A High Standard No.7 Your Choice

Good morning, nice to see you all here. Let's stand, shall we? Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's say the prayer which our Lord Jesus taught us to say.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Father, on this super Sunday, we pray that it may be indeed a special day.

Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for all your many goodnesses to us. We ask that as we come together as a family, boys, girls, babies, moms, dads, single people, old people, everyone contributing even at this moment.

Lord, we just ask in your grace that we might know your presence and your blessing for Jesus' sake. Amen. Just sit down for a moment, will you? And will you find 468? We're going to sing this old, lovely hymn which speaks about the character of God.

The first verse will be sung to us. Are you listening? Because I don't want you to get this wrong, or else we'll mess it up for the tape. The first verse will be sung to us, at the conclusion of which we all stand and sing the second verse.

We keep standing, but go quiet on the third verse, and then you can come in on the remaining verses, at the end of which you can then sit down and you'll have another song sung to you. 468. My God, how wonderful you are.

My God, how wonderful you are. Your majesty, how bright. How beautiful your mercy seat.

In depths of burning light. In all righteous natality, our everlasting Lord. By angels first seen day and night, incessantly adored.

Of you living Lords, whom my heart's longing hears, and worship you with certain hope and penitential tears. Yes, I may love you, O my Lord, O my secret of peace. For you have spoken to me in peace, with joy my heart has received.

How wonderful, how beautiful, your loving grace must be. Your endless wisdom, boundless power, and awesome glory. Jesus, name above all names.

Beautiful Saviour, glorious Lord. Emmanuel, God is with us. Blessed Redeemer, living Word.

Jesus, name above all names. Beautiful Saviour, glorious Lord. Emmanuel, God is with us.

Blessed Redeemer, living Word. Why don't you just offer a little prayer for all of us boys and girls as well, and ask that Jesus will bless us in our service right now. Dear Lord, we just commit this service to you, that you may place in our hearts more of your words, more of your teachings, so that we may become and learn more about you.

Please can you just teach us what you know we should know today? Amen. O happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away. He took me home to watch and pray, and here rejoicing every day.

Alleluia, happy day, O happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away. His triumphant reign, transgressions gone, I am my Lord and He is mine, teaching me how to be kind. O happy day, O happy day, O happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away.

He took me home to watch and pray, and here rejoicing every day. Let's pick up from the first verse of the 29th chapter. These are the terms of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he, that is God, had made with them at Horeb.

Now jump to verse 29 of that chapter. The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you, and you take them to heart, wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and with all your soul, according to everything I command you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where He scattered you, even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens.

From there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.

The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love Him with all your heart and with all your soul and live. The Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. You will again obey the Lord and follow all His commands I am giving you today.

Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb. The young of your livestock and the crops of your land, the Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as He delighted in your fathers. If you obey the Lord your God and keep His commands and decrees that are written in this book of the law, and turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Now, what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven so that you have to ask who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it. Nor is it beyond the sea so that you have to ask who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it.

No, the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction, for I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees, and laws.

Then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life and death so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God. Listen to His voice.

Hold fast to Him, 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. The Apostle Paul in Romans 10 takes up the theme of those verses, and he links the teaching of Moses to the revelation of the gospel and indicates the nearness of God that if we confess with our mouths the Lord Jesus and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. We had a great time yesterday here at the Tab.

You probably have gathered. The flowers commemorate not just the skills of our ladies celebrating an ordinary Sunday, but celebrating a very wonderful Saturday and spilling over onto this Lord's Day. One young man came down this central aisle, and he chose life.

You say, what do you mean? Well, the wedding Tim and I were privileged to help to conduct featured a bride whose name peculiarly was Zoe. And though you may not know this, Zoe is actually the English transliteration of the Greek life. So, when I got to the point in the service of addressing dear Ian McCarra and saying, will you take this woman to be your wife? I was in effect saying, do you choose life? Do you choose Zoe? Now, he's a lawyer, at least a trainee, and he knows a thing or two.

Most lawyers do. And immediately his response was yes. I mean, there was no equivocation.

He didn't say, well, I'm going to think about this. Actually, he'd done a lot of thinking over a number of years and had well prepared himself for this particular high-water mark in his life. And similarly, doubtless, Zoe herself had thought things through.

