From Conflict to Joy | 30 Days of Joy - Philippians 4:1-4 | Tony Walliser (4/12/2026)

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Silverdale's Lead Pastor is Tony Walliser.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Well, good morning. It's so good to see all of you here worshiping with us today. I'd like to welcome all of you here at this campus, but also like to welcome all of our campuses and all of our venues and those of you that are worshiping with us online. If I haven't had a chance to meet you personally, I'm Tony Walliser, one of the pastors here at Silverdale, and have the privilege today to share with you God's word. So this one I encourage you to go and take your Bibles and open up the New Testament to the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter 4. Turn to Philippians chapter 4, and you can do this as well. You can take out these Bible study outlines that we provide for you so you can follow along and take notes as we study God's Word together. We took a little break from the book of Philippians whenever we did our three-week Easter series, but now we're going to jump back into the book of Philippians. We're going to look at the very last chapter, and we're going to call this series 30 Days of Joy. Because what we're going to do is we're going to spend four weeks in Philippians chapter 4, which is really one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. And hopefully, through this series, you're going to experience joy in your life. Because what the Apostle Paul does is he talks about how do you get past sort of the joy killers, those things that steal the happiness in our life. Now, if you're new here, let me just again set up the book of Philippians for you. Paul the Apostle wrote this from jail, a Roman prison. He's in this dungeon. It is rat infested, it's sewer smell. I mean, and here he is, he's writing this book from prison, and yet it is a book filled with joy. And what we learn in Philippians is how you can find joy in the Lord despite the circumstances that you have in your life. And so in this one chapter, Paul's going to deal with these four joy crushers in our life. And so this is an incredibly practical chapter to where we live. And so if your finances are low, and um, you know, your your heart is broken, and your soul is burdened, and your relationships are in conflict, guess what? There's hope, there's joy. And so the apostle Paul is going to teach us in this chapter how to overcome those four different areas of our life. And the very first thing Paul deals with is the conflict in relationships. And so let's read about it. It's found in Philippians chapter 4, beginning verses 1. Notice what God's word says. So then, my dearly loved and long-for brothers and sisters, my joy and crown in this matter, stand firm in the Lord, dear friends. Now we're going to read about the two ladies that have a conflict. Verse 2 I urge Eodiah, I urge Syntiche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord, always I will say it again, rejoice. And so you've got this conflict between these two ladies, right? And so Paul's going to address how do you deal with conflict, you know, in a relationship that you may have. Now, I can just imagine that whenever this letter was first read to the church at Philippi, you know, where the word was spread about, oh my goodness, we got this new letter from the Apostle Paul. It's going to be read in church, and everybody shows up and Paul read, they read it, and Paul calls your name out. And you go, ouch! He called me out by name? Yeah. So, yeah. Ladies, your conflict has reached all the way to Rome and my prison cell. Would you two get your act together, right? And so, why does Paul deal with conflict in a book that's so filled with joy? Because of a simple principle. It's a top principle on your outline. Job on your outline, unresolved conflict can extinguish your joy. Unresolved conflict can extinguish your joy. Now we all know this to be true, right? I mean, you could have a very blessed home, and then suddenly you get a conflict with one of your kids or conflict with your spouse that suddenly doesn't feel so blessed anymore. Or guess what? At work, you know what, you feel successful and fulfilled, but then you have a run-in with your boss or a coworker, and now it feels like, oh my goodness, this is a toxic workplace. One business consultant, Alan Lovejoy, wrote this. He said, workplace conflicts are worse now than they've ever been. Wow, it's quite a statement. But it's not just home, not just workplace. The neighborhood can be a place of conflict. I read one article. Here's the title Neighbors from Hell. Noisy dogs, nasty kids, troubles with the trees. It's a very bad day in the neighborhood. And in the article, it talks about this guy from California, lives next door to this guy whose dog is barking all night long. He goes out there with duct tape, duct tapes the dog's mouth. He was arrested for animal cruelty. And then the article ends conflicts with neighbors have never been worse. Wow. Conflicts at home, at work. Did you know there can be conflicts at church? That's what this passage is all