About a month ago, I had a conversation with a sister who requested a sermon on how one should honor one’s parents.  Her own father is not a Christian and has been doing some foolish things that she has trouble respecting, so she wanted to know how to navigate that.  Naturally, I agreed to help

As I was mulling over the topic, though, it occurred to me that though important, our relationships with our parents are not unique.  Instead, the Bible defines what we should do in a number of different relationships:  with spouses, with children, with employers, with governing authorities, and with other Christians.  When we’re happy with the actions of all of the above, we don’t have much trouble with the relationship. 

However, all of those relationships can go south.  We all know people who have struggled with foolish parents, jerk spouses, wayward children, harsh employers, unfair officials, and obnoxious brethren.  Maybe we are those people.  What do we do then?  How can we glorify God in a situation like that?  With these questions in mind, let’s consider what we should do when relationships get hard.

First, we must REMEMBER OUR RESPONSIBILITY.  Consider what Peter has to say in 1 Peter 2:18-20.  In fact, everything we look at this morning will come from 1 Peter 2, so you might as well put your marker there. 

Peter starts off with a familiar idea:  that servants should submit to their masters.  Paul says similar things in Ephesians and Colossians, and even though this was written about masters and slaves, we generally apply it to employers and employees.  Peter, though, adds another dimension to this familiar teaching.  He tells Christian servants that they don’t only have to submit when their masters are gentle and good, but when they are unfair and harsh too.  In other words, in the master-servant relationship, the responsibility of the Christian servant stays the same, regardless of what the master does.

Peter makes this idea explicit here, but this is implicit in every Biblical command about human relationships.  Husbands have to love their wives with the self-sacrificing love of Christ.  This is true when your wife is a wonderful woman, but it’s also true when she’s an ill-tempered shrew.  Wives have to respect their husbands.  This is true when the husband is a wise and godly uber-leader, but it’s also true when he’s an idiot who makes 20 bad decisions every day.  Children have to honor their parents.  This is true when their parents are a credit to the Father in heaven, but it’s also true when they don’t show the sense of a five-year-old.  Under God’s law, our responsibilities to others do not change.

To worldly wisdom, this seems nonsensical.  Why should we work as hard for a rotten employer as we do for a good employer???   The answer, of course, is that we don’t do what we do for the sake of people at all.  I’m sure you all will agree that my wife is an extremely lovable person, but fundamentally, that’s not why I as a Christian love her.  I love her because God commanded me to, and even though her lovability might change, at least hypothetically, God’s commandment does not and will not.

Second, Peter tells us to ENTRUST OURSELVES TO GOD.  Let’s look here at 1 Peter 2:21-25.  Notice that by bringing in the example of Jesus on the cross, Peter turns the intensity of his argument up to 11.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but a few verses ago, when I read about slaves being beaten by their masters, that makes me cringe.  It gets a whole lot worse in this section!

Even though Peter doesn’t say so directly, this is really about Jesus and His relationship with the government that was killing Him.  The actions of the chief priests and the Romans were utterly cruel, brutal, and unjust.  They tortured and killed an innocent man.  Nonetheless, despite the suffering He endured and the mental suffering of knowing that He didn’t deserve it, Jesus neither insulted nor threatened.  Under the most severe provocation that we can imagine, He was faithful to the will of God.

Instead, Peter says, He entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly.  He entrusted Himself to God.  I think this was true in a couple of senses.  First, He trusted to God to help Him endure and continue to be righteous.  We should do the same.  Whenever we find our relationships growing difficult, we should pray.  We should pray for ourselves.  We should pray for them, which, notice, Jesus did too.  We should lean on God for the wisdom and strength to continue doing right.

Second, though, Jesus entrusted Himself to God by looking to God for vindication.  Jesus knew that as long as He was pleasing God, the judgment of corrupt humanity didn’t matter.  So too with us.  No matter how much those relationships frustrate us, no matter what awful things the people in those relationships say and do to us, the important thing is that we remain faithful.  If we do, we will receive eternal glory from Him.

Finally, Peter encourages us to OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD.  Let’s read from 1 Peter 2:11-15.  Here, Peter explains that when Christians remain steadfast despite the slander of their enemies, they silence them and put them to shame.  To put things another way, we exert the greatest influence on foolish and evil people when we respond with wisdom and goodness. 