Books on preaching are not popular, and I'm quite amazed that in the grace of God and maybe the over-kindness of the British Christian public, the book that I attended has sold so well, it's come up for another reprint. Now, the reason why I'm amazed is because preaching is at an all-time low in terms of popularity. Of that, there can be no doubt whatsoever.

You check many of our churches in the UK, let alone abroad, and you'll discover that churches where there is a 30-minute or so, even longer exposition of Scripture are fairly far and few between. It's not that people are disinclined to go to church, provided you don't push it too often. They're quite happy to be present at funerals.

Well, it's not about happy at funerals. Weddings and dedications, but on a regular basis. If they do slip in, don't give us more than 10 minutes, because in this audiovisual age, that's all we can cope with.

But Moses was a preacher. And God has commanded that the ministry of preaching is one vehicle, perhaps the prime vehicle, though not exclusively, through which he transmits his word to a contemporary situation. And when a man has a burden, even the meekest man in the whole world can be turned into a lion.

Paul was no naturally gifted communicator. He will tell you in Corinthians that when he first got to that Greek seaport, he had problems with words. Paul was dependent on the unction of the Spirit.

And here is Moses, so reticent to go to the preaching ministry that when God called him, he said, hey, what about sending someone else? And Aaron, for a while, became his mouthpiece. But when a man has a burden from the Lord, the meekest man, the most faint-hearted person can be turned into an orator, can be transformed into a lion. And Moses doesn't have much time.

The sands are going through the glass. I mean by that, he's come to the borders of the promised land, and he's spent some 40 years or so of his life along with the Hebrews wandering around Sinai, and he is not to enter into the land that God originally gave to Abraham. Moses' time is through.

This is, if you please, his swan song, his nunc dimittis. Here is, if you like, the Simeon of the New Testament, Moses, who has his people in front of him, and he just has literally days to communicate to them what he wants to say. Always listen to the words of a dying man or woman.

Never push your older people out to graze. There are things that they know about life that you can never read in a book, and until you've experienced them yourself, you are completely ignorant of them. So, here is the age of Moses, God's meek servant, God's friend, and in front of him are his beloved congregation who gave him so many problems, and he opens out what is in effect his final address, and he pushes the business of choice.

He says, Choose this day. This day I call heaven and earth as witness against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.

Ian was biased yesterday. A preacher is always biased. You see, a preacher is not a lecturer, content to inform you about some subject matter, and he's neutral in his emotions.

This is why sometimes the preacher will find that his message overwhelms him. The most important thing to him at that moment is communicating what he believes he has to say from the Lord. Nothing else matters.

Time stops. It's a phenomenon that is known to many, many who occupy the pulpit. You see, he's out for a verdict, and every preacher is out for a verdict.

Rowena, my wife, was for several years in London given accommodation with a lady who was quite aristocratic, and a very kindly lady, a very educated woman in the profession of publishing, and she was an establishment Anglican. Now don't misunderstand me. I respect, as you will know, the Anglican church enormously and use a lot of their devotional material.

But she was an Anglican in name, and occasionally she would go along to the church. Now, it happened to be that her parish had as its church all souls, and the preacher there was none other than the great Dr. John Stott. Now she had no problems with Stott intellectually, but she did say as she came back from time to time, having visited the church, that she felt that Mr. Stott considered himself to be in a Salvation Army citadel, as though he was preaching to sinners.

And can you believe it? She was an Anglican, an aristocratic Anglican. You see, the point about Stott is, as he says in the book that he wrote on preaching, he's out for a verdict, as Moses is out for a verdict, as our Lord Jesus, when He comes on earth, is out for a verdict. There is the gravity of choice that Moses brings before the people.

Look, you're entering into a new cycle of your career, and the options are these – life, death, blessings, curses, prosperity or annihilation. Choose life. Ian embraced Zoe yesterday with his words, as well as in a physical embrace.

And don't you see, that's the message of the Old Testament and the New, they combine, because they are one book. God says through His servants, choose life. The problem about straddling a wall is, it's not easy to run.

You've got your legs on either side. And some people, in a Christian sense, go through life like that. When I say in a Christian, I mean in a religious sense.

I'd say the average person in Worthing is like that. I'd say the average person who helps to lead this town is like this. They're not anti-Christian.

We thank the Lord for the help that we get from the council and for the schools. They're heads and headmasters and headmistresses. No antagonism in this town between the schools and the churches.

