Outloud Bible Project Podcast
Mike Domeny, actor, author, and founder of Outloud Bible Project (outloudbible.com), reads the Bible out loud in a conversational and approachable way so you can read the Bible like it makes a difference! This isn't simply an audiobook version of the Bible! Every episode offers helpful context so you won't get lost, and a brief takeaway to help apply that reading to your life.
Want to invite Mike to read Scripture at your event or gathering? Visit outloudbible.com.
Starting with episode 279, the Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® https://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved
Outloud Bible Project Podcast
Living Outloud: Matthew 17-21
Forgiveness and conflict resolution are at the core of genuine Christian community, yet these practices often get sidelined in favor of avoidance and resentment.
• Coming down from spiritual mountaintop experiences into real-life relationship challenges
• Jesus' practical, step-by-step conflict resolution model in Matthew 18
• The damage caused when offended parties skip direct conversation and spread grievances
• Forgiving others "seventy times seven" after receiving God's immeasurable forgiveness
• How unforgiveness becomes self-torture that affects all relationships
• Christ's example of humble service as the foundation for healthy Christian community
• The freedom found in releasing others from what we feel they're "owed"
Go talk to that person you've been avoiding. Forgive them on the way, and you'll find a new freedom as you follow Christ in this way.
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Check out outloudbible.com for helpful study resources, and to discover how to bring the public reading of God's word to your church, conference, retreat, or other event.
Welcome back to the Outloud Bible Project podcast. This is Mike.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kelsey.
Speaker 1:And this is Living Outloud, where we take a special segment here to talk about not just what we hear and what we read of the Bible, but how to actually do it. We got to do what it says Hear it, love it, live it. That's what we're about.
Speaker 2:We just this past weekend, as of recording this did an Outloud Bible experience at a local church, with the book of Ecclesiastes being read out loud.
Speaker 1:Really really fitting for today, Really really fitting for the church and here in America, for the American church especially, to get God's perspective on the world. That's godly wisdom, God's perspective on life, and what a great book for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wishing for more and feeling like this isn't the way the world should be. Why are things the way they are? The conclusion of the matter is fear God and keep his commandments.
Speaker 1:I would recommend going and reading Ecclesiastes If you haven't, in a while, brush up on God's perspective on the world. If you want to listen to it, we've already covered it in this podcast. You can go back to episode 127, and there are three episodes dedicated to Ecclesiastes there. And if you're interested in hosting an Outloud Bible experience for your own church or event or gathering, reach out through our website, outloudbiblecom. We'd love to hear what you've got going on and how to make it work. It works really great for churches kicking off a series. In this case, the church was kicking off a series in Ecclesiastes, and this was kind of laying the foundation or maybe celebrate something that you have been studying and learning through. It doesn't have to be Ecclesiastes.
Speaker 1:We'll meet you where you are and read whatever you've got going on.
Speaker 2:When you hear Ecclesiastes, you think everything is meaningless. But it's not that everything has no meaning. It's that if you pursue the world and if you pursue things outside of God, it is meaningless. And so what lasts and what matters is fearing God and obeying his commandments. Fear God and obey him.
Speaker 1:This idea of obeying God is a strong theme here in Matthew 17 through 21. Matthew 17, this segment started with a literal mountaintop experience where Jesus and his three closest friends, peter, james and John, were on a mountain and then Jesus was just changed into his heavenly form, kind of with Moses was there and literal Elijah was there and God spoke and said this is my son, listen to him. And so already we see, all right, if we want to be with God, or what is our relationship with God, it is to listen to Jesus. It's all great when we have these mountaintop experiences, maybe a really good experience at church or a conference or a retreat or a camp, or really a good time reading your Bible on a quiet morning before the day begins, really great experiences where we feel like, oh man, I just see God differently, I see Jesus differently, I am hearing from God, I just wish I could stay in this space forever.
Speaker 1:And then you come off the mountain and, like we see in the rest of the section in Matthew, real life just starts to creep in. Jesus and his disciples come down the mountain and there are some other disciples who had been trying to cast out a demon and they just couldn't do it, and people are frustrated and scared and confused. And then there's taxes to pay and Jesus teaches a lot about conflict, and that's just when it just gets messy. Right, we want to stay on the mountain with Jesus and, oh yeah, just me and him, and let's just stay here and I really see him in a new way. Okay, but that really matters when we are down on the bottom of the mountain again.
Speaker 2:That is the world to which God has called us to be salt and light, to which God has called us to be salt and light, to take our perspective of what is real in the heavenly realms and live out obedience to God through trials and challenges and difficult situations.
