“Choosing to Hear God’s Voice” Deuteronomy 30:19-20
- glynnbeaty
- Feb 3, 2019
- 9 min read
“Choosing to Hear God’s Voice” Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Some choices are easy. Ice cream or Brussel sprouts? Hanging out with friends or giving a speech in front of a hostile crowd?
Some choices are not so easy. Where do you want to go eat? Where do you want to go on vacation?
Whether choices are easy or hard, we all have to make them. Every day we live, we make choices. Some we hardly think about, while others we ponder for some time. Some choices require a lot of research. Others can’t be researched. Some choices can be delayed; others are instantaneous.
I read a joke years ago about choices and decisions. A man was talking to his friends and said, “When we got married, my wife and I agreed I’d make all the major decisions and she’d make the small ones. So, I get to decide about world economy, politics and global weather patterns. She decides where we live, what I wear, what we eat . . .”
Some choices can be farmed out, but even then, it has to be our choice to farm it out. Ultimately, all our life decisions come down to us. It is always my choice, and I live with the consequences of each choice.
In today’s passage, Moses was offering a choice to the people of Israel. Moses’ ministry was coming to an end. It a few months, the people would be crossing over the Jordan to enter the Promised Land. Moses would not be going with them, due to a choice he had made that went against God's will.
In this passage, Moses tells them they have the choice between life and prosperity, death and destruction. The choice for life is a choice to follow God. The choice of death was to choose to turn their backs on God and embrace other, false gods.
Whichever they were to do, it would be their choice. Each person Moses spoke to had to make that choice.
The same is true to us today. Each day, we are required to decide—to choose—whether or not we will follow God, whether we will obey or not.
Central Truth: Just as Israel had to do, we need to make a conscious choice to follow God and listen to His voice.
By choosing life, we:
Provide for our children.
I think it is the hope and desire of almost every parent to leave their children a better world, a greater opportunity to succeed in life. We commit ourselves to their education, their training up in how a young man or lady should act. We teach them about life decisions and about consequences of the decisions we make. Almost every parent wants what his best for their children.
The first thing Moses tells the people of Israel and us is that in choosing to follow God, then we and our children may live. In the moment that Moses spoke these words, the issue was very real. The people of Israel were preparing to enter a land they had longed yearned for, a land they had spent the last 40 years preparing for. They had watched a generation of disbelieving people die in the wilderness. Those that had died in the wilderness had seen the hand of God in bringing them out of Egypt. They had walked across the dry seabed of the Red Sea and watched as Pharaoh’s army was destroyed by that same sea. They had eaten manna from heaven, drank from springs of water that sprung from rocks. They had followed the presence of God up to the border of the Promised Land. Yet, when the time came to actually enter that land, they instead listened to the voices of those who said they couldn’t survive in the land, because it was a land filled with giants that would crush them. Because they choose to ignore God’s power and promises, God condemned them to wander and die in the wilderness.
Now, the new generation who had seen and done much of what the older generation had done, were called to make a choice. If they chose to follow God, they would live and they would prosper in the land God had promised them long ago. They would enter that land, they would conquer that land, and they would grow in that land. God would bless them and give them a secured home in which to raise their children and grandchildren, and God’s hand would always be over them, as long as each generation chose to live in God’s presence.
The choice of life for Israel was the promise of living a secure life of prosperity in a land God was giving them. In our world, the choice to follow God is to be able to walk in His presence, to have Him close to us and to empower us with His Spirit. As we commit to walk with God each day, we are promised that we will live, and our children with us.
I have known people who don’t attend church nor do they send their children to church. Their reasoning is they don’t want to impose their religion on their children, that the child has to make his or her own decision. Sadly, such parents never realize that by neglecting the religious training of the child, they are imposing their religious beliefs—or lack of such—on their children. The same is true of dropping the children off at church for Sunday School and picking them up afterwards. By so doing, the parent is teaching the child that Sunday School and church are for children, but not for grown ups. The only way to ensure a child is brought up in the presence of God is to consciously choose to follow God in our own lives and let our children know why we are making that choice each day.
When we choose God, we choose what is best for ourselves and our children.
Love the Lord.
When we choose life, we choose to love the Lord.
Imagine a person deciding to get married. Let’s use the man in this illustration. He proposes to the woman, and tells her he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. As she is about to answer, he adds this provision. “Of course, even though I choose to marry you, I want you to know that I really don’t have any strong feelings for you. In fact, there are several other women that I feel strongly about. Even that will never change, I want to marry you. What do you say?”
I think we all know what her answer will be.
