Our first text today comes from the book of Joshua, chapter 24. If you would please turn with me in your Bibles, we will be beginning at the 14th verse. Joshua is speaking to the gathered elders of Israel, saying:
‘Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your father served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’
And the people answered, ‘Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out from the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.’
But Joshua said to the people, ‘You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good.’
And the people said to Joshua, ‘No, we will serve the Lord.’ Then Joshua said to the people, ‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him.’ And they said, ‘We are witnesses.’ He said, ‘Then put away the foreign gods that are among you and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.’ And the people said to Joshua, ‘The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.’
From the book of Joshua, we turn to the book of Acts, Acts chapter 2, beginning with the 14th verse. This is a familiar passage to many of us. This is on the morning of Pentecost.
But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them:
‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words, for these people are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him: ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.’
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.’ And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this crooked generation.’ And so those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, Abba, the time has come. We have gathered; we have heard of your glory. We have heard of what you have done and are doing, and it is our time to decide. We ask that you guide us, that you fill us with your Spirit, and let us choose and help us to always choose you in all that we do.
And now we ask that while you are here with us, you open our ears to hear, open our hearts to understand, and that our words and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight. Amen.
When the Lord gave his covenant law to his people at Mount Sinai, they agreed to abide by all that God had commanded them. They said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ They made a decision that they would obey God, that the Lord would be their God and they would be his people.
But then they didn’t, either individually and corporately. By their actions, if not by intent, they changed their minds. Moses went up on the mountain to collect the tablets of the testimony carved by the finger of God, but while he was gone, the people demanded of his brother Aaron to craft for them an idol of gold, an image of the invisible God for them to worship. They called the idol the Lord, and with all the people shouting and saying, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’
Israel had seen all of the wonders that the Lord had done in Egypt. Israel had heard the words of the Lord’s covenant made with his people and agreed to obey them. But before the ink was dry, before the written law was placed into their hands, they decided to disobey God. They were impatient, they were unruly, they were self-serving, and they acted out of their lack of faith and a lack of trust in the Lord’s continuing faithfulness.
They wanted to be just like everybody else; they decided they needed a physical god, an idol, which they could carry out before them, one which they could see and feel and point to, saying, ‘Look, see how great our God is!’ It’s got all the latest upgrades! It’s got built-in Wi-Fi, power windows, a backup camera; it slices, it dices, it even cuts tomatoes! It also holds down paper really well.
They chose not to wait for Moses or the Lord; they chose to disobey God, and they paid the penalty. Many of them were killed by the Levites, while others died suffering from a plague for this disobedience. Yet the Lord God himself remained faithful, guiding them to the promised land of Canaan, where they again chose to disobey God at the River Jordan by refusing to enter into the land because they were afraid of the inhabitants. They did not truly believe that the Lord would go before them and give them the land.
So God caused them to remain in the wilderness for forty years until that whole willful, stubborn, and unfaithful generation had perished. But then the next generation obediently crossed over the river to claim the land which the Lord was giving them.
Now during the conquest of Canaan, the people had many great victories whenever they were obedient, and they also suffered terrible defeats and tragedy whenever they disobeyed the Lord. Like when the walls of Jericho fell to the sounds of trumpets and a great shout because of their faith in God’s power.
But then a short time after, they were routed in battle by the men of Ai because one man—one man, Aiken—had kept a nice cloak along with some gold and silver for himself, things which were supposed to be devoted to destruction by the Lord’s command, coming from the spoils of Jericho.
Finally, after their 40 years in the wilderness, plus however long the many years were for the incomplete conquest of Canaan, the old man Joshua summoned all the elders of Israel together, called everyone of importance and responsibility to gather, to renew and reaffirm the covenant with God.
There, Joshua reminded them of all that God had done for them from Abraham until their present day and told them that this was their hour of decision. He told them that they must choose now and forevermore whom they would serve, whom they would obey, follow, and serve—whether the many idols of the world and their pagan ancestors or the only sovereign Lord. They needed to decide.
And ever since Mount Sinai, God’s people have been told what is right and wrong by the Lord through the giving of his word. We have each, every one of us, been taught by our elders and leaders, our pastors and Sunday school teachers, what is right and wrong. The Lord has given us the standard by which we and the world are measured, and it is clear; it is not ambiguous.
The Israelites were told what to do, how to live holy lives, and taught how they were to do it through obedient faithfulness. They were given specific rules to govern every moment of every day and their entire lives—how to wash their hands, how to cook their food, how to clean their homes, who they could associate with, what they were to think about, and even believe, and so many other things.
