The Fullness Of The Blessing

Amen.

I hope you have your Bible close by.

Let's just pick them up.

Tonight I've got something I want to teach you out of the word.

I believe it'll bless you.

Let's just wave our Bibles around.

Make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Say this together, say Heavenly Father.

I've tuned into live stream because there's life for me tonight, coming over the airwaves, right into my home, right into my place where I'm watching, right into my heart.

I have a willing, obedient heart, I have an open heart and, father, we thank you tonight that you will move in my life through the Word and through the Spirit and I will receive benefits in Jesus' name.

You know the Word is so beneficial.

Hey, let's look at a couple of places.

Psalm one, please first.

Psalm number one and also, while you're turning in your Bible, find Romans 15,.

I'm going to start with Psalm one and it's just six verses, so let's just read the entire Psalm.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law, or in the Word of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate every now and then, day and night, and he shall be that person that meditates in the Word.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.

His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveeth away.

Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish All right.

And then let's get Romans 15, verse 29.

Romans 15:29

And then verse 29,.

This is Paul speaking to that group that was longing to see him, and he said to them I am sure that when I come unto you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.

Notice what he said I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.

And so that's what I wanted to speak to you tonight, a message entitled the fullness of the blessing.

And you may remember that Sunday morning I shared a message entitled obedience brings blessings.

So it kind of ties in with that.

There's some little bit more meat tonight, some obligation on our side.

I like to define the milk of the Word, as all the blessing scriptures and the meat of the Word are our responsibilities.

All the exceptions, all of the conditions, I should say there are conditions for the blessings to be there and the fullness of the blessing is available, which tells me that then there can be partial bless, the Word.

Fullness just means filled up, filled to repletion, gorged.

You know, I think about a.

I've got a half ton pickup.

It's got a payload capacity in the tail, in the rear of the truck.

A half ton, a thousand pounds.

So if I'm hauling a payload that's 500 pounds, it's not the fullness of the payload, I only have half of the capacity and that's kind of the way the blessing is the blessing.

There's a fullness, there's a maximum capacity.

Don't you want everything that God's Word says you can have?

See, there's a fullness factor and sometimes, you know, the difference between success and failure is whether we're tapping into the fullness, or we're half full, or you're we're half empty, or a quarter full or whatever.

You know.

So, the, so, the fullness, everybody say that out loud, the fullness of the blessing, and notice how confident Paul is in the anointing that he has.

He said look, I'm coming with the fullness and you know, I have the same confidence.

When I come in here, behind this pulpit, when I'm anointed to speak and preach the Word of God, I know that God's not me, it's the gospel.

It has that capacity to fill you up to the maximum level of the blessing.

And I'll tell you, in the days that we live in, that's what we need.

We need them, we need the full payload and so the fullness of the blessing.

So let's get over here.

Now it turned back to Psalm one.

I want to show you some things out of this Psalm that are related to the fullness of the blessing and because, as you, as you get into the Word of God, you'll see that there are best practices and right off the bat here.

And it starts off with blessed.

Blessed is the man, you know, in verse one, and then it gives you three things not to do, you know.

So that's pretty good, right there, that gives you a key.

Blessed is the man that doesn't walk in the counsel of the ungodly.

That doesn't, you know, stand in the way of sinners.

That doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful.

I like to look at the progression of that.

You know, years ago, when I was meditating on these verses.

I saw progression.

I saw how people were walking by, like you know, walk by a crowd and all of a sudden you keep walking by the same day, the same place, every day and you hear a conversation.

All of a sudden, one day you stop and listen.

And then another day, not only stop and listen, you get to find a chair to sit down.

There's a progression.

And it says you know, you're blessed if you don't.

And so the fullness of the blessing includes protection from foolish advice.

You know there's just some people you shouldn't even walk by, you shouldn't listen to foolish advice.

And if you're gonna sit around and listen to foolish advice, pretty soon you're gonna sit down and make friends with foolish people.

