Episode Transcript
If you take your Bibles and turn to the book of Proverbs, please. Proverbs chapter 10.
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Proverbs chapter 10.
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God willing we'll be expounding verse 22 tonight.
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"Tile the message tonight is the blessing of the Lord."
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Have a healthy online presence tonight, and it's good to see y'all tonight.
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Every verse in God's Word is a powerful living treasure.
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But there's some verses like the stars in heaven that shine a little more bright than the other verses do.
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I'm sure a lot of y'all have favorite verses.
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Well, Proverbs 10.22 is one of those verses that shines exceeding bright.
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It's a foundational verse, and the truths that it contains transcends the particular sentence that contains it.
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The truth is applied across all of Scripture.
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There's so many applications that you can apply this verse to.
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And for this reason, I believe this verse should be committed to our memories.
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If this verse, if you have it in your mind and you understand it,
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it can actually rescue your mind in times of temptation and trouble.
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It's good to have verses like that, isn't it?
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The Holy Spirit now directs our attention, and if you'll look here in verse 22,
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He directs our attention to the blessing of the Lord.
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The blessing of the Lord.
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Now, here's something about blessing.
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You get blessed by someone over you, someone higher than you, someone greater than you.
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Blessing always trickles down. Blessing never goes up.
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Hebrews 7.7 says, "And without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the better."
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When Jacob wrestled with the angel, the angel wasn't trying to get Jacob to bless him.
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Jacob was trying to get blessed by the angel. Why?
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The less is blessed by the better.
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Man doesn't bless God. God blesses man.
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So the blessing of the Lord is not talking about us.
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Blessing the Lord is talking about the Lord blessing us.
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Yes, there are times in the Bible where you will see someone say,
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"Blessed be the Most High God," or "Blessed be the Lord," or something like that.
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But when you see people blessing God in the Bible, they are not giving God a blessing.
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They are giving thanks to God for a blessing they received.
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Make sense?
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Let's give an example. Psalm 103, verse 2 through 4.
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Psalm 103, verse 2 through 4.
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"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."
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You see what's happening? He's blessing God for the benefits or the blessings that we receive.
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He goes on to say, "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities? Who healeth all thy diseases?
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Who redeemeth thy lives from destruction? Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies?"
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So it's an acknowledgment of God's blessing when man blesses the Lord.
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Is not man actually granting God a blessing? Who could do that?
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The Hebrew word translated "blessing" literally means to stoop down,
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because blessings are handed down to us from the Most High God.
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And Solomon calls it here the blessing of the Lord. Why? It belongs to God. It's unique to God.
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Blessing, true blessing, comes from the Lord.
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Yes, there are times when people can be a blessing to us.
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Ultimately, that is from the Lord,
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but there's a difference between the blessing of the Lord that Solomon is referring to tonight,
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and blessing in general in the sense of benefits that we receive,
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or someone doing a favor for us, or something like that.
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Or something that we enjoy that could be considered a blessing.
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"Oh, that was such a blessing," you know, we would say.
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But the blessing of the Lord that Solomon is talking about tonight in this verse is a pure, heavenly blessing
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that originates with God and does not originate here on earth.
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It originates with God and does not originate here on earth.
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This world is a fallen world. We are sinful people.
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And the blessing of the Lord is not tainted with our sinful flesh.
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Let me give you an illustration. Last Sunday, my wife made some homemade peach cobbler for our church lunch.
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And I'm a very finicky eater.
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You rarely ever see me go to the dessert table.
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And it's got to be like super low sugar, and it's got to be whole wheat flour and all this healthy stuff, or I'm not going to touch it.
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And my wife made it that way, and when I saw it at the house, I thought, "How sweet! My wife made me a cobbler."
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Then I remembered, it's the first Sunday of the month, and she made it for the church lunch.
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So I had to wait. But she was sweet. She went and dipped me some out, and she brought some to me, and as sweet as she always is.
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And when the meal was over, there was a little bit of cobbler left.
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And I know that that cobbler could have been a blessing to somebody.
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And if someone would have come over to me and said, "Brother Richard, I sure enjoyed your wife's cobbler,"
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and I noticed there was a little bit left over there, it would be such a blessing to me if I could take what's left over home with me.
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And if someone would have done that to me, I would have jumped up, I would have grabbed that cobbler,
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I would have fixed them something to go in it for them, and I would have sent them home,
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and I would have felt good about being a blessing to that person.
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I really would have. But not very far back in my mind, I would have been thinking about how I wish I was the one taking that cobbler home.
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That's the truth. I thought, "Well, at least Brother Shepherd's getting to take it home.
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I'm glad to be a blessing." In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "Man, I was looking for that cobbler today."
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The blessing of the Lord is not like that. It doesn't originate in the heart of man.
