Getting to the Place of Forgiveness - Part 1 (1 of 12)

, well, let me have you turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans. Chapter 12, Romans chapter 12 for our time of study. And God's word this morning. we're here today, not because we deserve to be here.

I think we all know what we deserve from God, but we don't deserve to hear his voice, and yet he speaks to us, and he speaks to us with amazing grace, giving us practical insight and help and how to live and how to, do life and relationships the way that he, he wants us to. And do I have a PowerPoint? Oh, can that TV be turned on? It can't.

OK. So we're going to have to go old school, which I don't have. OK. Oh, here we go.

The old mirror that helps me to. OK. say what? OK.

OK. I just need to be able to see that the slides are, are changing. but what we're going to be doing, beginning today over the next, few, few weeks is, talking on the subject of forgiveness, and we're going to launch from Romans 12 into a study of the topic of forgiveness. But let me begin by sharing something with you.

this is a Voice magazine that came out almost a year ago, put out by the IFCA, an association that our church is a, a member of, and there's an excellent article. written in this magazine by Robert Mueller, and it's an article entitled How to Split Your Church. So I don't know, maybe this is something you've been pondering, and interested in doing, and this would be a great article that can help you. He actually offers 10 suggestions on how you can split the church that you are involved in.

But he begins. With an interesting story, and let me just let him tell you the story. A church in the Southern United States no longer exists due in part to an incident that took place in the church kitchen one Sunday afternoon. A new family had arrived to take part in their first potluck luncheon.

The aroma of tuna casseroles, baked beans, and tater tot dishes wafted through the building. The unsuspecting wife cheerfully brought her red gelatin salad to the kitchen, then headed back to the fellowship hall to join her family. The moment the pastor said amen, hungry parishioners politely charged for the serving line. There were dozens of dishes to sample.

Where's our salad? the woman's husband asked innocently. There must be some mistake, she said. I'll find out what happened.

She reached the kitchen door in time to witness the queen of the kitchen ladling the last of her salad into the garbage disposal. What are you doing? the newcomer shrieked. That's my salad.

Without batting an eye, the woman looked up and said, You're new to this church. You'll soon learn that we use only real whipped cream around here, not Cool Whip. She hit the switch. The garbage disposal rumbled and gurgled and sucked the salad down the drain.

This author goes on to say that that incident began a chain of events that led to that church suffering an awful split to the point where it doesn't even exist. Today He then gives 10 suggestions on how to split a church. I'm going to go through these fast enough to where you specifically don't have time to write them down. But I will read them to you.

If you want to split a church, here's 10 things to do. Number 1, focus only on your own desires. Number 2, listen to every criticism. Number 3, focus on your pastor's weaknesses, not his strengths.

Number 4, speak the truth or practice love, but never combine the two. Number 5, store grievances for future use. Number 6, forgive only those who ask you to and only if they deserve it. Number 7, hide your own sin behind harsh attitudes towards others.

Number 8, use prayer to unite discontented people and spread inappropriate information. Number 9, do whatever it takes to win. And number 10, remember, you are on a mission from God. Those are his suggestions on how to destroy a church, and I think ultimately many of these would be good counsel for how to destroy any relationship that you are involved in.

I thought about based on this article preaching a message on The right thing to do with the red gelatin salad. Or the benefits of Cool Whip, but after further thought, I realized we probably should go deeper. Than that, and I do want us to begin to talk in earnest on the subject of forgiveness. What this queen of the kitchen did in this story was a terrible thing, but how should the woman who had her salad thrown down the sink, how should she have responded?

How should we respond when we are on the receiving end of wrongdoing? How should we respond to wrongs that are done to us today, maybe this morning, maybe later today? how should we respond to wrongs that were done to us this past week that still are fresh in our minds and our hearts, even as we sit here? this morning in this service, how should we respond to wrongs that have been done against us 30 years ago, and yet they're still with us, and they still eat away at us and give shape to our lives from day to day.

Well, we have been learning from Romans 12. Guys, that we verses 17 through 21 that we live in a world of brokenness. We live in a world where many wrongs are done and evils are committed, and some of those wrongs are committed against us. And the question is, how do we respond when wrongs are done against us?

