Forgiven to Forgive | The One Another Way - Ephesians 4:30-32 | Brian Squires

Well, it's good to be here this morning.

It is for me, anyways.

Are you glad you're here?

Good.

Good.

It's a good place to be.

Um before I get started on this, I may just say a word about the video.

That's right.

God is faithful to the third generation.

And so I just I want you to know that truth this morning.

That He is faithful.

And uh even when we're not, He is.

So I'm very pleased to share that with you guys this morning.

And I'm sure if you're a grandparent, you know how that is.

So as I stated earlier in the welcome, we are continuing in our series this morning, our one another series.

And uh and today's message is from Ephesians uh chapter four, and um and it's about forgiveness.

And so uh I I went out on a limb and I've titled the sermon Forgive One Another.

So, yeah, it took me a long time to come up with that title.

A lot of research, a lot of market research, but um so you know, over the last couple of decades, the last 20 years or so, uh because I think of the internet and social media, the our culture, we have developed what researchers call the chronic grievance culture.

The chronic grievance culture.

So the algorithms that that show us what we see when we get on social media, they know what pushes our button.

Because that seems to be the thing that makes us keep coming back.

And so they keep showing us all of these things that push our buttons.

And it and it gives us reasons to be mad and offended at some group or some person, and we become, we've become as a society an angry and offended and unforgiving society.

And you know that to be true.

You you just look around and you see how people act.

And and to kind of show you how that works, I brought this glass of water with me this morning.

No, I'm not gonna do that.

Let's see how many people get offended.

So if I asked you, how much do you think this glass of water weighs?

How heavy do you think this is?

You might say, well, I don't know, a few ounces, maybe a pound or so.

You know, and then the reality is it's not really about how much this weighs, but if I hold this glass of water here like this while I talk to you for a few minutes, it's not a big deal, is it?

But if I were to hold this glass of water like this for an hour or two, my arm might start to get tired and hurting.

If I tried to hold this glass of water for a day or two, my arm might just go numb, right?

And that's kind of the way it is with unforgiveness, isn't it?

The longer it's not about the size of it, it's not about the weight of it, it's about how long we choose to hold on to it.

And I asked you this morning, what glass of water did you bring in with you this morning?

What have you been holding on to?

And you just can't set it down.

Let's look at our passage this morning in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

It's uh verses 30 through 32.

And it says this do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.

And so, I've said the title of the message is Forgive One Another, but when we look at this passage, I think there's a little bit more in there that we can unpack this morning, and so I want to I want to do that for you, and and I want to first start with verse 31.

It says this get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Now, when you're when you're uh doing your read the Bible through thing and you're blowing through these verses because you're trying to check off that box, right?

I read this, you know, what I had to read tonight, you might look at that and go, okay, this is kind of Paul's laundry list of nasty things.

And what's he telling us?

He says, hey, I want you to get rid of this laundry list of nasty things.

But if you uh if you look at it at least with my brain, what I see is not just a laundry list of things, but a progression.

And I'm calling this the progression of unforgiveness.

The progression of unforgiveness.

Now, it may just be me, because I I I did get an engineering degree.

I'm not sure how that happened.

That's a God thing in and of itself.

I was telling somebody before the service started, I tried my best not to let my extracurricular activities get in the way of school.

Uh, and I still managed to make it through.

And so I think this way, and I think, and I love a I love a good progression, right?

And so uh so as we look at the verse, what we see is that it begins with bitterness.

It begins with bitterness, right?

What does he say?

He says, get rid of all bitterness.

That's the first thing that we see.

And so unforgiveness, unforgiveness, it rarely starts with a bang.

It's really, it's really more about a hurt or a grievance that we have.

Somebody said something, somebody did something, somebody didn't do something that we expected, right?

And we're offended by this thing that they did or didn't do, or the thing that they said or didn't say, but we're offended by that, and we take offense, and what do we do?

We internalize that.

We hold on to it, and we stew on it, and we ruminate on it, and we play it in the tape player of our mind over and over again.

And unless you're younger and then you stream it.

So you see, you know, the whole tape player thing, right?

That's not a thing anymore.

But we we play it over and over again.

And what do we do?

The longer we play it, and then the longer we think about it, and the more we ruminate on it, the more bitter we become.

The writer of Hebrews gives us this warning about bitterness.