This is the exact opposite of the wisdom of the world.  The wisdom of the world says, “Return evil for evil.”  If somebody hurts you, get them back.  If they do something dumb, be sure to let them know how dumb it was.  The problem is, it never works. 

Just look at the recent racial unrest in our country.  There were millions of people out there who were outraged and upset about the wrongful death of George Floyd, and rightly so.  However, some of them decided in their outrage that the thing to do was to go out and riot and loot and get in fights with police.  Let’s be honest, brethren.  Did their returning evil for evil persuade others to their cause, or did it harden hearts against them?

Sadly, as all of us know all too well, returning evil for evil is so seductive.  We want to hit our jerk spouse with that zinger.  We want to make our punk kid feel about six inches tall.  In every situation, though, retaliation only makes our problems worse.

As Christians, we are called to rise above petty revenge.  We’re called to rise above the thoughtless expression of our hurt and anger.  This doesn’t mean that we can’t ever speak truth to someone who needs to hear it, but we have to make sure that we are speaking truth in love, and that our actions speak even louder than our words do.  Worldly wisdom only knows how to make broken relationships worse, but God’s wisdom knows how to heal them.  Continually taking the high road, even when others don’t, might seem like the road to failure, but in reality, it’s the only path to success. 

There are many attempts to interpret the Bible floating around on the Internet, some of them very useful and good, some of them very. . . not.  Indeed, as the above illustrates, it is possible to find memes that claim that the Bible teaches exactly the opposite of what we believe it teaches.  Many of them look very authoritative, too, with loads of parenthetical citations of Scripture. 

Lazy, ignorant people who agree with the meme rejoice.  “See???  I knew it all along!”  Lazy, ignorant people who disagree with the meme, on the other hand, become disheartened and confused.

However, there is a simple cure for such confusion.  Don’t take Random Internet Dude’s word about what a passage says.  Instead, look it up, and see for yourself if the interpreter is interpreting correctly.

In this case, such a simple process (I can’t imagine it taking anyone more than 15 minutes) will reveal the meme as a tissue of lies, cynically crafted to cast doubt on Biblical teaching about the value of life.  Let’s take it from the top:

Hosea 13:16 predicts that pregnant women will be slaughtered.  It does not offer permission to do so.

Genesis 38:24 is about Judah demanding that pregnant Tamar be burned for prostitution.  Before we get too impressed with Judah as an example of righteousness, we should remember that he was the one who impregnated Tamar in the first place.  He slept with her because he thought she was a prostitute.  Nobody in this story reveals God’s will.

Hosea 9:16 discusses God punishing Israel by killing those who already have been born.  It’s not about fetuses in utero.

Numbers 5:21 is in the weird context about the water of bitterness bringing a curse on adulterous women.  It has nothing to do with miscarriage.

Leviticus 27:6 is about valuing people who have been vowed to the Lord in some way.  Only providing a valuation for infants who are at least a month old has a lot more to do with the horrific prevalence of infant mortality 3500 years ago (newborns often did not survive) than it does with the newborn’s intrinsic lack of value. 

Numbers 13:15-16 excludes newborns from the census for the same reason.  Note also that women weren’t numbered either, but any argument that women are valueless runs headlong into a number of New Testament passages.

Matthew 18:6 is about drowning the one who offends a little child, not about drowning the little child, and it’s figurative anyway.

Deuteronomy 21:21 is about stoning a rebellious adult child, someone who is a glutton and a drunkard. 

Ezekiel 5:10 is a prediction of cannibalism during the siege of Jerusalem (fathers eating sons, sons eating fathers).  It does not establish cannibalism as godly behavior!

Genesis 19:24 describes God judging Sodom and Gomorrah by raining down fire on them, and it’s blasphemous to claim that the judgments that the Lord executes give us permission to kill.

Joshua 10:37 (the meme says 10:36, but I will be gracious) is about the Israelites destroying the Canaanites of Hebron, including children.  Again, they did so because God expressly commanded them to, in Deuteronomy 20:16-17.  There is no corresponding commandment concerning abortion.

Deuteronomy 32:24 mentions poison but not children.

In short, what looks like a devastating rebuttal of conservative views on abortion proves to be anything but.  It does nothing to prove that the Bible and Christianity are “fine with it”, nor does it reveal what God thinks about the practice.

