Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 18, 2017 | Really? - To Truly Forgive Is To Forget - Jeremiah Devine

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June 18, 2017 | Really? - To Truly Forgive Is To Forget - Jeremiah Devine · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am not Pastor Jim.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jeremiah, and I'm the worship pastor here at TBC.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I want to say Happy Father's Day to all of you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a great Sunday.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a great Sunday so far.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a sermon series called Really Dumb Things That Smart Christians Believe.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, actually, it's called Really Dumb Things That Smart Christians Believe.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we are in the third week of our sermon series, and Pastor Jim asked me to speak this morning to you a little bit about forgiveness.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this idea, some of the myths that are behind forgiveness, this idea that to truly forgive is to forget.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard that before.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive and forget.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about some of the ideas about forgiveness that maybe you have this morning, and those ideas might be making it difficult for you to actually move to a place of forgiveness.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start with a question this morning.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have been hurt by someone?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just by a show of hands, real quick.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have been hurt by someone?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, excellent.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And my hand-raised gauge is at 100% for the college building, so thanks for raising your hands over there, guys.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I see that.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does this tell me?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: This tells me, number one, that everyone on campus today has been hurt by someone, and number two, none of you have forgotten about it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you had forgotten about it, you wouldn't have raised your hand.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha! Well, let me tell you a little bit about something that happened to me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Back in middle school, back in high school, I was a small, small kid.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't know it now, but I was.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was a small kid and I was bullied a lot and picked on a lot.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh on top of that, I was really into music.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um and theater and drama and this sort of thing.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that didn't get me really any points.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but one day I went to choir.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This was in middle school, and I was a tiny, tiny kid, and I still sang soprano in middle school.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this kid who was in choir, and I have no idea why he was signed up for choir, because he didn't want to sing at all.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was two feet taller than me, and he had a beard in middle school.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But every day I would go to choir and he would pick me up by my wrist, and he would swing me around sort of like this, and it used to be a fun game, it's not fun anymore.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: He used to swing me around, and then he just kind of let me go.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember one day uh he let me go, and I flew into the metal choir risers in the room, and it really hurt my leg bad.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I started to cry, and I just sat there and I looked up and at these people who I thought were my friends, and they were all laughing.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really um painful, and that was really hurtful.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Another story, in high school, I was working at Pastor Jim told you one time I did I did mascot work, and that's true.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was certified as a professional mascot, and and uh I would travel around and be a substitute.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's where being little uh played an advantage.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I was a professional mascot, and we were doing a show at a junior college in Hutchinson, my hometown, and they had announced that um Jeremiah and his dad were doing this this show for halftime, and we came out there, and I was this orange-headed boy, and my dad was this big dog with big floppy ears, and we did this little magic show, and it was kind of cute and fun.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, after the after the show, we were in the hallway, and I had no idea this was coming, but this 300-pound football player who evidently was envious of my my uh page in Sports Illustrated, he just body slammed me from behind.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: He just bodyslammed me, and I had no idea it was coming.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The funny part of this story is I remember laying on my stomach and looking through the hole in my mouth and seeing my dad running with this dog suit on his ears are flopping after this guy.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that uh I definitely won't forget.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely won't forget.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um a lot of us have these things in life, and and I I think that forgiveness actually is a lot like a bell.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when something happens and you're reminded of your pain and you're reminded of this betrayal, and you and you're feeling all of these things, and it just kind of bubbles up, it's kind of like this bell that that rings and it has this echo effect in your life, and it just keeps coming back, and you're trying to forgive, and you're trying to forget it, but then you see this Facebook post that comes up, or you read this newspaper, or the company newsletter comes out, or you hear this country song that comes on that reminds you, and then your bell gets rung, and then you just have it's just this echo effect that happens.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and inside it causes this anger.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this anger turns to bitterness, and and then we have this guilt struggle, and we all we all want to honor and we want to follow Christ, but we just can't get past this hurt.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And every time our bell gets rung, we get angry.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we know we're not supposed to be angry, and so then we're guilty about feeling angry for doing something, for feeling something that we didn't even do.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going, how is that even fair?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, some of you are expecting maybe a low-grade anger, a low-grade anger that's causing some of the dysfunction in some of your relationships.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you are experiencing a low-grade anger that's causing dysfunction in your marriage, and you're but you're committed to making it work, but something just keeps happening, something keeps ringing your bell and reminding you.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this morning I want to talk about some of the myths about forgiveness.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But first, I want to tell you this.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know there's no verse in the Bible that tells us to forget?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: No verse in the Bible tells us to forget.