Choose Life

Well, good afternoon, everyone. That was a very nice piece by the choir, wasn't it? Very fitting for Jekyll Island. It's quite a peaceful setting we have for the Feast of Tabernacles. When you look around and just see the quiet that's on the island, the ocean off to the side there, just a very nice setting. Very nice job, choir. Hope you're all having a very good Sabbath day and a great Feast of Tabernacles so far.

You know, we probably all have favorite verses that we turn to. You know, we see the graduates every year in the United News. They always ask, what's your favorite Scripture? And you can learn a lot about someone just by what their favorite Scripture is. And there's probably Scriptures, more than one, that we all have that we bring to mind when something, when we need it, the Holy Spirit brings us to mind and it motivates us, inspires us, comforts us, teaches us, whatever it is. Take a few minutes as I'm speaking here to think, what is that verse for you?

For some of you it might be something like Hebrews 11, verse 6, that says, to know God, to understand God, we have to have faith, and without faith it's impossible to please Him. For many in the world, it's John 3, verse 16, that says, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that no...

I should be turning to these Scriptures, I guess, so... God gave His only begotten Son that whoso believes on Him should have life. Maybe for some of you it's Ecclesiastes 9.10. This is one of my dad's favorite Scriptures. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. All of those may be what it is. Another fitting one may be 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9, as we're here at the Feast of Tabernacles. I have not seen, nor have you heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of man the wonders that God has prepared for those that love Him.

Turn with me to Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30, verse 19, this is a verse that has motivated me for quite a few years. And I still think of this verse often. In my life, Deuteronomy 30, verse 19, you're all familiar with the verse. It says, I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.

Therefore, choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. Choose life, God says. You know, our life is full of choices. From the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go bed at night, our life is full of choices. We choose what time we're going to wake up in the morning to get all the things done that we choose to do before we go to work. If indeed we choose to go to work.

We choose what we're going to eat. We choose how we're going to get to work. We choose what we're going to wear. And all those mundane things that we do every day that involve choices. As a larger picture of life, there's important choices that we make. We choose what career we're going to work in.

We choose who we're going to marry. We choose where we're going to live. We choose...we choose to obey God. And when God calls us, and when He gives us the opportunity to know His will, to know His way of life, as He has for every single one of us in this room, we choose whether to follow Him or we choose to reject it. And keep following the way that we had before. Every one of us in this room has chosen to follow God. But there's so many more out there who have had the opportunity to make the choice that you have, but they've chosen to ignore Him.

To reject Him. To keep going on the way that they had. God gives us choice. God gives us choice, and our lives are often defined by those choices. Let's go back to James 1. You know, God gives us choice when we are called into the church, or when we're called into His truth. God has choices too. In James 1, verse 18, we read this.

Of His own will, He brought us forth by the word of truth. He chose to call you. He chose to call me. He chose to call everyone else who is living His way of life. Doing the things that are written in that word of truth, that Bible that's in your lap. So of His own will, He brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

He had a choice of who we will call. Now we know that God's will is eventually everyone will know His truth. Not in this lifetime, but eventually He will open the books and understanding to everyone. And they too will have the same choice that you and I have. Will we follow? Will we yield? Will we live our lives and dedicate to that? Or will we follow our own ways and do what seems to be best to us? God has choices and He gave us choice as well. Let's go back to Colossians. Colossians 1.

Let's begin in verse 19. In the verses here, it talks about Jesus Christ, that all things were created by Him and for Him that are in heaven and earth. And in verse 19 of Colossians 1, it says, And then look at the next word, if. If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast. Building those pillars just like you heard in the sermonette. If you remain or continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you heard. Any time you see a word like if, it means you have a choice. You have a choice. And we have to continue making the right choice all the rest of our lives. Many of the world think you make that choice just once. If you just accept Jesus Christ once, you're good. You don't have to do anything else. You're saved once and for all. Absolutely not true. You can't find that anywhere in the Bible. You have to continue making the right choice to choose Him, to choose to follow His way of life. To make the choices that show God you are committed to Him every day the rest of your life. Choice. When God gave us choice to know Him or to reject Him, He gave us a tremendous responsibility. He put future and eternity in our hands. He offers it freely. It's a gift from Him. And He'll give it, but by our choices and by our actions, we can give it right back to Him and say, No, we don't want it. We'd rather do what we want. We'd rather do our will rather than follow you. We'd rather just be comfortable in the world than to sacrifice any comfort or anything that may, interrupt our daily lives. You know, choice was built into the world right from the very beginning. Let's go back to Genesis 2.

