Sermon - Cron Gibson | Finding Freedom Through Radical Forgiveness

Welcome to the Avenue Community Church's podcast. We are a family of Christ

followers seeking shalom in Memphis.

We pray that you are encouraged by today's message. As you listen,

may the Word of God shape you to be more like Him.

It's great to be with you guys. I always love it when I get to preach.

As Tim said, I've been a church planter.

I have a doc, marriage and family, and I'm a pastor and MDIB,

all those things. but in my core, I think of myself as a pastor. This is who I am.

I help people with trauma and brokenness. I coach in churches,

but at the end of the day, we are all able to comfort others with the same love

with which Christ Jesus has comforted us.

And that's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

Ultimately, today, I'm going to talk to you. My sermon title is Forgiveness

and the Hurts of yesterday.

This is a sermon that I don't like, so you all can listen in while,

again, God talks to me about the way I hold on to things that I need not,

and as he speaks to my own pride and self-righteousness that fuels it and leaves me stuck at times.

Now, as I'm looking out at you, since Tim's your pastor, I'm going to assume

none of you carry any bitterness anywhere, no resentments.

There's no body groups of people or anything else that you judge for what they've

done or haven't done or anything else, right?

So we're going to talk about the church down the street today,

and we'll go from there. Does that work for everybody?

All right. So let me just open in a word of prayer.

Father, talking about what we're talking about today is heavy. It is hard.

Lord, I don't want to see.

How much I actually am persistently, deeply in need of your ever-washing forgiveness.

Because if I see it and if my heart knows it, then I'm going to have to live

different toward others.

I'm going to have to move out of the seat of the judge.

And a humility from heaven that reminds me I have no leg to stand on will come

upon me. But that is a frightening place.

And so, God, as I open your word today, as you privilege me to stand here,

and as always my prayer, let not the feebleness of my own faith hinder anything you would want to do.

Holy Spirit, speak to our minds and our hearts about the scope and depth of

your mercy in a way that begins,

fertilizes, and opens paths to freedom and a real flourishing in our souls between

us and the community around us.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, are we on? We're on. Okay, so I always like to start with a few quippy

things. So here's a couple of quotes I've heard on forgiveness.

Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.

Or always forgive your enemies because nothing annoys them as much as that.

And then my, my personal favorite is sometimes the first step to forgiveness

is understanding that the other person is a complete idiot. Amen. Right.

And I prefer these positions because it's all about I'm good and they're bad, right?

Think about a moment of conflict in your home, your family, your marriage with a friend.

And if somehow it held in you that you didn't have a leg to stand on in terms

of being a judge, an evaluator, what would change around you?

You see, the gospel comes to us, and in it, Jesus declares to us a radical forgiveness.

And I want to set this up for you this way. I did this with one of the groups

the other day. I'm going to do it again.

So let's just say I'm standing on an infinite line, and I'm in the middle as we do it.

And over here, we're going to put the evilest person we can think of in history,

Stalin, Hitler. So we'll put them over here.

And on the other end of the line, we're going to put the perfect spotless lamb of God, the Lord Jesus.

Right? And then I asked this question, and I'm going to pick on my brother Tim again.

I said, so if we had to pick up Tim and put him on this line,

where'd he go? By the piano.

Somebody's reading your journal, baby. There you go. Okay. But that is the right answer.

But why? You see, I can only judge another for the broken things in them.

I can only justify my bitterness and my resentments toward them when I look

at them and think I'm better.

But my back is to the king. See, when I turn and I see the glory of the perfect

one, all of a sudden, my ability to judge is gone, isn't it?

Now, the problem with staying in this position is I'm allergic to knowing how proud, broken,

stubborn my soul is, my heart is, and really how deep my present need for Jesus is.

I'd rather say I'm in the middle somewhere.

But freedom comes when the gospel falls, and I don't have to pretend that I'm

better than I am anymore.

When we carry deep, profound wounds in our lives, the messages of those things

have always in some way communicated that we are worth less, not good enough.

Let me speak of trauma for a minute. I am a trauma survivor.

I grew up with emotional, physical, spiritual, sexual abuse.

Every time I even say that out loud, I have a flash of my father in my head. I know what that is.

We can think of the roots of Memphis history in terms of the slave trade and

cultural brutality and abuse,

because abuse always deposits shame in the object and takes the beauty and the

sweetness and swallows and consumes it for the abuser.

