Deuteronomy 7.6-8

“…the LORDyour God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who on the face of the earth. The LORDdid not set His love you on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORDloves you, and because He would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the LORDhas brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you…”

In case it ever occurred to anyone in Israel to think that somehow something in them must have prompted God to redeem and claim the people of Israel for Himself, God made it abundantly clear that the sole motive operative in their redemption was His grace.

God did not need the world, but He made it. He made it and it pleased Him, therefore it must have reflected Him. In so doing, the world would have known a measure of the pleasure and fulfillment that exist in the Three-in-One God. Out of love, God the Creator and Sovereign extended to helpless creatures the experience of His goodness, the experience of Himself.

Out of love God called a man out of riches and idolatry to be the father of many nations (Gen. 12.1-3). From that one man a people descended on whom God set His love unto their redemption. In love He sustained them through the wilderness and spread before them a good land to be the temporal staging-ground for the next stage of covenant blessing.

In love God entered into a covenant with His people, and in love He took it upon Himself to fulfill that covenant in all that it requires (Gen. 15).

In love God gave His Law to His people so that they, like creation before the fall, might enter into His goodness and love and live in holiness and love toward Him and their neighbors.

The God of the Law of God is a God of love; the worldview promulgated in that Law is, first, unto holiness, and, at the same time, unto love – for God, as of first importance, and for our neighbors as ourselves.

We do not truly understand the worldview of God’s Law if we do not embrace and experience it as a worldview expressive of God Himself, Who is love.

Act: Meditate on Matthew 22.34-40. How does Jesus’ teaching here reflect the character of God? How should this affect the worldview that guides our lives? Talk with a Christian friend about these questions.

T. M. Moore

The book of Ecclesiastes is a crucial resource for understanding the Biblical worldview against the backdrop of our secular age. Follow T. M.’s studies in Ecclesiastes by downloading the free, weekly studies available in our Scriptorium Resources page at The Fellowship of Ailbe. Click hereto see the weekly studies available thus far.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.