Beware Of Practicing Your Righteousness Before Men #8

So this morning, we're going to be finishing our study of the Lord's Prayer in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. And this week's sermon is about the connection between our forgiveness of sins that comes from God. I'm sorry, I said that the wrong way. It's about the forgiveness of the sins that are committed against us and the Lord's forgiveness of us. Jesus ties these things together, saying that if we forgive others, our sins will be forgiven. But if we don't, then we won't. And so my hope this morning is that God will help us to forgive other people and not to harbor in our hearts bitterness and anger and unforgiveness toward one another, toward those who've sinned against us. Our text is Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to 15. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Pray then in this way, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. For if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. There's something we have to get straight right at the beginning of this, and it's what forgiveness comes first. If you read this text, we could understand why you would think that God's forgiveness is predicated upon or preceded by our forgiveness. It says, forgive us our debts current. Will you forgive our debts as we also have forgiven in the past our debtors? And so our first point this morning is to see that God is the one who forgives first.

not us. In Colossians 3, verses 12 and 13, Paul argues this way. He says, And so in Colossians, we can see that God's forgiveness is The first forgiveness, that our forgiveness flows out of it. We should do for others what has been done for us by God first. Excuse me. And so I want you to think for a second. If you had to forgive someone, when you've had to forgive someone, are you any good at it? Is it the thing that wells up inside of you when someone sins against you? You go, you know what I need to do? I need to forgive that person.

Sometimes perhaps that is what we think or what we know we should do. But if we're honest about what goes on in our hearts, we admit that's not our first inclination. It's not to forgive those who sinned against us. But many times it's to sin against them in like or worse manner. And so if it were for us to forgive first, if God's forgiveness of our sins was built on our forgiveness of other people's sins, where would we be in our relationship with God? Would our sins ever be forgiven? The answer is, of course not. If God stood and waited for us to forgive one another and then said, if you'll do that, then I'll forgive you, we would all be left unforgiven, bearing the weight of our own sins. In Romans 3, Paul tells us that there is none righteous, no, not one. And forgiveness is a part of our unrighteousness, that we don't forgive as we should, as we've been forgiven.

Many times when we come to the work of forgiving other people, we don't come at it and say, God's forgiven me, so I'm going to forgive you. God has made a deposit into our account of forgiveness that we can then dispense to other people as God fills our account of forgiveness for our own sins. Instead, what we do is we'll sit and we'll think, who sinned first? Whose fault is it? Because they're the person who needs to repent first. Or maybe we won't think who sinned first. We'll think, who sins the most? Glad I'm not as great of a sinner as they are. Or maybe we'll think, who sins the worst? Whose sins are the worst? Sure, I'm a sinner and I might have gone first. And I might even sin more, but I don't sin as grievously as the other person. And these are just some of the thoughts that we have toward those who sin against us. And all of them mount up in the direction of us not forgiving one another. These are all justifications for why we would not say to someone, I forgive you. But does it matter who sinned first? Does it matter who sins most?

Or does it matter who sinned the worst? No, in God's sight, those things don't matter because all sins, no matter how great or small, are worthy of death and lead to our condemnation. And so we are, in effect, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, arguing about things that in the end don't matter and are going to be at the bottom of the sea. Or in terms of forgiveness in hell, if it were left to us, we would not forgive. We simply would not do it. What is forgiveness? What is forgiveness? Is forgiveness simply holding your tongue when you're upset with someone? Is forgiveness never speaking of it again? Is forgiveness a list of things that the person's supposed to do? Is forgiveness a threat? If you don't do this, then I won't forgive you. Or if you do it again, then I will reach back and remember the things you did before and bring them back to the present.

Forgiveness is none of those things. Forgiveness is a free gift that's given to people who don't deserve it. Forgiveness is a Christian virtue. Unbelievers may in their way be able to overlook a certain amount of sin or a certain type of sin. An unbeliever may be able to rationalize in their head why they shouldn't make a big deal about this or that sin. Because in the end, it wouldn't serve them well to be upset about it. But that's not forgiveness. Forgiveness is not deciding to keep your mouth shut or to ignore a sin because it would be a bother to you if you did. Forgiveness requires that you acknowledge there's real sin that's occurred, not theoretical. When we ask God to forgive us, we're not asking him to forgive our nature. We have a sinful nature. Would you forgive us for having a sinful nature?

