Winning Ways: Make the Right Choice

“There are three kinds of people in the world,” a friend likes to say. “There are those who can count and those who can’t.”

And he’s an accountant.

Jesus said there are just two kinds of people in the world: those who follow him and those who don’t. Your choice between those two groups has serious consequences here and hereafter.

We’re reluctant to reduce our entire world down to just two groups. After all, we do our shopping in a marketplace that someone once called a “Baskin-Robbins society” where everything comes in at least 31 flavors. George Will pointed that out in a 2005 column for Newsweek:

If you are 62 or even if you are a spring chicken of 50, try to remember the way it was when you were, say, 15 and you wanted to listen to the popular music of the day. You would fidget around the radio dial, flitting from one to another of the--if you were fortunate--three or four stations that played the kind of music you fancied. And you could just hope that the disc jockeys would choose to play a few of the songs you especially wanted to hear.

Now, try to explain that bit of ancient history to your children. Before you can bend their ears, you will have to remove the earphones that connect them to their iPods, in which they can store as many as 10,000 songs of their choosing, which they can hear whenever they choose.

You’ll get no complaint from me about wider choices in the marketplace. I like my iPod, three kinds of sugar substitutes, varieties of mustard, and more choices for coffee than simply Folger’s or Maxwell House.

But when it comes to the most important choice of life, Jesus said there were only two options: you are among those who follow him, or you’re among those who don’t. At the end of his Sermon on the Mount, he said we must walk on one of two roads, decide on one of two trees, and build like one of two builders (Matthew 7:13-27). And he said the choice leads either to life or destruction.

This Sunday, we’ll wrap up our study of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount by looking at this simple life-changing choice. Bring a friend and join us at the “Bold Blend” service or the 10:45am “Smooth Blend” service, or listen online Monday (iTunes; website).

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