Some Assembly Required

Three of the most dreaded words I know in the English language – Some Assembly Required.

They make it seem so innocent, but we all know what it really means: “Advanced degree in engineering.” That’s what they should put on the side of the box.  It would be more accurate.  One time, we bought our oldest daughter, Eve a new bicycle.  I was in the store and saw one I thought would be great for her, so I found a salesperson and asked them to get one for me from the back.  He asked if I wanted them to put it together for an extra $10 bucks.  I smiled politely and said, “No thanks,” but inside I was laughing.  I mean, seriously.  Pay an extra $10 to have someone put together a bicycle?  Come on!  So, I took the new bike home and started to put it together.  Cassie came in and asked why I didn’t just have the guy put it together for us, and I laughed and said, “Honey.  I’m not going to waste $10 bucks to have someone do something I can do for free.  I used to do this all the time when I was in high school.”  You know, high school at the time was 25 years in the past.  Bicycles have changed slightly.  But I was confident!  After about 5 hours, I wheeled the bicycle out and let Eve try it.  But darn it if there weren’t a couple of extra pieces.  Cassie asked me, “How come there’s extra pieces?”  And I told her as a good husband ought to, “Oh, they always do that.  They put extra pieces in.”  Cassie just looked at me as if to say, “You know, this isn’t a LEGO set.”  I’ll tell you; I should’ve paid the $10 bucks.  Not just to save me 5 hours of work, but I never did put it together right.  Wouldn’t it be great if   Pay someone $10 bucks and have your problems solved.  But life isn’t like that.  We make choices every day on how to live our lives.  Sometimes we build the bike correctly.  Sometimes…we put the brake assembly on wrong.   The key is to choose the right set of directions for your life.  Because no matter how hard you try to build that bicycle, if you have directions for an Easy Bake Oven, you’re going to have an awfully hard time.

But God gives us the instructions to a better life.

Through his Word, through the life of Jesus, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit – it’s all there if we simply follow him.  Because when we listen to God, we make the kind of choices that will help us to have the life he wants for us.  BUT if we ignore his instructions or put OTHER things ABOVE God (money, status, famous people), or think we can do it on our own, that’s when we get into trouble.   Because we remove God from the process.  You can’t make mashed potatoes without potatoes.  You can’t make omelettes without eggs.  You can’t have the life God wants for you, if you don’t include God in that life. That’s why God warns us against living our lives according to things like horoscopes, witchcraft, and mediums.  Not because these things are evil, but because when we put our faith in things other than God, we start living a life separated from God and we become something other than what God wants us to be.  And everyday, everyday when you wake up, you make that choice on how you are going to live your life just as surely as you choose what clothes to wear and food you’re going to eat, except the consequences can be much bigger.

Our reading this morning comes from the book of Joshua, Chapter 24.

In this chapter, God is speaking through Joshua.  Joshua’s lived a long and fruitful life and has seen his people finally at peace.  There are no enemies to fight, and they live in the land that God had promised them so long ago.  So, Joshua is getting ready to die.  He knows it’s his time and has one last message from God.  Joshua gathers all the people together at Shechem and begins to tell them what God has said. 

 2 Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.

And from there, he gives the people a mini biography of God.  He tells them of all the times God has been there for them.  When they cried out in Egypt, when they were conquered by the Amorites, when he saved them from Balak, and on and on.  And each time, God was there.  God has always been there.  It was the people who turned on God.  And once again, God has saved them and given them this land.  And so now, Joshua makes this one last proclamation.   

¹⁴ “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. ¹⁵ But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served 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.”

Who do you serve?

Because it IS a choice.  And it is a choice we make everyday.  You might be thinking you already follow God, but how many times do we SAY we follow God, but act as if we don’t. I’m sure almost all of us have been there at one time or another.  I know I have.  I want to follow God each and every day, but I know I’ve made my share of mistakes.  I know I haven’t always done what he wanted and I’ve been selfish in my actions.  But thankfully, we follow a God who loves us and forgives us for our mistakes.  That’s not what gets us in trouble.  Making mistakes is part of being human.  The trouble begins when they stop being mistakes.  When we make the conscious choice to put the things of this world before God, that’s when we dishonor all that God has done for us.  Then we become as God said through Isaiah, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13) Are you following the instructions God has for your life?

It’s funny sometimes how so little has changed.

From the time of the early writers of the Old Testament to today, we still have many of the same problems.  Moses uses the examples of horoscopes and witchcraft and mediums as things that might steer us away from God, and we still have those today.  Now we also have the internet and YouTubers and TikTok superstars to go along with that.  People on the app formerly known as Twitter who spout lies and half-truths, and millions follow them!  Sometimes followers of Christ go too far and condemn all of those things as if they are the cause of evil, but they are not.  When I was growing up, it was Dungeons and Dragons that got a bad rap.  People were saying it was the “work of the devil.”  As a Dungeon Master myself, I was offended by that and those attitudes turn people away from faith.  As I got older it became things like Magic the Gathering (something I also enjoy) and then it became Harry Potter.  None of those things are evil or bad and there are plenty of good people (and good Christians) who enjoy those things.  It’s when those things dominate your life to the point where they push out what’s important – like God and family and friends – that’s when it becomes dangerous.  Again, it’s not about the things in our life, but about the choices we make.  And if you follow God’s call on your life, you don’t have to worry about it because it’s all there in the instructions.

When I was growing up, my family and I often went up to the Mammoth Mountain area to vacation.

We’d stay up at June Lake and go fishing every day.  We’d get up early, go out to the lake and rent a motorboat for the day and go out onto the water.  Those were awesome times.  I loved fishing with my dad.  It would be so much fun.  We’d take what we caught and bring it back to the cabin for dinner that night, or we’d freeze it and bring it back with us.  We always had a good time.  Except once.  The mosquitoes were biting pretty bad and I’m somewhat allergic to mosquito bites.  Not horribly allergic, but they would swell up on me when I got bitten and I’d have these huge red welts on my skin.  The next day, my dad brought some mosquito repellant out with us.  Well, on the way to where my dad wanted to fish, I was reading the back of the can and it said, “WARNING!” in BIG capital letters, “WARNING!  Do not use this product on your face or mouth.”  When we got to our fishing spot, my dad pulled out the can, and told me to stand up in the boat and he began spraying my clothes all over.  Then he said, “Close your eyes” and he held up the can toward my face!  I looked at him with alarm and said, “Dad, it says on the can not to use it on your face.”  And my mom said, “Kensuke, maybe you shouldn’t spray it on his face.”  And there I am nodding my head.  And my dad said, “I know what I’m doing.  Just close your eyes.  They don’t really mean it when they say that.”  So, I closed my eyes, and no sooner did that spray hit my face, I started shouting out loud, “My eyes!  My eyes!”  I dropped to the floor of the boat, reached my hands over the side while my dad is holding on to my jacket to keep me from going over, and I’m throwing water into my face, trying like mad to get rid of the stuff.  Needless to say, we didn’t catch any fish from THAT spot, and I spent most of that morning looking at my mom and saying, “Am I going blind?  Hold up your fingers.”  All because my dad didn’t follow directions.  He had the can.  The directions were clear.  But he chose to ignore them.  We do that to God sometimes, too.  We have the directions, but we don’t follow them.  If you’ve never made the choice to really follow a Christ-like life, I want to challenge you to give it a try.  To test God in this and see how your life could be better.  If you already follow God, challenge yourself this week to take a look and see where you might not be doing as God would want you to do, and work on that.  Because the truth is, God wants you to have a better life.  You just have to choose to do so.