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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