Deuteronomy 7:12
Promises of God
"Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you His covenant and His lovingkindness which He swore to your forefathers ...
God made a promise to the nation of Israel to bless them if they "listened" to Him ... they obeyed His Word. In the subsequent verse to this opening statement God lists all the things He would be doing for them if they remained faithful. He promised them liberty, purity, health and protection. The blessings are what we desire today. They are tied to one thing according to this passage; faithfulness to God's Word. It is a very simply formula: IF we obey God's Word we will be blessed. Yes, we live in a evil world. Yes, sin affects us all. Yes, it is impossible to be free from sin. But, God promised the nation He would protect them from the evil around them if they obeyed. We are to pray that in the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 7). We are to experience that as we follow wisdom in Proverbs (Proverbs 2 and 3). God will grant a miraculous life as we practice faith in Him and obedience to Him. We can't expect to obey Him, however, if we trust in our own ways as the nation did. They sought their own flesh way of doing things. They did not see with the eyes of faith. Forbidding themselves of what they saw and felt for something later by faith was foreign to them. It should not be to us. We must trust in God to give us later what is good for us rather seek what is now for our immediate gratification. We are to live by faith in obedience to God's Word and we will be blessed. Obedience equals blessing.
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