Dennis Tuuri

# Doing Justice In Resolving Conflicts
## Sermon Notes for July 15, 2012 by Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri

Well, I’d be able to use one of these chairs. Can I put it over here? Okay. Little rearrangement of furniture. During the prayer time, we’ll have two elders up here in addition to myself. So we need that seat there. I might just mention that what we’re trying to do as we move forward in reorientation of the sanctuary is kind of provide a focal point here in the middle and so have the support musicians on the side more.

We’re still learning how to do that and what will work best or not. So far it sounds pretty good with them. Even though they’re divided, they’re supporting us nicely. I’m at the table again because this seems like a more central location. It’s kind of tough for people here, particularly to look that way all during the sermon, and no back rubs will be provided at the end of it. So we thought it may be better just to move me to the center, and it gives me a little more freedom than being behind the pulpit. I think it kind of shows that in the context of the worship of God there is a centrality to the preached word and then to the sacrament as well. The preached word and the sacrament are kind of joined when I stand at this particular place in the sanctuary to deliver the sermon, the word of God for today.

That sermon is based on a text from Matthew 18:15-17. We just recited responsively and sang this psalm—one of many that David wrote where troubles and conflicts are in his life, sometimes severe ones. Now we’re not often captured by Philistines, but it can feel like that a lot of times with the difficulties and trials and tribulations we go through. Many of the psalms reflect that kind of personal distress that comes from conflict with people.

At other times, David’s conflict came from within the camp itself—from King Saul or other people that opposed him within Israel. So whether it’s coming from within the church or without the church, this altar is filled with conflict in our lives. That’s because our lives actually are like that a lot of the time. We’ll be talking about how to resolve conflicts today from Matthew 18. The focus of Matthew 18 will be internal conflicts—when there’s conflict within the body of Christ.

These are highly troubling to new creation life that we’ve been talking about in our series, and are tremendous sources of injustice in the world. So in this next to last sermon on our series on doing justice and bringing justice to victory, we’ll consider doing justice by resolving conflicts—particularly within the church correctly, although it has application beyond that. Let’s look at Matthew 18:15-17. Please stand.

That’s a good posture to receive God’s word in. Kind of shows you’re ready to act in obedience to it, right? So Matthew 18:15-17:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for our new life, the new creation that Jesus has brought into being. We thank you that our existence is found in that world. Forgive us that so often we sin against you, against one another. We pray you’d bless us now by thinking through how to resolve conflicts, personal difficulties that we run into with particular people both within the church and without. Thank you for the simplicity of this word. We need that simplicity, Lord God. We pray that you would help us now through the preaching of your word to commit ourselves afresh to how you say to resolve conflicts in a way that produces justice. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. Okay. The plan now is to start with the gospel and specifically with the gospel in reference to sin, by looking at Hebrews 1:1-4 for a couple of minutes. We’ll turn there in just a second. Then in the middle of the sermon, we’ll deal with these very simple instructions from Matthew 18. You know, it’s about as far from rocket science as you can get, but for some reason we just have a real hard time doing it, obeying the simplest of God’s words.

So there’s a little bit of complexity at the beginning of the sermon to kind of show you the beauty of Jesus and his salvation. But then there’s this very simple, easy to apply stuff at the center of the sermon based on the text. And then the last point we’ll make is one in general about repentance. I think that for a long time churches have been tempted by the term “repentance” itself—the English word—to think of it improperly. And if the goal of resolving conflict biblically is justice, then certainly what that involves is repentance for sins. But what does it mean?

Leonard Cohen in his song “The Future” says, “When they said repent, I wonder what they meant. I wonder what they meant.” Now I’m not sure what he means by that, but I know what we’re tempted to think about it. And because of the very word itself, we’ll try to do some correction on that. So that when we get around to resolving conflicts and we move toward repentance—either ourselves or helping others to do that—we’ll really move toward biblical repentance and not toward some other position or view that isn’t repentance.

I’ve got a nice color copy of what you got on the front of your orders of worship—a nice yellow traffic sign. And we hopefully will have color covers for your orders of worship sooner rather than later. But the cover really—Angie did a good job of putting this together—and this is what repentance is: this turning. So we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But first I want to start with the gospel—just pure, beautiful gospel as found in Hebrews 1 in the first few verses. It’s on your outline. If you don’t have an outline, go get one. This part will be a little more difficult for you if you don’t have one. Don’t feel bad—you can get up, go back there and grab one if you like. If you do have them, great.

Okay. So this is an example of when we read the Bible, most of us are just reading through the Bible and we may not quite get what’s going on in particular sections. These four verses are an example of a beautiful introduction to the entire book of Hebrews, and it has to do with what the gospel is. It’s the gospel. When we get around to resolving conflicts and repentance, we do it believing the gospel. And that gospel is pictured for us beautifully here in Hebrews.

