Making Wise Decisions
Matthew 7:13-27

A store that sells new husbands has opened in New York City where a woman can go in and choose a husband. This is fictitious, by the way. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. You may visit the store only once. There are five floors and the value may increase as the shopper ascends from one floor to the next. The shopper may choose any item from that particular floor or they may choose to go up to the next floor, but once you go up you may not go back down.

A curious single woman enters and reads the sign hanging above floor number one. Floor one, these men have jobs. She is intrigued but continues to the next floor. Floor two, these men have jobs and love kids. Oh, that's nice, she thinks, but I want more. So, she continues up to the next floor. Floor three, these men have jobs, love kids and are extremely good looking. Wow, she thinks, but she feels compelled to move on. Floor four, these men have jobs, they love kids. They're drop dead gorgeous, and they help with housework. Oh, mercy me, she says, I can hardly stand it. She is tempted to stay. She doesn't know what to do. Finally, her curiosity gets to her. After a long period of time of wondering, she finally goes up to the final level, the fifth floor. With excitement, as she reaches the floor, she immediately sees an enormous sign that says, you are visitor number 31,456,012. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.

Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

As Robert Frost wrote, “two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry, I could not travel both. And being one traveler alone, I stood and looked down as far as I could.” At the end, he says, “two roads diverged in a wood. And I took the one less traveled by. That has made all the difference.”

Looking that up, and of course, that was only just a snippet of the beginning and the end of that poem. It's a lengthy poem. He wrote that for a friend who was very indecisive in his life. That poem was actually written as a joke, if you look that up. It says it was kind of a humorous little joke to his friend who could never make up his mind.

Today, we're looking at facing life's daily questions. Throughout the Bible, we have numerous examples of choices made by a variety of individuals we think about some are good, as we read through the Bible. Some choices were good. Some were not so good. Some led to life. Some led to death.

The Book of Proverbs is almost entirely devoted to the comparison between the wise person and the foolish person.

Take Moses as an example. Deuteronomy 30:19-20. “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.”

That was Moses. We see in Joshua 24 verses we're very familiar with verses 14 and 15. This is Joshua speaking.

Now therefore, fear the Lord. Serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose this day for yourselves whom you shall serve this day. So choose you.

He's challenging them.

Choose who you will serve this day, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you currently dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Every day, we're faced with decisions. We will be wise, or as the Bible says, we will be foolish in the decisions we make. The little funny story I tried to put at the beginning. You see, it was rather foolish to try to keep thinking you wanted more and more, but that's what human society does.

Jesus gives us three important questions to ask ourselves to ensure that we are following the way of the wise and not the way of the foolish.

I. WHICH PATH ARE YOU TRAVELING ON?
Question number one, which path are you traveling on? You need to know where you're going. Do you ever have that? Do you ever have that feeling that, “Oh man, I'm on vacation. I'm making great time, but I'm not quite sure where we're at. I'm not sure if I'm on the right path or not.”

Matthew 7, Jesus speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:13-14, “Jesus says, enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction. And there are many who go in by it, because narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way which leads to life. And there are few that find it.”

The foolish person says, “Hey, there are no boundaries. There's nothing keeping me back. I can do what I want.” The world thinks total freedom with no restrictions is the goal that we should live by.

Proverbs 14:12 tells us, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”

We can look in Proverbs 3:5-6 that tells us, “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.”

We compare these two ways—the broad way. The broad way is kind of like the interstate, the international highway. You can travel very fast. You can get cruising. When I travel on the PA Turnpike I have a moral obligation to travel the speed limit. As a Christian person, you think that limit's there for a reason. Many times though, I find that the flow of traffic is so fast that it's almost like you get caught in the current of the flow.

You think about, where's everybody going? You can travel fast, but where are you headed? You can get enticed by the many billboards along the way. You can quickly exit the highway, and at various points, as you drive along, you can quickly exit, you can partake in whatever pleasure without accountability, and get right back on the highway again.

