Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve

Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote in his journals, "One can love religion like anything else in life: sports, science, stamp collecting. One can love it for its own sake without relation to God or the world or life. Religion fascinates; it is entertaining. It has everything that is sought after by a certain type of person: esthetics, mystery, the sacred, a feeling of one's importance and exclusive depth, etc. That kind of religion is not necessarily faith." (Mark Galli, "The Thirst of the 24/7 Fan," Christianity Today [3-28-05])

I believe what he is referring to is the fact that you can be religious without actually knowing Jesus as Lord and Savior. You can give a sort of intellectual assent to God and Christianity without truly knowing Christ. As a result you can say you believe in God, and yet choose to follow the ways of the world instead. However, when you trust in Christ alone for salvation, which is true faith, you cannot choose anything but to walk in the ways of the Lord.

Each and everyone of us must decide if we are going to follow the ways of God or the ways of man. When Joshua and the people of Israel had conquered the promised land, had divided it by God’s plan, and had settled in the land of Israel, Joshua encouraged the people to "fear the Lord" and to "serve Him in sincerity and truth" (Joshua 24:14). He then reminded them of all that God had done for them and of God’s faithfulness to them; the fact that He had blessed them in battle when they were faithful, and let them suffer defeat when they were not. Then Joshua challenged them, "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" (v. 15a). But he confessed, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (v. 15b).

In John 6:48-69, Jesus’ disciples had a similar choice to make. They had to decide whether or not to follow Jesus. Jesus spoke of Himself as "the bread of life" (v. 48), and said, "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me" (v. 57). Many of His followers found this to be "a hard saying" (v. 60). They simply couldn’t or wouldn’t understand what Jesus was saying, and they chose to forsake Him and leave Him (v. 66): "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more." When He asked the twelve if they wanted to leave as well, Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (v. 69).

Jesus’ inner circle of disciples made the right choice, just as Joshua had so long before. If you "believe and know" who Jesus is, I would hope that you would also make the right choice of following Him faithfully. It is an easy thing to let Christ and the church take a back row seat to other more worldly things in life. We seem to think that Christ is always there, the church is always there, so we’ll just forget them today and do something else. That is choosing to follow the ways of the world instead of following Christ. As Joshua understood, that is often when hard times come your way, and they simply do not seem to get any better.

I urge one and all to make the right choice today. Follow Christ faithfully ahead of all else. Attend church faithfully ahead of other things as well. Do this and God has shown that He will richly bless your life. He will see you through the hard times and give you His peace. Amen.