“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 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…” (Deut. 30:19-20) How many choices do we make every day? What time to get up / what do I wear / what do I have for breakfast? / which way do I drive to work / how do I use my time etc. It was simpler back in the 1920’s – Henry Ford’s famous quote – “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”
God’s Word to us comes from some of the last words that God gave Moses to write just before his death, “I have set before you life and death…” That’s a rather easy choice, right? Surely if given the option of life and blessings or death and curses, we would naturally and enthusiastically choose life! But the command: “Choose life” is more than a decision to keep on breathing. God’s command to choose life is defined as, “For I command you today to LOVE the Lord your God, to LISTEN to His voice, and HOLD FAST to Him.”
- FIRST, “choosing life” involves loving God. Not the grade school valentines kind of love; nor the infatuation or selfish kind of love that says, “I love you because you make me feel so good!” Rather, it is the INTIMATE GODLY kind of love – exclusive, wholehearted love, (Deut. 6:5) “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
- SECOND, “choosing life” means to walk in God’s ways– At the very beginning of time, Adam and Eve had a choice – obey God or do what they wanted. To obey God meant life and perfection / to choose their own way meant rebellion, death and curses; and we know what happened – they DID IT THEIR WAY! “By one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death passed to all people, because all have sinned.” (Rom. 5:12) By nature, on our own – we want it “our way!”
- THIRD, “choosing life” means “Hold fast to Him by keeping God’s commandments”;but we make loopholes / excuses as we rebelliously do it “our way!” In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21-37) Jesus clarifies what it means to “choose life.”
-Bill Stockham