Set Apart for Blessing
The story of the Bible is the story of a God who pours out generous love on His creation. Here, we read the beautiful narrative of a limitless God breathing life into humanity. Once He forms the first humans, He places them in a garden that is rich with plants of every kind.
This was a place where humans could dwell in His riches with no reason to worry. Instead, their Creator walked in the garden with them and provided open access to all that was needed to sustain them. This included the Tree of Life. His charge to the pinnacle of His creation;
“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and govern it” (Genesis 1:28, NLT).
God wanted His creation to carry the abundance of the garden across the earth, to spread His generous rule.
Of course, we know that only a few pages into this story things begin to unravel. The nachash (serpent, or shining one) deceives Eve. Through his deception, Eve begins to think, “Maybe God is holding out on me. There’s more out there that can be mine, but God doesn’t want me to have it. Maybe I need to take matters into my own hands.” And so she does. After all, the fruit from that forbidden tree was both desirable and pleasing to Eve’s eye.
Eve eats.
Adam eats.
Instead of trusting God to define good, instead of trusting God to provide, they trust themselves.
And we know the result. Humans are cast out from the garden.
Away from Eden, these first humans are given the very thing that they were deceived into wanting. They’ll have to take matters into their own hands. Instead of feasting from God’s abundance, they’ll have to toil and fight for food. Cut off from the Tree of Life, they’ll have to provide for themselves until they die. Humans have gone from God’s perfect abundance to a life of scarcity. Greed, lying, oppression, murder, and all sorts of evil follow.
However, the Creator hasn’t given up on His creation.
God finds someone who will trust Him completely. In turn, He blesses Abraham, promising to make a special nation of his family. They will be God’s chosen people, and God will lead them to a land filled with abundance. Just as God wanted the first humans to carry His goodness to the ends of the earth, God wants all nations to be blessed through Abraham’s family.
Just as God promised,
the nation of Israel is blessed by Him and brought to the promised land—a land “flowing with milk and honey.” Yet, Israel follows in the steps of the first humans. In that land of abundance, they become deceived by all the shining idols and riches, and forget to trust their generous God to provide. Worried there isn’t enough, Israel begins to hoard the blessing for themselves, and to take matters into their own hands. Tragically, like the first humans before them, Israel is exiled and cut off from their land of abundance.
But the story doesn’t end there.
The Creator Himself comes to earth and takes on the flesh of mankind. In a world of oppression and poverty, Jesus lived as if there were an abundance and showed that the Father could be trusted. He taught his followers to live the same way:
“Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life” (Matthew 6:26-27, NLT)?
“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith” (Matthew 6:28-30, NLT)?
“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:26-34, NLT).
Jesus gave the ultimate gift of generous love to us. He left His abundance with His Father and poured out everything, ultimately giving His life for us. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9:
“You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9, NLT).
Then God gave us another gift,
the gift of his Holy Spirit to help us as we do our best to live in the way that Jesus showed us. Now we are to be “royal priests” carrying out God’s mission to the first humans. A “holy nation” to be a blessing to other nations. We are to carry the message of the goodness of God and His generous love to the ends of the earth.
Will we now live with the conviction that God can be trusted, or will we believe that we need to take matters into our own hands? Will we live like we are living in God’s abundance, or will we hoard His blessing to ourselves? Will the shiny allure of wealth deceive us into a life of greed and exclusivity, or?
Often, I’m not generous because I’m afraid there just isn’t enough to go around.
I don’t have anything to give. This week, pray over your “Pay It Forward” card with me. Pray that God will show us who and how to bless with His blessings. I pray this challenge will be a small seed of faith for us—faith that God can be trusted and faith that because of Jesus, we live in abundance. I pray that this seed of faith will grow into a life of trust and overflowing generosity. May this be our new way of living, not for ourselves, but for blessing others as a result of knowing God’s rich blessing to us. I pray we’ll live out our own little Eden, trusting His abundance, until He makes everything new again.
In Him,
Pastor Dylan