Classic Sermon #6053: God wants to prosper us

Book of Exodus, chapter 1. The verses invite us to think about God's purpose, God's positive purpose for our life, and if we had to choose a verse that summarizes what we want to say, there is a passage that I have always said that it hasn't been applied well in terms of hermeneutics or biblical interpretation, on occasions when I've heard it applied, but that in a sense, we could apply it to what God wants for us.

And look, it's in third John, chapter 1, verse 2; where Juan tells the old Gallo to whom he writes a letter and says: "Beloved - and in that case we could think that it is God saying to us, what Juan says to Gallo- I want you to be prosperous in all things and may you be in health, just as your soul prospers."

Clearly here is a man writing to another man. I believe that this is what God also wants for us. God wants us to be prosperous in all things and that we have spiritual, physical, mental, emotional health, just as our soul already prospers because we are in Christ Jesus.

And this is what this book of Exodus, this passage that we are going to study, invites me to think about this day and says, let's read again beginning in verse 7 of chapter 1, to remember and refresh our minds: "And the children of Israel fructified and multiplied and were increased and strengthened exceedingly and the earth was filled with them. Meanwhile a new King arose over Egypt who did not know Joshua and that King said to his people:

"Behold, the people of the children of Israel are greater and stronger than we. Now let us be wise towards them, so that they do not multiply and it come to pass that when war comes, they also unite with our enemies and fight against us, and The Egyptians set tribute commissioners over the Jews to burden them with their burdens, and they built for Pharaoh storage cities: Pithom and Rameses. But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and grew. , so that the Egyptians feared the children of Israel.

And the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve harshly and embittered their life, with harsh servitude, in making clay and brick and in all the work of the field and in all their service, to which they were rigorously forced.

And the King of Egypt spoke to the midwives of the Hebrew women, one of whom was called Cifra and the other Fua, and said to them, "When you assist the Hebrew women in their deliveries and see the sex, if it is a son, kill him and if it is a daughter then live"

But the midwives feared God and did not do as the King of Egypt commanded them, but spared the children, and the King of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, 'Why have you done this when you have spared life? the children?' And the midwives answered Pharaoh: 'Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptians, for they are strong and give birth before the midwife comes to them.'

And God did good to the midwives and the people multiplied and strengthened greatly, and because the midwives feared God their families prospered. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people saying: "Throw into the river every son that is born and every daughter preserve life."

We said that life, even for Christians, is full of trials, it is full of difficulties.

The fact that you are a Christian, that you are in Christ, does not mean that problems will not come, that times of difficulties will not come in your lives.

But we said that even in moments of difficulty when it seems like there is no purpose in life, that there is no explanation for the things that are happening to us, that there is no meaning, like God is a thousand leagues away.

The hand of God is moving within your individual life and even within history collectively speaking, to carry out his purpose of salvation, his purpose of redemption.

We were saying that God's redemptive purpose for Israel took at least 500 years to develop. And I was thinking this week: if God took 500 years or more probably, to carry out only, the prelude purpose, the purpose before the main thing, which was to enter the Jewish people into the promised land and that the Jewish people would be there. become a powerful nation.

If only in the aspect of preparation God took 500 or so years, for only one people and it was only to teach humanity a lesson about what was to come, how much more was it not going to take to redeem not only one nation but the whole world, to complete its historical plan in its entirety, was it not going to take more than 500 years?

It would not be logical to think that perhaps it would take three or four times more, because today people say, where is Christ? Evangelicals keep saying that Jesus is coming soon, but overall things get worse and it seems that everything is going from bad to worse and I don't see the world getting better.

Remember God is working in history, God is developing his plan, the worse things get, that means that God's time is closer, because that is what has happened here, the stronger and hotter the situation of The Jews, that meant that the moment of Salvation was closer, the moment of redemption to leave Egypt.

So we do well to remember this, as God is taking his time in things as the Apostle says. It also says: "Do not get carried away by those who mock saying from the beginning of time they are saying that it would be the end of the world, because God in his mercy, in his goodness, in his patience, is leaving the boat open for see if some more enter it so that as few people as possible sink”

So God's delay is due to patience, not because God has fallen asleep but because God is working and God is also working in your life individually and in mine and we have to believe that.

We have to believe that God is working in the affairs of our life, even if the devil yells at us there is no meaning in life, it has no purpose, there is no difference between believers and non-believers.

And then here we enter that verse 7 that interests me, where it says that: "the children of Israel were fruitful and multiplied and were increased and strengthened exceedingly and the Earth was filled with them"

What a precious image of abundance, of sufficiency! The Jewish people that God had promised Abraham that his offspring would be like the sand of the earth and that God would greatly bless Abraham's seed, here we see them enjoying God's blessings.

