Author: emmanuelpcgateshead

SUNDAY 25^th

Joshua 3

NIV (v5) – ‘Joshua told the people, Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you.’

ESV (v5) – ‘Then Joshua said to the people, Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.’

As we come into this chapter, we see God is going to be doing something for his people which he had already done when they first left Egypt, which was to part the waters. In the first account it was the parting of the Red Sea as they were being chased by the Egyptian army, you will recall what happened, the people of God crossed on dry land and the pursuing armies were engulfed in the waters and drowned. It ended with the people of Israel singing the song of triumph. (Exodus 15) On that occasion it was Moses who was leading the people.

Now we come to the river Jordan, the people of God need to get across and this time the leader is Joshua, our text tells us that Joshua instructs the people to get ready, for God was about to do great wonders among them. And he did. The story continues that as they approached the river, and the feet of the priests were dipped in the water, it began to rise into a heap and was completely cut off until all the people had crossed over to the other side.

As I was meditating over these verses, these are the thoughts that crossed my mind. At the Jordan crossing we see a new leader and a new generation,  remember Moses who was at the Red Sea crossing had died and most if not all of the generation that crossed the Red Sea had also died, it was a new leader and a new generation at the Jordan river. They were going to experience for themselves what their fore parents had experienced, God performing a miracle that would see them cross through a water barrier on dry ground to get through to the other side. In my mind prior to this crossing and while still in the wilderness, I can visualise the older generation retelling the younger generation all the things they had witnessed as they left Egypt, and in particular the crossing of the Red sea, and the younger ones thinking to themselves, ‘Wow, I would love to have been there and experienced it for myself’ and now, as they prepare to cross into the Promised land, they are about to witness for themselves something very similar as the River Jordan is opened up for them to cross.

I can remember when I was younger, the older generation talking about the early days of the modern Pentecostal movement, retelling the amazing things that took place, some of them recalling first hand, others telling it second hand but still excited to have witnessed the actual outpourings of the early 20^th Century and that which spilled on into the next generation. I had a very close friend who although not a first generation Pentecostal, but of the next generation who would retell to me so much of what happened in those early days, even up until his dying moment (aged 94) he had a pin sharp memory of so much of what happened in those earlier days, as what took place had been recounted to him and excited him so much so that he wanted to know something of its impact in his own life. What about you and me, as we perhaps have heard or read about the wonders of the Pentecostal outpouring in the early 20^th Century, do we have a yearning and a longing for God to do it again, just as he revisited the people of Israel with another miracle of the crossing of water, he can revisited us in this a new generation with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that what our fore-parents witnessed so too we ourselves can witness.

‘Do it again Lord, do it again, pour out your Spirit on this dry and thirsty land, do for us in the 21^st Century what you did for the Church at its inauguration on the day of Pentecost and what you have done for the generations before us, help us the Church in the 21^st century to consecrate ourselves again, so that you will do wonders among us.’

SATURDAY 24^th

Joshua 2

This second chapter of Joshua opens up to us another story of espionage as Joshua who was once a spy himself decides to send two spies to ‘Go and view the land, especially Jericho’, and it also introduces us to an unlikely character in God’s story – a prostitute! (‘And they went  and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and lodged there.’v1) I touched on unlikely characters in a previous devotion, where we discovered that God will use whosoever he chooses to use to bring about his plan and purpose, and this prostitute was one of them and she is even afforded a space in the record of the heroes of faith in the book of Hebrews, ‘By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.’ (Hebrews 11:31)

