Well, this month, this month of July, we are studying the book of Proverbs and we are obviously not going to be able to study the whole book. It's 31 chapters and we've only got five weeks to do it and so we're doing a little bit of picking and choosing. And about a year ago, I was reading through Proverbs and there was a verse that jumped out at me so much so that I wrote it along with my daily prayer list and sort of meditated in honor for a little while and what jumped out at me was it had a couple of great word pictures but I wasn't completely sure I understood the verse and so I figured what better way to understand it than to preach it. So that's what we're going to do this morning. And so we're going to look at actually two verses, we're going to look at a primary verse and then kind of a secondary verse. So if you were able, please stand for this reading of God's Word, a word Proverbs 18 verse 19. A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city and quarreling is like the bars of a castle. Now go back one slide because I want to say that again because it's a short reading. So a brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city and quarreling is like the bars of a castle. Stay there. Now this time I want you to help me with this. I'm going to say most of, I'm going to say the phrase and you want you to end it. So I'll say a brother offended is more unyielding than a quarreling is like the bars of a, and now I can go to the next verse, good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlooking a fence. This is the word of the Lord, please be seated. In the movie, The Return of the King, there is a great battle that happens. And for simplicity's sake, we'll say it's between the good guys led by the great wizard Gandalf and the bad guys sent from Sauron. And the battle takes place at the city of Ministria, which is a city that is built on the side of a mountain. And it has huge walls, it was built for defense as very hard to wage war against. And so Sauron's army comes and they have to bring all of their orcs and trolls and ring rates and elephants and massive slingshots to try to come against the city. And yet they still fail the city holds. Solomon says that that is the kind of impregnable fortress that your brother or your sister can become to you when you have offended them. When I was in college, I was getting ready to go camping overnight with some buddies and so I went to the kitchen of my apartment and grabbed the skillets to cook eggs and bacon on the next morning and went, came back, turns out the skillet was my roommate. And it was not intended to be over an open flame and he was not happy and there was not forgiveness and we were not roommates three months later. Friend of a pastor friend of mine told me about something happened a few years ago as he was preaching. He happened to mention an activist and talked about just a little bit about their Christian faith. And he said that as he talked about this person, this kind of public figure, he looked down and he saw a man in his congregation who began to shake his head from side to side as if to say no, not him, he's the enemy. And sure enough, service was over, the man left, never came back, never would talk to my friend. Experience tells us what the Bible teaches, which is that a brother offended is more on yielding than a strong city. Let's take a closer look at this proverb to see what it's about, what it can teach us. So the first thing you might notice is that it is written as a couplet, which is a poetic couplet is two different, slightly different statements that speak on similar topics and slightly different prophecies. And now we're in the part of Proverbs in chapter 18 where Solomon is basically throwing out random Proverbs one after another. Now there are some main themes that go around these chapters of Proverbs, but there's not really a literary context for this verse, nor is there an historical context that we know of. And so really the only context for the verse is really the verse itself and the two phrases playing off each other. And then of course the rest of the Bible, because the Bible interprets itself. And what the two parts of the verse tell us is that offended people draw up walls and quarreling people draw up walls as well. Now quarreling is like the bars of a castle. Now the word quarreling is interesting, because you might hear that word and just think, well it's just talking about argument or debate, but the Oxford dictionary defines quarreling as this, a heated argument or disagreement, typically about a trivial issue and between people who are usually on good terms. Now that's interesting, there's two adjectives in that definition. I think that really a pretty key to the Bible's use of the term quarreling and that is heated and divisive. You see, the Bible is not against argument, it's not against a good healthy debate. In fact, it commands us to contend for the faith, to destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, but what it is against, it's against divisive and trivial quarreling. Paul says that elders in the church are to be gentle, not quarrelsome. For Christians are to have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies, for you know they breed what quarrels, which is not good. And so the basic gist of this verse taking the two parts together is there are real barriers to relationship that a wise person should be aware of and learn how to overcome. Now there are two ways that I want to look at this verse this morning. One is as the offender and one is as the person who has been offended. So let's start with the first. When you are the offender, now there are two types of offents that we can give. There is the intentional offents and there is the unintentional offents. Intentional offents happens even because we don't care about a person enough to be kind or to spare their feelings or on the other side, because we care so much about them that we want the offents to lead to their growth. Now you might think, what? We should offend someone for their good, I would never do that. When I was in seminary, we had to take a preaching class and part of the class was we had to prepare and then preach three different sermons to the class or classmates and our professor. And so I think I was preaching probably the second or third sermon and I got out there and I did it and I got through it and I thought, man I nailed that. And my professor