Sermon preached by Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr.
September 9, 2007
Copyright© 2007, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.

"And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor" (Luke 2:52).

How good it is to be home with you after two weeks of intensive travel on behalf of World Vision in Asia.

After spending two days in Hong Kong, I attended a six-day triennial council in Singapore. Some 450 members of the Partnership, which serves in over 100 countries, came together to provide governance that both reviewed the past three years and set the agenda and policies for the next three years. World Vision has grown to over $2 billion annually in ministry to the poorest of the poor. And we endeavor to provide the best practices in relief and development, sponsoring over three million children and doing all of this in the name of Jesus Christ.

I then went on to India to visit projects in the area of Chennai (formerly known as Madras). What a startling contrast it was to see massive, modern, industrial plants for multinational corporations such as Nokia, Dell and others en route to observing the poorest of the poor in their powerlessness and the severe exploitation of children sold into child labor slavery as a result of parental indebtedness.

Last Monday, we visited an HIV/AIDS clinic and talked with the personnel that gives so selflessly of themselves to the women and children infected with this deadly disease. It is a World Vision clinic dedicated to Mother Teresa.

The highlight for me was to see three of the nine children Anne and I sponsor. They were brought in by overnight train from 500 kilometers to meet with me last Sunday afternoon after church. None of the three had ever been on a train before, been inside a hotel or on an elevator. Their eyes filled with wonder at the experience they were having and were thrilled at the gifts I gave them that the World Vision personnel helped pick out as age and interest appropriate. I was particularly touched by 12-year-old Nithya who has just this last month dropped out of school. She very much wants to be a doctor. The problem is that the school is 4 kilometers from where she lives. She is now entering puberty, and her parents are desperately fearful that someone could take advantage of her on that long walk to school, even perhaps kidnaping her and forcing her into the sex trade business.

Thank you for sharing me as your pastor these last 21 years of involvement in World Vision. Being now a veteran of some 7 of these international triennial councils, I was asked to give a charge to the new board of World Vision International at their installation.

Now I am home with all of the challenges of this year ahead. This week, I officially begin my thirtieth year as your pastor. What a joy combined with responsibility!

Are you aware that of our over 7,000 PC (USA) churches, nearly half (47.5 percent) have 100 members or fewer? Only 6 percent have 351 members or more.

God has so blessed us at St. Andrew's! As we begin this new program year, I challenge you to be much in prayer for our mutual ministry and to actively invite others to become part of our St. Andrew's family.

It promises to be an exciting year of "Building the Future Now" as we complete our visioning process, do succession planning and construct the new Youth and Family Center and children's ed building--while, at the same time, continuing to implement this, our often-quoted mission statement: "St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church is endeavoring to be the family of God together in joyful, Christ-centered worship and is committed to: leading men, women and children to a personal saving faith in Jesus Christ; building ourselves in the faith; and serving others here and throughout the world."

Let us all give the Lord our very best in this most important year as we begin celebrating our church's 60^th birthday.

What better way is there to do all this than to focus on one of the most insightful verses in the Bible, which reads: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor" (Luke 2:52).

This verse is the basis for the five-week series titled Growing Toward Wholeness.

Is your biography one of growth toward wholeness? Or is it a story of lopsided personhood?

We live in an era of specialization. It is entirely possible for a person to achieve success as a giant corporate executive and yet be a mere pigmy as a husband or wife. I know of other people who devote all of their spare time to some form of athletics. Their life is dominated by their physical fitness routine. One friend of mine is a social butterfly. She still maintains that sorority-girl lifestyle. Life for her is one big party. On the other hand, there's my intellectual friend, whose bookish attitude seems to shout, "I'm smart. I'm a scholar. I look down on people who are not as intelligent as I." Then there's the spiritual athlete, who appears to concentrate every thought on God, but, in the process, this person turns off family and friends with a one-sided spirituality.

Granted, these are stereotypes of the extreme. Capsuled into each of them, however, is the important biblical truth that you and I can become lopsided persons.