Moses is telling the people, and us, that by choosing life, we are opening up the possibilities of loving God each day. It’s interesting to see that Moses says, “Choose life . . . that you may love the Lord your God.” It’s not choose life and love God, but that the choosing allows for the possibility of loving God.
Why?
I think the answer is found in the way that love is expressed and how love changes us. Going back to the analogy of a married couple, let’s suppose the man tells her that he loves her with all his heart, that he cannot imagine living life without her. Of course, she responds in a like way, and the two become husband and wife. The love they feel for each other is so strong and so passionate that it is hard to imagine how it can ever be any better.
But, as the years pass, they learn more about each other. They experience life together, begin a family together and go through life’s transitions together. As the years go by, they discover something about their love. They learn that some days, love is the last thing they’re feeling for each other. Most days, the love is stronger and deeper. Maybe the passion has waned to some degree from the early days, but the significance of the love has grown. As they have come to discover each other in new ways over the years, the love they have for each other endures, grows and strengthens.
I think that’s what Moses is talking about here. When we first come to Christ, we are excited and caught up in the salvation experience. As we go through life, we begin to realize that salvation isn’t a guarantee of eternal happiness and bliss. We discover walking with God can be difficult, with difficult choices and results. Still, as we go through life’s experiences, we learn that God is with us in all of them, and that our love for Him, though not as passionate as it was in the early days, is now a more mature, lasting love. We learn that loving God involved our entire being, and that being loved by God sees us through so much.
When we choose life, we choose to learn what it really means to love the Lord our God.
Listen to His voice.
My father died 32 years ago last August; my mother died 29 years ago just a few days ago. Their siblings have either all died or are nearing the ends of their lives. There will come a time in the not too distant future when the voice of that generation in my family will be silenced, and I will never be able to pick up the phone and speak with them, or go visit them. There are times I would give anything to speak to my mom or dad again, to get their take on matters or to just share with them life’s joys and mysteries.
The joy of choosing life and choosing God is that we have the privilege of not only hearing His voice, but we also get to listen to Him as well.
There is a difference between hearing and listening. Take songs, for instance. A person can hear a song and like it, learning the words and singing along. Then, one day, they really listen to the song, and discover that one of the lines of the song says something entirely different than what the person always thought.
The danger of hearing without listening is that we can misunderstand or misinterpret what was said.
When we choose to follow God, then we choose not only to hear His voice, but to listen to it, too. We want and need to understand His instructions so that we can show our love in our obedience to Him. Jesus tells us that if we love Him, we will obey Him (cf. John 14:15, 23). The obedience is not to earn God’s love, but an expression of our love for and faith in Him. Know that God seeks our best, we want to listen to His words to gain the insight only He can give.
When we choose life, we benefit by listening to God’s voice.
Hold fast to Him.
I saw a video on the internet a month or so ago. The video showed a tourist in Switzerland who decided to go on a hang-gliding ride. The tourist was to ride with an instructor, and it was to be a pleasant flight over a beautiful Alpine valley. What should have been a pleasant outing turned into a terrorizing flight of desperation. The tourist’s safety harness came loose, and shortly after the two men took off soaring into the air, the tourist fell from the glider. The video shows the tourist clutching at the other man and the glider, and as the tape continues, we see the tourist frantically fighting and holding on for dear life.
Fortunately, the tape ends with the two men landing safely, but the flight was a harrowing experience for the tourist.
When we are frightened, we tend to cling to something that gives us security. We also cling to those things we love and are afraid of losing. Sometimes, the clinging can be suffocating and detrimental to the relationship.
That is not the case with God, though. We hold fast to Him because He is our anchor in the storms of life. We hold fast to Him because of our deep devotion to Him. We hold fast to Him because He is our rock, our fortress, our sense of security and serenity in our lives. We hold fast to God because of our confidence and faith in Him, and we know that there is no one else to turn to for salvation and life.
Moses concludes the challenge to the people with the statement: “For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (v.20b). Moses tells us that when we choose to follow God, He assures us of His devotion to us and His promises to us. Paul, inspired by God, reminds us that “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
The way we know we are where God wants us is by choosing to listen to Him, to love Him and to hold fast to Him.
Conclusion
Life is filled with choices, and each choice has consequences. Sometimes, the choices and consequences are not that important, such as wearing the green shirt instead of the red one. Sometimes, the choices and consequences can be profound.
Still, the most important choice we will ever make is the one Moses poses to us: Will we choose life and prosperity, or death and destruction? Will we choose to follow Jesus, to listen to His voice, and to always hold fast to Him?
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