6/16/2002

Let's bow our heads.

It may have been one of those weeks for you when everything didn't work out right. This may be one of those mornings for you when you woke up expecting summer and we are backed up to spring again. Maybe life has been like that for you lately. Maybe now is the time to just lay that before the Lord and accept what has been given you and say Lord, You must have some reason for it and something for me to learn maybe, something for me to see, something that I haven't seen yet that I need to know. Sometimes we just need to persevere. Sometimes we suffer for doing what is right, sometimes we suffer for doing what is wrong. And so maybe we need to evaluate, maybe wonder if our pains are our own fault, maybe the Lord is bringing us consequences to help us to do right next time. Father we know that our lot in life is to enjoy some good times and to suffer through some bad times and so Father I don't know what the situation is here among all of us, it is a great day because we celebrate You and truly our Father in heaven. We celebrate Father's Day as we enjoy the fact that we have Dad's on earth who trained us and who loved us and who cared for us. We also know that sometimes things are not going so well for us and we need to look at our lives and examine our lives and see if maybe we brought these things onto ourselves. Maybe we are just suffering for doing what is right. Father we don't know what the circumstances of life are for each one here this morning. I pray that You might help us to bring whatever it is before You and lay it down before You and say Lord it is Yours, my life is Yours. It is in You that we live and move and have our being. So Father,we thank You that we have a place to run to, a rock to run to that is always there, that is higher than us. So Father,I pray that You might help us to love this day that You have given us, rejoice because You have given us this day, rejoice in the life that You have given us, help us to rejoice in the salvation that Jesus provides. We ask it in Jesus' Name, Amen.


Turn to the Book of Matthew, Chapter 18. We have been reading this passage the last couple of weeks. We have been dealing with the whole matter of forgiveness and will today and we're not going to be done with it today either. So if you wish we were, sorry. We are going to keep on looking at this whole area and different aspects of it the next couple of weeks yet. 

Matthew 18:21, 'Peter came and said to Him, "Lord," this is a familiar passage in fact we have been looking at it the last couple of weeks so you are very familiar with it. Peter said, "how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive Him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. And when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him one who owed him ten thousand talents. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. The slave therefore falling down, prostrated himself before him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.' And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe.' So his fellow slave fell down and began to entreat him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you.' "He was unwilling however, but went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you entreated me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you?' And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."

As we have looked at this passage the last couple of weeks, we have learned a few things. We have learned that forgiveness protects us. If we don't forgive somebody else it means that we carry around the results of their sin on our back. And it doesn't do us any good, so forgiveness protects us even as forgiving the fellow slave would have protected this slave from being handed over to the torturers. We have also learned what forgiveness is. The terms that are used in the scripture are varied and they give us different word pictures of what forgiveness is. One idea is to carry, or bear the weight of something. Another is to pardon, or to excuse somebody. Another word for forgiveness is to cover over with pitch, cover it so you can't see it. Another word for forgiveness is to leave or to ignore and never to return to look at it. Another word for forgiveness is to treat graciously, to treat someone as forgiven. So what forgiveness means is. we take the sin that somebody has committed against us, we cover it, we ignore it, we bear the penalty of it, we bear the cost of it just like the king bore the cost of the slaves spending the money, and we put it aside and we pardon the person, and we treat them graciously, as if they hadn't sinned. Now that doesn't mean we have to trust them, because sometimes a little bit of distrust is just a bit of wisdom there. We talked about that before though. 

Some of the questions we have already discussed have to do with, who do I have to forgive? Why do I have to forgive? One of the questions we will discuss later on is, when do I have to forgive? Does God really care if I forgive? Today we are going to discuss an interesting question, I think, that many people raise and they have heard probably the statement, if you have not forgotten, it means you haven't forgiven. Have you ever heard a phrase or statement something like that, probably you have. You hear about forgive and forget, forgiving and forgetting. Well, how many of you had the ability to forgive some significant moment in your life? Most of us don't, do we? If there is something big happens in our life we remember it. It is part of our history, part of our past, and we know how to remember that thing, whether it be good or bad. And so we tend to hold on to memories and if somebody says you remember such and such? Oh yeah, I remember that because it was pretty significant in my life. 

