Two-Way Monologue IV, Forgive Us Our Debts

Hey, I know I do a lot of dumb stuff, so I'd just like to apologize. Grandpa, one time I thought about voting Democrat, and I know that hurt you. I'd like to apologize to my sister for not realizing that she had children. Stacey, it was my insecurities that led me to say what I said to you. I'm sorry I magnetized your braces, that was immature of me. I'm sorry I didn't tip you, I meant to pay you back. In many countries, that's a sign of gratitude. I'm sorry I gave you the idea to do the three new Star Wars, all right? We should have just left it like that. Yes, I stole your car. Let's not get the lawyers involved. Yes, I crashed it. Whoops, uh-oh. Yes, I set it on fire. I didn't know that was flammable. Do I feel bad? A lot of the time. Now, get it away. Do the animals. But, again, I'm sorry. Oops, my mistake. My bad. Sorry. Lo siento. We all make mistakes. Someone asked me after the other service, was that someone on our staff? So I know it's one of Pastor Scott's friends. But you might have related to at least one of those. Understanding the whole concept of messing up, and especially with people that we care about. I think I'll start off today by just making sure I'm on the right page with everyone and see if you relate. This will determine whether or not you'll stay engaged or, you know, start dreaming about the football game. How many of you at one time or another in your life remember being personally violated? You remember somebody willfully taking something, doing something, in some way damaging your space? How many of you remember that one time? All right. Pretty safe question because all of us experience it in one way or another. You know, someone steals our wallet or our purse. Or I was with somebody the other day that they left their computer at a restaurant, just a coffee shop, rather, just for a few minutes. When they came back, it was gone, and all their personal stuff. People get their cars stolen. People have someone break into their house or apartment. People have other kinds of things that, you know, are important to them. People get into their office or whatever. When I was a student, a graduate student, I remember I had a car, my briefcase in the backseat of my car, and someone smashed the back window, and they couldn't steal the car, but they pulled my briefcase out. And I felt, you know, violated, like they got into my briefcase. But then I realized that, boy, they were going to be so mad because they'd open up and they had my Bible and some notes about God's love in there. And that probably was going to be sort of like hard for them to reconcile. But we all identify, don't we, with this whole matter of what does it mean to be violated by others? Because it's happened to us all. And you know what, friends? After today's sermon, this isn't going to change that. It'll still happen. Question is, what do we do about it? And I just want to encourage you to grab your outline, and we're going to fill in a lot of blanks. I didn't quite hit Kent's number, but I came close this time. You see, sometimes these things that happen to us, they're no big deal, and it's easy to forgive. Illustration. Not too long ago, I got a credit card bill, and it was like, I don't know, $4,800 or something, like four big screen TVs, tickets to Aruba, a set of tires, jewelry, some other things. And, you know, Carol came at me with two pots in her hands. She said, are you maniacal? No, I'm kidding. She didn't. She said, is this true? And I said, no, this is obviously a mistake. And so I called the, you know, the customer service thing and went through all that, and they said, oh, you mean you haven't been in Sacramento, California? No, I live in Pittsburgh. Never think about checking this out. And they said, well, you know, you're such a good customer, yada, yada, yada. Well, no, I didn't do any of that stuff. And I said, now, how much of this am I responsible for? She said, oh, sorry, nothing at all. I mean, I'm not responsible for any of these charges, right? Right. Walnut Grove, no. Atria's, no. It was really fun. Everything was forgiven. No, but see, it was easy for me to forgive that person who scammed my credit card because I never saw him, and I didn't have to pay anything back, right? But it's entirely different. And this is where I want to just prepare some of you. This is going to be a hard message. I know that because I'm going to bring up some stuff that you've pushed down in there so far that it hasn't seen the light of day. And some of you, for the first time in years, are going to emotionally connect with what God wants you to know because it's something that's got to come out of your life in order for you to go on with God. I remember some years ago when I was being defamed by another pastor, you know, who thought what we were doing was just crazy, big church stuff. He even got on the radio and made a big deal about it. And my character and the character of this church was being basically assaulted, and I didn't have anything I could do about it. The Lord just said, just be quiet. And boy, that was hard. That was hard to forgive that guy. Now, I've since heard from him a couple of times personally where he asked forgiveness. And I can tell you that I was able to write him back and say, I forgive you. And I ask God to bless you from here on. But it