Saint Cloud, Florida 2021, a simple dinner meeting turned into a full scale legal battle. When the sitting mayor, Nathan Blackwell, reached across the table and casually took a single french fry off the plate of his political rival, Jeff Higgins. Instead of brushing it off, Higgins claimed this was an act of physical intimidation. He called the police and filed a formal misdemeanor battery charge, triggering a multi week criminal investigation where they had to interview witnesses. They were analyzing restaurant surveillance footage, which, by the way, gave him the ability to get videos to then publicize for his own benefit.

Higgins then used the open criminal investigation that he started as proof that the mayor was completely out of control and lacked proper decorum as a leader. This sort of thing's not new. And we kinda laugh at these sort of stories. We say that's just how politicians act sometimes, silly, foolish politicians and the things they do to get power and control. A mentor of mine once told me whenever you have people, you have politics.

And, unfortunately, this sort of behavior can and pettiness can find its way even into local congregations at times. We can get really offended and upset about the smallest things. Sometimes it's just a look that someone gave us, or we overanalyze the conversation and a few words that someone said, or maybe something happened and we hope looked at Facebook or Instagram or wherever you get your social media fix and you realize you weren't invited to something. That ever happened? It's not a great feeling.

We begin forming all sorts of ideas and theories. We get upset, sometimes not even realizing what actually is even going on. And before we know it, we've gone down a road creating all kinds of problems that really should have never existed. The last thing that God's people need is to act like a politician, like this guy, Higgins. And scripture really warns us about this kind of behavior.

Do nothing from selfish ambition, Paul says, or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Philippians chapter two. Augustine, considering this text, told a friend, someone who had asked him for advice, that the theology, which just kind of the study of God or the life lived based on the study of God, should be done in the spirit of the incarnation. Right? This is a text that's talking about how Jesus emptied himself, and he came to Earth in the form of a servant, and he was obedient to death, even the death on the cross.

So that's the context of what Augustine was talking about here. And he said, this spirit, it should be done first with humility, second with humility, and third with humility. And his point was that often it's pride and the behavior that follows that is actually the biggest threat to unity and peace within the body of Christ. CS Lewis famously said the same sort of thing talking about how so often we think of the big sins being things like fornication or adultery or stealing or murder. And the point he ends up making is actually the big sin is pride because it's pride that stands behind and is the impetus for all of these other sins, and yet it often exists in the shadows unnoticed.

And yet it festers and grows and leads to all kinds of problems in our lives. Philemon is an interesting book that gives us some inside details of what happens in the lives of these two men who were at odds with each other. And Paul, he works to bring them back together, and he sees the seriousness of this. Right? At the end of the letter, he's telling Philemon, I'm writing this with my own hand.

I'm gonna I'll pay back whatever's owed, and I want this benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ, he says in verse 20, and I'm confident of your obedience. I write knowing that you will do even more than I say. He looked at this situation. He saw it was serious, and he knew there needed to be some kind of resolution to this problem, whatever the details were.

And that's important for us to look at as we've been doing the past few days. But, also, we have to consider that not everything, not everything that bothers me, not every situation I'm in is a Philemon type situation. Tonight, we're gonna step back and ask some questions about do we even need to get to this point? Do we even need to get to the point where we need a mediator? And there's someone who is wrong, then there's someone who is offended, and then there's someone who's in the wrong, and we need to address it in all throughout the week, I've been saying we need to confront and face conflict, and that's important to do.

But we also need to be willing to ask some key questions as we're working toward this idea of confronting and facing conflict. The first of these, does this need to become a conflict? That's our main thought tonight. As we're dealing with situations in our life and we get upset about something, we get frustrated in the moment, does this actually need to be a conflict? And then there's a companion question that's gonna naturally go with that, How do I know?

But that's a good question. Does this actually need to be a conflict? And, of course, not every single thing that bothers us, not everything in our life do we end up going and talking to somebody about. Right? That would be a nightmare.

You know, if each each time I was upset about something or I got offended or I didn't like what happened, I always had to go talk to somebody. You wouldn't be someone's favorite person. I can tell you that. That gets old real fast. We wanna look at some biblical principles and ideas to help us with this, but also work through and a lot of this is gonna be questions that we ask ourselves.

