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[00:00:24] Speaker B: All right, good morning, everybody. I'm glad you're here. Right in the middle of the summer, we have wonderful things happening in our church. It's great to see see these folks who are going public with their faith. That's always exciting to see people who step out and say, I'm not afraid or ashamed to let people know that I know Jesus. And then we're excited about the hundreds of families that our CRC is able to take care of each and every week, and all of our volunteers who serve so faithfully in that area of ministry. And it's just been exciting. We had a great, wow week this past week. Scott and all that team did such an amazing job. Haley and all of them did such a wonderful job in ministering to those kids and. And Family night was Friday night and. And the place was filled with people. Just been a great, great summer. And I'm glad that you are here. We're in a series where we're looking at the Lord's Prayer, probably the most famous prayer in all the world. Most of you probably could recite most of it, if not all of it. And I would remind you, as I kind of set up this part of my talk this morning, that the Lord's Prayer really came as a result of a request that the apostles made to our Lord. As I said when we started the series, they had observed him doing many things in his ministry. They saw him heal the sick.
They saw him counsel with people.
They saw him be able to speak in front of thousands of people and not bore anybody, which that's a trick.
And they saw all of the things that he did. But of all the things they observed Jesus doing, the thing that they wanted to learn most about was how to pray. In fact, In Luke chapter 11, verse 1, they said, Lord, teach us to pray. And so the Lord's Prayer as we know it today is really the model prayer. It's the example of how we are to pray. And Jesus taught that not just once or twice. I think probably he taught that many, many times. Certainly in the Sermon on the Mount, certainly in other instances we have in Scripture where he taught them this particular example of how we are to pray, how we are to approach Him. By the way, when you pray, you don't say prayers. You know, sometimes we tell our kids at night, go ahead and say your prayers. You don't say a prayer, you pray a prayer. Now, I know that's just a little, you know, minute thing here, my ocd, but I'm just saying it's like you don't say a conversation. You have a conversation.
If I'm talking to you or you're talking to me. I'm not just saying out of rote or routine or ritual. The same thing to you. Every time I see you, I'm saying something different based upon our experiences, based upon what's going on in your life. And so when you go to the Lord in prayer, that's how you approach him. You don't say a prayer. You pray a prayer. You come into his presence and you just say, lord, here's where I am in this moment. Here's what's going on in my life. And I just want to be honest and open with you. Because Jesus said in the warning he gave in Matthew 6 is, don't approach him with hypocrisy. Don't approach him with void or empty words. And certainly he said, don't approach him with a sense of pride. Instead, just come humbly into the presence of your Savior and say, lord Jesus, here's where I am and here's what I need. And I'm just asking this of you, and I'm sharing this with you. And that's how. That's how you pray. In fact, if I could break prayer down, I'd break it down this way. When you pray, you pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. You see how that works? When you pray, you pray to the Father, you pray through the Son. We pray in Jesus name and we pray in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so when we go to him in prayer, all of that is happening. Whether we are conscious of it or not, all of that is happening when we pray. And I love what John wrote when he said in 1 John 5:14, this is the confidence. You know, you can have confidence when you go to God in prayer.
It doesn't simply mean he's like a sovereign Santa Claus. It's gonna give you everything you're asking him for. But when you go to God in prayer, you can go with confidence, knowing he's going to do the best thing for you. He's gonna do what's right for you. He's gonna do the best thing for me, what's right for me so I can trust him. And when I go to him in prayer, John said again, First John 5:14.
