God wants you to prosper

by Darryl Manning            6/3/01

INTRO:  We have been declaring for over a year that God’s will is prosperity for his children. Today we will look at some scriptures that show us that prosperity is the will of God for us.

            Most of us have a very difficult time believing that God wants to prosper us. We are not alone. Throughout the Bible we find that most of the people of God were not able to believe this either.

 

Adam and Eve did not believe God’s plan of prosperity

·        God’s prosperity plan

Gen. 2: ⁸The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. ⁹And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. ¹¹The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹²And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there.

¹⁵Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

 

·        Man rejects God’s plan in unbelief

Gen. 3: ¹Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ⁶When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

 

Israel did not believe God’s plan of prosperity

·        God’s plan was prosperity: 

Ex. 3:⁷The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—

Deut. 6: ¹⁰“So it shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, ¹¹houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant

 

·        Israel fails to enter prosperity because of unbelief

Heb. 3: ¹⁶Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? ¹⁷And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? ¹⁸And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed^£? ¹⁹So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

 

God loves to prosper those who believe in His prosperity plan

·        Ex. Joseph

·        Ex. David

2 Sam. 12: ⁷Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. ⁸I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!

 

If you want to please God you have no choice but to believe in God’s will to prosper you.

In the past I believed a Christian had a choice in believing in prosperity or not believing. But it is obvious from our study today we cannot please God if we do not believe His will is to prosper us.