In our zeal for living, we can so easily lose our perspective, tragically sacrificing wholeness and balance.

Years ago, William Danforth, the founder of the Ralston-Purina Company, wrote a book titled I Dare You. In it, he challenged young men and women to a fourfold development: Think tall; stand tall; smile tall; and live tall. He called it "Foursquare Living."

To symbolize his idea, he suggested that we draw a perfect square on a piece of paper. Now label the left-hand side "Physical"; the top, "Mental"; the right-hand side, "Social"; and the baseline, "Religious." This illustrates clearly the balanced life, for each side is the same length, each facet of life given equal attention.

Danforth spent his life challenging people to balanced living. In fact, he incorporated this checkerboard notion into the brand on all of his products. For years, if you ate Wheat Chex, Rice Chex or any other of his company's products, you would pour them out of a checkerboard box, symbols of foursquare living.

Frankly, it is much more difficult to sustain a balanced view of life in today's society. In fact, the very word "square" connotes a kind of self-limiting lifestyle in which one is a kind of oddball, not quite with it. In my lifetime, I've seen the demise of such general readership magazines as Life, Look, and Colliers, emphasizing the trend toward specialization. They've been replaced by People Magazine, Psychology Today, Golf Digest. Walk by a magazine stand in any airport, and you will see scores of publications niche-marketed to one's political, entertainment, athletic, psychological, culinary and physical fitness interests.

I remember when Alvin Toffler published his book Future Shock, showing how American culture was moving into a whole new world of specialization. That movement is now pretty much complete. In our more cosmopolitan cities, entire communities are built around tennis courts or golf courses. The more scholarly build their own intellectual community attached to universities or art centers, often having little contact with average people. Religious types become compulsively involved in the life of their church or synagogue, living in tight little ghettos of their own making.

Now in my judgment, specialization is good. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, we in the church actually encourage it with our emphasis on "spiritual gifts." It is important that we understand our own special, unique, God-given gifts, passions and style of doing business.

But, this is not the final answer. To be the persons God created us to be, we are called to a growth toward wholeness, toward balance. The Apostle Paul puts it in this way: "All scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The whole thrust of these verses is that we are to be complete persons, fully equipped. Our lives are to reflect the whole counsel of God's Word.

Let me state this in a slightly different way. Extremism in the pursuit of godliness is no virtue. Jesus Christ does not call us to fanaticism. He calls us to a wholeness of life.

One of the great problems we have in the world today is religious fundamentalism. I want to be careful I'm not misunderstood in what I'm saying here. I am a fundamentalist in terms of holding to the great fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. To be clear in what one believes is a virtue. However, when those convictions motivate a person to a fanatical lifestyle, determined to force those views and opinions on others, we see very unfavorable results. Religious wars are the result of such fanaticism. We live in a world threatened by Muslim fanaticism of an Al-Qaeda type. Not all Muslims are that way. Some are very balanced and loving in their expression of their faith. Frankly, we Christians can become so ideologically fanatical that we lose our balance. The result is the "culture wars" we're experiencing here in the United States between the religious/political left and the religious/political right. Unfortunately, the dynamic center has fallen out from under American religious life to the point that truths being articulated by both sides get lost in the shouting match. True biblical faith maintains a healthy balance that integrates social justice with personal morality. The two become separated at great personal cost.

The late Quaker theological Elton Trueblood was a very wise man. I was privileged to know him in my early days of pastoral ministry. One of the last books he wrote was titled The New Man for Our Time. At that time, his language was not considered sexist. I will quote him exactly the way he wrote these highly insightful thoughts.

The new man for our time is the whole man, the man who consciously rejects the temptation to limit himself to one part of a totality, when such limitation is not required. But where is the inspiration to wholeness to be found? It is certainly not found in our current political operations, and seldom is it found in science. The truth is that it is most likely to be found in the Christian faith. Though it is sorrowfully true that some of the worst fragmentation is currently demonstrated in the Christian community itself, the Christian faith, particularly through its Founder and its Scriptures, possesses resources for the transcendence of one-sidedness.

