Overflow

The Gospel makes a difference in our relationships. If we’re living with people we’re experiencing conflict. Think of a recent conflict.

There are basically two ways people respond to conflict.

1. Attack – Tiger
You deal with anger or frustration by ‘venting’ it.
You argue your case passionately
You ask questions like ‘How do you know?’ and ‘Can you prove that?’
You want to fight until the fight is over.
You cross-examine like a lawyer in order to ‘get to the heart of the conflict.’
Winning the argument is more important than loving the opponent.
You turn the argument to focus on the other person, even if it began with you as the focal point.

2. Withdraw – Turtle
You deal with anger or frustration by suppressing it.
You have opinions but keep them to yourself in order to ‘keep the peace.’
You ask questions like, ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ and ‘Does it really matter?’
You’d rather avoid a fight than win one.
You sometimes physically leave an argument in order to ‘get some space.’

These responses are typical and ‘natural,’ but we should ask if they are biblical. How do we move toward resolving conflict in a biblical manner?

Bible Background:
The early church included Jews and Gentiles
The Jewish Christians imported some of their traditional practices into their worship of Jesus. The Gentiles had no allegiance to Jewish customs like circumcision or dietary laws.
Peter, a Jew, understood the gospel well enough to embrace the new Gentile believers with no strings attached. Acts 10:9-48
But his application of the gospel was tested when he found himself in mixed company.
Some important Jewish leaders came to Antioch and Peter began to separate himself from the Gentile believers.
His hypocrisy was even leading others astray (Barnabas).

Read Galatians 2:11-14

Gospel – The third way of the gospel
A. The Gospel brings Humility
He didn’t withdraw and avoid the confrontation
Paul was motivated by the defense of the gospel
He could have been personally offended because of the effort he’d put into being with Gentiles.
His concern for the gospel outweighed the temptation to either attack or withdraw
He gave Peter an opportunity to respond to honest questions
Paul was not self-interested or self-defensive. Pride is the enemy of humility.

B. The Gospel brings Courage
He didn’t attack him by gossiping about him or slandering him
He went to him in public because it was a public sin. Private sins should be handled in private.
He presented the issue plainly and didn’t add drama to the details.
He wasn’t afraid of what people would think. Fear is the enemy of courage.

This gospel-centered confrontation mirrors God’s movement toward us in the gospel.

God did not pour his wrath (attack) or remove his presence (withdraw). He sacrificially moved toward us in the person of Jesus, full of grace and truth, courage and humility.

Jesus confronted sin, invited relationship, and provided a way of reconciliation. We have a proper motivation (love), confidence (faith), and means for resolving conflict (grace and truth).

Individual Application - Gospel Fighting

1. HUMILITY: Confess your Sin

• When faced with conflict, do you usually attack or withdraw? Do you tend to be defensive, blame others, or always think you are right (attack)? Or do you tend to boil with anger inside, gossip, or avoid confrontation (withdraw)?
• Why are you an attacker OR withdrawer? What’s the deeper sin beneath the sin?
• Spend a few moments silently confessing your sin of either attacking (self-righteousness & pride) or withdrawing (insecurity & fear). Confess how you have failed to really believe the gospel during conflict.

2. COURAGE: Affirm your Faith

• Prayerfully acknowledge what drives your attacking or withdrawing. Are you concerned with: losing face, being wrong, disrupting the peace, other’s approval, etc? By faith, affirm your trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to free you from these sins of pride and fear.
• Communicate to those involved in the conflict that you want to seek resolution.
• Confess your sin. How have you sinned against the other person?
• Talk honestly and respectfully about your thoughts and feelings, and be sure to give them an opportunity to do the same.
• Listen. Do you understand each other? It’s a good idea to say, “This is what I’m hearing you say… is that right?”
• What will it cost each person to resolve the conflict? What steps must be taken toward resolution?
• Pray for God’s will to be done. Thank Jesus for his willingness to pay the ultimate price of death to resolve the ultimate conflict of our sinful rebellion.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Getting to the Heart of Forgiveness

1. Think of one or two people you need to forgive (or forgive more deeply). If you have a hard time thinking of someone, ask God to reveal someone to you. Here are some scenarios and feelings that might bring someone to mind: someone you have distanced yourself from; people you feel uncomfortable around; people you no longer enjoy; relational conflicts you keep rehearsing in your mind; someone who said or did something that hurt you; feelings of anger, bitterness, irritation, fear, gossip, or a critical spirit.
Write down one or two people who come to mind.

