Standing for the reading of God’s word. We’re looking in the book of Proverbs how we biblically deal wisely with personal offenses and conflicts through the wisdom of God’s word. And as we look to his word, if you would join with me in prayer.
Heavenly Father, as we come before you in your presence, we ask that you would open our ears to hear your voice, that you would open our hearts to love you more and more, that you would open our souls to receive your word in its fullness. Father, that you would continue to change us into the image and the likeness of our Savior Jesus, who is the Word made flesh, that you would be glorified, that you would be honored in our lives, in our church, in all that we do. And this we pray and ask in his mighty name. Amen. From Proverbs, you see it listed in your bulletin, it’s going down through them starting with Proverbs 12.
The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult. Proverbs 15: A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger pacifies contention. Proverbs 17: The beginning of strife is like the letting out of water, so abandon the quarrel before it breaks out. Proverbs 18: The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. Proverbs 19: Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it’s his glory to overlook an offense.
Proverbs 20: It’s an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. John Newton, a well-known letter that he wrote— of course, he’s the famed hymn writer of Amazing Grace— wrote a letter on controversy, and it’s a letter that actually gets circulated around the time of our General Assembly. I see lots of places will send that out and about.
And it’s one of those, one of those things that we need to know and to hear. The controversies that are within the heart of man within the church. I’d say it starts with the Reformation, but you can go all the way back. Every major church council, every major church decision has come from a conflict. And Newton was asked by a friend, a fellow minister who was about to engage in a public dispute, and he was wanting some advice from him.
So putting that in context, it’s so sort of like before a friend would hit send on his Twitter comment, he’s asking some wise advice first. And you think about how much trouble could be avoided if that was done on a regular basis. And Newton told the man, he said before he responded, he told him to commend the man he was arguing with, said, commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing. This practice will have a tendency to conciliate your heart to love and to pity him, as such disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write. And then he goes on, he goes, if you think you’ve been ill-treated, you’ll have an opportunity of showing that you are a disciple of Jesus.
Who when he was reviled, reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not. This is our pattern. I love that, that this is our pattern. This is our pattern as Christians.
And this short letter is filled with a wonderful call to a Christ-likeness in dealing with the errors of others. And it is always in the very places of temptation that we grow. And we have an opportunity to yield to the Holy Spirit as he directs us in the places we most want to resist. And that’s across the board in every temptation. The soil of conflict particularly is a rich one for this kind of spiritual growth.
And because the Lord has purchased us with the blood of his own Son, our lives are to demonstrate this reality. Those forgiven much love much. Proverbs then directs us with a real wisdom in these very hard places. Wisdom is, one writer has put it, is the skill and the art of godly living. And dealing with conflict, complaints, it requires a lot of godly skill.
Our consumer-driven society constantly tells us that we need to be self-actualizing, self-authenticating, self-determining. And this kind of society does not know how to forgive and overlook offenses unless it’s usually seen in therapeutic terms. Being offended is a cottage industry in our politics, in our workplaces, in our schools. Our college campuses, in the news. It’s the air we breathe, and it makes walking in wisdom in this way even harder.
When Proverbs then directs us how to develop a spirit of peace, and it lays out the rules of conflict, the rules of engagement in dealing with these issues. Well, looking at the spirit of peace, living wisely includes developing a peaceable spirit. The book of James, which is often called the Proverbs of the New Testament, says the wisdom from above is peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits. And Proverbs 17:14 reminds us the beginning of strife is like letting out of water. So abandon the quarrel before it breaks out.
The idea would be either like opening up a sluice gate or a breaching of a dam. And once you’ve done that, once you’ve unleashed the water, you don’t get it back. You see that in the floods that surround us. And it can refer to yourself dealing with your own heart before you say or send anything. It can refer to someone else.
You step away from the conflict before it gets too large. Charles Bridges, who was a great English pastor and theologian of the 19th century, he said, “One provoking word brings another. Every retort widens the breach. Seldom we heard the first word do we hear the last.” And so we think of Proverbs, it’s telling us, let your silence be the last word. A spirit of peace exercises patience.
Proverbs 19:11, that good sense makes one slow to anger, and it’s his glory to overlook an offense. One translation put it this way: a man’s insights make him patient. And you think of that, how many times we have asked or prayed to the Lord, you know, that that you would grant me patience. And we recognize patience is not a substance. It’s not like a sports drink replenishing electrolytes on a hot day.
When we ask for patience, we are really asking for the occasion to exercise self-control. Patience is not a substance, it’s an action. And if you’re wise, you will exercise patience. And as he goes on, it’s his glory to overlook an offense. That means a real offense has likely been given.
Someone has poked you and we say often, either out loud or to ourselves, “I’m in the right, they’re in the wrong.” Say, “Yep.” That’s why it’s a splendor and a glory of letting it go. Our lives are filled with these low-level offenses, a rude reply from someone. You’re sitting at a light, the light turns, it’s red and it turns green and you’re pushing on the accelerator and before the car goes, someone behind you is honking, you can see him yelling at you angrily. And you see things like that and it’s upsetting. Proverbs says, generally speaking, let it go.