Now, what I’ve done on the handout is I’ve noted the verbs, right? I’ve underlined verbs for you on the handout. Do you see that? Verse 1: “God spoke” (past tense), “these last days he has spoken” (past tense), “he appointed” (past tense), “he made the worlds” (past tense), “who being the brightness of the glory”—oh, so we’ve got a change in tense, verb tense, from past to present. Then we have another verb “upholding” (another present). Then going on in the next section: “when he had by himself purged our sins” (past tense), “he sat down at the right hand” (past tense), “having become so much better than the angels” (past tense). And then “he obtained a better name than they.”

Do you see? When we look for these structures—the way God lines out sections of verses like this—when we look for the structure, here’s an obvious movement, a change in the middle of a series of verses. He’s going past, past tenses. Then he gets to the center and he talks about the present tense, something going on in the present. And then he moves on to talk about past tenses again. That’s a literary device used to focus your attention on the center of what’s going on here.

What is the center? What is the relationship of these past tenses to the very center? Well, the center is the Lord Jesus Christ, right? “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these days spoken to us by the Son.” So we’re given a particular piece of information about the Son. And then there’s a second piece of information: “whom he has appointed heir of all things.” And then a third piece of information: “through whom he also made the worlds.”

Three discrete things are described in the past about who God’s Son is. And then in the middle we have some present tenses describing the present person of Jesus: “who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power.” The center of these verses is the brilliance, the shining forth, the bright glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in these present tense verbs that are provided for us. The center of this section—and our attention is drawn to the center by the simple change in verbs—okay, the center is the brilliance, the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The center of the gospel is the beauty of his person—that he’s the express image of what? Not himself but of the Father. Okay. So God is at the center demonstrating who he is through Jesus. And then as it moves out from the center we have another set of things. What did he do? He purged our sins. He sat down at the right hand of the Father. And he has become better than the angels.

Now folks, this is the gospel in summary form. Think of this center as a bright light—maybe a flashlight, right? You got one of those mag lights and you shine it in the dark and the beam goes out and it kind of disperses, right? So the brilliance of Jesus Christ and his ministry is at the center. He’s the bright shining refulgence, the express image, the beautiful glory—you know, the Shekinah glory. Whatever phrases you want to put in here, the brilliance of who Jesus is—this light that shines out.

Now the light shines out from the center. Our attention is drawn to the center with the verbs. But the center then affects something as well. Something changes because of the coming of Jesus. When the second person takes on human flesh, something changes as well—because the past tense in the next line is that “he purges our sins. He has purged our sins.” Matching that—just before the bright light, we got the flashlight shining on either side. After the flashlight, the middle point, “he has purged our sins.” Before it, what does it say he did? He created all things.

What is that causing us to link together? It’s causing us to link together Jesus dying and purging the sins of his people with the first creation. It’s the message that runs from one end of the Bible to the other—that after Adam’s sin brought the created order into darkness and into frustration and judgment, Jesus will come. And Jesus affects nothing less than new creation. The purging of our sins, the dying for the sins of his people and freeing us then to serve him. That’s the gospel—that Jesus is shining and he has paid the price for our sins.

You don’t have to do anything to pay for it. You can’t pay for it. You couldn’t purge your sins yourself, no matter how much weeping and mourning and gnashing of your teeth you engage in. You can’t purge your sins. But Jesus has. The fact is he cleanses the sin of the whole world. That’s what John says: “Here is he who takes away the sin of the world.” And what’s happened? The world is a brand new place. Jesus says in Revelation, “I make all things new.” It’s new creation.

The bright beauty of the glory of Jesus at the center of this text shines itself out by showing us that when Jesus paid the price, purged our sins, took them away, he was in effect bringing about another creation the same way he had created the first things. Now the next set of matching imagery is obvious stuff about his kingship. He “appoints him heir of all things.” He “sits down at the right hand of the Father.” What’s that all about? That’s king stuff, right? Jesus is the King.

The brightness of Jesus Christ, the brightness of the gospel, is not just about the fact that he’s brought about new creation and he’s purged our sins. It’s that he reigns in the midst of this new world that he has created. He sat down at the right hand of the Father. He’s not just the priest who has paid the price for our sins—as both the priest and the offering. He is that. Praise God for this beautiful picture of gospel in these first few verses of Hebrews. He is that, but he’s also the King, right? He was made heir of all things. He was the Prince and now he’s the King. Now he sat down at the right hand of the Father and Jesus Christ rules over this new creation.

