The Blessing Is a Garment: Wear Your Coat of Many Colours
Dr RJ Sing, 1 hr 5 min, from Living in the Blessing
Originally recorded as “Living in the Blessing (19 October 2014)”
Sermon outline
The blessing of the Lord is God's own creative power that you wear like a garment, and a tither who trades survival thinking for conquering thinking will go forward and wax great as Isaac did, even in famine.
Main text
- Genesis 26:1-4
- Genesis 26:12-16
- Proverbs 10:22
Opening
He congratulates a young singer and a new graduate, reads a letter from a woman helped by the Faith Chronicles, and reminds the church that a second congregation watches on television and live streaming. He then urges everyone not to miss Wednesdays, because he is preaching the series Living in the Blessing on Wednesdays and Sundays and each session picks up where the last one stopped.
Move from information to revelation
A resident pastor has to wait on God for a fresh word every week, and it is each believer's responsibility to feed on it. Knowledge of the Word is information, but you need a now word out of the Word that you act on until there is a manifestation. The best word you can ever get is the Bible, and preaching from someone sent by God carries impartation that changes lives.
Illustration: Travelling preachers can preach one message fifty times until they need no notes, but a resident pastor must prepare a new word all the time. He also warns against chasing personal prophecies and dreams, which he says can become like charismatic witchcraft.
“There's a big difference between went preachers and sent preachers.”
- Matthew 4:4
- Hosea 4:6
- Luke 4:18
- Romans 10:14-15
The blessing of the Lord is a garment you put on
Reading Proverbs 10:22 for the first time was a wow moment for him, much as the word anointing had gripped him for years until he knew that he was anointed. He came to see the blessing as a garment, a coat of many colours, which means a grace for many things. Joseph had no experience of prison, of running a household or of government, yet the grace on him made him ruler of the land. He adds that praying for people will not change them unless their minds are renewed.
Illustration: Joseph could not put prison, Potiphar's house or politics on his CV, yet in one moment Pharaoh set him over the land. He also pictures his preaching as a memory stick: what took him hours to receive, the church can download in minutes.
“If I had the blessing, boy, that's all I needed.”
- Proverbs 10:22
- Acts 10:38
- Mark 16:20
- Proverbs 23:7
- Romans 12:2
- 2 Corinthians 10:5
- Philippians 2:5
- Genesis 37:3
- Genesis 41:39-41
God's word to Isaac in famine: I will be with you and I will bless you
In a famine Isaac heard God's voice, obeyed it and stayed in the land God named instead of going down to Egypt. God's promise to him is God's word to the church that morning, and he explains bless as empower you to prosper.
“God is saying to you this morning, I will be with you and I will bless you.”
- Genesis 26:1-4
Isaac sowed in that land: the tithe is a contract with God
He did not grow up a Christian and had to learn tithing, which he came to see as covenant: a tenth given to honour God, with the other nine tenths blessed. You do not tithe to please the pastor but to contract with God, a contract signed in the blood of Jesus, the High Priest who receives the tithe in heaven and sends angels to open doors and restore what is lost. That land is your church, your storehouse, and he believes not only for the hundredfold but for the thousandfold.
Illustration: He likens the spirit that twists people's finances to arthritis, which straightens out when you decide to tithe. A tither rises like coffee creamer, or the foam on a cappuccino, instead of crawling like a crab at the bottom of the barrel, and is an eagle, not a chicken in a coop.
“You give your tithe to contract with God.”
- Genesis 26:12
- Hebrews 7:8
- Malachi 3:11
- Mark 4:20
The man waxed great, and the Philistines envied him
Watch the order of events: Isaac first sowed, then the Lord blessed him, and he went forward and grew until he became very great. When you start to do well, expect envy, and do not be thrown by it. You do not need to steal to get ahead, you only need the blessing.
Illustration: Pull in at work with a new car and colleagues will say how nice it is, then wonder in the office what you are stealing to afford it.
