Verse 19
THE WISE CHOICE
‘Therefore choose life.’
There is one choice which we must all make; and if that choice is once well made, it will very much secure all other choices, for the reason why we so often choose badly is because we have failed in that one great choice of all.
I. ‘Therefore choose life.’—Why ‘therefore’? (1) Because the option rests with yourself. You are free to take which you will. (2) Because the alternative is tremendous, and there is no middle space; it must be life or death. (3) Because life is everything. All that is worth having in this world or the next is in that word ‘life.’ ‘Therefore choose life.’
II. What is life?—(1) The source of life was originally the breath of God. That life was lost when man fell, but only lost to make way for a better restoration. By a mystical process, which we cannot explain, Christ became the Head of a body. ‘Because He lives, we live also,’ and live for ever. This is the source of life. (2) Look at the substance of life, what it is, its reality. Everything is real in proportion as it is consistent with and carries out its own element. Your element is a ‘body and soul and spirit.’ Life’s real substance is to know God, to enjoy God, to serve God. It might be safe to sum it up and say, Life is work: the inner work in one’s own soul, and the outer work of Christian usefulness. The great thing every one has to do is to find out his own proper work, what God has given him to do. And that work is life.
III. What is life’s object?—There may be a series of motives, but the end of motives is the glory of God. We must not seek our own glory, because God seeks His. All is His, and therefore to take any glory from anything is robbing God.
IV. Christ has said, ‘I am the Life.’—Choose the Christ who has so long chosen you, and you will live. He will be in you a necessity of life; you will live for God and with God for ever.
Rev. Jas. Vaughan.
SECOND OUTLINE
There are two ways of interpreting this text: the first literally, by the way of the law; the second spiritually or evangelically, by the way of the gospel. The way of the law is that they should set themselves to work to obey the Ten Commandments: that they should have no other gods but God, that they should worship no idols, that they should keep the Sabbath, honour their parents, commit no murder, no adultery, no theft, and so on. Now this was all they could do till a better way—the way of a higher life—was revealed; but when Christ came this better way, this higher life was revealed in Him. He said: ‘Believe in Me that ye may live—come unto Me that ye may have life, accept Me as your Saviour, and I will give you eternal life both here and hereafter. When you do this you shall keep the law as it was never kept before; for I will make a new covenant with you, which covenant shall be, that I will put My law in your hearts and write it in your minds, so that I and those who represent Me set before you life and death. And when you thus come to Me, receive My sacraments, which are not mere acts of obedience, but means of grace, in one of which you are grafted into Me, the living Vine, and in the other you receive Me as the Bread of heaven, ye receive My Body and Blood, and have My life in you. Then you shall keep the law of My Father, not outwardly, but inwardly. In your inmost soul you shall be poor in spirit, you shall be meek, you shall not only do outward righteousness, but you shall thirst after it; you shall be pure in heart, you shall have the peace of God Himself reigning in you, you shall even rejoice in persecutions, afflictions, distresses, because you shall discern in these the tokens of the love of your heavenly Father. And if you continue in this mind you shall subdue the world to Me. Your light shall so shine in a dark world that men shall see in it the very light of heaven.’
Rev. M. F. Sadler.
THIRD OUTLINE
For what are we all here on this struggling earth? What is the real end for which you live? What is the standard by which we shall be tried, each in turn? How often such questions dart across the mind in the swarming London streets! What is the goal? What purpose does this scurrying serve? What do men and women want to make out of this life? Well, to be sure, there was the gaining of one’s daily bread. That was a prime necessity. But the bread was naturally for the sake of something else. Man wanted to realise his capacities, to do something to fulfil an aim, to satisfy a desire, to feel that before he died he had achieved something, and had not lived in vain. What was that something? What did man set before himself? And not before himself alone, for he could not have a mere individual purpose; he was a social animal, belonging to the fellowship of men. What did they seek, and which, if known, would give meaning and value to all this un-intelligible hubbub?
