Choose Life

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Good morning.

Our scripture reading this morning is from Deuteronomy 30, 19.

The words of Moses.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, that I have set before

you life and death, blessings and curses.

Now choose life so that you and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your

God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give

your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The grass withers and the flowers fade.

The word of our God stands forever.

Please be seated.

Please pray with me, and we'll dive in.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your word.

We thank you that it is living and active and meets us where we are.

I pray, Lord, that if people are here this morning that are exploring faith, that you would overwhelm

them with a sense of your grace and salvation in Christ.

Pray for anyone that's discouraged, that you would encourage them.

Pray that you would meet us, Lord.

You know our hearts better than we do.

Challenge us.

Encourage us.

Speak to us.

Help me to faithfully proclaim your word.

I pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

I want to begin with a little bit of a story.

When I was in the fourth grade, my family went to Great America down in Santa Clara,

a big amusement park, and my mom kind of had one goal for the whole day, and it was to get

me to ride on the demon roller coaster with her.

So I'm nine years old.

I'm intrigued by it, but I wanted absolutely no part of it.

But somehow, I ended up in that line with my mom anyway.

She could be very persuasive, a bit of a force of nature.

But the worst thing about the demon is, the longer you're waiting in the queue and going

back and forth, the worse it gets.

You're winding around this line, and you can see this tunnel where the coaster disappears,

and smoke's pouring out of it, and there's these glowing red eyes.

And about every 30 seconds, this kind of demonic cackling about how you're never going to return

if you go in.

And so, as the line's going on, I remember looking at that tunnel and thinking, there's

just no way I'm going in there.

And the line kept moving.

I was physically moving closer to the ride, but mentally, I was nowhere closer to going

on that ride than I ever would have been.

So my mom, I told her at one point, I said, I'm done.

I'm getting out of line.

So she offered me 20 bucks, which in today's dollars is $65.

I mean, that's a pretty good deal.

But it wasn't the money that really kept me in line.

It was what my mom kept saying the whole time.

She kept saying, I'm going to be sitting right beside you.

You're going to have fun.

It's going to be okay.

And I trusted my mom.

And I stayed in that line.

And I got on the ride.

And I had an absolute blast.

And I've loved scary roller coasters ever since.

I've introduced all my boys.

My boys are now 24, 19, and 16.

And they have all been introduced to the demon.

I have to try to persuade them it was much more scary in my day.

It's a little bit run down now.

But here's what I didn't understand at nine years old that I understand now so clearly as a 52-year-old.

That the ride never changed, right?

The smoke and the eyes and the cackling and all of it remained incredibly scary to me.

What changed was me realizing I wasn't facing it alone.

My mom's presence didn't remove the fear.

But my mom's presence made the fear something I could walk through because she was with me.

And she said I would be okay and I trusted her.

And the reason I tell you that story is because I want us to hold on to that idea this morning as we look about this covenant.

Covenant and the presence of God and what it meant for Moses and what it means for us in the time of Jesus.

But I would argue that this idea that God is present with us in relationship is the foundational interpretive key for all of scripture.

Everything is always in that context of relationship.

That's what covenant is.

Covenant is not a contract.

It's not some kind of deal struck between two parties who are negotiating something for themselves.

Covenant is God binding himself to a people.

Covenant is God saying I will be your God and you will be my people.

And I will be with you.

And that's the theme that starts in the Garden of Eden and sin and brokenness.

Nothing changes God's pursuit and God's desire to be present.

And ultimately the ultimate pursuit obviously comes through Jesus Christ.

When God became a human being to continue that pursuit and ultimately draw us back in relationship because Christ laid his life down for us.

That's the whole thread that runs through the entirety of scripture.

God wants to be present with you.

God is present with you.

And when we see that so much of scripture comes alive.

God is never giving us command and telling us go do that.

Earn my approval.

God is always saying I'm with you.

This is what life with me looks like.

