Many years ago, I helped one of my friends study for the firefighting academy, and I would, you know, I'd have flashcards. He had a little notebook and all those binders and flip through, and I would quiz him on things. And, I was thinking about that this week under the heading of one of the most basic things the fire officer needs to decide when he arrives at a at a working fire is whether or not they're gonna attack it in an offensive or a defensive way, whether or not they're gonna engage in the fire by going after it and confronting the fire, so to speak, by deploying resources, by sizing it up and figuring out what kind of resources do they need to actually engage the fire and and put it out. That would be one attack. They call that an offensive attack.

And the other would be a defensive posture where you engage with the fire by almost pulling back, by making sure other things are out of the way, by making sure other buildings don't burn down, making sure the neighbors have their cats out or whatever. A defensive posture. I don't remember all the criteria, so I did look him up, this week, how you know which approach you're going to do. And the bottom line, I remember studying this helping my friend study for this, and he had a mnemonic to remember all these. And I don't remember what the mnemonic is, ironically.

But I I looked it up today in his his study guide, and the main component is the structural integrity of the building. How strong is the building that's on fire? If it's if it's if it's strong, it's gonna engage you know, frame the way how you're gonna engage with it. What's the potential risk to firefighters? What's the likelihood of saving lives?

What's the likelihood that deploying more resources will make a difference? In the analogy, I remember I and this was, like, new for me because I used to think firefighters wanted to put out every fire. That's what they do. And I remember from a study guide, there was an example of a fire that's in a field, and the grass is relatively wet. It's not there's no winds blowing.

The fire department could, you know, trapeze all their hoses and stuff out there. They could bring in other equipment from other stations and try to get out there and, you know, ramble through the mud to get to the fire. But every piece of equipment that's deployed there is not deployed somewhere else then. You know? If somebody has a heart attack a mile down the road, the next closest apparatus is, you know, twenty minutes away because everybody's trying to fight a fire in a field that ultimately isn't going to matter.

It's going to burn out. Sometimes you leave a fire because it's just too strong. You know, you roll up at a house and it's on fire, and the heat is so extreme that there's no saving that house. So you don't really need to call out, you know, a second and a third alarm because it doesn't matter. The house is gonna burn down.

Just make sure the cats are out of the way. That's it. In contrast, fire that's more minimal inside of a house but that is has the potential to spread, you would bring all kinds of equipment there. You don't want it to spread because you want it to damage the other houses around it. And so if you engage with it quickly, you can come out on top of it.

I was thinking about this that this week in light of all of the proverbs in relationship to confronting sin. There are, as I mentioned this morning, 17 proverbs about how to confront sin. But what stands out to you when you're engaging with these proverbs is that most of them, and I'll show you that this evening, but most of them esteemed the wisdom of covering sin, of of not engaging, of taking, to use the parlance of the fire department, a more defensive posture towards the fire, making sure nobody else is gonna get hurt and just trying to stay out of its way. The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about the wisdom in confronting sin, and, of course, it does require wisdom. You understand this is true in all the categories of proverbs.

Often the proverbs are in tension with each other. Do you confront a fool according to his folly, so he's not wise in his own eyes, or do you refrain from confronting a fool in his folly, Because otherwise, you'll be like him. That's a very basic example of this category. There's two verses right next to each other. One tells you to confront somebody, and the very next one says don't confront him.

And there's no mystery of the Hebrew. The only difference between those two verses is the word not in front of the second one. So you've got a guy who's being foolish, who's saying things that aren't true, who's being argumentative, bombastic, which are sins, by the way, do you confront Him, or do you ignore Him? Do you move along? Otherwise, people will think, you know, you're the crazy person arguing with the homeless guy in the subway.

The people the new people get on the car. They can't tell if you're the the homeless person or you're the guy trying to get to work. Do you refrain from arguing because you don't wanna be like that? Or do you engage and confront him on his sin? Otherwise, he'll think he's wise in his own eyes.

