Making Wise Decisions

Below is an excerpt of the sermon “Making Wise Decisions” from Pastor Mike Ray at Hopewell Baptist Church on Sunday Morning, 5/16/2021.

If you have your Bibles, let’s open them, please, to the book of Genesis for a moment. The book of Genesis. Genesis 13.

And here’s a little bit of the story. This is Lot. He is the one where in the New Testament it says, “Remember Lot’s wife. He’s the one who was raised by his uncle Abraham because his father had died. Lot’s father had died. And so, they were in business. They had herdsmen, and somehow Lot’s herdsmen, his workers, were not getting along with Abraham’s workers. Well, all of a sudden, instead of working that thing out, straightening some workers out, they decided, well, let’s depart from each other. Let’s split. Let’s one of us move. And God never told him to do that. You’ll find that people in the Bible that moved, there were two reasons: God told someone to move, one, if they were starting a nation. Okay, probably none of us. And then second, if they were like the Apostle Paul or a missionary, and they were starting a church. And so that’s about the only two times you see that in the Bible. And so, here’s a Lot. He ends up moving for money. It says that in Genesis 13:10 “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.”

You remember the story about these very wicked cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. God ended up burning the cities up. He sent fire and brimstone. But notice before Lot even moved in there, it started small. He made a decision. Verse 11. Genesis 13:11 “Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east…” East is always a direction in the Bible of trouble. “…and they separated themselves the one from the other.” The tragedy did not happen all of a sudden. Lot said, “I’m heading this way. I mean it looks like that’s where the better planes are.” He never deferred to his uncle who raised him. Lot was very selfish when he made that decision. Ten years later, he’s the welcoming committee in the most wicked city ever mentioned in the Bible. It was a little bit at a time. Just a little shift. A little change. A little moving. A little compromise. His daughters married evil people from that town. His daughters were burned up by the fire and brimstone. His wife was told not to look back. She did. She was turned to a pillar of salt. It was just a terrible tragedy. But that all started with a decision.

I’m going to speak today on making proper decisions. God has a plan for all of our lives. We call it the will of God. God really has many wills. He wills or decides what he wants for us to the minutest detail — who we marry, our vocation. And God knows what plan would make us the most fulfilled and give Him the most glory. Sometimes, we think if we surrender to do God’s plan, we’re going to be eating worms and in Africa somewhere under a totem pole. No, you’ll be eating crickets under a totem pole. No, no, no, not really.

Let’s pray, and then we’ll talk some about this. Father, bless this time that we have. Help us to make wise decisions. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

At the end of our life, we will simply be the culmination of all the decisions we made. Today, if you passed any homeless people, maybe they were living in a tent or maybe holding up a little cardboard sign with writing on it. Maybe they were unkempt. Some of that was from decisions made a long time ago. We can choose our decisions. We cannot choose the repercussions of those decisions.

I was researching some for this message and trying to think of in history, the worst historic decisions ever made. I think of the Titanic. They probably never should have sailed. There was a lot of pride. Not enough lifeboats, the wrong person keeping watch, information not shared, didn’t cry out for help in time, unused lifeboats. Once the ship went down, there were still some lifeboats that never even were used. Terrible. A lot of wrong decisions.

Here’s one, the city of Troy. They saw this great big wooden horse outside of the city and said, “What a nice gift!” And what a poor decision! They brought it in, and it was filled with enemies who came out and burned their city down.

I think of the painting. Some of you would know the name, some of you wouldn’t — The Scream by Edvard Munch. There was a granddaughter who was doing some work for a lady, and she said, “I don’t have much to pay you. I can give you a bottle of wine, or I got this old painting.” The girl took the bottle of wine. The old painting was that famous picture. You’ve seen it. It’s kind of in watercolors of this person screaming. That painting was worth millions of dollars. The person took the bottle of wine. What a poor choice.

I think of. Yahoo, the company. They were offered to buy another smaller company for 1 million dollars and they said, “No, it’s not worth it.” It was called Google.

I think of a man by the name of Ronald Wayne. He bought 10% stock in this little upstart company just getting going. And after eight months he said, “This isn’t going anywhere.” So he sold his 10% to the other two partners for $800. The other two partners were named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1978. His shares of that stock would right now be worth 80 billion dollars. What a poor choice.

There was a man who had long, long hair. He was a general named General Custer. He was going to “straighten out” some Indians that were causing some problems at the Little Bighorn. He had four heavy guns. These new guns were called Gatlin guns, kind of like a crank-it-out machine gun. You’ve heard or saw the movie? And he said, “These are too heavy. Why would we need these in this little skirmish with the Indians?” What a decision he made, as later on they called him General Pin Cushion with all the arrows that were in him.

I’m going to give several observations about decisions. Number one, make most of your big decisions in advance. The Bible says in Daniel 1:8, as young Daniel was leaving as a slave, he was leaving Israel to be brought to Babylon. It says, “and Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself.” So, as he was traveling to Babylon, he made some decisions in his heart in advance.

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Hopewell Baptist Church is an Independent Baptist Church in Napa, California pastored by Mike Ray. It is Bible-based with a warm, friendly atmosphere. Hopewell dedicated to bringing the water of life to the Napa Valley and beyond.