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Looking at how Proverbs shows the idea that peacemaking is better than trouble making, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund shares 3 choices that we can intentionally make to help us bring about peace and joy.

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Good morning. It's great to be together. Just before we jump into the teaching today, I'd like to take a couple of moments and let you know about something that is coming. If you've been around, you know we've been talking about having a project in the Worship Center at our Wexford Campus that will refurbish this space, and so this announcement is probably more germane to those of you who attend our Wexford Campus, are in the Worship Center, the Chapel, Butler County, the Strip District, still matters but it won't affect you as directly.

Our Board of Servant Leaders and Elders this last week approved the parameters of the project. And as I understand where we're at, our architect is still trying to finish, the construction drawings, should be done sometime toward the end of this month, permitting will take place. And then sometime, hopefully, in the next six to eight weeks, work will begin in this space, assuming there's no snags, which is a big assumption. But assuming that, what will happen is this space will be shut down for probably five, six months during construction. And so you'll be hearing about how we plan to navigate that time. Right now, our plan is largely to still have services at this time divided between the gym and the Chapel, and some different places around the building. Just stay tuned and you'll see that if you're the kind of person who comes once every three, four months, the next time you come back, it'll all be different. Just so you're aware of that.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you just for a chance to be together in Butler County, in the Strip District, the Chapel, in the Wexford Auditorium. Today, I pray that wherever we're coming from, God, that each of us would encounter you through your word. And Lord, I pray that my words would reflect your word, in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

You don't have to be a sociologist to know that there are relational breakdowns everywhere. You see it undoubtedly when you look at maybe somebody's family, maybe your own family. You've heard about the family where a child doesn't talk to a mom or a dad for years, or where a brother or sister have a falling out and their relationship is never quite put back together. Or, the family that never visits their cousins, they can't get together anymore because something happened and it brought a relational dysfunction or disharmony that created tension.

You know probably about some friends, maybe you have some friends that were once really close, but then something happened and the relationship was never the same. And now those friends can't think about one another without having some tension in the relationship, or maybe even a pit in the stomach. And you've heard about, or maybe you've experienced, work partnerships, people who worked together for years, seem to be pulling in the same direction, and it wasn't that the direction changed, but all of a sudden the relationship crumbled in such a way that now they can't work together or hardly stand one another anymore.

You know that these things happen all the time, and chances are, for many of us here, they've happened in our lives in one way or another. We're in this series that we've called Better, and we're looking at the Book of Proverbs, and some of the things that Proverbs says are better than the alternative. And today, we're going to look at this idea that being a peacemaker is better than being a troublemaker. And my guess is a few of us see ourselves as troublemakers, but what Proverbs says, very clearly, is that in the verse you heard read, Proverbs 12:20, that when there's peace, there's joy, or when you pursue peace, when you help bring peace about, there's joy.

And then Jesus says in Matthew five, verse nine, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God." And the word blessed in Matthew that's used there is a word that could be translated happy. And so the idea here is that happiness, joy, comes when there's peace, but when we don't have peace, there's a lack of joy. There's a lack of happiness. And this may seem really clear, but yet many times what happens in our lives is when we're in some kind of a situation where there's some relational tension, what we do is we think, my real joy will be getting in that word. Will be settling the score. Will be making somebody feel the tension that I feel, rather than saying, the joy comes, the happiness comes when there's peace.

Now, the Bible also says this inn Romans 12 verse 18 it says, as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. And the clear implication is there are some people that you can do everything in your power to live at peace with and it just isn't going to happen. In other words, there are some relationships that you may not be able to repair. There are some situations that you may not be able to build a bridge, but here's what I've come to observe and this isn't biblical. This is just my idea here and having walked with a lot of people over a lot of years. And that is, every five years or so, you may have one or two relationships where you've run into that person that as far as it depends on you, you can't live at peace with. But, if you start having three, four, five relationships like that in a season of time, at some point you probably need to look in the mirror. Because then, there's a good chance that you are not being a peacemaker, but you are bringing trouble to situations.

And what Proverbs does over again is it shows this idea that our choices impact our future. That the choices we make and in this instance, especially in relationships, either bring trouble or they eliminate trouble. And so with that as a rubric, what I'd like to do is talk about this idea of being a peacemaker and three choices that you can make, I can make, that we can make repeatedly, intentionally. That can bring about peace that can help us be one of the peacemakers who Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers who are called the children of God." In any relational situation in which we find ourselves.

