Day 193: Sin Confrontation 1

July 12
Today's Connected Passages: 

• Leviticus 19:17 
• 1 Samuel 3:11-21;  13:10-15; 15:12-26
• 2 Samuel 12:1-12 
• 1 Kings 18:16-19; 22:1-18 
• 2 Chronicles 18:1-17  
• 2 Chronicles 26:16-20 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. I am very happy you've decided to join us here on day number 193 of the Canon Connected. And today we're going to start a three-day series of studies of connected passages in the Bible on the very uncomfortable and yet still very relevant and applicable, and for me at least easy to talk about subject of confrontation. And it's easy for me to talk about not because I'm good at it. I absolutely am not. Many times in my life I have not confronted people well. And many times in my life I have not confronted people at all. And when I haven't confronted people well, very rarely, but it has happened a couple of times. I came on too strong, too judgmental without doing self-evaluation first, which is a big deal over the next three days for sure. Other times I was way too soft. I remember early on in my ministry in Chicago, I was confronting a person for doing something that they clearly were not supposed to do. And by the time I got done explaining, you know, to the person what their sin was, I had used so much soft language and couched it, you know, with so much inoffensive jargon that the person had no idea what I was talking about. It was very humbling. I even remember being on my I did two internships for pastoring youth ministry specifically in two churches, one in Kentucky and one in Indiana, and just being thrown to the fire, thrown to the wolf, so to speak, on this topic, because in both cases there were times I had to have uncomfortable conversations. But so I say it's easy to talk about, not because I'm good at it, uh, but because I have studied this a lot. Um, this is something that just by the very nature of pastoring, um, that you that you have to understand because you will be confronted, but you also will have to confront other people. That should be true of everybody in the church, but it does seem in American culture, especially the the leaders of the church, and and for good reason, generally speaking, are heavily involved in these in these these confrontations. So it's a it's essential that we get this right. And we have three days of readings and a wide range of readings. There's not a lot of lengthy passages in these readings because the Bible does speak to it succinctly so often. And yet we will talk about things like context of the passages we're going to talk about. And the whole biblical theology of this is just so good. That's true of all theology, but for again for me, and probably because in America we do this so poorly, we either judge too harshly or we're too lenient. Sometimes we gossip people out of the church instead of actually lovingly confronting them. But this has just been done so poorly, at least in my opinion, from my perspective, you know, pretty much my whole life, with some it with some very good exceptions that I'll I'll be leaning on, you know, people that have taught me how to do this well and modeled it well. Um, that I I just I really want to get this right. And it is absolutely something that's very touchy for some people. I know there are people out there who have been confronted in unloving ways and have church hurt as a result of it, and people and possibly even listening to this podcast that have scars from this sort of subject. So I hope and pray, but again, as I've said many times, with as much humility and love and grace, but also clarity, clarity is kindness, that we understand this topic. And I'm even calling in reinforcements because in the middle of these three days, tomorrow, the second day, I'm bringing in my good friend Dustin, as I alluded to. Um, somebody that I have mentored before, but has really become more of like a, you know, like an equal, so to speak, a uh cohort, I would say, in ministry. Um we don't have the same kind of relationship we used to, but he is under he has studied this a lot. I think he understands it. And a lot of these he's he's understood outside of my influence and teachings, but he has very good biblical opinions on it. So tomorrow in the middle of the three days, he's gonna help me hash this out some and we'll hear more from him than from me, because you get a lot from me on day one today, and then day three and two days. But as I said, just an inordinate amount of biblical passages on this subject is something we have to get right because God takes sin seriously, but he also takes the person who is confronting sin seriously. And so that's why there's so much accountability to this. There's so much to it that involves, you know, um, humility because, you know, the alternative is the very thing that Jesus that made Jesus the most angry, I think, uh, whenever he was on earth, self-righteousness, Phariseeism, whatever you want to call it. Today we're going to talk about one verse from the law and then several stories. And we're going to see stories of how it was done well in the Bible. And we see men of God who did it, even though they stood to be, you know, you know, hurt or even physically, maybe, maybe even killed. I don't know. The stories don't overtly talk about that, but we see people speak truth to power in these stories we're going to see today, and it absolutely just you know helps us to understand that this is something that even when we're terrified to do it, we have to do it. So beginning with Leviticus 19, just uh again a very simple verse. Leviticus goes in and out of laws and rituals. We've talked a lot about it this year, especially when we did the offering system, but it says, Do not hurt nurse natured, hatred in your heart for any of your relatives. And it says, confront people directly so you will not be held guilty for their sin. And so I don't know again if the second part of that is supposed to tie into the first part, you know, 100%. This is not proverbs, so it's not like it purposefully jumps in and out of different themes. So I'm I'm assuming they're supposed to be connected. But it absolutely does seem to make a connection there that if you don't confront people, then you do nurse hatred in your heart for them. And