Deuteronomy 30, verse 19.
I call heaven
and earth as witnesses today
against you, that I have set before you
life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore, choose life, that both you and your
descendants may live.
The Lord puts before you life and death
and says, choose for yourself.
I don't know if you have any hindrance
and what it is that stops you from
listening carefully, whether it's an attitude that stops
you.
If you bite the hand that feeds you
or that helps you, do not cry when
you don't have any more help.
God gives instruction and lays before you life
and death and says, see, I put it
before you, choose.
A certain young man overseas by the name
of Edwin Thomas had two brothers.
He was the shorter of them but with
a booming voice.
He was gifted in acting,
exceptionally so.
His brothers John and Junius were also gifted
but not as much as Edwin.
When Edwin was just 15 years of age,
he was already participating in plays in America
and Britain.
He was in Shakespeare, Hamlet, Brutus.
He was in New York.
He was able to act in various Shakespearean
roles, such as Hamlet, Brutus, Brutus, Brutus, Brutus,
Brutus, Brutus, Brutus.
He acted for over 100 days in the
role of Hamlet in America and people packed
the theatre day after day to come and
see him and his brothers acting.
His brother John acted the role of Brutus,
the one who was the murderer.
They were world famous by that time.
That was in the year of 1863.
This brother John acted as Brutus, the one
who killed Julius Caesar.
But as he was acting, Satan was busy
influencing him.
God had given him the offer of life
or death.
One night it was very cold and the
United States President attended.
This John had hidden behind one
box and he had a gun with him.
Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest
presidents of America, was sitting in the front.
He took his gun and shot Abraham Lincoln
in the head.
He died.
God had given him the offer of life
or death.
God had given him the offer of
life
or death.
I am so
ashamed
of what my brother has done.
I can never perform publicly again.
One day, Edwin was at a train station.
Edwin's face was world famous.
His portrait had been in pictures and photographs
and newspapers around the world.
The train station was full of people.
The train was whistling and there was a
push from the crowd.
Edwin Thomas, his
surname
being Brutus, was close
to the train.
The train whistled and it began to chug
off.
The train whistled and it began to chug
off.
Edwin Thomas was standing there while the crowd
was pressing from behind.
He was very well dressed and he just
had a striking appearance because of his clothing.
I would love to tell you about the
importance of proper clothing.
Edwin, you have to wear proper clothing.
If you don't wear proper clothing, you won't
be able to perform.
The crowd was pressing from behind on the
railway platform and he fell in between the
platform and the railway track.
The train was about to crush him.
Edwin, you have to wear proper clothing.
If you don't wear proper clothing, you
won't
be able to perform.
Another man had fallen and Edwin then put
out his leg, risking his life, put out
his leg for the man to hold onto
and to rescue him just as the train
pushed by.
The man he had rescued recognised that this
was Edwin Thomas.
Edwin didn't recognise who this young man was.
After two weeks, Edwin received a letter from
a general.
He said in this letter, Edwin Thomas, I
want to tell you that you have done
a heroic job.
You have saved somebody of great importance, the
son of one of the heroes of the
nation.
Who was the son?
It was Robert Todd Lincoln, the very son
of the assassinated president whom Edwin's brother had
assassinated.
The whole nation and the world applauded this
heroic act, saving the life of the son
of the assassinated president.
God presents us with life or death.
Edwin chose life, saving the life of the
son of the president.
His brother John had chosen death, assassinating the
president.
These boys were born of the same mother.
The one chose life, the one chose death.
God looking on.
Please don't stand up in the service, we
are listening.
For all the praying say, Lord help me,
help me till the end of the service.
How can one explain this?
Two boys born of the same mother, nursed
by the same mother, brought up in the
same house and with the same language.
One chose life, the other death.
So you are presented with the choice without
any intimidation.
You are not forced into any decision.
God doesn't come to you with a spear
or a stick, but he says, you choose.
Those who have left already in the buses
have chosen.
And you too, without fail, you will have
made a choice.
This Edwin Thomas Booth.
It's Booth, B-O-O-T-H.
Edwin took this letter and put it in
his pocket, close to his heart.
He kept it there till his last day.
Every day of his life, white man.
He kept this as a witness for himself,
to remind himself and as a comfort that
though his brother had assassinated the president of
the USA, Abraham Lincoln, yet he had been
thanked by this general for saving, unintentionally, not
knowing who the young man was, but saving
the son of the president.
