00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
In the last session, the second
point about laziness, I mentioned the idea of the sluggard's field
in which his marriages are not tended to. Then the weeds grow
up and the flowers can't grow. And I did not bring enough for
everybody. I did send Cindy a PDF of this peacemaking principles
brochure Are many of you familiar with Peacemaker Ministries or
Ken Sandy at all? Some, not many. So a man named
Ken Sandy, this would be going back into the early 90s, I think,
is a lawyer. And he became frustrated because
Christians were not resolving their conflicts in a biblical
way. And as a lawyer, 1 Corinthians 6 says, believers should not
go to court with one another. We should resolve matters among
ourselves with other believers in the church and other such
problems that He came up, he wrote a book called The Peacemaker,
which is now about 300 pages, which he meant to be a systematic
theology of biblical peacemaking. And then, if you don't want to
read the 300 and something page version, there's another version
that's very short called Resolving Everyday Conflict, which is a
summary of the crucial principles for dealing with conflict biblically.
And then these brochures are, again, kind of like the cards.
Actually, I keep some of the cards and I keep these brochures
in my Bible and I wind up using this quite often with people. Most marriage counseling involves
conflict. In the Peacemaker brochure, In
the Peacemaker material, we're reminded that when there are
sinners, there will always be conflict. There's conflict in
the world. There's conflict in churches. There's conflict in
families. And because of a fallen world,
there's going to be conflict. Robert Jones, in his book about
conflict, had a quote from somebody like, the Bible has four chapters
of peace, the first two and the last two, and then 1,000-something
chapters of conflict in between. This is an area in particular
where the gospel is central in that as our sin brought us into
conflict with God, and gospel where Christ gave himself for
us to break down the barrier that we who made ourselves God's
enemies could be reconciled to God, the gospel is absolutely
central in resolving our conflicts with one another. And so in the
time I have, I want to summarize first of all that when there's
conflict, and the weeds now I would say are representing unresolved
conflicts in marriage, where not only has there been neglect,
which itself is a weed, but there often are issues of hurt, patterns
perhaps of sin and misbehavior. that are not dealt with in a
biblical way. And so sometimes when people
come to us, they just have like a forest of weeds with almost
no flowers growing whatsoever. I'm probably going to devote
more time to pulling the weeds than I will to planting the flowers.
My general theory would be if you've pulled the weeds, the
flowers are easier to plant. It still takes some wisdom. And
so in Ken Sandy, when he's laying out the principles here is that
there's a reminder that conflict can be very dangerous. Jesus
said, when you're angry with your brother, it's like unto
murder in Matthew 5, 21. And people have done terrible
things in the midst of conflict. You may say, I want to avoid
conflict. Romans 12, 18 says, as far as is possible with you
to be at peace with all men. And so there are times where
there are things we ought to do. To avoid that, Proverbs 19.11
is one I use a lot for myself and in counseling, where it says,
a man's discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his
glory to overlook a transgression. And so we are not to be quarrelsome
people. It's kind of cool, it's glorious
to overlook something. this verse comes to my mind sometimes
Caroline does things that annoy me and my fleshly temptation
is to bring it up maybe to score a point or something and there
you know that thing I don't the thing I do that you don't like
you just did it and I did that's kind of see and Then I think
but it would be more glorious to keep my mouth shut pin a medal
on me or something because finally I didn't bring everything up
and so I There's a lot of conflict that appropriately can be avoided,
but there's also conflict that shouldn't be avoided. And one
of the things he has on here is what he calls the slippery
slope. And you can see it's this continuum, but there are unbiblical
responses to conflict are both fighting and avoiding, and both
are bad. And my observation has been in
most marriages, there's one of each. There's one person that
says, we are not going to sleep tonight until we solve this thing.
And they just keep at it, keep at it. And the other one says,
let's just go to sleep. But they never want to talk about it.
And Caroline and I, when we were courting even, I think I was
the guy, we're going to stay up until we solve it, and she
was the one, let's just forget about it and never talk about
it again. We both have had to grow out of that. And he has,
you know, unbiblical responses to conflict. In churches, when
some people, whenever there's a conflict and they don't like,
they just leave rather than trying to resolve the conflict. And
even worse, in some cases, there are people who cause division
when things don't go their way. But then in the middle, he talks
about there are biblical ways to resolve conflict through conflict
coaching. And we're going to go through
applying to marriage, get the log out of your own eye, gently
restore your brother, and forgive is the key principles involved. I think another thing to recognize
as we think about conflict resolution, this is true of all conflicts,
is that though conflict can be dangerous, conflict also gives
us an opportunity to honor the Lord. Whatever you do is to be
done to the glory of God. Our aim is to please Him. And
when there's conflict, how can I honor God here? And by the
way, both people are thinking that way, it's going to go pretty
well. Not, I'm going to win. It's not fair. I'm going to get
justice. But rather, how would God have me to act? in this situation,
and I want to see him honored, and I want to be willing to serve
others and not just insist on getting my own way. I want to
be looking for creative ways to deal with the problem. Going
back, I mentioned earlier the pastor who was perhaps on the
verge of losing his ministry, and he's the one that admitted
that his marriage field was like the sluggards' field. Backing
up a little bit, when his senior pastor insisted that he and his
wife come see Caroline and me, before the meeting, he actually
sent me a six-page email outlining the sins of his wife. He wanted
me to know just how bad she really was. And when they got to the
meeting, she did not need six pages. She was able to speak
spontaneously and without notes. and tell me how terrible he is.
