And
if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all
his commandments that I (Moses) command you today, the Lord your God will set
you high above all the nations of the earth…
Blessed
shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall
be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your
cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall
be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in,
and blessed shall you be when you go out… The Lord will command the blessing on
you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the
land that the Lord your God is giving you. The Lord will establish you as a
people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you… And the Lord will make you
abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your
livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore
to your fathers to give you.
The
Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your
land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend
to many nations, but you shall not borrow…if you obey the commandments of the
Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, and if you
do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right
hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
Deuteronomy 28:1-14
Prosperity preachers often refer to Deuteronomy 28 to
illustrate how God promises material wealth as the reward for obedience,
particularly the obedience of giving. The passage quoted above certainly makes
the blessing that God promises sound good but it needs to be balanced with the
rest of the chapter, which details the sorts of chastening and punishment the
people could expect if they were disobedient.
It is important to remember that the promise of both
blessing and punishment was given to the nation of Israel, not to individuals,
and the Torah, the ‘Old Testament Law’ that governed their way of life, had a
lot to say about not hoarding wealth and doing good to the people who were less
well off. If people began to hoard material wealth for themselves, to indulge
their own extravagance while others suffered, that would be disobedience and
the blessings would be forfeit.
Or to put it another way, the blessings were to be
kept in circulation for the benefit of the entire community, not hoarded by
individuals. This is why we are considering the funding of churches and other
‘Christian’ organisations alongside giving, because when Christians stop sowing
it is not only their personal situations that suffer but the activities of
churches and the many ‘Christian’ organisations that seek to give practical
help to people in need.
_____________________________________________
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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