Loving Others in Conflict

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0:07God is good. Amen. And he's here with us and he's here to teach us, to lead us, to help us to abide in him. So we seek to abide in him and in his word. He's faithful to meet us there. This is our last week of our little four week sermon series on loving each other. Four weeks of four little passages from Paul's prison epistles, prison letters about agape, about selfless love among Christians. A healthy church culture, which is something that we all want. It's developed as we focus on and learn about and practice the ways of the progression of agape love. That's what we've been talking about. So we've seen, we've gone from loving others in thought, that was week one, loving others in word, loving others in action. You might ask yourself, well, thought, word, action, what could be left? What's, what's the fourth week going to be about? Loving others in space, loving others in, in the metaverse, um, loving others in conflict. That's what we're talking about today. So as I've said, we're kind of getting, the challenge is increasing with every week. And wouldn't you agree? Loving others in action is even more challenging than loving others in service. Um, there's a stretch of land in Asia. Uh, it's 160 miles long and about two and a half miles wide. And it's practically a nature preserve. There are endangered species thriving there, rare birds, rare animals, rare plants. There's no fighting. There's no conflict there. There's no tanks. There's no guns. If you arrived at this place instantaneously, you might

2:00think that you have arrived someplace peaceful. Maybe you've gone back in time to the Garden of Eden or something. You'd think that you're in a place of peace, but you'd be very wrong because you'd be in the DMZ, the demilitarized zone in between North and South Korea, the strip of land that separates them. There's no conflict happening there, but it's not a land of peace by any stretch of the imagination because North and South Korea are still technically at war. They signed an armistice agreement for 72 years. They've been under an armistice agreement. There's, it's not a peace treaty. It's basically a truce. They're still technically at war. Now with so much strife, conflict in the world, in our lives, sometimes we settle for a truce. Sometimes we're like, okay, I'll settle for that. It might be as good as I'm going to get, but we want more than that, don't we? We want agreement. We want harmony. We want unity. We want real peace, but we don't know how to get there. And in order to get real peace, we need divine intervention, right? But God makes peace and he calls us into that act of peace and he equips us to do the same.

3:32And that's what we're going to talk about today. Just, this is a big subject. We're just going to get into it just a little bit today. Give us a call and some principles for peace. So let's go to Colossians chapter three, verses 12 through 17. This is the word of God for us today. It's true in every part. It's reliable. It comes from a God who loves us, who knows us, and who has promised for his word to go forth with power to change us. So let's receive it eagerly today. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Pray with me. Lord, we need your help because we are a world of conflict. We're a people that seem to fall into conflict over and over. Would you release us from that by the power of your spirit and your word? Show us a better way. Help us to rest in you, God, and the work of Christ, and to learn what you are bringing us into, Lord. The cosmic

5:50worldwide peace plan that you are at work unfolding through Jesus. Show us how we can participate in that and how we can partake of his blessings. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay, so loving others in conflict. Be as determined to make peace with others as God was with you. I think conflict is like potholes in the road, at least for me, even when I'm looking out for them and trying to avoid them. We still find our way to hit them. Have you ever seen that pothole a ways away and you're like, I'm definitely going to miss that pothole. I'm going to take maneuvers right now. And you're like, I've somehow steered into it. Sometimes that's what conflict is like. Our longing for peace, it comes out in pop music, in books, in movies. And yet what happens most naturally, given just the natural state of things, is not peace, but arguments, grievances, conflicts. You might be days, you're probably not more than days away from your most recent conflicts. You might be just hours or maybe even minutes. Maybe you got into conflict on the way to church this morning. That's okay.

7:24God wants to help you. Because God alone changes the narrative, the narrative of conflict after conflict that we find ourselves in. But he tells us to not be a people, don't be a people that just hope for peace. Don't be a people who just long for it or hope that it's around the next corner. God tells us to be people who make peace. Our outline today is this. We're called to make peace. We're equipped to make peace and we're blessed to make peace. That's what we're going to talk about today. There's a lot in this passage that I'm not going to touch. I'm going to draw out the things in it that are about peacemaking. There's a lot in the Bible about peacemaking that I won't be able to cover. But that's what we're going to cover today. How we are called to make peace, equipped to make peace, and blessed to make peace. So let's talk about this first one. If we're honest, the call to make peace is a little bit like being told to make your lunch. That's okay, fine.

