Resolving Conflict - Part 1

Scripture Reading

Why don't we go ahead and turn over in our Bibles to the book of Colossians, Colossians chapter 3. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Colossians chapter 3. And I had asked for suggestions from people for sermon topics. And I only got one piece of paper and boy, was it a whopper. Conflict in communication. So over the next two weeks, this is where we're gonna be.

So why don't we go ahead and turn our eyes to God's perfect and holy word now, Colossians chapter three. Hear now God's word. If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which were above, which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth. fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these, anger, wrath, Malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. Where there is neither Jew or Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

Bond servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in sincerity of heart. fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ, but he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, give your bond servants what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a master Well, in the reading of God's word there, brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

We have a lot of fish to fry and not a lot of time to cook them. There are three main points to the sermon today. The first is you need to seek Christ. The first is you need to seek Christ. The second is you need to put to death earthly desires, earthly things in your life. And instead of that, you need to put on Christ.

Third Point

Third, put on Christ. Christ, conflict, communication, especially in a year of COVID. Oh boy, oh boy, where do we start? We don't need much of an introduction. Fighting is all over us. Turn on any news channel, turn on any radio station that's talk radio, and people just like to fight.

But how should we communicate? God tells us be at peace with all men so long as it depends upon you. How do we communicate in marriage? How do we communicate with other Christians? How do we communicate with our children? How do we communicate with our boss? Or how do we communicate with people we just don't like?

Well, first we need to look to Christ. Look to Jesus Christ. Turn your eyes with me to verses one through four in Colossians 3. If then you were raised with Christ, Seek those things which are above, where Christ is. Fix your eyes, brothers and sisters, on Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of your faith. Fix your eyes, think about Christ, look upon Christ.

It should be our same cry that Paul said in Galatians 2.20, for it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live, I live by faith. and the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Can you honestly say of yourself, if I believe in Jesus Christ, it's not about me anymore. It's not about what I want, it's not about what my desires are, it's not about what I want to fulfill me, but it's about what Jesus Christ has done, and it's about the king of the universe, Jesus himself and his kingdom. If we have been raised in Christ, seek the things which are above, not the things upon the earth.

For you died, verse three, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Do you find your identity in the person and work of Jesus Christ? Is the gospel to you just something that, okay, Jesus died, he paid for my sins, but you take your entire identity, everything you are, and you say, who I am is I am in Christ. My identity is in the king of the universe. It's because I'm united to Jesus that I could do good works. It's not just that Jesus has paid for my sin, but Jesus is my life now.

Sometimes we say the Lord's Prayer, you know, and we think of it as like, oh, this just rote thing, we just say, but really, what does Jesus say? Father, your kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus tells us to forsake our own lives and pursue the kingdom.

You're not gonna do that unless Jesus has every ounce of devotion in your heart. This is what God demanded of the Israelites in Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. It is your uttermost devotion to Jesus Christ out of love for what he has done for you.

This is not legalism. This is saying, brothers and sisters, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is for you, that the Son of God humbled himself for you. that you might find your identity in Christ and unity with Him and be at peace with God. If we have any hope of having peace with other people around us, we need to recognize that first, we need to have peace with God. Now you can have kind of a surface level, eh, you know, we just kind of, I know how to smooth talk things over, but I'm talking about like real peace. I'm talking about Psalm 133 unity. I'm talking about if you really wanna have deep, lasting, meaningful relationships where the world would typically tell you you're not supposed to be friends with that type of person.

This is what the gospel does. It makes those bridges because Jesus made those bridges with us. Jesus is the one who made us right with God. And so first brothers and sisters, seek Christ. Seek the things which are above, not the things upon this earth. But if we're gonna seek the things above, that means we're gonna have to take some things off.

Now I'm gonna warn you, we're gonna go through this and we're talking about conflict and communication here. And there's a conflict between God and man. Man in his natural state has conflict. And because of the things we do and because of who we are, we have conflict with each other.

Our sin separates us from God, but our sin also breaks down our relationships with each other. Think about Adam and Eve. I want you to just take your mind back to Genesis chapter three. Did it cause a break when Eve first ate and then she gave the fruit to Adam and he ate? Did it cause a rift in the relationship between God and man? Yeah, absolutely, the biggest rift there possibly could be.

