"Soul-Conscious Choices"
Sermon Transcript for June 9, 2002
Scripture Reading: Herbrews 11:24-27
By Rev. Mike Beck
"Oh God, you are our light and there is no greater joy than knowing and loving you. If we’ve known you Lord for many years, we seldom take the time to think about what life would be like if there were no God, if Christ had not come. As we place Lillian’s body in the ground this week, that would have been the end. There would have been no hope of being with her again. We would be left to journey for no apparent reason on only our own strength. Truly there is no greater joy than knowing you. So help us now reflect upon our choices and let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, you who are our strength and our redeemer. Amen."
I hope you are genuinely excited about the next fifty days! I hope you are anticipating that this is going to be a time in which you will have accelerated spiritual growth. You will have an opportunity, if you picked up one of the journals or guidebooks today, to daily this week be back in touch with this morning’s theme. The 50-Day Adventure is one of the few ministries I’ve seen that let children, through their journals, be involved in the same process as parents. So pray and anticipate that this is going to be a great time of growth for you and for our church.
This year’s theme is a pick-up on one of the most popular television shows in the past several years--the CBS series, "Survivors". Now, if you’ve watched that show, you realize it’s not your ordinary game show. It’s not quite "Wheel of Fortune" or "Jeopardy". These contestants are placed in a remote environment where they eat bugs, and they sleep out in the rain, and they push themselves to the limit physically and emotionally. And then on top of that, after building relationships as a team, every week they then have to meet in council to vote someone off the island or the outback or wherever they may have been.
Well, if you are a Christian, you also live on an island that is not your real home. Peter in his epistle reminds us of this when he writes, "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul." There was a gospel song a few years back that put that same thing in these words, "This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through." And, as we begin this adventure we want to put that firmly in mind. In fact it’s one of the challenges for a Christian to be "in the world" but not to be "of the world". For although God wants us to interact and enjoy every blessing around us, what’s here is temporary, it is not our eternal dwelling. And although we live on an island that is not our real home, we are called of God to be more than "survivors".
The message of Pentecost, the season we are in, is through the Holy Spirit there is a power available to you and me that can enable us to rise above the challenges of the world to be what Paul calls "more than conquerors" through Christ who loved us. So during the eight Sundays of this year’s 50-Day Adventure, we’re going to look at a Biblical character each week. And those characters will teach us a lesson of how to thrive spiritually. If you caught the humorous quote I had out on the sign about a month ago, you know that today’s character started out as a "basket case". The son of a Hebrew slave who rose to be—some of you young people probably saw the movie recently-- the prince of Egypt. We’re talking about Moses, who in his young adult years lived a life of luxury in the Pharaoh’s palace. But one day Moses was out walking, he sees a Hebrew slave being mistreated, and in anger, Moses kills the Egyptian overseer. What now?
Moses is faced with a choice. Now he chooses to leave Egypt but he probably didn’t have to leave Egypt because Moses was royalty. Moses had an "in" with the King. But something on the inside was happening to Moses. He was slowly realizing that the palace and the life of luxury that he was living wasn’t his true home. So Moses left Egypt. He goes from the palace to the desert to live the life of a shepherd. He says "no" to palace life; he says "yes" to desert life. He says "no" to royalty; he says "yes" to identifying with his Hebrew brothers in slavery. He says "no" to prime rib for supper; and if you think ahead and know the story, he says "yes" to eating manna in the wilderness. You see in all of our choices when we say "yes" to one thing we’re saying "no" to something else. Or the reverse, when we say "no" to something, we’re saying "yes" to something else. But this choice that Moses made would allow God to accomplish His will over the next forty years as Moses lives a desert life. That desert life would be Moses’ training ground which would prepare him to return to Egypt to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery to the promised land that God had for them.
