Concluding Counsels: When We are Offended or Offender

Driving home: You spun a sin out of the stuff of your stinking self-centeredness and hypersensitivity. And it's a wicked, rotten, foul, disease. In a self-centered, me-ism age.

Martin defines a 'hypersensitive psyche' as an unloving, demonic ability to create sins out of non-sins, illustrating it with a scenario of misinterpreting a person looking away as a personal offense.

Matthew 18.15 If your brother sinned against you, you are now the offended. Your brother has sinned against you. You have not spun a sin out of the stuff of your own hypersensitive psyche.

5:47 - 6:04 Read in full sermon

The point: Observe this clear command (Matthew 18:15, Luke 17:3) as a non-optional directive from King Jesus.

Unresolved interpersonal issues are likened to a 'puff sack' in the soul that produces spiritual septicemia, poisoning the entire inner life, requiring the 'scalpel' of biblical confrontation and 'antibiotics' of repentance and forgiveness.

directive. It is King Jesus among his subjects saying to you and to me, when we are the offended, the one sinned against, if your brother sinned against you, go tell him his fault. If your brother sinned, rebuke him. Now, if you don't, the unresolved issue will fester like a puff sack in the soul that will produce a kind of spiritual septicemia. You know what septicemia is? When the

14:35 - 15:14 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Never, never is indwelling sin more active than at the point when we would do the thing that is most good.

He illustrates the activity of indwelling sin by contrasting the difficulty of reading the Bible when tired with the sudden alertness one finds when reading the sports page, showing how sin resists spiritual good.

But Paul says, I find then at the point of seeking to do good, when my renewed will under the impulse of the Holy Spirit would move in the direction of the will of God as revealed in Scripture, when I would do good, evil is present. And as John Owen so perceptively described it, never, never is indwelling sin more active than at the point when we would do the thing that is most good. I've illustrated it this way. How many of you, coming home from a busy day, mind exhausted, body exhausted, and you say, in spite of all of that, I didn't have time to read my Bible this morning.

20:21 - 21:05 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He illustrates how confronting an offender can be a help to them, and how the process of seeking and extending forgiveness demonstrates the gospel at work, preventing…

Martin shares a personal story where a brother honestly told him that his practice of greeting people in the aisles after service was offensive, leading to Martin's repentance and a restored understanding.

And I won't name names, but there was a situation a few years ago where a brother was very honest with me and said, you're doing something that offends me. I said, brother, please tell me. I don't have a clue what I'm doing. The last thing I would do is knowingly offend you.

27:13 - 27:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Plead with God for moral courage (to do what is right no matter what we feel) and spiritual grace to obey the command to confront.

He recounts instances where congregants have pointed out offensive statements in his sermons, and his response of seeking clarification and often repenting, demonstrating his openness to correction.

I was doing something that was an offense to him and I was not aware of it. He was my friend. By helping, he was helping me to see it was offensive. Some of you sitting here have come to me after I've preached and said, Pastor, something you said in the sermon I found very offensive.

28:23 - 28:41 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It's not a company of perfect people. It's a company of people radically changed, but not perfectly changed. Who as they wait the full consummation of grace in the coming of the Lord Jesus, the gospel is what makes them …

Martin shares a horror story of a couple who didn't speak for 40 years over a bar of soap, illustrating how unresolved minor issues can escalate into ludicrous, long-standing grudges.

You say, hey, I'd like to do this for a little while longer before I go to heaven. See the gospel working in these things that cause people in the world to spend years with unresolved grudges. I've read some horror stories in some of the books I've read in preparation for this series. One husband and wife 40 years didn't talk to one another.

31:57 - 32:17 Read in full sermon

The point: Practice these counsels on forgiveness to rivet the truth to your soul and make them a way of life.

He uses a tennis analogy to describe the process of seeking and extending forgiveness, where the offender 'knocks the ball' into the offended's court, requiring a response.

You've just been telling people for years how you feel rather than saying how you judge yourself and how you need the forgiveness of another. But you do it a dozen times and lo and behold, because the thing is then resolved, you say, Hey, this is wonderful. I could get hooked on this. I was snotty to my wife and I went to her and said, Honey, I was snotty.

49:22 - 49:43 Read in full sermon