Forgiveness Always Demands A Cost

A man had two sons.

The younger son told his father, I want my share of your estate now before you die.

So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.

A few days later, this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living.

About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land and he began to starve.

He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs.

The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him, but no one gave him anything.

When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, At home, even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger.

I will go home to my father and say, Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.

Please take me on as a hired servant.

So he returned home to his father, and while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming.

Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.

His father said to him, Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.

But his father said to the servants, Quick, bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him, get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet, and kill the calf we have been fattening.

We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life.

He was lost, but now he is found.

So the party began.

Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working.

When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants, What was going on?

Your brother is back, he was told, and your father has killed the fattened calf.

We are celebrating because of his safe return.

The older brother was angry and wouldn't go in.

His father came out and begged him, but he replied, All these years I've slaved for you, and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to.

And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends.

Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf.

His father said to him, Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours.

We had to celebrate this happy day, for your brother was dead and has come back to life.

He was lost, but now he is found.

And this is the word of the Lord.

Good morning.

Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus.

I welcome you to C3.

And um thank you.

Um Gail and Esther and Christopher and Zach and Derek and Sarah and Bethany and Colin and I know I'm Chris.

Did I say Chris?

Thanks, Chris.

Whoever.

Everybody, thank y'all for ever for all you did.

Um let me just add one more word about baptism next Sunday.

Um there's nothing that I've ever done in my life that was any more meaningful to me than the after I'd accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior.

Um I was 18 years old.

And um I'd never even I'd never even heard of anybody being baptized.

I didn't know what that really meant.

But I uh the man that led me to the Lord challenged me to read through the Bible, and um he told me to start in John, which I did, and um just got to act because that was the next thing, right after John.

And all these people were accepted the Lord and they were baptized, they accepted the Lord and they were baptized.

And um so I went to Brother Bobby, that was the guy, the pastor that got led me to the Lord, and I said, I want to be baptized.

And um he said, Okay, next Sunday.

And uh I just, if if you have, if you know the Lord, if he lives in your life, and you've never followed him in believers' baptism, uh I just encourage you to do it.

I just I just encourage you to do it.

Just like Cherley and I, every Christmas, we go down right after Christmas to New Orleans and we eat at this restaurant called Coquettes, and it's absurd expensive.

Um, they are thieves, but they can cook.

And uh it is the best food in the world.

And you go to New Orleans, go there.

I mean, because it's great.

If you know the Lord Jesus and you hadn't been baptized, be baptized, because it's great.

Uh I'm just telling you, it's it's great.

And it's just to declare to the world, I belong to the Savior.

And um that's a good deal.

And so if you want to be baptized next Sunday, it's not magical.

You don't get any extra credit, or you, you know, it's not a it's not like that.

It's just a I love my wife.

And I want everybody to know that.

And uh, I love my savior, and I want everybody to know that.

And baptism is one of the ways that we declare to people that we love him, we know him and love him.

And uh if you'd like to be baptized, text me or call me, or text or call Colton, and uh, we'd love to talk to you about that.

And um, yeah.

Um, okay, big lesson today.

You know, I've only got a few lessons left, and so you cannot imagine the mental exercise that I'm going through every week to decide.

What do I, what do I want to, what do I want y'all to know?

Of all the things we can talk about, what is what do I want you to know?

I want Shirley and I want you to know this.

What we're talking about today.

Um, Shirley, when you think of people in the Bible, I say in the Bible, in the Bible, in literature, but people, you know, bigger than life people.

Um, just that missed.

I was thinking about that dude, that older brother.

And, you know, when he said when the dad says, uh, bring out the robe, bring out the shoes, bring out the ring, kill the calf.

You who does all that stuff belong to?

Well, you could say the dad.

But one of the last lines in that story is everything I own belongs to you, older son.

That's my ring.

That's my road, that's my calf.

This is my party, this is my house, and you're giving all that stuff to this bum.

And we could all say, well, I wouldn't feel that way.

You ever been to the reading of a will?

It is not pretty.

Um, it's amazing how people can get bowed up over what belongs to who.

Um I think the tragedy of that story is that that older boy missed the party.

Sure.

He he he chose, just like Adam and Eve, to live outside the place.

The word Eden, the Garden of Eden, that's the Hebrew word for delight.

They chose to live outside the garden of delight.

He chose to live outside of glory.

Yeah, of glory.

Yeah.

