Kingdom Success
Drash on Parashah 46; Eikev (Because)
By MMin Kevin “Oriyan” Phipps

 Does God want His people to be rich and successful? Your options are yes, no, and depends. Let’s take a look at some passages from Eikev.  

"Because you are listening to these rulings, keeping and obeying them, Adonai your God will keep with you the covenant and mercy that he swore to your ancestors. He will love you, bless you and increase your numbers; he will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground - your grain, wine, olive oil and the young of your cattle and sheep - in the land he swore to your ancestors that he would give you. You will be blessed more than all other peoples; there will not be a sterile male or female among you, and the same with your livestock. Adonai will remove all illness from you - he will not afflict you with any of Egypt's dreadful diseases, which you have known; instead, he will lay them on those who hate you.
 [D’varim/Deuteronomy 7:12-15]

So obey the mitzvot of Adonai your God, living as he directs and fearing him. For Adonai your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams, springs and water welling up from the depths in valleys and on hillsides. It is a land of wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; a land where you will eat food in abundance and lack nothing in it; a land where the stones contain iron and the hills can be mined for copper. So you will eat and be satisfied, and you will bless Adonai your God for the good land he has given you. [D’varim 8:6-10]

It is a land Adonai your God cares for. The eyes of Adonai your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. "So if you listen carefully to my mitzvot which I am giving you today, to love Adonai your God and serve him with all your heart and all your being; then, [says Adonai,] 'I will give your land its rain at the right seasons, including the early fall rains and the late spring rains; so that you can gather in your wheat, new wine and olive oil; and I will give your fields grass for your livestock; with the result that you will eat and be satisfied.' But be careful not to let yourselves be seduced, so that you turn aside, serving other gods and worshipping them. If you do, the anger of Adonai will blaze up against you. He will shut up the sky, so that there will be no rain. The ground will not yield its produce, and you will quickly pass away from the good land Adonai is giving you. [D’varim 11:12-17]

 So, it would appear from these verses that the answer would be yes. I think this is completely true, especially if you send me $100 today…just kidding. I have heard my share of “Prosperity Gospel” preachers over the years and that is not what I am here to teach you today, at least not entirely. To go with the question I asked earlier, I should have you answer another question. Does God want His people to be dirt poor and living in the slums? Your options are the same. Remember, this is for posterity, so please be honest.
 Whenever we are reading Torah, we have to realize that the laws we read were given to a self-governing community of people who lived with God as their King. The promises given above were given to a nation, not individuals. America is the wealthiest and most successful nation in the world, but does that prosperity include every American? We all know this isn’t true. In fact by the end of September 500,000 Americans will lose their unemployment benefits without finding work. By the end of the year, the number will climb to 1,500,000. Many of these people are families which will be facing foreclosures on their homes and living on the streets. If it was not for the grace of God, we would be among them. So God is promising prosperity to Israel, not every person. Does God want Israel to be successful? Yes He does. However, success comes with several warnings like this:

"Be careful not to forget Adonai your God by not obeying his mitzvot, rulings and regulations that I am giving you today. Otherwise, after you have eaten and are satisfied, built fine houses and lived in them, and increased your herds, flocks, silver, gold and everything else you own, you will become proud-hearted. Forgetting Adonai your God - who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves; [D’varim 8:11-14]

 The end result of this is discipline and destruction. In Scripture, the only time we see God “desiring” poverty for His people is as a form of discipline to bring them back to Himself. God’s ideal is goodness, prosperity, and health. However, there are a few truths that relate to and limit this desire.

 We need to do our part. God wants to bless us, but He is not our servant. We are His servants. God’s promises of prosperity to His people were conditioned by the demand and assumption that they were obeying Him. He was then going to bless their work. They still had to rely on God to provide for them, while doing what work He had given them to do.

