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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christians' armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Clarifying Abraham’s Blessing

Matthew’s Gospel And Fulfillment

Blessed To Bless: Your Next Step

Closing Charge And Invitation

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All right, day four, Galatians chapter three, verses fifteen to eighteen. The Bible says, To give it a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say unto offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ. This is what I mean. The law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. This promise gets thrown a lot around a lot today. Sometimes it gets kind of translated into, I will bless those who bless Israel. That's not exactly what it says. Genesis chapter twelve, the Bible says this. Verse 1. Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Well, again, Paul makes it very clear that blessing is through the person and work of Jesus. He says, I'm not just blessing offsprings, I'm blessing the offspring. He's talking about Jesus. Again, he makes a point, Paul does, that this blessing, this promise, precedes the law of Moses by 430 years. By the way, this is just a one-off thing, that when that when Abraham encounters Melchizedek, who was a messenger from God, the first thing that Abraham does is he falls down and he gives back to God a tenth or a 10%. So the tithe preceded the law by 430 years. A part of what Paul wants us to know is this is that God is a promise-keeping God and God always keeps his promises. And so what the what the nation of Israel, particularly by the time Jesus shows up on the scene in the first century, what they had missed is the so that of the blessing. He says, I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. And then the nation, by the time Jesus is walking around, they're like, Cool, we are blessed. For what? Just to be blessed? No. We are chosen. Cool, for what? Just to be chosen? No. So that you will be a blessing. And so what Matthew does in his gospel, we're teaching through this right now at the Church of 1122. What Matthew was going to do in his gospel, Matthew is a man that was born as an insider. He was born Jewish, and yet by his own willful disobedience, he chooses to be an outsider. He was a tax collector. He exacted money from his people to give it to Rome to abuse his people. And yet Jesus sees through all that and calls Matthew to be one of his very own followers. And when he has an encounter with Jesus, it changes everything about his life. And so when Matthew writes his gospel, what he's trying to connect here is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. That Jesus is the greater Israel, that Jesus is the greater Moses, that Jesus came so that the whole world will be blessed. We see this all throughout the book. We see that the Gospel of Matthew begins with three wise men, it's not three, some wise men who we call kings, kings coming from afar, and it ends with taking the gospel of the kingdom to every tribe, tongue, and nation. This was the whole point. Now let me make this practical for you today. You say, well, what does this have to do with me today? The reality is, is through Christ, you have been blessed if you were in Christ. That he saved you, he redeemed you. But he didn't save you just so that you would be saved. He rescued you that you may become a part of the rescue team. He rescued you and saved you and then sent you so the whole world may know him. So are you a blessing to this world? Are you a conduit of the blessing of God that you experience through the gospel of Jesus Christ? Or are you just a cul de sac of Christianity trying to soak up all the benefits for yourself? You see, we like Abraham have been blessed with this blessing, and we have been blessed to be a blessing. So if you are a believer, if you are a Christian, if you have been redeemed by Christ, if you have been rescued by Jesus, then be a part of the rescue team. Be salt, be light, be a city on a hill. Go therefore and make disciples everywhere you go, teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then here's the real blessing. When you do that, Jesus says, and lo, I will be with you to the very end of the age.

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