5/27- “Does God Ever Bless?” Pentecost/Memorial Day Zeph. 1:12-18; Psalm 1 5/27/07
One of the questions we ask is why does God allow bad? But a question that is a precursor to that is, “Does God ever cause good?” Does God bless, favor, watch over, protect? There is an interesting story of George Washington that might fit in well this Memorial Day weekend. It is of his service as a colonel in the French and Indian War upon an attack upon Ft. Duquesne (now Pittsburgh). Before going into battle, his mother tried to persuade his superior not to send him, and to persuade him not to go. Washington told his mother: "The God [Jesus Christ] to whom you commended me, madam, when I set out upon a more perlious errand, defended me from harm, and I trust He will do so now. Do not you?" General Braddock ordered his British and Virginia soldiers to stay in columns in the middle but the French and Indians hid behind trees. 1,000 of 1,459 British and Americans were killed that day, only 30 French and Indians were killed- it was the worst defeat on American soil for years. Washington had two horses shot out from underneath him, had a gold medallion shot off of him, and four bullet holes in his coat. An Indian chief later said they were aiming at him and that one Indian said that “this man was not born to be killed by a bullet.” After the battle Washington said, “By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!" This story is found in most textbooks until 1934. George McGovern, once said that he was grateful to have survived WWII, but he lost faith in God’s protection when his godly gunner who was a great guy and going to be a minister died in the war. What do you do when God clearly protects one, but doesn’t protect another? Does that mean you give up on asking God for protection? If I was in a war, I would be praying hard for God’s protection.
One of the key questions that we must recognize is How do we Obtain God’s blessing?
There is a lot of quasi religion out there that we make up on our own, that is found on magazine racks in the grocery store line. Let me go through these quickly-
1) Some say, “We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.”- if we get ahead, it’s all up to us. But, this discredits, teachers, parents, friends, and is mental plagiarism. It takes glory from God
2) Some say “It is all by luck.” But this discounts work, and eliminates God having anything to do with it. Luck is another way of saying it is all by accident with no meaning/hope.
3) Some say, “Getting ahead in life doesn’t really matter or is an illusion.” This is eastern philosophy at its worst. I believed this in my hippie phase in the 70’s. It keeps people from helping the poor, and values naval gazing.
4) Some say, “It makes no sense at all. The wicked prosper and the good are cursed.” This view encourages stagnation. God does nothing good/bad.
5) Some say, “All blessings from God are spiritual.”- we should not pray for physical things.
5) Some say, “The blessing is from God and it is always spiritual and sometimes physical.”
We may think that the opposite of blessing is cursing. But at least in cursing God is doing something. Today, people assume God doesn’t do anything. In the 1960’s they called this the death of God theology. They said God doesn’t do anything, so why believe in God? That’s a good point. If your God doesn’t care, or doesn’t help, why worship Him? Hebrews says clearly, “If anyone wants to come to God, they must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him” (11:6). To believe in God we must also believe that God acts, or it is a different God, a different person. Jesus was not some weak, do nothing guy. People believed in him in part because he backed up his powerful teaching with powerful actions.
I hear some people say that the Old Testament speaks of physical blessings and physical punishments, but Jesus and the New Testament makes everything spiritual. Really? Jesus healed people. That’s a physical blessing. Turning water into wine is a physical thing. In the Bible it does not divide the person into different parts, but they are all inter-related. God is not just God of the spiritual realm, but the physical. The resurrection was not a spiritual resurrection— the testimony of friends and foes alike says the body was missing. Jesus told Thomas to put his fingers in his side, and ate fish- it was physical. It was the sect called the Gnostics that said that God only blesses spiritually not physically. They said the physical was evil, and that we need to get behind the physical to the spiritual. There were pre-cursors of this sect written against in the Gospel of John, Colossians, and Ephesians. I am always wary of people who say, “Let’s get rid of Christianity and all other religions (and the church), and let’s get back to the god behind it all.” While efforts to reform the church are certainly, even desperately needed, the god of the church is still the God of the Bible. A god behind it all is often a god we make up in our own thought patterns, and the Bible says making up ideas about God is a dangerous thing spiritually. It is making up an idol. The idea of finding a spiritual God totally separate but behind all the physical things like the Bible, church, and law of God is searching for another god. Gnosticism sounds like it is a really spiritual version of the gospel, but it is a different thing altogether. The Christian historian Harnack called such things “an acute secularization of Christianity.” Irenaeus likens such interpretations to someone who takes apart a beautiful picture of a king and reassembles it into a picture of a fox (Adversus Haereses 1.8.1). So many of the higher critics today, are turning away from the gospel of Christ altogether and coming up with their own gospel, a new form of Gnosticism with no rules, no admonitions, only a vague spirituality. They have destroyed the picture of Jesus in the Bible in order to make it more secular, taking less faith. But their new belief holds there is no god who cares about us whether we do good to be blessed or do bad to be held accountable. Our health, our houses, all we have, our very lives are gifts from God. I worry about those who say, “Don’t pray for God to do something physical, only pray for the spiritual needs.” That is similar to what people were saying in Zephaniah’s day- God does nothing- good or bad. I want us to explore this idea of blessing a bit.