Here's the first choice, and I'm just going to say that this choice is to say I will leave vengeance to God. The first choice is to say I will leave vengeance to God. And as has been the case as we've been looking at Proverbs, I'm going to read several verses and I could read many more. These are just a sample of some of the ways that Proverbs speaks about this.

Proverbs chapter 20 verse 22 says, "Do not say, I will pay you back for this wrong. Wait for the Lord and he will avenge you." Pretty straightforward instruction. Don't take vengeance into your own hands. Instead say, "I'm going to wait for God to work in this situation."

Proverbs chapter 26 verse two says it this way, "Like a fluttering Sparrow or a darting swallow. An undeserved curse does not come to rest." When somebody says something against you, that is like a bird in flight that lands for a moment and then goes away, it won't rest there. And so often what we think is if somebody says something about us that if we don't take it on, if we don't challenge it, if we don't counter it, that we will somehow lose rather than being able to say, "I don't have to respond to every insult that comes into my life."

Proverbs chapter 10 verse 12 says this, it says, "Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers all wrongs." Love covers all wrongs. To choose love means that we say, in essence, I'm going to cover this wrong and this won't impact our relationship beyond just some surface ways.

Proverbs chapter 17 verse nine says, "Whoever would foster love covers in offense, but whoever repeats a matter separates close friends." Again, just the idea that loves says, I'll cover this. And when you keep bringing something up over and over again, you separate close friends.

And then Proverbs 24 verse 29 says this, and that is it says, "Do not say I will do to them as they have done to me. I will pay them back for what they did." Now when you and I read those verses, we may give quick intellectual ascent to the idea that I will leave vengeance with God. But, we live in a culture and it really isn't unique to our culture. I think this has been true of cultures throughout time. We live in a culture that in many ways glorifies the idea of taking vengeance.

And the reason I say this is there's a chance that in the last few months you have watched a movie or a TV show that has glorified the idea of taking vengeance. And here's why I say this. You watch a show somebody has done wrong. And halfway through the movie you're like, I hope that they get this person back. And then toward the end of the movie, the episode, they blow up the people who did them wrong and you're like, yes! Anybody, you know what I'm talking about? Well, just so we're clear, that that moment when you go, yes, that is not a biblical value.

It makes for good TV, good movies because you say, I want to see this person who did wrong pay. But the idea in Proverbs and throughout the pages of the Bible is to say that we will leave vengeance to God. We won't take it ourselves. When somebody goes low, instead of saying, I'll go lower, we say, I will choose to leave this to God. And why this is so challenging is because no matter where you are in life, sooner or later you will have someone, you will have a group of people who will betray you, mistreats you treat you poorly, do things to you that you could never believe they would do. And then you'll have to say, will I leave vengeance to God or will I choose to take vengeance into my own hands? You see, it doesn't mean when we say, I'll leave vengeance to God that I'll never challenge something that's wrong or I'll never stand up to a bully. But what it means is that we will not simply say, if you hurt me, I will see how much I can hurt you.

And this is what Proverbs says and what it says is that there's joy. What Jesus says is there's happiness when you choose to be a peacemaker rather than somebody who chooses to take vengeance. Now, part of this in Proverbs is also this idea of, I would say ignoring insults because usually where vengeance starts is with this very simple idea that somebody has hurt me, and I have to hold on to this. Here's what we read. Proverbs chapter 12 verse 16, "Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult."

And then Proverbs 19 verse 11 it says this, Proverbs 19 verse 11 says it this way, "A person's wisdom yields patience. It is to one's glory to overlook an offense." And what this is talking about is probably more where we live. Probably few of us will ever get to a point where we take vengeance so seriously that we blow somebody up like a movie.

But the way that we often live our vengeance is somebody insults us, and we don't even say anything about it. But then we insult them back. We find just the right thing to say something that we know will hurt their feelings or be a little cold. Or, maybe what we'll do is we'll tell somebody else about them or we'll do something so that we make sure that there's a way in which we have let our hurt be shown. But Proverbs says that it is right and good to ignore an offense rather than taking offense at everything. And here's what maybe is a way to think about this.

If somebody wants to play ball with you and you don't want to play ball with that somebody and they throw you a ball and you don't pick up the ball and throw it back. Well sooner or later they get tired of throwing the ball to you and they just walk away. They're done. And what happens with insults, is somebody is often just trying to stir up the pot or get a reaction, get something from you. And so they throw an insult at you and if you basically catch it and throw it back. What you're doing is you're engaging in their game rather than saying, you can insult me and I can ignore it.

