You Are Blessed Of God When

As we are in this Advent season, it is a season of blessings. Of course the greatest blessing that we could possibly have is the blessing of eternal life that was made possible by Christ coming into the world and paying the price for our sins on the cross so that we could be in fellowship with God the Father and one day spend eternity with Him. There can be no greater blessing than that. But there are people through out scriptures that seemed to have been blessed by God in such a special way. When we focus upon the season of Advent, two people come to mind real easily that were especially blessed of God. The first one is Mary. Out of all the women on earth, young Mary was chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. She would give birth to the Savior of her people. Of course not only would He be the Savior of her people but He would really end up being the Savior of all people who put their faith in Him. Mary wrote a song that we know as the Magnificat. In it she wrote, “From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me…” And she is right, for generation after generation, reaching now into the 21st Century we call Mary a person who was truly blessed. Now some people have deified Mary and have seemed to have forgotten that she was a human just like you and I. But make no mistake about it, Mary was a wonderful woman of God and that is why she was chosen for such a terrific blessing. The second person who was tremendously blessed was Elizabeth. Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah, who we looked at last week, were a godly couple. But they had gone many years without giving birth. During that time for a woman not to have a child was considered almost like you were cursed. It was a tremendous emotional strain on a woman for her not to be able to conceive a child. But when Elizabeth was well along in years, the Lord fulfilled her dream and desire to have a child. But He didn’t give her just any child. He gave her John the Baptist. The man who would prepare the way for the Messiah. The man who Jesus said this about him, “I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” Elizabeth was a blessed woman. Now like I said we have all been blessed by God, if God didn’t do another thing for us we are blessed by His plan of salvation alone. But I believe that we can live our lives in such a way that we too can be blessed of God in a special way. Today in our scriptures we will look at Mary and Elizabeth as Mary comes to share her news with Elizabeth. In this text we will see qualities of their life that will help us to be a blessed people.

Luke 1:39-45

Listen again to what Elizabeth said to Mary in verse 45, keeping in mind that we’ve already been told that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!” You see Mary believed that indeed what the Lord said to her through an angel would come to pass. God said it, and she believed it. And she was blessed through that belief. I believe that it still rings true today; people are blessed of God when they believe what He says. You are blessed of God when you believe what the Lord said will be done. You see we don’t just have this one statement here to make this case. All throughout scripture we see people being blessed for believing that what God said will be done. It all started with Abraham. Abraham had basically said to the Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and my slave will be the one who inherits my estate. God responded by saying “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” Then if you remember he took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” Now comes the kicker to the whole thing. Right after God tells Abraham this, the very next verse, Genesis 15:6 the scripture says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited to him as righteousness.” For a man who seemed to be hopeless about ever having a son or any children of his own, what an incredible amount of faith to now believe God’s statement that you will one day have so many descendants that you won’t be able to count them. For a person in Old Testament times there was no greater blessing than that. But Abraham was made righteous through his faith that God would do what He says He would do. That faith was an incredible faith. Abraham went on to be a very blessed man. The nation of Israel would come into being all through Abraham’s descendants and most importantly God’s blessing. Abraham went on to be a blessing to all people everywhere that would call upon the Lord. You know your important when you have a song about you. We still sing Father Abraham, because even our lives were blessed through Abraham’s faith in what God said. On our study of the book of Genesis on Wednesday nights we saw the faith that the patriarchs had in this covenant that God made with them through Abraham. Joseph, lying there on his deathbed spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and told them to make sure that when they went back to the Promise land that they would bring his bones. Joseph was indeed a blessed man who looked down into the future and knew that God would do what he said we would do. And although Joseph had many difficult times, Joseph indeed lived a life that was blessed of God. Because he believed that when God said something that it would be accomplished.