This is a confidence that if we ask anything of according to his will. Now that's the caveat. According to his will, he will hear us. And we know if he hears us, whatever we ask, we know the requests that we've asked of him will be received. So he's promised to answer our prayer, but he's promised to answer our prayer according to his will. In other words, God is not going to give you or I anything that is not in accordance to his will. If it violates his will, he's not going to give it. If it goes against his word, he's not going to give it. So when we go to him in prayer, we have confidence. And when we ask our make our request known, we can have the confidence that he's going to answer and he's going to do it according to his will. That means when he says yes, that's according to his will. And hey, sometimes when he says no, that's according to his will. And so we have to trust the outcome when we go to God in prayer. So let's look at this Lord's Prayer, Matthew chapter six. Look at it in verse nine. We have it on the screen. If you don't have it in your device or in your hand with a Bible, he said this after this manner. Therefore, pray. And here it is. Our Father Paternoster. Our Father, who which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Now that's the sense of reverence. We approach him. Hallowed be thy name. We reverence him. That means when we go before God in prayer, the first thing we do is we acknowledge the fact that he's God and we're not. And so we, we respect him, we reverence Him. So that's the first thing. And then he said, pray. Thy kingdom come, here it is. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Remember we talked about God only wants for you? Remember what you would want for you if you just knew what he knows. So when you go to him in prayer, you can simply say, God, I desire your will. I come humbly into your presence, desiring your will, your will to be done on my life on earth, just as your will is done in heaven. Last week we looked at this phrase and give us this day our daily bread. Now, there's nothing wrong with planning and some of you are preppers there's nothing wrong with putting a lot of food back in the pantry. He's not teaching against that. What he's saying is there is a dependence that you and I ought to have on God for Him to meet our daily needs.
Give us this day our daily bread. He didn't say weekly or monthly or annual bread. He said daily bread. What does that mean by that? He means he wants us to depend upon him each and every day. In fact, I would say that the Christian life is not just a matter of dependence. It's a matter of interdependence. It's not independence where we're free from God. We are dependent upon him, but he wants us to be interdependent. There are some things that we cannot do without him. And there's nothing that he cannot do or he will not do without us. It's interdependence. He is waiting and he is watching for us to follow his will. And we walk in obedience to receive daily bread. And then this is the phrase I want to talk about this morning.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Next week we'll look at and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And then the last week of the series, we'll say, for thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Amen. But this week we're going to talk a little bit about the power of in this prayer for forgiveness. Now, you and I are aware that we live in a network of relationships. We're all relating to one another in some way. We relate to strangers in some way. You relate to your co workers in some way. And what he's saying here is that I owe God and I owe others a certain debt. We owe others a certain obligation. In fact, in the greatest commandment, when the attorneys question him in Matthew 22, what is the greatest commandment of the top 10? It's remember what Jesus said. Here's the great commandment, not a suggestion. Commandment, love God all your heart, soul and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. We have a debt that we owe to God, and that debt is to love Him. That love means to trust him. That love means to be obedient to him. That love means to follow him. And when we fail to do that, we fail to meet up with our obligation in that debt, to pay that debt of gratitude. And then we owe a debt to our fellow man. That's to treat them with love and respect.
That's to treat them, to love them, as the Bible says, as ourselves. To Treat them as we wanna be treated. Remember the golden rule. It's not he who has the gold makes the rule. By the way, the golden rule is you treat others as you would want to be treated. And so when we fail to do that on a daily basis, we're not paying our debt to the people that we're in a relationship with each and every day. That's why he uses these words in that, in that line. Debts, debtors, forgiveness. Again, a debt is that which we owe to others. Debtors are those who owe something to us. And then forgiveness is the overarching idea that that's how we respond to the debts and how we respond to the debtors, that we are to be willing to forgive others as.
As they are willing, we hope to forgive us. So debts, debtors and forgiveness, we're going to look at that a little bit this morning. We're going to think about that. Because I believe that the hardest thing, one of the hardest things in the Christian life to do consistently is to forgive other people. One of the hardest things to deal with. But the Bible says this in Luke chapter 17, verse 1, that it's not possible, it isn't possible to live your life without offenses. You and I are going to be offended. We're going to offend other people. Maybe not intentionally. I don't think anybody goes about intentionally offending anyone. I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and says, okay, who, who, whose life could I make miserable? Right. That's not on anyone's mind. But invariably we may cut somebody off or we may forget to say thank you at the Starbucks. Or we, you know, you know, we may not do it intentionally, but sometimes we offend people just getting through life and people offend us.