about. You got these two ladies that can't seem to get together, right? I mean, God's work in incredible ways at the church of Philippi. It was established by the Apostle Paul himself, and yet they got this conflict going on. Now, let me just tell you, I love the church. I've given my life to serve the people of the church. But let's be honest, there are times when sometimes the church can get wonky, right? You get people that get in the flesh, start operating more on their agenda rather than God's agenda, and you got this different perspectives, and next thing you know, you start dividing over maybe even trivial issues. I mean, I heard about one church that they started a petition that they sent to all the members that, you know, all the staff would be clean shaven. And I read that, I'm like, I guess they wouldn't want Jesus on their staff, right? What's up with that? I heard about this one church had a conflict over pot, you know, one of their potluck dinners, that somebody brought devil to eggs and they thought it was wrong. And I'm like, come on, it's not like those eggs are demon-possessed or anything. It's just the name, right? And so that's what's crazy, is that we can get weird sometimes, right? In the church, that can happen. And so here you have this conflict that Paul's addressing in church. Why is he addressing this? Because these are not two ladies that are pu-sitters, these are key leaders in the church. These are really, you know, prominent ladies that are at a disagreement with each other. I mean, notice how Paul again describes them in verse 3. Help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side. These are co-workers with Paul. These are folks that are involved in missionary ministry. And yet, this conflict is overshadowing all that they've done. Can I tell you? I can take you to half dozen churches in town right now that are embroiled in some kind of conflict. And you know what? They have decades of, you know, having kingdom of God, outreach, and it's all being overshadowed with some issue in their church right now. That's what Satan wants to do, right? And the fact is, is that that's what's happening here. Here's two ladies, and yet what they're doing, this conflict is overshadowing everything that they've ever accomplished. I mean, I just imagine that whenever they die, they go to heaven, they stand before the Lord, and the Lord says, you know what, ladies, got some good news, got some bad news. Good news, you're in the Bible. And billions of people are going to read about you throughout the centuries. Bad news, the only thing written about you is the conflict you two couldn't get over, right? What is up with that? But I think that's an application for you and I. If there was a snapshot of your life right now, click-click, right? Freeze frame right where you are, what would somebody write about you? Would it be about your joy? Would it be about your service, or would it be about some conflict that you're in with against this other person? And so here the Apostle Paul is addressing this because conflicts can steal our joy. But what we're gonna learn in this passage, Paul teaches us how to get past conflicts, how to restore relationships. That's what we discover in this passage. So jot this on your outline. You want to go from conflict to joy, this is how to do it. Number one, first of all, we should speak with kindness. We should speak with kindness. Now, Paul's gonna confront these two ladies, but he does it in such a gracious, kind way, a very loving way. He doesn't say, You two women are embarrassment. Oh, you're just letting me down, right? Or I don't even know if you're going to heaven, right? I mean, he doesn't say anything like that. What does he say? He says these really honoring things about them. Look again. Let me read these verses again. Verse one, my dearly loved and longed for, my joy and crown. These are people that Paul loves. These are people that have brought him joy. Verse 3, these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, these are two ladies that have worked really hard for the kingdom of God. Finally, my co-workers whose names are in the book of life, what does that mean? These ladies are saved, they're secure in heaven. Now, I don't know about you. I read those things that Paul said about these two ladies, and I'm like, but it'd be awesome if the apostle Paul said something like that about me. That I'm loved and bring him joy and you know, co-worker with him, and my name's in the book of life. Wouldn't it be amazing if somebody said that about you, right? And so Paul does that about these ladies. And the point is, is that many times, whenever we have a conflict with somebody, we forget the good, right? Has this ever happened to you before, right? You're in the middle of a conflict, and suddenly all you can see is their flaws, right? I see this in marriages all the time. Suddenly there's a marriage conflict, and what happens? Well, that becomes the thing that's in your face, glaring at you every day. Oh, I can't believe this person has this flaw. And what do you do in that moment? You forget all their amazing qualities. They got hundreds