Genesis 2, verse 15, after the account of the six days of creation and the Sabbath day was created and made part of the week in chapter 2, we read in verse 15, that God took, it says, the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to keep and tended. And the eternal God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but 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. Right back there at the beginning of time, choice was given to mankind. Will you take the tree of life, or will you take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Very similar to what he tells us in Deuteronomy 30, verse 19.

When he says, I said before you today, life and death, blessing and cursing. And then he gives us a very simple command, choose life. What he wanted Adam and Eve to do was choose life. That seems like a very simple decision, doesn't it? It should be no choice at all. And yet so many people choose the opposite. And Adam and Eve did the same thing. Here they were in a world that now they had a choice to make, and in chapter 3 we find that Eve makes a wrong choice. Here she was in a perfect creation.

Here she was in the Garden of Eden, walking with God, being instructed by him, knowing what he had done. Him instructing them, telling them, choose life. But then a serpent comes along, Satan, and he begins to lie. He begins to put doubt in her mind. And Eve succumbs. Verse 6 of chapter 3. When the woman looked and saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree desiring to make one wise, she made the choice, I'll take of that fruit and eat it.

How could she have done that? Yet day after day we have the same choice that we have. Do we take of the things that just look so pleasant to the eyes and the world around us? Do we just take and say this would be so much easier than what we do, or what God has called us to do? Let me just take that this once, because it looks so good.

It looks so tantalizing. How can it be wrong to take that once? So Eve took that fruit. She made that choice, and by that choice she told God, I choose the world. I choose my own ideas. I choose my will rather than your will. And Adam, when he came along, he had a choice to make, too. Apparently he wasn't right there when Eve made the choice to believe the lie, as opposed to the truth of God.

But when he came along and saw what she had done, Adam had a choice to make, too. Let's go over to 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy 2. And verse 13. Paul writes, Adam was formed first, and then Eve. And Adam was not deceived. Eve was deceived. She believed the lie. She believed what Satan had to say. But Adam wasn't deceived. But the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Adam had a choice.

Look what Eve has done. She's chosen the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He might have thought, how could she have done that? God was crystal clear in his choice, choose the tree of life. But she has now done this, and she's made a choice. And Adam had to choose. Do I follow God, or do I follow my wife? He chose Eve. He chose Eve over God.

He made a choice. And mankind has lived according to their own rules, rejecting God, choosing themselves over God ever since. Except those who God has called, whose minds he has opened, you and me and everyone else living by his ways, keeping his commandments, understanding his plan, and applying his way of life into ours. Adam and Eve had a choice.

They made the wrong one. As you go through the Bible, you see people who had choices to make. Abraham had a choice to make. When God said, sacrifice Isaac, he could have hesitated, he could have paused and thought, no, I've waited too long for this boy. I love him too much to even consider sacrificing him. But Abraham made the right choice. He chose God over his son to obey him. You can think of Joseph in the land of Egypt. Here he was, he had risen to the top of the Potiphar's household by applying himself and doing everything to the best of his ability.

And when Potiphar's wife decided she had some designs on him, he could have played along and thought, you know, life is just too good. Why would I interrupt what I have here? I've come from a land where I was a favored son to a land where I know nothing, knew nothing, and I've risen to this position in the house where everything under my master's command is at my command. Joseph had a choice to make. He chose to obey God rather than fall prey to Potiphar's wife's desires. And it cost him dearly that time, but ultimately God rewarded him.

You can think about people like Ruth. She married a family into a family. All the men died. Naomi was going back to Israel, but Ruth was a Moabiteus. Naomi encouraged her to stay behind. Go back and start your life over. Just stay in the land of Moab. Marry. Have a good life. But Ruth had come to see the truth. She had come to see the type of person Naomi was. And she came to believe in the God that Naomi believed in. And she made the choice, I'm leaving my world behind. I'm leaving everything that was before me or that I've known behind because I'm going to follow your God.

