What About Forgiveness?

Psalm 32 verse 1. A real short verse this morning. Psalm 32 verse 1. The Psalms are

Psalms 32:1 Psalms 32:1

right in the middle of your Bible. So if you flip over to the middle, you'll probably be

pretty close to the book of Psalms. Psalm 32 verse 1. We'll read the scripture, then we'll

Psalms 32:1

pray. How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Let's pray.

God we come to you today and we thank you for the freedom and the privilege to come

and to hear your word. And I pray God that today you speak to us through this word. God

such a simple truth this morning, but God it is the truth that gives us hope that our

sins can be forgiven, dear Lord. God we come into this place with a lot of sin in our life.

There are things that we've done that we wish we hadn't done. There are things that eat

away at us dear Lord. We just feel the guilt and the burden of our sin. But I pray today

God that we would know that there is forgiveness of our sin through Jesus Christ. I pray dear

Lord today that we would be those who leave happy knowing that our sins have been taken

care of. So God I pray that you would hide me behind the cross today that I would preach

and teach in a way that brings glory and honor to you. That you take away any pride or any

nerves that I have today dear Lord that everything that is said here is for your glory. I pray

that your Holy Spirit would be among us today that you free us from the distractions and

the worries of this world. And for a few minutes dear Lord that you would just let us hear

from you that you'd work in our lives. And I ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Psalm 32 was written by David and it is believed by many that David wrote this Psalm not long

after he had sinned by committing adultery with Bathsheba. Not long after he had done

that he had Bathsheba's husband killed. So David knew what it was like to sin and David

knew what it was like to sin greatly. And so do you and I. We understand the burden

of sin and it's a bad feeling. It's a bad feeling when you know you have done wrong.

When you know you've cheated someone. When you know you've said something to someone you

shouldn't have said. When you know you've treated someone in a bad way. When you know

you've sinned against God. When you know that you just haven't done right. And those sins

they just they seem to eat away at us. And they seem to continually just be in our minds.

But there is hope in our sinfulness. Our hope comes from Jesus Christ and there's probably

no worse feeling in our life than when we struggle with that sin and the burden of that

sin. But anybody in this room that's ever put their faith in Jesus Christ and come to

that realization and come to that hope and come to that reality to know that our sins

have been forgiven. What a joy that brings to our soul. There's a there's a joy in there

that you cannot understand if you have not put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

So David knew this happiness. This happiness that comes. How happy is the one whose transgression

is forgiven. Whose sin has been covered. It's a beautiful thing to know that we can go to

God in the midst of our sin and know that through Jesus Christ that God will forgive

our sin. And God removes the weight of that sin instantly. Some of you have experienced

that today. Perhaps there are some of you today that have never experienced that. Perhaps

there are some in here today and you're not happy. Happy is the one whose sin is forgiven.

But unhappy is the one who's living in their sin. Who's living with their sin. Who hasn't

given their sin to God. So maybe there are some in here today and your life's just not

very good. You say I just want to be happy. I'm never happy. Well maybe the reason why

you're not happy today is because you have not trusted in Jesus Christ. Perhaps today

if you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ you would experience that forgiveness just

as David did and you would be one who would leave here today who are happy because your

sins have been forgiven. There's no better feeling than when someone forgives you of

your sins. When the Lord forgives you of the sins you have committed against him. Maybe

it's your spouse. You had an argument. You said some things you shouldn't say. Boy it's

a beautiful feeling when you sit down and you say I'm sorry and they say I forgive you.

Maybe it's some other family member. Whatever it may be. Probably every one of us in this

room has had some experience in our life where we have done someone wrong and we have felt

the guilt and the pain and the shame of that and it's a beautiful thing when that person

says I forgive you. It's a beautiful thing when people who hurt you and people you hurt

can still come to you and they can bring forgiveness to you and offer that in your life. And David

says you're happy as the man whose sins have been covered. That's the good part of forgiveness.