Do you catch the depth of his insight? Those of us who are followers of Jesus are called to discover our gifts, our passions, our style of doing business, but to practice these in the context of a greater sense of wholeness, avoiding lopsided, one-sided living.

Trueblood went on to develop what he called his "Three-legged Stool" concept of life. Have you ever tried to sit down on a one-legged stool? Even a two-legged stool is difficult. In fact, I'm not certain I've ever seen one. Trueblood suggests a minimum of three legs on the stool of your life. Leg one: the experience of inner vitality that comes through a life of prayer. Leg two: the experience of outer action in which you as a Christian carry on a healing ministry to both individuals and social institutions. Leg three: the experience of careful thinking by which the credibility of your entire lifestyle may be supported. And he urges us to avoid the tendency of slipping into one of these three emphases to the neglect of the other two. We are called to: pray; serve; and think. Trueblood insisted that religion is dying when anyone of these three is omitted for an extended period of time.

This is good. I find his reflections stimulating.

I also find helpful the four-legged stool approach, which Jesus modeled for us as the perfect pattern. It supports even more weight for creative Christian living.

Luke describes it in these words, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor (NRSV)." The NIV translates this, "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men."

This one verse deals with the totality of development modeled for us by Jesus Christ in the first thirty years of His earthly life. In my opinion, it is one of the most significant verses in all of the Bible, for it patterns a lifestyle for those of us who are called to be His disciples.

The Bible tells us little about the early years of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us all we know about His birth. When He was eight days old, He was circumcised and named. When He was thirty-one days old, Joseph and Mary paid five shekels for the redemption of the first born, a Jewish ritual dating back to Exodus 3:2. According to the law of Leviticus 12, dealing with the purification after childbirth of the mother who had borne a son, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to Jerusalem, and Mary presented her humble offering of two pigeons. Matthew records their escape in Egypt and their return later to Nazareth after the death of Herod. Then follows a period of silence, punctuated only by one brief sentence: "The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him" (Luke 2:40).

The next glimpse we have of our Savior is when he was twelve years old. This is the familiar story of Jesus' trip to Jerusalem with His parents for the observance of the Passover. But it was also a significant time in the life of Jesus, because it marked the time of His becoming a man. A Jewish boy became a man when he reached the age of twelve.

Jesus became a Son of the Law and had to take the obligations of the Law upon Him. We can well imagine that this particular trip was an exciting time for Jesus. We know that He was so absorbed in what was going on that He missed the start of the journey home to Nazareth with His parents. After three days of frantic searching, they found Him back in the temple talking with the doctors of the Law, who were amazed at the depth of His understanding of the wholeness of life.

Then Luke relates how Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obedient to His parents. No child prodigy exploited that temple scene. Instead, the humble Son of God and Son of Man subjected himself to His own growth toward wholeness for the next eighteen years. The events of this period are compressed into one sentence, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor" (Luke 2:52). Here is the very God of all creation humbling himself to take human form. Quietly, in an unassuming manner, He dedicated His first thirty years to balanced, healthy living--to wholeness.

I commend to you and to myself this balanced biblical growth pattern toward wholeness. We need to ask ourselves some questions. Are we increasing in wisdom? Are we increasing in stature? Are we increasing in favor with God? Are we increasing in favor of our fellow humankind? These are significant questions that must be confronted.

But first, let's focus on the word "increased." What did Luke mean when he said that Jesus "increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor."

This word "increased" takes us off of a legalistic hook. None of us has fully arrived in our spiritual development. It's exciting to know that Jesus himself, with His self-imposed human limitations, developed gradually in each of these four areas. Trying to imitate Jesus can be dangerous and discouraging. In the process, we can be frustrated by legalism. Still we are instructed to be conformed to His image, to pattern ourselves after His likeness. Reading that Jesus "increased" reassures me that even He didn't start out fully arrived.

