The Road Not Taken

11/12/23

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Sermon Transcript

Tonight’s sermon did not begin its life as a sermon. Instead, it began its life as a commencement address. About 10 years ago, I was asked to give a commencement address to the graduates and their families at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama, and I went and gave a speech. And I remember thinking at the time, “That would probably make a pretty good sermon.” So I guess we’ll all find out tonight.

And I know what you’re thinking already. Graduation speech, those are usually short. I’ve had 10 years to add to that speech. I remember in writing that commencement address, I struggled quite a bit about what to say. I’d heard my share of them, but I’d never given one. And so I was wondering, what should I talk about? You know, should I talk about the exciting world of electrical engineering or the exciting world of patent law? I ruled those out pretty fast. I didn’t want them falling asleep and missing out on their diploma.

So, I thought, well, maybe I should just give them some wise principles for life. You know, some of those Benjamin Franklin platitudes that are so popular during the graduation period, you know, like never eat more than you can lift or they can’t chase you if you don’t run. That was my favorite in junior high school. If the enemy is in range, so are you. But none of those ideas seem quite right to me, so I struggled with what to talk about. You know, what should I choose? How should I decide? And with those questions, I found my topic and I decided to talk about decisions, making decisions. Because when people graduate, that’s a time to start making decisions and they were going to be making a lot of them.

So, you know, much of our life depends upon the decisions we make now and the decisions we made in the past, the choices we make now, the choices we made in the past. So how should we choose? You know, what should we choose? What should be the basis for our choice and our decisions? And I suspect there are maybe some here today who would like to maybe go back to some graduation and maybe make some different decisions along the way. And so that may be the case, but of course it’s never too late to start making good decisions. And so perhaps this topic could be useful not just to new graduates, but maybe it could be useful to everybody because we all make decisions. We all make choices.

In fact, we hear a lot today about freedom of choice. And it’s true that God has given us free will. That is a gift from God. God has given us the power to choose. You know there’s a kind of a movement in science today to tell us that free will is just a myth, that we don’t have free will. We may think we have free will, but we don’t really have free will. They’re writing books on that and articles and getting on the news and telling us that. That’s a lie, 'cause the Bible tells us we do have free will. We can choose. And in fact, God has always commanded his people to choose.

First Kings 18:21, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, follow him.” Then the one that was read tonight, Joshua 24:15, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” But while we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Generally, those consequences are chosen for us after we’ve made our choice. A true mark of wisdom is the ability to anticipate those consequences. Our God-given right to choose is a God-given responsibility to choose wisely.

Now, you often hear of the pathway of life, but for so many, there is no pathway. They’re just in a dark forest with countless paths leading off in countless directions. In fact, at no time in history, we had more choices than we do right now. Where to go, what to do, how to do it. And with more choices, the more difficult it becomes to choose, to make a decision. We can do what we want, we can do where we want it, we can do with whom we want, but what should we choose to do? What should we choose not to do?

Some decisions are big and some decisions are small. But you know, at the time, it’s sometimes very hard to tell which is which, isn’t it? I think if we looked at our own lives, we could probably testify that there are some decisions in our past that looked so small at the time that were in reality life-changing. And that uncertainty makes it all the more important that we have some basis for those decisions in our lives, some basis for what we choose.

And there are a lot we could choose from. We could just decide to do what everyone else is doing. You’ve heard that one, right? You know, someone, if everyone else chose to walk off a cliff, then would you walk off a cliff? But you know, everyone else wears clothes and I wear clothes, so sometimes it works. You know, we could decide to do what feels right or what feels good. That’s the philosophy of, you know, Jiminy Cricket, “Let your conscience be your guide.” Again, sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t work. We could just decide to do nothing. And there are a lot of people on that path today. The world is full of people just can’t make up their mind about anything.

Winston Churchill described such people decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute and adamant for drift. And for that drifting group, nothing is deliberate. Life is just a game of pinball. They just bounce around from one thing to another, back and forth, back and forth, and suddenly they miss the paddle, the chute opens and that’s the end of it all. They don’t really care what path they’re on 'cause they don’t care where they’re going. They live for the moment. So, should we make our decisions based on one of those approaches, or should we keep looking? I think we should keep looking.

Now, in preparing these graduation remarks that I gave a decade ago, there’s one rule that I learned about giving a graduation commencement address, one inviolate rule, and that is you absolutely have to read “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Fossey. So I went and looked up that poem, “The Road Not Taken.” That poem is about making choices, which seemed to fit with what I was gonna talk about. It ends with a very memorable line, “Two roads diverge in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” And I can tell you that poem has no doubt been quoted countless times before countless graduates, all dressed exactly alike, to tell them that individuality is the key to success.