It is important to note that just because God chose to use Rahab, it doesn’t means that the lifestyle she lived was okay, it wasn’t and in the New Testament we have the encounter recorded in Scripture of another woman who was caught in adultery and after being brought before Jesus, we discover that he first challenges those who brought her to be punished with the words, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ and one by one they walked away. He then says to the woman, ‘Where are they? Has no one condemned you? To which she replied, ‘No one, Lord.’ The next words of Jesus are very important, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, AND FROM NOW ON SIN NO MORE.’ Her lifestyle was unacceptable, and Jesus tells her it cannot and must not continue after her encounter with him. Any form of sinful lifestyle is unacceptable before God, yet he chose to use Rahab, why? Maybe she was the only person in the town that would be willing to accept the spies (after all they were men!) maybe despite her lifestyle, God also knew that she was a person with whom he could entrust the lives of the spies with, maybe this experience would be the means in which God would change this woman’s life around and she herself would be a person of faith in a personal God. Maybe, because of this encounter it would lead toward the next step in the people of Israel being able to conquer the land! Whatever the reasons we may conjure up God was involved, and God chose to use her.

We often sing a song ‘God can do anything, anything, anything . . . God can do anything but fail . . .’ perhaps we should sometimes sing ‘God can use anyone, anyone, anyone . . .’ after all, he is God and he has decreed his eternal plan and within that decree he will choose whomsoever he will to bring it about.

The wonder of it all is that God can choose to use us, and even more of a wonder he has chosen to use me! Now, I am not condoning that anyone despite their lifestyle can be used within the setting of the Church, not at all, after all we who make up the Church are those who have been redeemed, washed in the blood, called to be holy, and therefore within the setting of Christian service, there are certain standards that need to be applied. I am talking in a more general sense, talking of the course of human history and in particular of God bringing about his overall eternal purpose which involves both the secular and the spiritual for he is the one who is Sovereign over all things. It may be that God will sometimes use unbelievers or a secular setting to bring about his purpose for us in our lives! I have mentioned before that my trade was as a panel beater and vehicle refinisher, I loved the job, enjoyed the work and would have been happy to have spent the whole of my working life in that environment and yet it was within that environment with what I would say was an ungodly setting, God used people and circumstances to eventually bring me to where I am today, and why? Because he is God, and he can use whatsoever and whosoever he wishes to use to bring his plans into fruition. It doesn’t have to be a person, may even be a sickness, or some form of suffering, it may be a circumstance, it may be . . . whatever God chooses to use, the important thing is that we see in everything the hand of God, leading us, guiding us and bringing to fruition his will and purpose.

Immediately after I had prepared this devotion I had a phone call from a friend from North Wales, we often have chats about theological issues, and we were discussing the Sovereignty of God and in particular his right to choose whoever and whatever he wills,  he mentioned a couple of Scriptures so I add them here.

1 Chronicles 29:11–12 ‘Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honour come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.’

Psalm 135:6 ‘Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.’

FRIDAY 23^rd

Joshua 1

NIV (v9) – ‘Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.’

ESV (v9) – ‘Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.’

The book of Joshua starts off with the LORD coming and speaking to Joshua and giving to him instructions to cross the Jordan with the people of Israel and to enter the land that had been promised them. The LORD says to Joshua to ‘Be strong and courageous for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.’ (v6) Most of the generation who had left Egypt had now died, Joshua was leading the next generation and they were about to receive the promised inheritance.

I wonder how many times we have taken hold of this promise of God to Joshua and used it for ourselves? When we are stepping into the unknown, when the future seems so uncertain, when we are about to embark into something new and maybe daunting. Or we have used it to share with someone else to fit in with their circumstances.

Joshua had been one of the twelve spies sent to spy out the land, and he along with Caleb were the only two that came back with confidence that they could take the land, now in this chapter he has already been appointed as the leader, he had some big shoes to fill, following on from Moses, it is no wonder he needed a confidence boost! And he gets it from the lips of the LORD God himself.

It doesn’t matter how long we have been on our Christian pilgrimage, we may be considered older in the faith or as just babes in Christ, but we all need a confidence boost once in a while, that little something that encourages us, builds us up and spurs us on, and Joshua was getting this in chapter one, to spur him on, motivate him to get the people to leave the wilderness and to take possession of the land. And he commanded the officers, ‘Get ready, we are going to pass over this Jordan and possess the land’

Let us be encouraged today that the LORD our God is with us, whatever we need to possess or take, he will give to us as we put our confidence and trust in him.

