Prosperity—Has God Said? 

The one criterion that should settle the controversy over the prosperity message is, what did God say?

Ironically, it was Satan who asked this question— “has God said?”— while putting his own twist on it. And he did so in the Garden of Eden—Eden, the very setting of prosperity! A paradise on earth! A place where man was to live with dominion and delight!

It could have been different, you know. If prosperity weren’t in the heart of God, he could have assigned humanity to endless dirt, with no hint of any employment or enjoyment.

The opposite was true! Indeed, God's desire for our prosperity was so strong he made covenant promises to remove all doubt.

The Testimony of Covenants

There are more than 7,400 promises in God’s Word. But do any of these promises include health and wealth?

In answering this question, we should give particular attention to covenant promises, given the fact that covenants established between God and man were considered inviolable, at least on God's side. In fact, these covenants were the most binding legal agreements in the jurisprudence of the universe.

When God made his first covenant with Noah at the dawning of a brand new world, he spoke words of prosperity when he said, “be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply therein” (Genesis 9:7). The underlying theme of this message wasn’t biology and babies only; agriculture and every advance of civilization were also included in this sacred, sanctioned vision. The word abundantly, it should be noted, is a prosperity word.

When God made a covenant many years later with Abraham, the Lord again spoke words of prosperity when he said, “… To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates...” (Genesis 15:18).

You will notice that in reestablishing his covenant with Abraham, God said, “And I will give to you … all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). This was a large tract of land, more than 25,000 square miles—but was this good land? Scripture tells us it was. Deuteronomy 8, verses 7-9, declared:

For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

The mere fact that the goodness of the land is inventoried so extensively says something about the God who inspired these verses. Instead of denouncing prosperity outright, the Lord catalogues it, advertises it, and includes it in the eternal record.

The Bible even tells us that Abraham was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold (Genesis 13:2; 24:35); and also that Abraham benefited from a sudden wealth transfer in Egypt soon after the first covenant with the Lord was made (Genesis 12:11-20).

The history of Abraham, as the Bible reports it, is one of a rich man getting even richer as the years of his covenant walk with the Lord continued.

Likewise, Scripture says of Abraham’s son, Isaac, “… he had possessions of flocks, and possessions of herds, and great store of servants: So the Philistines envied him” (Genesis 26:14).

The Testimony of Curses

Later, a most remarkable event occurred with the people of God under Moses. In the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy we see God summoning his people to Shechem, where two mountains stood nearby. There was Mount Gerizim (six of the tribes were told to go there), and there was Mount Ebal (the other six tribes were told to go there).

As each tribe gathered where they had been assigned—at first puzzled by this sudden and strange assembly—they soon learned that Mount Gerizim represented the mountain of blessings, and Mount Ebal represented the mountain of cursing. What subsequently transpired at these two locations produced vivid and sharply contrasting testimonies.

In the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy God brought additional clarity to what constitutes a curse and what constitutes a blessing.

The cursed will see their ox slaughtered, their donkey stolen, their sheep given away, their crops fail, the produce of their land destroyed, and their houses seized.

The blessed will receive materialistic favor where it is said God will grant “plenty of goods,” increase of livestock and the produce of land. The Lord will open “his good treasure.” He will command favor on storehouses and all that their hand is set to do.

The critic speaks with a sneer about the “health and wealth gospel.” Were they to read their Bibles more carefully, they would find that message right here. Sickness is said to be a curse, health is said to be a blessing. Prosperity is said to be a blessing, poverty is said to be curse. What kind of scrambled thinking would ever deny this?

By gathering the entire nation at these two mountains, God strongly stressed the power of the curse, as well as the power of the blessing. Two lifestyles. Two destinies. Choose!

Here, poverty is more than once called a curse, and prosperity is more than once called a blessing. The language is obviously literal, and not symbolic.

Remember, these people were on their way to the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey and of splendid houses awaiting them that they didn’t have to build. Prosperity fulfilled was in their future.

And further, they were being led by the one who announced himself to Moses as Jehovah Jireh, “God our provider;” One who was also called Jehovah Shalom, “God our peace.” According to Strong’s Concordance, the Hebrew word for peace, “Shalom,” means favor, health, wholeness, and, yes, prosperity (Strong’s #7965). God’s connection to prosperity is so close, he says that’s my name!

Opponents of prosperity, in their vain attempt to escape the obvious, try to spiritualize these verses by claiming the reference is to the spiritually poor, the spiritually rich. Their integrity is impeached, however, by the genre of the text. This passage in Deuteronomy isn’t a parable, psalm, or poem. It is historical. It is literal, and must be interpreted that way.

Ironically, it is evangelicals, the very ones who hold to the hermeneutical principle that a passage must he interpreted according to the genre of the text, who abandon this principle in an attempt to weasel their way out of a conclusion they don’t like.

