Uncommon Community | Forgive One Another (May 21st, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, good morning, Harvest.

Why don't you turn in your Bibles now to Ephesians chapter 4?

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Ephesians 4, we're gonna be looking at uh just one verse today, but uh plenty to say, plenty to say about that verse.

Now, as you're getting turned there, I don't know how many of you would be familiar uh with the uh the story of Corey Ten Boom.

Not sure if you're familiar with her at all, uh, but she grew up uh in the Netherlands around the time of uh World War II.

And uh she was a Christian, her family were believers, and during the time that the Nazis were starting to uh infiltrate uh the Netherlands, her and her family decided that uh they were gonna take a stand and they were actually going to rescue Jews.

And so they actually uh did this uh thing in their house where they created, they actually built a kind of a secret compartment, a secret room right off of Corey's bedroom, actually, and they would house uh fleeing uh Jews.

And uh they did all of this, even though their house was only about a half a block away from uh a police station.

And so they did this and they were able to rescue many, uh, but it actually uh eventually got found out, and her and her family uh were led away to the concentration camps, and uh she actually tells about this uh in her famous book, The uh The Hiding Place.

Perhaps some of you have read that.

She also has us uh has a book called uh Tramp for the Lord, where she talks about the horrors that she endured uh while she were and her sister Betsy were in uh the concentration camps.

That was actually particularly bad uh for her sister.

And uh her sister was treated uh awfully, terribly uh by two guards, one of them uh specifically, and it ultimately led uh to her death uh just about uh f uh 15 days before Corey herself uh would be released.

Now she actually found out later on uh that she was released on a clerical error.

And uh just a week after she was released, all the women her age uh were led away to the gas chambers.

Now, she um actually in the uh years following, uh, she ended up going back to uh the Netherlands and uh taking care of uh mentally disabled and and creating basically a real a rehabilitation house for uh Jews as well that did a lot of amazing work, wrote tons of books, and ended up being a very sought-after uh speaker kind of all throughout Europe.

And I'm not sure if you're familiar with the story, but one time after she was done speaking, uh she actually uh a man came up to her uh and basically said, and she recognized him, and he of course recognized her, and it was the guard.

It was the guard who had been particularly cruel to her sister Betsy and had uh led to her death.

And he came up to her and he said, Hey, uh, I have uh come to know Jesus Christ as Savior.

I've come to know the forgiveness that is available for all sins.

And she and he said, Would you please, please forgive me?

Now you can just imagine in that moment, right, what that would have been like for her, as she would have been wrestling with the emotions and the anger and all of it, all of those feelings brought back up to the surface.

And she explains that in her book, uh Tramp for the Lord.

And and you can actually hear some audio uh on it as well, as she explains all of this, the difficulty of all this, as he's standing there with his hand out to her asking for forgiveness.

But she knew in that moment, she's like, Because of Christ, because of what he has done, I have to extend it.

And she did.

She offered him forgiveness, and she said the peace of the Lord that overwhelmed her in that moment uh was amazing.

Now, we hear a story like that, and I'm sure most of us here are thinking, uh, yeah, I don't know if I could ever, ever do that.

And some of us maybe even taking it a step further and saying, No, I know for sure that I couldn't forgive a man uh that was so cruel and so awful to so many people and actually caused the death of my sister.

Well, we're in our series, of course, it's called Uncommon Community, and we're looking at how uh we as Harvest Bible chapel uh relate to each other and care for each other as the body of Jesus Christ.

And so when God saves us, right, when he saves us and he draws us into this thing called the church, right, we become part of this community where now each of us as individuals and then each of us as a group corporately, we are being transformed by Jesus Christ from the inside out.

Now that's a pretty uh amazing thing to think of uh in and of itself, and uh and as a result of all of that, our our relationships and the culture that is established here among us becomes thoroughly unlike anything that the world can create, anything that the world uh can offer us.

Okay, it's safe to say, it's not at all a stretch to say, that the church is special, right?

The church is unique.

Why?

Because of what God Himself is doing here in and among us.

Well, one of the things that the Lord is working to build in us here is a culture of genuine forgiveness.

Where we would, you know, um willingly ask for forgiveness when we have sinned against somebody, okay, but then on the flip side of all of that, that we would be a group of people willingly um extending forgiveness when someone has sinned against us as well.

Now, I'm sure if you were to you know talk to uh Corey, she would say, Hey, listen, I I didn't have the ability to do this in and of myself, right?

And maybe you would admit that here today.

You're like, I can't do this, it's the last thing in the world that I want sometimes.

And uh I'm pretty sure that she would agree with you, right?

We don't offer forgiveness because we're particularly powerful and really great at it.

Uh we do it because God is, right?

He is powerful, he is great, and he is working uh in us.

Now, as uh I don't know the proper word, but uh but as extreme or as rare or as as unique as her story of forgiveness is, right?