The Bible is full of the same message.
Every page of it presents you with the
choice, life and death.
And God says, you choose.
Many ask why?
Many have asked me what makes a nation
poor and depraved.
I've said it's the choice they make.
If they choose violence, if they choose crime,
if they choose immorality, then they get the
results of their choosing.
You may ask yourself, why do I struggle
so?
Why am I so lost and isolated?
I'm out in the cold.
No, it's the result of your choice.
God presents you with your choice, your individual
choice of life or death.
If you're choosing death, then you die.
If you choose life, then live.
From the beginning of the Bible right to
the end.
Take, for instance, the story of Cain and
Abel.
Cain and Abel were born of one father,
one mother, and one son.
One chose life, the other chose death.
Jesus said, don't be surprised for I've come
to bring a sword, a sword of division.
In one family, three will be there and
two will be against them.
Cain and Abel.
They
played
together, they grew up together, Cain and Abel,
but one chose life, the other chose to
be a murderer.
What do you choose?
Look at Abraham and Lot.
Relatives.
Travelers in Canaan.
Abraham chose to serve God
first.
Lot chose Sodom and Gomorrah.
Lot in choosing Sodom and Gomorrah, God allowed
him the freedom of his choice.
God lets you choose.
Cain chose Sodom and Gomorrah.
God lets him go.
King David chose Saul.
King
David
chose Saul.
King Saul.
Look at those two.
Both kings.
One chose the Lord God first.
The other chose power and authority.
He was killed.
He was destroyed by the Amalekites.
Peter and Judas.
Both disciples of Jesus.
Both of them denied him.
One chose to come to the Lord for
forgiveness and repentance.
The other chose death and he hanged himself.
In every age of history, you
will
find in every age of history that God
allows these two things to be simultaneously there.
The choice before people of life and death.
And on every page of the Bible, you
will find it to be so.
And this truth is revealed everywhere.
God allows us to make our own choices.
And I wonder if you go and you
travel today by bus today or tonight or
tomorrow or whenever, what your choice will have
been?
I wonder, you young people, what have you
chosen?
But I do
know
that God will make your choice evident and
open and even public in this next half
of the year.
So it will be evident who you as
a young boy or girl have
chosen.
Even as you get into the bus, it
will become evident who you have chosen.
Life or death.
And no one explains this truth as well
as our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Matthew 7, verse 13 and 14,
he says, enter by the narrow gate.
You see that he doesn't go in with
the burden through that entrance there on this
wall hanging.
Instead he goes free.
The artist should have depicted the burden lying
on the floor at his feet.
For he had been carrying the burden of
sin.
But he
has
passed by the cross and all his burdens
of sin have fallen down.
A girl or a boy, whatever their burdens
are, have been left at the foot of
the cross.
Jesus says, choose, for wide is the gate
and broad is the way of destruction, but
there is also the narrow gate.
He says, broad is the gate going to
destruction, narrow is the gate to life.
And he says, narrow also is the way
to life.
You need to step like you are on
a tightrope.
But the gate and the way of death
and destruction is broad and easy, and there
are many who go in there by.
But the way into life, that narrow gate,
few there are who enter therein.
How can we even add to this, for
Jesus puts it so clearly.
He says, choose.
Will you go with the choice of the
majority or will you go with the few
who choose the narrow way?
Jesus says, you can build your house on
the sand or on the rock.
Choose what foundation you want.
You can choose money as your God or
the Lord.
You cannot choose both.
What is your choice?
You studying at school, what have you chosen
for your future?
Is it that you are going to run
after money or is it God?
In Matthew 25
he
speaks of the sheep and the goats.
Which group do you belong to?
And the Lord himself will separate the sheep
into eternal life and the goats into eternal
destruction.
The goats are the ones who turn their
backs on God and go into eternal fire
and destruction forever.
God gives us the choice, the vote and
says, who do you vote for?
For life or for death?
Choose then my friend.
But your choosing will be of eternal consequences.
Your choice is not just momentary, it is
not just now in the temporal, it is
an eternal choice.
You cannot then say later, Lord give me
another chance, another choice.
So what do you choose?
Let us stand to our feet.
Lord Jesus, you have heard what everyone says.
You hear each one in the auditorium what
they say.
Lord, may it be so eternally.
Lord, the one who says, I choose life,
I choose Jesus Christ, be with that person
right to the end.
Amen.