Your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. She made the right choice. So many others have not made the right choice. Let's go back to Joshua. Joshua 7. You see a man who, when he was faced with the choice, thought that he would maybe be able to have his cake and eat it too. In Joshua 7, we have the Israelites beginning to invade, go into the land that God had promised them. And we have them coming to the city of A.I. And Joshua knew that they should have defeated that city, but for some reason they didn't. And there was a problem in Israel that God was not going to allow them to conquer that city.

And so they began to go through the tribes, the tribes of the people of Israel to find out where is the sin. Where is the sin that has separated God from his people? Where is the thing that is preventing God from blessing us?

So they go through each tribe, they go through each family, they come down to this family of Achan. And let's look in Joshua 7 and verse 19. The Lot has fallen on him, and Joshua says to Achan, My son, I beg you, give glory to the eternal God of Israel. Make confession to him, and tell me now what you have done. Don't hide it from me. And Achan answered Joshua and said, Indeed I have sinned against the eternal God of Israel, and this is what I have done.

When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them, and I took them. And there they are hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, with the silver under it. When he came across those articles, Achan had a choice to make. God had said, No plunder, don't take anything, leave it all behind.

Achan found himself all alone in that tent, and here were these beautiful garments, these things that are worth a lot of money. He looked around proudly and thought, Well, there's no one watching what I'm doing. No one watching what I'm doing. Who will ever know if I just take these things and hide them in my tent? And he made a choice. He made a choice. I'm taking them. Even though the orders from God were don't. And he chose material things, or he chose mammon over God.

Humanly speaking, I can understand why he would think that he would get away with that. No one was watching. There was no human around. But he forgot that he wasn't dealing or trying to impress with people. It's God who was watching. It's God who is looking at what we do. It's God who we serve, and there is nothing hidden from Him. And he tells us in Numbers 32, verse 23, and Mark 4, Whatever is hidden will be revealed. Achan learned the hard way. Achan paid with his life for the mistake that he made.

He chose mammon over God.

He chose death. If we go back to Deuteronomy 30, verse 19, because there's only one way of life that leads to life, the other way leads to death. He chose death. And wasn't even thinking, probably, about what he was doing.

What God wants for us is to make a series of right choices throughout all the rest of our life, that when it comes time for us to die in this age or when Jesus Christ returns, that He finds you and me blameless. Let's go back to Revelation 1. Revelation 1, verse 14. The description of the first fruits.

Did I say Revelation 1? I meant Revelation 14. In verse 4.

Speaking, as you see in verse 3, here were the first fruits redeemed from the earth. These are the ones, verse 4, who were not defiled with women. They are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being first fruits to God and to the Lamb, and in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God.

You know when we're baptized and we come out of those waters, that water for baptism, at that point we're without fault before God's eyes. He's forgiven all our sins. We come up clean. And then we receive the Holy Spirit, but even after we receive the Holy Spirit, we're not perfect at that point. You know that, I know that. We still make mistakes. We still make wrong choices. And after we make some of those wrong choices, we wonder, what have we done? Why did we do that? Because it's so easy to just fall back into old habits, into old trains of thought. We spend the rest of our lives letting God through His Holy Spirit change us, cleanse us, purify us. Because over the course of the rest of our lifetimes, from the time we're baptized until the time of our death or until the time of Jesus Christ's return, that's what He's doing. Purifying, making ready a people of God. People who are dedicated and He knows that in their hearts and in their minds, His way of life is indelibly etched. And they've shown Him that by the choices they make each day, every day of their lives. The choice is to choose Him even when the easier way and when no one is looking might be something else. And after they fall, they get themselves back up, they start walking again, and the next time they make the right choice and continue to make that right choice. And God knows it's not easy. It's not easy to follow God. We're constantly battling ourselves. We have a mind, we have a heart that is naturally in enmity and opposition to God. He tells us that in Romans 8, verse 7. But God gives us tools because He wants us to succeed. What are some of those tools that He gives us? Proverbs 1, verse 7.

