They Could Make No Reply

So, how many of you like conflict? Does anybody like it? Do you like it, Isaiah? Did you know that, parents, that your son likes conflict? Sometimes? Sometimes? It depends? Well, you're unique then, because I think that most of us don't like conflict. I think that most of us do quite a bit to avoid it. No. So is anyone going to join Isaiah and say, I like conflict. I like having conflict with other people. I like having conflict with, in whatever form it takes, sign me up. I don't think that many of us, thank you. I don't think that many of us, or any of us really, you, well, it's young men for you. There is a time and a place for it, and that's what we're going to come to this morning. But I want to start by getting us to realize that none of us like it. We would prefer that there were no conflict, and when conflict presents itself, most of the time, we avoid it. Now, why do we avoid it?

Why do you avoid conflict? Why do I avoid conflict? Well, we avoid conflict because it feels ungodly. It's like conflict's the result of sin, and so if I'm engaged in conflict, I must be in sin. This morning, I'm here to tell you that's not always true. Sometimes that's true, but that's not always true. And the reason it's important for us at the very beginning to get this fixed into our head is that conflict avoidance is like the premier Christian virtue. don't do conflict. Or rather, Christians don't know how to do conflict. They don't know what to do with it. We get all bollocked up about it, and we go, well, if I engage, or if I say no, or if I say yes, or if I oppose anything or anyone, I'm in the wrong. And it's true that you can be. And it's also true that you will sin in some way while you live your life, when you engage. You're not going to be able to do it perfectly. You're not Jesus.

And yet that doesn't mean you're not supposed to engage with conflict. In fact, it's our duty. It's our responsibility. It's our privilege as Christians to be able to fight for Jesus. That's our place. That's our work. Christianity is not an all-or-welcome, everything's-the-same, tolerant, mishmash of whatever you want it to be. That's not what Christianity is. It's actually exclusive. requirements. There are expectations. There are commands to do this. There are commands to not do that. And those things create conflict, just like Jesus did. I think I told you last week as I've been preaching through Luke, I've been waiting for Jesus to be the Jesus I think he is, which is nice and friendly and tame and kind and lovable and approachable. And yet you just read and you realize this is He did very kind, gracious, loving things. And he was approachable, but it was not like, oh yeah, he's one of the guys. He's not one of the guys. He's not someone where you go, oh yeah, we get each other. He gets me and I get him. His disciples, they didn't get him. They didn't understand him. He did things that were constantly setting their teeth on edge. You're going to get us killed if you do that. I guess we'll follow you in there that we might die, is what they said one time.

So Jesus, I want you to see, was always engaged in conflict. There was always opposition surrounding him. And if we can learn that this morning, if we can learn that when opposition comes to us, our moral obligation is not always to turn and run away from it. Sometimes we should do that. Paul went and hid one time and they lowered him down in a basket out of the city because they wanted to kill him. And there were times where Jesus retired across the sea and went away from the conflict for a time. But we're in a period of the gospel right now where that's not what he's doing. He's engaging the conflict. And so this morning, we're going to be beginning a longer discourse that Jesus has in one of the Pharisees' home on the Sabbath. He ends up over there for a Sabbath meal. And this morning, we're only going to be reading the first six verses of him healing a man with dropsy on the Sabbath. And we're going to come in later to...

Him talking about who they should invite over. And then you're going to see a Pharisee say, try to dispel the conflict by saying, blessed is everyone who drinks wine in the kingdom of God. And then Jesus goes after him for what he's saying. And I want you to see that over the next three or four weeks, you're going to see an extended conflict in how Jesus conducts himself and how he handles himself. What is the point of him doing it if it's not for us to learn from it how to conduct ourselves in conflict? What should we do? How should we handle ourselves? Should we ignore it? Should we blow it up? Should we agree to just make the conflict go, yeah, that's fine, that's good, no, you're right? How should we handle ourselves in conflict? One of the things you'll find is it'll make you uncomfortable. That's just going to be what it is.

