- Seed will Possess Gate of Enemies
Genesis 22:17, 18 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice.
God promises to bless Abraham in blessing and multiply his seed in multiplying like the stars and the sand. We don’t know, and we can’t count, how many believers like Abraham there are now on earth, how many there have been, nor how many there will be. We just know it is a lot. There are many physical descendants of Abraham, but there are many more spiritual children of Abraham, an uncountable throng, All will one day stand before the throne in heaven worshiping God with loud praises and shouts in many different tongues.
Abraham proved his faith in the testing of the sacrifice of his only son. God knew it already, but now Abraham knows it: he believes God. Therefore all peoples on earth will be blessed in his seed. First, the blessing happened when Jesus of Nazareth was born on earth out of the ancestral line of Abraham. All peoples will be blessed in the Son of God, the son of Abraham. Secondly, the seed of Abraham are all the believers in Christ, the Church. Through the Church the earth-dwellers will be blessed. We, each one of us, and all of us together, are a blessing to the nations. The world is being redeemed through the message of the love of God with which we bless the world’s people. The prayers of God’s people positively affect the whole world and the people in it. Take away the prayers, take away the Church, take away the gospel, and the world is left in darkness and evil. Sin runs rampant and chaos returns to rule.
We do not know what a blessing we are. We do not see how God is using His believers to save the world and change it. Since we do not know and see, the Lord gives us a promise like this so that we may see by faith the difference blessing makes on a cursed world. See by faith and know that your life is worth something to somebody and to God’s purpose to bless. At the same time that we are living under the Curse of Sin we are also living under the Blessing of Forgiveness.
God promises that we shall possess the gate of our enemies. This is what Jesus accomplished at the cross. We who believe in Christ possess the gate of our spiritual enemies. Our faith and prayers and spiritual armor effectively possess the entrances of sin and evil into the world and into our own hearts. In Jesus’ name we possess, that is, we have the spiritual power to stop the increase of evil in our world, in our family, and in our heart.