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It doesn't originate here on earth. It's pure. It's perfect. It's holy.
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The blessing of man is nice to have, but it is not to be compared to the blessing of the Lord.
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And we're going to see why.
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Unlike the blessing of man, Solomon said, "The blessing of the Lord," loop back in your text,
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"It maketh rich."
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It maketh rich.
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If you're taking notes here, the Hebrew word "rich" has the idea of addition.
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Write down "addition" in your margin of your Bible or in your notes, or accumulation.
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It's the same principle. That's what this definition means in Hebrew.
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Why is that so important to us tonight?
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To understand that the blessing of the Lord, it makes rich. It is an addition.
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It makes an accumulation.
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It's because one of the unique attributes of the blessing of the Lord is that it adds to what you already have.
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When my wife made that cobbler, it was a blessing to me.
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But it wasn't the blessing of the Lord that Solomon is teaching us about tonight.
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You see, for my wife and I to be able to enjoy the blessing of that cobbler,
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we both had to give something in exchange for it.
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My wife had to give her time in the kitchen. My wife had to spend her energy in the kitchen.
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I had to take money and put into my wife's budget to go buy the flour at the grocery store.
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We both gave something in exchange for that blessing.
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You see, it was not an addition. It was a trade-off.
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And there's a very big difference there.
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The cobbler wasn't an added treasure. It was an exchanged treasure.
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It may have tasted rich, but it did not make us any richer than what we already were.
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Make sense?
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Here's a Kingdom Truth for you tonight.
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The blessing of the Lord is not given in exchange for anything.
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It is given in addition to everything.
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The blessing of the Lord is not given in exchange for anything.
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It's given in addition to everything.
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It makes rich. It adds. It accumulates.
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You cannot work for the blessing of the Lord.
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You cannot buy the blessing of the Lord.
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You cannot barter for the blessing of the Lord.
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If the blessing comes to you at a cost, then it is not the blessing of the Lord,
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because the blessing of the Lord makes rich.
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The very first time... Y'all ready for a blessing?
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Learning about the blessing of the Lord, here you go.
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The very first time you see this word, this Hebrew word, transitive blessing, here,
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is in Genesis chapter 12.
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The very first time this word used, and it's where God told Abraham,
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"And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great,
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and thou shalt be a blessing."
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Now, who's going to be blessing Abraham?
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Who's going to be making Abraham's name great?
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Who's going to be making Abraham a blessing? The Lord is.
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He says, "I will bless you."
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Now, there is a blessing that originated in heaven.
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There is a blessing that did not originate with man.
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For God to bless Abraham, and for God to make Abraham a blessing,
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God had to show Abraham, it has nothing to do with you.
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This blessing has nothing to do with you.
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He had to make Abraham go into a deep sleep.
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He had to pass through those pieces as a burning lamp,
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at a smoking furnace, while Abraham was in a deep sleep.
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He had to wait until Abraham got so old, and his wife got so old,
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they couldn't have any children before they could have some.
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That's the way God did, because it was all the Lord's blessing.
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God said, "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee,
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and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
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That's talking about the promised Savior.
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If you've been through the Genesis of Jesus, you know that quite well by now.
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That's the blessing of the Lord.
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And what God was describing to Abraham concerning this blessing
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was none other than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Through the promised Savior, God said he was going to bless
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all the families of the earth through Abraham.
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Understand then that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the blessing of the Lord.
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That makes rich.
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And that means that the gospel cannot be bartered.
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The gospel can never be given to man in exchange for anything else.
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The blessing of the Lord makes rich.
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It is an accumulation.
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It is never given in exchange for anything.
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It is always given in addition to everything.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ makes rich.
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It comes at no expense to us.
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Ephesians 2, verse 8 through 9,
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"For by grace are you saved through faith,
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and that not of yourselves."
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Not your energy, not your time, not your devotion, not your faith,
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not anything to do with you.
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There is nothing about you that you can give in exchange
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for the blessing of the Lord that was given to you through Abraham
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in the person of Jesus Christ.
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He says, "Not of works, blessed any man should boast."
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Psalm says, "God's blessing makes rich."
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Look back in your text, "And he addeth no sorrow with it."
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Man, this is good stuff, folks.
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Not only does it make rich, not only is it an accumulation,
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it's not exchanged, it is added.
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In this edition, God adds no sorrow with it.
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Any time God has this blessing of the Lord,
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you can know without a doubt two attributes.
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Number one, it is never given in exchange, it's always added.
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It makes rich.
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Number two, God never adds sorrow to his blessing.
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Why is that so important?
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There are no add-ons to the Gospel.
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He addeth no sorrow with it.
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If you have your Bibles out, underscore the word "addeth."
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The blessing of the Lord makes rich, can come at no cost to you,
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and God adds no sorrow with it.