Speaker 1:And so we find that when we're following Jesus, when we're going about this life, we're going to just run into people because for some reason Jesus decided that the way that we're going to follow him is be like a bunch of sheep, and in a flock and as a church, and in his body made of many parts, and all of these metaphors that Jesus uses to describe the fact that we are going to follow him. But we don't get to just go on a one-on-one road trip with Jesus. We don't get to just sit in the sidecar of his motorcycle as he drives. We are like sheep following him.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting that that comes up because in Matthew 18, starting in verse 12, he gives a little parable of like yeah, you're like sheep, and now if one goes away, I value each one so much that I go out of my way to go bring that one back. Like I don't play the law of averages and assume, well, you know, most of them are okay, I guess I'm still doing better off. Like no, I will go out of my way for one, and yet that leaves the other 99 kind of in the meantime, just like bumping into each other and having thoughts about the one that went away and like he, just he knows us and he knows that we're going to have issues, and so it's not surprising where, in Matthew 18, he talks a lot about forgiveness.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And he talks a lot about conflict. He gives a whole model here and this is one of those situations where it's like it's one thing to know what the Bible says, it's another thing to actually do it. Jesus gives this model of correcting another believer right. This is another person who professes faith in Jesus and yet, because this is life and because we are humans and we're flawed, we step in each other's toes, accidentally or on purpose sometimes, and we just need forgiveness or we need correction and so kind of.
Speaker 1:The first part of this chapter 18 talks about confronting and dealing with conflict and the second part of Matthew 18 talks about forgiveness and your own personal need to forgive. But this model here of like, first it starts with go to the person who you have offended, who has offended you. If they have gone astray, if they've done something wrong, go to them yourself. And I got to tell you I've seen this process get derailed in step one before step one. Because if someone is doing something wrong or has offended us or has offended others and they you know they're, they're just in the wrong, our first step is not to go talk to them. That sounds like conflict that I, I know, I I want to avoid and I still want to talk about it, but I still have I still, I still have words to say.
Speaker 1:so we go to our friends and say and, and it's not even necessarily like, oh, we're going to go gossip about them, but it's like I really need prayer. Like this person. This is what they did, I just need to vent.
Speaker 2:This is just really bothering me, or like I got to get something off my chest.
Speaker 1:And I think if I get off my chest I'll feel better, but that's not the process for feeling better. Jesus said that if you want to resolve conflict or feel better about something that has wronged you, it's not to go talk to someone about it, not just anyone. There's one you can talk to about it and that's the person who offended you in the first place or is wrong in the first place. So don't derail.
Speaker 2:Jesus's model. Before step one even starts, he says go talk to the person. I think the amount of pain that has been caused within the body of Christ by people who feel offended, then not going and talking to the offender is egregious. Like, yeah, it's bad that we hurt one another, it's bad that we say things or do things that are harmful to one another. But the real harm comes when the offended party just stays offended and doesn't go and try to work. Jesus could not be more clear in Matthew 18 of how we ought to address conflict with other believers, and I think that more damage is done by those who are offended than by the original offenders in the first place.
Speaker 1:Satan loves to get mileage out of some initial offense or sin and he's good at just blowing it up, and we help him when we don't follow Jesus's model. Go to the person who's offended you or who is wrong and causing damage in the body of believers. Go to them and I think that's going to solve it 90% of the time. Now there may be some people who are very stuck or are offended by you going to talk to them or whatever. Okay, that's why the process continues and it's like okay, now bring in another person or two, have a group of you know, three or four there, one or two witnesses there who can kind of help mediate and help, you know, be able to vouch for he said, she said whatever. And that also lends a little bit of weight to the situation where the now the, the person in the wrong, is going to be like oh, other people know.
Speaker 1:And, and, and I'm feeling outnumbered a little bit and and and that that could shake them up to be like, okay, yeah, you're right, I was wrong and that's got to solve now, like 99.9% of the conflicts. After that, if still like no, whatever, they're staunchly opposed to being corrected in this way, then you take them to the church. This is now when you rope the pastor into it. That's the other thing is we're like step zero or step one. We're like, hey, pastor, can you go talk to the person. Or like hey, like no, no, no, it's not the pastor's job to have your conversations.
Speaker 1:The pastor can be brought in like step three and in front of the church say, hey, this is the situation that's been going on. Also, it's probably not a surprise If it's gotten this big. It's probably not a surprise to the church on the whole, and then let the person decide if they're going to repent publicly for what they've done. And if not, then Jesus says treat them as an unbeliever, cast them out of your body and treat them as an unbeliever, which also, if we understand how Jesus treats unbelievers, this does not mean talk bad about them, does not mean ostracize them, avoid them at all costs and, you know, ignore that they exist. No, we pray for unbelievers, we love unbelievers.
Speaker 2:We share the gospel, we share the gospel.
Speaker 1:We forgive unbelievers. You pray for your enemies. We pray for them. So that's not licensed to just treat them in the way you've been wanting to treat them all along. But now you're justified because you did the Matthew 18 process. No, pray for them.
