- Fruitful and Multiply
Leviticus 26:9 For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you.
The promise of continued blessings for obedience to the commandments follows here: God will respect us, make us fruitful, multiply us, and establish his covenant with us. These blessings are consequences of keeping the Law. Jesus kept the Law for us, we are forgiven, and the promises are for us.
God promises to respect us, hold us in honor, grant us a position of high esteem, and treat each of us a special person. We all want to be respected, thought well of, and regarded highly by others, but we will never experience the respect we think we deserve. We cannot even respect ourselves as much as we need to. Self-esteem is very important, but we get it from God, not from the self.
God promises to make us fruitful. Jesus says the purpose of life is to bear fruit, and that our fruit should remain. Christians grow and show the fruit of the Spirit. It is God who makes us fruitful and beautiful, which is an amazing accomplishment when we remember the ash heap and dung pile we came out of. The greatest miracle is God turning filth into fruit, and so the Lord promises.
God promises to multiply us, not just physically with descendants, but He promises to extend our influence into the world around us. That influence is always for the better and for the improvement of humanity. We don’t see the multiplication that actually takes place, that is, the influence on other people, but we believe the promise that God will use us to influence others.
God promises to establish His covenant with us. He has chosen each believer in a special way to set His blessing upon. He has bound himself by covenant oath to keep all His very great and precious promises to us. All in all, He makes us special.