Hebrews Lesson
207 August
19, 2010
NKJ Acts 4:12 "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there
is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
We started off in our study looking at this topic
coming out of our study in Hebrews 12:14 where the command is:
NKJ Hebrews
12:14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no
one will see the Lord:
…focusing on that initial command to pursue peace with
all people which is also stated in a slightly different way in 1 Thessalonians
5:15 where we are to seek (using the same verb there dioko, to pursue or to seek) after that which is good for one
another and for all people. Also in Romans 13 it talks about the fact that we
are to be pursuing peace if at all possible with everyone. So this is a primary
objective and priority in the believer’s life.
Now last time I talked about the foundation for this. If
you don't get the foundation right, then many times this just can’t happen. If
you have of breakdowns in relationships, within families or business or any
other kind of relationship, if they're not faced and addressed with honesty and
integrity and above all humility, it just can't get resolved on any sort of
substantial basis.
We understand from the study of the Word of God all
the way through (Old Testament and New Testament) that two elements are
foundational. That is a proper understanding of grace and a proper
understanding of love, and that these are ultimately demonstrated for us in the
gospel – that God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were
still sinners, i.e. in a position of hostility, a position where we are
ethically obnoxious to God. And you have various metaphors that are used in
Scripture to stress the uncleanness of man versus the purity of God, that God
in His love towards that which was completely unacceptable to Him, and not only
completely unacceptable but in hostility to Him, rejecting His Word,
disobedient to Him, in idolatry, various forms of rebellion and disloyalty. Nevertheless
God is His grace extends a plan of salvation to man that is based not on what
man but on what God does.
And that is the model. It is that ultimately whenever
we are in a certain set of circumstances where we're trying to make up or
resolve conflicts (in a marriage, in any relationship) we have to pattern it in
on some sort of an external universal absolute. We can't pattern it on our own
emotions or feelings because those are inherently unstable. So only when we
look to something outside of creation in the character of God and the plan of
salvation that we could truly come to understand what it means to have an
unconditional or unmerited love for someone that's not conditioned on what they
do, how they respond, how they act and can get us out of self absorption.
The basic enemy to a peaceful relationship is
arrogance. Arrogance enters into it in many, many different guises. You can
have overt arrogance where somebody is just so full of pride. Then you could
have pseudo-humility, which is just the reverse side where it is a false
humility that is just another form of arrogance. It’s just manifested in
disguise.
And you have of various degrees of self-absorption and
when we live in a kind of culture we have – I think was Christopher Lash
who titled his book back in the 80’s The
Culture of Narcissism – you can probably, if I gave most of you a
test and asked you to list the five best candidates for the Narcissist of the
Year, you’d probably put down pretty much the same people. Just watch
Entertainment Tonight some night and you’ll get a lot of them. But because they
happen to be exposed on television doesn't mean that you’re a whole lot better
or that I’m a whole lot better.
We are the products of our culture. Everyone of us, every
human being from the fall of Adam in the garden, all the way through the
ancient civilizations of Egypt and Assyria and Babylon and Israel and all
modern countries, it doesn't matter where you go we all have the same basic
trends. When you live in a culture that promotes narcissism, which our culture
does – I mean just think about the popular magazines. I know some you
don't want to admit it, but you see these when you going through the checkout
line at the grocery store or you like to bundle these up and take them with you
when you go on a weekend trip to get away and forget about all the cares of
life. So you'll pick up magazines like People magazine, which originally came
out of a section of Time magazine. So it was all about people. Then it wasn’t a
long before there was another spinoff and it was all about Us. So you got to read about us. Then there was another magazine
that came out and it was really getting close to home. It was about Self. If you just look at the title of
many of these magazines it's all about you. It’s just all about focusing on
you, you, you – how you can you lose weight, how you can look better, how
you can attract the right person, how you can feel better, how you can solve
all your problems, how you can solve all your husband's problems or all your
wife’s problems. It’s all about you. We get this message overtly and covertly
again and again and again through all the exposure that we all have. Even the
best of us who don't think we have that big of a problem with self-absorption
really do. We are just in self-deception.
