Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 19 August 2012
By Captain Michael Ramsay.
Have you read those Which Way or Choose Your Own Adventure books before?[1] They are series of stories and at the bottom of each page you get to decide how the story unfolds. The pages often end with a choice for you, the reader, to make. Something along the lines of: You have reached a fork in the road, if you turn left, go to Page 2; if you go right, turn to Page 3. Let’s try one of these Which Way / Choose Your Own Adventure style of stories here shall we? The objective of this story that we are reading is to get to Grandma’s house.
To Get To Grandma’s House:
You are walking in a dark forest, all alone, at midnight. You should have been to Grandma’s house an hour ago. You look around you. Instantly it strikes you that you are lost. You no longer know where you are. You have seemingly walked these paths a thousand times before but today you must have been dreaming and missed a turn or something. You are lost. You sit down to take stalk of the situation when all of a sudden you hear footsteps. You know that it is not safe to be in the woods alone at night. You know there are rumours of monsters in these woods. The footsteps grow louder and louder as they seem to come closer and closer. They now seem to be running towards you but who’s or what’s footsteps are these? You notice a tree beside the path in the dark woods…
q If you climb the tree to hide while seeing what is running towards you, turn to Page 3.
q If you decide to stand in the path and greet whatever is making the footsteps, turn to Page 5.
Page 3.
You know to stay on the path. You have been told a hundred times to never leave the path but you are overcome by fear and your adrenaline takes over. You scale the tree as fast as you can. You climb out on a limb and you watch; the noise of the footsteps becomes louder and louder as whatever is making it draws closer and closer. It is a wolf or a big dog. As it passes, you sigh a sigh of relief from the assumed safety of your branch… and then you look beside you and beside you is… turn to Page 6.
Page 5.
You stand up. You are looking and waiting for who or whatever is racing towards you. You hear he, she, or it running closer and closer. You notice now that it is not the sound of a person. You hear panting. You think you even hear growling. Your heart starts to race. You stay as still as you can. It is too late to make a run for it. The creature is upon you. It pounces. It’s a hungry wolf looking for its dinner? No. It is grandma’s dog, Benji. She stares at you for a moment and then she is off and running again.
q If you follow her, turn to Page 7
q If you stay where you are, turn to Page 6.
Page 6.
A giant black panther reaches out, roars loudly and grabs you… then a gives you a big kiss. THE END.
Page 7.
You race behind Benji as fast as you can but you can’t keep up with her. She runs further and further ahead of you. You can’t keep up anymore. You are absolutely exhausted. You must keep going, you think, but you don’t think you can…. and then, you look up and there before you in the clearing is Grandma’s house. You have made it safe and sound. THE END.
This story, with its choices, is not entirely different than our pericope (Bible passage) today. The Hebrews have been wandering around the desert wilderness for a generation when they come to a spot where their parents were a generation before. Their parents, when they were on the precipice of inheriting the Promised Land, they lost it. They reached the edge of the Promised Land but, by disobeying God, they forfeited what was promised them. The promise was waiting for them; all they needed to do was to choose life, obey God, and it would be good. They instead chose evil and experienced death (Numbers 14, Deuteronomy 1). Now the next generation is here. They are on the precipice now. They have the same decision to make. God tells them through Moses, “See, I have set before you life and good, death and evil…”(ESV). You almost anticipate the next words to be, “if you choose life and good, turn to Page 7; if you choose death and evil, turn to Page 6.”
Now this seems like an easy enough choice, right, especially noticeably so for those of us who have been reading through the Bible together. We read in the chapters just before this one how there are blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Chapter 28). The covenant of Horeb is renewed at Moab (Chapter 29). They are warned about what will happen if they mess up. As they are standing right at the edge of the Promised Land this should be an easy choice: Death on Page 6 or life on Page 7, (cf. Romans 6:6-10)[2] Deuteronomy 30:11-14:
Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 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?” 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?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
You are able to choose correctly and this seems like an easy choice for the Hebrews to make, Verse 16: “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, 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.” If you want to live, then turn to Page 7.
Verses 17-18: “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. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.” If you want to be destroyed, then turn to Page 6.
The choice: Verse 15, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity [‘good’, KJV&ESV: turn to page 7], death and destruction [‘evil’, KJV&ESV: turn to page 6].” [3]
Turn to Page 6 if you want to be destroyed; turn to Page 7 if you want to live. This seems to be an easy choice, right? Now we must give the Israelites some credit; they do seem to initially make the right choice, like those of us from our introductory story who initially chose to stay in the path to meet the grandma’s dog. They do pretty well for a while. Albeit for one major error (Joshua 9), they seem to serve the Lord well for a generation but then the proverbial writing appears on the wall a few pages later in their story, in Judges 2:6-8&10 it reads:
The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. [Then] Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died... After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.
‘Turn to Page 6’ would be the next line if this were our Which Way style story about Grandma’s house. The Israelites make the first decision correctly but then they go back and make the wrong choice. It is like those of us from our introductory story who initially made the right choice to stay in the path to meet Grandma’s dog but then chose wrong and wound up being licked/kissed by the panther. The Israelites disregard the peril of making the wrong choice until it is too late. The people of land then overtake them and enslave them off and on until in the end of the book and time of the Judges (Judges 1-21) and then they repeat this pattern throughout Chronicles and the time of the Kings. The people have been warned and the decision should be any easy one: choose obedience and life on Page 7 or choose sin and death on Page 6 but alas they choose wrong again and again and they suffer the consequences. Do we ever do this? Do we ever know exactly what is the correct choice but still make the other choice anyway?