It's true that we have a sinful nature, but that's not what we ask forgiveness for. What we ask forgiveness for was our expressions of that sinful nature this last day and week and month and life. Would you forgive me for the things I did? For the things I said? For the things I thought? For the things I wanted? And so forgiveness can only happen or occur when a failure has been acknowledged. A sin has been seen. And I'm afraid many times this simple prayer that Jesus teaches us to pray, forgive us our debts. We go to great extents to avoid acknowledging that we need forgiveness from God. I think many times with regard to our own sins, we don't seek forgiveness when we speak to God about them. We may well pray about them, but we would pray for our circumstance to change or for someone else to change. And what's underneath that, just below the surface, is a justification for why we did the thing we did.

Lord, would you change my circumstance because it's what caused me to sin? Lord, would you soften that person's heart because their behavior tempted me to sin? You have to realize that's not a prayer like the one Jesus tells us to offer here. Forgive us our debts. Forgive us our sins. That's a justification for them. That's a downgrade. It wasn't that big of a deal. There's an explanation, sir. How many times when we're willing to admit our sins do we say, okay, if I'll admit my sins, then what I have to do first is remove my volition or my sorrow. I'll acknowledge them with a very sterile sort of acknowledgement. Yes, I did that. I'll tell you, the man or the woman who simply acknowledges, yes, I did that thing over there, doesn't want and is not seeking forgiveness. It's interesting to me.

Reformed people deal with emotions and feelings because generally we look at them and we scoff at them. We're like, those are bad. We shouldn't have those. Those are dangerous. They should be under tight supervision so they don't ever get out of line. But here's the funny thing about us, good Reformed folk. All of our entertainment, all of our music, all of the things you pursue outside of your faith is full to the brim of feelings. The people you're watching have a lot of feelings, good, bad, otherwise. Their goal is to produce in you very strong feelings of approval, of satisfaction, of joy, of fear. And so we would be foolish to take this reality of our own hearts and our disposition toward our sins and try to strain out how we feel about things and just go, yes, I did do that thing. Please forgive me for it. It's like, have you ever had someone talk to you like that?

It's like you're talking to a robot. Like robots don't need forgiveness because they don't have a soul. But people, they need forgiveness. So why do we act like robots? Why do we remove our heart from the situation? Why do we refuse to feel the weight of our sins? Well, the obvious answer is because it's no fun. Because we don't like it. It's not enjoyable to feel the weight of your sin. To acknowledge it in our heads is one thing, and it's sort of unavoidable, you know? It's like, oh, I punched him in the face. And now his nose is bleeding. I can't deny that I did that. But we'll act as though we're not sorry about it, even if we are sorry about it. It's like one of the highest principles with good reformed people is to not have any feelings about stuff. And so they turn out not to be very joyful people, not to be very content people, not to be very sorry people. They don't feel their sins. They deal with it all academically. It's all a theory. Well, Jesus isn't commanding us to...

ask forgiveness for the theory of sin. The theory is proven. And the theory is proven by your behavior every day. And so when you ask for your sins to be forgiven, you're asking for those particular sins that you're committing to be forgiven. And that's really personal. And it's really vulnerable. And it engages a part of your mind and your heart that isn't controllable as much as you'd like it to be. You know why we don't ask God to forgive us our sins? Because we've convinced ourselves that he won't. We've convinced ourselves that he stands far off from us, watching with a clipboard and a pen that never runs out of ink, marking down all of the failures. And that someday we're going to come and he's going to flip his pages of our failures in our face. And what hope do we have? So we lie to ourselves and we say, That wasn't sin, or that wasn't a big deal, or I didn't mean it, or I won't do it again, or there's worse sinners out there. Now, it is true that he does know the intentions and the desires of our hearts. He does have a perfect record of all the things we've even wanted, let alone said or done. But to think that God, your Father, is going to be on the judgment seat, listing off to his children all of their sins, only to judge them, is to deny.

