“This shall be their inheritance. I am their inheritance, and you shall give them no possession in Israel. I am their possession.”
– Ezekiel 44:28
What a picture, this is a description of the priests. And this is something we see all throughout the Old Testament, that to be a priest, God says, “Is to have the Lord as your possession.” Not land, not anything else in this world, that your inheritance is the Lord.
That’s the language here. This shall be their inheritance. I am their inheritance, and there’s so much we could talk about here, but suffice to say, 1 Peter makes very clear that for all who are in Christ, we are a royal priesthood, that we have God as our possession. And I just want you to think about that today in your life, especially if you’re going through a hard time, especially if you are struggling or suffering in some way, or wishing you had this or that. Maybe it’s health, wishing circumstances we’re different, wanting this or that to change.
I just want to encourage you, especially if you’re in one of those moments in your life, that if you are in Christ, you have God as your possession, you belong to him and he belongs to you, and all that is in him, supernatural, peace, joy, strength, wisdom, all that flows from God is yours. From God himself, he is your possession. God, I praise you for this reality in my life. I’m so overwhelmed, even as I think about this in my own life right now, that I have you, that I belong to you and you belong to me. That you are my God, that your strength is available to me in my weakness, that your joy is available to me in a way that supersedes any circumstances or sorrow or suffering in this world.
God, I pray this over every single person listening right now, that they would be encouraged, deeply encouraged by the reality that in Christ, you are their possession, that you are their God, and your strength is available to them. Your joy, your peace, your hope, your wisdom is available to them. And God, we pray for people who don’t know this reality in their lives. God, we pray for the Nogais people of Russia and Romania, a Muslim people group, hardly any known followers of Jesus. God, we pray that you would make the Nogais a part of this priesthood, that they would have you as their inheritance, that they would hear the good news of your love in Jesus.
You would send laborers to them, the Nogais might be able to say, God is my possession. Jesus is my inheritance. God, we praise you for the imperishable, unfading, hope, eternal everlasting hope that we have in you as our inheritance, as our eternal possession. Help us to live out of the overflow of that reality today. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
