Author Rev. Funke Ewuosho on 07th March, 2010. 02:31
Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the LORD makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” Psalm 133:3 says,”…for there the LORD commanded the blessing…” These verses of scripture clearly speak of ‘the blessing’ and not ‘a blessing’ or ‘blessings’. In this article, we will therefore be looking at the power of THE BLESSING of the Lord.
The first thing God did right after He created Man was to bless them. “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion…” (Gen. 28:1). After the flood, God blessed Noah and his sons and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. God had told Abram to get out of his country and his family to a land that He would show him. “[I will] 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.” (Gen. 12:1-3)
We must note that in all the instances referred to above, the blessing of the LORD upon the individuals was meant to produce some things in their lives. Man was to become fruitful and to multiply; to fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over everything else God had created. Abraham’s name was to become great and he was to become a blessing. In Genesis 24:35, the servant of Abraham testified before the family of Rebekah, “The LORD has blessed my master greatly, and he has become great; and He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys.” God’s blessing had made Abraham rich indeed! Moses warned the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8:18, “And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.” The blessing is what produces the blessings, that is, the physical and the material things in our lives! It is the blessing that makes one rich; and not the other way round. Some Christians think that it is the riches that make them blessed, so when they don’t have money or other material things, they think they are no more blessed. The Bible says Joseph was a prosperous man even when he was a slave in Potiphar’s house. (Gen. 39:2) In Genesis 26, there was a famine in the land where Isaac dwelt, he wanted to leave but God said to him, “dwell in this land and I will be with you and bless you…” (v. 3), And Isaac sowed in the same land and in the same year, reaped a hundredfold. That tells me that a blessed man could live in a land where there is famine and the blessing of God upon him will produce maximum results if he puts that blessing to work! It was the blessing that made what Isaac sowed to produce a hundredfold! Isaac became so prosperous that the Philistines envied him. They stopped the wells which his father’s servants had dug. They drove him away from among them and Isaac pitched his tent in the “Valley of Gerar” and he dug again the wells of water which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. He found a well of running water there. You cannot stop a blessed man even if you stopped his wells. It did not matter where Isaac dwelt, what mattered was the blessing; so he prospered even in the “Valley of Gerah”
The Philistines kept striving with Isaac over the wells and Isaac kept moving away from strife and he kept digging new wells until he got to his ‘’Rehoboth’. “And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called it Rehoboth because he said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.’” (Gen.26:22). I tell people that a blessed person does not strive because it isn’t about the wells, it is about the blessing – the robe does not make the monk, rather it is the other way round. A blessed man is a secure man; no one can take from him what produces the riches - he carries that with him wherever he goes. Jesus said, “Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” (Lk. 10:42) The blessing works in the most adverse conditions. Adversity can’t stop the blessing, in fact, the blessing thrives in adversity! The blessing sure has a way of attracting opposition. Like in Isaac’s case, he prospered so much that the Philistines envied him, quarrelled with him, were in enmity with him and they drove him away from their midst. Did not Jesus say in Mark 10:29 that we shall reap a hundredfold of whatever we gave up for His sake and the gospel’s in this time…with PERSECUTIONS! Psalm 112 says the man who fears the Lord is blessed, wealth and riches will be in his house and, “the wicked will see it and be grieved;” (v. 10) In the parable of the sower, Jesus said: “tribulation or persecution arises because of the word…” (Matt. 13:21). This explains why some Christians shy away from walking in the blessing; they can’t stand the heat! Abimelech told Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.” (Gen. 26:16). What could have made a man become mightier than the indigenes of a land in which he was a foreigner? The blessing of course! God blessed Abraham and said to him: “your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.” (Gen. 22:17). The same blessing was pronounced upon Rebekkah, the wife of Isaac: “And may your descendants possess the gates of those who hate them.” (Gen. 24:60) The word ‘Posses’ in the Hebrew means, to inherit, to seize, to occupy, to possess. Psalm 112:2 says the descendants of the blessed man will be mighty on the earth. It was the blessing upon Abraham and his descendants that made them flourish in the most adverse conditions in Egypt. Exodus 1:12 says the more their task masters afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew and the Egyptians were in dread of them. Listen to what Haman’s wife told him; “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you will not prevail against him but will surely fall before him.” (Es. 6:13) If Haman had heeded his wife’s warning, he would have saved his own life! King Ahasuerus said, “Indeed, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they have hanged him on the gallows because he tried to lay his hand on the Jews.” (Es 8:7) Can you see Abraham’s seed once again possessing the gates of those who hate them? Haman’s undoing was that he tried to lay his hand on the Jews. Isaiah 54:15 says “Indeed they shall surely assemble, but not because of Me. Whoever assembles against you shall fall for your sake. ” And in verse 17a; “No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment You shall condemn.” The Philistines realised that they couldn’t stop Isaac because what was producing what they saw was beyond the natural and was unstoppable! God commanded the Israelites not to sow in the seventh year. He told them to keep His statutes and judgments and they would dwell in the land in safety - “Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill,” (Lev. 25:19). Compare that to Genesis 3:17-19 (after the fall of man), “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground…” Also, after Cain had killed his brother, God said to him, “So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you.” (Gen 4:11, 12). The implication is that the blessing on the one hand, makes your ground or field to yield its fruit to you – and the curse on the other hand makes the ground not to yield its strength, but to produce thorns and thistles!In Leviticus 25:22, God told the Israelites that He would command His blessing on them in the sixth year and the land will bring forth produce enough for three years since they were not to sow until the eighth year. God had them covered till the ninth year when the next harvest would be! Elisha told the widow of Zarephath; “ For thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the LORD sends rain on the earth.’” (1 Kings 17:14).
