Does God Really Forgive All my Sins? | Pastor Di Beals | Venture Church

Hi, and welcome to Venture Church Online. My name is

Kelsey and I'm our online campus pastor. We're so glad

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We hope that you enjoy today's service.

If I haven't met you, my name is Die, part

of the team here at our Mill Creek campus Adventure

and I am joining you this morning as we work

our way through our series Midsummer Series God Problems, where

we're tackling some of the hardest questions that we wonder

about God or about faith, and it just seems appropriate

that Midsummer we'd take on the really lighthearted topic that

we probably all can relate to this question, which is

does God really forgive all of my sin? Or maybe

we should ask it, does God really forgive all of

my sins? Today? As we ask that question, and maybe

you're here today or joining us online and you're asking

that question right now, I couldn't help but come to

the conclusion for the direction of where to point this

question that the person asking this question is probably not

asking it because they're just curious. That's probably if you

are asking that question sincerely, you're probably not asking it

because you just wonder theologically like knowledge of God, it

is much more likely that the person who's asking this

kind of a question, even right now in the middle

of summer, is asking because there's a debt, a feeling

of debt, a feeling of regret, there's overwhelming shame, there's

overwhelming feelings of pain or secrets that have been kept,

and this person is probably lying awake at night wondering

does God really forgive all of my sins? And I

think if we were just to ask this question theologically

knowledge of God, probably just about everybody here would shake

their heads yes and say, yes, yes, we believe God

forgives all of our sins until we remember our own

shameful mountain of debt and sin and mistakes that we

have a mass for ourselves. And that's when we say,

but does He really forgive me? And does He really

forgive all of it? And forgiveness is a complex topic,

so I'm going to do my best to sort of

really whittle it down for us. But we could go

lots of different directions with forgiveness, and I think that's

because we don't see all the wrongs or all the

sins as equal, and so just to illustrate that, let's

just point it outward for a minute. So let's take

the topic of forgiveness and let's look at how we

extend or don't extend forgiveness to somebody else. To understand

that if somebody in this room is struggling because a

coworker is gossiping about you, maybe that's one level of

forgiveness it's needed. Or maybe someone here or watching online

is struggling with a spouse that has broken a promise

or has really broken upon promise or continues to break promises.

That's maybe a different level of gravity of forgiveness that's needed.

And maybe, and likely in a room this size, somebody

here has been deeply wronged, deeply hurt. Maybe someone here

has been sexually assaulted or abused. Maybe somebody here has

lost a loved one to a drunk driver, and that

just feels like a whole other level of expectation for forgiveness.

And in that case, the subject of forgiveness goes from Okay,

it's hard to forget someone who gossips about me too.

This is offensive that you would even ask or expect

or anyone would expect of me to extend forgiveness for

that great of a debt. In our mind, the debt

that has been accruede is just too great to forgive.

And it's with that personal understanding of forgiveness that we

often approach God and we think, yes, God can forgive

me when I was busy, or I was gossiping, or

I was you know, you know, doing minor things quote unquote,

but forgiveness for something major feels scandalous to us, It

feels unthinkable, and so I think I just want to

lay the foundation by saying Jesus understands this struggle. He

understands we struggle with this concept of forgiveness, both reception

and extension of and so knowing how hard it would

be for us to understand and receive forgiveness, Jesus tells

a story, And in the New Testament, when Jesus tells stories,

they're called parables, and they're meant as an illustration that

we can recognize ourself in the story and understand the

point of the story. And it's not a story about

some big theological complex idea. It's a story about people

and how they interact with each other. And that's the lens.

We're gonna look at today Matthew chapter eighteen, which has

a story or a parable about a servant and a king.

And your Bible might call it the parable of the

unforgiving servant, or the parable of mine calls it the

unforgiving debtor. But either way, we're gonna look at Matthew

chapter eighteen, verse twenty one. Before we do that, though,

would you just join me as we pray Jesus this morning.

