Navigating the Road to Forgiveness: A Biblical Perspective | Matthew 18:21-35

The following resource is brought to you by Real Life Community Church in Richmond, Kentucky.

We hope you're both challenged and encouraged by this message from Pastor Chris May.

Matthew 18, beginning in 21,.

Peter came up and said to Jesus Lord, how often will my brother sin against me?

And I forgive him as many as seven times?

Jesus said to him I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.

And since he could not pay, his master would order him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment be made.

So the servant, he fell on his knees, imploring him have patience with me and I'll pay you everything.

And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

But when that same servant went out, he found out of one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii and, seizing him, began to choke him, saying pay me what you owe.

So his servant, his fellow servant, fell down and pleaded with him have patience with me, I will pay you.

And he refused and he went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

And when his fellow servants saw what had taken place.

They were greatly distressed.

They went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

And then his master summoned him and said to him you, wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

Should not you have mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?

And in his anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you.

If you do not forgive your brother from your heart, the word of the Lord and you may be seated.

Well, in Matthew 18, we've been looking at four non-negotiable virtues of the kingdom of God.

These are, by the way, marks of a true Christian.

If we do not have these marks, it is highly likely that we are not truly in the kingdom of God.

And so so far, we have looked at the virtue of humility, we have looked at the virtue of righteousness, we have looked last week at the virtue of love and today very hard hitting passage we're going to look at the virtue of forgiveness.

I heard a story recently kind of humorous Years ago there was a man who got bit by a rabid dog, and this is before there was a cure for rabies.

And so the man gets bit and he goes to the doctor and the doctor said listen, you have rabies and I'm sorry you're not going to live very long.

He said, you want to get your affairs in order?

So the man takes out a piece of paper and he starts writing down names and the doctor says to him he says, hey, it's so good you're taking this seriously, you're putting together your living will.

He said that's not what I'm doing.

These are the names of the people I want to bite before I die.

Does that not illustrate the human disposition, the normal human disposition, that when we are wrong we want to bite as many people as who wrong us?

But you know, jesus has called us to a new way of being, amen.

He has called us to be a people of generosity and forgiveness.

Now I will say to you this is a very hard hitting and sobering passage.

In my years of pastoral ministry there has perhaps been no other issue that has been so pervasive in the church than unforgiveness.

I mean, I've had to walk so many people through giving a spouse or a neighbor or another church member.

It's very, very common, and I've watched Christians be robbed of their joy.

The text starts Peter asked this question.

You might remember last week we talked about love within the Christian community and Jesus says that Christians from time to time sin against one another, and if you've been in church for any length of time you know that happens.

And what Jesus is saying is when somebody hurts you, you don't leave.

When somebody sins again, you don't leave and go to another church.

What are you going to do when somebody offends you there?

What's he say?

He says you confront the person and you bring it up.

You confront them in love and about their sin and if they listen to you, repent, you've gained a brother.

If they don't repent, you bring somebody else with you, another believer.

They don't repent, bring them before the church.

If they don't repent, treat them like a pagan and tax collector because they're still living in sin.

And so after hearing this, peter immediately says hey, jesus, because that's about forgiving your brother, right?

Hey Jesus, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

And you just see him in this kind of arrogant spirit, up to seven times.

Here's the context you need to know.

In the ancient world, by this time, some rabbis had only required that you forgive a person.

If you were a Jew, you only had to forgive a person three times.

How did people stay married?

That's what I want to know.

Three times and you're done.

If it was premeditated, sin three times and you're out.

And so Jesus Peter here.

He thinks he's being so magnanimous, like, so generous.

He goes.

Jesus, listen, I heard what you said about confronting.

I'm going to forgive my brother, not three times, like the rabbis, seven times.

And Jesus, unimpressed, what's he say?

He says I do not say seven times, but he says 77 times.

Now some translations say what?

490 times here, 70 times seven?

Is my math correct?

Okay, either way, jesus is not saying count to 77 or 490.