But here's probably where this idea of saying I will not take vengeance is probably most significant. And this is this idea of covering an offense. We read that and it was that word that said cover. And the word in Hebrew means to conceal. And we see this in another place in Proverbs, we see it in the Psalms because to conceal an offense, to cover it, means that you live in many ways as if saying, I have now taken this offense and I've made it a nonissue.

Jesus in Matthew 18 told the story about a man who was forgiven much but chose not to forgive, and the story goes like this. A man had a huge debt so big that he could never repay it, that he owed to a King and the King forgave him his debt. And then the man went out and found somebody who owed him a little bit of money, not nearly as much and the man couldn't pay. And so he put the man in the debtor's prison. And then the people around the King went to the King and told the King this. And the King confronted this man and said, how could you, when you were forgiven so much, hold this against this man. And he had the man taken away.

And then Jesus says these haunting words. This is Matthew 18 verse 35 he says, so it will be with anyone who does not forgive his brother. And what Jesus is doing is, he's painting this picture of what forgiveness is and it's really a picture of this word cover from Proverbs. And it's this idea of saying that forgiveness is saying, I am not going to make you pay.

That's what forgiveness is. Now you may say, well, wait a second. How does this work in a society where sometimes people need to pay? I don't think that it means that you never go to court. Or, you never have people have natural consequences for what they've done. But what it means is that you will say, I do not need to make you pay over and over again for what you've done to me, even if the courts or somebody else has something to say about this.

Here's an example. If you're at the store and somebody backs into your car with their car, you have a couple of options. You can say, call your insurance, and they pay. You can say, you know, it's no big deal. It's a small dent. The car's not that new anyway, so I have a dent, it's okay. You pay, or you take your car to somebody and have them fix it and you pay out of pocket. Either way, somebody pays.

What forgiveness is, is it's saying, I pay, I absorb the debt. That's what the King did in Jesus' story. It's what the man failed to do to the people in his life. And to say, I'm paying, for most of us means I'm going to refuse to just bring it up all the time or to dwell on it or to talk about it. It doesn't again mean that you never stand up for your rights in a legal sense or anything like that, but it means that you say, I will choose to bear the brunt of this. I won't take vengeance.

Now you may say, well, wait a second. What about situation where there's been something horrific that's been done to me? Well, what I would say is, forgiveness may not be a one time thing, you may have to forgive over and over again. You may have to choose not to bring it up or not to pay over and over again. But to pay means that what you're doing is you're saying, I'm not going to seek vengeance. I'm not going to tell other people about this, this person and what they've done. I'm not going to bring it up over and over again. I'm not going to say, hey, remember that time way back when, when you did this to me? It doesn't necessarily mean that you give people full access to your life or to you if they have done something horrific. But to fail to forgive means that in some way you're still demanding payment and if you're still demanding payment, then you are taking vengeance and you're not practicing this choice with somebody in your life. That's the first choice and that is I will not take vengeance or I'll leave vengeance to God.

Here's the second choice, and I'm just going to say that this is, I will not perpetuate discord or disharmony. I won't choose to continue to foster relational messes in my life. Here's what we read. Proverbs chapter six verse 16 and following it says, "There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies. And then listen to number seven, a person who stirs up conflict in the community. It almost doesn't fit. Here are the things that God hates. Haughtiness, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood and somebody who just stirs up conflict in a community, somebody who doesn't get along with people. Somebody who over and over again has a relational train wreck on their hands and they say, well, it's always somebody else. That's what this is talking about.

Proverbs chapter 17 verse 14 says it this way, "Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam. So drop the matter before a dispute breaks out." And what that's talking about is that when a quarrel starts, it's like a breach in a dam where the water starts to flow through. And you at that moment, have in a sense opened a flood gate unintentionally that you can't predict where the water will go. You can't control where it will go and you can't retrieve where it will go. Think about a breach in a dam, when the water comes through, you can't put it back. You can't predict where it will go and you cannot control it in any way. And that's what Proverbs says is true about an argument. And so what it's wisdom is, is saying do all that you can, not just to say I leave vengeance to God, but to say I will not perpetuate and I will not contribute to discord in any way, shape or form.

Proverbs chapter 17 verse 19 puts it this way. "Whoever loves a quarrel loves sin. Whoever builds a high gate invites destruction". And when it says whoever loves a quarrel loves sin, what this means is if you get a little bit of enjoyment out of being at odds with somebody or saying something that's contrarian, or just being in a constant state of disharmony with somebody, that there's a sense in which you're loving sin.