And then the outer marks talk about how God spoke through the prophets at one time, but now he speaks through his Son. And then he’s given his Son a name much better than the angels. Now, that may not be quite so obvious what’s happening, but let me read two verses for you. In Galatians 3:19: “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made; and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.” Acts 7:53: “You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”

So God tells us in those two references in the New Testament that the law was in some sense mediated to man by angels. He spoke by means of the prophets, but he also mediated that law through angels. And now one greater than the prophets has come—Jesus. Now he speaks to us through Jesus, and one greater than the angels has come. He is now the law incarnate in himself. This speaks to his prophetic nature—his telling us what life is and what it’s about. And that word is a new creation word that causes us to spring forth into fruitfulness and we delight in it.

You’ve got to decide what you’re going to do with everything in your life. What am I going to do with this piece of paper right now? I’ll put it here. I’ll put it there. You’ve got a priestly nature where everything you do is doing something for a particular purpose. God calls us to be priests unto the great priest Jesus, who consecrates everything for his purpose. You’ve got to do some ruling, right? Some judgments in your life. We’re going to talk about that in a couple of minutes.

You’re a king. You’re a priest. You’re made in the image of God. You’re a king. Are you using your kingly rule for Jesus or yourself? Well, this text tells us that the gospel means you can’t just believe in Jesus and get your sins forgiven. No, no. Believing in Jesus means he’s the great priest and you got to serve him in your ordinary affairs of life. You’ve got to make judgments and rule for him because he’s the great king. What you understand about the world as a prophet—what you understand in your intellectual capacity of the world—also must be submitted to Jesus. It must be—forget that word—it can be because Jesus has revealed himself.

Boy, it’s really tough. I have to think about the world the way the guy that made the world and runs the world and saved the world thinks about it. Isn’t that too bad? No, it’s not too bad. Praise God. He’s going to reveal through his word, through the Savior, and through the Spirit what this is all about. That’s a good thing, right? Praise God.

So there’s all this gospel going on in this great brilliant picture that you sort of don’t see if you’re just reading through it quickly. Now, what’s it got to do with our text? Well, it kind of sets it up because the gospel has created a new world through forgiving us of our sins and purging our sins. If we let sin invade our lives again and control us, if we don’t repent, then we’re moving away from the new creation back into old creation. We’re moving away from life, we’re leaving a lifestyle and we’re entering into a death style, right?

And as a result of that, the King’s going to judge us and our minds are going to get dark. We’re not going to know what the heck to do. So you see, the gospel has implications that we should want to engage in this life. We should want to live in new creation. Who wants to live in the old dying creation? Not me. That’s what we do when we sin. The center of this thing is the brightness of Christ who has purged our sins and made us a new creation in him. Do you want to live in the new creation or not?

Justice is doing things right in relationship to God and our fellow man. It’s new creation stuff. That’s what justice is. Jesus is bringing justice to victory. He’s reconciled you to God and he’s reconciled you to dwell with your fellow man. But we blow that up. We mess it up when we start sinning against each other and we end up with personal conflicts. Jesus has initiated all of this. But Jesus also in his word tells us how to maintain—how to get back rather—into the new creation after we’ve slipped into death and into bad ways of being.

That’s what the simplicity, the non-rocket science, of Matthew 18 is all about. That’s what it’s all about.

Let’s turn then to Matthew 18. Simple. Simple. You know, it’s interesting because as I said, what you just read, what we just looked at, there are complicated parts of the Bible. They’re not easy to figure out. I was explaining to some folks this morning the meaning of the first few verses of Jeremiah. You can’t get it if you’re just reading your Bible. You can get some of it, but you miss an awful lot. The Bible can be difficult to understand.

You come across a text like this one that’s so simple, that’s so direct, that’s so textbook-like, right? It’s like the owner’s manual. You do X and then Y and there are quite easy steps. Why do you suppose that is? Well, I think it’s because they’re so easy that they’re laid out so easily—because we have such a hard time doing it. God is shouting this at us as it were. He makes it so simple. You know, it’s like that Wizard of Oz witch, you know, Dorothy, go home. Big letters in the sky here. The simplicity of it. God wants us to see so that we won’t get confused about it and that we would just end up doing it.

How to resolve conflicts. Conflicts in the church. And now today the emphasis is conflict within the church, within the body of Christ, with other believers, with other brothers and sisters in the Lord. But the implications are broader. But that’s the specific thing I want to talk about. And I’ll tell you why I want to talk about it. We’ve gone through some stresses here in the last six months. The last six or seven months have been kind of stressful in particular ways.

