207 - Pursuing Peace: Conflict Resolution, Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Love [C]

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.