WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CHOSEN?

As part of Parashah Va’etchanan, Deuteronomy 7:7-8 draws attention to the election of Israel in stating, “Adonai didn’t set his heart on you or choose because you numbered more than any other people - on the contrary, you were the fewest of all peoples. Rather, it was because Adonai loved you and because He wanted to keep the oath which he had sworn to your ancestors, that Adonai brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from a life of slavery under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” 

Of this marvelous passage of Scripture, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recounts Israel’s sages, in reminding of Rabbienu Bachya quotes Rambam, “who says that we would have expected          God, [the] King of the universe, to have chosen the most numerous nation in the world as His people, since ‘the glory of the King is in the multitude of people’ (Prov. 14:28). God did not do so. Thus, Israel should count itself extraordinary blessed that God chose it, despite its smallness, to be His am segula, His special treasure.” 

This election for Israel is also seen in Deuteronomy 10:15 that “Only Adonai took enough pleasure in your ancestors to love them and chose their descendants after them - yourselves above all peoples, as he still does today.” Of verse 15, it is noteworthy in acknowledging that in stating “… Adonai took enough pleasure in your ancestors to love them,” literally means in Hebrew, that God DELIGHTED in your fathers to LOVE and CHOSE them! It was in love that God chose the Patriarch’s, it was in love that God sent His holy Prophets and it was in love that He sent, Yeshua the Promised Messiah!

When speaking of Israel’s irrevocable calling, as believers in Yeshua we are doubly-encouraged in knowing that Adonai is a God of Covenant and Promise, and that we in Messiah have that same guarantee in His LOVE! It is for this reason, 1 Yochanan (John) 3:1-2 states, “See what love the Father has lavished on us in letting us be called God’s children! For that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it has not known Him. Dear friends, we are God’s children now; and it has yet been made clear what we will become. We do know that when He [Yeshua] appears, we will be like Him; because we will see Him as He really is.” 

In this, the grafted-in Gentile or Messianic Jew does not replace national-Israel in any way, but, because Adonai is faithful and true and will fulfill all His promises to national-Israel as seen in the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12:1-3; 17:1-8) and to both Jew and Gentile through the shed blood of the Messiah (Colossians 1:20). In the end, this is the hope for all of Israel and the entire world, and by God’s great grace we are chosen of God and called His daughters and sons! Beloved, you are love and God’s special treasure!

~ Rabbi Mark Rantz