Any anybody in literature or I don't know, that you come to comes to your mind that more than it than books could ever every book, almost everybody.

Yeah, everybody.

Everybody.

But two characters come to mind who allowed their circumstances to embitter them in such a way that they just chose not to turn, not to turn away.

Um, one I mentioned not too too long ago, I think, or maybe it was at class, but I think it was at church.

And um I'll just mention her again real quickly.

You remember um Great Expectations, Mrs.

Miss Havisham?

Do you remember that?

There's a movie.

And anyway, she was a woman who was jilted at the altar, as the language goes.

She had her wedding dress on, she goes to the altar to be married.

Turns out the guy doesn't show up, he's running off with someone else.

He was too ashamed to tell her, too scared to tell her.

So she just runs away and leaves her at the altar, and so that's it.

And so she goes back home, she's a rich woman, she goes back home and um sits down.

And in this work of fiction, she never takes that wedding dress off.

She leaves that dress on.

So by the time we come to know her at the beginning of the book, that's the backstory.

She's really old now, and she has been sitting there in this wedding dress her whole adult life.

And she's so bitter and so um consumed with hurt, the hurt that came to her, that she's never, never moved past it ever.

And it's grotesque to see her sitting there.

Anyway, people come, young people come into her life.

And you'd think, as a as a novice reader, you might think, uh oh, this is good.

She'll turn and and bless young people, and it'll all turn out well.

You and I both know she didn't do that.

She has no practice for that.

She has no habit for kindness, she has no habit for forgiveness.

I love those words, practice and habit.

She's practiced something else.

She has practiced bitterness and she has nursed her hatred.

She has loved her hatred, she has loved her scorn, and when the young people come into her life, she ruins them too.

Dang.

She lives out in future generational relationships what she's practiced.

Yes.

The habit of her life.

Now, dude, what y'all ought to do is all go home right now and ponder that for about a week.

Oh, I got one more.

You want one more?

Please.

Okay.

Um, in the book, Brothers Karamazov, there are three, it's a great book.

There are three brothers.

They all represent what it means to be a human being.

So that's the cool part.

So of the three brothers, one represents the body, one represents the soul, and one represents the mind.

Their father is terrible.

He has left them as orphans, he has left them penniless, he has a he has taken all the money and spent it on just on like the like the uh younger brother here, on himself, on drink, he's an alcoholic, he's hired all these prostitutes, he's just a wretch.

And someone kills him.

That's how the whole thing starts.

Um, two of the brothers decide over the course of the book, the one that's the body and the one that's the soul, decide that now their father is gone, that they're going to forgive all of that because they have to move forward.

They don't want to get stuck and become him.

But guess who can't do it?

Or I should, no, no, no.

Guess who won't do it?

Amen.

The mind.

His name is Avon.

The mind won't do it.

He stays clutched to all the terrible things that his father did.

And no one is saying that the father was a good guy, was a terrible guy.

But Avon, who was so brilliant, stayed clutched.

He practiced the habit of hatred.

He practiced his habit of unforgiveness.

And in the end, what happens to him is he loses the very thing that he worshipped, his mind.

So in both of these stories, and I could go on all day.

What happens in the end to these characters who won't embrace anything but their hatred and their practice of unforgiveness?

Lose everything.

Thank you.

Listening to you, I was just thinking about that parable.

Um well, I think it's in Mark, but that parable where the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he says, Jesus, what do I need to do to uh in uh experience eternal life?

Jesus says, Well, obey all the Old Testament laws.

And remarkably, this dude in youthful arrogance and ignorance goes, Oh, I've got that down.

A plus.

And he says, Oh, really?

Way to go.

Good job.

Anything else I need to do?

Well, okay, let's take it up a notch.

Sell everything you got, give away everything you have to the poor and come follow me.

The man says, the young man says, um, or no, he doesn't say anything.

It says that he turned around with a face that is downcast and walked away.

And then the last verse is because he was very wealthy.

It is hard to let go of our riches.

Whether you're rich or poor, you got 20 bucks or 20 million, it is hard to let go of our wealth.

But I'm convinced after working on this lesson, let me tell you something harder to let go of our grudges.

We love them.

That older brother, he couldn't let go.

He could not let go of uh, had the younger brother done wrong, had the younger brother wronged his dad, wronged the family name, wasted his own wealth, and now is wasting the older brother's wealth.