Now the church is always a stressful place because it’s filled with everybody from top to bottom—redeemed sinners. But we still have that old Adamic nature, and even if we didn’t, growth is difficult, right? Growth is always stressful. You ever have a teenager? You know, at a particular point they’re growing real fast and they don’t have a good body map anymore, right? They don’t know how tall they are or how long their legs stick out or their arms stick out. So they tend to bump into things for a while or they’ll trip a lot, you know.

And we know it’s kind of a truism: awkward teens. That’s because they’re maturing. That’s because they’re getting bigger and their mental image of how big their body is can’t keep up with the growth, the physical growth that’s happening. I think that no matter what a church is like, when you go through maturation and you’re starting to grow, it’s kind of difficult sometimes knowing exactly where you’re at and where things are.

I probably should have preached this six months ago, but better late than never. As we’re continuing to try to move forward in growth, these issues become very important. I was down in southern Oregon this week because of these issues. Jack Phelps was off flying to another church on Wednesday. As we were driving down on Thursday to deal with these kind of issues. They’re all over the place. So it’s not bad to deal about it.

But I was a little surprised that we, you know, when you get these tests, you get a grade at the end of the test. I’d say we might be like a B minus or a C. If that offends you, I’m sorry, but I think that’s kind of my read of this thing. The grade would be different for person to person. But I think it’s an important general thing to work for and strive for justice through interpersonal relationships. But honestly, I chose it because we need to hear this again and we need to be exhorted again. This is the way it works.

Okay, let’s talk about it real simple. So verse 15: “if your brother sins against you.” Now look, start at peace, right? You start by understanding that God has established a good relationship with people that you would have no relationship with apart from Jesus. Because it says “if your brother”—now right there, see, if we focus on interpersonal difficulties, what God wants us to immediately do is to remember that we’re talking about a brother or sister in the Lord.

You know, I got brothers and sisters in flesh relationships and they’re tight with them. Well, that kind of love and affection is supposed to permeate who you are in Christ in a particular local church. The beginning of this is to realize that you’re at peace, right? You’re in relationship with your brother and sister. It’s really important to remember that, right? Because one of the problems when things get kind of funky and relationships get tense is it’s very important to remember first principles.

First principles in the context of the church is God has made you a family in Jesus Christ. You’re talking about a brother. Now that presumption will change under certain conditions, but at the beginning you start off at peace, glory. You give the person the glory. Now they’re sinning according to this text we’re going to be reading. But you still begin by giving them the glory of considering them, calling them, identifying them as a brother or a sister in Christ. You give them that glory, that weight, that esteem when you go about this process.

Secondly, having said that, you got to be judgmental. It’s really interesting to me how our culture has moved away from judgmentalism. And you say, “Well, of course, judgmental is a bad thing.” No, judgmental simply means, according to the dictionary that I find online, it just means engaging in judgments about things. See, if your brother sins against you, well, now, if you don’t judge anybody, how in the world can you apply this verse in any way, shape, or form? You got to make a judgment about whether or not your brother is sinning in order to fulfill the simple requirements here.

You got to be a judge. You got to be judging your brother’s actions relative to you. But there are other texts that talk about if your brother’s overtaken in a trespass, you go and help him, even if it isn’t against you. You got to be judgmental, folks. Now, it doesn’t mean overly critical. It doesn’t mean overly judgmental. It doesn’t mean you’re going around looking to see who’s doing things wrong. That’s not what I mean. But you got to use judgment. You got to use discernment.

And what’s the judgment? What’s the determining factor for whether somebody’s sinning or not? The Word of God, the law. Again, it’s that simple. Justice is defined by the law. Sin is defined by the law or violation of the law. So you got to be judgmental.

Guess what? You know, we’ve got a culture now. I talked about this, and I didn’t post the link. Sorry. This Charles Murray book, *Coming Apart*, and I’ll try to remember to do it this week. But if one of you would remind me via email, I’d probably get it done. He talks about, you know, different kind of cultures in America, how the country is kind of coming apart. Upper middle class people still have marriage rates of 80, 85%. Whereas people that only have a high school degree at most—blue collar workers—have a marriage rate of about 45%. Huge difference.

What used to happen was people that had the social capital of being committed to marriage and diligence and hard work—they’re still doing that in those communities and neighborhoods. But one thing has changed. Murray says what’s changed is they don’t judge anybody else for not doing it. They don’t have—it’s a hollow social structure because it doesn’t have deep roots for people anymore. It’s just what they do and what you do is okay over there in whatever community you live in. There’s no judgmentalness anymore about it.

