SS05-20-07.

ST UDY THEME: BEING A PEACEMAKER. SS05-20-07.

“CONFRONT IN LOVE.” MATT. 18: 15-17; GAL. 5: 13-15; 6: 1-5.

MATT. 18: 15-17; GAL. 5: 13-15; 6:01, 2-5.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO MATTHEW 18.

Most of us have lived long enough to know that disagreements, controversies, conflicts and litigations abound in our society. Unfortunately they appear among Christians people as well. Often it seems easier to ignore or deny conflict situations, escape from them, or react to them by attacking rather than seeking ways to resolve conflicts and to discover peace and harmony.

Fortunately, God has provided a way for us to overcome our innate weakness as peacemakers and learn to respond to conflict constructively ….

Through the Gospel He also enables us to learn how to resist temptation, obey His commands, and live a life that honors him. God’s Word, the Bible, offers discipleship guidance toward becoming peacemakers in personal conflicts.

The first lesson in this study of how to become a peacemaker titled “Honor God” tells how Paul dealt with some conflicts and potential conflicts in a church in Philippi in Macedonia. In last Sunday’s lesson, “Accept Responsibility,” dealt with the sin of judging and the source of conflicts.

In today’s lesson titled, “Confront in Love,” presents Jesus’ teaching about the three stages that may culminate in church discipline, and Paul’s words about the need to restore an erring believer.

Next Sunday’s lesson deals with Joseph forgiving his brothers, Jesus teaching about seeking reconciliation with someone who has something against you, and the words of Paul about forgiving as the Lord forgave us.

This series of lessons was designed to help us be godly peace-makers and resolve personal conflicts according to biblical principles.

Many adults who are involved in conflict situations avoid confrontation, which often allows bitterness to grow and prevents a proper solution. Others go to the opposite extreme and confront the other person harshly, which makes conflict worse.

When Christians who are in conflict situations confront others in love, they are more likely to avoid adversarial situations and to find God-honoring solutions to their problems.

The Biblical Truth in today’s lesson is that when confrontation is necessary to resolve conflict, Christians are to confront in love in order to restore relationships.

1. PLEASE READ MATTHEW 18: 15-17.

In Matthew 18: 10-14 Jesus had just told the parable of the lost sheep. In vs. 15-17 He indicated one way to apply this parable---to people in the church who need to be sought and found. These words were addressed to Christians against whom a fellow believer had sinned. Thus both parties were professing Christians and church members.

Jesus used the word church only three times in the Gospels, and two of these are in vs. 17. (The other is in Matt. 16: 18.) One church member feels that another member has sinned against him. In spite of the severest warnings, offences will be committed.

We are not sure how the offense occurred, but the first thing the offended party must determine is whether it was serious enough to take steps to resolve it. Some people are overly sensitive to what others say and do. People who wear their feelings on their sleeves take offense at minor things. Therefore one should first make sure the offense is serious enough to require confrontation designed to resolve conflicts.

The second preliminary action before confronting someone is to evaluate your self. To what degree are you responsible for the conflict? None of us is perfect: therefore, any attempt to confront others about their faults should be made humbly as a fellow sinner, not as a perfect judge. The confrontation may involve mutual confession. The offended person must be ready to admit how his or her actions contributed to the conflict.

The third preliminary is to pray for the Lord’s direction about when to go to the offending person and what to say to him or her. Ask the Lord to be at work in your heart and in the heart of the offending party. These kinds of confrontations are difficult. No one enjoys being rebuked about any thing. Only the Lord can help both parties in a confrontation.

Procedures are outlined in Matt. 18 to show the injured party how to respond.

The first step in confronting the other person is to tell him his fault between thee and him alone. (rebuke him in private.)

Several guidelines for confrontation should be followed. You need to define the issues clearly. Confess your own sins and faults, especially those related to the conflict. Instead of making judgmental statements that accuse the person, focus on how the conflict has made you feel.