It requires a lot of situational awareness and tactful wisdom to know how to respond to those kind of situations. That's what we're gonna look at tonight for an outline. There's three responses to a neighbor's sin. I'm gonna frame this around a a neighbor's sin. Three responses to a neighbor's sin, and these three will move kind of in order.

The first response to a neighbor's sin is to cover it, to cover their sin. You see a neighbor or a family member or somebody from your church sinning, your first response, the wisest response is generally going to be to cover it. You don't cover it because you're a coward. You don't cover it because you don't wanna engage or because you have somewhere to be, although, obviously, those are are factors. You cover people's sin because you love them.

You cover people's sin for the same reason you wear clothes when you go outside. It's not that you're being dishonest. It's just that you're expressing love for other people. Proverbs 17:9 says it this way. Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.

If you cover an offense with your objective being love, you're serving the best interest of that other person. Nobody's helped by having every one of their sins confronted. That would make for a miserable home life. If every time you sinned you were confronted by a family member, it would make for a hostile living environment. Of course, it would.

Love tolerates one another. This is reminiscent of 1 Peter 4:8, which is probably the most well known passage in the Bible that says this. 1 Peter 4:8, love covers a multitude of sins. Love is a blanket that covers all kinds of things. Love overcomes evil.

How does love overcome evil? Well, it overcomes evil through forbearance and prayer. Those are the main two ways the New Testament describes the triumph of love. Love overcomes evil through forbearance and through prayer, not through force or through strength, generally speaking. Love is, of course, stronger than sin.

Love is stronger than hate. But love predominantly wins, not through its strength, but through its forbearance. The Christian triumphs not by overcoming his adversaries through force, but often by turning the other cheek. That's the standard New Testament model. Love is seen and displayed more in kindness than in conflict.

Love is most transparent when it is most covering. The ethic of kindness is often considered that of love and of wisdom. The effect of confrontation is often attributed in Proverbs to fools. Proverbs 19:11 repeats it a little bit differently, and I like the different flavor Proverbs 19:11 gives this. Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it's his glory to overlook an offense.

It's to your glory to look past some things, to look past some things. That requires maturity. It requires wisdom to know what to look past and what not to look past. To say with the fire analogy, if you have, you know, a fireplace in your house and wood falls out of it and it is now on the floor and is burning the floor, it is no good for anybody for, you know, one of the kids to say, there's a fire on the floor. But, you know, it's it's loving to overlook an offense.

You know, my my dad's taking a nap, so I'm not gonna wake him up to let him know the basement's on fire. He likes his naps. Amen. Yeah. But if there's, you know, fire if there's fire, we established a a rule in our house that when when I was napping, I was allowed to be woken up for fire and blood.

Those are the two things. And I was pretty clear. Like, a bloody nose or, like, a hangnail does not count. Does not count. I mean, like, if you can put a Band Aid on it yourself, like, you're on your own there at that point.

It's a glory to overlook an offense, to look beyond something. Many tribes in the world, even today, practice something called spearing. Spearing is if someone from your tribe is wounded accidentally by somebody from another tribe. A lot of these places in Papua New Guinea or even in the Amazon Forest, you have warring tribes that run into each other if somebody is accidentally wounded by a member of another tribe, likely a hunting accident. A standard practice in many of these tribes again, this goes on even to this day in the Indonesian islands, in Papua New Guinea, and in the Amazon Forest.

The standard practice is that if if somebody from your tribe was wounded accidentally by somebody from the other tribe, that other tribe had to put somebody forward for your tribe to wound. It's such a common practice that anthropologists have a name for it, spearing. Somebody from the from Burke accidentally rear ends somebody from Annandale. Then Burke has to nominate somebody that I can rear end. It's only fair.

Failure to do that in many of these tribes would be considered a supreme act of cowardice. That shouldn't be the Christian ethic. Christians, of course, don't put forward people to spear one another, but we do sometimes have this tendency to refuse to overlook offenses from other people that we know. And we keep a record of them in our minds. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, says this.