was hard. And some of you, I've not even come close to the depths of the pain that some of you felt. You've been lied to, you've been deceived, you've been betrayed, there's been infidelity, there's been broken promises, there's stuff that some of you had. And these were from people you thought were your friends or maybe even their loved ones or maybe even your spouse. And so, this whole matter of forgiveness isn't just a, you know, a little exercise we do as Christians. We don't just pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and ho, ho, ho. And for some of us to really mean that is a big, big deal. And yet, it's a big deal to Jesus. Did you notice on the top of your notes? This is the only part of the Lord's prayer that Jesus repeats. So, of all six of the different things that are in the prayer, this is the only one He says, you better, please don't miss this one. I even put the verse down here. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. In other words, you don't have the luxury of saying, God, please forgive me for my sins, but I'm holding on to my sins against you or your sin against me, really. We don't have that. So, if you want to receive God's forgiveness, as Scott Riley pointed out, it begins by looking at yourself and saying, all right, Lord, let's deal with some of these. Let's see which ones we can take on and let's see which ones we can deal with. Because if we don't, we're going to stay stuck in unforgiveness. And friends, unforgiveness is not an option for anyone who wants to move on with God. I want you to see a good definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness is, by the way, it does include the idea of being sorry, but it's much deeper than that. Notice, to forgive is to absolve, release, to lift off is the primary usage, as you'll see if you follow it through in the Hebrew and the Greek, or to pardon in full. In other words, it says, whatever you did to me, I release you from it, forgive you from it, and you don't owe me anything, you don't have to pay me back, there's no restoration, there's no reparation, it's over with, you're pardoned in full. And that's a little deeper than I'm just sorry. Okay, big deal. No, it is a big deal because you're giving up your right to exact some sort of return from them. But you know what? When you do that, you set in motion something really powerful, as we'll see. Well, let me give you an illustration. This wasn't that long ago, it surprised me when I realized it was just three years ago, right about now, that this horrible incident took place just east of us near Lancaster, PA, when on October the 2nd, Charles Roberts, 2006, walked into an Amish schoolhouse and dismissed all but 10 young girls, remember this story? And proceeded to shoot them one by one. Five of them died immediately, were on the spot, and five later recovered, and then he took his own life. Now, six months after this event, US News & World Report returned to the scene in Pennsylvania to find out how the Amish were coping. Reporting their findings in the article moving on, the reporters discovered that the tragedy brought together the Amish community and the non-Amish supporters and neighbors, resulting in a deeper sense of total community. They stood together, comforting and supporting one another. The Amish immediately reached out to the widow of the shooter, extending forgiveness, and forgiveness has been what has moved these people forward through their dark days. And then a commentator, an expert in Amish tradition goes on to say this, he says, in the biblical sense, forgiveness is love letting go when wrong has been suffered. To a person, the Amish would argue that forgiveness is the central teaching of Jesus. Whoa, that's really intense. Forgiveness is, and I think that's why Jesus took the trouble to repeat it. The Amish gave us an incredible nationwide illustration of that. I remember being moved, don't you, when they demonstrated that. And likewise, some of us are going to have to take some big steps, because if we don't, we won't be able to move in the freedom of God. What's the best illustration of forgiveness? Well, clearly, it's all around us today in the auditorium. It's the cross of Christ that we sang about. Amazing love, how could it be that thou, my God, would die for me? And as I went through this, and by the way, this was not an easy message to prepare, because as I've told you frequently, I don't ever bring a message that I don't have to deal with myself when I'm doing it. It's just the height of hypocrisy to tell you all about forgiveness while I hold my own stuff in, right? And so I had a lot of time this week that I had to go back with certain people in certain situations and say, Lord, that one's still in there, I got to pull that one out. But then I look at the cross, and I want you to think, just look at the cross for a moment and think about it. Because a sinless man who lived a perfect life, and the only thing he was known for was speaking about love and teaching people how to give to each other and care for each other. And the only thing that he did was to heal and restore and deliver and forgive. That man ended up on a cross after three years of ministry, tortured and bleeding, suffering beyond all definition and description. And his dying words as he heaved himself up, barely able to breathe on the