said, well you made a couple of good points but overall that was terrible. And anyone on to explain why it was terrible and what, how I could have sort of fixed it and done better. And I realized at that point that I had a ways to go, I had a lot of work to do to become proficient at preaching. Having friends, having mentors who love you enough to call you out on things, to speak the truth and love is a wonderful thing to have. Proverbs 27 says, iron, sharpened iron, as one man sharpens another. In fact, that's what we want you to have here at River Oaks, the kind of deep friends who can get past the surface niceties to do just that, to speak the truth and love. A few years ago I said something fairly insensitive in a meeting to my friend Dan. And so I sort of realized that and I went later and apologized to him. You know what he said? He said, JD, you could punch me in the face and I would thank you because I know you love me that much. Now I hope I never have to punch him in the face. But that's the kind of trusting relationship we need to help us to grow. And that we in the church ought to specialize in. Jesus intentionally offended people all the time. He called the Pharisees a brood of vipers, children of the devil. He told the rich young ruler to do the one thing that he was unwilling to do, give away all his money, when a gentile woman came and asked him to heal her demon possessed daughter. You know what he said there? He said, woman, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. Basically saying that the Israelites are children and gentiles calling her daughter a dog. In each of those instances Jesus purposely offended in order to expose the person's heart because sometimes pride has to be confronted and dismantled before relationship can happen. So Jesus, his method of offense was really in service to his love. Sometimes he let the chips fall where they would. For the first two cases the Pharisees, the rich young ruler, they both went away and basically were brothers who were as unyielding as strong cities. But with the third instance of the gentile woman, she responded in humility and faith to Jesus marvel at her faith and heal her daughter. Okay so there's unintentional offense, but what about when we unintentionally offend someone? When you criticize someone that you don't realize is a good friend of the person that you're talking to. When you see someone's children acting up and you give good advice that sounds a lot like judgment, it just comes spewing out of your mouth. Or when you make a snide snarky comment about a political issue, not realizing the person you're talking to is on the exact other side of the aisle. It seems like it is easier than ever to offend someone in today's climate. So what do we do when we offend and the person becomes as unyielding as a strong city? The first thing that to do is that we have to determine that the relationship is more important than our comfort, because approaching a strong city is hard and is dangerous, especially when there are arrows being shot from the top of the wall, right? But the gospel calls us to do the hard work of reconciliation. Because the gospel tells us that when we were hardened in our sins, when we were as unyielding as a strong city to God, the Jesus came to us to reconcile us to the Father, to make peace with us, and then he calls us to make peace with one another. In the storm around the mountain, Jesus says, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first, be reconciled to your brother. It is such an important thing, Jesus says, to try to reconcile with someone that we've hurt, as not always possible, but Jesus says it is so important that we should interrupt this sacred act of giving to God in order to try to first make peace with someone that we've hurt. Now the New Testament also has some very practical things to say about giving offense. One of the key things it says is that lesser things can often get in the way of really important things, like evangelism, and parenting, and we need to be aware of those lesser things and not let them offend unnecessarily. And so Paul, seconder in the in six, he says, we give no offense in anything so that no fault may be found in our ministry. There he's saying that, as we do ministry, we only want one thing to offend, and that is the gospel itself, that if the cross of Christ offends, okay, but we don't want anything less than the gospel to get in the way of the message to offend unnecessarily. That's why it's sometimes such a bad idea to debate online, right? Because battle lines get drawn up so quickly and it's so easy to offend when you're not sitting across from the other person and lose any chance to evangelize or win the person to your point of view. And then Paul says in Ephesians 6, fathers, don't provoke your children to anger. And I think what he's saying here is, in essence, don't be so offended by your kids' behavior that you lose your temper and you lose your ability to just demonstrate God's loving discipline, his kindness and patience. So your giving and taking offense with your child can often put up walls that damage your effectiveness as a parent. Okay, so we've looked at one side of the equation when you are the offender. Now let's look at, when you are the offended one, so my favorite people actually are the people that it is hardest to offend. My good friend from college, different from the guy I talked about earlier, Jeff, he is extremely hard to offend and it is basically his pastime to make fun of himself and he does it in a way that it's not showing that he hates himself or he's fishing for a compliment. No, on the contrary, he's very comfortable with himself. He would just rather poke fun at himself than have it poke at anyone else. But I have found that hard to offend people are probably few and far between. And I think the reason is because we are often not confident in who we are. Now, there's a psychologist, Dr. Leon Seltzer, who wrote an article in psychology today. He says this, he says, most of us, despite how much we may see ourselves as having evolved over time, still possess an ego more fragile than we typically realize. So it's likely that your ego may be more vulnerable than you assume to experiencing another's behavior as hurtful, hostile, or threatening. What's he saying? You say, not only are we easily hurt, but we often read into other people's behavior as maybe they're innocent behavior as intentionally