And in that sense, there's a profound and great exchange that happens as the

abuser deposits evil and takes the reflection of anything good and consumes

it. And then Jesus comes.

And Jesus comes to me and he takes the burden of all of my evil,

my brokenness and my shame, and he does something 180 degrees different.

And the Spirit of God deposits all that is right and the King into me and I am not what I was.

But also when that happens, I don't get to be the judge anymore.

So I want to talk about specifically forgiveness. I'm just going to touch two

passages, and we're going to come back to these along the way this morning.

And these are brutal teachings from the Savior.

This is right at the end of the Lord's Prayer.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.

Anybody get comfortable all of a sudden? I can imagine just sitting there,

I'm walking with Jesus in the ancient Near East, and that's not one of those

things I go, hey, say that again. I really want to get that one.

I don't want to know that.

Or then, in Matthew 18, 21, it's the teaching, it's a parable that Jesus has

told of the unmerciful servant.

And we'll unpack that a little bit more later from that piece of text.

But at the start of it, Peter comes to Jesus and he says, Lord.

Now, this is a cue that he's speaking for the rest of the disciples.

So it's just not Peter going, hey, I got a question.

They've been talking. And so he comes and he specifically says,

Lord, tell us something.

How often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times.

Now, you got to pause here for a minute. In the Ancient Near East,

the rabbinic, the Pharisees teaching was forgive them three times on the fourth they're out.

So Peter has picked a biblical number seven, which is perfection.

And he goes for, shall we forgive seven times? And then I got it.

I'm really good. And it is so often the case, the savior looks and he goes,

no, you missed something there, buddy.

I do not say to you seven times But 77 times Now Jesus isn't saying Hey you

just need a higher number.

He is telling Peter that the Christian life is actually the forgiving life.

That the evidence of my understanding of the gospel of the King of heaven,

of his mercy to me, shows up in how I reflect forgiveness into my world and the people around me.

And even will I believe him when he He says, I am forgiven, or will I practice my own contempt itself?

Does anybody here have that gift? You're good at chewing on yourself?

Anyone? Just me and Tim, because we're pastors, right?

And every time I do that, I tell him, yeah, your forgiveness isn't enough.

I need to pay some more penance over here. See?

So why don't we want to, sometimes we can be afraid to forgive.

If I forgive, what if they do it again? Yeah?

We can resist forgiving because somehow I think if I forgive you,

it means I need to go camping with you, right?

We need to become the best of friends all of a sudden.

But forgiveness and reconciliation are actually interconnected but different things.

We can refuse to forgive because somehow it seems easier to carry the burden

than pay the price. But here's a principle for you.

I have no choices. You have no choices. you are going to experience pain and violation in life.

The only choice we have is what we do with it.

You've grieved me, wounded me deeply. I'm a trauma survivor. I have a choice.

I begin the hard work of working out my forgiveness over and practicing it in time.

And in that way, I agree to pay your debt because I release you from what you owe me.

Or I marinate in resentments and bitterness and I continue to accumulate interest

as I pay for it with no hope of freedom.

Pain is inescapable.

The hard work of living out the forgiving gospel is entirely optional.

Other brief texts like in Luke 6.37, Jesus says this, and there's a link between

how we judge and condemn others and our understanding of forgiveness.

So hear Jesus for a minute. Do not judge and you will not be judged Do not condemn

And you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven. In the Sermon on the Mount,

the text of Matthew, what I read earlier, goes this way.

Jesus is talking about forgiveness, and then he teaches about the log and the speck.

Why do you not pay attention to

the log in your own eye while you keep commenting on the speck over there?

And the vision words he's using, or see and look, but they seem very similar in English.

But in the Greek language, they're crazy different.

I might look at her and go, green sweater, green top.

That's that. I noticed that. The word for see your own is, why don't you pick it up?

Pay attention to how heavy and big and ugly it is and the grain and the darkness of it all.

Talk to me about your need for forgiveness.

Remove yourself from the seat of the judge, and now, with the humility of heaven,

talk to the other person.

Okay, how many of us want to stop and go, wait a minute, let me look at the

evil in my own eye before I tell you you're a jerk?

You ever had an argument in your family? Okay, that's a dumb question.

But just wait a minute, let me just stop for a second because I need to talk

to Jesus a minute about the evil in my own heart right now.

