- All Nations Blessed
Genesis 26:3, 4 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee: for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father. And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of haven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
The promise to Abraham that all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him and his seed is repeated to Isaac. God repeats the promise, and He repeats the promise to all of us. We are the seed of Isaac as well as the seed of Abraham. Abraham, Isaac, and you and I all believe in the same thing: the same God, the same Promise, the same Son of God, and the same Savior. Hard to believe, but true: all people will be blessed through us, the Church, the believers in Christ.
Jesus Christ is the Seed of Abraham and Isaac, and through Christ all peoples of earth will be blessed. The fantastic blessing is salvation and eternal life, spiritual blessings beyond imagining. We, you and I, have received the blessing of The Seed by faith; and, we, you and I, are the blessing to the nations by faith. We have been blessed to be a blessing. We receive it and we give it. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The power of love, grace and forgiveness is an awesome blessing. Believe the promise: you are a blessing.
The additional promise given to Isaac is that God will be with Him. God says, “Don’t leave the land to go to Egypt. I will be with you here. Stay here, sojourn in this land, and I will bless you.” God says to us: “Don’t leave the Kingdom to go to the World. I will be with you where you are. Stay in the world where you are sojourning, and I will bless you there.” We are sojourners in a land to which we don’t belong. “Sojourning” means traveling through a country for a time, a country in which we are not citizens. We don’t belong there. We are not “at home.” So we don’t make a home in the world. We don’t pound the tent pegs in too deeply. Our citizenship is in heaven and that heavenly home is in us by faith. In this way, the promise is that the Lord of the eternal kingdom is with us wherever we are. We carry “home” with us while we “sojourn” in a foreign country. And God promises to be with us in a world that seeks to destroy us and take away our life. But the Lord won’t let it happen.