But my hope is that over the next couple of weeks, we're going to learn how to truly be peacemakers, those who seek reconciliation and peace. When Jesus went into the city and he wept over Jerusalem, what he did as he wept is he said, Oh, that you knew what it would take for there to be peace. Would that you knew the things that made for peace. And so his life was a life of conflict, and it just cannot surprise us or intimidate us that we're going to run into that same thing too. And so my hope is that we're going to be strengthened to know how to handle ourselves. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? From Luke chapter 14, verses 1 through 6. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. It happened that when he went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, They were watching him closely. And there in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they kept silent. And he took hold of him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, Which of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?

And they could make no reply to this. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So before we get into the particulars of this account, we need to orient to the climate of the home. You know, when you go into people's houses, you can kind of feel whether this is a happy place or this is a crazy place or this is an angry place. You can just kind of feel it. So I want you to feel the Pharisee's house. You know, he's over there for Sunday dinner, Sabbath dinner. They're there to eat bread. Jesus was invited, or he ended up at the house. I've wondered if he was invited to come. I think he was. It doesn't say in the text that he was, but I think he was invited to come into the home of the Pharisee. And we know that the Pharisees don't like Jesus, and that eventually they end up killing him. And so conflict is the context of this passage, though the conflict's not entirely open yet. They're not dragging him away. And yet Jesus knows the Pharisee's heart.

And he doesn't shy away from engaging their contempt for him. And that's what we'll be talking about over the next couple of weeks. So we're going to start by looking at the beginning of verse 1. It says that he went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. We could state that another way and say he went into his enemy's house. He had something to do with people that he knew hated him. Jesus associated with those who didn't like him. Now, the reason I point this out is what do you want to do? What do I want to do? With people that don't like us, fine. Stay over there and don't like me. I'll stay over here and not like you. And if it's not far enough, we'll go farther away. That's the natural inclination of man, of you and of me, is when there's conflict, right, people who don't like each other is to avoid it. You keep your problems over there far enough away from me that they don't bother me or touch me, and that'll be good.

And yet Jesus, as it was his habit, he's in the synagogues, he's teaching, he's worshiping with the Pharisees, and he ends up at their house for a meal. So you know everyone that comes to church doesn't like each other, right? That's true. You can't argue with it. But you can tell who people like by who they have over. And that's what we're going to talk about in two weeks when we pick this back up. about who we have over to our house. But generally speaking, the people you have in your house are the people you like. And the people you don't have in your house are the people you don't like. And it's because you either like them or you don't. They're a fun couple. I like having them over. Or I like going to their house. They have good food. Or they're fun. Or they always give us cool stuff or something. They got fun toys for the kids. We like to be around the people that we like. And yet Jesus goes into the house of someone who doesn't like him.

And so our natural inclination to distance ourselves from people that don't like us or that we don't like is not a godly inclination. Have you ever had in your life you know somebody and you know about them and you're getting to know them and you like them? You think they're safe, they're respectable, they're admirable, they're on the good list. And then you find out something particular about them. And all of a sudden, they're now the... No, they're in that crowd. Oh, I didn't know you were divorced. Oh, I didn't know that you this. Oh, I didn't know this. Oh, now that I know, you're not on the good list anymore. What I'd say to you, if you're with me so far, what I'd say to you is, do you have any love for them? And the answer is no, you didn't. You didn't have love for them when you thought they were great because you didn't have any love for them when you found out they weren't.

When you found out they were a sinner, or you found out they failed, or you found out that they weren't what you thought they were, all of a sudden it's like, oh, I didn't know you were one of those people. And I want you to see you had no love for them. And you didn't have love for them when you were in your ignorance. Love for people is not something that is contingent upon who they are or what they do or what they've done. I want you to see that Jesus was in the house of his enemies because he loved them. He wasn't there to make a scene. He wasn't there to be nasty. He wasn't there to fall all over himself and try to meet all of their expectations for himself. He was in their house because he loved them. And everything that he said and he did in that house had two purposes. The first, to glorify God. And the second, to call them to faith, to trust him, to believe in him, to follow him. That's why he was at their house. And that's the only reason you'll ever have people that you don't naturally like in your house.