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can dig and you can find a lot of verses in the Bible that tell you to forgive, that call us to forgive.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like this one from Colossians 3, verse 13 and 14.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bear with each other and forgive one another.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: If any of you had a grievance against someone, what's this say?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive as the Lord forgave you, and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: We think about Matthew chapter 6, where the Lord taught us to pray and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It goes on in the book of Matthew, chapter 6, for if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: But listen to this if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: After a little more digging, I find in Ephesians chapter 4 it says, put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrong and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, it calls us, to be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us are familiar with the parable in Matthew 18, the story of the unmerciful servant.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll refresh your memory.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 18 says, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle his accounts with his servants.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as he began this settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And since he wasn't able to pay, the master ordered that he bring his wife and his children and himself, and that they would sell them to repay the debt.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And at this the servant he fell on his knees before his master and he said, I will pay.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just be patient with me.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the servant's master he took pity on him.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: He took pity on him and he canceled the entire debt and he let him go.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But later that servant went to one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins, the Bible says.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: He grabbed him and began to choke him.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Pay back what you owe me, he demanded.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: His fellow servant fell to his knees and he begged him, Be patient with me, I will pay it back.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: But he refused, and he went off, and he had the man thrown into prison for a debt that he couldn't pay.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when the other servant saw what had happened, they went back to the master and they told the master everything that they had seen, everything that had happened, and the master called that servant back in and he said, You wicked servant, he said, I cancel all of that debt of yours because you begged me to.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you think you should show the same mercy that I just had on you?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in anger, his master handed him over to be tortured and jailed until he should pay, till he could pay back all that he owed.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what it says in verse 35 of this parable this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or your sister from your heart.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you a quick story about a guy who was bit by a dog, and it was later found that this dog had rabies.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so this man was rushed to the hospital, where they found, too, that this man had contracted this dreaded disease.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor came in and he talked with the patient and he said, I'm really sorry, but you have rabies.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but at this time it was uncurable and it's terminal.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to encourage you to get your affairs in order.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so the man, the patient, he sat back in the bed and he was really distraught and really disappointed.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: After a couple minutes, though, he sat straight up and he asked for a pen and paper, and so the nurse brought him some.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he sat there and he fervently wrote for about an hour.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: After about an hour, the doctor came back and he said, Well, I'm glad to see that you have taken my advice and that you're going to get your affairs in order.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the patient looked up at the doctor and he said, Oh, this isn't a will.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is a list of all the people I'm going to bite before I die.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think some of us do that.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we we have this list and we don't necessarily put this in our pocket and carry it around, but we hide it in our heart and it comes up, and when our bell gets rung, we're just reminded of it.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible calls us to forgive.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness is not an option.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness is not an option, and it's central to the Christian message.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: But forgiveness is tough.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why is forgiveness tough?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's because many of us have never been shown what actual biblical forgiveness really looks like.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's never been modeled to us.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes down to it, it's a really tough thing to do.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: C.S.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis writes this.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: He writes, everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a weight off our shoulders in a sense.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when our bell gets rung again and it's our turn to forgive, it's a difficult thing to do.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And because biblical forgiveness isn't often modeled, some people have developed sort of these myths about forgiveness.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like this one, for instance.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: That we just, is this working?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: That we just pretend that nothing happened.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's this sort of posture of your head in the sand.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You just totally forget that it even happened.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or this myth that forgiveness is just an unending circle of second chances.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over and over again, we we have the opportunity to start new, and the the slate is wiped clean.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever experienced this one, this myth, that it's just no big deal?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's no big deal.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever witnessed anybody apologize or forgive?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this person that they're forgiving, the one that they've that had the wrongdoing, they're going, Oh, it's no big deal.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't really affect me.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't really, it didn't really bother me.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, are you kidding me?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: You cried for a month about this.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't sleep for a week, and now you're saying it's no big deal?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I say, let's let's be honest about our feelings.