Daily Bible Reading Plans to help you read and understand God’s Word

Burkina Faso, Turkmenistan, India, Andorra, United States, Suriname. These are just a few of the world’s 195 countries that host 8.1 billion people today. Some of these nations may be unfamiliar to us, but the world is on our doorstep as advances in communication, business, social media, and transportation open our eyes and lives to them all. 

We have over 8,000,000,000 neighbors at this moment, and we’re more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. This globalization can be fascinating, inspiring, and unifying. But it can also feel overwhelming and frightening, especially when we witness unrelenting conflict, cruelty, and suffering. Anxiety rises as we feel the weight of the world. We can hardly process it, let alone fix it. 

While we may emphasize the importance of our personal relationship with Jesus, we may not be as familiar with God’s design for the nations collectively. Yes, God sees us close up and loves us personally. But He also has a wide-angle vision and love for the world, and we see that unfold through God’s promises to Abraham. 

“I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you....all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
—Genesis 12:2–3 

God planted Abraham and his family to grow a new community that would know and follow Him—the nation of Israel. And God promised Abraham that He would bless this new nation and all others through it. 

Fast forward 2,000 years or so, and a baby is born from Abraham’s lineage in Bethlehem. God blessed Israel through Abraham and expanded that blessing to all nations through Abraham’s descendant, Jesus. Jesus was also sent to grow a new community—a world-wide family of faith. 

Jesus’s disciple Peter helped connect these dots for the Jewish people. After he healed a crippled beggar at the temple in Jerusalem, Peter urged the astonished crowd to believe that the healing power came from the risen Messiah, Jesus. He reminded them that Abraham’s story and their own prophets foretold this Messiah who would bless and restore not only faithful Jewish followers but all nations.  

And Paul connected these dots for the Gentiles, too, teaching that this blessing and hope were for them by faith in Jesus too.

Now the Scripture...proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.”
—Galatians 3:8

This gospel was proclaimed ahead of time! And this is the good news for the nations: Jesus is God’s Son, who died for the weighty sin of the world. God welcomes all who believe that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah and rely on Him. All are adopted as family, loved, and saved for eternity. There was a divine plan for the formation and restoration of Israel, and there’s a divine plan for the formation and restoration of God’s worldwide family of faith. There is hope for all neighbors and nations, “the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the distant seas” (Psalm 65:5).