“Get used to this: when you start to do well, everyone will envy you.”
- Genesis 26:12-16
From salvation to transformation, from surviving to conquering
Change only comes when you function independently of the world's system and in the system of the kingdom of God. Do not stay stuck at salvation and goose bumps in prayer: grow until you function like Jesus and transform other lives. Leave the survival mentality for a conquering one, apply for the post without apology, and stop believing that the answer must come from overseas. Seek first the kingdom, because God is not against you having all these things.
Illustration: An elephant chained to a pole keeps walking the same small circle and never realises it has grown strong enough to break the chain. Instead of running from conference to conference, he says, go to the beach and build your dreams, then go back to the office and start sending out your CV and applying for contracts.
“It's your mentality that's crippling you.”
- Matthew 6:33
What the blessing is
Most people think the blessing simply means that God gives us his gifts, but it is the gifts and the creative power behind them. The Hebrew idea of blessed, he says, is being strengthened, with our weakness made up for by God's strength. It is raw, pure spiritual power that turns any terrible situation into a Garden of Eden when it is released by faith, and it has not worked fully for us only because we have not lived in the revelation of it. We must learn to activate it.
“It includes the gifts and the creative power behind that.”
- Proverbs 10:22
- Numbers 6:24-26
Sow at a higher level: the Copelands' aeroplane
He reads a testimony of how Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, needing a bigger aeroplane and money for a television project, were pointed to Luke 6:38 and sowed the plane they had into another ministry. Days later a large cheque came in, and they went on sowing aircraft from then on. He asks the church to think on that level, even sowing a car into the church instead of trading it in, and then reads a prophecy given by Kenneth Copeland about God's table of abundance.
Illustration: The plane the Copelands gave away was worth three quarters of their ministry's assets at the time.
“Why are you putting fences along your imaginations?”
- Luke 6:38
- Psalm 23:4-5
- Deuteronomy 28:2
Putting it into practice
- Be in church on Wednesdays as well as Sundays, and keep a steady diet of the Word.
- Decide today to be a tither, as a contract with God and not to please the pastor.
- Trade the survival mentality for a conquering one: apply for the post, send out your CV, build your dream.
- Do not be thrown when people envy your progress.
- When a word jumps in your spirit, trap it with a seed.
Closing
He prophesies that the church will stretch to the east, west, north and south, increase and wax great, and that no devil will stop them. He teaches them always to trap a word with a seed, saying the biggest changes in his own life came when he sowed, and calls everyone to become a tither. He ends with a prophetic act: each person tells a neighbour to move up and make space for the great things that are coming.
Declarations he led
- I'm a tither.
- I'm a multi-millionaire, growing to the east, left, north, south, waxing great. God blessing me, causing his face to shine upon me, causing me to flourish in the land of the living. I'm expanding each and every day. This world needs me. South Africa needs me. This province needs me. Somebody's life is attached to the other side of my blessing.
- You're God's key personnel.
- I'm growing. Make space for my millions. Make space for great things that's going to happen in my life.
In his words
- “We have to move away from information to revelation.”
- “There's a big difference between went preachers and sent preachers.”
- “I started to realize that that word blessing is a garment.”
- “We're not talking about surviving, we're talking about thriving.”
- “Always trap a word with the seed.”
Every scripture in this message
- Matthew 4:4
- Hosea 4:6
- Luke 4:18
- Romans 10:14-15
- Genesis 26:1-4
- Proverbs 10:22
- Acts 10:38
- Mark 16:20
- Proverbs 23:7
- Romans 12:2
- 2 Corinthians 10:5
- Philippians 2:5
- Genesis 37:3
- Genesis 41:39-41
- Genesis 26:12-16
- Hebrews 7:8
- Malachi 3:11
- Mark 4:20
- Matthew 6:33
- Numbers 6:24-26
- Luke 6:38
- Psalm 23:4-5
- Deuteronomy 28:2
- James 2:26