What Does It Take To Get God's Blessing?

There are three ideas that I want to share with you concerning this question as outlines in our passage of scripture for today.

I do encourage you to take some notes in the back of your bulletin and later on you may even want to visit our Church website and watch a video of this morning’s message as well as others that are available on our site. And invite others to visit the website as well.

So let’s get right to it! The first idea I want to share with you.

God’s Blessings for us Has Always Come Through Faith in Christ

Galatians 3:6 takes us all the way back to Genesis, Paul uses the example of Abraham to tell us how God’s blessing is received and enjoyed.

Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness [Gal. 3:6].

The illustration comes from the early part of the life of Abraham, his life of faith. Abraham is the great illustration of justification by faith.

It cannot be said that Abraham was justified by the Law because the Mosaic Law was not given until four hundred years after Abraham.

Neither can it be said that he was justified before God gave him the commandment of circumcision. Circumcision was the badge and evidence of Abraham’s faith.

Now, God had already told Abraham that his seed would be as numerous as the sand on the seashore. Now God takes him by the hand and tells him to look toward the heavens.

In effect, God said to Abraham, “You can’t count the stars, and neither can you count your offspring.” Do you know what Abraham’s response was? “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6).

In the original language it is very expressive. Literally it means that Abraham said “amen” to the Lord. God said, “I’m going to do it.” And Abraham said, “Amen.”

Now does this have an application for your life and mine?

It certainly does. God says to you and me, “I gave My Son to die for you. If you believe on Him you won’t perish. You will have everlasting life.”

Will you say “amen” to that? Will you believe God? Will you accept His son? If you do, you are justified by faith.

God said to Abraham in Genesis 15: “I am the LORD that brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it” (Gen. 15:7).

God made the promise and he sealed the deal. Abraham’s part was only to believe God.

If the covenant depended on Abraham’s faithfulness—perhaps on his saying his prayers every night—he might miss one night, and then the promise would be no good.

So God was the One who did all the promising, and the covenant depended on God’s faithfulness.

Over nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ went to the cross to pay for your sins and mine.

God is not asking you to say your prayers or be a nice little Sunday school boy to be saved. He is asking you to trust His Son who died for you.

He makes the contract. He is the One who makes the promise, the covenant, and He will save you and me.

The words accounted as seen in other translations of Galatians 3:6 and counted in Genesis 15:6 mean the same as the word imputed in Romans 4:11, 22–24.

The Greek word means “to put to one’s account.” When the sinner trusts Christ, God’s righteousness is put to his account. More than this, the believer’s sins are no longer put to his account (see Rom. 4:1–8).

This means that the record is always clean before God, and therefore the believer can never be brought into judgment for his sins.

The Jewish people of that day were very proud of their relationship with Abraham. The trouble was, they thought that this relationship guaranteed them eternal salvation.

John the Baptist warned them that their physical descent did not guarantee spiritual life (Matt. 3:9). Jesus made a clear distinction between “Abraham’s seed” physically and “Abraham’s children” spiritually (John 8:33–47).

Some people today still imagine that salvation is inherited. Because mom and dad were godly people, the children are automatically saved. But this is not true. It has well been said, “God has no grandchildren.”

That is in a sense the new contract. The old covenant He made with Abraham. Abraham believed God. He said, “amen,” to God. Abraham believed, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

God is still asking us to believe Him. Put your trust in Christ and you will be saved. What a glorious picture of faith we have here.

You see, God wants your faith to rest on a solid foundation. But, my friend, if you come to God, you must come to Him by faith. When you and I trust Christ as Savior, we are saved the same way that Abraham was saved—by faith.