Psalm 33:10-20
Who wants to be blessed? Don’t we all? Is there anybody here who does not want to be blessed? Excuse me, ah-ah-choo! (God bless you.) Thank you. That was a fake sneeze, but I like being blessed. Do you feel blessed today, or are you having too many problems to feel blessed?
Psalm 33 teaches us about God’s blessings. God wants to pour out his blessings. He is a generous and loving God. Listen to Eph. 1:3-8, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”
Hear it again from Eugene Peterson’s rendition in the Message. How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making.1
God wants to bless us! So why do you think Psalm 33 has in it the verse 10 that says, “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.” That doesn’t sound like blessing. When God does his work here the nations have to say, “Curses, foiled again. That doesn’t sound like blessing. But really it is. God blesses the world when he prevents nations of humans from doing their worst. God doesn’t give us the blessings we want unless we want what He wants. God always gives us the blessings we need. His plans are best. So when we accept his plans we are blessed!
And look what happens when we accept from God’s hand the blessings he wants to pour out upon us. The psalmist says, the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance.” So how are we blessed when we make God our Lord? The psalmist makes the list in the next verses. He sees us. He watches over us. He pays attention to our hearts and thoughts and is mindful of our situation. We are blessed when we rely on His strength and recognize that ours is insufficient.
If the nation is blessed whose God is the Lord, how about the state, or the city, or the church or the person? Surely it’s all the same. So how does God become our Lord? In one sense he already is whether we like it or not. If we don’t like it, we tend to be against him and we may feel our plans and dreams being foiled or thwarted. In another sense, we may want to be blessed and so we want God to be our Lord and we pray like, “Come on God bless me! Please? Just a little?” Well as I said before, God doesn’t give us the blessings we want unless we want what He wants. God always gives us the blessings we need. His plans are best. So when we accept his plans we are blessed!
The first blessing we need is the blessing of having our eyes opened to believe the gospel message. None of us should be thinking that we don’t need the blessing of God’s forgiveness. All of us have sinned and there is nothing we can do to fix that. But God has a plan established long ago. God has done the fixing, through Christ on the cross. All of us are going to stand before the Lord one day and even if you could say, “But all I did was tell a little white lie, once, and I was just a kid.” God couldn’t overlook that. It is a sin that can’t be fixed by the sinner or ignored by the perfectly holy God. The only remedy is God’s forgiveness. And I am sure there is no one here who could claim or even would dare to claim that they had never sinned. We all know how many times we have failed. Wait, no we don’t. We didn’t keep track. We can’t remember how many times we sinned.
But let’s go to the other extreme for a minute. You might be a person who feels you are so guilty of many terrible sins that God can’t or won’t forgive you. But while he hung in the cross Jesus even forgave the people who were involved in the process of killing him. There is nothing God can’t or won’t forgive for anyone who turns to him in faith.
Our only hope is to receive the blessing of God’s forgiveness. We receive that blessing first of all be believing that we need it. Not after we straighten out our lives and become presentable to God, but right now, just as you are. The moment you know you need his forgiveness and ask for it, that is when you get it. That is the moment we ask God to forgive us our sins and believe that he has done that through Jesus. If you haven’t done it yet, now is the time.
Next, we promise to repent of our sins, and now we make every effort to grow out of them because God will bless us with his help. That is how a new believer becomes a disciple of Christ, joining in Christian fellowship and worshiping God with a grateful heart for his gift of forgiveness. We get the blessing of being united to a new and loving family of believers who help us. Along the way he blesses us with the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell within and help us know we are children of God and help us learn how to live for him. That’s just the beginning of the rich blessings of being a child of God.
The psalmist says, "The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, on those whose hope is in His unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine." There are many Christians in the world today who face death and famine because they live in countries where it is illegal to be a Christian. But they trust in God for his blessings, not the kind we think of when we think of blessings. They think of another day alive, another meal, some chance to pray with others and worship God with brothers and sisters, even if it must be in secret. And they risk their lives to tell others the good news of the gospel that I am sharing with you so openly and freely. It is a blessing to be a witness for Christ, especially where it takes a boldness and strength that can only come from God.
The psalmist also says “We are blessed when we wait patiently for Him and His deliverance. This is true for us as individuals, as a church, as a nation. The question for us is, do our hearts rejoice in Him? Do we trust in His Holy Name, or are we still trying to figure our own way out of whatever situation we may find ourselves. May we as individuals, as a church, as a nation, truly say: "May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in You."
This week we celebrate freedom in America, but the truest and greatest freedom comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That is the greatest truth that will most assuredly set you free! And in that freedom you will truly be blessed. Amen.
1Eph. 1:3-10 The Message
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