Christian, It’s Your Choice!

14th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/30/15
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18


Christian, It’s Your Choice!
I. Realize what you’re facing.
II. The Lord will empower you to keep it.


Are you even remotely aware of how many decisions or choices you make every single day of your life? I did a little research on it, and found several opinions which state that it’s simply too many to count. Many decisions are so mundane and have such little lasting impact on your life that you’re unaware that you’re making them. “Are you going to open your eyes and get out of bed right now, or can you snooze another five minutes? Are you going to apply make-up to your face, and, if so, how much? What will you wear today?” Do you see what I mean?

Researchers at Cornell in a study conducted in 2007 found that the average person makes 226.7 decisions each day regarding food alone. If you sleep only 6 hours a night, that means you make 12 decisions about food every waking hour!

But then there are the really important decisions. Does the law enforcement officer pull the trigger or not? Do you accept this job offer that will necessitate relocating to another part of the country or not? Should you have the surgery or not? Do you do the hard work necessary to make your marriage better, or do you let it limp along? The choice you make can have a profound impact on your life.

There’s one such important decision before you and me this morning. It’s the one Joshua placed before the Children of Israel as he stepped down as Israel’s leader. He knew from experience how fickle and willfully wayward this nation of people could be, and yet they were still God’s people.

Let’s make one point perfectly clear. These people already were God’s people. By and large they trusted in the one true God. Joshua was placing before them the choice to remain that way. What he did was much the same we do for our Christian youth on the day of their Confirmation.

Truth be told, that choice is before us every day of our Christian lives. It’s before us right here in God’s word this morning. Christian, it’s your choice! Let’s come to a better understanding of what that choice involves and what it takes each day to make it.

Part I.

In any competition one of the most critical preparations you can make is to know your opponent. That’s true whether the competition involves athletics, music, science, math, spelling, even baking. The better you know your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, the more prepared you’ll be to compete and win.

Joshua doesn’t use the word “competition,” but what he describes is definitely a competition. It’s the competition for your trust, your loyalty, your allegiance. In this competition, your opponent isn’t a false god. False gods are nothing. You might reply, “It’s Satan who is behind the false gods.” I’ll grant you that. But bowing down to a god of wood or metal or stone isn’t even remotely a temptation for me and I’ll assume that it isn’t for you either. No, the most threatening opponent—are you ready for this?—is you. It’s me. I saw a comic strip once that read, “We have seen the enemy, and it’s us.” That’s what makes this choice so difficult. Our hearts that are sinful by nature are unwilling to allow the true God to reign in our hearts.

And while open idolatry isn’t an alluring choice for us, it was for these people standing before Joshua. He states, “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.” His words might surprise you. He makes reference to the fact that Abraham was raised in a family of idolaters. Imagine that! It highlights the grace of God in calling Abraham to faith.

He also references the gods of the Egyptians who worshipped everything from the Nile River to the sun. The Children of Israel revealed how affected they were by Egyptian idolatry when they had Aaron make them a golden calf and worshipped it.

Joshua then brings their choice for idolatry right up to the present when he references the gods of the Amorites in whose land they were living. It was the standard practice in ancient times to embrace the gods of the people in whose land you were living. The ancient thinking was that gods were territorial.

All of the gods Joshua mentions in one way or another appealed to the sinful nature of the heart. They appealed to their desires for good things, for wealth, even for sinful sexual encounters. Consider the choices Israel had. They could satisfy their sinful natures or they could remain faithful to the Lord.

Consider your choices. That decision is right in front of you countless times every day. Will you choose the Lord or the affections of your sinful heart? Those affections of the sinful heart are divided into two kinds. The one kind is sin itself. We chose what the Lord forbids and it drives a wedge into our relationship with the Lord. I hope and pray that doesn’t occur that often for you. The other kind, though, is much more prevalent. There are countless things in our daily lives that are blessings from the Lord—money, education, employment, recreation, the pursuit of things that interest us—and our sinful hearts would rather have those things on the throne of our hearts and put our Lord in second place, if not a little further down the pecking order. That’s what we’re prone to do. We’ve seen the enemy, and it’s us.

Christian, it’s your choice! Of course we choose the Lord, but in making that choice, realize what you’re facing.

I hope it was an easy choice for you to decide to worship your Savior this morning. But that’s really not such an easy choice. If it were, this sanctuary would be packed. We’d have chairs set up from here to the back of the fellowship hall. In fact, if it were such an easy choice we’d have people begging to worship the Lord with us. We’d have a packed house every Sunday, if not every day of the week. Please don’t misunderstand. Choosing the Lord doesn’t equal worshipping him every day of the week or even every Sunday. But worshipping him is a reflection of your choices. Worshipping him is a reflection of whether or not he really does reign unrivaled on the throne of your heart. Every day there’s a tug of war going on for your affections. It’s hard to decide. Sometimes unbearably hard. And we often fail, even when we are worshipping our Savior. There’s only one person who always loved God above all things and always made the right choice. Thankfully, you know him as your Savior, Jesus. That’s why we’re here today. I know my heart’s diverse affections. You know yours. We confess them. We receive our Savior’s forgiveness. And we love him all over again. Christian, it’s your choice!

Part II.

I mentioned earlier that the Children of Israel were all too often fickle and willfully wayward. But that’s not the people we hear responding to Joshua. As soon as Joshua placed the choice before them we hear them reply, “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods!” We’re pleased with their response. What caused them to make this choice so readily and firmly?

They recalled what the Lord had done for them. “It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land.” They had witnessed the mighty power of the Lord in their lives. They recalled those mighty acts and made the easy choice to commit themselves to him.

When we do the same thing, the Lord empowers us to keep the choice we made at our confirmations—to be faithful to the Lord. Our God has done marvelous things for us. Just think about them for a moment. He has literally rescued you from hell. That’s what our Savior’s work was all about—redeeming us, buying us back. His death on the cross for you completed that work and his resurrection guarantees you of it. Now in your lifetime he brought you to faith in Jesus as your Savior. That’s a gift countless billions of people don’t have, but you do—saving faith in Jesus. And now he uses word and sacrament to nurture that faith, to strengthen that faith, to keep you in that faith in spite of the fact that Satan and our world relentlessly attack it. How will you hold on to your faith in this evil world in which we live? Through word and sacrament, the very means of grace God places before us this morning. And the goal of your faith is not simply to get you through another day. Your faith in Jesus has its sights set on the heavenly home which your Savior is preparing for you. He guarantees it to you. When you consider all that your Lord has done and still does for you, the choice is easy.

Christian, it’s your choice. Choose the Lord. The Lord will empower you to keep it.

If our sins are no big deal, then neither is our God. But when we realize how woeful our record before the holy God is and how he has removed our sins from us by sacrificing his Son, then we realize what an awesome God we have. When we realize how much we mean to him, then we also realize how much he means to us. Christian, it’s your choice. Choose the Lord every day of your life. The Lord empowers you to make and keep that choice. Choose him! Amen.