Isaiah 56:2
“Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.”
To be blessed by God, I would imagine, is the desire of every person. A person knows that if they are blessed of God then certainly life will be a joy to live. But what does it mean to be blessed and how can we get blessed by God?
The word "blessed" means "to be happy." In other words, when God says "Blessed is the man," God is saying "Happy is the man." The man who does what God tells us to do in this verse will be a happy person who is in favor with God. So how can you become a blessed man? God says in this verse there are two ways you can be blessed.
First of all, God says the person that "keepeth the sabbath from polluting it..." The Sabbath was a very important day for the Jew. It was a day that was to be set aside for the LORD as this was His day. God did not want any work to be done on this day. God wanted His people to spend this day thinking of Him. Today the Sabbath has been replaced with Sunday. We do not observe the ordinances of the Sabbath because they were done away with at Calvary. But we do celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every Sunday. We call this the LORD's Day. I am still the old fashioned type of person who believes God will bless those that keep Sunday as a day to go to church. Our society has taken Sundays and polluted our Sundays with entertainment. If we want God to bless us then I believe we should still make Sundays a day to go to church. Don't be the type of person who looks for reasons to stay out of church, look for reasons to be in church.
Secondly, God says He will bless the person that keeps their "hand from doing any evil." In other words, God's blessings are upon the person who does everything they can to try not to hurt people. I know you think that there are not many people like this, but the truth is many of us do things that hurt people every day. For instance, when you try to get revenge with someone, you are trying to do evil to someone. Let me even get a little more personal, when you try to cut someone off on the road that cut you off, you are doing evil to someone. When a spouse throws something up from the past in an argument, they are being evil. When brothers and sisters tattle on each other to get them into trouble, they are trying to hurt each other. When people gossip about someone, they are trying to hurt an individual. Evil is doing anything that would hurt someone. If you want God to bless you then avoid anything that would be evil or hurtful to someone.
In this verse we find a simple formula for how we can receive the blessings of God. To put it simply, to be blessed of God we should make sure that we have a right relationship with God and also have a right relationship with man. When you do this, your life will be blessed.
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