Missed Blessings — E.A. Johnston

I like to take long walks along the seashore, it's relaxing and reinvigorating. Perhaps some of you like to walk along the beach. When I'm walking along the beach occasionally, I will come across a piece of driftwood sloshing up against the shore.

The tide will take it back and forth and have its way with that helpless piece of driftwood. That piece of driftwood is good for nothing. It's too waterlogged to burn for fire and it's too chewed up to make anything out of it worthwhile.

The Driftwood Christian Life

I believe I can make an analogy between the Christian life and that piece of driftwood. It's my strong conviction that if a Christian is not continually going forward with God in a deeper and more intimate walk with God, then that person will move away from God and their affections.

They will still say with their lips that they love Jesus. They will still serve Him in some regular capacity, but their heart isn't right with God and deep down they know it. They are like that piece of driftwood which is useless in that condition, useless for God.

David's Missed Blessings in 2 Samuel 12

A person who is in that backslidden condition will miss blessings from God because of their disobedience. I believe I can back up this observation with my Bible friends. Let me read you a portion from 2 Samuel 12 in regard to King David and how God revealed some important things to David.

After David was brought into conviction of sin by Nathan the prophet. Let me read you verses 7 -9. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man, thus saith the Lord God of Israel. I anointed thee king over Israel, and delivered thee out of the hand of Saul, and gave thee thy master's house and thy master's wives unto thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah.

And if that had been too little, I would moreover have given thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in His sight? I will stop there. Notice how God is reminding David of all the previous blessings upon him from the hand of God.

He tells him, I gave you this, I gave you that. I delivered you here and there and blessed you here and there. But I want to draw our attention, friends, to the word of God as spoken through his prophet Nathan to David his servant.

I would moreover have given thee such and such things. It is the such and such things of further blessings that God wanted to bestow upon David, but David missed out on these blessings because of his sin.

The Warning of Missed Blessings

The title of my message this evening, friends, is Missed Blessings. My text can be found in 2 Samuel chapter 6. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. This is a matter of great importance, and this subject should grip us with eternity because it concerns how each of us can be in danger of missing out on God's best for us by not pursuing him more and pursuing God in a closer walk with him.

For if we do not continually press forward with God against the tide of this world and our flesh, then we become like that piece of driftwood going further away from God and being in danger of becoming useless to God.

We end up with the missed blessings that God wanted to give us but could not because of our sin. I want each of us to pay close attention to this passage of Scripture, friends, and the message it has for each of us.

David Brings the Ark to Zion

It is the story about David bringing the ark to Zion and how he missed a blessing from the Lord for his disobedience to God and how he allowed the ark to be carried. Let me begin reading from verse 1.

Again David gathered together all the chosen men of Israel, 30 ,000. And David arose and went with all the people that were with him from Baal of Judah to bring up from Hans the ark of God, whose name is called by the name of the Lord of hosts that dwelleth between the cherubims.

And they set the ark of God upon a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abednadab, that was in Gibeah and Uzzah and Ohio. The sons of Abednadab drove the new cart and they brought it out of the house of Abednadab, which was in Gibeah, accompanying the ark of God, and Ohio went before the ark.

And David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner of instruments made of firwood, even on harps and on psalteries and on timbrels and on cornets and on cymbals. And when they came to Nachan's threshing floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it.

And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error. And there he died by the ark of God. And David was displeased because the Lord had made a breach upon Uzzah, and he called the name of the place Perez Uzzah to this day.

And David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, How shall the ark of the Lord come to me? So David would not remove the ark of the Lord unto him into the city of David. But David carried it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite.

And the ark of the Lord continued in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months. And the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and all his household. And it was told King David, saying, The Lord hath blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that pertaineth unto him because of the ark.

Familiarity, Disobedience, and Missed Favor

Well, I want to stop there, friends. And I want us to see from this passage something that should strike fear in our own hearts. And it is this. David knew better. He knew that the ark of God should be borne upon the shoulders of the priests.

We see this in Numbers 7, 9. But instead, they were instructed to carry the ark in a cart or carriage. They put the ark upon a common thing. And even Uzzah the priest became too familiar with the ark because he'd been around it so long.

And his familiarity with it usurped his reverence to a holy God. And he touched it when he had no business doing that. And he paid the price with his death. And David paid a price as well and missed blessings for when the ark was out of his possession and in the house of Obed-Edom, it was his household that received the favor of blessings from God.

David missed the blessing. And I believe, friends, that this can happen to a believer today. We get too familiar with our Christianity and take it for granted. We begin to take God for granted. We back away from God through disobedience and sin.

And we soon become like that piece of driftwood just sloshing along in life while God is out using somebody else to bestow his favors and blessings upon. If you're not a clear channel, then God cannot flow through you, friend, by his Holy Spirit because sin and disobedience blocks the Holy Spirit.

There's an old expression, sin will keep you away from the book. And the book will keep you away from sin. And when we drift away from God, then we drift into sin. God can't use us as he wants to or bless us as he desires to.

He will just have to use someone else. I want to read us a poem which speaks of the subject in relation to eternity and the Bema Seat when we stand before Jesus Christ when our race has ended and he opens up the book of our life and reviews it.

The Bema Seat and Repentance

Let me read it to you now, friends. It's called His Plan for Me. And when I finish reading it, I'd like for each of us to go to a time of silence before the Almighty and ask him if we have become a piece of driftwood.

If we have, then to grant us the grace to repent and turn back to him in a red-hot love relationship with him so he can begin using us again and putting us in a position to receive as many blessings which he wants to give us.

Yielding to God's Plan

Here now is that striking poem. When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ and it shows his plan for me, the plan of my life as it might have been, had he had his way and I see how I blocked him here and checked him there and I would not yield my will, would there be grief in my Savior's eyes, grief though he loves me still?

Would he have me rich and I stand there poor, stripped of all but his grace, while memory runs like a haunted thing down the paths I cannot retrace? Lord of the years that are left of me, I give them to thy hand.

Take me and break me and mold me to the pattern that thou hast planned.