Deut 28:1+2. "Now it shall be, if you will diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the Lord your God. 
We are continuing our study of what is necessary in the lives of the Lord’s people, both in the Old and the New Testament in terms of obedience and honor and reverence of Who He is and all that He has done. At the very core are two fundamental and basic realities of how to live on this earth. 
The first is that we live unto the Lord, in obedience to His ways and to His commandments. We seek to be completely in line with His Word through the abiding power and wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The focus of this life is that we live to Honor God. We know that we want to please Him. We recognize that we are not perfect in it all the time, but we want to be. Our desire is that He is pleased in the lives that we offer unto Him in our longing to know Him more intimately and more personally and more vibrantly as each day unfolds. This is the life in which we desire to have chosen the course that leads to the joy of the Lord’s manifold blessing upon Him and then through Him unto us.
The second one, which sadly, includes many born-again Christians, is the one in which we choose to live each day unto ourselves. As Christians, we can know His grace and we can know His mercy as He so miraculously and lovingly covers us with His salvation. However, we can stop ourselves right there. So many Christians are simply satisfied with the life insurance aspect of their salvation, so to speak. They know they are saved and yet they want to do as all the other people in this world do, participating in all those things which this world puts forth as alluring and captivating. They set aside the fullness of what is can be ours in Jesus for the tawdry and meager delights that this age has to offer.
This was the tragic sequence of events for the Children of Israel throughout the Old Testament. They knew what they should do, but they turned their hearts away from the One Whom they were to love with the entire core essence of their being. Even many of the supposedly devout religious leaders became enthralled with the power and the prestige and the singularity of their position over the rest of the society. They loved their place of honor and their higher learning stature in the eyes of the people rather than the Lord God Jehovah. They were enamored with the lusts of recognition and superiority and completely forgot the fact that they were to be the servants of all. They were to be an assistance to the people to bring their gifts and their sacrifices and their offerings to the Lord God Almighty. Rather, they chose to make themselves the objects of the people’s adoration and deliberation. 
When we live unto ourselves, rather than unto the Lord, we are easily beset and sidetracked from any real relationship with Our Heavenly Father, Our Lord Jesus, and the Glorious Holy Spirit. We set aside the desire to know God in the depth of a living relationship. We rather settle for the cultural name and custom and ritualistic mannerisms of a nominal, shallow, and utterly unsatisfying sense of knowing there is more. However we are not willing to give up the earthly vanities for the sake of the spiritual realities. 
We live our lives with the entire focus on what I get out of it rather than what the Lord God Our Creator and Savior will receive. We find ourselves be muddled with the meagerness of the heavenly scraps thereby shunning the breadth and depth and satisfaction and contentment and satiation of the manifold heavenly feast that is spread before those who will choose to partake of the fullness of Jesus Christ.
The Prophet Isaiah, in Isa 1:18+19, gave voice to the encouragement from the Lord for His people to go on in Him. He wanted them to receive of the full bounty of His Heavenly blessing, if only they would choose to obey and honor Him in their hearts and actions. He offered them the very best of the land in the manifested blessing of His work if they would only learn to live by the goodness and the grace of His commandments.
Isa 1:18+19, "Come now, and let us reason together," Says the Lord, "Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool. "If you consent and obey, You will eat the best of the land; 
The Lord continually set before His people, and He sets before us by His still active promises, the reality that there is so much more in store for those who will so seek Him and obey Him and desire to know Him. They and we will eat the best of the land, not just the meager portions that have been left in the fields for gleaning. There will be abundance and there will be unsurpassed quality and richness in the full measure of His outpouring upon us as we so learn to live in full accordance with all those truths that He has set before us.
You see, there is truly nothing that this world has to offer that will bring any satisfaction or enrichment or eternal joy. Everything of this age is fleeting and temporary. Like the fast food of this day, living for self only works to cause us to crave more and more in our feeble and pitiful efforts to appease the hunger for God Alone that He has instilled into each one of us. 
However, we are so adept at deluding ourselves with the lie that we will miss something great if we only do that which God instructs. We think that we will have time in the future to set aside our lusts when we are too old and too feeble to do anything other than just sit and read the Bible and pray. Every spiritual thing, other than necessity and custom and ritual, is set aside for the time being. We choose to do the works of self that we crave with the idea that later, sometime in our lives, we will do what we know in our hearts we should be doing.
Again, hear the Lord through the Prophet Isaiah in this regard, as He makes known the absolute truth that what we choose to do today matters for tomorrow. He highlights the positive reality of obedience in Isa 3:10.
Isa 3:10, Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, For they will eat the fruit of their actions. Keep the most obvious in mind with this truth. The righteous will eat the fruit of their righteousness. They will experience the course of the manifold spiritual truth of their relationship with the Lord God Almighty. They will know Him and love Him. They will have the training and the wisdom and the fortitude and the practical outworking of their relationship of counting on Him to see them through the course of every single circumstance and trial or tribulation. 
