The Obvious Choice
Text: Year A, 12th Sunday after Pentecost (Josh 24:14-18, John 6:58 – 69)
FCF: We must focus on the grateful words of life or else will miss out on the obvious goodness of God.
MP: The Gospel is an obvious choice, but there are things that prevent us from making it wisely.
Outline
1. Intro: What keeps us from choosing God when he’s so obviously good?
2. Exclusivity (Joshua)
a. 40 years ago…
b. Conditioned to hedge our bets, but love is exclusive (I love my wife AND…)
c. Pearl of Great Price. True Love does not believe in AND
d. the world’s notions of tolerance and pluralism, have no place in love
3. Counter-Culture (John)
a. Love Jesus so exclusively / Lord’s Supper is your susitence
b. iPhone and the Paradox of Choice
c. Dr. Phil (Romans 6.21 – What benefit did you gain from these things?)
4. Too Good to Be True (John)
a. Christ is your last best hope
b. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others
c. Eph 3.20 – Able to do exceedingly, abundantly
d. Jesus is the Word of life
5. Words of Life
a. Memorize Ps 103:1-5
b. Take a bath / meditate / continue the prayer
c. Come back next week and do Form V!
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you that you have set us free. We know that which you set free is free indeed, and we pray that you would not let us use our freedom to return to slavery. Rather free my mouth to proclaim your life giving Word and free our hearts to hear it. Let us the Truth you have for us, and let the Truth set us free, we pray, in the name of your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
They say if you love someone, you should set them free. Around College check-in season, they also say if returns home on its own, better open your checkbook, because you are probably related. Well, this morning, we have two lessons in which God shows how much he loves us by setting us free.
The problem is, too often, we use that freedom to make really bad choices. Once you turn 21, you are free to drink whatever you want – and we all know people for whom that freedom becomes disaster. When I walk into an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’m free to eat whatever I want. Doesn’t mean that I won’t gain each and every pound I deserve, but I am free to indulge.
And most importantly, I am free to either accept or reject the love that Jesus extended to me in being part of His kingdom. Love only exists outside of coercion, and freedom means that some people will reject that love. The question is: ‘Why would you?’ When we learn to focus on His benefits, we find out how amazing it is to be related not to a king, but to The King, not just the one who has the words of life, but the one who first spoke them.
I want to focus this morning on the OT and Gospel lessons, because in both cases, we see people who like us have been set free. They are free to choose God or reject him. And, that freedom carried a risk for God– the same risk you take whenever you set something free. The risk is that the one who has been set free will make a dumb choice. In both cases, otherwise intelligent people turned their backs on God. Some used their freedom to love statues instead of God; others used their freedom to choose to become trapped by their culture instead of embraced by the love of Christ.
It’s a terrible thing to choose slavery to sin over the love that sets us free, and yet people do it every day.
The question I want to focus on is ‘Why?’ Why is it, when faced with such an obvious benefit, people don’t choose God? The answer lies in how we make our decisions. Do you go with our experience, or with love? In Joshua, you see that choosing God will seem exclusive – but love is exclusive; In the Gospel, you see that choosing God is counter-cultural because love is counter-cultural; and finally as a result, you will see why it is that choosing God seems too good to be true because indeed love is too good to be true. The secret to loving God is to retrain our experience into seeing God’s love. .
Joshua - It seems exclusive
Let’s start by looking at Joshua. Let me put you in the context first. 40 years ago, your parents were slaves in Egypt. 40 years ago, God performed a series of miracles to set you free. But 40 years ago, your parents rejected the Promised Land that God had specially prepared for them by being afraid to take what God had put on a silver platter. As a result, for the last 40 years, you have been wandering a literally God-forsaken wilderness, following a pillar of cloud by day and a flame of fire by night. Every morning, God has provided sweet bread called manna, and every time you’ve needed it, there’s been water. Every now and then he’s even given you meat. Your clothes haven’t worn out and your tent has never failed. God has been good.
Earlier this year, you finally got to go into that Promised Land your parents thought was too good to be true, and every single enemy fell like flies. And now, your leader, Joshua has called everybody together, and he makes this speech. He says:
“Ok, it’s decision time. You need to figure out what god you want to follow. You have a choice. You are free to worship the gods your slave parents followed in Egypt. If you want to, you can even go back and serve those fake gods your great, great, great, great-grandparents did back in Babylon. It’s up to you. But, for the last 40 years, I’ve been experiencing what our God, the God of the OT, Jehovah Jireh – God My Provider – I’ve seen firsthand what he can do. So, go ahead and pick. It’s your choice. But as for me and my house? Well, we’re going to serve the Lord!”