of amazing things, but all you can focus on is that one negative thing that's in your face. Paul didn't do that. He kept to his mind all the amazing things that these ladies had experienced and were had given for the kingdom of God. Years ago, my wife Susan and I, we went on a marriage retreat, and um, the speaker used an illustration that really changed our marriage. He gave this illustration, he said this he said, Every one of us in a marriage relationship, we have the real person that we're living with, and then we have a fantasy person that we really want. And what we do is we got this fantasy person in our mind, and we've got the real person, and we got the fantasy person, and so what we do is because the real person doesn't match up to our fantasy person, we'll rip up the real person, we'll tear them down. Well, you can't do this, or why don't you do this, or why can't you do those things? And and guess what? We we'll we'll just criticize, we'll be little, or we'll think less of that real person because we got this fantasy person. And then the you know, the the speaker at that marriage conference made this statement, and this is what changed for us. He said, We all have this in every marriage, and you have a choice. You can either continue to tear up the real person you're living with, or you can tear up your fantasy person. You can't have both in any relationship. And so Susan and I determined in that moment we're gonna tear up the fantasy person and live with the real person that God had given to us. Well, that's what you and I have to do as well in every relationship. We've got to say, you know what, I've got to look past a person's flaw because you know what? They're gonna have some. So what does Paul do? He actually does what? He gives six positive characteristics of these women for the one negative. Psychologists tell us that's the perfect ratio. If you're gonna criticize somebody, be sure you have six positives to follow up, right? For for every negative, hey, give six. You're gonna discipline your kids. Here's the negative, give them six positive. You got some relationship problem, you got a negative, hey, give them six positive. Can I just tell you, if we did that, we wouldn't have as many conflicts as we do right now. And so here's the Apostle Paul, what's he doing? He does it, he says, if you want to go from conflict to joy, be gracious and kind with your words, right? Second principle he lays down is this. Shout this down. We should be a peacemaker. We should seek to be a peacemaker. Because what happens in our lives is that we all have issues in relationships, but they never get resolved. We just sort of shove them down, right? Let me illustrate it like this, okay? So let's just say that we have these issues and um and we hide them under the carpet, right? Okay, so I've got this carpet here, so I'm just gonna put it up here. And so we've got these issues that we have, well, let's say, with our spouse, and um, rather than resolving those issues, we just sort of shove it, right? They never get resolved. Like what? Like, okay, the way that she loads the dishwasher. There's a right way, there's a wrong way. Goodness gracious, I've told her about it, she continues to do it wrong, but you know what? It never gets resolved, it's just there, right? Or let's just say, he never puts up his clothes. It drives me crazy. He just lays his clothes around everywhere. Goodness gracious, right? And so that just goes under the rug as well. Or maybe, you know what, you got some tight finances, and your spouse goes out and buys these shoes, and you're like, oh my goodness, I can't believe you bought that. It's just busted our budget, and you know what, that goes under the rug as well. And then maybe you're disciplining your kids and and your your spouse is a passive parent. No, no, no, don't do it. And so you got to put your paddle under the there as well, right? And so, you say, what do you do? Okay, and so these are issues, they're real, and you think that you can just shove them and get past them and never resolve them, then what happens? You're gonna keep tripping over this stuff, right? So, what do you got to do? You've got to learn to resolve issues. You've got to take responsibility and say, okay, how do we get past these kind of things? Okay, let me put this stuff up, okay? Can I just tell you when I was buying these shoes, people gave me the craziest looks, right? What in the world is that guy doing? I was hiding. But anyway, there I was. Thank you, goodwill. But the point is, is that, you know, how do you get past it, okay? Paul says, look what he says. He basically says, take responsibility. Look at it. Verse 2. I urge Eodiah and I urge Sentiki to agree in the Lord. He says, I urge you and I urge you. That means you two both have to own this. You both have to take responsibility for this. I'm pleading with you ladies, right? And so one of you needs to take responsibility. Both of you should. And that's what the Bible says that you and I are supposed to. We're supposed to, okay, take the initiative. Right? I need to go apologize for what I've done. I need to humble myself. The Bible says, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. Notice how Jesus says this in Matthew. Jesus says this in Matthew 5. So if you are offering your gift to the altar, that means you're in the middle of a worship service. And there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. What is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying that your relationships are more important than worship. That this, your relationship that's broken, needs to be a priority. You need to do this. And so what happens is, let's say your marriage relationship is going sideways, or you have a friendship that just seems awkward right now. Take the initiative. Own what is yours to own. Go to them, humble yourself and say, you know, when I did this, when I said that, I was wrong. I'm sorry. But please forgive me for that. Right? That's what we're what we're called to do. Now, I know a lot of us were gonna tap our foot and say, Well, I'm gonna expect, they need to come to me, right? No. You go to them, you take the initiative. You may go, well, Pastor Joni, are you expecting me to get on my crawl and get on my knees and beg for their forgiveness? No, I'm not expecting you to do that, but the Lord is. But but if I do that, then you know what? They've done 90% of the wrong. They'll think that, you know what, um, that that they've done nothing wrong. I don't care what they think. I only care what the Lord thinks. And the Lord says we're supposed to reconcile relationships. I mean, think about it. Between you and God, who took the initiative? Christ took the initiative. Right? The only thing you brought to the table of reconciliation with God is your sin. Jesus did the rest of it. And so we now as followers of Jesus Christ, we need to say, okay, I need to love people and reconcile with people and try to be that way the best way I can, the way Jesus did. Now, I get that there are sometimes relationships can get so fractured that the two individuals can't get together anymore. And you need a third party to help you out. Paul talks about that in verse 3. Look what he says. I also asked you, true partner, to help these women. Now, we don't know who this true partner is, but he was obviously in a relationship with Paul and with these two ladies. And he could help these two ladies out to get past this. Now, why is this important? Because sometimes the pain is so fresh, that the hurt is so deep that we can't get together. And we need a third party to help us out. That's why you need good Christian friends that can speak in and help you, or go see a Christian counselor. That's why we have a you know care and counseling ministry in our church. There's amazing Christian counselors in town. You may go, I don't want to do anything like that. Why not? I mean, if the apostle Paul is saying, hey, do it, it's okay. I mean, I hear sometimes guys go, well, my wife wants to go to counsel, but I don't want to. Why not? Right? I mean, the fact is that we all need help from time to time. Sometimes we can't do it on our own. We need to be a third party. So be willing to do that. Paul's bringing a third party in to help these two ladies out. And the reality is, is as other followers of Christ, like many of you are, you need to be that third party. You need to be that person that you see these folks having a conflict, and you step in. Now, again, may not initially, you know, because I know my first response is, I'm gonna let sleeping dogs lie, let them figure it out on their own. But you know what? If it's just not working out, you come and you say, Hey, can we meet? Can we talk? Can we pray? Can we try to resolve some of this? I want to be a peacemaker in this. That's what Jesus said. Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers. We are all called to be peacemakers. And so there's those times in our lives where we need a peacemaker in our life. We need a conflict referee. And so, how do you go from conflict to joy? First, speak with gracious, kind words to each other. Secondly, choose to be a peacemaker. I'm gonna take the initiative in this. Third is this. Shut this down. We should seek common ground. We should seek common ground. Now, what's interesting about this passage is that we don't even have a clue what these two ladies were arguing about. Paul doesn't even bring up the issue. He doesn't get lost in the weeds. What does he do? He says, Okay, I'm not gonna focus on what's dividing you, I'm gonna focus on what should be uniting you. And what should bring the two of you together. What is the common ground? Look at it in verse 2. I urge Eodiah and I urge Sentiki to agree where? In the Lord. There's the common ground, folks. It is in the Lord. Whenever you look at differences that happen between you and I, what often takes place is we forget the Lord. I got my perspective, you got your perspective, I got my plan, you got your plan. What about the Lord? Why don't we include the Lord in this? Because the solution is always found in the Lord, right? I know you got your viewpoint, I got my viewpoint. What is the Lord's viewpoint about this? And the fact is, is that that's what unifies us. I mean, I think about our church. I