This is Life and Death

You have a choice. It’s just one choice, and it’s a simple one. There has never been another that matters. It’s the choice that was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is the choice given to the Israelites when God entered into covenant with them.

It’s a choice you have to make every single day of your life, and the beauty of God is that this choice is yours. It is not anyone else’s to make. This is the choice: life or death?

Now listen, I know there are some people who believe that God is completely sovereign in the sense that our decisions are not ours to make. I just can’t bring myself to see the sense in that kind of belief when I read scripture.

The very nature of Love is consensual, it is not forced, and God is love. Why would faith be rewarded if free will didn’t exist? And why would sin be punished?

If you knew all the things God wants for your lives, you’d be blown away. Some of you have even been given a word of prophecy regarding the future He has for you. Here’s the thing: if we are not obedient and choose to follow Him in all things, we can die having never seen the fulfillment of any of His promises.

This is quickly devolving into a fundamental case for the idea of free will, but since I believe the concept of free will is essentially self-evident, let me tell you what this message is really about. God has wonderful plans for your life, plans to “prosper you and not harm you” as Jeremiah 29:11 famously says, plans to give you a “hope and a future”. He gave His son to be the first fruits of many brothers and Jesus said we’ll do greater things than Him.

The First Choice

Let’s look at Adam and Eve.

God created them in his image and since they existed before the fall of man, they were perfect. They were spotless before God, righteous in His sight, the exact product of His will and scripture tells us they had a relationship with God that was without boundaries. There was no holy of holies, no veil, no pillar of smoke, no rituals, and no seeing through a glass dimly.

As far as we know, Adam and Eve had an unadulterated, unfiltered, intimate relationship with the Father. They didn’t have to work for their food, they were given complete authority over all the earth, and the only command they were given was to be fruitful and multiply.

God gave them one restriction and it was this: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why? Because when you eat from it, you will certainly die.

Now we all know what happens in this story. The serpent, which represented satan, deceived them and they ate from the tree. When God found out He cursed them both, sin entered our nature because of their disobedience, and they got kicked out of the garden to work the ground and painfully give birth to children until they died.

The thing that is interesting about this story is the second tree. After Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God banished them from the garden, and the reason He did that was to prevent them from eating from the tree of life so that they would not live forever.

The profound revelation that must be understood from the existence of the tree of life is that it was always in the garden and God never forbid them from eating its fruit. It was only after they ate from the tree which produced death that they were separated from the choice to eat from the tree of life.

God had a perfect plan for Adam and Eve, and even though He willed it, He gave them the opportunity to foil His plan for their lives. They were given the choice between life and death, and they chose death.

The Death of a Nation

Deuteronomy 30:15 (NKJV) says, “See, I set before you today life and good, death and evil.”

This famous line was given by God through Moses to the people of Israel. He spoke these words in Moab after renewing the covenant that was given to the first generation 40 years earlier at Horeb.

Why did God restate His covenant with Israel? Because the first generation failed, and He was about to entrust the leadership of the second generation to Joshua. We need to understand that God’s plan for Israel when He freed them from their slavery in Egypt was to give them their own land, the promised land, a land “flowing with milk and honey.” It wasn’t to drag them through a desert for 40 years and tease them with a better life only to let them die there and give the promised land to their children.

So if it wasn’t God’s will, then why did it happen? It happened because we all have a choice. We have to choose to love God.

Romans 8:28 (NKJV) says, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

And Romans 12:9 (NIV) says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” There is no promise that the plans of God will come to fruition in your life if you do not love Him by hating what is evil and clinging to what is good. That is the choice you have to make every day: life or death, good or evil.

God was speaking to me earlier this week about the power of the choice that He gives us, but in order for me to tell you what God was sharing with me, I have to tell you about the calling that He has given me. If you watch the Zach Drew Show you may already know some of this so I’ll be as concise as possible.

I attended a program a couple of years ago called Master’s Commission in Blue Eye, Missouri which was being run by Pastor Jim Bakker. While I was there God revealed some things about the prophetic nature of my first and middle names.

