Choosing to Forgive - Part 1 (5 of 12)

, well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles, this morning to Matthew chapter 18 for our time of study in the word this morning. We, today are coming back to the subject of forgiveness. And we'll be looking at a variety of passages of scripture. If you want to give a title to the message, it is choosing to forgive, choosing to forgive.

We have learned that forgiveness is a very important matter. throughout the course of your life, you will find yourself in situations where you are called upon to forgive, literally, over the span of your lifetime and your walk with the Lord, thousands. Of times and there are other things that people do that they spend a lot of time preparing for and they're not even sure they're going to get a chance to do what they're preparing for. Recently I was reading an interview with someone who works on the space station.

That orbits the Earth and they were explaining how they endure years of training to be in space, not even knowing that they're going to themselves make it into space. And then once they're selected to be on the space station, there's 3 more years of training just for one stint on the space station. There are athletes who Spend a lifetime working hard and training and preparing in order to make it to the big leagues when they're not even sure that that dream is going to be fulfilled, but they labor and prepare and study and develop themselves for that possibility.

When we talk about forgiveness and the fact that we're doing a study of the subject of forgiveness, it's not in that category.

It's not like, hey guys, you might find yourselves in a situation one day where forgiveness will be required of you and just in case that happens, let's study this subject. No, no, it's guaranteed that you will be drafted. You will be called up to the big leagues of forgiveness. You will find yourself thousands of times in a situation where you will be needing to give forgiveness to somebody who has wronged you, and this will happen multiple times.

and are you ready for that? This topic is vitally important. I think in Matthew 18, where Jesus, or Peter came to Jesus, and he asked Jesus, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him up to 7 times. And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to 7 times, but up to 70 times.

7, 490 times for just one person, Jesus says, and a question that I want to pose to you is, are you sufficiently trained enough in this matter of forgiveness, to where you are equipped to grant forgiveness 490 times to one person. to one person. Not to speak of all the people that are in your life. And the way we ought to think is, man, if God tells us that we need to be ready to do something 490 times for just one person in our life, then we probably ought to become a student of whatever that thing is that is being asked of us, so that we are ready on the multiple occasions where God is asking us to grant forgiveness to somebody who has wronged us.

If you think about all the times where forgiveness is required of us, the multiplied thousands of times, you then begin to realize how devastating it is when someone does not forgive or they're not good at forgiving other people. It ruins lives. Lives are ruined. Relationships are broken when people do not give real meaningful, biblical, robust forgiveness to those who have wronged them.

In fact, we could say that at the bottom of a whole array of seemingly unrelated issues is the matter of unforgiveness. John MacArthur said not too long ago, nearly all the personal problems that drive people to seek pastoral counseling are related in some way to the issue of forgiveness. Not all, but he says nearly all in one way or another on the giving or the receiving. And somewhere in that situation or need there is the matter of forgiveness given or not given or the need for that.

That's how vital this topic is. Let's remind ourselves of what the definition of forgiveness is. Somebody wrongs us and when we forgive them, What we are doing and forgiving them is a we are sending away the sin from between us and the one who has committed the sin against us, and we're choosing to hold that sin against them no longer. We're also in forgiving, sending away the offender from the vengeance that he deserves from us as a result of the sins that he has committed.

Against us and then see we are choosing to positively favor that person with blessing that they do not deserve. We don't just go around giving forgiveness to the deserving. The essence of forgiveness is grace. Forgiveness goes to those who are undeserving.

And so how do we do this? How do we forgive those who have wronged? Well, the way we've been breaking this down is we've been looking at 4 steps of forgiveness, and the first of these steps we spent 4 Sundays looking at, and by the way, we're spending more time on that first step than any of the remaining 3. But it took us 4 Sundays to unpack all that is entailed in the first step of forgiveness, and that is when someone wrongs you and maybe you find yourself in a place of anger and bitterness, and you're, you're not inclined at all to forgive them for the wrong that they have done.

Step 1 is go to the cross and do some gospel thinking. Go to the cross and do some gospel thinking. Don't wait until you Maybe magically wake up one morning and you feel in a forgiving mood. No, beat a path to the cross and do some gospel thinking there at the foot of the cross.