And so the next passage to which I took them was Matthew chapter
seven, where Jesus says, do not judge
so that you will not be judged. For in the manner you judge,
you will be judged, and by your standard of measure will be measured
to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's
eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how
can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of
your eye and behold, the log is in your own eye. You hypocrite. First take the log out of your
own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your
brother's eye. And so when people come in with conflict, with marriage
conflict, Typically, they will come in like this couple did,
each wanting to convince me that the other person is terrible,
each having clear vision of the other person's sin and generally
minimizing and excusing their own sin. This is human nature.
And with this man, after he read that passage, I actually said,
OK, something like this, that the rule in the first session
is this. The only person about whose sin you can speak in this
first session is your own sin. Who would like to go first? And usually that can't be solved
in a first session, but we would talk about the principles of
this. And this involves self-examination. Jesus says, look in the mirror.
Look at your own sins that you've been minimizing. Where has your
sin contributed to the problems in your marriage? Sometimes we
give homework. We'll call it a log list. Make
a list of the logs in your eye. Sometimes in counseling, we can
help them identify those things. Sometimes we counsel them separately
in order to help them reach that. But the psalmist says, search
me, oh God, and know my heart. Show me if there's any waywardness
in me. And so searching your heart and acknowledging, make
a list. Here's where my sin has contributed
to the troubles in my marriage. And then the next step is not
to go straight to your spouse. But it's to go to the Lord and
confess your sin to him. And when David had committed
adultery and murder and he writes Psalm 51, he says, against you
and you only have I sinned. If I am rude and impatient to
my wife, it's more of a sin against God than it's a sin against her.
Even David with his adultery and murder, it was primarily
a sin against God. Obviously, many of the people were hurt.
And for me to go to the Lord and said, you gave me this wonderful
wife and here I am, acting unappreciative and not treating her in a Christ-like
way and confessing that first to God even before I go to Caroline
and then to go to her and to seek her forgiveness. We're going
to talk about how to do that in just a moment. And so a lot
of times I say, well, what if it's 90% her fault and 10% my
fault? Confess you're 10%. Realizing
that because you got a log in your eye, your perspective may
be inaccurate. She probably thinks you're 90%
and she's 10%. But confess you're 10%. Don't
wait for them. I've had people I've given this
assignment to and they come back a week later and they say, oh,
we didn't have time. We just had such a busy week
that Sally had ballet and Johnny had soccer and we just had so
much going on. I said, OK, turn to Matthew chapter
5. Verse 23, please read verses
23 and 24. Jesus said, therefore, if you're
presenting your offering at the altar and then remember that
your brother has something against you, leave your offering there
before the altar, go first be reconciled to your brother, then
come and present your offering. Okay, what's Jesus saying? He's saying, he's not saying
that worship through making an offering is unimportant. He's
saying as important as worship is and offering worship to God
monetarily Your relationship your broken relationship with
your brother whom you offended is more important than that It's
more important than ballet or soccer and sometimes you say
well, then how much time did you spend this week in social
media watching? Streaming and all these are the
things is that this is a priority. That's urgent Very very important. There are no excuses if you have
to take time off of work something needs to happen to address this,
and of course often it's avoidance. Something that they have, Ken
Sandy came up with, and one thing, the way I use this brochure,
which you can buy your own, I actually buy them by the hundred and pass
them out both when I'm teaching but also when we're counseling.
is it has a summary of a lot of these principles, and also
the PDF is available, but there's a list on here called the seven
A's of confession. And the point that I think is
beneficial of these seven A's is that you've got these weeds. Years ago in California, I had
a garden, we had a garden, and we had strawberries in it, but
it became like the sluggards field, and we neglected it for
a couple of years, maybe had a few strawberry plants, not
even making strawberries, trying to survive, and there are weeds
all over the place. So what could I do? I could get a weed whacker,
and I could whack down my weeds in my little garden until it
looks a lot better, doesn't it? But what's going to happen? It's
just going to grow back again. And a lot of people, when they
try to resolve conflict, they're just mowing the weeds. rather
than pulling the weeds. And then I would say spraying
on the gospel roundup, if you will. But you see examples of
this when athletes and politicians get caught with horrible things
they've done. Well, I'm sorry if I ever offended
anybody. I'm really better than that.