And because of that, it can’t really be sustained long term, right? Because it’s just sort of a social mores. It’s what they learned from their dads or whatever it was. But there’s no saying, “Hey, this is better if you get married than living together. This is better for your kids and this is better for you.” You know, things happen, but this is the best way to do it. How can you help people if you don’t tell people this is the better way to go about doing something? It’s good if you work diligent, you know, diligently and hard. It’s good if you try to provide for yourself, right?

So there’s, oh, judgmentalness, Murray says, has gone out of the equation. And as a result, they’re really not able to help people anymore because they’re saying, “Oh, whatever you do, this is okay. That’s okay. Who cares? It’s hollow. There’s no judging.” Why has that happened? Well, I think it’s happened because the Christian church likes to say, “Don’t judge. Don’t judge. Don’t make any evaluations of people. Don’t look at people sideways when they’re doing something wrong.”

That began in the church. It began with cheap grace. It began with a lack of love, quite frankly. If I see someone engaging in a sin, whether it’s against me or not, and I know that sin is slipping back into that death style of the old creation, is it loving of me to just leave them alone as they cycle down and have more and more problems? There’s no love in that, my friends.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but the point here is the Bible tells us you got to have—you got to judge with—as Jesus says, righteous judgment. Not, you know, it’s not up to my traditions, my standards, my mores. No, forget that. We’re disciples of Jesus and the judgment has to be according to his word, not to what we think about this, that, or the other thing. So judge. Jesus says it. Third, be proactive.

Now in this case it says “if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.” But let me read a companion text in Matthew 5. “If you’re offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there between the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser when you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge hand you over to the guard and you be put in prison.”

So, Matthew 18 says, okay, somebody sinned against me, I’m supposed to go talk to them and I’m supposed to approach them as a brother with love, right? And Matthew 5 says, if I think somebody’s upset with me, right? Now I’m not upset with them because they’ve sinned against me, but I think they’re upset with me because maybe I did something wrong to them. Again, I’m supposed to go to them. And if it’s supposed to go before I go to worship God.

So either way, see, when you got a disruption in relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ, either way, you are called proactively to approach the other person and not just let things fester and slowly drift apart. Things just come apart, which is what the whole country is doing—because that’s what happens in a lot of churches.

Notice, by the way, here, and I read the next verse for a reason. He says, “Well, you’re going to go worship me. Don’t do it if you think somebody has ought against you. You got problems in a relationship. Go work it out before you go to church.” And then he says, “On your way to court, make a deal quickly with your adversary, lest the judge hand you over to the guard. You get thrown in prison.” What’s the analogy? He says, “When you come to worship, I’m the judge.”

See, that’s what’s going on. You’re going to take this table here. And if you take this table and you’ve got unresolved personal conflicts with people that you’re not working on, he’s the judge. He’s going to hand you over to the guard, the guard’s going to throw you in jail. Well, it gets worse because in the Bible it says that if you come to this table and you just kind of monkeyed around with your Christian faith and you’re not working hard to be friends with everybody here and resolve relationships, you could die when you drink this stuff. That’s what Paul says.

So, be proactive. Whether it’s somebody who has sinned against you or you think they’ve got a grievance against you because they think you’ve goofed up toward them. Either way, you’re supposed to talk to your brother and sister.

Fourth, be as private as the sin is. Says, “if your brother sins against you, tell him his fault between you and him alone.” This is the hardest part. This is where—well, rocket science we start to think, well, gee, I don’t know. It seems pretty simple, but maybe it’s—maybe it doesn’t quite mean what it says. No, it means what it says. It means what it says.

If the offense is between the two of you, you keep that private. You don’t go talking to a neighbor. You don’t go talking to your friend. You don’t go talking to this, that, or the other person here at the church or outside of the church about it. You know, we do this. This is precisely what I saw happen in spades here in the last six months. I could not believe it that people were going about missing this simple thing. I’m saying I do it too, okay? I’m not saying other people—we all tend to do this.

Leviticus 19: I’ve read this over and over lately. “You shall not go around as a tale bearer, a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. And then he says, Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love means you’re not going to go talk to somebody else about some problem you’re having with somebody else here at the church. You’re not going to go to them and say, “Hey, you know, I need your advice. I need your counsel on this. You know what this guy said to me?” Or you’re not supposed to go and say, “Hey, you know, I really like you to pray about this because, you know, me and this guy or me and this gal, we’re just at loggerheads and she did this and I just can’t believe she’d—please pray that I’d approach her correctly.”

You see, as pious as that sounds, that’s just baloney. I could use a stronger word. I probably should, but I won’t. Don’t want to offend people. But it’s horrible that we do that. You see, it’s a clear violation of what this text very clearly says. It’s easy to do. You got a problem with somebody. Leviticus says go and talk frankly with him. We’re a bunch of cowards so often, right? The cowardly way—the cowardly way out of conflict resolution is to talk to somebody else.