The law governed moments of important decision-making. Every moment of the day was an important decision, maybe not necessarily life-giving or salvation-impacting decisions, but nevertheless, they were important decisions made to live lives of holiness, righteousness, and obedience to God.
And throughout biblical history, under Moses, under Joshua, under the judges or the kings— all of God’s people and their rulers, before and after the Babylonian exile—made many decisions. Some made good decisions, some made poor decisions, some made decisions worthy of personal or corporate damnation and destruction, while some others made decisions which led to a religious revival among God’s people.
We see this same cycle repeated again and again, countless times throughout the church age, and even seems every week around here in this country. Every moment is the hour of decision for us, and I don’t mean to say that every moment and choice is to be a decision for Christ and your eternal salvation, as Billy Graham would put it, because that decision has already been made for you by God’s eternal sovereign election.
The decisions I mean are those about how you will live out your election—whether you are a person elected to salvation in Christ Jesus or somebody who is elected to damnation in Adam. The question we must answer, each for ourselves, is: How do I make my decisions? What is the metric, my rule, my influence, or my reason to decide one way or another?
Do I decide by the wisdom of the world, with my own strength and power, my knowledge and understanding, or do I decide according to my faith and trust in the Lord—deciding towards whatever glorifies him? Do I ask for and listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in my daily life or in my studies?
Do I consider what would Jesus do? Does this choice I am about to make serve God or serve myself? Does this choice glorify God or glorify myself? How do you decide? What will you decide— to obey Christ or not to obey him?
We spent the past two weeks talking about the law of God, particularly the moral law, which is written upon the hearts of all mankind, the regenerate and reprobate alike, governing our lives and our interactions as our conscience. We understand that neither our knowledge of nor obedience to the law can save us or help us with our eternal destination.
Knowledge of the law should still guide our lives. The law can inform our decisions, but it will not make them for us. Just knowing the law, knowing the difference between what is right and what is wrong will not force us to make the correct decision. Our knowledge informs us, but it cannot help us make and stick with our choice.
The law offers us no help or support, no encouragement to continue in obedience, and it certainly gives us no grace whatsoever whenever we transgress it. The law is a cruel taskmaster, making absolute demands of us without providing the means to satisfy those demands. Like when Pharaoh took away the straw from the brick-making Hebrew slaves and demanded the same output from them, the law only makes our obedience harder. The more laws there are, the harder it is to obey them all.
The law offers us no hope and no help, only condemnation and punishment for our failure to do the impossible. But praise God for the gospel of grace! Thank the Lord for his gift of mercy to sinners like us.
After 1400 years of Israel being governed by the law, with periods ranging from a total failure to keep the law in the slightest to the peak times of revival in faith and obedience, to the later even stricter adherence to the law through the letter of the law—strengthening its requirements through the human wisdom, or the oral Torah, of the Pharisees and the Essenes— finally the day we celebrate as Pentecost came and the Holy Spirit was poured out into the people of God.
On that day, the Apostle Peter preached what is arguably the greatest evangelistic sermon of all time, speaking so clearly by the power of the Holy Spirit that all who heard him understood in their best understood and best comprehended language, speaking of their immediate history concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, with proofs from the Hebrew Scriptures. Peter preached the message of salvation by grace through faith in Christ:
‘And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Peter preached to all the people gathered to all these Jews gathered in Jerusalem from across the Roman Empire—not about the power of the law, but of the power of the Lord and his promises; the power of God’s grace.
Hearing this, the people were cut to the heart; they were moved because the Holy Spirit was working among them in their hearts. They were receiving God’s grace of faith as they believed salvation was being applied to them, changing them, changing their focus of importance from fulfilling the works of the law to the work of God. They heard and believed the apostles and now knew the grace of Christ.
Peter said, ‘Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.’
All those people listening were men whom Peter called out as orchestrating and being involved in the death of Jesus, particularly those who delivered him up to the Romans for execution and who also falsely accused Christ of lawbreaking—both breaking the Torah and Roman law. These were the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees—those folks whose whole lives revolved around their absolute obedience to the law, who served as mediators and representatives for all the rest of Israel.
And then Peter included everybody else—the body politic, those people who first cried, ‘Crucify him!’ and then said, ‘We have no king but Caesar,’ accusing them as being the ones who each condemned Jesus to execution at the command of Pilate.
