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Who already has their Christmas decorations up. Whatever, whatever. It’s all over. Or you ate the turkey and got right up and got on it, I know it. Some of you guys. Well, holiday season is upon us, right? We all know it. After all, Costco had Christmas stuff out in August, so if you love Christmas, you could have started four months early this year. Um, and you know, when the holiday seasons come around. Something I have noticed throughout the years, especially now you’re married. I’m married. I’m older. Have a house to take care of. It’s just as people get together and as holiday seasons start to be celebrated, we are great at accumulating trash. It doesn’t matter how green you think you’re going to go this Christmas, there is just going to be trash. And some of us, I’ve noticed, attack trash differently, don’t we? Some of us, you’re like a machine. As soon as you see that sucker full, you bag it up and it’s out the door. You’ve got the kids trained. At least bag it up and out the door. Right. Some of us were more methodical in the procedure of the trash. We start to pile it up. We’ve had a big celebration and and we know it’s going to take multiple trips if we’re having dinner at our house that day. And so you become what we call the stuffer, right? You just shove that baby down. I know we it’s a contest for you.
How much more can we get in? It’s like the guy packing the moving truck, and then others hate the trash so much that you just. You make the piling of the trash an art form. I’ve noticed we’ve got that ability really well here at alpine. After church on on Sunday, our trash accumulates and it’s like, how high can we get the tower to stack before it finally topples over and somebody takes it out? But all of us have methods to the trash and holiday seasons come and trash just piles up. And it’s something else I’ve noticed with holiday seasons is a lot like physical trash. Relationships have the same thing. It seems like holiday seasons are supposed to be a time of joy, but a lot of times they carry with it tension as family gathers and as friends get together. As you run on Black Friday down the hall to grab the game that you think you deserve before someone else, right? Relationships experience tension and trash accumulates in our relationships, and sometimes we don’t know how to respond when tough situations arise. We treat our relationship trash like we treat physical trash. Some of us, we like to just take care of it right away. Some of us like to shove it down and just wait. Sometimes when relationships keep create for us tension, we ignore it. Some of us allow it just to pile up and it gets stinky.
You know, when someone takes out the actual trash in your home? The reason that we do that is we understand that when we take that bag and we get it out of the house, especially when you’ve got a kid in diapers, when you allow that thing to exit the building, the home is just so much more pleasant to live in. It’s enjoyable, isn’t it? You’ve now got the space, you can now smell fresh air, and there’s an opportunity to just start gathering the trash again. It’s the same thing with relationships. When it comes to relationships, someone in those relationships has to recognize the beauty for which those relationships were carried or created. Someone has to understand within that environment unless someone takes out the trash, the beauty of what that relationship is intended to be cannot be appreciated. And then recognizing the beauty of what a relationship is all about, someone has to be willing to take out the relational garbage. How do we do that? There are lots of approaches that we could talk about with reconciliation and relationships and how that works out. The the topic that I just want to discuss with us this morning is the idea of forgiveness. Without forgiveness, relationships can’t succeed. Everyone in your life will make a mistake at some point and disappoint you in some way. That’s what being human is all about. And relationships can’t thrive and succeed without the basis of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is important to the health of all our relationships. Not only that you receive it, but that you’re also willing to give it, and especially around the holidays. God desires for us to enjoy the company of one another, and forgiveness is the tool through which God allows us to do that. Forgiveness helps us to take out the trash. I just want us to recognize this morning. I want to talk about forgiveness. And and I want you to know that this is probably one of the most difficult things in the Christian life to practice. This is something that’s easy to say on your lips, but difficult to live in our lives. As a matter of fact, I already know that if we’ve come in today and forgiveness is something that’s challenged our life, the minute that I brought it up, we’ve become stressed on the inside, thinking of some individual in our lives that I am not forgiving regardless of what I say today. Right? That person deserves my anger. And so I just want to talk about what forgiveness is. And here’s what I want to do is we talk about it. We want the scriptures to speak to our lives. And I’m not here to guilt anybody this morning. So we’ll look at what God’s Word says. And as we discover what forgiveness means and how it relates to Christ and our relationship with him, let’s desire to allow God to work on our hearts.