Yesterday many of you knew that Clare went and played baseball and just had a wonderful season up until yesterday. But yesterday lost in the championship game. What are we going to remember? Are we going to remember that we lost, or that we had a great season? Well, the partial to each other I guess but Tthe definition of our team, hopefully, is that they had a wonderful team, a great season, and beat some of the best teams in the whole state. But we will remember this year, especially those who were on the team, those who coached, and those who watched will remember yesterday as a significant day in history. Are you going to ask somebody to forget that? How do you forget something like that? How do you forget something when somebody hurts you deeply? If you forgive them does that mean you have to forget it and ignore it, pretend that it never happened? No, that is not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is a deliberate act of the will. for we understand that a person has hurt me, but if I deal with it properly, I carry the weight of understanding that I am going to bear the cost of that sin, just like the king bore the cost of the slave's spending all the money. He bore the cost of it but he did not hold it against him, he did not make the slave owe him forever for that sin. And so therefore, forgiveness means we let the person off our hook, and we set it aside and don't dwell on it anymore.

Now, what happens if you are the person, however, who needs to be forgiven? What if you are the one who did the hurting? What if you are the one who is the offender? The one that Peter is talking about here, 'Shall I forgive seven times and Jesus said, 'No seventy times seven.' Suppose you are the person who has been the offender. What now? Well, let's address that one. It is important that we reconcile with our neighbor, with our family member, with those around us. Jesus said in Matthew 5, 'If you are coming to present your offering on the altar but remember that somebody has something against you, you lay your offering down, not at the altar, you lay it down, you go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering. The picture drawn there is that you are coming to do something wonderful for God, giving him money or some time or giving him some effort, some sacrifice of your own, some offering out of the goodness of your heart and say, God, here I want You to have this. He said you know what I would really rather have, I would really rather have you be reconciled with your neighbor. I would rather you go and fix the relationship that you have broken, then come and your gift will mean something real to me. 

How many of you ask your Dad what he wants for Father's Day? Not going to get him anything? Oh great, nobody even raised a hand. What does a Dad usually say? 'Oh, I've got pretty much all I need just having you around is enough,' yeah sure. Don't get him a flower. Ok, don't get him a flower, what can you pound with a flower? And you can't cut anything with a flower, you can't shoot anything with a flower, give him something that you can actually use. Give your Mom flowers, give your Dad something useful that he can use in a different way. Flowers are useful, by the way, somebody said flowers were made or created to show somebody that you care for them. Well Dad thinks you care for him when you give him something useful. And he uses other things beside flowers. 

What does God want from us? He said if you are going to bring me a gift, I might refuse the gift if you have not reconciled with your brother. If you are bringing something for me that you think is important, by the way, what we quite often do, this is something you might have to watch in yourself, you may have observed in others, people will do great service for God and neglect their relationships. They won't reconcile with other people, they will continue to hurt them and be unforgiving and unforgiven and then they will do more and more things for God as if they can make up for it. They can't. God says, 'No, no, no, I prefer obedience over sacrifice. When you have a gift you want to give Me, you stop giving Me the gift, you go and be reconciled, then come present your gift. Then I will accept it gladly.' 

In Chapter 12 of Romans Verse 18 he says, 'Be at peace with all people,' as much as depends on you. For our part of it, our responsibility is to be at peace with every person. It means not hurting them in the first place and if we have going back and fixing it. Well, let's talk about the going back and fixing it, all right. This is what if I am the one who needs forgiveness, what do I do about it? The first thing you need to do is recognize that something is wrong. It says if you bring your offering before God and remember that somebody has something against you, it means it comes to mind, you probably already knew about it, but if you didn't know about it God may reminded you. In fact once in awhile God will put somebody's name in your mind and you will go, Oh yeah, I did do that and never really have made it right.