8:35I'll make my lunch, but I would have rather someone made it for me. We'd rather someone just do it for us and hand it to us. Here's your peace. Now, God does play a decisive role in this. We're going to get to that. But we have a role to play and we have to just square our shoulders against this and see it. Not shirk it, not avoid it. Look at Psalm 34, 14. It says, seek peace and pursue it. Romans 14, 19 says, let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. We're supposed to go after it, to seek it. We might hit that pothole of conflicts without even trying and sometimes trying to avoid it. But that's not going to happen with peace. We have to be aiming for it, striving for it, seeking it. Now, when I ask Cadence Rebree for help with something, it's either because I can't do it myself, or because I want to teach them something, or maybe both. Since our father can do everything that he wants by himself, including make peace, he must want to teach us something, right?

9:49He must want to teach us something by calling us into this with such a deliberate call, make peace, seek peace. Making peace requires us to address conflict head on. Conflict gets in the way of things like rocks in your garden. Things don't grow quite as deep when there's conflict there. Conflict, it's like a pebble in your shoe or a speck in your eye. It just kind of irritates you. You can't function normally with that speck in your eye, with the pebble in your shoe. And conflict is like a Lego on the floor. You ignore it at your own risk. Eventually in the dark, you will step on it and it will hurt. Sometimes conflicts can just be digested in us.

10:41The passage says bearing with one another. This is part of graciousness. This is all the way back. We're making full circle now back to week one about loving others in thought. Sometimes we can handle conflict just by a quiet and internal forgiveness. And whenever we should, whenever we can do that, we should do that. But other conflict can't be digested. It has to be extracted. It's too big. It's too complicated. It's grown too deep. It's got to be identified and cut out and extracted.

11:20It takes spiritual wisdom truly to know when something has gone from, can I just digest this on my own to know? It's not there. It's not there anymore. I've got to, I've got to address this. Takes a lot of wisdom. We should ask, ask and ask often church for spiritual wisdom about when it changes, but right when it changes, right when it gets to the point where we have to address it, that's when it gets dicey. It's, it's tough. Our fear gets in the way. Bringing things up is uncomfortable. It can easily go sideways. Our pride gets in the way. We're instinctively defensive.

12:05How, how dare you accuse me? What, and you're perfect? And we have built a world. We have custom designed a world that tells us to do exactly what our hearts want to do. Look out for number one, the world tells us. And we say, yeah, I was waiting for someone to tell me that. Live your truth. The world tells us. And we say, yeah, yeah, you know, I was, I was waiting for someone to tell me that. Judge people from a distance instead of talking to them. Put them into categories. Then you can hate them. And we say, yeah, that sounds good. I'll do that. Are you offended? Are you hurt?

12:57Don't move towards someone. Cancel them. Cut them all. That's what the world tells us. And we, the secret, the dark parts of our hearts say, you know what? That sounds right to me. These are lies.

13:18These are lies. We want to hear them, but we shouldn't listen. God does not call us in that direction. And the world is speaking very loudly right now. The world does not know what to do with conflict. It's fostering it left and right. It's lighting fires all over the place and it has no equipment to put it out. We need God's intervention so much. And that's exactly what God does because on our own, there is no hope for peace, but we have to start with this. Jesus came and he said, peace, peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you?

14:13What good news, isn't that? What a relief. We hear that. We hear Jesus say that and we're like, tell us more, Jesus. Say more about that because the world is serving us up just garbage. Tell us more, Jesus, about the peace that you have to give us. That it's not like what the world has. And he says, I'll tell you, but I'll even more than that, I'll show you. And he goes to the cross and he dies in the place of sinners so that anyone who trusts him can have that peace. He himself is our peace. The word of God tells us. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It was a conflict of our doing. The fault was one-sided and yet God took one-sided action. Peace is the outcome of our repentance in his forgiveness. That has got to be the start. We have to look to the look to the gospel and we see the tools of peacemaking right there.

