Choose Life

I'm giving a sermon today that I gave at the feast at the Youth Day. And when I came home, a number of people who were at the feast there in Gatlinburg said, we want you to give that sermon here. And I put it on my list. And as you know, I have this long list. In fact, William's not here today, so I can say this. Sorry, William. He asked me to give two Bible studies on the canon of the Bible, canonization of the Bible. I went through the Old Testament. I never did get to the New Testament. It's still on the list, you know. So finally, after a few months, I decided to go ahead and give this sermon.

It was on Youth Day. It was designed for interacting with teenagers and young adults, and even younger kids. It was interesting. I had some younger kids come up afterwards and want to discuss it and talk about it a little bit. I did a little bit of a PowerPoint. It's not my usual complex PowerPoint. I had Aaron Jennings help me do this. Aaron does a lot of PowerPoint in Nashville. And I said, here's what I want. I want it simple, and this is what I want to do. And so he got, he did exactly what I wanted, and then I added a few things to it.

Every day, and it doesn't matter what your age, it doesn't matter if you're 70 or seven, right? We have to make decisions every day about a lot of different things. Today's sermon is titled, Choose Life. I'll just start through it, and then we'll... But you and I make decisions every day, and they're simple decisions, do complex decisions. It's, what do I wear? I like to believe that I'm the master of what I wear, but very many times on Sabbath morning, I come out dressed, and my wife says, you're not wearing that tie with that suit, are you? No, she says it in a nice way. But I immediately realize how trapped I am, and I'll say, no, I was just trying to make you laugh.

Then I'll go bring out a couple ties and say, which of these work? Okay, which of these work? But we pick what we're going to wear, and there's many times... Okay.

Okay, and I don't care what age you are, there's probably times you come thinking you're going to wear something to come to church or go to school, and your parents are saying, you're not wearing that, right? But we make choices every day what to wear. And it's simple, but it can get complex. We decide what to eat. Now, how we eat affects our health. No matter what age you are, how you're eating is going to affect your health in the future. So, these little decisions have long-term effects. How to get along with people at school or people at work, which may be one of the biggest challenges we have in life, and I know this is a big screen, so I hope you all can see this. This was designed for the big screen. But how we get along with people, how we're going to act as somebody who mistreats us. Are we going to fight people? What are we going to do? We have to make these decisions. And a big one is, what do we do with our spare time? And how we spend our spare time has a profound effect on how we develop as human beings. You know, I love my grandkids have a virtual reality game that I like playing. They've all mastered it, and it's boring to them. But you know, I don't play it all the time, right? You have to control what time you spend on different things. What we do with our spare time, we can end up wasting so much of our lives. Now, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be time for rest. See, learning how to use your spare time is real important. There is time for play. There is time for other things. Then we also make all kinds of moral decisions. And this is where the decisions become even more complex and can have a greater good and greater bad effect on your life. Will I cheat on a test? As a young person, I cheat on a test. Or at work, will I fill out an application and lie on it so I can get a better job? Will I lie to get something I want? You know, it's just a little thing, but I can get what I want here. If I tell something that's not true.

Will I drink too much with my friends? Let's, you know, let's reason this out. We're not driving, you know, because we can't hurt anybody. We're just having a good time. How much is too much? And we make moral decisions all the time. We make the moral decision, will I compromise with the Sabbath to make money? Now, I have no idea because I've been asked this because this particular picture was done by Aaron Jennings so you can make fun of him. I have no idea what that has to do with the Sabbath. Some guy sneaking out a door. I don't know what it is. So anyways, that's what he had and I couldn't come up with anything better. Now, there's lots of things in life you and I don't choose, right? We don't choose. We don't choose our heredity. We don't choose our natural abilities. When I was young, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be 6'2", 230 pounds, run 40 yards in 4.5 seconds and play middle linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I don't care how much I could wish that to happen. You know, it wasn't going to happen, right? We don't choose the society we're born into, even the area of country of the country you come from.

