False Methods of Obtaining a Blessing

Hey, welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. The purpose of this podcast is to give you some real answers for difficult issues. I cover a lot of different topics. My goal is simply to help you, to edify you, to exhort you, to bring healing to you, and also just to answer everyday life questions only God can answer. Sometimes the issues are very difficult and very serious and sometimes it's a little bit lighter but I thank you for listening to today's show, which is going to be very special because I have found out over the years that many people are constantly looking for a different way to get blessed by God. They're always looking for an inside track. If I do this, if I do that, if I observe this… Let's talk about that today, it's going to be a very interesting show. How do you really get blessings from God? This is Dr. Ray, thank you for listening.

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Hey, welcome to Self Talk. So today I'm talking about blessings, favor, abundance, all those good things that we're always wanting and hoping to get from God. Over the years I have observed a lot of things. I'm not trying to be judgmental but I do want to be scriptural. It seems that every time I turn around, somebody always has a new way, a new method, something that's going to really get you on the inside track with God and then you're going to really get that blessing. People send these little messages through Facebook uh, if you want to get blessing in the next 30 days this is what you have to do.

I'll give you, give you an example of what I'm talking about. Um, many years ago one of my church members came to me and they said uh, Dr. Ray, I have found out why the body of Christ is not blessed. And I said oh really? Why is that? He said well it's because we're not giving our first fruit offering; so here is our first fruit offering this is our first paycheck of the year and I know that if we give our first paycheck of the year to the church, we're going to be blessed. And my answer to them was did the Lord tell you to do this or is this something you think that has to be done? In other words, what I'm thinking to myself is have you found a magic formula or is this something the Holy Spirit is leading you to do? Well, they claim the Holy Spirit was leading them to do that but I knew they thought they had found another magic formula to get God's favor and God's blessing. 

The problem with these formulas- now listen, there's nothing wrong with giving, sowing and reaping. I get all that. But the problem is so many people are looking for a specific way. Something we can do to get on God's good list to get his favor to really get his blessing and the scripture is really clear about where the blessing comes from and we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that. Now many Christians have gone into observing the Jewish customs, and the Jewish customs are beautiful. They are, they, many of them are a prophetic portrayal of Christ but some, unfortunately, are going, going back into the customs because they feel like this gives them an inside path to God and this is some kind of requirement to God. 

Well, the Apostle Paul was actually addressing this issue with Galatians. As a matter of fact, at one point in chapter 2 of the book of Galatians, verse, verse, chapter 2, or was it oh, uh, chapter 3 verse one. “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? For in whose eye was Jesus Christ” um, uh, “publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you is did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?” So he's saying look, how did you, how did you receive the Holy Spirit? Was it by something you did or was it by your faith in the name of Jesus Christ? What were the Galatians doing? Well, they had come up with this thought that yes, Jesus is the Messiah, however, if you really want to have the blessings of God, you need to be circumcised and then there were some other things they were doing and you go to Galatians 4:10. He, he says “You observe days and months and seasons and years, now he's talking about the Jewish calendar in the Jewish holidays,” um, and probably feast and then in verse 11 he says “I fear for you.” “I fear for you. Perhaps I've labored over you in vain”. 

And then he goes down to say “did Christ die needlessly?” And so the point of this is they were looking for a method, a formula, an idea, something that they could do to put them into God's good graces but you see, that's contrary to scripture. We are saved by grace according to the book of Ephesians, not by works, not by works so no one could boast. We're saved through faith by grace. Through faith by grace, that is it. Jesus finished it all at the cross. The problem what I want to talk about today: when we come up with these other methods of blessing, we are actually, and hear me now, it’s gonna, this is a tough word, we're denying the finished work of Jesus Christ. What we're saying is Jesus is not quite sufficient.