15:28Repentance and forgiveness. God has done the essential work and if we are resting in him, we too can be peacemakers. And the central dynamic of peacemaking is found at the cross. Repentance and forgiveness, friends. I want you to hold on to those two things as we go through the rest of the sermon. Repentance and forgiveness, those are the primary tools of peacemaking. And we see them in the gospel. Our repentance and God's forgiveness. So we're called to make peace.

16:06It's a difficult call, but now that we've looked at it and admitted that that is indeed what God calls us to, let's talk about how he has equipped us to make peace. He's equipped us. Here's what God has given us for the calling. First, we're given a uniform. Many of you have had jobs or roles or maybe you still have jobs or roles that have a uniform. Uniforms identify the role that a person has. It helps the person embrace that role because they put it on. It helps other people recognize and receive that role because they see the uniform. He's a firefighter. She's a doctor.

16:54I'm going to interact with them because I see that uniform. But uniforms also prepare a person for the role, right? Some uniforms might have some type of protective element like a hard hat. Some uniforms have instruments on them like a stethoscope. Uniforms identify and they prepare. Being a peacemaker, it sometimes means repenting. It sometimes means forgiving. And usually it means both. For that huge task, God has given us a uniform. Twice here, it says put on. That is literally clothe yourself. It's not like put on, like make an imitation or put on a mask. It is literally clothe yourself. Clothe yourself with compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

17:56These are character traits. This is the uniform of the new self. This uniform identifies us as peacemakers and it makes us ready to make peace. And all of these traits, notice, they're all relational in nature. You can't do any of them by yourself. They're all relational attributes. Humility and meekness is about how we view ourselves in relation to other people. To be a peacemaker, you have to acknowledge your sin first and foremost. In Luke 6, Jesus asks, how can you say to your brother?

18:34Brother, let me take the speck that is out, that is in your eye. When you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye. You hypocrite, first take out the log of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye. If there's one passage about peacemaking that you can read, you should read every day for the rest of your life, it'd be that one.

19:01Because it points us in the right direction from the get-go. This is meekness and humility. This is how peacemaking starts. Look at yourself first. Deal with your own sin first and foremost. And look at it until you see it as a log in comparison with the speck of your brother and sister. But then remember, Jesus says, after you've taken it out, then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye. There still is a call at the end of that little message to move towards your brother or sister, right? Jesus is not living. He's not establishing for us a, you do you and I do me. You handle yourself, I'll handle myself and we're just going to be fine. That is not Jesus's way. Take out that log, then you will see clearly to help your brother or your sister. That only happens as we abide in Christ. Listen, if you're a Christian, you've already admitted, if to no one else you've at least admitted to God that you are a helpless sinner in need of His grace and mercy. Let me ask you, if you have admitted that to God, has that changed today? Is that different today than it was before?

20:21No, right? It's still true. It's still true that you are a helpless sinner in need of grace, right? Just maintain that perspective and that's the key to staying humble. Just remembering I did not get here because I earned it. I'm standing here by the grace of God. And as we change our perspective about ourselves, we also have to change our perspective about other people. We have to put on compassionate hearts, kindness and patience. We remember the person that I'm in conflict with, they are a work in progress just like me. They're a needy sinner just like me. And we're in this together. And then we're ready for this.

21:16This is the final element of the uniform. Above all these, put on love. This is the uniting element of the uniform, agape. A genuine love for other people because you can't make peace with someone that you don't love. Without love, compassion is pity. Without love, kindness is condescension. Without love, patience is just toleration. Without love, humility and meekness is just a show. You can't make peace without having love. Now, listen, the church and the context of the fellowship of God's people, this should be of all of the social context in the whole world, this should be the one where we are most likely to be able to make mistakes and recover from them. Oh, I wish that that were true in all churches on God's green earth, that that would be the place. Your school, your workplace, you don't know what's going to happen if you make a mistake. You hopefully someone will look past it or forgive you. This of all places needs to be the place where we can recover from the ordinary bumps and bruises and mistakes that we make in life, including against one another. Amen. This of all places needs to be the place where we can live graciously with each other, where we can recover. But that's only possible with love because love keeps our relationships soft and pliable. Without love, things get cold and relationships get brittle. They're not able to withstand the ordinary bumps and bruises that we commit against each other, whether we want to or not. I'm a math science guy. I like math and science. One of my favorite science