That's what the context is for the words that we just read about Moses.

Moses is telling them to choose life.

He's telling them to choose a loving God because that loving God has been with them.

And it's a simple and powerful command.

Choose life.

Therefore choose life.

But that word therefore is carrying a lot of weight and a lot of meaning as Moses is reading it.

That therefore is reaching back to everything that came before.

To the 29 chapters of the book of Deuteronomy that detailed the history of God and what God had done with these people and what God was calling them to do.

All of it is building to this moment.

All 29 chapters were rehearsing what God had done for Israel.

The exodus from Egypt.

The wilderness.

The covenant at Sinai.

The provision of manna.

The patience that God had with them through their rebellion.

Every mighty act.

Every mercy.

Everything God had done is in that word therefore.

That's that hinge.

In light of everything God has already done for you.

In light of who he has shown himself to be.

In light of God's covenant with you.

Therefore choose life.

The command that Moses is giving rests on the history of this people with God.

That idea in theology.

The imperative always rests on the indicative.

What you're called to do always flows from who you are or who God's made you to be.

It's not a unique pattern of Deuteronomy.

It's in the entirety of scripture.

It's never obey and then God will love you.

It's always God has loved you.

Therefore live accordingly.

And underneath all of that is a history of what God has done to his people.

History of his presence with his people.

And so that therefore that Moses is using is about their particular history.

But every single one of us has our own therefore.

Every single one of us has decisions that we are making.

That are based on what we think reality is.

What we think our history is.

Who we think God is.

Every human life is ordered around some set of foundational beliefs.

About what's real and what's possible.

And those beliefs are shaping what you think is possible for your life.

They are shaping that therefore in your life.

That's what is informing this question of what it means to choose life.

What I want to talk about a little bit today is use these passages.

And some from the New Testament as well.

To help us really be honest about what our therefore is.

What do you believe is fundamentally true about your world?

What do you believe is fundamentally true about how God has or has not shown up in your life?

How is your understanding of your history, your historical prologue and covenantal language?

How are you interpreting all of your life in light of that historical prologue?

What I want to do today is use these words of Moses to help us be really honest about what our therefore actually is.

And wrestle with God's word a bit about what it actually should be.

And what God's word tells us is he will be with us.

His presence is promised with us.

And so the main idea of the sermon today is just Moses' command.

Choose life.

And we're going to look at what it looked like to choose life in the time of Moses.

And then we're going to look at what it looks like to choose life in the time of Jesus.

So let's be clear about something at the outset here.

About choosing life in the time of Moses.

In the ancient world and in today, no one wakes up in the morning and decides to choose death.

No one's oriented their whole life around the goal of misery and emptiness and ruin.

Everyone thinks they're choosing life.

That's not the question.

The question is life defined by what?

What does it mean to choose life?

When I say life, what do you hear?

When they heard Moses say life, what did they hear?

What were they measuring on the basis of?

The ancient world that Moses was speaking into wasn't populated by people that were indifferent to life.

The Canaanites who surrounded Israel seemed to be deeply committed to life.

They pursued it with religious devotion.

They built temples.

They offered sacrifices.

They worshipped Baal and Asherah because they genuinely believed that these gods would help them find life.

But really it was more about survival for them and not the idea of abundant life that we have in scripture.

Think about the Egyptians for a minute.

When the Israelites had lived in Egypt for centuries, Egypt had constructed one of the most sophisticated civilizations in the ancient world precisely around this idea of pursuing life.

The pyramids themselves are kind of a monument to their refusal to accept death as the final word.

They were wrestling with life.

And so when Moses tells his people, therefore choose life, he is not addressing a people who have never thought about it before.

He is addressing a people surrounded by competing and sometimes compelling visions of what life is.

And so what he is trying to get them to do is choose real life.

Choose life in God.

Don't choose what the Canaanites are trying to tell you to choose.

Don't choose what this or that or any other culture are trying to get you to choose.

