Imperial Valley Christian Center

“To endue,” means to give or to put on, I like to say about fecundity that it means, lots of children, and longevity means, long life. So, according to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament,

To bless in the OT means to give power for success, prosperity, lots of children and long life.  

 

The Blessing of Abraham

It took me a while to make the connection to the story of Abraham, but eventually I saw it. God had indeed promised to give Abraham power to to get wealth, power to become rich, when He promised to bless Abraham. Here’s the story I was looking for but couldn’t find:

1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12: 1-3 NIV)

The story I was looking for, the incident I’d been looking for, was right there in those words “…I will bless thee…” 

Let’s substitute the definition for the word “bless” to see it a little better.

1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will give you power for success, prosperity, lots of children and long life; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

When God promised to bless Abraham he was promising to give him power for success and prosperity.Whooo hooooo! That’s it.

That’s the promise Deuteronomy 8:18 was talking about. That's the story I had so much trouble finding.

 

Blessed means…

You don’t have to take the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament’s word for it either, you can see that’s what blessed means just by the way it’s used in the Bible. Here’s some good examples:

Blessed means everything you do prospers.

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers 2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. 

The first two verses tell how to become the blessed one, how to get the blessing, the third, what it means to be blessed.

3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:1-3 NIV)

Blessed means wealth and riches are in your house.

Praise the Lord. Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands.

Who gets blessed? Those who find great delight in God’s commands. In other words, they know God’s law, meditate on God’s law, keep God’s law. Then it tells us what it means to be blessed.

2 Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. 3 Wealth and riches are in their houses…

In whose houses? In the houses of those who fear the lord, in the houses of the blessed.

 …and their righteousness endures forever. (Psalm 112:1-3 NIV)

Righteousness doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context. I’m pretty sure that’s because it’s mistranslated.  The Hebrew word translated “righteousness,” is “tzedekah” and here it’s a synonym (Okay, it’s really a metonym.) for blessed. So verse three means something  like, their blessedness or their blessing endures forever, i.e. it never runs out. We’ll be discussing that in more detail a little later.

Blessed means prosperity will be yours.

Psalm 128:1 Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him. 2 You will eat the fruit of your labor blessings and prosperity will be yours

Here's the “lots of children” part of the blessing.

3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

4 Yes, this will be the blessing for the man who fears the Lord. (Psalm 128:1-4)

Abraham's blessing.

Blessed is used to mean power for success and prosperity in the stories of Abraham and Isaac. Here’s Abraham’s servant describing what God has done for his master.

So he said, I am Abrahams servant. 35 The Lord has blessed my master abundantly… 

Then he describes what the abundant blessing did :

…and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys. 36 My masters wife Sarah has borne him a son in her old age, and he has given him everything he owns. (Genesis 24:34)

What did it mean that the Lord had blessed Abraham abundantly? It meant that God had made Abraham wealthy. 

Isaac's blessing. 

Here’s the same thing in Isaac’s story:

Now there was a famine in the land —besides the previous famine in Abrahams time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live.  

3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham… (Genesis 26:1

God tells Isaac to stay in the land and not go down to Egypt in spite of the famine. The famine was probably the result of drought. The sensible thing is to go down to Egypt because there water comes via irrigation, from the Nile, which makes Egypt immune to local droughts. 

 But Isaac obeys God and stays.  

6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar…

God had promised to bless Isaac if he stayed in the land and here’s what happened:

12 Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him. 13 The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. 14 He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. (Genesis 26:1-14 NIV) 

The blessing of the LORD makes rich.

That “bless” means,“power to produce wealth,” is so plain the writer of Proverbs puts it this way:

The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil for it. (Proverbs 10:22 NIV)

I like the NIV translation, “without painful toil for it.” In other words, God’s prosperity, the prosperity that God brings, isn’t based on your efforts. God’s prospering you is not dependent upon your hard work, or your abilities. Can you see how the anxious widow that George Muller mentioned would be out of luck if God’s promise to prosper was dependent upon her efforts? Can you see how the businessmen and the professionals mentioned by Müller refused to behave like Christians because they tied their prosperity to their own efforts? Can you see that it isn’t lack of painful toil that keeps people from prosperity and success?
 

The blessing of Abraham

So there it was. The story I’d been looking for, the story where God promiseed to give Abraham power to get wealth, was the story of God promising to bless Abraham.  

At this point it seemed pretty clear to me that God wasn’t just, not opposed to our prosperity, but God actively desired His people to become rich and successful. God was so in favor of prosperity that He promised to give power for prosperity and success to those who followed him. 

But where was the prosperity? Where was the wealth?