One final note, in Joshua one, the LORD says ‘Have I not commanded you’ (v9) this tells us that Joshua had been given the promise before, and we see this back in Deuteronomy 31 when Moses commissioned Joshua. Sometimes we just need a timely reminder that the LORD God is with us, we know it already, but a fresh reminder spurs us on.

THURSDAY 22nd

Deuteronomy 34

NIV (v10) – ‘Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face . . .’

ESV (v10) – ‘And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.’

What a statement to have made about you, and what a privileged position in life Moses had, in that he was used by God in a powerful way to bring about the exodus from Egypt, and to top it all who the LORD knew on a face to face basis! There is another verse earlier in the book of Numbers that describes the kind of man Moses was,  ‘Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.’ (Numbers 12:3) And yet at the same time, we also find this man was not perfect, he had his faults and sadly one of them disqualified him from entering the Promised land, the sin of disobedience. I mentioned in an earlier devotion that humanly speaking it would seem to us that given all the positive things said about Moses and with all that he had done, that God dealt harshly with Moses in preventing him from entering that which he was leading the people of Israel toward. But God is God, and he has the right to do what he deems necessary in any and every given situation.

We have come to the end of Deuteronomy today, Moses has died and his successor Joshua, is now responsible for leading the people of God. But what a legacy Moses had left behind, despite his failure Moses was a man who had listened to and obeyed God, (except in his sin that barred him from the land), think about the immense task he was given to do at the start of his leadership, to go down into Egypt and face the Pharaoh as God’s spokes-person. He had had to put up with a lot of rebellion, grumbling and murmuring from the people, he had been willing to intercede for them even if he may have thought they didn’t deserve it, his family had opposed him, but he remained determined in his calling and responsibility as God’s man for the moment to lead or shepherd the people

He had left his mark, and even we today can learn valuable life lessons from looking back over his life.

I wonder what legacy we will leave behind, or firstly what legacy are we leaving before we are gone? For every moment in our journey with God matters and counts, I can think back over the years of those who in particular who by their example made an impact on my life, some may now be gone, but their legacy is that they had an impact upon me. They showed an example to me which I have wanted to follow.

My parents and grand-parents who instilled in us as a family a godly heritage, I think of one of my previous pastors, Ken Rees and his wife Eva, who when I was a teenager, had an incredible impact upon me towards my spiritual walk, and who impressed upon me the importance and value of the sound preaching of the Word of God, the list could go on, men and woman who God placed in my life at the right moment of time to keep me from being in a wilderness and to keep me transitioning towards the eternal kingdom.

What examples are we being and leaving today to those around us who know what we are in Christ, are we ensuring that we will leave a good legacy behind, being examples that others would be pleased to follow.

WEDNESDAY 21st

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

NIV (v6) –  ‘These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.’

ESV (v6) – ‘And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.’

Following on from yesterday I will use todays devotion to share some Scriptures which refer to the word heart. Take some time out today to meditate upon them as a means of a spiritual heart health check.

Jeremiah 17:9–10

‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.’

1 Chronicles 28:9

‘And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought.’

Proverbs 4:23

‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.’

Proverbs 21:2     

‘Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.’

Proverbs 23:26

‘My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.’

Psalm 51:10     

‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.’

Ezekiel 11:19–20

‘And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.’

2 Corinthians 4:6

‘For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

Ephesians 1:18

‘. . . having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints . . .’

1 Kings 8:61

‘Let your heart therefore be wholly true to the LORD our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.’

1 Thessalonians 3:13

‘. . . so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.’

Psalm 27:14     

‘Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!’

Psalm 90:12

‘So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.’

Romans 10:10

‘For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.’

1 Peter 1:22

 ‘Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart . . .’

Proverbs 3:5           

‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.’

