The Goodness of God (Chapter Two)

Chapter Two

Error One: God Only Gives SPIRITUAL Blessings

A doctrine Satan has used to destroy faith in the goodness of God has been to put all of God's blessings on a spiritual plane only, making Christians believe that God has no concern for their physical well being. After all, the spiritual is more important.

This kind of practice is known as ASCETICISM. Asceticism is the prohibition of material things. It is outwardly despising anything of a material nature and denying the flesh any of its material desires. You may eat enough food or drink enough water to stay alive but nothing fancy.

This practice is used to help one live to a certain standard of holiness. If one could deny the lusts and passions of the flesh they thought that this was holiness. This practice started with the Gnostics in the days of John the Apostle and continued in the Catholic church. This is the reasons why monks, priests, and nuns take "vows of poverty" as though being poor will make you holier and serve the Lord much better. This same thinking crept into the Protestant church and into some parts of the Pentecostal church and is still around today in some form or another.

To ask God for any real material possession is a SIN to the ascetic. They believe that God will bless you, but His blessings are only of a spiritual nature. They base this on a misinterpretation of Ephesians 1:3:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all SPIRITUAL blessings in heavenly places in Christ."

These "ascetics" will tell you, "God will bless you spiritually. These blessings are better than anything material." Yet, most of the time they fail to tell you what these spiritual blessings are.

There are certain rules in Bible interpretation. One rule is to interpret Scripture in the light of other Scriptures. You can take any Scripture out of it's setting and prove anything. I will be using the Bible rule I have just shown you to prove the error of ascetic thinking. Perhaps the light of God's Word will bring you understanding and set you free from this so that you will have no trouble trusting God for material necessities and desires.

In the first chapter we talked about God's goodness and we showed you from Psalm 31:19 that God's goodness is stored up for you. Let us read this Scripture again but this time from the Living Bible:

"Oh, how great is your goodness to those who publicly declare that you will rescue them. For you have stored up great BLESSINGS for those who trust and reverence you."

In Ephesians 1:3 we see that you have spiritual blessings in heavenly places. If we look at this along with Psalm 31:19 we will see that heaven is only the storage place for these blessings. Heaven is not a material place. It is a place in the spirit realm. There are two realms - the spiritual and the material.

You and I live in the material realm and have need of material things. However all material things have its source in the SPIRITUAL. All material things are patterned after the spiritual.

Now what you and I must do is get the blessings that God has stored up for us from the spiritual into the material. You see these blessings must "come down":

"Every good and every perfect gift is FROM ABOVE, and COMETH DOWN from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." (James 1:17).

All of God's blessings find their source in heaven. They originate with the Father. Yet as we pray and stand on God's Word, He sends these things "down" to us and they manifest themselves in the physical realm.

When God created Adam and Eve he placed them a beautiful material garden which He created. In this garden they had everything that they could ever need or desire. Even after they sinned He continued to provide for their material needs by giving them coats of skin.

Everything that is on earth has been created by God The earth is His and it's fullness (Gen. 14:19, 22; Ps. 24:1; 89:11). He even owns all of the gold and silver on it (Hag. 2:8). He gives the earth to the children of men (Ps.115:16). Therefore all of the material things we would deny ourselves of have its origin in God. To call what God created as "evil" is to say that God gives evil things when He has just told us that His gifts are GOOD and PERFECT.

In order to get the blessings of God from heaven to the earth we must claim His promises by fulfilling the conditions and standing on His Word. An example of this is the blessings promised as we bring our tithes and offerings to God:

"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my 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." (Mal. 3:10)

God wants us to prove His Word by DOING IT. We prove that something is true by doing it and then we see the results. When we give the portion of our income that is required by God He promises to do something in return. He promises first to open heaven's windows. After that He promises to pour out a blessing.

So we can see from Malachi that God's blessings have their origin in heaven or in the spirit realm. When we do what He requires in His Word, these things are given to us in the earth realm.

In Deuteronomy chapter 28, God promises blessings to the obedient:

"And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." (Deut. 28:2)

I like that. If you and I are obedient to God we do not even need to run after the blessings. They will come on us and they will overtake us. God does abundantly above anything you and I could ever ask or think (Eph. 3:20).

As we read this chapter we find that these blessings are MATERIAL. In here you see blessings of fruitfulness, abundance, protection, direction, victory, success, holiness, riches, and dominion. Many will tell you that these blessings were for the Jews only but we will deal with this subject in a later chapter.

Deuteronomy also shows us that these blessings listed in here in chapter 28 originate from heaven:

"The Lord will open the heavens, THE STOREHOUSE OF HIS BOUNTY, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none." (Deut. 28:12; NIV)

In Psalm 31:19 we saw that God has our blessings stored up for us. Here in Deuteronomy 28 we see that the heavens are the storehouse. We also see that it is by obedience to His Word that this storehouse is opened up to us and His blessings come upon us.

