How odd? One of the laws of nature, as it were, is that very often the littlest or the runt of a litter is left to die. Unless the newborn can take care of itself, fight its way to the mother for nourishment, it is left to die. How odd? We are conceived and born in sin. Our nature is to sin. Our nature is to disobey God, to refuse and reject the gifts He has to give. Our nature is to actually fight against God as His enemy. How odd? Even though our spiritual condition is at odds with our Lord, He loves us and cares for us. Rather than leave us to die, rather than fight with us or against us, He chooses us, He calls us, by name. He calls us to faith. He gives us faith. He redeems us, buying us back, purchasing us, not with silver or gold, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. How odd indeed?
As the cliche goes, let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start with God’s first promise. After creating a perfect world, a world that God declared as good, even very good, God created and placed two people, Adam and Eve into the perfect world and the perfect garden He had created just for them. Because they had nothing of their own, God also gave them the ability to give to back to Him, that is He gave them a free will so that they could freely obey Him and in this way they could respond to all that He had given to them. At this point in history, before their fall into sin they did have perfect free will. They could freely decide to do what was good. Unfortunately they did not obey the Lord. Unfortunately they disobeyed and they sinned. This sin brought the punishment of death, physical death, but worse, apart from God’s intervention it would be eternal spiritual death, hell in other words. Fortunately, because God is love, He immediately stepped in and made a promise. God’s promise was to Adam and Eve and to all people without regard to culture. God’s promise was that He would take care of Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience. He would provide someone who would pay the price for their sin.
As time went on, God narrowed the fulfillment of His promise to the line of Abraham, that is God promised that the Savior to be born would be born through the narrow family line of Abraham. Notice, Abraham did not choose God, God chose Him. There was nothing innately special about Abraham, as a matter of fact we are told about Abraham’s idols. Again, there was nothing innately special about Abraham simply that God chose Him. God promised Abraham that He would make him a great nation, that He would make him a prosperous people and most importantly that the Savior of all nations, the Savior of all people, the Savior of all cultures, the Savior of the world would be from His descendants.
And finally, at just the right time. At just the right time in history, at just the right time in the world, God fulfilled His promise. He fulfilled His promise in the birth of a child, the Christ child. This child whose birth we celebrate every Christmas was born for a purpose, to die. And that is what He did. After living a perfect life, which is the fullness of the Gospel, not simply that Jesus died, but that He lived perfectly for us in our place because we could not be perfect as God demands, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” After obeying all God’s commands perfectly. After fulfilling all the law perfectly, for us, in our place, He took all our sins and imperfection on Himself. He freely gave His life, exchanging His perfection for our imperfection, exchanging our sins for His life and He suffered and died, paying the price for our sins.
But let’s rewind and get back to our text. God through Moses tells us in our text for this morning that we are a treasure to God. We read verse six and seven, “6For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples” (v. 6-7). The children of Israel were God’s people, descendants of Abraham. They had a rather roller coaster existence. In our text, Moses reminded the children of Israel that they were a treasure to God, His chosen people.
Moses reminds them that God chose them. God chose them, not because of their size. They were not a great nation when God chose them, as a matter of fact, God chose them before they became a great nation and it was only because of the Lord that they would become a great nation. As we look back at their history we see that under the rule of King David and King Solomon they had their glory years as a nation, enjoying many blessings from the Lord. This was after many ups and downs and before many more ups and downs that followed in their history.
Moses reminds the people that it was not they who chose the Lord, but it was God who chose them and set His love on them. It was the Lord who promised that they would be His people and He would be their God. It was the Lord who delivered them time and again and it was the Lord who allowed for them to be disciplined time and again, because of His love for them.
Continuing on in our text Moses reminds the people that it was God who acted first. We read picking up at verse eight, “8but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” )v. 8-9( God remembered the oath, the promise He made. Actually we might say the Lord continually remembered the oath, the covenant, the promise He made. Even better, the Lord never forgot His oath, covenant and promise. The children of Israel constantly forgot, refused, and reject the Lord’s gifts and promises, but the Lord never did and He never does.
