1st Kings, chapter 7, beginning in verse 1. This is God's word eternally true. It took Solomon 13 years, however, to complete the construction of his palace. He built the palace of the forest of Lebanon, a hundred qubits long, fifty-wide, and thirty-high, with four rows of cedar columns supporting trimmed cedar beams. It was roughed with cedar above the buildings that rested on the columns, 45 beams, 15 to a row. Its windows replaced high and sets of three facing each other. All the doorways had rectangular frames, they were in the front part and sets of three facing each other. It made a colony, fifty qubits long, and thirty-wide, in front of it was a portico, and in front of that were pillars and an overhanging roof. He built the throne hall, the hall of justice, where he was to judge, and he covered it with cedar from floor to ceiling. And the palace in which he was to live, set farther back, was similar in design. Solomon also made a palace like this hall, the fairer's daughter, whom he admired. All these structures from the outside to the great courtyard, and from the foundation to the ease, were made of blocks of high-grade stone cut to size and trimmed with a saw on their inner and outer faces. The foundations were laid with large stones of good quality, some measuring ten qubits and some eight. Above were high-grade stones cut to size and cedar beams. The great courtyard was surrounded by a wall of three courses of dressed stone and one course of trimmed cedar beams, as was the inner courtyard of the temple of the Lord with its portico. Hereins are reading, there is a response of thankfulness printed for center bulletins, the word of the Lord. Thanks indeed. Let's pray. One of the reasons that Mallory is headed to Iowa State is two parents who went there, they got engaged on the 50-yard line at the Iowa Stadium back in, I suppose, 1961 or 1960, somewhere around there, my dad's hawk there, my wife, Betsy went there, so that's fun. One of the other fun facts about Columbus is that Mike Tyson, who I think is the greatest boxer ever, despite who he is and all that kind of thing, but if you're watching a man, people were scared of him, and championship fights literally scared because he was so powerful and just knocked people out in the first round. First person to ever beat him was from Columbus so high out. This happened in 1990, he was a guy named Buster Douglas, and Buster Douglas fought this fight and beat Mike Tyson, and it was like nobody expected it to happen, it was just another fight for Mike Tyson, but then Buster Douglas earned this great paycheck for fighting this, the fight was in Tokyo, I think, or in Japan, but then there was a rematch schedule, but no Buster did, he went home in eight, and enjoyed the new money he had found, spent money, and relaxed on that kind of thing, so he came to this rematch out of shape, and quickly was dispensed up by Mike Tyson in the second match. As we saw in some of our readings that Jim read for us this morning, God had this great plan for his people, he rescued them out of their slavery in Egypt, ten flags, and all that, partying the Red Sea, and it was to bring them to this Promised Land, Israel, and he brings them to the Promised Land across the Jordan, and they defeat all their enemies there, and it's God's plan to place them in this Promised Land and to bless them abundantly. Now this was all by grace, we find out, and for the reasons for the Ten Commandments containing these two commands at the beginning, no other gods, and don't have idols, is because some of them were worshipping idols and had other gods when they were in Egypt, they were not contrary to what we see in Charlton Heston's version of the Ten Commandments, all faithful people looking for God, they're told by Moses to put away their idols, that means they had them, even after they had come out of Egypt. But God's plan for his people was in the Promised Land, this Old Testament people got to bless them abundantly, and so we read about that in Deuteronomy 28, what's God's plan, what's his intent for his people, not to curse them, not to make things difficult for them, but to bless them, and to give them abundant plots and great produce, this is what we're reading about in Deuteronomy 12, as they lived in the land, and that when nations would attack them, they'd come from one direction, but God's people would turn and face them in battle, and their enemies would scatter in seven directions, totally in confusion, that's God's design for his people, Old Testament Israel, that God would bless God's people's offspring in the land, if this would be a place of abundance, and so we see this being God's intent, and so the question is when we get to first and second kings, and we're dealing with two books that were written to people who had after the days of Moses, much, much later, they were almost 800, 900 years later, they would come themselves in exile. There were no longer in this Promised Land, experiencing blessings that God had declared he wanted to give them in Deuteronomy 28. They'd experienced those things for a while, and off and on, but they find themselves out of exile, and we see just a hint of what can happen here in this passage in 1st Kings 7. Now in 1st Kings 7, God is still abundantly blessing his people in the Promised Land through Solomon, and because of Solomon, and because of Solomon's faithfulness, and so we