THE DECISION ABOUT YOUR DESTINY

ACTS 2:14a, 36-41

Eldridge E. Fleming, Ph.D.

New Hope Presbyterian Church

Biggersville, Rienzi, Mississippi

APRIL 18, 1999

There was a party going on in Jerusalem, but it was a bittersweet party. We read some of it in Acts 2:14 a, 36-41.

From the first letter of 1 Peter 1:17 -23, we hear these words:

The gospel reading for the morning is from Luke 24:13 -35. Would you stand with me, if you wish, for the reading of the gospel?

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Last week I spoke on taking our place in the stream of Christian history and taking our turn in spreading and sharing the gospel. When we take the position of one of those apostles and we do those things that Jesus wants us to do in the world today, that is taking our turn.

Today I want to talk about the decisions we make and their impact on our history and God's history. It is my belief that every decision one makes impacts on ones destiny. So regardless of how trivial a decision may be, how frivolous it may even seem to be, it is -- indeed -- forceful and has some impact on who you are and where you go and what happens with you. It doesn't matter how innocent it seems at the moment, all your decisions reflect you, your core of beliefs, and all of them impact eventually on your outcome.

I have spoken a little to that with the children this morning. Because we do make decisions, we have to ask those central questions that are so critical to us, but I know that sometimes we are not in a spiritual position to react or to act according to our best interests.

For example, at age sixteen I was a young man who lived with his family in a very rural section of southwest Mississippi. We lived in a house that had no running water or accommodations. We had water from a well that we had bored and we took baths in washtubs. Simply put, that was our lifestyle. We had great fun, we worked hard, we had plenty to eat, and we enjoyed one another's company.

But also in those years of mine, I had been well trained in all the language that was used in the local area. I emphasize ALL the language used in the local area, including derogatory comments, including all the curse language that one could come up with; for I had an excellent trainer -- not my father, but an associate of his.

You see, at sixteen -- between my junior and senior years of high school -- I was working in my father's logging operation. It was rather small, but it was very strenuous and hard work; and one of the persons who had worked with us the years before was a person who had been a veteran of World War II. He had no teeth, and he was quite notorious for his story telling. He could tell all the despicable stories that one would want to hear. And tell them in such colorful language that you knew everything about whatever anyone else had -- all of their anatomy and all the rest. Because of that training, then, my mind was set on knowing all of that sort of information. So, I could use expletives, although I could not define what that was, I could use them as well as anyone else -- and habitually did.

But in that summer of 1953, something happened. In that summer, I was reminded that several years before I had been baptized into Christ and that the way I was using my language, the way I was living my life, my attitudes, etc., were not exactly up to par. And so, as is the custom in that area, when the revival came at that small Baptist church, I attended and I listened to the preachers very well. As I listened, something within me caused me to listen more. For you see, I had enough of a conscience to know that what I was doing was not right.

I would embarrass myself in front of the girls of our class. Our school had about two hundred people, counting the first through the twelfth grades. There were sixteen of us in the class that was coming up as seniors the next year. Sometimes when we were on trips, like we had been the year before, I embarrassed myself when the girls called me down. So you see, that was not a pretty picture.

But in that summer as I listened to these preachers talk, I opened my mind to let them speak to me. I enjoyed their stories, I enjoyed the power with which they delivered their message, I enjoyed the conviction they had about their truths and about God, and I had images of Christ floating in my head. As I listened I saw myself as one who was first of all sinful, second as one who was not fulfilling Christ's mission for me.

Oh, I had my ambitions, I had my aspirations, and I had the things that I wanted to do. As I have shared with you before, back in those days I read books late into the night about doctors, detectives, investigators and attorneys. My mindset that summer was that after finishing high school the next year, I was going off to college and I was going to become a lawyer or a doctor or a detective. So, I had my aspirations and I was ready to go with them, and I guess -- no that would not be fair -- my language really did not fit either one of those, it was more despicable than that.

Of course, I had some proper culture: I never used "that kind" of language in front of my mother or any adult woman, or any females, for that part, unless I was very familiar with them. Familiar not in the sexual sense, for I did not even date until I was in college, but in the sense of knowing someone very well. You see -- I knew that I was a sinner because I was not living the mission I knew Christ wanted me to be living.

Consequently, on a Tuesday evening after hearing one of these sermons, I lingered a while at the church and talked with the pastor. I told him my plight and what I felt. I shall never forget us kneeling by his little study. He was a big man, a big man, and his office was about six by seven feet and had a small desk in it, so we could not get inside. We knelt outside of his office by the door. It was there that I asked God to clean up my life, focus me on His ministry, and set me on the right path. With that decision and prayer, I went home. I went home to rest -- for the next day I would be going back to the woods and cutting timber again, working on a crosscut saw, if you know what that is. I was in good physical shape but in lousy spiritual shape up to that time. I went home with that kind of commitment, asking God to speak to me and lead me in the direction He wanted me to go.