The Bible says a lot about that. It warns us over and over against that. Proverbs 26:20-22: “For lack of wood, the fire goes out. Where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife. The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels. They go down into the inner parts of the body.”

Tasty. We like to hear it. We like, you know, “Oh yeah, you need counsel from me on this. Yeah, I’ll pray for you. Sure.” And then you like to tell me what happened. Tell me what happened. What happened when you talked to them? What did they do this time? Right? We just love that stuff. The Bible says don’t. That’s a way to contention. That’s a way to doing injustice, right? That’s not just to anybody.

Justice is living in right relationship with each other and God. You know, if all you’re doing is sending off your money or praying for some, you know, sex slave trafficking going on in Thailand and you can’t work out interpersonal relationships with your brother and sister here in Oregon City, don’t think you’re a doer of justice. Okay?

Doing justice starts with this simple stuff right here, and the church is either enhanced when we do justice or it becomes a bed of contention and strife and all that stuff breaks out. Actually, I’m kind of glad I waited. Things have, you know—I think there’s nothing going on that I’m particularly talking about today or in the last couple of months. But I’m saying this is what life is like and this is one of the most difficult things that God says we can do.

“The north wind brings forth rain and a backbiting tongue, angry looks.” I think that means that one way to stop this stuff from happening, to remove the whisperer, is when people come to you and ask for prayer and counsel, you tell them, “No, Pastor Tuuri said you go talk to that guy. Don’t tell me.” And you look at them and they continue to talk to you, you get angry with them. You put on your angry face. Okay? No, not going to do this. You’re sinning. And if you don’t repent now, I’m going to go talk to the pastor with you or bring along whatever else.

So the point here is, okay, I’m probably belaboring the point, but it’s so critical that we follow this simple instruction of Matthew 18. And yet I know it’s difficult. I know it’s hard. But that’s what God says we’re supposed to do.

Fifth, remember the three gifts. When you go and talk to somebody, we’re talking glory, knowledge, and life. That’s the three gifts in our worship. God restores us to glory through forgiving our sins. He gives us knowledge through the preaching of the word and he gives us rejoicing life together at this table. Glory, knowledge, and life.

If you are really trying to help your brother, you remember those three gifts. You want him to hear your knowledge about what he’s doing that’s in violation of God’s word because you want to have a hug with him at the end of the meeting. You want rejoicing life. But that means you start with glory. You start by affirming him as your brother. You start by affirming your love for him.

You see, if you want to hear him hear your knowledge, right, then you go with a proper attitude toward your brother. And you know what? Maybe you’re wrong. You want to hear his knowledge too. You want to say, “Well, looks to me like you’re doing X.” But maybe he isn’t. So remember the three gifts: glory, knowledge, and life. Remember that if you don’t give people glory, esteem, weight, safety, love, whatever you want to call it—if you don’t start there, you’re likely never going to get to really sharing good knowledge about things and you’re never going to get that hug. You’re never going to get to the hug. So remember the three gifts.

Sixth, seek repentance. Repentance—we’ll talk about that in just a couple of minutes. Seek repentance. Kind of obvious. And then seven—yeah, be prepared to stigmatize. See, here’s another thing. People don’t like to create these stigmas. To stigmatize simply means to mark somebody off with a problem. You got to be prepared to stigmatize the person because if they don’t repent, the process goes on and you take another person with you.

At some point, we’ll talk about this next week. Next week we’re going to finish up with the excommunication side of this thing. But at some point you’ve got to be prepared to stigmatize. Now be prepared to do it, but you don’t start by doing it, right? The change in how you treat the person is to happen as a result of the actions of the church, not you in isolation, right?

Says go with another couple of people—another person rather—then tell it to the church. If you won’t hear them, then you apply the stigma to him, that he’s like a gentile or a tax collector. We’ll talk next week what that means, but it’s a stigma. The stigma is not applied just because you’re offended or because you think something’s gone wrong. Okay? The stigma is applied after the process works its way through. All right?

So very simple stuff, very simple steps, and that’s what you’re supposed to do. Now, if you got a problem, if you think I’ve misunderstood the text or something, please—we got Q&A here afterwards. We always have a discussion about the sermon. You can give me all the push back you want. But it looks to me that this is a very simple process that’s quite important to the doing of justice in the context of our world.

Now, some stuff on repentance. Some very simple points, and I’ll come back to them next week and give some illustrations. But some quick points about repentance.

The goal of going to your brother or sister is therefore for them to repent from their sin, right? So repentance is related to contrition. So 2 Corinthians 7: contrition means sadness, right? Grief. I feel bad about something I did. But we read that godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death.