But when you read the entire poem, I think what you find is that that’s not the message at all of that poem. It’s got a very different message than that. The point begins with a description of these two roads that diverge in a yellow wood. And what the poet tells us is that they looked about the same. If one really was less traveled, it was hardly noticeable as he stood there looking at the two roads. It’s many years later, the poet says, ages and ages hence, he says, that he concludes that one of those roads must have been less travel. And he reaches that conclusion, the poem tells us, with a sigh. I guess one of them must have been less travel, he says. There really was, he concludes, some basis, some basis for that decision he made so long ago, that decision that seemingly had such a big difference in his life. Surely the course of his life had not been determined by some random turn in the woods long ago. Or had it.

When you read that poem, at least when I read the poem, what I see is not individualism. What I see is regret, regret. After all, the title of the poem is not the less traveled road or the road taken. The title of the poem is the road not taken. What would things have been like if he’d taken that other road so long ago? Seems to have been made the choice almost randomly. I think Yogi Berra maybe said it best. He said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” And we all see many forks in the road. And we’re often called to make a decision. Do I go left? Do I go right? Do I turn around and go back? Maybe I just stand here wondering if I should go left or right or turn around and go back. What do I do? We ask questions like that many times. Absent guidance, absent guidance, like the poet, we may find ourselves one day filled with regret about some decision we made, filled with regret about the seeming randomness of our life.

When we come to one of those forks in the road, how can we choose the correct path? What we need are road signs. And that’s what I want us to look at tonight. Three road signs that will help us on that road, help us on that path. Three guideposts that will help us make the decisions in our lives as we travel down that road, three choices that we’re gonna face, not once, but many times in our lives.

Truth vs. Desire

And the first road sign presents us with a choice, a choice between truth and desire. There are ultimately only two philosophies in life. Now, you may have wished you’d heard this before you suffered through a philosophy course in college, at the end of it all, there are only two, there are only two, a philosophy that conforms desire to the truth or a philosophy that conforms truth to desire, one or the other. As Christians, we know that desire must be in submission to truth. But the worldly reality is that truth and desire are on a collision course. And what happens when that collision occurs? Do we conform our desire to the truth or do we twist the truth to conform it to what we want to do?

That conflict between truth and desire is an ancient conflict. Think about Eve, Genesis 3, starting in verse 3. “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God had said,” there’s our truth. God has said, “You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it lest ye die.” And the serpent said to the woman, “You shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, She took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave to her husband and he did eat.

Right there in Genesis 3, truth, desire. Eve knew the truth, but Eve was standing before a tree to be desired. And Eve made a decision, she ate the fruit. And why did she do that? Because she believed the serpent and was deceived. Because she was willing to twist the truth. Right along with Satan, if it meant she could eat of the desired fruit. When faced with a conflict between truth and desire, Eve chose desire, and she twisted her view of the truth to match that desire. How many times in history has that been repeated?

Jesus faced that same choice in his first temptation in the wilderness. Matthew 4, verse 3. “And when the tempter came to him, he said, ‘If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread.’” There’s the desire. But he answered and said, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that come and proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” In verse 3, we see desire. In verse 4, we see truth. Jesus chose truth over desire, as Jesus always did, of course. And Jesus left us that example to follow. And the next time we are tempted by the way of desire, by the path of desire, by the road of desire, let’s follow the example of Christ and quote the Bible. That’s how Christ overcame temptation. That’s how we should overcome temptation. And there’s no better way than that to clobber desire with the truth.

Paul was talking about that choice when he said that those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and what? Desires. Passions and desires, Galatians 5:24. That verse is describing this conflict we’re talking about, the conflict between truth and desire. And that verse tells us the outcome of that for a Christian. When Jesus calls a man, he bids him to come and die. We choose truth and we crucify our passions and our desires. Yes, our culture has clearly gone the other way. But we must judge our culture by the Word of God. We must never bend the Bible to conform it to our culture. Whether the issue is gender, or abortion, or marriage, or whatever it is, the answer is the same. “Thy word is truth.” John 17:17. We must make our decisions about those issues and all other issues according to the truth of God’s word.

The question is never what I want the truth to be. That’s just irrelevant. The question it is always the same question Pilate asked. “What is truth?” John 18:38. Now Pilate did not hang around long enough to hear the answer, but we know the answer. We have the truth, God’s word. And that truth sets us free, John 8:32. And the answer to that question, what is truth, does not depend in any way on my desire. It does not depend in any way on what I want the answer to be. When we see truth and desire on that road sign, let’s always choose the way of truth. It may not be a pleasant way, it may not be the easy way, it may not be the popular way, but it’s always the right way.