There's different effects on all of us. We think differently in certain ways, simply because of where we grew up, how we view history, how we view life, our personal and family environment. You know, if you come from a broken home, you didn't choose to come from a broken home. If you come from a totally dysfunctional family, well, all families are dysfunctional one level or another, right? But if you come from a totally dysfunctional family, you didn't choose that. And yet, that's what you were born into. And that shapes and molds who you are as you deal with life through that. And then we didn't choose our physical appearance. You know, it's amazing how many people say, yeah, there's times in my life I've looked in the mirror and said, God, why didn't you make me pretty? Or why didn't you make me handsome? Or why do I have to look this way? We don't choose any of that. It's what life deals us. It's what we have. So we have choices we make, and there's choices we don't make. But what is the ultimate choice in your life? And that's what the sermon's about. What is the ultimate choice you have to make? There's a choice you make that all other choices come from. And we're going to show that as we go through a number of scriptures today.

When we talk about the church, we always talk about, you know, repentance and baptism and the return of Jesus Christ to bring God's kingdom on the earth.

But let me ask you something. How many here came into the church, were either born in the church, or came in as a child? Look around.

Now, those who came in because you weren't born into it or came in as a child, sometimes you had a different experience. You realized there was something wrong in life. You realized that you didn't have the truth. You realized you didn't have what you wanted, what God was supposed to do. There's something missing. And in that missingness, in that brokenness, because there's people who come into the church without being born into it.

They're introduced to it. They usually go through a period of brokenness where they're broken and they're searching and God reaches out and touches them. God has given you or called you, it doesn't matter what age you are and you're here, because He wants to do something and He's giving you a choice and a decision to make. It's in some ways a very simple decision. In other ways, it's a very complex decision.

And that's what I want to talk about, that decision. Go to Genesis 1. We're going to start with what God told Adam and Eve and something to think about in terms of where you and I are today. Adam and Eve, at this point, had never done anything against God. Their nature hadn't been corrupted in any way. They had never sinned and God creates them. I can't imagine what it's like to wake up as a full grown adult with a functioning mind. And you just wake up and you have thoughts and you have emotions and you have to have some kind of language.

You're discussing things with God and Adam and Eve are discussing things with each other. It's all just programmed in there. But in verse 26 it says, Then God said, Let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. Every human being was made in fundamentally in the image of God. In other words, we have certain abilities that are like God. We have a consciousness that other animals doesn't have, like we do.

We have the ability to make these choices. We actually have the ability to choose, even choose good and evil. And God gave humanity the earth and said, It's yours. This is yours. You are the rulers of the earth. You're the ones you're going to... Now, under God, obviously, I mean God was never left his throne, but you have this earth.

I've made it for you. It's a perfect environment. There's nothing wrong with it. You're protected in it. There's all the food you're going to need, and it's perfect. And you will have children, and you'll grow as the human race. Well, we know the story. We know the story that Satan was allowed to come into the garden. Understand something. Satan didn't sneak into the garden.

It wasn't like God saying, Oh, no, if I just would have caught him. He allowed him to come in because for human beings, made in the image of God means we have to choose. We have a choice, and he allowed them to make a choice. God would have never deceived them. So God wasn't going to expose them to evil, but he allowed Satan to do it. And Satan what? He lied to them. He convinced them that God didn't know what he was doing, or God made a mistake, or God wasn't telling him everything. And they got attracted to what he said, and they followed him.

And from that point on, Satan became what Paul calls the God of this world. He took the human dominion away from us. And he, God lets him. I mean, it's not like he took it away from God, right? In fact, the entire Bible is what?

It's God saying, that's enough, that's enough. He's always controlling where history's going, because it ends up where he wants it to be, not where Satan wants it to be. But he lets him have dominion. And you and I live in that world. For a limited time, he has limited dominion, and that means he has limited influence on all of us.