Choose something real.

And that is the challenge in front of all of us today.

We are all choosing what we think is most compelling.

Are we choosing God?

Are we choosing to live with God?

Are we choosing to let God work in our lives in a more powerful way?

What Moses is doing in Deuteronomy is trying to give his people a different historical prologue

than the ones that they've been exposed to in Egypt or through the Canaanites.

He's trying to give them different foundational facts.

He's saying before you decide how to live, remember what you have seen.

Remember who God is.

Remember what God has done.

He tells them you were slaves.

You were nobody.

You had no land, no army, no king, no future.

And the God of the universe, the one true God, not Baal, not Ra, not Marduk, all these other

foreign gods, the true God heard your cry.

And he sent plagues that humiliated in the most powerful empire on earth.

He parted the Red Sea.

They had walked through it.

He fed them with bread from heaven in the wilderness where nothing else was going to provide them

food.

He gave them law, stipulations not to burden them, but to show them what life could look like

with him.

And he was trying to teach them that they were image bearers of him and teach them to live

like it.

He brought them up to a land that was described as flowing with milk and honey and said, this

is for you.

This is the historical prologue that Moses is trying to remind his people of.

There is a reality that you're living into.

This is it.

This is real.

All this other stuff is false promises.

He's trying to get them to see that there therefore is a good God who loves them.

A God that has said, I will be your God and you will be my people.

So Moses is being very direct in this instance, right?

He's saying that if this historical prologue is true and I'm proclaiming to you that it

is, if this is what your God is actually like, then choosing Baal or some other Canaanite

God is not just some kind of like disobedience or not following the rules.

It's absolute insanity, right?

It's something akin to trading a fountain of living water for a sewage tank.

They were designed by God to be a covenant people, to live in covenant relationship with

him.

The only place they could find true life was in God himself.

Michael Horton in his theology called the Christian faith talks about covenant this way.

The covenant is not a transaction between two parties who are already independently alive

and then decided to do business together.

It's constitutive.

It creates the relationship within which humanity has its very being.

To break covenant with God is not to walk away from a contract.

It's to walk away from the source of existence itself.

This is what makes idolatry so tragic in our time but in the ancient world as well.

It's not merely rule breaking.

It's abandoning life.

Every idol Israel chased, every carved image, every fertility shrine, every foreign god,

all these things promised life and they delivered death.

The prosperity of the Canaanite system was built on the exploitation of the vulnerable.

The life of the nations surrounding them were offering all these promises but at best it

was a beautifully decorated form of death and destruction and Moses knew it and Moses was

warning them and pleading with them.

And he makes his categories explicit.

I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Here's what life with God looks like.

Here's what life without God looks like.

He will not let Israel pretend that all these options are equally good.

They're not.

There is life and there is a counterfeit.

And the counterfeit's everywhere and it could be attractive but ultimately the counterfeit will

always kill you because true life can only be found in relationship with God

because every single one of us in here was created by God to live with him and to live for him.

You're an image bearer of God.

God, the very act of you coming into this world is you being related to God.

You exist in relationship.

You exist in relationship with God and you exist in relationship with others.

That's how your identity is formed and shaped.

You don't get to decide if you're in relationship with God or others.

Now you can decide that you're going to be in a really bad relationship with God and others.

Right?

And that'll produce some bad fruit in your life.

But that's what you get to do.

So we need to really be honest about what life actually means.

Now Moses is trying to help them understand it.

He's not leaving the definition of life vague.

He makes it specific and concrete and personal.

Loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him.

He is your life and length of days.

He is where you find life and he is the one that sustains you.

God is your life.

Not just a means to a better life.

Not some kind of religious supplement to a life that you've already built yourself.

Not some kind of divine assistant who's helping you achieve your goals.

He is your life.

He is the source.

He is the substance.

He is the beginning and end of what the word life means.

That's the claim of all of scripture.