Work through this. How do I know? How can I think through this in a way that helps me decipher and discern? Is this actually something I need to continue on with and deal with? There's all kinds of things that happen to us.

Someone does does something I don't like or they say something I find to be offensive or someone makes a decision I disagree with or they interpret a passage differently than I do. Someone doesn't meet my expectations in some way, and I have to ask, is this a mountain I have to climb, or is this just a molehill I need to step around and keep living my life? It's a reasonable question. And I wanna guide your attention, first of all, to where you left off last night, and that is some guiding principles about how to preserve unity and fellowship. Just think through some of the ideas we talked about last evening that help us stay away from some of the big problems, being careful about the things we believe and what we hear.

We heard something. Sometimes we're offended by the spin. We'll talk more about that. We're offended not even by what actually happened, but what we think happened. We gotta be really careful about that.

We've gotta be the kind of people who are not seeking out problems and difficulties. We don't continue to repeat matters. We're willing to cover offenses by seeking love, and we're willing to let the fire die out. We want peace. We don't always have to be vindicated.

We don't always have to be justified in the things that we've done or what someone has done to us. That is not the ultimate goal. The goal is that we are eager to maintain unity, the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. That should be the ultimate goal, not to get mine and make sure that I end up on top. That is not the goal.

And sometimes in the middle of conflict as we get emotional about it, that begins to be our purpose if we aren't careful. But tonight, I wanna focus on a different proverb. Proverb 19 and verse 11 says, good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. James one nineteen is probably more familiar to us. Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.

Four, there's a reason for this, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Just because I'm angry doesn't mean I'm actually being just. Just because I'm upset doesn't mean I'm right, And it certainly doesn't mean I have divine righteousness behind me just because I'm offended or I get angry about something, and so I have to slow down and be very careful about the direction I go in my emotions and in my anger. Proverbs nineteen eleven suggests that maturity is demonstrated not merely by our willingness to confront wrong, which is sometimes needed to face it when it's needed, but also by our capacity to overlook offense. Good sense, he says, makes one slow to anger.

If we sort of break this down a little bit, I think what we see here is the wise man is saying there is something that happens between, like, there's an offense or we get upset or we get frustrated. If we have good sense, there's a break here. Rather than in my emotion or in my desire to immediately attack whatever the thing is, if I have a good sense, I slow down and there's this in between point where I think, does this really matter? Is this really important? Good sense makes one slow to anger.

That is really the foundation of what we're gonna talk about tonight. As we work through the points, I want us to have this verse in our minds. And think about that Paul and Onesimus, I think, probably took quite a bit of time to work through this, deciding what needing to happen. And Paul ultimately decides he needs to go back, and Onesimus decides he needs to go back. This is not something that just happens in a moment.

We think carefully through what actually needs to take place when there are conflicts and difficulties. That's what we do when we have good sense. And we think from a place I thought I'd get scrambled up over Onesimus. That's a hard word to say. It wasn't even that.

We think from a place that is rational, that is logical, not one that is just passionate and filled with emotion. And so before I confront, right, before I decide that it's time to face the issue and I need to go take care of this, I need to slow down to make sure I actually understand the issue. Well, that sounds pretty simple. You think, well, obviously. But in reality, so often, this doesn't actually happen.

And it doesn't happen in a number of ways. Before deciding about someone else, I need to question my own understanding. Did I actually see this right? I remember when I lived in Bowling Green, one of the men there, he did all sorts of things in the community, and someone had seen him go into a bar. Oh, man.

They so they went to him, which was good. They went and talked to him. They saw him do this, and there was some other he was doing something for the government or something. He had to go in there and find somebody and talk he wasn't going in there to drink. But how easy would it have been to say, oh, saw him going to the bar.

He's hiding. The story spread quickly. When we don't get the other side of the story, we think we've seen something, but actually what we saw is not what we thought we saw. Jesus' followers discern what truly matters, And they do that by slowing down and making sure they actually understand the issue, what's really taking place. Sometimes this is, is this actually a sin?

