Living with Eternal Perspective | Guest Speaker Marshall Rogers

Good evening.

The week before last, Tech had our uh spring break.

So we got to go home for a week and maybe relax a little bit, do anything except for school for the most part, and fill my time with things that I really didn't have the time for otherwise.

Um those things kind of varied, but one of the things that kept coming up through that week before last is kept watching debates online, um, and specifically spiritual debates.

Some of them were more on the aggressive side, some were more calm and cool and relaxed, and maybe were more of dialogues than debates.

But there was one in particular that really caught my eye.

And it caught my eye because these two gentlemen were exceptionally gracious with each other, they were charitable.

I didn't know that word had two meanings until recently, but they were they were kind, they were forgiving to one another.

What made that even weirder is that one gentleman was a Roman Catholic, and the other was actually a Reformed Baptist, which, if you know anything about those two groups, they're diametrically opposed in so many different ways.

And they were talking about an issue that they really did not agree on, maybe at all.

In some areas, yes, but overall, there was a sharp disagreement between the two.

But they were still gracious, they were patient with each other, they let each other talk.

And after watching some debates where that was not the case, um, instead, people were talking over each other.

Um, the cross-examination was brutal to watch because while it's supposed to be a question and answer session, it turned a lot more into let me ask you a question and then talk over you, and then the other guy did the same.

But this debate wasn't anything like that.

And so it kind of gets me to what I want to talk about tonight.

It's that topic of disagreeing productively.

If you think about that, as Christians especially, disagreement is just a part of life.

And we've got God's word with us, we've got his truth, but unfortunately, we're imperfect.

We're gonna be imperfect in how we uh break down God's word and how we dive into it and how we communicate that to other people.

And all of that kind of adds up to a reality that we're going to disagree at some point.

Sometimes about more important issues, sometimes about things that are maybe less important.

But it's important to think about how do we make those disagreements productive?

How do we gain something beneficial from them rather than disagreeing and then agreeing to disagree and leaving it at that?

You want to be turning over to Acts 18?

We're gonna look at a little episode there that you're probably familiar with, just for a few minutes.

But be thinking about that.

How do you make a disagreement less of a debate and more of a discussion, a dialogue, where you're getting something out of it and they're getting something out of it?

And if you don't end up agreeing by the end of the discussion, you can at least come away from it saying, okay, I understand where this person's coming from.

I understand that they care about God just as much or more than I do.

How do we get to that point where we can have those productive discussions?

Um so when I was thinking through that, when was a time in Scripture that two people disagreed or two groups disagreed, and the outcome was beneficial?

And one thing that really came to mind was an episode we actually looked at a few weeks ago.

Um, Nate kind of looked through the end of this passage in chapter 18.

We're gonna be looking at the story of Priscilla and Aquila and Apollos.

So let's go ahead and read through this passage.

It's about four verses.

So starting in verse 24, Luke writes, Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.

This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John.

So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue.

When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

And when he decided to cross to Achaea, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him.

And when he arrived, he had greatly helped those who had believed through grace, for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.

But I want you to think about three different things in particular here.

First thing is, what do we notice about Apollos?

If you see there, it says he was an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures.

He knew God's word.

In addition to that, he was fervent in spirit.

He was ready to preach, he was excited to do that.

But what do we see?

We see that when he encounters Priscilla and Aquila, his reaction isn't really negative.

Instead, it's the complete opposite, at least from what we can tell.

Um, sometimes I wish this passage was a little longer so we could see what were the details of their conversation.

How did that actually play out?

Because it was something pretty major that he was uh missing from that puzzle piece of the gospel.

But regardless, we realized one thing.

We realized that he was willing to be challenged.

He knew God's word, and that didn't just stop there.

He was willing to push forward and realize, okay, I know it, but I also realized that there's others who may know it better than I do or more accurately than I do.

Um, and all in all, he was willing to be challenged.

He was willing to even have that conversation with these two people, these two Christians.

So that's where we need to start in our own discussions with people.

Realize that you and I don't know everything.

We may have had a whole lifetime of studying scripture, but that doesn't mean we're incapable of having good discussions and learning from people around us, Christians around us.

I think that's a trap we can fall into of thinking that we can't be challenged, we shouldn't be challenged, um, because we already know everything.

And that's not a super healthy attitude to have.

The second thing I want you to notice is while their their conversation in verse 26 is it it's really short.

So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue.

When Priscilla and Aquila came to him, they heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

That's all we hear of their their actual discussion.

