The Lord your God has chosen you to be his people for his own possession out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord said his love upon you,

literally again delighted in you, and chose you, for you were the

fewest of all the peoples, but it was because the Lord loves you.

Why did God choose you?

That's the question John Piper answers from

Deuteronomy 10, 14, and 15 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on February 22nd, 1987.

Let's go to Deuteronomy 10,

verses 14 and 15. These two verses are the focus first of all.

The Uteronomy 1014 behold to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of

heavens the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord said his heart in love upon your

fathers. Literally that's the Lord delighted in your fathers to love them. That's where I get the idea of pleasure. He

delighted in loving them. And chose their descendants after them, you, above all the peoples, as at this day. Now notice two things about this text.

First, why does Moses describe the election of Israel against the backdrop of God's ownership of all things. You see that?

Verse 14 says to God belongs everything in heaven and on earth. He owns everything,

every body and everything. Every body and everything.

Then verse 15 says, yet he chose you for his people.

Now why did Moses in writing this put the choosing of God's people against the backdrop of God's ownership of everything.

Isn't the reason to dispel the notion that God was in any way cornered or hedged in so that he had to choose this people?

Isn't the point to dispel the current idea that each nation had its own God, Israel had its God, the

Canaanites had their God, Egypt had its God, the Babylonians had their God, and that's wrong, this text says.

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