Can I tell you this morning when it comes to forgiveness, knowing it’s easy to say, hard to live, you’re never going to have the ability to forgive someone unless you turn it over to Jesus. Someone could have so wronged you in your life, and you carry such anger and resentment in your heart. The Lord really needs to make your heart sensitive to that person. You need his strength and power to do it, and I’m not asking you to do it on your own. All I’m saying this morning is just let’s look at what God’s Word has to say. Forgiveness is the core of relationships. It’s the core of who Jesus is. It’s the core of the gospel. Matter of fact, when you read this is a famous a famous verse within Scripture. It dictates to us the reason Jesus’s presence was made known on the earth. It says in Isaiah 59 and verse two. Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and iniquities, which uses a clever word of talking about sin. Your sins have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. God is very simplistically recognizing for us what sin does to our relationship with him. It’s the same thing that sin does to any relationship that we have with anyone.
It creates division, it creates tension. It creates a problem. It creates a barrier for which that relationship can’t be made known. It’s as if a wall stands before you and the person you desire to love and experience life with. And God is saying, we have that same problem with him. Sin has hidden his face from you. Sin has created a barrier between you and your relationship with God. Good news is that in recognizing that Jesus did something about it, it tells us in Ephesians chapter one, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. And what it’s saying is, in him we have redemption. This has been paid for the sins that you have. Do you know when someone does something against you that’s offensive? There are two choices that we can make. We can either have them pay for their sin, or we can pay for that sin for them. When someone sins against you, someone will always pay for that sin, whether it be the offender or the one who is offended. We look at a relationship with the Lord. Religion will tell you, spend the rest of your life living these good standards and maybe, maybe it will be enough for God to forgive you. But you’ll never really know. Just do these good things. When you get to the other side, cross your fingers and hope that God lets you into his kingdom.
Jesus’s model was a different way. In fact, the Bible tells us that God gave us the law to prove to us that we couldn’t live up to the standard. Us earning our forgiveness is impossible. Here’s why. When you sin against an eternal God, your sin will last for eternity. And no matter how good you choose to do for your life, no good can ever undo a wrong. It’s been done. And so Jesus enters the picture and he says this. In him we have redemption through his blood. Jesus looked at the debt that you owed God because of your sin and decided you couldn’t afford to pay it, and so Jesus redeemed it on his behalf. He paid for it. How did he pay for it? Through his blood. Through his blood. You’ve received forgiveness. Jesus has chosen to take on your debt on his behalf according to his riches, the riches of his grace. Grace is something that we don’t earn. Jesus saw the importance of taking out the trash, because Jesus understood the beauty of the relationship for which he created you to have on this earth. The Alpine Bible Church we know forgiveness is significant to our lives because we say the theme of our church is relationships. Learning to love God with all of our hearts. And in that love for the Lord, learning how to better love one another as Jesus works in our lives, relationships is at the core of forgiveness.
The gospel and Jesus is at the core of forgiveness. And I love in the book of Matthew, we’re just going to highlight just a couple of these verses and talk about it today as it relates to us and forgiveness. But Jesus in Matthew outlines really what forgiveness is about. Excuse me. Let me skip ahead. He says in Matthew 523, therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering. Do you realize how important Jesus is saying to us this morning as we gather together and worship? How important forgiveness is? Forgiveness is easy to say, but man, it is so hard to do. And the Lord is saying to us, before you even get together on church on Sunday, and you worship if you’re sitting here and you’re worshiping and you’re thinking, man, you have problems in a relationship with someone else where you’ve just offended them, your relationship with God is so important, and being able to connect with him, that God’s desire for you is to leave the middle of your worship and go and seek forgiveness and reconciliation with that person before you come back and engage your worship with God.