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Be honest about the pain.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Be honest about what you're feeling in this wrongdoing, and be open to forgiveness.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's this myth also that forgiveness and trust are the same thing.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's imagine for a moment that someone was beating you or beating someone that you love.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: It might be easy for you, it might not, to forgive them quicker than you would be able to trust them again.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be wise if someone was beating someone you love to just let them right back immediately into your home?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so forgiveness and trust are not the same thing.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness can be can be immediate.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a matter of the heart, but trust, trust takes time.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a building.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this sort of imagination that when forgiveness happens, there's an immediate restoration of a broken relationship.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that immediate restoration is complete with total privilege and total trust, just like it was before.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a myth, friends, that's a myth about forgiveness.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is not always immediate, and trust takes time.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Another myth about forgiveness is that we just forget what happened.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of this idea of spiritual amnesia that comes over us.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible calls us to forgive, not to forget.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not how the Bible uses that word.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: The word forget is actually, it means the inability to recall something.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like a man is always on me about this.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Losing my keys.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I have no idea where my keys are.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: True story, if you see them, there's a little red thing on it for my parents' house.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not it, Dave.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like forgetting to go to a really important meeting, and there's this chair and you forgot to show up.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what forget means.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews chapter 8, it says this, for I will forgive their wickedness, and I will remember their sins no more.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And many many folks think that when the Bible says, I will remember their sins no more, what it's saying is that it just suddenly, God can't remember anything that happened.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: We pair that with verses like this one from Psalm 103, as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or this verse from Micah chapter 7, He will again have compassion on us and he will subdue our iniquities.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea, and I'm told that's with a no-fishing sign posted prominently nearby.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see why forgiveness is often defined as letting go to the point that every trace, every memory of the wrongdoing is gone.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not how the Bible uses those words.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: The word, excuse me, remember.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how it's used in the Bible.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: When the Bible speaks of God remembering something, it doesn't mean that the long-lost thought suddenly pops into his mind.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: It simply means that he's renewing his work with the person or with the situation at hand.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Noah floated around on the ark with these animals for nearly five months.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look in Genesis chapter 8, it says, But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: God remembered Noah.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he sh he shares a lot of this remembrance with and forgiveness with this with some of the other biblical stories of the sins of the saints in the Bible.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take, for instance, Adam's foolish taste test.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story I'm talking about.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or possibly David's mind-boggling adultery.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or Peter's harsh denial.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: All of these stories are widely known.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they're prominent biblical stories in the Bible.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in each situation, God renews his work with the person or the situation at hand, and all of them are fully forgiven.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if forgiveness means that God literally has no memory of these events, then we've got a bit of a theological debate on our hands, don't we?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because you and I are saying then, if God doesn't remember these events, then uh we're we're aware of things that even God doesn't know.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or some of these biblical stories, he just can't remember them.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's true.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: When the Bible speaks of him remembering our sins no more, like in Hebrews chapter 8, I think this is what he's saying.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying he no longer responds to us in light of those sins.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's no longer responding to us in the light of our sins.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And our sin can no longer derail our relationship with him.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those sins are gone.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're gone completely from our account.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't mean that God can't remember all that we've done.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's just not responding to us in the light of those sins.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: He remembers all the things we've done.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put it simply for you.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because God doesn't forget stuff.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't forget stuff.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the big deal?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we talking about this?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think here's the big deal.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: When the call to forgive morphs into the call to forget, I think a lot of us opt out because we're going, man, I have all this pain in my heart, and I'm suffering, and I can't forget about this.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible's not calling us to forget.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible's calling us to forgive.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of us feel that even if we should forgive, many of us feel like we can't.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: To put it another way, few of us think that we can forgive.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Few of us think that we can actually do it.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't even bother to try.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if there are small hurts and small annoyances and our feelings are hurt this day or that, we'll forgive those things.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of the big things we hang on to.