sojourners and exiles

And you shall be my people,

and I will be your God.

Jeremiah 30:22

This is the heartbeat of God’s covenant-making, covenant-keeping character. It is what God promised to Israel. It is what Jesus promises to His church. It is about a unique protective, providing, loving relationship. The God of the universe chooses to care for a people He tenderly loves and leads. And even when those people may fail, God is still faithful.

These words were spoken by God through Jeremiah, His prophet, to Judah as they mourned in the early days of the Babylonian captivity. Even though the Jewish nation had turned their back on the covenant and were now suffering a seven decade exile from their homeland, God still kept His covenant. He kept it as the curse of the Law corrected his people. He kept it in the assurance that Israel was still His people. He kept it in the promise to return a new generation to their homes.

Jesus calls us to be His people, even as the church sometimes is less than obedient in following our Savior. Christians are a chosen group as well. We are called a priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s own possession (1 Peter 2:9). We are God’s people, recipients of His great mercy in Christ, called to shine His light (1 Peter 2:10). And like the exiles to whom God sent encouragement to hang on and live as His people in an unfamiliar temporary home, God sees Christians as sojourners and exiles, still waiting to be brought back to their true home (1 Peter 2:11-12). We live in a way where we cannot quite be at home in this world. We long for a much better one!

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

C.S. Lewis