Bible Passage: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: September 7, 2025

Bulletin – September 7, 2025

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

The children of Israel had come to a pivotal moment in their history.  After forty years of wandering in the wilderness, they stand on the border of the Promised Land.  They are about to receive the real estate the LORD had first promised to Abraham hundreds of years earlier.  This is big!  No longer will they be a “nation without borders.”  They will have their own land to call home.     They will be “the new kid on the block.”  And it will be a rough neighborhood.  All around them are nations and peoples with different gods and different values.

That is why before they enter, the LORD through Moses impresses on them, one more time, how important it will be to remain faithful to him!  As we begin, let’s address a common misuse of this text.  Some hear in the LORD’s words, Choose life (v. 19), a sort of “altar call.”  They will use those words to say, “You see?  We must choose to have faith in the LORD!  It says so right here!”  This is not calling unbelievers to “choose” faith.  Such a thing can never be!  We do not have the capacity to “choose” Jesus.  The words of our text are a call to believers to remain faithful!  These are people who have already been chosen by the LORD to be his children.  Before them was a path that meant death, and a path that meant life.  They could stick with the LORD and enjoy life and his blessings in their new home.  Or, they could choose not to, and this would mean death. It was that simple.  For the Israelites about to enter the Promised Land, for every believer living today, the correct path is obvious:  The LORD is Your Life!

Let’s take a moment to carefully examine the two potential outcomes for Israel.  On the one hand, we hear the LORD say this:  I have set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster…Love the LORD your God, walk in his ways, and keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances.  Then you will live and increase in number, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are going to possess…Choose life so that you and your descendants may live by loving the LORD your God, by listening to his voice, and clinging to him, because that means life for you, and you will live a long life on your land…(v. 15, 16, 19b, 20).  Did you hear how many times “life” and “live” were mentioned?  The LORD wanted his people to enjoy a blessed life in their new home!  And here is how it would happen:  …loving the LORD…listening to his voice…clinging to him, because that means life for you.   Loving, listening to, clinging to the LORD!  All blessedness in life was to be found in the LORD!   Here was life!

The converse would also prove true.  But if your heart turns away, and you do not listen, and you are lured away, and you bow down to other gods and serve them, then I declare to you today that you will most certainly perish.  You will not live a long life on the land that you are about to enter and possess… (v. 17).   It was that simple.  Faithfulness to the LORD meant life; unfaithfulness meant death.

Such a choice seems like an obvious “no-brainer.”  Why would anyone not follow the LORD?  Because of those pesky other gods (v. 17) Moses mentions.  Moses warns the people about being lured away (v. 17) by these other gods.   Those who remember their Old Testament Bible stories will remember how that very thing happened to them.  The people would be “lured away” time and again by the Canaanite god, Baal.  Baal was a fertility god.  The “worship” of Baal, if it can be called worship, was pretty much an orgy.  It was Satan’s ultimate lure!  It was the sinful pleasures of the flesh all packaged neatly as worship of god!  It was a hellish “two-fer.”  In the final analysis, history shows Israel chose death over life.  They chose idolatry over the LORD.

We have a lot in common with the Israelites of old.  We, like they, have been made the people of God, not by our choice, but by God’s gracious choice.  Listen to the terms Peter uses for us:  You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. (1 Peter 2:9)  And we, like they, have before us each and every day life and death.

Each and every day there is the lure of strange idols out there.  Before you protest too loudly and say, “I am not tempted by idols!  Baal isn’t out there in DeForest!” just remember that all sin is really idolatry.  All sin really is making something else god.  Maybe it is only for a moment of pleasure.  But for that moment, pleasure is god!  This is not the blessed life.  It is separation from blessedness.  It finally brings separation from God in hell.  It is “death.”

This is the “death” from which we have been delivered by the Lord Jesus. And now, he is our life.  One thinks of the way the apostle Paul writes in Philippians 1.  Paul said, For to me, to live is Christ. (Philippians 1:21)  That is interesting!  He doesn’t say, “For to me, to live is to be like Christ.”  He doesn’t use the word “Christ” to make an adjective.  “To live is to be Christ-like.” “To live is to be Christ-ly.”  Christ isn’t an adjective!  Christ is your Savior!  Paul says life is Christ!  The person of Christ!  Life is not “imitation” of Christ, or “resemblance” of Christ.  Life is Christ!  His person and work!  Christ’s righteous life is your righteousness before God!  Christ’s death is your death for sin!  Christ’s resurrection to glorious life is your resurrection to glorious life.  To live is not “partly” Christ.  To live is not “mostly” Christ.  To live is CHRIST!

This makes us think of some significant days in our “lives” as Christians.  On the day of your Baptism, life came to you.  It felt cold and wet as the death and resurrection of Jesus were applied to you in water and Word.  On the day of your confirmation, you stood at a crossroads! You were asked, “Do you reject the devil along with all his lies and empty promises?”  You answered, “I do.”  You were asked, “Do you intend faithfully to conform all your life to the teachings of God’s Word, to be faithful in the use of the Word and Sacrament, and in faith and action remain true to God – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – as long as you live?”   You answered, “I do, and I ask God to help me.”  And so we love, we listen to, we cling to Christ!   Why? Because, by God’s grace, you have come to know the LORD is your life!

Amen.