You Don’t Need to Forgive Them

Kevin Beck

Things Jesus Never Said • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented 2 months ago

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Notes

Transcript

Open with prayer:

For world situations…

For our nation…

For our church/sick/unity…

For the lost…

For Alpha…

For forgiveness…

Connection/Tension

Starting a new series today called Things Jesus Never Said. We’re going to be looking at the words in red in our Bible - those are the words Jesus said. But sometimes it’s helpful, when we want to understand what Jesus did say, to look at what he didn’t say. What he could have said, what we might of said. What he didn’t say helps us to understand the power of what he did say. Today we are going to look at what Jesus didn’t say about the subject of forgiveness.

Does anyone know someone who is really annoying on Facebook? Hands up… So, if your hand isn’t up… maybe it’s you! Let me tell you what didn’t Jesus say on FB:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’ll give you hemorrhoids.

Do unto others, BEFORE they do unto you.

Dude, I’d like to forgive you. But I have a three strike policy.

Praise God, Jesus never said any of those things! We are going to see today that Jesus never said You Don’t Need to Forgive Them.

Text and Context

We are going to look this morning at Matthew 6. It’s part of the longest recorded sermon of Jesus called the Sermon on the Mount. In it, among other things, Jesus is teaching about how to pray. These words may be familiar to you

Matthew 6:9–11 “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”

But then look at what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “Forgive us our debts - though we are still holding grudges.” He doesn’t say, “I will forgive you, but you don’t need to forgive others.”

Matthew 6:12 “And forgive us our debts, AS [*] we also have forgiven our debtors.”

* - Everyone say “AS” - in the same way, to the same degree

And then to make this an even more clear command, he adds this little post script after the prayer. This is what Jesus did say:

Matthew 6:14–15 “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

You know what sucks sometimes about being a pastor? It’s that you have to preach about things that you aren’t good at! You get to prepare a message about forgiveness and grudge-holding, and the whole time the HS is in your ear saying, “Hey, remember that person you can’t seem to think nice thoughts about?” “Hey, remember that person that you prayed I would call them to a different church?” I never thought I was a grudge-holder - that was someone else’s problem (wife) - but not mine. And then God graciously gives you an opportunity to speak on forgiveness and point out all the places where you hold a grudge. It’s awesome! Some of you are wondering right now, Am I the one he prays about leaving? Depends on the week …

Any maybe you have had a similar kind of God-moment when you realize that you too are a grudge-holder. You also are living in unforgiveness toward someone. Welcome to the grudge-holders club!

Anytime I talk about forgiveness I know it can trigger a lot of emotions. For many of us, in the grand scheme of life, our grudges against others are over trivial things. They perferred someone else’s casserole to mine. But for others, what they have experienced has been devastating. You have been betrayed in the most painful way possible. You have been lied to. You have been lied about. People you thought you could trust have stabbed you in the back.

Someone has taken advantage of your good nature and used you. Someone who was supposed to protect you, hurt you. Emotionally, physically, spiritually, sexually. You still carry deep pain and scars to this day. And so I don’t want to simply pass over the pain that talk on forgiveness stirs up. It’s real, and what you experienced was horrible. It was wrong. It was maybe even evil.

Tell about Desiree’ being physically abused by boyfriend…

How do you forgive something that seems unforgivable? How is it even possible? I want to look at why Jesus wants us to forgive others - regardless of what they have done to us. There’s at least three people that our unforgiveness hurts.

Unforgiveness hurts God.

At the very beginning of the prayer Jesus gave us he says, “Our Father...” There is one sense in which God is only your father if you have entered into relationship with him through Jesus. But there is another sense that God is everyone’s father, bc he is the creator of everyone. We are all his children in that sense, and he loves all of his children.