And what we did over 4 weeks is we looked at 8 thoughts that we can think at the foot of the cross. Thoughts like Christ has suffered as I am suffering right now, and infinitely more so, which means I am never alone in any pain. Also, sometimes we observe at the foot of the cross that God purposes that those whom He loves deeply be painfully sinned against. We also observe that God the Father can be trusted on the receiving end of any wrongdoing.

We also observe that we have committed greater sins against God than anyone has ever or will ever commit against us. We also observed that Christ has accomplished our forgiveness and justification. At the cross. We also observe at the foot of the cross that we are purchased and owned by God and therefore, now we live to serve his purposes and not our own.

We also learned something about the nature of true forgiveness. And that is that apparently Forgiveness is suffering. Forgiveness is death. Forgiveness is crucifixion.

That's not just something Christ had to go through, and then somehow we get to forgive people without any pain or any cost or any dying. No, God is pointing to The cross saying this is what forgiveness feels like. This is what it is. And as you walk the path of forgiveness, you will find that forgiveness is suffering.

It is death. It is crucifixion. And then eighthly, we learn at the foot of the cross that death isn't so bad after all. In fact, it's the beginning of life as we see Christ dying with his eyes fixed upon a joy set before Him that lay on the other side of death.

Well, we unpack those over a 4 week period. so that we know how we can think when we're wronged, and we need to forgive, but we're not disposed to grant forgiveness that we can go to the cross, open our hearts to God, begin to think these thoughts, and allow the Spirit of God through these truths to transport us to the place of forgiveness. Now, having done that, I want to, before we move to the second step, I want to just deliver a caution. We spent 4 Sundays talking about the first step, which is simply getting to the place of forgiveness 4 Sundays.

so that stretched out over a month, and we even had some things interrupt us during that time. So it got stretched out even more. And one might get the impression that, man, it's, it's a long journey to the place of forgiveness. It takes weeks.

or longer to get to the place of forgiveness. This seems like a slow process. And one can also get the impression from what we've covered that, I guess if, if I'm supposed to forgive and I don't feel like forgiving, then I don't need to forgive. In fact, I can't forgive unless every fiber of my being is really wanting to forgive.

And so if I'm not totally on board with this forgiveness thing, And my emotions are not fully aligned with wanting to forgive, then I can't really authentically forgive. And so I've got to wait over weeks and months, maybe years for God to get me to this place where I get up one morning and every fiber of my being is saying forgive. Well, I just want to caution us against that. That is not an impression that I want to leave you with.

In fact, it's actually a dangerous. thing to think that the journey to the place of forgiveness can be a lengthy journey of weeks and months and years. Honestly, the eight truths that we've just enjoyed and lingered through over the 4 weeks that we looked at them, you can think those thoughts in a matter of minutes. In the span of an hour or two at the foot of the cross and have God in a matter of minutes or hours or a brother or sister along with you as you pray through these things together.

God can use those truths to get you to the place of forgiveness rather quickly. Do not buy into the myth that it can take a long, long time to get to the place of forgiveness. Nancy Lee Demas in her book Choosing Forgiveness in one of her chapters, talks about various myths regarding forgiveness, and one of the myths she says that keeps people from experiencing the reality and the blessing of forgiveness is that forgiveness requires a long drawn out process. listen to her as she unpacks this.

She says, I've heard people say, I'm moving toward forgiveness. Sometimes even after years of counseling and therapy. There's no question that for some people coming to grips with the awful offenses they've been forced to endure can be a long and arduous journey. The road just to get to the place where forgiveness is barely palatable is often a story in itself.

So, What she's saying is I get that. I'm comfortable with the language of getting to the place of forgiveness. I, I understand that she uses that language in her book, but she delivers a caution. She goes on to say this, but I'll just say this from experience.

I've watched believers working their way toward forgiveness for years and years and never getting there. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that when forgiveness is seen primarily as a work in progress, it seldom becomes a work in practice. The choice, she says, to forgive does not have to involve a long extended process anymore. Then God's forgiveness of us is a slow moving wait and see, not till I'm good and ready series of events and checkpoints.

Aren't you glad? Aren't you glad that that's not, that God, it just takes him a while after you've blown it on a bad day for him to get to a place of forgiveness. And we come to him to ask forgiveness, and he's like, no, no, I'm not forgiving you, but what, I'm getting there. OK, give me time.