You’d think it would be a no-brainer, right? Well, wrong. People still figured out ways to serve other gods and other things. They brought out their idols and they just made dumb choices. In fact, Joshua even goes on to say in verse 19 that people were going to do this. They were going to reject God. And why? Because they’re a “stiff-necked people.” They were going to do what they thought was right, and not what God said was best.
It was a simple decision – they said to themselves, “Let’s not be so arrogant in thinking that one God can be everything we need him to be. Let’s hedge our bets a little bit. Let’s serve God, yes, but let’s serve God and some of the local ones. I mean that Baal god these locals serve – he’s supposed to be good for crops. Let’s just throw him into the mix. And that Molech guy – sure we may occasionally have to sacrifice a few of our children – but supposedly he’s good for dead things. If we end up in hell, maybe it would pay to have been nice to him a little earlier, right?
We are all conditioned to hedge our bets. We all fear putting all our eggs in one basket. It seems so exclusive to pledge yourself just to one narrow-minded and backward thing, right? Except every one of us who has ever been married understands that logic doesn’t apply to love.
I love my wife. That sentence is clear. But if I say, I love my wife and… All the sudden, you have to start questioning that love don’t you? I love my wife and that woman over there too. Sounds different now, doesn’t it?
I follow the Bible. Clear again, right? I follow the Bible and maybe I can take a pass here. I want to follow God and myself. I want to follow God and still fool around. It doesn’t work. The word adultery appears in the prophets 41 times, and only 6 times is it ever actually talking about sex. And of those 6, most of them are in Hosea where God tells this prophet to go marry and adulterous woman to be a living example of how he feels Israel has treated him. Over and over again, God says he feels like a husband whose wife says, “God I love you, and…” That AND has no place in an exclusive, loving arrangement.
Jesus tells a parable called The Pearl of Great Price. In it, he talks about a merchant who finds this one pearl and sells everything that he has just in order to get it. He loves that pearl so much that nothing else matters. It seems strange to our ears, and it might even shame us in thinking that we should be willing to give up everything for Christ. But you know what? That parable is never about us – it’s really a parable about what Jesus did for us. He really did give up everything – his cosmic powers, his intimate relationship with the Father, his Life – just for us. He understood that true love is exclusive. True love does give up everything. True Love does not believe in AND.
And yet, when we are short on love, we do. Jesus said it so clearly: “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.” Translation? If you love me AND anything else, you won’t. If you love money, if you love power, even if you love the world’s ideas like “tolerance” or “pluralism” – understand these things do have a place in love. I do not tolerate my wife, I love her. And if I love her, I will either embrace her or encourage her to something different. Toleration is in fact the opposite of love, because it simply settles for the status quo. But Love does not rejoice in wrong, it rejoices in truth. Now– tolerance and pluralism - they have a place in society but not love. The question is whether you are choosing God or the world.
Gospel – It seems countercultural
Understand that exclusivity itself is counter cultural. True Love is inherently NOT what the cultural says or does. True love forsakes all others. It is different and it seems counter to our intuition. But if we would make godly choices, that’s just par for the course.
Look at the Gospel with me for a second if you would. In John 6:58, Jesus starts making some very counter cultural statements. He is challenging the crowd to view him as the manna and the water that sustained those slave parents back in the desert. He says, “You need to love me so exclusively that you would eat of my flesh and drink of my blood.”
Now, you should be seeing the Lord’s Supper that we take here at the climax of every service. When we do that, we are being as counter-cultural as it gets. The early Christians used to be accused of cannibalism because of this feast, and that was ok. To the extent that Christians were marginalized and kicked away from power, money, influence, the things of society – to that same extent they were forced to rely strictly and solely on Christ.
Sometimes choice itself is a type of slavery. Computer scientists and economists talk about the paradox of choice. We think that choices are always good, and freedom is the ultimate goal. But if you’ve ever used a Mac or an iPhone, you’ve had to learn to think different. Steve Jobs gets his reputation as the master of style precisely because of his vision that in taking away all your bad choices, you are free to have an elegant experience.
Well, I don’t know if Macs are all that, but I do know that in life, some choices are bad. Some choices just confuse life. We value our freedom and we should – but freedom and choices are not always the same thing. Those who make counter-cultural choices to drop out of the rat race often say they find a certain kind of freedom. Those who drop out of the choices that are clearly contrary to God’s will certainly find a freedom from sin that is unparalleled.
I love Romans 6.21, when Paul tells you that you are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. The truth is you really do end up needing to choose one. And then he asks, “So, back when you were a slave to sin, what benefit did you get from those things?” I mean, I can just hear Dr. Phil asking, “How’s that working for you?” You know? The truth is that sin and the world are a consistent logical choice. The truth is that Godly life and a counter-cultural means of choosing are consistent as well. What simply doesn’t work is trying to be both.