And they think they've made it all right. That's not at all
an apology. But oftentimes in marriage as
well, there are very shallow apologies when much deeper work
has to be done to really pull the weed so that we can plant
the flowers. I'm gonna tell you a real example. We had a case
many years ago where a woman, a couple came to us and the wife
told a story where she went out to her car one day at the grocery
store and on the windshield there was a handwritten letter of a
few pages And it was from a woman claiming to have been the husband's
mistress. And in this handwritten letter,
this other woman described in some detail the relationship
she carried on with the woman's husband, and probably also asserting her
claim for the man. Well, the wife has this thing.
She's obviously shaken up. The husband comes home, and she
says, I got this on my car, and I'm devastated. Is it true?"
And he says, yes, it's true. I broke up with her, and I'm
sorry. It's over. I'm married to you.
Just got to forget about it and move on. And the woman had a
friend who claimed to be a biblical counselor, well-meaning mentor,
And she's still very troubled by this. And she was more or
less saying, what should I do? Well, he apologized. You just
need to move on. And this was now like six months
had been going before they came to see us. And she was not able
to move on. And of course, the reason is,
I don't even think he, I think he didn't even mow the weeds,
just barely mentioning it. And we actually went through
what Ken Sandy calls the seven A's of confession. And I'll go
slowly in case you're taking notes, but someday you're going
to have access to this through something they're going to email
you. But the first one is address everyone involved. So think about
this man. Who has been hurt by what he has done? Obviously the
wife. Anybody else? Children. They had teenagers who see their
mother crying, who hear their parents fighting, who see the
terrible example of their dad who takes them to church and
pretends to be a Christian. Could be her parents who see
how much this has hurt their daughter. The other woman. Again, you have to be careful.
Don't have a private meeting, but there might be some way appropriately
to convey guilt and sorrow over guilt. Avoid if, but, and maybe. Most weed whacking, when you mow the weeds, people
will then make excuses, and the excuse nullifies the apology.
You know, I'm sorry I did that, but I travel a lot, and I get
lonely, and then when I come home, you're busy with the kids,
and I come to bed, and you're asleep, and so I've got these
needs, and I'm sorry I just kind of fell into that. That's no
apology at all. It's an excuse. If you're there to seek forgiveness,
when you're getting the log out of your own eye is not the time
to talk about the splinters in the other person's eye. And when
you say, well, I'm sorry, I yelled and screamed at you after you
made me late to whatever, you're really blame shifting. Later
on, there may be a time to talk to them about their sin. Jesus
said, after you get the log out of your eye, you can then help
them with a splinter. But if you start talking about their splinter,
It nullifies the apology. Admit specifically. Obviously,
there was the sexual sin, but there's also many other sins.
There was lying. There was a misuse of financial
resources. Generally, these things are very
expensive. I remember the wife more or less said, you wouldn't
let me spend money for these things for the kids, and you
bought her a car. So admit specifically. And then
acknowledging the hurt. And this is the hardest one for
me when I'm seeking forgiveness. It's usually of Caroline, is
I know the right stuff to say. But to try to be in her shoes,
how does it feel to be treated that way when you're the weaker
vessel and I was harsh or whatever it was? And how does it feel
for a wife? What's wrong with me that you
had to go after her? And the pain in the, can I ever
trust this guy again? Accept the consequences. Consequences, I deserve not to
have you. I hope that's not going to happen.
But I've had one guy quit his job to get away from the situation
there. One person even moved his whole
family to another part of the country to start over again. I'm going to do whatever. I'm
not going to travel alone. I'm going to bring you or one of
the kids at all times. So do something about it. Alter your
behavior goes along with that. This is the sixth one. things
will be different. I'm going to go to one of the
pastors. I'm going to get counseling. I get counseling for us together. And then ask for forgiveness.
This is a crucial part. This is where it mirrors the
gospel, is that the scripture says, if we confess our sin,
God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness. We'll talk about forgiveness in a moment,
how God has called us to forgive as we've been forgiven. to ask
for, will you forgive me? When I say to Caroline, will
you forgive me? It's not just, what do people
usually say? I'm sorry. It's okay. Both of
those are inaccurate. I mean, I'm sorry maybe a little
bit. It could be, I'm sorry you're so sensitive. Sorry it happened. Things happen all the time. The
way we're reconciled to God isn't just to say, I'm sorry. It's,
you know, please forgive me. And so we're going to ourselves.