Speaker 1:If this is not practical step-by-step advice and command from Jesus, then I don't know what is. If we can't say yes to obeying what Jesus says here in this segment, then what are we going to obey? This is very practical. It's a model and Jesus reinforces later in that chapter. Like I'm going to flip my Bible. I love the sound of pages flipping in the Bible.
Speaker 1:And he goes on to talk at the end of Matthew, chapter 18, of a man who was forgiven much by the king, the ruler, the boss, but then went on to not forgive a much smaller debt owed to him. And he says that's what you do if you don't forgive somebody who's wronged you. Like I've forgiven you so much. I think you tend to minimize how much I've forgiven you and that's got to be a reminder to me. Like yeah, I was saved when I was six. Sometimes I'm like, well, how bad was I, how bad could I have been? And it's like do not minimize forgiveness, the sin that Jesus has forgiven and the wrath of God he has swallowed up on your behalf so that you didn't have to take it. Don't minimize that. That's a huge debt that you don't have to pay with your life. So how dare we go and hold someone else to a much lesser offense against us which, by the way, they offended God and he's forgiven them too? Which, by the way, they offended God and he's forgiven them too.
Speaker 1:The consequence there, as he says, is in verse 34. Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. And then the kind of the haunting thing is he says in the next verse that's what my heavenly father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart. Like I don't know exactly what it all means to be sent to the torturers, but I think Sounds worth avoiding.
Speaker 2:Sounds like it's worth avoiding?
Speaker 1:I think there is, and we see it. The unforgiving heart is just wrecked, and not just with I don't know, guilt and negative emotions and revenge, but just it plays a toll physically and mentally on people.
Speaker 2:We see it and it's like and it affects more than just the relationship with the person that you're not forgiving. It just spreads, it affects all of your relationships and your relationship with God. It's just, unforgiveness is such a sickness.
Speaker 1:You're tortured.
Speaker 2:It's a torture, and so there's no denying that once they came down off the mountain and then had to interact with people. And Jesus is teaching us how to interact, as his flock, with one another, as we're bumping up against one another. We've got this conflict resolution. We've got teachings on forgiveness, because we're going to have to do it. We're going to have to resolve conflict. We're going to have to do it. We're going to have to resolve conflict. We're going to have to forgive each other.
Speaker 1:But probably only like seven times right, like that's plenty right.
Speaker 2:No, 70 times seven. And it may not be that you keep aggressing me 70 times and I have to forgive you every time you do something new. It might be I get re-triggered or re-offended or something comes up where I'm like I thought I dealt with that already and apparently I'm still upset. Forgive again, even 200,000 times, right, just keep forgiving, even for the same thing that you thought you got over and forgave already. This continual forgiveness, this recognition of what God's forgiven me of, and therefore I'm going to extend grace to you as an image bearer of God. And it all kind of comes to this point at the end of Matthew 20, where Jesus says even the Son of man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as ransom for many Like I think all of these conversations really boil down to are we willing to serve others, are we willing to put ourselves in the position that even Christ himself did, where we're not seeking advantage, we're not seeking position, we're not seeking to be somebody, we're not seeking to be acknowledged by other people, we're not seeking some position or authority.
Speaker 2:But Jesus Christ himself, who deserves all the position and authority, said that he didn't even come to receive it. He came to serve. If we're really trying to have a mind like Christ, we will strive and ask God to help us to be humble and to be servant-spirited, to want to serve other people. And in serving other people, we won't hold their offenses against them, because we'll see them as greater than we are. We'll love them in that way, by obeying Christ in this way, is how we love God and love other people. It has to start, I think, with this setting aside our own pride and taking on the humility of Christ. That came to serve, not to be served. And I think oftentimes when we're holding unforgiveness against people or when we're unwilling to go and have a conversation, it's because we think we're owed something. Jesus is owed something and he didn't even take it. So how arrogant do we have to be to believe and act as if we're owed something by other people or God himself before we will forgive?
Speaker 1:If we say we're following Jesus, following him does not just mean listening to the things he says. It means doing what he does. And Jesus led by example about how to forgive, because he was wronged grievously, and some of the last words he said on the cross was Father, forgive them. They don't even know what they're doing. They weren't even repenting, they weren't even asking for forgiveness from him, and he said I release them from any responsibility. He said I release them from any responsibility.
Speaker 1:So if he forgives people who grievously hurt him and betrayed him and wronged him, even if they didn't come asking for it, if we're following him and his example, we need to be able to do the same. He's given us a model and he's given us a command. If we're following him, then we have to do it. That's what it means to live this out loud. I think let's wrap it up there. Hey, go talk to the person. You know who they are, you know who we're talking about. Go talk to them, forgive them on the way and release them, and I guarantee that you will find a new freedom as you follow Christ in this way, praying for you, excited for you. We'll see you next time.