And Jesus said again in, in Luke 17:1, that it isn't possible to live your life without being offended. So when you are offended, you have this mechanism that's in the Lord's Prayer of how to respond to it and how you respond to the offenses is you have to learn the value of forgiveness. Remember the famous line Alexander Pope said, to err is human. And then he said, to forgive is divine. I hear people from time to time who will say, well, Bill, you don't know my situation. You don't know the offenses that I've declared dealt with in my life. I just can't forgive some people in my life for what they've done to me.
Now, I understand that.
I do understand that, and I'm not sassy. Why I said a moment ago, Forgiveness is probably the most difficult part of this prayer is to be able to forgive others of their offenses. The debtors, the people that owe us something. There's some people that owe you something. There's some people that owe you forgiveness. There's some people in their. In your life who have wronged you, who have done you. Yes. So I'm not saying that that's easy, but what I am saying about forgiveness is you don't do it for them, you do it for you.
And sometimes it takes a little time, as we're going to see this morning, to get to a place where you can actually forgive someone.
But one of the most powerful things that you could experience is be to be forgiven. And one of the most powerful things you could give is the gift of forgiveness.
Now let's go back to I can't forgive.
Sometimes when someone says that, I think they're being honest about it.
Because if you have not received forgiveness from God, it's hard to give forgiveness to other people.
You can't give what you do not have any more than you can come from where you've not been.
And so if I'm going to give forgiveness, I have to, first of all, do who have received forgiveness.
And so one of the first things that I would ask a person who's saying I just can't forgive a person, I would ask you, well, have you. Have you really experienced forgiveness?
Have you come to that place in life where you've said to God, God, I'm sorry, and you said to others maybe in your life that you've offended or wrong, I'm sorry, Where you've tried to deal with the areas in your own life where you've tried to deal with your own accounts.
And you have experienced forgiveness. Because when you've experienced forgiveness, you have within you the resources necessary to forgive others.
And when you finally kind of wrap your head around that and you get to that point, you realize that in actuality, the big thing is not I can't forgive. The big thing is I just won't forgive.
And that's the issue.
I just won't forget. I'm not at the place yet where I can really let this go. I'm not at the place yet where I can truly forgive.
When the Bible speaks of forgiveness, it talks about forgiveness at two levels. When I'm talking about receiving forgiveness, it's talking about one level of forgiveness that affects our relationship to God.
That's the forgiveness I had when I received him as my personal savior.
That's the most significant Forgiveness that any of us could receive. Receive. That's the forgiveness that Jesus desired to give to the world. When he said at the cross, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He was willing to forgive the world, but the forgiveness that we receive from God. When I receive him as my personal Savior, that forgiveness affects my relationship to him. That's why we say, our Father, who art in heaven, he's now your Father, you're now his child. Well, when did that relationship become? When did it get established? We'll go back to the conversation Jesus had with the Rabbi Nicodemus in John 3, when Nicodemus came to Jesus, troubled at night, and he said to Jesus, he said, you know, what does a man do? What does a woman do in order to go to heaven? And Jesus said to him in that famous line, he said, nicodemus, you must be born again.
And this highly educated and great, greatly intelligent man said, what? How do you enter into your mother's body and somehow be bo. I mean, he was.
Some of the most intelligent people can ask some of the craziest questions. But Jesus said, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding. I'm not talking about you being physically born again.
I'm talking about being spiritually born again.
And Jesus Here in John 3 compares a physical birth to a spiritual birth. He said, you must be born. You need to be born into the family of God. You do that by faith. You do that by receiving him as your savior. John 10 said, look, if we just confess and believe and receive, God becomes a reality in our life. And by that virtue of that being born, that new birth experience, he becomes your heavenly Father and you become his child.
That's relationship. Now, what I believe from studying the Scripture that that relationship is eternal.
Does anyone in the room believe you could be unborn physically?
No.
Then why would you think you could be unborn spiritually?
Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus, that which is born of flesh, Nicodemus is flesh, emphatic, irreversible, eternal. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that that which is born of spirit is spirit.