The person and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. There is no gospel in that way of thinking. And it's a miserable way to live. It's just miserable. And one of the things it produces, or one of the indicators that we live this way, is whether or not we're willing to forgive other people. Because many times I think we project on God our own natures and our own dispositions. And so we may look on God and say, he's sitting there and he's watching and he's recording and he's just building his case against us. But the reason we think that is because that's what we do. That's what we do with one another. How easy is it to get angry again about something that happened years ago? You're angry like it happened five minutes ago, but it happened five years ago. How does that happen? How does that happen in us? Why are we able to do that? Well, because we have this deficient, this anemic.

this weak, immature understanding of forgiveness. As though if our sins are small or no big deal, then they can be forgiven. But if they're big or if they're repetitive or if they're destructive, then we're in a different category. They can't be forgiven. This is how we think. This is how we live. This is why we don't confess our sins. This is why we don't forgive one another. And so God sees us. He sees us perfectly. He knows our own sins. Better than we do. As bad as we might feel. If we could sit and not write down the list of other people's sins, but write down the list of our sins, it would be so incomplete. If we were to compare it to God's perfect knowledge of our failures. Our list would be missing lots and lots. When we read just about the first commandment, what are the ways that we transgress the first commandment? And the list goes on and on and on and on and on. And you're like, at some point, like two or three of them, I'm like,

I fail right there. I do that. I've never thought of that before, but yeah, I do that. I never knew I broke the first commandment like that, but here we are, breaking the first commandment without even knowing it. My list is incomplete. I don't even know what to ask for forgiveness for. Have you ever had someone come and ask forgiveness of you and you sat in judgment of their confession saying, you don't even know what you did. You don't even know what all happened. You're asking forgiveness for this thing over here, but there's all this other stuff you did that you don't seem to have any awareness of.

Now here's the difference between you and God. Is that God has that same knowledge of you. A perfect knowledge of all of your sins. And you're over here with these few things and you're like, I think that was bad. And would you have mercy? And he's got all this big long list that you're unaware of or won't acknowledge or don't see. Are those sins forgiven? Or is God sitting there waiting, just waiting so that he can say, gotcha, gotcha. There's more. When we ask God to forgive us our sins, And we say after it, as we also have forgiven our debtors, we're acknowledging that we do the things that our Father does and has taught us to do. We forgive because we've been forgiven. Maybe you've heard this old saying that like, I don't know if it's bitterness or what, it says bitterness is letting the past live in your mind, like rent-free or something like, I don't know how the quote goes, maybe some of you guys know it. It's this idea that like,

If you don't get over the things that have happened, they just sit and they just stew inside of you. On the other hand, forgiveness frees you of all of that. And to forgive somebody is not to ignore the sin. It's not to say there was actually not that. There's forgiveness because it wasn't that big of a deal, or there's forgiveness because you don't do that that often, or it's forgiveness because other people have done worse things to me. Forgiveness doesn't require us to say or believe any of those things. Maybe you've looked into your own heart sometime and you thought, you know, why am I so upset about this? Like you have some self-critical capacity and you're like, I know I'm making a bigger deal of this than it actually is. Why do I do that? Because we've come to trade in the severity of sin. And we've come to meet out forgiveness based on how bad or how often the sin is. And that whole economy of dealing with sin is bankrupt.

Your sins are worse than you think they are. There are many sins you commit and are given to that are destructive that you don't even know about. There are plenty of sins that you have in your life that you are aware of and you do know about, and you still do it. And there's a whole host, probably a majority, that you aren't even aware of. So when we hear these things or think these things, we go, well, then, you're breaking this whole... this whole economy of sin that I've been dealing with where it's like we minimize it and we write it off and we justify it and all this stuff. You're breaking all of that. You're saying there's way more trouble than I thought there was. And in our way of thinking, that puts forgiveness out of reach. Because when it comes down to it, when it's all said and done, we live as though forgiveness is something that we earn. It's something that we deserve. It's something that we're owed.

We do live in this mindset of everything is give and take. Everything is give and take. There have been times, as an example of this mindset, where people will be, we have a deacon's fund and people will have needs. And it's very, very common for the people who have needs that are not in our church to say, if we go to them and say, we have this conversation, you have this need, and we'd like to help you with your need. Do you know what they almost always say? I'll pay you back. I'll pay you back. They want it to be a loan. They want there to be this transaction. They want there to be this record of who's doing right and who's dependent on one another and who is in the black and who's in the red, so to speak. So what do we say to them? What do our deacons say to them or our elders or whoever's in the conversation? We simply say to them, we do not ever give loans out of our deacon's fund. This money is a gift. And if in due time, the Lord blesses you and you want to,