In the midst of trials and struggles, God had blessed the people of Israel, had multiplied their offspring, and we know that for the Jews and the people of the Middle East, the greatest blessing that God could give a family was many children.

How difficult it is for us to imagine that mentality! In our time of contraception and if a family has more than two children or three children we already have fear in our minds.

Times have become difficult, but I sometimes wonder if it is because our lack of faith, -it occurs to me while I think about this- I wanted to talk about this dynamic that exists between Satan and how the Devil does not want the people of God multiply and grow.

And it occurs to me that also in this, in this aspect of birth control, how sometimes we as children of God as believers have allowed ourselves to be limited: we are afraid that our families will grow, that our families will prosper in the physical sense. of the word.

Because it's hard, the child care, the little salary we earn, the rent that gets so high and all these things. But I wonder if it is that our faith has also lacked a little that perhaps God if we said: “The Lord will supply. The Lord will give what is necessary" as Abraham said to Isaac: 'God will provide', who knows if we could have more abundant families, we would be more blessed in that way and God would provide us according to our faith. A thought that I leave there for you.

But speaking of this, of that image of blessing for the people of Israel, I wanted to meditate on this because I believe that it was applicable to the Jewish people; that God by a pact that he had made with Abraham blessed Abraham's offspring and multiplied his seed and made them great and strong on earth.

I believe that God has that purpose for our lives as well, which is why we use that verse from Third John, where it says: "Beloved, my desire is that you prosper in all things and that you prosper just as your soul prospers." . Because think if God blessed the people of Israel and God's pact with Israel was: "I am going to bless you always" and he did it through a pact that he had made with a man who was Abraham, in a sense we can say that Abraham was the mediator, between Israel and God for that pact of prosperity and blessing.

How much more will God have that purpose for us in the new covenant whose mediator is not a man but the perfect person of Christ Jesus? Logic tells us that in legal terms even and I believe that this is the type of reasoning that the writer of Hebrews uses, to elaborate his arguments about the new covenant, and about this priest who was Christ and all these things.

In other words, in Christ Jesus we have the word of God much more firmly committed than with Abraham and the Jews. Because with Abraham the only thing there was was the appearance of a word that was exchanged. However, with Christ Jesus what there was was the blood of the lamb shed on the cross, the precious blood of the son of God, it is the symbol of the pact that God has made in a sense with man. The Spirit that God has given us, the Holy Spirit that the Bible says is like 'the deposit of that great blessing that will come when we see the Glory of God manifested in all his power'.

So we also have to have that certainty in our life that God wants to bless us as well as I prosper the Jews.

God wants the People of God to have what is necessary, that the People of God be blessed to multiply, to be fruitful, to live happily, to live with material abundance and spiritual abundance, and in parentheses I would also like to say, I believe that this type of ideas is greatly exaggerated and simplified and we see people out there who say: "If you are sick it is because you are in sin" or because "God is not with you" or something like that.

I also believe that, as we said before, trials come, and God uses the cross and God uses the sufferings of life to polish us and to strengthen us spiritually. But I believe that the mind of God before all things wants us to be prosperous and to be blessed.

We are the new Israel, that is Biblical. I was thinking of the passage from First Peter 2, where Peter says: "For you are, he says, a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired by God so that we may be filled with the virtue of him who called us out of darkness into its marvelous light.

So I think that in the mind of the Apostle the language that God uses through Him for us is the language that identifies us as Israel: chosen lineage, holy nation, people acquired by God, royal priesthood.

We are in a sense the beneficiaries of that blessing plan that God has for us, because then if we were to deny that and in the Bible I do not believe there is an open denial in the New Testament; what we are saying is that God's plan in the New Testament in Christ is inferior and less generous than the plan that God had with the Jews in the Old Testament.

Look how God spoke to Israel in Deuteronomy 28 when he made a firm pact with the people, the Bible says that: 'God gathered all the Jews and Moses told the Jews- listen as he says- so that we can understand, yes that was in the imperfect old plan an echo of the one to come, how much more now the blessings that God has for the people of God here at this time!

Look at Deuteronomy 28, Moses says: "It will come to pass, that if you listen attentively to the voice of Jehovah your God to keep and do all his commandments that I prescribe you today, Jehovah your God will also exalt you above all the nations of the earth." And listen here to the blessings that God begins to promise the Jewish people in his Divine plan, he says:

“All these blessings will come upon you and they will reach you if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, blessed will you be in the city and blessed will you be in the field, blessed will be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, the fruit of your clothing , the calf of your cows and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed will be your basket and your kneading trough, blessed will you be when you enter and blessed when you leave. Jehovah will defeat your enemies who rise up against you, Jehovah will send you his blessing on your barns, on everything you put your hand to and bless you in the land that Jehovah your God gives you.