All of these are part of our arrogance skills which we
have mastered and have PhD’s in by the time we’re two years old or two and a
half years old. We’re already manipulating our parents to do everything we want
because everything revolves around us. As soon as we started screaming when we
came out of the womb we noticed every time we made a noise somebody showed up
and did something to us, we learned that it was all about us. This just gets
reinforced again and again and again so when that competition came on the scene
and we began to realize that there was a brother or a sister that was either
already there or was coming along and when they screamed and yelled they got
more attention than we did. Now we have the foundation for a lot of conflict
because it's not about them. It's about me! That’s one of the first things we
all have to make sure everybody else understands is it's all about me and it's
not about you. I’m going to be nice sometimes and let you think it's about you.
But I’m only going to let you think it's about you so that we can get back to making
sure it's all about me. That’s just how life works because we are just
self-absorbed. That absorption leads to self-deception and self-deception leads
to self- justification and self justification leads to self deification.
That's the whole structure of what Paul is saying in
Romans 1. When we kick God off the throne and say there is no God, the person
we just put on the throne was us. We decided we knew more that what God knew.
We were omniscient. We know all the facts that could possibly be known in the
universe. That means there can’t be a God. Or if it’s not the God of the Bible,
then it’s some idol or some other system within creation that we’re
worshipping.
In other words arrogance leads us ultimately to
self-absorption, self-deception, self-justification and self deification. The
more we focus on self, the more we burrow deep down into a hole that just is
filled with mirrors to remind us that it's all about us.
So we're just from a culture of narcissism. When we
have to go into any kind of conflict resolution, you can never truly resolve a
conflict with somebody else without humility. True genuine humility is the
foundation for any kind of resolution of a conflict because in most conflicts
even though we talk about the fact that there may be a "Well, I'm forty
percent responsible." But see as soon as we said, "I’m 40%
responsible," the subtext is that that's my self-justification. If I'm
only 49% responsible then somebody else is 51% responsible, so let's take care
of them. They've got a problem, not me.
The Scripture makes it very clear that if you're going
to resolve any kind of conflict with any body, it starts with the self. It
starts with us getting out of the arrogant self-absorption. You can't do that
if you don't understand grace – that grace means it’s based not on who
you are; it's based on who God is. That’s that external standard that gives us
the framework for understanding both grace and love.
The perfect example (the best example) is of course
the gift of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. Love is modeled there
because the love that God manifests toward man is a love that doesn't say first
you have to do X, Y or Z then I will provide for you.
God says, “I'm giving you a free gift, no strings
attached. At salvation you simply trust in My plan of salvation – trust
in Jesus Christ. You're saved. That's it.”
Does that mean there's no accountability or
responsibility? Not at all. But salvation itself is a free gift. So we have to
understand both grace (unmerited favor, undeserved kindness)… Let’s believe
your little self-absorbed life for a minute that it really is 100% the other
person’s fault. That means they don't deserve your kindness at all. So it’s
just pure grace; and it's up to you now to pass that spiritual test to
demonstrate grace orientation by killing them with kindness – undeserved,
unmerited.
At the very core of your being you want to just sort
of tighten up and say, "They don’t deserve it."
Now you’ve got the point. They don’t deserve it.
Neither do you. The more we think about what happens at the cross, the more you
think about the whole transaction of God providing salvation through grace and
love, the more that helps us understand how we are in turn to manifest this to
others.
So I pointed out last time verses such as Roman 5:8
and emphasis on passages such as Matthew 5:44 that we are to love our enemies,
bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who
spitefully use you and persecute you.
When you are loving someone, blessings someone,
praying for someone and doing good for someone it's about them, it's not about
you. That gets us out of the self-absorption narcissism and to focus on the
other person.
Luke 6 expresses these same ideas. Jesus said:
NKJ Luke 6:27 " But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you,
In other words don't give them what they deserve. Give
them good things that they don't deserve. If you love those who love you, what
credit is that to you? It's easy
to love lovable people. It's easy to love people who are attractive, however we
want to find attractiveness. Whether it’s physical attractiveness or emotional
attractiveness or financial attractiveness or whatever the criterion is. It's easy
to love people like that. It's not easy to love people who are antagonistic to
us, who are angry with us, who have done bad things to us. So Jesus is making
the point that it's easy to love those who love you.