No, no, no, you don't need to tell me anymore. Let me just talk to him about

it. I'll be right back. We don't do that. So honest question, church, why not?

Because whatever they've done, they're bad over there, and I'm more like Jesus

over here, and I can sit in the seat of the judge even as we come to the difficulty

in our relationship and our community or whatever it is.

Do not judge. You will not be judged. Do not condemn. You will not be condemned.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Okay, let me hit pause.

I want to make sure we're all equally uncomfortable.

Is anybody out there going, I don't understand. I really have an easy time for

giving and I have no bitterness or resentments in me. Can we get a show of hands?

And then we're going to pray for you, right? Because by the time we're done,

we're going to make sure you're bitter at us. No, okay, there we go.

So I just want to, I want to lay that out because in the heart of the gospel,

like when, when Jesus called me out of the darkness, when he called you out

of the darkness to be his own.

Surrendered, we said, only you, not me. You can, I can't.

Your power, your blood, your forgiveness, your righteousness, none of my own.

And in a sense, in that moment of regeneration, life comes into us,

and then our spouse hurts our feelings.

And as a dog returns to their own vomit, quoting Proverbs, we're right back at it again.

And so the practice of forgiveness, of understanding it, is the pathway to radical

life change and life change.

So, we're going to talk about four principles today this way.

The Christian life is the forgiving life.

Forgiveness is difficult, forgiveness is costly, and forgiveness is a journey.

The Christian life is the forgiving life, It is difficult, it is costly, and it is a journey.

So first, let's just touch some more of this idea that the Christian life is the forgiving life.

First, though, I want to start with what forgiveness is not.

You and I are walking to a coffee shop, and you step on my foot,

and I go, ouch, that hurt, and you go, I'm so sorry.

I go, not a problem, I forgive you, and we move right on. But when things get

more complicated and somebody owns it toward us, we have this tendency,

especially in the church, to go, I'm supposed to forgive. And we go, it's okay.

Don't worry about it. Is it okay?

Or I forgive you and a little bit of distance grows.

You see, in order to forgive especially complex things and things that have

happened over time, messages of contempt and shame,

if I am going to forgive honestly, I need to pick it up and pay attention to

what debt I am releasing you from.

Say what that did not mean. Let me get out my journal and make a list and find

detail of all the ways you have offended or hurt me. That is not where I'm going.

That might be necessary and part of it, but I need to pay attention to the hurt,

the wounding in me, the price of what has happened,

so that as I turn to you and say, I forgive you, and I keep working out that forgiveness,

I am being honest In it I read an illustration on forgiveness From Desmond Tutu

years ago I don't remember the name of the book Here's a simple practice If

you struggle with forgiveness,

Sometime later today Go out in your yard Go down the street,

Find a rock This big, maybe a little smaller You're allowed to wash it off And

for one week Put it in your non-dominant hand and you're not allowed to put it down.

If you get in the shower, got to hold the rock. Making dinner, got to hold the rock.

Trying to do your work, got to hold the rock.

And it will begin to help you have a picture of what your unforgiveness is doing to your soul.

See, so forgiveness is not a simple, oh, I forgive you, colloquial expression.

Forgiveness sheds light, though, on whether I understand that I am forgiven.

Connectedness here for a minute. In Matthew 3, it's John the Baptist speaking to the Pharisees.

And he says, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come,

go bear fruit in keeping with repentance in Matthew 3, 7, and 8.

Now, pay attention to what he said.

He's looking at their life. They say they know God and they love God.

And he's pointing out, if that were true, I would see something in your life that is different.

He's not saying, go do different, and then you love God. That's backwards.

The knowledge of his love and forgiveness, if it's in me, will produce a very different fruit.

And often it will call me to steps of faith that are frightening, overwhelming,

high risk to me as I step toward other in this life. Does that track out?

So repentance is not do something different.

Repentance is to whom or what am I looking for life that I need to put down

and turn back to the King of Glory and say, Jesus, I need you and only you.

And out of the certainty that you love me and forgive me, I move in a different way.

I always use this illustration. My wife, Elizabeth, and I dated in college for

about six months. Then we took about three years off.

We both grew up in train wrecks, didn't know how to do connection or anything

else in a meaningful way.

And so we did a lot of the kind of come toward me, go away game.