I'm coming asking for grace and forgiveness in pattern after
the gospel. And then hopefully the forgiveness
will come. So that's one element of pulling
the weeds. There's another. which, so the
key passage for the first of, you know, confessing, you're
getting the log out of your own eye is from Matthew 7 primarily. And then the aspect of restoring
your brother or sister is primarily from Galatians chapter 6, verse
1. It's an amazing verse because
it encaptures so much of what the Bible teaches throughout
about how to do this, that brethren, Even if anyone is caught in any
trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit
of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will
not be tempted." This is packed with wisdom. Part of it is, he
doesn't say elders. If someone is caught in a trespass,
you confront them. It's brethren. It's all of us.
According to the Bible, all of us have a responsibility when
we see someone in sin to go to them. Again, I've had cases where
you have two single people living together and one of them sees
the other looking at something inappropriate on a laptop. Or
I've had a case where one sees the other drinking excessively.
And love requires you to go to your brother. Love requires you
to confront what is wrong. This gets to be what some people
being conflict avoiders is they just let things go because they
just can't stand the confrontation. Caroline, by nature, has been
a conflict avoider. And I remember thinking 20 or
more years into marriage, she doesn't ever really correct me
or confront me. And many of you would say, what
a dream come true that would be. But for me, I was a bit nervous. Like, I need accountability.
And what happened is she got trained and certified as a biblical
counselor. And my joke is she's been making
up for lost time ever since. But I want to commend her in
that, of all the people I've seen applying Galatians chapter
6, she is the best at it. Because she comes to me not,
I got you now. But I want to help you be a better,
more godly man. I want to help you to be more
like Christ. That's the motivation of coming. Well, you may ask,
didn't you just say like 20 minutes ago that we should overlook many
faults? Proverbs 19, 11, 1 Peter 4, 8
says, love covers a multitude of sins. How do you decide when
to confront, when not to confront? Well, you can take some principles
from scripture that there are minor things that can be overlooked.
But if what this person is doing, like they claim to be a Christian
and it's the kind of thing that could result in church discipline,
it's sexual immorality, it's theft, it's destructive anger. drunkenness, that one is it's a matter that harms
the reputation of Christ if a Christian lives that way. Two is it's a
danger to their own soul, like the roommate who sees, or the
wife who sees the husband. Caroline's had women, their husbands
have Yeti cups, like I left mine over there, and they pretend
they're drinking 7-Up and they've got vodka in there. And it's
not just for how it affects her, but he's turning to this idol
to relieve his stress rather than turning to the Lord. And
so love requires her, for her professing Christian husband,
to approach her about that concern. Again, not to vent her anger,
but to help. The language here, if anyone's
caught in any trespass, part of it is we've all been caught
in trespass, right? We're all sinners. And the language
here is almost like you get caught in a trap. You get, like in the
parable of the Good Samaritan where the guy's going along the
road and the robbers get him and sometimes we fall into sin
and we don't even realize it. So there's a measure of compassion
there because I too have been caught. I'm not perfect. And
then just phrase by phrase, the language is brilliant here. It
says, you who are spiritual. What does that mean? Can anybody
think of the context of what that might mean? Galatians 6 comes
after Galatians 5. What is the end of Galatians
5 about? Walking in the Spirit. How do you know if you're walking
in the Spirit? Because when you confront them, you come with
love, joy, peace, all of that. Most confrontation takes place
in the flesh, outbursts of anger and dissension and jealousy.
The majority of the list for the deeds of the flesh in Galatians
5 are relational, actually. Galatians 5.15 warns, by the
way, that if you bite and devour one another, be careful you're
not consumed by one another. And it's rare, I think, to find
someone who comes genuinely walking in the Spirit in love. Many people
who are conflict avoiders avoid and avoid and avoid and avoid,
and finally they're so angry they burst forth in a fleshly
way, and it becomes an attack rather than helping. So you need
to make sure. Don't try to confront somebody
if you yourself aren't walking in the spirit. You need to prepare
yourself. I pray before I go to somebody.
There are times in my life where I see somebody that needs to
be confronted and I start praying that the Lord will help me to
find the right situation and the right words. I plan ahead
to some degree. That I could do this in a way
that's according to scripture and would be pleasing to God.
That would be same thing obviously in a marriage. And then the main
verb in Galatians 6.1 is restore. Restore is actually a fairly
rare word in the New Testament. Elsewhere, it's used of fishermen
mending nets. And that's a really good picture.
