Rev. David Holwick ZN
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
November 29, 1998
Joshua 24:15-27
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
===================
I. Our choices make a real difference.
Melissa Vinson, an honors student at Seminole High School in Sanford,
Florida, played a game called "Pass-Out" with two other girls.
In the board game, players land on squares that read, "Take a drink"
or "Go to the bar" and they recite tongue-twisters on "Pink
Elephant" cards.
In a two hour period, Melissa consumed most of a liter bottle of
vodka.
Later that night she began to convulse and blacked out on her
living room floor.
She was pronounced dead at Florida Hospital in Orlando.
Medical examiners concluded that possibly a reaction of the vodka
to a prescription drug contributed to her death.
Abraham Bininger, a Swiss boy from Zurich, came with his parents to
this country on the same ship with John Wesley.
His parents died on the trip and were buried at sea.
Young Abraham stepped down the gang-plank alone in a strange and
bewildering land.
A short time later he decided to take the gospel to the natives on
the island of St. Thomas.
When he got there he learned that it was illegal for anyone but a
slave to preach the gospel to the slaves.
He wrote to the governor of the island begging to become a slave
himself that he might have the freedom to proclaim the gospel.
The letter was forwarded to the king of Denmark who was so touched
by Bininger's desire that he sent an edict to allow him to
preach the gospel where, when and to whom he chose.
What do those stories have in common?
What is the thread weaving them together?
The element of choice.
Melissa made a choice and it cost her life;
Bininger made a choice and it led him to preach the gospel.
#4413
1) Think of the choices you have made that had an impact.
2) What would have been results of other choices?
a) We can never know for sure.
b) But we often think about it.
II. Choices that face us.
A. Choosing college or career.
1) Many Juniors have no idea what they want to do.
2) But the pressure builds anyway.
B. Choosing spouse.
1) What were biggest criteria?
a) Fun personality, common interests, lust?
2) Looking back, would you choose differently?
C. Choosing personal values / lifestyle.
1) Habits like drinking, smoking, drugs.
2) Moral convictions.
D. Most important choice of all.
1) True God or false gods.
2) Joshua's challenge: "Whom will you serve?" 24:15
III. Why we can believe.
A. God did stuff for the Israelites. 24:17
1) The miracles of the Exodus convinced them.
2) We are also convinced by special events.
a) Michael Jordan and significant events in his life.
Friends in car crashes, etc.
Couldn't just be coincidences.
"There's got to be something there."
B. Christian faith is based on real events.
Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., wrote:
The Gospel is not presented to mankind as an argument
about religious principles.
Nor is it offered as a philosophy of life.
Christianity is a witness to certain facts --
to events that have happened,
to hopes that have been fulfilled,
to realities that have been experienced,
to a Person who has lived and died and been
raised from the dead to reign for ever.
#4224
1) The reminders of history.
a) Some events of Christian history are discouraging.
1> Many follow Jesus only partly.
b) Others inspire us to press on.
1> Churches in Rome often dedicated to martyrs.
2> Simple people, who made a courageous, and lonely,
stand.
c) Example of Polycarp.
According to the ancient historian Eusebius:
The old man stepped forward, and was asked by the Roman
proconsul if he really was Polycarp.
When he said yes, the proconsul urged him to deny the charge
that he was a Christian.
"Respect your years!" he exclaimed, adding similar appeals
regularly made on such occasions:
"Swear by Caesar's fortune; change your attitude; say:
Away with the godless!"
[Christians were considered atheists back then]
But Polycarp, with his face set, looked at all the crowd in
the stadium and waved his hand towards them, sighed,
looked up to heaven, and cried:
"Away with the godless!"
The governor pressed him further:
"Swear, and I will set you free: curse Christ."
"For eighty-six years," replied Polycarp, "I have been his
servant, and he has never done me wrong.
How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?"
"I have wild beasts," said the proconsul.
"I shall throw you to them, if you don't change your
attitude."
