How To Heal Broken Relationships

Known for his unique ability to simplify profound truth so that it can be applied to everyday life, Adrian Rogers was one of the most effective preachers, respected Bible teachers, and Christian leaders of our time. Thanks for joining us for this message. Here's Adrian Rogers. I was driving down the highway one day and Paul Hardy was talking and he has little witticisms and things that he says.

And he said there was an ad that appeared in the Midwestern newspaper that said this or something like this. Will the party, our parties, who on two different occasions cut my fence, trespassed on my property, and killed some of my cows, please come back just one more time. What do you do when somebody trespasses against you?

Do you invite them back so you can shoot them? Well, look in verse 15. Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou has gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, then let him be unto thee as a heathen and a publican. Verily I say unto you that whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father, which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.

I want to talk to you tonight about how to heal broken relationships. I think all of us who've been in the service of our dear Savior for very long have had somebody who has wronged us, who has trespassed against us. And it is a very painful problem. Actually, the word to sin is hermatano, which literally means to miss the mark or to be out of bounds or to trespass. Now, this is a painful problem when somebody sins against another person, trespasses against that person, a relationship is broken, a fellowship is severed. Now, let me tell you why it's such a painful problem.

First of all, it disgraces God the Father. My daddy had a brother who had never visited our home. That brother lived in Denver.

And one day he was going to be in West Palm Beach, Florida, and visit in our home. And mother had stayed up that night to cook a turkey. And I had to sleep in a bed with my grown brother. Both of us by this time were big boys. I was playing football.

He'd come back from the army. We were sleeping on one narrow bed because we had company in the house, and the other bed was given to the company. And my brother rolled over in the middle of the night and pulled the blanket off of me. And I rolled over and pulled it back off of him. And then he gave me a knee, and I gave him an elbow. And it was dark in that room, but two grown boys were up there in a fistfight in the middle of the night.

And I'm sorry to tell you this, folks, but that's the kind of preacher you've got. And we were in a fistfight making a ruckus. Mama was up late at night basting that turkey. She threw open the door and turned on the light. And by that time, my brother had a big mouse up here on his eyebrow, and the blood was coming down just like that down his cheek. She looked at me. She had a basting spoon about that long in her hand. And she said, look what you've done to your brother.

I said, Mama, he started it. She said, you be quiet, and she hit me with that spoon right up here. And she hit me with the side of it and left a crescent mark right up there on my, a cut right up there on my head.

And when she saw that, she reached up and bit the back of her hand like, oh, look what I've done to Adrian. Folks, it was a bad night. The next morning when we came to breakfast, my brother came to breakfast with a great big knot up on his head, and I had this half-moon scar on my head. There was my daddy's brother, first time in our home, looking across the table at us. My father was mortified. My mother humiliated.

And well, they ought to have been. I wonder if there's not shame in heaven over the way some of God's children act. I mean, with shame, God the Father, when we don't get along as brothers and sisters, it disgraces the Father.

It also discourages the faithful. There's nothing worse than being in a church where there's not harmony. Nothing sweeter than being in a church where there is harmony. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.

Our Lord Jesus in John chapter 17 prayed, Lord, that they might be one that the world might believe that you've sent me. Did you know our unity is a form of evangelism? But not only does it disgrace the Father, and not only does it discourage the faithful, but it delights the foe.

Oh, how Satan loves to see brothers and sisters who cannot get along. The cause of Christ is hurt more by church squabbles and fusses, I believe, than by false doctrine. So, I'm certainly not making it easy for false doctrine, but I'm just simply saying that this thing is a perplexing problem. Now, if you're going to solve that problem, you're going to have to get a proper perspective. That's the second thing. Look, if you will, in verse 15. Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone, and if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. Now, I'm talking about a proper perspective. I want to mention three things. The very first thing you need to do is to consider your relationship to this person who has sinned against you. He is your brother.

All right? He's speaking here using masculine terms, but it could well be a sister. But what this literally means is somebody out of the same womb. That's what the word brother literally means. Somebody that has come out of the womb of grace, somebody who along with you calls God father.

And you need to consider that relationship. Well, you say maybe he's not a brother. Maybe he's never really been saved.