And foolish people, you know, can turn you into a place where there's really that friend, so to speak, has no godly purpose in your life.

They can turn into living, they can turn into a distraction, they can turn into something that's less than it can separate you from the fullness of the blessing.

And then, of course, the worst thing would then would be then to just accept those things, foolish acceptance.

You know You're protected.

The fullness of the blessing protects you from foolish advice, from foolish friends and then having foolish acceptance among their company.

You know, being in the company of some people and this is true a lot of newer Christians, it's just, you know, you're gonna have to make a separation.

Not everybody that's been your friend all your life can continue being there when you get saved.

Well, you know, I wanna witness to him.

Well, get strong first, you know, get your own life straightened out first.

You know it's just like riding in the airplane in the.

I almost called her a stewardess.

Now they're not their flight attendants now, after everything has got to be neutral, gender neutral, but flight attendant, it tells you, demonstrates to you that if there should be a sudden, sudden depressuration in the cabinet, that oxygen mass will fall from the ceiling.

We'll get yours first.

Put it on your mouth and nose and get the oxygen flowing before you help your child or your elderly person next to you or anybody else that's in distress.

If you help them first, you're likely to lose consciousness before you put your own on.

So it's not selfish, it's just the best practice.

And the best practice is for you to be full, for you to get your life straight, and when you grow a while, then you can begin to influence others but can't start out that way.

So the safeguarded life, the fullness of the blessing, includes protection from foolish advice, foolish friends and foolish acceptance and that progression.

I notice sometimes people, they start out really strong and then they get involved in the wrong relationships and the next thing you know they're shipwrecked.

So one thing that you can do if you're serious about serving God and serious about walking in the fullness of the blessing.

So let's remember we can't be a blessing unless we're blessed.

And so if our blessing that we walk in is half or one fourth, well then we're not gonna be very effective.

But if we just are aiming for the fullness of the blessing so that we can be a maximum blessing, then we ought to pray and depend on the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, help me not to be gullible.

You know, lord, separate me from anything that's gonna leaven me, separate me from anything that's going to interrupt your flow in my life, and he will help you.

But then you have to do your part.

That means making decisions.

Sometimes that makes.

I'm not saying that you have to write anybody a letter.

It doesn't mean that you have to just sever somebody.

It just means that you start to reprioritize your life and get and hang around wise, spiritual people that know more than you do.

And so then here we see it as one is protected and safeguarded.

Then we see, in verse two, the fullness of the blessing will bring you into the spiritual life.

See, you go from safeguarded life, which we know, when we all start out, we need to have that safeguarded life and we need to maintain it.

I mean, maintain, you know, maintain your safeguarded life and then it will lead you into the spiritual life.

What's the spiritual life?

Well, that one that's blessed.

Blessed is the man that his delight is in the law of the Lord or in the Word.

See, when you delight in the Word, I mean, the more thrilled you are with the Word, the better it'll work for you.

I mean, allow yourself to get thrilled with the Word.

When you get thrilled with what the Word says to you, not just the general Word, the Word to you, there ought to be a Word every day that you get for yourself that will thrill you See, that's what I'm talking about.

Your delight is in the Word of the Lord and in His Word.

See, the Word.

Law there means the first five books of the Bible.

This is the book of Psalms, and so that was one of the books that was written to the Jewish people.

But for Christians it's the whole Word of God, and especially the epistles.

All of the places in the Bible are says in Christ, in whom, through whom, those belong to you.

You ought to spend time delighting in those, meditating in those day and night.

They ought to be on your tongue.

They ought to be prayers that you pray.

I like the Ephesians one prayer, the Ephesians three prayer, colossians one prayer, the Colossians three prayer.

There are so many Holy Spirit-led prayers in the epistles and I like to pray those during the day.

I like to let them come bubbling up out of my spirit at different times of the day to let God know that I cannot succeed on any level without His help.