I. Do not say that it is happiness which is sought.—That was only a word used in laziness of thought when they were first challenged on this point. As an answer they could see, the moment they reflected, how untrue it was to the facts. By saying it they meant that they hoped to be happy in attaining the end they desired; and that meant that happiness itself was not their aim and end. The question was, What was the thing in attaining which they would be happy? The fact that they would be happy in attaining it told them nothing at all about the thing itself. Or, did they mean that they aimed at some particular end, whatever it might be, for the sake of the happiness it would bring? Well, universal experience showed that if they aimed at being happy, they were sure to be disappointed.
II. Let them try another answer—achievement.—Were they here to fulfil a task? That was a noble, inspiring ideal, good and right enough, and brave spirits rose and followed. Only, they looked sadly round on their groaning earth to-day, and wondered how many men there were to whom this ideal would appeal with any hope of success. What would they achieve? What fair and seemly work would they ever be fit to finish? They were looking for an aim common to all, stupid as well as cultivated. These ideals of some perfect achievement were the ideals of the few, of the elect, of the cultivated. What of the maimed, the halt, the damaged, the poor, the fragmentary? What work were they to carry to perfection? It would be a sorry world if that were their only message. Moreover, on this earth there could be so little achievement even for the few, and least of all for the highest. The greatest never attained what they aimed at, but broke themselves in struggling after an ideal hopelessly remote and unattainable. There was a story of the great Archbishop Trench, of Dublin, turning round and looking sadly at a man who had just painted a cart-wheel. ‘I envy that man,’ he said; ‘he has finished something.’ You could finish a cart-wheel; but only because it was a mere cart-wheel. If there was one thing which they had learned with absolute certainty, it was that this earth could never be meant for achievement. This life was not complete in itself. Not by what they achieved were they judged, but by what they tried to achieve, what they left unfinished when they died. ‘What I aspired to be,’ said the poet, ‘and was not, comforts me:’—
(1) ‘There are those who tell me that I cannot know anything about Him, so distant He is, so high in glory.
When John Bunyan was in distress of soul, he imagined that he heard God talking with the angel in His remote and shining heaven. “This poor, simple wretch doth hanker after Me,” God said, “as if I had nothing to do with My mercy but to bestow it on him.” Many speak to me of the impossibility of my learning either God’s love or God’s law, so infinitely removed He is from me; and they do it jauntily, and with none of Bunyan’s regret.
But the answer to all such scepticism is found in Jesus Christ. In Him God has entered my world, has clothed Himself in my nature, walks by my side, knocks at my door, takes my hand into His own. I may without doubt know Him, hold intimate communion with Him, follow Him: His well-beloved Son is my Brother and Saviour and Friend.
The Word is very nigh unto me, the Living and Personal Word—Jesus, my Lord and my God.’
(2) ‘What bliss can compare with that which is summed up in the words, “The Lord will rejoice over thee for good”? The Word of God, equally with His words, is very nigh. Let us choose life in choosing Him who asks our love, and let us cleave unto Him as the branch cleaves to its parent stem; yea, let us anew yield ourselves to obey His least admonition, so shall we dwell ever in the land of victory and rest and plenty.’
(3) ‘In making this choice, it often seems as though we are turning our back on the open door of heaven and our face to the cross. But it is only so in appearance. Remember that our Lord refused the joy that was unveiled before Him, and set Himself to bear the cross with its shame. Yet through it there has come a greater joy and deeper blessedness than ever. So must it always be.’
(4) ‘We each determine for ourselves whether the knowledge of what we ought to do will lead to life or to death, and by choosing obedience we choose life. Every ray of light from God is capable of producing a double effect. It either gladdens or pains, it either gives vision or blindness. The Gospel, which is the perfect revelation of God in Christ, brings every one of us face to face with the great alternative, and urgently demands from each his personal act of choice, whether he will accept it, or neglect or reject it. Not to choose to accept is to choose to reject. To do nothing is to choose death. The knowledge of the law was not enough, and neither is an intellectual reception of the Gospel. The one bred Pharisees, who were whited sepulchres; the other breeds orthodox professors, who have “a name to live and are dead.” The clearer our light, the heavier our responsibility. If we are to live, we have to “choose life”; and if we do not, by the vigorous exercise of our will, turn away from earth and self, and take Jesus for our Saviour and Lord, loving and obeying Whom we love and obey God, we have effectually chosen a worse death than that of the body, and flung away a better life than that of earth.’
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