Forgiveness (Part III)

Hi, this is Dave Scherrerrer and we are here, you and I are here, at Kingdom Offerings, a part of 100-Fold Ministries, and we are now at the third of a three-part series on something I'm calling the Kingdom Disciplines, the Kingdom Disciplines specifically of forgiveness. This forgiveness idea is a critical theme in Jesus' teachings on the Kingdom of God. He's got a good deal to say about it. In our two previous podcasts from this one, we've acknowledged that we live in a for real world of hurt, and the hurt sometimes leaves a mark. It's a mark that's either visible or invisible, and these marks tend to remind us of that hurt. So we hold the emotional blame and anger in a behavior known as unforgiveness, or if we want to be nice about it, we might call it holding a grudge. But whether we go nice with holding a grudge or direct by calling it what Jesus calls it, unforgiveness, in the priorities of God, forgiveness is a big deal. In our first podcast in this series on forgiveness about a month ago, we referred to some famous teachings by Jesus on forgiveness as a kingdom discipline, as a kingdom character trait. It was found in Matthew 18. It's called the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. And by review in that parable, a king forgives an enormous debt of a servant, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars. I have no idea how a servant of a king can wrap up that much debt. So as the story goes, that same recently forgiven servant then refuses to forgive a small debt of a man that owes him money, maybe less than $10. So the king hears about this injustice and unforgiveness, and he rescinds his previous forgiveness of that debt, and he throws that guy in jail. And Jesus concludes this story of the unmerciful servant by saying, This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. Seems pretty direct. That's a very profound statement on Jesus' part. The other standout passage on forgiveness in Jesus' teaching is in a follow-up to his Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6. Right after the Lord teaches us to pray, and he instructs us to ask for forgiveness, and the line is, As we forgive our debtors, or some of us, as we forgive our trespasses. So that's in Matthew 6 verse 12, right in the middle of the Lord's Prayer that he taught us. But interesting, one verse later he wraps up the prayer, and then making sure that we do not miss the point, Jesus builds on this thought of forgiveness, and he says in chapter 6, again now but in verse 14, two verses later, he says, For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. All right, that's a big idea. Let's go back to this idea of grudges, and then I want to touch base on this verse one more time. Because the fact is, we all have good reasons to hold a grudge. At least if you ask us, we have a good reason to hold a grudge. As I said, we live in a proverbial world of hurt. People let us down. Friends seemingly abandon us without so much as a phone call of explanation. And weirdly, it seems like parents and children, those who are closest to us, can also hurt us the deepest, and perhaps we hold the deepest grudge. You know what? Even God doesn't always do what we think he should do. And we get disappointed, and we get angry at him, and we hold offenses against God because we feel like he's wronged us. And if we've been led to believe that God should answer my prayers in my timeline, in my way, then we can build a pretty big catalog of grudges against God, who we think should do things differently according to my design. So I guess if you think about it, a grudge is nothing more than a refusal to forgive. As I said before, this is a big deal for God. And we can go way back to the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, for our proof text on this, thousands of years before Jesus came along to teach us. You'll remember one time Jesus was questioned, what is the greatest commandment of God? And he famously said, love God. And then his second, he said, is like it, love others. That second verse that we quote so often, to love others as ourselves, that's a very interesting context when you read it back in the Old Testament. In Leviticus chapter 18, where Jesus draws this commandment, it says, God saying to the people of Israel, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. So there's this very strong commandment, I am the Lord, puts an exclamation point, maybe a couple dozen of them, behind this statement. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, and the anecdote for that, but love your neighbor as yourself. This I command, I am the Lord. So I think it's interesting that God concluded this particular command with these words, I am the Lord. He's reminding us that he is the Lord and not us. To hold a grudge is to set ourselves up as judge and jury, it's to determine that one's personal wrongs should not be forgiven. I'm holding my grudge until I say so. I've got to say, no human being has the right or the authority to do that. In Romans chapter 12, it says, do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it's written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord. So it makes it sound as though unforgiveness is also a lack of faith that God will make things right. Misunderstanding forgiveness keeps us in bondage to these grudges, keeps the poison inside of us. Somehow in our brains we start to think that to forgive is to excuse sin, or perhaps we are supposed to pretend that the offense didn't matter, and actually neither of those is true. You see, forgiveness is not really about the other person. Forgiveness is God's gift to us to release us from the control of someone who has hurt us. They've already hurt us, why would we give them control by holding a grudge? You see, without forgiveness, just the thought of an offender can send acid to our stomach, heat to our faces. We see their name come up on our phone ID and we think, I'm not taking that call and now I'm out of fellowship. But when we forgive, we release to God any right to vengeance or restitution. Forgiveness puts our relationship with God back in a proper alignment, just like God by his forgiven us has put our relationship with him back in alignment, redeemed. So we acknowledge that he is judged, not us, and that he has the right to bring about any resolution in this that he chooses. Forgiveness is actually the choice to trust God rather than ourselves for the outcome of the offense. This is Kingdom Offerings and this is part of the podcast ministry of 100 Fold Ministries. And I invite you into the kingdom discipline of forgiveness. Maybe take a moment this evening and do a deep dive into your history. You may have simply said to yourself when someone hurt you, oh, it wasn't a big deal or they did the best they could, which by the way may be true, but if you have held a grudge, then the responsibility is now on you to forgive and let God do the restoring of your relationship and your heart. This is Dave Scherrerrer, 100 Fold Ministries, peace to you.