You know, what whatever's happening, whatever was done, or whatever their attitude was, is this actually sinful, or is it just something I don't like? Is it an opinion I have? Did this person actually violate God's will, or did they violate my will? It's easy to get those things conflated because I have a strong conviction or I believe something. Now I've decided this is God's will, and those are not always aligned.

I have to be willing to be honest and open and look to scripture and really decide, is is this something that actually God has said is important, or is it just something I think is important? Paul spends quite a bit of time on this issue actually in first Corinthians eight through 10 in Romans 14, dealing with Christians, their backgrounds, they're they're Jew and Gentile, backgrounds, and they have very strong convictions at times. They genuinely believe these convictions. But what Paul's doing here is he is not allowing them to turn every conviction into a standard by which they will judge everyone else, And he's very clear about that. If you're gonna observe a day, you observe it to the lord.

He says, if you're not gonna observe a day, you don't observe it to the lord, but you owe you owe to the lord, not to somebody else. And the message there is to be very careful about the conclusions and the judgments we draw based on our opinions about things and our conviction. There's two aspects to this. One of them is sort of what I've been talking about already is just the facts, the details, what actually happened. That is often difficult to ascertain easily.

Like, we think we know the details. We think we know the facts. It's so easy to get only one side of it. I've seen this. I've already mentioned it already this week, but it's so easy to get one story and not even know the other side of it.

I have a situation I know about right now where I've heard things from two different people who have given me completely different perspectives. You would think it's not even the same situation. Ain't that amazing? How perspective does that? When my sons were younger, Xander, who's the younger son, Titus has a big heart.

He's really sweet. He's 16 now. Xander's 11. He was a little bit of a bully when he was younger, and he would push his big brother around. And Titus is big.

He's not small, but he's kinda was like a big teddy bear when he was younger. And Xander would push him around and hit him and get the things he wanted. And I told Titus, I said, hey. Stop letting him do that. You know?

Don't let him just hit you and push you around. And so one day, Katie and I were downstairs. I don't remember what we're doing. Think we were just sitting and talking, and we hear this uproar going on upstairs. And Xander comes down the stairs and he goes, Titus, hit me back.

He didn't understand how to get out of this. Right? In his innocence, he told us both sides of the story. But we don't always get that, do we? Often what we get is, he hit me.

He pushed me. He shoved me. And then unless you have some kind of a witness there, there's a story in my family when we were kids with my brother and sister, that very thing happened. My brother was always getting in trouble for hitting my sister who was older until my grandmother happened to be in town when she was kind of off in the corner and didn't know, and she saw that she kept turning the TV off and doing all these things to irritate him to get him so angry that he would react. Isn't that how life is so often?

What do we tell our teams like you're a coach? Don't react. You're it's always the guy who reacts who gets the flag and then miss the other side of the story. It's so easy to only see it from one perspective and just not see the details the way we ought to. Proverbs 18 verse 17 says, the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him.

Just the way it is in life sometimes. Someone may tell they come and tell you their story and, man, it sounds so good. You can't believe that other person did that to them and was so ugly to them and so inconsiderate. And then, of course, you get the other side of the story and you get the other details of what actually happened. True examination.

True investigation. If we're gonna get involved, we better get involved the right way and get the actual story and not operate from the spin. Right? Do I understand the details accurately? Am I reacting to what really happened, or I'm am I just reacting to the how the story was spun to get me on the person's side?

Do I really understand? This is important. If we're gonna decide that a conflict needs to be addressed, we better really understand whatever that conflict is and make sure we really have the details before we start making judgments. And then there's the talk the doctrinal side of this. So there's the facts.

You know, sometimes this is just interpersonal things. This person did that or they said this, and we kinda gotta nail those details down. Sometimes it's doctrinal matters. Know, I believe this and this person did that and they said this to the pulpit and now I'm upset. Are you interpreting scripture correctly?