cross. If you read the Passion of the Christ, you know all about that. And I was struck as I was doing the study of this by his words when he said in Luke 23, 34, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And the reason why we can come today and I can come to you and say, friends, we have no option but to forgive is because that's how the Lord treats all of us who come to Him. He offers us unconditional forgiveness if we come to Him. It's amazing love. I thought about this and I struggled with it because, you know, when I say this, I have a hard time relating to that. I am not that gracious. I don't have that kind of power to do that. I just don't. So I began to think about some other illustrations and a very familiar story to me, but one I hadn't thought about recently came to mind. And maybe it'll have some, I don't know, a little bit more relevance to how you live your life. It's the story of Joseph and his brothers. How many of you have brothers and sisters? And how many of you would say they're on your list of hard to forgive? Oh, so many dishonest people. You're going to have to just repent of that right there. Of course, family members are really tough. But Joseph, he was the baby of 12 brothers. But he didn't let that stop him. If you know the story, turn to Genesis 37, if you have your Bible. Genesis 37, we're going to put some of it up on the screen. And I'm going to have to sort of just summarize this story. I could, if we were going to really do justice, this would be the whole message today. But I just, Joseph was the youngest brother and his father, he was his father's favorite son. Go figure that out. And he gave him this amazing robe, you know, the robe of many colors. You know the whole story if you went to Sunday school. And Joseph had a dream one day. And in his dream, he saw his brothers bowing down and paying homage to him. And as just being the sharpest knife in the drawer, he went and told his brother, hey, guess what, guys? One day you're going to bow down and this is going to kneel before me. Now, how many of you would love to hear that from your older brother? Or younger brother, rather? And how many of you, if that was your younger brother, you just go pound him right there, huh? But Joseph didn't quite realize that he really offended his brothers. But let's see what happens. Genesis 37, right around verse 14b. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. We're at verse 18. But they saw him in the distance. And before he reached them, listen to these words, they plotted to kill him. Do you think they were a little upset with his dreams? They were literally thinking about killing him. Here comes that dreamer, they said. They're mocking him, obviously. Come now, let's kill him and throw him in one of these cisterns. It's just a well in the desert. And then say that a ferocious animal devoured him. See, they're already casting a plan that they're going to pull off and tell Jacob, his father, about. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams. And Reuben, I guess one of the soft-hearted older brothers, says, well, let's not take his life. Let's not shed any blood. Let's just throw him into the cistern and don't lay a hand on him. Because Reuben was hoping he could rescue him. So he wasn't quite as upset. Verse 23, when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe. The richly ornamented robe he was wearing. And they took him and threw him into the cistern. And it was empty, there was no water in it. And they sat down to eat their meal. And when they looked up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming in from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices and so on. Then Judas said to one of his brothers, well, what will we gain if we kill our brother? And they're starting to soften up a little bit. Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him. After all, he is our brother. So you see, they're backing off. So we'll just sell him off into slavery for the rest of his life. Okay, that's a nice thing to do. The brothers agreed. And so when the midnight merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for 20 shekels of silver. And they took him off to Egypt. And if you know this story, he went off and now he's a slave in a totally foreign culture with nothing to show for himself. But the next chapters tell us something very interesting. Joseph does extremely well as a slave. He gets promoted in all that he does until he's now serving in the Pharaoh's house. And then he gets, on top of it all, unjustly accused of trying to seduce the Pharaoh's wife. And that ends him up in jail. And that's a big lie. But he ends up in jail for a couple of years. And yet God keeps blessing him and giving him favor until he ends up being second in command of all of Egypt, only to the Pharaoh. How did that happen? This slave becomes second in command because Joseph forgave his brothers. And I'll show you how I know that in just a moment. And friends, I didn't put this on the outline and I should have. Write it down. Favor follows forgiveness. When you learn to forgive, you put yourself in a favorable place in God. And blessing starts to come upon your life. That's what happened to Joseph. I know he forgave his brothers. I'll show it to you in a minute. But his life was blessed and everything he touched, God blessed. And he