"The Lord will confirm you as his holy people." Do you see the same language here? "You are a chosen lineage, a holy nation, a People acquired by God, Jehovah will confirm you as his holy people, as he has sworn to you when you keep the commandments of Jehovah your God and walk in his ways."

Look at verse 12, it says: "The Lord will open his good treasure in heaven to send rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands and you will lend to many nations and you will not ask for a loan, the Lord will make you head and not by tail and you will be above only you will not be below, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today so that you keep and fulfill them ". How many blessings!

Why do you think God took so long to tell the Jewish people all these things? Today we would not talk about the kneading trough, today we would talk, for example, Jehovah will bless your dishwasher or Jehovah will bless your car or Jehovah will bless your work or whatever, adjusting it to the time. But I think if God in an imperfect plan devised so many blessings for his people, how much more in the divine plan in Christ Jesus? How many more blessings, how many better purposes, how much more goodwill will God have for us?

Hello God bless you. This is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking to you. Thank you for listening to our messages and it gives us great joy to know that this program is being a Blessing for your life. I want to leave you with the words of Moses' blessing to the People of Israel: 'The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.' privilege for me to be part of your life, I hope you stay tuned to our program "An appointment with Christ" I bless you in the name of Jesus.

James tells us, for example, speaking of wisdom, he says: “If anyone needs wisdom, ask God, who gives abundantly and will be given without reproach and so many passages.

The writer of Ephesians tells the Ephesians, he says: “I pray for you continually and I pray, think for what? 'That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you and what is the richness of the Glory of his inheritance in the Saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe according to the operation of the power of His strenght.

There a lawyer is needed to take that verse only and break it in all its clauses, in all its parts. To see the language so abundant that the 'exceeding greatness of his power toward us according to the operation of the power of his forces', is almost like a redundancy.

But I believe that what God at that moment possessed in Paul's heart and Paul's mind and said: “Put in there all the words and all the thoughts that you can and squeeze it tight because that is what I want for my people”? Because? Because Paul had to pray because we are used to it in the world: every blessing that it gives us, it takes out of us, it squeezes us out, so that the account is always the same and we are used to what it has to be, everything if we are going to do something, it has to to be fought, it has to be sweating, any blessing whatever we have, as they say in English: there is no such thing as a free lunch.

That's the world out there. So when we get into the plan of God, our mind is still operating according to that little plan and so Paul prays to God that God will have the understanding of the Christians, so that they can understand, how great and how perfect and how abundant and complete. it is the blessing plan that God has for his People. How super abundant are the promises and blessings, God has already blessed us with all blessings and that is why the Bible says that for God things are always Yes and Amen. In it.

He is the only one who has an absolutely positive plan for our life and I am leaving here to tell you that we also pray that God opens the understanding of our Church and that God engraves in our minds that image of a God who wants to bless us in all levels of our life.

As time goes by and as I meditate more on the word of God, I realize more and more that the fundamental position of the believer must be a position of optimism, it must be a positive position, an aggressive position in the world.

In the sense that we are not made to be little, you are not made to be inferior, and if you feel inferior, it means that something is wrong with your conception of God's plan for your life. Paul also says, this marvelous passage that I like: "God has not given us the Spirit of fear" but what? of power, of love, of self-control.

God has given us a great Spirit. The Spirit that God has put in our hearts is the same Spirit that created the worlds simply by saying "let it be done" and that is why Paul says: "the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is the same Spirit that is operating In their lifes".

So believe that and move according to that promise, move knowing that the engine you have is not a VW engine, it is a Rolls Royce engine, it is a racing car engine that has great power and can do great things. Now I believe that we must apply it not only to material things but also to spiritual things.

The blessings that God has and we are going to see about that also speaking of the midwives, that is not simply that you go to bed to sleep and in the morning the bills piled up on the night table will dawn. You have to work, you have to invest spiritually, you have to meditate on these things, you have to fill yourself with the word of God, you have to strengthen yourself in the Power of the Spirit, as Paul says in Ephesians 6 and then when his machine is over the pistons they are moving that it seems that the machine is going to explode, then you move in the Power of God and things happen around you.

But there has to be internal pressure for the machinery to move, I don't know much about mechanics, but I do know that if there is a release of steam and pressure in the machinery of the automobile, there is no power for the movement, and how do we increase the pressure in our life? Through the word of God, through prayer, through fasting, through serving in the ranks of the Lord in the Church, giving the Lord everything we have and that increases the pressure.