Just as you cannot be unborn physically, Jesus said, you cannot be unborn spiritually. Then you go over to Ephesians 1, and he says, when you enter into this relationship with Jesus Christ, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit, meaning that the Holy Spirit is actually the seal that seals us in this relationship we have with God. And the Bible says, we're sealed unto the day of redemption. Now, what does that expression mean?
When I spend time on my grandparents farm. As a kid in Oklahoma, my grandmother would send me to her the storm cellar where she put up preserves. And she did canning down there. And as a kid I never understood why they called it canning when it was in jars. But that's another thing.
But she sent me down there to get some preserves that she had canned. And so I would go out there and I would get them and she would tell me, she would say, now Billy Lloyd, when you go down there, check the seal.
If I can. If that seal is popped up on that mason jar, she said, it's bad, throw it away. Don't even bring it to the house. She said, but if the seal is still good, then bring those. And I remember even as a kid, the first thing I checked was the seal. Because I knew if the seal wasn't broken, then what's contained in it is preserved.
And I'm saying the Bible uses the word seal for a purpose.
We are sealed. And what is this? Who is the seal? The Bible says the seal is the Holy Spirit himself.
He is the seal that seals us in the deal.
And how long is our salvation good? Is as good as he's good. And the Bible says concerning God, he cannot lie. And our salvation is good. He says unto the day of redemption. The day of redemption is when I got to grandma's house and she popped the top on that thing and put that jam on some bread with butter.
That's the day of redemption. What's the day of redemption for us? One day when we step into the presence of God and when we see him, we become like him, for we will see him as he is. That's the day of redemption. That's the day we go home. But I'm telling you, our salvation is good. So what's my point? My point is the first level of forgiveness is the forgiveness that we ask of God. And in that forgiveness we establish a relationship with God that cannot be broken. So I have a relationship with God through salvation. Here's the second part. This is the second thing that ties us to God. Not only a relationship to him, but now fellowship with Him.
Fellowship can be broken.
And that's why when sin comes into the life of a Christian. And look, the minute you receive Jesus and you're in that relationship with him, here's what happens. You stopped being a lost sinner and you started being a saved sinner.
When you receive Jesus, that did not eradicate sin from your flesh.
Now we have the presence of the Holy Spirit now within us that will rebuke us and convict us when we do sin. Sin's not as enjoyable as it used to be because the Holy Spirit makes us miserable about it.
And before you had the Holy Spirit, you could sin without a lot of things going on other than your conscience. And the Bible says you can sear your conscience over. People say, my conscience doesn't bother me. They may be right. Their conscience may not bother them.
You can callous your conscience over. You can sin against your conscience to the point your conscience won't bother you.
What you can't do is you can't shut out the Holy Spirit. If he's living in your life, he's gonna make you a little miserable about it. You got that little preacher that's with you all the time going, you shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have thought that.
You know better than that. You're better than that. This is not what I wanted you. It's not the best for you. And he doesn't go away. You can't turn to him. He's just constantly going, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You know, And I'm just saying that happens in the life of a Christian. And so it's not that when you become a Christ follower, you sin all you want to. That's not eternal security. I just sin all I want to. The point is, God changes your want to, he changes your desire, and he monitors that through the presence of his Holy Spirit. But when we sin, and we will sin, you're still gonna think things you shouldn't think. You're gonna sometimes do things you shouldn't say.
You're gonna say some things you shouldn't say. All I gotta do is get in the backseat of your car going down 1709, about 20 minutes in rush hour. And I'm gonna find out. Mm.
Okey dokey.
I'm not proud of it. I'm just saying it happens. It just happens.
And when it. By the way, you know what? That is an indication when that happens.
You know the idea, the word profane. I'm gonna chase a rabbit here for you. This is free like the rest of it.
You know where that comes from? It's an Old Testament expression. That's profanum profanim. It means to be outside of the court or outside of the temple area. Remember they had the tabernacle in the Old Testament to be phantom to profanum pro was outside or without phantom was the temple where the presence of God. So to be profane, The Bible says Esau was a profane man. That means he lived his life outside of the presence of God. So what happens when I use profanity is that I'm exposing a portion of my heart that's outside of fellowship with God.