You're free to contribute to the deacon's fund as you see fit, but no one's keeping track of that. Here you go. And they don't know what to do with the check. They're like, ugh. They're looking for the string that's attached to it because, of course, in our way of life, there's always a string. Sometimes it's an invisible string. Sometimes it's a really long string. And they don't realize what's at the other end of it for weeks or months or years later. But do you know how miserable our deacons work? We've got, you know, you think of the deacons here. Do you know how miserable your work would be if you had to keep track of all the money that you've given out and who owes you what? Who is a burden and a draw on the account? Like, that'd be awful. It would be miserable and it wouldn't be free anymore. It would rob you of all of the joy of being able to help those who are unable to help themselves. And forgiveness is the same way. When forgiveness is a transaction, when forgiveness is like, well,

I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry too. I'm sorry, but, you know, you did this other thing, you know, and it was tempting. Like, whenever there's this, like, justification and this, like, explanation, like, I know it's wrong, and, you know, we're even nodding our head, like, I know I shouldn't be justifying, but I'm sorry for what I did, but, you know, you did this other thing too, right? And we're doing this, like, figure eight thing with our head, trying to not accuse the person, but let them know that, like, they sin too, and they should be, they really should be the ones who's repenting and forgiving. At least they should be doing it first.

It's just awful. It's just awful, and we all do it. If you've been married more than, I don't know how long, maybe you had a longer honeymoon than other couples, but if you got back from the honeymoon, this has happened. You're talking to your kids, and you're like, I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you this and that and the other. Come on, man. Come on, Mom. Give it up. Just give it up. Just learn to say, I'm sorry. I failed. I screwed up. I did wrong. Please forgive me. You ever had anyone talk to you that way? It's almost like you're waiting for the, like, you're like, there's like a punch coming from somewhere hidden in the recesses. Like, where is the catch? If they're just like, I'm sorry, what I did was wrong. You're waiting for the but or the and. If you just, yeah, I'm sorry, but if you just. And then they're just like, I'm sorry, I was wrong. And you're like, are you done? You haven't justified it to me yet.

You haven't told me why it was actually not your fault. Forgiveness is not something you earn. It's not something you deserve. It's something you can only receive as a gift from God. And it's his prerogative to give it. If someone were to give you a gift, do you know how offensive it would be for you to like, you know, when you give someone a gift, what's the one thing you're supposed to do with it? Like if you bought it at a store. It doesn't happen online these days, but you're supposed to take the price tag off of it, right? If you didn't know that, I'll tell you that. If you give someone a gift, you're supposed to take the price tag off of it. Why are you supposed to take the price tag off of it? It's pretty basic, so they don't know how much it costs. Now, I know they can go look it online. They registered for it. They know how much. But there's some modesty put over it that says, we're not dealing with the dollars that were spent here. This is a gift. Could you imagine if someone gave you a gift and you were like, how much did you spend on this? Can I give you some money for it?

If someone did that to you, how would you respond? I'm sure you'd respond very graciously, and you'd say, oh, no, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. But you'd feel really awkward. If you would let your feelings speak for a minute, you'd be like, this is really messed up that you would do that. That you would, like, I'm giving you a gift, and what you want to know is if you can pay me for the gift. Like, if you can somehow reduce the cost somehow, you'd be offended. The gift giver would be offended. Why do we do that with God and forgiveness? Why are we always trying to reduce the cost and know what it is and pay it back later and pay it forward over here? Why can't we just receive the forgiveness of God? Well, part because we don't want to give it to other people. It's like, well, if I've been forgiven that way, then I have to do the same thing. It turns out I'm not good at that. I don't desire that the way that I should. I think we process forgiven too often. I talked about feelings earlier, and I said, you know,

If we could just get our hearts engaged with this whole process, it would be good and better for us. But here's a danger with feelings and forgiveness. I think that we process forgiveness largely through how we feel. Do I feel forgiven? Do they mean it? Or do I still feel guilty? Is it possible to be forgiven if I still feel bad? Yes. Yes. It is possible for your sins to be forgiven and for you not to feel as though you deserve it. That's a normal feeling. When someone does something kind for you, something great, maybe, you know, it's not the same as receiving a gift at your wedding or your anniversary or your birthday, but if someone sees a need that you have and they decide of their own, you know, here you go, it's normal to feel like, I don't deserve that. I didn't earn that. I didn't earn it. You're right, you didn't. So the question is not whether you earned it, but whether you'll receive it. Will you cash the check? Will you thank them?