So what that tells us is grief and repentance are not the same thing. There should be a grief when someone—when we come to awareness that we’ve sinned against somebody, right? We should be grieving about that. But that’s not repentance. Grief can either be a godly grief or an ungodly grief.

Now, an example of ungodly grief was Judas, right? Judas was very sorry because he didn’t like what the consequences were of his actions. But Judas didn’t repent. He just grieved and grieved and got depressed and he grieved some more and he wept some more and then he went and hung himself and killed himself. That’s ungodly grief. That’s not godly grief. Godly grief leads to something else.

Repentance is not grief or contrition or sadness. It starts with that, but it doesn’t end with that. Repentance is this: it’s a U-turn. Grief is past-oriented, right? We got things we’ve done in the past. In the present, we’re thinking about our sins and we grieve over what we’ve done. That’s okay. But repentance isn’t—repentance is over here. Repentance says I’m going to do things different in the future. And actually it is doing things different in the future.

Repentance is not past-oriented. Repentance is not grief-oriented. Broadus—who is a 19th century Southern Baptist New Testament professor, well esteemed preacher and expositor of the scriptures—Charles Spurgeon said that Broadus was his most favorite preacher, bar none. Broadus knew what he was doing. And Broadus said, “This word repentance is probably the worst translation in your entire Bible.” The worst translated word rather in your entire Bible.

Why? Because repentance comes from penitence. To do penance again, to do something to fix what you’ve done in the past. Now, restitution is a good thing. If you steal from somebody, you got to repay them twofold. Yeah. Yeah. That’s not repentance. Repentance is in the future. It’s not fixing what’s in the past. It’s not through your weeping and groaning and doing deeds of penance and paying restitution and trying to help somebody over and over again figuring out what to do about your sin. That’s self-atonement. That’s hell, okay? That’s misery. That’s not repentance.

So the word repentance is a complete mistranslation of the Greek word, and the Greek word means a change of mind, a change of attitude that results in a change of actions. That’s repentance. Repentance isn’t preoccupied with grief and sorrow. Repentance moves from a sorrow for sin, and maybe you need some restitution going on—that’s not repentance. Repentance is doing stuff in the future.

The Pharisees came to John the Baptist. He says, “Who warned you to flee? He says, “Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. Fruits that demonstrate your repentance, fruits that show that repentance is at work in your life.” And what did he tell him? He told men who were living for themselves and themselves alone. He said, “Hey, feed the poor, clothe the naked.”

And then they had these other people there, these publicans and tax collectors. And he said, “Hey, you want to repent and show fruits of repentance? Here’s what repentance is for you. Repentance for you is not taking more than what you’re supposed to be taking—taxes from people and not ripping them off in the future. He says this is what repentance is. Do honest things to people. Don’t cheat them. Don’t rip them off. Don’t charge more than what they’re actually owing in terms of their taxes.”

And then there were some soldiers there. And he said, “Here’s what repentance is for you. Repentance for you is you quit beating on people. You quit coercing people. You quit being so unhappy with your wages. You’re always ticked off and you’re ready to club somebody—you get content with your wages.” He tells them in your life today, be content and don’t rip people off and don’t coerce them with your power and your authority. That’s what he tells the cops. He tells the government officials, quit cheating people.

And he tells people that are just living for themselves, repentance means feeding people and clothing them. Does John the Baptist tell those folks—and you can look it up later in your Bibles, but I think I’m right about this. They come and they say, “We want to be baptized.” He says, “You got to repent.” Did he tell them repentance is meaning you got to be sorry for what you did and you need to make a public confession of your sin? Does he say that? The answer is no. He does not. Okay?

The answer is he tells them what repentance is. Repentance is not about the past. It’s about changed life. It’s about moving away from death and the old creation and running into the kingdom of life and new creation right now. That’s repentance. Now, the only way you’re going to do that is if you believe that gospel—that beautiful gospel we talked about at the beginning of the service.

If you believe the gospel that Jesus is the great priest, the great prophet, the great king, he’s purged your sins, he rules—now the first thing you want to do is line up with him. You want to follow him. That’s repentance. Repentance is being a disciple of Jesus. Okay? And it’s saying that, well, I’m a disciple, but you know, I turned around and I started acting like Adam again. And God says, repent. And you say—and you jump back over here and you start doing what’s right.

Repentance is being a disciple of Jesus today. It’s not something you got to do to fix everything you’ve done in the past. Jesus purged your sins. It’s not feeling horrible about what you did. Yeah, you’re going to feel sorry about sins that you commit, but that’s not the idea, you know?