The fear of the Lord, it says in Proverbs 1, verse 7. The fear of the Lord, holding Him in reverence, knowing that He is the supreme authority on all the earth, who holds eternity in His hands, that there is nothing on this earth. That compares to Him. The fear of the Lord and obedience to Him, that's the beginning of knowledge. And then it says, fools despise wisdom. Fear of God and His Holy Spirit gives us that proper fear of God, that we respect Him with a reverence that is only defined when we have God's Holy Spirit. It's the beginning of knowledge. It's the beginning of wisdom. And that wisdom is in this book that you have on your laps. John 17, verse 17. Your Word is truth. He gives us His way of life. He gives us the instruction book. He says, if you live by every word that I've given you here, that now I've opened your mind to understand. If you live it, if you apply it, if you spend the rest of your life making it part of you, then you'll make right choices. If you continue to fear God and don't desire more the things of the world or the things that you want over what He wants, if you really understand what God is offering, if you follow every word, you don't add to it, you don't take away from it, and you don't turn to the right, and you don't turn to the left.

Psalm 111.

Psalm 111, verse 10.

And in that word, He gives us a way of life. If you read the Bible from beginning to end, you see clearly that there is a way of life that God developed or put in place for mankind that was there through the Old Testament times, that applies today the way of life that will define His kingdom and all eternity. And that's the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments He wrote with His own finger and put on stone when He gave them to Moses, who remind the children of Israel of the law that had been in place from the beginning of time. Psalm 111, verse 10. The fear of the Lord, He says, is the beginning of wisdom and a good understanding of all those who do His commandments. All those who choose to do His commandments, because they're there, but it's our choice whether we obey them or not. God doesn't make us do them. He gives us the choice to do them. And He's very clear what the consequences of choosing His way of life is, and He makes it very clear what the consequences of rejecting His way of life is or are.

Life and blessing on one hand, death and curse on the other. Seems like the choice should be very clear. A good understanding have all they who do His commandments. So if you choose to keep His commandments, the more and more you do them, the more you understand the wisdom in God's law. The more you understand Him, the more you understand how in the whole world is living this way of life, how good and how great and how pleasant life is going to be.

But you can only know that if you choose to do His commandments, and you choose to do those the rest of your life, and let God continue to lead you in that way. And He also gives us a very important tool that without it, none of this would be possible, and we couldn't understand, and that's His Holy Spirit. In John 14, you can mark down in your notes there, verses 26 and chapter 16-13.

But you know in those chapters, He talks about the Holy Spirit. It teaches us, it guides us, it brings to remembrance the things for us, it comforts us, it leads us through life. In 2 Timothy 1, verse 7, He shows us just how important that Holy Spirit is. 2 Timothy 1, verse 7, God has not given us a spirit of fear, not a spirit of timidity, because with a spirit of timidity, we make choices out of weakness and not out of strength.

With a spirit of fear, when the pressure comes, and someone challenges us to die or live based on what we worship or what we count most important, we would always choose our own life. But God has given us not the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a silent mind.

Power. Power to make the difficult choices, but the right choices all through our lives. That when it's time to resist something that seems to be so important to us that we can use God's Spirit and say no to self, no to what we've always done, no to the world around us, no to those who say, if you don't do this, I'll take your life.

Choices. Choices we have today, choices we have every day, choices that may get tougher and tougher with each passing year. But with God's Spirit, with the conversion that He gives us, with the understanding we get from living His way of life and understanding Him more, the power, the power to live through it all and to be where and what God wants us to be. He puts all those tools in our hands. He's made them available to you.

He's made them available to me. It's our choice whether to use them. We can receive God's Holy Spirit and choose to ignore the things that come into our mind. We can choose to choose ourselves as opposed to what God's Spirit would have us do. We can choose to ignore the words of the Bible and just say, eh, you know what? God just doesn't care about this one little thing that I have.

I kind of deserve to do the things that, and who's really being hurt by it. We can choose to reject all the tools. And we show God whether we accept His tools or reject them by the way we live our lives and by the choices we make each day.

We talk about the big things in life. We choose to obey, we choose to follow, we choose to yield to God. We choose to come to church when He commands an assembly. We choose to worship Him with substance, with our lives, with our time. Somewhere along the line, many people who have the same choice you and I have made have somehow lost sight of what God has promised. And it wasn't an outright reject thing in many cases of, I just choose not to obey God's law. There's been other little things that have led people to make a choice for death instead of life.