NKJ Luke 6:32 "But if you love those who love you, what credit
is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
In other words even those who are completely out of
the will of God have nothing do with God or are completely self-absorbed know how
to love people who are attractive.
But what we're to do is:
NKJ Luke 6:35 "But love your enemies, do good, and lend,
hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be
sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.
You don't do it because you expect them to change. A
key element in conflict resolution is there are right things to do in a
relationship where there's a breakdown and you can't predicate it or condition
it on the fact that the other person's going to change. In some conflict
resolution scenarios you know and I know that this is going to go on for 20,
30, 40 years. That other person may never change. That doesn't change what
we're supposed to do in the way that we are to treat them. We are to treat them
in the same way that we would want to be treated if we were in that situation.
We looked at other passages like John 13:34 which
emphasized that love is the commandment. Therefore love is not an emotion. Love
is two things I said last week. First of all it's a decision to treat somebody
a certain way because it's the right thing to do. And secondly it is a mental
attitude. It is a mindset. Now emotion may come along with it. It may be
associated with it or it may not be associated with it. When Jesus goes go to
the cross (which is the ultimate example of love in the Scriptures), He didn't
feel real good. There's no sentimental positive emotion accepted that goes
along with Jesus when He’s on the cross. The night before He went to the cross
He was under so much pressure that the Scripture says that He's in emotional
turmoil and He is sweating drops of blood. That is a condition that happens to
many people in different kinds of extremely high stress circumstances where
they're under so much pressure that the capillaries (the very thin capillaries
that are right below the surface of the skin) break from the pressure. So those
little drops of blood go out through the pores and it looks like you're
sweating blood instead of normal perspiration.
Now the foundational passage for understanding the
whole process of conflict resolution between people is in Matthew 7. So turn
with me in your Bibles to Matthew 7. The foundation of this passage is that
humility (objective self evaluation) is foundational to any level of any kind
of conflict resolution. We can't go into a situation saying the other person
has to recognize these five things that they've done wrong.
“When they do that, then I’ll forgive them.”
That's conditional. It’s still motivated by anger. One
thing I want to make a note of is it's really easy for us sometimes to be in a
situation or to look at somebody who’s been in a situation where they've been
betrayed, abused and maltreated.
We say, "You know. This is what you need to do. Go
do it."
But when you know as well as I do that there are times
when your feelings have been hurt so badly that it takes time before you're
ready to settle down and be able to do the right thing. That doesn't mean it's
an excuse for languishing in self-pity and anger and resentment. But it's a
reality. You may be needing to confess your sin and really focus on the Word
for some time before you can get past the situation and start being objective. Sometimes
we try to make things resolve too quickly before we are ready or it’s the right
time.
One of the things we learn in the Scripture is that so
many times we’re watching God works in the lives of individuals. Think about
how God works with the nation Israel in the Old Testament. We’ve been studying
in Kings on Sunday morning for a long time. Notice how when the nation of
Israel goes into rebellion and into idolatry, God doesn't squash them with
Leviticus 26 cycles of discipline the next day. There's time. He gives them
time and you might say with good old Texas accent “enough rope to hang
themselves” or enough time to recover and turn back to Him. So we can’t be in a
hurry. That's not to justify being wrong or just taking your time, it is making
sure that you are actually in the right spiritual frame of mind in terms of
your orientation to the Word to do the right thing and not easily succumb to
sin in terms of mental attitude sins of anger, resentment, bitterness so that
you can maintain a level of stability and objectivity.
