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How to Agree to Disagree Part 1

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Agree to Disagree Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 15:36-41.

God is not always going to say, you do this. This is how God works, my friends. He blesses you with principles in the Bible. He blesses you with the leadership of the Spirit, and you are called to make the best judgment call that you can make, and you’ve got to live with it.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and you are listening to Hope Worth Having, radio broadcast. Thank you for tuning in today. When we come to the end of Acts chapter 15, verse 36 through 41, we see there is this confrontation in the church between the apostle and Barnabas, and we’re going to learn some principles.

What do we do when Christians disagree? How do we handle that? What is the way forward? So, I want you to grab your Bible and join me as we study. You have your Bible this morning. I want you to join me in Acts chapter 15, and we’re going to be covering verse 36 through 41.

While you’re turning there, I know that you have the unfortunate experience of having a pastor who likes Charlie Brown. And so, you get to hear stories about Charlie Brown and Lucy, and of course, you’re familiar with the Peanuts cartoon.

And one day, Lucy was talking to Snoopy. This is the little dog, if you’re not familiar. Those of you that are young enough that you have no clue who Snoopy is, then I want you to Google him. He is on YouTube and all that wonderful stuff, and that’s when times were good.

Good cartoons there. But anyway, speaking of time, Lucy said to Snoopy, she said, there are times when you really bugged me. But I must admit, there are also times, Snoopy, when I feel like giving you a hug.

Snoopy looked at Lucy, and he said, that’s the way I am. I am huggable and bugable. And so it is. with our relationships. Each of us know that we need each other, and yet there are many times that we annoy each other, if you’ll be real and honest.

There was a poet who wrote, to live above with the saints we love will certainly be glory, to live below with the saints we know. Well, that’s another story. One of the marks of a mature Christian is the ability to disagree without becoming disagreeable.

We see this in Acts chapter 15, in verse 36 through 41. Chapter 15 was the opportunity where the church leaders came together to reinforce their commitment that the gospel would be the death, burial, and resurrection, and that salvation would be imparted to all people by faith.

that there would be no strings attached, there would be no rules, there’d be no rituals that would be required in order to be a Christian, but that you would come to Christ by faith alone. At the end of that great conference, Luke, who is the human author under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he gives us a narrative of a scenario that takes place you remember if you’ve been studying with us through the book of Acts that Paul and Barnabas had launched out in Acts chapter 13 on the first missionary journey.

And they had completed that journey and they were updating their churches on how things were doing, what God was doing and the impact of the gospel upon people’s lives. And they stayed and they were teaching and they were preaching.

But then we come to verse 36, the Bible says that after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.

Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark. But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus but Paul chose Silas and departed being commended by the brethren to the grace of God and he went through Syria and Cilicia strengthening the churches.

Interesting here scenario. Note that in verse 36, the apostle is led of God to… to go see how the churches are doing. Paul had recognized that he had a responsibility to not only birth people into the kingdom of Christ and leading them to Jesus that they might know Christ and believe in Christ, but he had a responsibility to disciple them, to help them to grow in their faith.

He wanted to go back and check on them. Many of these believers were in Galatia. You might be familiar with the Bible in which one of the letters that the apostle wrote was to the Galatians. And this was a region that existed in the Roman Empire.

And we know that Paul spent much time preaching the gospel, planting churches in that region. Barnabas was excited about going, but he wanted to take John Mark with him. And Paul said, absolutely not.

If you’ve been following with us, let you know that John Mark… was on that first missionary team. We’re not ever told what or how or why John Mark left the team. But whatever it was, I can tell you that the Apostle Paul was not happy about it.

So much that he said no, he’s not coming on the second journey. We see this great dilemma that you’ve got Barnabas and if you remember back in Acts chapter four, he was the encourager. That’s what his name means, the son of encouragement.

He was always building people up and he was always trying to build relationships and build bridges and get people connected and get them to the next level. We see that even as he was helping Saul, who would later become the name Paul, but the early church was afraid of Saul because he harassed the church.