And on the 78th or the 491st time, you're sorry, you're out of luck.

Actually, I like the 77 times interpretation here, and because I think it's most compelling, because Jesus is a Bible nerd and so I'm going to nerd out for a second, is that alright?

So here's the thing that Jesus is always pulling from the Old Testament in his teachings.

And there's another place in the Old Testament, a pivotal text, where Jesus or, excuse me, where the Bible, uses the number 77.

And if you want to go there, it's Genesis, chapter 4, so almost all the way to the beginning, genesis, chapter 4.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention Genesis 4 · chapter mention

Now, genesis 4 is the story of Adam and Eve's son, cain, who murders his brother Abel.

You know the story right.

And so, because of Cain's sin, god tells him listen, you, from here on you're going to be cut off from your people in my presence and you are going to live as a fugitive and a wanderer for the rest of your life.

He's got this curse upon his life now because of his sin, because sin has consequences.

And so Cain kind of freaks out and he says oh my goodness, like people are going to try to kill me when they see me, right, because they see this curse in my life.

They don't want to be near me, they just they're going to want to get rid of me.

So, god, out of grace, what's he do?

He puts a mark on him.

He puts a mark on Cain and he says listen, if anyone kills you, cain, vengeance will be taken out on that person sevenfold.

Now, still in Genesis 4, you go down and the writer fast forwards five generations later, telling the story of one of Cain's descendants named Lamech.

And as soon as we're introduced to Lamech, we find him bragging about killing a man.

It's like this generational sin, and I want you to listen to Lamech's words in Genesis 4-24.

Here's what Lamech says If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is 77 fold, and so scholars make this connection.

Here Lamech is boasting about the vengeance that makes him even safer than Cain.

Listen, cain has God's protection.

Only His vengeance is sevenfold upon one who would hurt Cain.

But you mess with me.

You're getting it 77 times over.

And he's just got this vengeful spirit.

And this is the human disposition.

You mess with me.

I'm not just going to get even, I'm going to get ahead.

Come on, I know some of you, all from Appalachian country.

I know that's your mantra, right?

Okay, that wasn't funny.

You're like you're talking about my mama.

All right, here we go.

So that's what's going on and what Jesus is doing here.

He's saying listen, this is you have this vengeful people, right.

But he says I'm creating a new humanity who offers grace 77 times over.

You get what Jesus is doing here.

It's beautiful.

And so Jesus goes on to say all right, let me.

Let me give you a parable about why forgiveness is so necessary.

So, very quickly, I'm going to answer three questions today from the text you ready.

Number one what is forgiveness?

Number two how do we do it?

And number three why is it so critical?

I know it's late, but listen, please give me your attention, because this is literally a message of life or death.

It really is.

What is forgiveness?

It's such an intriguing parable, a crazy story.

It begins by introducing this king who, by the way, represents God, who wishes to settle accounts with his servants.

And so there's one particular servant who's brought to him, who represents us, by the way, and he's brought before the king.

And now, when you think of servant, don't think Butler or Gardner or Worker of the Field.

This is likely kind of a vassal king, a governor, a satrap who governs a particular province within an empire under the authority of the king.

So this is somebody of providence prominence.

There you go, that's the word I was looking for.

And this servant has mismanaged the king's funds or embezzled, we don't really know.

And so he owes the king this massive amount of money.

How much does the tech tech say he owes him?

Ten thousand talents.

What is that?

Listen to this.

This is crazy.

So one talent represents about 6,000 days wage of a blue-collar Palestinian worker at that time.

One talent, 6,000 days of work.

Ten thousand talents then would be about the equivalent of 60 million days wages, which many scholars suggest in today's term you're talking multi-billion dollars, if not zillions of dollars.

The point is this this is an insurmountable debt, insurmountable.

So, justly, the king orders that the servant's assets be seized.

And he said I want you to seize the family.

You know this servant and the family, and we're going to sell him into slavery to chip away at this debt.