talked last week about how Solomon first takes care of building the temple. That's chapter 6. He gets that done and in good order, seven years, and he gives his attention to it and he gets this done, and then after that, he builds the palace, and in the palace there's a place in the back for him, a place in the back for his wife, who was Pharaoh's daughter, who assumed from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes was faithful to the God of Israel. Solomon says to his son, listen to your mother, and it seems that, and we see this in Song of Solomon, chapter 3 as well, she comes up from Egypt, she accepts the God of Israel, like Ruth does, Ruth was a Moabite, but she comes and accepts the God of Israel, or like Rahab, one of the Canaanites, accepts the God of Israel. So this is the time in chapter 7 that God is abundantly blessing his people. So last week we talked about that God blesses his people, and blesses Solomon, the king he has selected for his people with this extravagant palace. That Jerusalem was along a trade route, and people would come into Jerusalem and trade, they'd sell their stuff and buy stuff, and as they would come to Jerusalem and walk by Jerusalem, they could look up and they could see these two structures magnificently high, side by side in Jerusalem, the temple that Solomon had built, and next to it on the north side the palace. And this was a sign to all those fours who walked through the land of Israel that this is the land that somebody blessed. And this must be a place where there's a real God who rules and who provides for and blesses his people. That's one of the functions of the temple, for the functions of the palace, that fours would come by and say, the God of all gods must live here. He must well here, he must bless these people, and so that was the signs of them as they passed by Jerusalem. So that's what God is doing in Solomon, and so we're at one of the heights, and we see the height of God's blessing on his people through chapter 10 of first kings. You see this highlighter at its peak in chapter 10 when the queen of Shiva coming down from the south, sometimes she's called the queen of the south. She comes up because she's heard of Solomon's wisdom and the splendor and the riches and the glory of this kingdom, and so she comes to see if this is all true and she concludes there, this is better than I was even told. And so that's what God's about, blessing his people. So the question we have, and as people who know how Solomon ended in his life, as people understand chapter 11 of first kings, which will get to work, Solomon goes astray, as we think about how gods people wound up in exile in Babylon like Daniel and Esther. How did they get there? And so the question we're looking at in this passage is, how does one have the blessing of God? And two, how is he or she keeping it? What's our role? Do we have a role in this? And we do. So we look first at how we devote ourselves, as we looked at last week, we devote ourselves first to the worship of God in our spiritual lives. That's what we talked about last week. This is what Solomon has devoted himself to. This is what we're to see. We devote himself first to the worship of God building the temple first and to having all things spiritually set forward first before we mess with other stuff like a palace. Then we look at this morning how we combat the potential downfall and ruin of our own lives or for a church that belongs to a denomination how we combat the downfall of our own denomination or whatever it is. So the question is your introduction there. If you'd like to fill up blanks in that line, here we go, we're starting with that now. You can fill those in if you want to just listen, that's fine too. We're looking at how do I arrive? How do I arrive? And stay in God's blessings in my life. Now this can be true for denomination. It can be true for a local church. It can be true for a person. So number one, first we looked at last week putting worship in spiritual life first has this result. It's time to talk about last week, but we didn't come out and say it and it's this. Number one, God will bless. God will bless as he did for Jesus, the person who put worship in spiritual life first better than anyone, Jesus did. God will bless as he did for Jesus as we put our spiritual life in worship first. Jim Redforest, Matthew 633. Seek first what? His kingdom and his righteousness and then what? All these things will be added to you. This is after Jesus says, don't let money to your God. Okay, we got to break there in our Bibles, right? But there's no break there, right? That's just an editorial comment. They put a they put a whole thing in there between chapter 3 verse 24 25. But Jesus, this is the discussion. Jesus says, you can't have two masters. You'll love one and hate the other. So you need to have one master. It needs to be God, not money. And they said, don't worry about money because God closed the field with lilies. God will take care of you. Don't worry about stuff. Don't build the palace first. Build the temple first. Have your life be a build the temple first life. God, my spiritual life first, my worship of God first before everything else, money, employment, job, sports, whatever else you can do that can come before God and the worship of Him. And so we seek for His kingdom and His righteousness and all the other stuff. God's got to take