God gives the Israelites the boundaries of their new land. God draws an imaginary line around the land which He is giving them. This is the place where God's people will live.
The people receive the land as a gift from God. But as the years go by the people forget that what they have was given to them by God. So God takes it away and sends them into exile.
Then God gives it back to them. But they forget again, so God takes it away again.
Finally, in 70 AD God takes it away for good when the Romans destroy Judah and Jerusalem and for the first time ever Judaism ceases to exist politically... until the 1940's. But they are still fighting for the land to this day.
It would be easy to think that since God's people are removed from their land that God would no longer be worshipped. That's how it worked back then. When a nation overtook another nation the god of that nation overtook the other nation's god. (That was a busy sentence!)
But that's not what happened.
Instead of God being erased when His people were taken into exile, God's glory grew. And in Jesus, God became the God of all nations and races.
Today there are no borders for God's people because they are everywhere. There are no borders for God's church because it is everywhere.
Even in Iran, where a Christian pastor has decided that he would rather be executed than deny Jesus. His courage has become worldwide news, his witness is what the church is built on.
The kingdom keeps growing. The boundaries are gone.
And God's glory keeps growing.
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