You know, because Satan is very clever. He knows what our pressure points are. And he doesn't care what it is that eventually leads us to choose death over life. He'll do it. Let's look at just a few things today. When choices that we can make, and that perhaps others or those of you who have known, have made. There's choices we make, and you know there are some things that we don't have a choice.

One thing that we don't have a choice in is the thoughts that enter our mind. You ever been sitting there and all of a sudden something enters your mind and you think, where did that thought come from? It wasn't even on the subject I was in. And you think, you know, I didn't make the choice to think that, but all of a sudden that thought is there. What do we do with that thought? You know, Satan is the prince of the power of the air.

He influences and we all have backgrounds, we all have baggage. God is still cleansing and purifying all of us. And when those thoughts come, what do we do with them? There's a choice to be made, isn't there? Do we allow that thought to develop? And do we get enticed by it? Do we keep it in the forefront of our mind and let it just continue and then eventually lead? To something?

Or when that thought comes, do we immediately make the choice and ask God that His Holy Spirit would remove that from us? That He would leave it behind and let us get on with what He wants us to do? Over in James 1, in verse 13, he talks about these thoughts that can come into our minds. He classifies them as temptations. Thoughts can be temptations as well. You know, when Achan was standing in that tent and he looked at those Babylonian garments and he saw those things of great wealth, a thought came into his mind.

If I can just take this, who would ever know? I'll hide it in my tent, and then we'll be the wiser.

Then I'm sure he thought about it for more than just a split second, but he let that thought grow and adunded in his and his family's death. James 1, verse 13, Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed, and then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.

Sin, when it is conceived or full grown, brings forth death. That way of life that we choose by the choice that we make, if we continue and don't repent of it. Over in Ezekiel 38, we have the account of something that will occur after Christ returns to earth, after Satan is bound, and the world is at peace, or at least it would seem to be that the world is in peace. Let's look at verse 1 of chapter 38. The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, saying, Son of man, set your face against God of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, Thus says the eternal God, behold I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal. And then he goes through and he talks about what he is going to do. To them. In verse 10, it says, On that day it will come to pass, the thoughts will arise in your mind. There's going to be a thought arise in your mind. Gog and Magog and these other places that he said, the thoughts going to come to your mind. Because the people in the millennium aren't going to be immediately perfect, just like we're not immediately perfect when we receive God's Holy Spirit. We spend a lifetime of God perfecting us, and cleansing us, and purifying us. They're still going to have thoughts in their minds. They've still got things. They maybe have the Holy Spirit, but they're going to have the same choice you and I do. Do we choose to follow it? Or do we choose sometimes to follow our thoughts? A thought will come into your mind, and you will make an evil plan. You, Gog and Magog, will make an evil plan. That thought will come into your mind, and rather than you engaging the Holy Spirit and rejecting it and choosing God, you're going to follow it. You're going to continue with that plan, and you're going to come against my people, God says.

And so war, war is in their mind, in the kingdom of God.

But God stops it, and later on in the verse you find that they are just all defeated. Because God won't have war in His kingdom, but they will have that thought in that time. And like us, sometimes they allow that thought to develop into an evil plan.

We've all done it. We've all done it. But hopefully as year after year passes, after mistake after mistake occurs, we learn more and more. Choose God. Choose life. Stop and think about what's at stake, because eternity is at stake. The future is at stake. Nothing in this life, nothing in this world, nothing compares to what God has called us to. And when you stop and you think that, and you let God's Holy Spirit be in your mind, the choice becomes easy to make. But only with His Holy Spirit.

We don't have any control over the thoughts that come into our minds, but we do have a choice over what we do with those thoughts. And as time goes on, we need to learn how to control our thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10.

2 Corinthians 10. We're in this chapter earlier in the feast.

Verse 4. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.

And then notice the next few words. Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Bringing every thought.

Making the choice with every thought to bring it to the obedience of Christ.

To choose to reject those that are apart from His way, but to follow the ones that we know comply with His word and with His will for us. Bringing every thought into the obedience of Christ. Making that choice day by day, week by week. And as we practice that, and as we consistently make that choice to bring every thought into the captivity of Christ, then He will be building character in us. Let me read this quote from an author, English novelist, 19th century, by the name of Charles Reed. He wrote, So a thought, and you reap an act. What you think, that's what you're going to do. So a thought, and you reap an act. So an act, and you reap a habit. So a habit, and you reap a character. So a character, and you reap a destiny. Your destiny. Your future. What you tell God you want to do. Do you want His will, or do you want your own will? You tell Him, by the choices we make, and it all begins with the thoughts we have and what we do with them. Do we bring them into captivity to Him, or do we allow our own ideas and our own history, old history, to lead us astray? Let's look at another one.

