Life and a Choice

Introduction

In our OT reading, Moses invites the children of Israel to “choose life!” He sets in front of them “life, good, and blessing” on the one hand, and “death, bad, and curse” on the other, and tells them to choose between the two! It seems like a simple enough concept, “choose life,” but it’s not so simple if you think about it for very long. Is it actually possible to “choose life?” You didn’t choose to be born, no one consulted you about whether existence was something you’d be interested in. Life is simply a given. Oh sure, once you’re living, you can make choices that are either beneficial or harmful to your continued existence. You can choose what to do with the gift of life once you have it, and you can even choose to throw away the gift, God forbid. But even those choices are limited. If I ask you to hold your breath you could do it for a while, but eventually your body would force you to start again. And the point is even more obvious if I asked you to try to stop your heart from beating for 10 seconds.

There are two gifts God gives to people, life and freedom to make choices, but the gift of life always comes first. You can’t choose anything if you’re not alive. We see this pattern throughout Scripture. First comes life, then comes a choice.

Life and a Choice in the Garden

When you start reading the Bible, you don’t have to look very far to find these words: life and death, good and bad, blessing and curse. They’re right there clustered together on the first couple of pages. In the story of the Garden of Eden, God forms Adam out of the dust of the ground and breathes “into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” You might say that God set life before Adam. But he did more than that: Gen 2:8-9

Genesis 2:8–9 ESV

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God did not only bring Adam to life and leave him lying there, he put him in a land of his very own, a place where he could walk with God. He gave him food to eat, everything he needed to sustain his life. Most wonderful of all, in the middle of the garden, at the very center of Adam’s existence was the tree of life, providing Adam with the gift of eternal life from God. God was sharing his own undying life with Adam. God didn’t merely set life before Adam, he piled life on him in abundance.

But there was something else standing at the center of Adam’s life. Something else that God had set before him: a limit. We already heard about it of course, the tree of life was there, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God gives his warning to Adam about this tree: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” There’s the rest of the picture from Deuteronomy. We’ve heard about life, now we hear about good and bad, and about death. God gave Adam life, now he gives him a commandment, an opportunity to trust what God says and live in obedience to him. This is the second gift that God gave man: freedom; the ability to desire and want what is good and to act on that desire.

There is something that is important to notice about this story: Adam did not choose to be created. He did not decide to live in Eden, he was taken from the dust and placed there by God. He did not plant the tree of life, God did. All the gifts of life that God showered on Adam were prior to any decision on his part, they were a given. It was just the situation Adam found himself in. First came God’s gift of life, then came the choice. And notice something really important about the choice too, because God doesn’t just hand Adam an equal decision between good and bad, life and death. Our Deut. reading might make us expect that there would be the tree of life and good on one hand and the tree of death and bad on the other, but that isn’t the situation. God’s life is in one tree, good, bad, and death are all concentrated in the other tree. See, Adam didn’t live in the world of weighing what was good and what was harmful and making difficult choices between the two. He didn’t live in a perilous tension between life and death. He lived entirely in the life God gave him. He didn’t need to know good and evil by experience or discern between the two. God had already told him what was good: continue in the life and work God had given him, and leave it to God to decide what was good and bad for him. God had told him what was bad: to seize God’s position at the center of Adam’s life and decide good and evil for himself. The “choice” is really no choice at all. Adam’s freedom was entirely directed at enjoying life with God. How could he have even thought to use his freedom for something else? He couldn’t, not until another voice slithered into the picture. A voice that offered Adam and his wife a different view of good and bad, another “option.” Once the serpent comes in, now we’ve entered the world of the test and temptation. The world of tough decisions. And humans can’t stand up to it. From the moment Adam and Eve started making decisions for themselves, the trajectory has moved in one direction: Away from God’s life, toward death, and toward evil.

Life and a Choice in the Promised Land

Fast forward through 5 books of the Bible and however many thousand years to our OT reading and once again we find the Israelites offered life and a choice. God has not been idle. God has been working his plan to bring a savior, a human who will crush the serpent’s head and bring humanity back to the life and blessing of Eden, and he has been doing it through the family of Abraham, the children of Israel. God chose one man out of the clear blue sky, made his descendants into a nation, and rescued them from slavery and death in Egypt, saving them with his powerful and gracious hand. Just like with Adam, Israel did not choose to live or be a nation, they did not decide to be God’s people. God chose them and essentially created them out of nothing, and he saved them out of Egypt all by himself. He gave them the gift of life and salvation, and then he gave them his good law and commandments. First came life, then came a choice.

Our text finds the Israelites just outside of the promised land, on the other side of the Jordan river, getting ready to cross over. And Moses is preparing them for how they should live in the land. Israel has an opportunity to be a kind of new Adam. Just like him, God is going to give them their own land with everything they need to sustain their lives. And so Moses reminds them of God’s commandment. God has told them what is good for them, how they should live in the land as his chosen people. Just like Adam, they have an opportunity to trust what God says and live in obedience to him. God gave them life, but they have the choice to throw it all away if they want. Moses presents them with the same kind of situation that Adam was presented with: life and death, good and bad, and he encourages them, “you should choose life so that you may live!”

