The Parable of Forgiveness Unveiled

Turn to the book of Matthew chapter 18, and I'll put up, I hope you wore your

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

steel toe boots this morning, okay? I'll go ahead and just let you know in advance.

We're going to be talking about forgiveness, all right?

I know, people are like, talk about the windows of heaven again.

No, we're going to be talking about forgiveness. Before I do,

though, while you're turning to Matthew chapter 18, he mentioned everybody that

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

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was a big project it's a little over three hundred thousand dollars we started that

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do it amen i believe it i believe it matthew

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

chapter 18 we're going to read verses 21 through 35

if you're just kind of joining with us the last few

weeks our theme this year is come and see and

we've said that that that's that come and see it's mentioned

different times in the new testament but we say that

come and see is an invitation to transformation we believe it the bible says

if any man be in christ he's a new creature old things are passed away behold

all things have become new and so it's an invitation for transformation we believe

that matthew chapter 18 verse 21 says it this way It says, then Peter came up and said,

Matthew 18:21

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

And if you've not read this, everybody's kind of leaning in right now like,

okay, what we got to do, right?

And he said, Peter says, seven times? Is that enough?

And Jesus said to him, I don't say to you seven times, but 77 times.

Some translations say 70 times seven.

Verse 23. Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wishes

to settle his accounts with his servants.

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

talents. Everybody say 10,000 talents.

Remember that. We're going to come back to that. All right. And since he could

not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and

all that he had and payment be made.

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

me and I will pay you everything.

But notice this. He didn't have him pay. He didn't put him on a payment plan.

He didn't try to collect that debt out of

pity for him the master of that servant released him

and forgave the debt just wrote it

off wiped the slate clean he didn't owe the 10 000

talents anymore we'll see how significant that is in just a moment but the the

parable goes on and says but when that same servant that had been forgiven of

the 10 000 talents when that same servant went out he found one of his fellow

servants who owed him 100 denarii.

Everybody say 100 denarii.

We'll talk about that in a minute. He seized him and began choking him,

saying, pay what you owe.

So when his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with

me and I will pay you. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

This servant had just, the other servant had done the same thing.

But now he's looking, he'd been forgiven.

He's looking at his fellow servant begging here's what

he said he refused and he went and

put him in prison until he should pay the debt but when

his fellow servants saw what had taken place they were greatly distressed

and they went reported to their master the

one that had forgiven so much to their master all

that had taken place did his master summoned

him and said to him you wicked servant

i forgave you all that debt

because you pleaded with me and you should not and

should you not have mercy on your fellow servant as i

had mercy on you oh it's gonna get close right

here and in anger his master delivered

him to the jailers some translators translation says

tormentors until he should pay all

his debt verse 35 so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you now

who's you that's us all right so who's you us let me see if i can teach this

who's you okay there we go now we know who we are right.

If we do not forgive our brother from our hearts, you may not have heard it

preached this way, but it's scriptural that there is an expectation for you

receiving forgiveness that you must forgive. It's conditional.

And the only way in the scripture that we find that if you're continuing to

live righteous, if you continue fellowship with the Lord, but we find that if

you do not forgive, forgiveness will be taken from you.

I know you're like preacher i've never heard that before we'll just read it

because it doesn't matter if a preacher's ever told you jesus told us and he's

the final say so so today i want to preach on this subject forgiven to forgive,

forgiven to forgive and i'll just pray the holy spirit speaks to every person

in this house this morning if there's anything that's in our hearts against

anybody else that we can let loose of it can we do that let's pray this morning

father we just thank you so much for what you're doing in our lives.

We thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you for your word.

And Lord, we just believe that,

We believe that we've been forgiven of so much, and I just thank you for that.

But Holy Spirit, speak to every heart.

We know that we're the us. We're the you that's mentioned in this parable. That's us.

And so, Holy Spirit, speak to our hearts this morning.

And, Lord, we thank you for your word. In the name of Jesus,

we pray. And the church says, amen.

Amen. I think we've all been through this at some point.

Unforgiveness has a way of creeping into our lives and impacting a lot of us. It's a funny story.

I'll start out with a funny story and we'll work our way into more serious things.

But for years, for years, when Emery was a little younger, I'm using your,

you're my example this morning, Emery. Sorry about that.

When she was a little younger, listen, she's growing up now.

I wish they'd put a cinder block on her head and slow her down.

She's growing up too fast. And it's just, you know, it's just one of those things.