He says in Hebrews 12, 15, see to it that no one misses the grace of God, and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.

No bitter root, see to it that no bitter root grows up.

It's interesting to me the contrast in this verse.

Do you see the contrast?

He says, Look, you don't want a bitter root to grow up in your life.

But what does he say at first?

See to it that no one misses the grace of God.

That's the contrast, right?

The grace of God, the bitter root.

And what is he saying?

He says, look, you he's saying, like the great philosopher of the 60s said, you've got to nip it.

Nip it in the bud.

Right?

I see, I see, I've got my audience.

That's right.

He says, You got to you got to stop it.

And how do you stop it?

How do you stop it from growing?

You remember the grace of God.

How much grace have you been shown?

So the best way to stop this bitterness is to recognize it before it gets going.

Is to recognize it before it gets going.

So, so, but if we don't, if we hold on to this bitterness and we and it's left unchecked, then it progresses and it progresses into trouble.

And we can see that if we go back to our verse again, verse 31, it says this get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, and brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Do you see the progression?

Let me show you the progression.

It starts with bitterness.

It starts with bitterness.

And we talked about bitterness, and we talked about how bitterness is in our life, and it just consumes us.

We just think about this thing all the time.

And we get bitter.

But listen, it don't stay at bitterness.

It moves, it moves to rage and anger.

Bitterness becomes rage and anger.

The next step in the progression, I'm bitter about this thing, but then what?

I get mad about it.

Right?

And I become this mad person.

And I they couldn't do that to me.

They can't say that to me.

And I'm I'm mad and I'm angry.

And I become this mad and angry person.

And then it moves from rage and anger to brawling and slander.

You see that?

I'm mad, I'm an angry person.

And what how's that come out?

How does that come out?

It comes out like this.

You're on my side, right?

You see this my way, right?

I'm gathering my people together.

And why am I gathering together?

Because we're gonna throw down, baby.

And you heard about what they did to me.

You heard about that.

You don't agree with it, right?

You don't agree with it, right?

That's brawling, that's slander.

We start throwing people under the bus.

And then it ends up in this last stop.

It ends up with what Paul says is every form of malice.

You just become this angry, bitter person that just wishes the worst on everybody.

That's what malice is.

Oh, they get what's coming to them.

Can't do that to me.

Can't you say that about me?

Well, and what does that do?

Where does that end?

Well, it ends here.

It culminates in a curmudgeon.

Ah, gotcha.

I've been waiting to get that way.

I love that word.

Such a great word.

It culminates in a curmudgeon.

You know these people.

You've been around these people, right?

They're no fun.

They're angry and they're bitter and everything.

Everything is not right.

There's nothing, nobody, it's like if you were handing out money, it'd be the wrong denomination.

Well, I was really hoping to get a 10.

I got a short video here of two of my favorite curmudgeons.

Watch this.

You know something?

That was a sweet number.

It sure was.

You know something else?

What?

I hate sweet numbers.

You suppose they have any life on other planets?

What do you care?

You don't have any life on this one.

So many of these songs are long and boring.

They finally managed one short and boring.

Does that mean they're getting better or worse?

It's called the medium sketch.

The medium sketch?

Yeah, it wasn't rare and it certainly wasn't well done.

Two of my favorite curmudgeons.

And you know, that's that's that's the that's the stereotype, isn't it?

It's the old man, crutchety old man.

That's the trope that we have for this curmudgeon thing.

But the reality is a curmudgeon is somebody who's just never happy.

Nothing ever goes to suit them.

The glass is always half empty.

And, you know, we laugh at that, but the reality is, do you want to be that person?

That the black cloud follows you around.

You're always negative and bitter.

You know, Paul says this, he says, get rid of these things.

Get rid of them.

They have no place in the heart and the life of a Christ follower.

And so I think if if we were gonna get rid of those things out of our life, if we're gonna get rid of that, all of that junk, we need to understand kind of fundamentally where does that come from?

Where does all that junk come from?

You can't eliminate it if you don't understand it if you can't pinpoint it.

And here's the deal pride.

Pride is the principal element.

Pride is the principal element in all of that.

Our pride says, you can't say that to me.

You can't do that to me.

I demand justice.

I don't get even, I get ahead.

That's our pride.

Proverbs, the writer of Proverbs in chapter 13, verse 10 says this pride only breeds quarrels.