We all have a choice in this, but one thing we don't have a choice in is what people do to us, do we? Now, I know you've all been in situations where something has been said or something done to you, and you certainly didn't choose someone to say whatever they said to you, or do whatever they did to you. Or to offend you in some way. We don't have any choice on what people say or do to us. We do have a choice in how we react to that. Let's go back to Luke 17, verse 1.

Luke 17 and verse 1. Christ speaking to His disciples, and He says, It is impossible, it is impossible that no offenses should come. We don't have a choice in life. Offenses will come. Someone will do something, someone will say something that's going to offend us. Someone will do something to hurt us, maybe deliberately, maybe unintentionally. And we learn as we go through life, often, it's unintentionally. It is impossible, Christ said, that offenses should not come. And they will. They'll come for you, they'll come for me, they'll come for all of us. We've experienced it, we'll continue to experience it again.

We don't have a choice in that. But we do have a choice in how we respond, in how we respond to what others do to us. Whether it's intentional or not intentional. You've heard the psychologists talk about that. And it's a very true fact.

We can choose to be angry at that person. We can choose to devise a plan to get them back or exact some revenge on them. Or we can choose to forgive, get on with life.

And not to allow that person to take away our peace, to take away the closeness that we have with God, or to allow us down to walk down a path that we simply don't want to walk down, if we are in the practice, day by day, of choosing the way God wants things done. Let's turn to Ecclesiastes 7.

Mr. Conlon read these verses at the Bible study last night. Ecclesiastes 7.

Solomon, in words of wisdom, says in verse 21 of chapter 7, Don't take to heart everything people say.

Now, there's a time when we know that some things people say we do want to take to heart, if it's done in sincerity, if it's done to help us. But there are times that people will just say things simply to hurt us, simply to get back at us, simply to throw us off course. Don't take to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. And he says, you know to do this because you know you've done the same thing to other people yourself. You've said things about them that you just said out of an emotion that you shouldn't have yielded to.

And so we go around saying things and doing things.

Not often.

Not often out of a sense of love for the other person, but just because we're reacting to something that's happened to us.

You know, God tells us to bear with one another. Over in Ephesians 4, He talks about the body that He places us all in. And we're all part of this body, the church that He's called us into, that He's placed us into. And He places us in a church because He wants us to learn, of course, from Him and to be led by Him. But we learn how to work with each other because so many of the problems of life come from dealing with other people. The relationships that we have. Ephesians 4, verse 1, bearing with one another in love. That if someone has a bad day and they come across you in Sabbath service and make some comment that you take as offensive, you're not going to retort back to them, but you're going to realize, I've done the same thing myself. They have to grow. And I'm going to forgive and ask God to help that person to grow as well. Choices we make, not to take a bad situation and make it worse.

Endeavoring, He says in verse 3, Endeavoring, working hard, making the choice to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Work at that. Make the choice to keep the unity. Weigh those decisions and those thoughts and those things that you hear from people that may be offensive, that may hurt. But always keep in mind what God has called you to. He's called you to be part of His kingdom. He's called you to be united with Him, one with Him, just as He wants to be, just as He and Jesus Christ are one, bound by the same Spirit that He's put in all of us as He puts us in one body to grow us, to develop us, to prepare us for what He has in store. Choose to keep that unity.