Or is this just what you've always believed? That's a hard question. And just because your daddy said it or an elder said it or a preacher said it doesn't mean it's right. And it's up to me and to each of you to do the hard work of actually digging into scripture and thinking carefully about what's there. We need to be humble enough to distinguish what scripture says from what I believe scripture says.

This is Augustine's point. This is the whole concept of humility. Coming to the text with humility. And, of course, these are obviously related. We're responsible to understand and obey scripture, but recognizing that my interpretation is an active interpretation creates appropriate of humility.

It should. Then I'm willing to have this discussion. I'm willing I'm not gonna just run to the elders and complain about it. Let's just have a conversation. Someone says something and you disagree, let's talk about it.

Let's see if we can come to terms and you can understand what I'm saying and I can understand what you're saying, and we can see if we're actually on the same page, which I found often is the case. We're sometimes saying it different ways. But it's starting from a place of humility. Have I studied this carefully? Do I really know the context, or am I just proof texting things?

Right? I see the word here and I see this word over here, and I'm just pulling things together from all over the Bible to say what I wanna say. That is a poor kind of study. And sometimes while we condemn our religious friends for that very thing, we may be found to do it ourselves, to prove some point or some belief that we have. Good bible study involves the willingness to challenge ourselves, to challenge the beliefs that we may have.

And there's just we all operate from bias. Particularly, if we haven't thought about that yet, we're definitely operating from bias. There's a really interesting study by a guy named Mark Allen Powell where he had people read the prodigal son story. So he did this with people in The United States, and then he did it with a group in Saint Petersburg, Russia. So the job was to read the prodigal son story and then to accurately retell the story.

So you read it, you put your Bible down, you talk to the person next to you, and you retell the story. And he just wanted to see how this would go. Interestingly, only 6% of the people from The United States mentioned the famine when they retold the story. Did you know there was a famine in the story? That was what pushed the young man into his desperate situation.

Whereas 84% of the people in Saint Petersburg, Russia, when they retold the story, explicitly mentioned the famine. Isn't that interesting? Powell's interpretation of that was six hundred and forty thousand people died because of a nine hundred day siege by the Nazis in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Famine wasn't just some random detail in the story. When they read that, it mattered because they understood it.

Nothing changed in the story. It's just sometimes our experiences and the things that we've dealt with in life changed the way we read the story. And maybe our perspective isn't always as attuned as we would like to think. And it takes some dialogue, some interaction with other people sometimes to see things more because that's why I love listening to other people preach. When I get the opportunity to go and hear someone else preach, they bring up things I didn't think of from the text.

Isn't that great? That's part of the joy of something like this. Or when I have conversations, when I'm riding around like like we were yesterday with Preston and Reagan and we were talking about things, and they're bringing up things I hadn't considered or hadn't thought about it that way. Or sometimes, we've been thinking about the same things and we start and we're like, oh, wow. I've been thinking about this too.

So there's some confirmation there. That is helpful. Dialogue is so important, not just an echo chamber, not just people who agree with whatever I say, but really challenging what we're thinking, not just because it's what I've always thought, but is this what scripture is actually teaching? Do I really understand the issue? Secondly, if we're gonna confront something, if we're considering it, we need to really consider if we actually understand where we are in the moment.

Do I actually understand myself in this? Good sense makes one slow to anger. Emotions bring us many places that they shouldn't. Emotions have good purpose, but sometimes when we let them rule our hearts, they can create a lot of chaos. This is why Paul, he's giving some instruction about helping someone who's clearly in sin in Galatians six one.

Right? Someone who is found to be in trespass, they've they've done wrong. He says, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness, keeping watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Spiritual people. Right?

The ones who are in tune with heavenly type thinking. Their minds are on things above, and they're to do this in a gentle way. Being really careful about their own attitude and the way they're thinking. This is what Paul is telling them. Yes.

Sometimes people are caught in sin. They get pulled in by temptation, and we need to deal with that, but we better be careful how we deal with it. The right attitude, the right spirit, making sure we're doing this for the right reason. Maybe the question is, why does this bother me so much? Is it because it's an attack on god's glory?

