Sermon for 9/8/13 - Deuteronomy 30

Sermon: Choose Life


Our sermon today is from Deuteronomy chapter 30.
God puts a choice before his people. And, being the all-knowing, loving God, he does know what the right choice, the one which brings blessing, is.
 life
 good
 blessing
 prosperity
 The choice? Hold fast to God’s commandments
   love the LORD - JHWH
   walk in His ways
   keep His commandments
Seems the obvious choice?
What do we choose?
Our Lord knows our choice.
How did Israel choose?
Verbally, “YES, YES, YES”
What did their actions choose?
 plunder things that they weren’t to have
 alliances with the people they were to destroy
 abandoned the sabbath for many generations
 add idol worship to God’s commanded worship
 abandon God’s word
What do we do? Just the same things. We make exactly the wrong choice.
Terrible fix! What are we going to do? We don’t choose life, we choose death.
Remember who God is.
 all-knowing
   knows the right choice
   knows what we will do
 all-loving
   does not want us to perish
   wants to rescue us
Our Lord knows that we have departed, that we have fled, like the slave Onesimus, we have become unprofitable. He desires to rescue us. So he does it.
 Jesus, entirely human - really one of us
 Jesus, entirely divine - really perfect
 Jesus = the perfect sacrifice
 Jesus who keeps God’s law perfectly
 Jesus who is able to give that perfect obedience and its fruits to us
 Jesus who is God’s word incarnate
God knows that we need Jesus. We don’t choose life. But Jesus chooses it for us, for all who believe.  He sets before us life, good, blessing, hope, future, grace.
What will we do to be saved?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our righteousness.