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).
---------------------------------------------
(II)
Rev. Ronald Hanko
[Source: The
Coming of Zion’s Redeemer: The Prophecies of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi,
pp. 490-491]
[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).
---------------------------------------------
(III)
More to come! (DV)
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