And there's a terrible result from that. What I want you to do, don't read it out loud, I'm saying, but I want you to read. I'm going to have a few things I want you to actually read with me, especially the younger people. I want you to think about what we're saying. You and I were born into a world that was originally designed by God for our good, but it went through an enormous change when our first parents decided not to listen to their Creator. This isn't what God created, in other words. You and I were born into a story long after this happened. And you have to realize, and the younger you realize it, the more you'll face life differently. You realize, oh, this isn't what God designed. This isn't what God wanted. I mean, there's a lot of good in the world, and I don't want to say, look, everything is evil. But it's not right. And you know it. You know it. You can feel it. The world we live in is a mixture of good and evil and constant confusion, and is doomed to failure, and the result is suffering, and everybody dies. That's a hard thing to say, but the one thing all of us will face is death, unless we happen to be alive when Christ sends back and we're changed immediately. But that's common to all human beings. That's the result of what happened when humanity said, our first parents said, no, we'll do it our way, under Satan's influence. And we live in that. Once again, there's still a lot of good. I'm not saying there's not good. I'm saying, though, you know it. You know it because you understand the hatred. You understand because even as a kid, you get frustrated, and you lose your temper, and you want to do bad things. There's something wrong in this. There's something wrong. Because you should be able to, you think, I can eat whatever I want to be healthy. I can play all the time. I don't have to do my schoolwork. I don't have to do all these things. That's what I want. And yes, that's not how it works. That's not how you become happy. That's not how you become productive. So this is the world we live in. God wants you to know why. You know, sometimes we think, well, okay, God just wants to come tell me what to do. No, this is more than God telling you what to do. He wants you to know why. He wants you to know why there's something fundamentally wrong. And even if you can't explain it, even sometimes if you're seven years old, you can feel it a little bit. There's just something not right in everyday life. He wants you to understand why. So let's go to Deuteronomy 30. Now, this is read a lot in youth sermons, but I'm going to take it in a little different direction here. This is what God told ancient Israel.

Deuteronomy 30, verse 15. He called these people, and he told them he was giving them a choice. Actually, it's a whole lifetime of making choices. Every day we make choices. But he wanted them to understand their life was a life of choosing. And he says in verse 15, See that I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. And then he says, I command you to love God and love his commandments. Keep his commandments so that he will bless them. Look at the verse 16 at the end. And the Lord your God will bless you and the land where you go to possess. So here's the promise. The promise is you choose rightly, and you're going to have a great life in this land that I give you.

And so he gave them a lot of promises. He told them that they would have health. He told them that he would give them wealth, that every person would have property, that they would have a judicial system that really worked and there was justice, and the rich wouldn't take advantage of the poor, and the poor couldn't go out and steal, and that he would keep them from getting certain diseases, and he would even take down their enemies. That's the promises that God made to them. Now, if you're sitting here and you're a younger person, or even if you're an older person who grew up saying, yes, and I chose to follow God, but life is a dilemma. I can't, I mean, if God promises to give us all these good things, why is it that I spend my life obeying God? And I have health problems. Why is it that someone who keeps the Ten Commandments is in a car wreck and so crippled up that they're stuck in their house in a wheelchair? You know who I'm talking about. I mean, we talk about Laurie many times, and it's, we agonize. And of course, the question that she's got to ask from time to time, why? I've, I've obeyed you all my life since I was young.