It's not a matter of was the is the is the is the anger uh and the and the grudge, is it justified?

That's that's that's not the question.

The question is, older brother, what are you gonna do now?

And he made his choice.

He could not, just like that rich fella, he couldn't let go of his wealth.

This older brother, he couldn't let go of his wounds, his anger, his unforgiveness, his grudges.

Well, what I want us to do today, this is not a this is not a hard lesson.

This is not complicated, this is not deep spiritual waters.

This is as simple as this is first grade, second grade stuff.

But I want us to think about the cost that forgiveness demands.

Um, in that story in Matthew 18, you know, everybody knows the story.

There's a king, he decides I'm gonna settle up.

I got a lot of people, I got a lot of money that's been spread out into the kingdom through loans and business ventures.

I want to settle up.

And he calls in this fella who owes him, and here's what it says.

I don't know how much this is, but it's literally this man owes him, owes the king 10,000 bags of gold.

I don't know how much that is, but that sounds like a lot.

A lot.

Please forgive me.

I'll pay back every sense, which was a joke.

And the king remarkably says, You're forgiven.

Do you think about the cost of what that king decided to do?

He ate ten thousand bags of gold.

And really, that's the point that I want us to think about today.

The cost that that king willingly paid to give that servant forgiveness.

As Christians, most of us in this room would understand and believe that when God forgave us of our sins, there was a great cost that had to be paid.

God didn't just make some kind of an, well, like our United States government, we just, you know, hey, we're gonna wipe out all the student loan debt in the universe.

And um, well, what who's gonna pay that?

Well, nobody just wiped out.

It's vanished.

It's just an edict.

It's a, it's, it's, it's nothing.

Maybe we'll print some more money on our little uh Xerox machine or or uh, what's that thing used to use in school?

Mimeograph.

Yeah, mimeograph thing, and we'll just shoot out some money.

But there's no who there's no cost.

There's no there's no cost.

But that's not the way God, that's not the way it worked in heaven.

When God decided to forgive you and me of our sins, there was a cost for that forgiveness that had to be paid.

And the Bible says that God paid that cost through the suffering and the death of his son.

Listen to these verses.

Isaiah 53.

600 years before Jesus came, says that this person, Jesus, experienced being despised and rejected.

He experienced sorrow and grief.

He experienced punishment and crush.

He was crushed and pierced and beaten, and he lived a life of anguish.

Those are all cost.

If you could get in your mind, those words are cost that God's Son willingly paid so that we could all be forgiven of our sins.

Um, Hebrews 2, the Bible says that Jesus suffered death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one of us.

John 19 says that Jesus, hanging on the cross, Jesus tasted the vinegar, shouted out to telesty, or paid in full.

That's what that Greek word means.

Paid in full.

It's a cost.

I'm doing something up here.

I'm paying the debt for somebody.

Tasted the vinegar, shouted to telesty or paid in full, bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

There was a cost that God paid.

A terrible cost, a painful cost, a cost that involved suffering so that you and I could experience forgiveness.

I want to present, or we want to present to you today the idea that it's not just the forgiveness of God that demands cost.

Every time anybody, including God, but also including You and me.

Anytime forgiveness is given, there is a cost, a horrible cost that has to be paid.

Let me give you some quick examples.

Joseph, you know, with the dreams and the multicolored coat, and you know his brothers treated him bad, badly, very badly.

And they made some decisions that impacted Joseph's life, and for years he suffered terribly.

But one day, through the sovereignty of God, Joseph decided, I forgive you.

I forgive all ten of you for what you did.

There was a cost that Joseph swallowed, that he ate like the king ate ten thousand bags of gold.

Joseph ate the wrong that his brothers did to offer them forgiveness.

I think it's an important point to note that he did not deny the wrong.

Thank you.

He didn't say, Oh, it wasn't that bad.

It's no big deal.

No, no.

Yeah, it was a huge deal.

He was enslaved.

He was a slave for a long time.

Thank you.

No, I think that forgiveness has nothing to do with, in fact, for us to say when we've been wrong, well, it's no big deal.

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

No, no, no.

It is a huge deal, and you should worry about it, because I've got a dad that is mattered and Hades at you for what you did for me.

And I'm not sure what he's gonna do how he's gonna deal with you about it.

And that's biblical.

But I choose, as the person that you wronged, I choose to forgive you.

But that decision is costly.

That's the point that I'm trying to make.