Now Matthew 5 through Matthew 7 we have the section of
Scripture known as the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is a very
well known passage or message that the Lord Jesus Christ gave to His disciples
on a small hill on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It’s repeated in Luke 6. In
Luke 6 there are different words. It’s different context. It says Jesus was on
the plain, so it’s a different location even though He said a lot of the same
things. It’s a different location, a different location responding to a
different circumstance. That's always important. Some of you have been
listening to me long enough to know that you've heard me teach the same
doctrines several different times and each time coming out of a different
context a different framework and I'm addressing maybe a different nuance. Sometimes
I'm adding things; sometimes I’m taking some points away. But just because you
read something in Matthew 5 through 7 and it's almost identical in Luke 6,
doesn't mean they're the same event. There's enough information there to make
us understand that they're different events, similar message but a different
context.
In Matthew 5 Jesus is really addressing a key issue
related to righteousness. Righteousness is a foundational word all through this
particular section.
Now I created a search file in the Logos software. I
was going to put it up on the screen so you can see it but at this point that
window doesn't allow you to expand the text. I can hardly see it so I won’t put
it on the board and make you think you're blind.
The word righteousness itself, not counting other
forms of dikaios or dikaiosune, is used 23 times in the book
of Matthew. It’s a major theme especially in this section from Matthew 5
through Matthew 6. Six times the word is used. The key usage is found in
Matthew 5:20 which gives us an understanding of the context of the verse.
Jesus says:
NKJ Matthew 5:20 "For I say to you, that unless your
righteousness exceeds the righteousness of
the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now if you were a Jewish person living at that time,
this could really get your attention because in terms of overt obedience, overt
ritual obedience according to the Mosaic Law; nobody was better than the
Pharisees. Now Christians have a tendency to look at the Pharisees through the
lens of Jesus' evaluation of the Pharisees and think, "These guys are
really bad." But that wasn't true if you were living there. It's not that
from a relative standpoint there were bad. They were excessively and
obsessively religiously observant down to the details, the fine minutia of the
Law. The problem is that it was external; it wasn’t internal. They weren't
dealing with the internal core problems; they were just following all of the
external ritual.
Now externally these look like the most moral obedient
God fearing people that ever walked the planet. So when Jesus said, "If
your righteousness isn’t better than their righteousness then you can’t get into
heaven," people are stunned. Why isn't their righteousness good enough? I
mean it's the best and the point is that man’s righteousness can’t be as good
as God requires.
This is what the prophet Isaiah emphasized in Isaiah
64:6 that all our works of righteousness—not unrighteousness but all of
our works of righteousness—are as filthy rags. In other words, the best
that we do in God’s sight is just filthy rags. It’s unacceptable. We have to
have perfect righteousness that’s completely untainted. The only way you can
have that is if it’s given as a gift, which is the basis for grace.
So Matthew 5:20 gives us the key interpretation to
unlock what is going on in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is contrasting the
high standard of righteousness which man just can’t get to which is in the
Torah. That’s in the Mosaic Law. But he is contrasting that with the
righteousness that the Pharisees are promoting because somehow it’s a doable
righteous. They have diluted the standard so that men can be good enough to
meet that relative standard. It’s a hard standard. You have all of the legalistic
ritual that they were imposing upon everybody which is why Jesus referred to it
as a form of slavery. But His point is that man can’t be righteous enough to
meet the standard of God.
So this whole idea of righteousness becomes the idea
and within Pharisaism there was this problem with being arrogant and judgmental
toward others. So that if you weren’t following their party line then you were
on the outs and they rejected you. They would be critically judging you. So
this is the background for understanding the passage I'm talking about. So it
must be understood in the context of the whole sermon, which is an exposition
on the kind of righteousness that God expects and that God revealed in the
Torah.
Matthew 7:1 says:
NKJ Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that you be not judged.
Now if you look at the screen, I highlighted two sets
of words there. The first set of words is the word to judge. The English word
judge is a translation of the Greek word krino.
Krino is the root, the dictionary form of the word. It shows up in various
forms either as the verb to judge or as the noun krimati which is translated judgment in verse 2. Then you have
three uses of the root metro there at
the end of verse 2 that’s translated here in the New King James – with the
measure you use, literally. You can see that the Greek word is the same. It
should be translated “with the measure you measure with, it will be measured.” There's
an emphasis there on measurement, and measurement has to do with evaluation and
judgment from God’s perspective.
