Election Day
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
Joshua 24:15
In the wake of a brutal election season, many have worked hard to “choose God” by getting God on their side. As we see in the top part of the image above, it has been about each side picking and choosing the scriptures that suit their agenda and cutting out the verses that support the other side. This is not what it means to choose God.
Joshua does not call us to choose a God who will serve our partisan interests. Joshua calls us to choose to set our interests aside and serve the God who brought us out of slavery, who set us free from the bondage of sin and showed us how to live as children of Abraham, who would lay aside the foreign gods of power, wealth, politics, comfort, pride, selfishness, greed, envy, anger, hatred, and countless others… and serve him only.
Every day is election day!
Every day we make a choice between God’s Kingdom and the powers of this world.
Every day we choose between faithful obedience and sin.
Every day we choose whom we will serve… God or ourselves.
When we choose God…
we make a choice against individualism and the assertion of our personal rights and opinions
we make a choice to put others above ourselves and to serve by humbling ourselves and washing the feet of our friends and our enemies alike.
we make a choice to be part of God's family, and to live among our brothers and sisters who don’t always look like us, think like us, act like us, or even vote like us.
we make a choice to love our neighbors as ourselves… even the ones we don’t like.
Too often it is not that we consciously choose ourselves over God but rather that we choose not to make a choice, trying to hold both together. Like the people of Israel, we will break even our most well intended promises to God. On Sunday morning we say, “we will serve the Lord”, but on Monday morning we tend to wake up and without a second thought begin considering how we can serve ourselves and our own interests. What will make us comfortable. What will make us happy.
That is our call today… on this election day… “Choose this day whom you will serve…” Remember, you can only choose one.
May God guide us not only to make the right choice, but by his great mercy, may the Holy Spirit empower us to honor our covenant, help us live into the perfect love of God and neighbor, forgive us when we fall short, and continue to purify and transform our hearts us until we are fully conformed to the image of Christ.
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
Video of the complete worship service available at http://asburyumc-huntersville.com/live