"Call them," replied the old man.
"We cannot change our attitude if it means a change from
better to worse.
But it is a splendid thing to change from cruelty to
justice."
"If you make light of the beasts," retorted the governor,
"I'll have you destroyed by fire, unless you change your
attitude."
Polycarp answered: "The fire you threaten burns for a time
and is soon extinguished.
There is a fire you know nothing about -- the fire of the
judgment to come and of eternal punishment, the fire
reserved for the ungodly.
But why do you hesitate? Do what you want."
The proconsul was amazed, and sent the crier to stand in
the middle of the arena and announce three times:
"Polycarp has confessed that he is a Christian."
Then a shout went up from every throat that Polycarp must
be burnt alive.
As the crowd piled logs and kindling around him,
Polycarp prayed:
"O Father of your beloved and blessed Son, Jesus Christ,
through whom we have come to know you, the God of angels
and powers and all creation, and of the whole family
of the righteous who live in your presence;
I bless you for counting me worthy of this day and hour,
that as one of the martyrs I may partake of Christ's cup."
When he had offered up the Amen and completed his prayer,
the men in charge lit the fire, and a great flame shot up.
#1549
2) Would you have this strong a faith?
a) The Israelites thought they did. 24:18,21
b) They kept the faith - as long as Joshua lived.
IV. The dilemma.
A. We are not able to choose God. 24:19
1) Ironic - not to discourage them, but make them count cost.
2) Better, it is literal - they cannot obey without God's grace.
a) His standards are too high.
b) Our hearts are wrong. We are incapable of choosing.
1> Recognize our need and limitations.
2> God must choose us. [+Jesus] John 15:16
B. Will God NOT forgive?
1) Exaggeration, because contrary to God's nature.
2) He forgives, but is not superficial with sin. Exod 34:6-7
V. When to choose God.
A. Don't put it off.
Evangelist D. L. Moody said that his "greatest mistake" occurred
October 8, 1871.
On that night his message was based on Pilate's question,
"What shall I do then with Jesus?" (Matthew 27:22)
As he concluded, he said, "I wish you would seriously consider
this subject, for next Sunday we will speak about the cross,
and at that time I'll ask you,
'What will you do with Jesus?'"
Ira Sankey then sang the closing hymn, which included the lines,
"Today the Savior calls; for refuge fly.
The storm of justice falls, and death is nigh."
Little did anyone know that these words would be the last ever
heard in that huge hall.
Even as they were being sung, the soloist's voice was nearly
drowned out by the sound of clanging bells in the street.
That was the night of the great Chicago fire which almost
destroyed the entire city.
Among the hundreds who died were some who earlier had been in
Moody's audience.
The evangelist was greatly distressed by this and lamented his
tragic error in not asking men and women to receive the
Lord that evening.
"Now, whenever I preach," he said later, "I press for a
definite decision.
I would rather lose my right hand than give people even a day
to decide for Christ, for I don't know if I'll ever see
them again."
The gospel invitation is a "today only" offer!
#4414
B. The choice is not for you alone.
1) "As for me and MY HOUSEHOLD" - what about your family? 24:15
2) Families are special to God.
a) Christians have a spiritualizing effect within
families. (but no guarantees) 1 Cor 7:14,16
b) Salvation is for you and your children. Acts 2:39
c) Whole household saved. Acts 11:14; 16:15; 16:31; 18:8
C. Make your choice concrete.
1) Joshua made a book, a proclamation, and set up a stone.
2) For you, perhaps baptism. Testimony. Journal.
3) Christmas traditions can build faith.
[Suggestions for improving sermon: Too similar to previous sermons in this
series. It might be good to expand on how we make choices, and how
to make better ones. Also, reasons why a rational person would choose
to be a Christian.]
===========================================================================
SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#1549, Eerdmans' Handbook To The History Of Christianity, "Polycarp,"
page 81.