care of the feeds the birds of the air. They're not worried. The field's not worried. You shouldn't be worried. Follow God. And if my dad used to say, let the chips fall where they will. Okay, do what's right? Let the chips fall where they go. Follow the seed God. Let the chips fall where they will. Let God be God's responsible for the consequences for the follow-up for the results. We're just responsible for our faithfulness to see God first and to worship Him as a top bird in a lot. So we see this for Jesus on Revelation 5. He takes us to talk about last week. His sacrificing Himself on the cross was an act of worship. Okay, He is high priest and sacrifice and He worships God by Himself, offering as high priest an act of worship a perfect sacrifice to God His Father. And that perfect sacrifice was His own body, His own sinless body, body that not had not seen. Okay, and so Jesus does worship first, the cross, but in Revelation 5 we see what's you get later. Let's see. Revelation 5, we see heaven is saying, who's going to save us? Who can read our names from the book of life? This scroll, this book of life is sealed with seven seals and no one's worried to open these seven seals who's in heaven right now and then the whole Revelation 5, Jesus arrives. After His ascension He arrives into heaven and they say, look, a lamb who's been slain. He is worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because He's purchased the people whose names are on that scroll. That scroll is the book of life. Jesus bought the book of life so he could open it up. Mallorge just had a birthday. Because it's her birthday, she's worthy to open those presents, right? Lots she did for that to be born that day. But only she can open those presents. It's not my birthday. I can't open them and say thanks myself for this gift I wanted to get. But Jesus is worthy to open the scroll because He bought with His blood. That's the rest of Revelation 5. He bought those names with His blood. He bought you in Me with His blood. He takes care of worship first. Then He goes up to heaven and everybody admires and they sing to Him in worship. And they say, where's the where's the where's the are you of Lord and our God? You've purchased men with your blood. Glory and honor and power to you. So we see in Jesus's own pattern, worship comes first, cross, and then blessing later. And so we make that note in our life. If I weren't blessing in my life, God who was sovereign over every micro event on the earth ever, He's the giver of blessing. And so how can I expect to have blessing unless I have blessing that comes from Him? So what do I seek to do to walk in His ways? It's Jesus' thing. Blessing doesn't come from where Satan tells us it comes from. That's temptation. Satan is telling you, in temptation, he tells me in temptation, you will have greater blessing if you do this thing that's not according to God's word. And He holds out for your prize. And then you take it and you see it's just a vapor. In the sense, it's such a pain, right? That's temptation. But we walk in God's ways and He blesses, He blesses us. So we arrive there and we arrive in blessing and we experience blessing just as Jesus does by putting worship first, spiritual life first. For us, it happens additionally in our future when Jesus comes back. And that's Revelation 21 and 22. I put a revelation, but if Chef is one through 20, talk about you're going to get beat up because you're a believer in Jesus. That's your life. Okay? People are going to trample on you, chapter 11, and they're going to rejoice. This believer who makes meh conscience feel bad because I'm in sin and he's worshipping God and I'm not. He's now downtrodden and they rejoice. They're not each and every person. He's not the reason. That's not right. Second, second Timothy 3, 12. All who desire to lift Godly and Christ Jesus will be persecuted. That's our lies here. That's our expectation here. Our expectation is not due to our enemy 28 promised land. You know, if you're a farmer, none of your farmers, but if you're a farmer, big crops. You may have years where you have abundant crops if you're a farmer and a believer, may have years for this drought. It's just not, it's just not the promise for us now. We'll talk about what that is in just a second. But God will bless, certainly, body and soul, revelation 21 and 22, and the new heaven to new us. Then all that stuff in, in, in, in, in, Deuteronomy 28 will come true, except for the, the part about the enemies, they'll be scattered at final judgment, running away in, in, in seven directions, the final judgment. And we won't see them never again. They have all these blessings of soul and body will be true for us when Jesus returns. Final judgment happens and we, what he dwells with us and we with him on the earth, recreated for us. So qualifications, what kind of blessings should we expect? What kind of blessings are the scriptures? Expect us to expect. We could take a look at Deuteronomy 28. We could be prosperity gospel and say, now, if you just believe, you know, God will give you, you know, ever increasing pay check and everything's going to zip it you do to go your way, right? My, oh my, what a wonderful day. But number one, qualifications or A there, as with Jesus in his life on earth. So we get direction from what was Jesus' life on earth? When he lived on earth, what kind of blessings did he