It's central to the entire storyline from Genesis to Revelation.

And if it's true, and I'm proclaiming to you obviously that it is,

if God is life, then life without God is not just incomplete.

It's kind of a category error.

Right?

It's like trying to understand or explain music without sound.

God is the essence of life.

But there's a limitation that Moses cannot overcome.

Moses cannot deliver what he commands.

He can describe their life.

He can exhort.

He can encourage them.

He can point to the promised land on the horizon.

He can plead with them to choose life.

But Moses himself will not cross the Jordan.

And more importantly, even if he could cross the Jordan,

he could not change what was in Israel's heart.

And he knew this.

He, in the book of Deuteronomy, has this prophecy with this kind of clear-eyed sadness

because he knows the people are going to fail.

He knows they're going to enter the land.

He knows they're going to encounter competing visions of life offered by Canaanite culture.

And he knows they're going to choose that.

Here's the reality for all of us.

That the human heart, left to itself, will always choose a smaller life and call it freedom.

We know what life is because God's shown us what life is.

But we still are so tempted to reach for the counterfeits.

Not because we're trying to choose death, but because our vision of life has been distorted.

Our loves have been distorted.

And we can't fix this on our own.

Moses could command them, but Moses could not transform them.

And what Israel need, what every human being needs, is not a better command.

It's every human being needs a new heart.

And Moses even says so.

Buried in Deuteronomy 30 is one of the most astonishing promises in the entire Old Testament.

He says,

God himself will do what we cannot do for us.

Both parts of the covenant of grace are fulfilled by God, the Father and the Son.

He is the one that we will ultimately rely on.

Moses is pointing forward to a better way, to a better prophet.

And he's pointing forward to Jesus.

Jesus.

And so what does it look like for us to apply this passage of therefore choose life in our time?

As those that are living after Christ has been resurrected.

There are competing therefores in our age.

But before we get to the resurrection and talk about who Jesus is and what he's done in the full and final way,

I want to stay on this question of the therefore a little bit.

I want to explore it with you a little bit.

Because this is alive and urgent as it ever was in history.

What do you think it would be the dominant historical prologues of our culture?

What are the foundational beliefs that are surrounding us and equipping us every day to think about the world in a wrong way?

Let me give you a couple.

Here's one.

The world is a competitive system of scarce resources.

And the good life belongs to those who accumulate the most resources.

Work hard.

Build your wealth.

Secure your future.

Maximize your assets.

Now this is not a fringe view, right?

I would argue that this is a dominant culture in the wider Bay Area.

But like Baal worship, it offers something genuinely appealing.

It offers security.

And financial security is not a bad thing.

But the problem for us is the same as it was in the time of Moses with Baal.

False gods cannot deliver what they promise.

Ask anyone that's actually achieved significant financial security and ask them whether it's eliminated the ache or the challenge or the brokenness of life.

It doesn't.

In my experience, it often upgrades the anxiety.

Here's another one that we hear in our culture, I would argue.

The purpose of life is the maximization of personal happiness and self-fulfillment.

You have one life.

Live it on your terms.

Follow your heart.

Be true to yourself.

This kind of creed has the virtue of taking human desire seriously.

So there's things in it that are appealing.

But the problem is that the self that we're trying to create, we cannot create ourselves.

We were created by God.

We find our identity in him.

We are his image bearers.

We cannot build a life on a foundation of our own making.

This idea of the authentic self.

It would be something like building a house on a flood plain and then being surprised when it floods.

You were not made to build your own identity.

You were made to find your identity in Jesus.

Here's a subtler one that I've seen in a lot of churches.

The purpose of Jesus is to help you become a better, happier, more morally upstanding version of yourself.

It's what I would call the Jesus is your life coach approach.

So Jesus becomes kind of a spiritual dimension that rounds out your already existing life.

You build your life up and you're pursuing a better family and a better job and you're building your resume

and you just throw a little bit of Jesus in on the end.

