Blessed?

This is disturbing stuff from Jesus – for those first hearing it and for those of us now!

Usually, if a person has done well for themselves financially, enjoys choice food and wine, laughs out load with friends and family a lot, and is well regarded in the family and the community, we would believe that person to blessed by God.

On the other hand, if a person is struggling financially, and as a result, struggles to eat even basic food, is suffering a lot and is ridiculed and insulted quite often by others around town or the office or farm, we would say that person is cursed by God.

Not so here with Jesus.

Sounds like that you, a disciple of Jesus, may be cursed if you look blessed and you may be blessed if you look cursed!

So, which are you at the moment?

Are you cursed or blessed by God this morning? How do you tell? What makes you either cursed or blessed? On what does being either one depend?

“Looking straight at his disciples”, Jesus said;

“Looking straight at his disciples”, Luke says. Fiery eyes looking into your soul….

I believe Jesus is saying, “I am giving you who are not blessed hope that you are; and you who think that you are blessed apart from me, the truth that you are not”.

As it has always been for those who live and speak God’s word in the Scriptures, God’s blessing is not determined by your outward show, moral glow or financial woes, or your or pain, regret and hurt. God’s blessing is determined by God. God’s blessing is determined by him giving it to you, apart from you outward show or inside pain.

How do we know? This is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, speaking these blessings and woes. This is Jesus of Nazareth, healing and curing troubled spirits down on the plain.

This is THE blessing of God for the troubled spirits down on the plain that day and here now. He is God speaking – he who gives up himself for the life of the world. The difference between being blessed by God or not is not wealth or food or enjoyment or lack of these things, it is this man, this Jesus. He is the great reward of which he speaks; and to which he calls these “troubled spirits”.

On the one hand, this Blessing of God wants you to know that just because you don’t FEEL blessed, or others say you are not blessed, you still are, no matter what. He lifts you up from giving up as he speaks his words of blessing upon you.

On the other hand, he wants to warn you against your usual tendency to be impatient as you wait for his blessing on his terms and in his time, and take matters into your own hands on your own time, and try to create your own blessing, superficial though it be (just things or status) – and then take the credit for any ‘blessings’ in life YOU have achieved and earnt – that YOU DESERVE.

Can you see that Jesus wants to save you from despair when you suffer and feel cursed, and to warn you when you take the credit for the good times and things that is not yours to take?

You can tell he is God’s blessing for rich and poor, well fed and under-fed, accepted and shunned by what he is already doing down by the sea with the crowd.

This day by the ocean, God’s blessing, healing love is coming out of this man in great power. Troubled souls who could never create this blessing of healing and life beyond their circumstances are receiving this great reward right here, right now.

It will continue to come out of him in many ways yet, and in the greatest act of love and healing the world has ever seen in the Good Friday cross and the Easter Sunday empty tomb.

So, if you feel cursed and cut off from God at the moment, he assures you that you are not. Life, love, joy are here for you by faith in his words now, and they will return as you receive him and his promises – there will be joy in the morning.

And if you are doing pretty well at the moment and tending take the credit for achieving the good that is going on, think again. You didn’t create yourself or your life. It is all him.

Friend, your circumstances do not determine his blessing. He does. HIS WORDS OF PROMISE ARE The great reward – now in part, one day in full.

And his blessing is full.  It lasts too, because he is full and he lasts.

I know we think God’s blessing is just inner happiness or outward success. I know we are always tempted to be the source of our own blessing or that we even play lip service to God by only ever praying when desperate or rejoicing what he gives us good things rather than living in love for him in both. I know we often want all the blessing without the person – we want God’s things but not he himself.

But, as he did here this day on the plain, Jesus seeks and saves troubled spirits bent on self-blessing!

So, friend, this blessed Saviour is seeking and freeing you this morning – freeing you from the natural despair that comes with tough things that makes you FEEL like God is forgetting you or punishing you or condemning you. He is not. His promises still stick true.

He is also saving you from missing the very fabric of life – the promises and acceptance of a gracious God, and his Son’s call to live one heck of a life – to be a blessing to as many as you can.

I know that Jesus did not want these troubled spirits or self-confident Pharisees to miss him. Same for you. If your desperate or if your disconnected, he wants to assure you are in his blessing.

Blessing is here. He’s got a name. He seeks and he heals because he loves troubled spirits and self-reliant sinners.

No matter how things are, you are not cursed today. You are not cut off today. You are blessed by Jesus today. There is hope and meaning in the poverty, and thankfulness to him in any the riches.

He is your blessed life and you are here to be his blessing in life.

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