When Moses forgave his brother and his sister for literally trying to take the nation of Israel away from his leadership, Moses chose to forgive them.

But it was costly for your own family to stab you in the back and try to basically have you murdered.

That cost Moses.

David and Saul, and David's choice to forgive.

Sherry says, I always mention Saul every, I met David every week.

Well, of course I do, because he's the Jesus of the Old Testament.

Of course I mention David every dead gum week.

For David to choose time and time again when he was in those caves, and then when he was that when he could have, he could have ended all his troubles.

But David chose to forgive Saul time and time again.

There was a cost that David was willing to pay.

And we could go on, Homer and Gomer, Homer, Hosea and Gomer, Lord help us.

I'm old.

Anyway, when Hosea chose to forgive his wife for walking away from all that Hosea had given Gomer and basically go back into a life of terribleness, Hosea forgave her, but there was a cost involved in doing that.

And I could go on.

Paul in the Philippian jailer.

Philippian jailer had just beaten Paul the night before, just a few hours before.

I don't know about you, but for somebody to beat me with a whip, I mean, bang, but that's a bad deal.

Blood, my back's still bleeding.

And Paul forgave the Philippian jailer and dead gum, and he shared the gospel with him and led him with the Lord.

There was a cost.

That was not just some, there was a cost these people paid.

And I just want us to think today about that cost.

That as Christians, Jesus declares that no servant is greater than his master, no messenger is greater than the one who sent him.

Mark 10 says, Jesus says to the disciples, and that's me and you, you will drink the cup that I drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized with.

Hebrews 10, remember after you got saved, how you endured great conflict and suffering and insult and persecution and financial loss.

For you knew you had something better, something lasting.

So don't lose heart.

God will not forget, you will be richly rewarded.

Paul says in Romans 8, we are the children of God and co-heirs with Christ if we share in his suffering, which results in his glory.

Philippians 2 says, Act like Jesus, who, though he was God, made himself nothing and became a servant and suffered for you and me.

And I could go on and on and on with these verses that tell us Jesus did not come here to hand out eternal life, get out of hell free cards.

Me and my grandson love to play Monopoly.

And he loves to play with me because he always wins.

And if you ever play Monopoly, you get these get out of jail cards.

And that's great for Monopoly.

Jesus did not come to give us get out of free, get out of hell free cards.

He came to offer us life.

But it's a life that, by definition, it is to be emulated.

Jesus paid a cost to offer us forgiveness.

Jesus asks us, begs us, commands us to follow Him by willingly pay a similar cost.

And it is a cost.

There's a cost for you to forgive your son-in-law or your daughter-in-law, or your mom, or your dad, or your mate, or your kid, or your parent, or your coworker, or your neighbor.

There's a cost to do that.

It's not that we we wait, we we wait around for these, oh I'll forgive, Brenda, when I'm no longer angry.

I'll forgive when the thoughts of anger and pain are no longer in my mind and my heart.

Well, if they float away, well, then there's no cost.

Where's the cost in that?

It's because we do know, we do remember the pain is still there.

But I choose to act like Jesus and willingly pay the cost to forgive you, even though the pain is there.

That's the cost.

I treat you like I want to be treated.

I speak about you like I hope you'll speak about me.

I will pray for you and for God's blessings on you, like I'm praying for God's blessings upon my children.

That's the cost.

But I don't want to do that.

I don't like doing that.

That doesn't taste good.

I know it.

But Jesus tasted death.

Well, I taste that the reason that doesn't taste good to us is because it's death.

There's a death I'm experiencing.

Do you want to?

So I want to engage that jail, get out of jail metaphor for just one quick second.

You know, it's interesting, and I didn't think about it until just this minute, that one of the phrases, one of the last phrases that Jesus said on the cross was, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.

Well, there's there's a literal um meaning to that.

They were crucifying the Son of God, they didn't know what they were doing.

But there is a meta literal um situation going there that is equal, and that is forgive them because they don't know that they're imprisoning themselves.

And so for me to not forgive, which is not easy, puts me though in the same prison.

That prison of not being able to move forward, that prison of grudge holding, that prison of hate that puts me there in that same place.

Um when the gospel says very clearly, or Paul says very clearly, Jesus came to set us free so that we can be free.

He opened the door to that cell so that we can walk out.

He opened the door.

But there's many a person, and the door is wide open, but they will not leave that cell.