But what's the first thing that Adam says to God? Did you eat of that fruit I told you not to? That lady, you gave me. She gave it to me and I ate. The blame shifting starts right away. That's how sin works. It breaks our relationship with God and it waterfalls down to all our relationships on the earth.

And so as we look through these next few verses of the things we need to put off, when we put these things off, we're both being reconciled to God. as well as to other people. And so keep those two focuses in mind. So what are the things we're to put off? What are these earthly things we're to put off? Verse five tells us, and I'm just gonna go from, some of these words I would translate differently, just letting you know. So, therefore put to death, verse five, your members which are on the earth.

Fornication, it's the word, it's the word porn in Ea, sexual immorality. Put away sexual immorality. If you're doing hanky-panky with someone you're not married with, God's saying that's sexual immorality. Anything outside of the godly bounds of marriage is what this word sexual immorality or fornication would be. Uncleanness. Put away uncleanness. Put away moral corruption. Put away passion. This passion is specifically this idea of unbridled sexual desire. This is difficult stuff, right?

I mean, this is what God says that the people did in Romans chapter one that caused his just condemnation and showed his judgment upon them. But if these are markers in your own life, it's going to affect things like your marriage and how you treat people around you. If you see other people as just objects for your own sexual gratification, objects for your own desires, if your wife is nothing but for you this plaything that you just want to be with every once in a while and you don't actually want to encourage emotional intimacy, you're going to have conflict in your marriage. You're gonna have conflict with women around you.

I cannot tell you how many men I have to disciple who have struggled with pornography. And now when they get around women, they just can't look them in the eyes, but they don't see women as women anymore. They just see it as these images that they've flooded their mind with. And how hard it is for them to rip that away and start building emotional, godly relationships with women. And this happens not just for men, but women can also struggle with this also.

I mean, we want to act like, oh, these things, if I just do with them in secret, it's just for me, I'm just indulging my own. No, it hurts relationships. It hurts relationships. So put away, put away sexual immorality, uncleanness, passions, put away evil desires. This is an interesting one that he says in this list. Look what he says, and put away, the New King James Version says, covetousness. The word is just greediness.

More, more, more, more, bigger, better. I need the bigger tractor. I need the better combine. I need the better truck. I need a bigger house. I need a bigger retirement account. I need a bigger savings account. And I don't care who it hurts in my desire to get more. I don't care if I neglect my children. I'm going to work to get more stuff. I don't care if I have to hurt my family because I need the best things. I don't care if I'm going to neglect the church. I want to work more so I can have a bigger house. I don't care if it's going to destroy the land I'm farming. I'm just going to ruin it and get the biggest yield I possibly can because I want more.

It's the American way, isn't it? Got to have the better car. Have you ever watched car commercials before? They're hilarious. They're hilarious. All your life is gonna be great if you just get this new car. All the while you pour yourself $60,000 in debt and have to work even more to get that more car you wanted.

But what does God say this is? Man, this is stinging. Which is idolatry. Which is idolatry. Because our heart's affection get set on something else, someone else, something that is our object of desire. And it puts a rift in our relationships, horizontally and vertically.

This is why Paul says it's a blessing for him to have learned contentment in all things, in much and in lack. And where did he find that contentment? He turned to Jesus Christ. When he was in much, he thanked the Lord. Thank you for giving me these good things. Thank you for providing for me. And when he didn't have much, what did he do? Lord, thank you so much for giving me what I do have.

Put off the sins of sexual immorality. Put off those sins of greed and covetousness. It might not seem like it's going to hurt your relationships, but it is erosive to the foundation of your relationships. I cannot tell you how many families are ripped apart because somebody just won't stop spending because they want more and more and more.

God has better plans for you than that. The Lord has more for his children than the things upon this earth. There's better than that. But then we get into some real things with communication especially. Oh boy, we get into verse 8. Oh, there's a lot to talk about here. Let's go ahead and look at what God says at verse eight. But now you yourselves are to put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

And our family, we heard this one time in a sermon I was listening to a while ago. And when you're responding to someone and you're in a thick, conversation, the tensions are high, and maybe one person is upset. A good phrase you might want to remember is, how I respond is my responsibility. How I respond to the situation in this conversation is my responsibility.

Someone can be angry at you, that does not mean they have to dictate that you become angry at them. Actually, Proverbs 29 verse 11 says, a fool vents all his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. Put away anger. But anger, when it seeps up and it gets deep and it can pour itself out in wrath, in wrath, put off all these anger, rage, or wrath.