He doesn't do that. And then finally she says this, by God's grace, you can choose to forgive in a moment of time to the level of your understanding at that point. And though much more may be required of you down the line, the reality of being released from the prison of your own unforgiveness can happen today, this moment. Amen.

and understand, guys, also that, you don't have to wait until you are 100% wanting to forgive. If, if Christ calls you to forgive in His word, and you come to Jesus, and you're like, man, you tell me to forgive, but so much of me doesn't want to forgive. if Christ said, well, is there anything in you that wants to forgive? And if your answer is, what, there's a small part of me that longs to forgive, but it's only the size of a mustard seed.

Jesus would say, that's really good news. And that's all I need. That's all I need. And you can step out in fear and trembling and in faith and by the grace of God forgive.

And the rest of your being will eventually fall into line with that. This is exactly what we're talking about in this series. That's why the first step of forgiveness is not wait until you feel disposed to forgive. No, it's go to the foot of the cross, do gospel thinking, because the cross or the gospel is the quickest path to the place of forgiveness.

When you go to the foot of the cross, it's as if you're getting into the gospel vehicle and allowing that vehicle to transport you to the place where there's enough in you that's ready to step out in faith and to make that fateful choice to forgive. And so we come this morning to the second step of forgiveness, and that is choose to forgive. At some point you've got to call it in. And make the choice that you're going to forgive the people or the person who has sinned against you.

Now, inside of that choice to forgive, we can word it this way is a series of choices. When you choose to forgive, there are some people who say, I'm going to choose to forgive, but they don't, they don't understand the mechanics of forgiveness, and so they don't execute their forgiveness the way that God outlines in His word. And so they fall short of experiencing the grace of God and the power of God. So You don't just choose to forgive, but in choosing to forgive, you're essentially making some choices about the mechanics of how you're going to execute that forgiveness towards the person who has wronged you.

I have on the screen 6 choices that we should make regarding how we go about forgiving. In the first service, we only got through the 1st 3, and so that's, that's as far as we'll get in this service as well. so let's do the best we can with the time that we have and at least looking at three of these choices. First of all, we observe in Scripture that when we do choose to forgive, we should choose to grant forgiveness in the context of prayer.

When you choose to forgive someone, make your choice to be this, that I, I will forgive, and I will forgive in the context of prayer. This is something we don't really talk a lot about, but it's actually pretty, pretty exciting with regard to forgiveness. Look at what Jesus says in Mark 11:25. He says, whenever you stand praying, So whenever you are praying, he's not saying this only applies if your posture is that of standing when you're praying.

If you're seated, this doesn't apply. You don't need to forgive if you're lying prostrate, you don't need to forgive, but if you're standing, you do need to forgive. That's not what he's saying. He's basically saying whenever you are praying, forgive.

If you have anything against anyone, what Jesus is teaching us here is that the venue in which we grant official forgiveness to people is the venue. of prayer. Forgiveness is something we do when we're praying. Forgiveness is something we grant when we are praying.

Apparently, prayer is not just the venue in which we connect to God, it's also the venue in which we release other people. From the prison cells of consequences that we would love to visit upon them for their sins against us. Prayer is a venue where you do a number of things and one of those is you're officially granting forgiveness as anything comes to your mind of something that somebody has done against you. Prayer is something you do when God is in the room.

More accurately, prayer is something you do when you're in God's room. When you are in the throne of grace before the throne of grace and the presence of God, that's the location where you grant forgiveness to other people. When I was in seminary, we read a book on prayer, an excellent book where the author suggested this acrostic that serves as a guide for prayer, and he says you don't have to hold to this superstitiously, but it might just be a helpful mechanism to provide structure to your prayers, and you see on the screen Acts, and that stands for adoration, so begin your prayer with worship and, adoring God and then confession, confessing your sins to, to God, and then spend some time thanking God for who He is and what he has done in your life.

And then lastly, supplication.

Now some people can make this a very rigid system, but the author recommends that you not do that, but he's just offering this as a help. I think though that if Jesus were to see this sacrostic, he would say this is great, but it's incomplete, and he would suggest that another letter be put there, and that is the letter F for forgiveness. Now I know that that's harder to pronounce, so it's never going to catch on. Akaitz, Akaitz.

But I think Jesus would say, you, I'm teaching you to make this a part of your prayer life. When you pray, make this something you habitually do, where you adore, your God, worship Him. You confess your sins, and also make sure that when you are praying that if there is anyone in your life that has wronged you in a way that you're mindful of that you are, while you're praying. Officially voicing your forgiveness of them.