Oh, I know it's there, I know the door's wide open, but I'm just gonna stay here.

I'm gonna stay here.

We we are so convinced, and I mean all of us, that our pain and our hurt is so singular that it is the one place that's the that's the worst hurt in the world.

And to give that up is well, you just you just don't understand.

Um you don't understand the level of my pain.

Well, probably every everybody has that.

I'm not diminishing it, but everybody, as Ms.

Lacey says, if you live long enough, everybody gets a turn.

Everybody gets a turn.

Everybody gets a turn.

If you die at age two, okay.

But if you live any length of time, you're good.

There's not a person in here that hasn't been wronged and hurt deeply.

We can ignore it, we can pretend it's not there, we can numb ourselves with dope, or we can uh uh distract ourselves with uh mahjong and bingo and everything else.

But at the end of the day, um we've all been hurt.

The question is, what am I gonna do with that?

And the answer is that there is only one real answer, one biblical answer.

You gotta you gotta pay the cost.

But I didn't create the debt.

I know.

I know.

But that's what forgiveness is.

It's a willingness to pay the debt that somebody else created.

And it's not fair, it's not pleasant, it's not easy, it's not quick.

But that's that's if you're not a Christian, I'd stay mad and I'd hate till I'd die.

Doesn't change the outcome, though.

No, it doesn't.

But of what you become.

But I don't as a Christian, because here's the deal we can choose not to pay the cost.

But there's a cost in choosing, there's a cost in choosing to forgive.

But there's a cost in choosing not to forgive.

That dude, if you read the rest of that parable, but those that slave, that servant that wouldn't uh forgive, he spent the rest of his life in prison.

And I've I we don't have time today, but we've got I've got all these examples when uh Herod's daughter, uh no, yeah, daughter-in-law, Herodias, that little girl, you know, the the the uh this girl danced for her stepdad, did some kind of shenanigans.

Anyway, and the king says, I'll give you half my kingdom.

I'll give you half my kingdom.

Little girl runs to her mom and says, Dad said that I can have half the kingdom.

What should I ask for?

And her mom goes, I want John the Baptist head.

Wonder if six months later, six years later, sixteen years later, twenty five years later, there's a head.

Wait, are you glad with that choice?

Is that is that are you glad later that was the choice you picked, little girl?

You could have had, you could have gone to the party.

You could have gone to the party, but all you got's a bloody head.

The Bible talks about forgive, pay the cost, forgive, because if you don't, the Bible says that we open our lives up to the attack of the devil.

I'm not trying to be morbid here, but that infidel, satanic-filled piece of trash that killed that teacher at St.

Mary's.

Would you let him in your house?

Would you let him spend the night at your house?

Would you let him eat at your set table?

You think he's evil?

The one that fills his life is way more evil.

And the Bible says, if I choose not to forgive, I open my life up to the devil.

Where is it?

Is it a parable or is it um where someone asks, how many times do I have to forgive?

Well, and I don't know the tone there.

I don't know the tone.

Peter asks Jesus.

Not a parable.

Peter asked Jesus, not in a parable.

How many times do we have to forgive?

And I can in in my mind, I hear it as a slightly, I don't know if it was, but in my mind I hear it as slightly petulant.

Well, how many times I might have to forgive?

I've already forgiven a bunch.

How many?

And Jesus says, 70 times seven.

Let's not get tied up in the literal 490 times.

But rather, could it be that Jesus was saying to a person he loves so much, Peter, his right-hand guy, or one of them, Peter's asking a question.

Maybe it's not petulant, maybe it is.

How many times do I have to do that?

And I think for me, the the response is just one more.

Just just do it, do it again.

Just do it again because every time you forgive that person, and then of course we step back, and then something else happens.

But we are practicing the act of following Christ, Jesus' words on the cross.

I'm gonna I I took oh, I took it back.

But I so I'm gonna start again.

And I do believe that eventually, with that practice, the Holy Spirit helps us.

And then it's not that we forget, I don't forget any hurt, but we've moved further from it because we have practiced forgiving again and then again, and oops, I slipped back, and so I want to.

I think that's an important point here.

It's not a one-and-done who no one does that.

Well, you said it at the beginning.

That thing of that of that lady, Miss Hammersham, ended her life living out and relating to others what she had practiced.

I think we all will.

And when God takes those away, then I can forgive.

