Pentecost 6, 2011 Deuteronomy 7:6-9
When the kids chose sides for a ballgame, Dale was always picked last. Dale always batted ninth. Dale always played right field. One day a new kid, named Josh showed up. Josh could hit, throw and field better than anyone else. The next day the kids made Josh a captain. With his first pick he said, “Dale.” When Dale started out for right field, Josh said, “Dale, where you going? You’re pitching.” When they came in from the field, Josh said, “Better grab a bat Dale, you’re leading off.” Though he was now number one, Dale’s athletic skills had not improved one bit. He was first because Josh chose him to be first.
According to our Old Testament lesson, we are all Dales, whom God chose to be His number one. God said, “You are a people holy to the Lord your God.” “Holy”, imagine that. Usually we think of holy as perfect. We’ll get to that in a minute. Holy’s first meaning is to be set apart. In cowboy movies during the spring round up the cowhand on his horse and twirling his lasso would cut out one of the calves from the herd, rope it and put the owner’s brand on it. God has cut us out from all the people on this crowded world for himself. He marked us as His own in Baptism.
God did not separate us out from the madding crowd because we were prize winners. Yet God, who can’t have a bunch of rejects in his kingdom, chose us anyway. Our great God sent his Son Jesus to purify us through His perfect and pure life and death. He made us fit to be his own prized possession. It’s not that God didn’t have other choices. As it says elsewhere in Deuteronomy, “To the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.”
Our response should be that we are completely surprised and overjoyed. However, unlike people on Antiques Road show who discover that some item is worth thousands of dollars, our tendency is to think, surely under all the grime and grit we’ve accumulated on ourselves there is something in us for God to love.
Well, God soon disabuses us of our delusions. He says in our text, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people…for you were the fewest of all peoples.” Think of God choosing Abraham to be the Father of Israel. Physically, Abraham,” was as good as dead (being 100 years old)” and his wife Sarah’s womb was barren.” Consider Israel in Egypt, he chose them to be his prized possession, a kingdom of priests, when they were slaves. He chose Moses, an octogenarian, to be leader of that freedom movement. We had nothing in us except trespasses, sin and the approaching smell of death. We had nothing which would commend ourselves to God. We wert h perennial Dale. The last picked who couldn’t run, throw or hit a lick.
Yet, He set his love upon us. In the Hebrew, that’s a phrase which indicates a strong physical desire for someone. We have an example in the book of Deuteronomy. When God gave Israel victory in a war and they took captives. God said, “And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife.” There were provisions set in place to protect the woman. The woman should shave her head and cut her nails. She would remove the clothes in which she was captured. Then she would spend a full month lamenting the loss of her father and mother. Then, after a month of seeing her at her most unattractive, if the man still had his love set upon her, he could marry the woman. Let me paraphrase Isaiah 53, “We had no form or majesty that God should look at us, and no beauty that he should desire us.” It all comes down to this; God chose to love us because He chose to love us. It’s as simple as that.
He chose us by grace alone fulfilling the promise given in Genesis that one of Eve’s offspring would crush the head of the serpent, but in the process the serpent would bruise his heal inflicting the poison of death. God desired us to be his own and in love gave himself into death through His son Jesus Christ. Martin Luther puts it this way, “all this He did out of fatherly divine goodness, without any merit or worthiness in us.”
When God makes a promise, he keeps his promise for the Lord your God is the faithful God. The word faithful means steady. It’s also the basis of our word “Amen.” When we say “Amen” we are confessing that we can count on God to answer our petition. God is the God of steadfast love. He is loyal to us. St. Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us? If God didn’t even spare his own son, won’t he also graciously give us all he has promised? Since God is the one who justifies, who can bring any charge against one whom God has chosen as his own and redeemed from sin and death? Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus who has died and risen again is at the right hand of God interceding for us.” What do we have to fear when two members of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, are interceding with the other third for us? God talking to himself on our behalf. God putting in a good word for us with himself. We’re conquerors through God’s love for us shown in Jesus Christ. Therefore there isn’t anything, anywhere or anyone who can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There are no limits here to God’s grace and love.
Therefore, I pose two questions for each of us and as Immanuel congregation to consider. How can we do anything other than give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name and make known his deeds among the peoples? How can we do anything else but be zealous for good works? Today we are calling on his name. This week we will have opportunity to make known his deeds and to be zealous in good works. May the Lord bless our words and our works.
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