By the way, there is an interesting word in the Bible called blameless. Blameless doesn't mean you have never done anything wrong, blameless means when you have done wrong, you have gone back to do your best to fix it. All of us do wrong, all of us hurt people, we say things that hurt, things like that. Blameless doesn't mean we are perfect, it means we go back and rectify the problem we have caused. Make restitution if necessary. Pay back money we have stolen, if we have taken something from somebody we take it back to them. If we have borrowed something and never took it back, take it back to them in at least as good of condition as you borrowed it. If we have hurt someone here are some principals you might want to think about, because I have no doubt that in this world you have somebody who needs to forgive you. I am convinced of this, if Peter talks about a person who has offended me seven times, it means somebody has done the offending, right? There is somebody who has been offended. It kind of takes two to tango in that regard, right? So, if there have been people who are hurt there are some of us who have done the hurting. And sometimes you are the hurt and sometimes you are the hurter.. ( I am not sure if that is a real word or not, but it is for this morning.) It is Father's Day I get to use new words.

It may have been intentional, it may have been totally unintentional, it may be one of those things that you are not sure what you did but you know something has been wrong there so you kind of have to figure it out. Sometimes the Lord can clarify it. Sometimes you just say, 'Lord I think something is wrong between me and my wife, or me and my son or daughter, or whoever it might be, but Lord I am not sure what it is, can You help clarify it. Guess what? He who knows all things can clarify in your mind what is the problem. He can tell you what the problem might be and clarify it in your mind. 

So what do we do? First of all we go to God. Say God would You help me understand. Secondly say God the fact that I hurt somebody means that first of all I sinned against You, so would You forgive me first? Would You forgive me and then help me to go to the person and ask their forgiveness? Then we have to determine that we will go and ask forgiveness. Not by e-mail, not by telephone, and not by letter, in person. In person you go to the person and talk to them. Now the problem is as soon as we determine that we will go, we get excuses. I can't go today because of this, I can't go tomorrow because of that. Look at my date book God I can't go. Or another good excuse, a good excuse would be like, Well, it has been such a long time ago I am sure they have forgotten about it, ok. If you remember it, they remember it because they are the one who got hurt. So if you remember it, they certainly remember it. You might say I don't even know where they live anymore. Well, guess who knows? God knows where they live, in fact probably somebody on the internet knows, if you want to go find out. You have people on the internet who can find people for you, just do a people search sometimes you'll find out where they might be. 

Third, humble yourself to accept the full responsibility of your acts. And not just your act, the results of your act. We can not guarantee the results of our acts, we can not limit the results of our act, but we can accept the responsibility that we played in it. Because sometimes our act and the result are out of proportion with each other. We need to ask God to give us full understanding not of what we did, but of what the other person felt. Of the pain that was caused by our action. Because sometimes, like I say, they are not in the same scale.

Let me read an interesting illustration that Jeff was telling about the other day and I ask him to bring the book. This is James Dobson's book, "Bringing up Boys" but this is actually an excerpt from a book called, "Up To No Good, the Rascally Things Boys Do." This is written by a man named Dave in Washington. 'A friend and I found a coffee can of gas in the garage and decided to pour some down a manhole, light it, and see what would happen. We popped the man hole open, poured some gas, and replaced the cover so that it was ajar. We kept throwing matches down but nothing happened so we poured all the gas in. Finally there was a noise like a jet engine starting up and then a big boom, the manhole cover flew up and a flame shot up about fifteen feet in the air, the ground was rumbling like an earthquake and the manhole cover crashed about twelve feet away in the neighbors driveway. What happened was the gas ran down the sewer lines for a block or so and vaporized all the methane there and blew up all our neighbors toilets. I am a plumber now that's how I know what really happened,' ok. What did the boys do? They poured some gas down a hole and threw some matches in it didn't they? What is just innocent fun, we all do that, right? That is just innocent fun, we just play with matches, I mean after all it was just a hole, we threw it in there to see what would happen. What did the neighbors think they had done, and how many neighbors thought so? So the act of throwing matches down a manhole was not in proportion to the results, was it? They found out that throwing a match down there effected every neighbor within sight. So all the neighbors said, he destroyed our home. The boy thought, No, I lite a match.' So which one was true? Both were true, weren't they? The result was out of proportion with the act. That is many times the way it is with us. We say something and think all I said was, and we find out somebody was hurt out of proportion to what we said. So we may not be responsible for the whole thing in the sense that we did not intend that, but we do bear responsibility because we caused that. And so we need to be able to go to a person and say, 'God has shown me how much I have hurt you when I did such.' Because we deal with it on the basis of TURN THE TAPE

