Postcards from the Past:
Finding Balance in Relationships
Scripture Reading: 2 John 1-13
He was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1905,
into a family that for 150 years
had traveled throughout Europe,
performing in city squares and beer halls
as acrobats,
jugglers,
clowns,
aerialists
and animal trainers.
He was performing in the family show at age six, and in 1922, he began to develop his own act, inventing an amazing 4-person, 3-level pyramid, balancing on a chair
on top of a bar
between the shoulders
of two men on bicycles
on a wire 50 feet in the air . . .
topping it off by having
his wife climb up on his shoulders!
The act was such a sensation
that when John Ringling them do it in Cuba,
he immediately signed them up for
the "Greatest Show On Earth."
Karl Wallenda was his name, and
his family was “The Flying Wallendas.”
Karl continued performing into his 60s & 70s,
doing "Sky Walks,"
walking between buildings and across stadiums.
He walked across Niagara Falls on a high wire.
He walked across the open top of the Astrodome.
At the age of 65,
he balanced himself along a 1200-foot long wire
across the Tallulah Falls Gorge in Georgia,
and performed two separate headstands
at a height of over 700 feet in the air.
And then,
in March, 1978,
during an exhibition in San Juan, Puerto Rico,
the patriarch of the Great Wallendas
fell to his death at age 73.
Not because of his age,
not because of the wind,
but because several misconnected guy ropes
along the wire caused him to lose his balance
and fall to his death.
Losing your balance can kill you,
and not just if you’re a high-wire artist;
it can kill you in relationships, too.
It can kill your job,
your marriage,
your friendships,
your reputation,
your testimony as a Christian.
Good morning. My name is Bob Hostetler,
and I want to welcome you all
to Cobblestone Community Church,
a church whose mission is to love people
into life-changing encounters with God,
which fits right into what we’re going to study
from Gpd’s Word, the Bible,
this morning.
Now, if you haven’t already opened your Bible,
let me ask you to do that
as we spend a few moments
in the book of 2 John,
the third-from-the-last book of the whole Bible!
You’ll find it on p. 847
in the free Bibles we’ve provided for your use,
either under every few chairs
or by the railing on your way in . . .
and if you don’t already have a Bible of your own, we’d love for you to take one home with you today.
So, as you’re turning to 2 John in your Bible,
let me just mention that this is such a short letter,
it would’ve fit onto one page,
one 8 x 10 sheet of parchment,
the material the Apostle John would’ve used
to write this letter, which we call “Second John.”
It was, in some ways, a first-century equivalent
to a modern postcard,
which makes it one of the “Postcard from the Past”
we’re studying these first three weeks of July.
So we’re going to read God’s mail this morning,
as we not only study an entire book of the Bible
in the brief time we have remaining,
but also learn some valuable things about
“Finding Balance in Relationships.”
So, if you would folllow along in your own Bible,
and, if you wish, make use of the notes
that are provided for you in the programs
you received as you came in the door,
I want to point out a few things first off
about this letter as a whole.
You’ll notice, if you look at verse 1,
that the person writing this letter does not identify himself by name,
as was the custom of other New Testament authors, such as Peter, Paul, James, and Jude.
He simply calls himself “The elder,” which may refer to his age, or to his position in a local church.
However, from the content of this letter
and its similarity to other New Testament writings,
it’s pretty safe to say that the “elder” of verse one
is the Apostle John, author of the Gospel of John,
who, probably while living in Ephesus
wrote what we now call 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John,
and who, while living out his last years in exile
on a Mediterranean island,
recorded what has become the last book
in the Bible,
the Revelation.
You’ll notice also, if you look again at verse 1,
that this “Postcard from the Past”
is the only book of the Bible
addressed specifically to a woman!
Verse one says,
The elder, To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth--and not I only, but also all who know the truth (2 John 1, NIV).
Now, we don’t know who this “chosen lady” was;
some scholars think it was Martha of Bethany,
maybe even Mary the mother of Jesus . . .
Others think it was actually a code phrase John
used to address a particular church in the vicinity of Ephesus, where John lived . . .
I tend to agree with those who think this “chosen
lady” was some woman who was either a wealthy patron, host, or leader of some kind in a church somewhere around Ephesus . . .
But we don’t have to figure out all that here & now;
for our purposes here this morning,
since it’s generally a good rule,
when trying to understand the Bible,
to accept the most natural reading of a passage
(unless you have sound reasons not to),
we’re going to read this “Postcard from the Past”
as a note from an aging apostle
to a dear woman, probably a widow woman,
and her children.
And we’ll find,
as we do that,
regardless of who this letter was written to,
it has some valuable things to teach us today
about finding balance in relationships.
