Ezekiel the "Prosperity Preacher"? (Ezekiel 34:25-30)
“I will make a covenant of peace with my people and drive away the dangerous animals from the land. Then they will be able to camp safely in the wildest places and sleep in the woods without fear. I will bless my people and their homes around my holy hill. And in the proper season I will send the showers they need. There will be showers of blessing. The orchards and fields of my people will yield bumper crops, and everyone will live in safety. When I have broken their chains of slavery and rescued them from those who enslaved them, then they will know that I am the Lord. They will no longer be prey for other nations, and wild animals will no longer devour them. They will live in safety, and no one will frighten them. “And I will make their land famous for its crops, so my people will never again suffer from famines or the insults of foreign nations. In this way, they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them. And they will know that they, the people of Israel, are my people, says the Sovereign Lord. (Ezekiel 34:25-30 NLT)
You gotta love passages like these that give us a break from the continual "everyone will die" diatribe from the Sovereign Lord. It's easy to get this one sided view of God when it seems like 98% of what you read in a single book sounds a lot more like angry retribution rather than merciful grace.
But here we catch a beautiful break from the gloom and doom and hear the hope we tend to expect from the Good Shepherd Himself who makes some pretty lofty promises about the perpetual welfare of His people.
Without sounding too "prosperity gospel" by suggesting that unending health and wealth mark the sure sign of God's blessing, at first glance what is being promised here in (vs 29-30) seems to be exactly that, "“And I will make their land famous for its crops, so my people will never again suffer from famines or the insults of foreign nations. In this way, they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them. And they will know that they, the people of Israel, are my people, says the Sovereign Lord."
Now a hasty preacher would probably jump head first into a "God wants you healthy, wealthy, and blessed" sermon with a subtle, underhanded jab at the have-nots implying their lack of faith as an excuse for lavish materialism. But let's proceed with more caution.
All this passage suggests is that God does at times use material things such as of health and wealth to mark our lives with His blessing. But what we have here is anything but exhaustive list of blessings. For instance, The Sermon on the Mount.
Since Scripture is its own best interpreter lets start there. Fact is, nobody is fully healthy or wealthy 100% of the time and nowhere does Scripture assume we should be this side of eternity. In fact, God's Word seems to repeatedly suggest the contrary to be true of God's people in both Testaments:(Matthew 5:1-11; 2 Timothy 3:12; Hebrews 5:7-8; 2 Timothy 2:11, Psalm 71:20; Philippians 4:11-12; etc., etc.).
Fact is, the absence of material goods does not mean the absence of God's blessing. God has promised us that regardless of our circumstance He will never leave or forsake us and His love for us never changes (Hebrews 13:5-8). While we typically only focus on the things we need here and now,
many times God "blesses" us with difficult circumstances and hardships in order to achieve a greater eternal good (James 1:2-3; Romans 8:28-29).
In the grand scheme, God is a God of blessing and everything He does is ultimately for our good. Often the main difference between material blessings and eternal blessings is mostly our perception of and ignorance concerning God's Sovereignty over our lives.
In every situation, God allows us to choose to see our lives from His point of view, and that choice is called faith, which is by definition, "the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; the assurance about things we cannot see. (Hebrews 11:1).
Today we can choose to be blessed simply by shifting our mindset from a temporal one to an eternal one by trusting in the unchanging faithfulness of God's character and continue to believe in His goodness whether we visibly see His blessings or not.
You gotta love passages like these that give us a break from the continual "everyone will die" diatribe from the Sovereign Lord. It's easy to get this one sided view of God when it seems like 98% of what you read in a single book sounds a lot more like angry retribution rather than merciful grace.
But here we catch a beautiful break from the gloom and doom and hear the hope we tend to expect from the Good Shepherd Himself who makes some pretty lofty promises about the perpetual welfare of His people.
Without sounding too "prosperity gospel" by suggesting that unending health and wealth mark the sure sign of God's blessing, at first glance what is being promised here in (vs 29-30) seems to be exactly that, "“And I will make their land famous for its crops, so my people will never again suffer from famines or the insults of foreign nations. In this way, they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them. And they will know that they, the people of Israel, are my people, says the Sovereign Lord."
Now a hasty preacher would probably jump head first into a "God wants you healthy, wealthy, and blessed" sermon with a subtle, underhanded jab at the have-nots implying their lack of faith as an excuse for lavish materialism. But let's proceed with more caution.
All this passage suggests is that God does at times use material things such as of health and wealth to mark our lives with His blessing. But what we have here is anything but exhaustive list of blessings. For instance, The Sermon on the Mount.
Since Scripture is its own best interpreter lets start there. Fact is, nobody is fully healthy or wealthy 100% of the time and nowhere does Scripture assume we should be this side of eternity. In fact, God's Word seems to repeatedly suggest the contrary to be true of God's people in both Testaments:(Matthew 5:1-11; 2 Timothy 3:12; Hebrews 5:7-8; 2 Timothy 2:11, Psalm 71:20; Philippians 4:11-12; etc., etc.).
Fact is, the absence of material goods does not mean the absence of God's blessing. God has promised us that regardless of our circumstance He will never leave or forsake us and His love for us never changes (Hebrews 13:5-8). While we typically only focus on the things we need here and now,
many times God "blesses" us with difficult circumstances and hardships in order to achieve a greater eternal good (James 1:2-3; Romans 8:28-29).
In the grand scheme, God is a God of blessing and everything He does is ultimately for our good. Often the main difference between material blessings and eternal blessings is mostly our perception of and ignorance concerning God's Sovereignty over our lives.
In every situation, God allows us to choose to see our lives from His point of view, and that choice is called faith, which is by definition, "the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; the assurance about things we cannot see. (Hebrews 11:1).
Today we can choose to be blessed simply by shifting our mindset from a temporal one to an eternal one by trusting in the unchanging faithfulness of God's character and continue to believe in His goodness whether we visibly see His blessings or not.
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