Deuteronomy 30:19

Deuteronomy 30:19

There is one choice which we must all make; and if that choice is once well made, it will very much secure all other choices, for the reason why we so often choose badly is because we have failed in that one great choice of all.

I. " Thereforechoose life." Why "therefore"? (1) Because the option rests with yourself. You are free to take which you will. (2) Because the alternative is tremendous, and there is no middle space; it must be life or death. (3) Because life is everything. All that is worth having in this world or the next is in that word "life." "Therefore choose life."

II. What is life? (1) The sourceof life was originally the breath of God. That life was lost when man fell, but only lost to make way for a better restoration. By a mystical process, which we cannot explain, Christ became the Head of a body. "Because He lives, we live also," and live for ever. This is the source of life. (2) Look at the substance of life, what it is, its reality. Everything is real in proportion as it is consistent with and carries out its own element. Your element is a "body and soul and spirit." Life's real substance is to know God, to enjoy God, to serve God. It might be safe to sum it up and say, Life is work: the inner work in one's own soul and the outer work of Christian usefulness. The great thing every one has to do is to find out his own proper work, what God has given him to do. And that work is life.

III. What is life's object? There may be a series of motives, but the end of motives is the glory of God. We must not seek our own glory, because God seeks His. All is His, and therefore to take any glory from anything is robbing God.

IV. Christ has said, "I am the Life." Choose the Christ who has so long chosen you, and you will live. He will be in you a necessity of life; you will live for God and with God for ever.

J. Vaughan, Sermons,15th series, p. 157.