2. What irritates or disturbs you most about this person?

3. What issues of “justice” are involved in the situation? How has this person wronged you, hurt you, or sinned against you?

4. What conditions do you instinctively want to place on this person before you truly forgive him or her? In others words, what does your heart want to require from this person before you release him or her? What specifically would you desire the person to say or do?

5. Describe your own debt before God. How is it far greater than the debt of the people you have listed (yet it is cancelled and forgiven)? Do not rush through this question. Take time to describe your indebtedness in terms of the specific ways sin manifests itself in your life.

6. How has your previous way of relating to these people reflected a small view of your own debt and a small view of Christ’s forgiveness?

How do you know that a baby is growing? You can see it.

We often think of Christian growth as something that is internal and personal, but that would be incomplete. Christian growth must actually be seen. It’s going somewhere. It is “growing” after all!

Imagine if after you were born, your internal organs started growing and growing, but your bones and skin did not grow. At some point… you’d look pretty funny. Christian growth is not merely internal.

Read John 20:19-23

[Use Balloon] The driving force behind all spiritual growth [the wind] is God’s grace expressed to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ and worked in us by the Holy Spirit. And when we are filled we overflow with grace toward others. What happens if we do not grow outward? We will eventually pop spiritually.
**This inward transformation that propels us outward is how we got the name for our youth ministry, overflow.

Matthew 6:10, Your kingdom come, your will be done [in my heart and then]… on earth as it is in heaven!!

So, we are called to MISSION

Read Galatians 5:13-15
What are we called to? Freedom.
Freedom from What?
Bad actions: Impurity, Anger, Envy
Bad motivators for good actions: Guilt, Fear, Bribery

The Good motivator:
- God’s Grace
What is freedom from sin and freedom from bad motives supposed to produce in us?
Love and Service — this is our MISSION

How should you be loving and serving people?
List a few
Why don’t you do it?
“Should has no motivational power.”

From a Student: “I know I should pay attention to a peer who is rejected by my other friends.  She is lonely and needs a friend, but it’s hard.”

Three responses to Mission opportunities:
1. Legalism (obey even though you don’t feel like it) – leads to drudgery

2. License (don’t obey at all) – leads to dullness

3. Gospel (God’s grace helps me see my selfishness and lack of love, reminds me that God loved me when I had nothing in common with him, Rom. 5:8, so this becomes a motivation to love people as you have been loved… it’s all empowered by grace.

Mission that is an overflow of internal gospel renewal is a JOY, not drudgery, not dullness.

If you aren’t motivated to love, serve, and speak the gospel to people, the answer isn’t “just do it.” The answer is to examine your heart, repent of sin, and discern where your refusal to believe the gospel is short-circuiting the natural outward movement of the gospel.

Being a Christian is not about “working for God.” It is about “God working in and through you.”

When I was in high school, I was a good kid.  I didn’t smoke, drink, party, have sex, or hang with people who did those things.  But I was very proud of my good behavior and ended up isolating a lot of people from God because of it.  As a matter of fact, I reached the point in 10th or 11th grade of thinking something like this: “I hope God lets me live through high school because I’d like to go to college and I’d like to get married some day.”  You see, I was so confident in my own morality that I thought that I really couldn’t get much better.  I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty close.  I actually remember thinking this when I was driving to school one day.  ”I hope I don’t get in a wreck.”

Some of you would have loved me.  But, some of you would have hated me.  Some of you might hate me now too because you think I think I’m a good person.  It’s scary: I’m not all that different than I was then–to be completely honest.  But God has been gracious to show me my deep sin.  He has shown me that I am a hypocrite, a liar, an adulterer, a murderer, an idol-maker, a hater, and on an on.

My problem was that I thought Christianity was about doing and not about believing.  Some of you have resisted becoming Christians.  But most likely, you’ve are resisting a false idea of what Christianity is.  You think it’s all about “doing” and that’s why you want nothing to do with Christianity.  But the reality is far different.

