It occurs to me that Super Bowl Sunday is a day filled with shifting allegiances. While it’s a great day for Rams and Bengals fans, the rest of the nation is caught trying to figure out who they should root for. Can you cheer for bitter division rivals simply because a victory might make the division your favorite team plays in look tougher? Or maybe you decide to cheer for a side simply because of a specific player you like and respect. In any case, purists are left dissatisfied because they can’t pull for either side. But our human hearts are rarely purist. Our allegiances are fickle and shift all the time. And this fickleness is a big issue for the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7, our passage for this Sunday.

You see, last week, we heard in Deuteronomy 6 that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might, to be wholly and completely devoted to the Lord with every fiber of our being. And here in chapter 7, that devotion means that the Lord has set the Israelites apart for Himself. This is the first time in the Old Testament that we see the Israelites called a “holy people”. And yet, we know that our hearts are rarely so devoted. And so the issue isn’t just being made holy, but also remaining holy. And then what happens when we lose our holiness? How can we be made holy again? As we work through Deuteronomy 7, the hope is to see that this passage points both to a holiness that we are called to and a holiness that we receive graciously in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So come this Sunday thinking about how an unholy people are graciously made holy through the Gospel.