That's the part of forgiveness that we seek right. That's the part of forgiveness that

we long for. The part that is fulfilled by God when his word tells us in Psalm 103 verse

Psalms 103:12

12 that our sins are cast as far as the east is to the west. What a beautiful thing that

is. What a beautiful truth that is for us today that we can come into this room and

you need to know today that you do not have to carry your sin with you today. You don't

have to carry the burden of your sin with you today that Jesus wants to free you from

that. That you might have done some really rotten things. You might have sinned in some

really great ways but I want you to know today the truth of the gospel is this that if we

would just repent of our sins, if we would say Lord Jesus I have sinned and I'm so ashamed

and I'm so guilty, that the truth of God's word says that God will forgive us of our

sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Isn't that a beautiful thing that we can come

here today and that we can have hope that in the midst of our rottenness that God doesn't

cast us aside but God brings us to church and he brings us to encounters with his words

and he brings us to encounters with other Christians who remind us the truth that we

are still loved and we can be forgiven and there are some in this room today that are

maybe struggling with your sin and you need to know today that there is hope in Jesus

Christ and if you would just repent. David has sinned pretty greatly. I don't know about

you and I but we sinned pretty greatly too. I don't know what your sin is but David committed

adultery and killed a man to cover it up. That's pretty bad. I suspect that many of

you in here have not topped that and yet what did David discover? He discovered that there

was forgiveness for his sins and for that David rejoiced. Even a sinner like David can

rejoice through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. What about you and I this morning? And that's

the good part of forgiveness. That's the beautiful part of forgiveness is that we who are so rotten

can be forgiven of our sins. But then there's two sides to the coin of forgiveness. There's

the side that says we can be forgiven and we are forgiven and then there's the harder

part of forgiveness. The part where God says that we must forgive others. Jesus says in

Matthew chapter 6 verses 14 and 15, for if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your

Matthew 6:14

heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don't forgive people, your Father

will not forgive your wrongdoing. Now I don't know about you guys but that's a pretty strong

verse. That God's Word says that if we have been forgiven through Jesus Christ, that if

we forgive others our sins are forgiven but if we don't forgive others our sins will not

be forgiven. And that is strong language. Why would Jesus say such a thing? Well I'll

tell you why I think Jesus says that. I think Jesus says that for this reason. Because I

believe that anyone who has experienced the grace of God, if anyone has experienced the

forgiveness of God for our sins and we've experienced a relationship with God through

Jesus Christ, then it should be our desire to forgive others who sin against us. If we've

received such grace and such compassion knowing how rotten we are, how can we not have that

compassion on others? And I think what Jesus is saying is, is if you don't have any desire

and you won't forgive those who have sinned against you, then maybe it's because you've

never really been forgiven of your sins. Maybe you've never really experienced the compassion

that Jesus Christ brings. Maybe you've never experienced the grace of God. Maybe you don't

realize that God has given you great mercy. So Jesus gives us a hard command here. That

if we are those who claim to be forgiven of our sins, if we are those who have trusted

in Jesus Christ, if we are those who have confessed our sins and God has been faithful

to forgive us of our sins, then we must be a people who forgive others. And that's where

it gets hard because we can overlook all of our failures because as bad as we may be,

we're not quite as bad as that person who has wronged us. As bad as we may be, there's

still some reason why we deserve forgiveness. There's still some reason why God should have

compassion on us, but there is no reason that we should have compassion on those who sin

against us because they're not worthy of it. And that's a hard truth that the Bible tells

us here, is that if we have received the forgiveness of God, then we are called to forgive others.

And that is a hard truth to live by. That is a hard thing to live by. We look at the

example of Jesus Christ in scripture, which is the great example of forgiveness you will

ever find in this world. And we see that Jesus was so full of compassion and so gentle and

so willing for even those who nailed Him to the cross to come to forgiveness there at

the very end. And yet there are so many times in our life that people have wronged us and

we cannot bear to forgive them. We don't want to forgive them sometimes if we're honest.

