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| Peacemaker 4: Gently Restore (Matthew 18:15-17) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace, Mercy and Peace to you … There was a real temptation in preparing our thoughts for this morning’s message to tie the title of our Message, “Gently Restore,” to the fact that today is our observation of LWML Sunday. The logical tie being … that a gentle touch is often seen a feminine quality. But it would be a mistake to make gentleness a necessarily feminine characteristic. It’s not. It’s a Godly characteristic. It is a walking-with-Jesus characteristic. It is a demonstration of God’s character in us. And that’s not gender specific. Gentleness is an approach in dealing with others that comes from love … as opposed, say, to brute forcefulness, which often derives from anger. And neither love, nor anger, are gender specific. Gentleness, though, is a Christian, or Godly way, of working with others. And that we celebrate today … along with the LWML. Last week we talked about the four “G’s” of peacemaking: 4 G’s … The first, Glorify God, The Second, Get the Log Out of Your Own Eye, The Third ...Gently Restore, And the Fourth … Go and Be Reconciled. Guess which one we’ll be talking about today? Gently Restore. We’ll be putting our attention on the final one, Go and Be Reconciled next week. Gently restore is so very important to what we’re talking about that… we’ll be looking at it even more in depth during our Bible Class Today. So, Gently restore. Restore what? The relationship. What’s happened to the relationship? For our discussions today we want to consider the case where someone has hurt us… Someone has done something, said something, or maybe perhaps NOT done something, that caused us hurt and offense. Now. A couple of weeks back we recognized that when this happens we have a decision to make. And the question is this: Can we overlook the offense? Can we overlook what’s happened? Is the offense something that we can truthfully, honestly, for the sake of the relationship … just write off? Perhaps … but to do so is counter to our human nature … Our human nature wants to either go into denial, or hit back. Denial means we won’t say anything to the person who hurt us, but we’ll hold a grudge against them, and bring it up later, perhaps, if and when it’s to our advantage… Or, as we said, our human nature, in anger, will want to even the score …to hit back … to reply in kind. So, to truly overlook the offense is not natural. It’s something that you can’t do without asking for and utilizing the strength of God’s Spirit. But that CAN be done. And when you do … You may not “forget” that it ever happened. But you won’t bring it up. You won’t talk to anyone else about it. You’ll never refer to it again… By the power of God’s Spirit at work in You, and out of love for the other person, and for the sake of your relationship, as far as you’re concerned, though, it never happened. Then, you know what you’ve done? You have truly forgiven them, without them ever even asking for your forgiveness. How much like God is that? However. There are instances, perhaps even maybe the majority of cases, where the hurt is something that needs to be brought to the other person’s attention … and the riff mended. A lot of times these hurts include what you might call “things at stake”… like rights, property, time… money… Instances where, in a non-Christian setting, the path most often taken would be off to court. Now. Jesus speaks to us specifically about how to handle these things in the eighteenth Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. The procedure there is often referred to … simply with that reference … “Matthew 18.” However, out of the entire chapter, the directions there only require 3 verses. Jesus says, “If your brother (now, assume throughout our discussion today that brother could also be “sister”) … If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you and if your brother listens, you have won your brother over.” Or, what Jesus is saying, if you have suffered an offense at the hands of your brother (or sister) go gently and talk to your brother in private. Why? First of all, he may be totally unaware of what he’s done to cause you the offense. It was unintentional, something he did or something he neglected to do. Presenting the issue in a gentle, loving manner will encourage a response in kind. An angry attack, full of ultimatums will, generally, either not be heard, or encourage a whole set of defensive rationalizations. Not what you need. Gently restore, or you yourself may be led into sin, St Paul warns us. Unfortunately, when we’re hurt in such a way that we just can’t let it go, our human nature really kicks in. We’ll want to talk to others about it in order to build up our case … and tear our adversary down. That’s what’s commonly called gossip. Meanwhile, we naturally tend to draw away from the one who hurt us. Giving them the “cold shoulder.” Punishing them for the hurt that we’ve experienced. All those actions just make it harder for the original offense to be seen. Now it’s clouded by a distant relationship and a lot of third-party talk about all the bad things