He dragged people out of their homes. He persecuted the church and when Saul suddenly declares that he’s a Christian, they’re like, yeah, right. He’s a spy. He wants to just kind of infiltrate us and catch us off guard and take advantage of us.

And so it was Barnabas who took that lead to connect Saul to the church. It was Barnabas who would bring Saul to the church at Antioch because he knew that Saul already in his faith was blossoming and growing so fast that he would be a great teacher in the church.

But the Bible says here, there was a sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over this young man, John Mark. Paul was a task -oriented guy. He had a job to get done, things to get accomplished. He was probably very much a strong personality.

He was pretty much a guy who put a plan together and he worked the plan. And he certainly didn’t want to have to depend upon somebody who might ditch him in the middle of the plan. or somebody who might leave them in the middle of the plan.

He needed to surround himself with people who were servants and people who were faithful and people who had endurance and patience and were willing to make it through the persecutions of life when it came to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

John Mark was a young man. He left. He left. He left. And unfortunately, he made a young man’s mistake. He left the job before it was done. And that irritated Paul. It frustrated him. The Bible says in verse 39, go back to chapter 15 if you will, because I want you to see that the contention became so sharp that they parted.

This sharp disagreement resulted in two great men of God, Barnabas, and Paul separating from each other. And you might ask the question, which one was right? When I was in Bible college, I had to write a paper on this passage of scripture.

Which one was right? And I want you to know that when you read the text, you know, Luke doesn’t help us out here. Luke doesn’t cake sides. He just shares what happened. He’s like a historian who is just writing down the facts, and he’s just giving us the facts, and he’s helping us to see what took place.

And of course, we understand that it’s easy for us to wanna take sides. It’s easy for us to say, well, I’m more of a Barnabas guy. And others of you might say, well, I’m more of a Paul guy. And we take sides and we say, boy, this is the way it should be.

And so really, I want you to know that there’s no sides to take. I want you to see the bigger picture of why Luke would include this in the narrative in the book of Acts. Remember, the church is growing.

And whenever the church is growing, whenever people are coming to Christ, whenever God is doing a mighty work, guess what, the devil goes to work. And he likes to divide. He likes to separate. He likes to cause problems.

He likes to cause people to become annoying and as Snoopy said, buggable. Do you ever think that Pastor Mike would quote Snoopy? Oh, buddy, we’re in for trouble, aren’t we? Well, I wanna share with you some principles on how to agree to disagree.

I think principles that we can lift out of this text that help us to understand how do we agree to disagree because let’s just be honest, not only within the church, within ministry, within the community of faith, and even our own families and our friends.

to be disagreements. And so my first point that I want you to note is that remember, even godly people will sometimes disagree. Even godly people will sometimes disagree. And I know that’s shocking to you.

We think, man, God’s people always getting long, always high -fiving, always hugging, always just agreeing together and thinking everything is wonderful, but I’m gonna tell you something, that’s not true.

And if you’re naive enough to believe that you’ll never have a disagreement in the church, or you’ll never have a disagreement with your family, or you’ll never have a disagreement at the job, or you’ll never have a disagreement with your friend, I’m telling you, you are vulnerable to the attacks of the devil.

You are open to burning bridges and destroying relationships and becoming a hurt, bitter Christian. We gotta grow. And as Paul told the Ephesian believers, we gotta grow up, not down. We gotta grow up and part of growing up is learning that not everybody agrees, even in the family of God.

Not everybody agrees. Sometimes these young couples come in and they wanna get married. And so I take them through a process of learning what it’s gonna take to be married. And we like to talk about how are you guys gonna handle disagreements?

And they giggle at me. And they say, Pastor, we don’t fight. I said, well, just get married and that’ll take care of it. Just get married. And they think there’ll never be any problems. And then they call me back two years later and they’re crying and they’re like, I can’t stand the guy.