The wise men and women, boys and girls, we know that things that guys will say to each other if they said to a girl might hurt her right to the very core of her being and we laugh it off. Tell you what if you want to go and get insulted on Wednesdays we have been going down and playing golf with my Dad and we have got Jim Keysor, Jerry Richardson, Steve Evans, Dave Luther went with us last time and Frank Carpenter went a couple of times. and Tthese guys insult each other all the way down there, all the way through the game, and all the way back. So if you are going to go and play with us prepare to be insulted, ok. I don't know if ladies ladies,when they go shopping, insult each other all the way there and back but most likely not, ok. We deal with each other very differently. So something a man could say to a man and means nothing, a man could say to a woman and it means a great deal. And so we as men and women need to understand that the things that we say and do often times the result is out of proportion with what we intended or actually said or did. So we need to go to the person and say, 'I understand, but I caused much more pain here than I realized. Would you forgive me on the basis of your pain? Because you see if you are going to ask me to forgive you, am I forgiving your act or am I forgiving the cost of my pain? 

The servant, in the parable of the king, the servant is saying, Oh king you have got lots of money, what is it to you? Well the king bore the whole cost, accepted the whole cost of the slaves sin, didn't he and didn't hold it against him. So I am asking when I go to you, you are asking when you come to me, to forgive the pain that I have caused not the act that I committed. So we go on that basis.

We also go first of all confessing our responsibility. Confessing our responsibility and don't explain why you did it. Or explain what you meant by it. Because explanations will tend to justify. The simplest way to ask forgiveness is to say, 'God has shown me how much I hurt you when I did such and such, will you please forgive me?' And be quiet. Because if you explain why you did it, is that helpful? No, to know why I was hurt doesn't make the pain less. It just means now you are justify yourself for doing it. So ask forgiveness and leave it at that. With the understanding that they have the choice to forgive you. They don't have to forgive you. They can forgive you, but they may not forgive you. The pain may be to great in their mind, they may not understand the benefit that they have in forgiving. They may be unable for whatever reason, unwilling I should say, because, you see, forgiveness is not an act of emotion. If we let emotions subside and when we finally don't hurt anymore, we say we have forgiven, that is not forgiveness. Because if something else comes up that pain comes right back. Forgiveness means to deal properly with it, by an act of our will, and deliberately set it aside and be done with it. Not wait until we don't feel bad anymore. The act means we won't feel so bad over time. Emotions will always come and go and so forgiveness is an act of our will not of our emotion. So we ask if they will forgive us, we don't say I am sorry. What would they say if you said, 'I'm sorry'? 'I am sorry too,' That is not a way of asking forgiveness is it? That is just expressing sorrow just in case you were offended by something I did.

And don't say I apologize, what is the world does that mean? I apologize. I am not sure what that means. What does apologize mean? It just means another way of saying, I am sorry. No, if you want somebody to forgive you, say would you please forgive me, leaving them the option to forgive or not forgive. We can not cause them to forgive, we can only ask them to do so. And also don't offer to make it up to them. Now if you took something, return it, restitution is not the same as making up for it. Don't say I am sorry I did this and from now on I will do something to make up for it. No, that becomes a reminder of the offense. So if we are going to actually put it aside, and cover it over, and leave it alone, we say would you please forgive me and leave it alone. Whatever there response is our responsibility, if we have asked truly for their forgiveness, our responsibility to make reconciliation, at least at that point, is over unless there is something we can go on and do . We don't know what that might be, they might tell us actually.