That's why that's coming out of there. Cause that's part isn't in sync with God at that moment. Right. And so what do you do when you sin? Well, first John 1:9. John said if we. He didn't say you. He said we. He's an apostle.
We called him Saint John. But I say he's no more saintly than any of you.
They're only the saints and the ain't you know Jesus or you don't.
And John just simply said, look, if we confess our sin, he's including himself in that he then is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So God has made provision for us to forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. And when we do that, it affects fellowship.
When we fail to do that, by the way, it affects fellowship. That's why you read a passage like Matthew 18 where he uses the story of the king who forgave this man of a debt. And once the man was forgiven of this debt, he went to this poor man that owed him a debt and refused to forgive him. And the king heard about it and offended the king. He said, I just forgave you of a million dollar debt and you are not willing now to go forgive this poor man of a few hundred dollars.
Well, the king reversed his decision, put the debt back on the man and made him pay it off. And then the principle he gave is if you're not willing to forgive others, God will not forgive you. Now sometimes people erroneously interpret that narrative to say, well, that means you can lose your salvation.
That means if you don't forgive others, God won't forgive you, meaning you're not going to go to heaven. Well, that flies in the face of what I just said about eternal security.
So it doesn't affect relationship. Let me tell you what unforgiveness affects. It affects fellowship.
God is saying, if you're not willing to forgive others of the debts that they owe you, your heavenly Father is going to forgive you your debts, meaning that it's going to affect your daily walk with God. It's going to affect our fellowship with him.
In fact, it'll hinder our prayers.
Isaiah said, you sin have separated you from God to the point that he will not hear you. He didn't say he Cannot. He said he will not.
You ever hear the expression, you know, here's the hand, you know, talk to the. That's God. He's saying to his children. Talk to the hand.
Come at me once you've dealt with this, until then, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. It's going to hinder your prayer. And so when we forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors, then we're understanding it's going to impact and it's going to affect our relationship with God.
In fact, he says we are to forgive as we have been forgiven.
Now, let me give you three thoughts on this and we'll go home.
First of all, to forgive someone or not forgive is a choice.
You have a choice to forgive.
You can be as happy or as miserable as you want to be.
And I'm telling you, the way to peace and the way to happiness and the way to joy in your life is to discover the power of forgiveness.
Some people don't want to forgive people because they feel like they're going to get away with it.
And somehow they feel like if I'm not forgiving this person, they're not getting really think about that. How. How is your unwillingness to forgive them hurting them?
They're just skippity doo dah and right on through their life.
They don't see what they've done to you as being a debt that they owe to you. So your anger and hostility toward them is not really affecting them, it's affecting you.
And you're assuming that your heavenly Father is not aware of it. And so you, in that assumption that you're making, is that if I let that go and let them go and I forgive them, they've gotten by with it. And I'm just telling you that's not the case.
You have a heavenly Father that knows the hairs of your head, that sees the sparrow when it falls. And believe me, he will deal with people that has hurt one of his kids.
But you got a choice to make. That's why I said some people may not be ready to do that. Some people, it takes them a little time before they can come up on that and to be able to do it. But in Ephesians chapter four, Paul said, look, here's the note we need to land on to have harmony in our home and to have harmony on the job. He says, look, Ephesians 4, 32, be kind, be compassionate to one another, forgiving each other. How do we do this? Just as Christ, God just as in Christ, rather, God forgave you.
He says, just as you've been forgiven, you are to forgive.
Just as you and I didn't deserve God's forgiveness, that's grace. He still forgave us.
So when you forgive, there is a grace factor. You're giving something perhaps to someone they don't really deserve. But just as God gave us forgiveness when we didn't deserve it, when we give to others forgiveness that they don't deserve, we're never more like our heavenly Father. There is a grace factor.
There's also a grief factor involved in forgiveness.
As I said a moment ago, it'll bring joy to your heart. It'll lift the burden from your soul when you can get to the point that you forgive someone. Because one of the ideas of forgiveness, and I've taught this before, but it's important that you understand this. To forgive is to release the word. By definition, the biblical word is to release.