There are those who take a different view of this verse. For them, Luke was referring to that thirty-year period during which the reputation of Jesus grew, as more and more people became impressed with His uniqueness. They completely missed the meaning of the word "increased." No, the word refers to a developmental process, a period when God emptied himself to experience what you and I go through in our everyday life. The author of the Letter of Hebrews tells us, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). He lived without sin while fully identifying with us in our human struggle.

If this example of Jesus, the only perfect God-Man, defeats you, look at a mere mortal named Samuel. You remember this young man of common birth who became one of the great prophets of Israel. This same formula for balanced living is expressed in a brief description of his youth. 1 Samuel 2:26 reads, "Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people." These words sum up his youthful development. Moses, David and a host of other biblical characters reveal this same aspect of wholeness.

So what does it mean when it says that Jesus "increased"? The Greek verb here is prokopto. It means "advanced," "grew," "increased." Prokopto is used only nine times in the entire Bible, in each case by Luke and Paul, both of whom were well trained in the Greek language. Because the verb is in the imperfect active tense, it means a process is going on. A balanced, forward movement marked our Lord's life. The same word is used to describe an opposite condition. In 2 Timothy 3:13, Paul describes people who are increasing more and more in ungodliness, "But wicked people and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived."

You and I have a choice. We can grow toward wholeness, or we can dissipate the resources God has given us by strictly emphasizing our areas of giftedness, passion and natural ways of doing business to the neglect of balanced living.

Through the years, I have appreciated the writings of Os Guinness. I first heard of him when he was Francis Schaeffer's perceptive colleague at L'Abri. I've benefitted from his writings during the past thirty years and got to know him a lot better this past June, when he and his wife Jenny traveled with us in the footsteps of Saint Paul through Turkey and Greece.

Throughout the years, Guinness has written and spoken about the "containment of contentment." Granted, we are instructed to be content wherever God puts us. But we need to develop a healthy discontent with life the way it is, the status quo. This spirit of false contentment can box us in, limiting our total growth toward wholeness. A healthy discontent can set us free, even as Jesus Christ was free to grow. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he pled with the Roman Christians, "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all of His demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity" (Romans 12:2, Phillips).

Guinness warns us of our natural tendency to float downstream in the flow of our natural aptitudes. It's important to maximize our giftedness but, at the same time, swim upstream against our own natural inclinations, so as to be more balanced, growing in areas that may not be as easy and natural.

For years, Guinness has expressed his fears about the future of American Christianity. He feels that we have adapted too totally to our culture. We live in a great country blessed with many freedoms. These very blessings can become our curse. We are in danger of falling asleep in our comfortable pews. Though we think all is well, our lives are either lopsided, or we simply stop growing. We abandon ourselves to our prejudices, becoming captives of our cultural inbreeding. True wholeness in Christ refuses to live boxed in.

Guinness and I had some in-depth discussions about our tendency to project onto Jesus our own particular political prejudices. In the process, those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ can be co-opted by politicians of both the right and the left who do not share our personal commitment to Jesus, but see us and people with similar viewpoints as large voting blocks who are their potential constituencies. The fact is that God in the form of Jesus Christ is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. He is the Lord of all history and calls on us to put aside our own individual vested interests to hold high the teachings and truths of His Word. We should, as did Jesus, refuse to go through life labeled either as conservative or liberal. If one is alive intellectually or spiritually, he is conservative. By that, I mean that person is unwilling to waste anything that has proven itself of value. Just because something is new doesn't necessarily mean it is best. On the other hand, one is liberal if he or she is open to truth from wherever it comes. Jesus was considered too liberal by some, too conservative by others. He refused to be contained by contentment.

Whole people refuse to stress the mind over the heart or the heart over the mind. A warm heart and a clear head need not be incompatible. In the life of a balanced Christian, reason and passion should go together.

