To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. (Deuteronomy 10:14-15, NIV)
To Yahweh—the one true God, the LORD—belong all things.
Why? Because he made them. They’re his. Nothing in all creation exists apart from God. He made it all and, therefore, all things owe their existence to him and, therefore, all things belong to him.
And yet….
And yet, he has chosen a people for himself. The God who made everything (including everyone) and thus owns everything has been pleased to take a step further and actually call a people to himself. This God has reached down and made himself a part of his creation in such a way as to reveal himself to people so that they can know him.
In Deuteronomy Moses is preparing the Israelites to enter the Promised Land. They’ve wandered for the past 40-years and an entire generation has died. Their wandering was due to their unwillingness to trust in God—the one who brought them out of the land of slavery—they’re Exiler. Instead of trusting, they grumbled. Instead of trusting, they murmured. Instead of trusting, they complained. And instead of trusting, they rebelled.
So, they wandered.
They wandered and all the while, through all their grumbling, murmuring, complaining, and rebellion, God was providing for them.
Now Moses who, along with the entire generation that died, knows he will not be entering into the Promised Land because of his disobedience, gives the Israelites one last word to remind them and encourage them as they go forward. That word of reminder and encouragement is the book of Deuteronomy.
In Deuteronomy 10:14 Moses tells them that everything belongs to God. The heavens, the earth, and everything in the earth is God’s. And yet Moses tells them that there’s something special about them.
They’re special.
But, they’re not special because of who they are. They’re special because of who God is and what he has done for them.
It’s always because of what God has done.
What did God do? He chose them. Among all the people in the entire world he set his affection on their ancestors and then on them and chose them to be his people. God picked them from all the world to show himself to the world.
It seems to me this sort of revelation can leave a person (or a group of people) in one of two states: either they’ll be filled with pride or they’ll be filled with humility. With a group it’s probably a mix of the two and it was surely no different with the ancient Israelites.
To know that God—the creator of everything—chose them to be his could easily fill them with pride. If they thought God chose them because of something unique to them then they would quickly set themselves above others. That sort of thinking will not do. God sees it coming and, through Moses, says to them: “…you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19).
God tells the Israelites to love those outside their group because God loves them (the Israelites). How dare they receive love from God and refuse to extend that love to others.
And so we might ask: What about us?
If you love Jesus right now it’s only because God has called you to himself. You did not want him on your own—in fact, you wanted anything other than him on your own. And yet, here you find yourself loving this Jesus whom you didn’t care about before. So, what will you do? Will you take that love and hold it to yourself or, like God (through Moses) told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10, will you love those outside the camp because of God’s great mercy in choosing you?