Offering forgiveness to this guard who was despicable and perhaps the most wicked thing you could ever think about, as again, as rare and unique as her story is, is it really supposed to be any different for us?

Right?

Are we supposed to be any different when it comes to the forgiveness that we offer?

No, not at all.

We're we're to forgive one another.

Always, right?

No matter what.

Okay, period.

And so the big question then really for us this morning is do we do we forgive each other?

Do we offer that?

Do we go to people that we have offended and and apologize when people have sinned against us or rubbed us the wrong way and come to offer us forgiveness?

Or if they don't, are you willing to forgive?

Are you willing to do that?

That's what we're gonna be exploring here uh this morning as we work through this.

Hopefully you're in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

I'm gonna read to us now again, just one verse, uh, verse 32, down in the last verse of chapter 4.

This is what it says.

It says, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Lord, we come before you this morning as your church.

Lord, and we do recognize the enormity of this task in front of us.

God, for some of us, we have been so terribly wounded.

We have been hurt, we have been maybe abused in various ways.

Maybe we've been so damaged that we have such a hard time trusting.

And Lord, it seems like we are uh so far from uh anything that would be considered a place ready to forgive somebody.

And so, God, we know though that you are in the in the business of transforming hearts.

And so, God, we pray that you would do that work here this morning, Lord.

I know that I can't do any work to convince people uh to go in and forgive someone who's hurt them, Lord, but you can.

Lord, it is your spirit that does it.

So, Lord, we cry out to you for your spirit to come and move.

We pray that you would make this scripture come alive to us.

We pray that you would stop us in our tracks, Lord.

Any of us who are harboring hard-heartedness or bitterness or anger or anything like that, Lord, I pray that we that we we would see the damaging road that that leads us down.

And Lord, I pray that we would forgive as Jesus did.

Lord, I pray that the gospel would come alive to us here this morning.

Lord, would you have mercy on your people?

Lord, would you build a strong community of people who take care of each other?

Lord, of people who make sure that we don't keep long accounts where we're not we're not making sure that everything's okay between us and other brothers and other sisters.

So Lord help us we pray in all of these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so right into it here this morning, all right.

Here it is.

I will always forgive.

I will always forgive.

Strong statement, isn't it?

Not sometimes, right?

Not when I not when I feel like it, not when it's kind of easy.

No, I will always, always forgive.

Here's the first thing, because now I'm all about others.

Because now I'm all about others.

Okay, so you need to understand this a little bit of context so that you understand kind of where our verse sort of slots here in the book of Ephesians.

Now, in the first part of Ephesians chapter four, Paul is discussing unity.

He's talking about the importance of unity in the body of Christ.

Now, we have talked about that, and we've continued to talk about that.

That's one of the kind of underlying themes of this entire series that we're going through, common community.

The importance of our church working together, the importance of our church uh need recognizing the need for each other, and one person's not more important than another, and and just because you're different than me doesn't mean that you're on the outside and I'm on the inside, or vice versa.

Right?

Unity is huge if we want to be a healthy, thriving, and worshipful church.

And so he talks about that through the first bunch of verses there in chapter four, and then starting in verse 17, uh, he gets into uh what life looks like after you receive Jesus Christ as Savior.

Like your life is so much different now.

It takes this, it takes this dramatic shift from how you used to operate and how you used to function before you got saved, before Christ came in and started to make you new.

And so he gets into what that change really looks like.

And a big part of it that he talks about is now how we relate to others, how we relate to each other and uh and our relationships within the church.

Okay, we're not to we're not supposed to be selfish anymore.

We're not supposed to be me focused or me above all else, right?

That's what the world proclaims, that's what the world says.

And in fact, if you have uh kind of any understanding of your heart, that's what your own heart wants, right?

You want to be first and preeminent and above all.

But Paul says, hey, once you get saved, once the Spirit starts working in you, we have this radical new approach.

We're supposed to be all about others.

We're supposed to care about their needs and what they want and put those things above our own.

And so he continues that line of thinking as he gets into our verse, as he gets into verse 32.

And so what does he say here?

Let's pull it apart a bit.

He says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.

Now you definitely get the sense here where those three words there, you know, really you'll kind of kind of flow together, right?

Genuine kindness.

The first word is be kind to one another.

Genuine kindness and and tender heartedness, having a soft heart and having a sense of compassion to others within the church body, all of that you you can just imagine leads to the being able to get to the place where you can offer genuine forgiveness to people uh when you've been hurt.

Okay, or put it another way, you know, when, you know, or if you're not exhibiting kindness, which of course is a fruit of the spirit, you might want to jot down uh Galatians chapter 5 there.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

This is a fruit that the spirit of God Himself grows in you, and then that pours out.

This isn't something that we all have the innate ability to do.

It's something that God grows in you.

