Fellowship With God

God's promise to make Israel his people and to be their God echoes throughout the Old Testament. "I will make my abode among you... and I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people" ( Leviticus 26:11-12 ). In Jeremiah's account of the new covenant the promise of God is: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" ( Jeremiah 31:33 ). The promise to Ezekiel is: "My dwelling-place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" ( Ezekiel 37:27 ). The highest promise of all is intimate fellowship with God, in which we can say: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine" (SS 6:3).

This fellowship with God in the golden age brings certain things. Tears and grief and crying and pain are gone. That, too, had been the dream of the prophets of the ancient days. "They shall obtain joy and gladness," said Isaiah of the pilgrims of the heavenly way, "and sorrow and sighing shall flee away" ( Isaiah 35:10 ). "I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress" ( Isaiah 65:19 ). Death, too, shall be gone. That, too, had been the dream of the ancient prophets. "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces" ( Isaiah 25:8 ).

This is a promise for the future. But even in this present world those who mourn are blessed, for they will be comforted, and death is swallowed up in victory for those who know Christ and the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his Resurrection ( Matthew 5:4 ; Philippians 3:10 ).