When you forgive someone, you're releasing them.
So the idea is being unforgiving. You're holding them, you're holding onto them, or you're holding on to an experience instead of releasing that experience.
Then you go to what Jesus taught about the power of releasing and getting that out of your system. In Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, remember, he said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Remember we talked about this, the pure. That word, pure in the Greek is this word cathedral.
And if you've had surgery like I have, you understand cathedral.
You get the medical word catheter from that word.
It is that device that relieves the body of impurity.
And the Bible is saying, our hearts need a catharus.
You, you. When you go through offenses, you need catharus.
You need something coming out of your heart that's going to poison your heart. You need a way of getting that out of you. And nothing will get it out of you faster than forgiveness.
You're releasing that.
You're not holding onto it. You're letting it go.
You're releasing something that will poison your heart. You're releasing something that can take the joy again out of your life. You're getting to the point where you can finally let it go. And listen, that is a choice, Kataros.
Not only is there a choice involved, but here's a tough one. There's a cost involved.
If somebody owes you, say, $1,000, and you know, and they've been hesitant to pay it back, and you know their situation, you know, I'm just not gonna see that money Ever again.
You may finally decide, I'm going to forgive the debt.
I'm going to release them of that obligation.
Now, that's good if you can do that. But here's what that transaction just cost you. Cost you a thousand bucks plus interest, plus the frustration of dealing with that guy or girl.
But I'm saying that when you forgive someone, there is a cost involved. And it always cost you something to forgive.
That's why when Jesus went to the cross and provided forgiveness, remember, it cost him his life.
It cost God his very Son. In order for us to have the relationship in forgiveness with him, it cost him everything.
That's why forgiveness isn't easy. That's why it's difficult. That's why releasing someone or forgiving someone is always costly. It's difficult to do that many times.
So there is a cost involved. But here's a third and final thought.
There's also a consequence involved.
The consequence, as I said, it's katharos. It will affect you. It will bless you. It will help you.
In fact, there's a verse in Hebrews, chapter 10, in verse 14, where God said, he has made us perfect in him, and he is, we're being made holy in Him. He didn't say we're presently holy. He said, we're being made holy in Him.
So when you come to faith in Jesus, it's a process. Forgiveness is a process. Being able to let this go and let them go is a process. Why I said, going into this talk this morning, you may not be there yet. And I understand that everybody gets there at different points in times based on the level of the offense or how impactful the offense has been. But I talked to a lady one time in our church years ago, and she was not willing to forgive someone in her life. As we talked through this, come to find out the person that she was not willing to forgive had been dead 20 years.
I mean, we're talking about. And I'm thinking, this joker's still living next door, whatever, you know. And I'm thinking, man, he's in her world every day. And all of a sudden she goes, you know, he's just been. He's been dead 20 years.
And it just hit me what I said a moment ago. Her unwillingness to let that go isn't affecting that dead joker.
It's affecting her.
It's taken all the joy out of her life. It's taken all the. You know what I mean? It was affecting her.
People were saturating her presence with their absence.
I mean, they just didn't want to be around her. She's just messed up.
And all of a sudden, man, it wasn't anything. I tried to sprinkle a little pastor dust, but nothing amazing happened in my office that day. But over a period of weeks, she came to me. Here's what she said. I'm in the process of forgiving him.
I said, great, just go stomp his grave if you need to. Just whatever you got. No, I didn't say that.
You know, I'm just saying whatever you gotta. You know, whatever you need to do. It's like that guy that said, man, you know, he said, if my uncle died, I'm so offended. I hate my uncle so bad. If he died, I wouldn't go to his funeral.
And then the guy went to church and he felt bad about it, and he finally was able to forgive his uncle. And he said, man, God's really changed me through this idea of forgiveness. He said, you know, there was a time in my life when I said if my uncle died, I wouldn't go to his funeral. He said, but now God's changed me. I can't wait to go to his funeral.
I think that's forgiveness. I'm not sure I think I know what he meant by that.
But it's this idea that it will. Forgiveness is consequential.
It really will. It will change you. It will change your outlook on things. It will free you from them. You know, the way you know that you have really forgiven someone is when you run into them.
