1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the
voice of the Lord thy God, to observe
and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations
of the earth:
2 And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou
shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.
3 Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the
field.
4 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground,
and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy
sheep.
5 Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.
6 Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be
when thou goest out.
7 The Lord shall cause thine
enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall
come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.
8 The Lord shall command the
blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand
unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
9 The Lord shall establish thee
an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the
commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in
his ways.
10 And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name
of the Lord; and they shall be
afraid of thee.
11 And the Lord shall make thee
plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle,
and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give thee.
12 The Lord shall open unto thee
his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and
to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and
thou shalt not borrow.
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)
Prof. Herman C. Hanko
[Source: Common Grace Considered]
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 … 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)
Prof. David J. Engelsma
[Source: Protestant
Reformed Theological Journal, vol. 46, no. 1 (November 2012), p. 59]
[The] earthly blessings of the Old Testament were not a
distinct element alongside the spiritual blessings, but rather typical of the
heavenly and spiritual blessings of salvation. Similarly, the earthly Canaan
was not an earthly home, which Israelites could merit by their own obedience, in
distinction from heaven, which Christ must earn for elect Israelites by His
obedience, but rather the type of heaven. Therefore, to teach that an Israelite
must, and could, merit Canaan is, by virtue of this fact, to teach that the
Israelite must, and could, merit heaven.
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(III)
More to come! (DV)
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