mean, we got over 7,000 people in our church, and fact is very diverse, right? Every one of us comes from different family backgrounds, and we have different races that are here and different socioeconomic backgrounds, and we've got married people and single people and divorced people, and just the differences between men and women alone is pretty remarkable. And you go, okay, we've got a lot of differences here, and yet our church is a pretty unified church. Doesn't mean that we don't have differences from time to time. We do, but the thing that makes us unified is that we are in the Lord. That's the key. The key is, okay, what does the Lord have to say about this? I mean, years ago there was an article written by the American Psychologic Association, and what they did is they interviewed different members of an orchestra and to see what they thought about other members in the orchestra. And so what they discovered is that the majority of the people in the orchestra they looked at the percussion section over here. Here? Loud and insensitive. Okay? And um, and then they thought that the strained instrument people were just full of themselves, full of pride and arrogant. And then they um they said um there was one word that they used to describe the brass. Too loud, loud, right? And they said that, you know what, it's just a few in this orchestra. The folks that were the kindest were the the woodwind section, okay? And so then they go, okay, here's you got this orchestra and you got all this diversity and all these biases and opinions of each other. How do they get together and play and make this beautiful music? Well, each one of them had to subordinate themselves and their opinions and their biases for the conductor, right? When they all got in the pit together, guess what? They said if we're gonna make beautiful music, we got to set aside all of our biases and what we think about each other, and we got to listen to the conductor. We have a conductor, folks. His name is Jesus Christ, and he alone is the thing that unifies us. We're very different. We're gonna have different opinions about a lot of different stuff, but it's gonna be Jesus that unifies us. And can I tell you, when I love Jesus and want to follow Jesus, and you love Jesus and want to follow Jesus, then guess what? We may not always see to eye to eye, but golly, we can work together and serve the Lord together. Amen? That's what God does. And it's amazing how he does that in relationships. I mean, I've shared before my parents' marriage didn't start out very good at all. In fact, um, my mom got pregnant out of, you know, outside of marriage, and so they agreed that they would get married just purely for my sister to have a different last name. So they got married and then literally divorced immediately after that. Then my dad wasn't paying child support, and so my mom had my dad arrested, and so my dad's in jail, and my mom goes and visits him in jail, and while he's in jail, they decide, hey, why don't we make a go at this thing? That's how their marriage started, okay? You go, golly, yeah, that's exactly how their marriage started. Five years later, they both came to faith in Jesus Christ, and God starts transforming their hearts. And they were married for over 50 years, and one of the most beautiful things I ever saw was my dad serving my mom and caring for her on her deathbed. And I'm like, golly, this has gone full circle. This is beautiful, but that's what the Lord can do. Well, that's the same way with you and I. You and I, we're gonna have a lot of differences, but if we find the common ground in the Lord, it's amazing how he can get past the differences in our lives. So, how do you move from conflict to joy? I'm gonna speak to other people with respect and kindness and honor them. I'm going to um, you know, take the initiative and be a peacemaker, and I'm going to try to find the common ground that we have in the Lord. Then what else? Number four is this. Shout this down. We should persevere with Christ. We should persevere with Christ. Because the simple reality is that whenever things get tough, the easiest thing to do is just, I'm out of here. I'm done. This is too hard. I think I'm going to quit, right? And so I want to especially address a reality that people have in churches. That whenever you have conflicts in churches, people get hurt. Can I just say church hurt is real? It is real. And so people get hurt in church. And so, whenever people get hurt in church, what do they do? They often go, that's what God's people are like. I don't want anything to do with them. And so, what do they do? They abandoned Jesus and they abandoned his bride, the church, right? And so, what does Paul say facing all this church hurt and conflict? Look what he says in verse 1. He says, in this manner, stand firm in the Lord, dear friends. Stand firm. It's a military term. It's talking to a soldier who, you know what, he's in the middle of battle. And rather than retreating, which is the natural tendency, stand firm. Well, it's real easy when the relationship gets hard to just retreat from it. But the Bible says, stand firm, right? And