Paul addresses the same thing over in 1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 13, we know it as the love chapter. In this chapter, he talks about all the elements of love, what we do if we truly love one another. In verse 4, he says, Love suffers long. It's patient with one another. It's not going to say, I don't love you anymore just because you say a crossword to me, or you don't like the color of my suit or tie or whatever it is. I'm not going to hold that against you. I'm not going to say, I don't want to be anything to do with that person anymore. I choose to keep the unity of the faith. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. Love is not puffed up. Love does not behave rudely. Love does not seek its own. Love is not provoked. It's not provoked to evil just because of something that someone does, either deliberately or just something that we think they do. We make the choice not to let people rattle us and keep us at a level where Satan wants us. We choose to react to people and work with people and bear with people in love just as Jesus Christ bears with us so that he grows us with each passing month, year, decade. We love people more because we've practiced it. And we don't allow offenses to come to us. And if someone says a stray word to us, we don't get all bent out of shape and spend the night thinking about how we're going to get back at them. Or thinking about what they meant. We simply let God's spirit. By choices we make, we don't do that anymore. Let's look at Psalm 35. King David lived a life. He was a man of God's own heart. He was anointed king. And then for 15 years Saul was after him and he bore with all that. He was patient through all that. He never condemned Saul. He didn't take his life even when the opportunity that was there. But in Psalm 35 and verse 11, we find David writing something that kind of shows us the choices that he made in the face of those instances in his life when people were against him. Psalm 35 and verse 11. Fierce witnesses rise up. They ask me things that I don't know. They reward me evil for good to the sorrow of my soul. They do all these things against him. But as for me, he says, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled myself with fasting, and my prayer would return to my own heart. I paced about as though he were a friend or brother. I bowed down heavily as one who mourns for his mother. But in my adversity, they rejoiced and gathered together. Attackers gathered against me, and I didn't know it. They tore at me and didn't cease. They did wrong to him, but David did right by them.

Choices we make.

Mr. Eret was in Revelation 3. Let's turn back there one more time. Revelation 3, verse 11.

Speaking of the Philadelphia era of the church, Christ says this, Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have, that no man or no one may take your crown.

Don't let a person by what they say or what they do take your crown. Don't let your reaction to what people say take your crown. It's not worth it. Always remember what God has called you to and always do what he has asked us to do. Be led by his spirit. Keep marching forward, and don't let a man by a false word or a bad comparison or judging or whatever men do. Don't let your crown be taken by people. You keep your eyes on God who has offered it to you, and you keep making the decision to choose and follow him. Okay, let's turn to Hebrews 12 and see another area where we can make a choice as apart from what God's will is. Hebrews 12, verse 5. Hebrews 12, verse 5. You've forgotten, the author writes, the expert, the exhortation which speaks to you is to sons. Remember that God called us to be his children. My son, don't despise the chastening of the Lord. Don't be discouraged when you're rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens, and he scourges every son whom he receives. All of us have been corrected for something we've done. We've experienced it as children. We've experienced it as adults. At work, our boss may not like the way that we did something. He's going to come by and he's going to tell us, you could have done this differently, or this is how I want you to do it from now on. In church, those things may happen where someone tells you, you didn't handle that right. Let's go back to the Bible and next time maybe handle it that way. And then the results will be what you wanted them to be rather than what you received. No chastening is pleasant, and yet every single one of us is going to experience it. It says it right there. Verse 7, if, remember that word if? If means you and I have a choice. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father doesn't chasten? Because when we're chastened, it stings, but we have a choice. Do we get mad? Do we get mad at the person who tells us, I'm not listening to that. They don't know what they're talking about. They don't know what my life has been like. They don't know what kind of effort I put into that. And you know what? That's their opinion. My opinion is something else.

Saul kind of handled things that way, didn't he? When he was chastened by Samuel, he had a defense and an answer for everything. But David, when it was brought to his attention what he had done, what did he do? He repented. He yielded. He had the right spirit. And he realized that he was a man under authority. A man under authority, just like you and I are under authority, and will be the rest of our lives. Jesus Christ is our authority. There will never be a time when we don't answer to him or live the way of life he has given us. If you think that somewhere down the line it's going to be your way as opposed to his, then you're thinking wrong. We will always be under his authority. But we will learn as we make choices to love that way of life, and it will become us as we do that. But if we have the attitude of resistance when someone tells us something, or thinking that our way is better, which we all have done somewhere in our lives, but hopefully we come to the point where we realize, choose God. Choose life. Choose his will because it's his will that we're all here for. That we say we're all here for. It's his will. It's his way of life. It's what he has planned for us. The reason that we're here, not to convince him that our way is better, but for him to show us, by the experiences in our life, that his way really is the best. And that we live that way of life.