The point is this:  Whenever anybody (whether I or an angel from heaven) makes a spiritual claim and cites a Scripture in support, always, always, ALWAYS look up the passage!  Teachers of the truth won’t mind; in fact, they will be pleased.  False teachers will mind very much, but it is godly to expose their falsehood.  Never put your trust in men.  Put your trust in the word of God!

There is a famous Charles Wesley hymn entitled “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”.  Certainly, there is plenty of Scriptural justification for applying that adjective to the Lord.  As the words of Zechariah in Luke 1 and Simeon in Luke 2 attest, the Jews had been waiting anxiously for the Messiah for centuries!

However, there is another sense in which Jesus’ coming was unexpected, and this sense is prominently displayed in John 7.  Throughout the chapter, nobody knows what to make of the Messiah they actually got.  7:4 tells us that His brothers did not believe in Him.  7:12 describes the dispute between the Jews who thought He was a good man and those who thought He was misleading the people (correct answer, none of the above).  In 7:27, some argue that because they knew where Jesus came from, He couldn’t be the true Messiah (never mind Isaiah 9, Micah 5, etc.).  Likewise, the chief priests claim in 7:52 that Jesus’ Galilean origin disqualifies Him from being a prophet. 

Ultimately, most of the Jewish nation rejects Jesus because He doesn’t fit in their Messiah-shaped box.  He doesn’t seek out the people they think He should seek out, He doesn’t tell them to do what they think they should do, and He doesn’t solve the problem they think He should solve.  The Jews turn aside from Jesus, straight into the downfall of their nation in 70 AD.

Today, we might shake our heads sadly at those foolish, foolish Jews.  However, we are better off considering whether we are behaving like them.  Even though the gospels reveal Jesus to us, the Jesus in the minds of most in our society doesn’t look much like the Jesus of the gospels at all.

Most Americans are looking for a Jesus who is an unconditional grace and blessings dispenser.  They don’t have any interest in discipleship or living holy lives.  Nonetheless, when they have problems, they want to be able to get Jesus to fix their problems.  This does not involve repentance, humility, or life change; instead, it’s about Jesus slathering their brokenness with His love.  Then, when their lives have improved, they want to put Jesus in the attic until the next time they need to feel better. 

Such expectations will keep them (and us) from any meaningful encounter with the Lord.  Jesus did not come to kiss our boo-boos.  He came to die a hideous death in our place because our sin was that bad and nothing less could help.  He doesn’t let us do whatever we want.  He demands utmost obedience because we owe Him everything.  His work doesn’t leave our lives unchanged.  It leaves them transformed.

This is the Jesus of the gospels, the Jesus who calls us to follow.  Either we pick the cross up, or we don’t.  However, indifference will meet an inevitable end—a shattering encounter with the Lord who will come one more time in a way that no one expects.

I am quite sure that God frequently shakes His head in amazement at my foolishness.  However, I hope that year by year, decade by decade, I manage to get a little bit wiser.  One such hard-won nugget of wisdom has to do with being right and wrong at the same time.

When I was younger, I believed that when it came to a difference of opinion, there was a right side and a wrong side, and that was that.  I tried to listen to the views of others and give them a fair hearing, but when I thought I was right, I was quick to inform others of their error.  The only thing that mattered was who was right, right?

Wrong.

The problem is that people aren’t computers.  People are people.  All of us have an emotional attachment to the things we believe.  When those convictions are challenged, we don’t enjoy it and are apt to become defensive.  If the challenger continues to push, either we push back or disengage from the conversation.  There’s been a lot of talk recently about white fragility, but frankly, I think human fragility is the real issue.  Nobody’s skin color makes it easier or harder for them to hear things they don’t want to. 

If we don’t acknowledge this fundamental truth about people, we are much less likely to win converts and much more likely to create conflict.  The map is not the territory, and merely presenting the abstract truth about something often fails to persuade.  When we’re right on a conceptual level but get the human aspect wrong, we will end up being right and wrong at the same time.

I spent years being right and wrong at the same time, and I probably spend too much time there even now.  I don’t recommend it.  It strains and fractures friendships, creates lots of enemies, and accomplishes nothing worthwhile.  People won’t listen, and we will become cynical and embittered because they aren’t listening.