We're taken on a heavy topic and we're not going

to shy away from it. So you didn't shy away

from this topic. In fact, it costs you everything. And

so this morning I ask for your grace to communicate,

and I'm asking that every heart and every mind listening

to this message, whenever it's listened to, would be open

to receive the truth and the gift of the forgiveness

you offer in your name. We pray Amen. All right,

Matthew chapter eighteen. If you have a Bible, I'm gonna

encourage you to turn there. I'm gonna read most of

this from the New Living Translation. If you don't have

a Bible, the words will be behind me on the screen.

We're gonna start off with first verse twenty one, and

we're just gonna hit just this verse to begin with.

It says, Then Peter came to him, him being Jesus,

and ask Lord, how often should I forgive someone who

sins against me? Seven times? Okay? So who's Peter? He

is a follower, a disciple of Jesus. He's one of

a group of followers of Jesus that spend a lot

of time with him and develop even close friendship with Jesus.

And Peter is asking the question of Jesus, how many

times do I forgive somebody? Now? Probably whatever Peter needs

to know this question four two thousand years ago would

be similar to the kinds of things we would need

to know this for now, like the offenses extended to

us or the pain extended to us is probably very

similar today than it was then. So Peter says, how

many times should I forgive this person? Now? The NIV

calls it a brother. So NIV says Peter is asking

how many times do I forget my brother? Now? That

can be literal, which I think is actually funny, and

I prefer because Peter's brother, Andrew, was also a follower

of Jesus and I like to imagine Andrew was just

standing right there as Peter says, advertise, we're gonna forgive

the knucklehead who just wronged me again. And we can

all chuckle at that because we relate. But if it's

not literal and it's metaphorical, a figurative, it would be

a close friend or associate. And either way we understand

the point here that it's someone close that has hurt him.

And it just tends to be true that the people

who are closest to us are the ones who can

hurt hurt us the most. So Peter asked this question,

and he's asking, should I forgive my brother or this

person seven times? Now? Maybe you've wondered how did Peter

settle on the number seven? I wondered, so I did

a little research. Turns out, at this point, when Jesus

is walking on the earth and teaching, there was a

very common rabbinical debate. So rabbinical rabbi teachers, teachers of

the Jewish Jewish religious law and following following God. This

understanding amongst the rabbis. Their agreement was that if you've

been wronged, you would need to forgive somebody three times.

This is what they've settled on as the answer, which

I don't know what happens after the third time. If

you just get like free whatever, you get a hold

of grudge, but you were released from your obligation to

forgive somebody after three times. So if that's the case,

Peter might be feeling really good about himself as the

star pupil for Jesus saying, I mean, Jesus, do I

forgive him seven times? Because that's double plus an extra one,

like he wants to be patted on the head, like

Jesus saying, Wow, that's an exceptional amount of forgiveness. Great job,

And I love how Jesus answers in verse twenty two, No, No,

In fact, he says no, not seven times, but seventy

times seven, or your translation might be seventy seven times.

There's a little wiggle room in there, but seventy times

seven is sort of the general one. So we're just

gonna run with that and ask the most natural question,

why on earth does Jesus give this as his answer,

Because if he means this to be quantitative or literal,

why doesn't he just say four hundred and ninety times

and then again I want to ask, what do you

do at time number four hundred and ninety one? Do

you just get a you know, repay and be bitter

or give vengeance whatever? But he doesn't say that. In fact,

why doesn't he just round it up and say how

about five hundred times? How come he doesn't just say endlessly?

Don't count keep forgiving? He doesn't he says this particular

phrase seventy times seven. Now, I was trying to imagine

like the Disciples walking around with like a notebook where

they keep hash marks of how many times they've been offended,

because if it's quantitative, this is really a hopeless thing.

And you know, if you're a parent in this place,

you understand forgiveness. Because I want to ask, like, who

lets someone hash at them four hundred and ninety times?

And I thought, well, if you're a parent in this place,

that happened like this morning before you came to Chuir.

And then that made me think of my twin boys,

and they're in their twenties now, but we actually just

talked about this this week and they affirmed they remember this.

