The knowledge of God’s glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. It’s a powerful statement – implying that the aim of God’s kingdom is not for a small struggling band to survive persecution, but that there will be a strong, universal church made up of a wide variety of backgrounds and races, for whom the only common factor will be the depth of their relationship with their Creator.
This isn’t something confined to the pages of the New Testament (Ephesians ch.1 v.10 and Philippians ch.2 v.10 immediately spring to mind). Habakkuk, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah and Zephaniah all allude to it – it’s in the Psalms too. But the first reference is in Numbers ch.14 v.21.
This is the pivotal point – where the vision God had given Abraham of a family that impacts the whole world; a vision which then develops into a nation of priests; now becomes something more.
God’s plan isn’t just for a single individual, family or nation to be blessed – but for the whole world to be transformed by every nation, family and individual becoming a blessing.
The plan has never changed – but our perception of its impact has.
The question for us now is are we prepared to become that blessing which the rest of the world so desperately needs?