couldn't make a bad decision. And he ended up being second in command in all of Egypt. It's an incredible story of God's favor in his life. Look what happens in Genesis 50. Let's just end the story here. Here's the end. The very thing he said was going to happen, happened. There's this horrendous drought and this, you know, they're all suffering. And the brothers end up in front of Joseph asking for water and food. And here's what happens. This is Genesis 50, verse 15. Now, when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, Jacob had died, they realized they're going to have to go to Joseph. They said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong things we did to him? So they sent word to Joseph saying, your father left these instructions before he died. Some translations say commanded us to say this. This is what you're to say to Joseph. I ask you to forgive your brothers. And again, there's another translation says, I command you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs that they committed in treating you so badly. Now, please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father. And when their message came to him, Joseph wept. And I want to pause right here and say, the reason why this is such a powerful thing is Joseph wept because he realized that his brothers hadn't really changed. Do you know that whole paragraph there? I'd never seen this before in all my readings. That whole entire paragraph is all just something that they made up. Jacob never said that. Jacob thought Joseph had died. The brothers just connived together this little concocted story to tell Joseph because they were afraid. I could just see him commiserating around a fire saying, well, we'll just say, you know, dad said to do this and your father commanded this. And this was like his last will and testament. You know, playing on Joseph's deep love and affection for his father and his father for him. And you see, friends, when I say to people something like I'm going to say today about forgiveness, the number one thing they say to me is, well, Jay, I just can't forgive them because they're not even sorry. They don't even care. In fact, they're still hurting me. And I look at them and I say with understanding, I know how painful it is, but you don't have the option not to forgive them. And the reason why Joseph wept was he knew that they were still trying to manipulate them. He wept because he realized not once did they say, we're sorry. Not once did they say, we shouldn't have thrown you into that well. Not once did they say, would you forgive us? They played on the manipulation of the father's love for him. But look at Joseph's response. Verse 19, when Joseph said, then don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? In other words, am I going to be your judge? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. Loved ones, if you don't have that underlined in your Bible, you should. Every time you get hurt and you know you're being hurt intentionally, claim that verse. They intended it for evil or to harm you, but God is going to use it for good if you'll learn to forgive them. Oh, that's such good news. There should be someone saying amen right there. That's very, very good news because every time you get hurt, they mean it for evil. God will use it for good. God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done by the saving of many lives. You see, in other words, the reason why I know that Joseph was favored by God because he forgave him because he says right here, God put me in this position so I could save your life and the life of all the families. I'm going to give you and all your families food. I'm going to take care of you. You see, that's the power of forgiveness when you are free to release it. Now, let me go on and just quickly cover just the three things. This won't take long, but there's three major keys here. Number one, the first thing you've got to do if you're going to walk in biblical forgiveness is you've got to release people from their offense. You've got to release them. In other words, you've got to say to them, you know what? You broke my heart, but I release you from it. Or you violated my trust, but I release you from that. You broke your promise. You hurt me with your words, whatever it is. And again, I want to just reiterate letter A. To release means to declare acquitted or no longer guilty or to grant them a full pardon. I know how hard this is. Listen, when someone says something to me, do you think pastors hear everything? All we get is like good news and wow, what a great job you're doing. I mean, a lot of people have a lot of anger toward pastors because they sort of represent to them the father that they didn't have or the God that they don't know. And they say hurtful things. But this tells me I don't have any option but to forgive people and to just release them from any kind of... I mean, just set them free. And I know it's not easy to do that. And if you've been manipulated and if the person isn't sorry, it doesn't matter. You still have to release them. You still have to let them go because if you don't, here's what's happening. Watch. You're maintaining your right to judge them and to exact what punishment they're going to have to pay. And the Bible says, Jesus said it in the Sermon on the Mount, judge not that you be not judged. And