Notice God didn’t tell Abram where the land was or anything about it. He just said, “Go, and I’ll show you,” and Abraham stepped out in faith. Right there is the reason he was so hugely successful with God. Whatever God said, he did it.
That’s also why in the New Testament, Abraham is called the father of our faith. As believers, we’re to watch him and follow the same pattern. We’re to operate in the same kind of faith and walk in the same BLESSING.
We learn more about the scope of that BLESSING in Genesis 14. There, Abraham had just won a great military victory. Melchizedek, the high priest and king of Salem (who was actually Noah’s son, Shem) had come to mark the victory by ministering to Abraham the covenant elements of bread and wine. As he did, he said, “Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth” (verse 19).
For years, when I read that verse I thought Melchizedek was calling God the possessor of heaven and earth. Then I realized that wasn’t the case. He was calling Abram the possessor of heaven and earth! That’s clear because the next verse goes on to say, “And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.”
“But that’s just too wild,” you might say. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that THE BLESSING of Abraham gives us possession of the whole world!”
No, I’m not just suggesting it. I’m saying it because that’s what the Bible says—not only in Genesis but in the book of Romans. Speaking about THE BLESSING and the promise of the Spirit given to Abraham, Romans 4 says: “For the promise, that he should be THE HEIR OF THE WORLD, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.… Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all” (verses 13, 16, emphasis mine).
Look at those verses again. What do they say God promised Abraham in THE BLESSING?
He’d be heir of the world. (That’s just another way of saying he’d be possessor of heaven and earth.)
BVOV : 7