You're coming to this person not to obliterate them with your
anger and frustration, which is what the world and the flesh
do. You're coming to help them. The net of a fisherman that has
big holes in it, his family is going to starve unless he repairs
it. It's useless. And if a believer is caught in
sin, they're not useful to the Lord. You're there to help them
to repair. And like I said, when Caroline
comes to me, sometimes she'll say that, I want to help you
be a more godly man. I want to help you restore you
to usefulness because of this thing I see you do. One of the ways she deals with
me is I interrupt too much. I'm talking all the time. If
I'm in a group, and you may see it today at lunch, if I start
talking too much, she'll put her hand on my arm and I'll be
quiet and let other people talk. So that's one of the areas she
works on me. And so my analogy would be when
most people when they confront, they come like a judge or a lawyer
to condemn, like a prosecutor. but to restore is to come like
a doctor or a nurse. I'm here to help you, not I'm
here to show you how terrible you are so that I can crush you. And this is in the spirit of
gentleness. You're taking something out of somebody's eye. If you
had a splinter in your eye, who do you want taking it out? Do
you want a drunk person with a rusty knife? Or do you want
a trained nurse with sterilized tweezers? It's no fun to be corrected. When I see Caroline coming, I'm
already beginning to defend myself and justify myself. There's nothing
wrong with what I just did. Gentleness, when I realize I
don't like being corrected, then realizing other people have a
hard time. We have to do what we need to do, but we need to
do it gently. Each one looking to yourself
so that you will not be tempted, tempted to fleshliness. There
could be other implications of that. And then here's a really
big challenge for us, especially, I think, as husbands, but it
would apply to all of us, is, is it safe for your spouse to
correct and restore you? There's a verse that I recite
to myself when I see Caroline coming. And it's Proverbs chapter
9, verse 8. Do not reprove a scoffer or he
will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will
love you. Am I going to be a foolish scoffer
who hates those who correct me? Or am I going to be wise to love
those who love me enough to bring me correction? Even if I may
think they're wrong, okay? Sometimes people bring correction
and we may not think it's fully justified. We should be grateful
that they're trying and we should receive it humbly. many church
leaders who need to read this, that they're very defensive and
they won't listen to correction. I'm sure that's not true here,
but there are places where that happens. Another case we're counseling
in where people had a concern with a church leader and they
tried to go and he yelled at him and everything. My wife,
being a conflict avoider, myself being of a stronger personality,
that I need to make it very safe for her to come. It's hard for
her to come. And if I react defensively or counterattack, it's going
to be hard for her to come again. So we want to make it, we want
to welcome those who come to restore us. And then the third
major area, and I'm going more into summary mode, is then we
are to grant forgiveness. And a key passage for that would
be Matthew chapter 18, verse 21 to the end. Just an amazing, amazing passage. But when the scripture says in
Ephesians 4.32, forgive one another is God and Christ has also forgiven
you. And so this parable illustrates
that principle. You know, in the Lord's Prayer,
forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. You know, Jesus
says, if you won't forgive your brother, then God will not forgive
you. This is a really big deal. And the point is that we merit
God's forgiveness by forgiving others. The point is, if you
understand how great God's forgiveness has been to you, if you've experienced
the gospel yourself, then you're going to reflect the gospel to
other people. And so in Matthew 18, it begins in verses 21 and
22, where Peter said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against
me? And I forgive him up to seven times. And Jesus said to him,
I do not say to you up to seven times, but 77 times. In some translations, we 70 times
seven. But I can tell you in 45 years,
you go way beyond the math there. It means lots and lots without
limit. And then he tells the very famous parable of the unmerciful
servant. For this reason, the kingdom
of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts
with his slaves. When he begun to settle them,
the one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. But since
he did not have the means to repay, the Lord commanded him
to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he
had in repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground
and prostrated himself before him saying, have patience with
me and I will repay you everything. And the Lord of that servant
felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.
And in this parable, basically two points. You have been forgiven
much, therefore you ought to forgive others. And there's no
relationship on earth you need more of that than in marriage,
right? And in this picture of how God has forgiven us is so
powerful. By the way, I also would add
parables are not allegories where every single little detail corresponds.
God's not exactly like that master, but it does display the nature
of our forgiveness. The idea of 10,000 talents. This
is like billions and billions of dollars. None of you have
a credit limit that will go that high. None of you can do that
on your credit card. It's hyperbole. And the idea is that it's an
unpayable amount. And yet, part of the thing that's
crucial is, do you see your sin that way? Before you were a Christian,
you said, well, nobody's perfect, but I'm probably better than
most people. I'll probably go to heaven because I've done more
good things than bad things. If that's the way you think,
you're not a believer, and you haven't yet experienced that
forgiveness. The scripture said, all have sinned. All have fallen
short of the glory of God. All of us like sheep have gone
astray. Every one of us has turned to his own way. And when we realize
of ourselves how great our sin is, is that we offended the majesty
of an infinitely holy God, that we've lived for ourselves rather
than for him, we've done things our way and not his way, we see
our debt, even the 10,000 talents, it's not hyperbole, it's actually
minimizing, that we have an infinite debt. And yet God has forgiven
us that debt. And the picture of forgiveness
is also interesting, where what does the servant say? He doesn't
say, forgive me. What does he say? Just give me
time, and I will pay you back. That's a ridiculous statement,
right? If you owe $50 billion, you could have 100 lifetimes,
and you'll never pay it back. Of course, with inflation, probably
you could. But I've got in my, for the next
talk, I've got $100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars thing. But anyway,
back to my, I shouldn't interrupt myself. But he says, give me time. But the master gives him better.
than was asked. He says, not, OK, I'll give you
time. It says, I wipe out the debt.
