Blessing, Prosperity and Rewards, Pt. 1
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Have you heard of prosperity Gospel? Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the idea that faithfulness to God leads to comfort, health, and financial reward. But is this idea biblical? Pastor Nick Gatzke pulls this assumption apart to expose the real blessings that come from God.
God really wants to bless you in your life. But he wants to bless you in a different way than most of us expect. Everyone who acknowledges the existence of God wants a blessing from him. And immediately when we think about blessing in this life, it is our propensity to turn our gaze toward things of material or physical nature as we go through our days. Because more money and greater health is something that we can feel and experience right now.
And in fact, a couple of years ago, Lifeway Research did a survey and they found that 26% of American churchgoers believe the statement to receive material blessings from God. I have to do something for God. Nearly 70% of American churchgoing Christians said, God wants me to prosper financially.
And we see again and again the messages of our time, but not just our time, really throughout. the last hundreds of years, a reoccurring theme, a reoccurring temptation that’s expressed in the prosperity preachers on television that you see today. Some people who have the largest churches in the United States and even the largest churches in the world. And the message that is repeatedly said again and again and again is God wants to bless you with health and wealth and rewards. All you have to do is something for him. And this becomes one of the core messages of Christianity for so many people.
The Bible does have a lot to say about prosperity and blessing and reward. A lot of good things to say about prosperity, blessing, and reward. But it doesn’t teach us what the prosperity preachers of our day teach us. In fact, it teaches us something that is even better.
And so the good news today is that God really, really wants to bless you. And the better news is that God really, really wants to bless you in ways that are infinitely more valuable to you than health, wealth, or prosperity. Today we continue in our series called From Old to New to You. This is a series in biblical theology in which we are tracing themes throughout the beginning of the Bible, through the Old Testament, into the New Testament, and describing what it means for you today. And today we talk about this theme or these themes of blessing, prosperity, and rewards. And the good news is that God wants to bless you. The better news is that he wants to bless you in ways that are more valuable than you want to be blessed. And we begin by looking at what blessing, prosperity, and reward looks like in the Old Testament. And it can be divided into three different categories. We see the category of the way that God has ordered the world, which is part of blessing and prosperity. We see the relationship that God has with people in a particular covenant or covenants in the Old Testament, and we see the greatest reward itself.
The first segment is the way that God orders the world as it relates to blessing and prosperity. We see that God in his infinite wisdom and under the banner of common grace has taught us things like Proverbs 12:24 which says the hand of the diligent will rule while the slothful will be put to forced labor or Proverbs 14:23 which says in all toil there is profit but mere talk tends only to poverty Or Proverbs 11:18, which says, “the wicked earns deceptive wages, but the one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward.” God has ordered the world in such a way as to provide reward and prosperity to many, many, many, many people, those who work hard.
Those who work hard get a reward for their work. If you prepare, If you gain specific skill, if you have opportunity, and then if that skill is applied, wage and even prosperity follows, and that is from God. I once heard a story about a father who inquired of his son when he planned to purchase a much-needed automobile. When God sends me my 100-fold, the son replied, And then he explained that he recently gave a gift of $50 to God. When God sends me my reward, I will have $5,000 and I can buy that car. And when he realized his son was serious, the father responded, son, God has already given you a reward. It comes every two weeks. It’s called your salary. God has ordered the world in such a way that when you work hard, blessing and material prosperity is what follows.
The second dynamic that we see about this in the Old Testament is the rewards that come from covenant faithfulness. In the Old Testament context of God making promises and engaging in a covenant with his people, Israel, prosperity and rewards are viewed as part of God’s favor or blessing upon those people. It’s an approval for their faithfulness. And we see this throughout the Old Testament in a variety of ways. Let me read you just a couple of passages. Psalm chapter 1, verses 1 to 3 says, who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water. It yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all he does, he prospers.
Psalm 112:1-5 talks about this type of favor and prosperity even more explicitly. It says this. It says, “Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments. His offspring will be mighty in the land. The generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with the man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice.” and so you see it again an example of what what happens when one acts or lives in righteousness and has riches and reward as the consequence And in fact in the Old Testament we see that Abraham and the patriarchs were mostly wealthy. David gained great wealth.
His son Solomon acquired even more wealth for himself. And that was a sign of God’s approval upon him. Israel’s nation inherited a land that was flowing with milk and honey, which means… and prosperity and fruitfulness for what God has for them. And we know that the covenants of God, the way that he chose to interact with his people in the Old Testament, have stipulations attached to them and blessings or curses attached to them. When people are faithful and obedient, God blesses them. And part of that blessing is a measure of reward, even material reward that followed. This wasn’t always the case.
Ecclesiastes chapter 8 tells us that there is a vanity in the world, that sometimes you look at the world and you see somebody who’s righteous and they have the standing or even the prosperity of one who is wicked, or one who’s wicked, who’s not following God, who has the prosperity of one who should be righteous. But generally speaking in the Old Testament, we see that God displays blessing in a variety of ways, and one of those ways is through material prosperity. What does this mean for you right now? Does this mean that you can expect riches from God if you are faithful to him?