Here’s why. Our lack of unforgiveness relates directly in correlation to our relationship with Jesus. You remember in the Great High Priestly Prayer where Jesus taught us to pray, Our Father which art in heaven, he says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our what? Debtors. Jesus is saying to us, your relationship with God is hindering upon your willingness to be able to forgive others as well. Meaning, if you hold bitterness and resentment and anger in your heart, you’re going to feel a distance in your walk with the Lord. Forgiveness is important. And if you feel that you’ve wronged someone so important is your relationship to God and worship with him. That God’s desire is that you carry a heart of humility in seeking forgiveness with the one you’ve offended. Not only does God ask us to go seek forgiveness with those who we’ve offended, he also says in Matthew 15, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. Not only does Matthew tell us if we’ve wronged someone, go seek forgiveness. Matthew’s also telling us that if someone has wronged us, that relationship is so important that you go and seek forgiveness. I love the way he says it here, because sometimes in our anger, we like to bring up the past sins people have made to make them feel bad. As if while we’re going to forgive you, we also want to put this guilt and pressure upon you.
And we publicly just display that frustration. And Matthew says in this, in this verse, listen, the goal isn’t really forgiveness, although forgiveness is a part, the goal is reconciliation to enjoy that relationship. And so you’re thinking about the other person’s interests as well as your own, and seeking to reconcile what God desires for you to have between one another. That’s the goal not to feel guilty, not to be angry, not to show resentment to someone, but to to to bring that relationship back to the wholeness that God desires for it to have. And so he says, when we go to a brother who sins against us, show him his fault in private. It means we do this with respect. It’s not about getting in front of everyone, just declaring what this individual has done wrong. It’s about giving the opportunity of recognizing their own heart what they’ve done wrong before God and before you. Just repenting of that in humility because their desire is to reconcile the relationship as you’ve shown respect to them, to come and do the same. Jeez, forgiveness is so easy to say, but it’s so hard to do. And I got to admit, when it when it comes to my own Christian life, and I see what Jesus says about forgiveness, even demonstrating in his own life what forgiveness really means and how significant it is.
It just makes me want to stop and say, do I? Do I really want to follow Jesus? I mean, look at what he’s challenging our life to. At the very least, if I if I want to follow Jesus, God, can I just do it when it’s convenient? I like 95% of what you have to say. Can I avoid like, this part, please? And this is hard. How in the world can we forgive those who who have done us wrong? Jesus even says in Colossians, bearing with one another, I love this picture. It’s like when you get together at church, it’s not perfect. So it’s saying, if you’re if you’re looking for the perfect church, it’s going to be in heaven. All right. It’s not here. Someone beside you, probably within five feet of your parameter today will make you aggravated. Who knows? We’re a little packed today. Maybe. Maybe just someone being close to you has just got you tense already this morning. And so when we practice this verse, we bear with one another and we forgive each other. We can look to your neighbor and say, I forgive you for sitting so close to me. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should, should you? It’s important for us to answer the question, how exactly did the Lord forgive? And we’ll do that in a minute. But then he goes on and says in Ephesians four, be kind to one another tender hearted.
Listen, I got to tell you, when I am angry, the last feeling that I have within my heart is tender hardness towards you, right? If you’ve done me wrong, Tenderheartedness would be the last emotional experience that I have on my insides, right? I got a little bit of thunder, a lot of lightning. No, I’m just kidding. But not tender hearted, that’s for sure. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. I like that as you think about the way it relates to Jesus. Jesus knew that he was coming to die for sins, and he and Jesus knows he asked you to forgive. And and Jesus could have gone to the cross and just been so angry. Why did you guys make me do this? You know. But he didn’t. In humility, he laid down his life to forgive. When we forgive, it’s not with a bitter attitude. It’s with the desire to reflect the very same nature for which we’ve been forgiven by Jesus. Do you know if you’re standing here today and you are a believer in Christ, you represent the most forgiven people in the world. God has extended his grace to you far beyond any debt that you could ever owe him. And God has forgiven you. And now God has asked you to represent that same forgiveness that he has demonstrated to you, to a world that needs to understand what forgiveness and him is all about.