When my boys, who you know, are like any siblings,

they fought a lot, but particularly they are opposites of

each other, so they really got into a lot of arguments. I,

as a parent, could have said like, okay, now, boys,

tell each other, I am sorry, and you know we

do this as parents, and tell your brother you forgive him. Instead,

my tortuous way of handling this is I would make

my two boys sit on the couch, wrap their arms

around each other and press their faces against each other,

and then I would set a timer for two minutes

that they had to press their faces against each other,

and they would end up laughing and punching each other

and it would all be fine. But I think it's

fair to assume four hundred and ninety was not meant

to be quantitative. Seventy times seven was not so that

we could keep score. So what actually is Jesus saying here?

And there's a really cool thing. So I'm just going

to kind of give you a flyover of this and

hang with me, because I think it's got a really

cool point to it. But seventy times seven, the rabbi

say again, the Jewish teachers, they're saying, this is grabbed

from the Old Testament. Okay, this language, now, the Old

Testament is Hebrew, and the New Testament is Greek, but

it's the same original concept here. And so we did

a series just a few months back. We went through

the entire book of Genesis, and the Rabbi say, this

comes from Genesis chapter four, So if you're not familiar

with that, I'll just give you a flyover, and that

is in Genesis chapter four we have the story of

Cain and Abel. So the first humans, Adam and Eve

have two children, Cain and Abel. Genesis four tells us

Cain and Abel both bring an offering to the Lord.

The Lord rejects Cain's offering and accepts Abel's. We don't

know why. That's not the point. Cain gets really mad

that his offering has not been accepted, and he's so

mad that he kills his brother Abel. God offers, and

I think offers is the right word punishment to Cain.

Cain deserved punishment here, and Cain's punishment is he is

banished and he's going to wander. Cain responds to God

that punishment is too great for me, and also people

are going to want to kill me. And I don't

know who these people are that want to kill him,

but that's what he's afraid of So God, in his graciousness,

says to Cain, I'm going to put a mark on

you so that anyone who sees you, if they harm you,

will then reap that seven times over. Okay, So Cain

has this gracious promise over his life. Following that in

Genesis four is a genealogy which I know all of

us skip genealogies. Maybe not all of us, but a

lot of us. We just get we can't like, I

can't pronounce those names. Who are these people? Anyway? Well,

this particular genealogy is actually Cain's descendants and a few

descendants down. So he has a you know, he has

a son, who has a son, who has a son.

We get to this guy named Lamex, and it's interesting

because it's listing names, but then it gets to Lameck

and it gives you, like a little tidbit about Lamec

that's important. And what it says is that Lameck has

two wives and that one day he's bragging to his

two wives about how a child struck him, a boy,

a boy struck him, and he killed the boy. That's

what he's bragging to his wives about. So we've gone

a long way. From Cain who killed his brother to

now you know a kid hit me and I killed him.

And then he references Cain's protection and he says this,

this is Lamex. So this is in the genealogy. It

says Lamex says, if someone who kills Cain is punished

seven times, then the one who kills me will be

punished seventy seven times, or also could be seventy times seven.

So what the rabbis tie together for us, and you

just have to know Jesus's followers when he says seventy

times seven, their brains go to where else that phrasing

is used, so they would track right along with this.

What the Rabbis are tying together here is that lamec

has inflicted extreme and we would agree extreme wretched for

a minor offense. You agree killing someone for striking you

is an extreme response to something relatively minor. And what

the rabbi say is this is the result of when

evil becomes the family line. Whereas Cain did an evil thing,

now his ancestors have just flat out become evil. They

wear evil like clothing, they their name is evil. They

are evil. Why would Jesus reference this because the Rabbi

say that Jesus is teaching Peter, We're going to have

to out forgive evil. Hang with me, where the story

of Cain and Abel begins with a brother killing a

brother and results in a completely evil lineage where murder

happens for small offenses. Jesus is teaching Peter and then

therefore us that we will have to be just the opposite.

And isn't that the way of Jesus. We're gonna be

the opposite of the world. We're gonna forgive for even

the biggest of violations. Do you see the opposite there?

This is God's way of radical, scandalous forgiveness. This is

not the natural way of the world. This is God's

radical forgiveness. So Jesus, now here we are to the story.

Jesus is now gonna illustrate God's radical forgiveness with this story.

In Matthew chapter eighteen, look with Me. At verse twenty three,

it says, therefore, the kingdom of Heaven can be compared

to a king who decided to bring his accounts up

to date with servants who had borrowed money from him.

In the process, one of his debtors was brought in

who owed him. The new living translation says millions of dollars,

which I think is unfortunate because we say millions all

the time. There were a million mosquitoes, there were millions

of cars on the road, and we sort of lose

the value here, but we'll come back to that. The

servant couldn't pay, so his master ordered that he be sold,

along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned

to pay the debt. It was gonna cost him everything.

But the man fell down before his master and begged him, please,

please be patient with me, and I will pay it all.

And then his master was filled with pity for him,

and he released him, and he forgave his debt. Okay,

a few things here that millions of dollars the original

language in the Greek, the original phrase there is ten

thousand talons, which if you read in a bible, that

actually says that we have no idea what that is.

So let's break that down. So everyone say with me,

denary denari a denari one. One denari is one full

day's wages. That is a unit of payment that an

entire day of work got it. One denari. A talent

was actually more of a unit of measurement. For like medals,

it was more of a measurement tool. But a talent

was the equivalent of about twenty years worth of one

day's wages. And we're not talking like I work five

days a week and I get three weeks paid vacation,

and I get Christmas off and the weekends off. We're

talking twenty years working every single day is one talent?

How many talents are we talking about? Ten thousand? Did

you know that that is about one hundred and sixty

four thousand years of debt that this guy owes. I

just want to ask some questions right now. Who's this king?

What's wrong with this guy that he lends? Well, how

did he even have that much money? But this guy

that he lends a stupid amount of money, why does

he lend this much money? Also? What is this guy

doing with one hundred and sixty four thousand years worth

of debt? And notice that when he's asked to pay

it back or demanded to pay it back, he doesn't say, oh,

I can give you like a third of it, but

I spent the other two thirds. He has nothing to give, nothing,

zero dollars. He has fully spent one hundred and sixty

four thousand years worth of money. Is there anything confusing

or ridiculous about this? Yes, this king seems to just

have no limit to what he will lend, and this

ridiculous servant has no limit to what he will take.

This servant, I think this is funny. He needs a

name because we're gonna get confused of who we're talking about.

So we're gonna call him Bill because he owes a

lot of bills. Thank you, thank you. I had to

explain it, so it's not a very good joke, but

on's ad another ridiculu element to this story. Bill asks

for patience so he can pay it all back. No,

you're not, Bill. You are not paying all of this

back ever, not even in one hundred thousand lifetimes, let

alone that amount you actually owe. So this is without

question an unpayable debt. You agree, unpayable, not doable, not possible.

And just as ridiculous as that debt is the fact

that the king forgives him not of half of it,

not a ten percent discount, not to pay it today,

and I'll take you know whatever off the top. This is,

without any exception, one hundred percent, complete, simple, actual, forgiveness

that happens immediately. It's ridiculous, this is stupid. I mean,

what kind of a kingdom is this king running? He'll

be bankrupt if he operates this way. But it's also

a vivid illustration and that's what it's supposed to be

of God's radical forgiveness. One hundred percent complete right there, simple,

fully available immediately. That is the gospel. It's all spelled

out right there. That's the good news. Colossians chapter two

says it this way, and he God forgave all our sins,

having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness. It's the

same language here which stood against us and condemned us.

He has taken it all away, nailing it to the cross.

That's what Jesus did. He took it all, all our debtedness.

I just want to say a note about debt, and

I think it's an important note in It's a slight aside,

but I don't want to miss it. Debt doesn't just disappear.

Debt has to go somewhere. Clinton, you're sitting in the

front row. We're friends. You're really nice. Let's just imagine

I borrowed ten thousand dollars from you. Thank you so

much for lending me ten thousand dollars. I didn't bother

to ask about your financial situation or whether you really

could afford that and when you needed it back. But

thank you for lending it to me. And let's just

pretend that I then returned to Clinton at some point

and say I'm so sorry, I can't pay it back now.