This is where the prosperity preachers of our day get it wrong. And this is where so many of us are tempted to get it wrong as well, because who doesn’t want the promise of riches in your house? All of us do. And yet, at the very same time, we’re tempted to get it wrong when we apply the promises of God, which are in the context of the old covenant, to people, us, who live under a new covenant. The promises of God with regard to material prosperity in the Old Testament are not applicable to you and to me in the same way today. Sorry, it is what it is. If I promise to buy my children a car as a reward for them graduating college, then this isn’t a promise for every one of my people, every one of my tribe, for generation after generation after generation. That promise of material blessing is for specific people in specific relationship to me and a specific time of proximity to me. God does not relate to people under the same covenant today as he did in the Old Testament. He relates to us now in a new covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so here’s the principle. God blesses obedience always. God always blesses the obedience of his people. And in the Old Testament, some of that blessing came in the form of material prosperity and reward. But even in the Old Testament with that kind of blessing, you know what the greatest reward is? The greatest reward is God himself.
God made the covenant with Abraham and he promised blessing and prosperity and in the land. In Genesis 15:1, this is what he says. He says, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. I am your shield. And because I am, you will have reward. God himself is of the greatest value, the greatest consequence, and as such to be found in his favor is the greatest reward for anyone in faith or faithfulness to him.
It was God who gave Abraham and Sarah a son when they were well past their age. It was God who empowered Moses to speak when he ministered to him at the burning bush. It was God who sent manna from heaven for his people in the wilderness. It was God who dropped the walls of Jericho as the people marched around it. It was God who brought Elijah to his eternal reward as he took him to heaven in the chariot. It was God who gave Daniel the courage to withstand the lion’s den. Or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego the courage to withstand and to be delivered from the fiery furnace. God is the greatest reward. Faithfulness leads to blessing and reward, and God himself is the greatest of those rewards. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” When you place your affections upon the Lord, the psalmist says, who is the most valuable? He gives you what you really want. He gives you what you desire. But when you place your affections on the Lord, you don’t desire the things that you used to desire. You now desire different things.
Because you change, your priorities are sharpened, your vision is clarified, you come in line with what the Lord himself is delighting in. You no longer ruminate on the need to have more money. You think of something greater. You’re no longer driven by comfort or ease in life. You see something of a greater consequence. You no longer find your greatest delight in needing the next exciting experience. The most invigorating thing is the Lord himself.
Blessing comes from obedience. And God himself is the greatest reward. That’s a glimpse into the Old Testament. When you shift gears to the New Testament and you think about material blessing, prosperity, and reward, a different picture is painted.
In the New Testament, we see that no longer is earthly prosperity a sign of God’s blessing. It’s not a sign of his favor. Wealth is not a sign of obedience. Prosperity is promised to the people of God, but it is promised only in eternity.
And in fact, not only is earthly prosperity not promised, at times it is set up as the example of a hindrance toward your relationship with God. Let me give you one example of how it’s not promised or an example of how it’s not modeled. The incarnation of Jesus is a reversal of prosperity for him. This is what it says in 2 Corinthians 8:9. It says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Jesus left the prosperity of heaven to condescend to the poverty of earth. that someday you might be rich, but not rich on earth, rich because you inherit the prosperity of heaven.
The Sermon on the Mount points to the fact that poverty actually leads to eternal prosperity. If you have a Bible and can open quickly, turn to Matthew chapter 5, and let me paint this picture for you. In Matthew chapter 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points to the fact that poverty points to eternal prosperity. And he says this, seeing that the crowds went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and he taught them saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Jesus teaches that the ones who are blessed are the ones who are meek and hungry and lowly in spirit and who long for God, even in the midst of their difficult circumstances. And blessing from God is not primarily found in comfort, though that’s what we desire. That blessing from God is actually seen in the Sermon on the Mount when you are persecuted. opposite of comfort.
Perhaps most strikingly, we see this displayed in Jesus’ interaction with the rich young ruler in Mark chapter 10. This was a man who was a follower of Yahweh. He was righteous, at least by his own accord, because he did the deeds of the law, and a first century Jew would look upon him and say, that man is blessed by God. He’s following God faithfully, and as a result, he is wealthy and prosperous in his ways. And when he comes to Jesus and says, what must I do to be saved? Jesus walks him through the law, and he says, I’ve done all of that, I’ve done all of that, I’ve done all of that. And Jesus says, well, then go sell everything you have and give it away to the poor. And the man goes away, drops his head, and Jesus responds, how difficult. It will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. He would say this, and then he would go on to say that all things, even that thing, is possible with God. Jesus is not decrying wealth as such.
He is highlighting the obstacle that wealth brings, which is self-sufficiency. The constant desire for comfort and the ability to have it that wealth provides. And God can even overcome this and save people. And so earthly prosperity is no longer a sign of God’s approval and it’s no longer a sign of God’s reward. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t give it.
Some of you here today have a lot of money. And that doesn’t mean that God hasn’t given you your money. He indeed has. But it does mean that you are not more blessed than the person who has less money than you. And in fact, your wealth creates for you some unique obstacles and temptations towards self-sufficiency. It could be good for you or it could be bad for you. But the consistent message of the New Testament is that prosperity and reward are coming. for the people of God, for all of you who believe in the Lord Jesus, but they’re coming for you in eternity.
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This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
