Deuteronomy 32:26-27 (ESV Strong's)
I would have said, “I will cut them to pieces;
I will wipe them from human memory,”
had I not feared provocation by the enemy,
lest their adversaries should misunderstand,
lest they should say, “Our hand is triumphant,
it was not the Lord who did all this.”’
Truth: God saved Israel for His namesake and not because they deserved it.
Over the years, Israel became quite puffed up that they were "God's people." The book of Romans was written so that the Jews who were Christians in the church would not think they had special privilege over the Gentiles in the body. The council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 was held because the Gospel had come to the Gentiles and the Jews felt that the Gentiles should have to take on some of the Jewish customs and add those customs to their salvation requirements. When Peter was told to go to the Gentiles in Acts 10 he, at first, stated that he had never done anything so unclean. In John 4 Jesus is discovered by the disciples talking to a Samaritan, and, in that, a women. To say that the Jewish people had an arrogance about them would be a gross understatement. They believed they were God's chosen people ... And they were!! Yet, as the above verse states (and is repeated throughout Scripture) they were God chosen people because God chose them. It was not because they deserved it. God saved them and rescued them for His own reputation and His own greatness. The same is true today. We are not the "elect" because of something we did, but because God chose to make us holy through the death of His Son. We can often get proud of our Christianity and believe we had something to do with it, or that Christ saved us because He saw something special in us. That is the farthest thing from truth. God saved them and us because we have a need to be saved and because He is a gracious God who promised to save. Israel was boastful because they were rescued. That is like someone being saved from drowning and trying to take the praise from the one who dove into the chilling water and rescued us. We need to praise God for our salvation.
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