relatives here, I'm not even positive, it just means 100% blood. I really do think it's probably talking about any Israelite, anybody in the camp, so to speak, any of your people, descendants of Abraham, so to speak, which would make them relatives ultimately. But regardless of what all of that means, the idea of confront people directly so you will not be held guilty for their sin again makes the point that we sin whenever we don't call sin out. I think that's safe to say biblically. That should not be controversial. Okay. And so, 1 Samuel 3, this is a big one because Samuel is young, you know, he's a novice, he's new, um, and Eli is the man, so to speak, the man that Samuel is going to become. He is definitely, you know, the second, you know, so to speak. He's the assistant, you know, the associate. And so for him to get this message from God about how he has to tell this hard truth to Eli about his sons, again, it scares him. He doesn't want to do it. I think that's pretty plain from the passage. But Eli basically, you know, lays it out, you know, you've got to do this or, and then the consequences are going to be dire. And I don't know if there was hyperbole there or not. But Samuel, you know, all things considered, he steps up to the plate and he tells Eli exactly what God has told him. And Eli says, let him do what he thinks is best. And this is again the uh the courage of Samuel to confront Eli is a model for us and how we have to be, you know, willing in our in our boldness to tell people the truth. And again, there's gonna be a lot of teachings over the next couple of days on we've got to do it humbly. You know, that's Galatians, that's Matthew 18, you know, that's uh that's 1 Corinthians 5. I think it's gotta be, you know, done with love. Math Matthew 7, you know, you get the beam out of your own eye. We're gonna we're gonna hash all that out. We're gonna develop those theologies strong over the next few days. It's got to be done with reconciliation in mind and not, you know, to to to initially separate the person from the church. That's a last resort that we'll see. But right now we're just looking at, again, these narratives and how they do again. Just give us a model. What can this look like? And this it could be very real in 2026. So much of the Bible, again, other side of the world, three different languages, you know, ancient cultures, but so much of it is so easy to put into practice on a Tuesday morning, Thursday afternoon, or Saturday night. It is just that real. And having to confront somebody who is in a position over you because their behavior or their family's behavior or whatever it may be is out of control. Again, that is that is something that we see Samuel deal with and that we can we can learn from. The next two are really a sad side of confrontation because we get to the good you know, result of confrontation with David, but with Saul, we don't. We see a pretty good contrast, a connection through contrast, as I've mentioned several times. Because probably the hardest form of love to me in the Bible, okay, is uh biblically is when you confront somebody who is unrepentant of their sin, because then you don't have the the end result to look forward to. Sometimes confrontation, you know, it's like it's like giving somebody a shot. You know, it's painful, but it makes them healthy. And if they respond well and they say, you know what, you're right. And even if they don't respond well at first, if eventually they get around to, okay, I was offended at first, but I understand what you're saying, you're right, I need to repent, or even if they push back a little bit and say, I agree with this, but I don't agree with that, but still there's reconciliation. That's what we're going to see with David, but with Saul, there was none of that. Again, we talked about him months ago and how, again, remorse doesn't always equal repentance. And because there was no repentance in Saul's life, I mean, there was apologies, okay, and there was justification for what he was doing, and that's very real. That happens all around us all the time. The the what Madam and Eve did, you know, as far as making excuses and passing the buck and passing the blame and making themselves out to be the victims, that is something you'll see probably any church anywhere. People get confronted, and that's that's often their go-to move. But when people aren't repentant and you have to deal with that, that is truly, I mean, that that's one of the hardest forms of love that I think uh, you know, a church, a Christian, anybody, but especially a leader, will ever have to deal with. And that's precisely what Samuel is dealing with here. This is not like Eli responding positively. This is Saul, again, being very underhanded and very, you know, very hip hippo hypocritical and trying to justify himself and trying to apologize without really turning his heart toward God. But then we do see again a positive example of this from the other side with David. We've talked about Nathan confronting David in other readings, but it comes up here because it's exactly what happens. Nathan the prophet has to go to the king, just as Samuel did. And again, he has a better result, but I don't think that makes his courage any less of a model for us. Because he not only had to go to David and confront him, he had to tell him a story so that David would see his hypocrisy. And this is risky, it has to be. But Nathan does the courageous thing and go and goes right to him and confronts him, and the and the result is positive. David confesses his sin, he doesn't just apologize, he goes to the temple and worships, he turns his heart to God, and David's story in the Bible was way more positive than negative. So, but it had to center on confrontation. Okay, God could have done it in any number of ways, but the way God chose it was the prophet, just as Samuel going to saw, the prophets often went to the leaders, to the kings, to confront them. That's a lot of these stories, and so um the Nathan the prophet shows you know great courage here in confrontation, and again, he gets the good result. David is humble in his response. And then Elijah and Ahab, another one that is absolutely very negative because Ahab is truly, I mean, he's probably worse than