We need not struggle to experience that relationship with him, because Jesus has already provided the way, and the barrier which separates our relationship from God can be removed completely in Christ because he has redeemed, or he has bought you in the forgiveness that he’s brought into your world. Suppose for a minute. You had a struggle in your relationships, let’s say a spouse fights with another spouse and they say to that spouse, you know, I forgive you. The Bible said today at church, I forgive you, but I don’t know that our relationship’s ever going to be the same. In fact, I don’t know that I could ever forget it. And I don’t know that we can ever have that same experience. I don’t know that I can even be close to you ever again. What if God said the same thing to you? You know I forgive you, but I don’t want to be near you anymore. And I forgive you for what you did. But we’re not going to be close anymore. This relationship which you created, you could pretty much consider it over. You’ve sinned. And I just. It’s too much of an offense for me. And what would you say if God said that to you? Lord, is there anything is there anything that can be done for which I could just experience that closeness to you that I crave? If God responded that way to you, you would say, you know, God may have said, I’m forgiven, but that’s not really what he meant.
And so the question I just want to answer for us this morning is what is forgiveness? If Jesus says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors reflecting our relationship. Forgiveness is important. We need to understand that our forgiveness towards one another directly reflects our relationship with the Lord. And as we carry bitterness and anger and resentment, it can affect our walk with Christ. So how can we forgive? And I find that one of the best ways for us to understand how we can forgive those that we’re thinking about this morning that may have even offended us, is to really understand what forgiveness is and is not. Sometimes we make forgiveness things that it shouldn’t be, which makes it then difficult to forgive because we have a lack of understanding of what true forgiveness really is all about. And other times we find that as we study forgiveness together, we really haven’t been obedient to this. We haven’t been seeking after forgiveness because we crave for that relationship with the Lord. And we understand the importance of relationships. So it’s a good time in the holiday season to stop and ask that question, because we want to walk with the Lord and walk in truth and light with others.
And to understand what forgiveness is about helps us in that opportunity to see the purpose for which Jesus came to this world, and really appreciate Christmas. What is forgiveness? Well, first of all, forgiveness isn’t a feeling. It is an act of the will. Meaning, when I read verses like, Lord, allow us to be tenderhearted emotionally. When you are wronged against the first thing that you are going to feel in your life is anger or frustration. Why? Because you understand God’s giving you ability to understand. That’s not how relationships should go. Anger and frustration can be a good thing. It motivates us to see a change. Now, how you choose to act with the anger and frustration. That’s where the sin comes. This is frustrating. What can be done about this? Well, understand that that forgiveness isn’t an act of feeling. It’s an act of the will. When we forgive, if we acted according to our emotions, the first thing that people would see is a left hook right? And not the love of Jesus. Forgiveness is a determination within your mind. You know I need to be forgiven. Therefore, I want to exercise the ability to forgive. This is good for us. To those who are sitting here this morning and saying I haven’t been wronged against this is not even pertaining to me. Well, good. This first part is okay.
Someone in the near future will wrong you and determine in your life. Right now I will carry a humble attitude of forgiveness. Amen. That way, when it comes, you’ve already got it ready. But I love thinking forgiveness isn’t a feeling. It’s an act of the will. It’s a decision of our hearts. Because when we look at the life of Jesus, he struggled with this in his humanity. In Matthew 26 and verse 39, just before Jesus’s crucifixion, he’s praying in the garden. It tells us in verse 39, he went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, My father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine. Jesus is looking at the cross before me and he’s saying, you know, this is difficult to bear. This is not feeling good at all. This is adversity at its greatest. What I’m interested in, God is not a decision of my feeling, but a decision of the will. And so, father, if this is your will, let your will be done. He then goes on in verse 42, he goes back and prays again. Jesus left him a second time, his disciples and prayed, My Father, if this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done. It’s thinking about the beauty of taking out the trash of our lives and sin that it presents before God, and presenting just a relationship.
And he’s thinking, God, if there’s any other way other than me making this payment, if this reconciliation can exist, if if this forgiveness doesn’t be needed through through the death on the cross, if there’s any way, let it happen. I’m not feeling great about this, but I desire to love them so nevertheless. God, your will be done. Forgiveness isn’t a desire of the emotions. It’s an act of your will, meaning most of the time, if we’re talking about a serious offense, we’re not going to desire to forgive anyone. Maybe someone calls you a name. You can turn around and say, sticks and stones may break my bones, whatever. You know, that’s not even a not even a big deal. But when someone really offends you, forgiveness is difficult to come by within our own hearts emotionally, but it’s the decision of the will. Second, I would say this forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Forgiveness is a process for us. It says in Isaiah in chapter 43, God is saying, I, even I am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. What God is saying here is that God God isn’t saying he can’t remember our sins. God isn’t stupid. God knows everything that you’ve done. Jesus died on the cross for it. God isn’t saying he can’t remember the sins that you’ve done against him.