Matthew 5:8

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’

TUESDAY 20^th

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

NIV (v6) –  ‘These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.’

ESV (v6) – ‘And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.’

The human body is amazing, David the psalmist said in Psalm 139 ‘I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.’ (vv14-15) When you start to consider the various parts that make up our body, the intricate details of the blood vessels, the nerve system, the skeleton and then the important functions of the various organs, we surely have to join with the Psalmist and exclaim ‘I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’

In our verse today, the text homes in onto the human heart. What an incredible organ, scientists tell us that the average human heart beats around 100,000 times a day as it pumps the oxygenated blood (aprox’ 5.7 litres) around the body keeping us alive, and pumps deoxygenated blood through the lungs, back to the heart to be circulated again. The heart is essential to life, but at the same time so are the other organs as well, but we all realise the need to do all we can to maintain a healthy heart to be able to live a healthy life. It is no coincidence that the heart is seen as the integral organ in Scripture regarding the life of an individual, not just physically, but spiritually as well. And so often it is the heart that is referred to when it comes to spiritual matters. In our text, the commandments or the law of God is to be on our hearts, that is just as oxygenated blood gives life to the physical, the law of God brings life to the spiritual, it is the place which we consider to be the seat of our emotions, we would say to somebody, ‘I love you with all of my heart’, in saying this we are declaring that we love them with all that we are, a complete love without any reservations.

You will remember that we saw a few devotions ago that we are to love the Lord with all our heart, which means completely, wholeheartedly, as if our life depends upon it and it does, for our eternal life does depend upon our response to loving the LORD God with all our hearts, that is with all our inner being, our souls.

When we come to faith, a phrase which is often used is ‘that we have given our hearts to Jesus’. What we are saying is that we have yielded our lives to him, that is ‘all that we are and have now belong to him’, our lives are centred around him, he has become our hearts desire, he is the one who we live for.

I know what I want to share today, but am struggling to find the right language or words, but I can best sum it up this way, just as we need to have a regular health check, in particular to ensure all is well with the heart physically, so we need to have regular spiritual heart checks, to ensure that all is well with our hearts spiritually.

We need to ensure that our hearts are beating with the heart of God, that they are in tune with his heartbeat of love. That we are keeping in rhythm with that which is his perfect will for our lives, that we ensure that our hearts are spiritually fit to keep in step with the Spirit, not lagging behind because of some spiritual disease that may be dragging us down.

Tomorrow, I will use the devotion to remind us of some of the Scriptures that refer to the heart.

MONDAY 19th

Deuteronomy 30:20

NIV – ‘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 . . .’

ESV – ‘. . . loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, . . .’

We come again to these verses and our third point:

That we hold fast.

The KJV has here, ‘ . . .that thou mayest cleave unto him: . . .’ In the KJV, the word cleave is used seven times in the book of Deuteronomy. (4:4, 10:20, 11:22, 13:4, 13:17, 28:21, 28:60, 30:20)

The word cleave is a word that can mean 1) to cut apart or 2) to hold together, two opposites using the same word! Can I suggest it is a good word to use about our Christian experience, for we need to cleave or cut away from our lives the old ways, the ways of the flesh,  and then we need to cleave to the new that is available to us by the Spirit of God. And here in our devotion we are being encouraged to cleave to God, cling to him, or to hold fast to him.

In Deuteronomy 4:4 it is used to show that cleaving or holding fast to God is the way of guaranteeing life,  ‘But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one of you this day.’ (KJV) In the same way eternal life will only be granted to those who come to the Lord Jesus Christ and cleave or hold fast to him, a Scriptures here, first from the KJV and then from the ESV.

Acts 11:23

‘Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.’

‘When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, . . .’

In Hebrews 10:23 we are encouraged to hold fast, ‘Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.’ This is a Scripture that should cause us to take stock and to ensure that we are  holding fast, both to the confession of our hope and to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to use the KJV language again to ensure that nothing comes between us and our Lord that would try to cleave us away from him, but rather we do all we can to cleave to him!