With that as background, I want us to note some things in our text for today. The writer of Hebrew’s says, "By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter." Notice that it says "by faith" back then. Where are you walking by faith today? Where in your life do you not have the answers but yet you are still trusting and relying on God to lead you even though the way seems dark? By faith--when you read the Bible you realize over and over again our life is a journey of faith. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and instead he chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. A couple of phrases I want to look at there. I want you to note the words "the pleasures of sin". Friends if sin wasn’t pleasurable no one would do it. Can we be honest about the fact that most sin is pleasurable for a season? There’s the catch. There is pleasure in sin, but when we make that choice we discover later on there are also painful consequences that go with it.
And Moses chose not to engage in the pleasures of sin but it says, "He chose". He chose. That’s what this morning’s service is all about—thinking about our choices. I want you to throw away, because it has no basis in reality, the excuse we sometimes like to use for our sin when we say, "The devil made me do it!" The devil didn’t make us do it! I tell you when I have fallen in to sin it’s normally because I let the pleasure entice me to where I said, "Well, I’m not going to do it, I’m just going to look at it." And I walk too close to the edge and eventually fall off. You think about your own life. When you’ve fallen in to sin, the devil didn’t make you do it. You’ve made some choices to play around with it till it got its hooks in you and pulled you over the edge again. We’re going to look next week about the fact that we have to flee temptation.
Then it says, "He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as a greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because He was looking ahead to his reward." He was looking ahead to his reward. My friend gave me this little book. Don’t be surprised if somebody doesn’t place it in your hands in the coming months. Its a little book by Randy Alcorn called The Treasure Principle. I predict it has the ability to transform this church and its future. It’s talking about where are we laying up our treasure? And friends, it’s a tough battle because again let’s be honest. There is a lot about the world we do enjoy—and God wants us to! I’m going to play golf this afternoon with friends. I’m looking forward to that. You’ve heard me say before, "I sure hope there’s a golf course in heaven." And I drove to work today from a different direction. We moved in to our new home this week and I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity that you have given to Mickey and I to purchase with the banks help our own home. And I’m lying down on the couch last evening and looking around me and just saying, "Oh, this is so nice; it’s mine." Well, that’s a good feeling that God wants us to have, but you know somebody else is going to live in that home someday. It’s not really mine. God has entrusted it to me for a little while, but it’s not where my treasure needs to be. God says to me, "Enjoy it; just don’t worship it." Moses was looking ahead to his reward—to his real home.
By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the King’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible." Do you remember those words in I Corinthians 13? It says, "Now we see in a glass, darkly; but one day will see face to face." It’s a walk by faith that God calls us to look ahead to see Him who is invisible, to realize His reality, and to persevere. I want to promise you, in this matter of choices, you’ll make some wrong ones. If there is anybody out there that’s never made a bad choice please come forward, you can preach the message. We won’t believe you but you can preach it anyway. When we make a bad choice the question is, will we follow it up by another bad choice or will we recognize the folly of our ways and turn and walk in a different direction? That’s persevering. That’s when we fall off the bicycle we get back on knowing that God doesn’t vote us off the island when we make a bad choice. But it is true, my friends, that our choices, sometimes big ones…but you know as I journey through life I realize that more often than not, although we make some major choices, it’s the accumulative effect of a lot of small choices that ultimately makes all of the difference.
So I want, as we close this morning, to spend a few moments reflecting on our choices. And as I was putting the service together today as food for thought I said, far more than anything I could say, this five-minute clip out of a movie that I know most of you have seen, speaks it much better than I could say. How many of you have seen the movie, "A Wonderful Life"? Let me see your hands. There’s a classic scene in that movie that has to do with choices. And as you watch that scene think about choices in your life.
VIDEO CLIP FROM "A WONDERFUL LIFE"
George Bailey was faced with a pretty big choice. He could have had it all but he realized there was a price. He wasn’t willing to sell his soul for the pleasures of sin for a season. When I see that familiar scene I have a real life scene that flashes in to my mind. A young farmer, Dean Simpson, who lived in eastern Harrison County when I was pastoring at Old Capital, had three young children. It was a time when Caesar’s was getting ready to put in the riverboat. They’d come to him and wanted an option on his land. He came in to my office and he said, "Reverend Mike it would take care of my college education for my kids." But he says, "I don’t think I can ethically do it. What do you think?" Man, I was taken back. You know, sometimes we don’t realize as pastors how well our people in the pews live out what we preach. He was living it out when he said to Caesar’s, "Thanks, no thanks because ethically I don’t approve of how you’re going to use this land that’s been in my family for generations."