Have you ever had somebody not forgive you? Don't raise hands this time ok. It happens that sometimes we ask a person to forgive us and they don't forgive us. Let me give you a few reasons why. One is because they don't understand the benefits of forgiveness for one thing. They may have no intention of forgiving you, they really may consider you their enemy and they think by not forgiving you they are punishing you, which we know that is actually not true. They are punishing themselves instead. But it may be that we attempted to place a little bit of the responsibility for the problem on them. So we are not really asking for forgiveness for our responsibility, we are saying forgive my part, but remember you had a part of it too. Now that may be entirely true but we can't deal with their part. God does not give us the grace to cause them to ask for forgiveness, he gives us the grace and strength to ask for forgiveness for our part. 
So we leave the blaming out, we leave the evening out by saying will you were partly responsible. I was partly responsible so forgive my part and you deal with your part. No, we accept the full responsibility of all the pain that was involved and ask for forgiveness because we had a part in it. Sometimes, if we blame them there is no reason they would want to forgive us. 

We may have also ask for this much when they know what we did was this big. See sometimes we go to a person and say would you forgive me for this little thing that I did, we know and they know we really did more, but we don't think they know. And so they are saying wait a minute here, this person is not being truthful so how can I forgive them when they only acknowledge a little bit. We know we need to take full responsibility for all that we did in causing their pain. If we take a portion of responsibility they may forgive a little bit, but probably not. They probably, in fact, would be more offended because we didn't really ask for forgiveness. We actually, in a sense, suggested that we really didn't do much. 

Another thing that might cause them to be unable to forgive or unwilling to forgive is trivializing their pain. Nobody has ever said this in here I am sure but sometimes people say, 'Well I only said this, I can't believe you are so sensitive, I can't believe you are hurt by that, you are making such a big deal over this thing. Ok, what does that do? It says your feelings and your pain are about this much, they really aren't worth considering here. See our reason here for going and asking forgiveness of them is to protect them because we know that forgiveness protects us from God's wrath for one thing, it protects us from further sin. If we have to go and do the hard work of asking for forgiveness it is unlikely we will do the same thing again. So it protects us from doing the same thing again to them, it helps protect at least. And so we dare not trivialize their pain. 

Another thing we can do wrong is to presume forgiveness. Go to them with the attitude that some people go to God and say, 'God I know you are going to forgive me for this, but I need to confess it anyway.' God is going, oh yeah, that is a real confession there. I grew up with kids who had a misunderstanding of their churches doctrine. Our school was Keresely High School, right next to us was Holy Rosary High School. I grew up with a great bunch of Catholic kids, but many of them had a misconception of the Catholic doctrine. Many of them practiced the misconception, they would say we can go out and do whatever we want on Saturday night and just go to Sunday morning and confess it and it is all gone. Well, that is not what the Catholic church really teaches, but that is how some, in my day at least growing up, practiced it. That is presuming upon God His forgiveness. Saying God I know You are going to forgive me for what I do today so I will go ahead and sin today with the understanding that You will forgive me tomorrow. Try that with your wife, try that with your husband, try that with your teacher. Say teacher, 'I know you will let me off the hook tomorrow so I will go ahead and cheat today.' That is not going to work. It doesn't work with God either. It doesn't work with people either when we presume their forgiveness and go with an attitude that says, "I know you are going to forgive me, but I need to confess this to you anyway, I need to ask your forgiveness anyway. It is formality, that is how we do it. Well, that is not going to bring great forgiveness is it. And explaining why you did it. Explaining why there responsible doesn't help, explaining why I did it doesn't help them to know that because it just means that I am trying to explain it away. If the dentist says this is going to hurt and here is why it is going to hurt, does that mean it hurts less? Not to me anyway, I anticipate the pain and it hurts more. So I would just as soon he just do the thing and be done with it and then go away and say 'Well that hurt'. If he says well this is really going to hurt I would also rather he say it is going to hurt a lot more than you think rather than say it is going to prick a little bit. It is like, 'Oh thanks a lot doc'. Well if you explain it, it just means it doesn't hurt less, it just means now you know why it hurt so much. And there is no forgiveness in that. There is no requirement for forgiveness in that. 