Is it because it's somehow an attack on something I believe or I've always believed? And then considering all the influences that are driving me, family and culture, church background, our personalities, previous experiences in life, teachers we've respected, the fears we have, friendships, are we being fair? If it was my friend, would I go talk to them? Or is it just because it's this other person who I've sort of don't get along with anyway? If it was my family member, would I give them a pass?

These are hard things to consider. Or is it just because I'd like to find some fault in this person anyway? And so I'll pick and I'll pry and I'll find the thing that I can bring out out them that makes them look bad. Is the goal to win them to gain my brother, Matthew 18? Right?

That's what Jesus is saying there. It is my goal to embarrass my brother, to humiliate. These are the things we've already talked about from Philemon, Paul, and how he deals with this. He's very careful not to humiliate and to embarrass. He's addressing this in a way gently with love because he cares about these two people deeply, and he makes that very clear, and he wants to bring them back together.

Is that my motivation, or am I doing this for some other kind of selfish motivation? Maybe a better way to ask this, because it's kind of hard. We of course, we think we're right when we're upset, and we're probably gonna pretty quickly justify ourselves in that moment. And so maybe some more probing questions would be helpful. If I confront this person, what do I want to happen?

What's going to make it okay? Whether it's a personal issue or a doctrinal issue, whatever the situation is, if I'm gonna go to them, what do I consider success? And maybe that'll help us answer the question about motivation. Is it that I just want them to say they're sorry? I just want them to recognize that they've hurt me.

Like, what is it? I need to think through why am I actually doing this? Love asks what is best for this person, for me, and for the fellowship of the body. It's comprehensive, not just what makes me look good or what makes it obvious that I'm right. What are my motivation?

And then last, and I think maybe most revealingly, is this idea of what does love require. So we need to understand the issue. We need to kind of have a handle on where we are in this. What are our motivations? What's driving me to do what I'm thinking about doing?

But I think a more appropriate question or more pertinent question is, what does love actually require in this moment? After I've examined the issue in myself and I think carefully, I've slowed down, I'm reasonable. Now what is the best course of action here that is gonna bring success to everyone in this situation? What would God want me to do in this moment? I think when we say what does love require, that's a bit of a tricky thought in our culture because I think in our culture, often, people are gonna say, well, let's just do loving thing is just to ignore everything and to not bring up any conflict and not any problems.

You know, just let people do what people wanna do, but I would submit to you that's not at all what is loving. There are times as we've already been looking at this week that doing the loving thing means you actually do confront the issue. So I have to ask, will overlooking this actually be the loving thing? And sometimes the answer to that is no. There are situations where silence isn't love.

We're ignoring something isn't love, looking over, dismissing something. If there's genuine sin, like, this isn't just an opinion. This is someone who's actually violating the will of God, and I'm aware of this. It is not loving to just look the other way and not handle it. That's not love.

Paul tells us in Ephesians four, we are to speak the truth in love. That's how we grow up. That's how we become people who are not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine like children. That's how we become mature. Is that we're willing to speak truth, but we do it in a loving way.

And sometimes we cannot just overlook things. That's why we have Matthew 18 in Galatians six one. Some obstacles are mountains that we have to climb. They're not just molehills to skip around even though that's the tempting thing to do. And I think we've talked quite a bit about that this week with Paul and how he handles this with Onesimus and Philemon.

But sometimes the answer to this is yes as Proverbs nineteen eleven makes very clear. Sometimes when I look at the situation and I realize this is just me wanting what's best for me. This is just me being upset because I was inconvenient, or I didn't really wanna have to do this, or I feel like I'm having to do more than I should have to do, or whatever the thing is, it's really just about me. It's all centered on what I want. And if I recognize this is not about God's glory, this is not about the betterment of the congregation, this is not about doing something that's good for the other person and helping them in their life.

It's just my opinion or what I want. Those are the times with with good sense. We slow down. We can say love can cover a multitude of sins. We got some married people here tonight, and I really hope that as married people, we do this in our marriages.

You know, right after you get married, you've got everything's wonderful. Right? You're in this infatuation state. Sometimes it's actually well before you're married. There's, like, twelve to twenty four months of infatuation where you just don't see the problems.

