Deuteronomy 10:14-15 “The heavens, indeed the highest heavens, belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord had his heart set on your fathers and loved them. He chose their descendants after them–he chose you out of all the peoples, as it is today.”

We are easily impressed by people who have a lot. I once watched a documentary about people who owned extraordinary houseboats. Most of them had more square footage than my own house. A two thousand square foot boat (most of them were more like barges) is an interesting thing, interesting enough that someone made a show about them. But in the end, it’s just people living on a big boat. You can find similar shows about extravagant houses, impressive car collections, and other luxuries beyond the reach of ordinary people.

People who can afford such things have choices the rest of us don’t. They don’t have to settle for “just-barely-good-enough-to-get-by.” For some, almost nothing is beyond their reach. The food they eat, the clothes they wear, the cars they drive are all of the highest quality. Such people don’t hang around with just anyone. The friends they make, even the people they marry, come from an elite class of people who don’t associate with the rest of us.

The Lord God makes all these celebrities and rich folk look like beggars. Moses mentions God’s ownership of the entire universe in which we live, not to make him interesting to us, nor to suggest that he is aloof and distant and unapproachable to little people like you or me. He does it to magnify God’s grace, his undeserved love, in choosing us to be his people. “Yet the Lord had his heart set on your fathers and loved them. He chose their descendants after them–he chose you out of all the peoples, as it is today.”

The Lord could have chosen any people he wanted. Israel had nothing to make them especially attractive to the Lord. From the time of their father Abraham they were nomadic shepherds, not great rulers and conquerors. The families from which they had come had been quite dysfunctional. Many times the family history read like a soap opera: adultery, playing favorites, pathological lying, unhealthy rivalries, domestic violence. As they grew into a nation, they proved to be stubborn, whiny, and ungrateful.

Still, the Lord set his heart on them and loved them. He didn’t overlook their shortcomings. He was well aware of them all. But he forgave them nonetheless. His standard for choosing them, for having them wasn’t based on their gifts, accomplishments, or goodness. It was all based on his grace. He is a seeking God who does not claim the best. He rescues the worst. He turns sinners into sons and daughters, the people he has made his very own.

Today, we are that people. In his first letter Peter writes to New Testament Christians, “You are a chosen people.” “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (2:9,10). There’s that standard again: mercy, grace. We have not impressed God with our credentials. We have been saved by the life and death of Jesus Christ, cleansed by his blood, and gathered by faith as the people who are his very own.            

That’s impressive.