get? And was he only blessed? He winds up on a cross. Okay. So how do we qualify this? What should we expect in our lives? Well, like Jesus as with Jesus in his life on earth, number one, in this era prior to Jesus' return, this blessing that we speak up is a guarantee regarding your soul. This is a guarantee regarding your soul. So as we saw Jeremiah 17, 7, 3, that's in our declaration of us the gospel, which my folks and God there it is. I'll read it for you. For what a great passage, right? But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. His confidence is in him. He will be planted by the water like a tree planted by the water that sends its roots out to a stream. You know, if you're a tree and roots grow out to a stream, you get water all the time. That's because they're by a stream. That's what water is. And so even though the ground might be dry below you, your roots are tapped in to a stream. And so Jeremiah goes on and says, the tree does not fear when heat comes, if leaves will always be green. This is talking about our souls, the condition of our souls, even if we're in jail for our belief in Jesus. Our souls will be green. So to speak, living, prospering, alive, not perched and dry. This tree has no worries in a year, in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit. So this is the promise for us in our lives. This is not a promise of physical, number two, is not a guarantee of solely as OLE, of solely good things for your life and your physical circumstances. Okay, the original audience knew this, right? The people in exile, it said, okay, even for us, that's not a guarantee of physical stuff. But this is a communication to us that the promise of blessing is to our souls for now, which Jesus comes back when the New heavens knows it'll be body and soul blessings. But for now it's blessing of soul. And we'll have occasional blessings to our bodies. We live in America. So the poorest of us is abundantly blessed in terms of world standards and historical standards, right? We're abundantly blessed, physically, you know, despite what someone might tell you or if you compare yourself to someone who, you know, like the Rockefellers or someone like that. You might say, oh, I'm so cursed, you know, but don't move to 50% of countries in the world who are in poverty, you know, who would qualify for welfare here in the whole country. So we have certain physical blessings, but primarily what we're interacting with here is soul blessing. We're trees. We're people who trust in the Lord. In our roots, the roots of our souls have extended to the stream of next week, we'll hear about living in the water. The stream of water that nourishes us, whether things are going well or whether things are going, the difficult forms, and things are not going well, and we're depressed because of our circumstances. Too many things are not going well, okay? So it's not a guarantee of solely good things for your life. It's not a guarantee of your physical circumstances. So Solomon, at the end of his life when he reflects back on every time, he's about to die and he writes a quiz. He asks, he asks, he's 814, one of my favorite verses in all his scripture. He says, all is meaningless. Here's why. The righteous man gets the wicked man's reward, and the wicked man gets the righteous man's reward. All is vanity.
That's Solomon's conclusion. He's looked out on the world. He says, so at the end of the book, he said, I've considered all things, and here's the conclusion. You don't know if being righteous and walking with the Lord is going to earn you death like it did for Jesus, or if it's going to earn you abundance like it did for Abraham. You don't know, because in this life, sometimes the wicked man prosper, and the righteous man die, or sometimes it's the other way around. So no guarantees on those verses, all those verses there are verses to talk about how we like Jesus in this life typically, the norm is we suffer, is we suffer. No, number three, number three, as with Jesus in this life on earth, in your relationships, in your relationships, putting your spiritual life in worship first will often, often, bless your relationships, but sometimes harm them. So because you believe in Jesus, because you walk with him, sometimes it'll bless your relationships, but sometimes it'll harm them. So we're told in Romans 12, bless, and do not curse. Do not take vengeance. Pray for those who persecute you, because vengeance is mine, says the Lord. It's not yours. So bless, and do not curse. And sometimes, hopefully a lot of the times, because we're treating non-believers and believers that way, blessing them, being kind to them, being patient to them, even though they haven't treated us so well, that will win them over. And so then we are treated well, then we're promoted. Because we've worked hard, even though we express our boss, I think we would be better that we do it this way, but he says, no, we're going to do it my way. And you first page of our bulletin, cheerfully, do your bosses will, because you understand, Romans 13, God puts all authorities in place in his sovereignty, and it is a good and godly thing to follow your authority, as long as he's asking you not to sin. But as you live out your faith, a lot of times that'll earn you blessing. But sometimes, it'll earn you curse. Paul talks about it. Sometimes, because we're walking with Jesus, we carry around