But when she was younger, she wouldn't speak to me. I didn't know why, right?

See, they would drop her off at school and I would say, I would say, morning, Emory.

And she would walk right by me with her head down and not even speak.

Like she wouldn't even, people on bus duty, they were like, what'd you do to

her? I'm like, I have no idea what I did to her.

And so one day, one day, Catherine says, do you know why Emory don't want to

speak to you? And I said, I have no idea.

She said one time when she was just a real little girl, you were up there on

the Thacker's Branch campus and you were giving high fives to the kids as they

were coming through, and I guess I looked away.

Maybe somebody talked to me. Not that I tried to do multiple things at once,

and I had, I guess, did I hit you in the face? Is that what happened?

Did I hit you like something? Anyway, I hit her in the forehead, right?

And I'm thinking she should have had like one of those Benny Hinn moments and

falling out and just got the full effect of it or something like that,

but all she kind of got from it was that her pastor had hit her in the forehead

when he was high-fiving everybody else. Now.

She worked it out in the salvation, and she's figured it out.

She talks to me now and things like that.

And I will say this. She is one of our most dedicated servants in our diapers

ministry. She works with our kids ministry, and I just want to recognize her

right now for the work that she does because she does a great job.

But that's kind of a funny example of sometimes, sometimes you do things to

people, and I mean, you've got to work it out.

You do. Forgiveness is tricky sometimes, and sometimes people are upset about

things that you don't even realize.

And I look at it when I'm looking at this sermon, and I realize that forgiveness

and unforgiveness is a big subject, it's a tricky subject in the kingdom of

God, in the body of Christ.

Now, if I had to boil this out, I simplified this thesis today,

and I kind of put it just in kind of common speak.

The forgiven must be the forgivers, or we risk forfeiting the grace that we've

received. That's what it comes down to.

And I know for some of us, this is not really a, we don't hear it preached in

the modern day church a lot like that anymore.

You don't, you don't take out your daily bread in the morning that says,

Hey, if you don't forgive, your forgiveness is going to be taken from,

you know, that's not your encouraging word of the day.

When they're trying to get you to sow this month's love gift,

they're not telling you that if you don't forgive, then forgiveness is going

to be taken away from you.

We don't hear it a lot. And because of that in the church, especially in this

American church that we're a part of, where sometimes the gospel's watered down a little bit.

In the American church, we don't hear enough about forgiveness and how forgiveness

as believers is not optional. It's required.

I've got to say that one more time. As believers, forgiveness is not if you can forgive.

It's you must forgive because it's not optional. It's required.

As a matter of fact, we see here that if you don't forgive, you risk forfeiting

the grace that's been given to you.

Now, I look at this. I read a story this week when preparing for this about

a woman named Shana from Tulsa, Oklahoma. This happened in 2015.

It was Channel 9 news article that I was reading, and it's a sad story.

I mean, it's a heartbreaking story that I read. Now, this woman actually went

and she attacked a lady that she found out had had an affair with her husband.

And I know what every woman in here is saying sounds reasonable. Okay, all right.

Just kind of pump the brakes right there just a little bit.

But because the crazy thing and the sad thing and the weird thing about this

story was the other lady had died of natural causes,

was at the funeral home, and this lady broke in the funeral home and attacked

the corpse while it was laying in the funeral home.

And this is, it's crazy when you read the story behind this,

but she was so overcome with unforgiveness, with rage,

with all this stuff in her mind, she ended up being sentenced to 16 years in

prison because of the other lady had died.

It wasn't even an issue anymore, but she was so overcome with unforgiveness,

with rage and other things that come with unforgiveness that she forfeited her

own freedom just to go and show some type of revenge that the other person wasn't

even aware of. Can I say this right now?

That some of you, you're mad at somebody, that you've not forgiven somebody,

and they don't even know that you're mad at them?

As a matter of fact, every time you're around them, you're all uptight,

and you're all angry, and you're all acting that kind of way,

and they're going on with their lives, and they're having a good time because

they don't even realize that you're upset because that's the way that unforgiveness works.

Unforgiveness puts a person in prison, but it's not the offender.

Unforgiveness puts those that cannot forgive in a prison. And I heard one time,

one man say, it's like drinking poison yourself and expecting the other person

to die whenever you hold on to unforgiveness.

I look at this and the problem with unforgiveness is not, it doesn't just impact

the person that wrongs you. It impacts you.