If you're not exhibiting that kindness, which is the fruit of the spirit, and if your heart isn't tender and compassionate and loving, but rather you've you know hardened your heart towards a person or maybe to people in general, and you kind of keep them all out here at arm's length, and I'm not gonna let people in and all of that type of thing, you know, how easy is it gonna be for you to forgive somebody when they injure you?

Right?

Not very, right?

Not very.

And so as you're you know sitting here and you're trying to, you know, kind of gauge yourself right now, and you're asking yourself the question, how forgiving of a person, kind of am I uh sort of in general?

You actually need to take a step back and kind of survey the entire landscape and the big picture here, and really ask the question, am I for people in general?

Right?

Am I generally for the interests of my brother or for my sister for my church family?

You know, am I genuinely committed to what's best for that person?

Okay, kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, all of that.

If you see that in your life, that is all evidence that you care for them, that you are for people.

Okay, so the flip side of that and an absence of all of that should tell us a lot about our mindset when it comes to being for people or not.

Now, being all about people and all for them and their best interests and all of that, that whole idea, that approach, that mindset, it's a it's a whole shift in your worldview and thinking.

All of that is so counterintuitive, isn't it?

It is.

Especially when we've been when we've been hurt, right?

Because when we've been damaged by somebody or offended or abused in some way, whatever, you know, wherever it may be on the on the spectrum there, who do we naturally think about?

We think about ourselves, don't we?

We think about, we think about us.

We rise to the surface, we are the ones that we have all the focus on.

You know, we think about what what we're feeling, you know, how how I've been injured, the the pain that that I'm experiencing, you know, the the anger and and the hatred that I have towards that person, right?

The injustice that that person did to me, right?

That's how we feel, and that is our whole attitude.

And so the last thing in the world, all right, that we that we want to do, or that we feel we are even able to do, is consider the well-being of the offender.

Right?

Again, you see how counterintuitive and how counter-cultural uh this whole idea that we're talking about, forgiving one another, uh, really is.

Right?

We need the Spirit of the Lord.

Now, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, especially if you've been a Christ follower for any amount of time, right?

You've heard all this before.

You've you've read the scriptures, you've heard pastors talking about it.

You you know up here that you know I should forgive people and and I should be you know generous, generous and gracious with all of that.

Okay, I'm not telling you anything that you probably don't know already.

Okay, but but in those moments we can feel you know pretty helpless because we know that we should forgive, right?

We know that, but in our flesh, do we want to?

No.

Right?

We don't, and we wanna we wanna hang on to that.

And I think there's there's kind of this, you know, if you're a Christ follower and you're trying to follow the Lord and and you really wanna, you know, you want to be like him and and you wanna grow and you wanna get to a place of healing, there's there's sort of a sense of helplessness that begins to well up in you as you kind of realize that, you know, I need to be a forgiving person, but but you know, I'm just not there.

You know, and that that helpless, those helpless moments, you know, of realizing, you know, where we're at, you know, spiritually, you know, and realizing you know the gap there and where we need to be, which is which is a forgiving person as Christ forgave us, what should that do?

That should drive us towards Jesus Christ.

Because we should feel like, man, I I'm just not there and I and I need him.

Lord, would you would you have mercy on me?

Lord, because I'm I'm finding this this hard.

I I don't want the person to be forgiven.

I want them to pay, right?

I want them to hurt the way the way I've hurt.

I I want I want to inflict damage on them.

I want it to be about revenge and and payback.

I want them to suffer.

I want them dead.

Too far?

Maybe a bit.

I don't know.

Maybe some of us we have felt that way before.

You know, and we you know it's good.

We can laugh about it, but maybe you've you you've thought in kind of your darkest moments, depending on what the pain was.

You know, you've felt that.

And hopefully what that starts to stir up in you as the Spirit of God is moving in your heart is this is this desire to pray to the Lord, Lord, would you help me to forgive?

Would you help me?

Would you get my heart there?

Lord, I am so far from being at the place where I can do this honestly, without it just being lip service, without it just being surfacey and and not real.

Lord, would you do a work in me to change my heart so that I would forgive, Lord?

Give me kindness, give me tenderness towards this person, so this relationship can be healed, so that it can be unity in the body, and so that I can be in a good place with you, Lord.

God, would you do that?

Right?

That that gap that we feel, right?

Sometimes you feel it, you're you're over here, and you're like, it's just it's anger and it's frustration, and I'm hurt, I'm withdrawing from community, and I I just want to be on my own, and I want to kind of stew in the juices of my bad mood, and all of that.

That that sense that you feel, the gap is way over here to where you you need to be of forgiving as as Christ forgave you.

You know, and you know, all of that, it it that gap seems so daunting, it seems so so huge, doesn't it?

You know, it feels unbridgeable, it feels like I'm never gonna change, I'm never gonna grow.

Well, that's the very gap, that's the very space, the very place where God begins to roll up his sleeves and he pours out his grace and he does a work in your heart.

That's what he does.