So, let’s begin reading together,
as I point out to you
three keys to healthy human relationships,
whether it’s a relationship with a spouse,
with a parent,
child,
sibling,
friend,
roommate,
neighbor,
whatever . . .
And the first is a . . . :
1. Healthy Balance
2 John is a letter about balance.
In fact, to a large degree,
the whole Bible is about balance,
in one way or another.
Time after time,
we see in Scripture a sort of stream of truth
that flows between two shores,
winding its way
between warning and encouragement,
between faith and works,
between justice and mercy,
between giving and receiving . . .
And 2 John fits nicely into that pattern.
It is a book about balance.
Let me show you what I mean.
Look at verses 1-6 with me:
The elder,
To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth--and not I only, but also all who know the truth-- because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us for ever: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.
It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love (2 John 1-6, NIV).
There it is; did you catch it?
What is the balance John is talking about? [pause]
That’s right . . .
It’s truth . . . and love.
Just as James in his New Testament letter
harped on balancing faith and works,
teaching the proper relationship between the two,
so John in this letter
is urging a proper balance of truth and love
in our relationships.
Now, at this point it might be helpful to know a little bit about what probably prompted this letter from John to the “chosen lady.”
You see, in John’s day,
Christ-followers did not meet in church buildings or in middle school auditerias . . .
They met in homes.
Organization was simple and informal.
And at that time, the Bible as we know it
had not yet been collected and compiled,
so the little home churches
scattered throughout much of the civilized world
relied a lot on itinerant teachers and preachers who traveled from one home assembly to another, teaching the churches what the apostles--
the influential leaders of the young church--
had said.
Of course,
in such a situation,
there was a very real danger
that someone who was uninformed
or perhaps not even a sincere Christ-follower
might come in and teach all sorts of things that
may have lined their pockets
but had no resemblance to the truth.
Come to think of it,
we have plenty of those kind today . . .
some of ‘em are even on TV and radio!
But I digress.
In any case, it seems that this “chosen lady” had opened her home, maybe even the church itself if she had some influence there, to a false teacher of that sort--maybe even a series of false teachers--
so John wrote to encourage a healthy balance of love . . . AND truth.
You see, both are crucial,
both are absolutely necessary.
Truth without love leads to legalism;
Love without truth leads to license.
The same is true in our relationships today. . .
Think about your relationships:
If they’re characterized by love without truth,
you probably feel like a doormat at times.
You’re probably stuffing down a lot of hurt and
resentment and
even rage
because you’ve been avoiding or ignoring the Biblical injunction to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:9).
If, on the other hand, your relationships are more often characterized by truth without love,
you’re probably lonely much of the time.
You’ve probably alienated some people,
and communicated that you care more about
principles than people, and you’re more likely to “lay down the law” to others than you are to “lay down your life” for others.
But John is saying,
“Health in relationships is found in the balance between love and truth,”
it’s found as John says in verse one,
in loving people “in the truth.”
But that’s not all. There’s another key to healthy human relationships in this little postcard from the past, and that’s . . .
2. Healthy Beliefs
Look at verses 7-9 with me. John writes,
Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son (2 John 7-9, NIV).
John here is combatting the same problem,
condemning the same false prophets,
that Paul railed against
in Philippians and Colossians,
that Peter spoke against in his second letter,
that Jude castigated in his fiery little letter.
They were called gnostics:
G - N - O - S - T - I - C - S,
and they so infiltrated the first century church and caused such confusion and conflict
that they were one of the main reasons John felt compelled to write a fourth Gospel,
when there were already at least three circulating among the churches!
And here he pulls no punches when he refers to the false teaching they had been spreading among the churches, calling such a person “the deceiver and the antichrist,” a word used--only by John, here and in 1 John 4--to refer to a spirit or attitude that is opposed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so John urges this “chosen lady” toward healthy beliefs, in her case, maintain a Biblical “teaching of Christ” (v. 9) . . . That is,
that Jesus came in the flesh,
was born of a virgin,
rose bodily from the dead,
is both God and man,
and so on.
But when I talk about healthy beliefs as a key to healthy relationships, I mean beliefs about Christ, but I also mean other kinds of beliefs, too.
For example, Dr. Chris Thurman, in his book, The Lies We Believe, identifies unhealthy beliefs, such as “I Must Be Perfect,” and “My Spouse Should Meet All My Needs,” as lies that lead to fractured relationships and unhappiness.
William Backus, in his book, Telling Yourself the Truth, looks at what he calls “misbeliefs” such as “In Order to Be Happy I Must Be Loved by Everybody.”