So the verse begins:
NKJ Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that you be not judged.
The idea here is not saying don't exercise critical
discernment or evaluation towards people, events and circumstances. That would
be foolish. God doesn't say quite thinking about the circumstances in life and
the people you associate with and don't make any kinds of evaluation about
them. Just look at passages like 1 Timothy 3 that list of qualifications for
elders, for pastors and for deacons. In order to find a pastor that fits those
qualifications, what do you have to do? You have to evaluate them. So the idea
of judgment here isn’t saying don't evaluate people. That would be ridiculous. You’re
not going to just treat everybody the same.
I know there are some Christians that do that. You get
Christians who produce these Christian Yellow pages. The idea basically is that
anybody who’s a Christian who’s in those Yellow pages you can trust them. Well,
I don’t know about you but I know a lot of Christians I’m not going to trust
any more than I can see them. You know the same kinds of people that I do.
We have to exercise evaluative judgment. But this is
using the word in the sense of an arrogant destructive kind of judgment towards
people; being harshly critical of others in an arrogant manner.
So Jesus says:
NKJ Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that you be not judged.
It’s not our job to go around and make judgments about
other people's spiritual condition and they're their righteousness, which is
what the Pharisees were doing.
He says in verse 2:
NKJ Matthew 7:2 "For with what judgment you judge, you will be
judged;
That is if you go around doing that, you in turn will
be judged according to that same standard and of course the one who's doing the
judging is God.
and with the measure you use, it
will be measured back to you.
Then he goes into a particular illustration that relates
to conflict resolution. This we see in verse 3. He says:
NKJ Matthew 7:3 "And why do you look at the speck in your
brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
Now the word for speck here in the Greek indicates
just a minute piece of dust. All of us at one time or another we just had a
small piece of dust or whatever get into our eye. It’s a little bit of an
irritant. We try to get it get it out, and it just bothers us. But he's stating
this with a stark contrast between the tiny speck of dust versus a log. He’s
talking about a massive log or a massive beam that is used as a support.
He says, "Here you are. You're very concerned
about this little bitty speck, this little irritant thing in somebody else's
eye, and all the while you're ignoring (because of self deception and self justification)
the fact that that you got a beam in your eye."
The point is that he’s saying that you're all bent out
of shape because somebody else has some little peccadillo that you think it's
so horrible and you're making an issue out of that in terms of your
relationship and the reality is you have even worse things going on in your own
life that you’re ignoring and acting as if they aren’t there.
The application in conflict resolution is if we're
going to try to resolve a conflict was somebody else, we have to start with
self-evaluation and self- examination. Now that we understand begins first of
all in terms of our relationship with God. We have to make sure that we are
cleansed before God and we're forgiven by God in terms of whatever sin may be
in our lives.
So we start with 1 John 1:9.
NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.
So the starting point first of all is making sure that
we are right with God. But it doesn't end there. Just because we're right with
God doesn't mean that automatically we are right with other people whom we have
offended or we have betrayed or whatever the circumstance may be. Now we have
to go to the individual.
That is what James is talking about in the fifth
chapter of James where he talks about confessing sins to one another. This
isn't public confession of sins, which you've seen in some churches where they
call people up and you have to tell everybody all the things you've done. Some
people like to go to churches like that. It’s better than a soap opera. They
get to hear what everybody else is doing, but they're not about to get up in
front of the church and confess to everybody. That passage isn’t talking about
public confession of sin. It is talking about the fact that if you are a
believer and you are in spiritual turmoil and you are under divine discipline
because of this, then part of the process is you have to evaluate your life and
see if there are these conflicts. If so you need to go to the other person and
ask for their forgiveness. You need to go to the other person and apologize in
some cases so that resolution can take place. You need to pursue peace with all
people. That means that there are times when you have to go to them in privacy
between you and the other person and get things right. So this is a starting
point here where we have to look and evaluate our own life, our own position
first.
Jesus goes on to say in verse 4:
NKJ Matthew 7:4 "Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me
remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye?
What's the solution?
