First Baptist Church
Matthew 18:15-17
Conflicted About Conflict!
Late one summer evening in Broken Bow, Nebraska, a weary truck driver pulled his rig into an all-night truck stop. The waitress had just served him when three tough looking, leather jacketed motorcyclist- of the Hell’s Angels type- decided to give him a hard time. Not only did they verbally abuse him, one grabbed the hamburger off his plate, another took a handful of his french fries, and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it.
How do you think he responded? He calmly rose, picked up the check, walked to the front of the room, put the check and his money on the cash register, and went out the door. The waitress followed him to put the money in the till and stood watching out the door as the big truck drove away into the night.
When she returned, one of the bikers said to her, “He’s not much of a man, is he?” She replied, “I don’t know about that, but he sure ain’t much of a truck driver. He just ran over three motorcycles on his way out of the parking lot.” (Illustration from a sermon by Jeff Simms)
Many of us may understand how this truck driver feels. It is hard to be nice to some people. The gospel teaches us that I have a obligation to every person, not just to the people who are nice.
Our world is littered with broken relationships. We have them in our families. We face them at work and school, with neighbors, different ethnic and social groups, between nations. What is the solution? Is there a way to repair the breech, to rebuild the bridge, to restore the relationship?
I believe God gives us a vital key to restore relationships. We don’t talk about it much, but the Bible does. It is the key of humility. In essence, it is living out the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. It means focusing on God and other people, not self.
Last week we began talking about conflict. I concluded that nobody who is normal likes conflict. In fact, one of the things that I have learned about conflict is that if it is done correctly, it can bring glory to God. How’s that for a leap of faith.
I want to touch on one thought from last week, and it will lead us in to today’s section about how to begin the process of reconciliation.
If there is a conflict between you and another believer, then you should go and speak to that person. That meeting should be just between the two of you. The purpose is to win your fellow believer over.
If our purpose is the same as what Jesus intends, we will not discuss with others the sins or conflicts we have with other believers. You see, greatness is not a competition, right? So we don’t need to publicize each other’s sins. We only do that to build ourselves up in our own eyes or the eyes of others.
Go and talk to the other person doing it in love, just the two of you.
Romans 12:18. ““If it is possible”” indicates that it may not be. ““As far as it depends on you”” means that you only have to do your part. ““live at peace”” is the goal for how you are to live.
Now, let me give you 6 guidelines that will help us when we need to have a private conversation with another believer:
1. Start soon — You may need some space to deal with your emotions, but the longer you put off your discussion, the harder it becomes to finally meet. Get things settled as soon as you can.
In Matthew 5:23-24, Jesus instructed his listeners, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”
Why is this verse so important? Worshiping God is the highest priority in the life of a Christian. Yet Jesus says, being reconciled with others takes precedence over our worship. Get right with your brother or sister – then come and worship. Obviously if we need to get things straightened out with someone, that activity would take precedence over everything else too. Appointments for work, family obligations, social plans.
Jesus wants us to know that fractured community is a matter of urgency. Take action right away.
Let’s imagine that after church all of us decide to go outside and play a giant game of football, and while we’re playing, I break some fingers. I’m rolling on the ground in pain.
You all surround me and suggest you take me to the Emergency Room so my fingers can be looked at. But I say, “No. I want to wait a couple of weeks. Maybe they’ll get better on its own.”
While most of us wouldn’t put off treatment on broken bones, the normal practice in church is to postpone the treatment of broken relationships. And from God’s perspective, broken relationships among His children, are far more serious than broken bones.
Do you need to have that private conversation with someone?
If so, don’t delay. Start soon. To God it’s serious.
2. Meet face to face
Today’s technology makes it easy to have private conversations in any number of ways. Yet, Jesus said “Go!”… “Go and show him his fault.” Jesus had a face to face conversation in mind.
Don’t email someone and hide behind your computer, don’t do it on the telephone, that all falls short from what Jesus had in mind. When you meet face to face you can better read someone’s body language and know if they are sincere.
