Deuteronomy 7:6-8 "For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. (7) The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: (8) But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt."
"For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God." This
statement stands on its own merit. If there were no other explanatory
thoughts in today's passage, these words would stand true. You are holy unto
the LORD your God. But if the explanation was not in place, we would try
to understand why we are holy and what made us holy. First, what does it
mean to be holy? According to Strong's Concordance, it means we have been
sanctified, or set apart, as a clean people unto the Lord. We have been
appointed to proclaim the goodness of our Lord.
Some might say this only pertains to the people of Israel and that is true in
the primary application of this Scripture. God was speaking this, through Moses,
to those people who were about to enter Canaan. God had separated them to
be a different people in comparison to those people who were currently
occupying the land. They were to be "God's people" and to show
the praise and power of God's glory. Though the primary application is toward
those people, the same principle applies to you and me and to every
blood-bought, Spirit-born child of God. We have been set apart by regeneration,
or being born again, to show the praise and power of God's glory in our individual
lives.
How did we become holy? What caused God to bring us into that state of
holiness? Did we do something in order to obtain holiness? Were we in the right
place at that right time, making the right decision, and doing the right
thing? If the explanation had not followed that opening declaration of
holiness, we could have assumed many different conclusions as to how we became
holy. But God did not leave it to our imagination. You can read it
directly from God's Word to find the answer. "God hath chosen thee
to be a special people unto himself." It was God's choice to love
you and me. We didn't earn it. We didn't deserve it. We did not merit the love
of God. In spite of that, God chose to love us.
Did God love us because we were the strongest? Did God love us because we were
the greatest or the most in number? No, again there was nothing about us that
would cause God to love us. There was nothing about us that could be counted as
worthy of a love that is as great as God's love for us. Nothing about us would
draw God toward us. This is a bleak picture so far, isn't it? The
brightness of this picture is not found in us at all; rather, the glory
(brightness) belongs unto the Lord. We are holy unto Him simply because He
loved us. There was no reason for that love outside of Himself. He promised to
love us. He promised to bring us out of the captivity of sin from which you and
I could not bring ourselves. He chose to redeem us. He chose that redemption to
require the shedding of blood. He chose that blood to be His own righteous
blood which flowed through the veins of His precious and only begotten Son.
We are holy unto the Lord simply because God chose us to be holy. There is no
explanation outside of Himself for this being true. What wondrous love is
this! Now, let us fulfill that holiness by showing forth His praise in
our lives.