In contrast, love keeps no record of wrongs. Love doesn't have the record. It doesn't have the Excel spreadsheet. Love refuses to do that. Love refuses to take revenge.

Vengeance is mine, says the lord. I will repay. It doesn't fall to those who love to expose sins for the point of exacting revenge. It is to our glory to overlook an offense. Alexander Strauch, in his wonderful little book titled If You Bite and Devour One Another, writes, quote, at times, some behavior has to be confronted and rebuked, of course.

But, normally, the best thing to do is to say nothing and to overlook another person's fault. In fact, he goes on to give criteria for to do this. And he says the the more you know the person, the more important it is for you not to pursue matters in their life, generally speaking, not to demand apologies for how you were confronted. And he gives a very simple observation. So I read that sentence the first time and I thought, I don't know if that's true.

I think the more you know the person, the more you have to confront them. But then he gives this very simple observation. The more you know a person, the more time you're spending with them, which means the more time they're sitting around you. So the more you're going to have to overlook their offenses. Instead of demanding apologies and keeping records of wrongs, it's better to apply 1 Peter 4:8.

I quoted it earlier, but I dropped off the first half of it earlier. Earlier, I just said that love covers a multitude of sins. But do you know what the first half of the verse is? Keep loving one another because love covers a multitude of sins. Ken Sandy in his book, Peacemaker, which is another very good book.

And the last time I quoted Ken Sandy in his sermon, he turned out to be in the worship center. That was odd. Quoted him a sermon and he came and met me in the hallway and he's taller than a giraffe. Have you seen seen Sandy? He does not blend in anywhere.

Bobby, I think you had invited him. Do you remember this? Like, this guy shakes my hand. This giraffe is shaking my hand in the hallway and he's like, I like the book you quoted. I was like, yeah.

Me too. And he's like, I wrote it. So I don't see him here today, but I'm quoting him again. He says, quote, to truly overlook an offense means to deliberately decide not to talk about it, not to dwell on it, not to let it grow into pent up bitterness. This should be our normal response to seeing sins in others, to overlook it, to deliberately decide not to talk about it.

And, of course, the rest of that sentence is important to not dwell on it. Proverbs 20:3 connects us to wisdom in a different way. It's an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife. But every fool is going to be quarreling. Yes.

There's things wrong at work. Yes. There's things wrong at home. Yes. There's things wrong in the government and wrong in politics.

Of course, there are. But, man, fools just get so worked up about them. Fools come home every day and complain. Every day, how was work? They had the list of the 20 things that were not right.

I mean, we live in a fallen world. It's the fool who feeds their mind everything that's wrong with the politics of the day and everything that's fallen in the world. There's just constant quarreling, but it is an honor to a person to stay above that. And, you know, me, I'm not talking like political passivity or ignoring, you know, horrible crimes and immorality in our world. Of course not.

But you have to grant that it is to a person's honor and dignity to, in a sense, stay above those things. Your dignity is oftentimes seen in what you're above. Proverbs 20:22 gives you the flip side of this. Whoever meddles in a quarrel, I'm skipping a bit here. Proverbs 26:17.

Whoever meddles in a quarrel, not his own, is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears. It's kind of a fun verse, isn't it? Here's somebody else's conflict. I happened to overhear half of that sentence. Let me jump in.

You may as well grab a dog by the ears. There is a huge difference between suffering as a busybody and suffering as a Christian. Some Christians are so eager to cover their own sin and so anxious to expose others. Aren't they? Like, they get love covers a multitude of sins when they're the subject of the sentence.

Oh, man. I sin all the time. It's a good thing everybody loves me and covers it. But when I see other people sin, oh, man. I'm engaging because I love truth.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Irritation seldom puts out strife. Secondly, first, you can confront wisdom I mean, confront sorry. First, you can cover sin. Second, typical response is to confront it.

To confront it. And I would even add the phrase to confront in wisdom. To confront in wisdom. So step one, the majority of time you encounter sin in the world, you're going to cover it. The majority of the time you encounter sin in somebody's life that you love, you cover it.

