Theme: Our choice, the Holy one of God
Text: Jos. 24:1-2, 15-18; Eph. 5:21-32; Jn. 6:60-69
There is a poem with the title “The Road not taken”, in which the author, Robert Frost, describes how he discovered two roads during a walk in the woods. He knew he had to make a choice as he could only travel on one, but he told himself that someday he would have the opportunity to travel on the other road. He knew in his heart that he might never return and have the opportunity of exploring the other road. The poet, however, was talking about something much more important than a simple choice of paths in a wood. He was talking about the choice of paths in a person’s life. Choosing a road symbolizes a choice between alternatives that appear equally attractive but lead to entirely different destinations. Whether we arrive at the right destination or not depends on the choices we make and our priorities determine which road we will travel. For most people today their main priority in life are wealth and possessions. Life consists of far more than just possessions and we are called to make a choice. It is a choice between Christ and the world. It is a choice between accepting and rejecting Christ. Each of us has to make a decision. There is really only one decision and that decision is to make our choice, the Holy one of God.
If you were asked today how you can find peace with God, how you can have forgiveness of sins, how you can find meaning and purpose in life, or how you can have everlasting life what would be your answer? You will be surprised how many different answers people give. The only way we can meet these needs is to come to Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ can meet these needs. We either choose to believe in Christ or we choose to reject Him. By rejecting Christ we reject God’s offer of forgiveness for our sins and have to pay the penalty for it. Accepting the Holy one of God is to receive forgiveness and eternal life. Peter makes this clear when he also had to make a choice. He and the other ten apostles, everyone except Judas, chose to believe and trust Jesus Christ. Everyone who makes the choice to accept Christ as Saviour and Lord pledges to honour and please Him and accepts that He is all-sufficient. When we believe this we will spend a lot of time with Him in prayer and in the reading of His Word. The more time we spend with Him the more we will think as He thinks, see as He sees and hear as He hears. It is only then He can use us to fulfil His divine purposes.
Life depends on the choices we make. The first human being, Adam, made a choice that still affects us today. He was given the choice to obey or disobey God – to choose spiritual life or death. He had the choice to eat from the "tree of life" or from the "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." While both trees produced edible fruit their effects were completely different as Adam’s choice revealed either his obedience or disobedience. This was the real issue. By eating the forbidden fruit Adam openly expressed his rebellion against God and His authority. Obedience or disobedience to God is demonstrated in very simple ways as the example of Adam shows. His disobedience led to spiritual death and only the work of God in regeneration, the new birth, can bring sinners to know spiritual and eternal life. Belief in Christ and repentance makes the abundance of God’s redeeming grace available to us. It procures for us perfect righteousness and eternal life. But God does not force this on us He gives us a choice.
We need to know the truth about salvation. We need to hear the truth rather than what we want to hear. We are not saved by what we do but by God’s grace. Christ has done all that needs to be done but we need to make a choice. We need to make a choice by accepting Christ as our Lord and Saviour. This is the only way to have a personal relationship with Christ. In the time of Christ many people were following Christ who had no personal relationship with Him. They were more interested in what they could get from Him than in whom He is. The situation is still the same today. A great many people are following Christ just for Him to meet their needs. They have no personal relationship with Him. A personal relationship with Christ will always result in the desire to please Him. How can we please Him when after confessing Christ to be the Son of the living God we then look to other sources to meet our needs? Some of us will leave Church only to go and seek spiritual help somewhere else. We who know Christ can only please Him when we rely on His sufficiency to meet our needs.
God wants to have a relationship with us so that we can enjoy His life. He chose us but also leaves us the choice to accept Him. We see this in the life of the Israelites. God had chosen them and because of His covenant with Abraham brought them out of slavery in Egypt. He protected and fed them on their journey in the wilderness and gave them a land of their own. He was their God. They were His people. His people did not choose God. God chose them. And as the Israelites stood at the threshold of Canaan, Joshua exhorted them to serve with fear and faithfulness the Lord who had chosen them. But God forced none of them to be His people. They had to make a choice – to serve the Lord or the gods of the Egyptians and the Amorites. This seemed a very easy choice to make but from the history of the Israelites we realise it was not such an easy choice. Unfortunately today many people still find it difficult to make their choice the Holy one of God. They have preconceived ideas about God, which they do not want to abandon. This was the experience of a very rich man and his wife who was facing a life-threatening battle with cancer and for the first time felt a sense of emptiness in their lives. Although they were not the church-going type they responded when a woman invited them to her church. They were pleasantly surprised finding it to be the complete opposite of everything they believed the church to be. It was interesting, the music was great, and the things the preacher said actually related to real life. Over time, they became regular Churchgoers, and began applying what they had learnt. To their amazement, things began changing for the better. Then one Sunday, a preacher quoted a Bible verse where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me". They just could not accept this and left the Church because they believed that there had to be many ways to God. They could not accept Christ as the only way because of their preconceived ideas about God, which made them believe only what they wanted to believe and not what the Word of God says. Each one of us has to make a choice who we will serve. You either serve God or the devil. What is your choice? Who are you serving?
Making the right choice our choice, the Holy one of God, transforms us and gives us the mind of Christ. Through faithful obedience we come to understand His mission. We come to understand that receiving eternal life and living this life is only possible because of Christ. This is because every believer has been united with Christ, not only in His death but also in His resurrection. The believer has died to self and the world with the Lord Jesus Christ and has been given a position in Christ where sin has no more claim on his life. The one who trusts in the finished work of Christ for his salvation is raised from a state of spiritual death into that of spiritual life. Our spiritual life is really Christ’s life. So the believer’s life is a heavenly walk made possible by the power of Christ’s resurrection life. Our new life within demands a change in our behaviour. We are to put off the old man with his deeds. Before we can put on a new set of clothes we have to remove the old. The believer is to put off the filthy garments associated with the flesh and to put on the new garments associated with righteousness. In Christ we have already put off the old man. But it is important that we make this real in our personal experience. We are to put off or deal with sexual immorality, greed, jealousy, lying and all other qualities, which characterized the old man. As we have put off the old man we should also put off his clothes. This can be compared with what Jesus did with His grave clothes at the resurrection. He left them behind because they were no longer needed. He had entered into a glorious resurrection life and was leaving behind all that characterised death. He put off the grave clothes as He entered the resurrection life in His glorified body. In contrast to those things, which are to be put off, some things need to be put on. We are to put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Those who have put on the new man have a divine nature and this is translated into daily living as we say yes to Christ and no to sin. We are to demonstrate love in our lives submitting to Christ and to one another. Putting on the new man gives believers a new unity. The new unity transcends all races, social positions, cultural differences and even political and economic status. Such distinctions belong to the old man and not to the new man.
If we have chosen Christ it is not to serve our own purposes but Christ’s. Accepting Christ does not mean that we can now use Him but that Christ can now use us to fulfil His divine will. God wants us to be conformed to the image of His Son and we can do this by our choice of the Holy one of God. This choice makes reading the Word of God and applying its truths to our lives a priority. Warren W. Wiersbe stated this truth saying “ When the child of God looks into the Word of God and sees the Son of God, he is changed by the Spirit of God into the image of God for the glory of God.” The believer is to experience a change in the quality of his life as he becomes more like Jesus Christ. Others should increasingly see Christ in our lives as we grow in our knowledge of Him. The better we get to know Christ, the more we become like Him. The choice of the Holy one of God is the most important decision we make in life. Have you made this choice? We do not always understand or like what is happening to us but to whom can we go? There is only one choice – our choice, the Holy one of God. Amen!