We just, we don't even want to consider it because the things they have done are so rotten

and so evil that we just can't bear to give them an ounce of compassion. Now there are

a lot of things we hold on to that are trivial that we need to let go. Your buddy stole your

girlfriend in third grade. It's time to let that go. There are some trivial things in

this world that you need to forgive people for and you need to let that go. But I also

understand that not everything is that easy. I understand that there are times in life

that people really hurt us. They really hurt us deeply. It may be a parent, something they

did to a child, a child something they did to a parent, maybe it's your spouse, whoever

it may be, whatever the circumstance may be. I get it. There are people that hurt us and

it hurts. It cuts us to the core and the closer that person is to us, the more it hurts and

the harder it is for us to forgive them. But Jesus says if we do not forgive, we will not

be forgiven. I can't twist that and make it pretty and sugar coated in any way. These

are the words of Jesus Christ. And maybe the reason why you're unhappy today is because

you've not been forgiven. And maybe the reason that you're unhappy today is because you're

not forgiving other people in your life. You may have so much bitterness and anger and

hatred in your heart that that's why you're unhappy. Maybe you know the word of God and

you know what Jesus says and you try to live by the word of God, but then there's this

one part here that trips you up because this one part says that person that is so evil

that has done you so wrong that you need to forgive them. And you don't want to forgive

them. You want revenge because revenge revels in wrath. You want them to suffer. You want

them to suffer as you have suffered. And whatever it is they've done, no matter how trivial

or how great it is, there are times in our life that it's hard for us to forgive people,

but these are the commands of Jesus Christ. And maybe the reason we've got so much bitterness

in our heart today is because we have not experienced forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

And you've not experienced the forgiveness of those who have sinned against you. Perhaps

there are some people in here today and you're thinking, maybe you've got a list of people.

Some people do that. Boy, they got a list of people. They keep up with everything somebody's

done to them since first grade. You get one shot, you wrong me and I don't want nothing

to do with it. There's people who go to their grave holding grudges, as angry and as bitter

and as pitiful as they can be because they have hatred in their heart and they do not

forgive sin. And that hatred builds and builds and builds, but there is nothing more beautiful,

not just for the one who is forgiven, but for the one who is forgiving. And maybe today

we need to check our hearts and we need to check our life and we need to look at those

who have sinned greatly against us and we need to forgive them yet once more. How many

times? Seven times? Jesus said 70 times seven. I believe what Jesus said is there's no limit.

Should one who sins against you come to you and repent and ask for your forgiveness, Jesus

says forgive that person. And we've got those people in our life. We've got those people

and they've done us wrong and we've forgiven them and they time and again and time and

again and time and again and we want to say I'm done with that person. I don't want anything

else to do with that person. I don't want to see them again. I don't want to forgive

them again. I'm done. But then we come to church and we hear a message like this and

we're reminded of the words of Jesus and we're reminded of the compassion of Jesus, of all

the people who were out to get him, of all the people who were part of that mock trial

that voted to nail him to a cross, of those very ones that put the nails through his hands,

of the very ones who put the cross, I mean the crown of thorns on his head as he hung

on the cross and yet Jesus still up until his last breath had compassion and a heart

for forgiveness. And that's a beautiful thing and that's a hard thing. So we come today

and for many of us, most of us, maybe all of us, and we have to say God I need some

help because it's way easier for us to hold a grudge. It's way easier for us to want to

see people get what's coming to them. What we have to realize and we need to be grateful

for if we've put our faith in Jesus Christ is that God didn't give us what was coming

to us or else we would not be in this room today. That God forgave us again and again

and we sit in this room today and there are sins that we've sinned against God repeatedly

and we've said we'll never do it again and you're going to leave this room and in the

next week and in the next month and in the next year you're going to do it again. And

you're going to go to God and you're going to pour your heart out to him and you're going

to repent and God is going to forgive you because his word says that he does. And if

we've experienced that joy, if we're happy in that way that we've experienced forgiveness,

then how can we withhold that from other people? So maybe there are some people in your life

today that you need to forgive. Even your worst enemies, those who have hurt you greatly,

love them, pray for them, forgive them. I want to read a story to you this morning.

