After Pentecost Devotional - Day 33

“You were the weakest of all nations, but Yahweh chose you because he loves you and because he had made a promise to your ancestors. Then with his mighty arm, he rescued you from the king of Egypt, who had made you his slaves.” Deuteronomy 7:7-8

“When I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul did not come up with those words in a vacuum. They are based on concepts as old as this text in Deuteronomy, even if we would more naturally desire to ignore them.

Israel was not chosen because they were anything special. If anything, they were chosen precisely because they were not special. Abraham was a nomad, migrating from one land to another with no place to call home. He had no society within which to claim any importance, prominence, or deferential treatment. He had been chosen because God's message was one of inclusion and acceptance toward those who were otherwise unacceptable.

Israel fell into the same line. As an enslaved people in Egypt, dominated by the world's superpower, they were negligible. They were that class of people who are mainly invisible to us. They were the backroom staff unseen by the customers. They were the janitorial class we look beyond on entering a business. They were the migrant workers picking crops in some field far away from the centers of commerce. They were the oppressed poor mining rare minerals in an African mine, sewing clothing in a Malaysian sweatshop, slaves aboard a fishing vessel in the Pacific, refugees from warring parties vying for power in Syria, Yemen, or Sudan.

If there was anything to recommend the Hebrews to Yahweh, it was the fact that they were oppressed and crying out for relief. That was the message of Yahweh's redemption. “I have heard you and come to redeem you so that the world may know who I am.”

The message of the Exodus was a message about the identity and character of Yahweh. It was a message that centered on Yahweh's identity and character, not upon the identity of the people being redeemed. That was the message in Deuteronomy 7, and it was the message of Christ Jesus on the cross, as well.

Too often, however, we forget that the message of salvation and our own salvation has nothing to do with our own standing, importance, or any sense of superiority. God saves us because of our need, not our deserving. The message is that it is only the lowly who are in need of salvation. It is the needy who are granted grace because they need grace. In their receiving grace, we understand who God truly is.

If we look at the development of this theme, we will find it recurring throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. We find it applied over and over to widows, orphans, immigrants, foreigners, refugees, the poor, crippled, lame, and outcasts of various stripes. If we are to become the people of Yahweh, following the example we are given to mold our lives after these principles, it requires that we think less of ourselves and more of the One who has accepted and called us in love and grace.

Determine to look for those you might otherwise ignore, people loved by God.


"Lord, remind me today of my continual need for your redeeming grace, that I may share it."


—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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