He says:
NKJ Matthew 7:5 "Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Now he’s not saying you don’t deal with the problem
with the other person. That’s the speck in his eye. But before you can deal
with that, you have to make sure that you have dealt with whatever sins or
arrogance or whatever problem it may be that contributed to the problem in the
first place. You have to make things right from your perspective in terms of
whatever contribution there has been from your own side.
Now I have a little warning here because I know that
there are people who have extremely tender consciences. In fact they have been
sort of programmed from birth that whenever somebody says, "Oh! Look what
somebody did here". Whether they did it or not they’re the first person to
confess because they've just been programmed to respond in guilt to everything.
Their first reaction is that "I did this. Aren’t I a horrible
person?" whether they did it or not. So they’re just are hyper sensitive
in that particular area. That’s just as much a form of arrogance as anything
else. So we have to avoid subjectivity and hyperventilating over our own
sensitive conscience. We have to make sure that we don't respond to situations.
This happens in a lot of family dynamics where you have two people who get at
odds with each other. One of them has an extremely sensitive conscience and in
order to resolve the situation and have peace, they will become the sacrificial
lamb and the martyr every single time and admit to it being all of their fault,
no matter what, because they want to avoid a conflict. They want to achieve
peace again and basically they admit to a lie over and over again. You can’t
have real genuine conflict resolution unless there is honesty and integrity at
the foundation for process. There has to be that.
Without that if you're just saying, "Okay. I'll
admit to being at fault just so we can get past this and have resolution,"
then you're just keeping the problem going. You're contributing to the problem;
and you're not resolving the problem because if it is the other person's fault
(60%, 70%, 80%) they’ve got a major arrogance problem that needs to be dealt
with. Otherwise this pattern is just going to be repeated within the family
dynamic again and again and again. So when some people take on in an act of
pseudo humility the guilt that isn't theirs and they play the martyr, it just
continues to contribute to the problem.
Let me give you a couple of examples, sort of case
study types of things. I've watched some of these things happen. They are
fictitious to a degree; but they're based on experiences I've had in dealing
with people. First of all you have two people who are in conflict. You always
have to remember that when you have two people in conflict (or just two
people), you've got two people who were basically arrogant and self-absorbed to
one degree or another. We're starting with two people who are sinners. By definition
that means they are arrogant and self-absorbed. Now the first person may have
contributed to the situation but only in some general sense. Now I've seen this
in a lot of marriage counseling scenarios and marriage breakdown scenarios. There's
not a single perfect husband anywhere on the planet, and there hasn't been
since Adam ate the fruit. It isn't going to happen. So every husband has done
something that really screws up the marriage no matter what. But you have a lot
of women who are humble and who are objective and they realize that, so they
don’t make an issue of this. So it never blows up into a major fracture within
the relationship.
The same thing happens on the other side. There's no
perfect wife anywhere. Every woman I've ever met is a sinner. I've never met
one that wasn’t a sinner. Just like men, they make mistakes. They get in bad
moods, get irritable, grumpy and all kinds of things that happen in life. We're
all familiar with that, and yet we have to overlook those things. When you love
someone a lot of times you going to step around things that you know you
shouldn't. You just do that in humility.
So you always have two people who are in conflict. The
other person, the person who is so called "in the right", has
probably done a lot of things that they shouldn’t have done. Let’s just use a
marriage example. They haven't been as neat as they should. They haven't been
as punctual as they should. They haven't been as responsible in some areas of
taking care of domestic responsibilities or financial responsibilities, or whatever
it may be, as they should. But those are general faults. The other person on
the other hand has done something that is truly a major fault and a major
problem that has contributed to a major breach within the relationship. So you
have these two people. One of them has in only a general sense contributed to
the breakdown. But the other one has contributed in a greater way. Now the
other person comes along, the one who’s truly guilty, and they figure out a way
to manufacture a rationale to make it look like the first person is the one who
really generated all of the fault. Now I don’t know if that would happen to
anybody here.
But Adam sort of mirrored that when God showed up and
said, “Well Adam, what happened?”
Adam said, “Well God it's the woman you gave me.”
He immediately passes the buck. We all do that. We're
very good at it.