To bless means, among other things, to cause to prosper. The power to get wealth includes spiritual, physical and mental ability or capacity. The blessing of the Lord is multi-dimensional. It covers every area of our lives – spiritual, mental, physical, material, etc. (Deut. 28:1-14). For instance in Exodus 23:25–26 “So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfil the number of your days.” Jesus said in Mark 16 that those who believe, if they shall take any deadly thing, it will by no means hurt them. Also in Luke 10:19 “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” The Bible tells us that Abraham died in a good old age, “an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.” (Gen 25:8)
The blessing is stronger than the curse! In Numbers 23, Balak invited Balaam to come curse the Israelites, and Balaam told him that God had already blessed Israel and wouldn’t change is mind about that. Balaam said “Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it.” (Num 23:20) Truly, no weapon formed against you shall prosper! Psalm 55:22 says God shall never permit the righteous to be shaken! (See also Psalm 125:12; 37:32,33) Romans 8:31-34 (NLT) says; “If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since God did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for His own? Will God? No! He is the One who has given us right standing with Himself. Who then will condemn us? Will Christ Jesus? No, for He is the One who died for us and was raised to life for us and is sitting at the place of highest honour next to God, pleading for us.”
So powerful and important was the blessing that the LORD commanded Aaron and his sons to bless the Children of Israel, saying to them: “The LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” (Num. 6:24-26). Peace means; completeness, wholeness, peace, health, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquillity, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord. In Isaiah 53:5, the chastisement necessary to bring us ‘peace’ was upon Jesus. He is to be called the Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6) In Luke 2:14, announcing the birth of Christ, the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
God had promised Abraham that in him shall all the families of the earth be blessed. The Jews are the natural descendants of Abraham and they walked in his blessings naturally. Jesus said, He was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:26). In healing the woman with the spirit of infirmity, Jesus said to the ruler of the Synagogue; “So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” (Luke 13:16). Again, Hebrews 2:16 says Jesus came to help the seed of Abraham. So, how do we who were not Jews by birth come into this blessing? How then could we be blessed in Abraham? Galatians 3:13, 14 says “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.” It is therefore through faith in Christ Jesus, that we can come into the blessing. Galatians 3:9 says, “So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” And also, in Galatians 3:26,29: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Ephesians 2:12,13 says clearly, “that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” And in verses 18 and 19, “For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,” Praise God! You therefore, should stop looking down on yourself. Stop seeing yourself as a second or third class citizen! You are a fellow citizen with the saints and a member of the household of God. Amen!
Psalm 133:3 tells us what the blessing boils down to – “Life forevermore.” Did Jesus not say, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) Let’s put it simply, the curse has a threefold assignment – stealing, killing and destruction, and the blessing, which is the Life Jesus came to give to us, makes us free from all those things! John 1:4,5 says, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [or overcome]it.” Romans 8;2 says, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” 1 John 5:11,12 says “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (or, the life) The choice is therefore ours – life or death, blessing or cursing. We can choose life so that both we and our descendants may live! (Deut. 30:19) Anyone who has received Christ has chosen life over death and the blessing over cursing. God did not send His Son to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him. (Jn. 3:17) That is the first step towards walking in the blessing. - believing in and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, the blessing is Life. (Ps. 133:3) “Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the people; but the LORD will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you.” (Isaiah 60:1, 2).
God bless you richly!
Rev. Funke Ewuosho
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