when you release them, what you're doing, and I'll just use my other hand as the illustration, you're taking your right to judge and you're releasing it and you're placing that person, now watch, in the hand of God. And how many of you believe God can be just a little more accurate in his judgment than you are? He knows their motives. He knows what will get to them more than you do. And there's great relief, actually, in a sense. Romans 12 says it clearly. It says, well, let's just read it. Don't repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it's possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord. Or you might just remember this phrase, vengeance is mine, saith God. So you make the choice. Do you want to be the one holding judgment? Because you're never going to get it right. God always gets it right. And when you release people, you're just placing them in the hands of God, not in order to torment them, but so that God can maybe get to their heart. Because isn't that what you want anyhow? Isn't that the outcome you really want? It's for them to see they're wrong and for them to maybe, you know, have God break in in their heart and move them closer to Him. I know how difficult it is, but that's the first step. Number two, you've got to receive this for yourself. And maybe this should have been number one, because I had people after both services tell me this. They said, you know, my problem is, I don't know that I've ever really received what you're talking about for myself. In fact, I had a person after the first service today say this, I believe God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself for the things I've done. Let's just pause for a moment and understand this. Because we know ourselves so well, we think it's going to be almost, how could God forgive us? We know we act sinfully at times. But I want you to catch a distinction here that I've picked up even in prayer that we've had and conversations that we've had. Listen, before you come to Christ, you are by nature a sinner, okay? That is you are on the inside wired to sin continually. After you come to Christ, there's a change in your nature and you are now a child of God. You are no longer a sinner by nature. You're a child of God by nature. Now you still commit sins on occasion because you are still being sanctified and that's still getting worked out. But by nature, don't call yourself a miserable rotten sinner anymore because you're not. You're a child of God. You've been set free. You don't need to beat yourself up and say, well, God, I'm just, you know, I'm, listen, you may not get through today without sinning. How many of you already know that there's at least three or four times that you just didn't quite hit the bar already today? I know it's true. I live my life like you do. It's like, you know, I was late coming in today as usual on Sunday mornings for whatever reason. I mean, I'm up early and all that, but I'm going over my, you know, rehearsing in my notes, my mind, all that. And I got to the light down here, you know, and if you're coming up this way, that light is like seven minutes long and that makes me seven minutes later than I already am. And I'm sitting there and I'm not saying, oh, hallelujah, this is great waiting. And in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, I have, I'm just not rejoicing in God. I'm wondering what moron programmed this light that it takes seven minutes to get through here. And then I'm thinking if there's nobody looking, maybe I can just turn in on the light. And then, but sure enough, there'd be a North Way person. Hey, I just saw you. That's going to happen. It's just, you know, how many of you know, by the way, what's your weak spot is, where you're tempted to sin more than other ways? Yeah. Anyhow, but the point I want you to hear that's so important is this. The Bible says, you've been set free. You are no longer a sinner by nature. And if, you know, if that's hard for you, hear it from God. He's saying it to you loud and clear. You can't earn any more. You can't improve upon your position. You are declared righteous by God Almighty because you've put your trust in the cross of Christ. In fact, turn your outline over. All you have to do is just believe it and receive it, that you can be totally forgiven of whatever dark thing you've been in. And friends, listen, if you don't think I've heard it all, I've heard it all. After 35 years in ministry, people have told me things that I just, all I can do is comfort them and then promise them that God already knew what was gonna happen and He's forgiven them. Look at this. Look at these verses. As far as the East is from the West, so far as He removed our transgressions from us. How far is East from the West? That's infinity, right? The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attended to your prayer. In other words, God's already, He's favorably inclined to you because you are rightly related to Him. And then this verse, which you just should love. God made Him, that it was Jesus, who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. And I don't know how to describe this except to say it this way. Again, look at the cross. There on the cross, you and I should be. That's what we deserved. Instead, if you put your faith in Christ, He took your place. And He says, now I declare you