But wisdom is found in those who take advice.

So it is our, it's our flesh, it's our fleshly pride that demands that justice be done.

Or at least the thing that we have determined is justice must be done, right?

And it's our pride that holds on to that hurt and that unforgiveness.

It's our pride that binds us up in unforgiveness.

It's our pride that causes us to hold the glass until we can't feel our arm anymore.

And somehow we think in all that we're getting even.

And you know, most of the time the person that you're getting even with don't even have a clue.

They don't have a clue.

James tells us this in James chapter 4, verse 6, but he gives us more grace.

James 4:6

That's why the scripture says God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

So you want to know more of God?

You want to be closer to God?

You want to experience God and his fullness in your life?

Let go of the pride.

Let go of the bitterness.

Let go of the unforgiveness.

The writer of Proverbs said in chapter 11, verse 2 when pride comes, then comes disgrace.

But with humility comes wisdom.

So it's this pride.

That's at the root of everything.

That's what causes all of this.

So we've seen the progression of what unforgiveness and bitterness can do to us.

But now I want to look at another, one of the other verses.

I want to look at the spiritual fallout.

The spiritual fallout of unforgiveness.

And we see this in verse 30 of our passage.

It says this, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

So there's a couple of things that I want us to see, a couple of truths that I think are in this verse that I want to point out to you this morning.

And the first truth is this it comes toward the end of the verse, and it says, We're sealed with the Spirit.

We're sealed with the Spirit.

Now, what does that mean?

What does it mean that we are sealed with the Spirit?

Well, if you look at the verse, he says, we're sealed with the Spirit for the day of redemption.

So there's a couple of things that we need to understand about this concept of being sealed with the Spirit.

And Paul tells us this in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 22, he says this.

2 Corinthians 1:22

I'll put the God part in there.

God set his seal of ownership on us and put his spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

So here's the deal.

When you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, when you bow your knee to him, when you say, I dedicate my life from this minute forward to you, Jesus, I'm going to follow you.

I want you to be my Savior.

When you do that, the scriptures are very clear, the Holy Spirit comes to reside in you.

And one of the things that that resonance does, when the Holy Spirit sets up residence in you, it's God putting his stamp on you.

His seal.

He says, Brian is mine.

I'm putting the Holy Spirit in his heart, and that's my way of saying that he belongs to me and nobody else.

And the second thing we see is that in this 2 Corinthians verse, he set his seal of ownership on us, and he put his spirit in our hearts as a deposit, as a guarantee.

I don't know if you've ever bought a house, but you go house shopping and you find the house that you want, and oh, this is the perfect house until you move in it.

But what does the real estate agent say?

They say, well, you need to put down some earnest money.

That's usually what they call it, a deposit, earnest money.

And what does that say?

Well, you put that money down because you're telling the current owner, I intend to buy this house.

I'm locking it up.

And so God puts his spirit in us and he stamps us and he says, You're mine.

You belong to me.

And not only that, this is a guarantee.

It's a guarantee for all the things to come.

Not the least of which is you will spend eternity with me.

So when we look at that and we see that when Paul talks about not grieving the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, one of the things that we need to understand is that he is talking to Christians.

He's talking to Christians, to believers, people who have been sealed, been stamped.

People who are going to heaven.

And so the second truth that we can see from that verse is in the first part of the verse where he says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

What does that mean?

What does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit of God?

Well, let me tell you first of all what it does not mean.

It does not mean that you will lose your salvation.

Because he just said, you were sealed, you were stamped, you were declared God's property.

So when he says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit, he's not talking about losing your salvation.

He's not talking about the Holy Spirit walking away from you.

So what is he talking about then when he says, Don't grieve the Holy Spirit?

Well, one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to live within us and to teach us and to guide us in how to be holy and righteous.

Okay?

So that's one of his functions.

One of his functions is he lives in.

Each believer, and his job is to teach us and guide us and interpret scripture for us so that we can be holy and righteous.

And when we hang on in our pride, in our bitterness to this unforgiveness, it makes him incredibly sad.

It does.

And why wouldn't it?

Because you're saying, I know that your job is to help make me holy, but I've decided I don't really want to be holy.

I really rather hang on to this thing.

I'd really rather be bitter.

I'd really rather be unforgiving.