Any of you ever do that kind of with people, right? And then.

Or so after college, I bumped into her at a campus ministry that I was just

their speaker at and where she lived.

She was in Dayton, Ohio. I was in Columbus, about 85 miles one way.

And as we started to reconnect, I realized I loved her.

And all of a sudden I was commuting 170 plus miles to go have dinner several nights a week.

Now, was I commuting 170 plus miles for dinner so that I would love her.

Oh, that's crazy, right?

But because my heart had turned toward her and I knew hers toward me, I was driving.

Right? Okay. When we do it, church, the other way, we are saying,

I'm committed to doing the right thing, performance,

measurement, legalism, and then go see, I'm doing it right. Do you love me?

Right? But forgiveness comes, and this happens.

Ephesians 5.1, be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.

A dearly loved child just reflects patterns, behaviors, etc. out of their parents.

They're not going, how do I mirror dad? One of my favorite pictures of my son

who's 28 when he was little.

He's probably 18 months, maybe two years old. I'm holding him and he's looking

at me. I'm looking at him and he's got a coffee cup in his hand.

And maybe that I drink coffee could be a 12-step need, but that's another one,

right? But he's just saying, I want to be like daddy.

That's the movement of the gospel.

Because dad loves me and I love him, My heart moves into a path that wants to

image him Now to be sure there are plenty of places where I go do you love me

and can I get away with this,

simply points out my present need for him to remind me of his forgiveness and

the righteousness that he has granted me.

It doesn't point out how bad I am.

It points out how much I need him. Okay.

Second thought, forgiveness is difficult.

So here's that text again. Peter came up and he said to him,

Lord, how often do I need to forgive?

And again, he's thinking he's being quite spiritual. He's giving,

you know, hey, I've gone way over and above.

Jesus goes, no, you're missing the point, son.

So I want you to pause in your mind or your heart if you're taking notes and

even just maybe write a name down. It might even be your own name.

Who do I not want to forgive?

What violation hurt do I carry or keeps coming that I just keep marinating in and judging another by.

Because that number, that 70, that seven times is a painful thing.

You see, we all like the art of self-justification.

If I do it tongue in cheek, it's like, I like to count.

That's four, Tim. That's five, six, seven. I've only done two. You're losing, right?

And then I justify my behaviors.

Sometimes we look at a person and who's done something to us or we see what

they're doing out there and we go, I would never do that.

Anybody ever had that one? Hmm.

All the time. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus picks two subjects to illustrate this.

He looks at the crowd and he says, in essence, he goes, okay, you guys, show of hands.

How many of you have ever looked on, in this case, it was probably men,

largely religious leaders.

How many of you have ever looked on a woman, not your wife, with desire in your heart?

You're adulterers, if you understand the law. You covet something that is not yours.

And as you do that, you tell God he is not good, right?

And then he goes to the next line. He goes, well, maybe you missed it.

Ever had unrighteous anger in your heart? Okay, show of hands.

Anybody ever have unrighteous anger?

Murderers. So 12-step together, 12-step group. Hello, my name is Kron and I'm

an adultering murderer.

Tim, Gina, how then can I judge another?

Now that doesn't mean I can't look and say something is evil.

And I can judge what is evil, but I do not get to judge another.

Do you hear the difference?

I want to hit pause again. And, you know, I know a handful of you.

I'm going to back up to my own story again.

Things I'm talking with you about are not easy. They're straightforward in a sense for me to explain.

But I'm a trauma survivor. I experienced emotional and sexual abuse.

I have flashbacks even still. At times, I have tons of time in the counseling

chair, not as the counselor, working through my story.

There are times in our life, Elizabeth and I have been married a little over

34 years, known each other 37 years, and she'll look at me and she said,

you know, I love you and you're safe. Can you quit being anxious yet?

Like, well, no, it's necessary for your sanctification, honey. There you go, right?

Because it is still there In time my relationship to the hurt And the need to

judge others has really changed,

keep practicing the work of forgiveness because my father loves me and he has

invited me to be like him.

You see, at the bottom of my refusal or your refusal, if we get really,

really honest to forgive,

is something in us that says either I don't deserve that kind of forgiveness

myself or I refuse to own how much I actually need it myself.

Forgiveness is painful and complicated. The Christian life is the forgiving life.

Forgiveness is difficult.

It is like trying to push a boulder up a hill sometimes. Now I want to be careful.

