Epiphany 6-- "Therefore Choose Life"

Text: “19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days....”” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Choose Life

It seems like such a simple invitation: ‘Choose life’. That’s especially true since what that means is “loving the Lord [their] God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him” (Deuteronomy 30:20). “He is your life and length of days,” Moses warns them, “that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

There are certainly some gods that people have made up that would be hard to love. Take the Greek and Roman gods, for example. It would be hard to love even the best of them, given everything they did to human beings. It might be understandable if it were one of those gods that Moses was calling on them to love. But it’s not. It’s the God who sent plagues upon Egypt in order to set them free from slavery; the God who parted the Red Sea; the God who, for 40 years, had given them water from a rock to drink in the wilderness; the God who fed them, every single day, with bread from heaven. Not one single morning did He forget them. Not once did what He gave them come up even just a little bit short of what they needed. That is the God they are being commanded to love: the God who had loved them consistently. The God who was now fulfilling His loving promise to their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who promised to continue loving them, and their children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and their children, to a thousand generations.

For the Children of Israel, on the very brink of the Promised Land, choosing life seems like an easy decision. How could they not love a God like that? You tell me.

I could say the same thing to you that Moses said to them: “Today I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live….” It seems like an easy choice, but have you chosen life? Do you truly love the Lord your God, obeying His voice, holding fast to Him?

He has loved you consistently. Right now, by extending to you the offering of life again today, He is fulfilling His promise to your fathers. The promise is for your children, and their children, and their children, and their children, to a thousand generations. Think of all that He’s done for you in the past and all He’s promised to do. But do you really love Him?

You love Him, but not enough to spend time reading and studying His word— the Word you should be holding fast to. How do I know? Well, on the one hand, each of you has studied Luther’s Small Catechism.

You stood before this altar and publicly confessed that it is a correct explanation of what the Bible teaches. But have you opened it since? Do you still remember what it says? Do you remember what it teaches?

If it’s good enough that the pastor knows it and still makes the young kids learn it, then that’s not love, is it?

Or what about the Bible, itself? Most of you had to learn it when you went to school year. But have you opened it since? you have the opportunity to hear it preached and taught every week. But how many things become more important than that? It’s really amazing: when it comes to church, it’s too hard to get up and going, and yet, when it comes to your child’s sports tournaments, or when it comes to ice fishing, or when it comes to so many other things, then you’re up at 7:00 a.m.? ...6:00 a.m.? …5:00 a.m.? Which of those things do you really love?

You love Him, but not enough to talk about Him in your home— or His Word, or even just about the challenges to living as a Christian in this world.

Jesus, Himself, points that out in today’s Gospel reading that it’s not good enough that you haven’t raised a hand against your neighbor. That doesn’t mean you’re innocent of the 5th commandment— “You shall not murder.” If you are “22 angry with his brother [you are] liable to judgment; [when you] insults [your] brother [you are] liable to [judgment]; and [when you say], ‘You fool!’ [you are] liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22).

Which do you choose— life or holding on to your anger? Do you choose life or do you choose to insult other people? Do you choose life or do you choose to mock and even bully them?

Jesus says, “23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you” (Matthew 5:23). But that would require being willing to lay aside your grudge. That would require being willing to be reconciled to them. For that matter, it would require being willing to talk to that person rather than talking about him and what a horrible person he is to everyone you know.

Choosing life seemed so easy, didn’t it? Until you had to deal with other people. It seems so easy until the time comes to be willing to lay aside your grudge. It seems so easy until the opportunity came to gather all sorts of sympathy and attention by telling everyone about that bad things others have done to you rather than approaching that person and dealing with it. Then you showed that you love yourself far more than them— and even more than God.

Jesus said that it’s not just the physical act that makes you guilty of the 6th commandment— You shall not commit adultery— but the lustful intent in your heart.

Jesus’ warning against lust doesn’t stop the crude jokes, the ‘locker room’ talk, let alone mindlessly taking in the movies and all the media filled with lustful intent.