The servant just breaks down and he says king, please have mercy on me, I'll pay it back.

But he can't pay it back.

And the king does something profound.

He doesn't say I'm going to give you a little time, I'm going to give you a week, I'm going to give you a month, a year.

Here's what he says I'm going to release you and the debt's forgiven, the debt's taken away.

It's profound act of grace and mercy and forgiveness.

And so, as we look at this part of the parable, we get a glimpse of what forgiveness is.

So let me tell you quickly what forgiveness is not.

Because we're called to forgive, we need to know what it is and what it is not.

So forgiveness is not ignoring somebody's sin against you, and we know that from last week's text.

No, you confront them, you tell them you've sinned against me.

It does not mean forgiveness does not mean that we let people treat us like doormats the previous text.

If the perpetrator doesn't listen, if he continues to sin, you treat them like a pagan or a Gentile in hopes that they will repent.

So there are.

We don't have to continually get abused.

That's not what forgiveness is.

Example if you are, you know someone who's being verbally or physically beaten by a spouse, to forgive them doesn't mean that you just keep taking that.

You need help and, by the way, if that's you or you know someone, we're here to help in that situation and point you to the right resources.

Forgiveness is not a restoration of immediate trust.

Now let me say this In the Christian church, the goal of forgiveness is always reconciliation.

God wants us to be reconciled to one another, but forgiveness is instantaneous, but reconciliation takes time.

You know, say that you hire a babysitter, all right, and you tell the babysitter you and your spouse are going out.

You tell the babysitter listen, I'm going to give you some rules.

My kids are young.

I want you to pay close attention to them.

They're crazy people and I don't want them.

I don't.

I don't want you, you know, having anybody over and I want them to eat their meal.

I don't want them having candy.

It's cold outside If they go out.

I want them dressing warm and they have to be watched.

Let's say you come home a little bit early from your date with your spouse and the kids are nowhere to be seen.

The babysitter is, you know, on the couch.

Her boyfriend's over, and then you see them.

They have not eaten their meal.

The food's still on the table and there's a outside.

There's a trail of like candy wrappers and they're running around out there in their diapers.

That's a bad experience.

Now question if you're a Christian, do you have to forgive your babysitter?

Yes, but you would be foolish to say, hey, what are you doing tomorrow?

We're going to go out again, right, like you don't have.

Trust is going to have to be rebuilt.

So reconciliation takes time, and so forgiveness and reconciliation they're not synonymous.

I guess that's what I'm saying.

What, then, is forgiveness?

What's it mean?

Well, number one, when you forgive when I forgive you know what you do.

You empathize with the perpetrator, something that we don't do enough.

I want you to notice in the text and verse 27, out of pity for this servant, the master released him and forgave him the debt.

Out of pity, now, the Greek word translated pity here is often translated compassion in the Bible, and I love Tim Keller points this out.

But there's an idiom that we have that really gets to the matter of what this is, and it is this idiom to give your heart out, to your heart going out to someone.

Right, you said this my heart goes out to that person.

Or, as you said, to fill it in your gut, in your bowels, so my heart goes out to you.

So to forgive means that we humanize the perpetrator and have compassion upon them, even though you may feel that they don't deserve it.

You have compassion and your heart goes out to them.

You see their brokenness.

And then, secondly, forgiveness.

You know what it is.

It's about absorbing the perpetrator's debt.

This king, he had two options.

With the money that was owed, he could either make the servant pay or you know what else he could do he could absorb the debt himself.

And what did he do?

He absorbed the debt Years ago, probably 20 years ago.

My stepdad he's in here, there he is, he.

He borrowed two jet skis from a friend of ours.

They were brand new and Nicky and I had never ridden them before, and there were some other family there with us and most of us had never ridden jet ski.

So, man, we had a blast reality on Cave Run Lake all day riding those things and they were powerful.

And we didn't know that you're not supposed to like take off full blast when you're around the bank, and we did that.