So the person who's guiltier or who's really created
these serious breach manufacturers a rationale which flips the guilt back on
the other person. Now the other person because of the nature that they're in is
a sensitive person and so they say, "Well, you know you're right. I’ve
failed in those areas. I'm so sorry. Let's go on."
What's happened is that they've apologized but they
convince themselves that they’re the guilty party when they're not. So the lack
of objectivity and an emphasis on false humility, which is what that is -
accepting the blame and that's not there, not accepting the proper level of
blame for the right actions - just contributes to a problem that will continue
to grow and grow and grow and exacerbate until it really explodes within the
marriage.
In another scenario you might have the same two
people, but the second person then manufacturers another rationale and doesn't
accept any of the responsibility. The second person is in complete denial about
what's going on in self-justification. They've generated some significant
problems let’s say. Because
they’re in self-denial, they refuse to accept any responsibility for what's
been going on. It's not their fault; it's the other person’s fault. And they
can list 25 things that the other person's said on the drop of a dime. They can
list 25 areas of fault in the other person and they don't ever forget that list
of twenty-five. So that person adopts a self-righteous strategy and only
accepts part of the blame because after all you should.
"That’s just going to make me look more
generous," and dumps it back on the on the other person.
What you're seeing both of these types of examples and
many others is we get into this gamesmanship where two people constantly try to
avoid accepting honest objective responsibility for their contribution to the
problem. They either manufacturer self-justification for their behavior, they
try to flip the blame back upon the other person, or they make it look like
they're the ones who are really not at fault. All kinds of mixtures like that
play out in different relationships. You see it in breakdowns with families
over many different issues. I can think of about five or six examples of that
right now from people that I know.
The problem is that at the root of it all is just
arrogance. Before you can get anywhere in resolving this kind of a situation,
the person that wants to be pursue peace (the believer who wants to pursue
peace) has to be truly and genuinely humble. Removing the beam out of your own
eye is the starting point. But that doesn't mean just because you are honest
and honest doesn't mean that you distort this.
You have to have real objectivity. That’s why I say
this takes time because we're really good at deceiving ourselves in many
different ways about our involvement in different kinds of conflicts. I’ve know
from situations I’ve seen in marriage counseling. And one reason I hate to do
marriage counseling is because the two people in front of you and as pastor you
look at these two people and they’ve been engaged in certain kinds of
behavioral patterns (sin patterns, arrogance patterns) for most of their lives;
and they're so mired in self deception that it'll be years before they could
ever approach objectivity in describing what's actually going on in the
relationship.
By the time they come and sit down in front of you,
they’ve self-justified and self-justified so much that you've got 50 layers of
self-justification rationales and self deception on top of whatever the
scenarios are. The only person who can break through that is of course God the
Holy Spirit to give us the objectivity to be honest with ourselves before God and
to deal with the problems. Once we do that then we're in a position where we
can address it with another person. But until you are honest with yourself and
have that real humility to go to the other person, you can't get anywhere. It just
then becomes another power struggle, gamesmanship between the two people.
Now the next passage that I want to look at is Matthew
18 starting in verse 15. This is a passage where people often go for church
discipline. I don't think this is Jesus is talking about a formal pattern that
is to be followed when anybody is sinning within the congregation. This is
talking about a personal relationship breakdown when two people need to work
out the problem. So it begins with preserving privacy. You have a problem with
somebody else who sins against you. So you are to go and sit down with them and
explain how they have offended you and where the problem is.
Now what do you have to do before that? You have to do
the Matthew 7 and get the beam out of your eye. Until you do that, you can’t go
talk to the other person. So then you go and talk to the other person and you
explain the fault, try to work it out. If he hears you, you have gained a
brother. The situation is resolved. You’ve made peace. You go forward.
But if he doesn't hear you, Jesus says:
NKJ Matthew
18:16 "But if he will not hear, take
with you one or two more, that 'by the mouth of two or three witnesses
See that’s going right back to the Mosaic Law which
anything had to be confirmed by two or three witnesses.
every word may be established.'
