3.082 What Do Blessings From the Lord Look Like

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." Do you know what blessings from the Lord look like in your life? We have wrapped up our reading from the book of Genesis. We're already through our first book in the Old Testament, and we move into our readings this week in Exodus chapters 1 through 6.

It's interesting because I don't think we realize, or at least I know I don't feel like we're going to be able to read the book of Genesis. Sometimes the Lord goes way up at like the 50,000-foot level, and then other times he goes way down into the weeds, and we zero in on a specific time and place. Genesis now has covered, oh, just over 2000 years of history in those fifty chapters, somewhere around there.

I'm not going to be an expert scholar in terms of the timeline of the Old Testament. Just to get us a general idea, several thousand years here, 2-plus years have passed. And then we have this end of Genesis and beginning of Exodus moment where another, seemingly, some Bible scholars will say, somewhere around three to 400 years pass.

The Bible is established in the book of Exodus, and it grows. We have a mid-2500-ish, maybe 3000-year history that has occurred before we even get to the book of Exodus. Now, of course, we are going to shift gears with the book of Exodus being the primary.

We're going to focus on the children of Israel escaping from Egypt and from Pharaoh in that day and time. It's inside of that story that we get the front end of it that I want to start our verse for today and really the framing of the book of Exodus at all. Our verse is in Exodus chapter 1, verse 7, and it says this when describing the children of Israel: "And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled with them." My friends, can you see the results of the blessings that come from the Lord to the children of Israel here in this single verse?

I think sometimes we tend to look at different ways the Lord blesses his people, and this one I think is a great way for us to kind of look at our own lives. We're fruitful, we increase abundantly. These are the ways the Lord blesses us.

It's not an exhaustive list by any means, but I think it's a great list for us to kind of build off of. Fruitful, increase abundantly. I've been in the MTC for about 27 years since I entered the MTC and got ready to go to Mongolia.

When I headed over there, Mongolia itself is roughly two-thirds the size of the United States. Mongolia, the country, sits from somewhere around Los Angeles to Chicago in size. The Lord blesses us through our covenant keeping.

He did so with the children of Israel. He does so continually today with us. I hope that you and I can take an opportunity to see those blessings, see the areas in our lives where we have been increased abundantly with the hand of the Lord and continue to see that growth as we go forward.

That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.