And Henry Cloud and John Townsend, in their book, False Assumptions: 12 “Christian” Beliefs that Can Drive you Crazy, identify unhealthy beliefs like,
“If I’m spiritual enough, I’ll have no pain or sinfulness,” and
“If I have God, I don’t need people,”
and so on.
Those are just some of the unhealthy beliefs that we put up with today. The Gnostics may not be a problem for us, but, boy, between
the pop psychologists,
and the televangelists,
not to mention media images and
songwriter/philosophers,
we’ve got a real problem with unhealthy beliefs.
So what do we do about it?
Let me just quickly suggest 3 things:
• Take a critical look at the beliefs that are driving us, and one way to do that is to read the kind of Christian books I’ve been mentioning;
• Become accountable to each other, asking a trusted friend, “if you see my perfectionism coming out, would you correct me?” or, “if you hear me acting like ‘Shoulds are good,’ you know, like ‘I should do this,’ or ‘I should be like that,’ would you point it out to me?” And then,
• Finally, we should, as Paul says in Romans 12, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” by bathing your mind in the truth of God’s Word, reading it, memorizing it, putting it into practice.
So, two of the prescriptions John gives in this short letter are a healthy balance, and healthy beliefs. The third thing he prescribes to the “chosen lady” is . . .
3. Healthy Boundaries
Look at verses 10-11 with me:
If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work (2 John 10-11).
And then he goes on to conclude the letter. . .
But wait a minute . . .
What happened to the love John talked about in verses 1-6?
It didn’t go anywhere. You see, this is key:
Healthy boundaries are not unloving.
John is not saying,
“Cuss ‘em out in the center aisle of Wal-Mart!”
or “Sic your attack-dog Spanky on ‘em!”
or even “Turn up your nose at ‘em when they come around.”
He’s simply saying,
“Do not lodge them in your home, and do nothing to help them spread their false teaching.”
That’s an appropriate boundary,
one that balances truth and love.
You see, a lot of us think that,
in order to call ourselves good Christians,
we have to “bed and board”
people who are hurting us,
we have to put up with
people who manipulate us or take
advantage of us,
we have to meet everyone else’s expectations.
And that’s just not true.
It’s possible to speak the truth in love, as the Bible says, and draw boundaries that prevent
unhealthy people,
habits,
relationships
or expectations from hurting us.
We DO have to love them, but as I said before,
healthy boundaries are not unloving.
Others of us think that for some reason,
we’re responsible for changing people’s minds
and forcing them to see the error of their ways,
and MAKING SURE that no one within a 50-mile
radius of us is thinking or saying or doing anything wrong!
AND we act as though principle alone matters,
and people don’t.
Well, guess what? THAT’s just not true, either.
As Henry Cloud says in his landmark book, Boundaries, healthy boundaries are ways of establishing the limits of what you will allow and what you will not, which, he says, is the basis for mutual respect and love. . .
“It no way,” he says, “does this imply that we will not forgive or continue to love and work on conflict. It does mean that we will require responsible behavior on the other [person]’s part, for only then can the conflict be worked through.”
Healthy boundaries in your relationships or mine
might sound something like this:
“I love you, son, but I won’t bail you out if you get arrested,” or
“I love you, dear, but I will no longer allow myself to be around when you’re drunk. If you choose to drink, I’ll leave until you stop. And I won’t call in sick for you when you’re hung over,” or
“I love you, buddy, but please don’t call me after 10:00 at night,” or
“I love you, Mom, but crying won’t work anymore. I know I’ve given in to you before whenever you started crying, but I’m 42 and it’s time for me to move out of the house,” or whatever.
It may not sound exactly like that in your relationships, but if the Holy Spirit of God is speaking to you right now,
suggesting areas of your life,
and relationships,
whether as a spouse,
or a parent,
or child,
sibling,
friend,
roommate,
neighbor,
whatever,
in which you need
a healthy balance of truth and love,
healthy beliefs about God, yourself, or others,
and healthy boundaries
would you consider taking a few moments here
as we near the conclusion of our celebration,
to listen?,
to say to God,
“Teach me what I don’t know,”
“Transform what is wrong,”
“Give me a better balance,
a healthier belief system,
healthier boundaries,”
“Visit my waiting heart and mind and soul, and
help me to walk in truth and love toward . . . this person . . . that person . . . whomever the Lord brings to mind.”
I urge you to do that by simply calling out to God in prayer, and if you’d like any help with that, or counsel of any kind, there will be prayer counselors available here at the front and throughout the auditeria wearing bright green name tags to pray with you and offer any spiritual guidance you may need today.