That doesn't work either.

I got to do a sabbatical in 2024.

I'm a big supporter of those.

So I'm glad you guys are doing that for your pastors.

And I spent the summer of 2024, did some travel, did a lot of reflection,

and was just praying that God would lay like one big conviction on my heart

that I could take into the next season of ministry to my, you know, being a husband, a father, a pastor, all those kind of things.

And the conviction that God laid on my heart was this question for me.

Does it require Jesus?

Not does it include Jesus.

Does it require Jesus?

In other words, like the way I'm seeking to sacrificially lay my life down and love my wife,

doesn't make sense, shouldn't make sense if Jesus isn't real.

The way I'm trying to raise my kids to understand who Jesus is and embrace faith for themselves,

it shouldn't make sense if you take Jesus out of the equation.

The way I pastor shouldn't make sense if you take Jesus out of the equation.

My sermon should not work if you take Jesus out of the equation.

Right?

I'm not, we're not doing a life coaching exercise.

We're saying that life is only found in Jesus.

Life is only found in God himself.

And if we're not seeking life there, we'll never find it.

Does the way you're living your life require Jesus?

That's how God built you.

That's how God made you.

Dorothy Sayers, in her book, Creator Chaos,

love reading that because it gets you to think about,

it was 80 plus years ago she wrote this,

but her observations I feel like only grow sharper in our current time.

She says this,

the people who hang Christ,

never to do them justice,

accused him of being a bore.

On the contrary,

they thought him too dynamic to be safe.

It has been left for later generations to muffle up the note of excitement.

The dogma of the incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity

and indeed the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man.

So when,

what she's basically arguing is Jesus is either everything or he's nothing at all.

That the people who crucified Jesus weren't bored by him,

they were threatened by him

because he was making a claim that they could not domesticate or control.

He was not offering a supplement to their existing life.

He was announcing the end of one age and the beginning of another.

And he was saying the whole way you understand life is through me.

Jesus defines life on his own terms.

In John 10, he says something that cuts straight to it.

He says,

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

He did not say I came to give them some more money,

some more pleasure,

some self-actualization.

I didn't come to give them religious satisfaction.

He says,

I came to give them life,

abundant life,

life overflowing,

life in excess of what you thought was possible,

life that is qualitatively different than anything the world can manufacture

or anything you can create on your own.

And in Matthew 6,

he tells us how to pursue this life.

He says,

seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness

and all these things will be added to you.

This is the Christian therefore.

Not accumulate first and then fit God in where it's convenient.

Not build your life first and then add Jesus in.

It's kind of a spiritual mention.

It's seek first the kingdom.

Let the reality of God's reign be the foundational fact

that informs everything about how you organize your life.

Let the person and work of Jesus and what he's done in this world

be your historical prologue.

There's this incredible promise here when we start to embrace this

that if we seek first the kingdom of God,

we'll find it.

Isn't that amazing?

He promises us to find abundant life.

Now,

this is where definitions are important, right?

Not an abundance of things,

not an abundance of money,

not an abundance of whatever else you might want to fill in the blank.

He promises an abundance of his very presence.

Is that what we want though?

Often I'll confess,

it's not.

Sometimes I want a little more financial security.

Sometimes I find a whole lot more security by my bank balance

than I do from knowing that the almighty created universe

is present with me and caring for me.

How crazy is that?

But if we're honest,

we find comfort and security in all kinds of places

and all of those,

if they're not in God,

are counterfeit places.

They're temporary at best.

They're destructive at worst

because we were designed to live with God.

We were designed to live for God

and that's how God has wired every single one of us in here.

Now the climax of this new historical prologue

that we're talking about

is the resurrection of Jesus.

It is what tells us who Christ is

and what he's come to do.

Because he was resurrected,

it's not just a happy ending to a sad story.

It's the validation of everything Jesus said and did.