23:29experiments that I remember from many times, science museum trips, you know, science class in high school and stuff is with liquid nitrogen. And if you've ever seen liquid nitrogen, it's very cold. And the experiment goes something like this. They take a rubber ball and you know what happens if you bounce a rubber ball. It hits the ground and if you were to slow it down with a camera, you'd see that the ball deforms. But then it snaps back into shape and that snapback is what causes it to bounce up in the air. So you take this rubber ball and you put it into liquid nitrogen. It's negative 321 degrees Fahrenheit. And you put it in this for about five minutes. You take it out and it doesn't look much different. But you throw it on the ground and it just shatters. Because all the heat has been sucked out of it. Now it's brittle.

24:28It doesn't snap back the way that it used to when you bounce it on the ground. That's what happens when love is missing from our congregation, from among us. That's why we're called to put on love, because it's got to snap back. We've got to be able to bounce against one another with all of our different personalities and styles and idiosyncrasies. And yes, the ways that we sin against each other. Love above all these put on love so that the relationships that we have with one another stay pliable, stay soft so that they're able to withstand that. Don't go into peacemaking without your uniform on. Search out the log in your own eye. Pray for more love for each other. Especially pray for the people that you don't get along with, the people who have hurt you, the people who you're in conflict with. So the second thing we're given is a guide. The first thing is our uniform. The second is a guide. The verse 15 and 16, the command, those commands are translated let. Those are third person imperatives for those who want to score high on the Greek quiz later. Third person imperatives are translated let because it is something that you just allow to happen. You just get out of the way and allow something else to have control. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Christ's word is a word of truth. It's a word of right and wrong.

26:12It dwells in us as we are teaching and admonishing one another. Both instruction and correction. Being honest in relationships is vital. We can't have peace without that. We can't help have peace if we lie. But his word is not just a word of truth, friends. It's also a word of grace. It's a patient word. It's a caring word. He called the bleeding woman who touched the fringe of his garment. He called her daughter. He told the thief dying next to him today you'll be with me in paradise. His words met people exactly where they were. We let the word of Christ have free reign as we speak truth and as we speak grace. And verse 15 says let the peace of Christ rule. Peace making situations, they are very messy, very confusing. We need a compass to point us north. Google maps is it's improved a lot over time, but it's still not perfect.

27:24It still gives you the wrong direction. Sometimes you can't just follow it blindly, but you can follow the peace of Christ blindly in every situation. Every word, every action, even the tone of our voice, bring it before the peace of Christ and ask, does this conform? Does this agree with your work, Jesus? Does this agree with your heart? The thing that I'm about to say or do, is that likely to increase peace or not? If not, what would you have me do? What would you have me say? Which way should I go? Where should I turn in this interaction to produce more peace? Now, listen, when the peace of Christ rules, you will have the freedom and the courage to do the things that right now you think are impossible. You will bring up hurt that you have not been able to get over, that you never thought you would ever talk about. When the peace of Christ rules, you will listen to someone that you swore was totally in the wrong. When the peace of Christ rules, you will repent even when someone doesn't forgive. And when the peace of Christ rules, you will forgive even when someone doesn't repent. All because you're looking to the peace of Christ and you're letting that have free reign in your life. You're saying this is my God, not my own heart, not my own wisdom, not the article I've read, the peace of Christ. I'm going to let that rule and reign because against all odds through the peace of Christ, we have been reconciled with God. So why wouldn't that be our guide? Here's the last thing. We need gratitude. We're equipped with a uniform, with a guide and with gratitude.