So often in the church, that’s what we teach. Repentance is unless you’re willing to shed a lot of tears and make a big long list—a catalog of all your sins and what you’ve done wrong and then show me how you’re going to change in each one of those individual areas. You got to make that catalog of sins. You got to weep and mourn and weep and mourn some more and weep and mourn some more. And you know where weeping and mourning goes on perpetually? Hell. That’s where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The kingdom is about forgiven men and women knowing they can’t save themselves. They can’t make full atonement for their sins at all. Jesus did that. All they’re going to do is follow Jesus from now on. They’re going to figure out what he wants them to do. If they’ve been selfish, they’re going to feed the poor and clothe the naked. If they’ve been a cop beating up people and being coercive and lying in court about people, they’re not going to do that anymore. They’re going to treat people justly.

And if there’s some government official that’s been ripping people off and taking some money off the top from the taxes, they’re going to stop doing that. They’re going to do their job right. That’s what John the Baptist says repentance is. Repentance is turning. It’s simple. You see, it’s the same thing. We make repentance and getting right with Jesus so complicated because we muck it all up with all this stuff about great deals of sorrow and long lists and what are we going to do?

And the Bible says, hey, repentance is simple. You get in line with Jesus. You move in terms of new creation. You do justice, right? You get right related to Jesus. That means you’re going to get right related to people and you just start doing that stuff. You forget what lies behind, right? Yeah, you’re sorry for what you did wrong, but that’s not the focus. Repentance is not past-focused.

Repentance—the biblical word translated repentance—a lousy translation. Repentance, I’ve given you that definition there on your outline. What Broadus says: it’s this change of mind that produces a whole different faith and a world view. It means changing who you are. Repentance just means becoming a disciple of Jesus again. And when we sin, we stop following him. And God says when you repent, you repent right now. You follow Jesus.

Now, we’re going to sing the offertory song here in a couple of minutes. A couple weeks ago I talked about honoring God and how you should come into his courts with praise. Remember that praise, that word for offering in the Old Testament—it’s tribute. It’s the thing you’d pay a king to acknowledge your love for him, that he’s saved you, that he’s providing all the blessings you have. You acknowledge that by some token representation.

What can you give to God? He doesn’t need nothing. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and more. But it’s a token representation that you’ve repented, that you’re getting with the kingdom, that you’re entering into new life in Jesus, and you’re going to keep repenting the rest of your life.

You know, Calvin and Luther both said that our lives are to be marked by continual repentance. I used to read that—it’s the very first one of the 95 Theses. Luther said, says, “Well, when Jesus says repent, he means our life is continual repentance.” And I thought, “What can that mean? I got to be sorry the rest of my life for things. I got to be in sorrow and gloom and downcast. Continual repentance. What are you talking about, Martin?”

Calvin says the same thing. I’ll read the quote next week. Calvin says the same thing. But you see, if you understand that repentance is not a focus on contrition or even ceasing from something wrong, but it’s becoming and reorienting yourself and recommitting yourself on a daily basis to follow Jesus, well, of course then it’s a life of repentance. You know, God repented, right? And if you understand that repentance is not sorrow for the past, it’s turning and changing your attitude in the present and future, God’s repentance makes a ton of sense then. It couldn’t make sense before if you got that old way of looking at repentance.

So let’s get it right. Let’s resolve conflicts biblically. Let’s do the simple actions of going to one another when we think there’s a problem. Working it out as much as possible in a private way. Bringing another person if you can’t work it out. Eventually getting the church involved through the pastoral ministries or whatever it is. Let’s commit to do that today. Not because it’s a good idea. It is. Not because it really helps community life. It does. Because that’s what Jesus says.

And if we’re going to repent, we’re going to say, “Yes, sir. That’s what we want to do in the future.” I hope each and every one of you come up with some token tribute offering to God today. And with that action of walking forward, you’re committing yourself again to being Jesus’s disciple. That’s what repentance is. That’s what God calls us to do today. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you that our lives are indeed a continual turning away from ourselves and our sins to you, embracing righteousness and peace and joy and justice in the kingdom. Bless us now as we come forward offering ourselves afresh as disciples of King Jesus. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Oh, for a thousand times sing my great Redeemer’s praise. He breaks the power of reigning sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood avail the dead receive. The mournful broken hearts rejoice. The humble poor believe.

All praise to our redeeming Lord who joins us by his grace and bids us each to each restored to together seek his face. He bids us build each other up and gathered into one to our high callings, glorious hope, we hand in hand go on.

Oh, put a watch upon my tongue and help me God to use it only for thy kingdom Lord and save me from its abuse.

And then my gracious God and King, oh, assist me to proclaim and spread through all the earth abroad the honors of thy name.