Ur to Haran years earlier on their way to Canaan.  They had settled in Haran and after Terah died, God contacted Abram and told I want you to gather up your family, pack up your inheritance, and head out of Haran, I’m going to take you to a new place, I’m going to help you complete the journey you began with your father, and I’m going to bless you.  God tells Abram that 1) He is going to make him into a great nation, 2) that He is going to bless him, and 3) that he is going to make Abram’s name great.  Was this all a well-deserved reward for Abram?  Not that we can tell.  To this point in Scripture, all that Abram has done was tag along with his dad to Haran.  Was this a surprise gift, an act of grace, just to benefit Abram out of the clear blue?  It was a surprise gift, it was an unearned act of grace.  However, God makes it clear that he is not blessing Abram for the sake of Abram.  He is blessing Abram so that Abram will be a blessing, so that through Abram, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God is going to bless Abram, not so Abram can feel good about himself or kick back and enjoy life, God is going to bless Abram in order that Abram can in turn bless others.  In God’s blessing of Abram is the future of our very presence here today.  For as Abram accepted the blessing of God, and in doing so agreed to be used as an agent through which God would bless the world, we see the beginnings of the ancestry that would lead to Jesus.

If there were any doubt to this line of thinking, the connection is made clear ten chapters later, when God, seeing that Abram, now Abraham, fully trusts in God, hears the words of God through the angel that stayed his hand:

“By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”

God blesses us that we may bless others…just as God set in motion through Abram the process through which he would bring salvation to the world in Jesus Christ and began His efforts toward restoring creation…so He continues that process with us.  When we use the blessings of God to be a blessing to others, we find ourselves, thanks to the grace of God, moving away from the sin of selfishness and self-focus, and toward the Christ-like image of grace-giving self-sacrifice for the sake of others.

Hoarding our blessings only leads to disappointment and destruction as the farmer in Jesus’ parable learns:

“The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

God intends our blessings to be a blessing to others…and when we willingly give up those blessings to touch the lives of others, God will not leave us empty, He will continue to enrich our lives and bless us.  Consider the story of Elijah and the widow where the widow was asked to share the very last of her food with Elijah…she was asked to offer as a blessing to Elijah all that she had, and yet when she did, when she selflessly offered that very last morsel, God blessed her and her son, and Elijah in that they never ran out of food. 

Jesus promises that there is not a blessing that we sacrifice for the sake of following him that we will not receive back one hundred fold, either on this side, or the other side of His return:

Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

I have seen and heard so many instances of folks with this understanding of blessings this past week, but two really stood out.

The first happened earlier in the week.  A woman came back to the church after having gotten one several of the health kits for her family.  Her adult daughter opened her health kit and inside was a card…and inside that card was a $20 bill.  That is the first time I have ever heard of a monetary gift in any of the health kits.  As her mom talked with her about what she was going to do with the money, she informed her mom that she was going to put it in an envelope and place it in the collection plate the next time she could get to church so that it might bless someone else.

The second happened yesterday.  A woman came by to pick up some of the disaster supplies.  She shared with us her storm story.  It turns out that she is a gardener for a living.  Standing on her property was an ancient pecan tree.  Pecan trees and strong hurricanes do not go well together, young or old.  During the hurricane that pecan tree came down…right across her garden, taking out her livelihood in two ways.  It flattened her crops…and she ensured that she would no longer have any income from selling pecans.  Yet she considered herself blessed.  Why?  Because taken out her garden was one of two ways that the tree could have fallen.  The other way would have involved the tree coming down and crushing her home, killing her and her family.  Over and over she kept saying, God has left us here for a reason, now we just have to find that reason…we have to find out what God wants us to do now.  She realized that God had left her here for a reason, had blessed her for a reason.  She realized she was giving the gift of still being alive, not just for her sake, but because God had something in store for her to do, some way she was supposed to be a blessing to someone else.

When we began this message, y’all shared that you had felt God’s blessings this past week.  The question remains, how will each of us, as individuals, and together as the Body of Christ, use the blessings that God has God has given us to bless those around us…to move from being inwardly focused to being tools of God’s redemptive, restorative, and re-creative efforts?  God has blessed each of us tremendously…not only with the gift of life which enables us breathe each and every moment…not only with the gift of being able to gather in His Name…but also with the gift of Eternal Life.  He blesses us with he promise that there is nothing in all of creation, not even a hurricane, that can separate us from the blessing of His love…and that in turn we are called to share that blessing in in ways that bless others and offer them the same gifts of love that God has offered us.  And truth be known, as we seek to bless others with those blessings, sharing our love and sharing the Gospel, both through sharing the Word and being the Word in action, we will see that in blessing others, God will continue to bless us, because the love of God shared, is the love of God multiplied, all around us, for as we are blessed and become a blessing to others, God continues pour out blessings abundantly.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.