I'm entirely dependent on Him.

See, that's spiritual, that's a spiritual life.

You have the safeguarded life to avoid the foolish advice, the foolish friends, the foolish acceptance, so that you can concentrate on the wisdom and the love of God and you meditate day and night on that.

You delight in that day and night.

It's your priority.

It's your pleasure.

Praise God.

You know God's priority is our pleasure.

When he has a priority for us, it's our pleasure to perform.

That.

It's not a burden, it's not oh God's asking me to do it.

No, it's your pleasure to do it.

Why?

Because you delight in His commandments, you delight in His direction and guidance.

So that's the spiritual life you know.

And so in Ephesians 1-3, the Bible says Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.

So all the blessings start in the spirit realm.

That's why we have to be spiritual people.

There's no blessing on the earth, there's no blessing where you live in the realm of the natural that you're gonna enjoy until you receive it in the spirit.

And that's why we have to be spiritual people.

We have to be safeguarded into that spiritual life.

And then we start to tap in to the maximum blessing.

How many of you want that maximum blessing?

See, I mean the fullness of the blessing of the gospel.

The gospel means good news, good news you're blessed.

Well, that's the legal side.

Legally, we're already blessed, but have we received it?

Have we gotten into this place where we can receive it?

And so that leads us to this third part that I wanna talk about.

We have the safeguarded life, we have the spiritual life and finally, the fullness of the blessing gives rise to the successful life.

That's right, the successful life.

God wants you to be successful.

Or you could put it this way God wants you to be victorious.

And we know we have an enemy and he is working full time, overtime, and even especially right now, because he knows his time is short.

And he's working right now in the book of Danlis and says in the last days he'll work to wear out the saints.

I see people that are so stressed out, worn out, over scheduled their lives.

They've under prioritized God and over prioritized things are not that important and the next thing you know, they're burned out.

Many of them are falling away.

Many of them are just giving up.

They just really don't know which end is up.

And no, my aim is to encourage you because there is a way to the successful life and that's what God wants you to have is a successful life.

And here it is wrapped up here in verse three.

Just look at just three verses of the Bible and how much there is, and I'm just giving you three verses here.

And in these three verses are the keys to receiving the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ, praise God.

I'm just giving it to you, but have you received it?

See, that's the question.

So what we see here, the successful life is gonna lead to verse three that blessed person, that blessed as a man.

What's he gonna look like?

He's gonna look like a tree.

You're gonna have a prominence.

Don't be afraid of prominence.

God will make you prominent, god will make you noteworthy.

God will raise you up in the midst of other people and you'll be noticed.

You know, jesus said we don't have light to hide it under a bushel or under a bed, but to put it on a candlestick.

Jesus said we're the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

He wants us visible, he wants us prominent.

Now, there's a difference between God raising us up and us trying to do that in our flesh.

Excuse me, you know, when you promote yourself, see, that's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about the.

The safeguarded life that leads to the, to the spiritual life, will give rise to the successful life.

And one of the great first marks of a successful life is prominent.

You are noticed, you are looked at.

I mean, I just remember I hadn't been saved and baptized in the Holy Ghost more than 30 days.

And I was still in the Catholic church in those days that I still hadn't grown enough to hear God move me from the Catholic church full time to Lakewood.

And so I was still involved in my Catholic church.

I was what they call a lector and I was on the schedule.

A lector is goes to mass and he reads a reading either out of the old there's two lectors per mass and so you either read your the lector that reads the verse out of the Old Testament or a passage out of the New Testament.

That's all.

That's all I did.

I'd march in with the priest and at my time I would come up to the podium, microphone, open the, the, the scripture, and I would read my scripture, maybe two to three verses at the most.

And I had an Italian guy that was ahead of the lectors, little short Italian guy from Buffalo, new York, had a big old nose.

He looked, you know, he looked kind of like a mafia figure, except he was a real sweet guy, george with his name.