But step two, if there are certain kinds of sins, you're the fire truck that rolls up, and this is the kind of fire that if it's not dealt with now is gonna burn down the neighbor's houses and all kinds of other stuff, You have to engage it. You make that decision. That requires wisdom. How do you know what kind of sins to confront and what kinds to cover? Well, first of all, James three seventeen, James one encourages you to pray for wisdom.

James three seventeen says that the wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere. That's the little seven adjectives right there that should engage in your mind before you confront somebody in their sin. Am I able to engage in this in a way that is pure, peaceable? Am I actually after peace, gentle? Am I open to reason?

That's the kind of confrontation that is actually look still in the data gathering phase. We will counselors love that phrase. The data gathering phase. Before I confront, I'm going to ask you some questions. What was going through your mind when you lit your house on fire?

I'm open to reason. I'm open to being merciful. You seek forgiveness in the confrontation, I'll grant it. I'll be so merciful to someone who asks for forgiveness. I'm impartial.

I'm not picking on you because you bother me. And I'm sincere. Like, I'm really asking you straightforward questions trying to discern the truth. Those are the seven adjectives that describe somebody who is confronting in good faith. They're pure, peaceable, gentle.

They're open to reason. They're full of mercy. They're impartial, and they're sincere. And you can tell somebody who's engaged in this kind of conflict who is not being teachable because they're not those things. They're not open to reason.

They're not full of mercy. They're not impartial. Of course not. They're super partial to whatever is important to them. They're not sincere.

They they obscure in their sentences, and they dodge point blank questions, and they maneuver around things trying to cover up the truth, the lack of sincerity. And that's why conflict is always ridden with danger. The most basic way to know of recovering versus confronting sin, the most basic framework to use here is if a person's sin is too serious to overlook because it's continuing as a pattern in their life. That's where you engage in confrontation. Now I'm trying to cover this sin, but it keeps coming up, and it's starting to harm other people.

That's when there has to be engagement. And that's often the time when people don't want to engage too. They don't want to engage at that point because now the fire is getting hot. But when you recognize that your neighbor's house is on fire, you deny yourself for the good of others. First of all, there's wisdom in confronting sometimes.

I mentioned there's only a few proverbs that are about this. The one is Proverbs twenty eight twenty three. Whoever rebukes a man will afterwards find more favor than he who flatters with his tongue. They might not be happy at the time, but the long term result is that you will probably strengthen your friendship with that person. If you guys are both Christians, you're probably going to end up stronger on the other side.

Nobody likes to be confronted in their sins, but true children are thankful for it later. No child likes to be disciplined, but when they grow up, they're thankful their parents disciplined them. And that's just the basic way the world works. So you rebuke a man. You confront a man.

You're probably going to find out later that he esteems you more than had you just flattered him. Flattery might feel good at the moment, but long term, somebody who's in a position of authority or power or leadership who has any amount of wisdom at all is going to see through flattery and is not going to respect those who flatter him. You think of Paul and Peter's conflict in Galatians. Paul rebukes Peter. It probably stung at the moment.

There are probably several quiet meals where they sat at different tables. That is a funny Bible joke even if nobody gets it. Remember, he rebuked him over who he was sitting with at dinner. They confronted each other. It was probably awkward.

They probably didn't like each other for a while. But by the time Peter is writing second Peter, he's esteemed Paul. Long term, it had the effect of increasing their respect for one another. It's important to confront sin because that is the way you protect other people in the church, especially when you have somebody who's being dominant and bullying, deceiving for their own gain, it ends up harming other people. And so often, people can overlook that sin because it's difficult to challenge, difficult to confront.

You're trying to negotiate the other Proverbs that talk about covering sin. Trying to negotiate the other Proverbs about how you it's to your glory not to get involved with that kind of thing, and people keep getting hurt. And so you confront. And remember Matthew 18 describes the process of the confrontation in the church. You confront individually, one on one.