You carry the weight. You carry the hurt. You carry the grief,

you carry the bitterness, and the other person could move on and go on with

their life, and you're still stuck in unforgiveness.

I told the 9 o'clock service because I know nobody's in here like that,

so it only applies to them, I'm sure.

But there's some people at that 9 o'clock service. We'll just preach on them

for a second so that you guys don't have to feel back.

There's some of them people at the 9 o'clock service, and not that I ever preach

on the 11 to them, okay? So don't think that I do.

But there's some of those people at the 9 o'clock service that somebody made

a comment on Facebook, and they've been offended about the comment,

thinking, well, it had to be about me.

I know they were talking about me. and they wasn't even talking about them.

It wasn't even about them, but they read too far. And they said,

well, if it wasn't about me, who else was it?

The other 3 billion people on Facebook, that's probably who it was.

We get offended over the craziest things.

And when we get offended, we hold on to the offense and we do not practice forgiveness.

Now, I don't want to trivialize this because I know there's people in this room

right now that you have been done wrong.

I know there's people in this room that you still carry trauma from things that

happened in your life, and I'm not trying to lessen the impact of that trauma,

but we trust God with that outcome, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.

But I do want to say as believers, we are required to forgive.

Matthew chapter 18 tells us the parable of the unforgiving servant.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

In this parable, Peter comes up to Jesus. Peter's curious.

He's like, you know, I want to play the game, but I want to know the rules of

the game, right? So if we're going to play this, how many times do I got to forgive?

If somebody offends me, do I forgive them seven times?

I mean, that sounds like a pretty good number, doesn't it?

Because think about it. In our culture, we'll say, fool me once,

shame on you. Fool me twice.

Ah, see, you guys would have been standing right behind the disciple Peter being

like, yeah, seven seems like a lot, right?

And we see that. And so the disciple Peter, I mean, he's serious.

He's like, how do we play this game.

Jesus said, I'm not telling you that you should forgive seven times.

He says, I'm telling you that you got to forgive 77 times.

That seems like a lot, right?

But when you start putting it into perspective and we realize that we've been

forgiven of so much that if we don't forgive, there's probably a few reasons

why, but we put our own salvation in jeopardy.

Now we come to this parable.

So Jesus realized that they're not going to get it.

Right. And I'm glad that he didn't just stop there, but he put the,

he said, okay, I'm going to give you a parable to kind of explain this.

And so he kind of made this, this parable into split up into three categories.

And the parable was kind of split up in the immense debt that had to be paid

and, and the refusal to forgive and then the consequences of that refusal.

And so Jesus starts out and says, there's this master, and he had a servant.

He calls in all of his debts, and he had a servant that owed him 10,000 talents.

Now, everybody say 10,000 talents.

That means absolutely nothing to us, all right? Because we look at that and it means nothing to us.

But if you start looking at it historically, a thousand, a thousand,

or I'm sorry, one thousand talents, or let me back up.

One talent was worth about 20 years wages, all right? One talent was worth about 20 years wages.

This servant owed 10,000 talents. Most scholars believe that he owed,

in today's terms and today's money, that he owed in excess of a billion dollars, okay?

So there's a servant that he calls in. Now, it's starting to kind of register now, right?

So this servant comes in. He owes his master over a billion dollars.

And when he can't pay, he falls on his knees and says, put me on a payment plan.

Let me repay you somehow.

Give me some time. And the amazing thing about this, and some of you are getting

ready to relate with this, because the reality was he couldn't have been put

on a payment plan because he owed a debt he could never be able to pay.

Now that registers with me right now, not because of my mortgage,

not because of my car payment, but because the debt of sin that I had in my life, I could never pay.

My salvation, I could never afford on my own. So what Jesus said the master

did was the master didn't put him on a payment plan. He didn't work out a deal.

He forgave him of the debt that he owed. So that over a billion dollars worth

of debt that he owed was written off.

See, because forgiveness, forgiveness was originally a monetary term.

It was used as it related to debt. And so when we talk about forgiveness,

we're actually saying that the debt that we owed was paid by Jesus Christ.

That's what Jesus is trying to show them in this parable. But Jesus went on.

He didn't stop there and just talking about the immense debt of sin that we had.

He said that the same servant that was forgiven went out and found one of his

fellow servants and said, I want you to pay me up.

Now that servant, the Bible tells us that that servant owed him a hundred denarii.

