“All the nations of the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.”
I read these words and they seem to come alive, deep red fire light burning around the edges of each letter. “All the nations of the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.”
Let those words sink into your heart for a moment. A blessing without boundaries, over mountains and into closed countries. A blessing crossing seas and oceans to distant shores and coastlands. A blessing that finds the waiting hearts of men, women and children of every tribe, family and language. A blessing born of simple obedience.
What would you give to hear God speak these words over your life!?
Can you imagine the faces of children hearing the good news for the first time? The love of Jesus embracing them because you were obedient to God’s call.
Can you imagine the faces of disenfranchised women hearing that God created them for relationship, a life of purpose and importance? The presence of Jesus standing and beholding his pure bride.
Can you imagine the eyes of a man hearing the gospel message of a God who created him in love and is calling him to experience His blessing?
God promised Abraham on the hillside of Mount Moriah that His obedience would mean blessing for the nations. God’s eye was on Egypt and Cush. God’s eye of blessing was looking at the Sumerians and the Akkadians. And still today, God’s eye is on the lost nations awaiting the blessing promised to Abraham: the Wolof, Pulaar and Mauritanian Moors. The blessing promised to Abraham still awaits fulfillment in the lives of Chadian Arabs and roaming Zaghawa.
No matter the centuries, the millennia that have passed, the blessing for all nations is irrevocable. No man, no nation, no religion can stand in the way of God’s eternal blessing promised as Abraham and Isaac stood by the altar.
In a few days our neighbors will celebrate Eid Al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice. Most families will gather together in the early morning hours and open the jugular vein of a sheep. The streets and paths of our city will run red as they remember Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own son.
But for many of our neighbors today, even though they have heard the story of God’s call for Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son and rejoiced in God’s faithful provision of a ram in his place, they have not heard the blessing Abraham’s obedience opened for them.
As the people of God, the people of the Book, we have the incredible privilege to carry the promise to the nations. Across this spinning globe there are men and women who, like Abraham, have heard the call of God to go from their homelands, their families and their father’s house to the land He has chosen for them to live out their days. Into the nations they take their families in prayer and sacrifice. These fathers, mothers and children go to the four corners of the world with the fire of the gospel and the knife of sacrifice so that the lost will hear the glorious promise of God’s blessing: the good news of Jesus Christ.
Thank you for your obedience in reaching the lost with the good news. Thank you for letting us be a personal link from the local church to the unreached with the God’s eternal promise.