Bible Study – 25th May 29 2021 (Suggested by Carol)
“I will be their God and they will be my people”
We are told in the Bible to ask and you shall receive. We pray to God asking for His help and because we are told in the Bible, we expect to receive what we ask for and wonder why when we don’t get what we want in the way that we want it when we want it. Is there then a danger that we think of God as our God, belonging to us, there for us? We have chosen the God in Heaven as our God, not the Hindu Gods or Buddha or no God at all.
I got to thinking about God’s words “I will be their God and they will be my people”. I always think the English language is amazing in that if you put the emphasis on a different word in a sentence it can totally change the meaning (We’ll come back to that) but if you put the emphasis on ‘their’ it kind of supports God belonging to us!! So I thought why does the Bible have it that way round and not ‘They will be my people and I will be their God’? Then I thought I better check whether it does have it that way round – and it does.
So let’s take a look at the context when it is said in both cases and where we think the emphasis should be and the meaning behind it.
Jeremiah 31 v 31-33 / Hebrews 8 v 8
2 Corinthians 6 v 14-16
Jeremiah 32 v 37-41
Ezekiel 37 v 22-23
Zechariah 8 v 1-8
Revelation 21 v 1-4