29:47Listen, reconciliation is a long road. Many times we get tired. It seems like we'll never get there. In those moments, friends, don't give up, give thanks. When you're tempted to give up, give thanks instead. Three times here, the passage tells us to have a grateful heart. Be thankful with thankfulness in your hearts to God, giving thanks to God, the father. You think he's trying to make a point? It's repeated because gratitude sustains us. Gratitude is the thing that can turn our hearts, that can soften them, that can reintroduce love. That can help us put on that uniform. Listen, when you can't give thanks for the person that you're in conflict with, you can still look to God. You can still look at God and you can reflect on what you have in him. The refuge, the strength, the comfort, the wisdom, the peace. As you're looking to him and you're letting him fill your mind with gratitude for what he's done, soon you'll be ready to look back to the other person. And now you'll see them differently.

30:59You two are more alike than you are different. You're both recipients of this saving mercy and grace from God. You're both people that God has not given up on. And before you know it, you're ready to get back in the game and keep making peace. So this is how we're equipped for it. Our uniform, our God, our gratitude. But I want to close with this, how we're blessed to make peace. James 13, 18 of James. Sorry, 318. We heard this earlier. A harvest of righteousness is sown by in peace by those who make peace. The work of peacemaking is hard, but it leads to abundant blessings. For one thing, it's spiritually liberating. Everyone feels justified in their bitterness, right? I know you've been there or you've been bitter and you're like, I am so right right now. I've never been more sure that I'm right in holding on to this bitterness.

32:22Only after forgiving someone do you realize that you have been locking yourself in a prison. That's why I have never met a Christian who regretted forgiving someone. Never. I've never met someone who says, you know, I really regret doing what I could do to make peace. Every single thing about your spiritual life is refreshed when you make peace. Fresh winds blow on it. Fresh rain falls on it. Your hope, your service, your wisdom, your joy, everything gets better when you forgive. And many times it also produces closer relationships. Anyone here, anyone here experienced closeness, a deeper closeness in relationship because of forgiveness happening there, right? I know I felt closer to people who've forgiven me and people that I've forgiven.

33:27What else can we say except that God is true and he's real? That it is spiritually refreshing when we make peace? That there really is a harvest of righteousness that's sown in peace when we make peace, right? We've experienced it. Peacemaking binds us together because it affirms the gospel. It's two people pointing to the same thing and saying, yes, forgiveness is real. I have it in Jesus. And so now I'm experiencing with someone else. Another blessing of peacemaking is that it disarms the enemy. Satan has many schemes, many schemes, but one of them is conflict.

34:13Ephesians 4.27 says unresolved anger is an opportunity for the devil. Pay attention. He loves to divide people because when sheep are isolated from each other, they're easier for him to pray upon.

34:34Peacemaking is a way to fight back. Repentance and forgiveness have spiritual power because our enemy has no answer to them has no answer to them. He can't handle it. He doesn't even know what's happening because he is totally unfamiliar with what repentance and forgiveness are. He's powerless to resist. They're so foreign to him. Satan knows nothing of the experience of repentance and forgiveness. And so they thwart his battle plans. They overcome even the deepest divisions.

35:08We fight back. When we make peace, we are waging war against the devil and his schemes. Repentance and forgiveness, they're not nice ideas. They're weapons in battle. And they're ours through the gospel. Now, here's the last thing. The last blessing that I'll mention here about peacemaking is that it shows our family resemblance. Everyone bears some kind of resemblance to their parents. It's fun to see. Who do you look like? I've got my dad's build and my mom's kind of facial features. This passage calls us God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. The same words that are used about God's people in Deuteronomy 7. If your faith is in Jesus, then he is your brother. He's your older brother. And God is your father. And making peace shows that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. In Matthew 5, Jesus says this, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. When I'm with my brother and my dad and people see us together, they look and they're like, you three belong together, don't you? Listen, friends, dear ones, when you courageously repent and forgive and make peace with one another, people look at you and they look at Jesus and they look at the father and they see, they say, I can see the resemblance between you guys. I see it. I see the resemblance.

37:10We're called to this. We're equipped for this. And we're blessed in this. Because we belong to the one who made peace with us through Jesus Christ. Let's courageously make peace. Boldly make peace. It's hard work, but oh, it's so worth it.