Examine Your Eye

May 11, 2008

Title: Examine Your Eye

Text: Matthew 7:1-6

Proposition: We have misunderstood the purpose of confrontation and reconciliation.

Application: Understanding reconciliation to require self examination prior to confronting a brother allows for the Gospel to transform our relationships.

Question: If we have a problem can we ignore our problem with someone else.

Cousin Gabe – His Grandmother and her lack of a Sunday Paper.

A. But are we not told to let it go?

1. Do not judge – Judgmental

Jesus himself makes judgments in how we are to live

2. Our judgment

1. Consistent with God – in fact we reserve him the right to be the final authority

2. Consistent with our belief and a desire to help rescue the lost (Jude 22-23) and love of Christians (I John 4:21, 5:16a)

3. Consistent with our own behavior before God.

B. But it is Hard

1. Because we do overlook our own faults and judge others.

2. Because we have a tradition of avoidance

Barney Wells – Notes form ESCN

How Different Mindsets “Come to Church”--this is missionary anthropology

	Agrarian	Cosmopolitan
Time	Almanac	Day-timer
Work	Do it Yourself	Specialist
Authority	Self-managed: they decide how they are going to run their business; you can’t tell them what to do, you persuade them; they can redefine passive-aggressive	Top Down: Who do I answer to and who answers to me; who resources me and who do I resource.
Decisions	Consensus: essential because everyone is independent; Everett Rogers’ study on doing new ideas 2% come up with a new idea 13.5% adopt early, 2/3 are convinced in a couple years, 13.5% are convinced in 5 years; 84% is consensus.	Executive:
Risk	Low Margins: the farmer takes everything he makes and invests it; he has very little liquid assets; everything is seen as a high risk. He is already taking so many risks with his personal life that it is difficult to risk in a church-based venture.	High Margins: used to working with a company that has a budget and provides him with material; as long as his personal finances are okay, he’s okay with new financial ventures at church.
People	Relationships: they know how people are related to each other and the land; what they do is secondary.	Roles: cosmopolitan environment has people coming and going; they have a difficult time establishing long-term relationships; if I need a dentist/preacher/doctor, I look for someone fulfilling that service/role.
Frame of Reference	Local: what he cares about stops at the county line. He wants missionaries he can call by name.	Global: everything is connected this way.
Conflict	Negative: hate conflict; every agrarian church has the designated “conflictor”; What is unusual about small communities is that everyone is connected to everyone else, that is why a fight in the church can go everywhere, conflict goes everywhere; they are good with suppressed conflict, but go against open conflict; a cosmopolitan preacher who wants to bring the conflict to the surface is seen as wanting to destroy their church.	Positive: let’s get all the ideas out there, bang them around and come up with something. The thing that will stop the web from shaking and send it back to homeostasis is the expulsion of the one with the fewest connections . . . usually the preacher.

Barney Wells, ESCN – Moberly, MO 3/1/08

C. But Conflicts need resolved

1. The Bible requires it of us, it is more important than worship of God himself.

2. Conflict resolution is what Christ came to do.

Romans 5:8-11