offensive. I certainly found that we are easily offended. I'm easily offended. We put up walls when we value reputation over relationship. Most of you know, I serve right now as an associate pastor here, but for 11 years before I was here, I served as church planter and senior pastor and still water and been ordained for 24 years. Recently someone came up to me and asked me, so when are you going to get your own church? Which is another way of saying, when are you going to become a real pastor? How dare they think I'm less important than I think I am? Here's where the gospel comes in again, because Jesus was offended for our sake. He bore reproach for us and Romans 15 pulses that Christ did not please himself. And as it's written, the reproaches of those who reproach you fell on me. In other words, Jesus took the worst of human anger, hatred, and violence onto himself. He endured it for us, and Paul says, therefore let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. See, the cross of Christ makes all the difference in our relationships. Because the cross is the greatest offense to human pride that there is, because the cross says that Jesus had to die for you, because you could not live up to God's standard on your own. You couldn't save yourself. And that is the ultimate offense to human pride. We don't want to admit that we need someone else. We don't want to have to admit we're failures and can't do it our own. We want to do it. We want to build up our own record of goodness and righteousness before God. While back I heard the song, I'm broken and it's beautiful by a Kelly Clarkson. And I thought, wow, that is a really great thought. It was a Christian. I didn't get by. I'm broken. It was beautiful. But then I went back and I listened to the lyrics of the song, and it kind of told a different story. The first verse says, I never held my hand out and asked for anything free. I got pride. I could roll out for miles in front of me. I have a knee-jerk help and I don't need sympathy. I know I'm superwoman. I know I'm strong. I know I've got this because I've had it all along. I'm phenomenal. I'm enough. I don't need you to tell me who to be. Now I recognize this song is probably a little bit speaking to sort of male chauvinism and idea that you have to save a woman, but it's a great example of human pride. I'm enough. I don't need help, but the gospel says, I'm not enough. I need a savior. And here's the thing. When you put your faith in Christ, not only does he forgive your sins, but he also gives you his perfect record of righteousness, his perfect goodness, not as what you need to be right before God. And so you don't have to worry. You can quit worrying about your reputation or how other people see you. And you can really understand them who you really are. And you can admit the darkest parts of your heart. And when something criticizes you, you can actually honestly say, man, if you only knew how dark my heart is, you're only scraping the surface. You haven't been offended by the cross. You will be easily offended by any number of things. But once you've been offended by the cross and been restored by grace, nothing else has the power to offend you so deeply. This past December we hosted Santa McCracken in a concert here at the church. And in the promotional materials, the poster leading up to it, it was just a picture of Sandra, but said, Santa McCracken with special guest, Taylor Leighnehart. Now, I didn't know who Taylor Leighnehart was. I didn't even know if it was a guy or a girl. But I was part of the group that got here early the day of the concert. I got here and we met the tour bus as they pulled up and Sandra got, was the first one off the bus and she said hello to everyone. And then a young woman in a trucker hat got off and she went around the back and she grabbed a couple of guitars. And so I went and grabbed a couple of guitars as well and I introduced myself and said, I'm Jonathan. And she said, hey, I'm Taylor. And without thinking, I said, oh, are you the road manager? And she said no. And then immediately I remembered, oh yeah, there's a special guest, I think, his name, Taylor. And but before I could say anything or apologize, she said, what, you know, I guess anybody could be a road manager these days, so that's cool. Now she could have said, no, you idiot. I'm not some lowly manager, I'm an artist, but she didn't. She valued relationship over reputation. She covered over my embarrassment with her kindness. I refuse me to take offense at my question, my dumb question. And now I'm a big Taylor lean heart, go buy all her records, she actually sees a great singer, son of a writer. It is good, it is good to understand that a brother or sister offended is more on, can be more unyielding than a strong city, but what is not good is to be that offended one. Setting up a loop in your disgust and pain at the one who offended you. Now I can feel really good, there's sort of a moral high horse that feels good, but for the sake of relationship, for the sake of the gospel, brothers and sisters come out of your barred castle, your fortified city and seek to be reconciled, and if you are the one who has done the offending swallow your pride, make your way past the bars and the locked doors of that person's hearts, let them know you're sorry and want to reconcile. Love with Proverbs 1911 says, good sense or wisdom makes one slow to anger and it is glory to overlook an offense. May it be our glory to look, to learn to get past offenses, both small and great, let's pray. Father, we recognize the complexities of relationships, how easy it is to get sideways with people, whether coworkers, family, or even close friends, and how easily our words can be misunderstood or come out the wrong way, or sometimes come out the way that we intended, but just didn't really intend, and how easy it is to offend and hurt Father, we pray then when that happens that you would continue to do the work of chipping away at our pride, that we would not ruin relationships for the sake of being in the place of being offended, that we would seek to reconcile, that by doing so that we would further the purity and the peace of your church, that we would show a watching world how Christians can truly love one another and forgive even deep hurts, because we have been forgiven, our rebellion, and our deep offense for a holy God, and pray this in Jesus' name, in the name of Jesus' name, in the name of Jesus'