A sincere, good faith confrontation is going to be one on one. And when that doesn't go well, you bring a witness. Not a witness to the sin, of course not, because that would be practically impossible, but a witness to the confrontation just to make sure that you're acting with the wisdom from above. Gentle, peaceable, open to reason, sincere, trying to be reconciled. And if that doesn't work, you go to the elders of the church.

And if that doesn't work, the person gets put out of the church. I mean, it's a pretty straightforward process. And at any step in that process, you can always engage at a level with saying, you know what? This is probably best to let love cover this. Like, maybe you thought at the first step, I'm gonna confront this person for their sin because I think it's rise risen to the level of needing to engage there.

You do. They don't receive it well. You bring a witness in, and it doesn't go well. And the elders might look at it and say, you know what? For the peace of the body, we're we're gonna cover this for now.

And that's why, generally, the people that are disciplined out of the church are disciplined largely, I mean, mostly for things like anger and sexual immorality, affairs, because those are the kinds of sins you can't just ignore. You have to put people out of the church for that. Ultimately, it ends up cleansing the church. When the person is put out the last step in Matthew 18, it ends up bringing peace. This is how Solomon says in Matthew twenty two ten, drive out a scoffer and strife will go out.

Quarreling and abuse will cease. And that's an amazing an amazing experience. You finally deal with if you're the teacher in the classroom, you finally deal with the problem of student, and it is amazing how calm the class is the next week. It's amazing. You thought the guy was just responsible for 50% of the disruption in the classroom.

You finally get the principal to suspend him for a week or whatever. He's gone, and it's like a % of the problems are gone. I've I've definitely had that experience as a teacher before. That's wisdom. You drive out the scoffer, and his strife goes with him.

Charles Bridges writes of the scoffer in the church, quote, The scorner is a firebrand of contention in the church, and he must be restrained. If restraint be ineffectual, he must, if possible, be cast out. If he can't be cast out, the wise person looks for ways to demonstrate that he is not on the same ground as the scoffer. He actually wrote the wise person looks for ways to shew, s h e w, that I think means show. I rendered it demonstrate, that you're not on the same ground as that person.

At least give a protest to those who tolerate scoffing and division. That's a pretty powerful challenge. You have somebody who's in the church causing dissension and division. You're trying to cover. You're trying to confront.

He says at least do what you can to demonstrate you're not on that person's side of things. And sometimes you can't cast out the scoffer. Sometimes the scoffer is related to you and lives with you. Sometimes the scoffer is the unbelieving husband. And what does Paul tell the wife?

You can't get rid of him. Stay married. Who knows? Maybe he'll come to faith through your example, through your love covering his sin. Maybe he'll come to faith.

Sometimes you can't get rid of the divisive and sinful person in the church. You try to confront them and you can't get rid of them. We're gonna talk about this coming Sunday. Like, you'd get a restraining order against them, but you can't get everybody to agree to discipline them out of the church. For whatever reason, they don't see the harm that it's causing.

He's the weeds in the church. Paul had that exact scenario happen in in in Corinth. Remember? And he prayed for the Lord to take that person out of the church. Three times he prayed that person would be taken out of the church.

And the Lord said, no. No. No. So that Paul would learn that God's grace is sufficient for him. That's amazing.

That God would let some demonically inspired false teacher sow division in the church so that Paul would learn humility. Nevertheless, it's wise to get rid of that kind of person if you can, Proverbs twenty two ten. Drive him out and his strife will go out with him. That doesn't mean you need to rush into every confrontation. To only cite the fact that most of Proverbs about this is about covering sin, so don't rush in.

And that's the way you can look at Proverbs 25. You might have it open in front of you, but I've got the key section on the screen beginning in verse eight. Do not hastily bring the person into court. Don't hastily go and confront somebody. For what will you do in the end when your neighbor puts you to shame?

This is a pretty common scenario. Your neighbor is bothering you in some way, and you're getting angrier and angrier and angrier at it. You're not covering it with love. You're getting, you know, ratcheted up. And you are so convinced you're right.