If the whole of their lives before then had been lived holy—if they thought they had been righteous before that moment, before both man and God—then at that time, they knew that they were lawbreakers. They knew that they had violated God’s covenantal law, his holy law, and were guilty of the entire thing. They were each internally convicted of all of their sins and needed to know what must be done to change their guilty state. How could they be made righteous or stand justified before the Lord?
They knew they needed to make a decision, so they asked Peter and the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter told them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.’
Meaning, ‘Repent! Stop it! Knock it off! Change your ways! Don’t do what you’ve been doing. Be changed! Be different! Don’t be like Mike! Be like Christ!’
The point of life is not Moses’s law. Moses cannot help you. Believe and be baptized into Jesus Christ and his works. Receive the forgiveness of your sins by his grace and then go and do as Moses told you.
Repentance is a choice. Repentance is our active recognition that what we have done is wrong, and it is an expression of our desire to do what is right instead. What we do demonstrates who we are and who we are identified with.
So do we choose to identify ourselves with the lawless and wicked ones or with the obedient one and all the saints? Baptism is the new visible sign, the identifying mark of our entrance into God’s covenant of grace—the covenant of promise which he gave to Abraham and his descendants and heirs to all believers in Christ Jesus.
It is our showing the world that we have made a different decision. It is a conscious affirmation and assent to Christ’s calling of us to himself. It is a response of faith. If you hear his voice calling to you, when you hear him calling to you by name, you cannot help but respond. You cannot help but follow him.
But you must choose how you will follow him. Will you respond quickly and immediately, or slowly and stubbornly? Do you live your life mortifying your sin, putting sin to death within yourself to more closely resemble your Savior? Do you repent of your sins honestly, asking for the Lord’s forgiveness and help to do otherwise, or do you choose to still revel in your sin?
Salvation is once and forever, but truly a decision for Christ is made much more frequently. Every choice is a decision for Jesus. Our profession of faith is not fire insurance; it is a binding affirmation and promise of obedience. Jesus requires changed lives to go along with our changed heart.
We have not been given a free will to choose Christ if he does not choose us first, but we have been given a will that is free to choose our individual actions and our active response to God’s grace. Everyone must choose how they will respond to him. This is the hour of decision.
Do you harden your heart, or do you obediently cross over the Jordan and enter the restful land of promise? Making no decision is still a choice, and it is never a choice for the good. A poor decision, a less good decision, is still better than making no choice at all. God’s grace and mercy is still great enough to cover our failures.
Don’t ask yourself, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Because you’re not Jesus, and thank God you don’t need to be. But instead, ask yourself: ‘What does Jesus want me to do in this moment?’
Jesus told the parable about a master with three servants. He gave each different sums of money, and two of these servants invested the money they were given, and they made good decisions; they responded faithfully to their master’s trust.
However, the third servant made no decision to act or invest. He chose not to act faithfully towards his master but instead acted selfishly out of fear. He buried the money; he did nothing with it, and then he returned it to his master, having been a wasteful and fruitless servant. He was justly condemned. Yes, the servant decided and chose to do nothing; he was not a faithful servant because he did not serve his master’s interests or work for his master’s glory. So he received a negative reward.
We must choose to serve and obey God always in everything. In his epistle, James talks about our faith without works being dead. He’s saying that our choices and our actions matter because they demonstrate and express our faith in Christ. Doing good works is our choice and obligation.
What we do matters; our obedience to God matters, but especially the why of our obedience matters just as much as the how. The Jews of Jesus’ day looked to obedience to the law of God for their salvation; they were not looking to God for it. They believed that by their obedience to Torah, because of their obedience, the Lord would restore Israel to his former glory.
They preferred their messianic figures to be like King David or Judas Maccabee and his brothers—men of power, men of deeds and strength, men of decisive action, the strength and power of men obedient to the law and its mediators, the priests. They believed that men could earn their salvation, earn righteousness by their obedience to the law, but they each lack the strength and the will to obey it perfectly.
We are not able to earn our salvation to choose to be rescued and redeemed of our sin because Jesus has already saved us. But we can still choose how we will respond to his good work because his obedience has been imputed to us. Now we may choose to obey him ourselves according to God’s grace given to us, and whatever obedience his grace does not achieve within us now in this life, his forgiveness will cover.
The Lord has saved us from the tyranny of the law so that we might be freely his obedient children. God demands much of his people, being the author and creator of all things, but he does not demand more of us than he has provided. Jesus said to everyone, ‘To whom much is given, much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.’