And when you move, you are like a bull that knocks down things wherever you go because the power of God is with you and that is the purpose that God has for our lives. Once again, God's plan in Christ Jesus cannot be less abundant, less generous, less positive than the imperfect plan that God had with the Jews.

Only then do we have to think, as logic tells me, we are going to fill ourselves with that image of a God who wants to bless us, of a God who wants to give us all the proofs of his good will. I say there is a time to feel sad, there is a time that one can sometimes feel depressed, there is a time when fear can come into our lives. But you have to remember that it should just be temporary, that it should be an attitude while you overcome that attitude.

I do not believe that in the life of the Christian there is room, within the normality of the Christian, for example, for long-term depression. Paul says again: "In perfect love there is no fear, because perfect love made out of fear, there is no room for sadness, there is no room for optimism"

Now that there are moments that yes, that our life is going to go through those darknesses and that dryness. Yes, but remember that that is a time that God is perhaps allowing for you to move on afterwards and when you come out of there come out as a General ready to continue fighting, purified by the furnace, purified by the test.

But you are going to pray, while you are in that negative state you are going to pray to the Lord: “Lord, free me, Lord, get me out of here, Lord, I know that this is a mental prison. Lord, use your Spirit." You are going to fast, you are going to pray to the Lord, you are going to seek his word, you are going to seek advice from someone wiser than you and God is going to get you out.

But I cannot believe that God has the purpose in someone, that they remain all their life, for example, under a situation of spiritual oppression. God wants to bless us, and then our image must be of an abundant God, I said last Wednesday, when we were analyzing the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, that Christ could have easily multiplied just enough loaves and enough fish to to feed the five thousand, or the four thousand, without a crumb of bread remaining, nor a little scale of fish, and yet in both cases, in the two miracles, there were not one or two left over, but twelve baskets and several baskets.

It is not because Christ was inaccurate in his way of operating those miracles, but I believe that he wanted to leave us an image of that God that when He gives to His People, He gives superabundantly, He gives so that it is left over, He gives so that the people can gather and that in the desert itself they find bread, because the disciples asked Jesus: "Where are we going to get bread, to give to four thousand people in the desert?" and Christ proved to them that not only for four thousand, but for ten thousand more than there would have been.

And likewise this world is a desert, this life is a desert, but in Christ Jesus, we can find enough bread to fill us for all our needs. And that is the attitude, that is the belief, that is the fundamental position that the Christian must have.

Verse 10 says Pharaoh: "Now then let us be wise toward the people of Israel, so that they do not multiply and it come to pass that when war comes he also joins our enemies and fights against us, and leaves the land."

Notice how interesting. God wants to bless you, God has good intentions for his people, God has good intentions for his chosen people. But look here at Pharaoh, for in the entire Exodus you are going to find that Pharaoh is a symbol of Satan. Just as Egypt is a symbol of the world, wherever I see Pharaoh acting, I can easily put the word Satan and it fits very well.

Pharaoh, Satan. Just as God has the purpose of blessing the people, what he wants is for the people to what? do not multiply, become great, prosper, or be blessed, because Satan is the exact negative equivalent of God, Satan is the inverse image of God and just as God wants to bless, Satan wants to curse, just as God wants give life, Satan wants to kill, just as God wants light to be, Satan wants darkness to reign.

And so Pharaoh here wants to keep the Jewish people small, he wants to keep it small, he wants to kill it, he wants to limit it, he wants to tire it, he wants to tire it out so that the people don't grow, so that God's purpose of multiplying and prospering it doesn't come to fruition, to realization.

You have to remember, we as children of God, as a chosen people, have an enemy, we have a negative principle that governs the world, that governs the air. The material element of the universe controls it, because God allows it to be so and that negative Spirit, enemy of the People of God, uses its resources just as Pharaoh uses his authority and his material resources to keep the people of God or try to keep it tiny. , to try to keep it fatigued and we have to know that to be able to interpret many times the things that are happening in our lives.

The purpose of the devil is that the people of God, the Church, remain small, that it is not blessed, that the gospel is not preached, that new souls are not converted, that the Churches do not have sufficient material and financial resources to carry out the plan of salvation.

To attract new Missionaries, new Pastors, so that the Church may prosper in every way.

So how does Satan operate? Tired of the people. The Devil sends negative situations into our life, situations that tire us, marital problems, family problems, problems at work.

It tires us physically and what happens? when Wednesday night arrives when you come home from work exhausted and tired and dead and psychologically you are unable to give more, your wife tells you: are we going to church tonight? And you look at her with a face as if a Martian were speaking to you. You cannot understand what they are saying to you.

