Forgive One Another

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our website@metchurch.com, dot. We would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Good morning, everybody. We're in a brand new series beginning today called one another. There's a greek word you find about times in the New Testament called Aliyan. What it means is to be mutually involved, to be each other. Translated more often than not in our bibles as one another. And it carries with it the idea that we're not necessarily to live independent of one another. We're not to live dependent upon one another, but we are to live interdependent upon one another. Meaning that you and I need each other. Everybody needs people. You gotta have them in your family. You gotta have them in your business. You can't have business without people. A church is all about people. And the Bible designed us and God made us to need each other. In fact, in romans 14, verse seven, the Bible says, none of us lives to ourselves alone, and none of us die to ourselves alone. Regardless of your experience, where you've been, where you are, where you're going, you need people. You need other people. And we've talked about before, the tendency that we have when you go through something is to isolate, to insulate, to pull in, to pull away from other people. And I've told you before, that's okay to go there. It's just not okay to stay there for a while. You may need to go there. You may need to insulate. You may need to isolate. Sometimes it's not good for you to be around people. We all get toxic from time to time. And so we have to limit our engagement with other people because we're healing, we're broken, we're bleeding, and we just need some time, right? And as I said, it's okay to go through those moments where you need a little ICU, but you don't want to live there. You don't want to stay there. Eventually, you need to emerge from that dark experience. You need to walk out of that, and you need to realize God has designed you and I in such a way that we really do need one another. And what I want to talk to you about this morning is probably the most difficult thing that you and I will ever try to do. When we are involved with, working with, relating to one another, and probably the most difficult thing that we'll ever do is to learn to forgive one another. That's hard to do. It's easy to talk about, but it's a difficult thing to do. And you and I will not go through life without offending people from time to time. You just are. It's just gonna happen. Maybe not intentionally, but just living your life, you're gonna offend people. I'm a big guy. Cindy used to tell me, put your hands in your pockets when you go into these really swanky places. Cause you'll knock stuff off the shelf. And when I put my hands in my pocket, I still got a pretty good wingspan and I can still knock stuff off the shelves. Not even. But I'm saying I never broke anything that I meant to do. I've never went in one of those swanky places she used to like to go through and say, I think I'm gonna knock that off the shelf. That looks expensive. And it never happened. I'm just saying sometimes we break things accidentally. We don't intend to do it, but it just happens. In fact, there's a great verse that might help you with this. It helps me. It's in Luke 17, verse one, where Jesus said to his apostles, it isn't possible. It is not possible to live without offense. You are going to offend people and people are going to offend you probably. If I surveyed you, you got offended when you left your house this morning driving down 1709. Somebody offended you. Trying to get them through the roundabout, let them know that's not a four way stop, is offensive. Boy, I hit on something there, didn't I? Understanding the left lane is for passing only can be offensive from time to time. Right. I'm just saying we all go down that road from time to time where we offend people and we don't mean to. It just happens. And people offend us. They don't mean to. It just happens. And the savior himself said, we will not live our lives apart from offense. You're going to experience it. You're going to have it. I'm going to. I'm going to have it. We're going to offend each other. You're going to offend other people. Maybe not intentionally, inadvertently, but it is just a reality of life. And I'm just laying the groundwork to tell you we have to understand the power of forgiveness, the power of absolutely getting past some of those things. Listen to what the Bible says in romans 1218 if possible. If possible. Sometimes it's not. But if possible, listen to what he said. If possible, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all people. He said, get along as much as you can. If it's possible. I even love the way he word that. If it's possible, if as much as it depends on you, you can't handle how other people treat you, you can handle how you react to other people. So he's saying here, look, if it's possible, as far as it depends on you, try to live at peace with other people. Just try to get along. You don't have to litigate every offense. You don't have to call somebody out over everything they've done to you. You don't have to die on every hill that you come up on. And I'm just suggesting to you that sometimes the best thing you can do is just walk away from a thing. Just say, it's just not worth it. It's not worth the emotional energy I'm about to expend on this, and you just simply walk away. I mean, the