For example, instead of saying, “ Your wagging tongue has told things about me that are outright lies,” you might say, “I felt deeply hurt when I learned what had been said about me.” Give the other person time to respond and listen carefully to what the person says. Seize any hopeful word and build on it.

One time of confrontation may not be enough. Be patient. Your goal is resolution of the conflict. Give the person time to make a decision. Jesus did not give a three-step process in order to do all three. The goal at each stage is to resolve the issue. If he listens to you, you have won your brother.”

Go to the second stage only when all hope is gone for reaching a private solution involving only the two of you. The second stage in the process is to go back to the offender and take one or two others with you. Deut. 19:15 says, “One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of 2 or 3 witness the matter shall be established,”

You are looking for someone the offender respects enough to listen to what the third party has to say. If possible, take someone with skills at arbitration or mediation. The third person should be able to keep confidences. You do not want to make this a public issue unless you have to do so. If you ask others to pray for the people involved, ask those who will not make what you are doing a topic of gossip.

Sometimes concerned family and friends have an intervention. This is usually a strategy used with people caught up in some harmful addiction. Any confrontation is an exercise in tough love, and intervention is definitely tough love.

None of these strategies is always successful. Peace makers are not always able to make peace. Jesus’ process for confrontation assumes that some people stubbornly resist every effort to help them. They reject the private approach and remain unmoved by two or three people.

If the issue remains unsolved, Jesus outline a third stage involving he entire church. “If your opponent professes to be a Christian and yet refuses to listen to the reconcilers’ counsel, and if the matter is too serious to overlook, Jesus commands you in Matt. 18: 17 to tell ‘tell it to the church.’

This does not mean standing up in a worship service and broadcasting the conflict to the church members and visitors alike, since unwarranted publicity is totally inconsistent with the intent of Matt. 18.

Instead, you should inform the leadership of the other person’s church (and probably yours as well) of the problem and request their assistance in promoting justice and peace by holding both of you accountable to God’s Word and to your commitments.

The objective of this third stage is the same as the first two stages: repentance, forgiveness, and restoration. Sometimes these are the result of the person’s awareness that the church is following Scripture, but at other times the person remains unmoved. “If he doesn’t pay attention even to the church, let him be like and unbeliever and a tax collector to you.”

The objective of the process outlined in Matt. 18: 15-17 is redemption at each stage. This goal continues even if a member is treated as a sinner by the church. How did Jesus treat sinners and tax collectors? He sought to win them. So should the church treat those disciplined by the church. The decision of the congregation in such matters, reached through prayer, the Word, and the Spirit, will be ratified in heaven.

Church discipline is not often practiced today. Why? People point back to a time when church discipline was harsh and judgmental. It often was exercised over trivial things. Also people today are more permissive. They quote Jesus words from John 8: 7: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” Or they fear that bringing a private issue into the church may become divisive as members take sides. They ask, “Where would church discipline start and where would it stop?” In spite of all these objections, the fact remains that the biblical process in Matt. 18:15-17 is still in God’s Word.

The first step in seeking reconciliation is personal confrontation. The second step is involving one or two others as reconcilers. The third step is to take the matter to the church. Christians are to follow biblical guidelines in seeking to resolve conflicts. We are to forgive as God in Christ has forgiven us. But according to Luke 17:3-4, Eph. 4; 32; Col. 3: 13, and Gal 5: 13-15 we are to bestow forgiveness upon the one who says, “I repent.”

PLESE TURN IN YOUR BIBLE TO GALATIANS 5.

2. PLEASE READ GALATIANS 5: 13-15.

Paul faced opponents from two different directions. On the one hand his primary opponents in the Galatian churches were legalists. They undercut the gospel of grace by insisting that Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the Jewish law to be saved.

After an emotional beginning, Paul spent most of his letter to the Galatians defending the gospel

of grace. He summed up Christian Freedom in 5: 1.

His other opponents wanted to make this freedom mean liberty to do as hey pleased. They wee called libertines or antinomians. Paul addressed this error in Gal. 5: 13: “For you are called for freedom, brothers: only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.”

