God Tagged

We live in a world where very few things can get truly lost. That is, if you're interested in your things not getting lost. 

Your phone and tech are smart enough to have "find me" features if you accidentally misplace them. And if you can't use a "find me" feature, you can program something into it to let anyone who might find it know how to get it back to you. We have little tags that we can put onto nearly anything that will let us use an app to locate it at any time, no matter where it might have ended up. We even put little chips inside of our pets so that if they get loose, someone can run a scanner over their neck and find out where they belong. 

It's gone high-tech, but this is not really a new idea. In the 90s, it was label makers. We all wanted label makers, just to put our name on all of our stuff. 

In the wild west, and even way back into extremely historic times, it was branding. Livestock was burned or tagged or marked with the emblem chosen by its owner so that everyone would know who that animal belonged to. 

We are a people who like to mark our stuff, to put our name on things so that we don't lose them. So that no one else can take them away. So that the whole world will know that they belong to us. 

...I guess we get that from the God in whose image we are created. 

Because He does exactly the same thing. 

We know that throughout the Bible, He makes clear who are His people. He leads them and follows them and meets them in cloud and fire. He guides them with favor through the world. There's no question - in Israel, in Assyria, in Babylon, in Egypt, in Philistia, in Jerusalem, and beyond - who God's people are. 

And Revelation tells us that in the end of all things, it will be even more clear. 

As God is revealing to John just what those final days will look like, as He is unveiling the judgment and destruction that is coming, as He is talking about plagues and fires and famines and destruction and the angels who are coming with tribulation and the horses and their riders and all the things that apocalypse is made of, He tells His angels not to destroy even a tree until the servants of God have His mark on their forehead (7:3).

Until everyone who is His is marked as His, don't. touch. anything. 

He doesn't want to risk losing us. 

He doesn't want us to get swept up in the destruction of all things, the way that a box of treasured memories might accidentally get put in the donation pile if it's not clearly labeled. The way that the wrong tree might get cut down if the right one doesn't have a spray painted X marking it. The way that, and I swear to you I have seen this on the news, the wrong house gets demolished because the project wasn't clearly marked. 

God's not taking any risks with us. Not with you, not with me. He's going to mark us as His own. So that not one of us will be lost. So that no one else can take us away. So that the whole world will know...

...we belong to Him.