Seeker Issue: Coping with life's problems - WordPress.com

Abundant Life Issue: How to get along with people
#4 People Power -- Matthew 7:1-5, 5:38-42, 5:23-26; 7:12 Introduction
We can't make it through life without dealing with people. They are
everywhere. They are in our homes and at our work. They are at church and
where we enjoy our leisure.
Like it or not, we need people. We might wish we could live life totally
on our own terms, but that is impossible.
Learning to deal with people will help us at work or at church. It will
help us live a happier life. Let's look at some excerpts of Jesus' Sermon
on the Mount, to see what principles he can give us for getting along with
people.
I. Be careful about judging others (7:1-5).
A. This does not say we cannot or should not discern good from
evil.
B. It does say we should not subject others to unreasonable
criticism.
C. We are not wise enough to make such criticisms.
D. We are not good enough to make such criticisms.
E. It will keep us busy enough, just monitoring ourselves.
F. If we try to straighten other people out while we have the same
problem, then we become as comical as the man with a plank in
his eye trying to pick out specks in others' eyes.
II. Do more than expected (5:38-42).
A. Turn the other cheek. This does not mean that we cannot defend
our lives. It does mean that we should not take little insults
too seriously.
B. Go the extra mile
C. Give another your coat
D. This will drive others crazy until they find out why you are so
kind.
III. Don't let disputes fester (5:23-26).
A. It has been said that time heals all wounds, but this is not
always true.
B. Sometimes time allows a situation to become worse and worse
until it becomes dangerous.
IV. Show kindness to everyone (5:43-48).
A. It is a shame to say sometimes we can't even show kindness to
those who are kind to us.
B. Jesus wants us to be kind, even to the undeserving.
C. Showing kindness to an enemy is the ultimate revenge.
V. Treat others as you want to be treated (7:12).
A. This is what has been called the golden rule, for the principle
is worth gold to us.
B. Jesus saw this statement as summary of the law and the prophets.
C. Notice that Jesus states this as a positive. He didn't say,
"Don't do to others anything you would not want done to you."
Conclusion
People who have people power can be used of God in a mighty way. After all,
people are His first concern, and people are His greatest tools.
Illustrations
A lot of us are like the cartoon character, who said, "I love mankind. It's
people I can't stand."
Did you hear about the man who had just been won to Christ? A old
acquaintance tried to get him involved in a brawl and punched him in the
face. The new Christian replied, "You must know that my Lord teaches me
that if you strike me on the right cheek, I must turn the other. This I
will do. But, you need to know that if you hit the other cheek, he left me
no further instructions." More detailed notes (for teachers)
We can't make it through life without dealing with people. They are
everywhere. They are in our homes and at our work. They are at church and
where we enjoy our leisure. Like it or not, we need people. We might wish we could live life totally on
our own terms, but that is impossible. Learning to deal with people will help us at work or at church. It will
help us live a happier life. Let's look at some excerpts of Jesus' Sermon
on the Mount, to see what principles he can give us for getting along with
people. I. Be careful about judging others (7:1-5).
