For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.
Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and olive oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor will any of your livestock be without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. - Deuteronomy 7:6-16
God chose us, not because we were special or because there were a lot of us, but because he loved us. Because of his love, he made a promise. And because of that promise, his favor covers us. We are inside his family, not outside.
God has chosen the difficult route of being our God. Rather than fear and punishment, he has chosen love and gratitude as the motivators he will use to change our behavior and our character. It is the difficult route because it is easy to take his goodness for granted. It is the difficult route because we can choose selfish behavior and know that God still will love us. I lived a lot of my life worried about how God might be disappointed in me rather than grateful at how generous he is. Worry is ultimately selfish because it focuses on my failing while gratitude focuses on his giving.
Knowing that, he still chooses to wait for us to love him back. "Therefore, take care...If you pay attention..." It is true that we can fail to experience the full goodness of God because we turn away from him. This doesn't discourage the 1,000-generation-faithful God and his covenant of love. But it does direct the pattern of his interaction. When we act like we are in a covenant of love with God, he can bless us, knowing that the blessing is a lesson to us in gratitude. When we do not act like were in a covenant of love with God, he must interact with us in the fashion that teaches us the goodness of God, not the goodness of fate.
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