I know from personal experience how grievous it is when your children don’t get along. For those who don’t know, Julie and I have four children - all grown now, thank God! But I remember well the days of taking a road trip to go see family, and at some point in the trip hearing the words, “Ethan touched me!” “Katie is looking at me!” And I did at that point what parents have said from the beginning of time, “You better knock it off or I’ll pull this car over!”

But in reality, there have been times where our kids have been at odds with each other. Unforgiving toward one another. Damaged relationship. Nothing hurts my heart more. And I think the same is true for God. He is grieved when his children not only hurt one another, but when they remain in unforgiveness toward one another.

And nothing makes my daddy heart happier than when relationship is restored. When apologies are made and forgiveness is given and received. I think the Psalmist is echoing the heart of God when he writes, Psalm 133:1 “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” How we get along with God’s other children matters deeply to God. Our unforgiveness hurts God.

Unforgiveness hurts our communion with God.

There is something almost false about coming to worship God yet holding bitterness, grudges, and unforgiveness in our hearts. Can’t we just worship God and develop relationship with him without worrying about our other relationships? Apparently not.

Matthew 5:23–24 “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

What could be more important that our worship of God? Apparently, being reconciled to our neighbor. This is an amazing verse, because it looks like God would rather you hold off on worship until after you have made things right with others. We so often think of worship as our highest priority. But Jesus offers an even higher one. First be reconciled to others, then come and worship.

This shouldn’t be surprising. In Isaiah’s time, people were very good at going through the motions of worshipping God. But at the same time they were mistreating their brothers and sisters. They were fasting and praying, but at the same time abusing and oppressing. And so God calls them out for it.

Isaiah 58:6–7 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

How we live in relation to others has a direct bearing on how we live in relation to God. Unforgiveness hurts God. Unforgiveness hurts our communion with God.

Unforgiveness hurts us.

It’s been said that holding on to unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. What unforgiveness really does is place us in a prison of our own making. We think that we are somehow punishing the one who hurt us, but in reality they are walking free. We are the ones that are bound.

Many years ago a woman came to our church - I think to an Alpha course we were running. She had had a hard life. Was honest about struggling with drugs. But she was trying to get her life together. She needed to find a job, but she didn’t have a car. Julie and I had just purchased our first of many minivans - gag - and we had our old car that we didn’t want anymore. It was a 1984 Mercury Grand Marquis - I called it a land barge - so you know now why I didn’t want it. But it still ran great.

So we offered to sell it to her below value and let her pay it out over time. She made one payment. And then we never saw her again. I reached out to her. No response. Weeks go by and one day I get a call from the Fort Smith police. They said that they had a car that was registered in my name and it was at a trailer park in town. I went to go collect it to discover that it had been gutted for parts. So not only did she not pay me, but now I had a car that wasn’t good for anything but to be sold for scrap.

I’ll be honest. I seethed inside. I was mad at that woman for taking advantage of me. I was mad at myself for being so gullible. And I was mad at God for letting it happen. Here I was, trying to do the decent Christian thing, and God let me get fleeced! And maybe for the first time in my life that I can remember, I started to feel hatred toward another person.

Until one day, while inwardly replaying the car scenario for the thousandth time, God brought me up short. He asked me a very simply question: Did you suffer any kind of lack by losing the income from that car? Did you go without anything you needed bc you didn’t receive what you were supposed to for it? And the truthful answer was “no”. I was holding onto this grudge over something that really didn’t matter that much. And in that moment I understood that I had placed myself in a prison of unforgiveness and bitterness. The person who cheated me was walking free, and I was in chains.

What some of you have experienced goes way beyond my experience. But the truth remains: in the end, the only person you hurt by holding on to unforgiveness is yourself.

Ok, so I’m convinced holding on to unforgiveness isn’t good. But I’m still mad. I’m still hurt. I’m still in pain. What do I do?

You pray for the person who hurt you.