But, you see, you don't become a follower of Jesus by straddling, by sitting on both sides of the fence, or trying to do that. Moses will not have this in his year, and neither will Jesus in the day of his ministry. And neither will the church, the true church, down the centuries.

And this is the reason why preaching is unpopular, because biblical preaching is always confrontational. Biblical preaching assaults the mind, and from the mind goes to the will, and from the will to the emotions. Not always in that order, but generally speaking, that's the case.

And here is Moses, and he says, look, fellas, the choice is grave. But the issue is simple. What I'm commanding you, verse 11, is not too difficult for you to be beyond your reach.

You don't have to go skyward, neither do you have to go seaward, not up to heaven, nor do you have to go beyond the sea to some distant land, in order to find what? The Word of God, the presence of the Lord. When Jesus Christ came on earth, Emmanuel happened, I mean by that, God with us. Some of us took part in a very moving communion service just an hour or so ago.

Communion is a time when God, in His grace, allows His presence to be felt. So, we of the Protestant tradition do not just believe that the bread and the wine remain symbols, though they are that. They are also the media that God elects to release His presence in a very special way, so that His kiss comes upon the person as he, she receives the emblem.

Next to reading the Word of God, next to coming around the throne of grace in prayer, is surely fidelity, faithfulness, regularity at the communion table. That's why I would not be pastor of this church if we did not spread the table at least once a week. God is here, and to bless, where two or three are gathered together in His name.

This is basically what Moses is anticipating. Of course, he lives before the day of Christ, and yet Jesus says in John 5, Moses wrote of me. That's why the Apostle Paul can take the content of Deuteronomy 30 and link into his argument what Moses has to say when Paul is writing Romans chapter 10, because Paul is living in a day which fulfills the prediction of Moses in regard to the great profit that there will be.

But Moses does not just glory in the future, he shows that there are present blessings for the Hebrews in which to participate at that moment. Closeness to God, not just the Ten Commandments, he refers to other advice that he has given the people down the years in addition to the covenant he made with them at Horeb, 29 verse 1. What is Moses in his dimittis advising his people to do, his children to do? In a word, he is advising them to make God a priority in their lives. And so, again and again, he tells them that they are to love the Lord their God, that they are to walk in His ways.

Verse 16, For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His commands, decrees, and laws, that you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land where you are entering to possess. I wish I could tell you that the advice of every elderly person who was wise I have lived by. I would have been a better man.

Alas, sometimes we younger ones, or the days were when I was younger, we shake our heads at older people and think that their advice is something old-fashioned, and yes, we were in a new culture, and therefore, behold, I make all things new. The Bible doesn't allow for that. The Bible allows you to be anchored to the rock and geared to the times, but it is very important that you are anchored to the rock.

And Moses flashes in front to the people what is to be their religious stroke, political stroke, social manifesto as they move into the land which God had promised them. They are to love Him with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind, and this our Lord Jesus, you remember, summarized as being the greatest commandment of all. And if you want a summary of the summary, you get it in the 19th verse.

Choose life. Why? Because verse 20, the Lord is your life. You can fight your wife, you can fight your husband, you can fight your kids, you can fight your parents, but you cannot fight Him.

He is the author of life. You are utterly dependent upon Him. So, Moses says, here's the grave choice.

Here is the simplicity of it. It's not such that the ordinary Hebrew cannot understand. I mean, this is the thing with the gospel as I'm trying to explain it to the large company of people who came yesterday afternoon, some of whom probably had never been in the tab before.

The gospel is so simple that a little lad can come and sing and lead us in our opening act of worship and be fully knowledgeable in his prayer that it's important that mom and dad and he himself is taught from the Word of the Lord. So simple a ten-year-old can comprehend. So profound that if we had the consensus of all the wisdom here in this congregation reduced to one mass, you could not plumb the depths of the gospel.

It is so fathomless. The heart of the matter which Moses brings out is that these people are to love the Lord their God. This is what our Lord Christ said, of course, when He was on earth.

But let's bring this to a conclusion. What if? What if you've moved from being straddled on a fence into the Christian fold? You've been in that position intellectually and perhaps spiritually for some while, and yet you went off course. That happens to many of us, if not all of us, at some point.