And so listen, realizing that there's a gap, understanding that you can't get yourself from point A to point B in your heart, listen, that's a good thing.

That's a good thing.

Because it means now that you are ready for the Lord to do a work.

You have you have been humbled, you understand that you are not God, that you can't do the work that He's calling you to do.

You need His Spirit, you need Him, you need His grace.

And once you're in that place, that's when the Lord again He starts to move because you're asking Him for it, you're dependent, you're humble, you're crying out, you're working through the emotions of it and the grittiness of it and the pain and the tears and all of it.

You get to the place where you can ask Him for help.

And so the question really is then will we do it?

Will we ask Him?

Will we not just realize that there's a gap there, but ask the Lord to bridge it?

Will we ask Him to do it?

Will you?

Or will you continue to stand over there in the anger?

Will you sit in the pain?

You know, it's it's kind of weird for us to think that you know we might kind of like that position.

I would I would never want to be in pain.

Well, sometimes we we kind of do.

And we know what we're supposed to do, and we know that we're supposed to pray, we know that we're supposed to surrender this to the Lord, but we kind of refuse to.

And we just kind of sit there and stew in the place of unforgiveness.

And so the question is, will you approach the Lord?

Will you will you cry out to him for help, for a changed heart, a heart that reflects you know the forgiveness that he has shown you?

Will you pray for that?

Right?

Really, what you're asking for is Lord, give me the kind of heart for this person that you have for me.

That's what we're crying out for.

Now we're really getting into the second thing, so why don't you jump into that?

Okay, I will always forgive.

I will always forgive, since I've been forgiven of much.

Right?

I've been forgiven of much.

Okay, verse 32 again.

I'm gonna start over there.

It says, Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another.

We read all that, and then this is huge.

As God in Christ forgave you.

As God in Christ forgave you.

So this is really the crux of it.

Right?

This is this is the Meat and potatoes here.

You know, just like last week, how we looked at how we should love one another.

Why?

Because Jesus Christ loved us first.

God loved us first.

Well, this is kind of the same idea, just kind of coming at it from a different angle here.

Why do we forgive?

Because Christ forgave.

He forgave us.

You know, so to withhold or or deny, you know, forgiveness to anyone, regardless of the severity of the crime or the sheer amount of injury that has been thrown at us, you know, it's completely uncharacteristic for a believer.

Now listen, I understand the strength of a statement like that.

I do.

You know, but I say it because according to the scriptures, especially Matthew 6, verse 15, you might want to write that down there.

Matthew 6:15

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but according to Matthew 6, 15, if we don't forgive others, it means that we are not Christians.

We're not Christians.

Now you might be like, well, what does that verse say?

Well, I'll read it for you.

It says this, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

That is a heavy verse.

That is a verse that should sink in and cause us to sweat a little bit.

Now let me be real clear on this.

This isn't saying that you should forgive so that the Lord will forgive you.

That's not what it's saying.

Okay, forgiveness from God isn't an earned thing, it's not something that you earn from Him.

Forgiving someone isn't a condition, okay, that we must fulfill before God will agree to forgive us or save us.

That's not the way that this all works.

Salvation is by grace through faith.

It is a gift given to us.

We don't earn it, it is simply by faith.

It's not of works.

Okay, rather, this verse, Matthew 6.15, is really another way of saying that if you've truly received forgiveness from Jesus Christ, okay, you will extend forgiveness to others.

You will do it, just like Corey did with the guard.

Why?

Because that's what Christians do.

That's what we do.

Christ's followers, we we don't hold back forgiveness.

We offer it, and we offer it generously.

Okay, here's what uh John Piper has to say about that.

It'll be up on the screen for you.

He says this if the forgiveness that we received at the cost of the blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is so ineffective in our hearts that we are bent on holding unforgiving judge uh grudges and bitterness against someone, we are not a good tree.

Right?

He's talking about a tree that bears good fruit.

He says, he goes on, he says, We are not saved.

We don't cherish this forgiveness, we don't trust in this forgiveness, we don't embrace and treasure this forgiveness.

We are hypocrites, we are just mouthing.

We haven't ever felt the piercing, joyful wonder that God paid the life of his son.

Now, I don't know about you, but every once in a while it's just nice to be devastated by a John Piper quote, right?

It's nice just to be like that hits hard, right?

It hits hard, but it's so good.

Um, but bam, right?

That that's huge.

Right?

And it's so it's so on the mark as he's talking about Matthew 6, 15.

But hey, listen, put it this way.

Put it this way.

You and I have never been, you know, so so hurt or as hurt and and and wronged and sinned against as as Jesus was by by you and I, right?

Yeah, what did he do?

He offered a forgiveness, he extended that to us, and he did it through his blood on the cross.

That's what he did, that's why he went to the cross.

So think about it.

In that light, okay, in that light, there's there's a certain insanity, if you will, to the notion that I wouldn't forgive somebody who hurt me.

Right?

If if Christ would forgive mankind for putting him on the cross, right, our sin was way worse than anyone's ever done to us or we could ever do to anyone else.

Right?

If he could forgive us, how I don't mean to be flippant about it, but how silly are we to not extend that same forgiveness to other people?

Okay, but all that being said, we do struggle to forgive, don't we?

We struggle.

You know, as we grapple with the Lord on these things and we, you know, wrestle through the you know the gospel and you know, we you know work towards having a changed heart and all of that, you know, getting to that to that place where we can honestly and and truthfully and and and really do it, really forgive.

That's a messy journey, isn't it?

Right?

I'm not trying to stand here and say, oh, it's really easy, just just do it.

Right?

It's not even hard.

No, no one's saying that.

Right?

It's messy.

And we struggle with you know with forgiveness, and you know, sometimes we want to, and sometimes we don't, and sometimes we feel like we've forgiven, and and then all of a sudden we're reminded of it, and you know, the old bitterness and feelings of anger and betrayal and all that kind of resurfaces again, and it's and it's tough.

And so, you know, we sometimes hold back forgiveness, we withhold it, and there are all kinds of reasons why.

You might be thinking, well, you know, what are some of those reasons?

Well, we have uh you know, we've got it on the screen for you.

We're gonna have here uh eight reasons why sometimes we don't forgive.

And maybe you have wrestled with one or more of these here, and as we kind of go through these, be kind of prayerful even in these Lord.

Is this is this the reason why I am not forgiving that person or why I am stingy when it comes to uh forgiveness?

You ready for these?

Here we go.

Here's the first one.

Okay, we like the sense of power that it gives us over the person.

Right?

Is this ever you?

Would you ever sense that this is maybe true of your heart?

You know, when you're in the position of not forgiving somebody, it's because it kind of makes you kind of makes you feel powerful, doesn't it?

Right?

That person hurt me, and and and maybe that person wants forgiveness or they've asked for it, and I'm gonna withhold it because I kind of like you, you know, under my foot.

Right?

I I like you squirming, and I and I like you hurting, and that that sense of kind of power that our flesh loves is something that we don't really, we're not really ready to let go of yet.

And so because of that, we delay or we withhold forgiveness.

This might be a reason for you uh why you haven't forgiven somebody.

How about this one, the second one?

Okay, we like to savor the bad attitude that comes along with it.

River experience this?

Now, again, bad attitudes, you know, we you know, we often talk about, you know, we don't want to be in a bad attitude, and it's so much greater being in a you know in a in a good mood and all that kind of stuff, and I think that's all true, but there's a sense of uh of bad at the bad attitude that we love, right?

Whether there's an aspect of it, you know, you're kind of stewing it, and you, you know, you walk around huffing and puffing, and you know, I love I love people to know that I've had a hard day, and you know, look how tough my life is, and I'm gonna make sure that people know that I'm crusty today, and and I'm gonna make it difficult for people to, you know.

Right?

We love that.

We love to savor you know the bad mood, and and we're trying to hold on to this, and and and we know that we should forgive, and and maybe our plan, you know, in the kind of the darkness of our heart is yeah, I'm gonna get to it.

But right now, I'm gonna I'm gonna enjoy this bad mood because my flesh enjoys it.

I love it.

It's kind of fun.

You know, and you may have heard the saying before, but withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Right?

And that's kind of what we do when we choose to not forgive and we try and, you know, just sort of savor the bad attitude.

Right?

We're not the one that suffers you, or sorry, the other person's not the one to suffer.

That's what we often think.

I'm gonna make them suffer worse.

Well, oftentimes it's your own heart that's you know that's made darker and darker and gets into a worse and worse place.

Okay, but this one, number three.

We like to watch the other person suffer for what they've done.

All right, this is very much related to some couple of the things that we've already looked at here.

And and maybe for us we want to just pay them back.

Maybe we love revenge, you know, and I'm not gonna forgive them.

Instead, I want to get them back, right?

And I'm a I'm a revenge person.

I mean, how many movies do we watch that has like the whole plot is revenge, right?

And we watch that and we love it.

Right?

This is the greatest.

I want to see the little guy that got like hit and beat up the entire movie, finally come back and beat the bad guy at the end.

We love that sense of revenge.

Where he comes and redeems his, you know, his family that was taken from him or something like that.

You know, we love those movies, and we actually try to incorporate that into our own lives as well.

And we do that when we when we hold back forgiveness, because we want to pay them back, and we would love to watch them suffer.

How about the fourth one here?

We think that because they don't deserve it, we shouldn't extend it.

Well, they don't they don't deserve forgiveness.

You know, and they've hurt me a number of times, or they've done this to a number of people, and and the last thing in the world of the world that they deserve is to be forgiven.

So guess what?

Not gonna do it.

Not gonna do it.