A young couple, they get married, they love each other. They've done it right. They've obeyed God. They've been faithful. They get married and find out they can't have a baby. Why? I mean, God promised. He told ancient Israel, and you'll be fruitful, you'll multiply, and all these things are going to happen. But you and I see all the time that you and I live in a world where it doesn't work out. We can eat perfect. I've seen people that eat so perfect, you think they'll live to be 120. And then their health collapses at some point, and it might be something genetic. Something from great-great-grandpa, right? Or great-great-grandma that went through the genetics, and now they have a genetic problem. And they're sick. And you think, why? But choose. We've been choosing. We've been choosing. Why is it that we're not getting all these things? Why aren't my enemies subdued, right? Now, you and I live in a very prosperous time. You and I actually live as rich people compared to the rest of the world. But we still compare ourselves and say, why God is it better? Why is it that I got fired? Why is it that my business failed? Why? But I was doing everything right. I was tithing. But isn't the promise all this life that we have now? Well, we're going to talk a little bit. God does say He'll give us physical things. But we have to look at this in the context of why God has said to you, come follow me. Come follow my son, Jesus Christ. Why? Let's go to Mark 10. Mark 10.

Verse 17. Let's talk about Jesus Christ. Now, as he was going out on the road, one came up running, now before him and asked him, Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? We know from this story that this man was very wealthy. He had physical blessings, lots of physical blessings. And he comes and he asks a very specific question. And this is important because this is why God has come into your life. It's not just to drive a Mustang. I always say that because all my life I wanted to drive a Mustang and now I'm so old, I don't care. I wanted to own a Mustang. Someone gave me a couple years ago a little matchbox Mustang and said, There, you got your Mustang. I said, I'm a happy man.

So this man comes and he asks, What do I do for eternal life? You see, he knew something was wrong. He knew something was wrong in this life, just like you know. What is it? What is wrong? I don't want to die someday and I don't want to get old someday and I don't want to be sick. What can I do to have eternal life? Because God, he knew the Old Testament, by the way. He knew there was a promise of eternal life. And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one. That is God. There's a whole interesting subject in that verse, but we don't have time for that. But here's what he says to him. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and your mother. He says, You want life? Then, okay, let's just start with the Ten Commandments. And when you come into the church as a young person, the first thing we teach you is the Ten Commandments, right? God loves you. Christ is the Son of God who died for you. And here's the Ten Commandments. And that's where he starts with the man. Verse 20 is very interesting. This is what the man says to Jesus. And he answered and said to him, Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. And then the next statement says, Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him. Jesus didn't say, You hypocrite. You low-life, pretending to keep the Ten Commandments. Understand, this man, since he was a child, had never worshiped an idol in the letter of the law. He had always kept the Sabbath. He had always kept the Holy Days. He had never stolen anything. In the letter of the law, this man had done it. Now, I don't know, maybe he stole something as a child. But you know what I mean is there was not habitual, obvious breaking of the Ten Commandments going on. We're not talking about the spirit of the law, but the letter of the law. He was doing it, which he understood. I have to do that. We understand. We have to do that. So you think, I'm wealthy? We know he's wealthy. I got everything, but something's missing. Well, keep the Commandments. I do keep the Commandments. And Jesus, all it says is he loved him.

He was doing the best he could in trying to keep the Ten Commandments. Didn't mean he was keeping them. He just didn't understand the depth of it. But Jesus did not correct him on his commandment keeping. Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, One thing you lack, go your way, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you have treasure in heaven, and come, take up the cross, and follow me. You know, take up the cross doesn't mean much to us. But they had regularly seen people, men, women were used to kill differently, but dragging across me through the streets, being beaten. And you know what you do when you picked up that that pole. You're going to be nailed to it. You are going to be nailed to it. You are going to die terribly. And he says, okay, you want eternal life? Get your mind off the physical. No, by the way, I'm not telling you all or saying go sell everything you have. But Jesus is making a point. This is so important to you. Go sell it all, and come, follow me. He offered him discipleship. Come, follow me, and you will have eternal life. He wasn't asking how to have a good life. He was asking how to have eternal life. And this is what Christ answered him with. You want an eternal life? Okay. There's a price to be paid to really come out of the world, to really become, be reconstructed into the image of God. There's a price to be paid. Verse 22, but he was sad in this word and went away because he had great possessions. He could not pay the physical price that was being required of him.

He could not pay the physical price. Understand something. If you understand what this calling is, you will always be at a step with the world around you, even with your closest friends. You'll be always out of step because you're being called by God to be transformed into something else, and it costs something to get there.