So now it’s a little more serious situation. You're
going to talk to somebody and if they're mired in self-deception, anger, resentment,
you've got witnesses. You’re trying to work this thing out. The other person
isn’t listening.
Then in the next verse:
NKJ Matthew
18:17 "And if he refuses to hear
them, tell it to the church. But if
he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax
collector.
Now this is one the first uses the word ekklesia in the New Testament. This is
before (chronologically before) the founding of the church. Jesus isn't even
talking about the church as the church yet. Ekklesia
was also a word used for any kind of assembly. So he's talking about taking it
before – and this context is probably the synagogue - and working out
this conflict because by this point this would've reached a major proportion
and threatened (probably) the peace of the synagogue or the congregation.
So the point here is if he refuses to listen, tell it
to the church, but if he refuses even to go to the church let him be to you
like a heathen and the tax collector. Now the realization here is that there
are some people that you're going to deal with that you want to have conflict
resolution with. They may be a son or daughter. They may be a parent, a friend,
maybe somebody you're in business with, or have a contract with. At this point
you have to realize they don't want resolution which is what you want, and
you’re just have to stop because no matter how much you want it, if they don't
you can’t have resolution.
In the Old Testament in Jeremiah, Jeremiah says unless
two people are agreed, how can they walk together? If there's not that
agreement between two people that we're going to work through the circumstance
the situation to have resolution and to have peace, one person can’t do
it.
It takes two people to make any marriage work. It
takes one person to make it not work. Anybody who's mired in arrogance is going
to break down any relationship because there's no objectivity; and there's no humility;
and there's no grace. So all it only takes one person to destroy that
relationship; but it takes both of them working together to bring about that
sort of resolution.
Also just another interesting comment here in terms of
this passage is verse 18. Jesus then says addressing His disciples:
NKJ Matthew
18:18 "Assuredly, I say to you,
whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and
What he says is:
whatever you loose on earth will be
loosed in heaven.
Now this terminology of binding and loosing comes out
of rabbinic verbiage. Basically it means that however you decide to resolve the
issue, you have the authority to resolve it. Whatever you bind has already been
bound in heaven. You are in effect as the disciples; you have the authority to
pronounce judgments in these kinds of situations.
So what happened in verse 17? Jesus said if you're
going to go to this person, take two or three witnesses with you. Now it's very
important to understand this context because the next verse is one of those
prayer promises you often hear quoted by people that’s ripped out of context.
Verse 19 Jesus said:
NKJ Matthew
18:19 "Again I say to you
The same group as verse 18.
that if two of you agree
Contextually he’s talking to the disciples.
on earth concerning anything that
they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.
Contextually what are they asking for? Binding and
loosing – judgment. This isn't a prayer promise. This is a promise
related to the authority that the disciples would have in the early church in
conflict resolution. It's not a prayer promise. God isn't saying you're going
to have more effective prayers if you can get two or three Christians together and
they can agree on something. This is not talking about prayer. This is talking
about bringing two or three witnesses together in the second stage of this
conflict resolution; and they're the ones who are in authority to bring about
that resolution and agreement and to enforce authority if necessary in terms of
those relationships. So don't be quoting Matthew 18:19 as a prayer promise that
if we can just two or three together and pray that God's going to hear us
because we’ve hit the magic number and now God’s going to listen to us. It
doesn’t work that way.
So tonight what we emphasized is that conflict resolution
starts by looking at us. There has to be humility; there has to be objectivity.
It starts with self- examination in terms of confession (our relationship with
God) number one, then in terms of resolving the conflict with the other person.
Without humility it's all a fraud, and you only get the humility if you are in
fact willing to deal with it honestly with your fault, not accepting blame that's
not yours and not trying to rationalize away blame that is yours. It has to be
honest and objective.
We’ll come back next time. I want to look at two or
three other passengers that we have in the Scriptures getting into the passages
such as Ephesians 4:32.
NKJ Ephesians
4:32 And be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
NKJ Ephesians
5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as
dear children.
So we’ll start linking this with forgiveness and the
love of God. Then we can see how all this works out as a priority in the
believer’s life.