On Deuteronomy 7:6-11…God calls out and gathers His people in such a way and with such means and for such reasons so as to provide all who are watching with a clear illustration of His person and character. Based upon what God has made His people to be and how it is that He has chosen them, we are instructed to “know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God” (v.9). Put another way, what God has done with His people (the Church) throughout the ages He has done to provide a vivid and tangible illustration of some more essential and basic truths about Himself.

What we learn here about the people of God overall (the Church) is a broad portrait of what also happens in each and every individual community of believers in every place.

• As a community of believers, we are a community holy to the Lord our God (v.6)

• We are a community chosen out of all the peoples on the face of the earth (v.6)

• Our community is God’s treasured possession (v.6)

• God did not make us into a community belonging to Him because of anything great about us (v.7)

• God did make us into a community belonging to Him because of His own love (v.8)

• God also made us into a community because of His promise to gather for Himself a people (v.8)

• To make us into a community belonging to Him, God brought us out and redeemed us from the house of slavery (v.8—this is obviously a reference to the people of Israel being freed from slavery in Egypt, but the imagery here is fitting of the condition of each of our souls without God’s help, we are bound by the slave-masters of sin and death, from which God redeems us and brings us out).

These amazing truths illustrate the character of God, since He is “the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love” (v.9, a covenant that v.12 goes on to say is one that God swore to the fathers, it is not a covenant based upon us; it was promised to those before us, and because of that promise, we are included by the mercy and love of God).

But the covenant of God is not without necessary response on our part. The covenant that God will keep is only with those who love Him and keep His commandments. From this I think two observations are obvious:

First, there is such an emphasis upon the previous nature of God’s involvement in the covenant with His people, I can’t help but think that (though it may not be explicit here) there is an element of God-enabled responsive love and God-empowered responsive obedience. It is simply a part of God’s character that He creates for Himself a people that fittingly respond to the greatness of His nature. God gathers a worshiping (loving and obedient) people. How could He gather any other kind of people?

Second, how great it is that the response God first requires (though not the only thing) is that we respond to His faithfulness and love with love towards Him. God wants our hearts. He desires our love, and the obedience that flows from it. “You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:4-5).