Rev. David Holwick J
First Baptist Church (very well-received)
Ledgewood, New Jersey
March 11, 2012
Isaiah 30:18-21
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I. The forks in the road.
A. Don Jacke contemplates some what-might-have-beens.
Alfred Savia was inducted into the Livingston High School
Hall of Fame last summer.
The citation states that he is an award-winning music
director who has an internationally respected career as
conductor, orchestra builder and teacher.
He is a frequent guest conductor throughout North America
and around the globe even though he lives in Indiana.
What the award didn't state is that Alfred owes all his
success to our church organist, Don Jacke.
Or at least part of it - Alfred was Don's one-and-only
piano student.
They were only a few years apart in age, but Alfred wanted
a few weeks of lessons on the piano so he could add that
instrument to his resume.
At the end of his time in high school, Alfred was presented
with a dramatic choice.
He could be part of an international marching band at the
Macy's Parade, or he could march at the Livingston home
game.
If he had gone to the Macy's Parade, big opportunities would
have opened up for him - going to Juilliard, perhaps, or
even a career that would bring him to a major orchestra.
He was that talented.
However, the high school had it rigged.
Alfred was the president of the marching band so he had to
go to the home game.
No Juilliard, no major orchestra.
But he still did okay.
When Don read the Hall of Fame article, he had to wonder if
things could have turned out differently. [1]
B. All of us have critical junctions in our lives.
1) There are a multitude of them, though only a few probably
stick in our minds.
2) The choices you make have a big impact:
a) Schools you go to.
b) Careers you seek. (for many people, multiple ones)
c) The person you marry.
d) The God you believe in.
C. The way we approach forks in the road will define us.
1) More important than the paths we choose is our attitude
about the journey itself.
2) It is often not a straight or easy path and you never know
how it will turn out.
3) Nevertheless, we can live with confidence if God guides us.
II. A poem you learned in high school sums up the dilemma.
"The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost (1916).
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
#19254
A. Roads have always been a metaphor for life.
1) When Jesus says, "I am the way," he is literally saying,
"I am the road."
2) Robert Frost understood the metaphor, too.
a) He applies it to the choices we must make in life.
1> The man cannot go down both roads.
2> He has to choose one.
b) He checks them out as far as he can see.
1> Both look about the same.
2> One seems a little less traveled, but really isn't.
A> The fallen leaves are untrammeled on both.
3) The man makes his choice.
a) He can always travel the other road later.
b) But the way life is, maybe not. He doubts it himself.
4) He sighs.
a) From the distance of time, he thinks back on the
diverging roads.
b) He took the one less traveled by. (but it wasn't, really)
c) He attributes great differences to it. (because he felt
he had to?)
B. It is probably not about what you think it is.
1) It is not about rugged individualism or being different.
a) This has been so identified with the poem that some
people think it is titled, "The Road Less Traveled."
1> Only bold people can choose the unpopular path.
2> We like to think we are special, that we take the
rare path that few others find.
b) But in the poem, both roads are pretty much the same, as
far as he can tell.
1> And that's the problem - we can never really tell.
2> The experience of a pastor's wife.
This month Celeste began a new position at work.
She is in charge of all the nursing staff on a shift.
For some time now she has wanted to be in management.
She started a college program so she can get a degree.
She volunteers for special committees.
They offered her the job, and she began to fret.
It will make it harder to have vacations.
It will require more daily paper work.
She left them hanging for weeks, but then she took it.
After two days on the job, she had panic attacks in
her sleep.
Nurses aides hide from her.
Doctors leave her hanging.
Her husband is severely neglected.
But she can't go back to her old job. She is doomed.
You try to figure it all out ahead of time, but you
can't.
2) The poem is really about regrets.
a) Frost once told an interviewer that he was thinking of
a close friend when he wrote the poem.
The friend was an Englishman and fellow writer named
Edward Thomas.
Edward was not a happy man.
He was often depressed and had writer's block.
One quirk he had was that he often regretted the
particular choices he had made.
Frost is reported to have once said to Edward, "No
matter which road you take, you'll always sigh, and
wish you'd taken another."
b) The sigh of regret.
1> We think back to what our other choices might have
produced.
2> Don Jacke thought about Alfred Savia but he could
just as well thought about himself.
What was Don's first job out of college?
It wasn't in a church.
It was in a mattress factory.
He counts it a blessing that he soon moved from
there to New Jersey Bell.
But what if he got it wrong?