It's a relatively short story. A man by the name of Richard Wormbrand told this story.

Some of you have heard of him. Some of you may have not have heard of Richard Wormbrand.

He was a Romanian priest back in the 40s around the time of World War II. He lived in a communist

area. He was a Christian. He said communism and Christianity cannot, they just do not

go together. They do not go together. And because he preached the truth of the gospel

of Jesus Christ, he was in prison for that for 14 years. Richard Wormbrand has told many

stories of his imprisonment. He was beaten, beaten often along with other priests, pastors,

along with other Christian believers. You need to look him up. You need to read of his

story. He started a ministry called The Voice of the Marver. You can find that online. In

which he brings light to brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who are suffering.

Now he died in 2001, but the ministry still continues. And his stories are really unbelievable,

unbelievable stories of suffering that people go through. And a great example of brothers

and sisters in Christ that suffer and all the way up until death, they still do not

give up on Jesus Christ. And he wrote a story once, a story of forgiveness. And I was going

to sum it up to save time. It'll take three or four minutes to read it, but it's such

a beautiful story. I wanted to read it in his own words this morning. And I think it's

a beautiful example of what forgiveness is. When I was in jail, I felt very, very ill.

I had tuberculosis of the whole surface of both lungs. And four vertebrae were attacked

by tuberculosis. I also had intestinal tuberculosis, diabetes, heart failure, jaundice, and other

sicknesses I can't even remember. I was near death. In my right hand was a priest by the

name of Iskew. He was abbot of a monastery. This man, perhaps in his forties, had been

so tortured he was near to death. But his face was serene. He spoke about his hope of

heaven, about his love of Christ, about his faith. He radiated joy. On my left side was

the communist torturer who had tortured the priest almost to death. He had been arrested

by his own comrades. Don't believe the newspapers when they say that communists only hate Christians

or Jews. It's not true. They simply hate. They hate everybody. They hate Jews. They

hate Christians. They hate anti-Semites. They hate anti-Christians. They hate everybody.

One communist hates another communist. They quarrel among themselves. And when they quarrel

with communists with one another, they put the other one in jail and torture him just

like a Christian, and they beat him. And so it happened that the communist torturer who

had tortured this priest nearly to death had been tortured nearly to death by his comrades.

He was dying near me. His soul was in agony. During the night he would awaken me saying,

Pastor, please pray for me. I can't die. I've committed such terrible crimes. Then I saw

a miracle. I saw the agonized priest calling to two other prisoners. And leaning on their

shoulders slowly, slowly he walked past my bed and sat on the bedside of this murderer.

And he caressed his head. I will never forget this gesture. I watched a murdered man caressing

his murderer. That is love. He found a caress for him. The priest said to the man, You are

young. You did not know what you were doing. I love you with all my heart. But he did not

just say the words. You can say love. It's just a four-letter word. But he really loved.

I love you with all of my heart, he went on. If I who am a sinner can love you so much,

imagine Christ, who is love incarnate, how much he loves you. And all the Christians

whom you've tortured know that they forgive you. They love you. And Christ loves you.

He wishes you to be saved much more than you wish to be saved. You wonder if your sins

can be forgiven. He wishes to forgive your sins more than you wish your sins to be forgiven.

He desires for you to be with him in heaven much more than you wish to be in heaven with

him. He is love. You only need to turn to him and repent. In this prison cell in which

there was no possibility of privacy, I overheard the confession of the murderer to the murdered.

Life is more thrilling than a novel. No novelist has ever written such a thing. The murdered,

near to death, received the confession of the murderer. The murderer gave absolution

to his murderer. They prayed together, embraced each other, and the priest went back to his

bed. Both men died that same night. It was Christmas Eve. But it was not a Christmas

Eve in which we simply remembered the 2,000 years ago Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It

was a Christmas Eve during which Jesus was born in the heart of a communist murderer.

