His Seal? A Big Deal!

My forehead’s important. So’s yours.

Not because it keeps my brains from falling out. It’s also a billboard in a prime location. It can either remind me about something or proclaim to the world who or what I am or who I belong to.

But don’t take my word for it.

The Lord God instructed to His firstborn Israel exactly how they should remember what He told them:

“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.” [Deut. 6:6-8] [my emphasis]

What’s interesting here is that the ancient Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint actually records this noun “frontals” [which means head band in Hebrew] as the phrase “ἔσται ἀσάλευτον πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν σου.”

Literally, it means: “it shall be immovable before your eyes.”

In the days of old, a forehead was integral to the memory of God’s people. But, in the future, it will surely define me more than remind me.

In the apostle John’s Revelation from the Lord’s messenger, He testifies to hearing a list read of those bondservants of God having already been “sealed” with His name upon their foreheads. [Rev. 7:4-8] But later on in the text, he describes an horrendous vision revealed to him at the sounding of the fifth messenger’s trumpet:

“Then out of the smoke [coming out of the bottomless pit] came locusts upon the earth, and power was given [to] them, [the same way] as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were told not to do harm to the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only to the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. [Yet] they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death flees from them.” [Rev. 9:3-6] [my emphasis]

This passage forces me to consider what it actually means for me to be “sealed” with the Holy Spirit of promise. The apostle Paul assures those having believed the message of truth to be sealed in Christ, suggesting them to be a form of proprietary possession in His behalf. [see: Eph. 1:13-14]

[σφραγίζω: (sfrâ-gî’-zō) to seal, secure with a seal, mark with a seal, set apart by a seal, affix to be true, acknowledge, prove; Strong’s #5381: to put a mark on an object to show possession, authority, identity, or security]

Where, then, am I wearing that seal—that is, His proof of ownership?

Does the world see it clearly now demonstrated through my words and actions? Is it immovable?

Will the locusts be able to see it when they start flying?