One vs. Many

The second road sign presents us with a choice between one and many, one and many. I told those graduates that if I could leave them with one piece of career advice, it would be this, live a focused life in an unfocused world and you will succeed. You know, I’ve never heard any commencement speaker come out on the platform and tell all the graduates to go out in the world and, you know, flitter away their lives on trivialities. And yet, how many of them do just that?

Our focus, our focus is a laser beam that cuts through the mediocrity and the superficiality that surrounds us. And that’s not just a message to graduates looking for career advice. That’s a message to everybody. God demands our focus. You know, when we look at those who have accomplished much in this world, one trait we’re always gonna see is focus. You know, maybe they haven’t even accomplished anything that’s good, but they’re still gonna be focused on what they’re doing.

You know, as a patent attorney, I have a special appreciation for one of this country’s greatest inventors, Thomas Edison. Over his career, he filed 1,700 patents in the US and 1,200 foreign patents. And one year alone, at the peak of his career, he filed 100 successful patent applications. You know, you may call him a great inventor. I’d call him a dream client. A reporter once camped outside his laboratory, Edison’s laboratory, for three weeks, hoping to get an interview. He just wanted to interview him. Camped out for three weeks. When he finally met Edison, he asked Edison the secret of his success, and here’s what Edison said. “The secret to success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary. You do something all day long, don’t you? Everybody does. If you get up at 7 a.m. and go to bed at 11 p.m., you’ve put in 16 good hours, and it’s certain with most men that you’ve been doing something all that time. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things, and I do it about one,” Edison said. If they took the time to question and applied it in one direction to one object, they would succeed. Thomas Edison understood the power of focus.

Focus is important, but focus on what? Focus may give us a career boost, but if we’re focused on the wrong thing, it’s not going to do us any good. In fact, it’s going to do us a great deal of harm. There’s a word for focus apart from God. And that word is idolatry. That’s what an idol is. Something I’m focused on is not God. Something I spend all my time thinking about that’s not God. Something I direct all my energy to is not God. That’s an idol. We must not focus on idols. We must focus on God.

The apostle Paul certainly understood the power of focus. Philippians 3, starting in verse 13. “But one thing I do, one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, one thing I do. You know, Paul could have been distracted by many things. He could have been distracted by regrets over his former life and that all he had done to harm the church. Paul could have been distracted by the persecutions he’s facing and was going to face. Paul could have been distracted by the opposition and the slander of his opponents. And yet Paul was not distracted. He remained focused, not on many things, but on one thing. “One thing I do,” he said. Paul had a goal. Paul was focused on that goal. A Christian life is a focused life.

Focus is vital and yet nothing is more difficult today. Our buzzing phones and our blaring TVs and our endless distractions. Focus prevents us from being sidetracked by that noise. Focus keeps us on track when every pathway seems to be leading off in a different direction. Focus keeps us on the one pathway leading toward our goal. And our focus must be on God. Well, how do we do that? We focus on God the Father when we focus on God the Son. John 14:9, Jesus said, “Who has seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”

We focus on God when we focus on the Word of God. We should have a thirst for the Word of God. You know, the best way to obtain and maintain spiritual focus is to read and study the Word of God every day. That’s what we stay focused on. That focuses our mind and our intellect and our thoughts and our actions, being immersed in the Word of God. If we’re not spending time every day studying God’s Word, then is there any surprise that we lack spiritual focus?

We focus on God when we spend time in prayer with God. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing. How can we pray without ceasing if we’re not constantly focused on God, the ways of God, the people of God, things of God, the word of God. Prayer is crucial to maintaining that focus. We’re not focused on God if we’re not praying to God as we should. And the wonderful promise to us, the wonderful promise to us is that if we focus on Jesus, we will become more like him. 2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.” And does that surprise anyone? Does that really surprise anyone that we become like that which we focus on?

In Luke 14, starting in verse 15, we find an entire parable devoted to the topic of spiritual focus. In that parable, God gives a feast and he invites everybody to come, Yet he hears nothing but excuses. One has bought property and he can’t come to the feast. One has bought oxen and he can’t come to the feast. One of them got married and he can’t come to the feast. They’re just too busy for God. Are we too busy for God? We sing a song entitled, “Jesus Calls Us.” Beautiful song. Jesus calls us for the tumult of our life’s wild restless sea Day by day his sweet voice sound of saying Christian follow me. When Jesus calls me does he get a busy signal? Do we put the author of eternal life on hold while we attend to other matters? Must never be true for a Christian.

Spiritual focus is a primary theme in the book of James and again that shouldn’t surprise us at all. James grew up with Christ. He witnessed that focus. And James tells us in James 4, verse 8, “Draw nigh to God he will draw nigh to you purify your heart she double-minded.” Notice that James links our purity of heart with our spiritual focus. Those who choose the many over the one are double-minded. They have two masters, and those who are double-minded are not pure of heart, James tells us. But didn’t Jesus tell us the same thing? Matthew 5:8. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” “Blessed are those who focus on God for they shall see Him” could be a paraphrase. The message is simple. We see what we focus on. What are we looking at?