Maybe he just has his name on the church road. Well, if he's not a brother, then he's lost, and he's blind, he's on the road to hell. He all the more deserves your pity and your prayer. If he is a brother, then to harm him is to harm you because you're both not only brother or sister and sister and sister, but you are members of the same body.

So just consider that relationship. No matter what an individual does and no matter how they trespass against us, they are to be loved. Put these verses down. 1 John 3 verse 16. Hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. And listen to Galatians chapter 6 verse 10. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially those of the household of faith. So when you're getting this proper perspective, first of all, consider the relationship. This is a brother.

Now secondly, consider the responsibility. Look again, if you will, in verse 15. He says that if thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone.

If he shall hear thee, thou has gained thy brother. Every failing Christian is another Christian's responsibility. When one brother fails, it's up to another brother, another sister to lift him up because the Bible says in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 1, brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, then ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. So consider your relationship and consider your responsibility.

If somebody trespasses against you, it is your responsibility to try to make it right. And when you consider your relationship and you consider your responsibility, how important it is for you to consider yourself. Listen to Galatians 6, 1. If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself.

How do you consider yourself? Well, you have to ask yourself if you're trying to straighten somebody else out, are you sinning in a similar area? The apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, listen to this. Therefore, thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.

And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? I mean, how dare we, how dare we go to anybody and try and straighten anybody out if we ourselves are failing likewise. And then we have to consider also, have we been praying for this individual who sinned against us?

Now, Samuel said in 1 Samuel 12, verse 23, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. And we have to ask ourselves about the individual that we want to go straighten out. Have we set the good example before him?

Are we ourselves an example in that area? Hebrews 12, verse 13, make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way. That is, if you don't walk straight, somebody else is liable to be turned out of the way. All right, we've talked about a problem. We've talked about a perspective.

Let's talk about a procedure. What is the prescribed procedure if somebody trespasses against you? Well, first of all, you go see them. You lovingly visit and confront them.

Look in verse 15, moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. How are you to visit him? You visit him privately. Somebody sins against you, you don't tell another soul on this earth. You go to that individual and don't tell anybody else. Well, why should you not tell somebody else?

Well, they might take up an offense. And the Bible says that it's wrong for people to take up an offense. Proverbs chapter 16, verse 28, a froward man soweth strife, and a whisperer seperateth chief friends.

And Proverbs 25 and verse 9 says, debate thy cause with thy neighbor himself and discover not a secret to another. Now, if Jim Whitmire sins against me, I go to Jim. Or if I perceive that Jim has sinned against me, I go to him. I don't need to tell Bob Sorrell. I don't need to tell anybody else. I go to Jim and I speak to Jim alone about it.

Why do I do this? Well, maybe Jim didn't really sin against me. Maybe I just thought he did. Maybe I'm wrong in my facts.

And sometimes we can be wrong. I may have told you about a little boy who went to a birthday party. His mother said, if you misbehave, I've asked Miss Jones to send you home and you'll get a spanking when you get home. He hadn't been gone 10 minutes before Miss Jones came walking him back to the house. She snatched him up and spanked him and said, now, what did you do wrong? He said, I didn't do nothing wrong.

The party ain't till tomorrow. Now, sometimes, sometimes we just assume things that are not true. And so if I go to an individual and I confront him, he says, now, Adrian, that's what you think, but now let me give you the facts. I am to visit him privately and I am to visit him lovingly. The greatest test of love for a brother is, are you willing to confront him if and when he does wrong? Proverbs 27 verses five and six, open rebuke is better than secret love.

Fateful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Now, when you go to this brother, this sister, you don't go to tell him off. The Bible tells us clearly in verse 15 that we're there to gain our brother. You go to win him, not to condemn him. Now, if somebody sins against you and somebody trespasses against you, do you know what human nature is?

Human nature is this. Human nature says he sinned against me. If he wants me to forgive him, let him come to me. Isn't that what human nature says? If he comes to me and asks me to forgive him, I'll forgive him.

But am I to go to him and seek him out? Absolutely. Why? Because the Bible says we're to be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.

How? As God, for Christ's sake, forgave us. I want to ask you a question. Did God come and seek you out? Indeed, he did. We love him.

Why? Because he first loved us. God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners.