That's what Jesus is talking about. Reminds me of that little phrase, your mother always asks you or somebody asks you, if people, if everybody else jumped off the bridge, would you jump too? In life, that's what it seems like, right? I remember as a teacher, whenever I asked a student, why they did it, well, everybody else is doing it. How many times do you hear that? That's what Jesus is referring to as the broad way everyone else is doing it, that doesn't make it right.

Then He speaks of the narrow road. It's more like that winding rural road. It's not easy to find, and therefore, it's not easy to get at. You have to be careful, and you have to look for it. I'm sure we've all done that on the GPS. You're driving along, and all of a sudden, it says, turn here, and you think, where? I mean, this is just a tiny road, are you kidding me? You have to be careful. You have to know that it's there, and you have to look for it. It's very restrictive.

The word translated narrow is from the Greek word, and from my understanding, that Greek word is tribulation, which usually means persecution, which tells us that we have to leave our baggage behind. The wise person realizes that the way to life is a very narrow way, as it's taught in the Bible.

John 14:6, Jesus says to him, what does Jesus say? I'm sure we're all familiar with this.

John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.”

We go to 1^st Timothy 2:5, “for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

We're pursuing that narrow path. Pursuing it is an ongoing decision. We enter the narrow way when we first decide to follow Jesus, but we must continue daily to make wise decisions in order to stay on that. You ask for directions.

Everybody wants you to take the road, the big road. Oh yeah, I know where that goes. No, we don't wanna do that. We gotta stay focused on taking the narrow road. To head on the wide pathway to hell requires you to do absolutely nothing…nothing in your life. I don't want to just sit and do nothing. Well, in the world, that's all you really have to do to head on that wide path. Simply follow the crowd.

The second question Jesus asks us.

The first question, what path are we on? How do we know which path?

II. WHO ARE YOU LISTENING TO?
The second question He gives us to ask ourselves is, who are you listening to?

Matthew 7:15-22. “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly, they are ferocious wolves.
By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit, you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name or in your name drive out demons or perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you.” Depart or away from me, you evildoers. Depart from me, you that work iniquity.

Jesus is condemning more than just false teaching. He is discouraging false behavior, impure motives, and inconsistent actions. Jesus points to the fruit as the essential method of discerning what is false and what is true.

In Israel, the buckthorn plant, from what I understand, produced little black berries that could initially be mistaken for grapes. There was also a thistle that produced a flower similar to the fig. So the idea of carefully examining the fruit of the plant, the plant that they were looking at, was a familiar one to those that were listening to Jesus.

How do we tell a false teacher from a true one? We should pay attention to the content of their teaching, to their motives. Is it true fruit from God's word or is it man-centered, appealing to the ears that want to be tickled?

III. WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING ON?
The third question that we ask ourselves. Jesus gives us a question of what are we building on? What is the foundation? Robert's very familiar with that as he examines buildings and whatever. What is the foundation it is built on?

Matthew 7, verses 24, 25, 26, and 27. Jesus, again, speaking in the Sermon on the Mount. “Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them is likened to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rains descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rains descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. Great was the fall.”

When we were kids, we used to sing that. The wise man built his, the foolish man. And we couldn't wait to get to the end. You see the kids getting faster and faster. And that house went SPLAT! Sorry. We think about that and the excitement we had.

My wife and I just celebrated our anniversary, we went down to Hilton Head Island. We just recently started to do that to celebrate. It was one year from my heart surgery and our anniversary. But one of the things, it's called, if you ever go to the water, we love to see the water come in, but how dangerous it is. In the morning, early morning, you see the wave way out, and then you can see them start to come in.

Kids, if you don't pay attention, you know, the kids start putting their sandcastles, they start making the sandcastles and so on. One time when we were real young, we put our blanket and our, you know, put everything out, our chairs and everything all out. We wondered why everybody was way behind us. We thought, well, they don't want to enjoy the ocean? Yeah, and then you go up for lunch and you come back and you understand why. You're flooded, you know, everything's, the water comes in and then that's what I picture what Jesus is saying.

That sand, it's beautiful, but that water comes in and your sandcastles and so on just get washed away. There isn't substance to it. Whereas the rocks and so on, that foundation, what foundation are we building on? Jesus continues through the Sermon on the Mount to get people to think long-term.