Will you do the same for others? You remember the story of the slave that owed his master a bunch of money? And the master calls in the slave and he says, you owe me all this money. You need to pay it. And what's the slave do? He says, I can't pay it. Just give me a little more time. And the master says, you know what? Your debt's forgiven. Your debt's forgiven. You don't owe me anything anymore. Not because you paid it. Not because it's in deferral. Not because the government forgave it. It's forgiven. It's forgiven. It's off the records. It's not there anymore. Well, then that slave goes out to the guy who owes him, you know, by comparison, like 20 bucks and like starts beating the guy. It's like, you owe me my money and give me what's mine. And then he's hauled back in to the master and the master's like, look what you did, man. Like you didn't do what you should have done. I forgave your lifetime of debt. Like it would have taken you a lifetime to accumulate the amount of money that you owe me.

And I forgave it. And then you went out and you beat this guy half senseless over 20 bucks. Actually, your sin's not forgiven. I mean, your debt's not forgiven. When we don't forgive other people, we're behaving like that slave. That slave was forgiven his debts. But he didn't understand what he was supposed to do with that forgiveness. He thought, now I'm liberated. Now I'm not a slave anymore. Now I can go and do what I want, which is to behave exactly in contradiction to my master who set me free. And isn't that what we do when we refuse to forgive other people is to choose to act in contradiction to our master who set us free from our sins and from the consequence of them through forgiveness. We say, surely it can't be that way. That can't be how God works. I mean, if that's the way it works, then I would stop caring about sin. I'd stop feeling bad about it. And I say, we've gone back to an ungodly, unbiblical way of thinking and living.

you really do have to get out of your mind this idea that you can pay God any of the stuff you owe him. You really, really can't. Vanessa and I have talked about relationships with people. It's not so much about forgiveness, but about just how to relate to people. And I've told her, I said, I know that sometimes I presume on people and don't even realize I'm doing it. But the other option in my mind is to live in a constant worry of whether or not they like me and want to help me and love me. or interested or not. And I said, I just can't live that way. If they say they love me, I'm going to presume they love me. And if I sin against them, I presume they're going to come tell me and have come and told me, you really screwed up. And I say, okay, I really screwed up. But I presume that they love me. I presume that they, because they're Christians, are going to love me and forgive me when I sin. And I presume I'm supposed to do the same thing for them, whether I want to, whether my flesh wants to in the moment or not. That's how I'm going to choose to live. Because the other way of living is just miserable.

It's just this transactional way of living that everything's at arm's distance and nothing is ever sure. How can you relate to somebody if the reality of sin always can sever the relationship and break it? How can you be close to somebody? How can you love them if those are the terms of the relationship? You can't. You can't. Because there's always this moving line that you don't quite know where it's at. If you cross over it, then it's all broken. And that's an awful way to live. Some of the marriages I've seen that operate that way, it just griefs me. I'm like, how can you live that way? How can you raise kids that way? How can you treat your kids like that, that there's this unknown thing of whether or not you'll love them and care about them? If you've lived in a situation like that, if your marriage has been that way at some times, you understand firsthand how awful that is. If you grew up in a home like that, you understand how miserable it is. And what's missing from it is forgiveness. You did the thing.

And I forgive you. And it's not there anymore. It's just not there anymore. And so we really have to put to death this idea that forgiveness is a way of, it's a bargaining chip in our lives. I'll forgive you if, God will forgive me if. God will forgive me if he chooses to forgive me. And his words gone further than to say if he chooses to, it says that he will forgive all those who come to him. That all who come to him, he will in no way cast them out. That he'll separate from us our sins as far as the east is from the west. That he will have mercy on whom he'll have mercy on. And so Christians ought to look on this issue of forgiveness and their sins as something that God is desirous to do. He wants to forgive you your sins. He wants to. He's not simply obligated to. He wants to. If he didn't want to, He wouldn't do it. And when he doesn't want to forgive somebody their sins, he doesn't do it. And there's nothing they can do to change that. But to his children, he gives them the gift of eternal life through the forgiveness of their sins. And so I caution you, warn you, not to turn forgiveness into something to earn God's favor. Consider other areas of your life where you've tried to earn God's favor, tried to get him on your side, tried to petition him through your behavior to get him to do what you want. Does it work?