Everybody say a hundred denarii.

That means nothing to us, right? And so 100 denarii was equivalent of a few

months' wages. It was a few thousand dollars is what the servant owed him.

So the servant that had just been forgiven of over a billion dollars worth of

debt refused to forgive his fellow servant for a few thousand dollar debt that he owed him.

And he threw him in prison. And he treated him unfairly. Now,

when the master found out about this, now, I know you know who the master is, right?

In the parable, the master is always the one that's good. Amen.

It's always the one that when he spoke in the very beginning and said,

let there be light, there was light.

The master is the one that has the power to forgive sin.

The master is the one the Bible says had the power to cast both body and soul into hell.

That's who we're talking about. We're talking about God right here.

And so Jesus said that when the master,

it's the type and shadow of God, when he found out about the servant's unforgiveness,

that he brought that servant that had forgiven over a billion dollars worth

of debt, he brought him back in.

And he said, not only have you done wrong, but everything that was against you,

I'm bringing back against you.

And the Bible says he delivered him over to the jailers, some translations to

the tormentors, that he made him pay, even though he had been forgiven,

because he refused to forgive.

He made him pay the original debt that he owed.

Now, that is a harsh and that is a very stern parable.

But then we come to the part of the scripture that throws this squarely in our

laps, because that's where Jesus says, so also my heavenly father will do to

every one of you. Now, who do we say that you were?

Us, right? He's talking to us right now.

You know, we was talking about that guy that got forgiven of a billion dollars.

We're like, that guy's crazy. That guy shouldn't be doing that.

That guy's in trouble. But then Jesus turns it over and says,

no, I'm not just talking about this guy in the parable.

I'm talking about us. I'm talking about you.

I'm talking about every one of us in this building. He said that our heavenly

father will do that to us if we do not forgive our brothers and sisters from our hearts.

That's where this lands this morning because we have been coming to church.

I'm just going to preach to us in a very general term right now that as the

Church of America, we have been coming to church. We have been enjoying grace.

We've been singing songs about the blood and the cross and every good thing that God is doing.

And we've been believing that we could accept the grace of God as long as we

didn't cuss and chew and hang out with those that do, you know.

We had all these rules of religion that we made up, right, as long as we didn't

get seen at the club and as long as we didn't.

All these rules of religion that we made up.

But then in spite of all of that, Jesus said, if you have unforgiveness in your

heart, if you are not forgiving your brother, then you are not going to be forgiven either.

There risks people that have perfect attendance at church, that look the right

way, that act the right way, but they're, I know this is tough because it deals

with the matters of the heart.

You can't hide this. You can't hide this from God.

I know I'm preaching to the church right here, so let me go ahead.

Judgment begins at the house of God.

We love it when we can say, okay, we act this way, and we talk this way,

and we don't go these places.

Therefore, we are righteous. Jesus said it's not just about that.

If you've got something in your heart that don't belong there,

then you're not going to be forgiven.

We see here that what it dials back to is we've got to realize we've been forgiven from a lot, right?

Our debt has been canceled. Our debt has been paid. It comes back to the doctrine

of forgiveness, and I believe we've lost this in the church today, right?

God's forgiveness is unmerited, limitless, and transformative.

I absolutely believe that.

The Bible tells us in the book of Psalms chapter 103 that as far as the east

Psalms 103 · chapter mention

is from the west, so does he remove our transgressions from us.

See, that means something to me. I know some of you guys, you were perfect.

You were angels and you came out of the church nursery and became a church member.

But for some of us, we don't have that testimony. Amen.

For some of us, we're glad that we don't have instant replay of what our lives were like.

Yeah. I'm glad that when people say, you know, Scott's a good person,

somebody can't say, well, let's go to the booth and confirm that.

No, I'm glad that they can't say that because they could bring up some stuff

that I don't want anybody else to see.

I look at this and I'm glad that God can cast my sins as far as the east is from the west.

As a matter of fact, we see the impact on the New Testament church.

Stephen was about to get stoned to death and the Bible says that he looks into

heaven and he says, Lord, do not hold this sin, sorry, do not hold this sin against them.

It shows there was an attitude of the New Testament church, that they realized

that they had been forgiven, so much forgiven, that they had to practice that same forgiveness.

See, the doctrine of forgiveness tells us that we are forgiven,

not because of our own merit, but because of the grace of God.

And if we didn't deserve it, we must extend that same forgiveness to people that may not deserve it.