Nor did we know that there were these rocks, about this big, pretty, pretty large rock stones Right underneath us in the shallow water, and they ran fine that day.

But come to find out they had they were so these jet skis were so robust they actually sucked these stones up into the inner workings and destroyed the motors.

And so this is before.

My dad owned his own company and he he could have said you're paying the debt, or he could have absorbed it, and he absorbed the debt.

Thank you very much, by the way.

He absorbed that, that debt.

And, and you know, when it comes to when people sin against us, we are hurt, we are broken and we can either make the other person pay, and meaning that we want to, we want to get revenge, we want to break them, we want to ruin their reputation, or we can absorb the debt ourselves, which is what Jesus calls us to do.

And, by the way, again, does it mean that they're they don't have consequences?

But it's when I, when I say absorbing the debt, what the Bible talks about, listen, we don't hold a grudge, we don't gossip about that person, we let it go, we absorb the debt, the hurt.

That's what forgiveness is.

It's a matter of the heart, matter of fact.

Jesus says this in the last verse of this text if you do not forgive your brother from your heart, it's a heart issue, so it's.

It's releasing somebody from these, you know, just vengeful feelings, releasing them from your heart.

So how do we do this?

Has anybody struggled with forgiving somebody this week, this year, sometime?

Come on, it's difficult.

Well, here it is, when the forgiven servant is released, what's he do?

I mean, you would think he would walk away, humble and merciful and just joyous.

But what's he do?

He searches for somebody that owes him money.

You know, sometimes when you sin, you like to find somebody else has done the same thing to make you feel better about yourself.

Right, this person lied.

So I want to say you know, I want to find another liar to make me feel okay, misery loves company, right.

And so so this, this guy.

He goes out.

The servant for given servant goes out and he finds somebody that owes him money and it's a relatively small amount in comparison.

I mean, it's very small as a matter of fact, it could be paid off in comparison to what he owed to the king and was just forgiven for.

So it brings this guy in and and and the guy.

He says I want you to pay this.

And the text actually says he begins to choke the guy.

The guy just forgiven just begins to choke him.

I mean, this is Hatfield and McCoy stuff, folks, right?

He chokes him and the guy pleads for mercy.

He says, hey, I'll pay you back.

He actually could have worked this off.

But the guy who was forgiven says not on your life.

And he has him put in prison.

The forgiven servant refuses to forgive this other servant.

How appalling.

And why do we struggle with this?

Why do we find this so difficult?

Well, unforgiveness, if we're honest, it can feel good for a season, can it?

I mean, those feelings against someone can feel good.

I love these words Listen to this closely by Frederick Buechner.

He wrote this in a book called Wishful Thinking.

He writes of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over the grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come.

Have you ever done that?

You play out in your mind what you're going to say to this person the next time you see him.

To savor to the last two-some morsel both the pain you were given and the pain you were given back.

You are giving back in many ways.

He says it is a feast fit for a king anger, bitterness.

But he writes this the chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down at this feast is yourself.

The skeleton at the feast is you.

That's profound.

Unforgiveness feels good for a while.

It makes us feel morally superior to the perpetrator, right.

But the problem is that we think we're hurting another person with unforgiveness and we are sometimes.

But you know who it hurts most?

It hurts you.

You are the skeleton at the feast.

Another reason it's hard to forgive is because we want justice, right, and so we feel that forgiving somebody is unjust because they need to pay.

But here's the deal If they repent, payment will be paid.

Payment will be made in full.

It was paid, matter of fact, in the past, at Calvary, 2000 years ago, justice happened at the cross.

If they do not repent, vengeance is the Lord's and his wrath is much worse than yours.

We want justice.

So here's what we have to do if we're going to forgive.

Number one we've got to identify with the perpetrator, the forgiven servant.

You know what he's done.

He's forgotten his own sin.

He doesn't identify with the guy and you know what he reduces.

And this is what we do when we don't forgive.

We reduce another human to their sin.

For instance, keller points this out If someone lies to you, what do you say?