Here's how Paul puts it in Galatians 6:7-8. Paul says, “do not be deceived. God is not mocked.”

You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people or whatever, but you can't fool Mom. God is really that way.

Paul says, do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that also he shall reap. For whoever sows to his flesh will reap flesh and that corruption. But whoever sows to the Spirit will, of the Spirit, reap everlasting life.

The wise person says, I'm going to plan for eternity.

What does James 1:22 tell us?

James 1:22 tells us, “but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself.”

I like to notice the similarities between these builders, the wise and the foolish. Notice the similarities. Both are building houses. Both have a similar life situation. They're going through storms of life. It's that storm that proves to be the difference though, isn't it? We have to understand that when we're building something, that that building is going to be tested. What are the differences between the two builders? They're two different kinds of people. They build on two different kinds of foundations. The first hears the word and builds upon it. The second hears the word, but chooses to ignore it.

The two have different outcomes. One house stands firm. The other is completely destroyed. We know that that parable is an inspiration for that great old gospel song. My hope is built on nothing less, song number 120, than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest fame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. And then we get to the chorus. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. So we have two different underlying principles.

If you're only hearing and reading the truth, but are not prepared for life's storms that come up, if your foundation is sure no storm will cause your life to collapse. Sister Mary asked for prayers for people that she knows. We all know people, I know, in our lives that need that reassurance. There are people constantly potent in life. We know that life is not friendly to us in general. Society, we have constant, face constant challenges in our lives. But God tries us and then sees what foundation we're building on.

Jesus didn't preach this message so it would sound nice or so that we could sit around and discuss it like this morning. He preached it so that we could act on it. He emphasized obedience.

I heard this the other day and I found this interesting. In the audience, I'd like just to offer you $1,440. Each one of you today--$1,440. I'd like you to ponder that. There are some stipulations though. I'm gonna give you $1,440 on your way out, maybe. But you cannot carry it past this evening. This $1,440 must be spent, used at the end of tonight, at midnight. It can be taken away from you at any time. Today, I offer you that money. But it could be taken away at any time. And you would have to spend it before midnight. And I only say that just to get your attention. Obviously, I'm not really gonna do that. I don't have that much money. But that's a comparison to what God gives us.

This person said, now that we got your attention, God gives us exactly 1,440 minutes a day. We can't go back. We have to use them during this day. At midnight, they're used up. And they can be taken from us at any time. Any time during the day, that time, those minutes can be spent. We think about, how do we use the minutes that God gives us?

My conclusion today.

Everything that is extremely valuable can be counterfeited. We think about all the things that are valuable in life. There's a counterfeit. Gold. Fool's gold. Gems. Fake gems. Gem buyers today must be aware of three types of gems that I understand. You have the synthetic gems that are lab-grown stones. They closely duplicate the natural gem's physical qualities and chemical properties. Or we have simulated gems that are man-made. The color of the simulated stone may be similar to that of a natural gem, but it is very different both physically and chemically. Or we have enhanced gems that are natural gems altered in some way to improve their look. I bring this up to say that experts advise buyers to verify a stone's value with gem testing labs.

I guess there's a Gemological Institute of America. And you can go there or have them verify before any final sales are made. It is the same with truth. Jesus is sharing throughout the Bible. We must ensure we are not falling to false teachers. On that day, we will stand alone before God. Every day, we are building a foundation in our lives based on which path we travel and who we listen to and what foundation we're building upon.

It's time for us this morning to make our decision. Have I chosen the right gate? Am I traveling the right road? Does my tree bear the correct good fruit? Am I following those who teach the truth? Is my faith being demonstrated in what I do? Do I truly know God and am I following the teachings of the New Testament?

The lesson is yours this morning to ponder those questions. And if you are in need in any way, if you are one that has not taken the steps to being baptized, becoming a Christian, we ask you to do that this morning, then consider that.

Or if you are in need of the prayers of the congregation, whatever your need is, you have the opportunity to come forward as together we stand and sing our song of invitation.