Choices

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

We hear all the time how great it is to have choices in life. You can have the red or the blue…or maybe the emerald green! Would you like fries or a baked potato? If you’d like to speak to a customer service representative, please press “0”; if you’d like to change your address, please press “1.” Do you want a car wash with your fill or gas? Would you like to purchase an extended warranty with your new refrigerator? Would you like your appointment on Monday or Tuesday or Friday next week? Will you pick up the kids or should I? It seems that we can either do surgery or treat with you medicine…the choice is yours.

Do you ever get overwhelmed with all the choices you have to make? We say we like choices in life, and on some level we probably do, but it also seems to me that on another level we’d just like there to be no choice at all. Here’s the way it is. Here’s the best course of action. Done deal. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I long for the days when people were buying the Model T. You could get black…or black. I guess there was a choice, but it wasn’t really a choice after all.

Our text today has the wandering people of Israel at a fork in the road. For forty years the people have been nomads in the desert. Now they are camped in the plains of Moab east of the Jordan River. They are preparing to enter the land of Canaan. The words in our text are those of Moses. He is wrapping up his farewell sermon to the new generation of Israelites who are about to cross over into the land they have been longing for their whole lives. But Moses won’t be crossing over with them. Remember that he made a bad choice at Meribah and God said, “Because you did not trust in me…you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”[1] But Moses doesn’t seem bitter. He seems reflective. It seems the Moses of Deuteronomy is like a parent who doesn’t want to see his children make the same mistakes that he made.

Some of you recently, or in past years, have had the experience of dropping off your child as he or she begins a new college year. You’ve carried up their boxes. You’ve maybe purchased their parking permits. As you got ready to leave and drive back home, did you offer them any last minute advice? “Make good choices.” “Wear your scarf when it gets cold.” “Don’t wash your colors with your whites.” “Don’t walk home alone late at night.” Did you offer any wisdom as your child rolled his or her eyes at you? That’s the Moses we have in our text today. He says, “Look, you’ve got a choice. There’s life and there’s death. There’s obedience and there’s idolatry. There’s blessing and there’s curse. Choose life.”[2]

It’s seems like such a no-brainer doesn’t it? Life or death – which will you choose? I don’t know anyone when, given the option, chooses death over life. But maybe my assumptions that we always choose life are wrong. Do we always choose life?

In Moses’ long deuteronomic speech, he says choosing life means that we obey God’s commandments. We mostly make good choices. We try to be ethical and moral people. So far so good. Most of us are not in too much hot water. Most of us read verse 17 of our text today and breathe a sigh of relief because most of us have not turned our hearts away from God or pursued other gods…(long pause)…too badly.

But here’s where I start to get a lot less comfortable about my own choices in life. When Moses talks about curses and choosing death in Deuteronomy, he gives us some examples where people choose death: when we mistreat our parents,[3] when we take advantage of people,[4] and a blanket statement (Don’t you hate those blanket statements that cover everything and leave no loopholes?) about not observing the law…any parts of the law![5] I don’t know about you but I’m getting real uncomfortable now. In case you’re not completely demoralized yet, listen to how the curse is realized: “The Lord will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.”[6] Deuteronomy teaches that repentance is not only needed, but that turning toward God is a matter of life and death.[7]

Is Moses overstating his argument here like protective parents sometimes do? What about the grace of God? Paul writes: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”[8] We preach and talk about God’s grace as the heartbeat of the church because we can’t justify ourselves before God. Doesn’t grace save us? How do Paul’s words fit with the words of Moses? Are we faced with yet another choice? Oh bother!

We should keep in mind that Moses and Paul have two different perspectives when they talk about the law. Moses has ethical concerns in mind. He’s talking about how the people of God should behave toward one another in the community. When Paul talks about the law, he’s concerned about people’s salvation.

Even though God is a loving and gracious God, God is also a just God. When we put our faith in Jesus as our Savior, then we’re saved from the eternal consequences of our sins, but that doesn’t mean we’ll always escape the immediate consequences of our irresponsibility.[9] This should be a call for all of us today. We need to choose life – choose God or we may realize the consequences! Just as Israel needed to choose to live as God’s peculiar possession, as God’s nation of priests, we need to do the same.[10] Earlier in Deuteronomy, Moses reminds us that the requirements for choosing God are not too tough.[11] They are not heavenly mysteries beyond attainment.[12] The Reformer Martin Luther said that choosing for God is very “doable.”

Just like Israel, we’re at the threshold of a new land too. We’re on the front edge of a new church year. School is just starting. Summer vacations are done and we’re ready to get back into a normal routine. It’s the perfect time to assess how we’ll live in this next season of our lives.

I’ve been amazed over the years at mantra that comes out of the students at Grady Brown Elementary. If I asked every student who comes out of that school what the catch-phrase is, or what’s drilled into them over and over again from day one, I’m betting I would hear one thing: Make good choices. Just the other day, I overheard Ainslee playing with Eli and she said to him, “Eli, we need to make good choices!” She’s had been in kindergarten about three days when she said this. We are entering a new land. Make good choices. Choose life! Choose God!

Amen

[2] I have varied the wording in this paragraph but the idea came from a sermon by Dr. Elizabeth Huwiler delivered at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia on September 7, 2004.

[7] Mark Hillmer, “Faith in the Old Testament: Pentateuch and Prophets for Pentecost,” Word & World, Volume XVIII, Number 3, Summer 1998, p. 323.

[9] Thomas W. Mann, Deuteronomy, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989), p. 156.

[10] Mark E. Biddle, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Deuteronomy (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2003), p. 446.