Some of these wrongs leave us wounded and they leave us devastated and it seems that nobody understands the pain that we feel. Some wrongs done against us leave us fuming and steaming, hurt. And scarred. How do we respond when real wrongs are done against us?

I don't know honestly guys if there is any issue that is more important than this particular issue. I'm sure there are, but if you wanted to name the top 5 most important issues that we have to figure out in our lives if we're going to make our way through this broken world successfully and have good relationships, this is in the top 5. There are few issues more important than this issue. This is a giant slayer.

You think about David, who's looking at Goliath, and all of the Philistine army is behind Goliath. And David could have thought, what I'm going to do, I'm going to fight every one of these Philistine soldiers. And take them all down. He didn't think that.

He thought to himself, I'm going to go for the big guy. And he did, and by God's grace defeated the giant, and the rest of the soldiers fled. And this issue of forgiveness is one of those giant slayers that if we can win this battle, And learn to forgive. the dividends in our lives are huge, and 1000 other giants get slain in the process.

some Ulcers, some physical diseases, some anxieties, some depression that people experience, murders, acts of violence, verbal abuse, broken marriages, broken relationships, and church splits, all of that stuff lies somewhere downstream. of unforgiveness. And so what we're going to do in this topical series beginning today, is we're going to climb upstream of those things, and come to this matter of forgiveness, and look at what the scripture says. And in the process, if we can figure this out and learn to forgive and get this right, the dividends will be, be huge.

I would say as a married man myself and as a marriage counselor that, and I would not have guessed this coming into the ministry 21 years ago, but hands down. I would say that the number one killer of marriages is unforgiveness. And the interesting thing is few people would ever give that diagnosis. Hey, what killed your marriage?

Unforgiveness? No. When a couple comes into my office and I say, What's the problem? I don't know that I've ever had a man say, I'll tell you what the problem is, Pastor Milton.

I am an unforgiving person. no one ever says that. What they do is they'll say, I'll tell you what the problem is, and then they will list all the things their spouse has done that they have not forgiven them for. So few people would give the diagnosis of being unforgiving as the root problem.

But indeed, it is in marriages and in relationships and In the church. So we're gonna be studying this topic and seeking to get this right and learn to do this well. If we want a vibrant church, vibrant relationships, vibrant marriages, then we must become skilled and practiced at the art of this thing called forgiveness. And that brings us back to Romans chapter 12.

verses 17 through 21, we spent 3 weeks looking at this set of verses. And it's interesting when you look at verses 17 through 21, there's, there's several instructions. Paul is giving us a strategy for overcoming evil. and so to be an overcomer, to be victorious is not to live a life where no one ever wrongs you, but it's to respond in a certain way to those wrongs and thereby become an overcomer.

Over evil with good. And he's told us, don't retaliate with the evil for evil. Instead, premeditate the doing of what is morally good and beautiful towards the very people that have wronged you. He instructs us to be at peace.

With all men, including those that have wronged us. He has told us to not take justice into our own hands, but to leave room for the wrath of God. And then he says, I want you to turn around and actually for your part, do practical kindness to the person who has wronged you. So that's what we spent 3 weeks looking at that list of things there, which is the critical elements in Paul's strategy for overcoming evil.

with, with good. Now as you look at this list. And read the text Romans 12:17 to 21, a question may come to your mind, and that question is, where is forgiveness? In these verses, where is forgiveness?

It's not stated anywhere in these verses, and my response to that question is Romans 12:17 to 21, the list of items here. This is the definition of forgiveness. That's why you don't see the word forgiveness here. This is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is doing exactly what Paul says here. Withholding retaliation and not being an executioner of your own justice against the person who has wronged you and instead seeking peace and doing real and practical kindness to the person who has made himself or herself your enemy. in fact, let me just, what we're going to be doing this morning is just introducing the idea and then trying to make some headway through some of the points that you see on your insert. Let me, let me talk a little bit about the, the word forgive that we find in the New Testament.

There's, there's essentially two Greek words in the New Testament that are translated forgive, and the first word. is a word that literally means to send away from. OK, it's the word send with a word that means away from attached to the beginning of it. That's, that's one of the key words for forgiveness in the New Testament.

It means to send away from. And what's interesting is that there are times where this word, this verb, has an object which is a person, and other times where the object of this verb is the sin. And so some passages speak of sending away the sin of another person or the sending away of the person who committed the sin against you. We actually have both of these uses.