Too Good To Be True
Now, I’ve long gotten a kick of Peter. And honestly, this is probably my favorite answer of his. Jesus, in seeing how few people want to ever make this counter cultural choice to love and serve him gets frustrated. Remember – Jesus was human. He gets frustrated and he asks his disciples, “So, are you going to leave me too?” This is not a question of sweetness and light!
But Peter answers, “Where else can we go? You alone have the Words of Life.” When you realize that Christ is your last, best hope, your choices become clear.
It’s a simple realization and one that I often fall on when I’m at the end of my rope. When I start wondering why I’ve chosen to follow Jesus. When the rest of the world is turning its back on me and me on it, I have doubts. I wonder if I’m just being totally stupid. It’s my human side rationally wondering if I have made a dumb choice.
And you know what I do when I get that way? I come back right here to Peter. I have to just say, “Maybe I am stupid for following Christ.” But then I have to ask, does the world offer anything better?
It’s like Winston Churchill’s admission. He said “Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others.” He’s dead on. Democracy leads to bad choices. If people are free to choose everything, they will look to themselves first and last. Protecting minorities, freeing slaves, becoming better people – these are not democratic outcomes. But every dictatorship, every utopia, every other form of government that starts out in the expectation of being superior ends up in worse slavery than the freely chosen mistakes we make.
If you are frustrated in your Christian walk, you may well understand that following Jesus is the worst way to live your life, except for every other alternative! Jesus alone has the Words of Life, and Jesus alone can give you that life.
In Ephesians 3:20, Paul prays to Jesus in the words I often use as a benediction. He prays: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, more than we ask or imagine.” He can do that because Jesus alone does have the Words of Life. He is the Word, He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Word of Life.
But you know what? We fall back in that worldly trap. We are conditioned to think that if something is too good to be true, than it probably is. That applies to every used car salesman and every email you will ever receive from the nephew of a deposed African despot, but it isn’t true when it comes to Jesus. If you think he is JUST human, than you would be disappointed. But if you are willing to make the counter-cultural claim that he is exclusively the Way, the Truth, and the Life, then you will find that He really is.
The Words of Life
So again, I’m going to come back to the question, How do we learn to make the obviously good choice? How do we learn to choose Jesus? Clearly if you use the world’s ways, you will end up settling for a worldly answer. The trick is to focus on the words of life.
I want to suggest two simple exercises for you this week and they both flow from memorizing some Words of Life. Now, I know – you’re saying: “I can’t memorize scripture. I’ve tried!” Trust me, these words are easy. You don’t need to fear entering this land. I want you to memorize just first five verses from Psalm 103, and there easy. Look at your bulletin insert with me, and let’s repeat them together.
There – not so hard, is it? Bless the Lord, O My Soul. This is simply a statement of blessings that the Lord has done. Now, I said that both things I want you to do this week stem from this text.
The first one is this. Take a bath. Go into the bathroom, close the door, and then repeat this text several times. I suspect what will happen is this. As you repeat those Words, “Bless the Lord, O My Soul,” and then read off a list of several great things that He has done for you, you will remember other things – other great benefits of choosing the serve the Lord exclusively. Go with that. Keep adding to that Psalm. List the great things he is doing for you while you enjoy your soak. Think of it as “immersing yourself in the Word.” Think of it as meditation if you like, because that’s what it is. You are simply tuning out the outside world and focusing strictly on the benefits of being a child of God.
The other thing I want you to do is to not forget his benefits. Truth is you will make choices based on self-interest. You simply need to learn to enlighten that self-interest, and you do that by being grateful. And, you should be grateful publically.
For the last several weeks we have been using Form V in the BCP, and there is a place where we are supposed to list things we are thankful for. Frankly, I’ve been astonished that in 5 weeks, not one person has spoken up. Now, you may be afraid that you are going to delay us here, and maybe there is someone who wants to get home early and by publically thanking God you are going to cause someone to be annoyed.
Well, let them be annoyed. If someone is going home later because they’ve been hearing the Words of Life, is that really so bad? It may be a bit counter-cultural, but that’s the point.
Let them hear this. Let them be encouraged to hear how thankful and grateful you are for having the privilege of serving Christ.
In choosing to live this life, in choosing to serve God and God alone, you are making the best possible choice there is. Be grateful for the freedom to do that. Be grateful for the benefits of having made that choice. Be thankful that He is so obviously good and that he loves you so much that he risks letting you believe whatever it is you want to believe, and that he loves you so much that he’ll make the choice abundantly obvious.
We are blessed to be able to choose, and to choose well. Let us choose now to come to our Lord in prayer and then to tell him what we believe he has done for us by reciting the Creed. If you haven’t chosen that, please don’t say it. There’s a lot of exclusive and truly revolutionary things being claimed. But in the end, they are a good summary of the Words of Life that are truly more than we could ever ask or imagine. Would you pray with me?
Psalm 103: 1 - 5
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