Clinton is gracious. If you know him, you know he's gracious,

And in his graciousness, he says, that's okay, Die, you

don't ever have to pay it back. Well, I walk

away scott free. I'm like, hey, I got an extra

ten grand out of the deal. I don't have it anymore,

but I hope I spent it on something good. But

Clinton took the loss, and he'll carry that loss. It

will remain his because the debt doesn't just go away.

It either goes to me or it goes back to him.

In the words of my kids, Clinton took the l

on this one. He took the loss. Debt goes somewhere,

somebody pays the debt. The King, Jesus, our King, took

the debt, and he took it willingly, and he took

the loss to offer us forgiveness, no conditions, no hesitation,

full forgiveness. What a gift that we have received. So

let's ask our question again. Does God forgive all of

my sins? Absolutely? One hundred percent? The King is incredibly gracious,

knowing we could never pay back our unfathomable, unpayable debt, ever,

and he forgives us immediately, no limits, no conditions. In

the words of my dear friend Christian lind Beck, theologian

Christian Limbeck, and I don't mean that jokingly. He said

it this way. Does God forgive all our sins? Yes?

But it's not a casual theological yes, it's a cross bought,

blood soaked king's ransom. Yes, because it costs something. Can

I ask you to hold on to that idea for

just a moment, Just hold on to it, because I

think there's another really important piece of this that we

have to consider, because that's just one piece. But forgiveness

is a big, complex subject, and this story doesn't end here,

So we have to see the story through. So look

with me now at verse twenty eight to see where

Jesus takes this story. He doesn't just end with the

King forgave it says, But when the man Bill left

the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed

him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the

throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down

before him and begged for a little more time. Be

patient with me, and I will pay it, he pleaded.

Sound familiar. Did you catch that when the man left

the king, like, immediately he received one hundred and sixty

something thousand years worth of debt forgiveness. And immediately he

goes and finds someone who owes him something. And we're

not going to trivialize what is owed. The ten thousand

dollars that I owed in my little fictionalized story, that's

that's it. I don't want to just pooh pooh that away.

That's that's money, that's that's his. But he immediately goes

to another servant and grabs him by the throat, demanding

payment his creditor. He had the man arrested and put

in prison until the debt could be paid in full

Verse thirty one. When some of the other servants saw this,

they were upset, so they ratted him out. That's the

diabe Biel's version of the Bible to the king. They

went and told the king everything that had happened. And

then the King called Bill in and said, you evil servant,

I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.

Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as

I had mercy on you? And then the angry king

sent Bill to prison to be tortured until he paid

all of his debt. We're gonna come back to that

verse because I think that verse is incredibly important to us.

Just a few things. It's not a trivial amount of money,

but it is far less that the second service servant owed.

We're gonna call him Fred because it's the closest thing

I can think of to the word freed, and he

should have been freed from his debt too. So Bill

has a massive debt and he doesn't forgive Fred. Fred

does owe something, but by comparison, it's not even close.

And we think, no way, who could possibly do this?

Who would act this way? And of course we then

have to say us, because the story is about us. Sadly,

this is us. We're supposed to immediately see ourselves in

the story, we're supposed to see the incredible forgiveness Jesus

has offered us, our King has offered us that we

could never pay back, and that we're supposed to see

that that expectation is that we will have then extend

it to people who owe us far less than what

we've ever been forgiven. And again, hear me say, it's

a different thing to extend forgiveness because someone talked bad

about you than it is if it cost you the

life of someone you love. Those are different, but they

all fit in this category of forgiveness received that must

be forgiveness extended. A message about forgiveness here a word,

because really a whole sermon on forgiveness is due at

some point. But I don't want to rush past this

without at least saying one or two words here. And

there's lots of great research out there. I can point

you to some of it. There's a pastor named read

Dent who's done some great work on this that I love,

so I'm gonna use his language here. I want you

to understand what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not condoning.

It's not us saying what you did to me what

was done to me, that's okay. It's not condoning it.

Forgiveness is not forgetting, pretending it never happened, or pretending

and just putting it out of our memory. And you know,

I'm gonna forgive and I'm gonna wake up and I'm

not gonna remember this horrible thing that happened to me.

