313. Bring Us to the Land
Ezekiel 36:24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.
The Lord will take us out from among the world, for the faith that God gives us makes us different than unbelieving mankind. He sets us apart from the world and its ungodly ways. He rescues from the destructive forces of Sin, Death and Satan, which rule and control the people of the world.
The Lord will gather us out of all the world’s kingdoms with its evil, deadly, ungodly, foreign, and destructive ways. In the end all the kingdoms of the world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. “Gathering” means that we are in a good and safe group; we are a part of the in crowd; we are in the family of God with God our Father and Jesus our brother. The Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.
The Lord will bring us into our own land. Our own land is the Kingdom of God; this is where we belong, and it is where we have a sense of belonging. Everything is familiar, comfortable, safe and warm; nothing is strange, foreign, unfamiliar, unknown or dangerous. We get used to living in that kind of world, but the Spirit is training us in righteousness and godliness, so that the world becomes more foreign and the kingdom becomes more familiar. This is “our own land.” This is the family of God, the kingdom of God, the reign of God, the Church of God.
In the immediate context, this promise is for the Jews in Exile in Babylon. But in the wider context of Scripture this promise is for all believers in Christ. We know there was a Paradise, a Promised Land, out of which we were expelled, and we know there will be such a place to which we will be brought once again.