Put a cork in a bottle before it goes very far. You say, “Well, that’s not fair. I have a right to be upset. I didn’t do anything.” It is a glory and an honor to overlook an offense. It’s the way of wisdom.
It is morally beautiful. Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” It’s the nature of love to overcome distance between people. Causing strife and contention is the opposite of that. Hatred stirs up strife. And there are some who have this perverse joy and satisfaction in causing trouble, but that’s not the way it’s to be with God’s people.
Love covers all offenses. The Apostle Peter says almost the same in his letter. He says, above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. It’s the very same thought. Covers offenses, a multitude of sins.
Charles Bridges again, he said, “Too often love sits at the door of our lips instead of finding a home in our hearts.” Great way to put that. Too often love sits at the door of our lips instead of finding a home in our hearts. Proverbs 17:9, “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends. And this is the idea that covering is the same as forgiving. When scripture speaks of covering an offense, it’s the same as saying forgiving an offense.
You are choosing to let it go because of love. And once you have let it go, you’re to let it go. You don’t keep bringing up the fact how you let it go and telling the person over and over again why you shouldn’t have let it go, but why you did. We do that. I appreciate Ken Sande.
I mean, you’re aware of him. He’s the one who started Peacemaker Ministries, the author of the book Peacemakers. He says, when you are overlooking the wrongs others commit against you, we are imitating God’s extraordinary forgiveness towards us. We are imitating God’s extraordinary forgiveness towards us. Holding on to unforgiveness and bitterness, it makes us miserable.
And ultimately, we’re letting the person who wronged us control our lives. Now, all that’s true, but personal therapy is not to be our motivation because it ends up in the end focused on us. Like, I choose to forgive you because I want my life to be better. As a Christian, our motivation is first and foremost to the Lord. I forgive you because I have been forgiven.
My overlooking an offense honors my Lord and Savior. It puts him in the focal point, as it should, and it reminds us of what he has done for us even long before we extend that to someone else. Well, what are we to do then when we can’t overlook an offense, or maybe we shouldn’t? We’ll look at the rules, the guidelines of engagement, knowing when we should or shouldn’t pursue a confrontation. One of the questions is, what is happening?
Is it a personal offense or is it something greater? You know, standing up for the cause of someone else or caring enough about a person to not want them walking in a sinful pattern, that is good and right. Much of the time though, it’s just about us and our own hurt.
Overlooking is so often the better way to go. And some sins are so significant that overlooking would be wrong and unloving. A person needs Correction and accountability. And if I’m choosing to overlook something like that, I am essentially just being a coward and I don’t want to confront for the wrong reason. But when someone who is generally pretty patient having a bad day does something uncharacteristic of that, you should probably let it go.
That’s one of those things where we’ve all done that. We all recognize it in our own hearts. We’ve said or done things we shouldn’t have and People overlooked it for us, we overlook it for them.
But if it’s an actually ingrained habit that’s repeated, it’s probably wise to go and enter into it. The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 6, he said, brothers, if anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch over yourself so that you would not be tempted. Recognizing that, that we can enter into some of these disputes and actually get sucked into it, we’re no longer restoring someone, we’re also being tempted tempted with the problem or we’re entering into it in a wrong way. He’s saying keep watch, but when you have the opportunity to do that, step in, be a peacemaker.
And much of the time Proverbs counsels us simply to avoid quarrels. Proverbs 12:16: The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignore an insult. Proverbs 15:18: A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger pacifieth contention.
If after an offense you’ve tried to let it go but it does keep coming up and it’s affecting your relationship with the person, you may very well need to go and talk with them about it. But even here you need to take stock of yourself. If you almost never let an offense go and everything is a big deal, that’s a problem. And you need to address that and say, “Why is it that everything bothers me?” wisdom in knowing when to let something go. And that’s how we grow in a Christ-likeness, by learning to walk past some of these hurts.
Something that seems obvious but often is sometimes seldom done. Proverbs 18:17: The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. And we can hear a report, be upset by it, and make a relational decision based on it, all the while never speaking with the other person involved. When this is done to us, which it has happened to us, we are always upset and rightly so. And the principle, of course, is don’t do this to other people.
If you are unsure about something or bothered by it, just simply go and ask. I think we all recognize that when we are in a conflict, we usually don’t represent the other side really well. We leave out important information, we say things that put us in a better light and them in a worse light, and we all do that. And so we know that we do that, we just can assume that that’s done by others. And the easy way to find out if it’s an issue is just to check.
A more extreme case of this was with a group of men, and a particular man was wanting sympathy about telling about how mean and unreasonable his girlfriend had been in treating him, how hurt he was because of her reaction towards him. And, you know, hearing that, And later actually spoke with his parole officer, and that’s a clue.
And the parole officer actually said, actually he was choking his girlfriend and beat her up, and that’s why he’s where he is. But that information was left out of the conversation of, man, I’m being treated terribly. So that’s one of the things we do is stay in there and say, hey, what is actually going on? But most of the time simply choosing not to enter into the conflict is usually the best way to avoid it. I appreciate George Whitfield, who’s a well-known evangelist.