Have you ever had an issue with someone and you spot them across the grocery store and you go to aisle four, you turn that cart, you just. I mean, you don't even be around them. Don't look so pious at me, like you've never done that.
Are you going to a restaurant and go, no, I'm not hungry for fish. Let's go somewhere else, right? Appetite just went away. Well, you're not there yet.
There's your sign. You're not there yet. But what happens when you see someone that has offended you, that never requested your forgiveness, you just finally had to get to a point where you cut the loss and let them go. When you see them without wanting to kill them, or you see them and you don't cry or your heart doesn't break when you see them, you know. You know, you've moved into that forgiveness zone.
Not that they got by with anything. It's just that for your good, you had to move beyond that, and you had to get past that. And Forgiveness was the vehicle that you were riding on to get you to that point where you could let that go. It's. It's consequential. It will definitely have a strong effect, a powerful effect on your life.
So again this morning, I'm not saying it's easy.
I'm not saying that it's.
Gosh, that it's just instantaneous. Sometimes it's just this process.
But I'm saying it's probably one of the best things you could do for you is finally get to a point in life when you can forgive other people, when you can just simply learn to let it go.
One more quick thing. I'd add what I think you could do. Think about this kind of as an illustration.
Open up an account in your mind. Open up an account and in that account put their name on it and make a deposit of forgiveness in their name. In that account you say, how often do I make deposits? As often as you think about them and as often as you think about that deposit. Forgiveness. God help me to forgive them. Help me to. I. I'm just gonna let this go. And it may take you a while. Just that discipline in your mind. It's a discipline of moving it from your head into that account, moving it from your head into that account, moving it from your head into that account. And you know what will happen if perchance someday they have some epiphany and they were to approach you and say, I am so sorry for what I did. It'll be easier to let it go because you've been storing up forgiveness and that account with their name on it for a long, long time.
Now they're getting to avail themselves of it.
Let me step that up. As I think about forgiveness from God.
Do people miss heaven and go to hell because God will not forgive them?
I mean, there's some people that think God looks down from heaven and just kind of goes eeny, meeny, miny, mo. You go to heaven, to hell you go.
I believe in election. I don't believe in selection.
When he said, whosoever will let them come.
When he says in 2nd Peter 3. 9, God is not willing that any. He didn't say many. He said any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Well, why isn't everybody going to heaven? Well, they're not going not because God will not forgive them. They're not going because they won't ask him to forgive him.
So I'm saying God has stored up forgiveness in an account with the world's name on it.
John 3:16. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes taps into that account with their name on it. Whosoever believes should not perish, shall not miss heaven and go to hell, but have everlasting life.
That's how you tap into forgiveness.
And in some way, when you establish that account for people that have offended you, your debtors, you give them an avenue to tap in at some point to forgiveness from you.
And if they never do, at least you got it out of you, Katharos.
And you approached God as far as you know with the purest heart that you actually could have approached him with, because you did everything you could to get that out of you and put that back on him.
Forgiveness is a powerful, powerful thing. Let's pray together.
Lord, thank you for principles and precepts in your Word that can change our lives.
And Father, when we hear your Word or we study your Word, we're always amazed at how practical it is.
You always put those cookies on the lower shelf so we can all reach them.
And it's very practical. Your Word is doable. It's understandable and comprehendable.
But as we understand the practicality of your Word, we also understand the power of your Word, that when we do more than just hear the Word, when we apply the Word, it has a power to really change our life.
So I pray this morning as we leave this room that we will be determined to apply the power of forgiveness that we'll truly have forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And finally, Lord, I pray for anyone in the room or anyone watching online who may never have trusted you as Savior and they don't have that relationship with you that this might be the moment right where they are, where they humble their heart and they pray a simple prayer like this and just say, lord Jesus, come into my heart today. Forgive my sin.
Forgive my sin.
I believe you died on a cross and I believe you rose on Easter. And with everything I know about me in this moment, I trust all that I know about you.
Lord, I receive you as my Savior and I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:37:55] 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.