But the second thing we realize there is that they had to care for the truth.

Both parties did, not just one, not just the other.

But Priscilla and Aquila, they cared enough when they heard the truth taught, or they heard the things that Apollos was teaching, rather.

They cared about the truth enough to take him aside to compare what they knew with what he knew and determine what was actually accurate.

And in this case, obviously, Apollos, he recognized that these two people had a piece that he was missing, a piece of the picture that he didn't quite grasp.

And so he had the ability to recognize that.

And sometimes our discussions with people aren't going to be necessarily the same way.

Sometimes people are gonna have a piece that you're missing, um, and maybe you'll have a piece to give to those people.

Um and sometimes it's just two parties who believe they have the whole picture, um, but one of them is incorrect.

So it just comes down to actually having a discussion and being willing to hash it out.

And that also starts with caring about the truth enough to disagree.

Um, sometimes we look at disagreement as this really negative thing, um, and society as a whole is just culturally, we don't like to have those tough discussions.

We want to shy away from them.

And a lot of the time it's because we find ourselves not caring about the truth enough, um, especially when it comes to spiritual discussions, because we have the truth right here.

Maybe we're scared um of a number of things.

Ultimately, we don't want to be challenged.

And number two, maybe sometimes we don't care enough about what the truth is to be able to share that with other people.

So that's number two, care about the truth.

The third part is having a readiness to align our own will with God's.

If you think about that, it's really a simple idea in and of itself, but it's incredibly hard to do in many cases in our lives.

But if you think about it too, anyone, everyone who in this room who's a Christian, you've looked at your life, you've realized you've sinned, you've fallen short, and you've realized that God's will is triumphant over your own, ultimately meaning that your will has to conform to his.

And so when we look at scripture and then have those discussions with the people around us, whenever we do reach a point where we can make a conclusion, okay, this is accurate, this is the truth.

We have to be willing enough within ourselves to then conform our lives to it, to conform how we think, to set our pride aside, which is probably the hardest thing to do, and better align ourselves with the Lord.

But if we see, that's exactly what Apollos did here.

He looked at the truth, he realized that it was presented to him, and he didn't go about his day just teaching exactly how he taught before.

He he changed.

He shifted his attitude, he shifted what he was teaching.

And not only that, but he didn't allow that affect how excited he was to teach those things.

If you see at the end there, verse 27, and when he desired to cross to Achaea, the brethren, which I'd assume includes Priscilla and Aquila, wrote exhorting the disciples to receive him.

And when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace, for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.

So he continued in that he was just as fervent to teach God's word to these Jews, to teach the message of Christ to these Jews, even when he had to be corrected and taken aside and had his his whole view shifted on maybe a number of things.

Excuse me, we'll go ahead and finish there.

Beginning of verse 12, Paul writes, Therefore is the elect of God holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so also you must do.

This isn't necessarily specific to the topic of disagreement, but I do want you to look at as you go about your week this week, are your disagreements full of tender mercies?

Are they full of kindness?

Are they full of humility?

Are they full of meekness and long suffering?

Are they full of patience with other people?

Maybe when they misspeak or believe something that's incorrect.

Are they full of forgiveness?

Definitely something worth thinking about as you go about your everyday life.

These principles, obviously, they can apply to discussions that aren't strictly spiritual.

And that seems to be the case with a lot of principles in scripture.

But when it comes to these spiritual discussions, these doctrinal discussions, make sure that they're filled with grace.

Make sure that they're filled with forgiveness.

There's a lot of people who strive to follow that rule, but in practice, whenever they get encountered with somebody who disagrees with them, they fall far short of giving the benefit of a doubt to the person that they're talking to, to being forgiving to that individual.

I think we can really make strides with a lot of people in our lives when we realize that even if we're right, the way we present that truth matters.

If you look at your own lives, I'm sure you've been encountered before by maybe somebody who is correcting you and you get defensive.

I felt that before.

I felt that a whole lot.

And in fact, that's why I wanted to speak about this tonight because I'm really, really not great at doing this.

Um college, college offers a lot of opportunities to talk with unique people, with unique experiences, with totally different views than I have.

And in a lot of cases, I've fallen short of that mark of being forgiving with people, of not feeling immediately defensive and curling up into a ball and trying to run away.

I appreciate your attention, Night.

And Nate's gonna get up here and deliver another great message here in a minute.

But I encourage you as you go about this week just to take that with you.

Think about how you can productively disagree this week and the next few months, whenever you get the opportunity.

Thank you for your attention.