2 Tim. 2:19-26

This past week I was talking with a woman who recently left the Mormon Church. Like all of us, the nicely dressed men would knock on her door and ask to talk with her about Jesus. She invited them in, and so they began to call on her more frequently. She asked lots of questions about their beliefs, but felt she was never given a straight answer. They talked about Jesus and the Bible, but it was a different Jesus. Later she was baptized as a Mormon and joined their church. Eventually she began to realize that she was being deceived by them. I am not sure if she is a believer, but she had known enough stories from her childhood days in church to finally realize that things were not right. I had the opportunity to explain the real Jesus of the Bible to her.

Thankfully she was able to see the false teaching for what it was. Chances are most of us would not be pulled in by the false teaching of Mormonism, but as we said last week, there is a non-stop assault of false teaching coming at us from the TV, internet, radio and books. I mentioned Joel Osteen’s book last week. Let me read you a few quotes.

"Perhaps you’re searching for a parking spot in a crowded lot. Say, ‘Father, I thank you for leading and guiding me. Your favor will cause me to get a good spot."[i] Osteen also said this, "I’ve come to expect to be treated differently. I’ve learned to expect people to want to help me. My attitude is: I’m a child of the Most High God. My Father created the whole universe. He has crowned me with favor, therefore, I can expect preferential treatment".[ii]

I would never mention this book if were just an average self-help book, but the real problem is that it pretends to be a Christian book, and the majority of the five million copies are being read by Christians who believe this nonsense is the will of God for their lives. False teaching is all around us. We need to be on guard against it, because Paul warned us of the consequences of falling into its trap.

Shame—Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth (15)

Ungodliness—because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly (16)

Destruction of your faith—who have wandered away from the truth…they destroy the faith of some (18)

We need to be on guard against it, but we also need to be actively correcting false teaching. This passage teaches us the motive and the method of correcting someone. In context this is about correcting false teaching, but it can be applied to correcting sinful behavior and it is also an excellent parenting strategy and principle for marriages. This passage will give us the CURE for every conflict. But let me warn you from the start—we will only get halfway through the cure this morning and will finish it next week.

²²Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. ²³Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. ²⁴ And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. ²⁵Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

How do you correct another person? How do you confront another person? Confronting another person is so difficult that most of us simply choose not to do it, or else we do it very poorly. If we are more timid, then we choose to avoid the situation and if we have a stronger personality we tend to be too harsh and perhaps even angry. If we love the person who is caught in a lie or a sin, we cannot avoid the opportunity to help them. If we love them we will help, but we must do it with love and gentleness. This passage teaches us how to avoid both extremes of avoidance and anger. This passage is an extended lesson on how to speak the truth in love. How do you talk about a difficult subject in your marriage? How do you correct wrong behavior in your children?

The first step in any conflict is to cultivate a pure heart. Let’s say you are having a struggle in your marriage. I realize this isn’t even a relevant question because no one here could possibly have a conflict in your marriage J. So humor me for a moment and try hard to imagine, if in the middle of your marital bliss, a minor conflict arose some day, inconceivable as it may seem, then this is how you should deal with it.

When a conflict arises, where is the first place we turn our attention? We almost never look at ourselves first but always look to the faults of the other person. Our natural reaction is that we are innocent and the other person is guilty. But the Bible teaches us to break the habit of defensiveness by first looking in the mirror. In v. 22 Paul instructed, Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Do those words sound familiar to you—faith, love and peace? These are fruits of the Holy Spirit. Before you rush into a conflict and look for blame in the other person, the first question to ask is, “How’s my heart?” Let’s assume that you were the innocent party in a marital conflict—say that your husband completely forgot your birthday. Who is to blame in this scenario? The husband really messed up, didn’t he? But if you were the forgotten wife, how would you feel about it? You would be hopping mad, wouldn’t you? Revenge would be written all over your face. How’s your heart doing at that very moment—are you cultivating a pure heart of faith, love and peace? By the way, if you are mad at that moment, it’s not because your husband “made you mad”. No one can make you mad, your anger has to arise from within. By his callousness, your husband may have flipped a switch which released your anger, but the anger was already inside you. If there wasn’t any anger inside you, then when the switch was flipped, nothing would have come out. It’s like Jesus said, It’s not what goes into a man which makes him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth which makes him unclean. I realize it goes against all of our natural reaction to look inward when we feel we have been wronged, but it is the way of Christ.

