To Encourage You

2 Samuel 24:12 “Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’”

I’ve been reading a collection of essays by the late British pastor F. W. Boreham. What an awesome writer he was!  One of his essays is curiously entitled, “That Blessed Word – ‘Which.’” In this essay he recounts the following story that he had once heard from another pastor: “’I’ve been thanking the good Lord all day long for that blessed word “Which?”’ said John to his friend. ‘That blessed word “Which?”’ replied his astonished companion. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ ‘Well,’ explained John, ‘it’s like this. For many years I gave way to drink. Our home was a poor sort of place. My Mary hadn’t a very nice life of it. But she bore it all like a saint, and never murmured. And in those days I had no clothes except those I stood up in. But last year I started going to church with my Mary.  And one night I was converted. And my, the difference it made! Why, last night my Mary was upstairs, and I called out to her to bring my clothes down when she came. And what do you think she called back? She shouted “Which?” And, oh, it made me feel good to hear my Mary ask me that! And I’ve been thanking the good Lord all day for that blessed word “Which?”’” 

Boreham goes on to talk about the many wonderful opportunities to make choices that God has given us in life.  He’s not a stingy God. He has given us a multitude of foods, for example.  We aren’t limited to only one kind. We can choose this one or that one.  It’s a wonderful thing, this privilege of choice. He compares that to the life of a slave who, for the most part, can’t make decisions for him- or herself.  Their master calls all the shots. They don’t have many opportunities to answer the question, “Which?”

But most of us aren’t like that. We can choose which clothes to wear because God, in His grace, has allowed us to have closets full of them. We can choose where we go and what we do because God, in His bountiful provisions toward us, has made such choices possible.   It extends to every aspect of life. Choices of friends.  A choice of a spouse. Decisions to have children. On and on our privileges go. And it is the privilege of choice that extends even to our relationship with God. We can choose to obey Him, or not. We can choose to listen to Him, or not. We can choose to talk to Him, or not.  And sometimes those choices extend even to the consequences of those choices.

In the passage above from 2 Samuel, we have an account of God’s discipline for David’s sin of pride. He had foolishly chosen to take a census of his army, and by that choice, had taken his eyes off of God. And so the Lord disciplined him. He gave him three choices as consequences for his sin: three years of famine, three months of being pursued by his enemies, or three days of plague.  What a difficult choice this would be, yet God gave David the freedom to make it. 

And you know what? God has given us such choices as well. We see a shadow of this in Joshua’s challenge to the nation of Israel as they moved to occupy the Promised Land. In Joshua 24:15, Joshua says this: “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers 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.”  Moses had made a similar offer to Israel earlier in their history and shortly before his death: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 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,loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Deuteronomy 30:15-20). 

In the very same way, Jesus has placed a choice before us. Will we follow Him or not? Will we trust Him, or not?  The choice is ours, as are the consequences.  There are two ways, and we have the freedom to choose which one.  There is the broad way that leads to destruction and the narrow way that leads to life.  Blessing and cursing, life and death. The choice lies before us, but the question we must all answer is “Which?”