Well, he's just a liar.

You've reduced them to their sin.

He's just a liar.

And then you're asked well, do you ever lie?

You say, well, I have, but it's because I wanted to protect myself or I was protecting somebody else.

So you're not a liar.

But that other person who lied is a liar.

You've not identified with them.

We reduce people to their sin.

Keller uses this beautiful illustration have you ever been caricatured?

Is that how you say it?

Caricatured, the cartoons drawn of you?

I don't think I said that very well, but that's all right.

So if you've ever had that done.

It's really brave if you allow this to be done, because the cartoonists always exaggerate your worst feature.

If your ears are a little big, your ears are massive on the cartoon Knows a little big, your nose is massive.

If you're short, you're microscopic.

Right Tall, you're a giant and whatever it is.

If you're old, they make you look ancient, right and so.

But this is what we do when people hurt us, we forget all the good and other things about them and we reduce them.

We exaggerate this one part.

And so, if we're going to forgive, we've got to humanize those people and, by the way, identify with them, realizing that we are capable of the same level of malevolence.

Does that make sense?

You've got to identify, if you're going to forgive, with the perpetrator and then you've got to make a choice.

Forgiveness is not a feeling, it's a choice.

In Matthew 18, it says that the verse 29 and 30 says that this servant refused to forgive the other servant.

He refused, it doesn't say he could not, it says he would not.

This is a choice, it's a matter of the will.

I talked about this at your anniversary celebration last night, but we think that feelings come after or, excuse me, precede, come before action.

So whatever we feel, then we act.

That's what we all believe.

But CS Lewis, dietrich Bonhoeffer, they talk about this that actually actions precede feelings.

So in marriage counseling what I tell people, particularly premarital counseling I said you're not going to wake up every day and feel loving feelings towards your spouse.

And all the married people said, amen, right, like there's just days you don't feel loving.

But here's what you do, because people come to me and say, well, we're just not in love anymore.

Well, let me tell you what you do in that case.

You act loving, and when you act loving, the feelings of love will follow.

And so when somebody sins against you, you're not automatically going to feel like you want to forgive them, but here's what you do.

You do what the Bible says you bless those who curse you, you pray for those who spitefully harm you and, as you do, acts of love and acts of service for them.

Actually, god does a wonderful thing and he changes your heart and those feelings of forgiveness will follow.

And then what do we do?

Finally, how do we forgive?

We, yes, we make a choice.

It's a matter of the will.

We identify with the perpetrator, but we remember this is so important, the incalculable debt that God has forgiven us of no-transcript.

Some of you guys have been hurt horrendously by another human being, but have you ever heard someone say maybe you've said this how could I forgive them for this?

Let me tell you how.

You preach the gospel to yourself and you realize that what they've done to you is nothing, nothing.

This is the point of the story.

It's nothing compared what the true king has forgiven you for.

Every sin that we've ever committed is, first and foremost, against the holy God he has given us.

He has made us stewards like this king in the story.

He has made us say, traps of his world, governors of his world, and we have made a mess of it.

We have squandered his wealth, squandered his creation.

We have broken relationships.

We have hurt people who are created in his image.

We owe a debt we could never pay back.

And what has God done for us?

He paid it in Christ at Calvary.

He's paid that debt.

So when you think how could I forgive somebody for this, you think of this parable and you remember what has God forgiven me, of?

How in the world could I hold a grudge against somebody else?

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

So here's the end of the parable and it shows why forgiveness is so critical.

Okay, give me five more minutes here.

Why is it so critical forgiving someone?

Number one, hear me, unforgiveness is a prison.

What happens at the end of the parable?

The king gets word of this how this servant he just forgave has been so horrible to another servant in unforgiving.

And he comes to him and he says what have you done?

I gave you mercy, why have you not shown it?

And the king?

Out of his great anger, he has this servant thrown into prison.

He says you're going to be here until you pay every every cent of the debt, which can never be done.

