“A Two-Sided Story”
Subject: Relationship with God
Theme: The Two sides to our relationship with God
Text: Joshua 23:14-16
Time: Sunday Evening March 4, 2001
Question: What are the results of the choices we make?
Introduction:
In the story “A River Runs Through It” - two sons of a Presbyterian Minister - one who is messed up - the other who builds a successful career. The only thing that made the messed up son and his Father click was their love for fly-fishing! - the messed up son was never able to reconcile his father’s God with his own life - it always eluded him. He was a tortured soul - whose life ended prematurely - before his time - before what could have been! In this story - there are two-sides to life that are continually portrayed but never truly reconciled!
Objective: The two sides of the story of our life rise up to remind us that life is always best when lived with God rather than without God.
In Joshua chapter 23 - Joshua’s life is about to come to an end - and he takes the people of Israel to Shechem - a city right in-between to Mountains - Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal - Mt Gerizim was designated by God as the mountain of blessing and Mt. Ebal was designated as the mountain of cursing. Moses had also assembled the people in this place - with those on Mt. Gerizim reciting what a “blessed” life that is lived with God is like - and those on Mt. Ebal who recited what a “cursed” life that is lived without God is like!
Illustration: Have the people divide in the chapel - half on one side and half on the other. Have the Mt. Gerizim side recite Deut.28:1-6 and have the Mt. Ebal side recite Deut. 28:15-19 (transparencies for groups to read).
Once they have finished read what Joshua says to them in the same place some 40 - 50 years later -
“Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed. But just as every good promise of the LORD your God has come true, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil he has threatened, until he has destroyed you from this good land he has given you. If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you.” Joshua 23:14-16
Joshua gives Israel a reminder that still resounds to us as we read it - that life is lived between these two mountains - and the choices that we make - we make in light of these two alternatives that are always present with us as we go about the journey of our life here on earth!
Transition: I want to leave you with some things to consider as we look at our lives in this “two-sided” way!
1. The Curse of Life without God
a. If we were all honest here tonight................
We could truly express - each one of us express - the wretchedness of life lived without God. We have felt the effects - we have lived with consequences of it - we are dealing with them even now as I speak.
We have in some way felt the alienation and isolation of a life lived apart from God.
The story of the Prodigal Son tells it all - “so desperate was the young man for food that even what the pigs were eating looked good to him.” This is the depths of despair - a truly cursed existence - a confusion and deeply disturbing state to be in.
b. I don’t see God to be brutal in this context
God doesn’t wish this on us - He doesn’t go looking for us to live a cursed life - but he does warn us about where we can end up if we live without Him. It can be a sad state of affairs.
God desperately tries to warn Israel - He has Moses teach them a song of what will happen to them if they stray from their relationship with Him - but they keep headed down that same road - much like the messed up son in “A River Runs Through It”
c. Paul speaks of this “cursed” life as well
He calls it - “living in the flesh” - in other words - living like God doesn’t exist - Jesus never came!
“People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship Him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with the filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshipped the god they made instead of the God who made them - the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh yes!”
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either - and they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it - emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.”
(The Message) Romans 1:20ff
Application:
If we’re honest - we can truly say that we have experienced this kind of alienation in some way, shape or form: and we need to be careful to not exempt ourselves as immune to making choices without considering God : we need to be careful not to point the finger at each other - but to earnestly seek God ourselves:
“Those people [who live life without God] are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done. You didn’t think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard?”
(The Message) Romans 2:1ff
Remember - Israel pledged that day with Joshua that they would choose God now and choose God in the future - but it never happened - they proved and have proved to the world that men and women are incapable on their own to shed a “cursed” life!
Transition: I want to emphasize that the only way of living a consistent life that is continually devoted to God is:
2. The “Blessed Life” Lived in Relationship to Jesus!
a. Why did Jesus live?
A difficult question to answer especially because we have always emphasized his death - but there would be no death without his life!
Jesus came to earth in the likeness of human flesh - and so in the words of Karl Barth - in the likeness of sin-controlled flesh God sent his Son - and thereby - spoke the death-sentence over sin in the midst of the flesh.”
Jesus lives a life so like ours - that he is eternally connected to every human being - and every human being represented in Him - so as to live a life that continually made the choices in light of “blessing” - living a life with God.
b. What has happened to us?
Unable to continually live our lives by making our choices in favour of “blessing” - Jesus lives the life we could never live - and does it consistently in light of “blessing” so that we now in him - have the opportunity to live lives that make choices in favour of “blessing” everyday!
Illustration: From the CBS mini - series - “Jesus” - the temptation scene.
c. We can live a life of “blessing” through Jesus!
There is a counseling method used by psychiatrists and psychologists that encourages people to go back into traumatic periods of their lives and as Jesus to accompany them in order to heal the past - the choices in life that brought cursed existence!
It was so aptly portrayed in the Disney Movie “THE KID”
Application:
G.K. Chesterton (explain who he is)
“A great silent collapse, an enormous unspoken disappointment, has in our time fallen on our Northern civilization. All previous ages have sweated and been crucified in an attempt to realize what is really the right life, what was really the good man. A definite part of the modern world has come beyond question to the conclusion that there is no answer to these questions, that the most that we can do is to set up a few notice-boards at places of obvious danger, to warn men, for instance, against drinking themselves to death, or ignoring the mere existence of their neighbours.”
In Orthodoxy p.51.
Some of you - feel like a pinball being thrust through life contually going from the Mountain of Blessing to the Mountain of Cursing - and Jesus says to us - you need not live like that anymore - but you can live a life that is always running through the Mountain of Blessing -
Jesus said so clearly - “Come to me if you are carrying a heavy load of life and I will give you rest - my way of living is easier - the way I work makes the load lighter!” - “I’ll show you the good life!”
Conclusion:
God intended life to be a “blessed” existence. - which means a joyous, content, happy, ecstatic existence -
Paul said to the Romans:
“If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighbourhood you’re from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up.” Romans 2:
Objective: The two sides of the story of our life rise up to remind us that life is always best when lived with God rather than without God. - only Jesus can keep us on the blessed side of life.
We may be still living our lives between these two mountains - two choices of living - but we don’t need to succumb to a “cursed existence” - we can - with Jesus in us - live a “blessed” life -
“You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out!” - this was declared in the context of community!!!
By the way - there is alot of talk in Deuteronomy and Joshua about obeying God’s command - well remember what Jesus said about that - The greatest command is to “love God with all your heart, soul mind and strength [Deut. 6] and love your neighbour!