Of course, you can resolve some minor conflicts on the telephone, but if it is major, something that’s really bothering you, then you need a face to face meeting.
You can use e-mail or the phone or a hand-written note to set up an appointment, but don’t rely on technology to help you have a conversation that would be better accomplished face to face.
3. Affirm the relationship ~ and this may be more difficult.
Remind the person that you’re trying to resolve this conflict precisely because you care about them and about your relationship. A good way to approach the subject might be with a statement like this, “I want to discuss something that may be difficult for both of us. I value our friendship and you are too important in my life to let our relationship remain strained. I am confident that with God’s help, we can resolve this together.” Affirm your desire for reconciliation.
4. Make observations, not accusations -
State the facts, not the assumptions -
Examine actions, not motives -
Let me explain — when you meet with someone, don’t assume you know what they were really intending to do. For example, nobody calls you to tell you a prayer concern that everyone else seems to know about. You may think, ‘nobody likes me,’ or ‘see, it was Michael who was supposed to call me, he’s angry at me.’ We can make a lot of assumptions, but none of them might be correct.
We can never examine a person’s heart unless they reveal what is in their heart. A person’s desires and motives can never be scrutinized by you and I. That is God’s work. Remember what Jeremiah said in 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” And in 17:10, Jeremiah tells us who searches the heart . . . “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind to reward a person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
State only what you perceive to be the facts and nothing but the facts. Don’t accuse the other person, but use I statements, such as —
“When you told me my outfit was interesting, I took that as an insult.”
“When you didn’t call me, I felt unloved.”
What you are doing is not blaming, but you are explaining how you felt.
If you begin accusing, you assault the other person’s character. It will immediately make them defensive. And when we become defensive, we usually become offensive.
5. Get the facts -- from the other person
Besides offering your own observations, be sure to let the other person respond. You might say, “Here’s what I saw, heard and felt. Now, what about you? How do you understand this situation? I might be missing or misunderstanding something.”
Proverbs 4:24 reminds us, “Don't use your mouth to tell lies; don't ever say things that are not true.” (NCV)
Both parties need to be silent and listen while the other person is speaking. James 1:19 tells us, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” In other words, listen to the person, don’t formulate your answers while they’re speaking, but love them enough to keep both ears open.
6. Promote Reconciliation
The point is not to fight, win or prove someone wrong. The point is reconciliation – restoring relationships that are valuable to us and important to God. In this private conversation we need to decide what steps need to be taken to restore trust and re-create some sense of harmony.
The hope is that whenever we have differences we will find ourselves freer to engage another believer in a conversation so that we can find reconciliation. Most people feel that confrontation is a terrible thing, however, confrontation can lead to healing and joy. But if we avoid it like I avoid celery and we avoid the West Nile Virus, then how will we be able to find healing in our relationships. The key to make confrontation a positive event is to look at your brother or sister and pray for them and love them.
Friends, when we have a conflict, a difference of opinion, if we’ve been hurt by another believer, then God wants us to have reconciliation. That is what the cross is all about, isn’t it? It’s about us being reconciled to God, it’s about you and I being made righteous before the Majestic King of Kings and Lord of Lords, all through the death of Jesus on the cross.
What greater glory could we bring to God than to resolve to reconcile our broken relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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The officials, who declined to be identified because they were not supposed to be discussing the matter with reporters, would not say when an agreement will be announced.
First Baptist Church
Matthew 18:15-17
Part Number 3
Conflicted About Conflict!
The difficulty comes into play when the other person has no desire to reconcile. At this point you have two choices, you can determine that the issue is not that vital in your life and with the help of the Holy Spirit you can seek to forgive them, and drop the issue and move on. Of course, if the two of you are involved in the church, then you need to decide if you can work side by side. Otherwise the next step is to bring 2 or 3 trustworthy objective people to meet together. The purpose is for these witnesses to confirm what they are hearing and quite possible to open the eyes of the two who are at odds. The ultimate goal is that conflict can be resolved and there would be reconciliation.
