God Loves and Helps All Kinds of People

“a great and numerous people, as tall as the Anakim. The Lord destroyed the Rephaim at the advance of the Ammonites so that they drove them out and settled in their place. This was just as He had done for the descendants of Esau who lived in Seir when He destroyed the Horites before them; they drove them out and have lived in their place until now.” (Deuteronomy 2:21–22, HCSB)

Sometimes we get the mistaken impression that God worked only through the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. However, in this passage, we see that God worked through the descendants of Esau as well as the Ammonites. The Ammonites were the descendants of Lot. God helped the Ammonites and He also helped the Edomites.
Why would God record that He helped these other groups of people? He wanted to show the Israelites that even then at that time, they were not exclusive to Him. God chose Israel as His chosen people. Yet, God loves more people than just the Israelites. Even today, God loves more people than just those aligned spiritually with the nation of Israel. He loves Christians. He loves Jews. He loves Arabs. He loves Persians. He loves Buddhists. He loves Muslims. He will work His purposes through any nation or set of people He chooses to use.

However, He has exclusively used His Son Jesus to save people from the consequences of sin and death, an everlasting punishment in a place called Hell. So while God loves everyone, He can’t exclusively protect people from the consequences of disobeying Him. But because God loves everyone, He provided a way to help everyone deal with the consequences of disobeying Him. Jesus died on the cross to pay the sin debt for the entire world.

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash