Latest / Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies / God According to God | Mike Baker | Week 12

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God According to God | Mike Baker | Week 12 · Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online@madisonchurch.org be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
• 0:37
  Speaker B: All right, so we're going to jump right in. So we're actually talking about the idea of forgiveness. And one of the things I wanted you all to think about last week was this whole idea of forgiveness and do we forgive someone who doesn't come out and ask for forgiveness? And so we're going to. That's going to kind of be our topic. We're going to first start with Matthew, verse chapter 18, verses 21, 25, which is a very familiar passage to all of us, but we're going to go ahead and read it. So Matthew, chapter 18, beginning in verse 21. Then Peter came up and said to him, lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him as many as seven times. Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master Summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from the heart. So this is a story and a passage that we hear all the time, right, that Peter asks about this limit of forgiveness. Because under the Jewish system, right, I don't even think it was three strikes. So when Peter said, do I forgive him seven times to himself, he was actually being generous, thinking that that was more than enough. But then Jesus came back and said, that's not enough. But forgive 77 times. Now, was Jesus really meaning that we, okay, that's one, two, that we literally count out 77 times? Jesus was just not given that expression, but rather Jesus was using a large number, basically meaning that our forgiveness should know no limits. Then that launches Jesus into telling that story about the unforgiving servant. So one that was brought who owed him 10,000 talents. So what's the first question whenever we've read this passage? Have we always wanted to know how much is a talent? Okay, so I did the one thing that I tell you not to do when you study the Bible, and I went to Google and I got tons of answers about what a talent was. In reality, a talent was actually some monetary value that was about 20 years of wages. It varied. Talents varied from geographic location to geographic location. Talents varied through time. But it's basically 20 year salary. Why do you think we want to know exactly how much a talent is? Don't you know, like, have you ever met someone who says, okay, or I did this, we would get a car. I hate having car payment. So I say, okay, if I could, you know, if I, if I don't do this and I only have one lunch a week, it's an extra and I get this paid off. And, you know, we want to know what that value is because we think we can always pay it off sooner than what it's actually due, right? But think about this. So we've got 10,000 talents, 20 years per talent. It's 200,000 years of salary. And the reason why you can't pin a number to a talent is because it varied from person to person. So if you make $65,000 a year, you'd owe 13 billion. If you made 80,000, you would owe 16. If you made 100,000, you'd owe 20 billion, right? The whole point of Jesus story is this could never, ever be paid. And I want you to think about to the people who were listening, because first they were pretty blown away by the servant allowing himself to get that far in debt in the first place. And then when it said the king forgave them, I'm sure there was just this enormous gasp, right? Because it was a large, large sum that would not be payable, right? So the servant begs for mercy. More time to repay once again, right? Just like we do. If you just give me a little more time so I can have a yard sale and a bake sale, earn a little more money, I can get it paid off. So he's still thinking that if you just give me more time, I could pay off this debt. But the king cancels the entire debt, wipes the ledger clean. Then we see the servant go into a fellow servant. Now, also, one of the things about the Internet is they always talk about, well, you know, that other servant didn't owe him a lot of money. Okay? The other servant owed him 100 denarii. A denarius was a day's wages. So it wasn't like you read some of the stories. They say, well, the second servant owed him like 20 bucks. He owed him 100 days worth of wages, three months and a week. So it wasn't like it was just this small amount of money that the one servant owed the other servant. It was a significant. It was a significant amount. Did it compare? We got 100 days versus I can't do 200,000 times 365. But is it. Is. It doesn't even compare, right? 100 days to 200,000 years. But it wasn't that. It was just a small sum of money. It was pretty significant. Servant 2 makes that same request, but instead of showing him mercy, the first servant had him thrown into prison. The other servants run and tell the king, and then the king throws that first servant into jail until he could repay. Which when is that going to be? Never. And so we get this story. So let's start talking a little bit about this idea of forgiveness. What do we learn from the story? Well, who does the king represent? Who do the servants represent? Us. Right? And so what we should see is that we should reconcile. We should forgive because we have been forgiven. God reconciled with us through Jesus. If God is willing to forgive so much, then we should be willing to forgive a little. That's the whole point of the story. Let's go to 2 Corinthians 5, 16, 19. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who, through Christ, reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ. God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So suddenly, Paul tells us we got the story from Jesus. Paul comes back and says, we have a new business that we're to be about, and that business is reconciliation. It's reconciliation that we should no longer regard people from the human perspective. We no longer see them as just flesh. We see them as spiritual. We see them as their souls. And God reconciled himself to us, and now we're in this business of reconciliation. So when we talk about forgiveness, how do we forgive? Is our forgiveness based upon the offender's worthiness to be forgiven? Do we look and say, okay, that person who has wronged me, they're worthy to be forgiven? And do we pick and choose? Do we select those who we hold a grudge against versus those that we don't hold a grudge against? Are there times when we might have that one person that we're just like, yeah, I just can't forgive? Oftentimes we look at that worthiness. But what did the king do? What did 2 Corinthians that Paul state, right, is that if we look at someone as human, if we look at someone as flesh, then oftentimes it's harder for us to forgive. Rather, if we look at them through the eyes of God to see that they are spiritual, that they are a soul, and that should help us have that forgiveness? What kind of things? Let's go back and think about all the things we've talked about this quarter. What kind of things has God forgiven? People killing Jesus, you got the people putting his son to death. If you look at the Old Testament, right, there were time and time again, the Israelites rejected him, rebelled against him, times in which they almost seemed to forget him, his son. All of those things we see him forgive. How are these things that God has been forgiven? How do they compare with what we typically forgive? One of the things when you go to Google, you know, I read an article and the guy was like, you know, when that person cuts you off in traffic, okay, you know, you know, you need to forgive them Even though they don't ask and not said and let it anger you all day. Okay, well, first of all, if you're angry all day because someone cut you off in traffic, there's a few more, I think there's a few more issues than forgiveness, right? But when we compare what we're typically called to forgive, does it really compare to what? The things that God has forgiven. Don't you see in that story where you got the 200,000 years of salary versus the 100 days of wages, what God has forgiven has been so much the other thing that, that story that Jesus tells gives us this idea that forgiveness knows no limits. So Peter wants a number, right? He wants a number to use before he gives up on that person or shuts them off or closes them out, right? It's kind of like the, we have the three strike rule. So Peter wants this numerical limit and Jesus refuses to set a limit. He sets and he gives him a number that's actually, you know, really high, therefore basically saying there is no limit. What do you think? How does this affect our thinking on giving up on people? Do you have that one person co worker maybe? So I had one of those uncles. Everybody has one of those uncles where you would never know what he would say. He, you never knew, you never knew what he would do. Whenever I was dating a girl and I, I would always kind of break up with her at Christmas just because I never know what he would say to her if she met the family. Right? That, that uncle, right. And you're just like, okay, I'm gonna let it go this time. But that's it, you know, and so you're constantly just, you know, wincing every time he opens to say something. Right? But what is this, what does this say about that? Right? What does this say about those people in our lives that just over and over again we feel like we just forgive, forgive, forgive.
• 15:04
  Speaker C: Well, I'm not sure it applies. God gave up on people too many times in the Old Testament he would forgive. And let's just take the Israelites as an example, he would forgive him, Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven. And finally he would say, okay, that's it, you're gonna have to be punished. And he would send some other nation to punish them. So there, of course, he was doing that to try to get them to repent also. But, but there was a limit with God and there is, I think, a limitless God. We just don't know what it is.
• 15:52
  Speaker B: So I'd like to share with you.
• 15:53
  Speaker C: But that's not our limit.
• 15:57
  Speaker B: I would like to share with you. Somebody who watched on Livestream texted me this earlier. Right. And remember last week when we talked about punishment, we asked about the difference between discipline and punishment. He said that I think the thought process in a way that limited what discipline actually is. I see discipline as lessons being taught. Discipline is having a curfew. It teaches responsibility, punctuality, and if broken, consequences. And that's more like a punishment. I like when it says, what father does not discipline. And the entire Bible could be looked upon discipline and its lessons about respect and consequence. And so God did discipline, right? Israelites sinned, he forgave them, did something to try to discipline on and on until eventually there was punishment as a consequence of them not learning that particular lesson. I think, though, when we look at this, that this tells us that even though there are people who are maybe exhausting or exasperating, you don't necessarily give up on them. And we'll kind of talk about this a little bit more. So what happens if and when a person keeps wronging us? Then.
• 17:27
  Speaker D: I think we can forgive.
• 17:29
  Speaker B: But also distance, okay? That we forgive and we also. Distance. That's a good one.
• 17:39
  Speaker E: Our heart in the matter should never change. We should always have a heart hoping for forgiveness and a heart of where we were wanting to reconcile and things like that. But just like there are those natural consequences, there are those things that might need to be put in place to strength to. To possibly lessen the possibility of things happening again. But our heart doesn't change.
• 18:03
  Speaker B: So one of the things I want us from now to the end of the class is we're going to see forgiveness as two things. We're going to see forgiveness as an attitude that we have to develop, an attitude that has to be developed within our heart. Then we also see forgiveness as an action, right? Forgiveness. Just like that King canceled that debt. Forgiveness is an action. So what we see in these verses we're going to read from now in the class is we see those two things. Even when someone who does this right keeps wronging us, we have to have an attitude of forgiveness in our heart that even though they keep wronging us, they'll still get our forgiveness. However, we can control the action that we do, right? If you have someone, I had a cousin who was addicted to drugs, stole from everybody, stole from my parents, stole from other aunts and uncles. Event, you know, we, we. When he sought treatment, we would forgive him, but yet they always kept their valuables locked up because it was just. It was too a temptation or things like that. So, you know, we give forgiveness, but we also have to remember distance. And I got a slide on this as well, Jimmy.
• 19:24
  Speaker F: I think relating that to the parable that Jesus said, what's expected of the. Of the servant who had the large, large sum forgiven of him was to forgive and let go of the other servant. But it wasn't necessarily expected of him to loan him more money. So that's kind of the difference between giving them forgiveness as opposed to intentionally setting yourself up to be disappointed or to be taken advantage of again.
• 20:05
  Speaker B: And the other thing we see in that story, right, is that forgiveness is not always just an internal change of mind. Right. The king doesn't simply say, I'm not angry with you anymore. Right. Rather, he had pity and forgave that debt. He takes this action by canceling that debt. That's why I said that to me. Forgiveness, there's two parts of forgiveness. That internal attitude within our heart. And then oftentimes it's going to require an action. Right. Sometimes forgiveness includes, not necessarily limited to changing how we feel about someone. We might have to make it might be doing things to make that relationship. Right. Okay. Especially if you think about. If something, you know, is said and there's, you know, we do it all the time in our marriages, in our close friendships, you know, you have a little argument, things are said. And so then you wind up going through and that forgiveness and you make those things right. And in some cases, it may mean sacrifices. I mean, the king canceled a debt that he was rightfully owed. Okay. This is not a big. This is not a big. It's not a big deal. It's not. Maybe not the best example. I all know I had an older sister who passed away in 2020. Loved her. I mean, we were close, but if I gave her money, I knew I'd never get paid back. Right. And so my parents had a 50th wedding anniversary. We were going to split things 50. 50. Amy and I took care of everything. And I didn't see anything from her that's expected. Right. At that point, I knew that was going to happen. And so Amy and I knew that was going to happen. It didn't stop us from giving my parents their 50th wedding anniversary. We just knew that if she was able to pay us something great, though she wasn't able to pay us something, that's all right too. Right? And so we wind up realizing that sometimes to keep that relationship intact, not to let that anger build up inside, you just. You just have to let go and you just have to forgive. Let's go to Matthew 5, verses 22 through 24. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel. And whoever says, you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and then you remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. So in this passage, are we the offender or are we the offendee? We're the offender, right? If we realize that someone has something against you, which to me implies I have done something to them, right? Then I need to leave the altar and go and make that. Make that right. What do you think it means? Notice that what Jesus says, it's not just an internal decision. It's not like I'm in worship and I look across and I see somebody sitting there and I'm like, you know, I must have made them angry. They haven't talked to me. I must have done something. I'll fix it later, right? It's not just this internal decision to do something later, but rather it is an action and a conversation that takes place, that has to take place. If you. Let's come down here, this last one, right? What do you think it. So you think of how ritualistic the Jewish giving, offering sacrifices, all that was. What do you think it means that Jesus says, before you do all that, go make things right? Then come back and do it. What is he implying about? What is he implying that if you stayed and did that versus going, what do you think the implication there is? What would it say about your sacrifice?
• 24:49
  Speaker D: It's like the sacrifice of Cage.