Or you'll go to the house of someone that you don't like. There's nobody I don't like. And I say, you lie, you lie, you lie. There are people you don't like. There are people you're like, okay, over there is good. In my house, not so good. But here, Jesus goes into the house of the Pharisees because he wants to do them some good. He wants to glorify his Father. He wants to love them. And we ought to do the same thing. And whether they're our friends or our enemies makes no difference. If you don't love your enemies, You probably don't love your friends. So Jesus goes into this house on the Sabbath to eat bread, and it says that the Pharisees were watching him closely. Now, why were they watching him closely? Because they admired him so much, and they thought, can we glean something amazing from him if we just pay close attention? No. I mean, sometimes that's why you watch people closely, but that's not what's going on here. They're watching him closely so that they can catch him in something he might say or do.

They're looking for a ground to accuse him of sin so that they can discredit him. So they're watching him closely. They're scrutinizing everything that he says and he does. Now, if you've been in situations like that in your workplace, maybe your spouse is the kind who watches you closely. Maybe you're a child and when watching closely is something you go, yeah, that's what my mom does. That's what my dad does. That's what my boss does. And they're watching to see what you do. Now you remember that Jesus healed the woman in the synagogue. A few weeks ago we studied that, where he's up, he's teaching, and he sees a woman bent over with a debilitating back injury. He's been that way for 18 years. And in the middle of church, he heals her. And the synagogue official stands up and says, no, you can't do that. There's six days for that, but today's the Lord's day. Come back later to get healed.

We're not here to work on the Sabbath. And Jesus answers them and says, wouldn't you feed your animals if they were hungry? Don't you feed your animals? Aren't you that merciful that even on the Sabbath you make sure that your animals have food and water? You'll show them that level of mercy, but you won't show this daughter of Abraham any mercy on the Sabbath? And so he shames them publicly. And they don't say anything, but you have to know that that has already happened. These Pharisees know about this. They know about Jesus healing on the Sabbath. So now he's in their house, and there's a man with dropsy there. Now, do you know what dropsy is? It's edema. Do you know what edema is? It's just swelling. It's just a retention of fluid. It's visible. You ever see people, and they're walking around, their legs are purple, and it just looks like if you prick their legs, they would just...

They just burst. They're so full. They're big. It's painful. It's usually the result of one or more of your vital organs not functioning while your kidney, your liver, your heart. You know, congestive heart failure causes edema, causes swelling, causes dropsy. It's visible. It's painful. So this man is at the Pharisee's house. And Jesus obviously notices this man's condition. He's already healed publicly on the Sabbath. And doing things publicly provides some level of safety. Because, you know, who's going to stone you to death in public? But the temptation, you know, the question is, well, when you're in the same situation, but it's private now. And there aren't people watching that might help you or restrain them or whatever. It's private now. Will you do the same thing? Well, the Pharisee's house is private.

It's full of Pharisees and lawyers and Jesus, a bunch of people who don't like him, and then there's a guy with dropsy. We don't know how that guy got there. My guess is, given what Jesus says next to them about how they should invite the poor and those who can't repay them instead of the rich who can repay them, my guess is that this man is not some high-ranking person in the society. He's probably... a relative of the Pharisees, or he was invited to test Jesus. That actually the Pharisees brought him there, said, you come to see what Jesus would do in private, to see if they could find a way to accuse him when there wasn't the public witness of what was said and done. We don't know. But setting that aside, Jesus is in this man's house. It's a private setting. There's a smaller group of people. They don't like him. And there's a man who's sick, who's suffering.

So what should Jesus do? How's he going to handle the conflict? It's very real. You notice when it says, if we compare, I was doing this with my kids earlier in the week, I said, compare this situation to the woman in the synagogue. Because it's like, oh, Jesus healed two people on the Sabbath, and it was all the same. But it really was not all the same. There's a lot of differences. One of them was it's public, and one of them was private. Neither one of them asked for help. But the primary, the difference was, what's Jesus going to do? Will he do the same thing when the deck's stacked against him? He's not in public. He doesn't have the crowds of the people supporting him. Will he be consistent? Will he act with integrity? And we all go, yeah, yeah, he should say what he said in public and private. Because that was the right thing to do. And it was the right thing to do in public, and therefore it's the right thing to do in private.