So there is nothing better for a man to do than eat, drink and and let himself enjoy the good that results from his work. I also realized that this is from God's hand. [Kohelet/Ecclesiastes 2:24]

 The next principle is that where God desires prosperity for us this is not His top priority. God is primarily concerned about our relationship with Him, and if wealth will get in the way of that, it is of no value. There are cautions, not prohibitions, but cautions concerning wealth seen throughout the Bible. We are told that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. We are told that money is the root of all evil. There are some in the world who God has blessed financially, who use their affluence and influence to advance the Kingdom, and they fully thank God for everything they have, but this is rare. Even those people would likely tell you that in many ways life was easier to handle when they did not have as much money.
 Related to this last principle is the fact that God has a plan for each person. At times infirmity and limitation mixed with faith enables God to do greater work in that person’s life than wealth and worldly success. Our focus has to be on God and our relationship with Him and we need to be thankful for whatever blessings He gives us no matter how great or small. We use all we have to bring glory to our King and advancement of His Kingdom. At times we have to prove ourselves to be able to handle little before He blesses us with much.

 This brings me to the next principle. Where God’s desire is to prosper us, our desire is to be God, not prosperity.

Furthermore, those whose goal is to be rich fall into temptation; they get trapped in many foolish and hurtful ambitions which plunge them into ruin and destruction. [1Timothy 6:9]

 It is not so much wealth that destroys a person, but a desire for it that is contrary to and uncontrolled by the boundaries of Torah. This is lust. There are people with nothing, living on the streets that are just as hungry for wealth and success as a corporate executive on Wall Street. Money becomes God and everything revolves around getting as much as possible and thinking that if you only had enough your problems would be solved and life would be good. This is a lie from Ha Satan meant to lead, even Believers away from the riches of the Kingdom.

Listen, my dear brothers, hasn't God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and to receive the Kingdom which he promised to those who love him? [Ya’akov/James 2:5]

 We often lament over the fact that wicked people seem to flourish and the righteous suffer. David answers this dilemma in Tehellim/Psalms 37. For the wicked of the world, the blessings of the world, which his son Shlomo/Solomon called vanity, is all they have. The righteous, as stated by Yeshua, store up treasure in a place He has gone to prepare just for us. This is an eternal Kingdom and eternal riches. Considering the short time we spend here compared to eternity, our focus ought to be on our relationship with God, and not the condition of our lives.
 The prosperity God promised His people was not necessarily lavish. He didn’t promise pearly gates and streets of gold like we see in Revelation for all the saints. He promised them food, fertility, and political success over their enemies. He promised them land from which to build His Kingdom on earth. What He promised them was that if they lived for Him, He would take care of the concerns of their lives. Just as Yeshua has told us not to worry about what we will wear, what we will eat, or where we will live, He told them they same thing and told them to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness.

 In Mishlei/Proverbs, a man named Agur wrote this prayer: 

I have asked two things of you; don't deny them to me as long as I live —keep falsehood and futility far from me, and give me neither poverty nor wealth. Yes, provide just the food I need today; for if I have too much, I might deny you and say, "Who is Adonai?" And if I am poor, I might steal and thus profane the name of my God. [Mishlei 30:7-9]

 This balance should be our desire, but even still, what is most important is our relationship with God and following His will for our lives. Through trusting in Him, we know that, even in a bad economy, God will take care of us. He may choose to prosper us in this world, or He may not. Regardless of our situation we are obligated to remain thankful for what we do have and use all to His glory as the woman with the widow’s mite did in Yeshua’s day.
 There is one more consideration from God’s Word concerning success. We see it in the Psalm I read for the children’s blessing. Children are a gift from God and blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. Our relationships with God and our fellow man are one of the few things that carry over into the Kingdom. Children are a unique part of that in that they are the fruit of my loins. In the next life, my house, job, car, and everything else I own will be gone. However, there will be sons and daughters in the Kingdom that are there because of what I did in my life on earth. As a man, this, more than anything else is a measure of Kingdom success.