Choosing life seemed so easy, didn’t it? Until the opportunity for that momentary thrill presented itself.

Jesus said to let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’. But it’s so much easier to fudge the truth. It’s so much easier to make a lot of noise about doing something than it is to follow through.

Choosing life seems easy, until the time comes to bear the burden of what you’ve promised.

How could the children of Israel not choose life? For the same reasons that you and I don’t. You love Him, but you love this world more. You love Him, but you love yourself more.

Jesus’ Choice (pt. 1)

There is One who was able to choose life: Jesus.

To be sure, He had serious conflicts with a lot of people, but those conflicts always said more about them than about Him. Even at His harshest, His words were never meant to wound, but to heal. “A bruised reed he [would] not break, and a faintly burning wick he [would] not quench” (Isaiah 42:3).

His words cut, at times, but only ever in order to heal. There was never a hint of gossip in Jesus’ words— nor did He ever fail to defend those who were being wrongly spoken against. And He always spoke a comforting word, to speak forgiveness without hesitation.

There is no question that He lived in perfect chastity.

For a long time I wondered about the moment in John 8 when the Pharisees brought to Him the woman caught in adultery. Why would Jesus stoop down and start writing in the dust? I wondered about that until someone (I wish I could remember who) pointed out that she was caught in the act of adultery. As they paraded her in front of Jesus, she would not have been dressed for the occasion. Even in that moment, Jesus didn’t look at her as an object. He respectfully turned His gaze. Every moment of His life, He lived in perfect chastity.

And do we even need to spend time considering how He always followed through on exactly what He said, no matter how difficult it was? No matter what it took?

Ironically, choosing life led to His death. He deliberately, in obedience to the Father’s command and holding fast to His will, chose to take upon Himself the death that you and I chose so thoughtlessly.

He chose to become the one and only murderer; the only and only adulterer; the one and only faithless one. Your death was died by Him on the cross so that He could choose life for you. His choice of life is now credited to you.

The death you chose through your angry words to others, through your spiteful words about others, He endured in your place.

The fires of hell that your eye and your hands and every other part of your body rightly deserve to be thrown into, He suffered in your place.

For every lie, every thoughtless promise, every half truth to make you look good to others He died the death you chose.

In His death is life. “Just as sin came into the world through one man— Adam— and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12), the free gift of life has come to all men through one Man, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:15-21).

Jesus’ Choice (pt. 2)

So today I set before you life.

Not symbolically. Not metaphorically. In the most real sense possible. The life He chose, both through His perfect life and by His death in your place, is now credited to you. There on the cross, He choose life for you. His choice of life is now credited to you as your choice. That life is set before you here today, as it is every single week. Yes, it is still a struggle. You would rather be out ice fishing; the sports tournaments are fun— most of the time (the time with your children certainly is, if nothing else); but being here is worth it, isn’t it? It’s worth it because of what the Father wants to give you, here, through Jesus Christ.

Obey His voice that commands you to repent and believe the Gospel. Believe that His death was for you; that, in it, He gives you life.

By His command you were brought to this font, you were buried with Jesus there, into His death, and raised with Him to life.

He commands you to come and eat and drink at this altar because, here, He gives you not just bread and wine, but His very body and blood— He feeds you with life.

Hold fast to Him, knowing that you have been brought from death to life.

“13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:13-14). You are now “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).

Why would you speak spitefully to anyone any longer when their sins were paid for in full by Jesus Christ, as well? How can you go speaking spitefully about anyone any longer when he or she is, in fact, one for whom Christ died?

Why would you hold on to grudges when you have the opportunity to speak life— to speak grace and forgiveness— to them?

Rejoice in the good and beautiful gift of your sexuality, as God intended it, holding marriage in honor among all and letting the marriage bed be undefiled (Heb. 13:4).

And let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’. Anything else just isn’t fitting for a child of God, which is what you are.

“19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death…. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days....”” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Amen.