The reason it's the right thing to do in public and private is simply because it's the right thing to do. It was merciful for him to heal somebody. And whether it was in public or whether it was in private, mercy was appropriate. And so we say, yeah, he should do that on wherever he's at. And so he does. But one of the differences is in the synagogue, he just healed her. He didn't say anything to anybody. He just, woman, come here. And he heals her. Now here, note what he does first. He turns to them, and it says that he answered them. Now, they hadn't asked him anything. But in verse 3, it says, Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? He knew their intention. He knew they were watching him. What Matthew Henry says is the thoughts of man are as actions to God. That he sees our thoughts as clearly as we see one another's actions. And so Jesus answers them. And before he does anything with the man who's sick,

He puts the question to them ahead of time. What should I do? That's the import of his question. Should I heal him? Is it lawful to do it? And they're stuck. They can't answer him. They're aware of what's happened in the synagogue. They can't say anything. And so what's Jesus doing? There's a conflict. They don't like him. What's he doing? He's initiating. He's intensifying the conflict. I mean, it's enough to be in a place where people don't like you. and for you to know there's conflict. But here, what does Jesus do? He says, do you guys think it's appropriate for me to heal him or not? What do you have to say about it? I know what you guys think. What do you have to say about it? Well, they didn't have anything to say about it. They kept silent. And the reason they said nothing was that if they say it was lawful, then they're aligning themselves with Jesus against the Pharisees who want to kill him. So they can't say it's lawful. If they say that it wasn't lawful, then they'd be made to look like fools.

since they would have been more willing to show mercy to their animals than to see a man healed. Which is what Jesus said to them in the synagogue, and later it's what he says to them about their son or their ox. If he fell in a well, which one of you wouldn't immediately, immediately, without reference to the day or time, go help them? They couldn't say it wasn't lawful, so they chose to say nothing. So you kind of, you know, I'm wondering, why did Jesus ask them that question? Why would he take time to ask them? There's got to be a point, right? Jesus doesn't do things for no reason. So what's the reason for asking them? Is it lawful? He was seeing if they would openly oppose him. Jesus took the offensive position in this conflict. You see that. He was not just a responder to everything coming and being thrust upon him. He initiated the exposure of the conflict to everyone who was watching.

So is there a place where in our lives where we should initiate the conflict, we should expose the conflict? And we all want to say, if you're like me, you're saying, no, no, you should, that's, uh-uh. Because we'll do it sinfully. And we won't do it in the right time. And we won't have done the right thing first. And we'll mess it all up. And so the solution is, no, we should never initiate a conflict. And I say, that's not right. That's not right. Sometimes you should expose the conflict. You should just say, I know you don't like me. I think you don't like me because of this. Could you tell me what's going on? In the premarital counseling that Vanessa and I have done, we talk a lot about conflict resolution. And one of the things I say to the husbands is, because you all know that husbands have a tendency to be afraid of their wives and don't want to cause conflict with their wife,

I tell them, you know, some nights you're going to decide, you need to decide that you're going to have a conflict. Not a frivolous conflict, and I don't mean a fight for the sake of having a fight. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is you, as a husband, should know the climate of your home, and you should know if there's conflict like there was in this home. And if that's the state of your home, you should choose to go home and address it. And you should know that it's going to cause a fight. That your wife's not going to go, Oh, you're right, honey. That's not going to be the first thing she says. You should choose to initiate. Lance open the wound and get the infection out. That's what I mean by initiating conflict. I don't mean being nasty or mean or condescending or rude or brash or any of that. I simply mean if you know that there's a conflict, if you know there's a rift in a relationship.