I will use an acronym to help us

C – Confession. We must never be afraid to come before the Lord with confession, to confess those things that would seek to drive a wedge in our relationship with him.

L – Listen. We must continually listen to and obey his voice.

E – Endure. We must learn to endure or to withstand anything that the enemy would seek to throw at us, knowing that Jesus endured so much on our behalf.

A – Advance. As we hold fast, we move forward in God’s will and purpose for our lives.

V – Victory. We need to continually learn to live in the victory that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord. Learning not to allow the problems or difficulties we may face to distract or divert us.

E –  Eternity. As we hold fast it will lead to life eternal.

SUNDAY 18th

Deuteronomy 30:20

NIV – ‘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 . . .’

ESV – ‘. . . loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, . . .’

Today we continue with our second point from this verse which is that:

We obey his voice.

Our love toward God is further demonstrated by our willingness to listen to (NIV) and to obey (ESV, KJV) the voice of God.

Obedience is a key word in the life of the people of Israel, and likewise for us as the Church, the body of Christ. Taking from the NIV and the ESV we see that we need to listen and obey, that is we need to become sensitive to hearing the voice of God in the many ways that we can hear it and act upon it once heard with obedience. (Remember Samuel in 1 Samuel 3)

God speaks in many ways, first and foremost through the Scripture which is the Word of God, as we read it and meditate upon it we need to hear God speak, secondly he has spoken to us through his Son, Jesus, (Hebrews 1:1-4) and we hear God speak through the words, life and ministry of Jesus, thirdly I am a firm believer that God speaks through the preaching of his Word, that is why I believe the preaching of the Word of God is still vitally important in the life of a local Church and because of its importance sufficient time must be given over for its proclamation. Fourth, I believe God speaks through the gifts and ministry of the Holy Spirit, speaking through what we would call the voice gifts as found in 1 Corinthians 12, and then I believe that God can speak into our lives with a still small voice, an inner conviction that we can clearly sense as being the voice of God. In the book of Deuteronomy we see how God chose to speak to the people of Israel through Moses, and as Moses spoke God’s word to them, whether of instruction, warning, or guidance they needed to not only hear but also to obey.

We also need to hear the voice of God, whether it be a word of guidance, instruction, warning or direction, we need to be willing to obey him for the way of blessing is through obedience. We can all recall the story of Jonah, how God spoke to him and he chose to disobey and go his own way, if only he had listened and obeyed the first time he could have saved himself a whole lot of trouble, the same goes for the people of Israel, because of their stubbornness and disobedience they went around in circles for forty years, may we never wander in the desert or have to go through unpleasant circumstances because we choose to ignore the voice of God, but may we be determined in our hearts to respond positively to what he speaks to us, individually and corporately as a local Church.

Obedience (obeying his voice) is a loving submission to the one we love, because we trust him.

SATURDAY 17^th

Deuteronomy 30:20

NIV – ‘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 . . .’

ESV – ‘. . . loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, . . .’

There are three things that follow out of the choice that is made concerning life – (see devotion from yesterday) they are that:

We love the LORD our God

We obey his voice

We hold fast

For our devotion today – We love the LORD our God.

We have probably all asked someone the question, ‘How much do you love me’ and we get the various answers back, for example, ‘I love you to the moon and back’.

When it comes to wondering how much God loves us, then we have the very clear answer in Scripture found in John 3:16  ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’  And in  1 Jn 4:10–11 ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ We will have heard the little yet profound illustration, ‘I asked God, ‘How much do you love me’ and he answered, ‘This much’ and he stretched his arms out wide and died.’ He didn’t love to the moon and back, he loved from heaven to earth and back!

The love of God toward humanity is unquestionable, he has proved it or demonstrated it beyond any doubt at Calvary. Penned for us in the words of the song, ‘The love of God’

The love of God is greater far

Than tongue or pen can ever tell.

