A Blessing to All Nations In Christ

Abraham was the blessed recipient of divine visitations and conversations. He talked and walked with God. He was godly because he loved God and wanted to be like God.

Preceding the destruction of Sodom, three men visited Abraham. He fed them. They told him that his elderly wife Sarah would give birth to a son. [1]

The Lord revealed to Abraham what He was going to do to Sodom on the basis of the fact that Abraham was one who taught his children to keep God’s ways.

“For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.” [2]

Abraham interceded for Sodom because his nephew Lot lived there. He asked the Lord not to destroy Sodom if at least 10 righteous people were there. God agreed. [3]

God sent two angels to get Lot and his family out of Sodom before the fire fell. Angels literally had to take Lot, his wife and two daughters by their hands and lead them out of the city. For although they had warned them to escape, they lingered. The angels told them to escape to the mountains, but even in this Lot tried to haggle with them. He asked if they could flee to a nearby city. The angels permitted him to do so. Then, the fire fell. [4]

Abraham returned the next “morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.” [5]

Although God got Lot’s daughters out of Sodom, Sodom was still in them. The daughters made their father drunk and committed incest with him. It is as though the unclean spirits of Sodom found a way to preserve their perversity by escaping destruction via these two daughters. From the daughters of Lot sprung the nations of Moab and Ammon. [6] These nations made war with the descendants of Abraham. On a positive note, Ruth, who appears in the genealogy of Messiah Jesus, was a Moabite woman who married a descendant of Abraham.

Abraham’s wife Sarah did give birth to the child that God promised him. [7]

Afterwards, “God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then He said, ‘Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’” [8]

Abraham went to the place of God’s choice. He told his servants, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.” [9]

Notice that Abraham said, “We will come back to you.” The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham had faith in God that even if he sacrificed Isaac that God would resurrect Isaac because God had promised that through Isaac he would have many descendants.

“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” [10]

When Isaac asked Abraham about the absence of a lamb for the sacrifice, Abraham told Issac, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” [11]

The Lord stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son before it was too late. He said to Abraham, “Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now, I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” [12]

Then, a ram showed up and Abraham sacrificed it to the Lord and “called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide.” [13]

The Lord said to Abraham, “Because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son—blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your Seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” [14]

Some are careless about the fruit of their bodies. Praise God for preserving the lineage of Christ via His servant Abraham, not just biologically but spiritually, a legacy of descendants who kept faith that God would bring about that special Seed via a woman. The One of which God said to the serpent in the Garden, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” [15]

Jesus crushed the serpent’s plan to destroy the human race by becoming an atoning sacrifice for our sin. Jesus experienced the bruising when He died on the cross for us. But Jesus did not remain dead. He conquered sin, death and the devil on third day when He resurrected from the dead.

Peter connected the promise of Israel being a blessing to all nations to Messiah when he said, “He [God] said to your father Abraham, ‘Through your descendants all the nations on the earth will be blessed.’” [16]

Paul connected the promise of Israel being a blessing to all nations to Messiah when he said, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his Seed. It does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ referring to many, but referring to One, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ.” [17]

It is in Christ that we are blessed and it is in Christ that we are a blessing to the nations.

[1] Genesis 18:1-15
[2] Genesis 18:19
[3] Genesis 18:22-33
[4] Genesis 19:1-25
[5] Genesis 19:27-29
[6] Genesis 19:30-38
[7] Genesis 21:1-2
[8] Genesis 22:1-2
[9] Genesis 22:3-5
[10] Hebrews 11:17-19
[11] Genesis 22:7-8
[12] Genesis 22:11-12
[13] Genesis 22:13-14
[14] Genesis 22:16-18
[15] Genesis 3:15
[16] Acts 3:25
[17] Galatians 3:16