Choose this Day Matthew 25: 1-13; Joshua 24: 1, 14-18 As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord. We received this banner from Rev. Levi Nyondo, the General Secretary of the Synod of Livingstonia, When we were ready to leave Malawi after an amazing trip. It was a trip where we saw orphaned children who were learning & growing, AIDS patients who were being treated and healed, churches that were bursting at the seams and giving birth to fellowship groups, A seminary filled with students eager to learn, fields and villages that had water for the first time, and communities where our church was helping to build health clinics and all this is a country with $270 per capita income, 55 year life expectancy and 50% of their people below poverty. It is a country that is dominated by rural agriculture. The people are physically poorer than we can imagine And yet the Presbyterian Church is thriving With 85% of the 11 million population being Christian And the majority of the Christians are Presbyterian.
We visited one of the first missions, Old Bendawi Church on Lake Malawi, Which is both scenic and deadly because of the Malaria carrying mosquitoes. This was the second church founded by missionaries in Malawi & saw the graves Of those missionaries who literally gave their lives for the Gospel. And we understood why Levy gave us this banner: As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24: 15) As our mission folks often say, we learned as much in our trip as we shared And part of what we learned was that the choices we make say more about our faith than any number of words might communicate. And what they taught us was that our faith is not just a little part Of the many things that we participate in. It is not a luxury that we can choose today and ignore tomorrow. It s not what we do if we have time or energy. Rather, they taught us that it is the first and best thing we can do for ourselves and for our children and for the community and the world. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Our setting for church is so different from the Malawi Christians but.. It turns out that we are not so unlike the people of Joshua s day as we think. When Joshua said to the Tribes of Israel at Shechem: put away the gods that your ancestors served and serve the Lord.
He could easily have been talking to Twenty-First Century Americans. The idols we worship are not the gods of the Amorites or the Egyptian Sun God But rather they are the things we give most of our time and money to. I love sports and I m glad that athletes are no longer indentured servants But when we pay athletes tens of millions of dollars to throw or kick a ball Then we seem dangerously close to idolatry. I love television and yet when it grabs hold of us for an average of 5+ hours/day And sets the idols of greed and gossip in front of us every hour of every day Then we are dangerously close to idolatry. And we ve just finished the latest round of elections which seem to suggest That money and power are the things we pay the most attention to And that too brings us dangerously close to idolatry. So we are not so different from the people of Joshua s time as we think, It s just that instead of the gods Amurru or Martu we have to deal with The gods of power, money and fame. And they are idols indeed. And we can say with our mouths that we will not follow these other gods Just as the Hebrew people swore that they would follow Yahweh But the real proof is in the Gospel lesson. When do we invest the resources that God has given us.
Do we invest those resources waiting for the bridegroom who is Christ or do we do something else with our resources, our energy and our lives. In the story 10 bridesmaids went out with lamps to meet the bridegroom. Up to this point they are all on the right track- oil, lamps to receive bridegroom But 5 bridesmaids had only the surface faith, what one could see While the other 5, the wise bridesmaids, had a deep reservoir of faith. They had the oil in their lamps plus additional oil for the watch. This passage challenges us to make sure that our reservoir of faith, And the reservoir of faith of our children, girls and boys, Is sufficient for whatever we encounter in life as we wait for God. As I read this I realize that it s not just the Malawi children that need a deep Reservoir of faith to survive but also the children right here in Jeff City. As I hear the stories of Drewrexton & Tia in K Plus I realize That we are building the reservoir of faith for them; And as I read the Touched by God devotion guide and hear the Story of Corey Burkhardt and her struggles with hip and brain Injuries and realize that it isn t the therapy or surgery But the love of God in the little children That gave her hope and drive and peace, Then I realize how important the choices we make are.
We can make choices that increase the oil in our lamp, the love, joy and faith Or we can try to make it on what we have already have in the tank. But friends, what we have already isn t enough. We need to keep replenishing the reservoir so that We are fully ready to receive the bridegroom And we don t know when the bridegroom will come. We don t know when Christ will return, We don t know when we will be faced with a debilitating disease, We don t know when and accident or illness might take our life. We don t know the times or the seasons but we do know That God is challenging us today to make a choice. Who will you serve? The God s of the culture around us- power, money, fame; Or the God who created the heaven and the earth and life itself, The God who came to us in the person of Jesus Christ to redeem us, The God who is with us still by the power of the Holy Spirit. Today I invite you to make a choice to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. In a few minutes I will invite you to either walk forward to recommit yourself or to raise a hand or simply make an affirmation in your heart. But we do have a choice and to choose Discipleship in Jesus Christ And I invite you to make the choice today. Who will you choose?