He annoys me every day. Hey, anyways, now I want you to know, I know some of you probably don’t agree with me, but that’s okay, because we’re talking about how to agree to disagree. Hey, man, what a perfect time.

I do sometimes recommend to couples not to get married. Now, none of them have ever taken it, but I am batting a thousand. They should have never gotten married. Now, it’s not that, you know, and I’m sure some of you are saying, hey, we’ve been married 80 years, Pastor, and they told us not to get married.

And so I’m all in. But I’m just telling you, there’s some things sometimes I can see. But I want you to know that when you get married, when you have children, I want you to know when you go to work, I want you to know when you come to a church that there’s going to be conflict.

When people come to our church from another church, I say to them, if you’re over here because you’re mad at the last pastor that you ran from, I want you to know it won’t be long before Pastor Mike makes you mad.

And they said, well, how do you know that, Pastor? I said, because I make my wife mad. And if I make my wife mad, how much more am I gonna? to make you mad. So if it’s about who I’m mad at, that’s where I determine where I go to church and where I don’t go to church, I’m gonna tell you, you’re never gonna find that perfect church where you never disagree with the pastor.

Are you with me? It’s like, you know, people get, you know, they get married and then they get divorced. They get married and they get divorced. And one time a lady came to me and she was on number five.

And I recommended to her not to get married because the problem probably was not her spouses, but it was probably her. I mean, after five, wouldn’t you just give up, amen? Maybe you’re the bugable person, I don’t know.

But anyways, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verse 12, now concerning our brother Apollos, Apollos was one of the pastors at the church at Corinth. And if you’re a student of the Bible, you know that you’re a student of the Bible.

that at the church of Corinth, they all had their favorite pastor, kind of like the open door church. I hear this all the time. Hey, we love Pastor Paul. We love Pastor Peter and we love Pastor Apollos.

And they all had their different gifts and they had their different strengths. And one group said, well, I’m of Paul and I’m of Peter and I’m of Apollos. And then a super spiritual group said, I’m of Jesus, as if they were more spiritual than others.

But here’s the point, here’s what Paul’s instruction is to them at the end of the letter, 1 Corinthians 16, 12. Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit with you, the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now.

He will come when he has opportunity. Can you imagine the apostle Paul calling you on the phone and saying, look, I need you to do A, B and C and you say to the apostle, not right now, I don’t got time.

I got something else I’m involved in. That’s literally what took place. I mean, it wasn’t like a cell phone call, okay? It wasn’t like a phone call text message or anything, but that’s what happened.

And I just find that sometimes when I read the Bible, I kind of just see things there that maybe you don’t initially grasp. But here we see a disagreement between Paul and Apollos. Paul says, you need to do this.

And Apollos says, nah, that’s not gonna be what I’m gonna be able to do. The apostle Paul says it was not his will to come now. Now, why do people sometimes disagree? You write these down, okay? Write these down.

Number one, because there’s personality conflicts. Now I could solve 90% of your marriage if you could just understand each other’s personality. 90% of your marriage problems are personality problems.

They are. And that’s why it’s important to learn about the different personalities. A people, and the Bible teaches us that there are different personalities. And we see these personalities coming. through as they’re sharing the stories of the different things that they have done.

But one of the reasons people disagree is because they don’t like one personality over the other, or vice versa. And there are some personalities that they just rub each other the wrong way, just the way it is.

Number two, perspective. I don’t know if you understand, but people have different perspectives on things. You see it one way, they see it another way. And sometimes we disagree, it’s not because it’s wrong, but it’s because we see it differently.

Now let’s just imagine, and I don’t want this to happen, but let’s hypothetically imagine that on the way out, somebody drives off our campus and they have a fender bender. that I’m on one corner of the street and you’re on another corner of the street and the police officer comes and he asks for us to describe what happened and I tell one story and the other person tells another story and it’s like two different stories.

But it’s really not. It’s the same story with two different perspectives. Sometimes when you read the gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they’re telling the same story and sometimes you’ll compare them and you’ll say, whoa, look at these differences.