Forgiveness is not excusing. It's not saying, ah, I mean

not get it. It's okay, you were having a bad

day when you wronged me that way, or you know,

I'll just let it go this time. Forgiveness is not

acce or allowing additional wounds. It is not laying down

like a doormat in front of somebody and saying, well,

I forgive you, so therefore I have to let you

punch on me a few more times. You don't have

to keep lending. Forgiveness is also not reconciling. Just because

we extend forgiveness doesn't mean we have to be in

a relationship with the person we've forgiven. So what is forgiveness?

I'm going to put my words to it. I think forgiveness,

after a lot of years of study and having to

walk this out myself, I think forgiveness is where we

recognize the charge or the debt that is owed to us,

and we release the expectation it will be repaid. It's

where I recognize I've been wronged, or you recognize you've

been wronged, and you stop expecting that it's going to

be made right. You release the expectation of forgiveness. And

that's forgiveness is trickier because that's if we've received the

gift of forgiveness from the King ourselves, the expectation is

we will extend it. Let me kind of bring this

home for us, Because what if Bill, who had all

of this ridiculous amount of debt, said, you know what, King,

that's so nice of you to offer. Can I give

it a night's sleep to think about it. I just

go home and lay there and think about the debt

I can never pay, and then get back to you

tomorrow if I want you to know that's ridiculous. This

forgiveness offer is like too good to be true. We're

gonna take it immediately, except we struggle because we think

our debt is too great. Let's go back to how

I kind of laid the foundation of this message, where

I said that I don't think the person who's wondering,

does God really forgive all my sins? Is asking a

theological or curiosity question that comes from a place of

deep shame, of recognition of the great debt I've incurred,

of the brokenness and the pain and the secrecy in

the sleepless nights over the mountain of debt that cannot

be repaid. It's just too high. I can't even ask.

And King Jesus offers forgiveness holly, without exception, one hundred percent,

and it's right now, and it's for all time if

we receive it. Jesus's story about the King and the

Servant begs us a two part response. First, this story

begs us to accept the forgiveness that Jesus offers us,

that he took our unfathomable debt to the cross, and

the work he did on the cross was enough. Hear

me say that whatever you're thinking of right now, that

is too big. Jesus's work on the Cross was enough

to pay for it. And he offers forgiveness that is

one hundred percent paid for with his blood. And we

can live and walk in true and complete forgiveness if

we accept it. And number two, we must extend that

forgiveness to others. The King himself modeled this for us.

He extended forgiveness to Bill, and then he expected that

Bill was going to walk it out and offer forgiveness

to Fred. That means we have to like go of

the grudges. We have to let go of the expectation

of repayment or an expectation of an apology, or an

expectation that it's going to be made right. We have

to let go of the vengeance or the vindictiveness, and

trust that forgiveness received and forgiveness extended it's going to

work out in God's economy. And if we won't extend

that forgiveness, there is a danger that comes from that choice.

And you can do all the psychological reading, but I

want to just pull the danger that comes straight out

of our story. So look again, as I close us

on verse thirty four, it says the angry king sent

the man Bill to prison to be tortured until he

paid his entire debt. And we read this really naturally.

I in fact, I would bet one hundred percent or

almost one hundred percent of us listening to this would

read it this way. Then the angry king sent Bill

to prison to be tortured and tell Bill paid Bill's

entire debt. That's our natural reading. But the original Greek

here not only makes an allowance for another reading here,

but actually lens or leans towards another reading here. Follow me.

The Greek word for paid in some translations that says repaid.

The Greek word for paid or repaid is not just

a financial term. It also says release, can soul or forgive. Okay,

So we're talking about forgiveness today, So let's just take

that word forgive and let's put it back into the

verse and see if it makes sense. So the angry

king sent Bill to prison to be tortured and tell

Bill forgave Bill's entire debt. Bill never goes to prison

in that sentence, because Bill forgives Bill's debt. Immediately, Bill

is like, yay, I'm free, Yes, of course, I forgive

my own debt. I don't want to have to pay

that back. That that doesn't make any sense, which means

we have to then ask are we reading the he

and his there correctly? Because we understood all of those

pronouns to be Bill. What if we have read that

wrong all of the times we've read this story. What

if it reads the King sent Bill to be prison

to be tortured, and tell Bill forgave the debt of Fred.