In the Lord's Prayer, this should be Matthew 6:12, not 612. And, and look at this, Jesus says, forgive our debts, literally send away, speaking to God, send away our debts, send away our sins, as we send away our debtors. So send away our sins and sin is the object of this verb, as we send away those who sin against us. Is that clear enough?

and that raises the question, what does it mean to send away sins? when sin is the object and we're sending that away, basically, guys, here's what it means when, when someone sins against you, The natural thing to happen is their sin to loom front and center in your thinking. It's what you see when you think of that person, and that sin is hanging in between you and that particular person, to where when you relate to them. That sin that is in between you now is giving shape to it's cluttering or giving shape to or limiting the way that you're relating to that person to forgive the sin that that person has committed against you is to send it away from being between you, to send it away, away from the center of your gaze.

So instead of stewing over it, and staring at it, one wife that Jay Adams talks about in his book, Family Living in the Home, literally kept a spiral-bound notebook of over 100 pages single spaced of her husband's offenses against her for 13 years. She had duly recorded all of them and laid that on the counselor's desk and said, Here's the problem in our marriage. And he replied by saying, you are right. This is the problem in your marriage.

but that's what is she doing? She's taking the offenses that her husband has done, and she's recording them, and she's studying those things. They're right in the center of her gaze, and whenever she sees her husband, that's what she sees. For a woman in that case to send those things away is to take that notebook and put it in the fireplace.

With the fire burning, of course, to send them away so that these are not between us anymore and these are not in the center of my gaze when I look upon and think about this person who has sinned against me. So that's what it means to send the sin away. But what does it mean to send away the person who sinned against you? Literally we're We're being counseled here that when someone sins against you, to send that person away.

You say, Well, Pastor Milton, what, this message was hard up to this point, but I'm good at that. What does it mean to send away the person who has sinned? Against us. Well, obviously it's not talking about sending someone away from you.

Let's word it this way. It means to send that person to release and send that person away from the prison of the consequences that you wish to visit upon him or her., thinking of the prison analogy, it's interesting in Matthew 18, Jesus actually uses that analogy to speak of what we do to people that have sinned against us. we want to throw them in prison. And so someone sins against us and what we want to do, speaking metaphorically, is we create this prison cell of consequences, whatever those consequences may be.

And we put them inside that prison cell of consequences, and we close the door and we lock that door, and we won't let them out of that prison cell of consequences that we now are visiting upon them as a result of their sin against us. and what does it mean to send that person away? Here's what forgiveness means. Forgiveness means taking the key to that door and unlocking the door of that prison cell of consequences that we are visiting upon that person, unlocking it, opening the door, and then sending the person away, releasing them, saying you can go and be free of these consequences.

That in my opinion, you deserve for what you have done. Against me. Guys, we're, we're good at locking people up, aren't we? People who mess with us and sin against us.

We'll put them in a prison cell wherein we will verbally lash at them. Deliver constant reminders of their sin against us where they are to our angry countenance and various other forms of active retaliation or passive aggressive low grade retaliation or withholding from them some good that we know that they are expecting from us, but it's like, what, they've let me down, so I'm not going to give them what They think they're entitled to, and we build these prisons and we lock people up in them.

And when it comes to us relating to them, that's all they get from us. There are people, perhaps in your life, that are trying to get out of that prison of consequences that you are visiting upon them as a result of their failures against you.

And to forgive them. is to take the key and unlock that door of that prison cell, to open that door and to let the person go and to send them away. You, you are free. Just like when a prisoner is released from prison, the warden and guards will come and they will take him.

They'll open the gate of the cell and let him. Let them out. And, and when you're free from prison, you're not allowed to hang around anymore. It's like you got to go.

And so they'll see you to the door of the, the gate of the compound of the prison and make sure you leave, they are sending you away. And anyone being sent away in a situation like that is very happy to be sent away. And Jesus would tell us that's the essence of forgiveness. It's releasing people and sending them away from the prison of consequences that you in your heart wish to visit upon them or are visiting upon them.

So that's the first word for forgiveness in the New Testament. It's to send away the sin from out between you and that other person who has sinned against you. And it's to send them away, to release them and send them away from the consequences that you have been visiting upon them. But there's another word for forgive in the New Testament, and this is the word that I think If my study was thorough enough, this is Paul's word for forgiveness.