So when we see that we have been given "spiritual blessings" in heavenly places we must recognize the fact that heaven is the source or the storehouse where all our blessings are. But they were not meant to stay there. You and I must claim these blessings and get them from the spirit realm into the physical realm.

Prayer is also the key to getting our spiritual blessings from heaven into the earth. In what is commonly known as the Lord's prayer, Jesus teaches to pray for our MATERIAL needs:

"After this manner pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread....." (Matt. 6:9-11)

God is our FATHER. A true father could not stand to see his or her children suffering. God compares Himself with earthly fathers and shows that He would do much more than even they who are born with a sinful nature (Matt. 7:7-11).

God is more than willing to provide for our material needs or our Lord Jesus Christ would not have told us to pray after this manner. God does not waste words and give false hopes. He means what He says. If He tells you to do something then you can expect results. If He tells you to pray after a certain manner then you can expect that prayer to be answered after that manner.

Further on in this same chapter Jesus deals with worry and material needs. Jesus tells us not to "take any thought" or in other words do not worry or be anxious. What is He telling us not to worry about? He tells us not to worry about material things such as food, drink, or clothing. Why? "For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things?" (Matt. 6:32).

He says our Father knows that we have NEED of them. The ascetics will tell you that you do not need them. You must learn to deny your flesh is what they say. "Only the spiritual blessings is what counts. You are not guaranteed any physical blessings because they are not God's best for you."

God gives us His guarantee that we can receive these material blessings:

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE ADDED UNTO YOU." (Matt. 6:33)

The kingdom of God represents His rule and His government in our lives. If we focus on God and His plans and purposes we are GUARANTEED to have every spiritual and material resource that we will ever need. He is a Father to those of us who have accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior. He is concerned and has made provision for every area of our being: spirit, soul, and body.

If we focus on the spiritual then we are guaranteed the material. Jesus sometimes ministered forgiveness of sins before He healed the body (Mark 2:1-12). In other words the forgiveness was a SPIRITUAL blessing that manifested itself in the physical by producing bodily healing. We are to minister this same way (James 5:13-16).

Paul shows us that God is interested in our physical as well as our spiritual needs:

"But my God shall supply ALL your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:19)

Paul was talking to those who had sown MATERIALLY into his ministry (Phil. 4:15-18). Therefore, if we keep the Scripture in context, we see that Paul would have to be referring to our material needs being supplied.

The word "all" covers a wide span. It does not say "all your spiritual need" and neither does it say "all your material need" it says "all your need." This word "all" covers both material and spiritual.

How is He going to do it? According to His RICHES IN GLORY! Whenever a Christian goes home to be with the Lord we sometimes say that the person went to "glory." In other words, that person went to heaven.

Ephesians 1:3 says that our spiritual blessings are in heavenly places. God's riches are in GLORY or in HEAVENLY PLACES. God will supply our need ACCORDING to these riches. Our Father is rich. When we obey God these riches will MANIFEST themselves in a material way. The word "manifest" simply means to go from one realm into another. That's what happens when God supplies our need. He brings them from the heavenly spiritual realm into the material. These blessings are not just limited to our "needs." Paul tells us in the book of Romans that God will give us ALL things:

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us ALL things." (Rom. 8:32)

There is another form of asceticism that teaches that God will supply our needs, not our wants (desires). We will deal with this area in more detail in a later chapter. But for now we can see that God wants to give us ALL things. There is no limit to the storehouse of His bounty because there is no limit with God. If He does not have it He certainly has the ability to create it.

Holiness does not come from denying ourselves material blessings. It does not come from "afflicting" our bodies and suffering needlessly. Holiness comes from faith in the power of God's Word to deliver us from sin and to teach us right from wrong (Ps. 119:9-11; 1 Pet. 2:24; Rom. 6).

As we follow the LEADING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT we are guaranteed not to fulfill the LUSTS of the flesh (Gal. 5:16-25). There is a big difference between "lusts" and "desires." Man has a natural desire for food, clothing, and other material possessions. It becomes "lust" when we have what we need and we desire more than is lawful or we feel that we must have something we are not supposed to have. The power of the Holy Spirit will prevent us from going the route of lust.

Sometimes the "only spiritual blessings" doctrine is used to excuse our doubt and unbelief. Sometimes we lack the desire to stand against the devil and believe God for what we have asked Him for. If it seems to take a long period of time manifesting, we easily give up and develop such doctrines as an excuse for our laziness.

When one has been blinded by tradition it is hard to see the plain literal truth of the Scriptures. All divine healing promises are replaced with "spiritual healing." All promises of prosperity are replaced with "spiritual prosperity." We tend to add to God's Word by our traditions and make His Word non effective in our lives (Mark 7:13).

When we learn to take God's Word for what it says, without adding or taking away from it, we will get the results that are promised in the Word (Luke 5:1-7).

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