Infinite Grace, Infinite Mercy

What a strange thing indeed! On one hand, we have God trying to bless us and on the other, we have mankind desiring the blessing but not receiving it. Thanks be to God who sent Jesus to enact the covenant and restore things to their rightful place through the sacrifice He made on the cross! We know we don't deserve the goodness of God because of what we have done. Indeed we deserve the judgment Christ bore for us. But, God in His mercy, has made us His children and wants us to show His goodness to the rest of the world. The Lord reminds us in Deuteronomy 8:6-18, "Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; and land of wheat and barley, or vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today. Lest - when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them: and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage: who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water: who brought water for you out of the flinty rock: who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end - then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.' And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." When you start to receive the blessings of the covenant, do not forget who it was who gave you those blessings and why they were given to you. It is a good thing to be in covenant with the living God. It is even a better thing to share that knowledge with someone else! Deuteronomy 11:18-27 states, "Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them like the days of heaven above the earth. For if you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do - to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to hold fast to Him - then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the Western Sea, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand against you: the Lord your God will put the dread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, just as He has said to you. Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today." Shalom, Todd Rausch