Message by Larry Thacker Jr. from September 20, “Choose Life”
Our text is from Deuteronomy 30:19-20. Moses is speaking to to the people of Israel. He reminds them of all that Yahweh had done for them, and he confirms Yahweh’s law as the covenant by which they must live in order to be blessed. After detailing the blessings that will come from obedience and the curses that will come from disobedience, verse 19 says, “…life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. So choose life, …”
This is also a message for us today. When we do things God’s way, we make room for His blessing in our lives. It doesn’t mean we’ll never face adversity. Israel still had to fight in order to gain the land that God promised them. It does mean that we will ultimately gain the victory. On the other hand, when we do things our way, we can expect bad things to happen. This should not be a hard concept for us to grasp, but we struggle with it because we want what we want and we’re good at rationalization. Yet we don’t have a problem with this in the natural world. We use tools for their intended purpose and we know that using something for a purpose that it wasn’t made for may result in breaking both the tool and the thing you’re trying to fix. God made His world to work a certain way. He gave us the instruction manual, but we won’t read it. Then we get upset when our lives are broken.
Sin has consequences. God may take an active role in punishing sin. We know that He will in the end. We also know that punishment is part of love. However, most of the time the consequence comes simply because we insist on disobeying the laws that govern God’s universe. Just as we can’t ignore the laws of physics, we can’t ignore spiritual laws.F