And, of course, your family and everybody else around you is trying to help you with that. You know, like, have you noticed this? Oh, no. It's all wonderful. You know?

And so it's very hard to think rationally when you're and this is all actually proven scientifically, by the way. This is not something I'm just making up. Then you start to see reality, and that can be really tough at first. The things the little things that, oh, they were so cute before, and now it just annoys you that they're biting their fingernails all the time or whatever it is. And some of those times, there are things that would be addressed, and we have to decide, like, that's really gonna bother me.

It's gonna bother me all the time. I just we gotta talk about it. That's legitimate. But there's also plenty of things where we just say, you know what? I love you enough.

Just gonna let it go. And it's the same concept outside of our marriage as other people as well, people within our local congregations. That we love them enough and we care enough about them that there's just some things we can let go. It's not important. When we work through this analysis of does this need to be a conflict and how do I know?

Have I thought through all this? Do I really understand everything? Do I really understand myself and my emotions and why I feel this way? There's gotta be times where I look at this and I say, I just I love you enough. I'm just gonna let this go.

We can move forward. It's not about you being what I want all the time. Sometimes I have to acquiesce. I just have to compromise and realize everybody's not gonna do everything I want. It's not always about me, and that's okay.

That's the nature of love and how love works. But I do wanna offer this warning. As we're thinking about conflict and wrestling with how important our issues or problems that we have or offenses that we feel, how I handle the issue may become more serious than the issue itself. As we're thinking about mountains and molehills, is this really this huge mountain that's an obstacle, or is it just this little thing that sometimes I've made into a big issue? We have to consider sometimes there are minor issues, but people respond with gossip or anger or arrogance or suspicion or contempt or division or broken fellowship.

And maybe the actual problem was really just this molehill, but pride became the mountain or anger became the mountain or gossip became the mountain. Division became the mountain. We turned this thing in our pride, in our own arrogance, in our own stubbornness. We took something that was relatively small, and we made it this huge mountain now. We have to be very careful as we work through the significance of some problem or imagined issue, something that we may feel strongly about ourselves, an opinion we have.

Am I going to take my opinion and turn this into a divisive issue in the church? The consequences of that are serious. Godly people don't act that way. Godly people are discerning. They're careful.

They use good reason and good sense. They're slow to anger. They're quick to hear. And the reality is when I'm not doing that, I'm not being a godly person, and that's on me to change. If I find myself reacting in anger, being quick, not listening, then the problem is likely with me.

Have you ever noticed that, like, in your family? You know, like, sometimes at least this is my family. Maybe your families aren't like this, but the same exact thing can be happening, like, one day or another, and we react completely differently to it. You know, you might be sitting at the table and someone's making a noise and, man, I've been stressed today. It's been a long day.

I've had a lot of responsibility, and I'm frustrated. Can you stop that? Ever been there? But then at a different time, the exact thing can be going on, and we join in or we're being silly and having fun with it. What's the problem there?

It's me. It's my emotions. It's where I'm at. And sometimes in that situation, I've got four kids, so there's lots of noise and lots of activity at times. There's sometimes when I feel like I'm speeding up, I'm getting irritated, I just gotta get myself out of the room for a few minutes.

Not because I'm mad at anybody, but I'm just recognizing I need a little break. I need to calm down, and then I need to come back, and it'll be fine. It's me. I'm the issue here. You know, they're having fun, and isn't that the worst?

As you get older, I've had to grow a lot as a dad, and I've gotten to a point now where I've recognized these things a lot. And before, I was like, oh, you know, people are being irritated. They're no. It was me. I was the problem.

And sad to say, there was times people were having fun, and they were having a good time, and I and I was the problem. I was squashing the fun because I was frustrated or I was irritated. Isn't that sad? All the while, we're imagining it's everybody else that's the problem. Perspective.

Good sense makes us slow to anger. It helps us think of solutions It sometimes will help us realize it's actually on me. These questions I said earlier, the sermon is essentially questions. This little chart here kinda helps us through this process. Right?