Are you able to manipulate God into doing what you want because you think it's best? Does it help you to be content with the circumstances of your life and the trials that you're bearing or the burdens that you carry when you approach it this way? What's true in other areas is that these things don't work to manipulate God or to earn his favor. We shouldn't think forgiveness would either. In fact, when we take forgiveness and we use it as a tool to earn God's forgiveness, well, I deserve it. I'm not forgivable yet, but if I do this, then I will be. It inevitably leads to us.

within us a sense of entitlement when God doesn't do what we want when we think he should or in the way that we think he should. And so at the end, we get angry and we end up taking back all the things that we did by faith. You remember at the end of Matthew where Jesus describes the judgment and he says, all are going to come to me and I'm going to divide them into two groups. In this group, I'm going to say to them, all you, you know, he's going to say, you know, you never did any of the good stuff. And they're going to say, Lord, when did we see you and not?

naked and not clothe you? When did we see you thirsty and not give you a drink? When did we see you in prison and not visit you? What you realize in that way of thinking is that there's an economy of back and forth. When did we see you and choose not to do the right thing? Well, inevitably, there are lots of times they didn't see what they should have seen. But what do the sheep on the other side say? They say, Lord, we never did those things. We weren't in this economy of earning your favor and you know, forcing our way into heaven, those people simply received forgiveness and lived like Christians, lived in conformity to God's word. And Jesus says to them, so much as you've done it to the least of these, my brothers, you've done it to me. They thought, you know what? Here's the ordering principle of my life. This is as complex as it gets. God has been good to me, and I'm going to be good to other people. God's been good to me in this way.

I'm going to be good to other people in that same way. Whether that way is being patient with them, whether that way is forgiving them, whether that way is bearing with them, carrying their burdens for them, whatever it is, whatever God's done for me, I'm going to do it for other people. And I'm not going to be keeping record of what they owe me as I do it. I'm just going to do it because that's how God treated me. He's loved me and forgiven me in my sins. I don't deserve those things. So I'm just going to do that with other people. I'm going to forgive them.

And if you'll do that, this amazing thing will happen where when you interact with people, the sins aren't forgotten. They aren't completely forgotten. They're not like, oh, and it never ever happened. No one has any memory of it. But they are the sorts of things that in years to come you can laugh about because there's not any more tension. You can say, look at what kind of awful thing we did, I did, you did. And all of the insecurity about it is gone away. And you can say, yeah, I was an idiot. Look at that awful thing. Look how merciful God was to me and to us. Look at his faithfulness. Look at his provision. Look at his bearing with us. And you rejoice because of the forgiveness of God and the forgiveness that you've offered to one another. And so forgiveness is not something we do to earn God's trust. It's something that we receive. Forgiveness is also not something we do to indebt other people to us.

Have you ever thought that if I forgive somebody, then they'll behave the way I want them to? That you weaponize forgiveness in such a way as to make it a tool or a weapon against them. I won't forgive you if, or I'll only forgive you if. Forgiveness is not a token to be spent when we think it will derive the most benefit from it, or when we think the other person has felt sufficiently bad for what they've done. I mean, where would we be with God if he didn't forgive us until we felt sufficiently bad about our sins? What would happen to us? Would he forgive us? Do we ever feel bad enough about our sins? We never feel bad enough about our sins. So why would we treat each other that way? Forgiveness is not a weapon to be used to manipulate or to control a situation or a person. It's something to be given freely with no strings attached because it's something that you received in just that way. It's the way it came to you, and it's the only way it can be given. Romans 12.18 says, If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.

The way to be at peace with all men, you only can do one or two things when it comes to your interactions with other people. You can either forgive them or you can isolate yourself from them. In the end, in terms of big picture, you will either do one of those two things. That's really it. You'll either deal with the sins by forgiveness or you'll deal with the sins by distance, meaning put them further and further and further away. Neither one of those, well, only forgiveness leads to peace. Isolation does not lead to peace. One of the things that's been noted about our church by people who've come in and visited as visitors or have come in new is they say, man, the people really love each other here. You hang out after church and you talk to each other. Why is that? It's because we're all like-minded and all love all the same sports and politics and we're just this big homogenous group of everything. We all just agree about everything, right? That's why we all hang out. No, it's not that at all. It's simply because we have a principle of forgiveness.