between you and your spouse, between your children, with your neighbors. It's Christian to acknowledge it and say, what are we going to do about it? This doesn't honor Jesus. What's going on right here does not bring him any glory. We need to fix it. And I don't mean you only do that with Christians. Jesus is at the Pharisee's house doing it. This is what it means to love our neighbor. So they don't reply to Jesus' question. He says, is it lawful? They keep silent. And then what did he do? He took hold of the man, he healed him, and then he sent him away. So he followed through on his threat or his promise. It wasn't a threat, but he wasn't just bluffing and saying, is it lawful? Well, good. I'm glad you guys are silent. I'm glad you know I'm right. And that's enough for me, that you know I'm right. No. He goes on and does it. He does the very thing that they don't want him to do.

And then he sends the man away. So we don't know what this man's response was to being healed. We don't know if he was one of the ones that hated Jesus. You know, so many people came out to, the crowds came out to see Jesus. If you're not careful, you'll end up thinking that just everyone who was sick came out to be healed by Jesus when he was on earth. But don't you think it's possible that there were people who didn't come out to heal him because they didn't? They didn't like him. They were Pharisees. They had problems, and they go, we're not going to be healed by him. We'd rather suffer. I've seen plenty of people do that now. I remember a man who made his wife walk home in the middle of winter from church and wouldn't accept a ride from us. And he had a little young child, and his wife was pregnant. I mean, he cut off his nose to spite his face, and his poor wife and child were the ones that suffered. And he was willing for them to suffer. You think there was no man, no husband at this time, no parent, no mother at this time who said, no, I don't want him touching our child.

And so we don't know this man's response. We don't know how he replied. The woman that he healed in the synagogue, she immediately started praising him. But this man, he's sent away. And maybe he was praising God and really thankful, and maybe he was angry. Maybe he was scared the Pharisees were going to kill him because he'd been healed. You just don't know. But we do know how the Pharisees respond. Because after Jesus heals him, he says to them, which one of you having a son or an ox fall into a well will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day? And yet again, they remain silent.

They give no answer. Now, about silence. When you're in a conflict and you take up silence, what's going on in your heart? Just think of yourself for a minute and think, when I'm silent, is silence, you know, is that the path to humility in your heart? Is that the path to repentance in your heart? Is that the path to tenderness? The answer is no. It's the path to hardness. And you have to see that in these Pharisees, that when someone is silent, forget about what you do. What about when you're the one who's initiating the conflict and the person you're talking to, silent, won't say anything, just stares at you. Or just says, yeah, okay, uh-huh, okay. You know, they're not silent, but they're very clearly not listening. You might as well be silent. Silence is not a good thing in conflict. That's the point. It's not good for you to be quiet and silent, and it's not for you to...

It's not good for you to be silent in conflict. And you also shouldn't be satisfied with silence from other people. Because it's not an indication of unity, of agreement. But they remained silent. They could make no reply to what Jesus had said. Now, was there no reply to what Jesus had said? Did they remain silent because there was nothing to be said? No. There's a response. What would you say if you were in this house? and you saw someone who was suffering terribly, healed, and Jesus said to you, was this right for me to do? And wouldn't you do the same thing if you could? With your son or with your ox, would you have nothing to say? No, you'd have something to say. You'd say, thank you. Praise God. You were right. I'm glad you did that. Forgive me for being angry and thinking that you were in the wrong. There's plenty to say.

And so when they make no reply, they're leaving their rebellion and their hatred and their hardness toward Jesus out for everyone to see. Their response should have been repentance and praise. But their response was silence. And what were they responding to with silence? They were responding to the gospel with silence. You say, no, they were responding to Jesus with silence. And I say, is he not the good news? Is not everything that he says and everything that he does the gospel? made available to everyone who sees it or hears about it, with the goal of them repenting of their sins and trusting in him. It wasn't the man they rejected. It was the gospel. It was his blood for their sins. That's what they were rejecting. Jesus is the gospel incarnate. And instead of humbling themselves and repenting and making peace with God, they hardened their hearts.

