Daily Dose of Hope

November 5, 2024

Day 3 of Week 32

Scripture: Hosea 7-10; Matthew 18

Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, the devotional and podcast that goes along with New Hope Church’s Bible reading plan. On this beautiful Tuesday morning, let’s get right to our Scripture.

We start with Hosea 7-10. I don’t know about you, but reading these chapters in Hosea is hard. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, on the surface acknowledges God. They do all the religious things. But their hearts are far from God. Some of these lines are truly painful. Listen to these words in chapter 8, Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning...Now he will remember their wickedness and punish their sins... In chapter 9, we read, The days of punishment are coming, the days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this. Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great... Maybe it’s because we know what it going to happen that it is hard to keep reading. We know there isn’t repentance in Israel and by this point, there is no going back. We know they will be punished and we know it’s going to be ugly. Sin has consequences and we are going to watch it go down.

With that, let’s head over to the New Testament. Our chapter for today is Matthew 18. There is lots of great substance in this chapter, but I want to focus on verses 15-20. This is what we might call Jesus’ conflict mediation model. If you have a disagreement with someone, you go directly to that person and try to resolve it. You don’t immediately pick up your phone and share your frustration with your closest friends. You don’t post something rude on social media. You don’t decide to quit the church. You actually go to that person and have the hard conversation. Most of the time that works.

But if that doesn’t work, Jesus has more wisdom to share. Go find some other trusted believers and bring them in to help resolve the dispute. That should certainly take care of things but just in case it doesn’t, take it to the church. Do keep in mind that these were pretty small house churches so taking a dispute to the church would have looked differently than it does today. Today, it probably would mean bringing it to the pastor or some church leaders, but ONLY after you have done the other steps.

We use this model in our own leadership teams here at New Hope. That’s why if someone brings me a problem that involves another church member, I always ask, “Have you talked to that person already?” Conflict is inevitable in the church because we are all humans. However, we need to be very intentional and respectful about how we handle conflict. But we do need to handle it. Avoidance, denial, gossip, and/or projection onto others never turns out well and isn’t how Jesus intended his people to behave.

Blessings,

Pastor Vicki