Bible says, if it's possible, as much as it depends on you, live at peace with all people. And all of these things impact us in this realm, in this area of offenses. Everybody in the room, what I do know about all of us, everybody in the room has at some point been offended, and sometimes very deeply. So probably you don't have to think very much, go very far in your mind to think of someone who has hurt you deeply. I saw where a psychologist said in studying churches. He said in the average church, on any given Sunday, at least one third of the congregation attending the service is angry about something. One third is angry about something. Look at the person on your left right quick. Would you look at them? Just look at that person on your left. Look at the person on your right. Look them over. Just look at em real good. Do they look mad? Well, if not, it might be you. One third, one out of three. That means sometimes we walked into this room just snow white, downright blazing bright, mad at something or mad at somebody. And that's okay. It's a part of life. You will not get through life without offense. Jesus said that it's what you do with the offense, how long you allow it to remain, how long will you allow it to affect you before you do something about that thing? Now, there's certain things that we can do with an offense, several things, but I thought of three. One of the things you can do is just bury it. Act like it doesn't exist. Just deny it. Just try to walk away from it, I said, and sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. You try to rationalize it. You know what happens when you rationalize? You tell yourself rational lies. You simply say, I'm not as hurt as bad as I thought I am. This is not as rough as I thought it was. And yet it keeps coming up in your mind because you've buried something that's still alive. Some things you can't walk away from, and it's the things that you try to bury that remain alive are some of the things you can't walk away from, so you try to bury it. Other people try to blame other people. They don't own any responsibility for anything a little narcissistic in their approach to life, and they just simply try to blame everybody else for the problems that they're facing. That's, by the way, that's as old as the garden of Eden. You remember when Adam and eve, when sin entered the picture, and you remember when God called them out on sin. And you remember when Eve was called out on it. She said, God, or she called Adam out on it. He said, God. It was the woman that you gave me. It was her. And that's your fault because you gave her to me, right? It's the blame game. In fact, the Bible talks about this principle in the book of proverbs, chapter 19 and verse three. He talks about the fact that if you don't resolve a conflict, you blame others or you try to bury it, it becomes like a self inflicted wound, like it hurts you more than it hurts anyone else. And then a third option that people have is they just beat themselves up about it. They just live with a guilty conscience. They live with resentment from the offense. And what you'll find is when you begin to beat yourself up, you'll find that eventually that will have a negative effect on you emotionally and even physiologically. In psalm 38, David's guilt brought about depression. What he was suffering and what he was struggling with. And he didn't deal with it. He buried it. He was blaming everybody else. He wasn't taking responsibility. And all of a sudden, in some ways, I know there's different forms of depression, but some forms of depression are simply nothing more than anger turned inward. It's when you just turn it in on yourself. You know what the problem with beating yourself up about something? You know what the big problem is? You don't know when to stop. You just keep beating yourself up and beating yourself up and people that beat themselves up typically don't know when to stop. And so I'm just saying there is a way to deal with this that is healthy, that is good theology, it is good psychology, and that is understanding the power of forgiveness. In fact, if you have a Bible, look with me in Ephesians chapter four. There are many places we could go, but this is a great passage. It really underscores what I want to talk to you about. Ephesians four, look down in verse 30 and do not grieve the holy spirit of God, with whom you are sealed for the day of redemption. Now, let me stop long enough to say that goes to the idea when I tell you you're saved eternally, once you're saved, you're always saved. Underscore that. That's not really where I'm going today, but it's just there. And I, you know, it's just. It's a low hanging fruit. You are sealed to the day of redemption. How long is your salvation good? Until the day of redemption. What does that mean? That means the seal that seals you in your relationship with Christ is the Holy Spirit. He's the seal. And your and my salvation is as good as the seal is good. If the seal can be broken, what's in the container will spoil. But since the seal is the Holy Spirit, the seal cannot be broken, because God cannot lie. There's nothing that he. That he cannot do. And so we are sealed. Until when will we ultimately be redeemed? When we step into the presence of God. Once we're in the presence of God, our salvation is finally made complete when we see him. Third, John says, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. So that had nothing to do with what I want to talk to you about. That was low hanging fruit. That's free like the rest of it. Look, verse 31 instead. Notice it. Now get rid of all bitterness. Now, he wouldn't tell us to do something that's not within our power or ability to do. You say, well, I know bitter people, or I'm a bitter person. Well, the Bible says we have the power to deal with our own bitterness. So get rid of bitterness. Get rid of rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. How do you do that? 32. Be kind and compassionate. Here it is to one another. And how are we consistently able to do that? Here it is forgiving one another. What is the basis of this forgiveness? Just as in Christ, God forgave you. Just as God in Christ forgave us we're to forgive one another. And the result of not forgiving, as we'll see, are all those negative emotions that we experience in life. And I want to say first and foremost, the idea of forgiveness is a choice. You and I have a choice to forgive, or we have a choice not to forgive. It's within your power. It's within your ability to forgive. Have you ever heard someone say this? Or maybe you've said this before? I just can't forgive them. Really, what we ought to say, and be honest with us, what we ought to say is I won't forgive. Because when I say I can't forgive, then I'm forgetting the idea that once I'm forgiven, once God in Christ has forgiven me, he has given me the power. The power, the ability to forgive other people. Now I'll say this about that. Some people who say I can't forgive may not be able to. Now stay with me. I don't want to sound like I'm contradicting myself, but listen to this. They may be a person that has never received God's forgiveness. So when they tell you I can't forgive, that may be true. They may not have the power within them in this moment to forgive because they've never been forgiven. Because the basis of our forgiveness, based on this narrative, is we're to forgive as Christ has forgiven us. In that forgiveness, he empowers us to have the ability to forgive other people. You really can't forgive someone if you haven't been forgiven. You can't receive something you haven't been given any more than you can come from somewhere you haven't been. So what I'm helping you understand is at the end of the day, you and I have a choice. Particularly if you're in a relationship with God. You have a choice to forgive or not to forgive. It's your choice. And I'm saying it's not easy. And if you need a great basis for forgiveness, then I would tell you one of the great basis of forgiveness is first what I would call the grace. The grace factor, verse 32. We're to forgive as he has forgiven us. Did we deserve forgiveness? No. What is grace? If you were to look at acrostic on grace, grace. The acrostic would be God's riches at Christ's expense. Grace. Grace is simply defined as unmerited favor. Grace is the favor of God that I did not deserve. It was God being kind to me, God being good to me. Romans five, eight. While I was still in my sins, Christ died for me. That's why we tell you Christianity is not behavior modification. You don't get your act together and come to Jesus. You come to Jesus with your messed up self. You come to Jesus with your sinful self. The old hymn says, just as I am without one plea, but that your blood was shed for me. O lamb of God, I come. That's how you come to Jesus. How does he forgive you? By his grace. Not based on our. On our merit, because we have none. But we are forgiven based upon his love for. How do we forgive other people? The grace factor. Do we give it because they deserve it? Heavens, no. Most of the people that you'll struggle with forgiving absolutely don't deserve forgiveness. And by the way, when you forgive them, that doesn't mean they still have access to you. Remember I told you last week we are to love everyone, but access is earned. And when someone breaks your heart and someone betrays your confidence, you can forgive them. But that doesn't mean everything picks up where it left off. What's that? Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. That's not in the Bible, but that'd be a good one. And I'm just suggesting you that some of the things you learn by being hurt and betrayed is you learn trust is earned. And just because you forgive someone, that doesn't mean they deserve it. And that doesn't mean everything's gonna return to what it was. That just means you've released them. Do you know, one of the ideas of forgiveness is to release. To release it means to let them go. It means to let it go. And I told you that's not easy. You need a lot of grace to do that. And some people, I'll tell you this morning, aren't ready to do that. And I understand that, because anytime you talk about this subject, I'll get someone that will say, you have no idea what happened to me. You have no idea what I've been through. And, you know, you're right. And I'm not minimizing at all how hard this is, because some of you guys and some watching online, you have been hurt deeply. You have been betrayed completely. You've had someone do some horrific things to you. Maybe as a child, they've done some things to you that were just horrific, and they need the millstone tied around their neck, and they need to be thrown out the middle of grapevine Lake or somewhere that's not in the Bible, but I'm trying to relate. Well, the other part is the location is off. But I'm saying I get that. And you may not be, listen, you may not be ready to do that yet. Today may not be the day. I'm just saying this to file this away in your mind and know at some point God may bring you to that place where you realize holding on to it is hurting you more than it's ever hurting them. And you may need to say, it's not that I love them, but it is that I love me. And I'm going to let this go. I'm going to release it. I know why some people don't. Because you feel like they'll get away with it, right? As long as I can hold onto that somehow you feel like they're making them pay, but that's not what's happening. They're skipping skippity doo doll right on down their life and they're living their life and they're not even thinking about you. And you're holding on and harboring something that is affecting you. Let me tell you something. Your heavenly Father is very capable of taking care of you. The Bible says time and time again, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay. I mean, it's a mystery to me why God allows some of the things that happen to us to happen to us. You say, why did he let the abuse happen to begin with? I don't know. I don't know. That's a mystery. It's one of those things that if you hang up on that, it'll rob you of your joy. It'll affect your peace. It'll cloud your view of God. What you have to get to is that place to realize God is sovereign. I'm not. He knows everything. I don't. We're in a sinful world with, with corrupt and sinful people. And good things happen to bad people sometimes. And bad things happen to good people sometimes. And we have to know, God is faithful. He will not fail. And even though the offense happened, you have a heavenly father that is going to take care of it because at the end of the day, nobody gets by with anything. The beautiful thing about knowing Jesus is my sins and yours are placed against the cross, never to be remembered against us again. When I received Jesus as my savior, everything I'd ever done, everything I was currently doing, and everything I will ever do in the future is forgiven. Now that doesn't mean I won't face consequences for my stupidity. You love your kids and you forgive your kids, but you still stick them in time out are some of you apply the board of education to the seat of knowledge. I mean, there are always consequences. That doesn't mean you don't love them. That just means you're trying to correct a behavior. You're trying to prepare them for life in the real world. You're trying to let them know you can't yell and scream and pitch fit at me. Because you're going to do that to your teacher and you're going to do that to the first law enforcement officer that pulls you. And I'm not bailing you out of jail for your stupidity. So catch it while it's young. Don't wait. Listen, don't wait 15 years and 100 pounds too late. Start early. And I'm just suggesting to your heart this morning that it takes time to get to a place where you can let some stuff go. But when you are releasing them, you're releasing them with your heavenly father saying, I got you and I got this. Trust me. I'm just giving you permission to know you may not be ready to do that today. I don't want you upset at me. I'm just trying to give you something I think will help you in the long run. When you can get to the place where you can truly say, I'm ready, I'm gonna let it go. There's a grace factor. I'm to forgiven. I'm forgiven based upon the forgiveness that I've received of God. Now what if you don't? What if you don't? Look at that verse I read to you again down in verse 31. 1st thing that happens is bitterness. In fact, in Hebrews, chapter twelve, verse 15, he says, be careful lest a root of bitterness spring up in you and defile you and defile everyone else. Listen, where there is the root of bitterness, eventually there will be the fruit of bitterness. Nobody starts out bitter. You know what I know about our kids? We don't have a bitter kidde. There are no bitter babies over there in the nursery. My diaper's dirty, I'm hungry. I don't know these little snotty nosed kids. Why they dropped me off in here, right? There's no bitter kids. You go pick those little boogers up and they're going to be as happy as they just saw their first sunrise. Kids are awesome. They're not prejudiced, they're not bitter. Those are things you have to experience when you get knocked around a little bit in life. And all bitterness is an unresolved conflict. It is an offense that I allowed to ferment. To take root literally is what Hebrews is teaching to take root and eventually it starts poisoning me. And what happens is I start poisoning people around me. And before long, people don't want to be around a bitter person. People will start saturating your presence with their absence. And the Bible says, get rid of it. This is something you have the power to do, but if you don't, it creates bitterness. Look at the next word. Rage. Bitterness. Rage. What is rage? Rage. It carries the idea of something beneath the surface that is seething. Have you just been around somebody and you just tell they're about to go Tawanda on somebody? There is something right below the surface. Good night, man. Don't bump them, man. Let me tell you something. We're all full of something. And you want to know what you're full of? What comes out of you when you get bumped? The Bible says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. We saw. We say, what's in the well comes up in the bucket. And when you get bumped or you get squeezed, what's in you comes out of you. And what may come out of you ain't real sanctified. And if you're full of rage and bitterness, that's what's going to come out of you. And you're probably going to go off on somebody who doesn't know you and they don't deserve it. We call it road rage. It's a new phenomenon where you're just taking it out on somebody. And I'll admit there are people that'll wear you out a little bit on the road. They'll go 20 miles below the speed limit and you finally get a chance to pass them. Now the race is on, baby. Now they're going 80. Try to keep you from passing them, and I don't care. This is free. I don't know. Is anybody else like me? Do you have to just look at them when you go buy them? What's wrong with them? I'd never thought. I tried to evaluate myself and analyze myself. I've got to look at them. I'll never see them again. And believe me, if they got a met church sticker, I'm riding right behind them, man. I got their back door. We're both going to go 20 under. There's no way I'm passing them. Last thing I want, somebody pastor, I go to your church, man. You need to deal with that there. You know, Tony Stewart, you know, so that's an old NASCAR guy, by the way. But you just kind of, kind of look at them. I just got to see what that person looks like, right? But my point is, simply, you take it out on somebody, that's rage, and then the next thing is, it becomes anger. That's when the rage gets outside of you, and then it becomes brawling. That's. That's an old english word. That means it gets verbal. That means you're yelling and you're calling them names and all. And then from brawling, it talks about slander. That means you're saying things to hurt them, intentionally hurt them. And then it says malice. That means to harm them physically or financially. So he's saying, are you getting the spiral? He's saying that when you aren't forgiving and you're not loving to one another, when those qualities are not inside of you and you don't handle the offense well, these are the things that ultimately happen in your spirit, and none of them are good. So you have a choice to forgive. Let me give you the second thought. Not only the choice of forgiveness, but think about this. The cost of forgiveness. Forgiving costs you something. For example, if somebody owes you $1,000 and you forgive the debt, they're forgiven $1,000. That costs you $1,000. You're out the money. What's the principle? The principle is it costs something to forgive. What did it cost Jesus? Well, he set the parameters. The soul that sins must die. He said that if you're on a relation with him and you die in your sin, the unpardonable sin is to die. Rejecting Jesus blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So what he did is he paid a price. He paid the cost of salvation. In other words, he took the sins of the world upon himself. He became everything that you and I were and are so that we could become everything that he is. The Bible says in Romans four, blessed is the one to whom God will not impute sin. The word impute is an accounting word. There is actually a doctrine called the doctrine of imputation. It means blessed. Happy. The word blessed means happy. Happy is the person. Here's literally what it means. Happy is the one on whose account God will not put sin. He won't put sin on your account. How does he do that? Well, he puts it on Jesus account. He takes all the sins that you and I have committed, and he writes them on Jesus ledger sheet. He writes them on his account. And then Jesus takes the qualities of his life and writes them on ours. On him, became sin on us, became forgiveness on him, became unrighteousness on us, became righteousness on him at the cross became unholiness upon you and I, holiness. That's why at the cross when Jesus so completely became sin, the Bible says the father turned his back on his son and the world became as dark at noon day as though it were midnight. Because a holy and just God could not look upon sin. Because in that moment, Jesus had completely taken upon himself the sins of the world. You remember what he said on the cross, Father, forgive them. Release them of this debt. They don't even know what they're doing. And now the forgiveness that he provides is at the cross. If you want to know Jesus and the forgiveness of your sins, you just walked to the cross. That's why that old song says Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left the crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Forgiveness cost you something. It costs you something. It costs you the burden that you were carrying. It costs you the idea of releasing them and releasing that. There's a cost, there's a relief involved. It costs something to forgive. In fact, there's a story of a man who owed a huge sum of money and he was forgiven by the king. I'm trying to find the reference for you here. It's Matthew 18. In fact, according to biblical money in that day, it was a sum of like close to a million dollars that the man owed the king. He never paid back. And the king saw how hard the man was working and he saw what a burden it was. And listen, the king forgave the man. He forgave him of the debt. Cost the king a million dollars or so, but the man was dead. And then later in the story of Matthew 18, Jesus said, this very same man that had just been forgiveness had another man in his life that owed him a few hundred dollars and he wouldn't let him out of the debt. And when the king heard it, he reversed, he reversed the debt and made the guy pay off the original loan because he said, I've forgiven you much and you're not willing to forgive little. What's my point? My point is people who have been forgiven much ought to be people who can forgive others. We can forgive it because of the grace of God. We can forgive it because we've been forgiven. We can forgive it because he has released us of all of our past and all of the things that we deserve to happen in our life. He's forgiven us of that. But it wasn't easy. It cost him his life on the cross. And forgiveness is not easy for us either. There's always a cost, you say, well, how should I forgive them? Here's three words that might help you with that. Number one, forgive them freely. Freely. You heard the old expression, when you bury the hatchet, don't leave the handle sticking out of the ground. That's kind of what I'm driving at freely. In other words, don't hold it over their head. Once you've forgiven someone, don't remind them every time you have a disagreement. You know that time back in 75? You know, if you've really forgiven them, just walk away from it. Let it go. Don't bring it up anymore. Otherwise, they may feel like you really didn't forgive them. So do it freely. Do it fully. Fully? Freely and fully. Meaning not a partial forgiveness. Give them. Just say, I'm letting this go. I'm forgiving you. And thirdly, forgive them. Finally, forgive them. Finally. Just say, I'm walking away. I've dealt with that issue. We may have a different issue, but it won't be that one. I'm walking away from this. But remember, it'll cost you something to forgive. Here's the third and final thought. The consequence of forgiveness. What is the consequence if I do this? Maybe I'm not ready today. But eventually, if I can release that or release them, what are the consequences? Well, the first thing that happens is how it affects you. How forgiveness affects you. I've given this to you before, but it really hit me as I was preparing for this weekend. I thought, I need to share that with him again. In the Jesus sermon in Matthew five, the famous sermon that Jesus brings, he said, blessed are the peacemakers and blessed. You remember where he said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Remember, I shared this with you. Pure is the word. Catharos in the Greek. Katharos. And what's significant about that is we get the word catheter from that same word. A catheter is a medical device that takes the impurities out of our body. Did I clean that up enough? A catheter. That's what it is. And what he's saying is blessed are those who have the ability to have the impurities of their heart removed. The pure in heart. Catharis. You have a catheter in your heart. You have a power within you that can remove the impurities from you. It will make you happy. The word blessed is happy. So one of the things the consequences of forgiveness is it's like a catheter in your heart. You're not storing up this poison. You're not holding it within you, hoping it doesn't affect you at some point. We've already said it will. Bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, malice. Remember, it's going to affect you. It's not will it? It's just when will it? So what you have to do is you have to insert the catheter. And the catheter is simply something that goes in your heart that has the power to release people and to release circumstances. Blessed are the pure in heart catharos. What I'm saying is it'll have a cleansing effect on you. It will cleanse your spirit, it will change your outlook and it will change how you look at other people. And here's another possibility, another possibility of when you release someone and you forgive someone, there could be reconciliation to that relationship. Sometimes not. Sometimes you may not want it, sometimes it might not be, but sometimes it could reconcile the relationship. In fact, when you see that principle there in verse 32, all the way down, when you look at chapter five, verses one and two, you look at Matthew, chapter 18, verse 15, Jesus said, if the person you've forgiven will hear you, you've regained your brother or you've regained your sister. Possibility of reconciliation. Maybe you get them back. Maybe you want them back. Maybe it's a different relationship than you had before. Maybe it's better. I don't know. I'm just saying, when you release them and you release that, that's a possibility, not only does it affect you, it affects them. It could bring about not just rejoicing in your heart, but reconciliation in the relationship. Not only that, it can bring about, it can bring about a whole new outlook on your life. It has a great illustration that I found that I wanted to give this to you. You remember in the Old Testament when they named their kids, their names had significance. It was always tied to some experience. Their names were significant. You remember the story of Joseph, one of the great stories of the Old Testament, how he's betrayed. Remember, he's betrayed by his brothers. Remember the coat of many colors and famous story. And yet, years later, through a series of trials and difficulties, God promotes him and he becomes the prime minister of Egypt. He becomes Pharaoh's right hand man. And there's a famine in the land, remember? And his brothers reach out, not knowing that was Joseph. They thought Joseph died years ago. And now Joseph's the prime minister of Egypt. And they come stand before him and you have that famous chapter in Genesis 50 of that reunion. And you see the story where Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers and he says to them, the things you did to me, you meant evil. But I realize now God meant it for good. It took some time. He wasn't ready. I promise you. When he was in the pit, he wasn't thinking forgiveness. When they first. He was thinking, man, if I get out of here, I'll make those boys pay. Right? He wasn't ready. That's what I'm saying. Some of you may not be ready, but after a period of time, he obviously was able to release it because when he saw them, he had the power to kill them and he didn't. You know, how you can tell you've forgiven someone is when you run into them in a restaurant, you don't want to kill them. That's a little extreme, I know, but you get my point. Or you can run into them in a store somewhere and you don't just grit your teeth and walk the other way or pray to God they didn't see you. You can just walk right up to them and speak to them. Why? Because you've let it go. That's the way. You know. And if you hadn't really fully, or it's not time, you'll know. Wait till you see them. And all the needles in your life just went over in the red zone, you know, okay, we ain't ready for this. I'm gonna walk away, and then that's good. If it's possible, live at peace with all peace. Sometimes it's not walk away. What's my point? My point is, Joseph had forgiven him, and here's where I'm going with all that. One of the consequences of forgiving him is he had two sons. One of the boy's name was Ephraim. The other boy's name was Manasseh. You know what their names mean? Ephraim means fruitfulness. God has allowed me to be prosperous. He's allowed me to have success. He's taken all the bad junk that happened to me, and he's allowed me to turn that around, and now I am fruitful. You know what Manasseh means? Forgetfulness. Whoa. And what it literally means is this. Not when I say forgive. Here's what I'm telling you. You can never forget. I'm going to explain myself, and I'm closing. I'm done with this. You can never forget. If somebody says forgive and forget now, you. You can forgive. You can't. You really? Anybody can forget. Seriously, I don't care how spiritual you can be right up there close to Jesus this morning. You can't forget now. You may not like I said, you can run into them. It doesn't bother you anymore. You still remember. You still remember pastor friend. His mom had Alzheimer's and he had a guy that had worked with him for years and the guy just really betrayed him and he hurt the church. And it was just a terrible situation. And the guy ended up trying to amend and make things right. He came back, said, man, I'm just so sorry. I did some terrible things and I just, I'm sorry for the way I left and I, what caused my dismissal? Blah, blah, blah. So he and the pastor reconciled. Everybody was good. Staff and people that knew him were all. So he took, he wanted to see his mother. We didn't realize his mother had Alzheimer's, so she's, you know, her mind was kind of slipping a little bit. And so he said, when I took her in the room, I said, mom, do you remember him? And she said, she just looked at him and all she said is, you did something. You did something. And he's like, oh, mom, don't you know how it is when your mother says something, you're kind of embarrassed. You're like, oh, mom, we're way past that. She goes, no, no, no, you did something right. She didn't forget. My point. And you can't forget either. But what does it mean then? Forgetfulness. Here's what it means. It means that time and the grace of God can take the pain out of the memory. He can take the pain out of the memory so that when that memory does hit you again, and it will. Cause you can't forget. It doesn't hit the same way. You don't get mad. Maybe you don't cry. Maybe you're just emotionally, you flatline. And that's good because it means you forgive, means your heart is healed. You feel nothing. You feel nothing. Forgetfulness. And Joseph gave a great tribute to how God had brought him through by saying, he's blessed me with fruitfulness and he's blessed me with the ability to release some things. Forgetfulness. I pray that for you, I pray you'll have joy in your life regardless of your circumstance or your experience in life. I pray God can bring you to a point, maybe not today for some of you, but in time, where you can say, not because I love them, not because I have not acknowledged what happened to me, but I love me. And I'm sick of what this is doing. I am going to release this. I pray he'll give you the power to do it. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the power that is in your word, not only to impact us physically and spiritually, but to impact us emotionally. And I pray my friends this morning will receive your word into their heart. Apply it in the way that your spirit would guide them to. And not, as James said, just hear it, but to act on it, to apply it, to put it in play, to put it in practice. I pray you'll give them the power to do that. And finally, Lord, for anyone who may never have trusted you as savior, I pray this might be the moment where they humble their heart. And they say, lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all I know about you. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, and I pray this now in Jesus name. Amen. [00:39:44] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting Metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.