Now, if somebody sins against us, we do not have the luxury of waiting for them to come to us. We go to them, and the Bible's very clear about this. So how, in this thing of visitation, how do we do it? We visit him privately. We visit him lovingly. We visit him humbly. Again, Galatians chapter six, verse one. He says, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. When you're trying to straighten somebody else out, you'd better pray a whole lot and make certain that you go very humbly because you yourself are not perfect. So what do we do?

First of all, there is visitation. And hopefully, there is restoration because verse 15 says, if he will hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. Now, Simon Peter, who was listening to all of this, got to thinking about that. And evidently, Simon Peter had been sinned against by some fellow quite a bit. And this guy kept coming back to Simon Peter and saying, Simon, I'm sorry.

Or maybe Simon had been going to him and confronting him, and he'd been confessing and repenting and saying he was sorry. So Simon wants to know where are the limits. Go down to verse 21. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how off shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Till seven times, evidently, there must be some limit. And I think what Peter was thinking, the more a person sins, the less possibility there is for forgiveness. I mean, after a while, you get saturated with this thing and say that's it.

Peter's wondering where that is. What the Lord says is this is not a matter of mathematics. When you're considering forgiveness, forget the arithmetic. So Jesus says, no, 70 times seven. And what Jesus meant when he said 70 times seven, I thoroughly believe is you forgive him to infinitude. If he repent, then you forgive him.

Not seven times, but until 70 times seven. Now that's a very interesting thing because the truth of the matter is if you forgave him one time and you truly forgave him, then that sin is gone, it is dissolved, it is obliterated. You forgive him the next time, that sin is gone, forgiven, obliterated, buried in the grave of God's forgetfulness.

And if that is true, you're not keeping a record. So every time you forgive him is really the first time. It's the first time. It's not the seventh time or the eighth time. Because those other times don't count.

They're gone. You're not keeping score. Love does not keep a record. So you forgive that brother freely before it becomes an infection. You forgive him fully. By the way, if you go to a person and ask for forgiveness, make sure it's forgiveness that you get because a proud person will say, oh, that didn't matter. That's all right.

Forget it. Say, no, I want you to forgive me. Don't just take his shrug and say it doesn't matter. It does matter for your sake and for his sake that they come closure. And if he just says, oh, just forget it, forgetting comes as a result of forgiveness. And there can be no forgetting until the slate is clean. And don't be sloppy when it comes to getting forgiveness. Forgive freely, forgive fully, and forgive finally. I mean, buried in the grave of God's forgetfulness, we are to forgive one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us. Well, that brings up a problem.

What if the individual will not hear you as frequently as the case? He might say, I did not do wrong. I don't owe you an apology.

I don't need forgiveness. Or he might say, I'm doing wrong. So what?

Get that out of my face. Then what do you do? Well, you have to get some confirmation. First of all, there's visitation, then restoration. But what if that doesn't work? Then you get confirmation.

So you get some people to go back with you. Look in verse 16. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. So you need to get somebody to confirm what's going on.

Now, the Bible makes it very clear that two or more are necessary to witness and to confirm something because you could be wrong and he could be right. We all have blind spots. I have some. If I knew where they were, they wouldn't be blind spots.

We all have them. And so it's good if we can't get this thing done to bring somebody else there to confirm for some confirmation. They are to come not to witness against him but to witness to him to try to win this individual back. Well, suppose he turns a deaf ear to these.

Suppose he stonewalls these. You have gone to him privately. You have gone to him humbly.

You've gone to him lovingly. He won't hear you. You take some godly friends back with you. They confirm that he's done wrong and he won't hear them. Then after visitation and confrontation, then what do you do? Well, then you tell it to the church.

It gets more and more serious. Look in verse 17. And if he neglect to hear them, let him tell it to the church.

Now this is getting very serious. The matter now is brought to God's leadership there in the church and this individual then is confronted with spiritual leadership. Again, the desire is not to condemn him and not to expose him but to reclaim him. This ought to cause an individual who is challenged now by the church to go into deep self-examination and the church ought to examine and say, have we truly ministered to this individual? Have we prayed for him or her? Have we lovingly entreated this individual? Well, suppose he will not hear the church.

Then what happens? Then he must be excommunicated, put out of the church. Look, if you will, in the last part of verse 17. And if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. A heathen man was a man outside the household of faith.