Mark 1:14-15
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

This was at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. People began to follow him because he called them to repent of their old patterns of unbelief and to believe in him. But after a while people started to get tired of this. The people came up to Jesus later in his ministry and asked a question that many of us ask.

John 6:28-29
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

Like these people, we often want to move beyond the place where we started in following Christ. “Yeah, Jesus, we get the whole repent and believe thing… now tell us what you want us to do!” But Jesus replies, “The work of God is that you believe.” It’s infuriating.

We think growth is about doing more: spiritual discipline, reading, praying, finding Xian friends, sinning less, or learning theology.  But repentance and faith should be the continual pattern of the Christian life. We do not get to graduate to something better.

Last week we talked about repentance… seeing the sin beneath the sin.

The Christian life is not about ‘doing’ it is about ‘believing’

• We are naturally “doers,” but our pursuit of maturity produces a lot of busy effort but little lasting change. Why?
• We are doing too much and believing too little.
• Or, we are doing NOTHING because we think being a better Christian is doing more stuff – and we’d rather just avoid doing altogether.

In the mid 1980’s my mom began to gain weight.  She is a dietician, so she knew that she shouldn’t be gaining weight.  She hadn’t changed her eating habits or her activity level.  The doctors finally diagnosed a deeper problem.  She had a tumor on her pituitary gland, which controls hormones.  Her weight gain was a symptom of a deeper problem.  It would have been easy for her to have just focused on “getting fat.”  But had she not gone to the doctor and found the deeper problem, it would have led to her death.

Likewise, our surface sins are only symptoms of a deeper problem.

• Underneath every external sin is a heart idol – a false god that has eclipsed the true God in our thoughts or affections.
• “Sin is not breaking the rules, but it is breaking God’s heart.”
• The first command is “You shall have no other gods before me.”
• We must learn to repent of the “sin beneath the sin”

Surface SIN: Gossip
talking about people behind their backs in judgmental or destructive ways

Why do we gossip?
What are we looking to heart idols to provide what we should be finding in God.

Common Heart Idols

» Approval (I want the approval of the people I’m talking to)

» Control (Using gossip as a way to manipulate/control others)

» Reputation (I want to feel important, so I cut someone else down verbally)

» Success (Someone is succeeding—and I’m not—so I gossip about him)

» Security (Talking about others masks my own in security)

» Pleasure (Someone else is enjoying life—and I’m not—so I attack her)

» Knowledge (Talking about people is a way of showing I know more)

» Recognition (Talking about others gets people to notice me)

» Respect (That person disrespected me, so I’m going to disrespect him)

All these are false saviors promising false gospels
These are something we already have in Jesus because of the gospel. But when we are not living in light of the gospel, we turn to these idols to give us what only Jesus can truly give us.

We must repent of believing in these false idols.  But we must also believe in Jesus.

Believing the gospel is essential for true heart change. It’s possible to repent of surface sins for a lifetime yet never address the deeper heart issues behind them. Some of the most moral people in the world are not Christians.

At the moment I sin, I need to apply the gospel by 1. repenting of my deep heart idolatry, and 2. believing the specific gospel promises that break the power of my heart idols.

Believing:
Set the affections on Jesus – Worship him
Delight in the privileges that are ours in Christ

Back to Gossip – How does this work practically?
1] I acknowledge my sin and repent of it (i.e. gossip). I gossiped when I participated in that conversation about Suzy’s new boyfriend.
2] I discern the heart idol beneath my surface sin (i.e. respect).  I gossip because I really want to be respected by people.
3] I pause and worship Jesus for his victory over this sin (i.e. humility). He laid aside his right to be respected, becoming humbled to death.
4] I remind myself of the gospel promises (i.e. 2 Cor. 5:17-21). I no longer need to crave the respect of others because i have the approval of God through faith in Jesus. I don’t seek my own fame anymore, I am freed to seek the fame of Jesus.

Repentance and Faith are not Steps on the Pathway to Walking with Jesus.
Repentance and Faith are the Path.
“The work of God is to “believe.”

Take Home Practice:

1. What are your common surface sins?
2. What heart idols might lie behind these sins?
3. Worship Jesus for his victory over that idol.
4. What are specific gospel promises you can rely on to help defeat the power of that idol?