It's broken down. The first questions really are about the questions I should be asking to make sure I'm being careful how I react. Is this actually sinful? Do I really know the whole story? Before I jump on the bandwagon and get all upset about something, do I really know whatever that something is?

Right? Do I really understand scripture? Have I actually studied this thoroughly? And I mean really studied. Like, this is not easy stuff to do sometimes.

Digging in, working through a concept or an idea, could I be wrong? Could could there be nuances I haven't quite understood yet? What this does is it keeps me con from confusing my beliefs and my convictions with god's revelation, Being very careful about that as any good honest student should do. Wondering why am I so upset about this? Is it really what is it really what's happening?

This is kind of what I was just describing about the dinner thing. Is it really what's happening? You know, people are happy and being loud and telling what happened today, and they're kinda getting loud because they're excited. Is that really the problem? Or is what is it what's happening in me that I'm frustrated and upset and I'm stressed?

Have I slowed down to ask this question? To think through this carefully. And then the end of this is what does love require? What happens if I don't deal with this? Is someone are they just gonna continue on in sin?

If I don't address this issue, if I don't go and talk to them, they're just gonna continue on living in a way that god doesn't want? That's serious. But it may be that it's actually rather insignificant. It's just something that bothers me. Sometimes love requires the courage to say we need to talk, and sometimes love requires the maturity to say, this just doesn't need to become a conflict.

I can look past it. We've come quite a ways over the last four days. We've talked about a lot of different things with Philemon, looking at Philemon's perspective and Onesimus and Paul and kind of bringing this all together about how this continues on afterwards, how we rebuild the trust that sometimes is lost in that moment. And then finally tonight, talking about does this actually matter? The things I get upset about, have I really thought carefully about, do I really need to blow things up because of whatever this is in my mind or in my heart?

And I really hope that this has been beneficial to you. It's been a huge help to me as I work through this. And I know some of you have came have come and talked to me and said this has been helpful. It's been a struggle that you've had, and I would say many of us have struggled with these kinds of things because it's just part of having human emotion and learning to control those and to think carefully through them. I think maybe this is why things like the book of Philemon are there for us.

A small little letter filled with such great thoughts and content for us to shape our hearts and our minds to be the kind of people god wants us to be, people who love unity, who love each other, who wanna honor our lord Jesus Christ as king, and live as people who are walking as citizens of his kingdom in a way that brings honor to him. Not focused on honor being brought to ourselves, not trying to win, but trying to win souls for the Lord. My fellow worker, Jonathan Banning, posted something. I think it was yesterday that I thought actually fit pretty well with this. The entire quote, if you go see his Facebook page, is is great.

But he's talking he's talking about the questions that Jesus asked. It's a book he wrote. But Jesus has all the answers. Why is he asking the questions? But these questions are probing.

They're meant to make a point. And so I wanna end tonight with thinking about this idea. He goes into the idea of judgment with this question, what more are you doing than others? How are we different than the world? And so he says this, we judge with understanding.

Right? He talks about how we're in this culture where people love to judge. There's cancel culture, and it's just you're one moment away or one post away from upsetting people and everybody getting angry. And so he says, Christians should be different. We should distinguish ourselves.

We judge with understanding, recognizing that we should judge others as we ourselves would like to be judged. We judge with humility, appreciating that we have our own flaws and foibles too. We judge with compassion and mercy knowing that we will desire the same from god when he judges us. What more are you doing than others? If I do this just like the world, does that say something about my discipleship of Jesus Christ?

That's the point. We are called to be different and to handle conflict with a Christ like spirit. And that's what we've been working through these few days. If you feel at odds tonight, you feel out of line, things aren't right in your life, Jesus has an answer for you. He calls you to come to him, to cast your cares on him.

If you are weary and heavy laden, he will give you rest. You can come take his yoke yoke and you can learn from him. You can be his disciple and live a life, whether it's things like how to handle conflict or just how to live as a Christian person. You can live a life following his example in which you will experience true fulfillment and peace even when things are hard. That option is there for you because god loves you so much.

He's given you the wisdom to follow his son and to be recreated in his image. Can we help you do that tonight? Why don't you come now as we stand and we sing?