Well, God is saying is that he won’t remember the sins that you’ve conducted against him. God desires to forget your sins Because God desires to experience a relationship with you. Any time you have your past hovering over you as you experience a relationship with someone in this life, i.e. God or an individual, if you’ve got that sin just hovering over the weight of that relationship, it’s it’s difficult to enjoy. You can’t really think about the future because you’re so stuck in the past that it won’t allow you to move forward. And Jesus is interested in forgiving our sins and forgetting our sins in the sense that he just doesn’t want to remember them anymore. Not that he can’t, but he he just won’t. Because what God is interested in is not what you’ve done in your past, but what you can enjoy in your future with him. It’s paid for everything. Every concern that you ever have, every weight that you’ve carried, every thing that you’ve ever done wrong. Don’t worry about it anymore. God chooses not to remember it so that you can enjoy your relationship with him. He’s interested in your future. And our lives, relationships. And we talk about forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t about forgetting. It’s about what we choose to remember and how you choose to remember it. It’s not about living in the past, but thinking towards the future, to the reconciliation of that relationship.
But it is a process. It’s a process, especially the deeper the wounds we have in our lives. It’s more of a process to continue to think about the future and the hope that you can experience together in a relationship with someone else who’s offended you. It is a process of letting go of the past and seeking after the future. It’s a process that only God can strengthen and giving his love to us. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling. It’s an act of the will. It isn’t forgetting or it is a process in our lives. And I think most importantly for us, for some of us today, it’s important to understand that forgiveness isn’t excusing. Forgiveness isn’t about excusing someone else’s sin. If someone’s coming to your life and they’ve done something terribly wrong for you, it’s just not about forgetting that. It’s not about excusing that behavior. It’s not allowing allowing it to excuse it so that it can continue. Do you? Biblical forgiveness is really about acknowledging. You saw the context of Matthew chapter 15 when when the individual comes before someone who’s offended them, he comes before them in private to allow the person the opportunity to be forgiven. And you know what he does. He acknowledges the sin. Forgiveness isn’t about excusing. Excusing says, you know what? That’s okay. Just let it go. Let’s let it slide. Oops, you didn’t mean to bump into me.
Just let that go. You didn’t mean to do that to me. Let’s. Let’s forget about it like it never happened. Forgiveness isn’t about excusing. Forgiveness is about confronting. Matthew 15 said very pointedly. When someone offends you, go to them in private, thinking about the reconciliation of the relationship and saying to you, this is what was done wrong, this was inexcusable. But I love you and I forgive you. Do you know what that does for both parties? It gives the person who’s been wronged against the opportunity to share with the other individual, what exactly has caused the problem in their relationship? This is where the tension comes from. You’ve done this and this is how I feel about it. I’m thinking about the interest of our relationship when I share this to you. But this is what’s been done and this is how it’s made me feel. It gives you the opportunity to acknowledge it. You don’t feel crazy on the inside when you walk around this world and you feel bitter about everything, you get the opportunity and forgiveness to actually acknowledge it. I’ve heard it said once that unforgiveness is the poison that you drink, hoping someone else will die. Isn’t that true? There are people that we are mad at in this room. They have no idea and they’ve long since forgot about it and it is eating away at us. Forgiveness isn’t about excusing. It’s really about acknowledging.