forgiven. And if you believe that and receive that, the Bible says, Isaiah 61 10, that He gives you a robe of righteousness. And when God looks down in heaven, He doesn't see a sinner. He sees one of His own children, His son or daughter, completely free and forgiven. Wow, what a miracle that is. He sees you, justification, just as if you never sinned. He said, but I did sin. Yeah, but He doesn't see that. He sees you as cleansed and forgiven. And when you do sin, then you just need to say, Lord, I'm sorry, and the blood of Jesus forgives you and covers you and cleanses you again. Now, I'm gonna pause and say, for the one person, one person that might be thinking, well, that just means I could go and do whatever I want and say, I'm sorry, and go, no, that's not what it means. Who would do that to someone they love anyhow? Sin will catch up to you, by the way. It'll exact its consequence from you. But God looks down on you and says, I forgive you, and I see you as my own. In fact, John 1, 12, let's just put that final verse up. I love this verse. I memorized it when I was a young Christian. Yet to all who received Him, there's one of the words we used this morning, to those who believed Him, that's the word we're on now, He gave them the right, that's the Greek word dunamis, which is the word for power or authority, to become children of God. So I'm looking out now here at a large congregation, mainly filled with children of God. And that should change your entire countenance. You should walk out, if you're not a little, you should walk out if you're saying, Lord, I don't deserve it. I'm not worthy, but I'm yours. And I can expect your blessing. And I can expect to walk in the grace and power and mercy and fullness of what you have for me. And God, you can even take my mistakes and make something good out of them. Let me close with a story where this happened to me. Some years ago, I remember I had came to a point where we were just coming out of the station wagon stage. This was before minivans were coming on. And we were able to buy a car that wasn't a station wagon. What a glorious moment that was. And the first Saturday that I had the car, I went over to the gym, the health club to work out. And it was early in the morning. And if you're a car person, you know how freaky this is. But we have this phobia of people that come up and whip, they're oblivious. They just whip open their doors and or they roll shopping carts again. So I parked my car way up out of the way and just admired it as I walked. Oh, I knew this is awesome. Went in and did my workout, came out and parked right next to my car was this horrific looking, I don't know, green Pinto something. I mean, with a all beat up. And it was like one inch from my door. I said, well, there's no way a person could do that accidentally. If you're that bad of a driver, they intentionally did. And I couldn't even get my door open to get in on the driver's side. And I'm thinking they probably opened the other door and just hit me. And I saw I'm like, I'm godly, but I went in and I said, I need to see the manager. And I need you to call out the person that owns an ugly green Pinto with this license number. And about two minutes later, this rather large guy came down and he happened to be on the staff of the health club. I said, do you own a Pinto with this license number? And he said, yeah. I said, did you just park up at the end of the park? And it's still early. There's still tons of spaces. Did you just park up next to this blue car, right next to it? And he said, yeah. I said, did you do that on purpose? He said, yeah. I looked at him again and I realized, you know, he was on the staff of the health club. And this, I said to myself, this isn't going to go outside. We're going to keep this inside. But I said, why did you, were you just trying to make me mad? Yeah. I said, why? Then he put his head down a little bit. And he said, well, I think I was just maybe a little jealous. I'll move it. And he just walked away. And he wanted to move this car. So, I'm still seething a little bit. I didn't get it, but I get in my car and I sat down and I went to put the key in and God spoke to my heart. Now, I don't use those words often, but he spoke two things. First thing he said to me was, he said, son, you overreacted. People are more important than things. And you treated that guy with a lot of disdain in your heart. You were wrong. You need to repent. And I said, Lord, you're right. It's just the thing. It's a car. It's new, but it's just the thing. I repent. Then he said to me, and you need to ask him for his forgiveness because you really offended him the way you treated him. No, Lord, get behind me. That's, I'm not doing that. He's already up there laughing, telling you the rest of his health club buddies what an idiot I am. I'm not going in there. And have you ever been in that position where you say, you have to make a decision. Am I just going to drive off and do my own thing or am I going to obey God? And I want you to know, I've tried to turn the key. I wanted to drive out of there so badly, but I've learned when God speaks, you better do what he tells you to do. So I go back in and I said, would you call the owner of a Pinto? And he came back down and he said, yeah. I didn't even ask him a question. He said, yeah. And I said, listen, I'm sorry for th