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what's more is that when forgiving becomes synonymous with forgetting, it tends to produce a spiritual confusion.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: A spiritual confusion that often causes bitterness and often causes anger at God.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us think that getting right with God should make everything right with life, and that's not true.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Getting right with God doesn't necessarily make everything right with life.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: We think that his forgiveness should have removed all of the traces and all of the consequences of our sin.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Think of the former tax cheat who could never shake the IRS, or the alcoholic dad who could never restore a relationship with his children, or the former porn addict who could never regain his wife's trust or intimacy with her, no matter how hard he tried.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And after a while they became angry at God because they had assumed that forgiving meant forgetting, and they couldn't understand why God just hadn't reached down and just fixed everything that they had broken.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: They felt like God didn't really do his part, he didn't keep his part of this confession and forgiveness bargain, but he had.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so this leads to some unreasonable expectations.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: We assume that if someone has forgiven us, then whatever happened, they said they said we're forgiven, so it should be a debt issue, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's gone, it's over.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: The other person should just get over it and they should just move on.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's unreasonable.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's unreasonable because it unfairly turns the table on the person who's been wronged.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you're equating forgiveness with trust.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness can be immediate, and trust takes time.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: This morning I want to share with you what I my idea of forgiveness.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is it.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness is giving up my right to get even.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And many of you, you might be sitting here this morning and you're going, but I have all of this pain and I have all of this hurt, and I just want this person or this situation or this organization to suffer or experience a little bit of hurt in the way that I'm feeling.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if I just offer forgiveness and I just give it up, then they're off the hook.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul reminds us in the book of Romans, he says, Dear friends, never take revenge.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Leave that to the righteous anger of God, and he says, I will take revenge.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they might be off your hook, but they're not off God's hook.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: God understands justice, he understands patience, and he understands every situation from all angles.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so you go, how do I give up that right to get even?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it tells Tells us here in Ephesians 4, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think many of us forget often how much God has forgiven us and what He's done for us.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to say when we've offended someone, it's easy to say, you know, I'm really sorry, and do you forgive me?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they might say, yes.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then we go, oh, but you know, no one's perfect, right?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody makes mistakes, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: But when someone else offends us, that part is hard to remember, isn't it?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: That part's hard to remember.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can only often think of our pain.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Paul encourages us to remember how much God has given us in Romans.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't want to be bitter or angry, stuck in the past.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: The legacy that we want is God's spirit living inside of us.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the fruit that that produces, like love and patience, and kindness and self-control.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, forgive as God has forgiven you.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this forgiveness is supernatural.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiven people.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive others.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're this morning and you want to receive his forgiveness so that you can offer it to others.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're here this morning and you're hurting and you need to forgive someone or a situation.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: I ask you to do that this morning.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: You won't find in the Bible a phrase that says, forgive and forget.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not there.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible calls us to forgive, it doesn't call us to forget.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a decision of the will.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And since God commands us to forgive, we must make a conscious decision to obey and to forgive.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven is ours when we forgive as sin has never occurred.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: If we belong to Him through faith in Jesus Christ, and in that sense, God forgives and forgets.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you might be sitting here this morning, and there's just some situation that is so hard, and you think this is just unforgivable.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: When we offer forgiveness to those who have no excuse, listen to this.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: When we offer forgiveness to those who have no excuse, because they've done something that in our mind and heart is unforgivable, that's when we become most like Jesus.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that Jesus died for sins that he didn't commit to forgive people, to forgive people who had no right to be forgiven.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say that again.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus died for sins that he never committed, to forgive people who have no right to be forgiven.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's such a big deal to him that we learn to forgive, that we learn to forgive as we have been forgiven.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: God, this morning, just ask you to help us give up our right to get even.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Give us that supernatural strength, Lord.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to forgive this person or the situation again and again.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: God, remind me how our hands are dirty.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you've forgiven us.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to extend that same forgiveness to other people.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for your amazing forgiveness, for your selfless display of love.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you chose not to get even with us, but to pay the debt that we created by sending your son to die on a cross, that his death atoned and made right for our sins.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for coming.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Father's Day.