Always the Choice

Scripture: See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. Deuteronomy 30:15

Observation: God ALWAYS sets this choice before mankind - chose life, or choose death. And there is no middle ground. There are three obvious cases where God has done this.

In the garden, God gave Adam and Eve two trees in the center of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, and told them they could eat of any tree except the tree of knowledge, and that eating of that tree meant they would die.

In the wilderness, God gave the Israelites two paths, to obey the law and receive life and blessing, or to turn away from the law and receive curses and death.

In the redemption, God gives all mankind a simple choice of faith, to either believe in Jesus Christ as Messiah and receive the gift of eternal life, or to reject him and be cursed to eternal death.

Application: It feels like these choices are pretty obvious, and yet the majority always get it wrong. God really couldn't make it any easier for every - a straightforward black-and-white choice, with one side being a great eternity and the other being cursed death - and I might have an idea about why. People need faith of some kind to believe either side. They need to believe God can provide the blessing, and they need to believe God is powerful enough to rain down curses. And standing in that dark void that is lack of faith, a third choice arises ... ambivalence.

I see there are huge numbers of people who simply haven't made the choice - they live in a place where they deny God's power, love, or existence. I know because I was once there. I explicitly doubted God's love, which lead me to doubt his power, and put me in a place where I was actively about to choose to doubt his existence. That was where he reached me. To me, it wasn't that I was about to choose death, but I was about to reject the very validity of the choice.

So the challenge may not be to simply tell people about Jesus, but to tell them of the choice ... that there is a very real choice to be made, with outcomes and consequences on the other side of that choice.

Prayer: Lord, I know people who have rejected the existence of the choice. They may even believe you exist, but just don't think there is a real choice to be made regarding life and death. They are actively choosing death and don't even know it. Please, Lord, reach them. Here I am, send me. Put words in my mouth. Put action to my hands. Or put someone or something or some situation in their path that is more effective than me. For the hope of the world, please. Amen.