Choices. How do we go about making soul-conscious choices? I want the ushers to put a little booklet in your hand now if they’ll come forward. I didn’t let you have it earlier because you’d read it ahead of time. We need to keep firmly in mind that our choices have consequences. It may be years before we reap the consequences, but they have consequences for ourselves, for others, for eternity. In fact, Reverend Dan put it well when he said there’s a relationship—go ahead, don’t count them out ushers. Just pass the whole thing down the aisle. That will make it go quicker. We’ll collect the unused ones at the end of the aisle at the end of the service. But Dan’s right when he said this 50-Day Spiritual Adventure has a direct relationship to our service of healing a few weeks ago. When Jesus said to the crippled man, "Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be made well?" Jesus says that to us and it has to do, if we say "Yes I want to get well", He then may say to us, "Well, let’s look at the choices that you are making." So, I’ll wait until they get down the aisle. You are being handed, "A Book Called Yourself". And let me read for you the poem that’s on the cover.
So, what then will be your life story?
It’s a book that you’re writing each day.
You’re unique, so I guess it’s a novel.
Still, your future’s a big mystery.
Your story is bound to be noticed
By those who observe what you write.
Will your words offer Christlike compassion,
With phrases of reasoned insight?
Will your sentences question the culture,
As you challenge the lies it conveys?
Will your paragraphs stand out in bold print
As you stand up to ungodly ways?
Will your story be read by the masses?
Or will it be left on some shelf?
The choices you make
And the paths that you take
Will result in a book called Yourself.
When the worship team was planning today’s services, we realized this needed to be more than something we just gave intellectual assent to for a few minutes and then left. So I want you to live with this book this week. I want you to put it in some location; I’ll put it by my computer mouse because I check my e-mail every day. Put it in a place where you will read it in its entirety. It will only take you a couple of minutes each day. Turn to the inside. There are some guidelines here in regards to our choices. Is it helpful physically, spiritually, or mentally? If I make this choice, does it bring me under its power? Does this choice hurt others? Does this choice glorify God? But I don’t want you to write your name in the book. But I want you to take a pencil or pen and throughout this week I want you to fill in a couple of places here. On the left hand side it says, "Loving God, I repent of the following choices that have damaged my relationship with You and with others." Repentance means I say, "Hey, I’m wrong and I need to start walking in a different direction." And then over on the right hand side you’ve got some words I want you to read each day by Charles Swindoll that talks about how our thoughts will ultimately end up impacting our choices. And there’s a place for response there. "Loving God, in the power of Your Holy Spirit, I commit to the following choices that will enhance my relationship with You and with others." And then on the back page is a prayer for you to pray each day. Those of you that pick up a journal you’ll have even more with a scripture to read each day. But I invite you to join me now in that prayer, "Lord Jesus, I live in a world that offers numerous pleasures and treasures. Scripture teaches that I am an alien here, and I need your help to be more than a survivor. You said it made no sense to gain the whole world at the cost on one’s soul. Help me, like Moses, to be sensitive to the soul-conscious choices I regularly face. Amen."
Take a moment to read and reflect on this small booklet each day. Make notes about your choices and commitments. And then bring it with you next Sunday and on our opening hymn, "Trust and Obey", we’ll have a basket up front and as a symbol of your commitment to God in this critically important area of your choices, you can bring your book and place it in the basket.
The quote by Robert Frost summarizes this matter of choices so well. You know the quote, he said, "Two roads diverged in the woods; and I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference." If you want to thrive spiritually, our first principle is to, like Moses, practice making soul-conscious choices.
E-mail Comments to: Reverend Dan Sinkhorn