#4224, Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., "Far and Near," acquired from "Online
Christian Quotation Of The Day," edited by Robert McAnally Adams,
November 1, 1997.
#4413, Internet sermon: "Choose Today Whom You Will Serve!" by
Rev. David P. Nolte. [Story of Melissa from Albany Democrat-
Herald newspaper; Bininger illustration from Paul Lee Tan,
"Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations."
#4414, Internet sermon: "Choose Today Whom You Will Serve!" by
Rev. David P. Nolte. Moody illustration from Paul Lee Tan,
"Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations."
===========================================================================
POSSIBLE CHILDREN'S SERMON on "Choice"
CATEGORY: Choice, Decision, Hand
Number: 2197 Hard copy:
SOURCE: Dynamic Preaching Disk, Spring 1992 "A"
TITLE: I Am Doing A New Thing
ILLUSTRATION__________________________________________________________________
Children's sermon: Scripture: Isaiah 43:16-21; Object: The Bible.
I want to tell you one of my favorite stories. It is about a king and a wise
man. The king didn't like this wise man. He was too popular with the people
and the king was jealous. The king tried to think of a way he could make the
wise man look bad.
One day he hit upon a scheme. He summoned all his followers, and sent for
the wise man. The king asked the wise man, "Oh, wisest of men, tell me this.
I have the tiniest of birds cupped between my hands. I command you to tell me
if the bird is alive or dead?"
The wise man realized that if he said, "Alive," the king would give one quick
squeeze and the bird would be dead. If he said, "Dead," the king would simply
open his hand and release the bird. The king would use either answer from the
wise man to make him look bad. The wise man pondered for a moment. The king
grew impatient. "Well," demanded the king, "Is the bird alive or dead?" The
wise man replied, "The choice is in your hand, your Majesty. The choice is in
your hand!"
Do you know how much God loves us, boys and girls? He loves us so much that
he has let us decide completely what we do with our lives, with the things we
own, with time, with everything in this world. The choice is in our hand.
But he has provided us with a book of wisdom that tells us the best possible
way to live our lives. It is this book, the Bible. That is why we read it.
That's why we study it in Sunday School. This book tells us how to have a
life that is wonderful. That is the kind of life God wants for each of us.
The choice is ours.
#2197
*
===========================================================================
Passage summary
===============
I. Choose whom you will serve. 15
A. The real God.
B. Other gods.
II. People: we will not forsake God. 16
A. God did miracles of deliverance for us. 17
III. You are not able to serve God. 19
A. He is holy and jealous.
B. He will not forgive rebellion.
1) (hyperbole?)
2) Forsake God, and he will turn from good to evil for you.
IV. People: reaffirm their commitment. 21
A. They are witnesses against themselves. 22
V. Joshua: terms of commitment. 23
A. Throw away foreign gods.
B. Yield your hearts to God.
VI. Covenant, decrees, recorded, memorialized. 25-27
===========================================================================
ILLUSTRATIONS
CATEGORY: Character, Virtue, Responsibility, Example, Story, Choices, Duty,
Good & Evil, Kairos, Time, Opportunity, Consequences
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TEXT: Josh 24:15, Ruth 3:11, Prov 1:1-16, Prov 12:4, Prov 31:10, Ps 15,
Isa 7:15, Matt 7:21, Mark 1:15, Mark 7:15, John 13:15, John 14:15,
Rom 2:21-24, Rom 5:4, Rom 7:15, 1 Cor 11:1, 1 Cor 15:33, 2 Cor 6:2,
Gal 5:22-23, Eph 5:16, Phil 3:17, 1 Tim 4:12, Tit 2:7, Heb 4:11, 1 Pet 2:21,
1 Pet 4:3-5, 2 Pet 1:4-8, Jude 1:7
Number: 3562 Hard copy:
SOURCE: Online Christianity Today (America Online)
TITLE: In Pursuit Of Character, Part 1: What's Missing From The Debate [3]
AUTHOR: Daniel Taylor
PAGE: DATE: 12/11/95 Typist: ENTERED: 3/5/96
DATE_USED:
ILLUSTRATION__________________________________________________________________
: [See #3559-3561 for rest of article]
The key to every good plot is characters making choices. Choices instill
values -- right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, wise and foolish --
into an otherwise sterile sequence of events.