the hope of eternal life in us, and we go to worship on Sundays, and we walk in his way, and we refuse to do certain sin that is commonly done, and that reminds people who aren't believers that judgment is coming. Paul calls us, the aroma of life for those who have eternal life, but we're the aroma of death for those who are parishing. That is, we're reminder that they owe their all to God and that they will be judged for not giving their all to God. And so when they see us, they say, oh, it's like Homer with Ned Flanders. But here's, Jesus puts it this way, if the world hates you, keep in mind, keep in mind it hated me first. If you belong to the world, it would love you, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. So Jesus says, here's your baseline, expect the world to hate you because you're following me, and if they don't consider it a blessing or a bonus, like, hey, wow, this is great, they're doing nice to me. Jesus said, I tell you the truth, no one has left home or brothers, sisters and mother or father or children or fields for me in the gospel who fail to receive 100 times as much in the present age and in the age to come eternal life. Jesus said, and that's you, so we leave a lot of things to follow Jesus. That's not fun. And in Matthew 10, 32, 33, 37, he says, do not pretend, do not expect that I've come to bring peace on earth. Jesus, wait a minute. I didn't come to bring peace on earth but a sword. And it goes on in his flames and get this, Jesus is talking to Jews. This is who Jesus was among. God's covenant people during his own incarnation. And he's telling them, don't expect peace if you follow me because look, what's going to happen to me because I follow the one true God. I'm going to wind up on a cross and you know what's going to happen to you? You're going to be divided from your mom and your dad and your brothers and your sisters and they may turn on you and deliver you over to the authorities because they see you have abandoned the God of Israel. They don't stick with the Pharisees and the Pharisees view of things. And therefore Jesus says, I come to bring a sword and the sword is dividing people between those who follow the one true son of David, the chosen son of David, me and those who don't. And some of you have experienced that. Some of you have believed or you've left, you know, people leave the Jewish faith or maybe the Catholic faith or they've left Islam or they've left Hinduism or they've left atheism and had their own parents say to them, I'm ashamed of you or in many countries in countries where Islam is present, you know, it's believing in Jesus converting to Christianity is a capital offense and they see their parents say I never want to talk to you again, you're not my son any longer. This is the sword Jesus talks about. So just know that in your life walking with Christ and following loving people as you love yourself, there will be some people who are reasonable and say I like this guy but there will be some who will hate you because you're a reminder of judgment to come, you're a follower of Jesus. Okay, now be, so those are the qualifications there. It's our Jesus experience, all those things, even his own half brothers didn't believe until after the resurrection, but be in your life, know this, it's quality will be full and rich. That's the good news. You may suffer, you may be persecuted in external physical circumstantial kind of way, but your soul will be full and rich and that's real life there. We all know rich people who feel very empty. We all know successful people who feel very empty and whose lives are mess. But as we walk with the Lord as we put worship first, as we put our spiritual lives in order first, our lives are full and rich, even with the difficulties that we experience because we have the warmness of that comfort we received from the Lord, knowing that his blessing is upon us. When I was in high school, I became, by 12th grade, I became a better player than I ever thought I would do. This doesn't mean I was great. I wasn't, I started one game my senior year in high school, but here's the blessing on it. I worked hard at different things and so I could dribble well and I always tell people, hey, you know, life isn't fair. I'm a better dribbler, I'm a better shooter, definitely a better foul shooter than Shaquille or Nia, but he has millions of dollars and I don't, but I'm the better basketball player. But I don't have. God in his service, he didn't give me a seven foot, I love Shaq, it'd be great. He's like everything he's in, it's like put him in every commercial to buy this thing, right?