You're so convinced that he's wrong. You're so convinced you haven't voiced this to a third party yet for a reason. You're just getting angrier and angrier and angrier in your heart. You finally break out and confront him, and what's gonna happen? You're You're probably getting put to shame because you're probably wronging him in ways way worse than you thought.

So instead of openly rebuking him, instead of calling the cops, instead of going to stage three of Matthew eighteen first, why don't you start one on one? This is the same Matthew 18 principle. Matthew 18, New Testament, Proverbs 25, Old Testament. Just go to Him yourself. One on one have a conversation.

And don't reveal the conversation to others. Let it be done in secret, lest whoever hears you bring shame upon you, and your ill repute will have no ends. You'll torch your own reputation. This requires intense wisdom to know how to do this, intense wisdom to know how to speak to somebody in a way that calms down and doesn't ratchet up and yet brings reconciliation, exposes sin, confronts, restores, reconciles, all that. Extreme wisdom.

And that's why the the next verse in this, I think, is important. I think it's tied to this. Verse 11. A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. It takes insane and intense wisdom to have these kind of conversations well.

You have to put strategy into your words, into the situation, where you're gonna have this, over the fence, in their driveway, over coffee. You're thinking through how to say it. But if you do it right, it's so worth it. So worth it. Wisdom to know the right thing to say and the right way to bring the right results.

That's confrontation. And sometimes confrontation doesn't work, in which case you go to the third. Quit. See, they're all c's. Right?

You quit. You tried covering the sin. That didn't work. You tried confronting the sin. That didn't work.

You can bring other people in. Sure. If it's some kind of sins, like I mentioned, adultery, repeated sin that's gonna harm the body, of course, you bring a witness in. You bring the elders. You go through Matthew 18.

I'm not trying to say anything different than Matthew 18 here. But by and large, some of our more normal con you know, confrontation, not everything needs to be Matthew eighteen's. Not everything needs to be Matthew eighteen's. You know, you have conflict with your spouse. Neither one of you agrees that who's in the right and who's in the wrong.

You don't need to go get a witness for this. Like, okay. I've confronted my wife on her sin, and she's not repenting. Like, she thinks she's totally in the right for how she puts away the sponge. She's convinced she's in the right.

And I've tried bringing this to her attention, so now I'm gonna get a witness for the confrontation. Not helpful. Not helpful. I reverse this. It's me with the bad sponge doctrine.

I know this. Peace is always the goal of confrontation. And if you can't get it, then you move on. You live at peace with all men. Romans twelve eighteen says that.

Proverbs seventeen twenty four says it this way. The beginning of strife is like letting out of water. So quit before the quarrel breaks out. So you try to confront somebody. It doesn't go well, and it's not like a Matthew 18 kind of scenario.

It's not sin that's gonna harm the body. You can just tap out right then. It's the dam that's starting to leak the water. You don't wanna stand underneath the dam when it breaks. You'll get a better view from down there, I guess, for a minute.

You'll have a front row seat to your death. And so just quit the conflict. The ESV renders the word quit there, and that's a great translation of it. You can be done. You can be done.

The idea is that you tried to let love cover the situation. That didn't didn't work. Now you tried to confront. That didn't work. Again, assuming it's not a Matthew 18 kind of situation, the kind of sin that's gonna bring irreparable harm to the body, then you can tap out at that point.

Because if you don't, one provoking word leads to another. You confront over this sin. They confront back. That was the language earlier in Proverbs 28. You confront because of the sin.

They confront back. You confront back. And then it just gets hotter and hotter and hotter. The fire just spreads. So don't make strife hastily.

And if you try the confrontation and it doesn't work, quit it, it says. Paul and Barnabas did this on their missionary journey. They had conflicts. They tried to work through it, and they both got to the point where this isn't going to work. Barnabas wanted John Mark.

Paul did not. And I'm sure this could be there's so many easy ways to frame this in holier than thou language, isn't it? Or Barnabas says, oh, Paul doesn't believe in forgiveness. He doesn't believe in second chances. And Paul says, oh, Barnabas doesn't believe in the integrity of the mission and qualifications for leaders.

