Dangerous Duo

Dangerous Duo

I want to begin today by telling you about my father. He was a hard working man all of his life. He worked hard to support his family. He was a faithful husband. He was a loving, consistent example of what a man of God should be. He is not only my father but he was and is my mentor. We don’t get to see each other very often any more but I still love and respect him deeply. I can only hope that the young men in his church where he pastors are taking the time to benefit from his influence.

I am now 38 years old. I have found that at 38 I still can benefit from having a mentor. That man for the past 5 years has been my pastor. No matter how old I get, I hope that I will always have somebody that I can look up to and model my life after, somebody who has modeled their life after Christ.

The concept of having a Christian mentor in your life is a biblical one. The Apostle Paul taught us to follow his example in verses such as 2 Thessalonians 3:7-9. Jesus taught this as well. One such passage is Luke 6:39-40.

There are three things that I want for us to learn from this short passage today. I want us first to consider the ditch. Secondly, I want us to consider the dangerous duo. Dangerous duo, sounds exciting doesn’t it? Finally we will see the Deliverer. Thank God for the Deliverer.

So let’s begin with the ditch. What is a ditch? You may think of a ditch as a hole, a pit, a low place or a gutter. You may think of it as a place where water runs off and gathers when it rains or you wash your car. You might realize it is the place where the down and out sleep or the place that your television or refrigerator ends up after it has bounced out of the back of the trailer you were hauling it in and it gets hit by a semi. If you want to think on the darker side you might see it as the place where murderers dump the bodies of their victims, or hunters dump their deer carcasses. In the reality of life, it is the place of the drunk, the addict, the alcoholic or the party girl. It’s the place of the girl who gives herself to her boyfriend to prove her love only to find out that he really didn’t love her. It’s the place of the Christian teenager who rebels against mom and dad and goes off to find their place in a godless world. It’s often a place of hunger, disease, fear, doubt and hopelessness. Do you get the idea? The ditch is a place to be avoided at all costs. It’s self-inflicted. God sends nobody there, it is man’s own choice. Ask the prodigal son that Luke writes about in his book, he spent some time there. Ask Lot, who in a drunken stupor committed incest with his daughters. Ask Noah who was drunken and naked before his sons. He was in the ditch.

But now let’s talk about the dangerous duo. Jesus warns us about this pair. He described them as the blind leading the blind. The physical analogy that I see goes like this. A blind man is tapping his way along with white cane in hand. To his waste is tied a rope, perhaps 15 or 20 feet long. At the end of the rope is a second man being led along. The first man comes to an open manhole cover and falls into it. The second man, feeling the rope go taunt begins to run screaming Wait for me, wait for me! This is indeed a dangerous duo.

But then I consider some of today’s dangerous duos. In the lead are today’s mentors. The pop-stars, the movie stars, the rappers, the television personalities that make up today’s culture. And in tow are the young people of America. And as they plunge over the cliff, down into the open manhole cover, into the ditches of life, America’s young people run head long after them. While the young people see the glitz and glamour, the bling-bling of their lifestyles, they fail to see the empty lives. The divorce, disease, single-parent homes, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse and yes, sometimes even murder. The ditches surely must be deep because the bodies just keep piling up. Filling up with aborted babies, throw-away kids from a generation taught by society that everything’s OK as long as it feels good. The blind are leading the blind. It’s a dangerous duo.

Oh but there is good news. Yes there’s a ditch and yes there are many dangerous duos out there but praise God there’s a Deliverer. There is one who will get you out of the ditch and keep your feet on the right road. Psalm 37:23 tells us that the footsteps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Proverbs 3:6 tells us In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths. Psalm 40:2 tells us He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.