Let me hit pause again. Greek grammar.

Forgive as you have been forgiven. And the way Greek works, verbs,

forgive, it's present active indicative.

You can write that down and impress all your friends.

What that means is it has a starting point.

It's active. It has to keep happening.

And it points in a direction. Okay?

So forgiveness, for most things, is not a one-er and a done-er.

So I want you to hear me again. You're an abuse survivor. you've experienced

the brutality of racism somewhere.

Please do not hear me telling you forgive and move on. It will not work that way.

Sometimes we think I can't forgive because I can't forget. Honestly,

has anybody ever kind of had that thought in hard places?

That's a little bit of a misnomer.

Sean read the psalm this morning that says Jesus has taken my sin and he's cast

it as far as the east is from the west and remembers it no more.

So clearly, if I'm forgiving, I should forget.

It's not actually what the psalm is saying. It's a poem.

It's a word picture. The day the Lord takes me home and I'm face-to-face with

Jesus, he's not going to go, do you remember what that was about?

Why was that crown on my head again?

It's because it's teaching us this. He will never bring it up against me again.

Amen. And instead, he will deposit the beauty and the righteousness of heaven

into me. Hear that, right? Amen.

This side of heaven, I'm working it out. Lord Jesus, I'm judging again.

Lord Jesus, I'm practicing contempt at me again. I know you tell me I'm completely

forgiven, and Father, you have counted me right in your Son,

but my heart doesn't believe it today.

Will you tell me again, even in this wounded and painful place in my soul,

that I may know your mercy and give it afresh to myself, to others, as the case may be.

Forgiveness, what it does not mean, does not mean you have to trust someone.

Forgiveness does not mean even we can be reconciled. Forgiveness,

as I said a minute ago, does not mean we forget.

Reconciliation and forgiveness are very different things. Without forgiveness,

we can never have reconciliation.

But we cannot have real reconciliation without the humility of forgiveness.

So let's just say you are somebody who has really harmed me in some way, shape, or form.

For my sake, I need to work out forgiveness of you, whether you know it or not.

That's my choice. How will I pay for this?

Bitterness or redemption?

And depending on it, again, I probably will have to really keep working it out.

Now, certainly it's helpful if you go, Quran, will you forgive me?

I did this. But me forgiving you isn't predicated on your ask.

My forgiveness is not predicated on your ask,

My forgiveness is predicated on the king who has forgiven me Now as I forgive

you We may be able to be reconciled But part of that will be Can you own what you have done?

Can I see that you have a godly sorrow As you move toward me to own and repair?

But you may have a truly godly sorrow And while I'm busy marinating in my self-justified

bitterness, there can be no movement.

Trust takes time to rebuild.

Forgiveness enables me to let you off the hook.

A pathway where maybe I can take one step toward you and see if it's real.

Reconciliation, we're both in.

Forgiveness is costly. You see, when we don't forgive, we continue to pay for

it, again, with bitterness, isolation, anxiety,

depression.

Ruptured relationships, fill in the blank.

When, as I image the work of Jesus for me, I am willing to pay attention to

what I need to release you from, and I release you from your debt.

Compassion grows, burdens left, restoration is possible.

And in that place, the first step is not, I'm going to trust you.

The first step is, will I trust the one who made me and for whom I am made?

And will I entrust justice to my big-hearted king?

In the text of Matthew 18, in the parable of the unmerciful servant,

if you have a Bible, I'm just going to read a piece of it starting at verse 21 of chapter 18.

So this is a piece of it we've already said this morning. So Peter came up and

he said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive

him as many as seven times seven.

The seven times Jesus said, no, I did not say seven. I said 77.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle

accounts with his servants.

And when he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents.

The language being used, the amount is irrelevant. It's unpayable.

That's what saying. It is an unrepayable debt.

Once he could not pay it, the master ordered him to be sold with his wife and

children all that he had and payment to be made.

So the servant fell on his knees imploring him, have patience with me.

I will pay you everything.

Hit pause with me. It's unpayable.

So hear the context of the request for forgiveness. I know I screwed up. I will be really good.

And I can be good enough to repay a debt that I can't possibly ever pay.

Who is he looking at? Himself.

Now, out of pity for him, the master who is actually Jesus released him from his debt.

So we need to hit pause for a minute. Let me just drive home a nail about how

much I need forgiveness.

