'I Will Bless Those Who Bless You'

I Will Bless Those Who Bless You

Jack Kelley

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

The Ammonites, the Edomites, the Moabites, and the Philistines all gave Israel trouble from time to time after they settled in the land. Sometimes God used them as agents of His judgment against disobedient Israel, and other times it was of their own volition. But eventually their animosity toward Israel brought about their destruction. When the Lord sent Babylon to execute His judgment against Israel, He had Nebuchadnezzar destroy those nations completely.

But even the mighty Babylon earned the Lord’s displeasure for the way they treated His people. He told Jeremiah that as soon as Israel’s 70-year exile had been completed, He would judge their captors (Jer. 25:12). 150 years earlier God had warned Babylon they would mistreat His people and He would judge them because of it, but they paid Him no heed. Read the words of Isaiah.

“I was angry with my people and desecrated my inheritance; I gave them into your hand, and you showed them no mercy. Even on the aged you laid a very heavy yoke. You said, I will continue forever— the eternal queen!’ But you did not consider these things or reflect on what might happen.

“Now then, listen, you wanton creature, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children.’ Both of these will overtake you in a moment, on a single day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and all your potent spells.

You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’

Disaster will come upon you, and you will not know how to conjure it away. A calamity will fall upon you that you cannot ward off with a ransom; a catastrophe you cannot foresee will suddenly come upon you.” (Isaiah 47:6-11)

At the end of the 70 years, the Lord sent the Medes and Persians against them and the great City of Babylon was conquered. Cyrus the Persian set the Israelites free, returned the loot stolen from the Temple Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed and helped them rebuild it. Later Persian King Artaxerxes gave Nehemiah permission to rebuild the Holy City and its walls (Nehemiah 2), an event that started the clock running on Daniel’s 70 Weeks prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27). In return the Kingdom of Persia enjoyed several generations of peace and prosperity.

When Alexander the Great came through the Middle East but spared Jerusalem, he was blessed with an unbroken string of victories the likes of which the world had never seen, reaching into Africa and all the way across India.

In modern times Israel’s first benefactor was Great Britain. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 made the creation of the modern nation possible. The Lord had given the British lands that spanned the globe. “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” was their legitimate boast. But in 1938 when they suddenly changed their tune and began a period of open hostility toward the Jews things changed. Today most of that Empire is gone and Britain is no longer the dominant world power.

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