See, we Christians are empowered by the Holy Spirit. We are given the grace to try, the grace to fail, and the grace to succeed. Christ has given us such a great power by his Spirit so that now we have the great responsibility to walk in it for his glory.
But first we must decide to walk in his way, and then keep remaking that decision all our lives. We are not able to choose our salvation, but being both saved by grace and knowing what is right and what is wrong, we are now able to choose how we act and respond obediently in faith.
Our choice either identifies us with the old man, Adam and the sinful nature, or the new creation, Christ and the regenerated heart. Every choice we face boils down to a binary decision: for Christ or against Christ. There is no middle ground. Choosing anything other than conscious, intentional obedience to God is a choice in favor of wrath and enmity against the Lord.
Our decision for Christ, the decision to follow him in all things always, is not a once-in-a-lifetime choice; it is an everyday choice. We must choose to serve Jesus in every moment of every hour of every day. This is the attitude and mindset to apply our faith to life.
We can afford to take risks, we can afford to try and fail, we can afford to be considered foolish by our neighbors, and we can afford to obey God no matter what the worldly cost is because our confidence is secure in him. And living out this choice is how we walk in the Spirit.
So if Jesus Christ is your eternal security, then decide to act like it. Now, then brothers and sisters, what shall we do? Peter told the crowd, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ They’re from this crooked generation. The NIV uses ‘corrupt,’ the ESV uses ‘crooked,’ the King James uses ‘an untoward generation.’ The Greek word here is ‘scoliosis,’ which is literally bent out of shape, figuratively meaning bent, twisted, unscrupulous, dishonest, unfair—in short, describing all the ways of the wicked of the world, describing everything except the way of Christ.
But Peter is not talking about people saving themselves from their eternal salvation; he was instructing them about their daily choices which concerned everything else in their lives. Israel, the people of God, the church, has been separated from the rest of the world by the Lord’s decree. We are declared to be holy because our God is holy, and the Holy Spirit is even now making us to be holy in truth.
We are the ecclesia, the called-out ones, the sacred assembly, and Peter was right: We must save ourselves from this crooked generation and from every other corrupt generation to come. By God’s grace, we have been given the power and ability to save ourselves, to distinguish ourselves, to be separated away from the rebellious ones, those lawbreakers, because Jesus Christ was numbered among the transgressors so that you and I don’t need to be.
The old argument of ‘Well, everybody’s doing it’ always seems to end with people jumping off of a steep cliff, a steep cliff to their doom. But we Christians are called to be different, to live differently, to choose to act differently from everybody else. Choose to be different because of Christ.
Jesus was in the world, but he was not of the world, and that is how he calls his people to live as well. Choose to not be conformed to the culture around us. We must choose to remain standing firm in the faith, living our lives upon the solid rock. Choose to be generous with your wealth and talents; be generous with all that God has given us because the Good Shepherd will ensure that our cup always overflows.
Choose to help others because the Lord is our help and strength. Help may come in different forms, so we can each help our neighbor according to our own personal capability, without any guilty comparison against other believers.
Choose to love your neighbor sacrificially without any distinction or discrimination, for in doing so, we love them like Christ would so that they may feel and know his love through us. Choose to speak the truth with others about brokenness, both our own and theirs and our shared fallen condition because we, the church, are being sanctified, but we’re not perfect.
We are being transformed by the Holy Spirit inside of us. We are able to share what and who we were, and now show them who we are now because of God’s grace and mercy given to us. We can share our past failures under the law and share this newfound joy we have in grace.
This is the hour of decision, so choose this day whom you will serve, now and forevermore. Will you serve yourself and the many idols of this world, or will you serve and obey and love Jesus Christ alone? Will you choose to save yourself from this crooked generation, or will you choose to stand with them in the company of the wicked? Make every decision to be a decision for Christ.
I have decided; have you? I will stand with Joshua. I will answer Moses’ call of ‘Who is on the Lord’s side?’ I stand with Christ Jesus. And if you have decided this as well, then please join me in standing as you are able and reaffirming with me our faith in the Lord with the words of the Apostles’ Creed:
‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended to hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.’
Let us pray.
Almighty God, you are the author, creator, and maker of all things. You are the only source of power. Give us the strength to stand firm in our decision. Give us confidence; give us the ability. Strengthen our wills to choose you in all of our thoughts, words, and deeds. Make us to be your obedient children, and continue to give us grace as we need it every day. Give us the grace to choose you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.