As Christians we all love God's blessings. We like to read about them in our favourite Bible passages, sing and talk about them, and especially receive them!
BRING ON THE BLESSINGS! That's great! God has always wanted to bless His people. At the very beginning, God prepared a wonderful planet for mankind to live on with everything in it for them to enjoy. We can read about God's blessing on Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3:
"Now the Lord had said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
Here we see God making a covenant with Abraham. This covenant resulted in every area of his life being blessed.1 We know through what the apostle Paul wrote in the New Testament, that this same blessing is available to every believer now.
"And the Scripture, forseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham...Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law...that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." (Galatians 3:8-9, 13-14)
In this passage, the apostle Paul states that what God said to Abraham in Genesis 12 was actually the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is a Gospel of blessing.
In Deuteronomy 28, we see a record of all the covenant blessings that God's people could enjoy as they followed the Lord.2 To be blessed means 'to empower to prosper and succeed'. God's will has never changed. He desires everyone to know His blessing and empowering through a living relationship with Him through Jesus Christ, receiving all that Jesus has provided through His death, resurrection and ascension.
God wants us to be blessed in every area of our life...spirit, soul and body. He wants us to be receiving revelation knowledge and spiritual insight from His Word. He wants us to have peace of mind and to be emotionally and physically healthy and whole. He wants us to prosper relationally and financially.
BUT WHY? If God wants to bless us so much, which the Bible makes clear, then the key question we must ask is 'why?' Is it because He loves us? Is it so we can have a great life? Yes. But is there more to it than that? Yes! Let's look at Deuteronomy 28:10:
"Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord..."
After listing all the blessings in Deuteronomy, God gives the reason for His blessing on our lives...SO THAT ALL PEOPLES OF THE EARTH SHALL SEE that we belong to God, in order that they may also know Him and receive His blessing. God says in Genesis 12:3:
"...in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
Notice, the reason God blessed Abraham was not because He liked Abraham more than anyone else. It was in order that through Abraham's seed, all the families of the earth may be blessed. God was looking for an instrument, a channel through which His blessing could be passed on to all peoples. The nation of Israel was originally given this mandate to be a light to the nations and pass on the blessing to all other peoples. Ultimately, it would be in Jesus, the Seed of Abraham, that all the families of the earth would be blessed. And they are blessed, if only they knew it. That's where we come in! It is now OUR job to pass on that blessing.
'THE BOTTOM LINE' God's blessing is therefore never to be viewed as an end in itself. It is always a means to an end. In simple terms, God's covenant made with Abraham consisted of two parts. We can call these parts the 'top line' and the 'bottom line'. The 'top line' refers to God blessing His people ('I will bless you and make your name great'), and the 'bottom line' is the purpose of the blessing ('All peoples on earth will be blessed through you'). We can see these two parts expressed time and again throughout the Bible as a continuing theme.
After Jesus had been raised from the dead, He gave His disciples a 40-day crash course in reviewing God's promise to reach all nations, originally given to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. Jesus broke down the whole of Old Testament scripture into two central themes: the work of redemption through Christ's death and resurrection (the 'top line' blessing) and the responsibility to preach the gospel to all peoples on the face of the earth (the 'bottom line' responsibility).3 Later, Peter, the apostle Paul, and the writer to the Hebrews all quote Genesis 12:3 as the original source of their message.4
Before returning to His Father, Jesus concluded His overview of the Scriptures by commissioning His own disciples to "go into all the world and make disciples of all nations".5 But before launching out into the whole world, they needed to wait in Jerusalem until they had received the power of the Holy Spirit.
What was the purpose of receiving the power of the Holy Spirit? Was it just so they could have lively worship services or speak in other tongues? Wonderful as that is, the primary reason was so they could be witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth. Once again, the top line blessing of the baptism in the Holy Spirit was not to be received as an end in itself, merely for personal benefit and edification. Yes, these blessings were to be enjoyed but ultimately, they carried with them the bottom line responsibility of taking the Gospel in the power of the Spirit to the ends of the earth!
TOP LINE BLESSING = BOTTOM LINE RESPONSIBILITY How many of us want the blessings of Abraham but forget the responsibilities as the seed of Abraham to be a blessing to all families of the earth? God's blessings carry responsibilities! If we merely enjoy and keep the blessings to ourselves without being channels of God's blessing to others, we're just taking the top line blessing of the covenant and missing half of what God wants.
Remember it isn't 'either/or', but both. God doesn't want us to just hoard His blessing, neither does He want us to try to reach out to others with a Gospel which is devoid of the fulness of His blessing. In fact, we need to receive all the blessing we can so we have as much as possible to give! God wants us to enjoy all the blessing He wants to pour into our lives, but not to stop there. He desires that we be channels of His blessing. To what extent? Now this is a key question.
WHO DO WE BLESS? Some Christians and churches know they are blessed to be a blessing to others, but fall short of blessing all those whom God wants to bless through them.
Have you noticed, God never told Abraham His blessing would just be for his own family or people from his own culture like himself. God made it very clear that His blessing needed to cross cultures and boundaries in order to reach ALL FAMILIES OF THE EARTH.
Ouch! 'All families of the earth' sounds uncomfortable! It sounds as though it is beyond the familiar territory of our lives, outside of our cultural boxes, and may require effort and sacrifice. The fact is though, that God never called us to comfort. He never planned that His blessing would just stop with ourselves or only be shared with those like us. God's limits are the ends of the earth and Jesus is waiting until all the earth's families have been blessed so that He can return.6 However, they will only be blessed if we, as carriers of God's awesome blessing found only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, go to them.7
Are you blessed by God? If you know Jesus, you are blessed! What are you doing with God's blessing? SMS
"God be merciful to us and BLESS US, and cause His face to shine upon us. THAT YOUR WAY MAY BE KNOWN ON EARTH, Your salvation among ALL NATIONS... God, our own God, shall BLESS US. God shall BLESS US, and ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH shall fear Him." (Psalm 67:1-2, 6b-7)
1 Genesis 24:1 2 Deuteronomy 28:1-14 3 Luke 24:44-47 4 Acts 3:25-26; Galatians 3:8; Hebrews 6:13-17 5 Matthew 28:19-20 6 Matthew 24:14 7 Romans 10:14-15
Q: "How many of us want the blessings of Abraham but forget the responsibilities as the seed of Abraham to be a blessing to all families of the earth?"
You can begin to evaluate what you are doing with God's blessings by asking yourself the following questions:
What am I doing with God's blessings in my life, my time, my money, my prayers, my gifts, my possessions?
How many of my Christian books, teaching and music CDs etc are about God blessing ME with 'top-line' blessings and how many incorporate or focus on 'bottom-line' topics?
How can I pass on God's blessing in my life to others, including cross-culturally?
As Christians we all love God's blessings. We like to read about them in our favourite Bible passages, sing and talk about them, and especially receive them!
'THE BOTTOM LINE'