That is, he needs to be told. We're sorry, my friend, but you cannot continue to live that way to disgrace the Father, to distress the faithful, to delight the foe. You cannot do that and be in communion in this church.

And the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3, verses 14 and 15, If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. Don't just keep fellowshipping him. Don't let him feel that he's still in the communion, in the fellowship.

Admonish him. Love him, pray for him, but don't let him continue to disgrace God. In the Corinthian church, there was a man who was living in incest. Actually, he was sleeping with his father's wife. I take it to mean by that language, when it doesn't say his mother, but his father's wife, that this was his stepmother.

It's a terrible thing. Paul said, we don't even see the heathen acting that way. And here was a man, a member of the Corinthian church. And Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 5, he told them to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Now, what that meant to deliver him to Satan was to take away that umbrella of protection. And he's excommunicated.

He is turned out, not because we don't love him, but because we do love him. We're talking about the destruction of the flesh. We're talking about actually his physical body or that carnal fleshly nature. It could be one or the other.

It could be both. Paul had another man that he dealt with in two of them, Hymenaeus and Alexander, 1 Timothy 1, verse 20. He speaks of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. They had been members of the fellowship, but they had living now in spiritual sin, blasphemy. So we are to excommunicate or to put out of the fellowship.

Now, this is to be done as the last, last, last resort. It is not if we find somebody who has failed that we're to put them out of the fellowship. I mean, people, all people fail. One man said he was so distressed with evil in the world today, he got to talking with God and he said to God, God, why don't you destroy these evil people? And God said, all right, I will, I'll start with you.

That is what he imagined hearing God say. I'll start with you. I mean, all of us, even the best of us fail. And a church is not a museum for saints. It's a hospital for sinners. And Romans 14 one in a paraphrase says, receive a brother into the church, even if he scarcely believes Christ can save him. And we ought to take babes in Christ, weak, stumbling people, people who fail, people who get into sin and love them, confront them, help them, build them up, not exclude them.

They need the church. But what this is talking about is a recalcitrant person, an enduring person, an obdurate person, a person who says, no, I will not change. This is my chosen way.

This is my lifestyle. I repudiate this love. I am stubbornly set in my own way. I will not hear a brother who's going to me. I will not hear a committee that's come to me. I will not hear the church that has challenged me. Then we say with a broken heart, we're sorry, brother, we're sorry.

We're sorry, my sister, we're sorry. But you cannot continue to live that way and be in the fellowship of this church. We count you as a heathen. Well, what do you do with a heathen? You love them and try and win them to Christ.

Doesn't mean that we are not concerned about this individual. We love them and try and win them to Christ, but we do not let them poison the fellowship. We do not let them hurt and distort the cause of Christ. And so if there's somebody that has sinned against you, don't make it a matter of gossip.

Don't come and tell me what some church member has done wrong. Go to that individual, pray, consider yourself, go lovingly, humbly, gently, and try to win your brother. And if he won't hear you, get a few trusted friends, spiritually mature people, and go back. And if he won't hear them, she won't hear them, then bring it to the church. And the church must confront. Then if they won't hear the church, it would break our heart. But we would have to treat them as though they had never met and known the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, an attempt with all of our heart to win them to Christ.

I say that to say this. Some years ago, I told our deacons that I was not satisfied with the way that we are practicing church discipline. We do practice church discipline.

We have practiced it, and we will continue to practice it. And we're trying to find even better ways to practice church discipline in our church because what we want is a holy church. Amen? We want a holy church. We don't want a church where we think we're better than other people. We don't want a church that has no room for those who are fallen and hurting.

We want to help those kind of people. But we want a church that when we say, oh, God, bless America and send revival to America, that God won't have to say to us, well, why don't you clean up your own act, first of all? Why do you allow and why do you count on its things that I have clearly and forbidden in my Word? Lord Jesus, we thank you so very much that you don't leave us floundering around.

You don't leave us helpless. You show us, dear Lord, in your Word, how to behave and how to love others and how to restore and reclaim brothers and sisters. And, Lord, help us to know how to mend broken brothers, how to reclaim those, dear Lord, who have fallen. But help us, oh Lord, also not to countenance things that would hurt your church or grieve the Holy Spirit or cause an unsaved world to stumble. Lord, we need such wisdom. We need such love. And we know, dear Lord, that you will give it. In your Holy Name we pray, amen. .