God gives Shaq the seven foot body that's this wide. You know, if you've been around from the 70s, you know, he's left on cell with Korean tight, right? Wow. I remember when I first saw him and I thought, woo, this is both. He's got the full package. He's not a skinny tall guy. He's a real tall guy. He's got that wide body that can get rebounds at will. But I became a better basketball player than I thought I would be, but I didn't play much. And so that was a hardship for me. You know, going out there and I'd done well and some other things, and there I went out on the bench. Some games I didn't get in at all. And my dad became worried about me about halfway through the seas or maybe two-thirds of the way through and he's trying to encourage me. And I said, Dad, I'm okay. I said, and I put it this way, don't take it the wrong way. I said, I'm John Musgrave, whether I play or not. But what I meant was this, I was having fun in practice because I was shooting the ball and making it. The three-point line came the year after I graduated from high school. I could bomb them. And I was bombing them over the first team in practice. And when the coach needed somebody to get out there at the end of the game and run the four-quarters office, I was the guy because I could dribble well and handle the ball well. And I just knew that. Whether I was utilized or whether I lived the embarrassment of not being able to start on my high school basketball team, I had this knowledge inside. I was actually better than I thought I would ever be. I'd wound up to that place in 12th grade. Enough the kind of experience that we can have as believers. You know, everything can be crumbling around us and the world can look at us and say, wow, look at your life. Things didn't really turn out for you, did they? But we know in our souls, I'm a child of God. A God of heaven who controls all things. He loves me. And did you notice there at the verse 6 of Psalm 1, he watches over the way of the righteous. That's us. God's blowing the wicked away like chaff. You know, that's dust. That's dust from the weeds. Chaff. He's just blowing that all over the place. But he's watching over us. He's protecting us. And that makes us feel good inside. It gives us comfort and strength inside. And we can enjoy regardless of our circumstances because of that. Okay, so in your life, you've got this quality. Now, here's the thing to note from this passage. While this passage in and of itself, these first 12 verses of chapter 7 are speaking of the glory and the blessing that God has given to his people and his Solomon and to his people through Solomon, we also have a foreshadowing of what can potentially go wrong when God blesses you. Because Solomon is everything going his way. And then we find out, come chapter 11, that that wasn't good for his soul. Or didn't handle that well. He could have, but he didn't. And that caused ultimately the exile of all God's people into various parts of the world and into Babylon. So here's number two. It's a huge principle in scripture to get. Number two, when God blesses you, be careful of your own heart. When God blesses you, be careful of your own heart. When God enables you, even to experience, you know, physical circumstances that are good. Like Allison Felix, she's a believer. And she became a believer early in her life. And now she's the most metal-winning runner in history for the United States. One her 11th last night, tied Carl Lewis with her 10th in the 400 Gitna Bronze and then won the 11th with the four by 400 real life. God, it got a gold medal with that. And she's, you know, has this great blessing and it's like, you know, God even have to do this. That you did. You made me fast. And you enabled me to be fast enough that I could be a 17-year-old in the Olympics starting to get medals. And a 35-year-old with a little girl. Yeah, she's a mom now. Still able to get a bronze, that third fastest in the world in the 400 and gold medal level in the relay. And so when that kind of thing happens, when God blesses us, we want to watch our hearts. We're going to watch our hearts. So as we look here in Psalm 51, we remember God says, the sacrifices I want are broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. That's what I care about. And so why does God care about David so much? David sends a man to his death because he's committed adultery with that man's life. And so he pushes. He's not an accessory to murder or whatever. He's the cause of somebody and murder in effect, whatever you call that. And then he's an adulterer. Why does God still so high on David after this even? It's because David is a good repenser. David's heart is always going back to the Lord even after his sin. And David pends these words in Psalm 51. The sacrifices that God desires is a humble and contrite heart. And so we're always to remember our hearts are important. See, David, when he committed adultery with that Shiva, he hadn't gone out with the troops as the ordinarily had. Perhaps the wealth, perhaps his position that came and started acting like other came to sin out the peasants with their peasant fingers and peasants to fight for him. Instead of going forward in front of the leading the troops as he had with the lion in other instances, second Samuel 8's is all about David leading the troops in battle. And so David didn't handle blessing. Well, but we want to. So remember that God blesses those whose hearts, whose hearts look to him and seek him. This is what Psalm 1, 1 through 3 is about. Psalm 1, 6 is about Psalm 51, 17, that I just read to you. The second Chronicles 16, 9. This is the prophet of Hannah, Hannah and I, a Hanami to Asa, the king, for the eyes of the Lord go to and grow throughout the horse. But the Lord might strongly support those whose heart is complete in this. And so we always want to be careful where our hearts are. That's the important thing that our hearts are completely the Lord's, whether we're in difficult circumstances or in great blessing. Hebrews 11, 16, a little more familiar to us. He is a rewarder of those who enus earnestly seek him. He's a rewarder of those who earnestly seek him. So be, if your heart strays from looking