You say, well, they don't deserve to be forgiven. I didn't deserve to be forgiven. Right?

You say, well, they didn't say they're sorry. Sorry don't even cover it.

Right? We're wanting an apology like an apology is going to fix something.

No, we've been forgiven of something we couldn't pay. And therefore,

we got to extend that same forgiveness. Now, three things, three keys to forgiveness

here that maybe you need to jot these down. I think they're important.

Number one, we got to recognize how immense our own forgiveness is.

We got to recognize how immense it is. See, I think, first of all,

we got to understand the debt that we owed.

See, we used to have a culture that was kind of brought up with Christian values.

And so people used to tell their children and other people, they used to say,

don't forget where you came from.

Do you guys ever remember that? and what they were trying to teach them was

you used to be, maybe you used to struggle a little bit yourself and maybe you

didn't used to be the person that you are right now yourself.

Don't forget where you came from.

Give some other people some grace too.

Extend some hope to some other people as well. We look at this in this kind of context.

We see here that Matthew chapter 18, that sin that's represented right there,

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

it shows that debt, it represents our sin.

The Bible says in Romans chapter six in verse 23 that the wages of sin is death,

free gift of God is eternal life. See, that sin that we had,

that was the death that we deserved. That's the immensity of our sin.

Sin is any transgression against the will and the knowledge of God.

How great our sins was, we deserved death, but instead of that,

the Bible says that we got the free gift of God, which is in eternal life.

Colossians chapter 2 says, and you who are dead in your trespasses.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

God made alive together with him, having forgiven us of all of our trespasses

by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

You know what the legal demands of sin were?

The legal demands of sin, the legal demands said you need to spend eternity in hell.

Every single one of us, no matter how good you think.

You know, we see people sometimes and We say, oh, they're a good person.

All they need is just to come to church.

No, we are all in sin, right?

We have all come short of the glory of God.

All of us, because of sin, the legal demands of sin is that we spend eternity apart from God in hell.

That's what we deserved. But Jesus paid the price for our sin so that we don't

have to spend it eternally separated from God, so that we don't have to suffer those consequences.

See, we see this even in psychology. It shows us that people that are aware

of their own shortcomings, it increases their empathy and their forgiveness towards somebody else.

See, all that does is showing what the Bible has already affirmed to us,

is that when we are aware of the great immensity of our sins,

then we're more likely to extend forgiveness towards somebody else.

So number one, we got to know how big our sin really was, the immensity of our

sins. but number two, we've got to release the offense to God.

Oh, this is the hard part, isn't it?

Because we want to be the one that carries out judgment, right?

Yeah, we want to be the one that carries out judgment. You want to be the one

that, you know, vengeance is yours, right?

We want to carry it out. See, forgiveness is not about excusing the offense,

but forgiveness is about entrusting God to the justice of that offense. I'm gonna say it again.

Forgiveness is not about excusing the offense. Forgiveness is about entrusting

that God will exercise judgment,

for that justice, for that offense. Now, I look at that because Romans chapter

Romans 12 · chapter mention

12 and verse 19 says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.

And I'm not going to stand up here before you as a pastor and say that I've

never prayed to pray, you know, because the Bible says a lot about people that

do things against the righteous.

And so I'm not going to say that I've never prayed prayers like,

God, we just ask you to break the teeth of the wicked ones.

You know, because there's a lot of scripture in there that you can pray against

people that are doing wrong things again.

But you've got to forgive them. You've got to leave it up to the Lord.

And if he wants to break their teeth, and if he wants to rain down hot coals

of fire on them, and if he wants to do those things, then that's up to God.

But we can't be the one that exercises that judgment.

Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 31 says it this way.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

It says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger be put away from you.

Here's the church I want to pastor right here.

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

We've got to leave that up, that other stuff, all the wrath and the anger and the judgment.

We've got to leave that up to the Lord. Now, I'm not belittling what somebody

else did to you. I'm going to say that right now.

And I know for some of you, maybe there's a whole childhood worth of Trump that

you are having to deal with right now.

I'm not belittling that. And I'm not excusing that. And God's not excusing that.

But what God is saying is take it out of your hands and put it into his hands.

Because God is able to execute. He's either going to execute righteousness or

judgment, one or the other, in that person's life.

And so what I do now is I put it in God's hands. And I'm like,

God, I just ask you, if they're not going to turn around, then you be the one

that judged them. But if they're going to turn around, save them.