Frank Kermode claims that every plot is "an escape from chronicity."
Chronicity is mere clock time. It is succession without progression, or even
meaningful cause and effect. It is time dehumanized and devalued, measured
by repetition, not by significance.
The antidote to chronos is kairos, the Greek and biblical notion of time
redeemed. In classical Greek, kairos referred, among other things, to a
decisive time, a moment that required an important decision. There was a
statue to a god named Kairos outside the stadium at Olympia, perhaps in
recognition of the need for athletes to seize the moment, to act decisively
before the opportunity was past.
Kairos was also linked to the idea of responsibility. One has a duty to
fulfill the demands of the pregnant moment. In this sense, as in many
others, story time is kairos, not chronos. In life as in art, the characters
in a story must choose, and they are responsible for the consequences of
their choices. With choosing comes significance.
In Greek thought, the opposite of such choosing and acting was passivity.
The Greeks, of course, believed strongly in fate, but that did not mean one
waited idly for things to happen. Seizing the moment was an act of faith
that one's destiny required and rewarded decisive action. Kairos was an
antidote to a fatalism that made one the passive victim of time and chance.
Early Christianity adapted and gave theological richness to the Greek notion
of kairos (though its use in the New Testament is not entirely consistent).
God is seen as impregnating time with significance throughout salvation
history, most notably in the Incarnation. Jesus presents himself in the
Gospels as the fulfillment of the very purpose of time and history: "The time
has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"
His life creates a new urgency for everyone who encounters his message: "Now
is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation." This message requires
a decision ("Who do you say that I am?") and a changed life, not merely
assent or dissent ("Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I
say?").
Stories turn mere chronology, one thing after another, into the purposeful
action of plot, and thereby into meaning. If we discern a plot to our lives,
we are more likely to take ourselves seriously as characters. Healthy
stories challenge us to be active characters, not passive victims or
observers.
Stories teach us that character, in the ethical as well as literary sense, is
more important than personality. Because characters must choose (and
refusing to choose is itself a choice), they are inherently valuing beings.
Every choice implies an underlying value -- a because, an ought. The more
conscious we are of our stories, and our roles as characters in them, the
more clarity we have about who we are and why we are here and how we should
act in the world.
We learn that we are interdependent. Our stories are inextricably
interwoven. What you do is part of my story; what I do is part of yours.
Such an awareness encourages the shared understandings and shared commitments
that are central to a healthy society.
An emphasis on story will not heal every social or spiritual ill, or solve
every intellectual quandry. It is not a definitive solution to our troubles
so much as a direction to be explored. It will not, by itself, clean up the
moral waste dump spawned by relativism.
What it can do is defeat the passivity and paralysis that accompanies a
"Who's to say?" approach to crucial issues. How? By encouraging us to think
of ourselves as responsible characters in a meaningful story. And when we
find that our stories collide with others' stories, it can encourage us to
keep talking until we find that point at which our stories interweave.
If we think of ourselves more often as interdependent characters in a shared
story, we are more likely to turn out as our mothers intended. One of my
mother's favorite admonitions was "Straighten up and fly right." It never
occurred to her to doubt that terms like "straight" and "right" had real
meaning and were somehow rooted in the nature of things. We need to
recapture that assumption, because it is not possible to live well together
without it.
That assumption, of course, has been out of favor for a long time. The
ruling supposition, instead, has been that all morality is a product of
culture and, therefore, that no universal moral rules or principles exist.
