Dec 21, 2019
God is a gracious God, and no one should have known that better than the people of Israel. He had repeatedly extended to them His grace and mercy and, in most cases, in spite of them, not because of them. He had chosen them as His own, not because they deserved it, but because He wanted to express His love for them. And God expected His chosen people to treat others with the same graciousness and goodness that they had received from Him. In Deuteronomy 15:1-11, Moses encourages the people of Israel to care for the poor and needy among them. He had even come up with a plan for forgiving debt and allowing people a chance to start their lives anew, with no threat of prosecution or slavery should they fail to pay all they owed. These kinds of initiatives, ordained by God, were meant to set the people of Israel apart from all the other nations and to mirror the loving, gracious, and forgiving nature of their God.