It goes beyond the highest star

And reaches to the lowest hell.

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win;

His erring child He reconciled

And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure—

The saints’ and angels’ song

I ask that you stop for a few moments and consider God’s great love for you.

Now, after considering God’s love for you, we return to the point for today, which is that ‘we love the LORD God’ and as we have asked ‘how much does God love us’, we also ask ‘how much do we love him in return’, is it to the moon and back, or more?

The Bible tells us how much we should love him, it’s here in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 5 ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ This Old Testament verse is repeated in three of the gospels, twice by the one himself who has loved us with an everlasting love, the Lord Jesus Christ, (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30) and once by the lawyer wanting to test Jesus, to which Jesus said ‘You go and do likewise’. (Luke 10:27,37)

Surely this brings an important challenge to us in regard to our love for the LORD God, do we truly love him with all our heart, that means whole heartedly, without any hesitation, without any reservations, without any question? Do we love him with all our soul, that means with all our being, with all that we are? And to love him with all our might or strength, that is with all that we have. Scholars tell us that the original Hebrew here in this verse which we have translated as strength or might in our English translations should better be translated as with all our resources, that is to love him with all that we own.*¹

It means that in the demonstration of our love for God we should be loyal toward him,*² it should be God above all else and before all else. This leads to our second point for tomorrow – We obey his voice.

*¹ The NIV Application Commentary. Deuteronomy Daniel Block. Pages 183-184 (Zondervan)

*² Honey from the Rock. James Robson. Page 185 (Apollos)

FRIDAY 16th

Deuteronomy 30:11-20

NIV  (v19) –  ‘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, . . .’

ESV (v19) –  ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, . . .’

As we go through life we are constantly having to make choices, there are the simple every day choices like ‘what will I wear’, ‘what shall I have for lunch today’ etc, then there are choices which we need to spend a bit more time thinking about, and then there are choices which carry with them consequences that can have long term effect, for example a career choice, a marriage choice where more consideration and wisdom needs to be applied. We can probably all look back over time and see where we have made a choice that has turned out to be a bad one or the wrong choice or at other times a  choice that has turned out to be the best we could ever have made, some choices may have brought regret, sorrow or heartache, while others have brought joy and have led to pleasant and positive results.

In our verses today the people of Israel were being asked to make a choice which would have serious consequences according to the response they made. The choices were rather blunt and yet extremely important, there were only two options – life or death, (life was equal to blessing, death was equal to curse) but the manner in which they would make the choice would be seen by how they lived or responded. To choose life, they would need to obey the commandments of the Lord their God, to disobey, automatically meant that they had chosen death. This is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, God had given them a commandment, and their response to the command would lead to either life or death, ‘And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’ (Ge 2:16–17) Sadly we know that they disobeyed and as a result the curse (death) came upon them.

Going back to the choices we have to make, there is one choice which counts more importantly than every other choice we have to make, and it also has to do with whether the response is life or death. For us the choice is placed before us by the means of a Cross, and with the man who hung on that Cross, and what we choose to do about the Lord Jesus Christ determines the eternal consequence, to choose Jesus means to choose life, life that is abundant and eternal, (John 3:16) to reject Jesus means that we are choosing death, which is more than physical death, it is eternal death, eternally cut off from God in the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:14-15)

I know I am writing this devotion for the Church, but it is also on-line, and for any who are reading this devotion that have no faith or are indifferent to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, I set before you today life and death and would implore you to choose life, choose it by coming to the one who died in your place, the one who became sin on your behalf, the one who bore the punishment of sin on your behalf, the one who bore the wrath of God on your behalf, his name is Jesus, the only one who is the way, the truth and the life and no one, absolutely no one regardless of race, religion, colour, class etc can come to the Father but through him. (John 14:6, Acts 4:12)

To close today, the same verses before us today continue with these words in Deuteronomy 30:20 ‘. . . loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, . . .’

Three things, which we will start to look at tomorrow. Love, obey and hold fast.