It was exactly what the Galatians were doing. He says, look at verse, let me go back to Galatians 4:9…and 10 and 11. “For now that you have come to know God,” talking to the Galatians. This is Paul, “or rather be known my God, how was it you turn back to weak and worthless elemental things?”. Now they were going back into Jewish customs, okay? “Why do you do that to which you desire, to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. You're going back into the Jewish holidays and feasts and Jewish customs and observing the various feasts and holidays. I fear for you, I fear for you. Perhaps I've labored over you in vain.” Because Paul, for years was teaching them that Christ is everything. See, our blessing comes in the fact that our Savior Jesus Christ came to Earth as a man and he lived here as a man and then he offered up his life as a perfect sacrifice to God and in that sacrifice, on the cross, he took every curse, every curse upon us so we would have the blessings of Abraham. He took disease, He took shame, he took condemnation, he took the guilt for our sin. And we receive this by faith. By faith, by believing it, by believing it.

But if we go say “well yeah, I believe that but I need to do this. I got to make sure that I wear my prayer shawl every Sunday. I got, I got to make sure that, that I do this and I do that and I do this…” I'm going no, you cannot do something to earn God's favor. You believe Jesus to earn God's favor. Now out of that faith comes your good works. Now, if you want to, to observe a holiday or a season or you want to observe Passover, God bless you. But if you think that's going to earn you a certain favor with God because you're…this is going to earn you some kind of inside track to get God's blessing, you're wrong. Because the only way God's blessing comes to us is through the blood of Jesus Christ, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That's where it comes from. And the problem, there's nothing wrong with wanting to do some of these things, but people do these things thinking this is going to give them some form of righteousness. You will not do something, you cannot observe something, do a tradition, observe a tradition, observe a custom, wear a certain amount of certain clothing, wear a prayer shawl, observe Yom Kippur or observe Passover, that's all good stuff but it's not going to earn you any righteousness. 

Now if you want to do that in remembrance of Christ, to remind you of Christ, hallelujah, great stuff, but if you think doing this earns you favor with God or a blessing with God, it does not because you're saying Jesus was not enough. This is exactly why Paul, again in Galatians 3 “you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly betrayed as crucified? This one thing I want to find out, that you received the Holy Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith.” In other words, seek the greatest gift of all. The greatest blessing of all is when we receive the Holy Spirit. How do we receive the Holy Spirit? We receive the Holy Spirit by faith by faith in Jesus Christ, okay? It wasn't by observing some work of Jewish law. 

So people are going back into this Jewish law thinking that this somehow is going to give you some supernatural favor with God and here's Paul, the Jew of Jews, a Pharisee, who is rebuking the Jews for doing this very thing, okay? And he says the righteous shall live by faith. Galatians 3:7 “therefore, be sure it is those that are of Faith are the sons of Abraham.” okay? No one is justified by the law. Galatians 3:11 “the righteous shall live by faith.” Now and then he says, then he rebukes them again. In chapter 4 of Galatians he said “why do You observe these days and months and seasons? Why are you doing this? What's wrong with you? I fear I've labored for you.”  In vain. And he tells them did Christ die needlessly? And he's just- 

See, Paul was this way. Paul was pure Christ. At one point he said this “one thing I know is Christ and him crucified”, okay? Um, it's just, he, he wants people to understand that everything we need, everything we have, everything has been provided for us through Jesus Christ. Through what he accomplished when he died on the cross for us and then rose again on the third day. And by faith we are saved, and that salvation is a benefit package. That salvation is healing, it's eternal life, it's preservation from danger, it's a lot of things. Gives us authority over the works of the enemy. All this has been given to us and then you look at- he says he gave us the blessings of Abraham. It tells us very clearly that Jesus even became a curse by being on the cross so we might receive the blessings of Abraham and so, so much, so, so much.

So verse, Galatians 2:21: “I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly.” What was the law? They were trying to go back into the Jewish law and customs and observing seasons and observing months and observing certain days; and they thought that that was going to earn them some form of righteousness and he said if you do these things and you think that that's going to make you righteous, then why did Christ have to die?

The Bible says in Galatians that Jesus became a curse for us. He redeemed us from the curse of the law that we might have the blessings of Abraham. Everything: our blessing, our righteousness, our favor, our redemption, our justification all came through Jesus Christ and what the Lord wants us to do is accept that by faith, believe that with every bit of our heart, believe that with all of our heart and then because of this faith, live accordingly. You see the Book of James says faith without works is dead; and what that means is I want to do some right I want to live right. I want to do some right things, I want to do some things to please God, not to earn my righteousness but because I've been given righteousness. In Corinthians, “he who knew no sin became sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us that we might be made righteous.

