Here's my sermon from last Sunday. If you'd rather listen to it, check out my church website instead.
Choosing a Life of Blessing
Deuteronomy 30:11-20
21/01/07
Introduction – the importance of choice
Imagine yourself at a Y-junction – a point in the road where you can veer to the left or to the right, and you need to choose which way your going to go.
There’s a sign post at the junction which describes what is ahead. To the left, it says: “Bumpy, windy, smelly, rough, treacherous track to certain destruction”. To the right it says: “Good road with beautiful views, tough going at times but worth the effort to a glorious destination.”
Which way are you going to go?
- Do you trust the truthfulness of the signpost?
- Does one part of you want to take the awful road just to see if it really is that bad?
There’s a choice that you need to make that is going to have a huge impact on the quality of your journey.
Today we are going to be looking at the issue of making good choices in life. We all face hundreds or even thousands of choices every day, choices about where to go, what to do, what to say, what to think, even how to feel. The Bible naturally has a lot to say about the importance of making the right choices in life, and how we should go about that. The Bible stands as a signpost to show us the right way to go, but how much attention are we paying to it?
Illustration – The frustrations of being a parent!
Many of you know what it’s like to be a parent. As a parent you want your children to make good choices. It makes you feel great when they do, but it can be worrying and frustrating when they don’t (or when you think they don’t).
As a parent you learn to recognise some of the things that stop your children from making good choices. When young children are too tired, they often make bad choices. When they are too hyped up on red cordial or lollies or when they are over-excited by something their choices aren’t the best. Good manners can go out the window and listening to parents seems impossible.
As children get older you begin to recognise the influence of peer pressure on choices, the influence of changing hormones, the influence of popular culture and so on.
Today I want us to picture God as our parent, our Heavenly Father; and He wants to talk to us about the choices we are making, and the choices we need to make. He recognises that there are things which affect each of us, and affect the things that we are choosing in life, and He has something to say about that.
Read: Deut. 30:11-20.
What does God want to say to us this morning about choices? Firstly..
1. Choices have Consequences
As Moses speaks to the people as God’s messenger, he makes it very clear. If you choose to love and obey God, the result will be that God will bless you. But if you decide to turn away from God and disobey His commands the result for you will be certain destruction. When you look at the history of the nation of Israel you can see that God carried through on that promise. But there’s something interesting about that, which I want to describe by telling you a little bit about a king of Israel named Jeroboam the second. We read about Jeroboam in 2 Kings 14:23-29 (read).
The most successful (and what some people might call “blessed”) period in Israel’s history, since they split off from the nation of Judah, was under an evil king. He promoted idol worship in Israel, just as the first king by the name of Jeroboam had done 150 years earlier. The very thing that Moses warned the people about before they entered the promised land. But from a historical point of view, he was their most successful king, and he brought the nation renewed prosperity.
What’s with that?
Well, just 30 years after Jeroboam II’s death, Israel was totally wiped out by the Assyrians. Only 30 years after being at their most powerful and prosperous, Israel was no more. It’s a valuable lesson for us to consider.
Sometimes doing the wrong thing seems to have good consequences. People who are dishonest and greedy get rich. People who are bullies get their own way. People who tell lies and rumours stir up trouble for others.
But in the end, what God has said will happen always happens. Sometimes consequences are immediate, sometimes they take a while to arrive. But every choice carries consequences. We need to learn to think about the consequences of our choices.
Simple example: When enjoying a movie or T.V. programme late into the night, learn to think “I’m going to be too tired tomorrow, I’d better switch this off.”
Don’t decide on the basis of what you feel like doing now, think about what consequence you prefer. Watch the show and be tired, or get a good sleep.
For myself, I’d rather play a computer game than read my Bible any day! But the consequences of each are so different. After playing a computer game, I usually feel nothing except maybe my eyes might be a bit tired. After reading my Bible my mind is alive with truth – I feel energised. If I do what I feel like doing, my spiritual life is barren. If I do what I know will be best, I come alive.
When you are talking to someone, think about what the impact of your words will be. Who will be affected by what you are saying? How will they be affected? Learn to think about consequences.
Many of us know what sort of life we want to lead. We want to live as Jesus would. We want to have character which is Christ-like. We want to be a good witness so that people around us may come to believe in Jesus. What choices do you need to make that will produce that kind of result? None of that stuff will happen by itself. Those things are consequences of good choices carried through into action.
2. Our Choices Reflect our Heart for God
Verse 17 tells us that a choice to disobey God comes from a heart that turns away from Him. A heart that considers other people or other things more important or more desirable than God. The choices we make in life are a good litmus test of where we stand in relationship with God, which is why the Apostle John writes so strongly in his first letter to the churches. 1 John 5:3 says “This is love for God: to obey His commands.”
As a parent, I often explain to my children the consequences of their actions. I try to get them to make good choices based on the consequences to those choices. “If you eat any more plums, you’re going to get a sore tummy”. However sometimes my kids either don’t believe me or don’t care about those consequences, and they make the wrong choice. Sometimes I have to say more strongly “Don’t do that.” or “Do that.”, and as their father, I expect them to obey. They obey me because that is the nature of our relationship, I am the Dad, they are the Children. Choosing to obey me reflects how much they love and respect me as their father. Sometimes that decision is based on little more than a fear of punishment, but I would like to think that most of the time the fear of punishment isn’t an issue.
As a preacher I am well aware that some people respond to certain types of teaching and certain types of teachers, but not so well to others. On any given Sunday someone might love a sermon I do while someone else really struggles with it. For a while I was part of a church where I didn’t get a lot from the preaching. Other people seemed to love it, but I just thought it was terrible. It felt to me like there wasn’t much point being there. So the consequences for me of choosing to be in church didn’t really motivate me to make that choice. What did motivate me was the desire to honour God anyway. I learned to ask God to speak to me despite my difficulties with the style of preaching. I learned that being there with a good attitude and a desire to bless others was an important part of worship. I didn’t do it well every week, but my choice about how to participate in my church reflected my heart for God and my submission to Him.
If we want to make right choices; choices that bring life and goodness instead of death and destruction, we need to learn to consider the consequences of those choices; and even more importantly, to evaluate the condition of our hearts toward God.
Conclusion
I want to close by looking again at verse 11, where Moses says: “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.”
The Apostle Paul seemed to disagree with this when he wrote in Romans 7: “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”
But a few sentences later on in chapter 8 he writes:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
We can make all sort of excuses and give all sorts of reasons for the choices we make. We are all affected by different things, just as our children are affected by various things at various times.
But in Jesus God has paid the price for all our sins – our wrong choices in life. He has forgiven all those who have believed in Jesus as the One who has saved us and is our rightful Lord. He has given us the Holy Spirit to help us to make right choices and to carry them out.
Remember 2 Peter 1:3: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness”
There is no excuse for the Christian, to make consistently bad choices about how they live, or to act as though they don’t have any choice in the matter. We have been given everything we need in order to live the lives that God has called us to live.
Our choices always have consequences, and they always reflect our heart for God. May God challenge you about the choices you make today, this week and this year. As a church may our choices prove the truth of who God is and what He means to us.
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