Is one of them lying? No, it’s the same story with two different perspectives. It’s possible for somebody to have a legitimate perspective that is different from yours, to see something totally different.

The things that impact our perspective sometimes can be the way that we’re raised, it can be the culture we live in, the trauma we deal with, the tragedies that we face in life, and all these things impact our perspective.

What’s another way that causes disagreement is priorities. We have different priorities. Now, when I first came to the Open Door Church, there would be people to say to me, now, Pastor Mike, we need to send all the church money up to the Christian school because that’s really where it’s happening.

And then another person would come up to me and say, now, Pastor Mike, we need to pour all our money in the youth group because they’re the future of the church. And then another person would say, no, we need to give all our money to the missionaries.

And they would say, that’s what we gotta do to get the gospel out. And then another person would say, well, I’m tired of supporting foreign missionaries, let’s support local missionaries. And it wasn’t that any of them were wrong, it’s just that they all had different priority.

Are you with me? And there are times in ministry, there’s times in your home, and there’s times in the workplace that the reason we’re having conflict is because you might not have the same priority as the others.

and the other person. Here’s another reason that we disagree. We have different philosophies. We have different philosophies. I tell people when Dr. Dino Padron was here, he was like an evangelist who was a pastor and he was having crusades every Sunday.

He was having big rallies every Sunday and God was using that in a great time. There was a great time of harvest. But not everybody has that philosophy. One time, Dr. Padron told me that he had 10 ,000 people in church and I said, Dr.

Padron, I don’t mean to be mean, but that’s impossible. You don’t have 10 ,000 parking spots. You don’t even have 5 ,000. And you don’t even have 2 ,000 parking spots. How could you get 10 ,000 people?

And he began to explain to me how he actually was counting people at different places across the state. And that’s fine, I’m not against that, but that was his philosophy. And we have different philosophies.

different pastors, different philosophies, different homes, different philosophies. How about this one? We have different preferences. Some of you like it one way, another person likes it another way.

You might like a certain ball team and I like another ball team. You may like music and can’t stand sports and I like sports and can’t stand music. I’m not sure what its point is. But we have different preferences.

Doesn’t make anybody bad. Doesn’t make anybody evil. But we have different preferences in our life. And again, so many factors can impact our preferences. You might like Walmart and somebody else might like Target.

All right, so we have different preferences. Matthew Henry, who was a great Puritan, Bible commentator, preacher in his day, here’s what he said relating to this fact that godly people will sometimes disagree.

He said, even those that are united to one and the same Jesus and sanctified by the one and the same spirit have different apprehensions, different opinions, different views and different sentiments and points of prudence.

It will be so while we are in this state of darkness and imperfection, we shall never be all of a mind till we come to heaven where light and love are perfect. All he’s trying to state is the obvious church.

Don’t go in to any relationship thinking we’ll always agree and that the only way we can get along is if we’re 100% in agreement. That’s just an impossibility. It’s just an impossibility. And I know that there are many Christians that are on the sidelines today that they’re not involved in a church because they could not handle disagreement in the church.

They couldn’t handle it and now they just. burn that bridge, shut down, and don’t wanna be a part of any church. The second principle I want you to learn this morning is that you gotta realize that in many disagreements, each side is valid.

Each side is valid. Life is made up of judgment calls. I want you to go back to verse 38 of chapter 15. The Bible says that Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

I asked you the question earlier, which one was right? And in my paper, I concluded they both were right. They both were right. Paul had to have somebody on his team who was dependable. He was going out on the missionary journey and he was doing a very difficult task.

He was doing something that was gonna require stamina, determination, endurance, the ability to handle opposition. Remember that on the first missionary journey, the Apostle Paul, that they were so upset with him for sharing the gospel that they threw stones at him and they left him for dead.

They thought he was dead. They drug him out to the city limits and they left him there to die. So if it doesn’t take much and you’re John Mark and you get a little pushback and all of a sudden you fold your tent up and said, I’m out of here.

