Pastor Darryl Bentley
Midland SDA Church
August 14, 2010
Homiletical Idea: Conflict resolution is something all Christians should learn to master. When we fail to resolve conflict it allows strife to build up in our life and it will cause damage to those involved.
Conflict at Birth
Conflict was a part of Jesus’ life from nearly the beginning. Satan knew that Jesus was the promised Messiah and he wanted desperately to either cause Christ to fail through falling into sin or to kill Him before He could accomplish His mission to redeem mankind. Jesus’ name comes from the Hebrew Yeshua that means “Yahweh saves”.
Revelation 12 gives us some insight regarding Satan’s tactics. We can read in verse 4 that the dragon stood ready to devour the child of God as soon as He was born. History and the record of Scripture bear witness to this fact. Within two years of His birth a decree went forth to destroy all male children two years and younger (Matt 2:16). Herod was jealous of the promised messiah and sought to have Him killed before He could grow up and lead His people out of sin into the kingdom of glory. History refers to this tragedy as the “Slaughter of the Innocents”.
Conflict After His Anointing
Once Jesus reached adulthood and entered into his official ministry He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. He was baptized in the Jordan by His cousin John who was the precursor for the Messiah who sought to prepare men’s hearts to receive the Christ through repentance and baptism.
We are told in Matthew 4 that after His baptism that Jesus was driven into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. After fasting for 40 days and nights Jesus was at His weakest point and it was there that Satan came to attack Him.
A forty day fast leaves one very hungry so Satan used that as his first avenue of attack. He told Jesus that if He were the Son of God why had He not commanded that the stones be turned into bread. Notice Jesus’ tactics in dealing with this conflict. Immediately He answered. Not with an argument about how He was the Son of God, but rather with Scripture. Jesus did not have to defend His son-ship. Satan knew that He was the promised Messiah. The attack was not about who Jesus was but rather about whether or not He would use His power for selfish gain and thereby fail to be qualified to redeem humanity.
The second attack was in the same vein. Satan took Him to the top of the temple and told Him to throw Himself down because if He were God’s Son then the angels would bear Him up to prevent any injury. Once again Jesus did not engage Satan in regard to His son-ship. He addressed the real issue which was regarding God’s people doing things out of presumption instead of faith. If Jesus had used His power to intervene on His own behalf He would have failed to save us. In order to save us He had to live in total dependence on God the Father. Adam failed to do this and Christ had to take a different course of action if He wanted to save us.
Lastly, Satan came and offered Him all the kingdoms of the world if He would but worship Satan. Emphatically, Christ rejected the offer and rebuked Satan for his treachery. In each moment and in the height of human frailty and weakness Jesus dealt with conflict the way that He would have us to do so: directly and to the point. Conflict resolution is something that all Christians should learn to master.
Why Gutters?
But some of you may be wondering what gutters have to do with conflict resolution. What purpose do gutters serve on a home or building? They divert and channel water, right? They are at the lowest point of the roof line where gravity brings the water. They catch the water as it races off the roof and the gutters guide that water to a down-spout that then directs it away from the structure.
But what happens if those gutters become clogged? What happens when debris is allowed to gather in those troughs without being cleared away? Yes, they get to the point where they no longer carry water away from the house. Instead they do quite the opposite. When gutters become clogged the water stands in the trough and then other troubles come.
The additional weight puts undue stress on the soffit to which the gutters are mounted. That extra weight pulls on the nails holding up the guttering sometimes causing the gutters to pull away from the building and perhaps eventually fall off.
Even if they don’t fall off, as water backs up in the gutter it can spill over against the soffit or bleed back under the roofing to cause leaks and rotting that often is not seen until much damage has been done.
Christian Gutters?
How does this apply to us? I am not trying to belittle anyone today by calling you each guttering systems, but in a sense we have to do a similar work for the Lord in our lives. No doubt most of you have heard the saying sometime in your life, “When it rains, it pours.” The meaning behind this phrase is that when things begin to happen look out because it may get worse before it gets better. We even talk about rain in our lives as a positive too. We refer to God’s blessings as “showers of blessing”. We sing about it in hymn 195.
But what do you do when the storms of life come to you? How do you handle it? Do you allow them to wash over you in such a way as to divert them away from you, or are you all clogged up allowing damage to occur beneath the surface of your life? Is there debris in your life that you have not dealt with over the years that clogs up the avenues of conflict resolution for you? What do I mean? I will give you an example.
Suppose someone begins spreading lies about you at church, saying horribly malicious things that have no basis in reality. Then suppose they go to others who know you and begin trying to turn them against you by spreading their lies. They do this by blaming you for doing what they had in fact been doing and then they go around the church telling people that you are spreading lies about them. What happens if this goes on for years? It can tear people and churches apart.
How do you handle a situation like that? Do these things occur in the church? You better believe they do. What should you do? To whom should you talk to about it?
For far too many of us we don’t deal with it. We just become embittered and silently angry as we bottle it up inside. Some would try to get even by seeking their “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth”. I would say to you that each of these responses is unacceptable. Why? Because they both lead to scenarios where “debris” can build up and cause damage within the life of all the believers involved.
So What Now?
So if lashing out in like-fashion to seek revenge is not the right approach and if boiling silently inside is wrong; what are we supposed to do? How do we keep the gutters cleared? I am glad you asked because the Bible has an answer for us today.
The simple answer is to say, “Do as Jesus did.” So what did Jesus do? He dealt with conflict as it arose. He attempted to directly address those that were causing the trouble and He held them accountable according to Biblical principles.
When we look at His approach in the wilderness of temptation He followed this approach. He did not ignore Satan’s attack. He dealt with it directly and without hesitation.
Fight or Flight
Psychologists would say that the human psyche will respond in one of two ways when conflict arises: we will have either a fight or flight response. Some of us want to jump right in and duke it out with people while others prefer to run away, hide and pretend it never happened. Still others are somewhere in between which I think is where we should be.
Not every situation allows for us to resolve it right then. Sometimes we have to be patient and let things cool off a bit before we attempt to resolve it.
**not sure how but rest of manuscript was lost**