Good vs. Evil…It’s a Choice

It’s Up to You to Choose Wisely

Reading the book of Psalms is like riding an emotional roller coaster. One-minute things are going great. The writer is on top of the world. The next thing you know they are wallowing in the mud with everything going wrong.

This shouldn’t surprise us. The theme throughout the Bible is good vs. evil starting in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve could choose to eat the fruit or not…they didn’t choose wisely. Moses laid out the choice of good and evil.

This is not a choice of being righteous or a sinner.

It’s a choice of turning our face or our back to God.

We’re starting through the book of Psalms over the next several weeks. The Psalms are big enough that we aren’t planning to do all of them at this point. But, we’ll start at the beginning.

The first chapter of Psalms addresses both things. It tells us what to expect if we do good or what will happen when we do evil.

Great blessings belong to those
    who don’t listen to evil advice,
who don’t live like sinners,
    and who don’t join those who make fun of God.[a]
Instead, they love the Lord’s teachings
    and think about them day and night.
So they grow strong,
    like a tree planted by a stream—
a tree that produces fruit when it should
    and has leaves that never fall.
Everything they do is successful.

But the wicked are not like that.
    They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
When the time for judgment comes, the wicked will be found guilty.
    Sinners have no place among those who do what is right.
The Lord shows his people how to live,
    but the wicked have lost their way.

If we choose good, we’re like a tree planted by a stream. We will produce good fruit and be successful. (verse 3)

“The gate to life is narrow. The path to destruction is wide and leads to death.”

Matthew 7:13-14

Just because the gate to life is narrow doesn’t mean it’s hard…it’s narrow because it’s just one thing. The fact that it’s narrow feels restrictive. That’s why a lot of people chose the wide path. It feels more freeing.

This wide path distracts us from God. The noisy world pulls us in all kinds of different directions. It’s up to us to choose which path we’re going to follow.

Here are four things that the world has taught us that we can choose to unlearn:

  1. Taking bad advice – Adam and Eve took bad advice from the snake. They ate from the tree of good and evil and we know how that turned out. The world is full of snakes giving us bad advice. We can choose to take their advice or not.
  2. Attraction to the wrong path – These paths are wide and attractive. They’re easy to go down but lead to cliffs. We need to be aware of what wrong paths we’re being attracted to and avoid them.
  3. Sinful behaviors – These can be seemingly small things that won’t do that much harm. But they are sneaky. It’s not that big of a deal if I do this little thing. That food was really good…I think I’ll have seconds. There’s a price to pay.
  4. Cynicism – This attitude of general distrust of others leads to a lack of faith and hope. With all the negativity and pessimism out there, it’s easy to be cynical. This causes chaos and division…just what Satan wants. It makes us ineffective.

We can choose which path we’re going to travel…the good or the evil. We have control over our behaviors.

We can choose to turn our face or our back toward God.

Choose wisely.

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