I have been reading in Deuteronomy recently and it is not at all how I remember it. In my memory I can never distinguish between Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Even though I just read it not too long ago I cannot remember what the theme of Leviticus was. Numbers, I remember, was when God told Moses to take a census of the Israelites and the he was given some laws that I don’t remember. Deuteronomy apparently means “Second Numbers.” In that way it is a continuation of the Book of Numbers which was a large part of the law. Deuteronomy is also the recorded final speech of Moses before the Israelites finally entered the promised land and Moses when up on a Mountain to die.
The thing that I think about to put all this into
perspective while I am reading is that God is in the process of setting Israel
apart to be his people and a demonstration to the world of who He is. It has stood
out to me during Moses’s speech that Israel was not a better or more righteous
people than the people that they were going to destroy and replace in the land.
Instead it was because God had chosen them and loved them that they were going
to inherit the land and be his people. Moses says, “It is not for your
righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to
possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of theses nations that
the Lord your God is driving out before you in order to confirm the oath which
the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham Isaac and Jacob.”[1]
God had chosen his people five hundred years earlier by calling out Abraham and
promising that the Lord would make Abraham a great nation. Now He was making
good on His promise.
It strikes me that while at some points God is so frustrated
with the Israelites that he considers wiping them out, I do not think he ever
stopped loving them. Looking ahead to the cycle of rebellion, punishment,
repentance, and redemption that Israel falls into when they inhabit the land, God
did not stop loving them then either. Then finally when God decided that He’d had
enough, I do not believe He stopped loving them even when He exiled them from
the land. Their exile even came with a promise, that after 70 years they would
be redeemed. God was again fulfilling His promise that he would punish Israel
for their disobedience to bring them back to Him.
What an encouragement it is that while God may use different
means to correct us or get our attention. We can have faith that since he has
chosen us and loves us, he will not stop loving us because we do wrong. This is
not an enabling fact so that we can live in sin, but a humbling truth that we
owe everything to God’s willingness to love us, redeem us, and not give up on
us.
“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who
believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”
John 1:12