And the whole time, you know, it's like a parent who sees their child going off down a trail, and they're like, that's not good for you.

And the kid just keeps going.

And what does it do?

It makes you sad.

I'm sad breaks your heart.

And I can remember in my younger days doing some things.

And had a friend's parent caught me doing these things.

And I said, please don't tell my mom.

Really for two reasons.

But the biggest reason is it will break her heart.

It will break her heart.

And it breaks the heart of the Holy Spirit because we are living at less than our potential.

He says, Look, I live in you, I'm guiding you, and I know what God wants for you, and I know God wants you to be victorious, and I know that God wants you to be filled with his joy, and I know that God has a purpose for you.

And if you hold on to this bitterness and this unforgiveness, you will never achieve the things that God has for you.

You're holding yourself back.

You're living beneath your potential.

And it makes him sad.

So we've seen that unforgiveness and bitterness, it has this progression.

It can turn us into this person that we don't want to be.

And in the process of doing that, we can grieve the Holy Spirit of God that lives within us.

It's supposed to be our constant source of wisdom and power.

So what can we do?

What can we do to avoid this?

Let's look at the remedy for unforgiveness.

What is the remedy for unforgiveness?

Well, we find that in our last verse of our passage in Ephesians 4.32.

It says this be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

So I think when we break this verse down, we see three elements that we need to cultivate in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us.

You can't do this.

You can't do these things on your own.

Okay?

Let me just tell you that straight up up front.

You have to be powered by the Holy Spirit to do these things.

And so the first element that we that we see is that we need to be kind.

Be kind.

And we know in other passages that Paul tells us that kindness is one of the fruits of the Spirit.

But what does it mean to be kind?

You know, and I asked some people that when I was preparing this, I said, you know, what does it mean to be kind?

That's a it's it's a little short word.

It carries a lot of meaning, doesn't it?

I looked up kindness in the dictionary and it said, the act of being kind.

I said, well, that was a great help.

Was it, you know, I think we can look at Colossians chapter 3, verse 12, and Paul talks about this in a little different light, in a little different way.

Colossians 3:12

He says, This, therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

And so you see this word kindness, and it's stuck in there with these other words like humility and gentleness and compassion and patience.

And kindness is kind of one of those things, isn't it?

It's like, well, I don't know, I don't know how to describe kindness, but I know it when I see it.

And when we look at the scriptures, we see acts of kindness.

If you study the scripture, you'll see that we're told that Rahab showed kindness to the spies when she hid them in the wall.

Jesus told us a parable and told us about who our neighbor was.

And he said, Your neighbor is the guy who shows kindness, like this man showed kindness to the man who'd been beat up.

We call him the Good Samaritan.

In Acts chapter 9, we're told that Tabitha or Dorcas made clothes for all the widows.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

And it calls her kind.

And her kindness.

Also in Acts, it tells us that the people of Malta, when Paul and his buds there all got shipwrecked on the island, it says that they showed them kindness and they took them in and took care of them.

So kindness, kindness belongs in this list, right?

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Kindness requires us to get beyond ourselves.

Kindness requires us to look beyond just our needs, but to the needs of other people.

He goes on in verse 32, and he says this not only be kind, but be compassionate.

Be compassionate.

Now, in 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 8, Peter tells us this finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another, be sympathetic.

1 Peter 3:8

Love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.

Be compassionate.

Compassion like kindness requires that we put ourselves aside and see the other person in their situation and put them ahead of ourselves.

Right?

Look what he uses.

Look at the words he uses.

Be sympathetic.

Love his brothers.

Be compassionate.

And always, we always see this word.

It keeps coming up over and over again.

Humble.

Humility.

See, you can't be kind and you can't be compassionate without humility.

It doesn't work that way, right?

When we're all full of ourselves, we want other people to be kind to us.

And we want other people to be compassionate to us.

Man, anybody can do that.

We're just built for that.

It's the Holy Spirit that moves inside of us, gives us the power, gives us the drive, it gives us the antennas to be sensitive to the people around us that need to be shown kindness and compassion.

Let me ask you this question.

When was the last time that you were moved with genuine compassion for somebody that's not related to you?

When was the last time that you were moved with genuine compassion for somebody that's not related to you?

Be compassionate.

But then the last thing, this kindness and this compassion, they lead us to the overall thing.