Christians growing toward wholeness refuse to separate words and deeds. We preach the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then we allow our lives actually to be changed by that Gospel. In the name of Jesus Christ, we give the cup of cold water. Then we tell why we gave the cup of cold water. There is no place for an incomplete pietism, which emphasizes prayer, worship, devotion, personal evangelism and the salvation of souls but is not equally concerned with the bodies which house the souls. On the other hand, there is no place for an empty activism, which pickets, organizes, marches, signs petitions, engages in protests, but laughs at the spiritual sensitivities of those whose lifestyle is marked by prayer and worship.

God forgive us for the ways in which we distort the wholeness of life He desires for us. May He help us instead to live a creative life of faith, allowing these varied legitimate emphases to be held in complementary tension.

How do we start on the road to balanced living? Let me list briefly four steps which perhaps will be helpful.

One: Reflect prayerfully on your life.

Let's ask ourselves a question, "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" "What is most important to me?" Life moves so rapidly today that we seldom find the time to reflect.

Two: Write down your primary purpose for living.

What is it? Do I want to be wealthy, smart, popular? Do I desire job security, a lovely home, a nice family? We must be honest with ourselves. God knows what is important to us. Has our purpose shifted from what it once was? Do I truly want to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? Do I love God with my whole heart, mind and soul? Is my neighbor as important to me as myself?

Three: Ask yourself what in your life is excess baggage.

Just what hinders you from achieving your purpose? One way to chart this is to make four columns, using the perfect pattern of that foursquare lifestyle of Jesus Christ as your guide. If He could spend thirty years attending to balanced growth--intellectually, physically, spiritually and socially--why shouldn't you and I? Be honest in your reflections as to how you're doing in each of these four areas. Are you willing to make Luke 2:52 a major corrective influence in your life?

Four: Write down some specific goals in each of these four areas.

Sentimental piety in Christian living comes easily. We can become passive agents, pretending to trust the Holy Spirit when we actually are lazy. The Bible clearly states that there is nothing we can do to earn our own salvation. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you and I can do. There is a place for human initiative, as we respond to what God has done for us. Do I have goals? Do I have intellectual, physical, spiritual and social goals?

Goals simply help me set up specific measurable actions to accomplish my purpose. The goal-oriented person achieves. This conclusion is not incompatible with the Gospel. I am wrong when I choose the wrong purpose and the wrong goals. Then I march off in my own direction, away from God, who has a stronger purpose and a better goal for me.

Set short-range and long-range goals, realizing they are made to be broken. It is impossible to accomplish them all. However, we'll achieve more when we have goals that are specific than when we try to live without them. I must not allow my life to simply be an accident waiting for things to happen. I must make things happen, undergirding my total goal orientation with the prayer, "Not my will but Thine be done."

This process has been going on in my life for over six decades. At times, I'm highly critical of myself, perhaps too much so. There must be a balance, even in our self-evaluation. We must not think too much or too little of ourselves. As I've compared myself to the perfect pattern of growth toward wholeness modeled by Jesus, I've had to reorganize my life. I have filled some sheets of paper setting short-range and long-range goals dedicated to the glory of Jesus Christ. I know I'll fall short. Thank God I'm less legalistic about my goals as they become higher. They are not the basis of my salvation. That was purchased and freely given to me by Jesus Christ. Why should I expose myself to this goal-oriented growth toward wholeness? For one reason--the Bible urges it. The setting of goals is a standard for Christian discipleship. Not only that, goal setting makes sense. It's worth all the effort expended.

No, I'm not setting up a success formula for living. I can't guarantee every Christian a spectacular life. Some of the disciples of Jesus lived quiet, unassuming lives completely out of the spotlight. What goal setting does produce, as we are enabled by the Holy Spirit, is a life of commitment, discipline, risk, excellence, freedom and exhilaration--all to the glory of Jesus Christ and growth toward wholeness in Him. Come join me in this journey toward wholeness!