I’m taking my football and I’m gonna go home. It’s not gonna work with the Apostle Paul. But yet we also understand that somebody’s gotta invest in John Mark. Somebody’s gotta get him to the next level.

Somebody’s gotta encourage him. Somebody’s gotta come along and equip him and strengthen him. They are both right and they both had valid reasons of why they made the judgment call that they made. In life, hear me, in life, the heavens are not always gonna part and God is not always gonna say, you do this or you don’t do this.

This is how God works, my friends. He blesses you with principles in the Bible. He blesses you with the wisdom of the Father. He blesses you with the mind of Christ. He blesses you with the leadership of the Spirit and you are called within the context of your personality and the context of your preferences and the context of your priorities to make the best judgment call that you can make.

And you gotta live with it. You gotta live with it. For the Apostle Paul, he felt like that was the best judgment that John Mark not come. I can’t rely on him. For Barnabas, he felt like we gotta invest in this guy and we can’t give up on him and I believe that he could become a great leader down the road.

They’re both right. Many disagreements are valid on both sides. There is diversity in the body of Christ. What’s important to you may not be important to me, but that’s okay. What you’re passionate about may not be what I’m passionate about and vice versa, but that’s okay.

We don’t always have to agree on every little thing and we don’t always have to see everything just right and it’s okay, we might have a disagreement, but both sides are valid and that’s important. Third principle I want you to learn, that when you have a disagreement, you need to reach out to those you disagree with, personally and privately.

But when I have a disagreement with someone at a level that it’s affecting me, now let me just put this out there, okay, I didn’t even put this in my notes, but I just feel that I should tell you this, that when I have a disagreement, one might ask the question.

when do I have to personally talk to them about a disagreement? Because if we spend our life trying to confront everybody and talk to everybody about a disagreement, I’m gonna tell you something, that’s all we’ll be doing in life, okay?

I mean, there are times people say, I mean, one time I came into church and the lady said, I don’t like your haircut. Hey, I’m just trying to hang on to what I got, much less you like what I got, amen?

Okay, honestly, I didn’t even give it, I just kind of walked off and I said, I appreciate the input, okay? And I just moved on in life, okay? I mean, sometimes people tell me crazy stuff, you just wouldn’t believe it and I learned this from Dr.

Dina Padrone, he told me, Mike, you don’t have to argue with everything, just say, that’s interesting. So if I’m in a conversation with you and I say, that’s interesting, that’s your cue. He doesn’t agree with me.

He just trying to move me along, amen? Isn’t that interesting? But when do I take that time to talk to somebody? Let me share it with you. When it affects you, it’s affecting your spiritual life. It’s setting you back spiritually.

Number two, when do I talk to somebody when it affects other people’s spiritual life? It’s setting them back personally. Number three, I know I need to talk to someone if it is affecting the kingdom of God, it’s affecting the work of God, it’s affecting the people of God because there are sometimes disagreements among people that it’s spreading throughout the community of faith and it’s causing a negative reaction.

Those are the three times that we need to try to do our best to work it out so that we can get the better outcome and the cause of Christ can move forward. One of the marks of maturity is the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

It’s gonna happen in the church. You’re gonna disagree with people and sometimes that’s gonna… rise to a level where you’re gonna have to figure out what you’re gonna do. And this is what happened to Paul and Barnabas, but yet God uses this in a way to help expand his kingdom, but also to help both of these men to mature and be more sanctified in their faith.

So every disagreement in our life shouldn’t be looked as a negative as much as, God what are you teaching me through this and how can I be more like Christ as a result of this? So I hope that this has been a great encouragement.

We’ll continue studying this next week. Let me remind you that Hope Worth Having is on Facebook like us and keep up with all the things going on in the church as well as on the ministry and you can live stream from the Facebook page of Hope Worth Having.

So if for any reason you can’t be in your local church or sick or you’re having some challenges relating to your health or something, feel free to pull us up and listen to us live as we teach the Word of God.

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