It costs us giving up whatever is keeping us from following God.

God's promise to you now, in coming into the body of Christ, is greater than the promise he made to the people of ancient Israel. God is calling you the way Jesus called that man. Here's what you have to do for eternal life. Oh, but I want a house. Oh, you already have a house. You have to give that up. I have a great job. Now, I'm not saying he's saying give up your house, but you have to get the point here. This is not the same promise he gave to ancient Israel. The promise is if you want eternal life, come pick up the cross, be willing to give up whatever it takes, and come follow me. The promise God's making to you is that he doesn't promise that you'll never get sick. He doesn't promise that you'll never lose a job. He doesn't promise that there's a time where you may not have a house. He doesn't promise that there'll be a time where you're in poverty. I know, because I've experienced all those things at one time in my life.

That's not the promise he's making to you. He's not promising that he'll destroy your enemies. He's promising you eternal life in his kingdom. And in order to do that, you're coming into a relationship with God that the ancient Israelites never did because he offers you his Holy Spirit. We just went through that on Pentecost, right? And I don't care how old you are, you're here. That means God is saying, if you want this, this is what I offer.

There's a great false teaching that modern Christianity has. It's got into our society so deep that it infiltrates into the church at times. So listen to this. Read it with me. Christianity isn't about God taking mean, bad people and simply making them into nice people who unconditionally accept others and do some good deeds. This is what the definition of Christianity has become. God just wants you to be nice. He wants you to accept everybody unconditionally, no matter what their lifestyles or what they do, and they want you to do some good deeds. And that is a belief that even the church has to fight sometimes.

Here is what God is calling you to. Christianity is about God taking morally corrupted, hopeless, suffering, dying people and changing them into His eternal children in His family. What must I do to have a good life? If the man would have asked Jesus that, He would have got a different answer. Keep the commandments. I do. Go and have a good life. The question was, what do I do to have eternal life? Oh, that's everything. God is willing to give you everything He has, but we have to give everything to receive it. And this is what it is. We realize that we're morally corrupted, even if you grow up in a church, inside you're morally corrupted. You're hopeless. You can't fix your own life. Sometimes you're suffering. You can't have eternal life. Of course, when you're 23, it seems like you are going to live forever. At 43, it's like, who? I may not live forever. And your 70s is like, oh, I'm not going to live forever. That's the stages you go through. He's offering you to be eternal children in His family forever, in a perfect world, or a perfect environment. I can't say perfect world, because I'm not even sure what it is to be changed and despaired. This is what He's offering us. So keeping the 10 commandments is the first step, but that's not the entirety of the calling. The entirety of the calling is to become a child of God.

And all that that entails in our lives. And it's a lifelong journey. He never totally obtained it in His life. You're always moving forward to when it becomes a reality. Let's look at Matthew 6. This is also read many times in youth sermons, but I want to use this in terms of, or read this in terms of, what we've been covering here. Because this is in the Sermon on the Mount, and I want you to look at what He actually says here. Jesus says in verse 25, Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, or about your body, what you put in it. It is not more than food, and the body more than clothing. Now He's not saying, just live like a bum and don't care. That's not His point. His point is, don't be overwhelmed by these things. Don't live your whole life trying to, oh, if I could just have those clothing, those shoes, because you're manipulated all the time. I have an embarrassing thing I'm going to tell. When I worked in radio, how many know what jellies are? They're a shoe. Oh, some do. Jellies are a little shoe. It's a plastic, cheap shoe that they can make for nothing. And I think they were selling them for $1.99 or $2.99 a pair. And suddenly, in the town I worked in that was way out of the big market, they ran out of jellies.