Don't let man take your crown. Don't let failure to submit to Christ take your crown. He's looking at every single one of us. How do we respond? And if we can't respond the way Jesus Christ responded, then he may not want us part of his kingdom, because he wants people who believe with all their heart and with all their mind that his way is best, and that they will follow it without fail. And they show that to him by the choices they make. And then finally, he crystallizes that character at the time we're changed.

You know, there's people who don't make choices. They kind of know what God has called them to. And yet, well, they'll do the things that God tells them to. They'll show up at church when they're supposed to. They'll give offerings when they're supposed to. They'll say the right things when they're supposed to, and when someone's watching. But then they live their way, their life, different when someone isn't watching. In Revelation 3, we were there a few minutes ago, God talks about the Laodicean church.

And we see that the Laodicean attitude is one that doesn't really want to make a choice for God or for the world. They don't want to choose life or death. They kind of want to walk right down the middle of the two. Chapter 14, or verse 14 of Revelation. To the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, These things says, the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, I know your works. I know the choices that you have made. You are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. I wish you would make the choice to be hot and obey me. Or I wish that you would make the choice to just reject me. But instead, you're trying to walk and have both ways and not choose one or the other. So then, because you are lukewarm, and you haven't made a choice to be cold or hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth, he says. Because you say, I've become rich, I've become wealthy, I have need of nothing. And you don't know that in my eyes, God says, you are rich, miserable, poor, blind and naked. And then he tells that group, I counsel you to make some choices. I counsel you, buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and choose to have your eyes anointed with eyesab that you may see.

Make a choice. Make a choice, but make the simple choice that Christ said. Choose life. Choose life.

You know, there will come a time when it's too late to make those choices. When it's too late, it's not too late right now, it's not too late to turn your life around and start making the choices for life. But there will come a time when it's just too late in this physical life. In Matthew 25, I won't take the time to turn there, it talks about the parable of the ten virgins. For five of them, it was just kind of too late. They let the oil go out. And as they were knocking on the door, begging to get in, it was like, it's too late. You let it go too long. We're hearing Revelation, and over in Revelation 22, in verse 11, harrowing words are spoken. Christ, who comes to earth and is King of kings, who, having a new earth, is brought down in verse 11 of chapter 22. It says, He who is unjust, let him be unjust still. The choices he made in his life, that's kind of where the time caught him. He's unjust. He didn't make the right choices through his life. Let him be unjust still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him be righteous still. Let him continue in that. And when the Lord, when Christ comes, let him find him so doing, making the same pattern of choices that he has throughout his life. And he who is holy, let him be holy still.

So, and develop the character that God wants you to have. It all begins with your choices.

And they're not always easy choices. Until we stop and think what God has offered versus what we offer to ourselves or what the world offers, then it becomes an easy choice to choose God. You know, I remember back when I was in geometry. Oh, you had good memories of geometry. I remember something that the geometry teacher said at that time, and he was kind of telling us, you better keep up with the homework. If you're going to get this, none of you just automatically know what geometry is. These are concepts and theorems and everything you're going to have to work at. And he told this little story about Euclid, who was the father of geometry and Ptolemy. He was an Egyptian king. I think he's referred to as the king of the south sometime in the past in the Bible prophecy. But apparently Ptolemy, and I'm sure this is just a legend, decided he wanted to learn geometry from Euclid. And so Euclid spent the time to kind of develop and through all those theorems that you learned. The very basic things, but they build on one another. And finally Ptolemy just is like, you know, I'm tired of this. And he said, I just want to know what it is. And Euclid turned to him and said, there is no royal road. There is no royal road to geometry.

Now what he told us was, if you want an A in this class, there's no easy road. You're going to have to do every homework assignment. You're going to have to take every quiz. You're going to have to work hard and you're going to have to make the choice to always study hard. And you know that same thing applies to us. There is no royal road to salvation. Just because you know it doesn't mean you're going to be there. You're going to have to pass every test. You're going to have to make every choice. You're going to have to show God and you're going to have to build in your... You're going to have to make the choice to let God build in you the character by the choices you make. That you really want to learn geometry. That you really want to learn His way of life. And that is what you choose when He gives you the choice. As we go through life, as we go through the rest of this feast, let's conclude back again with Christ's words back in Deuteronomy 30.

Deuteronomy 30, verse 19. Christ says, I call heaven and earth, as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life that you and your descendants may live.