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Volume. XXXVVII, No. 33 The Life that Blesses (Part 1)A late Chinese evangelist Watchman Nee has a sermon entitled, ‘Expecting the Lord’s Blessing.’ In his sermon, he hammers home a simple but profound truth, he said, ‘Everything in our service for the Lord is dependent on His blessing’. He observes that in the feeding of the 5,000, the supply in hand was totally inadequate to meet the demand, and yet the demand was met. He says, ‘The meeting of need is not dependent on the supply in hand, but on the blessing of the Lord resting on the supply’.
That begs us to ask the following questions: ‘Do we really prize the blessing of the LORD in our lives?’ ‘Do we really want and seek God’s blessing on our personal life, our family life, our service for the Lord, and on His church?’ We all know the answer to these question too well. No one would say, ‘No, I don’t want God’s blessing.’ If that being the case, I want us to also think of these questions: ‘What does it mean to be blessed by God? And, how can God’s people procure His blessing?’ Let us see some examples of those who were blessed by God.
There are, a number of men in Scripture whom God blessed: Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and David are prominent examples. But Ezra and Nehemiah were men whom God blessed, even though they are not so well known compared to some of the men mentioned earlier.
In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, we read that God raised up Ezra and Nehemiah to bring spiritual reform to His people. Both men were burdened with the low spiritual state of the exiles that had returned to the land; and both men were willing to give up their comfortable situations in Babylon and endure the hardship and hassles to bring reform to God’s people.
Some say the difference between Ezra and Nehemiah is that when they learned that the Jews had intermarried with the pagans, Ezra pulled off his own hair and Nehemiah pulled of the hair of the Jews—that was literally what they did (Ezra 9 and Nehemiah 13). But all in all, we see God’s hand was upon these men (Ezra 7:6, 9, 28; 8:18, 22, 31; Nehemiah 2:8, 18) because God had blessed them. They both of them had one thing in common—they diligently sought and obeyed God’s Word. As we shall see, to have God’s hand of blessing on us, we must also seek and obey God’s Word!
What is God’s Blessing? The Hebrew word most often translated ‘bless’ is barak, which means to praise, congratulate, or salute. It can generally mean ‘happiness’.
For example, when God bless Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, God wished them to be happy, but that happiness is hinged upon their obedience to God. And obviously, they did not enjoy that state of happiness for very long —they disobeyed (Genesis 1:22, 12:1-3, 22:16-18).
Another Hebrew word for blessing is esher, which is also translated as happiness. Job said, ‘Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth….’ The word happy there is ‘esher’.
In other words, a man’s happiness is depended upon a right relationship with God (Job 5:17; Psalm 1:1-3). You can see that is really case. The people whom are in a good relationship with God are happy people and the opposite is also true.
In the New Testament, there are two Greek words translated as blessing, makarios and eulogeo. The former carries pretty much the same meaning as the Hebrew counterparts barak and esher, the latter literally means ‘good words’ or ‘good reports’ that other give of someone. We use the English word eulogy to mean saying something comforting or encouraging, the word comes from the same Greek word eulogeo.
Based upon the definitions given, the word blessing or God’s blessing really refers to God’s doing above and beyond what human effort can do or expect that results in the happiness of God’s people. And what makes God’s people happy in the day of Ezra and Nehemiah? We mentioned that the Jews wanted their temple and city wall rebuilt in Ezra chapter seven.
This rebuilding effort fits right after the events took place in the book of Esther but comes before Nehemiah chapter 8. In other words, Zerubbabel was responsible for the first return in Ezra one. Ezra was responsible for the second return of the Jews here in chapter seven (but after the events of Esther), and Nehemiah was responsible for the third return in the book of Nehemiah.
So, in the year 458 BC, king Artaxerxes who is actually the step-son of Queen Esther granted Ezra all his requests. Why? Well, maybe partly because king Artaxerxes was very sympathetic to the Jews as his step-mom, Esther.
But the main reason was according to Ezra 7:6, ‘the good hand of the LORD was upon him.’ Therefore, the king authorized Ezra to go to Jerusalem and insure that God’s law was both taught and observed (Ezra 7:14,25). Not only that the king provided a generous grant silver and gold, perhaps millions of dollars in today’s money to buy supplies and temple vessels for the temple worship (Ezra 7:15-20) He also commanded the treasurers in the provinces to supplement anything else that Ezra needed (Ezra 7:21-22).
He even exempted all temple officials and workers from taxation (Ezra 7:24) – tax free for all clergymen. Then he authorized Ezra to set up a judicial system to see that these laws were obeyed and that violators were properly punished (Ezra 7:25-26) so special laws and courts are set up to punish those who oppose the rebuilding work.
Now, was Ezra’s success coming as a result of ‘luck’? No. We often hear people say, ‘You are so lucky.’ Christians don’t and shouldn’t believe in luck. Luck is a random process of chance (some say it can be traced back to pagan superstition). But Ezra’s success is the direct result of God’s blessing and His divine providence. Therefore, we should not give credit to our success to ‘luck’.
Ezra 7:6 says, ‘the good hand of the LORD was upon Ezra’. And he was blessed because, as verse 10 reads, he ‘…prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD…’ What does it mean to prepare one’s heart to seek the Law of the LORD?
To be continued... Rev David Weng
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