Saul, at least by some measures of morality and lack of repentance. Although as far as the end result of Saul, it doesn't really get any worse. But Ahab did a lot of worse worse things. Saul at least did a lot of good things, and Ahab maybe did one or two that we could, you know, sort of classify as good, but Ahab was just pure evil. And one of the things you see from Ahab here that I want to point out that's not directly tied to confrontation, but this is something you can get from confrontation, is that he says, So it is really you, you troublemaker of Israel. I started to put a connection here to those verses in Isaiah 5 that say, Woe unto you when you call evil good and good evil, because that's exactly what happens here. Ahab's telling Elijah, you're the troublemaker when Ahab is the troublemaker. This is called deflection, I think. You know, maybe not even in psychology, maybe that's just a general word, but I've seen this a lot of times, people or projection is probably what I should say. More specifically, he's projecting his own, you know, sinful behavior on the person who's confronting him. And this is sin. Okay, the the need for confrontation is already sin, but when you try to turn it around on the person who is righteous and is doing the confronting, that's exactly what we see here. He's calling Elijah the troublemaker, and Elijah is the prophet of God, who's not perfect, of course, but who is doing the right thing here. And then we see, you know, two stories, uh two parallel stories about Micaiah, you know, confronting um Ahab as well. And I find this one interesting in contrast to to Elijah, not the passage we just read, but Micaiah's not that long after, you know, um Elijah, you know, has the the showdown on Mount Carmel and he calls down fire from heaven and all the false prophets and Ahab and they're all, you know, they're scattering and they and they're the and they're the ones who are weak and pitiful and are at God's mercy. And you have to wonder if if prophets like Micaiah aren't thinking, you know, maybe I'll get to do that. But instead of that, Micaiah confronts, you know, Ahab at uh Jehoshaphat's request, and he gets slapped in the face. That's just a good reminder, too, that not all of Christianity is big and exciting like you know, Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. A lot of Christianity is Elijah struggling with his feelings and depression or whatever in chapter 19. And a lot of it's Micaiah doing the right thing and not getting, you know, the great you know response from God from you know fire from heaven or or or whatever. Instead, he gets slapped in the face. That's just you know, trivial, you know, menial, mundane kind of stuff in the very negative sense. But Micaiah does it. Micaiah, uh, he's sarcastic at first. We could probably do a whole reading on biblical sarcasm, probably never will, but there's a lot of it in there, but it's uh but Micaiah is sarcastic at first, but then he tells the truth. He does not back down from speaking truth to um to King Ahab. And then the last one is a story we've studied a few times already, even just very recently. Uzziah and his pride. And I mentioned this whenever we talked about it because we talked about, you know, how kings weren't allowed to go into the temple. Um but Uzziah does because he's arrogant, he's let all his success go to his head. And so all of these men, you know, have to confront him. It wasn't just um Azariah, the high priest, but it was eighty other priests of the Lord, all brave men, it said, and we've talked about that before. Um, and then we saw Uzziah recently because of the leprosy as well. But these men, the eighty men, and again, there's a lot of times you will need strength in numbers. Not all confrontation, even according to Matthew 18, is supposed to be one-on-one. It starts that way. And of course, a lot of circumstances lie outside of Matthew 18, in my opinion. We'll talk about that some too. But the idea here is, you know, that he there was strength in numbers. They confronted Uzziah and they did it with with eighty men, eighty-one men, I guess, if you count Azariah. But they still confronted and they were all brave. So the really the big connection today is the courage it takes, you know, to confront, especially when the person is over you, or when the person has power or the person has the ability to hurt you. Um that takes courage for sure. There's a lot in the Bible about, you know, not casting pearls before swine. You know, sometimes with people and they're acting foolishness, it's better not to do anything, you know, and there's definitely times where the Bible says, answer a fool according to his folly, and he doesn't, that's Proverbs 26, 4 and 5. But in these cases, I think there's absolutely no doubt when a person in the church is caught in sin, there has to be some sort of confrontation. We're not just talking about acting foolish on Facebook or whatever, you know, or or whatever it may be. But there are there's a definite need for healthy, loving, humble, as we'll talk about the next two days. I want to make that clear in case anybody's listening and you've got baggage, spiritual, emotional, mental baggage from this topic. Believe me, we're gonna talk about the person who does the confronting and the needs there and the need for genuine love. I want what's best for you. You know, Paul not just casting somebody out of the church, but handing them over to Satan, multiple people, for the salvation of their souls, that sort of thing. So that's coming. And Dustin's gonna help me again to work all that out. But right now I want you to see just how the people in the Old Testament, how how bold and courageous they were whenever they confronted people based on what God said. This is not selfish, it's not arrogant, it's not self-righteous, what any of these confronters did in these stories. So two more days of this, a lot of passages. I hope you'll read them, I hope you'll meditate on them, and I hope that the podcasts are very helpful in thinking through them. So come back and be with me, be with us again tomorrow, me and Dustin, and then the next day after that, and we'll do three days of reading, seeing, and studying the connections in regards to confrontation. Thank you.