Scripture Daily

Context No. 3458 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 37:24-28: in context

24“‘“My servant David will be king over them. They all will have one shepherd. They will also walk in my ordinances and observe my statutes, and do them. 25They will dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob my servant, in which your fathers lived. They will dwell therein, they, and their children, and their children’s children, forever. David my servant will be their prince forever. 26Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant with them. I will place them, multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forever more. 27My tent also will be with them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 28The nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is among them forever more.”’”

God gathers into one great promise the hopes of his scattered people: one king, David my servant, over them, one shepherd; a covenant of peace, an everlasting covenant; his sanctuary set among them forever. And at the heart of it all is the simplest and truest promise of them all.

My dwelling place shall be with them, God says; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. The whole vast vision of restoration comes down to this: God dwelling among his people as their God, and they belonging to him as his own. This is the promise that runs from Eden to the new Jerusalem, foreshadowed here, fulfilled in Christ the one shepherd, and consummated when God dwells with his people forever. The goal of all God's saving work is not merely rescue from trouble but relationship: to be our God, to have us as his people, and to dwell in the midst of us. Everything else he gives serves that one end.

Do I treasure the heart of God's promise, that he would be my God and dwell among his people, above every other blessing he gives?

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