In other words, my righteousness my right- righteous, righteousness means right standing with God. My right standing with God gives me blessing, my right standing with God redeems me from every curse, my right standing with God makes me above and not beneath, the head and not the tail. My right standing with God causes me to be healed, my right standing with God gives me abundant life, my right standing with God gives me everything and that right standing comes by faith. Faith. Faith. Righteousness does not come through the law. Christ died in, in… to me, maybe the most important verse in the Bible is, it's in Ephesians. Is in Ephesians, when it says we were saved. How were we saved? We were saved by, by, Ephesians 2:8, “for by grace you have been saved through faith not of yourselves”. It's the gift of God. Verse 9: “not as a result of works that no one can boast”.

And you know what's really happening? I was talking to somebody even just today about a church member who's gone back into observing all the Messianic stuff and he told me, he said, “you know, Dr. Ray? They've actually gotten prideful about it” but you see, what it says here in the scripture not as a result of work so no one can boast. You see, if there's things that we can do to earn that; we can do, observe, act, wear, achieve to earn favor with God, then we're boasting. We're boasting in our works and it's not really about Christ, it's about us. Truth is, Christ gave us everything. Jesus said “apart from me you can do nothing”. And so Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father but through me”, John 14:12. My point is human nature logic says “okay, I've got to do something. If I do this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start getting lucky.” 

Remember the old chain letters they used to pass around? And they say don't break the chain because if you, if you pass this around, enough people read it, this blessing’s going to come upon you. I used to see chain posts. People put stuff on, on social media and if you share this with so many friends, this amount of money is going to come to you. It might be a scripture but if you share this with this amount of people, some blessing is going to come upon you. 

Actually, that's works righteousness and it's an abomination to God and it actually is more likely to cause you to be cursed than to be blessed. You hear me? Cursed, not blessed, because what you're doing is you're denying that Jesus is sufficient. You're, you're coming up with another method, formula, idea. Thought something else and somebody- always around the body of Christ it seems like every time I turn around, something else is coming down the pike. Some new idea, some new formula, some new way to get supernatural blessings of God. Remember the prayer of Jabez? Well, that's a great prayer the prayer of Jabaz. Remember that some years ago? Well if you say the prayer of Jabez, guaranteed you're going to have this, this blessing come to you. And there are things we need to do because of our salvation, because of our sanctification, because of our righteousness. We should live righteous because of the gift that God has put within us, we should live accordingly but my working, my achievements, my striving, my trying to do something, find something, make something happen, it's not going to get God's favor.

God's favor came to me through Jesus when he died on the cross; rose on the third day. And me, Ray Self, I've accepted that by faith and then I'm filled with the Holy Spirit of God. I have the Spirit of God living in me. All the blessings Jesus has given to me are within me through the Holy Spirit so there's nothing I can do that can add to that or increase that other than, you know, live the best life I can. But remember, my achievements, my works, my formulas, my ideas, my, my methods, my trying this gimmick or that gimmick, that's not going to earn you God's favor. God's favor has already been given to you through Christ and that's what Paul was so angry about in Galatians when he said “oh foolish Galatians”, “oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” “Who has bewitched you through whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This only thing I want to find out from you, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law? By hearing with faith, having begun the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

In other words, Paul's question to us is how did you begin your walk with God? How did you receive the Holy Spirit? How were you saved? It was by hearing the word of God by faith, by hearing faith. You, you placed your faith in Jesus as the Son of God and he forgave you of your sins. This is where your blessings come from and still came- they come from and are still coming from, not because you wear this article of clothing, not because you decide you're going to observe Passover or you're going to observe Yom Kippur. Now there’s nothing wrong with it, with the, the Day of Atonement, Passover. Great! Remember, it's just great reminders of Christ but there's no blessing in the Passover, there's no blessing in observing a Jewish custom, there's no blessing in making a first fruit offering, there's no blessing in something we do. The blessing comes from our faith through grace, through God, through the Holy Spirit.