Let's take the two great commandments, church. Anybody want to spit them out?

Love the Lord your God with?

Soul mind and strength anybody done that one yet today every thought from your

head every bit of your emotion every action of your body every everything perfectly

anybody been obedient yet,

how often do you need forgiveness now i like the second commandment this is

i'm a recovering yankee go with me sarcasm is a free gift jesus says kron love

your neighbor as yourself i go jesus i got that one.

I hate my emotional life. I hate their emotional life. Loving them like myself.

Not exactly what he means, is it?

To go back to the Sermon on the Mount, is there a difference between coveting,

thinking of, and committing actual adultery? Well, yes.

But if I get honest, in comparison to the perfect one, the gap between me and

an adulterer is not very big.

In reference to me and the King of Glory.

If you've been cheated on, I'm not telling you that's a simple statement.

That kind of rupture is hard work to work through what is done to you. So I want to be clear.

I did not just say to you, suck it up, buttercup, forgive, and move on.

That is not what I'm talking about, okay?

You're a trauma survivor. I'm not giving you a Band-Aid, talking about the journey

of our hearts with the King.

And there's a lot of hurt and pain in these journeys.

So we come back underneath this. And again, I need to stop and ask,

am I going to turn to the king or not?

But to turn to the king, I need him to tell me again how much he's forgiven me.

And I need him, as painful as it is, to remind me how much more than I can really

ask or imagine, I actually need that forgiveness presently.

Thursday night, with the group that was here, we were talking about the church as a family.

So I asked this question, something like this. In your family,

how many of you had an older person, a grandmother, a mom, a dad,

who persistently pursued you and say, hey, kid, what's going on inside of you?

What are you feeling today?

And helped you process those things and was willing actually to vulnerably share

themselves with you in that way.

No hands went up. And I said, let's look at family rules, right?

Like in my family, a family rule was if mom or dad said money,

my two brothers and I should find radiation suits.

We shall never, ever talk about money because nuclear war would be breaking out any second.

I get married and Elizabeth says, because she's the practical one in the family,

hey, we need to talk about money.

And everything inside of me goes, why do you want to destroy me and crush me

like a grape? We don't do that, that you're breaking the rules.

And one of the women said, okay, I said, so what are family rules?

And we don't talk about anything.

And so we come to church. Church is a family. How does that work?

Because I'll do it like I'm your pastor. That's hard because I'm better looking

than Tim, but just go with me.

I'm going to let you down. Why? Because I'm a person who cannot love you perfectly.

And even if I did love you perfectly, you could have had the wrong thing for

breakfast and wouldn't notice.

But in our stories we interpret pain as somebody doesn't care about me for example,

or we interpret hurt and anxiety as i can never be safe or or and now the church is a family,

and all that stuff sits there and we bring it to our new family just like when

my wife and i got married, we're polar opposites by every measure of personalities, spiritual gifts.

We both grew up in train wrecks, but we react or have processed our hurts in

very different ways in our own forms of beautiful self-management, right?

If she's angry, I immediately go, what did I do wrong, right?

Personalities are different. Elizabeth is much more overtly intense emotionally

than I am. So if she's talking and I don't mirror her intensity, she thinks I don't care.

Try to visualize something like that in your own life.

Not true, though, in those family rules. And then we come to the church,

and it just reproduces because we're a family.

Now, I'm your pastor, and I believe I should be able to, because I'm a recovering

people pleaser, I should be able to love you perfectly at all times.

And if you're upset with me, I'm bad.

And then I practice my second greatest spiritual gift, anxiety.

It's where I go, right? So I'm just trying to illustrate. So now let's bring

forgiveness into the room.

What happens in a church when together we hear the music of the gospel?

All of a sudden, I'm not on a pedestal anymore.

I used to tell my churches, please don't put me on a pedestal.

It hurts really bad when I fall off and I get the shards in my, well, you know, right?

But what happens when all of a sudden we hear the music of the gospel together?

All of a sudden, we know the present hope of the gospel in crazy different ways.

And even if I'm the pastor, you can go, oh, hey, Kron, I was really disappointed,

or I don't understand, or something in me says you don't care.

And I realize if I pay attention to who you are, that's not true about you.

Or maybe you're upset, and you experience me trying to make you okay instead of hearing you.