Unfortunately for the Israelites though, they did not have the advantages Adam did. Unlike him, the land God gave to them already had temptation in it. They were going to have to kick the serpent out so to speak, and take the land back from him. Israel would have to remove the other nations who would tempt them and turn their hearts away to worship and serve other gods to have any hope of “choosing life.” And that didn’t go so well. Unlike Adam, Israel was coming from the world of hard knocks and difficult choices between life and death, of deciding for themselves what good and evil were. And even though God had given them life as a gift and rescued them from death, the sinful nature they inherited from Adam constantly wanted to go back: back to evil, and back to death. Even Moses himself, the one saying all this, was not above this tendency. He was not going to cross the Jordan because of a little incident where he decided that he knew better than God what was good and what was bad. What hope did Israel have? What hope was there for God’s plan of life and salvation?

Life and a Choice for Us

What hope is there for any of us to “choose life”? We’re still faced everyday with tough decisions between good and bad, and we’re still challenged to do what God commands. Jesus words from the Gospel reading ring out telling us what is good: Don’t hate your brother, don’t lust, don’t divorce your spouse. It sounds good on paper, we wish we could want and choose those things, but the challenge seems more impossible than ever. There are voices everywhere telling us that what is bad for us is good. Divorce is rampant and accepted as normal in our world; a marriage can be sacrificed if it gets in the way of personal happiness. Lust, well, you can get as much lust as you want with just a few clicks of the mouse, and no one need be any the wiser. And as for anger and hatred, you only need to open a news app on your phone and you can find out what you should be angry about and who you should hate this week. We also inherited Adam’s desire to decide what is good and evil for ourselves, we are naturally dead in our sin, and it seems like it is easier than ever to pretend we are our own gods. Why should we expect to do any better than Adam in paradise or the Israelites?

Because of Jesus. Jesus did what Adam and Israel and we never could. Like Israel in Deuteronomy, Jesus stood on the other side of the Jordan and crossed through the river into the promised land when he was baptized by John. But unlike Israel, he defeated the enemy that inhabited the land: the devil, the demonic powers, and unclean spirits, and he cast them out. As soon as he came up from the river, we’re told that he went to do battle with the tempter, the ancient serpent, just like Adam did so long ago. But Jesus did what Adam failed to do: he resisted the temptation and chose life. 3 different times Jesus foiled the deceptions of Satan, each time using the words that Israel had been taught in Deuteronomy before they entered the promised land. Jesus trusted what his father said was good. Each day of his life, Jesus chose life and what was good for his people. Even when he went to the cross, when it looked like death and evil, he chose it, knowing that his death would lead to eternal life and good for those who believe in him. In his death, Jesus did what Adam should have done the moment Satan started his tempting: he crushed the serpent’s head. And in his rising to life, Jesus restored the blessings of the tree of life to us. Jesus is the new Adam, the true Israel, he did what Adam and Israel were called to do and failed.

Jesus does not leave you to choose life for yourself. He gives you the eternal life he has won for you as a promise and a gift. In your Baptism, you’ve crossed with Jesus into the promised land of life and salvation. As we’ve seen again and again, the gift of life comes before any choice on your part. It is something you possess because of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus has set life and good before you. Like Adam, you’ve been firmly placed on the side of life, but unlike Adam, you don’t have to face the tempter on your own. Jesus has already defeated him.

Is there still a choice then? Well, yes. The words of Jesus are still a challenge to do what is good. The law of God is good, and it describes what life should look like, life as God designed it. Jesus’ words explaining the Law in the sermon on the mount still invite you to choose life and what is good. But don’t forget that Jesus says these words after he has been baptized and defeated the tempter in the wilderness. He addresses the words to his disciples, to people that he has already brought under his kingdom. Jesus has already given them life in the promises of the Beatitudes: blessed are you, you will receive mercy, you will inherit the earth, you will see God!

Jesus doesn’t just give you a choice. First he gives you life. He gives you both forgiveness for all the times you’ve made the wrong choice, and he helps you by the power of his Holy Spirit to make the right choice. He takes you, dead in sin, and inclined to evil, and brings you to life. He gives you the ability to choose life and what is good. If you have failed and chosen death once again, as we all do sometimes, look to Jesus. His forgiveness and life still stands for you. Trust in him, he is your life. Then look again at Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount and see them as an invitation and a challenge. Hatred and lust are death, they are bad for you. Love for God and your neighbor are good and life-giving. So choose life! But remember that it’s not about your choice anymore, it’s about Jesus’ choice. And he has chosen life for you. In his name, Amen.