you’ve said against the person who hurt you … who may not even yet know they’ve done something wrong. Go to that person …gently … in private … and speak honestly of your hurt. At that point, if you’re talking to Christian Brother or sister, they well may be moved to do confession we talked about in our Bible Study last week … They will be sorry for what they have done … they may ask for your forgiveness. They may even assure you they’ll do whatever’s necessary so that … whatever it was …won’t happen again. That’s what Jesus is talking about when He says “win your brother over.” With his confession of hurting you and your forgiveness of that hurt … there is reconciliation. You have won, you have gained your brother back as a brother. The hurt is absolved. And then you don’t bring it up again, you don’t talk about it to anyone else. And whatever material aspects there may be can then be jointly worked out between the two of you. Now. Sometimes we think if we’ve had one private meeting with our offending brother or sister … we’ve gotten our card punched … we have to go on to the next step. But, the word “Go” Jesus uses has a “keep on doing it” flavor about it. Give him (or her, again) time for the Holy Spirit to work in his or her heart. Give the Spirit the chance to put some different words in your mouth … and try meeting with that individual in private again. The result may be the same … but there’s better than even chance, because God is involved, that a second time may be all that’s needed. And yet, sometimes doing all we’ve just talked about finds a hardened heart, even in a Christian. Then, Jesus tells us to take one or two others with us and try again. This takes “personality conflicts” out of the picture … or minimizes them. Two witnesses were always required in the Old Testament to verify the truth of a matter. That’s why this step is taken. You AND the other person or persons verify not only the validity of the offense … but the presence of the other person also speaks to your desire to resolve the matter in a gentle and loving way. And this, too, could be done more than once. That much effort in most Christian contexts would seem to be sufficient to come to reconciliation. However. There is a final step Jesus gives us … if all the forgoing has not worked. Why the next step? Because, there is real spiritual danger for anyone to remain in unrepentant sin … especially if the sin is one of a public nature, and as such, casts a bad light on the person and the fact that that person calls himself a Christian. If that is the case … we move to what’s called Accountability. Here in Matthew 18, Jesus gives the Church the responsibility, and as such, the congregation, and/or, it’s elected representatives (depending on its constitution) to hold the person calling himself a member of that congregation accountable for remaining unrepentant of their words or behavior. Accountability is the only place where we get to an “or Else.” Jesus no where lets us off the hook individually to stop loving that person at any of these steps, even as we are to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. But to the Church, Jesus does give the authority to put an unrepentant person out of fellowship. Does that mean he can’t come to hear the Word of God? No. He is actually the ripest evangelism candidate in the church. But, is he to take communion? No. He stands unrepentant before the congregation and before God. And that is the first question we all should ask ourselves before we come to the altar … Are we truly sorry for our sins and desire that God would help us to repent of them? For coming to the altar with a hardened, unrepentant heart puts one under the judgment of God. And so … out of love for that person, not in punishment, but in love … they are kept from the Lord’s supper, to show that person how serious their hard heartedness is in this world … and so that it may not carry over into the next. You see … God would have none be lost. So, first He sends you and me … to be gentle, to speak God’s words of forgiveness as well as our own … and to do so in all gentleness, as God is to us in His grace and mercy. But, if a stronger message needs to be delivered, God doesn’t send angels to deliver it. He does it Himself. Not through us, as the offended, but through His Church, as His representative on earth. You see God calls us as His adopted sons and daughters to be His ambassadors of peace to each other … through the peace we have with God. Jesus shed his blood that we might know that peace. And God has given us His Spirit that we might now share that peace with one another. My prayer is … that the next time any of us is hurt or offended … that we might stop … and maybe re-read Matthew 18:15-17. And then, first see if we can overlook the offense … and if not, then, privately and gently speak to the one who hurt us, putting the relationship in God’s hands. God’s given us that challenge, hasn’t he? He can work through us to put things back together … or, according to our human nature, we can go it on our own. My prayer again is … we’d ask His Spirit to guide us on His path … walking with Jesus …that we might gently restore. In Him, Amen. |