so when you want to quit, stand firm. When you want to retaliate, stand firm. When you don't want to forgive that person, stand firm in the Lord. Stand firm in the Lord. Do this right now. Turn to the person next to you and just say, stand firm in the Lord. Do that right now. Stand firm in the Lord. Stand firm in the Lord. Stand firm in the Lord, right? That's what we're supposed to do. Now, let me address a couple of aspects of this. There is a phenomenon right now, especially in younger generation, of what's known as deconstructing their faith. And so there's a lot of young people that will say, you know what, I used to be a Christian, used to go to church, and um, you know, I was involved in youth group and went on mission trips, but you know what, I I no longer believe. I've matured and I no longer need that church stuff, right? So that's basically they deconstruct their faith. Now I've read a lot about deconstruction of people's faith, and the vast majority of people that deconstruct their faith, it is over the church's stand with sexual issues. So we stand against transgenderism or a homosexual lifestyle or sleeping around outside of marriage, and so they're like, oh, yeah, I don't like the church telling me how I'm supposed to, you know, live my life, and so I'm just gonna deconstruct my faith. Well, let me just say, you're not deconstructing your faith, you are just basically abandoning God in his word. Because God's word is very clear about those three issues I just talked about. Okay, and so so it's not you're deconstructing faith, you just don't like what God has to say about something that you want to do. Okay, that's that's ultimately it. But there is another reality, and that other reality is that there are real church hurt. And so, and again, in a congregation our size, I know that many of you have had church hurt. Church hurt at other churches, maybe church hurt in this church, right? It may have been a dictator pastor, it may have been a hypocritical leader, it may have been somebody that somebody led you wrong or did something wrong, they said the wrong thing, they they hurt a family member, they they they did the wrong thing, right? And guess what? That's real. It is real. And so this is what I want to do. As a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ, I'm sorry. I wish I could take away that hurt. I wish those people hadn't responded that way, hadn't done those things. All I can do is say, as one representative of the Church of Jesus Christ, I apologize. And I'm sorry. We shouldn't have done that. But it happened, and I acknowledge it, and it's real. Okay? So please forgive Christ and forgive the church. Because listen, folks, don't abandon Jesus for bad representatives of Jesus. Amen? We can't. We just can't do that. I mean, Jesus did not say follow a dictator, pastor. He said, follow me. Right? He didn't say follow my people. Jesus said, follow me. And so what does that mean? That means we worship a perfect savior imperfectly. Ain't nobody here perfect. I as your pastor, I am not a perfect person. I've made mistakes in the past, I'll make mistakes in the future, right? So you gotta understand, hey, we're all flawed here. You've heard the joke before. If you find the perfect church, don't join it, you'll ruin it, right? It's true, right? Because none of us are perfect. And so because we're worshiping a perfect savior imperfectly, where nobody here is perfect, what does that mean? That means we gotta give a lot of grace to each other and forgive each other. And so, if we're gonna get past the past and get past the hurts, then you know what? We've got to learn to say, okay, I'm gonna stand firm in the Lord, and I can move forward with the Lord even if this other person hurts me along the way, right? Now, today's you know message is real simple. You could just look at this and go, this is a real practical sermon. But so one thing I know that these are the kind of sermons that most of us don't want to obey. And so I want you to think about at least one action step today. What is it that God's asking you to do right now in the relationships you have? Maybe it is speaking a kind word and looking at the best in that person. Maybe it is um, you know what, taking the initiative, maybe it's making a phone call, maybe it's um writing a letter, maybe it's saying, hey, can we have lunch together? I don't know what it is. Whatever the Holy Spirit is saying, this is what you need to do in those relationships. Will you please obey the Lord? Because I know this. If we will do these simple little principles, our relationships will go from conflict to joy. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the reality that you have put us together and we're broken, but you are the one who heals brokenness. Thank you, Lord, so much for our church. Thank you for the things that you're doing. But God, I pray specifically for every person in this room and all the relationships they have. Would you please heal? Will you give grace? Will you bring restoration? Will you resolve the hurts that exist there? God, we trust you to do that. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.