And we live close enough to each other to actually have to put it into practice. And so we have to say, I'm sorry. And we have to say, I forgive you. And we have to hug and pray and love each other. And that, whether the visitor or the new person realizes that's what's going on, I'm telling you that's what's going on. Because where there's not forgiveness, there's not intimacy. There can't be. Because you're aware that there's some list somewhere that's going to come out. If you forgive others their transgressions, this is at the end after the prayer, Jesus says, he comes back to it and says, if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you don't forgive others, then your father will not forgive you your transgressions. Forgiveness, though it's not listed as one of the fruits of the spirit, is the product of the grace of God in your life. And so if we aren't willing to forgive other people,

then what we're doing, in fact, is not saying we haven't qualified for the Father's forgiveness in the future, but rather demonstrating that we've not been recipients of it in the past. If you find that you are unwilling to forgive other people, then what it should do is it should teach you that you have not been forgiven by God, your own sins. Because if you had been, you would be willing to forgive your brother. Do you remember when Peter came up to Jesus? And he said, Lord, how often shall I forgive my brother's sin against me? How often shall I forgive him? Seven times? Jesus said to him, I don't say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. He teaches us something very important about forgiveness here. It's constant. It's perpetually necessary. 490 times. But don't keep count. The way our mind should work when it comes to forgiveness is, when we have this impulse inside of us that Peter...

articulates here is, okay, how many times does God forgive me? How many times does God say there's a limit? Like if you do it one more time, now all is lost. Is there anywhere in scripture that teaches us that? No. Which means like if we were to think of it in terms of having like an account, a bank account with money in it, God's always making deposits of forgiveness for our sins into that account. And what he calls us to do is to take out of that account and give to other people, As often as they sin against us. And that account with that forgiveness in it, it's like the jar that the widow had, who's like, I'm going to make this, you know, when Elijah went and visited her. And he's like, you know, he says, hey, can you make me some bread? And she says, well, actually, I was going to make some bread with this last bit of oil and last bit of flour, and then me and my son, we were going to die. Because we don't have any more food. But sure, I'll make you some bread first. You know, which when you read it is quite this just incredible story.

Because miraculously, the oil never runs out. And neither does the forgiveness of God for your sins. So, your forgiveness for other people should never run dry. And when it does, when you feel as though, I think I have forgiven enough, what it should trigger in your mind is the thought, I think I've forgotten what kind of sinner I am. I think I've slipped back into this way of dealing with life that says, it really wasn't all that bad. It really wasn't all that often. Actually, your sins were worse. I've slipped back into that way of thinking. I've left behind this idea that I need forgiveness every single day. When we pray and ask Jesus to give us food every day, give us this day our daily bread, when we ask him to forgive us our debts, is that a very sporadic thing that he needs to do? We need bread every day, but we just need forgiveness like...

You know, every few years? No, we need forgiveness in the same way that we need bread daily. We need this from God and we need to offer it to others. And so continual forgiveness is a staple in the Christian life. This is what you and I should be aiming at, forgiving as we've been forgiven, seeking forgiveness as often as we need it. If you've never gotten tired of asking forgiveness for the same sins, you don't understand what forgiveness is the way you should. And what you're in danger of is slipping into isolation and just going, you know, I don't want to have to deal with this whole free giving of forgiveness and free receiving of forgiveness. I think what I'll do is withdraw so that I'm not being sinned against so I don't have to forgive people. Well, what's underneath that is a deficient view of forgiveness. You don't want to do it. You don't want to receive it. You don't think you need it. So don't choose isolation over forgiveness. Choose to forgive other people because God's forgiven you. Be free of it.

Be free of carrying around the burden. Set it down. It's very easy to get angry. And I think we're too often, we're accustomed to carrying around the weight of other people's sins against us. It's like so much of our minds and our energy is eaten up with stoking those fires of remembering what happened. To what good end do we do that? Does it glorify God for us to do that? Is he pleased by his children walking around remembering all of the faults of their brothers and sisters? Is he pleased by us fighting and quarreling and accusing and lying and defending? No. He's glorified by us saying, I'm a sinner. Have mercy on me, a sinner. Asking God to do that for us and then doing that for others. That's what it means to be a Christian, is to forgive from your heart the sins that were committed against you.

And to not keep a record of them anymore. To wake up in the morning and to not remember the troubles of the night or the day before. Because they were resolved and forgiven and laid to rest by the death of Jesus. And so if your sins have been forgiven, then it's incumbent on you that you forgive other people. Whether you feel like it or not. If your sins have been forgiven, if you're a Christian, then it's incumbent on you to believe that even when you don't feel like that's true. It's incumbent on you to... believe what other people tell you about that when you don't feel like that's how it should be, when you feel like, I think I should feel bad for a while longer yet. I don't think I've sufficiently been miserable. Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus and you'll find rest. Offer Jesus to one another so that the people that you love can find rest in him. Let's pray.