Deuteronomy 28:8

COMMANDED BLESSINGS

‘The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee.’

Deuteronomy 28:8

What more encouraging thought could possibly occupy our hearts at the entrance of a New Year! All our well-being may be summed up under the head of Divinely commanded blessings. No mercies would be ours did not our Heavenly Father bid them come.

I. From the connection in which the words stand we see that they refer in the first place to Israel’s temporal prosperity. But we know how truly their earthly possessions in the land of Canaan set forth the spiritual privileges and resources of God’s children now. As the Lord commanded the blessing to descend upon them in the fruit of their labour, so that they were provided with plenty, in like manner the Lord is willing to command the blessing upon our souls in the path of His leading.

II. Christ has a right to command His blessings.—‘All power,’ He tells us, ‘is given unto Me.’ That is, not power simply but authority. The whole administration of the economy of grace has been committed into His hands. The Father has invested Him with legal right and authority over all creation; over every creature in heaven and in earth, over all angels, all persons, all passions, all principles, over all elements. On Him has been bestowed the gift of universal dominion.

—Rev. E. H. Hopkins.

Illustration

(1) ‘We may see the Lord’s doings with our eyes, and yet we may not be able to see them with an inner perception until the Lord gives us a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear. When God leads He finds shoe leather. We only get to know His watchful, loving care when we have travelled with Him; then we come to know Him, whom at first we only believed. It is the obedient soul which incorporates the Word of God into memory, and life that prospers in all to which it puts the hand.’

(2) ‘God gives, in what He has bestowed upon us already in Christ. And He gives again by revealing to our souls what He has thus given. “All spiritual blessings,” and therefore all blessings that belong to our sanctification have already been bestowed upon us in Christ. What now remains, in order that we might experimentally realise them, is that they should be revealed to us by His Spirit. It is concerning the gift of spiritual perception and appropriation that we have to pray. Let us ask for the receptive mind, for the teachable spirit, for the contrite heart, for the obedient will.’