Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, “It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,” whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.
(Deuteronomy 9:4)
Read: Deuteronomy 9
Devotion: As Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 7:11, the Father is a wonderful gift giver—especially toward his people. The gifts he lavishes on his creation are literally innumerable. Then, on top of that pile of immeasurable goodness, he blesses his people with even more and greater gifts!
The chief of the gifts he gives to his people is, of course, forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with him! On the one side of this gift, his people are given the assured promise that they will be welcomed into his kingdom and will dwell in the peace and joy of his presence forever. On the other side of this gift is the other wonderful promise that God will remove every hint of sin and wickedness from the earth. All of his enemies, and ours by extension, will be crushed under the righteous heel of Christ! We should rightly be reveling in the great gifts that God has given us, and we should be telling others about them as well.
As we celebrate our salvation and God’s mercy toward us and tell others about God’s amazing grace, however, we must keep a close eye on our hearts. Why? Because in our pride we will look around at all of our blessings and think that we have received them because we deserve them.
During the exodus and their wilderness travels, Israel also received tremendous blessings from the Lord with promises of even greater ones in the future. They were freed from bondage to Egypt, they heard God’s voice on Mt. Sinai, they received his law, he dwelt in their midst, and he led them to the land he had promised their forefathers. When they got to the land, he would fight for them and drive out the nations who were currently inhabiting the land so that Israel could inherit a land full of cities, fields, and cattle that they neither built, planted, or raised (Deut 6:10-11).
On the border of the Promised Land, God had Moses recount Israel’s journey up to that point because he knew the heart of men. God knew that Israel would look around at their blessings and be tempted to think that it was because of their own righteousness that God chose them and blessed them. At the same time, they would look down their noses on the other nations who weren’t as “righteous” as they and, thus, only deserving of Yahweh’s righteous wrath.
God warns them, therefore, that it is not because of their greatness that he chose them and gave the land to them (vv. 4-5), nor was it because they were righteous. Israel was no less wicked than the nations that God was going to drive out of the land. They were a stubborn people who had been rebellious since the day he delivered them from bondage in Egypt (vv. 6-7). He did not save them or bless them, and he was not going to destroy their enemies for them, due to anything good in them. As God told them earlier, he chose to love them despite their wickedness, and he is faithful to his promises (Deut 7:6-8). God chose them, not out of any merit on their part, but wholly out of his abundant grace and mercy.
Christ did not die for you because you deserved it.
We, too, need this warning and reminder. Christ did not die for you because you deserved it. You did not believe in him and come to the true knowledge of God and the true meaning of creation and history because you were smarter than everyone else who failed to come to such a knowledge. You were as deserving of wrath and condemnation as every other wicked person on the planet (Eph 2:1-3). “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2:4-5). As Paul says elsewhere, there is nothing that you have that you did not receive as a gift of pure grace. And if you did receive it as a gift, how can you live and talk as though you acquired it on your own (see 1 Cor 4:7)?
As God instructed the Israelites in the wilderness, we must guard our hearts against any hint of spiritual pride. As we revel in the grand gifts that God has given us, especially in the gift of our salvation, we must remember that we are wholly undeserving of such gifts. And as we go and tell others of what God has done, we must do so not with an air of superiority, but with a humble and contrite heart. As Isaac Watts wrote, “Alas! And did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” As worms, let us go and tell our fellow worms of the grace and mercy that is found only in the cross of Christ.
Ponder and Pray: Consider why spiritual pride is not only dangerous but also harmful for evangelism. Finish by thanking God for his abundant grace despite your sin.
