Sermon Tone Analysis

| *Forgiving Yourself \\ * |

| A Pocket Paper \\ from \\ The Donelson Fellowship \\ *______________Robert J. Morgan \\ *Robert J. Morgan \\ ----

*The knife* sliced through the man's shirt like a razor, entering his back at the shoulder and cutting diagonally toward the spine.

Skin and muscle melted like mutton before a cleaver.

The shock paralyzed him, and searing pain tore through his body like currents of fire.

He tried to scream, but the knife had punctured a lung.

Being withdrawn, it was plunged in again.

And again.

The third plunge was most cruel, stabbing, carving, nicking spinal cord and puncturing heart.

The victim twisted toward his attacker, seeing through anguished eyes the face of his betrayer.

Three times the scalpel lacerated the man's chest, scoring the skin, cutting along carefully drawn lines.

Its surgical steel grew red.

Flesh and fat separated, the chest opened.

Soon the heart was bared.

Two knives.

One in the hand of a killer, the other in the hand of a healer.

One cut into the back, the other into the chest.

Three stabs for the betrayal.

Three for the surgery.

The surgeon, being healed, was operating on the man who had attacked him.

This is the story found in Luke 22 and John 21: Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest.

Peter followed at a distance.

But when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.

A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight.

She looked closely at him and said, "This man was with him."

But he denied it.

"Woman, I don't know him," he said.

A little later someone else saw him and said, "You also are one of the them."

"Man, I am not!" Peter replied.

About an hour later another asserted, "Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean."

Peter replied, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!"

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.

Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times."

And he went outside and wept bitterly (Luke 22:56-62).

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."

Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"

He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."

The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?"

He said "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.

Jesus said, "Feed my sheep..." (John 21:15-17).

Three times Peter stabbed Jesus in the back.

And three times, Jesus cut Peter to the heart.

The Lord knew that Peter's guilt and his sense of shame was blacker than coal.

But he also knew that Peter would never become the bold and brilliant leader of the early church if he spent his days groping in the coalmines of guilt and moping in his mineshafts of shame.

So he told him, in effect, to get over it.

To put it behind him.

To renew his love for his Master, and to get busy feeding the sheep.

When we have betrayed a father or mother or husband or wife or friend, how do we forgive ourselves?

When we have done the unspeakable, how do we get past it?

It is one thing to be forgiven, but is another to forgive ourselves.

I read of a man who had gotten drunk, swerved into the opposite lane of the highway, and collided head-on with a Toyota driven a woman, eight months pregnant.

She was killed along with her unborn child.

Now the man is sitting in prison, reliving that moment over and over and over.

He has confessed his sin to God.

He has begged the woman's family for forgiveness.

But he can't forgive himself.

How do we do it?

*Peter* Three examples in the Bible provide us, I think, with clues.

The first case is Peter, and his example teaches us that if we are going to obtain self-forgiveness, we must first appropriate and appreciate the power of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Peter's darkest moment was when he thrice betrayed his friend, and history is not kind to traitors.

As long as American history endures, the name Benedict Arnold will be etched in infamy.

As long as Christian history continues, the name of Judas Iscariot will be a synonym for treachery.

How, then, did Peter overcome the shame and stigma of betrayal?

He appropriated and appreciated the acidity of the blood of Christ.

We know from 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared privately to Peter on Easter Sunday.

We don't know what they said, for no record of the conversation found its way into Scripture.

We assume they talked about the betrayal, and that the Risen Lord assured the broken apostle of forgiveness.

At any rate, shortly afterward Jesus dealt with Peter in the John 21 passage, telling him to get on with it, to get busy feeding the sheep.

Ever after, Peter spoke of the wondrous extent of God's forgiveness.

On the day of Pentecost, he told the crowds in Jerusalem, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38).

He told the temple worshippers in Acts 3, "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord" (Acts 3:19).

The power of Christ's blood has the ability to turn times of regretting into seasons of refreshing.

When Peter went before the Sanhedrin, he said, "God has exalted (Christ) to his right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins..." (Acts 5:31).

He journeyed to Caesarea, telling the Gentiles: "All the prophets testify about (Christ) that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name" (Acts 10:43).

This was still his message years later.

Writing in 1 Peter 2, Peter didn't get past the second verse of the book before talking about being sprinkled by the blood of Christ.

And he didn't get out of the first chapter before reminding his readers, "It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed... but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect" (1 Peter 1:18).

When we come to Jesus Christ for his forgiveness, he washes away our guilt.

It is gone, and we are clean as snow.

No record of it exists, for God abundantly pardons.

We are justified by the blood of Christ; it is just as though we had never sinned.

Therefore when we continue to brood over sin that God has forgiven, we are underestimating his love, doubting his grace, and discounting the scope of his forgiveness.

When we wallow around in guilt banished by God, we are refusing to accept his view of things.

In simple terms, when you refuse to forgive yourself, you are saying, in effect, that the death of Jesus Christ wasn't adequate-his blood isn't strong enough-to really justify you.

Self-forgiveness, on the other hand, is simply aligning your thinking to God's Word.

*Joseph* The second step in self-forgiveness is found in the advice given by Joseph to his brothers in Genesis.

These ruthless brothers, remember, had committed a horrendous act of betrayal.

They had savagely abused their own brother, selling him into slavery for twenty shekels of silver.

As the years passed, their collective guilt ate away at their souls.

Meanwhile, the overruling hand of God's providence was at work, bringing about a famine in western Asia and raising up Joseph to deal with it as Prime Minister of Egypt.

In the course of time, the brothers stood before Joseph, though they did not yet recognize him.

Genesis 45 records the story like this: Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, "Have everyone leave my presence!"

So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers.

And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household heard about it.

Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph!

Is my father still living?"

But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.