And then also thanking God and delivering supplications to God or making requests based on needs in your life or the life of other people. Jesus affirms this elsewhere in Luke chapter 11, verse 4, the disciples come to Jesus, or at least one disciple comes to Jesus and says, Lord, teach us to pray. And Jesus says, OK, I'll teach you how to pray. And he says, I'll tell you what to say.

And amongst the things that Jesus wants to come out of our mouth when we're praying are the words, we ourselves are forgiving everyone who is indebted to us. Jesus is saying, say that you need to say this when you pray, and the tense of this indicates that it's, it's not just, I've done this in some other venue. No, right now, as I'm praying, I am forgiving those who are indebted to me. So when you pray at some point you need to be giving voice to your forgiveness of other people.

Earlier in Matthew 6:12 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching us how to pray. And again amongst the wording that He provides for us to say when we pray are the words we forgive our debtors. Yes, we ask God to forgive us, but when we are praying, Jesus is saying, I want you to say. I forgive those who sinned against me.

And that takes us back to a statement in Mark 11, that whenever you are praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive when you are praying. And so I just want to ask you, like, do you, do you use prayer as a venue to forgive? do you find yourself, making use of that venue to where just as a normal, matter of course, just that you are habitually, not only asking God for forgiveness, but also granting and verbalizing forgiveness in the presence of God. See, I think this is important because it, it might be easy to, we just get real vague when it comes to granting forgiveness.

And, we're mad at somebody, but then something happens and we're just not quite so angry, and we're like, oh, I guess I've forgiven them. But we, there's never been a transaction that has happened in our hearts where we have granted that person forgiveness, at least in our hearts, even if they have not asked us. If they ask us, we'd give that to them, but in our hearts that we have that transaction has happened to where we stand ready to freely give that to them were they to ask.

But Jesus is saying, I want you, when you pray, to do this, so come into God's presence and with God in the room, with you in His room, with God present.

God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, God the Son present, vocalize your forgiveness. I don't know, that adds something. It's not just you in your heart saying, OK, I forgive. No, it's you verbalizing that in the presence of the triune God that adds a level of accountability and meaning that Christ is inviting us into here.

So use your prayer time. Not to ignore the wrongs that others have done, but to give voice to those things and to officially grant forgiveness in the context of prayer. There's a second choice that we need to make with regard to forgiving others, and that is that we should choose to forgive others in a way that is shaped by God's forgiveness of us. We should choose to forgive others in a way that is shaped by God's forgiveness of us.

What's interesting is that, the Bible doesn't just tell us to forgive. That's not enough. If you just go around forgiving, God would say, actually, that's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is that you forgive in a way that's motivated by and shaped by my forgiveness of you.

I don't want you to just forgive, I want you to forgive with gospel motivated forgiveness. For example, in Ephesians 4:32 through chapter 5, verse 1, Paul says that we are to be forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you, therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. So what he's telling us is that when someone has wronged you, you grace them, you forgive them. and you forgive them in a way that reflects the mindfulness of the fact that God has forgiven you of your sins against him.

And therefore, just as He has forgiven you, you now turn to that person, and you forgive them with a forgiveness that is molded and shaped by and bears the imprint of the grace that God has shown to you. And in the process, You are imitating God. You're imitating God. So here you are in prayer, and you're confessing your sins to God, and you're receiving His grace and His forgiveness for your sins.

And then God says, now, while you're praying in my presence, turn in your mind's eye towards those who've wronged you and do what I just did. imitate me, and so we get to do that in the presence of God and imitate Him. This adds so much meaning to this. We get to enjoy being imitators of God.

John Chrysostom, the church father, said it this way, Nothing causes us to so nearly resemble God as the forgiveness of injuries. You may even be praying, God, make me more like you. Help me to be an imitator. Of you and God says, I would love to answer your prayer.