• 24:51
  Speaker B: It would be unworthy, right? Like Cain's sacrifice is unworthy. If you know you've done something and you offer the sacrifice first, it's an un. It's not a right sacrifice. You've got to go make things right and then come back. And then. I'm starting to speed ahead, but there's a section I want to make sure I get to. So the other thing I think that it teaches us that story that Jesus told is forgiveness. And someone mentioned this before, forgiveness doesn't necessarily do away with the consequences, right? Christians are called. Christians are called to forgive, okay? There's not any offense or anything that we're not called to forgive. However, oftentimes there's going to be consequences to the person who we've Forgiven. Right. For example, you know, someone may, you know, I talked about my cousin who stole from my parents and uncle eventually got caught. He got sent to jail. Now everybody in the family forgave him, but there were still consequences to what he had done. Christian forgiveness and consequences do coexist. Let's go to Romans, chapter 13 and look at verse 4, 7. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you will also pay taxes for the authorities or ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed. Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is. So. So Paul is actually talking about the Roman Empire. And what he tells Christians is that the Roman Empire is responsible. They carry the sword, not Christians. Right at this time, when Paul was writing it, Christians weren't even allowed to serve in government. But what he's saying is the Roman Empire, they're allowed to bear the sword. Meaning that when you sin, there might be legal consequences and that's what's going on and that you accept those consequences. So this goes back to someone said earlier, does forgiving someone mean we forget wise practices? I think we kind of answered that before. Right. Is that forgiving someone still means that we show wise practice? We're still aware of things. How do you forgive someone? Well, first of all, does forgiving someone lead to enablement? If you keep forgiving someone over something, do you feel like that might lead to enablement? How do you avoid that?
• 28:13
  Speaker D: Yeah, I think it can. Unless if you just continue to forgive somebody and don't put any type of boundary into effect, then I think it can be enabling behavior. Like if know kid does something wrong and you, you forgive them and don't say, hey, don't do that, or you know, make them feel any type of boundary there, then they're going to continue to being able to do it.
• 28:44
  Speaker B: So you have to be careful when you forgive to tell them you don't necessarily accept that behavior. Right. Current I say you, I saw you shaking your head.
• 28:57
  Speaker G: I was, I wanted to say yes. Well, sorry, the, the question, it does not necessarily enable them. This is something I've been studying out recently. That's like really hit home with me is in Ezekiel 36, where we're being prophesied, basically the water and spirit of how we get saved. It's. It's really amazing how with the spirit part, God, he's going to put a.
• 29:23
  Speaker B: New spirit in us, put a new.
• 29:24
  Speaker G: Heart in us, and give us his spirit, with the result being our own obedience. So it's like we were disobedient.
• 29:30
  Speaker D: He needed to.
• 29:30
  Speaker G: Well, not needed, but we needed his forgiveness. But yet he does the exact opposite of the enabling. He actually goes beyond just the forgiveness and then helps us to do what he actually wants us to do. But then at the end of it, he says, at the end of this, you're going to weep and lament and.
• 29:46
  Speaker D: Mourn all the things.
• 29:47
  Speaker G: Things that you did. So it's like almost the exact opposite of the enabling. But then at the end of it, he gets us to see what we did for the walking in.
• 29:57
  Speaker D: That's like the full sort of redemption.
• 29:59
  Speaker B: And that's a great lead in to this last part, which where I want to spend some time and hopefully get a quick discussion. Right. I mentioned before, to me, what you see in all these verses is you see forgiveness as two things. You see forgiveness as an attitude that we have to cultivate in our heart. We have to cultivate this idea of forgiveness within our soul. And then you also see that forgiveness is an action that transpires in a relationship. Okay, so let's talk about this first one, this attitude of forgiveness, because the question is, how do we get that? How do we cultivate that? So let's go to Ephesians, chapter 4 and look at verse 31 and 32. So verse 31 says, Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. And then we move into verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God and Christ forgave you. So my question is, you look at this order. Do you think this order is just random? Or what do you think we've got to do to start cultivating forgiveness in our heart? What is mentioned before forgiveness has ever even talked about? Yeah, it's this first part, right? You got to let all bitterness and wrath and anger and slander, any malice that you have, you've got to let it go. You got to let it out of your life. So before you can forgive one, before you can really forgive one another, you gotta let go of the anger that's in your heart for that particular person or that particular thing that's happened, okay, that's how you cultivate this idea of forgiveness, right? The command to let go of that bitterness and that anger and malice, and all you see, it precedes that idea to forgive. And so that's how you cultivate that. All right, so now I'd like for us to spend. The last part is to talk about the action of forgiveness. So look at first John 1:9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Okay? So in this case, for God to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us, what's got to take place, we confess, right? So if we confess our sins to God, then God is faithful, God is just, and he forgives us of those sins. And then let's look at Luke 17, verses 3 through 4. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times in a day saying, I repent, then you must forgive him. So this is talking about God. This is talking about us. So what does Luke 17 say about the action of forgiveness?