He gives us very wise advice. He said, “I think it’s best not to dispute when there’s no probability of convincing.” Best not to dispute when there’s no probability of convincing. This probably applies to almost every online debate, but it’s sound counsel for everything else. You think about that. How many holiday meals could be improved upon by not entering with the same disagreement with the same relative every year?
How that can just be where it’s okay, Uncle Bob’s coming and we’re gonna have the Uncle Bob conversation about this thing. And it’s simply saying, I’m not going to enter into it. I’m going to just move the conversation a different direction. How much more profitable that is. But it does lead us to think too about Proverbs 26:4-5.
It’s directly applicable. Many people read this and like, well, there’s a contradiction here. It’s not a contradiction. It’s the application of wisdom. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
And then, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” And here’s a picture of wisdom at its best, the art and the skill of godly living. When is it appropriate to answer back and when is it better just to ignore it? And that’s precisely the challenge of wisdom. I would say the longer that life you live lies submitting yourself to the word of God and yielding to the Holy Spirit, the better you get at this.
But it is difficult. And people can sometimes answer this in different sides. Sometimes you have to answer because a wider circle of people are being influenced by the fool, and your response isn’t so much to them, it’s to the larger group. And other times it’s what Jesus warned about, not casting your pearls before swine. And it’s hard to know in any given circumstance, and it’s usually best when you include the wise counsel of other people, how am I to respond to this?
And Jesus gives us a template in Matthew 18, particularly about dealing with church conflicts. And there he says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him. And if he listens, you have gained your brother.” And then it goes a step further. If he doesn’t listen, take one or two along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. And then it goes a step further if that doesn’t work.
If he refuses to listen, then tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. So Jesus gives us a means of how we’re to deal with life in the church, of the principle of going individually, going with more, and then with a larger group. And that is a part of what it means walking in wisdom and dealing with conflict. And this is from John Newton again.
He wrote in another letter, “The longer I live, the more I see the vanity and the sinfulness of our unchristian disputes. They eat up the very vitals of religion. I grieve to think how often I have lost my time, my temper that way, in presuming to regulate the vineyards of others when I have neglected my own, when the beam in my own eye has so contracted my sight that I could discern nothing but the mote in in my neighbors. I am now desirous to choose a better part. So a peaceable man in general Newton was, but still recognizing in his own heart that through a life lived out, wasting so much of it on unnecessary conflict and not being able to see his own sin.
That’s one of the very principles Jesus said, look at the sin in yourself before you go and attempt to correct someone else. It puts us in a place of humility. And when you think about John Newton saying, what is the, the desiring a better part? What is a better part?
Paul gives us a beautiful illustration of this in 1 Corinthians 13. So, you know, Paul is not writing 13, chapter 13, because he’s at a wedding. We hear the principle of love always at a wedding. He’s writing to a church that’s largely in conflict with him. And people who are in dispute with him and the struggles that he’s having, not only in his ministry, but this, the church at large.
And he says this: Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast, is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. And that is the greater way. That is the purpose and the focus for which Christ has died for our sins. That we would be reconciled first and foremost to the Father, and that we would be reconciled to one another. That we would be able to live out as the people of God the very core of what love is to be.
It’s a beautiful reminder, and it’s also one where we look and we see how far short we are. Of such an important and amazing calling. And the Gospel comes into the midst of our struggles. It comes into the midst and it speaks peace. It speaks to us of the love that we are to have with one another.
And we think about how that goes into a world around us that this, uh, it sure seems like we’ve gotten way worse as a society in just dealing with all kinds of conflicts. Things that we see now compared to even 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, it’s just worse. And the challenge for us as Christians is how do we enter into this soil of the place and the time that we are to bring forth the fruit of righteousness of the gospel? How that we can be the bearers of the good news of Christ, of reconciliation, of restoration, of the hope of future glory. And that always is a struggle, and we think about that just in our own homes, the relationships we have, husbands and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, workplaces, school places, everywhere.
This is real. And everywhere we are called to walk in places we don’t want to walk. That is the temptation The soil is fertile for the growth of the Spirit, but it’s also fertile for leaning in to our own sin and our own desires. And there is a battle that takes place, a spiritual warfare, and we as God’s people enter into that warfare with the wisdom that he has provided us, the means of the gospel in front of us, that Jesus has redeemed us to be able to bring that restoration that wholeness to the people of God and beyond. That is both a challenge as well as the high calling that we have been given as brothers and sisters in faith.
Pray with me. Father, as we come before you, all of us know we’re terrible at this. Father, we struggle with offenses. Father, we struggle with our own heart. And Lord, we thank you for the forgiveness that we have received through your Son Jesus.
And Father, we would ask then, as those who bear your name as representatives of, of Jesus, Father, that you would continue to equip us, to challenge us, Father, to enable us by your Spirit to enter into the world around us as peacemakers, as those who have given the image of Christ. The forgiveness of sins. And Lord God, we would ask then that in that you would be glorified, that the name of Jesus would be lifted high, Father, because people see the love that we have for one another and give you all praise, glory, and honor. And this we would ask through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.