Right, what does God say to us? That's not what we're supposed to be. Right, we're not supposed to just be touchy or moody and at the drop of a pin, we're just gonna get upset. Now, I know you guys are like, oh, I'm too good for that. I've never been irritable before. I've never just been in a bad mood before. But when we're doing that, that's not love. That's sin.

And it's corrosive to our relationships. It's corrosive to how we talk with one another. When we pour out our wrath, our rage upon people, put away wickedness, put away wickedness, put away blasphemy. Now that's an interesting word, blasphemy. That's one of those weird words that are like, in Greek, it's literally blasphemy. And in English, it's blasphemy. But what in the world does that word mean? It means don't talk bad about people.

When we talk about it with God and we say that's blasphemous, we're saying you're talking bad about the Lord. But we can also be blasphemous towards each other. Man, especially in a small town, or as you're talking about people, ooh, if you're talking about people in the church, how easy is it to tear each other down? But what does Ephesians chapter four say?

Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, right? Don't use your words to tear other people down. but only what is good for necessary edification. Only speak things that are good for building other people up, that you might impart grace to those who hear.

It's so easy. Let me ask you, I want you to search your own heart and I want you to think about this. As you're naturally given to conversations, are you naturally given towards tearing people down, Or are you naturally drawn towards, I wanna say good things about this person? What's easier? Oh man, with small town gossip, it's really easy to just tear people down, isn't it? In families, it's really easy to just, I just don't like that person.

And just in case you didn't realize, Paul is writing to church people. Can you believe church people have to be told not to talk bad about each other? No, that would never have to be said in this church. No, right, we do this naturally. I think it's part of our corrupt nature, part of our depraved hearts, part of what is in baked in our souls is this natural tendency towards just wanting to pull someone else down.

I'm mad and I'm gonna tear you down in response to it. The Lord says, put that away. You didn't learn Christ that way. Put away blasphemy. Put away tearing other people down. Put away obscene speech. This last one, this is another interesting one that he puts in here. Do not lie to one another. Don't lie to each other.

The quickest way to ruin a relationship or make a small problem a big problem, just start lying about it. Whether it's big lies or small lies, just start fudging the truth a little bit so it sounds better for you. Just twist it a little bit so that it will make you look better. As we do that more and more and people will catch you in that, you erode trust. Especially in a marriage, that will rip people apart. The more you lie to someone, you're taking a pickaxe to the cornerstone of your relationship. Don't lie to one another.

Again, this isn't meant to be, I don't want you to feel like, oh, Pastor Brian's just up here and he's laying law on us. No, I'm telling you, this is a gift of the gospel. God wants you to have godly relationships with the Lord, wants you to flourish in your relationships. God wants the church to be a place where people are building each other up, where we're loving each other, where the gospel is finding itself, where people are bearing with one another.

And all of these are hindrances to that. God is saying, look, I'm telling you over here, this is bad juju. You don't wanna go over here. If you start pulling out of this bag for your toolbox, you're gonna be building on a wrong foundation. Put those old tools away. Come over here, we got a new house to build. It's built upon Jesus Christ as a cornerstone. And here's how we build it. So let's look at what we're supposed to put on instead. Look with me at verse nine and following. Do not lie to one another. Why?

Since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free. But Christ is all in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, again, notice your identity first. Your identity first, who you are as the elect, as the chosen ones of God, who he has loved. What are you supposed to do? Since you are in Jesus, put on what?

Tender mercies. Tender mercies. This is This is that word I love, splognon. It's this weird word in Greek. It's like down in your kidneys or in your liver, like, oh, I just love that person, like down here, you know? Like, I just love you so much. That's the tender mercy.

It's like, I remember when Olivia and I were dating and she was a nanny in Hawaii for a while and I went out to visit her for a few days. And I knew that I wanted to marry her, and we had kind of just finished the last conversation, like the major one, where I was like, OK, I'm going to go. If this conversation goes well, I'm going to fly out to Ohio. I'm going to ask her dad if I can marry her, and I know this is going to happen. And everything went smoothingly well. I'll tell you the funny story with that some other time.

But when I got on the plane, man, there was a four-hour flight or something like that back to Los Angeles, and I cried like a baby. Cried so bad my kidneys hurt. I was crying so bad because I didn't want to leave her. Here was this woman I absolutely loved and she was across the ocean.

