Making The Right Choice

TEXT: DEUTERONOMY 30:11-20

TITLE: “MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE”

INTRODUCTION: A. Has there ever been a time in your life when you made the wrong choice?

--Maybe you’ve heard of the Darwin Awards. It’s a yearly feature sent around the

Internet hat highlights the worst of the wrong choices people have made in the past

Year. Here is the 2005 list of Darwin Awards:

1. In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after

squeezing head-first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys

2. A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker who “totally zoned when he ran,” and

accidentally jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run

3. In Bixton, NC, a man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the

sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach goers said, that Daniel Jones, age 21, dug

the hold for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair

at the bottom of the hole when it collapsed, burying him beneath five feet of sand.

People on the beach tried to dig Jones out but couldn’t reach him. It took rescued

workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people

watched. He was pronounced dead at a hospital

4. Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face0first through

the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. He was killed when the long

flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base

of his skull as he hit the floor.

5. HONORABLE MENTION: Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover

township, NJ, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, when a quarter-stick of

dynamite blew up in their car. While driving around at 2:00 AM, the bored coupled

lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but

apparently failed to notice the window was closed.

6. RUNNER-UP: In Tacoma, WA, Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several

friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from

the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more

heated and at least ten men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM.

Upon arriving at the midpoint of the bride, they discovered that no on had brought

the appropriate bungee cord. Bingham volunteered to jump using a coil of

lineman’s cable that was nearby. One end of the cable was secured around

Bingham’s leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. He fell 40 feet and then the

cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall

into the icy river water and was rescued by two nearby fisherman. According to

news reports, his foot was never located.

7. WINNER: There was an overzealous zookeeper in Germany who fed his

constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries,

figs, and prunes. Thinking the treatment had not worked, he was attempting

another procedure standing directly behind the elephant when he was buried in the

avalanche that was released. The force knocked him to the ground where he hit his

head on a rock and lay there unconscious during the whole process. He died by

suffocation because he was alone and wasn’t discovered until an hour later by a

watchman making his rounds.

B. Many of you are probably familiar with the country music icon George Jones.

George has been around quite a long time and a lot of his songs are what are called the

stereotypical “cheatin’ and drinkin’” songs. George, himself, had a drinking problem

and country music fans were horrified to hear that Jones was critically injured on

March 6, 1999 when he crashed his car into a bridge in the Nashville area. The

investigation showed that George had been drunk while at the wheel.

Thankfully, George recovered. His next album was called Cold Hard Truth and on

it was a hit song titled “Choices”. Ironically, the hook line of the song says, “I’m

living and dying with the choices I made.”

1. We all make choices every day

2. Some are mundane; others make the difference between life and death.

C. We, as a congregation, face some life and death decisions

1. We stand at a crossroads and have to choose which way we’re going to go

2. As we study the Scriptures this morning, I encourage every one of us to make the

right decision.

I. SCRIPTURAL EXAMPLE

A. Everything we do as Christians and as a Christian church should be ground in the Bible

1. This morning we’re going to look at a passage speaks to our situation today