That's a strong phrase that we read here. And then, we see in Proverbs chapter three verse 30 just this phrase, it says, "Do not accuse anyone for no reason what they have done when they have done you no harm." In other words, be careful of how you go about your relationships in life. Because if you perpetuate an argument, you are in some ways going to open a flood gate. And what this is also saying is be careful of getting into anybody else's argument, because when you do, it is in many ways just plain foolish.

Now in Proverbs six with which I read just a moment ago, just before the verses that we read, we see this and that is we see some of what it is that is part of being somebody who perpetuates an argument. I think it was Dale Carnegie who once said, you never win an argument. And his point was to say that even if you win an argument as in you feel like you have somehow said something, that was the last word, you've actually hurt the relationship. But here we see this in Proverbs chapter six verse 12 it says, "A troublemaker and a villain who goes about with a corrupt mouth". And a troublemaker, here it says, is one who has a corrupt mouth. In other words, they'll speak ill of people. They'll run somebody down.

Then we see this verse 13 it says, "Troublemakers, one who winks maliciously with his eye and signals with his feet." And this is the idea of somebody who says, I am going to talk to somebody that's kind of off the record in a way that they and I will have an agreement about somebody else. And then we see this idea in verse 14 of somebody who plots evil and deceit in their heart and they stir up conflict. And here's why I read these verses. You understand and know intuitively that to denigrate somebody, to speak against them, stirs up conflict. But often we do it in much more skilled ways and sometimes we're not even aware of it ourselves. And that is, anytime somebody says, hey listen, this is just between you and me, do you know what's happening? In all likelihood, you're stirring up conflict.

Because as soon as you say, look, this is for you and me and I don't want you to tell somebody else, what you're doing is you're saying something that if they knew that you were saying it, would be a problem. Well do you know what you're doing? You are creating conflict in that relationship. That's exactly what you're doing at that moment. And that is something that will always be damaging. I think it was the Rotary or the Kiwanis who popularized something in recent days and that is the old has four questions. And that is, is it true, is it helpful, is it necessary, is it kind? And if you can't say yes to all of those things, then don't say it or you might be contributing to trouble.

I remember years ago, this was before I moved to Pittsburgh and came to Orchard Hill, I was working at a church. And the way the offices were set was, the offices all went around kind of this outside thing. All the offices were around the outside and there was a central area. And I had somebody in my office and they brought something up and we were talking about how somebody else was dealing with something. And I probably made some comments, I didn't probably, I did make some comments that were derogatory toward this person that we were talking about. And then I walked out of my office and the person was standing there and the door was open and it was like, oh shoot. Anybody ever been in that situation? Don't raise your hands.

Here's something I learned that day and I made a decision to try to do something different that day. And that was to say, I never want to say something about somebody, that if they heard that I said it, it would be a problem. Now I say I try, I'd love to say I've nailed that ever since. But think about how your relationships would change if you said, I'm not going to say something about somebody that if they heard me say it, it would not be a problem.

That would change your relationship with your family where maybe there's some estrangement. It would change your friendships, it would change your work relationships. And I believe that this is actually a biblical idea. And so what I've tried to do for all the years since then, is say if I say something, then I can stand behind it, there are no secrets.

One of the things I know that the staff here at the church gets tired of hearing me say is there are no secrets. Because I believe that as soon as you say this is secret, this is private, this is just between you and me, that you are creating conflict, whether you mean to or not. And so a choice, a commitment that you can make, to be a peacemaker is to say, I will leave vengeance to God, but I will not perpetuate discord. I will not participate in relational destructively charged conversations.

And here's the third commitment. And this one is this simple statement. And that is, I will settle matters quickly and personally. Proverbs chapter 25 verse nine and 10, "If you take your neighbor to court, do not betray another's confidence or the one who hears it may shame you and the charge against you will stand." And the idea here is just saying, if you feel the need to, at some point, air something publicly or in court, understand that as soon as you do that, all the facts will be known. And if you're wrong, it may shame you.

Proverbs 26 verse 17, "Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears, is someone who rushes into a quarrel that's not their own." And then Proverbs 17 verse 20 and 21 says this, "Without wood, a fire goes out, without a gossip, a quarrel dies down. As charcoals to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person to kindling strife." And the idea here, very simply is that quarrels die without fuel, without wood.