I forgive you. And none of us can pay the debt. But the debt has been removed.
But I'm going to add that what God has given you is better than
what the master gave the servant. If you understand the gospel.
Second Corinthians 8 and 9 says, For you know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake
he became poor, that you through his poverty might be made Not
debt free, but rich. In the parable, the debt gets
wiped out. In the gospel, Christ has wiped out our debt by paying
it on our behalf on the cross. But then his righteousness has
been imputed to us. The righteousness that comes
from God has been given to us by faith in Christ. And if the
parable were an allegory, the master would say, not only do
I forgive you, but I'm adopting you. And everything I have is
yours. That's what God has done for
us in Christ. And when you realize how much
you've been forgiven, I'm not going to have time to read the
rest of the parable. I think most of you know it. Then the
first servant, another servant owes him 100 denarii. That's
another point about forgiveness, by the way. 100 denarii, a denarii
is a day's wage. And in the typical wages now
in the United States, that would be tens of thousands of dollars.
It's not just a few coins. If somebody owed me tens of thousands
of dollars and wouldn't pay me back, I would be annoyed. That
would be hard, but that's also a picture like with my couple
that sometimes forgiveness is hard. Sometimes people, it's
a big debt until you compare it to the bigger debt that's
been forgiven, but it's the power of realizing you've been forgiven
the infinite debt that makes it possible to forgive a debt
like this woman had to forgive of her husband when he was repentant
and she did forgive him. I had another case where a woman
was having a really hard time forgiving her husband. Then one
week, I could just tell by body language, things had changed.
And they were sitting together. I said, what happened? She said,
well, I went to church on Good Friday. And the pastor described
in detail the suffering of Jesus on the cross. And I realized
if Jesus would do that for me, then I could forgive my husband.
And both of these couples, by the grace of God, are still together
decades later, thanks be to God. The gospel is what empowers our
forgiveness, and it's not a freedom we have. If someone has sought
forgiveness, we must grant forgiveness as God has forgiven us. I'm going
to give you one caveat, and that is you say, well, what if the
other person won't seek my forgiveness? And I believe the Bible teaches
that we should always have an attitude of forgiveness. But
there's a sense in which the transaction of forgiveness can
only take place if the other person repents. And some of you
are in relationships right now where you've been deeply hurt
and the other person won't seek your forgiveness. And I think
our attitude, if that's your situation, would be like Jesus
on the cross, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they
do. When Stephen was being stoned, Lord, do not hold this against
them. We should have an attitude of grace and realizes God has
forgiven me the chief of sinners and I can still be gracious.
I don't have to be embittered. And I'm like the father of the
prodigal son waiting with my arms open that someday maybe
they'll come back. In some cases the person who hurt you is gone.
You just have to leave that in God's hand. We can always have
an attitude of forgiveness but the actual transaction of forgiveness
and that may be something you need to pray for is when the
other person does repent. It can't be fully resolved. Luke
17 3. Be on your guard if your brother sins, rebuke him, and
if he repents, forgive him. And it's also parallel to the gospel.
Whom does God forgive? Does he forgive everybody? Whom
does he forgive? Those who repent. If we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sin, then God is faithful and just to forgive
us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I'm
happy to say, actually, I'm in possession of the letter that
the woman brought into counseling, that part of when she forgave
her husband. They're still married. They take
walks on the beach every day. They live in Southern California.
They listen to sermons together, and God, by His grace alone,
has done a good thing. Forgiveness enables us, and Ken
Sandy on this forum also talks about the promises of forgiveness.
Jeremiah 31 talks about how God will remember our sin no more
in the New Covenant. It doesn't mean you don't remember
that the other person sinned. God remembers what David did,
that God treats David as if it never happened. He doesn't remember
our sins against us. And so when you forgive and,
you know, he has the paradigm of, I'm not going to dwell on
this. I'm not going to keep bringing it up and using it against you.
I'm not going to go gossip to others about how terrible you
were. I'm not going to let this stand between us and our relationship.
And so forgiveness is as far as you can to bring restoration
to the relationship. And so that's a quick summary
of pulling the weeds. Sometimes the weeds have been
growing for decades and it takes a really long time. It's not
just a matter of spending an hour in a counseling session.