It's God's public declaration

in completely unambiguous terms

that life is to be found in Christ alone

and every single one of his teachings

is to be taken with authority.

And there's credible comfort in that.

Let me read you the words of John Chrysostom,

who's a great preacher in the fourth century.

He said,

Let no one mourn that he hath fallen again and again,

for forgiveness hath risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death,

for the death of our Savior hath set us free.

He hath destroyed death by undergoing death.

He who descended into Hades laid waste to it.

Incredible phrase.

He who descended into Hades laid waste to it.

He defeated death.

There is no greater security that you can have

than to be in his presence

and have his transforming power in your life.

That is eternal security,

eternal power,

eternal love,

unconditional grace.

These are all the things that are on offer

to all of us every single day.

What Jesus did in the resurrection

was begin to put things right in our world

that in defeating death,

he is teaching us and showing us

what it looks like to pursue life.

It's kind of the deepest seal

of the covenant promise with God

because God says,

I will be with you,

went all the way to the grave

to prove that he will be with us,

took all the brokenness of the world,

all of our own brokenness and sin,

all of our rebellion upon himself

and gave us love and adoption in its place.

He's with you.

Sealed it even more, right?

Because Jesus says,

When I go,

it'll be better for you

because I'm sending the Holy Spirit

to indwell your heart.

The Holy Spirit

is a more powerful gift from God

than the physical presence of Jesus on earth

is what he's teaching.

That's another crazy one.

Do you believe that?

The Spirit enables you

to daily commune with God.

The Spirit connects you continually

to the finished work of Jesus Christ.

The resurrection was a declaration

that death has been defeated,

but the Holy Spirit

is the daily assurance

and confidence that God gives us.

N.T. Wright has a beautiful book

called Surprised by Hope.

He says this,

The resurrection was not simply

the resuscitation of a corpse.

It was the beginning of the new creation

breaking into the old one,

the first day of the new world.

And what Wright's getting at

is that the entire New Testament

drives that over and over and over again,

that the resurrection

is not a spiritual metaphor

for a new beginning.

It's an actual event in history

that restructured all of reality.

A body that was genuinely,

verifiably dead

on the third day rose,

alive in a transformed,

glorified, indestructible form,

and the implications of that event

of what changed all of world history.

The resurrection is true,

and because the resurrection is true,

that has to be our therefore.

That has to be our historical prologue.

Not that there was a God

that once did some cool things

for an ancient people

in the Middle East,

but there is a God

who created the world

and then entered into it

as a human being,

died for its sin and rebellion,

and rose again to begin its renewal.

That's the truth,

the foundational truth.

There's nothing more true

in our world than that.

That's the foundational reality

that every life needs to be built on.

My life, your life,

everyone's life.

Because the resurrection

is not merely

a different set of beliefs.

It's a new anchor for a new life,

and it's the only authority,

the final authority,

to appeal to in all things.

When God raised Jesus from the dead,

he declared that the life

available to you is real,

that his righteousness

was accepted on our behalf,

and that human existence

looks like being conformed

into Christ's image.

And that's not just a future hope,

it's a present reality.

So when the Apostle Paul says

in Romans 6

that we are baptized

into Christ's death

and raised with him

in a newness of life,

he means that this resurrection life,

this indestructible life

that no grave could hold,

is now available to you

and at work in you.

It's not a metaphor.

It's an historical promise.

Right?

It's not just an inspirational concept.

It's the almighty

creator of the universe

raised Jesus from the dead,

then connected you to Jesus,

then empowered you

with his Holy Spirit,

and that's your daily reality

right now.

The resurrection doesn't just

promise like life after death,

it promises a new

and abundant life

that begins now.

So that when Jesus says

that I am the way

and the truth

and the life,

that is what we can

hold on to right now.

Dorothy Sayers again

in the greatest drama

ever stage.

If the thing happened,

the resurrection,

it was the central event

in the history of the earth.

