Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

Nicki and I were on vacation in French Lick, Indiana. French Lick is famous because it is Larry Bird’s hometown and because it has a PGA golf course. Well, we’re not basketball fans and neither one of us golf, so we weren’t overwhelmed with things to do.

Our hotel had a lounge that had a pool table. We do both like to play pool, so we made our way to the lounge. As we were chalking up our pool cues, I started talking a little trash to my wife. I was feeling like I had my A game, so I started telling her how I was going to smoke her in this game. And as the game started, that’s exactly what happened. I started sinking balls right and left. I never missed. I was making absolutely everything in sight.

I was down to just two balls left to sink. The last one of mine and then the eight ball. I informed Nicki that she was lucky to receive a free education because I had just taken her to school. With that, I made my shot. As I watched the cue ball rolling down the table, I immediately knew that I was in trouble. It was a perfect shot…that sunk the wrong ball. I knocked the eight ball right into a corner pocket. Any of you who know how to play pool know that if you sink the eight ball before you sink all of your solid or striped balls, you lose. And unfortunately my wife was all too familiar with this pesky rule as well. She informed me that I had indeed lost the game in a very animated and taunting fashion. Since I had been so nice and gracious to her throughout the game, I really thought her little outburst was uncalled for. But even though my wife was a terribly bad sport, she was right. Because of the eight ball, I lost the game.

Today we’ve reached the fifth installment in our Games People Play series. Today we’re talking about pool or billiards. There’s a great lesson to be learned from this game that we need to apply in our walk with Christ. As we continue on our faith journey, it is critically important that we watch out for the pitfalls, or the eight balls, in our lives. These pitfalls, these eight balls, are the sins that we return to again and again in our lives.

You know what I’m talking about. That sin in your life where you swear every time will be the last time and it never is. Every time you fall into this sin, you say, “This is it! I’m not doing this again! I’m done!” But you never are. You feel like such a loser Christian because you just can’t seem to get past this. You feel like everyone is making spiritual progress except you. Every time you think you’re going to make a good shot, you wind up sinking the eight ball and you lose.

This morning we’re going to start out in Proverbs 5. We’re going to go to God’s Word for some very practical advice about how we deal with the pitfalls and eight balls in our lives.

Proverbs 5, begin in verse 21. “The LORD sees everything you do. Wherever you go, he is watching. The sins of the wicked are a trap. They get caught in the net of their own sin. They die because they have no self-control. Their utter stupidity will send them to their graves.” (Proverbs 5:21-23, GNB)

The first thing we can pull from God’s Word is that you have to recognize the eight balls in your life. Proverbs calls sin a trap and a net. In other words, something that’s easy to get caught in. And once you’re caught in the net of a particular sin, it’s easy to keep going back again and again.

But God is telling us to press the pause button and take a look around. If we’re going to escape the eight balls in our lives, the first thing we have to do is open our eyes and recognize those eight balls.

Let’s look at the last line in the Proverbs passage again. “Their utter stupidity will send them to their graves.” (Proverbs 5:23b, GNB) Other translations say things like “folly” or “foolishness.” But the Good News Bible hits the hardest: “utter stupidity.”

When we’re fighting to overcome a sin that has a grip on our lives, we often do stupid things that defeat us before we start. It is utter stupidity to keep going back to the same place and expecting something to change. It is utter stupidity to keep putting ourselves in the same temptation situation over and over again and expecting that one day we’ll react differently.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And yet that’s often how we fight against the sin in our lives. Let’s be honest. Most of our temptations are not a surprise to us. Most days, we face the same temptations at the same time in the same places.

I know that at this time, she’s going to walk in and say this, and then I’m going to be tempted to say that.

I know at this time that my parents aren’t home, the computer is sitting right there, I’ll get on the internet, and I’m tempted.

I know that the contract will read like this. But I know I can make it read like this and no one will ever notice. I’m tempted.

We know the places where we’re tempted, and yet we continue to go there. We know the situations that put temptation in front of us, and yet we never change our situations. Proverbs calls this utter stupidity that will ultimately send us to our graves. In other words, we sink the eight ball. Game over.

I don’t want to oversimplify this, but it really isn’t rocket science. If you know that you meet a certain temptation in a certain place at a certain time, then you change your location or your schedule. Instead of passively wondering why we can’t overcome this sin in our lives, we need to use the brain God gave us, recognize the situation, and then work to make the necessary changes.

Let’s say that I go to a restaurant and order a steak. When the steak comes, it is absolutely terrible. Now, a normal person would say, “I’m not going back there again. There are too many other restaurant options.” But instead, I say, “Hey, maybe they were just having an off night. I bet the food is usually pretty good.” So I go back to the same restaurant and order the same steak. And guess what? It still stinks. But you can’t hit a homerun every time. I’m just convinced that this place is good. So I go a third time, order the steak again. The steak comes, I bite into it, and shoe leather would have more flavor. It would be more tender, too. Any sane person would say, “You gave it three tries. It’s been bad every time. Go somewhere else.” But not me. I know that cook has a good steak in him somewhere. And I keep going back day after day, week after week. I keep going to the same restaurant with the same chef and ordering the same food. And then I act surprised when it never improves.

That is the dumbest example I could think of to illustrate how crazy we are to think that we can go to the same places, same people, same situations, and expect a different result. The first step to winning over the eight balls in our lives is to recognize what and where those eight balls are and then make the changes necessary to avoid them.

Let’s go to the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians. In chapter 10, God gives us some more practical advice on dealing with our life’s eight balls.

1 Corinthians 10, start in verse 12. “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:12-13, NIV)

The second thing God tells us is, “Don’t be arrogant about the eight balls in your life.”

