Love - Choosing Israel

Lesson #49

This is our second lesson related to the word love. I am still thinking about the last lesson and want to try to focus more clearly. As I ponder on this I see God’s love for us and I see our love for God. There is the general love God has for everyone, both lost and saved, in the world. But I see a special group of people called the elect that I believe God loves more deeply. As believers we are to love all people, even our enemies, but I believe we have a greater love for the one we have chosen to be our spouse. Now consider our love for God. Consider two possibilities of coming to salvation; you choose through John 3:16 or God chooses you to be one of his. In which case do you think you would feel the greatest love for God and the most secure?

Life is made up of choices. We choose people for various reasons or assignments and others choose us. Does God choose people for certain assignments? The scriptures are clear that he does. As an example consider God’s choosing of Israel. Consider what John Piper said in the sermon titled “God So Loved the World, Part 2.” The text of what was said is included below.

Deuteronomy 10:14–15: “Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.”

The point here is that God did not just offer to be Israel’s covenant God; he chose Israel. He took them from all the people. He didn't negotiate. He freely and sovereignly and unconditionally chose Israel.

The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you. (Deuteronomy 7:6–8)

This does not mean that they all have eternal life. But it does mean that God put them in a special covenant relation to himself. They did not choose him. He chose them. And he calls this love. It is a love that goes beyond an offer.

With this choice of Israel in mind consider what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:1 – 3 about choice: “To those who reside as aliens . . . who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit . . . Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (NASB). Next time we will consider how this love is greater than the general love of John 3:16.

Prayer

Father, today in most sermons and Bible studies we just skim the surface of scripture. We don’t take time and seek out the treasures buried beneath the surface and we walk away lacking the nourishment we so desperately need. Father, I pray for the Spirit’s guidance as I dig into this material. Lord, teach me what I need to know.