And they sat there silently. So what's the application to us of this text? There are a number. Most of them we've already hit on. One is your neighbors are going to be your enemies. Just think of your neighborhood. Think where you live. There you have neighbors you don't like. Think of your workplace. There's people you don't like. Think of here. There's people you don't like. Your own family. There's people you don't like. They're not easy to get along. We don't think and do it the same way. We're surrounded by them for various reasons. But there are people who don't like you because of your faith of their rebellion, some mix of that. So what are you going to do about it? There's a conflict. Do you love them? Yeah, I love them over there. As long as they stay over there. What would love look like? Dinner? You know I tell people this regularly when they don't like somebody? You know that sometimes you guys come to me and say, I don't like somebody else in the church? And you know what I tell you to do? Go spend time with them. Go spend time with them. It's that simple.

Go spend some time with him. You having a little bit of conflict with him? You men, you having a little bit of conflict? Why don't you guys, why don't you call him and ask him if he'll come over and help you trim out your bonus room? Why don't you ask him to come over and help you change your brakes? Or why don't you go fishing with him? Or why don't you do something together? Why don't you have lunch? Ask him how work is. Just get some face time with him. And you know what? It helps. It's really simple. It's hard. We think it's much harder than it actually is. You should spend time with the people that are hard for you to love. That's what you should do. That's what Jesus does at the very beginning. He goes into the house of people who didn't like him, and he loved them. He loved them. He loved that man with dropsy. He sought to do them all good. He engaged the conflict. So often in our lives as Christians, we go, oh, well, when there's conflict, I have to take a backpedaling, get it away from me thing because, you know, we're supposed to be peaceful.

And I say, you're right. We're supposed to be peaceful, but Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount didn't say that the conflict avoiders will be blessed. He said the peacemakers will be blessed. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. How is peace produced? It's not through ignoring the problem and hoping it'll go away. Where would we be if that was God's way of handling conflict between man and himself because of our sin? I'm just going to back off. See what you guys do. You know as well as I do as he does what you're going to do. And so his way with sinners, with conflict, with rebels, is to go straight at them in love. Straight at them according to how God's made you. Straight at somebody in conflict for you is going to look different than it will for me. That's okay. You don't have to do it the way I would do it or the way Dan would do it or Vanessa or Wendy or Abram or whoever. You don't have to do it like someone else does.

What's it look like for you to love the person that it's hard for you to love? Spend some time with them. And when you spend time with them, don't have a principle against the conflict. I don't like them because they're rude. They always dominate the conversation. They've got bad table manners. Their kids are crawling up the walls tearing our house up. You know what you should do? Say something about it. That's what you should do. Because you love them. Because you want to see their lives glorified. See them. And the lives that they live glorify God. You should tell them. Your kids shouldn't behave that way. We can help. I'd like to help. We love you guys. We've had trouble with our kids too. Can't avoid it. Our goal in conflict has to be that God would be glorified. And their repentance is not the only way that God can be glorified. God can be glorified and is glorified through what you do. He's not only glorified by the result, but he's glorified by the process.

So if you go to somebody who doesn't like you, and it's funny, if I say, if you go to someone that doesn't like you, you're like, yeah, are there people who don't like me? And I say, yeah, they're probably the people you don't like. It's generally about how it goes. The people that you have a hard time with, they have a hard time with you too. So those people. Go to them. Spend time with them. Talk to them. It's awkward and it's hard and I don't know what to say. And I say, just say to them whatever you would say to people you do like.

That's what you should do. If you had people over for dinner that you enjoyed, you know, were easy for you to enjoy and get along with and all the rest, what would you do with them? Just do that. And if a problem arises, then in love speak to them about it. What if they don't like me? What if it's, you know, all the what ifs. The what ifs come and they come and they just keep coming. And I say, well, how is God glorified? Is he glorified by you sitting over in the corner and not liking them? Spend some time with them. Ask them questions.