Legalists assumed that only the law could motivate a person to do what is right. The libertines believed that because they were free from the law they were free to do as they pleased. Paul, proclaimed freedom, but claimed that libertinism is only another form of slavery.

This is a message for our day in which many people have no higher morality than one of their own making. Ethical relativism is the order of the day. The old commandments are considered out of date, and each person is free to do his or her own thing.

In vs. 13 Paul comes back to the theme of liberty. “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty”---you have been set free, you are no longer slaves, you are free men---“only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh.” Do not say, “Well, Now, I am saved by grace and therefore I am free to do as I like.” No; but, I am saved by grace and so I am free to glorify the God of all grace!

I have liberty to live for God, I have liberty to magnify the Christ who died for me, and I have liberty to walk in love toward all my brethren. It is a glorious liberty, this, the liberty of holiness, of righteousness. “But by love serve one another.”

Having been called into this liberty be willing to be a servant. Our blessed Lord set us the example; He took that place on earth: “If I, then, your Lord and Maser, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Through love we delight to serve. Look at that mother caring for her little babe. She has to do many things her heart does not naturally delight in. Is her service a slavery as she waits upon her babe? Oh, no: she delights to do that which love dictates and so in our relation to one another, how glad we ought to be to have the opportunity of serving fellow-saints. “By love serve one another.”

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word”: It is as though He says, You talk about the law, you insist that believers should come under that law; why don’t you stop to consider what the law really teaches? “All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “Thou shalt love.”

The man who loves will not break any of the commandments. If I love God as I should, I will not sin against Him. Look at Joseph, exposed to severe temptation, greater perhaps than many another has gone through, and yet his answer to the temptress was, “How shall I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

He loved God and that kept him in the hour of temptation. And when it comes to dealing with our fellows, if we love our neighbor as ourselves we won’t violate the commandments. We won’t lie one to another, we won’t bear false witness, no one will commit adultery, there will be no violation of God’s law, we will not murder. No wrong will be done to another if we are walking in love. All the law is fulfilled in one word, even this: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.”

God is love and therefore it is natural for the new nature to love. When you find a believer acting in an unloving way, doing an unkind thing, you may be sure that it is the old nature, not the new, that is dominating him at that moment.

Oh, to walk in love that Christ may be glorified in all our ways! It was said of early Christians, even by the heathen about them, “Behold how they love one another!” Can that always be said of us? Or must it be said, behold how they quarrel; behold how they criticize; behold how they backbite one another; behold why they scandalize one another.” “What a shame if such things could be said of us!”

Paul believed that two things motivated Christians to do right. One was agape love, the other was the Holy Spirit. He called on believers to by love serve one another. Paul quoted what Jesus called the second greatest commandment. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. He said the law was fulfilled in that one commandment.

Love demands more than law, and it comes from relationships, not from a set of rules. Law can tell me that adultery is wrong, but it cannot put love in my heart. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, and He enables us to bear the fruit of the Spirit, which are Christ like qualities. Gal. 5: 16-26 is an appeal to walk in the way of the Spirit. All the law is fulfilled in one word, even this: “Thou shalt love.”

Now, on the other hand, if one fails in this, “If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that yet be not consumed one of another.” If you would tear one another’s reputations to pieces, find fault with one another, quarrel with one another, be careful, for the natural result will be that you will be “consumed one of another.”

Do you know why many a testimony that was once bright for God today is in ruins? It is because of a spirit of quarrelsomeness, fault-finding, and murmuring, comes in among the people of God, and God cannot bless that .

If you and I are guilty of that, we ought to get into God’s presence and examine our ways before Him; yea, plead with Him to search our hearts, and confess and judge every such thing as sin in His sight in order that we may be helpers and not hinderers in His service.