And in my sovereignty, I have provided multiple opportunities in which you can now imitate me. And it's the people that have wronged you, and you now get to display to them the same grace that I have been showing to you and you get to imitate me. What we learn from this is that we need to be frequent confessors of our sins in prayer to God. If we're not confessing our own sins to God, receiving His grace, receiving His forgiveness, we're not really going to be positioned well to be bestowing that grace upon other people if you're walking.

walking around in pride. If you're walking around in a spirit of condemnation, not receiving God's grace, you're not going to be able to do this. But if you're receiving God's grace, confessing your sins and brokenness, and humility and taking in God's grace, God says to you, I don't want to just give you my grace. I now want you while you're in my presence, to turn to those who have wronged you and do what I just did.

Be like me, imitate what you've just seen in me. I believe if we as Christians were a more forgiving people towards each other and towards the lost around us, they might have a little easier time believing our message of grace and forgiveness. There are Christians who preach a fine message of grace, but they don't live according to that grace. And if someone wrongs them or crosses them, man, you've got their wrath to deal with.

No, we're called to not only preach this message of grace, but to live it towards those that have wronged us. So we, when we choose to forgive, we should choose to forgive others in a way that is shaped by God's forgiveness of us. I'm going to do what seems like a contradiction or a reversal. But we have to do this if we're going to be faithful to The text of the Bible, let's word it this way.

Not only should we choose to forgive others in a way that is shaped by God's forgiveness of us, but thirdly, we should choose to forgive others as a means of shaping our own experience of forgiveness from God. Yeah, we forgive others in a way that bears the imprint of the grace God has just shown us. But we're actually going to see in the text of the Bible, that our experience of God's grace and forgiveness is actually shaped by the forgiveness that we do give to other people, or fail to give.

In Luke 11:4 Jesus is teaching us how to pray and he says, say this, forgive us, God, of our sins, for we also, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

Do you ever say that? God forgive me. Forgive me of my sins. Because I forgive people.

Of their sins against me. See, we're not normally accustomed to thinking. That way. but Christ is saying, when you pray, I want you to include this language, as challenging as it may be.

In Matthew 6, Jesus again is teaching us how to pray, and he says, say this, and forgive us our debts, just as we also have forgiven. Our debtors. God, forgive me. Of my sins.

Just as I am forgiving other people of their sins against me. Christ, then when he's done, reciting what we call the Lord's Prayer, goes back and provides a commentary on the subject of forgiveness. And he says in verse 14, for if you forgive men for their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

It's a very challenging statement. This is not just something that came out of Jesus' mouth in a careless moment. He teaches us what to say when we pray regarding forgiveness. When he's done with the prayer, he says, Let me go back and elaborate on why I told you to say forgive us our debts as we forgive.

Our debtors, and that is because if you forgive other people of their sins, then yes, your Heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people of their sins against you, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Passages like this create A dilemma for us. We could avoid them and say, well, but in Ephesians 4 it says, Forgive as you've been forgiven.

Let's just camp there. Or we can just try to be faithful to the text of the Bible. And whatever it says, we'll try to reckon with it honestly, searchingly, and allow it to shape our theology. Whatever our theology is, statements like this that Jesus, the Son of God, makes needs to be inserted into our theology and provide shape to our theology.

But how do we make sense of this? Well, we know that Jesus is not telling us to earn God's forgiveness. He's not saying if you forgive other people, you Good for you. You've just earned God's forgiveness.

We know he's not saying that. I think what Jesus is indicating here, and we know experientially that this is true. That if I am harboring anger and bitterness in my heart against another person and I am refusing to forgive them, I can't compartmentalize that anger and bitterness and the pride that is embodied there. If I'm not going to forgive someone of an offense against me.

And yet I'm going to believe God has forgiven me, then I'm obviously believing I'm in a position of moral superiority, right, that my sins are less bad than that person's sins. I'm entitled to receive forgiveness, but they're not. And so the pride and the arrogance that is there, the lack of humility is a profound problem. And if I in my pride and selfishness and arrogance, I am holding a grudge and refusing to give grace and forgiveness to someone who has sinned against me, that by itself will render me unable to experience the true brokenness and humility that is required.

to receive God's grace. The picture here is not of a person who's withholding forgiveness from someone. And then he turns around in the next moment and in true humility, true brokenness says, God, forgive me of my sins. I see the magnitude of my sins and my sins against you are worse than anyone's sins against me.

Lord, give me your grace and forgiveness. And God says, no, I'm not going to do that. I see that you're humble and you're truly broken, but my answer is no, because this person over here is not being forgiven by you. That's not the picture.

