Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Pastor Brian Cook

My wife does most of the laundry in our house and there’s a reason for that. She hates the way I do laundry. She says I don’t let the water run long enough before I put in way too many clothes. Not only that, usually when I do a load of laundry its not long before a loud, banging racket starts coming from the laundry room. Not only have I put too many clothes in the washer, but now they’re uneven and they make the machine shake and bang on the floor! Now, for those of you who’ve never done laundry, that means that the laundry load’s unbalanced and the clothes need to be spread out.

You may be wondering, “Why the Home Economics lesson? What’s this got to do with anything?”  Well, so much of our lives are about maintaining a good balance. In our finances, we’ve got to maintain a good balance between our income and our expenses. If we spend more than we make we’re going be in trouble. We all know that it’s important to maintain a healthy balance in our diets. I just read this week about a man who just got into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most Big Macs eaten over a lifetime. So far he’s eaten 20,000! Now, obviously, that can’t be too good for you.

If you work hard, you’ve got to balance it out with rest. If you play sports you know that a winning team has a good balance between offense and defense. Balance is critical to every area of our lives because it affects every area of our lives. Did you know that out of the 10.5 million accidents that occur every year in the home the vast majority of them happen because someone lost their balance either on the stairs or a ladder?

If balance is critical to every area of our lives then I would say that having balance in the area of our spiritual lives is even more critical. If we’re always careful not to lose our balance going down a flight of stairs, we’ve got to be even more careful not to lose our spiritual balance in our walk with Christ, and that happens when we take our eyes off of Christ.

Matthew 16:13-16 “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”.

In these verses we see the wonderful balance Peter had in his spiritual life. He was able to focus on Who Christ is and to put aside all the misconceptions and wrong interpretations of all those around him. Peter was able to line up the actions of Jesus according to the Scriptures and determine that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. In verse 17 Jesus blesses Peter for his insight and solid answer, but let’s continue to read.

Matthew 16:20-23 “Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.  But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”

In just 6 verses Peter completely lost his spiritual balance in regards to the insight He had earlier possessed. In verse 22 Peter actually rebuked Christ after Jesus revealed the true nature of His mission and Jesus’ responded harshly.  Jesus’ rebuke for Peter was the total opposite of His earlier praise for him. Peter had gotten so far out of balance that Jesus went from calling him blessed to actually calling him Satan! Now how did this happen? What caused Peter to go from balance to unbalance so quickly? I believe it’s because Peter had a real hard time keeping his emotions in balance.

I think it’s clear that Peter had a hard time keeping his emotions balanced and we see that in other places in the Scripture as well. In Matt. 14 he jumped from his boat into the water and walked on water until he took his eyes off of Jesus and began to sink and Jesus said that Peter had little faith. In Matt. 26 he took out his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant and Jesus rebuked Him for that. In Luke 22 he swore that he’d never deny Jesus and then he did 3 times in the same chapter. Peter had a hard time keeping his emotions in balance. Now, I’m not giving Peter a hard time, because we all have a tendency to go to extremes. It’s a struggle for us as humans to stay balanced because of our fallen nature.

The Bible says that we’re created in the image of God. I take that to mean that Adam must have had a real good sense of balance, yet Adam fell into sin and since then our balance is something that’s easily thrown out of whack. We need Christ and His Word as our Anchor, our Solid Foundation to keep us balanced. I want you to know that there are not many references in the Bible to this notion of “balance”, but there are all kinds of principles.

Proverbs 4:25-27 “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.  Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.”

The Bible is the bar we carry to keep us balanced as we walk this tightrope called life. It’s a tightrope and it’s hard trying to stay balanced in a fallen world, but as Paul says, we press on toward Christ. As we walk along, our sinful nature continues to pull at us trying to cause us to fall to one side or the other. Not only that, but Satan gives us various shoves along the way through temptations. We’ve got to hold onto the Word in order to keep our spiritual balance.

I want you to know that heresy is truth out of balance! We can’t veer away from the truth!  We’ve got to stay focused on Christ and His message; otherwise we’ll fall towards one extreme or the other. I want you to know, that taking things to the extreme can create problems for us. Often the Church is guilty of going to the extreme. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that in some churches everything’s just a big celebration. There’s never a time or a place or solemn assembly. And church becomes more like entertainment than worship. But then there’s the other extreme, too. Some churches are like going to a funeral. No joy, no laughter, no life!

For some believers, they go to the extreme of legalism, like the Pharisees. Others go to the extreme of liberalism where everything is permitted. Some are so judgmental that they can find sin in everything and others continue to ignore sin and pretend that everybody’s just fine! I believe that many unbelievers have an unbalanced view of the church because believers are unbalanced!

Our Preachers must be balanced. In Jeremiah 3:15 God says, “I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.” We don’t need feel-good sermons that feed our sin nature. We don’t need a social gospel. We need preachers that’ll preach in such a way that we’ll receive knowledge and understanding and be kept on the narrow path, and that path is Jesus Christ, and that Path leads to eternal life!

Read the Bible, Jesus was balanced in all that He did. He hung out with sinners, but He never compromised His message. He hated sin, but He rarely confronted sinners and their sin outright, He allowed them to be convicted in other ways. He saved His confrontations for the self-righteous, religious folks. Jesus had a great balance between following God’s Law and loving people. He healed on the Sabbath which upset the Teachers of the Law, but His heart was for the lost and He was able to balance following the God’s Law and still express His love for the lost.

We need to be balanced as Jesus was balanced. How do we do that? Number 1: We have to be Bible-soaked. We have to be like a sponge soaking up the Word of God so that it gets into our hears and minds. In Colossians 3:16, the Apostle Paul tells us to “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly”.

If the Bible is the bar that keeps us balanced on the tightrope of life, we’ve got to know the Bible! We’ve got to know its message. We’ve got to know the principles it teaches us and how to apply them to our lives. It’s very sad that so many in the church today are biblically illiterate. I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said, “Many Christian’s Bibles have dust so thick that you can write “damnation” on them with your finger!”

We need to pick up our Bibles and read them! Did you know that half of the books of the Bible can be read in less than 45 minutes and some of them in less than 20? How then, do we account for our lack of Bible knowledge? We can’t.

Number 2: We need to hang around with spiritually mature, balanced Christians. If the people we spend time with are spiritually immature and out of balance one of two things will happen. We’ll either be able to help them become balanced or we’ll become unbalanced ourselves.

Number 3: We need to live out our faith as balanced believers who’re stable, genuine and who live lives under the guidance of Christ and His Spirit. The world is watching you if you know Christ. They want to know if we really believe what Jesus taught. The challenge that is set before us is the challenge of God-honoring consistency in our lives outside of the church. That doesn’t mean perfection, it just means balance. We should have balance at our jobs, balance in the TV or movies we watch, balance in the way we use our money, balance in the way we serve others, and balance in the way we react to those who’ve offended us.

Living a life of balance isn’t easy. It takes work and diligence. But in order to remain on the narrow path, on the tightrope, and in order to continue moving forward toward Christ, we’ve got to make balance our goal.