Now, here's the thing you might be bang on about that, right?

They don't deserve it.

But listen, neither did you deserve forgiveness from Christ.

Right?

At the end of the day, none of us really, strictly speaking, deserve that.

Right?

We deserve punishment, right?

But we need to remember, yeah, they don't deserve it.

But I should be extending it anyways, because of Christ.

How about this one, number five?

We wait for the person to apologize, even though it'll never happen.

Right?

Sometimes you're waiting, some of you are waiting for the person to apologize.

You know, yeah, I'll offer it.

I'm just waiting for them to come to me.

I'm waiting for them to take the first step.

You know, enough of enough of me always putting out the olive branch.

How about how about that person doing some work for once?

You know, I'll I'll give it to them, but you know, when you kind of you kind of will hold it because of that, and you know, you're waiting for the apology.

Listen, that apology may never come.

It may never come.

That person may never get their heart into the right place where they they know what they've even done is wrong, let alone come and apologize to you for it.

Or maybe it was done so long ago that that maybe that person has has passed away, right?

And they're literally never going to come and apologize to you.

And so you're like, there's no point in waiting around for that.

You can forgive them even though they've never asked.

And we're gonna talk a little bit about that uh as we go here.

How about this one, number six?

We try to ignore it and never truly face the reality of our pain.

Right?

I think a lot of us do this, don't we?

You know, we've been we've been hurt and we've been, you know, infl some kind of damage has been inflicted on us by somebody else, and and and rather than kind of facing it head on, we think that the you know, the easier road, the the better road, the more healthy road is just to kind of pretend that it didn't happen.

You know, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ignore it.

I'm just gonna kind of you know throw a blanket over it and you know scoop it into the corner of my you know my heart somewhere and just sort of pretend that everything is fine and life is rosy and you know everything is you know all good.

You know, I I'm gonna act like it, like it never happened.

Well, hopefully it doesn't take too much you know explanation or convincing to understand that that's not really the healthy move either.

Because you've kind of always kind of got it there, right, in the back of your mind.

Okay, the seventh one's related to that.

Okay, we think that time will heal all wounds.

Right?

You're you've heard that phrase before, you've heard a lot.

Time heals all wounds.

Wrong.

It doesn't.

Time does not heal all wounds.

All that it does is it, you know, time can maybe push the wound from the forefront of your mind, where you're thinking about it 24-7, into kind of the back burner of your life.

But here's the problem that burner's still on.

Things are still cooking, right?

Smoke is starting to billow, and you may not see it, you may not sense it until it's too late.

And it starts to affect other areas of your life, it starts to affect other relationships until things go sideways and it gets it gets real ugly.

Listen, time only does not heal all wounds.

We need to face it head on.

Don't don't neglect it, don't minimize all of that pain.

Don't don't ignore it, don't pretend it didn't exist, don't pretend it wasn't a big deal.

It was.

We need to forgive.

Here's the last thing here, and this is a big one for us.

We assume that we have to feel like it before we offer forgiveness.

Right?

This is massive.

I think this one alone stops the church dead in its tracks.

This stops us from getting to the place where we could get to.

Of just amazing unity and amazing health in our relationships.

We think that, you know what, I'm just gonna kind of wait around and wait around and wait around until I feel like 100% happy and positive and all of that towards the person.

Then I will offer them forgiveness.

Yeah, guess what?

That may never happen either.

Right?

You may, you may always, you know, that that relationship may forever be changed, but it doesn't mean that you should withhold forgiveness from them.

Listen, don't let your emotions and your feelings lead the charge here.

Right?

Let the truth lead the charge.

Your emotions will follow in behind all of that.

Yeah, you may not, you may not feel like doing it, but that's okay.

Do it anyways.

Why?

Because well, because Christ commands us to.

Right, again, we're gonna get into this here a little bit more, how we can choose to forgive somebody uh in just a second here.

But listen, if if these are reasons, you know, why we don't forgive, and you know, you and I may be struggling with, you know, one or you know, two, three, four, eight of these, you know, as you know, as we go through life, you know, I think a question that kind of comes up is well, like how how do I actually forgive?

Right?

Like if I'm wrestling through this and I genuinely want to forgive the person that's hurt me, but like I don't really feel like it, and you know, I tend to kind of minimize all of that or ignore it, or you know, I have kind of a revenge mentality and I want to get them back and I love watching them squirm and all of that, but but the Spirit of God is working in me and and and I want to kind of grind through this.

How do I actually navigate that process?

Right?

Like, how do I go from everything that we're talking about here this morning, go from that just being theory that I know in my head, right, to to actual application where I'm actually forgiving.

Okay, well, we've got here four practical steps for you as you try and put forgiveness into action.

Okay, four, four practical steps, and uh you can jot this down and you can put this uh into place uh as you go, as you try and uh fix and see the Lord fix and repair uh broken relationships uh in your life.