Confirm what your suspicions are about them. How about that? Do you think there's this or that or the other thing? Ask them. Do you think they're lazy at work? Ask them how work's going. And then follow up and, like, figure out if they're lazy or figure out if they're in a bad, you know, what is going on. You should find out. What else in terms of application? There should not be a difference between how you conduct yourself in public versus how you conduct yourself in private. There should be no difference. And as that relates to people you don't like, what I work to maintain in my own life is that I don't say anything about people that I wouldn't say to them. It's a simple rule. I fail, but it's the goal. That's my goal, is that I would never say anything about you that I wouldn't say right to you. Why is that important? Well, because if I'm willing to say something about you in private that I wouldn't say to you in public, how often do those things get through the grapevine back to the person?

And isn't that awful? You know how to fix it? Say it to them directly. And if you wouldn't say it to them directly, don't say it about them at all. A lot of gossip and a lot of slander and a lot of bitterness and a lot of lies would be prevented if you had just maintained that rule. That you'll say to them, to their face, what you'd say to their back. So what happens if you hear that somebody said something about you behind your back? There's the conflict. What are you going to do? What are you going to do, Lucas? We're going to deal with it. You're going to punch them? You're going to go talk to them. I heard you said such and such. I can't say that. I can't do that. I'll betray the trust of the person who told me. Then they won't what? They won't tell me the next time they say something nasty about me. How about we have the goal of reconciliation so that they're not saying nasty things about you? How about that? That would be good. That would be better, wouldn't it? You see how silly we are? All because we won't want to deal with conflict. Directly, plainly.

And so my exhortation to you is to deal with it, to see it, to engage in it, to initiate it, to not be afraid of it. And you know what? It's a mess, and you're not going to be good at it. People who practice, they get better. And so if you're like, I don't do conflict, not me, nope, nope, I would move to the other side of the country before I'll deal with that conflict. I'll just slide out through the back door without dealing with that conflict. If that's you, and there are plenty of you in here that do that, you know what? You're not going to be any good at it when you first start.

Don't set the bar real high. Just try. You'll get better at it. You'll learn how to be gracious. You'll learn how to be kind and patient when you talk to people. You'll learn how to love them. You'll learn how God loves you. We're to be ministers of reconciliation. That's what Paul says. Ambassadors for Christ. We're to be peacemakers. And that means you can't avoid conflict. You can't ignore it. You can't sweep it under the rug. You can't make excuse for it. You have to acknowledge it. Simply, and then seek the reconciliation. Sometimes you won't get reconciliation. That's part of it, and it's sad when that's what happens. And it ought to grieve you. Instead of saying, I knew they weren't going to. It ought to grieve you when there's an open conflict that isn't resolved with people. It's okay for it to grieve you. It's okay for it to hurt. It should. But you can trust God, and you can continue to love them, and continue to care for them. So long as...

They're willing. So much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. If you won't engage conflict, you're going to be a loner. Because as soon as you get close enough to people, you're going to find sin. You're going to be offended. You're going to get hurt. You're going to hurt them. And God didn't design us to live by ourselves, to be alone, off on our own. So you have to learn how to deal with conflict. And if you're afraid to do it by yourself, I don't know if I can do it by myself. I don't know what to say or do. Ask for help. Ask for help. My wife and I are struggling. Can we talk?

Our son's doing this thing and he's not listening. Can you help? Here's a situation at work. My boss is this and that. How can I honor God? These are the things that should be a normal part of our life because conflict is unavoidable. In our day and age, it's the humble man who fights. I'll say it again. In our day and age, when peace is the thing that we all have, we're told everyone agrees with everyone and everyone likes everyone and everyone accepts everyone. It's not true. But that's what we're told. And yet our nation, if we'll use that as an example, is more divided now than I don't know when. When in history we were more divided as a nation. There's not peace. And so it's our place as Christians to seek peace, to be humble enough to work for reconciliation. And that necessarily means engaging conflict, fighting, disagreeing, opposing. That's the meat and potatoes of Christian.

of the Christian life. And so I call you to be a part of it. On a big scale, on a small scale, wherever it's at in your life, engage with it by faith. Trust God to reconcile and fix and improve the things that are not as they should be. Let's pray.