Bring them out. Let them be my brother and sister. Dude, I trust God.

Can I say this right now? I trust God to do the right thing more than I trust

myself to do the right thing.

Right? If it was up to us to execute judgment, could you imagine?

Could you imagine? I mean, Ashley lives with me. She knows how harsh that would

be. That would be amazing.

Carter, that'd be rough, wouldn't it? If it was up to me to execute judgment.

All right. Good answer. All right. So we got to give that to Jesus.

We got to trust him with that. And then finally, finally, and I think this one's

important, is we have to reflect Christ through your forgiveness.

See, for some of us, this world's not going to be impressed when we send money to other countries.

This world's not going to be impressed when we feed the hungry locally.

This world is not going to be impressed. We're going to keep on doing it because it's changing lives.

But there's going to be some people that are not impressed by us giving away

thousands of dollars worth of diapers out here to families that are in need.

They're not going to be impressed by that. But what they will,

their minds will be blown when

they look at us and we're able to forgive people that have wronged us.

Because it's not natural. it's supernatural. I'm going to say that again.

Forgiveness is not a natural act. Forgiveness is something supernatural that

you cannot do apart from the grace of God.

That's why people that don't normally practice forgiveness, they have not been

forgiven themselves because they don't realize what forgiveness does and releases them from.

But as the church, we realize this. Matthew chapter 6 and verse 14 says it this way.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

It says, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

It shows us that there's a conditional relationship that if we want to walk

in forgiveness, if we want to be forgiven, then we must practice forgiveness to the fullest extent.

Even Jesus on the cross said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

So when you bring it full circle, what we're seeing here, this whole parable

about this unforgiving servant, it brings us back to forgiveness is not just

a commandment, but a reflection of God's character.

It shows us that if we're really going to receive forgiveness for ourselves,

then we must practice it to the fullest extent.

Hope if you'll come help us, I'm going to land this plane right here.

See, I told a different story in the 9 a.m. I'm going to make this a little

more personal because I know most of you guys, right? So I'll make this a little more personal.

Several years back, this has been several years ago. I'm just going to open

up my own life here for a second.

As a lot of you guys know, my father murdered my mother when I was a teenager.

And it led to a lot of trauma, a lot of unforgiveness there.

Even when I gave my heart to Jesus back in 97, I had a hard time processing all of that.

Felt like I had forgiven my father, but I had never not saying that you have to do this.

Okay. Because Jesus says you have to do this in your heart.

But one day the holy spirit spoke to me and this

is this several years later after i give my heart to jesus i've

been pastoring i was i've been preaching for several years and had people come

and give their hearts to the lord seeing salvations and i was talking i was

prepping to preach about forgiveness and the holy spirit spoke to me and said

if you're going to preach forgiveness then And you need to practice it to its fullest extent.

And so I called my brother up. And my father was in prison over in Virginia

at the time. Greenville State Correction.

And so I called my brother up and said, I'm about to go see Dad.

I need to tell him. I forgive him.

Now the last time that I'd seen my father it was at a court the last sentencing

hearing he was in there had been fights in the courtroom,

they had officers, they brought in extra officers to stand down the aisles because

there was such hostility between the families,

and as my father was walking out he looked at me and my brother and made a very

threatening comment toward us that's the last time I'd ever seen my father in person.

And Pastor Sturgill, before he told me and my brother,

he said, the Lord had let him know that my father's intention was not only kill

my mother, but to kill me and my brother and himself.

That was her intentions. I didn't know this part until probably 10,

12 years later after Pastor Sturgill told me this.

But one of my relatives Aubrey Wilson he told me one day he said Scott I've

never felt like I could tell you this but I feel like now is the time I can

tell you so my father he used to to get up above our house and make threatening

phone calls once he had been removed from the home and,

threaten our lives and we knew he was up within sight distance of our house

on Thacker's Branch We knew that was going on.

And Aubrey said, right after that happened, he said, I came, I was turkey hunting.

And he said, I came up into a clearing. And he said, I could see your all's

house right through that clearing.

And he said, there was four shallow graves that had been dug right there in that clearing.

And he didn't even, he didn't know the story about what Pastor Sturgill had

told me. He didn't know any of that.

But I knew this. So I was trying to deal with all of this and reconcile all this.

So I remember we drove on the other side to the side of Richmond,

Virginia, down to Jarrett, Virginia.