And so the antidote to this, and this is why I read the verse about court, is to decide that you will deal with people personally rather than publicly. And that you will deal with them in a way that is private, not public. It will be personal, not impersonal. It'll be private, not public. And that's a choice that you and I can make all the time when it comes to how we choose to resolve conflict. Derek Kidner, who has written a great little commentary on Proverbs, put it this way, one's motives in spreading a story are seldom as pure as one pretends. To run to the law or to neighbors is usually to run away from the duty of personal relationship.

You see, when you and I find ourselves in conflict, here's what our tendency to do is. And that is, it's to go to somebody else and say, can you believe what they are doing? What they said, how they're handling this? And as soon as you do that, what you're doing is you're actually trying to get an ally, somebody to say, oh yeah, they're crazy, you're right. Now again, I'm not saying that there's never a time to seek counsel and friendship and say, check me in this. Help me know if I'm right and how I'm thinking about this. But if you do that, make sure that the way you talk about it could be repeated. Because when you go ally seeking, what you're probably doing is saying, I just want somebody to tell me I'm right and that they're wrong. Rather than saying, I'm going to go to this person personally and quickly and resolve this issue as I can.

And again, just think about this analogy of fire. What Proverbs is saying is that if you go beyond the circle, what you're doing is you're putting more wood on the fire rather than throwing water on the fire. And this is exactly why some families, some friendships, some business relationships go the wrong direction. Rather than saying, we're going to deal with this personally and quickly.

Now my guess is, we've talked about this that very few of us would initially put ourselves in the category of a troublemaker. I've rarely met somebody who says, I'm a troublemaker. Yeah, I don't get along with people. Almost everybody I know, if they have troubled relationships says, well, I have some troubled relationships, but it's because of, and then you fill in the blank with the people and all the things they've done. And we say, well, I'm troubled because of them, not because of me. It couldn't be me.

And as I said earlier, if you have several broken relationships at some point, let trouble tell you that perhaps you need to look in the mirror more closely and make these commitments to say, I will not take vengeance. I'll leave vengeance to God. I'm not going to perpetuate discord. And when I have an issue, I will settle it personally and privately as an approach to my relationships. And I know some of you may say, well, wait a second, wait a second. You don't know what somebody has done. You don't know the difficult person I'm dealing with. You don't know. And you're right, I don't know. But what Proverbs says, what Jesus says is that the people who are most joyful, most happy in this world are what? The peacemakers. The people who pursue peace, find joy. Blessed, happy are those who are the peacemakers. There'll be called the children of God. Those are the people who experience it.

And here's where you and I can really get the power for this. You see, if you walk out of here today and your idea is to say, well, I'm going to try really hard not to take vengeance. I'm going to try really hard to be somebody who doesn't perpetuate conflict. I'm going to try really hard to settle matters quickly and personally. You'll have some improvement, but the motivation that we have actually needs to come from somewhere deeper. And Jesus' story is so instructive because the man who went and demanded something from his fellow man had been forgiven much. See where the motivation comes from to say I'm going to be a peacemaker, is realizing how much God has made peace with you and me, even though we didn't deserve it.

Romans five one says that we've been justified through Jesus. In other words, been declared legally right before Jesus with Jesus and it says, therefore we have peace with God. God is the great peacemaker with you and me, paying a debt that we could never pay. Giving us vertical forgiveness and then saying, offer peace, offer forgiveness horizontally. And here's what I know, and that is when you are taken with how much God has done for you and Jesus Christ, then when you look at the offense, no matter how big it is, how real it is, you're able to say, I can be at peace with people who have been difficult. But when that's small in your mind, then you feel aggrieved. You feel self-righteous. You feel the need to make them pay. You feel the need to say, they have to do everything to make this right rather than saying, I can leave it because where I couldn't make it right, God through Jesus Christ has made it right.

And today, some of us might be here and say, I never realized the debt that I owed to God. We might say, I always thought that I was pretty good and I didn't owe. But biblically, the picture is always that you and I owe more than we can pay. And the Bible calls that sin and the payment for our sin is Jesus, not our goodness. And because of that, you and I can be motivated to say, I'm going to live as a peacemaker in my family, in my friendships, in my community, in my place of work, even if it's hard.

Father, we thank you for just how your word speaks to something so relevant and important as the way that we relate to people in our lives. And God, I pray for me, I pray for each person here that you would help us to be people who live as peacemakers. And that we'd be able to honestly even see where and how we've been part of the problem at times. And not just change our behavior, but change our motivation. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.