And again, I'd only been saved and filled with the Holy Ghost a few weeks, a few months, and I showed up for my turn and we were waiting out in the, in the vestibule, waiting to march in with the priest and the altar boys, you know.

And I'm just standing there Just kind of not saying anything.

And he said man, john, you, you look different.

You have you lost weight?

And I said no.

I said I've been born again and filled with the Holy Ghost.

See, that prominence.

He saw something about me that attracted him, moved him to say something.

He was trying to guess.

What in the world was it that I looked different?

I said no, I've been born again and filled with the Holy Ghost, with the evidence of speaking and other tongues.

So the boldness came out and he looked at me as eyes bugged out and he said, oh, and that was it.

No more, no more response.

But you know, god will shine a light on you, god will put you in front of people and that's part of that successful life.

And so let's keep see.

He shall be like a tree planted.

See, look at the progression.

See, planted implies growth.

You can't grow unless you're planted.

You know they sell trees.

You can buy a tree that's got a burlap around the roots.

You know it's leaning up against the side of the building.

You know you go shopping.

Oh, here's a fruit tree.

It's not going to do much good, it's got to be what it's got to be planted.

So a successful life is, is prominence.

And then you're like a tree planted.

See growth, you must grow.

You know, I've seen people in almost 40 years of ministry Well, I'll say 35 years of actual ministry.

I mean, I feel like I meant started ministering when I got saved, but I got ordained after that.

So I've been ordained since 1988.

So that, what are the 33 years?

And I've seen just a whole lot of people stunted in their growth.

They never grow, they never grew, they weren't in the right place to grow.

So you're prominent.

And then you have the progression of growth.

Now the tree is planted, and where is it planted?

By the rivers of water.

Position, position.

You're planted in your position to grow tall, to grow even more prominent by the what?

By the rivers of water.

You know, when you've got a water source, I mean, man, I'm telling you that tree is gonna grow and it's gonna grow healthy by the rivers of water.

You've got to position yourself by the rivers of water.

You know, I was a home builder for 25 years and we had a subdivision.

We started building in and we divvied up the lots by lottery and I drew five lots on this street and they were all in a row and not one of them had a tree ball prairie.

The rest of the subdivision was pretty wooded but in the front of the subdivision there was a lot of areas and so we all had the same amount of balled lots which were, you know, they were undesirable.

I mean, out here in this part of town you wanted trees.

That's what sold the houses was the trees.

So when you're building a house with no trees you've got to get some trees.

So the developer had some vacant land and he dedicated the trees on that land.

They had some really nice little pine trees and he said you can have the trees but just make sure that there's no holes left when you plant them.

Make sure they fill the hole that's left but when you take the tree.

So I found a tree planting service, had this truck that's got these spades and so they went on my lot.

I had five of them, so I bought three trees per lot, that's 15 trees at 500 bucks a piece, that's $7,500.

For me that was a huge investment because this is out in front of any kind of cash flow.

I had to pull that out of my pocket and pay this guy.

Even though the trees were free, the planting wasn't, and so the process was they dig the hole and set the dirt and take the dirt to the front of the subdivision where these other trees were, put the dirt cone it was like a cone shape and they put it next to the tree that I'm gonna take.

And then I'd take that and usually pine trees, because any other kind of tree would die.

The pine tree has a tap root and it does better in that type of thing.

So he would pull that up out of the ground and turn it and put the tree over his cab and drive down into subdivision, plant the tree because the hole was there, and then he would go back to where he took the tree and put the cone of dirt back in the hole and repeat the whole process 15 times.

And so it took all day and now I have to water those trees.

I mean they're gonna die.

They're gonna die if I don't water them.

I had a hose connection in the front of the lots and it had a big long hose, and so I started the process.

So for a month my hole.

I mean, I had to go over there and keep the water going all month long.

I had water one until it started running out of the sides of that hole, and then I'd move the hose over, and then I'd move the hose 15 times.