to God, if your heart strays from looking to God, if Solomon's heart later would, having to bless so greatly. And as his heart strays, we see that in chapter 11. God will bring discipline to you. Discipline to you. You're not blessing out of his love for you. Hebrews 12, 5 to 11. God the Father who loves you and a loving Father disciplines his kids. Because he doesn't want you to be experiencing a consequence, earning for yourself a bad reputation, earning for yourself bad consequences in your life. And so he brings discipline. So you don't want your heart to stray. You want just to receive that blessing and not discipline. And then see, be aware that the human heart and your heart, not just everybody else's, but your heart simply takes blessing without being grateful. That's the human heart. That's the sinful heart in us. That's the flesh in us. Our human hearts, our hearts simply take blessing without being grateful. Be grateful people. That's a scriptural through and through. And the more meal service somebody does for you, the more thankful you should be. Don't say, oh boy, that's meal service. I'm not saying anything to that person. Someone does something for you. Say thank you. Tell them why you appreciate what they're doing that for you. Be grateful and be grateful to God. And that should be a trigger. And that's a rewiring of our sinful hearts. Our sinful hearts say when blessing happens, it's because of me, Nebuchadnezzar chapter four, right? The reason I ruin over everything as far as I can see is because of my greatness. Nebuchadnezzar says, and God says, no, it isn't. And I'll show you. And it takes away Nebuchadnezzar's sanity. And so we always want this truth. We've got things good are happening to me. Be grateful. Say thank you God for this. I don't deserve it. You didn't owe this to me. You're just being nice. Like David says, God does not treat to someone. If God does not treat us as our sins deserve, or someone hundred, one of those two, God does not treat us as our sins deserve. And so when good things happen to you, remember, be grateful. Deuteronomy five six. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. This comes before he gives the sin command. Once his people have realized the reason you're not and reason we're not in slavery to sin anymore is because he rescued us from it. Then God tells them in the promised land, be grateful. In the midst of the promised land, be grateful. It's a repeated exhortation in Scripture. So here's the formula. Here's the road takeaway and the bang from this sermon. If you've been asleep, none of you happen. You've been asleep until now. Here's now tune in and focus in. This is life, Prince Floyd. Remember hearing this sitting in a seminary class and it just struck me. It's the word from the prophets over and over. It's the word from Moses. It's the word from Jesus. It's the word from Paul. So listen in. It's D. It's D. When God blesses you, instead when God blesses you, that's your blank blesses, instead when God blesses you as your heart has gone after him. When you walk to the Lord, when you've been seeking him, and he blesses you, instead of not being grateful, instead of trying to explain that by, well, I first did this and I studied real hard and I did all handling drills in my basement every, you know, for half an hour or every night each summer, which I did. Instead of crediting yourself for that, take note. Take note of the blessing. That's number one. Take note. Take note of the blessing. There when something night happens to you, God sovereign, take note of this blessing. Take this. This has happened to me and it's a nice thing. So take note. Number two, recognize that this nice thing that's happened to you is from God. Recognize this blessing is from God. It's not because of you. Solomon also says right near that, that verse in Ecclesiastes 8 or toward the end of chapter 8 or maybe in the beginning of chapter 9, the race is not always to do this with. And he's not, Solomon does not mean, hey, have hope if you really slow, you can win the gold medal in the Olympics. He's not saying that. He's saying life is unfair. You can be the fastest person in that race and not win, right? That's all the Olympics there. They're surprise winners. Somebody from, where's that? Someone from Italy can win the 100 meters. They did an Italian won the 100 meters this year. And he wasn't the fastest. He didn't have the fastest time in the world, but all in that night he felt juice in his life. He felt energy. He had power coming out of those legs. And the other guys were running as fast as they could and they couldn't keep up or are 200 meter champion no alive with the fastest time in the world. The undisputed fastest guy in 200 meters comes in, what was it? Third or fourth? Third. Third. There. And the race is not always to the swift. God is sovereign. If you win the gold medal, if you get a blessing regardless of your skill or lack thereof, it's because God made that happen. And so take note of that. Recognize the blessing is from God. No matter how hard you work from it for it, or if you just showed up and it popped in front of your fence, recognize the blessings from God. Number three, mark that God has been free to bless you and not discipline you because your heart has been seeking you. If you've been seeking a Lord, if you've been putting your spiritual life first, you've been putting