Now stop for a moment and compare this teaching with that of Joel Osteen when he says, “He has crowned me with favor, therefore, I can expect preferential treatment." Could you imagine what a marriage would look like that was built upon this principle? Every moment of every day both the husband and the wife are expecting preferential treatment! Could you imagine a church that was built upon this principle? Every person in the pew is expecting preferential treatment! Is it any wonder that this book has sold five million copies? Mr. Osteen has taken our natural, sinful reaction of pride and selfishness and has told us that God wants us to act this way! Instead, God tells us to Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. In any conflict, the first step is to cultivate a pure heart. Now we should be doing this long before a conflict erupts, but it is also the first step in the conflict.

We have a distinct role to play in a conflict and God has a distinct role to play. If we understand our role and allow God to do his role, then we have the likelihood of the most success. The problem arises when we confuse our role with God’s role. Paul describes our role this way. (The NIV translates this well, but I think the ESV translation is more helpful.) And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. This passage reminds me of Galatians 6 that we studied a few weeks back. Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. ²Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. When it comes to correction and rebuking, the lion’s share of the burden lies with the person doing the correcting. This is our God-appointed role.

The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone. Once again this flies in the face of our natural reaction. We are programmed for either fight or flight. We tend to either avoid or attack, but to remain calm and not quarrelsome in the face of conflict is not a natural reaction. The next phrase defines our role even more clearly: patiently enduring evil. Now come on—God may as well ask us to walk on water as to ask us to “patiently endure evil”, right? How many of us can do such a thing? Remember that Paul was giving Godly advice to this young pastor named Timothy. That’s why he was writing the letter to Timothy. Paul expected that when Timothy tried to correct a fellow believer, that oftentimes he would be verbally attacked in the process. Paul was preparing this young pastor for the heat of conflict. His advice was like this: “Timothy, when need to correct a brother, approach them with a pure heart—don’t get into an argument with them, and oh, by the way, they may start yelling at you and accusing you of all kinds of terrible things. When they do this, just patiently endure the evil coming at you.” It’s hard enough to confront someone, but it’s even more difficult to confront someone when you know they might blow their top!

Did you know that you can pay hundreds of dollars to attend a corporate training seminar to be told the exact same thing I am telling you from God’s word? This is the type of training that managers and customer service employees receive. If you attended one of these seminars they would teach you how to diffuse an angry customer and how to work with difficult employees. The big-wigs in the corporate world have borrowed the Biblical message from the church, they charge hundreds of dollars to teach these Biblical principles, and then they apply it better than most of the Christians in our churches. I don’t mind that hey stole our message, but the problem is that they are doing it better than we are! This should not be!!

Paul’s next phrase reminds us that this is not just a friendly conversation you are having, but that your defined goal is to correct some teaching or some behavior: able to teach…correcting his opponents with gentleness. God does not call us to be customer service agents whose job is to listen to angry customers. We are fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord whose high calling is to love one another so sufficiently and so boldly that we are willing to risk a difficult confrontation in order to help one another. In order to do this, we need to be able to teach, and in this context it assumes that you are able to clearly define the correction you are offering. If you are correcting a false belief about Jesus to a Mormon follower, you must be able to teach that truth. If you are a parent correcting your child, you need to be able to teach your child what they did wrong and how to correct their behavior. In other words, this is not so much a discussion as it is a correcting and teaching opportunity. We are called to correct our opponents, but we must do it with gentleness.