So, one of the guys came to me to own a clothing store, and he said, I got all the jellies I can sell. So, I'm going to be selling them for $4.99. So, I worked up a campaign. And one of our stations played tajano music, and a lot of the Hispanic girls loved these things. So, we got this really exciting announcer that are really big in tajano stations. And he's just gone on in Spanish about these jellies. And we had, you know, great music behind it and everything. And he ran out for $4.99. So, he got another batch, and we were selling for $7.99. He got another...nobody else had him. At one point, we were selling jellies for $14.99. He was making money head over face. And then, the manufacturers caught up, and everybody in town had jellies. And they went back to $1.99 a pair. Today, I still feel bad about convincing young girls, you had to go buy your jellies now, there's only one place in town you can get it. Which was true, but they weren't worth $7.99. They sure weren't worth $14.99. This is what the world does to us, and this is what the world does to you. It's one of the reasons I finally get out of advertising. I just said, I can't do this anymore. There's always a manipulation...not always, but many times, there's a manipulation going on to people. You say, well, that's just good marketing. That's just the capitalistic system. Well, the capitalistic system isn't always God's way.

So he says, don't worry about these things. Don't get caught up in a lot of people trying to get you to think that's important in your life. Know what's important in your life. Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sown or reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valued than they? To God, what is your value to God? You're made in His image, and you were created to be His child, and He wants you to be His child. It's a desire He has. Jesus Christ has a desire for you to be in His family. I don't know what He has to do to prove it any more than He already has. That's a desire for you. You say, well, I'm not worth it. Well, nobody is. But to God, you are, because He knows what you can become. He knows what you can become. Yeah, but I'm only 14 years old, but He knows what you can become, so you have to choose. Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to a stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. Neither do they toil nor spin. Yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not a raid like one of these. Now if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, He will not much more clothe you, O you of little faith. He doesn't mean we're all going to have expensive, fancy clothing. He's saying God will give you what you need. You know, how many of you got to see that Jamaican video that we played? I know we... wasn't that amazing? How thankful those people were? And we're looking at where they live and think, oh, how do you live in a place like that?

God gives them what they need. We think we need a whole lot more than we do. For all these things the nations seek, for your heavenly Father knows what you need, that you need all these things. He doesn't say that you don't need anything. He says He knows it. So this is the point then. Here's the choice. But seek first the King of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Oh, good, I'll be rich. No. He knows what you need. So seek Him and what He's offering you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Sometimes we worry so much about the future, we sacrifice the here and now, the today.

Okay, here's a basic truth that's very hard, but somebody's got to say it. Okay. The only real choice, okay, see, so I got to make a choice. The only real choice you have is to go through a life of good times and bad times without God's help and no eternal future. That's one choice. The other is to go through a life of good times and bad times with God's help and receive a future He has planned for you. You notice that both ways have good times and bad times. Your choice isn't, oh, I get all good times. No. Your choice is you either do it with God or without God. And I can only tell you from experience, it is better with God.

It's better with God. Doing this without God is pretty, I mean, it's tough with Him. Without Him it's impossible. That's what choosing life is. That breaks it down into the simplest concept, either choosing to do this with God or without God. And that means in the good times and the bad times and the times that you have to sacrifice. Remember, there's a price to be paid. Romans 12.

Romans 12. Then we'll start wrapping it up here. Romans 12.

Another scripture that many of you have memorized. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. A living sacrifice is an oxymoron. I mean, what do you do with the sacrifice? You kill it. A living, dying thing. But that's what he means. You're living for God, and you're dying to the world. That's what life is. I don't... anyone who's been doing this, you know, someone who's younger says, oh wow, that's... when do I reach it when I'm not a living, dying thing anymore? When you actually die? For all the rest of us, this is a daily activity we all go through. Every adult goes, we're a living, dying sacrifice. Giving up ourselves to become more in the image of God, to becoming a child of God. That's what we do. That's what life is. Verse 2 says, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. You're looking for the will of God in your life, and that means your mind has to be changed. You have to be transformed into something else. And that's what Christianity is. It's not just accepting Jesus. It's not just having belief in God. It's submitting to God so that He is transforming you into someone else. Oh, you're still you, but you're not a mixture of good and evil anymore. When we're changed, when Christ returns, we will not be capable of evil. It'll be gone.