a worship first and God is causing nice things to happen to you. Say, this is me living in the promised land, walking in God's way, and God's giving me abundant crops, and you're causing my enemies to flee in seven directions, take note of this. Say, this is God, he's free to bless me. The reason he's giving me all these nice things is he's not having to discipline me because I'm walking away from him, because my heart is straining. Note that when God blesses you, that you've enabled that blessing because God's a good father. He doesn't give you a car when you get all F's. Right? Mike, give you a car by surprise if he's able to or some nice gift might have never gave me a new car. I got a 76-shabby love that he had driven and my brother had driven. And I drove in 1983, which was nice. But realize this, you know what? One of the reasons I'm being blessed here is because God's not having to put his energy towards my discipline. When we're walking with the Lord, he's free just to do what he wants to do, which is blessed. And so we enable that. We may be walking with him and it may be time for us to be sharpened through hardship. But when that blessing comes, just note, I guess God's not having to discipline me. Okay? And then number four, and this is real, this is why you've got the asterisk here.
When God blesses you, when you're walking with him, he blesses you, put your foot to the floor and pursuing him and all of them. This is what happens in the description that God tells us to, when I bless you, remember me and I'll bless you more. When you're walking with me and I bless you, you think that's good? Just wait to what I want to give you. Just keep walking with me. With things are going well for you, make the connection. They're going well for me because I'm walking with the Lord. I love him. And so I need to do that even more. This is what we don't see in the Solomon. Solomon doesn't turn at the end of his life toward the latter part of his life. He's saying, look at all God's blessings. How could I walk away from him? How could I not heed the words of my father, David? He said, don't marry foreign wives, they'll turn your heart away from you. How could I establish a dollar to his worship in the way? Solomon doesn't, he doesn't see the blessing at the end of his life and puts his foot to the floor at the racing. That's a hard thing. You know, if things are going well, just be all the more faithful. Receive all the more blessing. This is not prosperity gospel. This is your soul will be blessed all the more. When God blesses you, have that be a reminder, not that you've done a great thing, have that be a reminder that God is the blesser, that he is sovereign. And when he blesses you, have that be a red flag that says, oh, I need to obey. Even more. If I obeyed in this little way, and God blessed me like this, then what if I obeyed in this other thing that I've been hedging on? God will bless me there too. He's training us. So, you know, when you're in school or if you're in school, you know, when you study longer, you spend an hour studying instead of watching Americans count talent. The night before test. And you get a 90, and you get a 95 on the test instead of a 79. You know, that, that should say, you shouldn't walk away from that and say, oh, it doesn't matter how long I study. No, take note of that. And so, the blessing of this 95 is because I spent this extra half-hour studying. And in a similar way, as we walk with the Lord, not that we have perfect lives, just we prioritize our spiritual lives, as we prioritize our worship of him. We know, hey, this, this finds up in good things in my soul. Good things in my soul as I walk with him. So, go, go for receiving what God wants to give to you, that is more blessing, mostly to your soul. So, go for that. As you see God blessing you, go for more. And the way you go for more is seeing God to give her blessings. And his life to bless me is like prioritize worship and walking with him and being put a different way. Get addicted to keeping, get addicted to keeping your heart thankful to God and to pursuing him as you see and note in your life the great results of your doing so. So, Solomon should have looked at this palace as it was completed at the end of his searching years and said, wow, God has been great to me. I'm so thankful. I'm the eighth kid of David. How did he even find me to choose me to be the one that took over for David and was came over all things and then all this splendor he's given to me and he's enabled me to build a temple for him. For I'm grateful and we want to be, we want to be like that. So, our summary, our summary. God delights to bless you. God delights to bless you. That's his demeanor. That's his, is what he wants to do. He delights to bless you and he continues blessing to you as your heart continues to seek him. And when God blesses you in life when you have some kind of palace complex verses 1 through 12 here, whatever that would be in your life, here should be your response. You should press on to seek him more. Press on to seek him more. You say, hey, this is working. Faithfulness is working. My soul feels good. I don't feel so guilty anymore. Someone can ask me, hey, have you done, did you do this and say, I did? Because you did. It's a great blessing to walk in God's ways and God delights to bless you. Yeah, that's that's it. Do that all the more. Let's press.