Let me take you to another place in Jesus’ sermon:

Matthew 5:43–44 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

What do you do when you are angry, hurt, and bitter? You can pray for the person who hurt you, let your down, abused you. But I don’t feel like praying! I get it! I have felt betrayed by people in ways you can’t imagine. And if I waited until I felt like praying for them - I’d never pray for them! And if I am going to keep from being a prisoner to my own unforgiveness, then I had to start praying for them whether I felt like it or not. “God please do something to them - I mean in them”.

But over time, if I pray for the people that hurt me, I find that my heart starts to soften. I eventually reach the point when I can say honestly, “God please bless them. Please let them find forgiveness in you.” What is true so much of the time is that our actions proceed our attitude. Your prayer may or may not change others, but it will always change you.

How do we learn to let go of unforgiveness? First, we pray for the person who hurt us.

You choose to forgive.

The Greek word for forgive means “to let go of, to release, to hurl away”. It does not mean saying that what they did was OK. I was perhaps very evil, and forgiving does not mean treating it as less so. It does not mean letting an abuser back in your life. Sometimes there are still consequences for our actions.

What it does mean is that you will no longer carry the debt. You release it to God. You let it go and entrust justice into his hands. You decide to stop drinking the poison and choose to forgive. How can we do this?

The apostle Paul wrote Colossians 3:13 “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

God freely forgives our sins - some of them, if we are honest, might seem to others as reprehensible and unforgivable. But God lets go of and hurls away our sin. And he says in the same way that you must hurl away the sins of others. This is not a feeling. It is a choice.

Andy Stanley writes, “In the shadow of my hurt, forgiveness feels like a decision to reward my enemy. But in the shadow of the cross, forgiveness is merely a gift from one undeserving soul to another.”

We don’t deserve forgiveness. We can’t earn forgiveness. God chooses to give it freely. And what we receive freely we can choose to give freely. And we find that when we release others from their debt to us, that we are in the perfect place to receive God’s grace toward us.

Gospel/Response

I never want to make light of the pain that many of you have suffered from the hands of others. But I - and more importantly, God - wants to see you walk in freedom from it. It doesn’t excuse what was done, but forgiveness renders it unable to continue to hurt you.

And if we are completely honest, if we look at how much we have been forgiven, how can we not forgive others. Forgiveness empowers you to set the prisoner free. And what you find is that the whole time, the prisoner was actually you.

Someone here or listening online may be wondering if this forgiveness from God applies to them. Kevin, you don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know the people I have hurt, abused, taken advantage of, lied to. Let me just say that God’s offer of forgiveness to you is free and unreserved. If you will ask him, he will forgive you right now. If you will ask him, he will come and make his home in your heart and he will begin to make you a new person from the inside out. And that may mean going to the people you have hurt and asking forgiveness, but he will give you the grace to do that too.

God loves you. There is not “but” to that statement, no exception clause. Thankfully he doesn’t have a three strike policy. We see his love and forgiveness perfectly revealed in Jesus. Jesus came so that we could see the love of the Father. He went to the cross to take the death consequence of our sin upon himself. He died so that our sins could be buried and hurled away for all time. And he invites you to enter into new life with him.

If you’ve never done this, I’d like to lead you in a prayer of commitment. You need to understand that it isn’t the words of a prayer that saves you but rather it is by placing your trust in Jesus’ finished work on your behalf. But this prayer can be a way of expressing what is in your heart, and if you are ready to commit your life to Jesus, I invite you to pray this with me:

(Prayer of commitment slide) Heavenly Father, I admit that I have sinned against you by what I’ve thought, by what I’ve said, and by what I’ve done. [Take a moment to confess anything in particular that is troubling your conscience.] I’m sorry and I turn away from this old way of living. Please forgive me. Thank you, Jesus, for dying for my sins. I receive your forgiveness and give you my life. Fill me, Holy Spirit, so that I can learn to love and follow you for the rest of my days. Amen.

If you prayed that today for the first time, let me be the first to welcome you to God’s family! This is only the beginning. I’d love to meet with you and talk about next steps in your new life. (Next steps slide).