The picture Is that in refusing to forgive another person, the pride, the arrogance, the lack of brokenness, the moral superiority that is governing me will render me actually blinded to being able to see the magnitude of my own sins and thus my need for God's grace. You guys know this is true when you're obsessing on the sins of another person. that have wounded and hurt you or disappointed you, you're, you're in no place to see your sins as you ought, much less even go to God to get grace for your sins.

And so it disturbs the mechanics.

of even going to God and receiving His grace when we refuse or fail to give grace to another person. Unforgiveness of others hinders our capacity to experience the grace of God. I've experienced this in my own life. There have been times where I've noticed that there's been a diminishing in my capacity to experience the grace of the gospel, and I, I notice it like, man, something's off.

I'm preaching the gospel to myself, but it's not getting in. What is the problem here? And there have been moments where upon further examination of my heart and life, I realize I'm really ticked at somebody right now. I'm really angry, and I'm withholding forgiveness from them.

And so what's happened is God's grace has been backed up in me. It's not moving through me to, to other people. And in such moments, there've been moments where I've come to God and I've confessed my anger against that person, and I've asked God to forgive me, and I've also officially forgiven that person. And, and in the process, there's almost an instant deepening of my capacity to experience the grace of God.

You guys know what I'm talking about. almost to such a degree that it's like, man, this is amazing. Who else can I forgive? Because I want to forgive, because in forgiving, it deepens my capacity to experience God's grace.

and a more profound way. we need to be driven by a holy greed that I do not just forgive because I've been forgiven. I actually forgive other people for the sake of my own soul, for the health of my own soul. I forgive others in order to deepen my capacity to experience God's grace.

God's grace is most richly experienced by us when it is in motion. Not when it's static. You experience God's grace most richly, when it is passing through you to other people. And when that flow stops, and grace, which may be in you, is motionless, You're not benefited by it.

It needs to be in motion. And it's easy as a believer to get backed up with the grace of God. And Christ is saying you need to keep God's grace flowing. And in granting forgiveness to other people, you ensure that that flow is happening, and you thereby deepen your capacity to experience God's grace.

One other thing to To add here by way of putting this all together. Is that evidently when you look at Jesus' language here in Matthew chapter 61 of the signs or marks of a true believer is that they forgive. And guys, again, we've got to take this at face value. I'm not making this up.

Christ says if you don't forgive other people, your Father won't forgive you. That's scary. That is frightening. We do not want to stand before God and discover that we have not been forgiven by God for our sins against him.

And the reason being that we have not forgiven those who have wronged us. Apparently, one of the marks of a true believer is they read passages like this. And they say, I will forgive. I will forgive.

John Piper says it this way, if we hold fast to an unforgiving spirit, we will not be forgiven by God. That's a theologically true statement based on what Christ says in Matthew 6. If we continue on in that way, without repentance, then we will not go to heaven because heaven is the dwelling place of forgiving. People, I remember a number of years ago counseling with a lady who was wanting to start attending Cornerstone and with her family and There was a lot of bitterness from her previous church experience, a lot of anger, and it was one of the issues that came up as we were meeting and And we were urging her to address that anger and bitterness before she joined Cornerstone.

But it became quickly evident that there was no interest in forgiving these people for their sins against her at the previous church. And I called her biblically to forgive, and she just flatly said, I don't want to forgive. But then she said, You're going to need to convince me. So I said, Well, let me, let me just offer three thoughts that hopefully you will find motivational.

I said, first of all, if you're a true child of God, God has forgiven you of greater sins against him than these people have or will ever commit against you. So you should forgive, as you have been forgiven. Secondly, if you refuse to forgive them, and you live your life walking around with anger in your, in your being, That anger will only destroy you and render you a grotesquely ugly person. Anger in our bosom is like gasoline in a Styrofoam cup.

Anger always destroys its container, always. Eventually it'll eat its way out and destroy its container. And I then said, and thirdly, and I don't, I don't say this often to people, but it just seemed in the moment that this needed to be said. I said, if you refuse to forgive these people, And you live your life, never repenting of your bitterness and anger, never repenting of your refusal to forgive them.

Then you just might die and go to hell. and burn in hell forever. And I said to her, I don't know what else to say to you. When in fact, Jesus says, if you do not forgive others of their sins against you, your Father will not forgive you.