My first name is Andrew, and in the Bible, Andrew was the brother of Peter. In fact, most of the time when you see the name Andrew, it is not alone. It is usually seen in combination with the name of his brother Peter, usually as “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother” or “Peter, and Andrew his brother”, but it is common to see Peter’s name by itself.

The implication seems to be that Peter is a man who needs no introduction, and that Andrew’s most noteworthy characteristic is that he is Peter’s brother. This is an observation that really resonated with me. My brother Josh has always been a pretty charismatic guy, and in my youth I was probably called “Josh’s brother” just about as often as I was called Andrew, if not more. Peter is often thought of as the founder of the first church, to the point that the catholic church considers him the first pope. This is an important fact that will make more sense once I share the significance of my middle name, Aaron.

Aaron was another famous brother, as he was the brother of Moses. Aaron served as sort of the right-hand-man to Moses and was tasked to speak on his behalf when God called Moses to command the Pharaoh of Egypt to set the Israelites free.

The picture of Aaron’s supportive ministry is more clearly visualized when he helped in holding up the arms of Moses during the battle of Israel against the Amalekites. In the same vein of these two historical figures, God gave me the gist of my calling, which was broadly that I was going to serve as a sort of second-hand to some great minister.

I was working for Zach at the time under Jim Bakker and he shared with me how God has called him to be a kind of Joshua figure, metaphorically leading a generation into the promise of God, and how he viewed himself as taking the mantle of Jim Bakker, whom he considered to be a type of Moses.

This was significant to me because around that time in my life I had received a prophetic word from someone that God had given me a spirit of Caleb. Of course in scripture, Caleb served under Joshua in bringing the Israelites out of the desert and into the promised land of God. It really appeared as if my calling was taking shape and that it was meshing with the calling God had placed on Zach’s life.

Close to Home

God shared something with me this week that really laid a burden on my heart, though. He told me “I gave you both the name of Aaron and the ministry of Caleb.” I immediately understood the significance of the distinction, as Aaron was of the generation that did not make it into God’s promise and Caleb was of the generation that did.

When I noticed the distinction, I also understood why God showed me the discrepancy in the destiny of each of those men, and this was the profoundly heavy revelation that God gave me next, “I have called you both Aaron and Caleb because your life will decide which one you will be.” I realized that God was telling me that I had the opportunity to destroy the calling that He has placed on my life, and it was a devastatingly hard truth. This is not only my truth, but it is yours too.

It is the choice that God gives you every day: life or death, good or evil, gather or scatter, broad or narrow gate.

I have to say, though, that burden has lifted from my heart since God gave me this word. Do you know why? It’s because Aaron was the head of the priesthood, chosen of God, satisfied in the glory of men, having the appearance of godliness, but the moment the people turned on him, the moment he felt just a little pressure, he denied God and molded a calf out of gold. He said to Israel, “this is your God that brought you out of Egypt.” The name Caleb, though, means “wholehearted.”

Jeremiah 29:12 (NKJV) says, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

I realized God was calling me to renounce the distractions in my life, stop wasting my time on things that didn’t matter, and to seek Him with everything in me. You see, the yoke of Christ is easy, and His burden is light. That is why my heart is not burdened with the prospect that I could ruin everything that God has planned for me.

All I have to do is love Him with my whole heart. All I have to do is “die daily.” I can’t mess up God’s plans if it’s not me who is living, but Christ who is living in me. The pressure is off, as long as he has my whole heart. Then I won’t have to be worried about being an Aaron, who had “the form of godliness” but denied “the power thereof.” That is the kind of man that God was warning me not to become; a man who seems as though he is godly but whose heart does not belong completely to the Father.

Conclusion

If God is calling you to rise to a new standard of relationship with Him today, don’t ignore His voice. He has so many great plans for you, but He is giving you the opportunity to choose.

Today and every day, this is your choice: life or death. Jesus said that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and if you choose Him today and every day, then you will never experience death. What in your life is so important that it is keeping you from giving Him your whole heart today? Please don’t make the wrong choice.