NO SUPERSTAR!
Morning Devotional February 8, 2012
The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery. Deuteronomy 7:7,8, NIV.
God’s chosen are not superstars---they are super-loved! Twenty-five times in this single book (in the dusty heart of the Old Testament, at that). Moses speaks of “love.” Here the Hebrew word ahabah is the identical word Moses used to tell one of the great love stories of all time.
Remember the story of the runaway boy who, after dividing both his dad and his older brother out of the birthright, flees to a faraway land to find his uncle? Physically exhausted after days and nights on the lam, Jacob arrives in the country of his mother’s kin and collapses beside a shepherd’s well. Sheep bleating in every direction, Jacob looks up to spot a young woman leading her flock to the watering trough. “Rachel was beautiful of form and appearance” (Genesis 29:17). And it was, for the vagabond, love at first sight. So smitten was he that after meeting her father, his uncle Laban, Jacob blurted out his proposal: “I’ll work for you seven years if you’ll let me marry your daughter.” Deal! And as Moses tell the story. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love (ahabah) he had for her” (verse 20).
It is the same “love” that Moses uses to describe the reason the chosen got chosen in the first place. God loved the movement of liberated slaves, just like Jacob loved Rachel. Love at first sight, love for life. “For forty years” Moses declares, “your God has been trying to win your hand in marriage.” There’s only one word to describe a God who would spend 40 long years trying to win the love of any of us---and that love is g-r-a-c-e.
How else shall we explain the God of the universe, so passionate about winning the entire juvenile detention center back to Him, that He picks out one of the occupants, the one who showed Him a semblance of interest, a modicum of openness, and sets out to win that collective heart for the sake of His global mission? That God would choose a movement at all to help Him reach and save this world is truly amazing.
Amazing grace, amazing love. Obviously the only superstar in our story is He! (The Chosen, by Dwight K. Nelson, p. 49).
THE SHOW CASE
Morning Devotional February 09,2012
He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land---your grain, new wine and oil---the calves of your heard and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people. Deuteronomy 7:13, 14, NIV.
I knew a man once who was a champion race car driver, and had the scars to prove it! Not that he needed the scars to tell his story. Step into his eight-floor suite overlooking the city, and you’ll see a wall of bright-colored photographs capturing the beauty and glory of his fast cars. Then you’ll see, displayed out on the shelves, tiny replica and models of his racing machines. Look behind the glass and you’ll gaze upon his collection of ribbons and cups and trophies. It is the showcase of a winner (most of the time).
When you put a showcase together, you’ve got something you want to share with the world. That’s why showcase are more than simple collections---they often tell the story about the one who put them together.
And that’s Moses point in his farewell address of Deuteronomy. Again and again he not only reminds the grown up children of Israel that they’ve been chosen by God---he repeatedly tells them why. As our text today reveals, the chosen are specially blessed by the Chooser. It’s that simple.
If you obey God’s laws carefully, “you will display your wisdom and intelligence among the surrounding nations. When they hear all these decrees, they will exclaim, ‘How wise and prudent are the people of this great nation.” For what great nation has a god as near as near to them as the Lord our God is near to us whenever we call on Him?” (Deuteronomy 4:6, 7, NLT). What kind of a movement is this that has a God like that!
And that’s why God calls the chosen and raises them up, with the promise to bless them, if they follow Him. It’s the law of the showcase. When you put a showcase together, you’ve got something you want to share with the world. After all, showcases aren’t suppose to be dusty old collections. They’re the visual demonstration that somebody rather special is behind it all. As it turns out. Somebody very special, if you’re talking about the divine movement of the chosen. (The Chosen by Dwight K. Nelson p. 50).