I can stop and go, you know what, it's okay that you're hurt.

Because I don't need to be good, because Jesus already said I am. And I can hear you.

You make other applications with your spouses, friends, your children.

But the mercy of the gospel invites me to live in a way I do not want to live.

To crawl out from under my bush, my leaves, to trust the king who says I am his,

and to be vulnerable and present with others in a broken world and in my own

broken life as a reflection of the mercy of heaven toward me.

And then you know what happens? I cannot not share my faith with my neighbor

because the gospel is actually good news.

Not hypothetically, and not just the day he takes me home.

Church, when we, I'm going to land it here.

Jesus calls you and me to a radically different life.

Forgiveness is a journey. The Lord's prayer assumes that you and I are going

to be hurt, wounded, and violated.

Else, why would he say forgive as you have been forgiven?

You see, every time I don't love God with all my heart, soul,

mind, and strength Or my neighbor as myself,

I violate the heart of God I reject his goodness and his kindness But he says,

forgive as you have been forgiven So some practical ideas,

Maybe start with confessing your honest resistance to forgiving other people,

To him Or maybe you have a friend here that you trust And you can say,

this is me Will you pray that Jesus would help me understand How much I am forgiven,

Not will you hold me accountable to doing the right thing.

Things for me to do over the years, but has rescued my soul in so many ways,

is to practice giving thanks to God for somebody from whom I am offended or hurt.

To say thank you for who they are, that they are no worse or better than me.

That doesn't minimize maybe what's

been perpetrated, but there's still a person made in the image of God.

And as I give thanks for them, it's not that I let them off the hook,

but I'm able to see them as a person.

And forgiveness accidentally might creep in.

Every time the offense comes to mind again, ask God to bless the one who offended you.

And I would put this on here, and Jesus, will you tell me that I can entrust

judgment to you? and I thank you that you have not let judgment fall on me for my offenses to you.

Each time the desire for some kind of justice comes upon you,

thank God for his mercy to you.

Ask God to enable you to show mercy rather than demand justice.

Therefore, I tell you, and this is from, let me just unpack this briefly.

I really didn't put enough on here. In Luke 7, Jesus has gone to the home of Simon the Pharisee.

And if you're not familiar with the story, a woman of the night,

a sinner, probably a prostitute, makes her way through the crowd and pours oil

on Jesus' feet and begins to dry his feet with her hair.

Simon the Pharisee didn't even give Jesus water to wash his feet.

And Jesus looks at her and looks at Simon and says, I tell you,

her many sins have been forgiven.

And he says, for she loved much. Now he's not again saying she loved much, so I forgave.

That she knows she has loved is showing up in what she's doing.

But he who has been forgiven little loves little.

These are hard things. We're all still working them out. And I just want to

invite you to hear the music of the gospel for you.

And so here is a metaphor that has been with me for years that popped into my mind one day.

You are just really struggling. You're anxious, overwhelmed.

You're marinating and the noise in your head, your heart.

And so you do what I would do, of course, at that moment. You go to Starbucks

and you get a Godiva chocolate frappuccino to medicate all the evil within you.

So you park your car. You're not paying attention.

And as you begin to walk across the parking lot headed for the door,

a delivery truck comes barreling through the parking lot and the driver doesn't see you.

On the curb behind you is a father and his son.

Son and says son quickly go and save him

go and save her and the

son runs into the street out of love for the father and

you and he pushes you out of the way and the last thing you hear before the

truck runs him over is i love you and then the father steps up to you and he

reaches across the blood of his of his one and only the spotless lamb of god

and he says take my hand so much have i loved you.

I have a way for you. Come with me. You are mine.

Father God, will you help us to hear the music of the gospel in a way that transforms

bit by bit the noise within us?

Will you help us to hear the music of the gospel in a way that lets us see the

beauty of your righteousness and the dirty, filthy, impoverished rags of our self-righteousness.

Father God, by your Spirit, will you help us see the delight of heaven,

the surety that you know our names even in the most terrifying places,

and you call us by those names.

That you have saved a people to yourself, but also you know the individual names of all of your people.

And you have changed us and we are not what we were.

Music.

And in that space, Holy Spirit, will you help us to hear consistently the Father's voice,

of delight in us in a way that shapes us to be imitators of the one who has

loved us in a way and in a scope we do not get.

For the glory of Jesus and.

Music.