And because it can also mean paid, what if Bill

is sent to prison and tell Bill pays Fred's debt.

The story seems to say, Bill, You've been forgiven so

much and you received it. You accepted that forgiveness. But

until you learn to forgive, you'll be the one to pay.

And in this case, Bill is sent to prison with

his very own key to be released, and that key

is forgiveness. Forgiveness from the king frees us from our guild,

forgiveness of others releases us from the prison. And isn't

it true that when we hold a grudge or unforgiveness

against somebody else, they seem to just live just fine,

and we are the ones who struggle in the misery

of the unforgiveness. Here's the thing. Most people don't struggle

to believe theologically God forgives like we not our heads.

We say, yes, yes, he forgives, and he forgives it all.

And yet many of us are still so haunted by

the debts, by the shame, by the secrecy, by the lies,

by the pain we've caused, other the wrongs we've done,

and we just have determined God's mad at me, and

I deserve him to be mad at me, or that

forgiveness is for her or for him, but not for me.

I don't deserve it. And Jesus illustrates here the ridiculous,

ridiculous forgiveness of God that is for every one of us,

if we'll receive it. And I think when we receive

the forgiveness of God that Jesus paid for, it's only

then we can try. I really know his love. That

is unfathomable. Right. If Jesus would take my debt to

the cross and purchase my freedom with his blood, that

is there is no greater demonstration of love. And when

I receive that forgiveness, I learn to know that love,

and that causes me. How could I not, as a response,

extend forgiveness to other people? I know that in this

room and listening online, there are many who feel like, Wow,

I don't know the forgiveness of Jesus like that, but

I want to, And that's awesome. We're gonna pray for

that in a second. And there are probably also many

who are sitting here thinking I really need some help

extending forgiveness. We're gonna pray for that too. So I'm

gonna ask you to bow your heads and we're going

to put these two things together and pray a prayer.

If you're here, and you would say, I want to

know the forgiveness of Jesus. I want to be right

before him, debt free. If that's you in this place,

would you raise your hand? Yeah? Awesome, thank you, thank you.

And if you're here, and you would say, Jesus, I

need some help extending forgiveness to others. I need some

help letting some things go as a natural response of

what you freed me from and forgiven me of help

me to extend that to others, would you raise your hand? Yeah,

thank you. Pray with me, Jesus. We need your forgiveness.

Forgive us, Jesus for our sins. Thank you that the

truth found in your word is that you do holy

and completely forgive wash us clean. Jesus. We receive your forgiveness,

and it's a simple as that. And now, Jesus, for

every person listening or here in this room who is

struggling to extend that forgiveness to someone else, and there

might be what seems to be very justifiable reasons all

across this room for the terrible wrongs. Help us, Jesus,

to not live in a prison of our own making,

holding the key that you've given us to be released

from our own unforgiveness prison. Help us to extend the

forgiveness you have given. Give us a spirit born spirit, breathe,

ability to forgive and release, the expectation of repayment and

i'm sorries and restitution, so that we can truly walk

in the forgiveness you've given us and the freedom from

the forgiveness we offer to other people. Thank you, Jesus

for the work you're doing. It's in your name. We

pray Amen. Before I dismiss you, I just want to

offer I will make myself available in the front if

you'd like some prayer. Maybe you're really struggling with forgiveness

of yourself even we want to come alongside of you.

So some of our staff and maybe any of our

prayer team or deacons that are here, if we could

just hang out at the front if you need prayer,

it would be our privilege to put our arm around

you and pray with you. But as you go, go

ahead and stand up, and as you walk out, walk

out knowing that you walk in the freedom that Jesus

has forgiven you, and that you can extend that to others. Agree.

Thank you again for joining us. If you enjoyed today's service,

go ahead and subscribe to our channel so you can

see future messages. If you'd like to learn more about Venture.

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