Here's the first one.

We've talked about it already, but remember that Christ forgave you and praise him for it.

Okay, so if you're in that moment and you are struggling, and I, you know, I don't really feel like forgiving and I don't want to, and I'm just I'm I'm struck by the pain and the trauma and the wound of all of it.

Listen, you need to remind yourself, you need to spend probably some some significant time just meditating on the gospel, right?

Thinking about the gospel.

What has Christ done for me?

I need to I need some perspective here, right?

That's what this really is.

You need to gain some perspective.

And I don't just mean like to kind of mechanically in your head going through like, you know, five things that Jesus did when he went to the cross.

I don't mean that, but I mean rehearse them, go through them, pray through them, and then get to the place where your heart can worship because of them.

If you can worship the Lord because of what he has done, if you can genuinely thank him and praise him for the forgiveness that he has extended to you, then your heart is gonna be in a much better place to be able to forgive someone who's hurt you.

Okay, so that's the first thing.

Spend some significant time in that.

It's probably not a 30-second exercise, right?

Something you're gonna need to continually do.

Here's a second one.

Choose to, whether you feel like it or not.

Okay, we've talked a little bit about this already.

I said we were getting back to it.

Well, here it is.

We just need to choose to forgive.

It's a ch it's a choice.

It's it's it's less it's less of a feeling as it is a choice.

We need to just choose to forgive.

Well, Christ chose to forgive me.

I'm gonna choose to forgive this person.

Again, even if my ocean uh my emotions haven't quite caught up yet, I'm gonna mentally decide to and make the commitment that I am going to forgive you.

I am going to absolve you of the debt that you owe me.

That's what forgiveness really is.

I'm gonna take that on myself.

I'm gonna choose to.

Right?

Again, whether we feel like it or not.

And then this one is huge.

Number three, you need to decide to be done.

Done with bringing it up to yourself, to others, and to God.

Right?

I've heard Pastor James uh talk about this before, and it's it's a big thing that I really think needs to be a huge part of our culture here as we think about forgiveness.

Because listen, you you know what it's like.

Okay, I'll make the I'll make the choice to forgive that person, but what about in like 15 minutes later, right, when I when I'm thinking about it again and I'm still kind of angry, right?

Well, you need to make the choice.

I'm gonna I'm stocking, I'm gonna stop playing around with it in my mind, I'm gonna stop stewing on it.

I'm gonna stop allowing the you know that story, that what that person did to kind of get me all riled up and worked up.

I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna stop thinking about it for myself.

I'm gonna stop bringing it up to the Lord.

Yeah, well, Lord, this person, I'm gonna be done with all of that.

I'm gonna be done bringing it up to others as well.

Yeah, well, can you believe what this person did to me?

No, you're done with that.

You know, be careful of this person because they hurt me.

They might hurt you too.

Done with that.

We're not talking about that.

Bleeds into, you know, gossip and slander so quickly.

Right?

So we gotta be done, right?

Decide to be done with bringing it up to yourself, to others, and God.

Here's the fourth step.

Repeat.

So again, you're starting to understand, right?

This is something that just because you decide to forgive, just because you've rehearsed the gospel once or twice, just because you're working on not bringing it up to yourself, others, and God, doesn't mean that it's not gonna creep up again at some point later.

And so what do you need to do?

You need to go right back to step one and continue to remind yourself of the gospel.

Continue to remind yourself of what the Lord has done for you, the forgiveness that he has offered you.

You gotta remember, you gotta go back to the choice.

I'm gonna choose not to, I'm gonna choose to forgive them whether I feel like it or not.

I'm gonna stop bringing it up to myself, others, and God.

All right, and you keep repeating that process over and over again.

And listen, as the Lord works in you, he is gonna change your heart on this.

Right?

He will.

He will work in you and he will have mercy on you, and he is so so gracious and and good to us.

I'm not trying to say it's a simple process, right?

I think I've made that clear already.

And you may have to go through this process a number of times, kind of depending on where you are, where you're at, and depending on the severity of the injury uh you've received.

Okay, so harvest.

What we all need to buy into here, when you kind of break it down and you know, the bottom line here is we need to we need to buy into the idea, the belief that God's way is always best.

It's always best.

Forgiveness is better than unforgiveness.

Right?

Healing and and the unity of the church and and and God's glory is simply better than the alternative.

It's it's better than anger.

It's better than just stewing in frustration and hatred.

It's better than you know, walking on the other side of the room so that I don't have to go past that person and look them in the eye.

It's you know, healthy relationships are better than unhealthy relationships.

That's what God is for.

That's what God is all about.

Again, this is what he is working to build in our church.

This is what he's working to build in all of us who are sitting here.

It's what he's working to do upstairs and harvest kids among those kids.

This is what he's doing in our small group ministry.

Right?

He is working to grow us into people who forgive one another.

Right?

And so the question is can you guys get on board with that?

