Life and Death: A Meditation on Deuteronomy 30, for the 13th Sunday in Pentecost

See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;

In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God,

 to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments

and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply:

and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

 

But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear,

but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;

I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish,

and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land,

whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it.

 

 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you,

that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:

therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

That thou mayest love the Lord thy God,

and that thou mayest obey his voice,

and that thou mayest cleave unto him:

for he is thy life, and the length of thy days:

that thou mayest dwell in the land

which the Lord sware unto thy fathers,

to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

 

What Moses presents to the people of Israel just before they finish the Exodus and enter into the Promised Land, Jesus makes even more poignant for those who listened to Him over 1500 years later:   So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.  There’s a totality in the way God approaches His creation, and it demands that everyone either be all in, or all out—no half measures or divided loyalties.  To hear, believe, keep, and abide in God’s Word is to live forever in Him, yet to reject that Word is to cast one’s self away from the Author of Life.  There could be no higher stakes for both individuals and the whole of humanity, than how they either receive or reject their Maker, because their Maker is also poised to be either their Judge or their Savior.  And what Moses casts in the context of the Hebrews in their Promised Land, Jesus makes universal when He emphatically claims that He alone is the path of eternal life.  While the paths which lead to death and destruction may be as multitudinous as the number of people who will ever breath the air of this world, the path of life and salvation is singular, rooted in the person and work and Word of Jesus.

 

It seems to me that this severity and austerity is often lost in modern thinking, particularly in western cultures.  Though it was not always so, contemporary sensibilities often demand all claims to truth be equally valued, no matter how contradictory or irrational they may be.  Christianity finds little persecution if it does not condemn Atheism, Marxism, Mohammadism, Paganism, or any other ideology which presents itself as truth.  Where Christianity finds its most ardent and violent opponents is when it stands clearly on the Word of God, declaring the reality of Life and Death—and that the only path of Life is found in the One who is Himself the Eternal Word of the Father, Jesus Christ.  It is an absolute claim made by Jesus, which echoes the absolute claim of God to Moses when He wrote the First Commandment upon tablets of stone at Mt. Sinai:  I am the Lord thy God, you shall have no other gods before Me. People may want the individual freedom to imagine truth in any way that appeals to them, but personal desire and personal perception do not change the realities which God has spoken into the fabric of the cosmos.  By His Word alone was the universe created, and by His Word alone shall it be judged.

 

In ages past, knowledge of this reality of good and evil, of eternal Life and Death, motivated great missionary expeditions to bring the Word of God to everyone who might hear it, repent, believe, and live.  This knowledge that there is only one Way to live forever and avoid the eternal fires of hell, moved evangelistic societies to translate the Scriptures into every language under heaven, to risk their very lives to smuggle these Scriptures into some of the most vile and hostile places on the planet, liberating whole regions and countries and even continents from the slavery of sin, death, hell, and the devil.  Conviction for the saving Truth of Jesus Christ moved people in love to carry the Medicine of Immortality—the Word and Sacraments of Jesus—to the spiritually sick and dying of every tribe, tongue, and locale.  Yet today, especially in American churches, personal safety, comfort, and social respectability seem far higher priorities than any singular message of Life and Death.  Unlike our forebearers who carried the Gospel into plague infested areas, were hunted and massacred by bloodthirsty barbarians, braved harsh cold and scorching heat to reach distant lands with the hope of Jesus, most of our churches closed their doors for months or even years at the hint of manipulative threats and cajoling from hostile government leaders.  Our churches may or may not open if the air conditioner or furnace is malfunctioning, if the coffee pot or overhead projector is broken, or if it’s just generally inconvenient to be there.  Our churches may or may not be filled, depending on how many people in an area think almost anything else on their agenda on any given Sunday is more important than the Word of God.

 

Yet this is a folly of which we must repent, regardless of how common place it may be in our age.  There is only one Way to eternal life, only one God who is the Creator, Sustainer, Savior and Judge of the entire world, and only one Hope that is given to all of mankind.  It is a Love we cannot earn, but only receive; a grace we cannot deserve, but must freely be washed in; a faith we could not generate in ourselves, but once given we must cling to above all other things.  There is only one Jesus, and He is the only Savior of any and every person who has ever been, or ever shall be.  He alone is our life, our sweetness, and our hope, and He demands that no other god be countenanced before Him.  It is a matter of Life and Death, not only in this world where the Word of the Lord brings blessings and curses upon those who either receive or reject it, but in the eternal age to come, into which every soul must press.  A life of minutes or decades in this world is the swiftest of memories when compared with the eternity which lays before every person, yet how we live in this brief present life shall echo forever in the life yet to come.  There is no room for timidity, or doubt, or double-mindedness, for the Word of the Lord has come to each and every soul to lay before us Life or Death, that we might by grace through faith in Christ alone choose Life.

 

Hear the Word of the Lord as it comes to you this day, that the shadows of doubt and weakness of spirit so endemic in our fallen race might be washed away in the Blood of the Lamb who alone takes away the sins of the whole world.  See clearly the path of Life that is set before you, and the promise of grace which calls you into a blessed and eternal fellowship with your Maker, who desires to be your Savior rather than your Judge.  Let go every other idol that clouds your vision or infatuates your heart, that the Cross of Christ and His Everlasting Gospel might broker no other contenders in your mind.  Then forgiven and free, in the promise of eternal life made sure in the Word of God given to you, carry that saving Word out into the world around you with the same compassion and urgency that once moved our Lord to His Cross, thus taking up our own daily crosses and following Him, reflecting His love and grace to all we meet as we bear His saving Word to all.  Soli Deo Gloria, unto ages of ages without end!  Amen.