Moses reminds the people how the Lord had previously delivered them from slavery in Egypt. It was the Lord who had called them to be His people. It was the Lord who had made them a great nation, at least at the time that they were in Egypt they were becoming a great nation as in have a great number of people. It was because of the gifts and blessing and because of the Lord’s favor that they were the nation they were.
Mostly, Moses’ words remind us that God is faithful and His steadfast love and covenant last to a thousand generations. God never forgets nor does He ever go back on His promises. God’s Word is sure and true and God always does what He says. Even more than depending on the most dependable person we may imagine, we can depend on the Lord. Although we may struggle to keep our word and promises, the Lord’s Word never fails.
What Does This Mean? And what does this mean for us today? Today Moses’ words remind us that before God even began creating the world, He had us, you and me in mind. Before He began creation He chose us to love us. He looked through time to this very day and saw us. Now, that might be difficult for us to imagine, but as we said last week, God does not live in time as you and I do. God created time for us. God lives in the eternal present, so that everything that is happening to us through time is happening all at once for the Lord. Thus, it was and is easy for Him to have us in mind at the time of creation.
On our part, our condition is terminal, at least our physical condition is terminal. We are all dying. We will die. Our bodies will wear out. We are conceived and born in sin. We sin in thought, word and deed. We sin sins of omission, not doing what we should be doing and we sin sins of commission, doing what we should not be doing. We sin and the result is that we are dying. We are dying a physical death as our bodies age and are infected with sin. Remember, the judgement on sin is physical death. Yet even worse, we are dying a spiritual death, the result which, left to ourselves, would be a judgement of eternal spiritual death. Our need, our real need is forgiveness of sins. We cannot forgive ourselves. We cannot earn our forgiveness. Our forgiveness must come from outside of us. Our forgives has been purchased and won for us by Jesus. We need and we get help from outside ourselves.
So, we revel in, we delight in, we respond to all that our Lord does for us and gives to us. We revel in, we delight in, we respond to the fact that we love because He first loved us. We revel in, we delight in, we respond to the fact that, as Paul tells us in our epistle lesson, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose,” and “]nothing[ in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our Lord has taken care of our spiritual condition. Jesus has paid the price for our sin. The judgement we face will not be eternal spiritual death, but will be eternal life. His life for ours. Yes, we may have to suffer physical death, unless the Lord returns first, and that is a possibility. Either way, we will soon meet and be with the Lord and I would suggest that day will be sooner than we know and sooner than we might expect. Thanks be to God that we are ready and we remain ready and in confidence we look forward to that day.
I believe the key to this morning’s text is the key to all of Holy Scripture. As I have said before, the direction of salvation is always top down, from heaven to earth, from God to man. Those who would espouse what we call decision theology, encouraging you to make a decision for Jesus, to choose Jesus as you personal Savior, reject original sin. In other words, they do not believe we are conceived and born in sin, nor that one’s will is tainted by sin, so we are able to choose Jesus. As we read our Bible, from the Old Testament though the New Testament, what we read is not an attempt on God’s part to get us to choose Him. Rather what we read time and again, like our text for this morning is the reminder that God chose us. I like the illustration and I know I have used it before, but it goes like this. Remember when you were in school. At recess time you would choose two people to pick teams to play a game. Suppose one of the captains was your best friend. Suppose you knew, you chose in your heart to be on your best friend’s team. Did that matter, your choosing? No, what mattered was that your friend chose you. It does not matter if we choose Jesus, which we cannot do because our will has been tainted by sin. What matters most is that He has already chosen us, you and me. He has chosen us. He gives us faith through the waters of Holy Baptism. He gives us forgiveness of sins through His Word, through confession and absolution and through His Holy Supper. He keeps us in faith through His Word and His Holy Supper. He has so many gifts and blessing He wants to give to us. My prayer is that you will continue to be given the gifts He has to give so that he may continue to stir in us our response of praise saying, to Him be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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