Now because we're blessed, we should live accordingly. I hope this makes sense to you. It's kind of a chicken and the egg. We we live righteous because we've been made righteous. Righteousness is a gift from God that comes by God's grace through our faith because I am righteous and because you are righteous, you have the blessings of Abraham. You are blessed coming, in blessed going out. The head, not the tail. All the work of your hands. You have these blessings, there's nothing else you can do other than surrender and believe Jesus with all your heart. Now, if you want to do something else to remind you of Christ, to give you a picture of Christ, as a memory, sure, go ahead and do it; but the blessing doesn't come through that action, through that custom, or that that ritual. It doesn't come through that, it comes through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. This is why Paul was rebuking the Galatians and all they want to do, they want to be circumcised, they were saying “yeah, Jesus was, was great but we still need some Moses here.” You cannot say Jesus is all in all and keep adding to him. Don't add to Jesus, Jesus is everything that you need. And the access to that is grace through your faith. Grace comes, God's grace comes to you through your faith and God's grace has every blessing. It has God's favor, it has God's healing, it has God's power, it is a gift. It is a free gift, okay? It is a free gift. In Galatians 3:9, “those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham.” And that's a pretty amazing gift; this was a very blessed man..matter of fact, the Bible says in one scripture Abraham was blessed in every single way, so remember this.

Now, I'm just, I'm just saying…again Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith not by yourselves it is the gift of God and not just as a result of works”. So, if you're not saved, you cannot be saved by your works. Why do you think you're going to be blessed by your works? Now, there, I mean, there's certain principles that God talks about -sowing and reaping- okay? You will reap what you sow, okay? But your blessing comes through Jesus, not through observing some custom or some ritual or something that you feel like you have to do to add on to. It, that's your flesh. That is your flesh looking for a formula. There is no formula for the blessing other than the grace of God coming through your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Jesus is everything. He has given you everything and if you want to still observe some of these customs, well go for it; but if you think observing this custom is going to win you some righteousness, it does not. Jesus already did that for you and you can't add to it and you can't take away from it. Jesus did it. He said when he died “it is finished” and you know what that means in the Greek? It means it is perfectly complete. Jesus made a perfect sacrifice, perfectly completed everything we needed to be saved and made righteous and be blessed. Jesus has done that for us and the only way we get it is through faith; through faith believing him; believing in him and trusting in Him and knowing that God's grace is headed your way, amen?

I hope this wasn't too tough for you. I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Um, you know, and you know I love you much. Not trying to be harsh but I think when I read Paul's letters, I see his passion. His passion was Jesus and him crucified, and Jesus was everything to him. Now he knew everything there was to know about the law and about Jewish customs and he was rebuking them for following them. He said now Jesus has fulfilled all of that, Jesus has taken care of all that. A matter of fact in, Hebrews if he wrote -it might have been somebody else wrote Hebrews- the writer says “why do you go back into these elemental things?” You, you know we have- now we don't go back into types and shadows and copies. No more copies, types and shadows. Some of these uh, ritualistic things are copies and shadows and prophetic symbols. We don't have to go back into symbols of something when we already have the something, amen? Amen.

I love you much. Thank you for listening and uh, hey, please go to my, my website for the podcast is ICM College- icmcollege.org/selftalk. Please go there. Also, check out our new store and there's a link to the store in the show notes. Uh, we've got t-shirts, caps and courses and courses you can purchase for 35 dollars- some really good courses. Thank you so much for listening. This is Dr. Ray Self and God bless you.

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Thanks again for listening to my show. I hope it's been a blessing to you. You know, I tried just to cover a variety of topics but something that I think could edify you, bring healing to you, and possibly exhort you. Hey, we're really excited that we have a new store. It's an ICM store with t-shirts and also for 35 dollars you can purchase a number of different college level ICM courses. Maybe there's a counseling course you would like to take, or theology course you'd like to take and you can have the whole course for 35 dollars. And so you get that in our store. The link to the store is in the show description. I appreciate you very much for listening. Also, please go to the website, my website icmcollege.org/selftalk and subscribe. Give me a review, that way we'll put you on the email list and you'll also get a lot of things that some of the other listeners don't because you're on my email list.

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