So if you have hurt somebody, you have put a weight on their shoulder, a weight on their life of pain, of emotional pain, of spiritual pain, of some sort of pain, a weight that they now have to carry. Our responsibility as the offender, according to Christ, is to go to them and say, 'Would you please forgive me so we can be reconciled'? That allows them to take that weight, that we put on their shoulders, and to put it down. And we can both then walk away from it. 

Back to the question, how do we forgive and forget? How do we forgive and forget? Forgiving means we put it down, and walk the other direction. When we are walking the other direction we are not looking that direction anymore. When Jesus forgives us God says, He not only takes away our sin, He gives us the righteousness of Christ. And so when we have the righteousness of Christ we are looking not at righteousness, not at sin. So when God sees you and me as a Christian he sees our righteousness not our sin. The sin is therefore forgotten because you are looking a different direction. So if I have laid that sin down that you have committed against me or I have committed against you, you lay it down, it is down there. I am walking this way looking at my responsibility to serve God and I am no longer looking at the thing I laid down. So forgetting becomes natural because our focus is on another thing.

How many of you know what a twitch is? If you are a horse person, you know what a twitch is. A twitch is either rope or chain on the end of a club like thing and on the end there is a loop of chain or rope and believe it or not you take it and wrap it around the upper lip of a horse or the lower lip. You take it and twist it like this, try it to your neighbor, take your neighbors lip and start twisting, ok. Don't try it here, when you get home maybe. Take a chain it works real good with chain. You take a chain or a rope and twist their lip and sometimes lower sometimes upper or sometimes people take an ear and start twisting it. Why do they do that? The horse is unable to focus on two things at once. So if you are trying to trim a horse with some clippers or if you are trying to shoe it or something or trim it's feet and the horse is worried about that thing sometimes a twitch will make them focus on their lip that now hurts and so you actually take the twitch and twitch it a little bit because it keeps their mind on their lip and not on their foot, or not on the clippers that are buzzing around their ears. And so we focus on this thing and the other thing is no longer in our mind is it? 

So if you want to forget something, forgive them. Then you put it down and you look other directions and the thing that is behind you, you just don't even think about anymore, it will take a little while that is alright. I am sure when you take the twitch off a horses lip it stings for a little while but they don't think about it much after you put some grain in front of them they forget about the lip, put them out in the grass they start eating grass and there goes the pain of the lip. And the clipping or trimming of the hooves or whatever else it is, that is long forgotten. So when you start focusing on your responsibilities, on the benefits ahead, the pain from behind just naturally goes. You don't have to think about forgetting, you just focus on a different direction. So forgiveness says I am putting it down, I no longer have to look at it anymore, I don't even see it anymore, and I am looking a different direction. Before long I forget that it was there. It becomes essentially, practically forgotten, it is gone. If we want God to forget our sins, no longer focusing on them, Jesus says, we need to forgive and forget others sins against us.

Let's pray, Father we know that sometimes we are the offender, we are the one who has hurt somebody else and Father we need to know that we have offended You first and as a result we have offended our neighbor, our wife, our children, our friend, our enemy even. And so Father, there are times when we need to go to a person and ask their forgiveness, not explaining why we did such a thing, not trivializing their pain, not saying we only did such a thing, and there shouldn't be such a big result. Father, we just think we are throwing matches down a sewer pipe, when in reality it is destroying homes around us as it were. Father, help us to understand that our little words, our little thoughts and our little actions sometimes cause great pain, much greater than we could have expected. Help us to ask forgiveness on the basis of the persons pain, not on the basis of our act, not on the basis of our intent, not explaining it away but accepting responsibility for the fact that what we did, did cause great pain. And giving them the opportunity to lay it down as we lay down the sins of others against us and ignoring it, walking away, thinking of different things, allowing it to be gone from our past. We thank You that You did that for us in Jesus Christ. You no longer see our sin, You see our righteousness in Jesus Christ. We thank You for that, help us to practice it. In Jesus name, Amen..

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