The conflict in the Galatian churches was sharp. Paul used strong words to warn against it in vs. 15. What did he mean by the warning not to bite and devour one another? These words sound as if they were fighting with each other like wild animals do. The danger of such savage conflicts is deadly. The words “be not consumed one of another” sound like a warning against cannibalism. Rather than doing this, they needed to love one another and to serve one another.

If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Well, someone says, “I always hate myself if I say anything unkind, and I make up my mind never to do it again.” The trouble is that you have not yielded that tongue of yours to the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember the word in Rom 12: 1, “Present your our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. A number of people have presented almost every part of their bodies except their tongues. They have kept the tongues for themselves, and they allow them to wag on and one until gradually they bring in a lot of sorrow and grief among the people of God. Won’t you say, “Lord, this tongue of mine was given me to glorify Thee: I have used it so often to find fault with others, to injure the reputation of a brother or a sister, to speak unkindly or discourteously about other people. Lord Jesus, I give it to Thee, this tongue that Thou hath bought with Thy blood. Help me to use it from this time on solely to glorify Thee. And in using it to glorify Thee, I shall be using it to bless and help others, instead of to distress and hinder them.”

Jesus will be so glad to come in and take control and everything will be made new in the light of His presence.

PLEASE TURN TO GALATIANS 6.

3. PLEASE READ GALATIANS 6: 1.

This verse is one of the most import Bible texts on confronting fellow Christians who need to be restored. Paul wrote about a brother or sister who was overtaken in a fault or caught in a wrongdoing, or caught in a sin. The word overtaken can mean either “detected” or “surprised.” This may mean that the person was caught in the act. The Pharisees claimed in John 8:3-4 that they caught the woman taken in adultery “in the very act. This does not mean that Christians should be observing one another to catch them at some sin.

If the meaning is ‘detect,’ it means that one or more fellow believers learn of the sin. Ken Sande believes that the person was surprised: “Thus, the brother who needs our help is one who has been ensnared when he was off guard. He is like a fisherman who wasn’t paying attention and got entangled in his net as it was going overboard, and now he is hanging desperately to the side of the boat, in danger of being drowned.” Sin ought not to take us by surprise. We cannot excuse ourselves from committing the sin.

We have the case of a brother who has failed, though not willfully. The Sprit of God says, “Brethren, if a man be overtake in a fault.” He did not set out with intention to sin. He was not endeavoring to stifle his conscience, but sudden temptation proved too much for him, as for instance, in the case of the apostle Peter, who really loved the Lord, but when challenged as to being one of His disciples was so filled with fear that he denied the One he had declared he would never forsake.

It is important to distinguish between willful, deliberate sin, when one has put away a good conscience and definitely embarked upon a course of evil, and sudden and unexpected failure because of overwhelming temptation taking one off his guard. How many fall under such circumstances!

Perhaps it is the power of appetite or of fleshly passion. It may be a question of a quick temper or unjudged pride and vanity. One goes on unconscious of danger, finds himself in circumstances for which he was not prepared, and before he realizes what is transpiring, he has sinned against the One who loves him most.

It is easy for others who do not understand the hidden springs of action to blame such a one very severely, particularly if his fault is of such a character as to reflect discredit upon the testimony of the Lord.

The easiest way in such a case is to insist on immediate excommunicating the wrong-doer from the church privileges. But here a better way is unfolded to us. Paul writes, “Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness: considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”

It is no evidence of spirituality to give way to harsh judgment, but rather to manifest compassion for the one who has failed and to seek to bring him back to fellowship with God. It is only in the spirit of meekness that his can be done. A hard, critical spirit will drive the failing one deeper into sin and make it more difficult to recover him at last. But a loving, tender word, accompanied by gracious effort to recover, will often result in saving him from further declension.

If we remember what we ourselves are and how easily we too may fall, we will not be over stern in dealing with others. It is not that we are called upon to excuse sin. That must be dealt with faithfully, for we are told in the law, “thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him.” But we are to point out the way of deliverance; considering our own need of divine help continually in order that we may be kept from sin, we will know better how to deal with those who in the hour of temptation have missed their path.