When Jesus spoke like this, as so often in the Sermon on the Mount, he was
using words and ideas which were quite familiar to the highest thoughts of
the Jews. Many a time the Rabbis warned people against judging others. "He
who judges his neighbor favorably," they said, "will be judged favorable by
God." they laid it down that there were six great works which brought a man
credit in this world and profit in the world to come-study, visiting the
sick hospitality, devotion in prayer, the education of children in the Law,
and thinking the best of other people. The Jews knew that kindliness in
judgment is nothing less than a sacred duty. One would have thought that this would have been a commandment easy to
obey, for history is strewn with the record of the most amazing
misjudgments. There have been so many that one would have thought it would
be a warning to men not to judge at all. It has been so in literature. In the Edinburgh Review of November, 1814,
Lord Jeffrey wrote a review of Wordsworth's newly published poem The
Excursion, in which he delivered the now famous, or infamous verdict: "This
will never do." In a review of Keats' Endymion, The Quarterly patronizingly
noted "to a certain amount of talent which deserves to be put in the right
way." Again and again men and women who became famous have been dismissed as
nonentities. In his autobiography Gilbert Frankau tells how in the
Victorian days his mother's house was a salon where the most brilliant
people met. His mother arranged for the entertainment of her guests. Once
she engaged a young Australian soprano to sing. After she had sung, Gilbert
Frankau's mother said, "What an appalling voice! She ought to be muzzled
and allowed to sing no more!" The young singer's name was Nellie Melba. Gilbert Frankau himself was producing a play. He sent to a theatrical
agency for a young male actor to play the leading male part. The young man
was interviewed and tested. After the test Gilbert Frankau telephones to
the agent. "this man," he said, "will never do. He cannot act, and he never
will be able to act, and you had better tell him to look for some other
profession before he starves. By the way, tell me his name again so that I
can cross him off my list." The actor was Ronald Colman who was to become
one of the most famous the screen has ever known. Again and again people have been guilty of the most notorious moral
misjudgments. Collie Knox tells of what happened to himself and a friend.
He himself had been badly smashed up in a flying accident while serving in
the Royal Flying Corps. The friend had that very day been decorated for
gallantry at Buckingham Palace. They had changed from service dress into
civilian clothes and were lunching together at a famous London restaurant,
when a girl came up and handed to each of them a white feather-the badge of
cowardice. There is hardly anyone who has not bee guilty of some grave misjudgment;
there is hardly anyone who has not suffered from someone else's
misjudgment. And yet the strange fact is that there is hardly any
commandment of Jesus which is more consistently broken and neglected. There are three great reasons why no man should judge another.
(i) We never know the whole facts of the whole person. Long ago Hillel the
famous Rabbi said, "Do not judge a man until you yourself have come into
his circumstances or situation." No man knows the strength of another man's
temptations. The man with the placid and equable temperament knows nothing
of the temptations of the man whose blood is afire and whose passions are
on a hair-trigger. The man brought up in a good home and in Christian
surroundings knows nothing of the temptation of the man brought up in a
slum, or in a place where evil stalks abroad. The man blessed with fine
parents knows nothing of the temptations of the man who has the load of a
bad heredity upon his back. The fact is that if we realized what some
people have to go through, so far from condemning them, we would be amazed
that they have succeeded in being as good as they are. No more do we know the whole person. In one set of circumstances a person
may be unlovely and graceless; in another that same person may be a tower
of strength and beauty. In one of his novels Mark Rutherford tells of a man
who married for the second time. His wife had also been married before, and
she had a daughter in her teens. The daughter seemed a sullen and unlovely
creature, without a grain of attractiveness in her. The man could make
nothing of her. Then, unexpectedly, the mother fell ill. At once the
daughter was transformed. She became the perfect nurse, the embodiment of
service and tireless devotion. Her sullenness was lit by a sudden radiance,
and there appeared in her a person no one would ever have dreamed was
there.
There is a kind of crystal called Labrador spar. At first sight it is dull
and without luster; but if is turned round and round, and here and there,
it will suddenly come into a position where the light strikes it in a
certain way and it will sparkle with the flashing beauty. People are like
that. They may seem unlovely simply because we do not know the whole
person. Everyone has something good in him or her. Our task is not to
condemn, and to judge by, the superficial unloveliness, but to look for the
underlying beauty. That is what we would have others do to us, and that is
what we must do to them. (ii) It is almost impossible for any man to be strictly impartial in his
judgment. Again and again we are swayed by instinctive and unreasoning
reactions to people. It is told that sometimes, when the Greeks held a particularly important
and difficult trial, they held it in the dark so that judge and jury would
not even see the man on trial, and so would be influenced by nothing but
the facts of the case. Montaigne has a grim tale in one of his essays. There was a Persian judge
who had given a biased verdict, and he had given it under the influence of
bribery. When Cambysses, the king, discovered what had happened, he ordered
the judge to be executed. Then he had the skin flayed from the dead body
and preserved; and with the skin h