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Issue link: http://magazine.kcm.org/i/1439385
The phrase 'it shall come to pass' in Hebrew means there was no doubt about this. It was going to happen. If the Israelites diligently hearkened to God’s voice and obeyed Him, it was inevitable—they would be blessed. God would come down in their midst in His manifested glory (Exodus 19:18). He would see to it that they perpetually prospered in everything they did. No enemy would be able to stand before them. They’d be the head and not the tail. “All people of the earth,” God said, “shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee” (Deuteronomy 28:10). God held nothing back from Israel! If they would let Him be God in their lives, He would be everything to them. They could have Him in total manifestation in their lives and be His precious treasure. We think of precious treasure in terms of material things, like gold. But God makes streets out of gold. His treasures are His obedient people. And the Israelites could have been those people. His only requirement was that they hearken diligently to His voice—that they take heed, listen to Him carefully and attentively with intense effort—and do what He said. Jesus Had To Fulfill the Same Conditions Those were the conditions God laid out in order for the Israelites to experience His glory and blessings; they were the same conditions He laid out for Adam and Eve; and those conditions have never changed. Even Jesus had to fulfill them when He was on earth. God’s blessings and power didn’t just fall on Him automatically because He was God’s Son. They manifested in His life because He hearkened diligently to God’s Word. Even as a child, at 12 years old, Jesus knew more about the Word than the religious scholars of His day. (See Luke 2:47.) As a grown man in ministry, He sometimes spent entire nights praying and hearing from God about what He was to do. That’s how Jesus lived His entire life! Everything He did was in obedience to God’s Word. “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me,” He said. “I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things…for I do always those things that please him” (John 5:30, 8:28-29). If Jesus had to live that way to walk in God’s best, then for you and me to walk in God’s best, we must live that way, too. What’s more, we should want to live that way because that’s where victory is. It’s where the manifestation of God is. It’s how we walk unhindered in the glory of God—by walking in obedience to Him. I’m not saying we have to be perfect, or that we have to earn God’s blessings. Jesus earned God’s blessings for us, and we receive them by faith. But since faith works by love (Galatians 5:6), for our faith to be strong we must walk not only in love toward one another but toward God. (See Mark 12:30.) We walk in love toward God by giving Him our hearts and by obedience. By reverencing Him enough to hear and heed what He says. “But Gloria,” you might say, “I don’t know everything God said in the Bible! I don’t know everything He wants me to do.” God understands that. He realizes you’re still learning and growing in your knowledge of Him. We all are. He just asks that we walk in the light of what we do know and continue to seek more light. If we stick with that program, we’ll be His precious treasure and we’ll keep progressing. We’ll keep advancing from faith to faith and from glory to glory. 28 : BVOV