The Promise to Be a Blessing

The Promise to Be a Blessing

God blesses His people so that they might bless the world.

“Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” Deuteronomy 4:6

Beyond merely influencing other nations for good, Israel was promised that they would be a channel through whom the blessings of God would flow to other nations (Gen. 12:2). In its fullest form, this blessing would entail bringing other nations into the Covenant of God and citizenship with His people.

This promise can be difficult to reconcile with God’s command that His people remain completely separate from the nations around them—not intermarrying with them and not adopting any of their laws, customs, or ways (Lev. 20:26). At the same time, God’s people were to welcome sojourners within their midst and to show them the love that God had for them, which is the love He has for His own people (Ex. 22:21; 23:9; Lev. 19:33, 34).

Ultimately, God’s Covenant blessings would come to the nations through the preaching of the Gospel. It is rather strange that the Gospel going to Gentiles seems to have created so much confusion among the first believers. But this is only because, under the oppression of Rome, Jews in the first century seem to have lost sight of God’s larger covenantal plan to bless the nations. Only when the leaders of the New Covenant community came together in the Spirit to consider this issue, were they able to recover this original promise of God’s Covenant and to accelerate the mission among non-Jews (Acts 15:12-22).

Yet even in the Old Testament, obedience to God’s Law is connected to the nations being drawn to God and to His Covenant (Mic. 4:1-5). We cannot presume to claim or seek this promise without, at the same time, walking in the righteousness of Jesus Christ according to His Law. The promise of being a blessing to the nations, and the vision of worldwide awakening which many today diligently pursue, continue to be linked to the character of our lives and the holiness others observe in us.

For more insight to the nature of God’s Covenant, order a copy of T. M.’s book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store. Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.