Seen vs. Unseen

And that brings us to our final road sign. The third road sign presents us with a choice between the seen and the unseen. We just talked about the power of focus. And as we said, focus by itself is not a virtue. You could be the most focused person on planet earth, but it’s not gonna do you any good if you’re focused on the wrong thing. So, on what should we focus? What should we look at? God answers that question with a wonderful paradox. We should look at what we can’t see. We should focus on the unseen.

You know, we live in a secular world that completely rejects the unseen. Most people will focus on the scene because they think that’s all there is. And that’s not just a modern phenomenon. Why was the rich fool in Luke 12 a fool? Because he was focused on just what he could see and nothing else. And why was Moses a pillar of the faith? Which Hebrews 11, verse 1 tells us the evidence of what? Things not seen. Why was Moses a pillar of the faith?

Hebrews 11, starting in verse 24, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not afraid of the anger of the king. Why? For he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” Moses focused on the unseen. Moses was a pillar of the faith because he looked to that unseen reward that he could see with the eyes of faith and did not look at the riches of Egypt that he could see with his physical eye.

Again, it’s the Apostle Paul who perfectly frames the issue. 2 Corinthians 4:18, “We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, the things which are not seen are eternal.” Yes, we look at things that are not seen. That’s what Paul tells us. And Paul tells us that if we’re trusting in the things that are seen, then we’re trusting in something that’s gonna go away. It’s not permanent. It’s not, won’t be here forever. That trust is misplaced.

What do we see when we look at the things that are not seen? What do we see with the eyes of faith? Well, we see the devastating impact that our proclamation of the gospel has on Satan, Luke 10:18. We see the great heavenly celebrations that occur when a sinner repents, Luke 15, verse 7. We see what was happening behind the scenes when a baby was born in a manger. Revelation chapter 12. We see that those who are with us are more than those who are with them. 2 Kings 6:16. And we see a great unseen world that is very interested in the church and what the church is doing on this earth. Ephesians 3, starting in verse 8. “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” The world may ignore the unseen, but believe me, the unseen is not ignoring this world. And someday the unseen will be all that remains for anybody to see. Those things that seem so permanent in this world today will have all passed away because they’re all temporary.

In John 9:39, Jesus said, “For judgment I am coming to this world,” why? “That they would see not might see.” We even sing about it. I once was lost, now I’m saved. Was blind, now I see. To live with God in the next world, we must look to God in this world. Helen Keller once said, “It gives me a deep, comforting sense that things seen are temporary and things unseen are eternal.” She also said, “To be blind is bad, but worse is to have eyes and not see.” That is true of so many. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, “In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. They have eyes they cannot see.” They have been blinded by the God of this world, by Satan. Let’s not be like them. Let’s choose the unseen. Let’s choose the permanent.

Conclusion

So we’ve looked at three road signs tonight. Three choices we face every single day. Truth versus desire. One versus many. Unseen versus the seen. Christians must choose truth over desire. We must choose the one over the many, and we must choose the unseen over the seen.

You know, at some point in our lives, we’re all going to look up and wonder where we’re headed in our life. The answer to that question is simple. If you wanna know where you’re headed, look at the road you’re on, and look at the direction that you’re traveling in on that road. You know, no one who gets on Interstate 10 and heads West should be surprised when they end up in San Antonio. And yet, how many people react with such great surprise when they reach the destination to which their choices and their decisions have been leading them their entire life. How did I get here, they say. Well, what road had you been on your whole life? Where were you headed your whole life?

The key to reaching the right destination is to get on the right road and to stay on that right road and move in the right direction until you reach your goal. For a Christian, that goal is entrance into heaven when this life is over. And for a Christian, that road is the narrow way that leads to life eternal, Matthew 7:14. And the people on that narrow road, the people on that narrow road, they choose truth over They choose the one over the many. They choose the unseen over the seen. They look for those road signs, and then they choose their path with deliberation and wisdom from the word of God.

Well, is that a popular path? No, and Jesus tells us that also. Again, Matthew 7:14, few there be that find it. Not a popular path, but it’s the path that leads to God, the only path that leads to God. It is the path we must follow. Luke 9:23, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself daily and take up his cross and follow me.”

You know, the first time I gave this talk, those listening came forward and received a diploma. Tonight you can come forward and receive something infinitely more valuable than that. You can put on Christ in baptism and receive the free gift of eternal life. You know, this lesson reminds me of one of my favorite songs. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. turning back. Had you decided to follow Jesus, you will never make a more important decision than that one. We can help in any way tonight. Please come while we stand and while we sing.