It gives you the opportunity to come before the person, to talk to them about what’s created the barrier in your relationship, but not only that beautifully, it allows the individual that that’s sinned against you to humbly come back before you and just ask for forgiveness. They may not do it, but we can still extend it, but it gives them the opportunity to to help see that relationship restored. If they don’t know why you’re so mad at them after four years, what in the world are they going to do about it? You know, just they you treat them different. They don’t know any differently. Or maybe they do, but they’re not sure why they made you mad. Right? But it gives them the opportunity to acknowledge it, too. It gives them the opportunity to look into their own character of what’s been done wrong, reflect upon that, and to see it change for the joy of that relationship. Forgiveness is about isn’t about excuse me, excuse me. It’s about letting go and letting God take charge. Fourth, I would say this forgiveness is a radical decision not to hold an offense against the offender, but to release them from punishment. Do you know the actual word? The Greek predominant word for forgiveness really, really means to let go. It’s a decision that you make. You have two choices in your life. When someone offends you, they can either make that payment or you can make that payment for them.
They can either make that payment, you can show resentment. You can be cold to them. You can be absent from them. You can inflict emotional pain back on them for the way that they’ve hurt you. You can make them pay. Or you can forgive them and let it go. You know, the joy of forgiveness is it just takes so much monkeys off of your back. And when you got more than one person to be mad at, you got so much to think about. But think about this for just a minute. God’s judgment, God’s wrath, God’s decisions over humanity in this world will be far greater than any resentment that you carry towards anyone about unforgiveness. What God chooses to do with an individual is up to God. It’s not up to us. We’re not responsible for the wrath. We’re not responsible for the judgment. We’re not responsible for the the punishment of others or the grace that’s to be extended. It’s up to God. When we let go and let God have control, we leave it up to him. And forgiveness comes for us. A radical decision not to hold an offense against an offender. And here’s the difficult part, though, is forgiveness can be extremely costly. So the decision that we’re all left to make and the reason I say it’s so difficult to follow Jesus in this area is because we all have to answer the question, how much am I really willing to forgive to love someone else? Well, if we’re called to do it like Jesus did it.
Jesus gave everything. I understand it’s hard. Jesus even demonstrated that it was hard in the garden, praying, father, if this cup can pass, nevertheless, your will be done. Maybe in our lives, if you’ve come in this morning and you’ve just carried anger and frustration, and you heard me say the word forgiveness, and you thought in your heart, I am not doing this, maybe that’s where it starts for us to come before God and saying, Lord, I do not want to do this. God, there is no way I can do this unless you work on me. Lord. But what’s more important than any of this is that your will be done. God, I desire to have that close relationship with you. I don’t want to act in unforgiveness. Knowing God, you have forgiven me so greatly, God. So just please work on my heart and give me the strength to forgive. Forgiveness is difficult for us. The question we have to answer is how much are you willing to pay? Because the price can be extremely costly. Forgiveness is also a practice that both exercises your heart and your actions. It’s a practice that exercises our wills and our hearts. The heart says this God, I’m coming before you and I’m just laying it down.
No one else has any idea what’s happening in your lives because it’s something intimate, something taking place between you and the Lord God. I know I need to just carry an attitude of forgiveness. Lord, help me walk in humility. I’m turning this over to you. I’m allowing you to have control of this heart. But God, I’m also asking you to give me control. Excuse me? To allow you to have control of the practice. I love the way it says it. This this scripture is actually mentioned a few times within the Bible, but it says in Luke chapter six and verse 28, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. You know, if there’s a good way to start loving those you hate, it’s praying for them. It’s blessing. It’s asking the Lord to intervene in their lives. You know, the real, the real way that that individual is going to see change in this world is if God changes their life. And God before you, even before you even go before them, maybe you can even begin praying to the Lord before you forgive. God. God, just give them a heart that’s sensitive to you. God, let’s see what you can do in their lives, because we know what you can do outside of their lives. Lord help them. And I love the thought of this verse, because what it does is it gets us to stop focusing on the pain and start looking to the future.
