The Danger of Blessings
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 3 March 2013
Most people would agree with the axiom, "Too much of a good thing can be bad," right? Too much money makes somebody indulgent, irresponsible and materialistic. Too much popularity makes one proud and selfish. Too much power makes one implacable, compassionless, invincible and abusive. Too much blessings is a problem too.
You know, Godly wisdom tells us that self-denial is healthy; some measure of deprivation is beneficial. It is beneficial for your character to be faced with some weaknesses which you cannot easily overcome.
What is really hard to handle is to have all you want of what you want when you want it, because then self-control, self-denial, and discipline disappear. And where a person lives in undisciplined freedom, they live on the edge of self-destruction.
And amazingly this can happen in the Kingdom of God too. Look at Deuteronomy 6. The children of Israel had been in Egypt for 400 years. They were slaves and they existed one step above animals. They lived in poverty and deprivation and weakness and need and abuse.
And then God, in a mighty display of power, brought a man named Moses and ordained him to lead Israel out of the land of Egypt. Two million slaves left Egypt. In order to do that, God had to bring a series of ten deadly plagues, the likes of which the world had never ever seen before.
You remember the final miracle was that God sent the death angel to execute the first- born. But for every Jewish family that sprinkled the Passover blood on the door, the death angel passed by and spared that first-born. And in that great miracle of judgment, there was also a miracle of deliverance, and that was all that Egypt could take.
And they said, "Get out of this country. We can't take anymore devastation from your God." And so the children of Israel were released. It wasn't long however, before pharaoh pursued them with his army. You know the miracle. The Red Sea opened. They walked across on dry land. Pharaoh tried to follow, and the whole Egyptian army was drowned.
They were then led into the wilderness as a result of these great liberating miracles. After 40 years of wandering, they were given the privilege of going into the land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, the land which was the most fruitful piece of earth. God gave them the best, and they took over the land from the Canaanites, and it was a very good place. But when things are too good there is always danger.
God knows this and here comes His warning in Deuteronomy 6:10-15, “10 “So it shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, 11 houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant—when you have eaten and are full— 12 then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”
That was God's warning to them of the danger of blessing. Great cities built by an advanced civilization in the ancient world, the Canaanites. They moved into homes and houses that they didn't build. And then they went out to get water from wells they never dug, and they plucked grapes from vines they never grew, and harvested wonderful olives from trees that they never planted.
And so in verse 13, He says, "You shall fear the Lord your God, and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name." That is, you need to make covenants and promises to God to be faithful. "14You shall not go after other gods for the Lord your God is a jealous God among you. 15 Lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth."
Now the New Testament gives us another illustration of this in 1 Corinthians 10. Sadly they did exactly what God told them not to do. They enjoyed all of the homes and all of the things that were in them, they enjoyed the wells and the water, they enjoyed everything that was in the land flowing with milk and honey. And they, in spite of all of that, turned to idols.
The kingdom split. The northern kingdom was taken into captivity and destroyed in 722 B.C. The southern kingdom went into captivity 586 B.C. and taken to Babylon, and God did bring destruction on that land. It was a sad disregard of a very clear warning of the danger of blessings.
You have a similar situation with the Corinthians. The Apostle Paul is writing to a very blessed church and he spent nearly two years with them. He has come to love these people. In his introduction in 1 Corinthians 1: 4-5, Paul says, "I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which is given to you by Christ Jesus, 5 that you were enriched in everything by Him.”
They were a church planted by Paul, probably the greatest preacher ever next to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 1:7 he says, "You come short in no gift. You have had all the teaching, all the treasures, everything.” In fact, in chapter 4:8, he says, "You're filled to the brim.” There is nothing lacking.
Now, to make his point more strongly, Paul is using a biblical illustration from 1 Corinthians 10:1-5, "Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 5 But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.”
Paul says, I'm concerned about the danger of blessings. I'm concerned about you enjoying all these freedoms that are yours in Christ. And the blessings of this grace upon grace where all your sins are forgiven, and you are not under the law. I'm concerned that you're not going to discipline your body. So let me remind you about Israel.
