The Decision That Determines Your Destiny
Griffith Baptist Church – 3/9/08
A.M. Service
Text: Matthew 7:13-14
Key verse:
The Introduction
In God’s realm, all we are offered is two choices. What direction we choose will affect where we spend eternity.
Thomas Edison had a unique way of hiring engineers. He’d give the applicant a light bulb and ask, ’How much water will it hold?"
There were two ways to find the answer. The first choice was to use gauges to measure all the angles of the bulb. Then with the measurements in hand, the engineer would calculate the surface area. This approach could take as long as twenty minutes.
The second choice was to fill the bulb with water and then pour the contents into a measuring cup. Total elapsed time: about a minute.
Engineers who took the first route, and performed their measurements by book, were thanked politely for their time and sent on their way. If you took the second route, you heard Edison say, ’You’re hired."
David Armstrong, Managing by Storying Around, Doubleday, New York, NY; cited in The Competitive Advantage, P.O. Box 10091, Portland, OR 97210, Speaker’s Idea File
This is the invitation portion of Christ’s sermon (7:13-27)
In this, He begins with the presentation of two choices
o We are confronted with choices all our lives
o When it comes to decisions about most things, we may often have more than two choices (just look at a Bob Evans menu)
o With God, only two choices are afforded us. That is good.
o God uncomplicates things for us.
o Fewer choices should mean quicker decisions.
Transition Statement: Christ tells us that there are two contrasting ways or roads that are offered to humanity, and only two. The first choice He gives mankind is the road that leads to loss.
Body
1. The Road That Leads to Loss
A. The On-Ramp of Fateful Decision
i. A husband and wife, prior to marriage, decided that he’d make all the major decisions and she the minor ones. After 20 years of marriage, he was asked how this arrangement had worked. “Great! In all these years I’ve never had to make a major decision.”
ii. We are all called upon to make a spiritual choice
iii. Many see an easy path and a wide open entrance
iv. Without God guiding we are bound to get on the wrong road
B. The Interstate of False Faith
i. Zig Ziglar tells of a thief, a man named Emmanuel Nenger. The year is 1887. The scene is a small neighborhood grocery store. Mr. Nenger is buying some turnip greens. He gives the clerk a $20 bill. As the clerk begins to put the money in the cash drawer to give Mr. Nenger his change, she notices some of the ink from the $20 bill is coming off on her fingers which are damp from the turnip greens. She looks at Mr. Nenger, a man she has known for years. She looks at the smudged bill. This man is a trusted friend; she has known him all her life; he can’t be a counterfeiter. She gives Mr. Nenger his change, and he leaves the store.
But $20 is a lot of money in 1887, and eventually the clerk calls the police. They verify the bill as counterfeit and get a search warrant to look through Mr. Nenger’s home. In the attic they find where he is reproducing money. He is a master artist and is painting $20 bills with brushes and paint! But also in the attic they find three portraits Nenger had painted. They seized these and eventually sold them at auction for $16,000 (in 1887 currency, remember) or a little more than $5,000 per painting. The irony is that it took Nenger almost as long to paint a $20 bill as it did for him to paint a $5,000 portrait!
It’s true that Emanuel Nenger was a thief, but the person from whom he stole the most was himself. Signs of the Times, Oct. 1988, pp. 22-3
ii. Verse 13 says – many there be which go in thereat: (It is a busy place)
iii. There are Four (4) lanes on this highway:
iv. Lane One: Religion
a. Going to church
b. Baptism
c. Reading your Bible
d. Obeying the Ten Commandments
v. Lane Two: Good Works
a. Helping others
b. Giving to charity
c. Being kind
vi. Lane Three: Indecision
a. This is the play it safe lane
b. Noncommittal is really commitment to nothing
c. This is the “God is to good to allow anyone to go to hell” deception
d. You think, “If I lay back and do nothing, maybe my not worrying about it will make the necessity to make a decision go away.”
e. So, we fill our lives with other things (materialism, pleasure, and other distractions)
f. We all have to eventually give an account to God - Luke 12:16 - 16And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 17And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? 18And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 20But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? 21So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
vii. Lane Four: Rejection
a. Romans 1:28 – And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
b. Psalms 14:1 - The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
c. Some people make the deadly choice of not believing at all, not dealing with it.