Can you imagine not being able to just experience evil, bad thoughts, bad feelings? It's just gone. It's not there because God's not capable of it.

And this is the training ground. This is the learning place. God has chosen you to change you from the inside out. The man who came to Jesus understood the behaviors, and Jesus loved him. He did not understand entirely the inner change that has to take place. And that is harder than learning the behaviors. Younger people, you learn the behaviors first. But it's not where we stop. You choose not to tell a lie. You may sacrifice a friendship. And the other way to do this is to commit your life to a life of sacrifice. And there's blessings in that. And those blessings are beyond external blessings. They're internal blessings that really bring you happiness and peace and some settlement in the world that you're living in. That means you are in an existential battle between good and evil. And God has called you to come to good and to win. If we don't win, it's because we don't follow Him. Because if we do, He wins. Oh, if I just had enough character, I can't have enough character. God has to build it. God has to teach. God has to learn. God has to push. God has to do all this stuff to make this happen. And He will win if we give to Him. If we just give it up to Him. That's why you can't do it by your own effort. We choose, but our choice is, I sacrifice me for what you want to do. And let's look at, let's just finish in John 3.

I read this a couple times a year. First John, first John chapter 3, because it's one of my favorite passages. And so it doesn't matter if you're baptized or not, you're here. It doesn't matter what your age is, you're here. And that means this is open to you. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know Him. I want you to understand, we are called the children of God. God's called you to have a relationship with Him as a Father now and Jesus Christ as Savior and King, but also as brother. He says He's our brother. This is a family relationship He's called you into now. You go before God and you say, you can say, my Father. And that's how He responds to you, as Father, not as policeman, right? As Father. That still means when you're wrong, guess what Dad does. Dad can be really hard on you when you're wrong, but it's still Dad. It's a different motivation. It's a different motivation.

He says, Beloved, verse 2, we are now children of God, and it shall, it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Fascinating. John says, I don't even know what it means to be changed. I had this father-child relationship with Him now, but what is it like to actually be in His family? He says, all I know is we'll see Him. We'll see the Father. We'll see Christ, and we'll interact in a way that we can't even beyond understand. It's beyond our understanding. And this is the motivation. And everyone who has this hope, verse 3, and everyone who has this hope in Him purifies Himself just as He is pure. In other words, everyone tries. Everyone keeps choosing. And every day, sometimes we choose wrong. Everybody does. And you say, no, that was wrong. And you keep trying to ask God to help you to choose right. And every time you make a right choice, something good's happening between you and God and in your life. And it may not be that you get the job you want. It may not be that you're 6'2", 230 pounds, and can run 40 yards in 4.5 seconds. He's like, nah, you're stupid, kid. Right? You don't get that.

It's what He knows we should be. This is an adventure. You have to understand, Christianity is a grand adventure. And spiritually, there are adventures and there are struggles and there are fights and there's rewards.

And we have to see this life that way, where we get so just involved in the physical parts, we lose what God is doing, what He's offered to us, and what He's offered to you. So God sets before you this day life and death.

Every day He sets this before you. But you're on a path of choosing life, and every day you have choices to make. Sometimes we make the wrong ones. And we quickly figure out that doesn't work. Well, sometimes not so quickly, but eventually you figure out that doesn't work. So He's given us this choice between life and death. Here's the... you break this down into simple choices. Choose the goodness of God. Choose the goodness of God.

Choose His forgiveness and love through Christ.

Choose His forgiveness to say, I can be forgiven of all the wrong I've done. And when I understand Christ, I understand what God's doing.

And this is one of those core elements of the Gospel. Choose a life of spiritual transformation and discipleship. This is the adventure part. You choose. I wish to be transformed. You choose. I wish to pay the price. Therefore, I will be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Choose life.