God’s greatest passion is to have a close relationship with the people He made.

Time after time, God greatly desired that the Jews would a have a close relationship with Him. Time after time, they rejected Him and chose lawlessness and wrongdoing. God is holy and can’t be in the presence of sin. All through the Old Testament, He cried out to His people that He would be their God and they would be His people. They didn’t listen. Yet since He created them he also understood their frailty. So He made a way through the only Son He ever had, Jesus. Jesus lived the only sinless life on earth. He made the way for all humanity to choose to have a relationship with God. Jesus was Emmanuel which means ‘God with us.

Here is a simple timeline through the Bible of “I will be their God and they will be my people.”

When God promised Abraham many descendants~

Genesis 17:

⁷ “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

When God was instructing Moses, the leader of the Israelites, about following Old Testament laws~

Leviticus 17:

⁷ “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

When God told Joseph and Mary they would have Jesus who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, He would fulfill God’s great passion and be ‘God with us’~

Matthew 1:

¹⁸ This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

²⁰ As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. ²¹ And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife.

When Jesus returns to take all God’s people to Heaven at that time God’s greatest passion that He would our God and we would be His people will be ultimately fulfilled~

Revelation 21:

³ I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.