Deut 9:4, Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. 
    	This morning, we are once again presented with the reality that needs to be at the forefront of our every thought in terms of the life that we have been given to live on this earth by the Lord God Almighty. All that we are in Christ is because of the work of God in us. There is nothing that we can do to earn it. There is no inherent worthiness that made God choose us. There is nothing that has brought us to the place that we can claim that we deserve the best that God has to offer. Just as with the Children of Israel, we cannot delude ourselves in any measure thinking that we are someone whom God has to honor with all the goodness of His heart because it would be wrong of Him not to do so.
In all humbleness and with greatest meekness before God, we need to allow the Lord to establish the proper perspective of our lives at this time as we walk with Him. We are not trying to insinuate that we are worthless nor are we diminishing our identity as the creation of God. But the fact remains that the great issue with which man has always been beset is the inflated sense of his own selfhood. There has been that within the core of humanity that has tried to replace God and the need for God with the deluded lie that we can be as gods unto ourselves. We are constantly bombarded with the subterfuge and deception that we have no need of some entity other than our own ingenuity and prideful ability to reason our way through the course of our physical lives in this world. That is the core element that God addresses in these words from the mouth of Moses to His people, which includes you and me and which we need to take to heart.
This was reinforced over and over again by the Lord through Moses, such as in our previous readings in this very Book of the Bible. Please turn back to a couple of passages which we have already discussed beginning with Deut 7:7+8.
Deut 7:7+8, The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 
    	Just as with the tribes of Israel, the Lord did what the Lord chose to do because it was His good pleasure. He did not choose the Israelites, as we discussed because they were some large and powerful nation that would march through the land with all the force of their own might. He chose a people which needed everything to be done by God in order to shower upon them His good and wonderful providential Hand of love and safekeeping and mercy and grace and provision. He showed, through this small and insignificant people, the might of His own Omnipotence and Omniscience and Omnipresence in order to reveal to the whole of humanity that He was the Sovereign Lord God Almighty Who was going before a people that He had chosen unto Himself. 
	Now turn to last week’s reading, Deut 8:16-18 and please follow along. Moses made known to them the full measure of why God was doing all that He was doing for them. 
Deut 8:16-18, In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.' "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 
	We need to constantly remind ourselves that God deserves the every credit for all that we have. He is the One Who makes the every provision, from the oxygen that fills our lungs and the blood that courses through our bodies. Consider His gift of our parentage, whom we have received, and the spouse whom He provided, our children with whom we are blessed. As well, He gives us the shelter and the food and the clothing and everything else that we need each and every day. Nothing is to be accounted as being ours by our own efforts. It is all because God has made it available through our complete trust and reliance upon Him. That is our humbleness of mind that should be in evidence as we contemplate our thankfulness unto Him for all that He does for us.
	Then in this morning’s reading, reinforcing the passage of our consideration, we will highlight verse 5 one more time. Deut 9:5, It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 
	The value of the work of the Lord is strictly set in His Omniscience. He knows the true and holy and just and sure reason that He does all things. He is not to be questioned by us as if we could ever know better than Him what He is doing. All is set in His plan and purpose in Jesus Christ that was in place long before the eternal ages even began. God is the Supreme Sovereign of the totality of all that He has created. What He chooses to do and how He chooses to do it will always be the very best and most splendid means of presenting His awesome and perfect will unfolding in full accordance with His Supreme Authority.
	The Prophet Ezekiel brings this to the forefront as we can read together in a couple of passages in the 36th Chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. We will begin with verses 20-23, if you would please open to Ezek Chapter 36.
	Ezek 36:20-23, "When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned My holy name, because it was said of them, 'These are the people of the Lord; yet they have come out of His land.' "But I had concern for My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went. "Therefore, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord God," It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. "And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord," declares the Lord God, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. 