I mean, I don't know how they actually frame it to each other, but don't just gloss over that conflict in Acts and say, oh, it's so super spiritual. It's beyond us. No. It's not. It's about a person.

And should he go on a mission trip? And they couldn't agree with it. And so they split up. It was better for the church to split up. And that's not in the Bible just to end like the Barnabas narrative.

It's in the Bible as an example for us of a godly way to deal with this kind of conflict. You can move on. Proverbs 15:1 says it this way, a soft word turns away wrath. There's been so many situations in churches where neither side is willing to move on. It's basically a preference issue that gets framed as a conscience issue.

That's always a warning sign, isn't it? Once somebody frames it as a conscience issue, it's like my conscience binds me to this. You know? I don't think you should have drums in a drum cage. I think we should have drums in a drum cage.

I think the drum should be in the middle. You remember that period, Jesus? Yeah. Jesus is all in. He's got to see the conductor.

I remember this conversation. He got to see the conductor. Yeah. The conductor's at the center. I know.

And then you start framing it as a conscience issue. People do this. My conscience won't allow me to have the drums in a cage over here. It's so worldly. And if my conscience won't allow me, I need the elders to weigh in on it.

I'm choosing the drums because it's a silly thing that's, like, always talked about in churches. We don't really have this conflict in Emmanuel. That's why I'm choosing it. I'm wise enough not to choose an actual conflict we have. Jeez.

But you know how it works. Somebody has this issue, and they make it their conscience issue. And now because it's my conscience, you have to take sides. Just quit. Just quit.

And you know what? If quitting is not gonna work, Proverbs eighteen eighteen has such good advice on how to handle this. The lot puts an end to quarrels. There you go. Flip a coin.

Flip a coin and move on. And you think, is there an example this is what I was saying. Is there an example of the in the Bible of two people solving their conflicts by flipping a coin? And the answer is yes. There's a couple.

But my favorite is Abraham and Lot. Because it's not a question about right and wrong. Abraham was right. Lot was wrong. It's pretty simple.

And they were having conflict. And Lot was being pugnacious about it and argumentative and ungrateful. He was being all of those things. And Abraham finally says, fine. You choose which way to go.

It wasn't even a coin. It was like, you flip it and call it once you see what it lands on it. Lot. It still fits with this because it was Lot with a capital l. It still works.

And so Lot goes one way. Abraham goes the other way. And the lord is vindicated, and peace is maintained. All is well right up until Lot got kidnapped, and then Abraham went and rescued him. And you see this in the New Testament.

How about two Corinthians six verse seven? You guys in the church have lawsuits among you. You've already lost, Paul says. If you're suing each other in the church, you've already lost. And then he tells you this.

Why not just consider yourself wronged? Like, why not just call yourself wronged? This person has sinned against you. They've taken something that is yours. For whatever reason, it's not a Matthew 18 kind of situation.

They you're not gonna get disciplined for that. And you're stuck, and you think, I want my whatever back. So you take him to court. And Paul says, don't. Just count yourself cheated for the unity of the church.

Dieter and I have a friend who ministers in Albania who told us that he will only hire Muslim contractors to work on his church building. That way he can sue him with a clean conscience. Proverbs twenty four twenty eight. Don't be a witness against your neighbor without cause, and don't deceive him with your lips. Don't say I will do to him as he's done to me.

I will pay the man back for what he's done. This is the person who's refusing to quit. Don't be that guy. Don't keep ratcheting it up. You know, he wrongs you.

Your neighbor wrongs you. So don't go back to get him back. Don't go take revenge on him without cause. And you think, yeah. But if I don't get revenge, then I'm going to be wronged.

That's exactly right. You're gonna be wronged. Let love cover his sin. He doesn't relent and then back away. Don't repay evil for evil.