If it did not happen,

not one word of the New Testament

is worth reading.

Right?

So if Jesus wasn't

raised from the dead,

you guys should sleep in

on Sunday.

But if he was raised

from the dead,

then you have to restructure

everything about your life

and beliefs on the basis of it.

It's an all-in proposition.

It's not just a little bit

of thing here and there

that you kind of just

add a little bit in.

That's not Christianity.

Christianity is

that Jesus Christ

was raised from the dead

and all of life

is found in him.

Not some of your life,

all of your life

is found in him.

He has to restructure

every motivation.

He has to restructure

everything we do.

Every goal we strive after.

Every word that comes up

in our mouth

is supposed to be informed

by and empowered by

the truth of the resurrection

of who Jesus is.

Jesus has to be our therefore

for absolutely everything

in our lives.

This is our new

historical prologue

that when I think about my life

and I rehearse it,

I think back to who Jesus is

and what he's done.

There's this beautiful pattern

we have in Scripture,

again, of covenant

where there's this preamble,

the announcing of the

great name of the king.

That's God.

I am the Lord, your God.

And then there's

the historical prologue.

This is how I've related to you.

This is who I am to you.

Then there's the stipulations.

This is what life

with me looks like.

Then there's the laying out

of the curses

and the blessings.

Here's what life

with me looks like.

Here's what life

when you reject me

looks like.

It's incredibly,

it's relational though, right?

It's God telling you,

this is what life

with me looks like.

Sometimes we read

the warning passages

in Scripture

and they seem a bit harsh,

but if you put them

in the context

of relationship and family,

what parent in here

wouldn't throw your body

in the way of your child

that was headed off

to do something destructive?

Right?

What parent doesn't hold

their young child's hand

across the street?

What parent doesn't

harshly warn them

or rebuke them

when they're going to go

do something destructive,

right?

All God's trying to do

is to get us to understand

that he loves us

and he's going to continue

to pursue us

and that he is there for us

and he's going to warn us

when he needs to be warned,

he's going to encourage us

when he needs to be encouraged

because that's what

real relationship is.

It's not platitudes.

Jesus says,

come to me all you

who are weary

and heavy laden

and I will give you rest.

Jesus doesn't say,

try harder

and someday you'll make it.

Try harder

and someday you'll earn it.

He just says,

come.

And come to me

if you're weary

and I will give you rest.

That's the promise

that God has put

before us today.

Moses said

that God is your life.

Jesus says,

I am the way

and the truth

and the life.

He is risen.

He is Lord

and the invitation

to come to him

stands.

This invitation

has been transforming lives

for 2,000 years.

The love of Jesus

has transformed

our entire world.

The very idea

that every human being

is entitled to dignity

and to worth

and to honor

and to love

only exists

because Jesus walked the earth.

Everything that our society

holds beautiful

and true,

whatever,

only exists

because Jesus walks the earth.

That's just an historical fact.

Now,

the question before us

is what is your therefore?

What historical prologue

are you living out of

and how would your life change

if the resurrection

became the biggest therefore

in your life?

If the truth of who Jesus is

shaped everything else about you?

I'll begin,

or I'll end rather

where I began.

There's this exhortation

before us,

this beautiful exhortation

to choose life,

to choose Christ

and to know

that he has already

chosen you.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father,

we thank you

for your word.

We thank you for Jesus.

We thank you

for the words of Moses,

therefore choose life

to the Israelites

way back 3,000 years ago

and we thank you

for the words of Jesus

that tell us even today,

come to me

all who are weary

and I will give you rest.

I pray that every one of us

will find rest

in Christ today

in a deeper

and fuller way.

I pray that Jesus

would be the therefore

of our lives

and we would structure

everything around

who he is

and that we would be

eager to help others

understand the incredible

hope and love

and forgiveness

that's in Christ.

We thank you for your word.

We thank you for this time together

and we pray in Jesus' name.

Thank you.