• 33:21
  Speaker D: Person has to repent.
• 33:23
  Speaker B: That person has to repent.
• 33:25
  Speaker C: So if you've confronted him, then he has to repent.
• 33:29
  Speaker B: Okay, so if you've confronted him, he has to repent. So what does this say? So what does this say about the importance of asking for forgiveness? Going back to the question, this is where we move into the homework part. And the homework part was, do you forgive somebody if they don't ask you for forgiveness? So we've talked about that. We've got to develop that heart, that attitude of forgiveness. And then there's an action to forgiveness. So now we're on that action part. So we look at what we read in first John. We look at what we read in Luke. So then the question is, when do we apply that action? And I've been looking at this all week, and I still don't have an answer. So I'm hoping somebody I know one of y'all have answers.
• 34:22
  Speaker C: Just from a practical standpoint, there are things that I might say to you that, hey, this person, you know, did or said this to me, and you would think, well, that's not such a big deal. Or it isn't to you, but if you think, you know, it's important, go talk to him. So. Well, I wouldn't want to go talk to him about that. Well, if it's not important enough for you to go talk to that person, then you should forgive him without going to talking.
• 34:59
  Speaker B: So I do think that we got to break a few things out, right? Obviously when we read Luke and it says if he sins, rebuke him, he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times during the day and, and turns to you saying I repent, you got to forgive him. I think there are, I think how do we. What's the church word for this? There are sins of omission and sins of commission, right? There are those things that we do that perhaps we don't know we've done. Then there are things that we do that we know we have done. And so I do think if someone does something and you rebuke them that they should repent. But I think what we're focused or at least what I'm focused on here is what about those people who have done us wrong and they know they have done us wrong, right? I'll just throw it out there. Last week we talked about or a couple weeks ago I mentioned I have an ex wife. She's never asked for forgiveness for what she has done. So do you, do you offer it or do you forgive? In that case, how do you, what is the action or when should that action take place?
• 36:23
  Speaker D: Do you think counter question is there? And this may be semantics, but is there something other than forgiveness you can do to release yourself of that burden? Right? Because I think my, my thought process going forward this class and then you reinforce it with your examples. Just you can't really forgive somebody if they don't repent or ask for forgiveness. If the magic question, magic words, right? Of is there something of just releasing that and like getting it out of yourself like that. I don't know what the right word is. Hate or wrong feeling, whatever releasing it instead of forgiving, right? Because you can't absolve someone that wrongdoing if they don't want to change or they're going to keep doing it.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: So this first forgiveness we read here, can we offer this level of forgiveness? No. Only God can forgive sins. So who is, who is gaining something when we do this part of forgiveness? Both or sometimes it may just be us, right? We can't let remember what we said before we can forgive. We got to get rid of all anger, we got to get rid of all malice. So this, right, the forgiveness that we, we extend to someone is really more for us, right? Because we have released that anger and that malice and we do that now. Here is where I was. Here's where I was headed with this question. Do you think this is true? If we have that attitude of forgiveness flow out into action before forgiveness has been sought, do we undercut the need for a sinful person to repent of their sin?
• 38:37
  Speaker E: This kind of goes with what.
• 38:42
  Speaker C: There'S.
• 38:42
  Speaker E: A difference in again, which we talked about all. But it's the attitude idea, like, we can. There are things that we can let go of and not hold on to, but we can still hold people accountable. I mean, that, that a lot of this. I know it is a semantics thing in the sense of, you know, a lot of times we want to find like the 1 answer for stuff in scripture and it's just not there. I mean, that God doesn't give us a. This is what you do in this situation, this situation, this situation. He gives us principles, gives us things to live by. And we know that. We have a heart of forgiveness. We know that that's our goal. Our goal is always reconciliation, humiliation and things like that. We can let things go. We can. We and ourselves can go about our lives not affected by it, or at least as much as we can, not affected by other people's actions. But if somebody is sinning and not asking for forgiveness and living in that simple lifestyle and all of these things, like, it would be. It would not be a good thing for us just to go to them, be like, hey, it's all good, like there's nothing there. I mean, we can let go of things, but there is still, again, consequences and we have to hold people accountable.