I do not remember, I might have told you before, the rest of that story. The rest of the story is that I went home and went to bed and went to sleep. After a while, I was awakened by a dream. Dreams are natural to us, but this dream was kind of unique.

In the dream I was standing on a stage in a great hall that had two tiers of horseshoe balconies around it. On this great platform was only a lonely microphone and I was standing back of it, looking at all these people. Someone I did not see came by my back from the left and touched my left elbow and said, "Tell them about Jesus." I awoke. Such a dream. I wrestled with it a while and then went back to sleep. After a while, I awoke again with the same dream, and after the third time, it seemed to make sense to me that that was the kind of thing that I should do.

So, the next day I went to work and as was my custom, I did the things that were routine. But I did not have to use the colorful, foul, sinful language. Up in the day, someone asked me what had happened and I told them that I guess I had prayed last night to the Lord to take away my sinfulness and He took away my bad language. I went all day and did not use a single word of color or profanity. I shied away from and did not participate either, that I recall, in any of the dirty jokes or the slang that was told about Jesus.

You see, that decision and experience set the course of my life. When I went back to church that night and told the preacher what I had experienced, the natural conclusion was that this must be the call of God to go into the ministry and preach. That has been the central focus of my life -- not all the time since then -- but it is always there. Because of that decision, decisions about where I went to school, the subjects I took in school, the behaviors I engaged in, the jobs I took, all of those decisions focused around this central point, that central decision.

That decision, you see, has guided my destiny. Not that I have made good decisions every time. No, I have made some decisions that were not good. But somehow or other, by the mercy of God, I am here today still holding on to, still working toward, that central point of telling as many as I can about Jesus.

That is true with all of us, is it not? That we have somewhere in our experience that moment when we make that decision that lifts us to faith for the rest of our lives. But of course, I could have decided something differently. I could have decided to ignore that. I could have said it is just a dream, your conscience is bothering you, leave it alone. I could have done that, but I did not.

Now on the day of Pentecost, Peter was speaking to this crowd who had gathered around that place -- that upper room, windows open, spirit moving, wind sounding horrendous, people gathering, wondering what was going on -- and Peter was the spokesman for the apostles. You see, there were twelve of them at that point because they had replaced Judas. Out of that group, Peter was the spokesman that day and explained to the crowd what had happened. He came to the conclusion by a deduction form -- as Timothy Warren of Dallas Theological Seminary tells us -- he came to the conclusion that Jesus is Lord and Messiah. He came to that conclusion by looking at a reasonable way of studying.

Jesus was a good man, a man who had done that which was right in the eyes of the people. He had healed, he had given, he had given healing to those who were sick, he had given control to those who were paralytic, and he had given strength to the lame. He had given to them what they had needed. He had given them an understanding of the kingdom of heaven and what God was doing in life. As he did all those things that were right and proper and good, the religious leaders of the day decided they needed him out of the way and they crucified him.

Now, Peter's argument goes: here was a man who we know was a prophet of God, he did good things. He enumerated those, and he said "Your leaders crucified him and to prove that he was a good man, he has been raised from the dead and we have experienced him for forty days or more. And now, at this day of Pentecost he has ascended already into heaven and we are here to carry on his mission. By the mere fact of his resurrection, that is the proof that God indeed was working with him."

And the people had a conscience, they heard what they had done by proxy in their leadership and they were cut to the heart, cut to the core. And they said, "What shall we do? Shall we take the leaders out and crucify them? Shall we storm the Roman garrison that carried out the mission? What shall we do?" Peter's answer was to the point: Repent of your sin and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus, and make him, in essence, Lord and Messiah.

Now, here we have a second point to make and that is that the decision of destiny was before them. They could continue on in their sin, they could continue on with cutting hearts, they could continue on as they had been -- or they could repent, receive forgiveness, and be on their way to being servants of God.

So, in that moment, in that period of time, three thousand out of the probably ten or fifteen thousand that were there -- three thousand of those -- decided they would, indeed, repent of their sins and be baptized. You see, the decision then was theirs. We have the reasoning of Peter, the preaching of Peter, the surging of the conscience in their hearts, and their responding by a decision that would shape their destiny.

What happened to them after they were baptized? The scriptures tell us that they spent their time in fellowship with one another and learning the teachings of the apostles. They became disciples of Jesus Christ. In becoming disciples of Jesus Christ, we become followers of his and we are forever students of Jesus. Forever learners of his ways, will, and wishes for us.

Earlier I raised the question with the children: What would Jesus do? Well, sometimes I do not know what Jesus would do in certain situations So what do I do? I go back and I learn some more, I study more. I get someone else who has been there to talk with me about how they handled it and how they might have mishandled it. Then, based on that, I can make some decisions. Today we will make decisions, every day all of us make decisions, and those decisions contribute to our destiny.

Our decisions affect our destiny. I hope you will decide to be a disciple of Christ. Amen.