Let's go back to when they came out of Egypt. They all came out, he is looking at everybody. Paul says, "All our forefathers, our ancestors were under the cloud." What does that mean? The glory cloud, the Shekinah cloud that led Israel when they wandered in the wilderness. Do you remember they were led by a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud by day?
So he says, they all experienced divine direction and divine guidance. And he says they all passed through the Red Sea. They all experienced divine miraculous deliverance. So this is a people who have experienced miracles, the 10 miracles of judgment in Egypt, the great miracle of being led out of Egypt, being led by a Shekinah glory cloud, the very presence of God in visible form.
Then 1 Corinthians 10:2 says, "All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea." That simple means this: you were all literally one with your leader. There were no divisions or separated groups. So they knew solidarity in leadership. They experienced divine, miraculous leadership under Moses.
Then they were given divine provision. They all ate the same spiritual food, the same manna, the same birds that God provided. They all drank the same spiritual drink. And the spiritual drink was the drink provided by the spiritual source who is God.
And actually, it tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:4, the spiritual rock that followed them was Christ. This is the pre-incarnate Christ, before He was born in Bethlehem; He existed eternally as God the Son, the second member of the Trinity. And, of course, He ministered to Israel. He would be Israel's Savior.
But before the incarnation, He literally was with them, following them in their wilderness wanderings so that the very Christ Himself was in the midst of His people. They had been given divine provision of food and water. They were always under the special care of the rock who is Christ who followed them, who was really the source of all the miracles that met their needs.
You the HKBP church also have all these same privileges. This is all the best that God can give. And the sad reality of verse 5 is, in spite of that, with most of them, God was not well-pleased, and their corpses were scattered all over the desert. That is pretty shocking, two million died in the desert. From the first generation that came out, only two people went into the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb.
1 Corinthians 10:6 says, "These things became our examples." This is not just history. This is an example for us. "to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted." First problem, they started to desire the things of the world. They wanted what they had in Egypt. They wanted what other people had.
Then they got into idolatry, verse 7, "Don't become idolaters, as were some of them, as it is written, and it quotes out of Exodus 32 where it says, "the people sit down to eat and drink, and then rose up to have sexual amusement." They got into the world.
They committed, in verse 8, sexual immorality and in one day, 23,000 fell. And then there were others who tested Christ in verse 9. And then there were others, verse 10, who complained and they died. Do you know that fourteen thousand seven hundred complainers were destroyed?
Well, is grumbling in the category of major sins? When we cannot see all the blessings that God has given us and we are egotistical that is sin. I mean what did they have to complain about? What is it that was still unsatisfactory? And why would they take for granted the miraculous goodness of God?
And why would they want to be immoral when God had given them everything within marriage to provide blessings? Why would they worship a golden calf when they knew the true and living God who delivered them from Egypt? And why would they want what the world had to give when it was the world that nearly destroyed them?
How does that relate to our life today? How many people have premarital sex which is immoral? How many people have sex with someone that they are not married to? We don’t worship a golden calf but how many of us worship money and things instead of tithing to God? And how many think more about themselves than about other people that have much less? When you're greatly blessed, beware.
Well, this is what the word of God is for us today, we better learn self-discipline; self- denial, moderation or we are going to wind up being disqualified. The danger is that we begin to feel so comfortable, we begin to feel that God owes us something which gives us reasons to complain and we don’t have the joy of salvation.
Or we only focus on the trials of life without seeing all the things that God has already blessed us with. You don’t appreciate and don’t remember all that God has done for you. And you do not tithe and you are robbing God. You begin to drift closer and closer to old familiar sins.
That is my fear for the future of the church. What could happen to us is that we become self-indulgent, and we abuse the grace of God. That's why, it's so important for us to ask, "Have I done everything to please you, Lord?" "Have I gone too far in pleasing myself? It's time to examine our hearts, Amen?