22 August, 2016

Malachi 3:10—“prove me now herewith . . . if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing”


Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it (Malachi 3:10 KJV).




COMMON GRACE ARGUMENT:
The theory of common grace equates God’s grace and favor towards men with the bestowal of pleasant earthly things. Rain and sunshine are favor, so it is claimed. So is health and strength. So is prosperity and affluence.



(I)


Herman C. Hanko


[Source: Common Grace Considered, p. 55]

It is sometimes argued that surely in the old dispensation material prosperity was indicative of God’s blessing. Countless texts can be quoted in support of this, especially in the book of Deuteronomy. One example of such a text, outside of Deuteronomy, is Malachi 3:10: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now here with, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

But we must not forget that all this was in the old dispensation in which all God’s dealings with His church were in pictures and not in reality, in types and shadows and not directly in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result was that material prosperity was, for the church, prosperity in the land of Canaan. And the land of Canaan was a picture of heaven: it was a land flowing with milk and honey as a picture of the rich spiritual blessedness of heaven. In keeping, therefore, with the nature of the old dispensation, all these blessings in the land of Canaan were dependent on Israel’s keeping of the law of God (See especially Deuteronomy 28). And the fact of the matter was that Israel could not and did not keep God’s law, with the result that the land of Canaan became a barren wasteland and Israel was brought into captivity (II Chron. 36:21).

The believers in Canaan never made the mistake of confusing Canaan and earthly prosperity with the blessing of God in Jesus Christ. They looked at the picture and realized it was only a picture. When Christ would come, He would fulfil the law for them and do on their behalf what they could never do. And the reward would be, not that land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, but heaven itself. Their hope and faith were fixed on Christ and on His perfect work, which would give them the fullness of the spiritual blessings of salvation (Heb. 11:10, 13-16).


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(II)

Rev. Ronald Hanko


[Material] prosperity, though it can picture the blessing of God, does not in itself constitute that blessing. If it did, the poor would have to conclude that they have forfeited the blessing of God, and the rich would be able to think they had his favour in a special way. Indeed, we would all conclude that the ungodly have more of his favour than his people, for the experience of God’s people is often that of Asaph in Psalm 73: “Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish…All the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning” (vv. 7, 14, emphasis added).

The blessings promised therefore are in principle spiritual and heavenly. They are the blessings of salvation: what the New Testament refers to as the riches of God’s grace and the blessings that are in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:3, 7).  


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(III)

More to come! (DV)

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