And that brings us back to Piper's statement that if we continue on and bitterness and anger and unforgiveness, then we will not go to heaven because heaven is the dwelling place of forgiving people. Think about it. If you're going to be holding a grudge for your life and never repenting of that, you're going to nurse that and hold on to it. Why would you want to go to heaven?

There's no grudges there. You can't bring that grudge with you into heaven. You have to leave that behind. In CS Lewis's book The Great Divorce, whatever the theological problems are there in that fantasy, there are some interesting theological points that are made, and he imagines in this dream sequence of people taking a bus ride from hell to the foothills of heaven, and they have an opportunity.

You can come in if you want. And one by one, in just about every case, everyone says, I don't like it here. And they choose to walk away from heaven and go back to hell. And one of the characters doesn't want to be in heaven because they can't.

Keep their grudges. Heaven, I don't, I don't want to be here. If people aren't going to make a big deal here about what I'm angry about and the grudges that I'm holding, And so this is not, don't read this and go, man, I can't go to heaven. I really want to be there.

No, no, you really don't want to be there. If your grudge is so important to you, that you refuse to forgive. You just might prefer hell. Over heaven, in fact, unforgiveness and bitterness and anger.

is in itself the lobby of hell. It is the beginnings. It is the essence of hell that may be at work in our beings, and it needs to be renounced. It needs to be hated.

It needs to be confessed. It needs to be rejected. And so as believers, here's how it all fits together. We say to God, God, someone has wronged me, and I want to forgive them in a way that is shaped by your forgiveness of me.

And also, Lord, I've sinned against you and I'm asking you to forgive me the way that I forgive other people, which bears the imprint of the way that you forgive me. So it all comes full circle. It's all tied together, and I want to forgive other people, though it will shake me to my core, though it will rattle me to my bones, though I do this with fear and trembling, and it's going to hurt and it will involve my dying and piercing pangs that go along with that, I will forgive out of all holy greed to go deeper into experiencing your grace in my life.

Let me close by asking you this question.

Can you, for example, if you are married, can you pray this prayer? Would you dare? Pray this prayer. Father, forgive me in the same way that I forgive my spouse.

And other people in my life. who have wronged me. You say that just, that sounds really weird to say that Jesus basically twice, Luke 11, Matthew 6 says, hey, when you pray, say this. It'll challenge you to your core.

Challenge you to your core. But that's a good thing, right? It's what we need. There's some other choices embodied in our choice to forgive in terms of how we execute that, and we'll look at that next Sunday.

But let's go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to help us. You guys have your connection cards that are in your bulletin. I would, I would urge you to just pull those out, man, if you're visiting with us and you're comfortable doing so, let us know that. Just fill out the information on the front.

If you're a 1st time, 2nd time, 3rd time visitor. If you consider yourself a regular attender, let us know that. But on the back of the connection card, if, if God, we're not just playing church here, if God's spirit is speaking to your heart, challenging you, encouraging you, instructing you in some way, can you just, could you indicate that just give expression of that on the back of this connection card. If there's some way that we can pray for you about these things or anything else in your life, write that down.

Also, if you need a pastoral staff member to call you. Let us know that. As well, and we'll be happy to do that. But let us know how maybe God is dealing with your heart and what you're learning from these passages, how that's intersecting with your journey and challenging you or helping you, and how we might be involved at least in praying for you regarding these things.

And then as the offering bags go by in just a moment, we would encourage you to put this, your connection card in the offering bag. But we all need a whole lot of help, don't we? And fortunately God has given us the capacity to pray and receive that from Him. Let's pray together.

Lord, we thank you for your word. It, it encourages us. It lifts us up, it challenges us. It breaks us.

It makes us whole. It puts us together. It tears us apart. It is a hammer.

It is a refining fire. it is milk. It is a soothing, comforting, gracious word. It is everything we need, Lord.

And so we just open our hearts to all that you're saying to us, challenge us and break us and mold us and shape us and make us a forgiving people. We need your help. We need your grace to do this, Lord. Help us If there's anyone here today who's not opened their hearts to receive this grace from you, touch their hearts that they would cry out to you right now, right now.

But all of us, Lord, together cry out to You. And ask that you would make us, the men and women, the boys and girls, the forgiving people that you call us to be. We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, Lord. Receive these funds, do much with them for the glory of Jesus.

In His name we pray, and all God's people sin.