Speak truthfully to him and then move on. Don't bring it up. Don't plot revenge and trust your case to the Lord. You should you should forgive yourself little and forgive your neighbor much. And we always get that backwards.

We always forgive our neighbor little and forgive ourselves much. Just reverse that. Forgive yourself little, forgive your neighbors much. Proverbs twenty six twenty. Kind of wrap this up here back with a fire illustration.

For lack of wood, the fire goes out. And where there's no whisper, quarreling ceases. As charcoal is to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for the kindling of strife. The strife and the conflict is happening. It's on fire.

Don't keep feeding the fire. Tongues can light great fires. Your neighbor or friend has wronged you by saying something that's not true about you, you can let it end there. You can let it end. Otherwise, it can burn down a whole city.

Rumors spread so quickly because people repeat them. In church, they often repeat them under the auspice of a prayer request. I don't know if this is true or not, but I just think you need to pray for so and so. Rumors are spread by repeating them. They're so hard to undo.

But you know what the cool thing with this is? They're so easy to stop. They're so hard to undo. They're so easy to stop. Just don't tell anyone what you heard.

We have a wood burning fireplace at our house. It'd be insane for me to say, I want the fire to burn out. I want it to die out, but I keep putting wood on it every few hours. The darn thing won't quit. It doesn't quit because you feed it, and that's the way conflict is in the church.

You keep feeding it, and, of course, it keeps going. We so often think, but if I don't keep working on this, nothing will happen. Well, that's probably not true. You think if I don't press this issue anymore, nothing will happen. Again, that's probably not true.

Probably something will happen. Probably. That's just my own experience in ministry. People think if I don't press this in, if I don't get this person exposed, then he's just gonna keep on living undercover. Generally speaking, that's not true.

Generally speaking, time and truth go hand in hand. People have a uncanny way of exposing themselves. It doesn't have to be you. But even if it were true, even if they would end up getting away with it, if you're not the one who pushes it, that's okay also because the lord knows. The lord knows what's in their heart.

The Lord knows. That's why I wanna end with Proverbs 19:23. The fear of Yahweh leads to life. Whoever has it rests satisfied. He's not gonna be visited by harm.

And you think, what does that have to do with conflict? Oh, it has a lot to do with conflict. Because you think if I don't press this issue, that person's gonna keep getting away with it. And then what? Then I'm gonna keep getting wronged.

I'm gonna keep getting wronged. Okay. That's 1 Corinthians 6 again. So what? You're gonna get wronged.

It's okay. Count yourself wronged for the glory of the Lord. The fear of Yahweh leads to life. Whoever has it, you can rest satisfied. You can put your head on your pillow and close your eyes and go to sleep even though that person hasn't been exposed yet or, you know, that guy wronged you and won't admit it.

It's okay. You can go to sleep. Nothing's gonna hurt you. When you have that kind of confidence in the Lord, that will feed your wisdom. So to reiterate, most of the time you're encountering sin in your life, it's sin that should be covered.

It's sin that should be overlooked for the glory of the body and the glory of the Lord and the peace and unity in your home and in your church most of the time. There are sins that require confrontation, sins that are gonna end up harming others, sins that are gonna gonna grow and expand and bring disunity. You need to engage with those. We don't always make the right decisions at that time. Sometimes we think we should engage and we shouldn't or we shouldn't when we should.

We don't always make the right decisions. And so you follow the process of Matthew 18 that if they respond well, great. If not, you can back away or you can get elders that have wisdom involved and they can get in and they can say back away or they can push the issue. And if the whole time you're operating with the wisdom from above, you're being peaceable and sensible and open to correction and all of this while you're resting in the Lord, then the Lord will vindicate himself. Wisdom is vindicated by her children, Jesus said.

The Lord's glory will be maintained in the church. Lord, it's difficult to know when to speak and when to be quiet. It's difficult to know when to confront and when to cover. So we just trust each other to be motivated by love. Help the love of Christ mind our hearts together and strengthen the body of Christ.

And pray for the love of Christ to be first and foremost in all that we do. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And now for a parting word for pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.