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, “if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!”

If we’re growing in Christ throughout our spiritual journey, we will eventually begin to leave certain sins behind. That is great. That’s what is supposed to happen.

But, when this happens, we have to watch out for a shift in our attitude. This shift happens slowly, and it is incredibly subtle. It is a shift away from trusting God’s strength and toward trusting our own strength to deal with temptation.

When we remember a sin from our past and we arrogantly think, “Man, I finally beat that,” that’s exactly when Satan says, “I got ya!” When we fall into this arrogant attitude about sin, we let our guard down, and that’s when we’re most susceptible to fall right back into it again.

The Bible says, “The arrogant one will stumble and fall and no one will help her up…” (Jeremiah 50:32, NIV)

That’s why Paul warns us to be careful. Just when you think you’ve got the game won, you can sink the eight ball.

When someone is coming out of alcoholism, they refer to themselves as a recovering alcoholic. This will be how they describe themselves for the rest of their lives. No matter how long it has been since their last drink, they are a recovering alcoholic.

This is a constant reminder to them that they cannot let their guard down and arrogantly believe that they’ve beaten their addiction. If they begin to believe that, they’re primed and ready to fall headfirst back into addiction.

We have to constantly remind ourselves of our proclivity for sin. As long as we live in this sin-stained world, we cannot arrogantly believe that we ourselves have overcome a particular sin, because that puts us in danger of landing right back where we started.

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger learned a little lesson about arrogance recently, didn’t he? He’s a motorcycle enthusiast and he always rode without a helmet. Other people, including his coaches, told him to wear a helmet, but Ben had been riding his bike for years. He’s good enough to not need a helmet. That is until his head smashed into a car’s windshield and he was thrown over the car and onto the pavement back in June.

In an interview on Good Morning America, Ben said, “I'm coming off two pretty good seasons in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl and 24 years old, and maybe this is God's way of saying, 'Hey, I can take it away from you at anytime so you better back off a little bit."'

Ben learned that maybe he’s not that good. He was given a painful dose of humility. And when we start thinking that we’re “all that,” spiritually speaking, we’re primed for a huge wreck in our lives. Those eight balls will be waiting to take us down again.

There is one final lesson God wants to teach us about these eight balls. God is more powerful than the eight balls in your life.

Let’s read the 1 Corinthians passage one more time. “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:12-13, NIV)

God is more powerful than our temptations. God’s wisdom is powerful because he knows where our breaking point is. He won’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we can handle. God’s love is powerful because he provides an escape from our temptation. In every way, God is more powerful than our temptations.

I want you to look at two key phrases in the Corinthian passage. You be careful; God is faithful. Those are the two key components to overcome our life’s eight balls. You be careful; God is faithful.   In other words, you do the possible. God does the impossible.

It is a team effort between us and the Lord. We do the possible. Recognize our temptations. Know where, when, and how our temptations usually come at us. And then get proactive and make some changes.

I’m tempted to watch stuff on TV that I shouldn’t watch. Call your cable or satellite company and change your package. Get rid of those channels. If necessary, pitch the TV altogether.

I’m tempted to overspend on stuff that we just don’t need. Cancel your credit card.

I’m tempted to complain, criticize, and gossip when I’m one the phone with this person. Record your conversation and then force yourself to listen to how beautiful or ugly your words were.

You may think these solutions are radical, but a problem that is out of control may require radical action.

Jesus said, “So if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better to enter heaven crippled or lame than to be thrown into the unquenchable fire with both of your hands and feet. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better to enter heaven half blind than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 18:8-9, NLT)

Jesus calls us to radical action to deal with an out-of-control problem. If there is a sin that has a grip in your life, you need to do everything you can to change your situation and remove the temptation from your life. That is doing the possible.

You be careful; God is faithful. If we do the possible, like we’ve talked about, we can trust God to faithfully do the impossible. We can pray for God to give us wisdom to make the right changes in our lives. We can pray for him to help us to see this sin as he sees it. To us, it looks attractive and fun. Otherwise why would we keep doing it? But pray for God to show you what it looks like through his eyes.

We can trust that God will not allow more temptation to come into our lives than we can handle. God always lives up to his end of the bargain. He’s always willing to do the impossible. So if there’s a sin we’re struggling with, we can assume that we have yet to do the possible. We have yet to make the right changes. We have yet to commit the situation to prayer so that God can work in our lives. And because of that, we just keep sinking the eight ball.

On the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was a fleet of robotic invaders called “The Borg.” The Borg demanded the unconditional surrender of the earth’s solar system. They told anyone they came across, “Resistance is futile—you will be assimilated.” Regardless of the question, their answer was the same. Resistance is futile—you will be assimilated. However, anyone who watched Next Generation knows that they were wrong. They were defeated and the earth was saved.

Sometimes it seems like Satan is whispering the same thing in our ears. These recurring sins have a stranglehold on us, and we hear him say, “Resistance is futile.” You cannot resist this temptation. This sin has such a foothold in your life that you might as well give up.

And, if we were running on our own power, that would be true. But when our efforts are teamed with God’s limitless power, that sin that is so prevalent in our lives can be defeated.

There is always hope. That’s what the good news of Jesus is all about. There is hope for another day. Because of Jesus death on the cross, the sins of our past and even our present can be forgiven. But not only that, we have God’s Spirit in our lives. Through His Spirit, God can guide us and strengthen us to finally move past these eight ball sins. If you’ve never accepted his love and forgiveness, we invite you to do it today. The sin in your life has erected a dividing wall between you and God, but Jesus is ready to break down that wall today. Are you ready to accept this free gift he offers?

Mike Edmisten