Then what do you do? Well, my beloved friend Len Bickerton was quite right as he led us in a meditation around the communion table in making a distinction between the law and the gospel and saying that the reading of last Sunday morning terrified him if it was taken just on its own. Because when you think of the law that God imposed upon the Israelites and the character of God, it seemed as though greater responsibility was being put on the shoulders of these weak people. But you see, even in the book of Deuteronomy, which is one of the reasons why Tim and I are preaching from it, you do not just get law, you get grace mingled in, or else it would be impossible.

So, Moses says, look, if the worst scenario happens, verse 4, if you've been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. There's a way back to God from the dark paths of sin. There's a door that is open, and you may go in.

At Calvary's cross, it's where you begin when you come as a sinner to Jesus. Moses, in his Nunc Dimittis, tells us not only of the strictures by which the Hebrews were to live their lives, but being a frail man himself who blew it from time to time, he also emphasizes the reality of the grace of God. What do you do, Moses, when you've messed things up? And he says, you choose life again.

You go before God and you say you're sorry, as a husband has to say he's sorry to his wife, and wife to husband, and deacon to elder, and elder to deacon, and pastor to pastor, because all that we have as a common denominator here in Worthing Taub, apart from our faith in the Lord Jesus, is the mistakes which we have made. But there's a gospel, deep in the Old Testament, made even more plain in the New, that tells us the choice is dangled again before us. Choose once more.

Embrace again. Do what I invite the people to do, and we had ex-mayors here yesterday afternoon. If you're by your partner, as I commit Ian and Zoe to the Lord, take their hand, renew your vow, because that's the substance of life and relationships.

Repair when damage has been done, coming back to the first point. And this is what Pastor Moses tells his people. Choose life.

It's a grave issue, because the alternative is death. And Jesus says, later on I'm come that you might have life, and if you don't have me, you'll know the curses of God upon you. You may not like that strong language, but it's there in the New Testament.

Read through the last chapters of Matthew's gospel. It's their language that fell from the lips of Jesus. It's a grave issue.

Ah, but you see, the resolution of the issue is so simple, you don't have to go to heaven to get it. You don't have to go to the states to get it. You don't have to go to Asia to get it.

It is so simple. What's simple? The gospel. It's near you.

What is the gospel? Confess. If you confess in your mouth and believe in your heart that Christ has been raised from the dead, then says the Apostle Paul, you will be saved. So, we thank God, do we not, for the inspirations of his word, how he threads together Deuteronomy 30 and Romans 10, read the latter at your leisure, and how Moses and Paul are saying exactly the same thing, and far more eloquently and powerful is our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, Ian chose Zoe. I must send him a copy of this tape. I can't understand why he didn't come to me to church this morning.

I mean, bless my soul. He chose life. Have you chosen life yourself? You've committed yourself to God? We asked for him to forgive your sins and to make you anew.

Have you said, Lord, here is the volume of my sin. Here is the righteousness of your Son. He says, by faith I can turn my sin to his account, and you pronounce me clean and whole, a living spiritual being on earth, but set on course for eternity.

Brothers and sisters in Worthingtab, on this Sunday in July, I adieu you in the name of God. Choose life. Let's have a prayer and then, Joy, perhaps you could be ready with a song that just fits in or a traditional hymn as we bring our service to a conclusion.

Father, we thank you for the whole gamut of emotions this morning, starting with a lovely song on to a very cleverly arranged children's presentation, to songs of worship, to prayers for people in Kuwait and Pakistan, to your word, and now eventually home. Bless what we have learned to us. May it stay on in our minds.

As we sing our final songs and go on into the rest of this day, will you use us for your honor and for your glory throughout today and tomorrow and until the eternal day dawns. For Jesus' sake, amen. When we've sung whatever Joy's got, you've got notes to use in front of you or you should have.

We'll conclude by all saying what's one of my favorite prayers, the prayer of Francis of Chichester, Richard of Chichester, I'm sorry. Number 502, you stand and sing. Oh, let the Son of God enfold you with his spirit and his power.

Let him fill your life and satisfy your soul. Oh, let him have the things that hold you, things that hold you back, and his spirit, like a dove, will descend upon your life and make you whole. Stand.

So join in the final prayer. Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for me. O merciful Redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more clearly, and follow thee more nearly.

Amen. Good morning. God bless.

Thanks for coming.