 If we want to avoid this trap, there are several things we need to consider.  What’s our goal?  Usually, it isn’t (or shouldn’t be) just to “get somebody told”.  As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:11, knowing the fear of God, we ought to try to persuade others.  Winning hearts is the goal of the gospel.  Winning arguments isn’t.

Persuasion requires us to account for the humanness of those we are trying to persuade.  One of the most enlightening books I’ve read in recent years is Kerry Patterson’s Crucial Conversations.  It observes that people only are persuadable when they feel safe.  The less safe they feel, the more inclined they will be to reject what you have to say.

There are a number of ways to build safety in a difficult conversation.  Having a strong pre-existing relationship is perhaps the most important.  The more others trust us, the better able we are to safely discuss a difficult topic with them.  In fact, I think it’s sound practice for all Christians to build and reinforce relationships with everyone they know as a matter of habit.  We never know when we will have to put that relationship to the test.

Second, we need to choose our words carefully.  In Colossians 4:6, Paul urges us to season our speech, and our efforts toward palatability can make all the difference between acceptance and rejection.  Harsh, condemnatory language rarely wins over its target.  On the other hand, when we strive to be understanding, fair, and compassionate, we are much more likely to find an open heart.

Finally, we have to make change as easy as possible.  All of us are proud, insecure creatures.  We don’t like to admit when we’re wrong, especially not in front of others.  Consequently, private conversations generally are more effective than public confrontations.  They allow people to change without suffering a dramatic loss of face.

We also need to put ourselves in the place of the one who is wrong and speak to them as we ourselves would like to be spoken to when we are wrong.  We never should demand that someone forfeit their dignity in order to acknowledge an error.  As satisfying as it may be to make the moron crawl, such demands will destroy our future influence.

Doing even these things is not easy, and there is much more that I could say on the subject!  Sadly, I’m sure that I have even more to learn.  We live in a society that has forgotten the art of having conversations like these, but this is a skill that we must master if we want to win souls and inherit eternal life ourselves.

There is no error more dangerous to the Bible student than overlooking the context of a passage.  Though all of us know the temptation to proof-text, many of the most pernicious false doctrines of all time arose because someone prioritized the verse over the context.

Of course, dismissing the context doesn’t always lead us into apostasy.  Sometimes, it merely leads us to miss the point.  This is probably true for most brethren when it comes to Matthew 18:15-18.  We know this one as the withdrawal-process passage.  It lays out the steps that you have to go through before you can cross a brother off the membership rolls who is “walking disorderly”.

A look at context, though, sheds a different light on these four verses.  In Matthew 18:1-5, Jesus informs us that we have to become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.  In vs. 6-9, He warns us about the dire punishment that will come upon one who causes such a child to stumble and emphasizes how far we must go to avoid such a fate.  In vs. 10-14, He highlights the value of every such child to their heavenly Father.  Even vs. 21-35 show how important God’s children are by explaining the lengths to which we must go in forgiving them.

In sum, the context of Matthew 18 is about the value of every child of God.  Every.  Single.  One.  If our reading of vs. 15-18 also does not reaffirm that importance (and it usually doesn’t), we’ve overlooked something vital.

Read in context, vs. 15-18 isn’t the bureaucratic process for excluding a Christian from fellowship.  Instead, Jesus is setting out the lengths to which we must go to try to rescue an erring child of God, because every one of them is that precious.

When we see a Christian who looks like they’re getting in trouble, we don’t gossip about them with our friends or wait quietly for the elders to get involved.  We go to them ourselves.  We act immediately, just as we would act immediately if hackers got hold of the password to our bank account.

If that doesn’t get through to them, we’re supposed to return with reinforcements, bringing in others in a desperate effort to avert calamity.  If that doesn’t work, we are supposed to involve the entire congregation.  Only then, only after we have done everything we possibly could do, to no avail, are we allowed to consider that Christian as though they are no longer part of us.

Too often, we follow the letter of the law here while ignoring its spirit.  One Christian learns of another brother in sin.  He informs the elders, who send the erring brother a letter that gets ignored.  The elders announce to the church that the wayward member isn’t responding to correction, and two weeks later, they read another letter which they have used to inform him that he has been withdrawn from.  None of this produces any outward result because the brother in question stopped assembling six months ago.

Does this follow the form of Matthew 18:15-18? 

It does. 

Does it honor the Lord’s intent?

Absolutely not.