You know, by the time I did the 15th tree, the first tree is dry, so I just start over again.

It took a month to get those trees to where they were settled, and they wouldn't die in the heat of the summer.

That's another thing.

You did it in the summertime.

So what I'm talking about, though, is you've got to be watered.

You're gonna be successful, and God wants you to be successful.

You have to not mind for God to shine the light on you, and then you've got to be planted, and you've got to be watered.

You gotta be positioned.

Some people are listen.

If you're watching tonight and you're in a dead church that closed up most of during the COVID time, and they're just now opening up, you're in the wrong place.

I'm telling you.

I'm telling you right now get out of there.

Get out of there and go to a place that's gonna give you the living water, cause you're never gonna grow with fear.

You're never gonna grow with an idea that church should bow down to little government leaders like county judges and mayors and even governors and presidents.

Look the church, our rights came from God.

They didn't come from those politicians.

So get out of that church and get into a Bible believing church and you'll be watered.

So you have prominence progression, which is growth, and then you have position by the waters.

And then what happens?

When that happens?

That, bringing forth his fruit, you're gonna be productive.

I started being productive.

I started laying hands on people.

I laid hands on my electrician.

He got healed.

I mean, right there in one of my houses under construction, he dared to say something about man, my back is killing me.

I said, sit here on the steps of this stairway where the house was framed up, and I laid hands on him and God healed his back.

I mean, I just started, listen.

I started being productive.

I was alive because I was positioned properly, I was being watered, I was delighting in the Word, I was growing, and that's the plan for every believer, especially right now.

And so productivity, god wants you.

There's no success without producing.

And then what does it say?

Producing fruit in his season?

Our season ought to be all the time.

You know, an apple tree is just once a year.

I've got some azaleas.

I just planted that put azaleas on the bush three times a year.

I wanted more azaleas than just once.

I wanted three times a year.

So I got a particular kind.

You know there's some kind of fruit trees that they have more fruit than just once a year.

We ought to be continually producing.

You know, if we're planted and watered properly, we will produce fruit all the time.

What kind of fruit?

Prayer, fruit, ministry fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, all those.

And God is Тут.

And so punctuality is the word.

You know and you're seasoned, you're punctual, you have.

God can depend on you to show up with the goods and so along, all of this that I'm talking about tonight.

I lived it early in my walk with the Lord and what wound up happening was that I call the eye of John Osteen Pastor.

John Osteen, who had a worldwide ministry, he saw something in me the prominence, the progression, the productivity, the punctuality, and he saw that he could depend on me.

He saw that I bore fruit on time, that when I got up in front of people to pray, I prayed with the Holy Ghost involved and opened the door of ministry.

One of the main reasons I'm here today is because God connected me up during all those years, even when I was young.

In the Lord God connected me up and which leads to the next one, whose leaf also shall not wither permanence.

You know God doesn't want you to be a flash in a pan, he doesn't want you just to.

You know, be real beautiful one year and then just wither the next.

You know permanence who brings forth?

You know it's leaf shall not wither.

You know we all go through trouble.

We all go through times of drought, we all go through times of storm.

But the key is you're permanent.

You never give up.

You know you'll show reap and do season.

You shall reap if you faint not.

In other words, in due season you shall be productive If you faint not.

Smith Wigglesworth said his experience most Christians give up before the answer comes.

No, don't be like that your leaf.

The leaf is the part of the tree that turns sunlight into nutrients.

It's called photosynthesis.

I still remember that from high school biology and photosynthesis is see.

So our leaf shall not wither.

What?

What light are we?

In the light of the Word of God.

The light is always producing strength in us to weather whatever storm comes our way if we take and cling to the Word of God and I want to wrap up the last part of this and it says and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Praise God, prosperity.

So let me run through the successful life Prominence.

You know progression, position, productivity, punctuality, permanence, prosperity.

God wants you prosperous.

And prosperous is not a million dollars.

Prosperous is not just money.

