421. God will be our God
Zechariah 8:8 And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness.
One oft-repeated refrain of the Covenant promise in the OT is:“You shall be my people and I will be your God.” And so it is repeated here. The Lord will bring His people and they will live in the midst of the Church. The Church, made up of all believers in Christ, is the People of God. The OT people of God, called Israel, become the NT people of God, called the Church. To be the people of God means that they are redeemed and cared for by the Lord. We belong to the Lord. We are His children. We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd. He is responsible for our life and wellbeing. There is nothing more secure than being the people of God. God promises to take care of His people, His sheep, and His family in every way that is good.
The promise implies also that we will be the people of God, that we will live according to God’s Laws, that we will be faithful to the Lord alone. However, we will fail in these demands and therefore we will forfeit the covenant by refusing to be God’s people. We broke the covenant and thus God is not obligated to keep His part. But the Lord is so faithful that He sent His only Son to live according to the Covenant Law in our place and to die for us as the penalty for sin, thereby freeing us from the judgments and punishments for breaking the covenant. With Jesus taking our place as “My People,” we have perfectly kept our part, thus binding God to keep His part.
Therefore, God will be our God, and we can count on this guaranteed promise as long as we live, and we will live a very long time, even forever. The Lord will always and forever be our God. He will be God to us and for us and with us and in us. This is good, because He is a good God. We can rest comfortably and safely under the umbrella of His love and behind the walls of His protection.
He will be our God in truth and righteousness. Everything God says is truth, absolute, guaranteed, without doubt or shadow of turning. Everything God does is righteousness, always perfectly just and good and right, and, believe it or not, fair. All people complain about God not being fair, but contrary to human opinion, the Lord God is always fair without fail. The promise says: Let God be true and every man a liar; God is right and I am wrong; God will be fair while I will be wrong in my accusations of unfairness. This is God’s promise: I will be your God.