What Will You Do?
Deuteronomy 28:15, 20
“But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments … then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. … The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, …”
Notice that as Moses nears the end of this five-volume testament called The Torah, he takes readers all the way back to the beginning once more. A clear and cogent reminder for us that God’s gift of freewill to Adam and Eve and of their rebellion against God via that freedom is not merely a recounting of the origination of sin in the world but also a beckoning to us to take seriously the consequences of our own actions. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil may have disappeared from the earth’s topography, and so too that luscious, heavenly garden, but the same determinative, cosmic forces of human existence remain: God’s Word, our choice, and the blessing or curses that will follow our decision.
It doesn’t ultimately matter what you believe about free will in theory. Whether, that is, theologically you’re a five-point Calvinist or whether you align more with Freewill Baptists or whether you haven’t thought long enough about it to decide. We live in the concrete of action, not in the abstract of concept, and, in action, the fact of choosing is so common as to be mundane. As Moses clearly wrote above, “If you will obey, you will be blessed…If you will not obey, you will be cursed.” That’s the same rule we’ve been teaching our kids ever since they could walk. Children learn what ‘No!’ means long before they learn their ABCs, right?
These pilgrims entering Canaan don’t need a theological treatise on the paradox of God’s Sovereignty and man’s autonomy before making their decision. All they need for recourse is to examine their own lives thus far through a simple analysis: have my choices led to greater favor and blessing with God or to greater confusion and frustration? Has that forbidden fruit of sin improved my well-being or harmed it? Is my conscience more at peace within me or more at war?
Friend, don’t waste another precious day shrouded in the frustration and confusion of selfish ambition. Choose to obey the voice of the LORD!