And this is what we've been talking about all morning, right?

They lead us to be forgiving.

Be forgiveness.

Forgiveness flows from kindness and compassion.

And Paul restates it in Colossians like this.

In Colossians chapter 3, verse 13, Paul says, This bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.

Colossians 3:13

Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

When you go back to the verse in Ephesians, he says kind of the same thing, doesn't he?

He always, Paul, he always comes back to Jesus.

What is up with that?

Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Look, notice what he says.

Bear with each other.

Bear with each other.

He might as well be saying, stop being so offended.

Stop wearing your heart on your sleeve.

Stop looking for a hundred ways that somebody could do something not the way you want it done.

Stop thinking about yourself for a minute.

And think about other people.

Forgive whatever grievances.

Man, that covers a lot of territory, doesn't it?

That covers big grievances and little grievances and every grievance in between.

And I know you're sitting out there and you're thinking, well, you don't know what I've been through.

Let me point you at that last of that verse.

I don't know what you've been through, but I know what a dirty, rotten, black sinner you are.

I know.

Because I am one.

As we all are.

We come out of the womb that way.

And I know this.

God forgave me.

And God forgave you.

How in the world?

How in the world could you say I would never forgive that person?

Oh my goodness, how could you say that?

What if Jesus had said that?

Man, Squires, he's a lost cause, man.

He's just around the bin.

He said, I need to forgive me.

I can't.

Do you see what he did last week?

You see what he said to that guy?

I could never forgive that.

He didn't say that, did he?

No, as a matter of fact, he hung on the cross between heaven and earth with his lifeblood draining out.

And in the last few moments of his life, he looked down at the people who had nailed him there.

The people who had cursed him.

The people he came to save, the people who said, I hate you.

And he said, Father, forgive them.

Because they just don't get it.

And you know what?

If you claim the name of Jesus Christ, then you're telling me I get it.

I get it.

I get how black I was.

How black my sin was.

I get that his blood covered my sin.

I get that I'm white as snow.

I get that.

And I am willing to give that to somebody else.

Listen.

Forgiveness is not saying that it's okay.

That what that person did is okay.

It's not saying, it's not saying that I accept that.

What it's saying is, I am not going to hold on to that.

I'm going to give that to God and I'm going to let God take care of it.

And you know what forgiveness does?

It frees you, it gives you freedom.

Now you may have to get up every morning for a year and say, God, I choose today to forgive this person.

I choose to do that.

And through the power of your spirit, work on me and change me.

And he'll do it.

And before long, you want on that.

He'll be gone.

Listen, God wants you to live in victory.

And the ultimate goal behind all of this, because who is Paul talking to?

He's talking to the church.

And he's saying, I need for you guys to forgive each other.

I need for you to be able to overlook these things.

Why?

Because I need for everybody in this room to pull the rope in the same direction.

I need for you to be unified.

Unified around the cross of Jesus Christ.

Our goal is to bring as many people with us as we can to heaven.

And when you live with bitterness and unforgiveness, it spoils your testimony.

And it cripples what God can do.

God wants to use you to love on other people.

God wants to use you to show you who He is to the people around you.

God doesn't want you to be the bitter curmudgeon.

He wants you to be the joyful person that lights up the room when you come in.

So what about it?

What about it?

Are you holding on to something this morning?

You got somebody in your mind and it's like, oh, I just could never, I could never get past that.

I'm telling you, he'll get you past it.

He can do it.

Forgive him.

Forgive him.

Put the glass down.

Put it down.

And let it go.

He wants you to do that.

Because he knows how good it'll be.

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, God, in our own, we understand.

In our own flesh, we don't own this.

We can't do this.

We can't forgive somebody.

Because, God, we know that some people do really bad things to each other.

But God, we know that your word tells us that we're sealed with your spirit.

Your spirit lives in us.

And it's the same power that rose Jesus from the dead.

It quickens us.

And so, God, I pray that if there is somebody here this morning and they're just holding on to this bitterness and they're holding on to this unforgiveness, God, I pray that you would help them to bring it to you and leave it at the foot of the cross.

God, I pray that you would help them through the power of your spirit to forgive and let it go and live the life of victory and joy that you've called us to.

God, we thank you that you don't leave us and you don't forsake us.

But you always want us to get better.

And I pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.