C. The Destination of the Fatal Finish
i. A politician awoke after an operation and found the curtains in his hospital room drawn. “Why are the curtains closed?” he asked the nurse. “Is it night time already?”
“No,” the nurse replied, “But there’s a fire across the street, and we didn’t want you to wake and think the operation was unsuccessful.” Rotary Down Under, as quoted in Reader’s Digest
ii. HELL: The place we do not like to talk about nor the word we like to say.
iii. Descriptions of Hell:
a. Mark 9:43-44 – 43And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 44Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
b. Matthew 8:12 – . . . cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
c. Luke 16:23-24 – 23And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 24And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
d. Matthew 13:42 – And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
e. Matthew 25:41 – Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
f. Revelation 20:15 – 15And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
iv. The Bible describes no other destination than this for those who reject Christ.
v. It is a very real place with a very genuine and destructive reputation
Transition Statement: The good news is that a person does not have to take this crowded highway. You can take the road less traveled.
2. The Road That Leads to Life
A. The Gate of Salvation
i. Harry Ironside stated that salvation was like Noah inviting a pagan in his day to place his trust in God’s Word and come in to the ark. Some view salvation like Noah offering to put a peg on the outside of the ark. ’If you just hang on through the storm, you’ll be saved." Salvation is not dependent on our holding on to God, but on our being securely held by and in Christ. So Great Salvation, Charles Ryrie, Victor Books, 1989, pp. 137ff
ii. In verse 14, Christ said – narrow is the way
iii. In other words, Christ said we have a narrow-minded religion
a. John 6:35 – I am the bread of life:
b. John 8:12 – I am the light of the world
c. John 10:7 – I am the door of the sheep.
d. John 10:11 – I am the good shepherd
e. John 10:36 – I am the Son of God
f. John 11:25 – I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
g. John 14:6 – I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
h. I am THE, I am THE, I am THE . . .
i. Not, I am A, but I am THE.
iv. The Road that leads to life is not about religion, it is about a relationship with Jesus Christ.
v. He opens the gate.
vi. It is small and cannot be entered with all your baggage. You have to come to God believing in Jesus Christ alone
vii. It is not about what you have done in your life, it is about what He has done to save your life.
B. The Path of Peace
i. D. L. Moody said, “The promise is ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace who mind is stayed on Thee. (Is. 26:3)’ Now as long as our minds are stayed on our dear selves, we shall never have peace.”
ii. Peace, even in the middle of trials in this life - John 16:33 – These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
iii. Christ offers peace nothing else cannot give.
iv. It may not be a superhighway but it is a safer way.
C. The Sanctuary of Heaven
i. One day when George MacDonald, the great Scottish preacher and writer, was talking with his son, the conversation turned to heaven and the prophets’ version of the end of all things.
“It seems too good to be true,” the son said at one point.
A smile crossed MacDonald’s whiskered face. “Nay,” he replied, “It is just so good it must be true!” Disappointment With God, PhilipYancey, Zondervan, p. 97
ii. How often do you think of heaven?
iii. A little girl was taking an evening walk with her father. Wonderingly, she looked up at the stars and exclaimed; “Oh, Daddy, if the wrong side of heaven is so beautiful, what must the right side be!” Charles L. Allen in Home Fires
iv. Heaven is more beautiful than we can imagine, but the most important aspect of heaven is not palaces but a presence, God Himself.
v. Eternity with God, an absence of sin, no more hurt and disappointment, no more disillusionment, Jesus Christ present, our loved ones waiting for us, and salvation complete. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
vi. None of this is possible without making the right choice, however.
Transition Statement: Jesus said there are two and only two ways. The way to destruction or the way to life. There is not a third option in the mind of God.
Concluding Statement: C.S. Lewis wisely said - When the author walks onto the stage, the play is over. God is going to invade, all right; but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else comes crashing in? This time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. That will not be the time for choosing; It will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. - C.S. Lewis
Conclusion:
What side have you chosen?
Christian, how long will you hesitate to warn others about the path they are on? What will it take for you to be a witness for Christ? Has the reality of Hell really hit you?
-Plea to the non-Christian-