I think of my two-year-old daughter sitting at the supper table. She has eaten all of her dinner that she intends to eat. She picks up a piece of broccoli and raises it above her head… Mom tells her, “don’t you dare through that food on the ground.” Heather raises the broccoli even further, she looks Mom straight in the eye…Mom tells her, “don’t you dare through that food on the ground.” She throws the broccoli and the whole scene unfolds just as you might imagine that it would unfold with Heather learning the hard way not to cross her mother but rather to honour her parents.
How about us? Are we any different than a two-year-old? I remember once as a teenager I was raking an older gentleman’s yard with some friends and he is speaking to us as we are working. He sees one of the teens’ packs of cigarettes and then he warns us all not to smoke and shows us the hole that he had to have cut in his throat from smoking. While we were talking to him still, he lights a cigarette and smokes it through that hole. He knew he had the choice of life and death, good and bad, health and illness but he still chooses illness.
A friend of mine from years ago, who as far as I know loves the Lord as much as anyone else, would speak about God and the Bible for hours on end. At this same time in his life, however, he keeps getting drawn back to cocaine. He keeps returning to drugs. He has a faithful wife and a loving family who are standing by him for so long. Set before him is the choice of life and good -on Page 7- or of death and evil -on Page 6. When I last heard about his whereabouts, he was separated from his family and he was in jail. Life on Page 7; death on Page 6.
I have many other friends who have made similar choices and experienced similar fates. How about us? Do we ever – maybe on this scale, maybe not, but - do we ever know what is obedient, good and leading to life and still choose disobedience, evil and death instead?
Do we have a problem with alcohol, drugs, or other addictions; figure that one pint won’t hurt us and a then few hours later find ourselves in someplace we don’t want to be as our choice has carried us down a tragic spiral? Do we have a problem with food or exercise and figure, ‘oh well, I’ll just start that exercise routine or diet tomorrow’? Do we have a problem with driving the speed limit, or parking violations, or a temptation to gossip about others, or difficulty in tithing, or praying, or whatever else? And do we know what we should do but persist in doing something else instead? Do we persist in turning to the metaphorical Page 6, when we know the right choice is to turn to Page 7? Do we continue to choose evil over good, even though we know the results of that choice?
Last week, for those of us who were here or for those of us that follow the sermons on-line, you will know that we took a holiness test based on the Ten Commandments. We went through them one by one, examining our relationships with our God and our neighbours in light of each of them. I know that there were a few of us that answered a few answers on that test, not entirely correctly. This probably means that when there are those times in each of our lives when God sets before us the choice of obedience and good and life or the choice of disobedience and evil and death; this probably means that sometimes we have intentionally chosen wrong; sometimes we have turned to Page 6 when we know we should have turned to Page 7. Sometimes we have sinned and sometimes we are thus deserving of the death on Page 6 that comes from our evil and our sin. [4]
But there is good news even after we have turned to the wrong page; Deuteronomy 30:2, 8-10:
… When you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today... The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live…You will again obey the Lord and follow all His commands I am giving you today… The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers, if you obey the Lord your God and keep His commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
So this is exciting. Even the ancient Israelites, when they sin, when they choose evil and death, God still offers them the opportunity to choose repentance, forgiveness and restoration.[5] I can’t tell you the number of testimonies that I have heard from people who have done this same thing in our day and age: choose sin and death and then, before it is too late – and as long as we have breath in our body, it is not too late – even while they are suffering the consequences of their actions, praise the Lord, they decide to turn the page of their book of their life away from Page 6, forward to Page 7 and experienced the joys of everlasting life with our Father in heaven.
So this is exciting because this same opportunity and this same choice is before us here today. As long as we have breath in our bodies, the story of our life is not completed. No matter whether we are faced with the decision to either reject God and experience death and destruction or to obey God and experience good and life for the very first time or if we have been on the precipice of the promised salvation before, each of us here still has a choice. We can choose disobedience, which brings with it evil and death or we can choose obedience to God, which brings goodness and life. Today and forevermore, each of us here has that same opportunity, we either can choose death or we can choose life. Today let’s choose life.
Let us pray.
[1] This 24-book Which Way series ran from 1982 to1986 and was published by Simon & Schuster under the Archway imprint. The Choose Your Own Adventure series ran from 1979 to 1998 and was published by Random House. For more information: http://www.gamebooks.org/wwlist.htm (The original cover art that the ‘poster’ for our wall was based on art work by Gordon Tombei)
[2] Cf. Earl S. Kalland, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Deuteronomy/Notes to Deuteronomy/Deuteronomy 30 Notes/Deuteronomy Note 30:12-14, Book Version: 4.0.2
[3]J. A. Thompson, Deuteronomy: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1974 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 5), S. 313: The phrase I have set before you in the present context means ‘I have set before you for choice’. In 11:26–28 the alternatives are blessing and cursing. Hence the full alternatives are life, good and blessing, or death, evil and cursing. The term good (ṭôb) denotes ‘prosperity’, while the term evil (ra‘) denotes ‘misfortune’.
[4] Cf. F. F. Bruce, Romans: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 6), S. 201, re: NT applications of our text according to the Apostle Paul in Romans.
[5] Bruce Wells, ‘Between Text & Sermon: Deuteronomy 30:6-14’, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology Vol. 61 (April 2007): 199.
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