Satan, Pharaoh has achieved his purpose: Satan tired you, Satan tired you during the day, Satan filled you with negative thoughts and then it was clear that you lost the blessing and God's people were tiny on Wednesday night. And we have to learn those tricks, because again, look at verse 10 again, the first line says, "Now then." What? "let's be" how? "Let's be wise."

Satan's quintessential method of operating in the Universe is through the satanic wisdom that he has, it is crazy wisdom, it is sick wisdom. Satan is a malevolent genius like Hitler, but ten thousand times more and Satan has great wisdom.

God made Satan like no other creature that God had made and when God threw him into the depths of hell, what happened was that this great mentality that God had created for him went awry. But that mentality is operating with all its power and with all its capacity now turned to evil, but Satan always prefers to work through cunning with the people of God and with man.

And that is why Pharaoh says: "Let us be wise, let us be cunning" the writer also says in another passage: "do not give way to the cunning of the devil, he tells him, the methods of the devil".

The original Greek is the word methodeya, which means: methods, tricks, tactics, strategies.

Satan is a strategist par excellence. Satan always uses methods, never underestimate the power of the Devil to work psychologically, I believe that what the Devil uses the most is science and human wisdom directed by him to kill men, to bind them and to tire them and you learn to interpret those things.

When the Devil is tiring you, in your material life, in your work life, remember that you have to fill yourself up and acclaim and turn to the power that God has in you so that you can get up and say: 'No, I'm going to I'm not going to lose God's blessings, I'm not going to let Satan dwarf the Church, I'm not going to let Satan limit me in everything he has'.

What is the image of Satan in the Bible? The snake. Have you seen an animal more cunning than the snake? We could do stories about how a snake gets its food and like a snake, they are the smartest animals I could say on earth, they have tremendous strategy. Christ said, "Be crafty also as serpents."

We have to use cunning, but the cunning that comes from God, the cunning that comes from the Power of God. How does a Christian gain cunning to be able to deal with the cunning of the enemy? The study of the Bible; the prayer that gives us understanding, asking God directly to give us wisdom.

If you don't come to Church and you listen to the Sermons and listen to the explanations, and you don't read the Bible during the week, if you never pick up even a book by chance, to read something about the things of God, if your Your mind is never exercising in these spiritual things, you will never be able to understand the strategies, you will never be able to compete with that developed mind that Satan has.

So you have to exercise to be able to know how the devil is operating in your life, to defeat him, to tire him out, to let you down and so that you are not all that God wants you to be. When Christians let the struggles of life and the toils of life and the weariness of life and the psychological pressure of life undermine their desire to serve the Lord and their desire to exercise in the things of the Lord, he gave victory to Satan.

Because Satan, his favorite way of working is coldly like that. Satan is like the mob. Do you know that the least thing the mafia cares about is having to kill people? The last thing the mafia cares about is having to appear in the newspapers. The trials that have been carried out against the mob in New York, which have caught up with many of the big leaders of the mob, what it reveals is an organization that much prefers to work in secret and to work in such a way that it does not raise dust, that does not sound a lot in the newspapers, or on the radio, or anything.

Why what happened? So people start putting pressure on the police and putting pressure on the FBI and putting pressure on the law to start doing things. While the mafia can operate perfectly within regular channels, they are not interested in killing anyone or harming anyone. What they are interested in is getting their money and being prosperous in their malevolent things.

They use the cold method first. Now if that doesn't work, they go to another level of chopping off heads and stuffing people into car trunks and all these things. But first they prefer the smooth way of doing things.

Satan Pharaoh here wanted to use a psychological technique: we are going to put the Jewish people to work, we are going to put them into making bricks, we are going to tire them out, we are going to put big taxes on them and what will happen? So, they are going to say: “life is so bad that I don't want to have more children”. They will be tired when they get home, they will not have time to meet their wives, they will not want to enjoy themselves physically, and the town will decay.

Time will pass and everything will be resolved.

That is the psychological method that Satan uses, just as I tell you: he also uses that method in our lives. When a person wants to work in the Church, Satan immediately begins to hinder him and then the fights begin with other brothers in the Church and the disappointments begin and the criticisms begin and all these things are fueling his psychological pressure so that that little brother says: "Oh no. If that's the case, I'd better stay on my bench sitting calmly”.

Satan won another victory. Pharaoh, Satan took another soul that lowers the ranks of the army of Jesus Christ. Let's not give in to that Spirit, let's not let the enemy cheat like that. Let's outsmart him and interpret these things in light of God's word.

May God bless us and may we fill our minds with that image of a God who wants us to be prosperous and blessed as well.