Scripture | Deuteronomy 30:11-20 (NIV)
11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Spiritual Strength – Rule for Life
By Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Our goal for 2021 is to grow in our spiritual strength – to develop our spiritual muscle through learning and practicing Spiritual Disciplines. We’re following along with Adele Calhoun, writer of Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, as she helps us to understand these spiritual disciplines. Right now, we’re looking at those disciplines which are related to our worship. Last week, we talked about Gratitude. We talked about how our culture is one which makes gratitude a rare thing. When we use complaining and dissatisfaction to relate and bond to others, we create in ourselves a constant cynicism and distance ourselves from God. Thankfulness works to do the opposite by highlighting God’s presence in our lives and allows for us to partner with what God is already doing in the world.
This week we move onto Rule for Life. But before we do, let’s practice our memory verse: “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” -Psalm 139:14
How many people here have ever worked with, parented, or even known a toddler before? Even I can raise my hand to that. While I have no children of my own and have, therefore, never had a toddler, even I know that toddlers can be a handful. Having been one myself, I can tell you that there is a lot of mischief which happens by the hands of toddlers around the world. From imaginary friends, to wanting to choose their own clothes, to eating fuzzies from the couch, to thinking that they ARE batman – toddlers are strange little creatures. But one of the strangest things about them is their decision-making process. You could offer a toddle candy or dirt to eat and there genuinely is a 50-50 chance that they will choose the dirt over the candy.
Honestly, they’re probably heathier for choosing the dirt, but by all accounts, any one with half of brain would choose the candy, which might make and excuse for them as their brains are still developing. But obviously, we have fully developed brains and can make smart choices. We would never choose to eat dirt over candy, right? All we need to do to dispel this false view of ourselves is look around our world. The chaos of our lives just prove that we don’t always make the best decisions like we think we do. To be fair, life is not as black and white as dirt versus candy. In a world of complexity, how do we make right decisions? How do we choose what is good and how do we avoid eating bugs?
In our text for today, we hear from the mouth of God that He has placed before us the ultimate choice. He says, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.” How will we choose? How will we know what is life and what is death? God says, “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.”
What’s interesting here is that God offers us is a choice. Reading this it is clear to see that God tells us that the choice of life is following His commandments, listening to His call, and choosing to call good what He calls good. Inversely, if we choose to ignore God’s call, to wander from His commandments, and define for ourselves what is good, we are choosing death. What’s interesting here is that this choice which God gives us makes many people upset. “If God really is a God of love,” they say, “then why can’t I do what I want and still be okay?” Many call this choice a false one, because there is no choice. Some might call this fear mongering on God’s behalf. Others might say bribery or coercion. But the choice which God puts before us is not one of force or punishment, but of natural consequence.
Let’s change our analogy a bit. If you have a choice to eat balanced meals, with vegetables, fruit, meat, starches, breads – the works – for the rest of your life but no desserts, or the choice to eat desserts for the rest of your life without any of the meal, what would you choose? What happens when you choose to go the dessert route? You get sick and will actually die. Not just because your body cannot handle all of the sweets constantly, but they don’t hold the nutrition which is so essential to keep you alive. The reality is that we need to eat things like vegetables, fruits, proteins, and carbohydrates in order to live.
Is this choice unfair because there is no third option? Is this fear mongering by our doctors to make us scared enough to eat vegetables? Is this bribery or coercion by the farmers of the world? Is this a false choice? No, it is a choice of natural consequence. The reality of life and death is that there are things in the universe which naturally give life and those which give death. Eating well gives life. Exercise gives life. Drugs gives death. Drunkenness brings death. These are well known examples which we accept as truths – truths which do not bother us to accept. In the same way, God has offered us the ultimate choice of life or death, not because God is working to scare us into submission and slavery, but because God is a good God and has made the choice clear for us.
Before us, He has placed what it means to live a good life by giving to us His Word. He has instructed us and led us from the beginning of time, teaching us what it means to live good lives. Even when we choose to live lives of death and destruction, He has continued to teach us, going so far as to break through the separation of creator and creation and come and pay the price for our choice. All this is to say that the choice to follow God, to follow His commandments, listen to His call, and call good what He calls good has the natural consequence of gaining life. Just like eating your vegetables gives you life on earth, so too does following God give you eternal life.
I don’t want to say that living God’s life is boring, or not as fun as life in the crazy self-choosing lane. It’s 100% better, and life is never boring with God. By no means is this a sermon which means to say that “You HAVE to eat your vegetables, even if you don’t want to.” NO! This is to say that there are things which naturally give life when we choose them and because God is life, when we choose Him, we choose life in the fullest sense possible.
So the question becomes, how, then, do we live a life which chooses life? The answer is intentionality. Today, each of you received our next spiritual discipline packet titled the Rule for Life. God has given us direction and instruction on what it means to live good lives. Our next step is to take inventory of our lives and find areas which need new choices, other areas which may need reinforcement, and finally areas which we can expand because they are doing so well. The questions which are before you are designed to do just that – to help you discover those areas and to start living in a way which chooses life.
Our challenge this week is to do just that. To begin choosing life in every aspect of our lives. To begin to follow after God’s commandments, to listen and seek after His call. To start using God’s definitions of what is good and what is evil. This is something which takes a lifetime to learn and practice, and luckily, we each have one of those to work with. So, I invite you to take seriously the challenge before us. Seriously invest in this Rule for Life. And seriously start seeking after God that we might be what we were always meant to be.
Amen? Amen.