And perhaps some of you are thinking about this and saying, we've
got some weeds that I need to pull. I need to look at the logs
and seek forgiveness. And maybe it's been you've mowed
the weeds and you haven't pulled the weeds. You've ignored things.
And you wonder why you can't get close. Well, there's weeds
preventing the flowers from growing. And we will give this as an assignment
for couples to spend time. And again, think about where
your guilt is. Seek God's forgiveness humbly.
Go to one another. It can be really hard to go back,
maybe just saying in 20 years of marriage, I've never really
admitted I was doing this. And now I'm going to seek your
forgiveness. It's hard to admit you failed that much, but God
loves it when sinners repent. Real Christians love it when
their spouse repents and can build something better. You may
need to get help from your pastors or godly couples who could help
you work through this if you get stuck. There's so much more
to it. But I wanted, at least in the last few minutes, talking
about planting the flowers. The objective of clearing the
weeds isn't just to have bare dirt. You want to grow crops. You want to grow the corn or
the strawberries or the flowers, whatever it is. And that also
takes some effort. Some of that I covered in the
last session when I said the plans of the diligent lead to
advantage. And life is so busy, you have to be intentional about
spending time together. If you don't plan it, it will
not happen, especially in busy times of life when you have little
kids or you're both working. And so communication is something
that doesn't just happen. It's something that takes diligent
effort. And then according to scripture,
Love listens. In Proverbs 20, verse 5, it says,
the plan of a man's heart is like a deep well, but a person
of understanding draws it out. The man I was talking to earlier
this week, he says, well, my wife and I have nothing to talk
about. Well, you need to get a longer rope and a bigger bucket.
to get down, she wants to communicate with you, she doesn't trust that
you want to listen. And listening is a biblical skill
that you really care about what they have to say and you want
to know them. Philippians 2, consider others more important
than yourself, Paul writes, which is to be Christ-like and humble.
Many cases when couples do talk, it's like, would you be quiet
and listen to me and then everything will be fine. And while the other
person's talking, we're reloading. So when it's our turn, we can
finally you know, get our point across, and then maybe they'll
come to their senses. Humility would be that when we're having
a disagreement even, is that I want to understand your point
of view. We were talking to another pastor and his wife, and I don't
even want to go to the details, but basically she wanted to make
a decision, he went against her decision, and they both needed
to be admonished because rather than saying, he basically said,
I'm the man of the house, we're going to do things my way. That is
not what Ephesians 5 and Headship are talking about. It should
be, help me understand, honey, why you disagree with me. And
really listen and care to hear that. Many men are very terrible
listeners. And they're not just a terrible listener because you
need to learn some technique. How do you become a good listener?
You're humble and realize you're not as smart as you think. And
the other person is really important. They have good things to say.
Proverbs 31, the godly woman, the teaching of wisdom is on
her lips. The heart of her husband trusts in her. To value your
wife is saying profound and important things you ought to listen to.
She's reading the Bible. She's studying the Bible. You can learn
from her. And she's with the kids all the
time or whatever it is. And you want to know her. Another counseling case where
a couple we perform pre-marriage counseling. I performed the wedding
over 30 years ago Their marriage is really in trouble. They're
not going to divorce. They're not going to give up but they just
aren't close anymore and I asked him. What does your wife want
from you Mike? He says well, she wants me to provide well
so she can be at home. She wants me to help with the
kids and And he does those things, take care of things around the
house. I said, but that's not what your wife wants more than
anything else. I think I know what your wife wants more than
anything else. What is it? Anybody want to guess? She wants to be known. When you were courting, you could
not know her enough. She wants to be a person you
want to know as deeply as possible. The techniques will all work.
All communication techniques work if you've decided you want
to communicate. And we've got different ones we teach. How
first you say, here's what I think you're saying. And then she says,
here's what I think you're saying. And then, wow, that's really good. And
here's where you got it wrong. I mean, there's all kinds of good things.
And write letters to each other. They all work if you're just
saying, I'm determined. that I want to get close to you,
I want to hear what matters to you, that I'm not the only smart
person in the room, and I want to respect you and what you want
to say. I do want to know you deeply. Brad Hambrick wrote an
article called About Conversation and Sex. And his point was that
men and women have different needs. A lot of men have high
levels of need for intimacy and lower perceived needs in communication
and realize that your wife may have as much need for communication
as you do sex. It's not a matter of getting
sex by communicating. It's a matter of caring for her
enough to realize that I don't just want to get what I need.