Some might interpret this as a gang tackle or numbers play, but it’s actually nothing of the sort. Jesus wants us to meet privately first. But the temptation is usually to involve others from the beginning instead of meeting privately.
So maybe we go to a deacon or another trusted member and say: “You know what Nadine did to me? That crazy woman has a real problem. You need to talk to her.”
And the response they should give is not -- “OOOOh, tell me more.” They should say, “That sounds like a difficult situation. Have you talked to her. If she refuses to discuss it with you, then let’s consider the both of us getting together with her to talk it through.”
Church becomes a very unsafe place when we involve others in our conflicts for the sole purpose of ranting and raving about the other person. Of course, we need to have people who are our confidants, people we can talk to about our situation, people who can be objective and help us through difficult times, but to discuss conflict with the entire church. . . that is going we overboard. When other people are brought into the situation – their opinion of someone else may be tainted, when really you might have misinterpreted the person’s words or actions. And that is how long term damage is done. Satan loves it when we do this. Somehow he convinces us to air our conflicts with anyone but the person involved.
If we are like most churches, we have some room to grow in this area. But we’ll only grow when each of us makes a firm commitment to rely on the Holy Spirit for courage to handle our conflicts one on one rather than complaining to someone else.
In a safe church we would even sometimes stop our friends in the midst of a conversation from time to time and say, “As much as I’d like to listen and help you with this, I need to ask you, “have you gone directly to this person and told them how their actions made you feel?” And if the answer is no, we’d say, “Let’s pray together for courage and draw up a plan for how you might contact that person for a face to face conversation."
That’s a safe church. Does that describe how you would handle the situation? Or would you get sucked in and listen to only one side of the story, and condemn the other person?
Jesus has a couple of other steps to be used only in the most extreme cases.
STEP 3 is to go to the church for resolution. What I believe Jesus has in mind at this point is continuing, confirmed and unconfessed sin. For instance if a person’s spouse is having an affair with another person in the church. A private conversation brought about no change. So a couple of church leaders meet with the person and the person’s spouse. Yet there is still no desire for repentance or reconciliation. What then? Jesus says, “Tell the church.”
He doesn’t specifically say, “Make a formal announcement from the pulpit during a worship service.” Though perhaps some extreme cases may call for that. I believe what He means is, “If one on one doesn’t work, and the person is not convinced by the presence of a few witnesses, then enlist a larger group to pray, and to encourage. Remember, the goal is reconciliation, so at this point involve some others in the church who will also work with you toward that goal.”
Then, what if reconciliation still doesn’t come? That brings us to STEP 4 —
You are to treat them as if they were a non-Christian. Of course, you are to treat them with love and grace, but they are now to be considered outside the church. Paul write in 1 Corinthians 5:5 and in 1 Timothy 1:20 that an unrepentant sinner should be turned over to satan. It sounds strange and cruel, yet, the hope is that the person will get so low in their life that the only way out is for them to repent and turn to Jesus. It does not mean we wish them harm, injury or disease, we do not pray for satan to ravage their bodies, instead, we no longer fellowship with them.
Remember Jesus commanded his followers to love pagans and tax collectors. Love them and seek to win them over with your love. If all this doesn’t bring reconciliation, then start from square one. Yet, we are to always love them.
More than likely, if a person refuses to be reconciled through the first three steps, they have already removed themselves from the life and participation of the church body. So we start loving them as a person who needs to be brought into the fold.
Questions to ask ourselves if someone refuses to be reconciled to us:
~ Does my heart long for reconciliation?
~ Have I honestly done all I can?
~ Do I still act lovingly toward the person?
~ Do I mourn for the harm the person is doing toward their soul, to
me and to others?
If so we are displaying the kind of heart that has no desire to live at odds with someone.
Finally, when we grow through conflict, relying on the spiritual resources God makes available to us means… WE ENJOY THE RESULTING ATMOSPHERE
God’s goal is always reconciliation. God’s goal is community!