Now, this is what happens when you do not forgive you are put in prison.

You will not sense God's presence.

It will break other relationships in your life that you don't want broken.

When people leave this church, and they leave mad, in an unforgiving spirit, unreconciled, they go into the next church and they carry that spirit with them, because the way you leave one church is the way you go into the next one.

They're in a prison and they get mad and they get angry.

And this is what happens.

People get hurt at church.

They don't deal with it and it festers and it grows and the only choice they have is to leave because they've not dealt with it.

And they're so bitter and they go to the next church mad and angry and then they get hurt there and they do the same thing.

Unforgiveness is a prison and it's so interesting.

Here the text says in the English standard version it says that the king turned him over to the jailers, and that word, jailers in the Greek is often translated in the Bible tormentors, which is often in the context of hell.

And quite literally, when you don't forgive, you create hell for you and your family and you start gossiping about other family members and they did this and they did this.

You've not dealt with it.

It creates hell for you and everybody around you.

It creates hell at church.

I've seen churches destroyed by this Unforgiveness.

And then in the end I think this is the main point of the passage If we do not forgive, the result is hell after this life.

Jesus, look at this last verse with me, 35.

So my heavenly father will do to every one of you He'll turn you over to the tormentors if you do not forgive your brother in your heart.

Now you say to me so.

Is this salvation by works, like the way we get into the kingdom, is by forgiving somebody?

That's not what Jesus is saying.

If that was the case, why would he have had to come If all you had to do was forgive and serve the poor?

That's not what he's saying.

This can be best illustrated with a very popular illustration.

Think of, let's say, we have, imagine, we're in a field and we have two peach trees side by side.

It's this peach tree season, right?

And so you have two peach trees side by side.

We go out to this field today and one of them is full of luscious, delicious peaches.

Right for the picking, as we say, right.

The other tree beside it, right next to it, is barren.

It's barren.

Now we could safely assume, I think, that the first tree that's bearing fruit is alive and healthy.

True, shake your head at me.

We could say then, probably safely, that the tree, the other tree that's barren in due season, is dead or on its dying, true?

Now here's what I want you to think about.

The fruit is not what gives the tree life, it's not what makes the tree healthy.

It's a sign that the tree's healthy.

A lack of fruit doesn't kill the tree.

It's a sign that the tree is dead.

You get what I'm saying Forgive this, and humility and righteousness and love.

They do not save you, but they are signs that you've been saved and that Jesus has changed your heart, that you're in a new kingdom.

So if you are unforgiving Jesus, I don't care how much you go to church, I don't care how much scripture you can quote, if you've taught Sunday school, if you speak in tongues, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if Jesus could not be clearer, and this is repeated over and over in Scripture If you do not forgive, you won't be forgiven, and this parable tells us why.

Do you see how absurd it is when you consider the gospel?

How absurd it is to not forgive Dean if you wouldn't mind coming up.

What do we do with this?

Well, if you're here today and you've not yet come to Jesus, I hope you realize the depths of your sin.

I hope the Holy Spirit has revealed this to you and you know you have a debt to God that you could never pay.

But I also hope that you know the sacrifice that Jesus made on your behalf, giving his life for yours, paying your debt at the cross, and if you'll come to him and fall to his feet like the servant did in the beginning of the story.

Lord, have mercy on me.

He will take pity on you and he will apply the cross to your life and he will wipe away the debt.

But assuming most of you are Christians here, I want to call us to search our hearts for whom we may need to forgive.

I love this conversation.

Actually, I hate it, but it's one that happens many times over.

Well, I've forgiven them, and then they continue to gossip about them.

They continue to replay this over and over.

I forgive them, but you haven't forgiven them.

You have not forgiven them.

If you're still talking about it, if you're still replaying, I'm not saying that you forget it, you don't forget it.

But if you're still telling other people about it constantly, you've not forgiven.

Don't fool yourself.

Some of you know I mean you know you've made a decision.

I'm not forgiving this person.