Don’t dwell on what’s been done. You become a bitter bucket old hag. Right? You got to get over it. I know it’s a process. I know it’s difficult, but when you’re dwelling on the past, you’re not going to be moving forward. What a great practice within the Bible to take our hearts, to turn it to the Lord, and then begin to practice in our lives, just praying for them. Jesus, make my heart sensitive as I pray for this person that allow me not to carry this bitterness. What we find in all of it is that forgiveness is about healing. Forgiveness is about helping us to let go so we can move on, finding our hearts healed. Forgiveness gives us the opportunity to confront the one who’s wronged us now, helping them to recognize that they are forgiven regardless if they want to receive it or not, so that we can just let go in our lives and just move on. So there’s not this awkwardness and this wall and this barrier that exists within our relationship, but that we can just enjoy life and loving in those relationships for which we are created. So let me give you some final thoughts. I mentioned all of this about forgiveness and and I know this is a difficult topic to talk about. And we talk about forgiveness. We think about people in our lives through which we’re looking at and saying, man, I still don’t know if I can forgive them.
And and there’s just a few things I just want to share with us about forgiveness, to help us understand how to best do that. First of all, I want to I want to just say forgiveness does not mean there is no accountability for sins. Listen, if someone’s done something wrong to you, there is still accountability. There can be accountability for that wrong that’s been done. If I think about the most extreme measures in life and someone does something wrong against you physically. Emotionally, uh, yeah. Let’s just focus on the physical for just a minute. If someone harms you physically, we talk about forgiveness. I think that the Lord doesn’t want you to hold anger in your heart, and I think it’s healthy to forgive. But I also think when someone else offends you or someone else does something wrong with you, they haven’t just broken God’s laws against you. They’ve also broken the laws of this land. You know what I’m saying? So when someone does something wrong against you and you seek to forgive them, doesn’t mean that the law can’t step in because they’ve also offended the law. And one of the most loving things that you can do for people is when someone does something wrong against you. And it’s the most drastic things in life that we can conceive of, and it breaks other laws.
One of the most loving things that you can do is allow those laws to step in. You think, for instance, those in their lives that have had physical things done to them, and we read the Bible and we see words like forgiveness, and we think all that means the release of everything. You think about having someone like that wandering around the world. If we don’t take the opportunity to use the resources that God has given us, what they might do to other people, how helpful it would be for them to be able to get help, to call them out on the things that the law has intended to create to protect us. We talk about forgiveness. I just want to be careful in saying forgiveness doesn’t mean that you let everything go. There is accountability in all sorts of things in our lives, government being one way in which accountability comes. But forgiveness does give you the opportunity to let go. It also gives the other person the opportunity to reconcile, to seek that forgiveness through you. But it doesn’t mean there is no accountability for the things that we do wrong. Second, forgiveness doesn’t enable those with habitual sins. You think about those who struggle with addictions. If you were just to forgive them every time they came and stole something from you to pawn it off and get what they want, they would continue to do that.
Forgiveness isn’t enabling those who have addictions. Forgiveness is holding people accountable for their sins. When they make a mistake, we confront it. Now, I know forgiveness is about letting go of the past, but when someone has a habitual sin within their lives that they just can’t let go of, they can’t let go of, and you forgive and they can’t let go of more than anything, this person, when they begin to let go of it, needs to know that the past has been washed away from their lives. It’s not going to hover over them in their relationships, but what they need in the middle of that habitual sin that continues to happen over and over is more accountability. And we don’t want to bring up the past because we want to enjoy relationships. When someone is involved in habitual sin, we bring it up for their wellbeing to say, listen, this is a pattern in your life and brother, you need help. You need more than just me to say forgiven. You’re forgiven. You need something to come in your life and just aid you in this. Forgiveness brings with it accountability. It recognizes where the shortcomings are and it helps people out. Most importantly. Without a way to find forgiveness, what we find is relationships really have no hope. And so in order to be a person that walks with forgiveness in the world, we have to be a person that walks with humility.
Let me give you a great example. I love calling my examples great before I give everything I’ve said. Today has been marvelous. Um, when I think, here’s my tendency, I’ll tell you where my shortcomings are. Um. I like to think I walk in this world perfectly right and everyone does stuff against me. I don’t ever do anything against anyone else. Everyone always offends me. And my initial reaction when someone does that is just to get angry and get better and to treat that person differently, right? I’m saying this is a sin, and some of you would say, that’s what I’m talking about, man. Do you know what they did again? Give me a reason to get angry. They don’t deserve me. You know, that’s. And that’s exactly where I’m going to say. And the problem comes in. Someone could have been 100% wrong in the way that they treated you, but your reaction to that person can also then become wrong. And therefore we become a part of the problem. And I can be 2% wrong in a situation, but I’m still 100% responsible. I love Matthew 15 when it tells us to go and seek to reconcile those relationships, because I completely agree with what it told us in Matthew five and verse 23 when I’ve done something wrong, man, I know it stinks and I got to confess it.