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We're going to understand that here in just a minute.
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People say, "Well, I know the Bible says salvation is a gift,
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but they're just about to add. They're about to add something to it.
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They're about to add sorrow to it."
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When a person says they're about to add something on to the Gospel,
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you better look out.
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When they say, "Well, I know it's all about what Jesus did, but..."
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you better look out. There's no buts to it.
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The devil wants people to think that there's some hidden clause in the Gospel.
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Now, Brother Shepherd knows this very well.
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When you're looking at law, you can get a law out,
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you can read this particular law, this statute,
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and it seems so abundantly clear.
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In a police officer, you can say, "Ah, he broke that law. I've got him dead to rights."
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But you've got to keep reading, don't you, Brother Shepherd?
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You've got to keep reading.
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This subsection here, this here, down here,
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this fine print, so to speak, in the law, you find, "Ah, there's an exemption."
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Happens all the time.
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But not with the Gospel.
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There's no fine print with the Gospel.
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There's no hidden clauses.
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The devil wants people to think that they're going to stand before God,
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having put their faith in what Jesus has done for them on the cross.
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And then God's going to look at them,
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with them fully expecting to enter into heaven, and God's going to say, "Oh, well."
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Now, Tanya, you didn't read the fine print.
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You see in subsection A, paragraph 2, down here.
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It says right here, down here in the book of Hezekiah, chapter 34,
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there's no book of Hezekiah.
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And you get down here, this little, you see this little verse right here,
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"You missed this. Had you been reading your Bible more,
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you would have seen you needed to do this too, to go to heaven.
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Depart from me, ye worker of iniquity."
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It doesn't work like that.
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The blessing of the Lord makes rich.
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There's nothing you can give in exchange for it.
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It is the gift of God.
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It is for by grace, you're saying, "That not of yourselves."
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And then He adds no sorrow to it.
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There are no add-ons to the Gospel.
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Now, the sorrow here is very important that we understand what He's talking about.
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The blessing of Abraham makes rich, and God adds on no sorrow.
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Did God charge Abraham anything for the lamb that took Isaac's place?
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It just showed up.
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God didn't have that lamb there, and Ravishim said,
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"Well, God, how much to owe you for that lamb?"
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It didn't work that way.
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Man, that thing's heavy. I'm going to have to...
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Whew!
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It didn't work that way.
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It just showed up. It was free. It was provided by God.
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"God will provide Himself a lamb," Abraham said.
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God provided that lamb to take Isaac's place, and Isaac went free.
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The lamb God provided for Isaac didn't cost him anything.
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Neither did the lamb God provided for us.
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There are no add-ons to the Gospel message.
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He adds no sorrow with the blessing He gives.
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Now, remember I told you, understanding what this word "sorrow" means is huge.
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The Hebrew word for sorrow here...
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I get excited about this.
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We're not talking about sorrow in the sense of, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that."
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We're not talking about sorrow in the sense of being in a bad mood.
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We're not talking about sorrow in the sense of even being sad or sorry.
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The sorrow here is a specific type of sorrow.
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Genesis chapter 3 verse 16.
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The very first time you see this word "sorrow," you're going to get some context,
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and you're going to know what Psalm is speaking about here.
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It's when God told Eve, after they sinned,
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because prior to the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, there was no sorrow.
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And God said to Eve, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception,"
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or "thy sorrow in thy conception."
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He says, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children."
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Now, Eve was always supposed to bring forth children.
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Adam was always supposed to work, but Adam was not supposed to work in sorrow.
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Eve was not supposed to give children in sorrow.
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He was not supposed to be a painful event.
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The Hebrew word translated "sorrow" here, it means "toil." It means "labor."
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That's the sorrow that God is speaking about here.
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That is the sorrow that Solomon is speaking about here in Proverbs chapter 10.
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The word "sorrow" means "toil" in the Hebrew.
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That's why it means "labor" in the Hebrew.
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That's why when a woman has a child, she goes into what? "Labor."
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There's work involved.
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My daughter recently was blessed with the new baby.
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But that blessing cost my daughter something.
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Sorrow was added to that blessing.
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That's not the blessing of the Lord that Solomon is talking about here.
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Sin brought sorrow into that situation.
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She toiled, she labored in pain to bring forth that child.
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A woman must give something in exchange for her child. Right, sister Elizabeth?
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You give something in exchange for yourself.
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A woman must give up her comfort. A woman must give up her rest.
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A woman must give up her energy and her strength.
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Some women must give up their lives to have their children.
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But to receive the blessing of Abraham, we give up nothing.
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Nothing. We give up the same thing Isaac gave up to have the Lamb take His place.
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Nothing. That, not of yourself.
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What of Isaac was left on that altar?
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Nothing was left on that altar.
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Only the Lamb that died in Isaac's place.