Furthermore, it is incumbent upon the opponents of prosperity to prove that God changed his values. Scripture elevates the concepts of poverty being a curse and prosperity being a blessing on the high planes of a scriptural statue. Proving God reversed that simply can’t be done.

Oh, yes, these opponents of the prosperity message do try. They romanticize poverty by casting the vision of a man walking down a dusty road, free from the entanglements of commerce, enjoying nature—the blessing of a breeze, the delicacy of a flower, the glory of a sun ray, the delight of animals at play, the ecstasy of nature’s panoramic view!

Those who would officiate at the wedding of poverty to spirituality haven’t perceived the true nature of either. And those who would find poverty esteemed and established by Jesus’ words will look in vain to find such words. Religion thought this up; the superiority of poverty to prosperity wasn’t ever his message.

At times, when a prosperity opponent speaks, his chest swells, his voice deepens, as he explains divine providence in ways Scripture never does.

Sounding ever so profound, he will tell us how God ordained poverty for our good. It may not always seem good, he acknowledge, but that’s where faith comes in. We must seek the good that can be found during poverty. And should we not find it on earth, we’ll understand it better in the sweet by and by.

The biblically astute response is to say bye-bye to this teaching!

Notice next the correct teaching is also strengthened by—

The Testimony of the Cross

Galatians 3:13 says Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law. This means that all that constitutes a curse, which Deuteronomy 28 helps explain, was borne by Jesus on Calvary’s cross. He bore it so we wouldn’t have to! All those curses identified in Deuteronomy 28—they’ve all been reversed!

By bearing the totality of the curse in himself, the justice of God was upheld, the unimpeachable holiness of God was maintained, and every barrier to the abundant life of God could now be removed.

The now-famous Christmas song, “Joy to the World,” had it right when it said of Jesus, “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”

As we think about each barrier the curses throw up and the way each barricades abundant life, what Jesus encountered takes on complexities beyond what we've previously thought.

Saving the beloved wasn’t the only objective; the mission had to be more global, more multi-dimensional than that. And not to see this is to edit God’s salvation story in a way that rips out chapters that do belong.

All these curses will lose their power against us in the same way condemnation loses its power, by releasing faith. But if we don’t know what the cross accomplished, we won’t release faith in those areas we didn’t know Jesus overcame. Instead, we’ll accept all these curses as just a normal part of life.

Galatians 3:14 further explains that the cross accomplished what it did so the blessings of Abraham would come on us.

Here we find an important connector between Old Testament promises and the New Testament believer. Through Jesus, God took actions to negate the curses and to provide the blessings. That which needlessly vexes and perplexes found remedy in the cross.

Charles Spurgeon wrote these words about the verses we just cited in Galatians: “Though this be a promise of the law, it stands good for the people of God, for Jesus has removed the curse, but he has established the blessing.”¹

The salvation story gets radically reduced by focusing on one part and not the other parts of what was accomplished on the cross. This is exactly what has happened in many churches. That Jesus came to save our souls is rightly proclaimed, but other aspects of his salvation are strangely omitted.

The impression thus left is that major areas of life remained as they were, outside the salvation Jesus brought to earth. While the soul gets saved, the body languishes under the curse and anguishes for relief.

The truth-twisting of tradition just doesn’t make sense. Jesus became poor so you could stay poor? No, so you could become rich (II Corinthians 8:9)!

Jesus bore your sickness so you could stay sick? No, so you could be healed (Isaiah 53:5)!

Jesus became sin so you could keep on sinning? No, so you could be made the righteousness of God (II Corinthians 5:21) and stop sinning (Romans 6:14).

Abundant life deals with all of life, and not just the soul.

We end up with only half a gospel if we see it dealing with the inner curses and not the outer curses. “Don’t forget,” A.W. Tozer said, “that when Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, he didn’t die alone for men, but for everything that touches men.” ²

Now, if the best the gospel has to offer is Jesus joining us in our distress, becoming a companion with us under the curse, this story wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as it turned out to be.

This half-gospel scenario leaves much of the curse intact, at least while we’re on earth. Under this arrangement, major areas of daily life are susceptible to the same curses enumerated in Deuteronomy. The only sure way the believer gains relief is to die. Aside from that option, the pain remains and financial hardships stay hard.

Back to our question, has God said? The answer is: Yes, he did! His testimonies in the covenants, about the curses and the cross, affirm he repeatedly said that prosperity is his will for us!

The truth-twisting that brings doubt about a covenant promise must be withstood. Remember, failure to do so the first time this question— “has God said?”—went unanswered led to disaster.

And with the help of those opposing the Bible’s teaching on prosperity, the disaster continues today!

Notes:

1. Charles Spurgeon, Faith’s Checkbook, (South Plainfield, NJ, Bridge Publishing Inc., 1987), p.44.

2. Taken from A.W. Tozer’s sermon, “The Voice of God’s Love.” http://sermons.christiansunite.com/A.W.Tozer2.ml