Went into that Supermax facility. I'd never been in a Supermax prison at that point.

I remember getting on that bus. They were bussing us over to one of the pods.

I remember getting on that bus and just feeling the air blow through and wondering,

what in the world am I going to say to this man that probably hates me still to this day.

I remember walking into that room there's a large visitation room about half the size of this room,

they had plastic patio furniture sitting out i was

sitting there in a chair and all of a sudden the door opens and a man walks

out i didn't recognize him but it was my father he'd been incarcerated at that

time for probably eight or nine years so he walks over and he sits down very

awkward don't know what to say,

so I just jumped in and I just looked at him and I said dad I forgive you.

Music.

All of a sudden tears started flowing down his eyes,

and he started apologizing for everything that he'd ever done see what I didn't

know is that a few months earlier he'd given his heart to the Lord there in prison,

see what i'm showing you right now is forgiveness see i could have i could have

held on he could have held on but we would have both been holding on to freedom,

and not setting ourselves free we'd have been holding on to this staying in

this prison for the rest of our lives he was physically in prison but i didn't

even realize I was still in a prison myself.

I had forgiven him in my mind, but there was something that happened when I

looked at him and said, I forgive you.

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Replaces all of that and helps with all of that knowing that jesus christ is so faithful,

and the one that forgave me is able

to forgive anybody anybody and the freedom you can experience in that there's

no guys there's no replacement for that there's no substitute for that now for

some of you you may have been through things that i can't even imagine i can't

imagine what some of you've been through.

And I can only speak for me, but I can say with confidence that God is able

to free anybody in this building.

I can't speak to your trauma, but I could speak for my God and tell you that

no matter what you've been through, he is able to set you free.

He is able to take that hurt and turn it into a testimony and to this day to

this day i tell people they'll say they'll say i know you wish that never happened i tell them,

the same thing you've heard me say this i don't know how many people i said

if i could go back i wouldn't have chosen it but on this side of it i wouldn't

change it either because i've seen the goodness of god and everything that he's

done in my life i've seen what he's able to do and nobody could come into my

life right now and tell me he's not able let's stand all over this building.

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Once again i'm not belittling anybody else's trauma i'm very aware of that i

know some of you guys have been through a lot and i'm not trying to to say that it

it's not bad but what i'm trying to express to you is that no matter how great your trauma is,

god is greater no matter

how overpowering this unforgiving feeling

that you're wanting to hold on to i'm telling you

that the grace of forgiveness and the freedom that comes with it is so much

better that today is the day that you that you need to forgive not that everybody

has to make a phone call and say that but some of you might have to the lord

might put that on your heart And you know what?

Some people, I've done that before. I've had other people that I've said, I forgive you.

And they've not really taken it well. But you know what? I didn't have to live with that anymore.

It's not about how they receive it.

We're held accountable for how we practice it. I just want to say that right

now. Every head bowed, every eye closed. Nobody looking around.

If you're here this morning, you'd say, Pastor Scott.

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It's been a lot, but I trust God enough to know that his freedom is better.

If that's you, I just want you to raise your hand right now.

There's hands going up all over this place. Yeah. Yeah, that's us. That's us.

Yeah, you can tell. That's us.

Here's my next call. Maybe you've been forgiven and you've forgiven yourself,

but there's still some hurt there.

And you'd say, Pastor Scott, there's still some hurt that's lingering.

There's still times that I struggle and I need God to help me with this hurt.

If that's you, I just want you to raise your hand. That's me.

Yeah, that's a lot of us right there, guys. There's a lot of people living right there.

The same one, the same one that's helped me with my hurt, the same one that's

given me the grace to take another step, the same one that gives me the grace,

it's the same one that's going to give you that same grace.

Here's what I want to do. If you raise your hand, I know there may be a lot

of us, but we can make room here if we need to. if you raise your hand on either

one of those calls on the count of three, I want to just come to this altar.

This altar is a place of change.

I believe today is a morning of change.

Remember, we said come and see as an invitation for transformation.

And I believe that's this morning right now.

So one, two, three, step on out. Let's approach this altar. That's right. Come on down.

This is not a place of shame. This is a place of healing.

This is a place of redemption. This is a place of restoration.

This is a place where if any man be in Christ, any woman be in Christ,

he's a new creature. She's a new creature. Old things have passed away.

Behold, all things have been made new.

Father, in the name of Jesus, we come before you.

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