God Wants The First And The Best For Him

Study: #671-Church in the Houses From: February 8 – 14, 2011 TOPIC: "God Wants The First And The Best For Him" Exodus 19:4, 5

God calls us to give us the blessings of His great kindness. All our welfare comes from His great kindness. This is not because we have known God but because we have been known by Him. Galatians 4: 9 Exodus 19: 4 says: "…I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself." Thus is the love of the Father towards us. Why aren’t we able to fall to His feet and surrender to Him? So many privileges! "I took you upon eagle wings…" What a beautiful expression of the admirable tenderness of God! God not only came as an eagle flying to liberate the Israelites but He hurried to remove them promptly. He did it with the strength and with the speed of an eagle. It was this way when He called us. He removed us from evil as quick as in the wings of an eagle. His people were in the nest of that oven of iron which was Egypt, enslaved, with marks of pain; now He would make them a nation. And tell me beloved, how was the world where we were lost? And God has delivered us from there wanting to make us a nation for Him. When the archers seek to hunt the eagles, they are not able to damage the small baby eagles without crossing the body of the mother that defends them. This is how God attracted the Israelites to Him, as the eagle that is willing to give her life for her small babies. The people of Israel were not only delivered to freedom and honor by the Lord but He brought them to have a covenant and communion with God Himself. Jesus died for them and for us; the just for the unjust to take us to God the Father. I Peter 3:18 Exodus 19:5 "Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession; because the whole earth is mine." Who do you belong to? We are His special treasure, because the earth belongs to Him. The Earth belongs to Him; among the earth He seeks, not just anyone, but people who will love Him so that He can bless them with His rich blessings. In this verse God affirms His sovereignty upon His property in all the visible creation. He told Israel, his people, that they were above all other nations. He has also provided us with His richest blessings like filling us with the Holy Spirit, giving us eternal life to live with Him and the privilege to be a part of His Church. Blessed be God who has called us! Why not love Him? You are different from the world, show it for the love that He has for you. We see King David who understands that all the wealth and honor that men possess they owe it to God. I Chronic 29:14 What we give to the Lord is not but a minimum part of what we receive from Him. Here David is thankful to God’s grace that enables him to contribute so joyfully to the building of the temple. It is a test of the power of the grace of God in our life that we can do willingly the work of God. Here David speaks of himself and of his people. As a shadow that does not last, thus is man; everything belongs to God and what we receive from His hand we give Him.

David and the leaders of his town admired the fact that God had set His eyes on them and had done so much for them. David knew very well that everything belongs to God. He also expresses it in Psalm 24:1. When God gave the land to ours first fathers He gave it to them as if they were tenants reserving the real entitlement of the property. God leases to men the mines, the beasts of the field, the fruits of the ground, houses, estates and all that men can do with their ingenuity and effort; everything belongs to the Lord of the Heavens. See if when someone dies they can take anything with them! It was God who established the earth upon the seas and He affirmed it upon the rivers. The earth belongs to God by His indisputable title of creator of everything that exists. He created it and accommodated it for the use of mankind. Matter is His for He made it from nothing; the shape is also His for He did it according to the eternal intention, idea of His mind. Generations pass and the earth is sustained by Jehovah; its general state remains without altering and without changing its orbit. Then, we must give God what belongs to Him. Exodus 22:30 The first fruits are for God. Roman 8:32 God did not even retain His own Son but surrendered Him for all of us. We should give in the same way and everything that God asks from us. Neither should the people delay in bringing the offering from the first fruits of the crop and the vats. God wants for Him the first and the best so that the blessings will flow richly upon us. The Israelites thought that God would be thankful and satisfied by the multitude of sacrifices that they offered upon the altar. But, we see in Psalm 50:10-15 that God declares that He did not need such sacrifices for He is the sovereign owner of all the animals. God was not going to eat meat from the sacrificed bulls. He was seeking from His people a sacrifice of praise and that they invoked Him. The infinite self-sufficiency of God shows our complete insufficiency to add anything to what is already His. In Haggai 2:8 the Lord said: "The silver is mine and the gold, declares the Lord Almighty." We must understand who is the God that we serve; the powerful God. We must fear with love and reverence and then we will see His great blessings upon our lives as the people of God that we are. Amen.