Prosperous is having an abundant supply of anything and everything.

You know prosperous.

When you're prosperous, you have an abundance of joy.

You have an abundance of encouragement to offer others.

You have, you're just an overflowing fountain.

Rivers of living water flow out of you and you water everyone around you.

That's what I call prosperity.

And, yeah, money goes with it.

I mean, how can we be, how can we be a blessing if we're not first blessed?

And so that gets us back to this message the fullness of the blessing.

God doesn't want us to have a partial manifestation, he doesn't want us to be half full, he doesn't want us to be one fourth full.

He wants us to have the full payload.

And that's what I'm talking about tonight out of these verses.

Now I wanna contrast everything I've said for the godly blessed as a man who does not several things and does the other.

And then it says the ungodly are not so.

So he contrasts the psalmist contrasts the Holy Ghost, contrasts what happens to the ungodly.

The ungodly are not like this but are like the chaff which the wind driveeth away.

The chaff you see, wheat has chaff around it.

It's when it's harvested.

It's a big stalk and they have to separate the chaff from the wheat.

The wheat, they roll over it and thresh it and they get the wheat and they gather it and put it in the barn.

But the chaff is the worthless part of it.

And they use a fan, a winnowing fork, throw it up in the air and the wind blows the chaff away and clears it off of the threshing room floor, so that all that's laying on the floor after this process is just the wheat.

And then you can roll over the wheat with a wagon wheel or a weight or something in it and it breaks it up and then you can take it to the granary.

So the ungodly are like chaff which the wind drives away.

We are experiencing some winds like we've never seen, and that wind is not directed against us.

It's directed to separate us from the chaff.

There's chaff and every church in America.

There's chaff in every church all over the world, and the winds of adversity are blowing, and God is gonna use those winds to separate the righteous from the wicked.

And we're in that place right now, and so it's time for us to cling to the word of God.

Therefore, it says, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment.

That's where we're at.

We're right at the edge of the judgment of the nations.

God judgment just means separation, that's all it is.

And so what's gonna happen?

The ungodly are not gonna stand in the judgment.

They'll be blown away.

And what's gonna be left in the judgment?

We are.

We're the wheat, we're the precious fruit of the earth, we're the harvest.

Amen.

Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

See, that's where they are.

They're in the congregation of the righteous.

The sinners are here.

Now, the sinners have a chance to not be sinners.

The sinners have a chance to hear this word and repent in turn.

And it's on them, because every human being has got a built in truth detector that God gave them.

When they hear the word of God, they know it's true, and then they have to choose to believe it and accept it and alter their way, repent.

They have to.

That is the Holy Spirit conviction of sinners, and you have to have the word to have conviction.

We have conviction in this church.

We have conviction in this Holy Ghost conviction.

When sinners come in here, they get confronted with the truth and some choose and some choose to not change, and that's on them, for the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

That's where we're at right now, church, and so I wanna encourage you.

The fullness of the blessing is to contrast the church and to make it attractive for those that have not made a decision.

You know, when they see how blessed we are, they're gonna be attracted.

We have a message that's attracting to people.

It always pays to serve God.

It never costs, it pays.

And sometimes sinners I know I felt this way way back before I got saved I thought, oh, I could never live for God like that.

It just it's.

You have to give up too much.

I tell you, yeah, give up misery, give up brokenness, give up fear, give up all of.

Yeah, I gave it all up, all right.

Have we had trouble since we got saved?

Of course we overcame it, though I would never trade places, never, never, never trade places.

The fullness of the blessing.

I hope this blessed you tonight and just lift your hand and receive the word of God.

Father, we thank you for this message.

It's certainly a message that is separating the chaff from the wheat, and we wanna embrace the wheat, we wanna encourage the wheat and hopefully in the process we can pick up those that are ready to get saved in these last days.

In Jesus' name, amen, everybody say I'm blessed to be a blessing.

Amen, praise God, all right.