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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alistair Huong

The Dilemma of Balance: Cling to the Word

Father in heaven as we begin a study of your word today we ask that above all else you may instill within us the desire the willingness to cling to your word just as it reads.

May we put aside our selfish endeavors, our own feelings, and our biases, but to listen humbly to your voice and your voice alone.

Bless our time together, we pray in Jesus' name.

I Like to read a few quotes to you, these are real live quotes that I heard with my own 2 ears, okay, I Don't want to go to that school.

They need to be more balanced All you ever do is study the Bible or preach or do mission trips you need to be more balanced That speaker said as long as I feel right I feel like Jesus can be right next to me during the music that I listen to, the movies that I watch, the recreation that I do, then it's okay.

You know, I just realized I wasn't being balanced back then.

You know and this is a quote from someone I once knew who had resumed his movie going, his partying, his regular lifestyle.

God doesn't expect you to be perfect here's 1 that actually I said okay so pointing some fingers at me time is short school is a waste of time I just need to do ministry The Bible and the Spirit prophecy or the Spirit prophecy says that using just a little bit of salt is good.

So that must mean if I don't use any salt that's better.

Have you heard there's that this person this I mean this is a paraphrase it's a it's a combination of a lot of things I've heard.

It's some, It's this new idea from Daniel revelation that nobody has ever heard before He says that something big is gonna happen next year and the Sunday law is gonna come Have you heard something like that before?

I've heard lots of things like that and here's 1 for the great controversy class We need to prepare for the time of trouble.

So I've been looking for caves in the mountains to hide out.

Everybody says that we need to be balanced.

It is important to be balanced but the question is what does it mean to be balanced?

And number 2, who determines what the appropriate balance is?

In Webster's dictionary it defines the word balance as to bring into harmony or proportion.

Okay we all understand that at a gut level, it's intuitive to us, but it's intuitive to a lot of people and how we interpret that is different.

In certain cultures of the world, I believe we can illustrate this with a yin and yang symbol, there's the white and the black, there's a balance of good and evil there needs to be some balance of of right and wrong balance of of of good and bad sometimes we get this feeling that that's the right balance but wait a second who determines what appropriate balance is.

Turn your Bibles with me to Daniel chapter 5.

You know the story well King Belshazzar who is 1 of the descendants, grandson I believe of King Nebuchadnezzar is taken over the throne of Babylon and he's having a huge royal party in which he's drinking out of the wine goblets or the golden cups from the temple in Jerusalem.

All of a sudden a bloodless hand rides against the wall meeny meeny teckle you farson.

He begins you know it says the joints of his loins were loosened and his knees smote 1 against another.

And there he is standing there looking at this word these words and nobody can interpret and Daniel comes in I'll cut to the chase he interprets the writing look with me in verse 27 well since we're there let's just read verse 26 this is an interpretation of the thing meaning God have numbered thy kingdom and finished it tackle thou art weighed in the what everyone balances and art found wanting so who is it Who is the ultimate determiner of what is balanced in the universe?

All our acts, all our words are to be weighed in the balances of the sanctuary.

A just and impartial God is to determine all our cases, every event of our life history.

Those 2 things, those 2 quotes from the Bible and the Spirit prophecy simply to establish that appropriate balance in the Christian experience in all aspects, every event in our life history it says, must be determined by God.

So yes it's fine for us to say we need to find the balance We do need to find a balance, but we need to put aside our own interpretations of what appropriate balance is and base our interpretation on what God says I Like this illustration into our Jesus Matthew chapter 7 and we're gonna sort of use this as the visuals, the invisible visual if you will, for our message today.

For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.

But straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it.

So you're getting a mental mental picture.

Jesus is trying to use word pictures to illustrate to us what the Christian life is like.

There's the broad way and then there is the narrow way.

Now the broad way gives an idea of like in my mind's eye it's like I was just in Atlanta last week and I was on an interstate that had 7 lanes on 1 side.

But if you're driving in the middle of that broad way, you can change lanes, you can maneuver, you can pass, and you don't get anywhere near the edge.

The narrow way gives the idea of, I go to school in Arkansas, reminds me of the roads in Arkansas.

There's some roads don't even have shoulders.

It's just a 2 lane road, 1 going this way, 1 coming that way, and there's no shoulders on either side.

And you just have to stay in the middle of the road, or else you fall in the ditch.

He says in the spirit of prophecy that inside information given just to us.

Inspiration draws a line here against this extreme and inspiration draws another line here against this extreme, but in the middle there's a broad swath in which you can go on your way and I can go on my way.

We can be ourselves, you can be you, I can be me, and we're still in the safety zone.

But what we got to do is stay in the middle of the road.

Another illustration perhaps, I don't want to go too far on illustrations here, but I like this 1.

Sometimes we begin to feel in bondage because of the narrowness of the narrow road.

Imagine there's a horse and the horse is in a corral.

And the horse is inside there and the horse is free to roam wherever he wants he can jump in the grass he can play he can do whatever but what if that horse day after day he just paces right next to that fence just walking around and around right next to that fence, hugging the fence, hugging the rail, walking day by day.

What do you think that horse is gonna think?

All of a sudden, the world seems like it is such a limiting place.

Why did He have to put this fence right here?

But what if that horse stayed in the middle of that corral?

Where there's open space, where he can run and jump and play and eat without ever coming in contact with that fence.

And so on this narrow road, we're better off driving in the middle of the road than trying to hug the rails.

Because on the narrow road, it's easy to fall in a ditch.

And so there are extremes both left and right.

The Dilemma of Balance: Cling to the Word

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