And I want to appeal to us, it's the other way around.

The Bible from beginning to end declares loudly: don't let your feelings lead.

Make them follow.

They're the slaves, they're the servants, they're the B team.

Choose life, choose freedom, choose righteousness, choose to do what to choose the life that Jesus lived and make your feelings follow up behind.

And if you follow Jesus long enough, maybe your feelings will catch up and join the good team, the A team.

Maybe they won't, but they're still the B team.

Choose to pay the cost that your Savior paid for you, and that we're so glad He did, and that many others in our lives have also paid for us.

How many times has my wife paid the cost of forgiving me?

How many times has my mom, how many times have many of you paid the cost of forgiving me?

And I'm thankful that you have.

Am I willing to do that for you?

Am I willing to do that for others?

But this thing about us waiting around till we feel like forgiving somebody.

Ms.

Haversham never got that feeling.

Well, she moved further and further away from that every day.

And she missed the party.

I don't want to miss the party.

I don't want you to miss the party.

Let's choose to pay the cost and forgive the people.

Pray for them like they were our own.

God bless them.

God fill them with your joy and your peace.

Do good to them when we can.

I'll tell you the number one thing, and I'll end with this.

You wanna you wanna get to a place where you can actually forgive somebody?

Stop talking about them.

Stop talking about them.

Stop talking mean about them.

Stop talking mean to them.

Be quiet.

Just be quiet.

Just be quiet.

Because as long as you're talking about the people that have hurt you or talking meanly to the people that have hurt you, you know you don't have a dog's chance in Hades of forgiving them.

Just be quiet.

Okay.

Oh, for friends.

Real friends.

I was talking to somebody yesterday about, you know, you surely loves to watch these award shows like the Oscars and the all those other kinds of deals.

And these people stand up, you know, in front of 5,000 people and 50 million people on the uh, you know, out in TV world, and they go, I I love y'all.

You do?

Do you know my name?

Well, no, but I love you.

Y'all are my friends.

Really?

Do you know my name?

No, but you're my friend.

I'm your friend.

Is that right?

I don't need any friends like that.

I need somebody, I'll tell you the friend I need.

I'm a serious article.

I need a friend that will let me talk meanly about my the people that have hurt me once or twice, and then at some point.

They go, hey, you talked about that person a couple times.

Let's not talk about them anymore.

That's the friend I need that'll tell me to be quiet so that I can ultimately get to a place where I'll forgive them.

That's now there's a friend.

I would like that friend.

That would tell me that.

You've mentioned them a couple times.

I got it.

I know you're hurt.

I know you're mad.

I know they're a rat.

Let's move on.

Let's move on.

That's a friend.

Okay.

We're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

We eat this bread, which represents the body of Jesus, and we drink this juice, which represents his blood, every week.

And in one very specific way, this is our attempt to remind ourselves and one another of the cost that Jesus paid so that he could forgive us.

He paid a cost with his body and his blood so that his dad could say, You are no longer my enemy.

You now are my child.

And I've got a robe for you, and I've got a ring for you.

And I've got new shoes for you.

I've got a room in my house for you.

You are one of mine.

I claim you, I call you by name.

I love you.

That came with a cost.

And Jesus said, I'll pay that with my body and my blood.

And we eat and we drink.

Sandra, Sandra.

Thank you.

We're talking about important stuff.

We're talking about important stuff.

Okay.

Jesus paid a cost.

And so we eat and we drink to declare that, to remind ourselves of that.

And hopefully to remind ourselves, am I willing to pay that cost too?

Am I willing to pay that cost too?

That's the goal.

That's the goal.

So I invite you.

Well, I need some folks.

Woody, would you and Kristen come up and help me?

And Don and Kathy, y'all ain't been here in six months, so y'all come up here and go.

We take the Lord's Supper every week.

Y'all come up here and help us.

I'm just hazing.

Come on.

God.

See, now you got to forgive me.

Isn't that great?

Hooray.

They've got uncovered wine, and they've got covered wine and bread, and then I've got some bread.

So if you'd like to come and eat and drink and be reminded of the cost Jesus paid, so that God could forgive you and forgive me.

And just as a way of declaring, God, help me to willingly pay the cost of forgiving others.

The good news is the Bible declares that God's grace is greater than your enemy's sin.

And it's greater than your wounds, and it's greater than your sin, too.

That's the good news of the gospel.

So you come if you'd like to.