Conversely, those who do unrighteousness, those who do not know what it means to live in accordance with the obedience unto the Lord which develops such an intimate relationship with Him, will have no concept of how to face and to endure all those dealings and consequences of their unrighteous activities. They will be lost in the manner of all the trials and the turbulence and the tribulations that will come into their lives. They will have no basis for an anchor and a saving hope and a foundational bedrock for a solid footing when the inevitable crushing waves of this world’s enraged furies pound them into the dissipating sand of their existence. 
	Please turn to Isaiah, chapter 55 and let us read it together. Again listen to the Lord as He calls out to us through the voice of the Prophet Isaiah, to set aside our thoughts and our self-centered ways and to live in full accordance to all that the Lord is putting before us for our very best on this earth, today!    
Please stand as we read this chapter together. Isa 55, "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost. "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And delight yourself in abundance. "Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, According to the faithful mercies shown to David. "Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples, A leader and commander for the peoples. "Behold, you will call a nation you do not know, And a nation which knows you not will run to you, Because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel; For He has glorified you." Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord, And He will have compassion on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth, And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. "For you will go out with joy, And be led forth with peace; The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the trees of the field will clap their hands. "Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up; And instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up; And it will be a memorial to the Lord, For an everlasting sign which will not be cut off." 
Amen. You may take your seats.
This was all again reiterated to and through the Prophet Jeremiah by the Lord in Jer 11:1-5. This shows just how seriously the Lord took this covenant that was made with humanity. It began with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and was extended throughout the nation of Israel. 
Jer 11:1-5, The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, "Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and say to them,' Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "Cursed is the man who does not heed the words of this covenant which I commanded your forefathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, 'Listen to My voice, and do according to all which I command you; so you shall be My people, and I will be your God,' in order to confirm the oath which I swore to your forefathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day."'" Then I answered and said, "Amen, O Lord." 
    	Then, through the glorious work of Jesus of Nazareth, the Only Begotten Son of God, sent by the Heavenly Father as the single means of true and eternal salvation, this covenantal relationship was opened to any and all humanity who would but accept that freely offered salvation and living relationship as the family of God on high! 
	When Jesus and His mother were being blessed while He was teaching on this earth, He made it abundantly clear, in Luke 11:28, who was really the blessed among humanity. Luke 11:28, But He said, "On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God, and observe it." 
This was not any change in the focal point and the heart of God. Everything was still set in the reverent obedience of those who would listen to God and would obey His Word. His Word is not something that would enslave, as purported so falsely by the powers of this present deceitful age. 
Rather, it sets free the lives and the hearts of mankind. It is a protection from all the ills and the diseases that plague mankind in this day and age. Adherence to the wisdom and the teaching and the admonition of God are those means of Omnipotent safe-keeping and divine blessing in the every area of life on this earth. It is the on-going and continuous knowledge of the approval of God’s smile upon the lives of those who are so minded as to want to please Him in the course of the life that He has given us to live, no matter what our current physical or emotional condition may be.
Our Lord further detailed this for those who are willing to listen and to obey as recorded in John 15:13-15. Here, He was specifically addressing His disciples, but in the truth of His open heart, He is including you and me. We are His friends, yea even more deeply associated with Him, we are His brothers. He has brought us into the very family of God as those adopted sons and daughters who are the delight of Our Heavenly Father.
John 15:13-15, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. "You are My friends, if you do what I command you. "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 
As Christ laid down His life for you and for me, so are we to lay down our lives for the sake of the blessing and the honor and the reverence of our Lord God and for one another. This is in terms of setting aside our rights and our selfishness and our place as the focus of the universe! We need to learn, by the study of His Word, in most earnest and continual prayer, through complete obedience to the Holy Spirit, to live forth unto His glory and His praise on this earth. We are to live our lives in such a manner as to bring pleasure and delight to Our Beloved Heavenly Father. 
The Apostle Paul brings the fundamental aspect of this familial relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ to the forefront in Phil 2:3-11. Please open to it so we can rejoice and receive this very specific responsibility into our hearts and minds. 
Phil 2:3-11, Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As we do so, we will discover one of the great realities that is our blessing on this earth. When we choose to honor the Lord fully in the course of the life that we are willingly sacrificing unto Him, we will find that we are manifestly and richly lavished with the totality of all that we could ever want or need in Jesus Christ. There will be no dearth of delight and contentment and satisfaction as we sojourn on this earth. We will lose nothing of true value as alleged by the relentless hawkers and devious venders of this age. Rather, we will gain everything of joy and peace and righteousness and love in Our Savior and Lord. 
We conclude with the statement of the Apostle Paul in Phil 3:7-11, in which he expounds upon this truth. Everything that this world has to offer, no matter how magnificently it may be deceitfully presented in all its gilded and tawdry glory, has zilch eternal value. It is all rubbish in the light of the life that we have been given in our relationship with Jesus Christ. There is nothing that this world can put forth as of importance and value that can even vaguely compare to the riches and the richness of knowing God; Our Heavenly Father, and Our Lord and Savior, through the vibrantly working ministry of Our Precious, indwelling Holy Spirit! 
Phil 3:7-11, But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. So be it!
"Now it shall be, if you will diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the Lord your God. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 136:26. Give thanks to the God of heaven, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Amen.