James Q. Wilson, however, is not alone in arguing, as he does in his recent
book "The Moral Sense," that there is much broader agreement from culture to
culture and age to age on moral issues than has commonly been allowed, and
that the moral sense is actually something naturally built into each human
being. (The Christian, of course, has some ideas about where that moral sense
originates.)
And morality, specifically character, is at the heart of many of the crucial
social and economic issues of our day. Wilson argues, for instance, that
poverty and even oppression are not adequate explanations for crime, because
they fail to explain why most oppressed people in poverty do not engage in
crime -- and have not in the past under even worse conditions.
...
We must be characters in life-defining stories that make it matter that we
were ever here. If our present story is inadequate, we must choose to be
different characters in a different story. I believe the ultimate author of
such a story is the God who made and loves us and calls us to himself. But
this is no Boy Scout God. Nor is he the God of humanitarianism. This God is
one who came to us speaking these fearful words:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good
news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and
recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the
year of the Lord's favor.
To be a character in this story calls for more of us than we are anxious to
give, but next to it, all other stories pale.
***********************
Daniel Taylor is professor of literature at Bethel College in St. Paul,
Minnesota. Parts of this essay are adapted from his book "The Healing Power
of Stories: Creating Yourself Through the Stories of Your Life" (forthcoming
from Doubleday).
Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine
ctcurrmrj5TE29b5B29
#3562
*
CATEGORY: Free Will, Predestination, Chaos, Fuzzy Logic, Humanism, Love,
Determinism, Choice, Decisions, Emotions, Cause & Effect
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TEXT: Gen 50:20, Josh 24:15, Judg 6:37-40, Judg 13:5, 1 Sam 6:9, Job 14:5,
Prov 16:9**, Prov 16:33, Eccl 7:23, Eccl 9:11*, Isa 10:6-7, Isa 55:8,
Isa 58:2, Jer 1:5, Dan 11:36, Hab 2:13, Luke 22:42, John 15:16, Acts 1:24,
Acts 17:26, Rom 8:29-30, Rom 9:19-20*, Phil 1:22, Jam 1:5-8
Number: 3764 Hard copy: y
SOURCE: The Humanist
TITLE: Free Will: A Human, Fuzzy, Chaotic Process
AUTHOR: Paul Geisert & Mynga Futrell
PAGE: 26 DATE: 5/1/96 Typist: ENTERED: 6/11/96
DATE_USED:
ILLUSTRATION__________________________________________________________________
: A humanistic perspective on free will vs. determinism:
When we make a choice, such as whom we will marry, are we exercising free
will? For most people with a philosophical inclination, the possible answers
to the problem of free will are limited. If one has decided that there are
supernatural powers, free will is generally regarded as having been granted by
a supreme being and the question is settled. If one decides that there are no
supernatural powers, one must look to naturalistic solutions to the question
of free will.
Science is based on cause and effect, and if one is logically rigorous, one
must come to the logical conclusion that there is no such thing as human free
will, since all events are determined. Traditionally, there is no
satisfactory way out of this dilemma.
(Authors' solution is to see human mind using fuzzy logic, where we distill
past experiences and produce preferences. Some flow charts are given for
illustration. The definition of "LOVE" and other human emotions is given this
way:
"Love is a human attribute. It arises out of a specific arrangement of
matter and energy. The fact that the universe is deterministic in no way
nullifies that fact that complex attributes can arise out of complex
physical systems, and humans give those attributes word labels, such as
love, hate, fear, anxiety, aggression and free will.")
Free will is the human capability of implementing a preference which is the
result of the conscious brain's interpretation of a chaotic environment (in
the scientific sense) using decision processes described by fuzzy logic (in
the mathematical sense). The fact that the universe is deterministic or
strictly dictated by cause and effect does not negate the fact that humans cut
their way through the fuzzy, chaotic world to make their power and preferences
known, both to themselves and others.
#3764
*
First Baptist Church; Ledgewood, New Jersey
This document last modified December 4, 1998