Can you do that?

Can you can you commit to this?

Can you will you prayerfully and humbly submit to what the Lord wants to do in our church?

Will you do it?

Because here's kind of uh the awful reality.

The awful reality is that we are going to hurt each other.

Right?

And that's uh that's a lousy thing to think about.

All right, but there there's really nothing realistic about thinking that just because we're a church, you know, everything is gonna be slap happy and lovey dovey, and you know, all the relationships are gonna be flowery and awesome and feel good emotions all the time.

That's just that's not the way it works, not this side of eternity.

Because we're all we're all sinners, right?

We've all we're all broken.

And when you put sinners together in a room and and you rub them together, there's friction.

Right?

And so we need to be committed to each other.

And I love this line that that Pastor James McDonald has said multiple times, and you know, I think about it quite a bit, and I know that down at Harvest in Chicago, they have this as one of their staff values, and uh, you know, as our staff grows, we'll be building this into it for sure.

But listen, this is for our whole church, this is really it, and this is what he says maybe.

You've heard it, but he says there are no enduring relationships without forgiveness.

You heard that before?

There are no enduring relationships without forgiveness.

You know, if we want our church family to be healthy, if we want to have strong relationships now, and then have you know any sort of any resemblance of health going forward, this is what we need to be all in about.

We need to be committed to this.

Because really, this is what uncommon community does.

So what we're gonna do right now is we're actually gonna close this service down a little bit differently than we uh usually do it.

The worship team's not gonna come.

We're not gonna close down with a song or uh or even a prayer.

But rather, what we're gonna do is we are going to kind of keep this room here as a quiet, reflective place where you can get your heart right with the Lord.

And you know, I I I'm not altogether sure how the Lord is working specifically in you as you've been, you know, hearing the words here this morning.

I'm not sure if you're the person who needs to go and ask for forgiveness of somebody.

Maybe you're on the other end of it and someone has asked you for forgiveness, or you know that you need to extend it, whether they've asked for it or not, and you've been holding on to unforgiveness and bitterness, and you know that you need to get your heart there.

I need to forgive as Christ forgave me.

And so we're gonna have this time where we just you can just sit and you can just prayerfully reflect on these things and make a commitment.

Maybe it's someone here in this room.

I need to go talk to them after the service today, not next week, not in a month.

Again, not when I feel better about it.

I need to go do it now.

Maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's somebody at work that you need to talk to this week.

But I want you to focus specifically on our church, right?

On the relationship and the community that we have here.

Would you do that?

Would you prayerfully consider that?

Here's what else you can do.

Maybe you are sitting here this morning and you don't know Christ personally, right?

You don't have a relationship with him.

You know, and you've been you know hearing us talk a little bit, obviously, about the forgiveness that Christ offers us.

And you need to know that that is extended to you as well.

Jesus Christ went to the cross 2,000 years ago.

He literally did it.

It's not a myth, it's not a fairy tale.

There's plenty of evidence to back up that that actually happened.

And he did it why?

He did it to bring you into a relationship with him.

Because at the end of the day, all of your sin, all of the wrong things that you have done, whether you consider them grave or you know, not so grave, all of it ultimately was against your creator.

It was against God.

And because of that, the Bible tells us that we have hell waiting for us when we die.

Now that is obviously the most horrendous news you could ever receive.

Right?

And that actually needs to strike us hard.

But that's exactly why Jesus went to the cross.

Because he wanted to gather you in.

He didn't want to have to punish you because he is a good and just God.

He can't just pretend that sin didn't happen, can't, you know, turn a blind eye to it, sweep it under the rug, all of those things.

He had to deal with it.

So instead of punishing you, he punished Jesus in your place.

Why?

So that you could be made new, so that you could be forgiven of your debt.

And so I would challenge you this morning to understand that all of your sin is against your God.

But he offers you forgiveness.

Would you trust him today?

Becoming Christ's follower is uh is a relatively simple thing.

It's recognizing that Jesus went to the cross for your sins.

It's recognizing that.

It's believing that yes, he did that, and that was for me.

Trusting that what he did paid the price for your sins.

So it's it's it's turning, Lord.

I want to be done with my sin.

Would you please forgive me?

Would you now be my savior and transform me and transform my life?

When you do that, you're a Christ follower.

It's a gift that's been extended to you.

It's not something you earn or you know you can even pay back.

It's it's nothing like that.

It's amazing, amazing.

It's a gift from God.

Would you maybe spend the next few moments just thinking that through, praying that through.

If you've got any questions about that, if if any of you are struggling with forgiveness, and help me, there's gonna be some people uh up here at the front that would love to uh pray for you uh as we uh close this time down.

But just remember, let's keep this as kind of a quiet and reflective time.

If and when you're done, you can make your way uh out into the atrium, grab a coffee and all of that, and kind of mingle out there.

All right?

Have a great week.

You are loved.