• 40:02
  Speaker B: And I think this is something that Curran alluded to earlier, right? Is, you know, when I say I forgive you, does that alleviate the fact that you might have to ask God or confess God or ask God for forgiveness? I can't forgive sin, right? So when I forgive someone, I need to make sure. Talking about that enablement, right? You got to make sure to say, well, you know, I forgive you. But the more pressing matter is, has God forgiven you? Have you asked God for forgiveness? Right. If we develop that attitude in our heart, we should be willing to forgive someone whether they ask us or not, right? Because we have that attitude of forgiveness. But we have to be careful when we forgive someone not to just say we've accepted that behavior because it may be that they need to ask for forgiveness from the higher power. Right?
• 41:00
  Speaker H: Comments, kind of going back to your last point. And sometimes it's kind of branching out what they're in and say too. You do need that form of release. Especially if depending on how egregious the action was and how long you've held on to that anger and malice. If you, if you have that, if you don't have that attitude of forgiveness and have had to come to it, to me that's more of a reason to come maybe forward and you have to have a release somehow. And I, I know in my past there's the most recent incident that I can think of that really, really bothered me that I had to really come to grips with. I had to verbally come out and, you know, say I forgive you. And I'm asking for your forgiveness as well. Because I wasn't always. I was never right either. So it's, it's certainly case dependent. But I would think if you, if it's something you've held on to, there's got to be a way to move past it.
• 42:06
  Speaker B: Right.
• 42:06
  Speaker H: And asking for forgiveness seems to me to be that demar. Line of demarcation to move past your, your letting go to, you know, forgiveness, if you want.
• 42:19
  Speaker D: Yeah, just. I don't even know exactly where I'm going with this. Just in the sense that it's difficult to balance forgiveness and then justice. Like I was looking in second Timothy three, talking about godliness in the last days, talking about people be lovers of self, disobedient to their parents, treacherous swallowing with conceit, blah, blah, blah, long list. And. And then it says avoid such people. So it's not like just forgive them and keep letting them sin in your church and over and over again avoid them. So there is a point where you have to balance having a forgiving heart with also justice and avoiding like enablement, where that sin ends up creeping into your own life.
• 43:10
  Speaker B: So one quick thing and then we'll be dismissed. So this is so a lot of y'all know that for years I did Christian camping, Gulf Coast Bible camp with West Huntsville, with Madison. And so when we were at West Huntsville, there was something going on in camp and there were all these cinder blocks. And so I had an object lesson where I had, I think it was James and Jared. And so I had them hold these cinder blocks. So at one point both of them are holding six cinder blocks. And then I do my devo and the whole time they're just, you know, but they're teenage boys, so they are not going to let those cinder blocks go down. Right now for one, I talked about that those cinder blocks were sin. Right? Sin weighs you down, but there's an easy way to get rid of that sin. Right. But for the Other one I talked about forgiveness, right? There may be cinder blocks that you're holding that you've held onto for a long time because you're not able to get that anger or that malice or that bitterness out of your life. And it gets heavy. And for me, the whole idea of forgiveness, it's for us to remove these cinder blocks. And I'm sure all of us could put something on a block. We could write a person's name. We could write somebody's incident that happened, and we may still be hanging on to that.
• 44:45
  Speaker G: And.
• 44:46
  Speaker B: And that cinder blocks is getting heavy. And the easiest way to get that weight out of our lives is just to. Just to forgive them. And it may be they'll say, okay, because they don't even think they need forgiveness, Right? But the point is, you've eliminated these things that are weighing you down. So my answer, do we forgive someone even though they don't ask? Is absolutely, because we've got to develop a heart of forgiveness right now. We also, depending upon the circumstance, it may be, I forgive you, but you got a broader. You got something you've got to. You know, when we rebuke a brother, right, You've got something you got to take care of, and that is that you ask for God's forgiveness, right? But get rid of these cinder blocks because they. They wear you down. Homework for the week is do the teacher survey. Let us know what you think about the class, about me. I'll have free coffee and donuts next week for class, so remember that when you do the survey and y'all are dismissed.