I want my wife to be really happy and her needs to be met. just
as a wife towards her husband might think, even if this isn't
always what I want, I want my husband to be thrilled to be
married to me. I want my wife to be thrilled to be married
to me because I want to listen to her. My wife wants someone
to listen to her. I learned this early on, just
every day we would sit down 15 minutes, even with little kids,
because she just had to tell me about her day, and she wanted
somebody who cared about her day. Now she counsels all the
time, and all these women are pouring out their hearts, I have
nobody else who will listen to me, and no one else I can talk
to in my life, and I'm the guy she can talk to. And, but not
just walking along and, yeah, okay, okay. That really cares
about her. Cares about her excitement when
she sees someone growing and her sadness when someone seems
to be falling away and, you know, when her pie burns and the, you
know, it's not saying, yeah, I'll go to the store and get
you another pie. That's not it. That pie was her. in a sense,
and just working at that understanding in relationship. It's learning
to love what they love because they love it. And we don't have
a perfect marriage, but that's the one I have the most examples
from. When I hit 50, I started taking up long distance running.
And Caroline is the most unathletic person I think I've ever known
in my life that didn't have some kind of physical handicap. She can't throw. She can't catch.
She can't hit a tennis ball. But I was preparing for these
marathons, and she started training for half marathons. And I started
training her for the half marathons. I'd run the marathon. She'd run
the half marathon. I bought her a shirt that says, I hate running. She'd wear that sometimes. But
if that was what I was doing, and I would help her train her
and doing her long runs, and then she did it, she would have
never done it. But she wanted to be with me and my friends
as we were doing those things. Another example into the side
is Caroline has collected stamps, actually, with her mother, who's
here, ever since she was a girl. And it used to be her mother
would come see us and bring her stamp book, and Caroline would
her, I don't know what they were doing, really, but they had their stamp
books, and they're looking at stamps, and maybe one had stamps,
the other one needed. Anyway, many years, several years
ago, we were living in Southern California, I learned there was
a stamp show about an hour away. And I learned Caroline had never,
she'd been collecting stamps for 50 something years, she had
never actually been to a stamp show. And so I planned to take
the day off, and I drove her to this place, and she brought
her stamp book, and she, here's one I'm missing, here's one I'm
missing, and they have all these dealers there, they had a display
of This ultra rare stamp, there's a cop there with a gun guarding
the upside down Jenny stamp that's worth millions of dollars. They
had that there. Is that right, stamp collector? Anyway, something
like that. You can just turn it upside, I don't know. Anyway. But she was like a kid in the
candy store. She was so excited. And I was happy I had a smartphone
to keep me entertained all day. But when you love somebody, you're
delighted in their joy. Another thing Caroline loves
is Disney World. Anyway, apart from that. But we go to Disney
World, sometimes I see people in my generation watching their
children watching their children. My generation paid. They're standing
there. They paid $200. today to thousands
of dollars, but even their ticket was just to watch their grandchildren
play and their children enjoy some things. But when you love
your grandchildren and you love your children, it's delightful
to spend the thousands of dollars to see them do that. Well, so
it should be with our spouse, that you find out what they love
and you talk about it with them. You find out what they love and
you find ways to do it with them. And when you care about somebody
else, then making them happy becomes more important than you
being happy. And it's all of life, including communication.
Again, it can be, you know, I already described kind of practically
things we've tried to do in terms of make sure we talk every day.
Now we have an empty nest. I have flexible schedule. We're
able to take the walk. Some of you could never do that
yet. Work on it. You know, getting away together,
doing different things. But the structure is one thing,
but then the commitment of saying, I want us to be close. The man
who said I'm too busy to get close to my wife needs to change
his priorities. He needs to change his heart. This is really important. I've
already kind of brought this up. Have fun together. Back to
where I began last night with my little verse in Ecclesiastes
9.9. that enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days
of your fleeting life, which He has given you under the sun,
for this is your reward in life and in your toil, which you've
labored under the sun. God has given marriage that we
can bring blessing to one another, receive marriage as a gift from
Him, but it doesn't just happen. We need to pull the weeds. And
then by the grace of God, we need to plant the flowers, and
then we can at least come closer to enjoying the ideals the gospel
enables us to fulfill. Let's pray. Father in heaven,
you know the hearts of each person here. You know the condition
of the marriages represented here. I pray where there are
weeds and unresolved conflicts, that you would bring reconciliation,
humility, confession, forgiveness. Help us where we may need to
confront others, to do so with love and gentleness for restoration.
And help us not to just be satisfied with problems having been resolved,
but help us to each bring joy to the other in marriage and
to know each other and to be known. We pray this in Jesus'
name, amen.
2024 Marriage Conference, Session 4
Series 2024 Marriage Conference
Session 4: Conflict resolution and communication
Grace Church Marriage Conference
September 13-14, 2024
Speakers: Dr. Jim and Caroline Newheiser
| Sermon ID | 92524126212242 |
| Duration | 51:38 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Language | English |
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.