It hurt too much.

You need to forgive them today, lest you not be forgiven.

May the Holy Spirit reveal those things to our hearts, those people whom we need to forgive.

Phone calls need to be made today.

Conversations need to happen after church today.

Let me just close with this beautiful story.

Are you familiar with Cory Ten Boom?

Eric Metaxas, in his book Seven Women and the Secret of their Greatness, tells the story of this wonderful woman of God.

Cory was a Dutch woman who, during World War II, hid Jews, along with her sister, betsy, from the Nazis.

She and Betsy were eventually arrested and they were taken to the horrific concentration camps.

She survived, but Betsy, her sister, actually died in the concentration camp.

After the war, cory Ten Boom actually began, became a Bible teacher of sorts.

She traveled around and shared her story.

In 1947, she was giving a talk on forgiveness at a church in Munich, germany.

She was talking about how God has forgiven her and all of us and that we need to forgive others.

At the end of the service her message was put to the test in her own life.

After the service, a balding man in a gray overcoat approached her and she froze.

She recognized him.

She remembered him well.

He was one of the most vicious guards at Ravensbrook.

She remembered walking by him naked after showering with other women, as he would stare them down and mock them.

Now this brutal man you know what he does.

He reaches out to shake her hand at this church.

A fine message, froy Line.

He says how good it is to know that, as you say, all of our sins are at the bottom of the sea.

And here's Cory's testimony about what happened that day.

It's profound.

She says an eye who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness fumbled in my pocketbook, rather than take that hand, he would not remember me.

Of course, how could he remember one prisoner among the thousands of women?

I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt.

I was face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

You mentioned Ravensbrook in your talk.

He said to her I was a guard there, but since that time he went on, I become a Christian and I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there.

But I would like to hear it from your lips as well, froy Line.

Again his hand came out.

Will you forgive me?

She says.

And as I stood there, eye whose sins had again and again been forgiven, I could not forgive.

The soldier stood there expectingly, waiting for Cory's hand to meet his.

She writes I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do, for I had to do it.

I knew that the message that God forgives has a prior condition that we forgive those who have injured us.

So, standing there before the former SSS guard, cory remembered that forgiveness is an act of the will, not a feeling.

Jesus helped me.

She cried.

I can lift my hand.

I can do that much.

You supply the feeling.

At that moment, cory thrust out her hand and, as I did, she writes an incredible thing took place.

The current started in my shoulder, raised down my arm, spraying into our joined hands, and then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

I forgive you, brother.

I cried with all my heart for a long moment.

We grasped each other's hands.

She says the former guard and the former prisoner.

I listened to this.

I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then, but even so I realized it was not my love.

I had tried and did not have the power.

It was the power of the Holy Spirit.

May each of you today feel the intensity of God's love like this, as you choose to forgive by the power of the Spirit, stand with me.

Lord in heaven, we thank you that you have forgiven us of such an insurmountable debt, one we could never pay in a million lifetimes.

Lord, you did it at the cost of your own son's life.

And, lord, how could we then not forgive those who have hurt us?

And today I don't want to diminish the hurts that have taken place to the people in this community, the real hurts.

There's real brokenness here because of things that other family members, friends, coworkers, church members have done to each of us.

But God may re-remember the great mercy that you've had upon us and may we then, in turn, forgive others.

We may not feel it this morning, but we may we do as Cory Tim Boom did and stick out our hand and trust you to bring the feeling you do the rest.

And so, whatever phone calls need to be made today, whatever prayers of repentance need to happen, let them happen today.

We pray it in Jesus' good name, amen.

Thank you for listening.

If you'd like to know more about how you can have a relationship with Jesus Christ, or if you have questions about our church, you can email us at info at myrealchurchorg.

Real Life Community Church is located at 335 Glendon Avenue in Richmond, Kentucky.

We invite you to join us for worship Sunday at 10.45 am or Wednesday at 7 pm.

Visit us online at myrealchurchorg.