There are basically two Greek words for the same English word “blessing.” One is eulogia- or praise, and is only used of God. We get our word “eulogy” from that- when someone praises another at a funeral. This word is used in the phrase “bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.” This is not the word I am talking about here. The word I am speaking of comes from the Greek word “baruk.” It means to be favored of God. When Moses said to Aaron the priest to bless the people he said to use the words, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace.” He in effect was saying the same thing four different ways- may God bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you!... by keeping, being with, being gracious to, shining on, and giving peace.
Bruce Wilkinson had two NY Times bestsellers about blessing: “The Prayer of Jabez” and “A Life God Rewards.” Both are about blessing. One is a prayer for God’s blessing here- the prayer of Jabez found in I Chronicles 4:9- “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” The Bible says that God granted his request, and Wilkinson said we ought to pray similarly for God’s blessing in this life. His second book, “A Life God Rewards” points out all the promises in the Bible for a reward for our behavior in the next life. He clearly says we are saved by grace, but then he says God blesses us for honoring him in the next life. There are all kinds of jokes about this. I’ve heard a lot of jokes about whose mansion in heaven will be bigger Steve Spurriers or Tommy Bowdens. Then there’s always the guy who pipes up the biggest mansion is the one with the Citadel flag on it- because that’s God’s house! I don’t know about all of that. The scriptures clearly point out that God blesses here, and also in the next life. God is a God who likes to pour blessings and grace on people. His blessings are always spiritual and sometimes physical.
Why are his blessings only SOMETIMES physical? Why can’t we pray and God always say “yes?” There are several reasons for that. 1) Prayer is not magic. If it were we might worship prayer instead of God. 2) This life is not perfect. Sometimes good people are thwarted by evil. We are in a spiritual battle here. Sometimes a gang member shoots an innocent person. Sometimes a good person gets stepped on by someone selfish. There are still evil things that happen by the nature of our world- a car brake goes bad and someone good gets hurt. A hurricane slams the coast and good people die. The titanic sinks because someone rushes ahead and doesn’t see the danger. This life is not heaven.
3) When we are not totally comfortable here, it makes us long for a better place, but also for God Himself. All the evil in life points us to the possibility when evil is gone. When I cut my finger, I long for the time when my finger is healed. In heaven there will be no more pain or crying. If life were totally perfect here, we would not long for heaven at all. 4) This life is temporary. We do not want to get overly attached to something temporary. Everything here is temporary. This life does not last forever. People get sick and die. Even Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead died. Those he fed at the feeding of the 5,000 got hungry again.
I have loved the temporary too much, and maybe you have too. My very first car was a 1965 Dodge Dart. I had my first date in that car, and kissed my first and only wife in that car. It took me to work, to school, and off to college, and back home on holidays. I named the car after Don Quixote’s horse that was described as skinny and ugly, but Quixote thought it was magnificent. Eventually that car just died. It became impossible to fix on my income and with my time. I cried and grieved. But every car dies. Every house will be rubble one day. Every person we love will not last on this earth. But there is a place where things do not rust, or die. Life is better and more permanent there. Here we must do the unusual dance of appreciating the blessings we have, but not clinging to them tightly.
Sometimes the greatest spiritual blessing comes in giving up a physical blessing. Jesus said he who holds to his life will lose it. A mother who sacrifices for her children, a missionary who sacrifices his culture and language, a martyr who gives up everything to keep his faith.
When our children were smaller we would pray with them at night, and they would end their prayer with “God bless grandmommy, granddaddy, uncle Dendy, aunt Margie, cousin Trey and John Mark… and the list would go on for few minutes. They memorized the names. Those they prayed over were special to them, and they believed they had done something for them. Have you ever noticed that children will pray more easily and more believingly than adults? Jesus said that we must become like little children to please him. Isaiah said, “A little child shall lead them.” Children teach us to not be so skeptical, so hard-hearted, but to believe.
I invite you to believe again. Give up skepticism on this Pentecost Sunday. Leave behind hardened hearts and believe God blesses, and seek His blessing. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!