God says that's how we're supposed to feel about one another, how we're supposed to love one another so much that it would hurt. When someone hurts, we hurt. When someone is in pain, we feel their pain. It is not a sin to be empathetic towards people. Christ is empathetic towards us. Christ knows our pain and feels it with and for us. Put on bowels of tender mercy. Put on kindness.

Isn't it funny that we have to have a commandment to be kind to one another? I mean, we have to tell our five-year-olds to do it, right? God has to tell me now that I'm 35. Gotta do it, man. Be kind. It's easy to be mean. It's easy. It's godly to be kind as a fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness.

Kindness, are we kind to one another? Do we speak to one another? Now that's an interesting thing I need to say is as we talk about communication specifically with kindness, You are living in a day and age where you have a big problem. Most of your communication is going to be electronic, either email, text messages, private messages, whatever it is.

Kindness and love are difficult to portray in a typed message. You know, when I was doing some research a long time ago on this lady who was writing this letter, and she was writing, and I could tell that she was emotionally distraught over what she was writing about, because there were literally tears on the page. And I could see where the tears had hit the page, and some of the ink had run down, and the pages were stained with it. People can't see that in an email or a text message.

So I'd encourage you. On my email service I use, it even has an option for me. Before I hit send, it always delays the send by about three minutes, just to make sure I have some time to think through, do I really want to send that message and say it that way?

And maybe if it's an especially difficult message, you might want to talk to your spouse and say, can you look this over and make sure that I'm not being a jerk? And make sure that I'm actually being kind to these people. Make sure that I'm actually being kind in how I'm communicating. This is one of the reasons why we prayed the way we did during our time of confession. We'll write things in our emails or in our text messages or in our letters that were meant to be kind.

And if it's just, somebody can read one or two sentences and all of a sudden, they don't read any kindness in that sentence. And they could take an affront. So I'm gonna give you a piece of modern, I don't know, modern advice is not biblical advice. If you wanna get around that, here's a tip. Use emojis. Like, I'm dead serious. Many of you have gotten messages from me before. And I have a friend who's really good at this. He'll put smiley faces. Like, if he's being sarcastic, he'll put a little laughing face next to it so you're able to read, OK, this is Caleb's sarcastic voice. He meant for me to laugh at this. He wasn't actually trying to hurt me with it.

Figure out, how do you actually rephrase things? Or what do you need to do in your communication with your spouse? When you pick up your phone, your tone matters. Did you know that? When you pick up your phone, if your wife calls you and say, what do you need? What does that communicate to your spouse? Does it communicate kindness? Probably not. Do you see how difficult communication is and how inbaked in our hearts it is to either perceive offense when it's not there or to give offense when you didn't mean to offend someone?

This is why God tells us to put on kindness, and you've gotta do it in Christ, right? You need to be active about this. So put on kindness. Next in verse eight there, put on, or verse 12 there, put on humility. Put on humility. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. Philippians chapter two verse three tells us that we are to have the mind of Christ that we would serve others. Think of them above ourselves.

Do I need to even send this email? Do I even need to respond the way that I would want to respond? Does this even, do I need to even talk back? Or can I just let the water roll off my back and let it go? Can I think about where the other person is first? Can I humble myself? and think about where they are, and maybe they're writing because they're in a place of pain.

I was reading a book a while ago about this young pastor, when he was first a pastor, he would go to the hospital every single week. It was a 45-minute drive for him to drive to this hospital in Dallas. Through the traffic, he'd finally get there, and for three weeks in a row, he went to this room, and he was supposed to visit this young lady, and every single time, she'd yell, go away! and he'd, fine, whatever, you know, and he'd walk out and he'd be so upset that he just wasted an hour and a half of his time driving. The last time he went for the fourth week, he didn't wanna go, but he thought, I gotta go. So he goes, he's never met this person before, he's a brand new pastor, he gets there, he comes to find out that this person was a young lady, true story, had lost one arm and two legs in a horrible auto accident. And those other three times he had come to visit her, she was in so much pain that she could not physically handle seeing anyone.

Sometimes we just need to humble ourselves and put ourselves lower and think of what another person might be going through first. Put on gentleness. Put on gentleness. Proverbs 15.1 says, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up strife. And if we're really going to give it to them, we better expect a fight. If we're going to be harsh with our answers and not gentle, we shouldn't expect anything other than that.