What if he had stayed in the mattress factory and
was now the Mattress King of New Jersey?
Pat would now be sitting on a Caribbean island
sipping lemonade while servants attended her.
Then again, he met Pat at New Jersey Bell, so he
would be married to a different trophy wife now.
Who knows?
c) You can always second-guess your choices if you want to.
III. We have to make the best choices we can.
A. Don't make obviously bad choices, or sinful choices.
1) You can expect those to blow up in your face.
2) Yet humans can be pretty stubborn.
a) In the 30th chapter of Isaiah, up in verse 15, God says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it."
b) The result is going to be an unmitigated disaster for
all of them: military defeat and exile.
c) Maybe you have had disasters like that.
1> You knew what you should have done, but didn't do it.
2> Others warned you but you wouldn't listen until it
was too late.
B. Through it all, God still wants to be gracious and guide us.
1) God's grace pervades this whole passage.
a) He wants us to have a life of blessing.
2) But as verse 19 says, we must cry to him for help.
a) If we do, we can hear that voice that says,
"This is the way; walk in it."
3) Even the choices we hope turn out good require faith on
our part.
a) Ecclesiastes 11:6 points this out:
"Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not
your hands be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed, whether this
or that, or whether both will do equally well."
b) It is not up to you to be a success, but it is up to
you to put your hands to the plow and move ahead.
c) Be faithful, and leave the outcome to God.
IV. Whatever you do, live boldly.
A. We have to accept the choices we make and keep moving.
1) Some of our choices may not seem to pan out.
a) We all know friends or relatives who prosper more than us.
b) Who knew that blue-eyed blonde would have such a temper?
c) But resist the temptation to chuck it all and run away.
1> You can still find contentment and fulfillment
right where you are.
2) Neither do our sinful choices have to defeat us.
a) God can forgive us and bless us again.
b) But we must be serious about repenting and getting back
on God's path.
c) Take responsibility, seek forgiveness, move on.
B. Don't let the uncertainties of life enslave you.
Chuck Swindoll once wrote about a bazaar that was held in a
village in northern India.
Everyone brought his goods to trade and sell, including an one
old farmer who brought in a whole covey of quail.
He had tied a string around one leg of each bird.
The other ends of all the strings were tied to a ring which
fit loosely over a central stick.
He had taught the quail to walk dolefully in a circle, around
and around, like mules at a sugarcane mill.
Nobody seemed interested in buying the birds until a devout
Brahman came along.
He believed in the Hindu idea of respect for all life, so his
heart went out to those poor little creatures walking in
endless, monotonous circles.
"I want to buy them all," he told the merchant, who was thrilled.
After receiving the money, the farmer was surprised to hear
the buyer say, "Now, I want you to set them all free."
"What's that, sir?"
"You heard me. Cut the strings from their legs and turn them
loose. Set them all free!"
With a shrug, the old farmer bent down and snipped the strings
off the quail.
They were freed at last.
What happened?
The birds simply continued marching around and around in a
circle.
Finally, the man had to shoo them off.
But even when they landed some distance away, they resumed their
predictable march.
Free, unfettered, released...yet they kept going around in
circles as if still tied.
Swindoll concludes:
"Until you give yourself permission to be the unique person
God made you to be ... and to do the unpredictable things
grace allows you to do ... you will be like that covey of
quail, marching around in vicious circles of fear,
timidity and boredom."
#63519
V. Put your choices in God's hands.
A. A full life can be found on many roads.
1) Many Christians feel God has a long series of specific
choices for your life, and you can't miss even one.
a) I don't think so.
b) If you face multiple choices that all seem good, take
any one of them, and ask God to bless it.
c) He can bless it, and will.
2) Don't yearn for the choices you passed by, or the choices
others have made.
B. There is only one road you don't want to miss.
1) That road is Jesus.
2) With him on your side, you will not go wrong.
3) Only Jesus truly "makes all the difference."
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
Much of the interpretation of Robert Frost’s poem is borrowed from the
sermon “The Road Not Taken” by Rev. Bruce A. Bode, May 9, 2004.
[1] You can read Alfred Savia’s 2011 Livingston High School Fall of Fame
citation at <http://www.livingston.org/Page/10952>.
#19254 “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, 1920,
<http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index.html
#63519 “Permission To Be Free,” by Chuck Swindoll, Preaching Now
newsletter, www.preaching.com, March 6, 2012. Originally
derived from the Dallas Seminary Daily Devotional on
February 7, 2005, which quotes one of Swindoll’s books.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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