But Lord, I’m willing to do that because it models you in this world. I want people to see you, not me. I want them to see you and how you forgive and just to model that. And I love that. But now when you put me on the hook to tell me to forgive others who’ve wronged me, G. God has desired for all of us, no matter how responsible you are for any argument, you’ve had to just carry that responsibility. 2% wrong is 100% responsible. You know, I may not have hurt that individual, but man, I have sure treated them like they deserve to be heard. And so God’s calling upon me would just be to go back and confess it and just say, you know, this is what I understand about the Bible. God has created me to love him, and my relationship with him is really being affected right now because I have bitterness towards you, man, and I’m just sorry I’ve been treating you different. I’ve been acting this way even regardless. Regardless of if someone else says I’m sorry back. I’m not saying this for an I’m sorry, I’m sorry back. We like to do that sometimes. I’m sorry. What do you had to say? You know, come on. Wait all day. I’m not doing this for them, although it does benefit them. I’m doing this because this is the way that God has called me to walk in this world.
I want to enjoy my relationship with him. I understand that God created me in this world for relationships. I want to forgive as Jesus has forgiven me. I want to forgive our debtors as Christ forgives my debts. How do we do this? You know, when I think in the Bible. Excuse me? Not the Bible. I think in history. People who have had to forgiven such wrongs that have happened to them. No one shouts out louder to me than the story of Corrie ten Boom. You know Corrie ten boom if you’re not aware of her. She was a Christian around the time of Nazi Germany. And what she did during that time period is she allowed the Jews to come into her home and she would hide them so that the Nazis couldn’t find them and take them to concentration camps and kill them. Corrie Ten Boom loved and her family helped these individuals out and they loved. And one day they were caught. They were carried off into concentration camps. Her family was killed. Corrie ten boom continued in her faith and after the war she went around publicly sharing just her love for the Lord and the way that God had worked in her life. One day she was speaking at a church and this is what she wrote. It was at a church service in Munich, Germany, that I saw him. The former SS man who stood guard at the shower room door at the processing center in Ravensbruck.
Brook. He was the first of our actual jailers I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there. The room was full of mocking men and the heaps of clothing. This man came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. He said, how grateful I am for your message to remind us. As you say, my sins are washed away. His hand thrust out to shake mine, and I kept my hand at my side, even as the anger and the vengeful thoughts boiled through me. I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man. Was I going to ask for more of a payment? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand and I could not. I felt nothing, not even a spark of warmth or love. And so I breathed again and I prayed. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. And as I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder, through my arm and into my hand. I a current passed through me and while from my heart a love for this stranger sprang up for me. So I discovered something. It’s not on our forgiveness, nor our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but upon him. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with that the command, the ability to love itself.
When you realize you can’t forgive on your own strength, but that God gives you the ability to forgive, then you will find your strength. You need to forgive others and experience reconciled relationships. Just propose a thought. Perhaps we struggle with forgiveness because it’s an area of our lives that we keep back from the Lord. Perhaps if I’m being honest and I say to you this morning, I want to follow 95% of Jesus. But this one verse, right? It’s because it’s revealing of my own heart. God, when it comes to vengeance, I’m great at that. When it comes to grace, I need your help. Maybe if you’ve come in this morning and you saw the word forgiveness, and you immediately got tense thinking about relationships in your life, it’s saying to us that you really haven’t turned it over to the Lord. That there is something within you that you are keeping back from allowing God to have control. That you think any vengeance or wrath that you carry is far better than the way that the Lord would deal with anyone in those relationships. What I say to us this morning. Let’s turn it over to Christ. This is easy to say, but hard to do. But the reality is, the longer we as people hold on to bitterness and hold on to resentment, the greater effect reflects and affects our relationship with God. God, help me to give this to you.