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The only thing the gospel takes away from us is sin.
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And sin takes away everything.
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The gospel makes rich. Sin steals, kills, and destroys.
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The devil wants people to think that one day they will have to stand before God and God will say,
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"I know you trust in Jesus as your Savior, but you miss this part or that part."
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And that's wrong. If you must give something for it, then it is not the blessing of the Lord.
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The blessing of the Lord makes rich and the Lord adds no sorrow.
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He adds no toil. He adds no labor, no burden with the gospel.
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In fact, in order to have the gospel, you have to give up any burden, labor, or toil to get it.
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"Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden and weary. I will give you," what? "Rest."
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"I'll do the work. You get the rest." Isn't that wonderful?
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Why? The blessing of the Lord makes rich. He has no toil with it, no labor with it.
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If any gospel adds this sorrow, this labor, this toil, it's a false gospel. It's not the blessing of the Lord.
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So let's think about our verse and we'll close.
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The blessing of the Lord, it makes rich. And he adds no sorrow with it.
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You say, "Brother Richard, what about those verses that Jesus talks like you have to give up things to be able to be His disciple?
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If you don't hate your mother and your brother and your sister, and if you don't lose your own life and all those things,
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it's not worthy to be my disciple." What about giving up those things?
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You're not understanding what Jesus is talking about.
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Today we had a pretty big court case today where I work.
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Ten million dollars were involved. Ten million dollars the government is trying to get out of business following bankruptcy.
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Ten million dollars, that's quite a bit. Almost what a preacher makes.
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Now what if I told you, "Brother Jeff, what if I told you, what if you were in bankruptcy? What if you were in debt?
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And I told you I was going to give you ten million dollars."
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Would you all agree that in order to get that ten million dollars and me give him a blessing and make him rich,
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would you all agree that he would have to give up his poverty in order for me to make him rich?
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You can't be poor and rich at the same time. So is that really costing him something? No.
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When Jesus says you have to give these things up, He's talking about our identity in this life.
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When we're born into this world, we are born impoverished in bondage people.
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And everything about this world system is going to steal, kill, and destroy us.
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Sin and death will consume us. We will perish and not have everlasting life.
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So in order for Jesus to give us everlasting life, in order for Him to make us rich in the world to come,
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we've got to give up the poverty in the world that now is. We have to be willing to say,
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"Yes, I do not want to belong to the kingdom of this world until it's bondage of sin and death.
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I want to be a citizen of the kingdom to come." Because no man can serve two masters.
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You can't be poor and rich at the same time. You can't be dead and live forever at the same time.
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You can't embrace that which seeks to destroy you and that which seeks to deliver you at the same time.
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So when Jesus asks or demands or says that He requires us to give something up,
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it's all the same as me telling Jeff, "In order for you to get this money and make you rich,
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you must be willing to give up your poverty." And if he says, "Oh no, well I love my poverty,"
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then he can't have my riches. It's all the same. It just depends on how you look at this world.
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And a person who repents, that means their mind changes and they look at this world and they realize this world is flat broke.
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And the only true wealth, the only true riches I can really receive is in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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They give up one, they receive the other. They don't...
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It adds no sorrow with it. In the book of Genesis, and we'll close with this, in the book of Genesis,
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is where we first hear that word sorrow when sin calls sorrow to be added to the human experience.
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When you get to the last book of the Bible, you know what happens when Jesus comes?
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The blessing of the Lord overcomes the curse of man.
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And guess what happens to the sorrow when the blessing of the Lord overcomes the curse of man?
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There's no more sorrow.
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Now the people who die in their sin, all they'll have is sorrow, all they'll have is toil,
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because the last book of the Bible says they have no rest, day or night.
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But us, all will have rest, there'll be no sorrow, because the former things are passed away and God will wipe all tears from our eyes.
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Because that's all that'll be left over, is the blessing of the Lord and we'll be rich in Jesus Christ, rich toward God.
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Go ahead and close in prayer.
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Father, thank you so much for this very distinguished verse in the Bible.
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A very powerful verse, Lord, that shines brightly in the Scriptures and illuminates, Father, many things for us.
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Thank you, Lord, that way back in the book of Genesis, Lord, when you said the deliver through the seed of the woman, Father, would bruise the serpent's head,
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you were referencing the blessing of the Lord that overcomes the curse of man.
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I thank you, Father, Lord, that the blessing makes us rich. And I thank you, Lord, that you don't add sorrow to it like you did to Eve's labor, Eve's childbearing, Adam's work.
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I thank you that you give us a blessing, Father, that we can truly, truly rest in Jesus.
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Thank you, Lord, there's nothing we can give in exchange for this blessing. For what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
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Only Jesus could purchase such a wonderful gift. It's his name we pray and we thank you. Amen.
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Amen.
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