His Name is Jesus

by Rocky Fleming

Day 5: Choose Wisely

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” –C.S. Lewis, English author (1898-1963)

CHOOSE WISELY THE ROAD YOU TRAVEL, FOR IT WILL LEAD TO YOUR FINAL DESTINATION

“You must make your choice” are words by Lewis, and they are a sober reminder that the choice is ours to make if we will believe that Jesus is indeed the Savior, and we want Him to be our Savior.  With this choice in mind, imagine if you will that there is a sign on the road that you are traveling that gives you the above warning.  What would you do?  Would you drive recklessly ahead with no regard to the warning?  Would you at least slow down and consider the implications of the choice you make?  If you were as intelligent as you think, would it not be the smartest thing that you could do to consider the consequences of the choice you make?  What you have been given is a crossroad in life that will lead to somewhere.  Will it lead to life and heaven, or will it lead to misery and eternal death?  Not to be dramatic, but that is exactly what a non-believer must choose.  Will they choose wisely or will they choose the wrong path.  It requires a decision. But it also requires faith.

All week long I have provided “intelligent” considerations for the non-believer, the skeptic and the atheist, to help them understand that it does not require intellectual suicide to believe Christ for who He is and what He has done.  Even so, there is as much intelligent skepticism out there to try and counteract the truth.  Mankind’s intelligence and knowledge will not be the determiner of the decision he or she must make.  It ultimately comes down to faith.  Many people have tried to leave faith out of their decision.  But it can never be left out, for it is our ticket into heaven.  It is a requirement of God.  It has always been His requirement.  He has never changed His mind with this requirement.

Several years ago I heard a sports personality say that he had made a decision to be a Muslim.  His reason was that he wanted a simple god to follow, for something like the Triune God of the Christians was too much for him to understand.  He chose a god that he could understand.  Now is that really smart?  Is the only way that we can believe in God is to understand how He ticks?  I love what Daniel Webster wrote about that subject:

“If I might comprehend Jesus Christ, I could not believe in Him. He would be no greater than myself. Such is my consciousness of sin and inability that I must have a superhuman Savior.” –Daniel Webster, American statesman, lawyer, and orator (1782 – 1852)

So the truth is, we cannot figure God out.  We cannot fully understand Him.  We cannot find enough proof to overcome our natural resistance to our skepticism of a Resurrected Christ.  We can only believe Him and trust Him, and by doing so, take the road less traveled by the world.  But it is the road that we will one day know was the smartest decision that we ever made.  Choose wisely if you have not made this decision, for it is the most important decision you will ever make.