    	Notice that the Lord worked with the remnant of His people in order to show the whole of creation that He was the One Who was Holy and to be honored for all that He had done on their behalf. Even through the time of testing and the period of capture and removal from the Promised Land, God was still actively working to show forth His testimony and His name’s sake in His dealing with His chosen nation. 
	Then, in Ezek 36:32-36, we have the following recorded for us. Ezek 36:32-36, "I am not doing this for your sake," declares the Lord God, "let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel!" 'Thus says the Lord God, "On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. "And the desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passed by. "And they will say, 'This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.' "Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken and will do it." 
Again, take to heart the truth that all the credit belongs to the Lord for all that He will do. His people acted with malice and hatred toward Him and His commandments. They chaffed under the holiness that they were to present to the rest of the nations. They committed adulterous actions and immensely appalling and impudent and disgusting behaviors in the manner of thumbing their noses at the Lord Who only loved and kept and protected them. This was all the outworking of that audacity which infests the hearts and minds of humanity in his every effort to declare his independence from especially his Creator. 
The Apostle Paul brings this into the light in the truth that what we are now in Jesus Christ is not because of anything we did or can do or even should do. It is now, just as it was throughout the old dispensation of the Law, the direct action and grace and mercy and love of the Lord as He does what He so chooses to do for His name’s sake in our lives.
Please consider Rom 11:5+6. Rom 11:5+6, In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God's gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. 
    	We are brought face to face with the truth that all is by the gracious choice of God in our lives. We cannot take the slightest credit for any of it. Neither can we longer delude ourselves that God needed to choose us because we were worth choosing through some efforts or worthiness of our own making. All that is before us is that God so loved us that He sent His Only Begotten Son to save us unto Himself through the outpouring of His grace in the merciful action of our redemption. There was nothing that we could earn or deserve or manipulate or manage or handle in any manner whatsoever.
	Then, in Eph 2:1-7, the Apostle highlights what was so true of us until God made us alive unto Himself in Jesus. Please turn to it so we can relish the work that He has done in all His mercy and grace and love on our behalf.
	Eph 2:1-7, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 
This passage fully declares all that was true of us. No matter how much we might have considered ourselves to be a “good person,” the truth is that we were dead in our sin and trespasses. There was nothing about us that was inherently worthy of any of the love of the Lord. In spite of that, because He is rich in mercy, He so chose to love us unto Himself and to make us alive together in Jesus Christ. …(by grace you have been saved)…is not just a simple phrase that can be quickly read and then glossed over. It is the very essence of all that we have become by the working power and awesome merciful grace of God.
As the Apostle Paul so wrote to his protégé, Timothy, in 2 Tim 1:8-11, it is the grace of God that makes us the workmanship of His wonderful and awesome love. The full breadth and length and height of what God has done for us in the Omnipotent work of His Only Begotten Son is revealing the great love with which He has so loved us. He abolished death and brought life to such as ourselves who were dead in our sin and trespasses. In Christ, He made us the instruments for the declaration of His so great love.
2 Tim 1:8-11, Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me His prisoner; but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. 
In our final passage of this morning, Titus 3:3-7, the Apostle Paul sums up all that we need to have firmly and resolutely set into the core fabric of our being and our understanding of the tremendous work of God to such as ourselves. It is the absolute contrast and negation of anything that we might have considered of value in our lives apart from the life of Jesus Christ.
Titus 3:3-7, For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 
Oh the mighty and incredible and overwhelming and amazing love of God … poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior…. We can never sufficiently express the full extent of the gratitude that we owe to God for saving us from our selves. No matter how much we tried to make it on our own, lost in our sin and trespass and deeds of death, God made us alive in Jesus Christ. He did it all for the sake of His glory and His witness of holiness and the testimony of His wondrous and awesome name. Thank You Lord! So be it!
Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 77:13+14. Thy way, O God, is holy; What god is great like our God? Thou art the God who workest wonders; Thou hast made known Thy strength among the peoples. Amen.