And I remember a dude just around here, he bought gravel from someone for his driveway. And somebody else came and they sat there and thought, do you need gravel this year? And he said, no, I already got gravel. And the guy got real upset, slammed his door, sped down the road in a big huff and puff. And the guy just sat there and he's like, well, I guess I'm never buying gravel from him again.

And his anger and his lack of gentleness and going, oh, I thought I'd earned your business. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I could have done better? The guy just got furious, slammed the door, drove off as fast as he possibly could, and he lost a customer because of it. And we're not even gentle in how we answer people. This is what happens. This is what happens. We have to be gentle if we want these ones. But here's a hard one, ready? Put on patience. Put on patience. Do you know the old word for patience? Long suffering. Being willing to suffer along with someone.

Okay, we haven't been able to get along this week. There's next week. All right, still didn't pick up his laundry this week. I'll lovingly tell him, and maybe next week. Ah, she still used that toothpaste the wrong way again. Maybe next week. Patience. Patience. Patience is incredible what it does for our relationships. Bear with one another. Put on bearing with one another. Just put up with someone. Deal with their weaknesses. In our modern day and age, you know, people think, oh, if I don't, if I'm not feeling in love with my spouse, I just need to, I just need to get out of there, right? Something is wrong.

The Lord says, stick with it, bear with one another, bear with one another. I'm going to encourage you that this is especially true in our time and age of COVID. I don't want to justify what the session has made decisions on in our response to COVID. And I don't want to say we've done anything perfect. By all means, there are plenty of people who haven't been happy by things that the session decided. But once again, we came to this idea that we need to bear with one another's weaknesses and bear with one another's own consciences.

If someone needs to wear a mask, okay, let them wear a mask and don't berate them for it. If somebody feels unsafe and they need to stay home, we love you. People online, we love you and we're bearing with you. If somebody feels like they can go willy nilly and they can just do whatever they want and they don't care about crowds and masks and whatever, bear with them too. Live at peace with all men so long as it depends upon you. We gotta learn to bear with one another. Right, we wanna make everything about moral absolutes and sometimes it's just saying, I love you.

We're gonna disagree with each other on this and guess what? We can still be part of the same church. We can still live in the same house. We can still work at the same company. Doesn't mean I'm gonna love everything you do, but I'll put up with it. It's all right. Bearing with one another. Be gracious to one another. The motivation behind all of this forgiving one another just as you have been forgiven. The word there is literally be gracious to one another. Show grace.

You have been one who God has poured out his love upon that he sent his only son to die upon his cross for you. He poured out his life for you. He has forgiven your sins. He's canceled your debt. He doesn't hold grudges against you. He's buried your sins beneath the depths of the ocean. He's removed them as far as the east is from the west. He has forgiven you.

By golly, forgive your husband for not putting down the silly toilet seat. Forgive your coworker for having a bad day. Forgive someone in the church for not agreeing with you on an insignificant or maybe even sometimes a significant opinion. Forgive each other, you've been forgiven.

Right, that's what Jesus says in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we have been forgiven. But what does he say right after he teaches the Lord's Prayer? For if you will not forgive men when they sin against you, oh now this hurts hard. Neither will your Father in heaven forgive you when you sin.

Closing Prayer

Brothers and sisters, if we cannot show grace to others, it shows that we don't understand grace ourselves. We must be people filled with grace, because our identity is in Christ, because we have received grace. But above all of this, put on love. Put on love. care about someone's eternal well-being rather than your own preferences. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and see that all the things that we have been talking about, God has essentially been saying, be loving, be patient, be kind, don't keep a record of wrongs, forgiving, love one another. There's no way we're getting through all this. I kind of figured that was gonna happen. So we got through point one and two, that's why it's a two-part sermon. Let's go ahead and pray.

Lord, we thank you for the grace that you have poured out upon us in Jesus Christ. Father, we pray that you would, by your Spirit, so impress the truth of the grace of Jesus in our hearts that it would overflow out of us into our relationships and how we talk to others. Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would make these things true in our lives and in our congregation and our marriages. Make us grace-filled people and grace-giving people. For the sake of your Son, by the power of your Spirit, in Jesus' name, amen. Will you stand together with me and sing in response, Psalm 66, selection B. Let's stand together and sing in response.