These things which I have seen with my own eyes. What a beautiful story of forgiveness.

That this communist guard beat this priest daily till he was near death. And when this

communist guard himself was near death, it was the very priest he had beaten daily that

came to his side and told him of the love of Jesus Christ. He told him that Christians

that he had beaten had forgiven him and he told him more importantly that God would forgive

him. What a beautiful example of forgiveness. So when we say, I can't forgive this person.

They've done this horrible thing to me. Really, what have they done to you? Have they beaten

you for years while you were in prison? Even so, what a beautiful example of this priest

to offer forgiveness. Chances are many of the things that people do to us as bad as

they may be and as hurtful as they may be are things that pale in comparison to this

story I just read. And yet in this story we see an example of forgiveness. Throughout

scripture we see a beautiful example of forgiveness in Jesus Christ. There is forgiveness for

you today if you'd repent of your sins and know that Jesus Christ loves you, he will

forgive you. And if you receive that forgiveness, if you're living in that forgiveness today,

then let us be those who will forgive others just as Jesus Christ has forgiven us. Let's

pray. Father God, we come to you. We thank you for your good word. I pray, dear Lord,

that you would help us because we struggle. God, life is hard and people do really horrible

things to us. And we're not excusing people, dear Lord. We don't excuse wrong behavior.

We don't sweep it under the rug. We don't pretend like it doesn't happen. But dear Lord,

we have to be able to forgive people, dear Lord. And so I pray that you would help us

to do that. God, as bad as the pain may be in this room today, and there are probably

some great pains in this room, I pray, God, that you would touch those hearts. I pray,

God, that they would feel your love and feel your grace and feel your presence. God, that

today, even in the midst of their hurt, they would find happiness. That they would be those

today that can echo the words of David, how happy is the one whose sins have been forgiven.

And dear Lord, knowing that our sins are forgiven, give us the ability to forgive those who have

caused us such pain. Dear Lord, maybe there are some in this room today and they don't

know who Jesus is. Maybe they've come to church a lot. Maybe they know some scripture. But

maybe today they tested theirself and they see that there is too much hatred and too

much unforgiveness in their life. And maybe they realized that maybe they've never experienced

the forgiveness of Jesus Christ this morning, God. I pray that if there are any in this

room that do not know who Jesus is, that have not lived in the grace of forgiveness, dear

Lord, that today that they would confess their sins to you. Dear Lord, I don't know what

they did. It's heavy. They know what they did, dear Lord. They probably some in this

room that think it's too much, but it's not, God. When Jesus died on the cross, his death

was sufficient to cover our sins as bad as they may be. God, if there are some who have

been struggling under the burden of their sin today and just living miserable, unhappy

lives, I pray today, God, that they would repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ,

that they would ask you to forgive them today, dear Lord, that they would know their sin

has been covered. Oh, how happy the one is, dear Lord, whose transgression has been forgiven.

I pray that they would find that happiness today. Dear Lord, maybe there's some bitterness

and hatred in our heart, even for some of those who are yours this morning. And maybe

that's the source of some of our unhappiness today. God, I pray that right now that we

would just kind of relinquish those judges, those grudges, dear Lord, and those bitterness,

the feelings that we feel, dear Lord, and that we would just give those to you today.

That we would even reach out to those, dear Lord, today, tomorrow, this week, who have

heard us, that we'd call them, we'd go to their house, and we'd just tell them those

words, I forgive you. Dear Lord, we may find that that is such freedom for us, and it may

be freedom for the other person, too, dear Lord. I pray, God, that we would know that

our relationship with you would be restored today through forgiveness, and I pray that

you would let that guide us to restore relationships through forgiveness ourselves for those that

we encounter in this world. Help us to follow the example of Jesus Christ. God, it's hard.

It's hard to forgive. But dear Lord, we know that you've forgiven us, so give us the ability

to forgive those who sin against us. And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.