Do you see how this gentleness thing keeps coming up again and again? This is a lesson that I can’t hear enough. I am growing in gentleness, but I certainly have not arrived yet! When my kids are fighting, the first thing I need to remember is GENTLENESS. When Karen and I have a disagreement, the first thing I need to remember is gentleness. When a conflict in the church arises, the first thing I need to remember is gentleness. How about you—are you the same way, or are you more likely to run from all conflict and avoid marital problems and smooth over your child’s disobedience by giving into them? Each of us is imbalanced one way or another. Is your tendency to fight or flight? Is your natural reaction anger or avoidance? It is possible to do both. Some people get angry and then move to avoidance. Others run from conflict with occasional outbursts of anger. What is your natural reaction?

What we are talking about here is how to be tough and tender at the same time. Even before our church had elders, the provisional leadership team studied this book together, Christ in Church Leadership—A Handbook for Elders and Leaders. It is still to this day one of the most helpful books on leadership I have ever read. The authors describe four paradigms of leadership. They start with what they call a soft-case. This type of leader has a soft heart, meaning they have a tendency toward mercy and gentleness, but they also have a soft-mind, meaning they are not able to think through the difficult issues of correcting someone who is in error. The end result is that the issue is completely ignored. The second type of leader is the hard-case. This person has a hard mind, which is a good thing. This means they are able to think through the issues and discern exactly what is true, what is false and what needs correcting. The problem is that they are hard-hearted; they have a tendency toward harshness and possibly even anger. They will confront a person, but cannot do it with the required amount of gentleness. The third type is the worst-case—a soft-minded, hard-hearted individual. This person is low on discernment and mercy—they should never be a leader in the first place. The best-case scenario is the person who is hard-minded and soft-hearted. This person has a balance of truth and love. They don’t fight and they don’t take flight. They don’t have avoidance or anger issues. This kind of person is as close as possible to what Scripture lays down as the ideal. It is the kind of person we should all want to become, but few of us ever get there.

John Piper wrote a biography on the life of John Newton, the man who wrote Amazing Grace. Piper believes that Newton embodied this ideal of tough and tender. Listen to the way he opens his message on the life of Newton.

So why am I interested in this man? Because one of my great desires is to see Christian pastors be as strong and durable as redwood trees, and as tender and fragrant as a field of clover—unshakably rugged in the "defense and confirmation" of the truth (Philippians 1:7), and relentlessly humble and patient and merciful in dealing with people. ((Rich’s comment: Piper is speaking here to pastors, but his vision applies to every Christian.) Ever since I came to Bethlehem in 1980 this vision of ministry has beckoned me because, soon after I came, I read through Matthew and Mark and put in the margin of my Greek New Testament a "to" (for tough) and a "te" (for tender) beside all of Jesus' words and deeds that fit one category or the other. What a mixture he was! No one ever spoke like this man.

It seems to me that we are always falling off the horse on one side or the other in this matter of being tough and tender—wimping out on truth when we ought to be lion-hearted, or wrangling with anger when we ought to be weeping. I know it's a risk to take up this topic and John Newton in a setting like this, where some of you need a good (tender!) kick in the pants to be more courageous, and others of you confuse courage with what William Cowper called "a furious and abusive zeal. Oh how rare are the pastors who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.

I dream of such pastors. I would like to be one someday. A pastor whose might in the truth is matched by his meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched by his manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are matched by his depths of humility. Yes, and the other way around! A pastor whose relational warmth is matched by his rigor of study, whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of his biblical discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of his calling.[iii]

Isn’t that a beautiful vision of what a healthy church should look like? A church where we love one another so deeply that we risk confrontation when necessary, but also a church where our love transforms us into people of humility and gentleness. Like Piper, I long to become like this and I pray that others will want to both help me and join me. I try to regularly give our elders permission to come to me and say, “Maurer, I think your mind is going a little soft. I think you were out of balance there”. Or else they might put their arm around me and say, “Hey Rich, do you think you may have been a little harsh there?” If we want a church like this, then it must start with giving each other permission to speak the truth in love—to correct with gentleness. Are you ready to give permission?

[i] Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now, p. 41

[ii] Ibid, p. 39

[iii] John Newton: The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness, January 31, 2001, John Piper