In fact, I think this is the only word he uses for forgiveness, and it's simply the word for grace. The verb form of grace. If Paul were speaking to us in English, he would say to forgive someone is to grace someone, to grace them. Someone wrongs you and you come to Paul and say, what should I do?

He would say, you need to grace that person. and this particular verb for forgiveness is used in Ephesians 4:32 in Colossians 3:13, and elsewhere in Paul's, writings. And this speaks of more than, than just, Withholding retaliation from a person, releasing them from the prison cell of consequences that you've been visiting upon them as a result of their sin, to grace someone means that you do active and positive good to them. So you've released them and they're walking away from these consequences, and then you chase them down and you do real and active and positive good.

To them The word grace, whenever you see this word, think of three words think of favor, think of undeserved favor, and think of ill-deserved favor. It is favor and any practical expression of that favor in the form of kindness towards a person, Grace by its very nature is undeserved favor. It is a favor and a kindness that has not been earned. In fact, it's ill deserved.

It's the opposite. of what a person has actually earned. from us. It's what God has done to us.

We have sinned against Him. We have not earned his love, we have not earned his forgiveness and salvation and his acceptance. In fact, we have earned the opposite. But God, when we believed in Jesus, rescued us from the prison of consequences eternally that we deserved.

And not only that, but God has moved towards us and repeatedly in Christ, is doing real and practical kindness to us to where Paul uses words like lavish in describing how great the kindness that he shows. And so that's the other word for forgiveness. And if we put those two words together, here's a definition of forgiveness, and this is what you see on your notes. To forgive someone is to send away the sin from between you and the one who sinned against you.

It is to release that person from the consequences he or she deserves from you as a result of the sins that they have committed against you. But it's not to stop there. It is also let see to positively favor him or her with blessing that is in fact the opposite of what you feel that they deserve from you. And when you read that definition, Tell me what's different about this definition than what Paul tells us in Romans 12:17-21.

That's exactly what Paul tells us to do, withhold retaliation. Don't take your own revenge upon those who wrong you, and instead, you need to premeditate doing good to that person. And you need to do real and practical kindness to that person. Romans 12:17 to 21 is in its very essence, the definition of forgiveness, and Paul in Ephesians 4:32 says, I want you to be gracing one another in this way.

In Colossians 3:13, I want you to be gracing and forgiving one another in this way. In Romans 12:17 to 21. I want you to carry this out towards your brothers and sisters in Christ and towards those who don't know Christ. Anyone who wrongs you, I want you to live out this ethic of forgiveness.

Well, that brings us to what we're going to be talking about in the coming weeks. And your response may be, Pastor Milton, I think I know what forgiveness is, and I think I know based on what you're saying that I'm called to forgive. But I'm not there. I am not there.

And I, I totally understand. That struggle. There are times where I am so deeply humbled as a pastor where I'm staring into the face of a person who's on the receiving end of horrific wrong. I've heard in my office.

A blood curdling scream. From a woman who just discovered her husband's infidelity as it was confessed to her. And when she came back into the office staring at me with this numb look, And I'm looking at her and I know ultimately she's going to have to forgive, but my tongue is tied and my hand is over my mouth. How, what, what do I say here?

And at such moments, I Right or wrong, I just, I can't bring myself to say to, a brother or sister in such a moment and say to them, what, God commands you to forgive. But what I do instead is I ask them, are you willing to go on a journey starting today that will lead you to a place of forgiveness? That's all I want to ask in that moment. Are you willing to go on a journey that will lead you to a place of forgiveness and God be praised.

There have been many who have said, Yes, I'm willing. I'm willing to go on that journey. And what we're going to begin to look at this morning is when someone says, I'm willing, I, I am not in a place even remotely where I'm ready to forgive this other person, but I'm willing to go on a journey that will take me there. when someone is open to that journey, what I like to do is what we're about to do.

I like to do what I call a 360 around the cross. My goal as a pastor and as a brother in such moments is to simply take them to the foot of the cross where Jesus died. And we're just going to journey around the cross, and we're going to observe what we can observe, think upon what we see there, and really allow what we see there into our hearts, and we're going to go the full distance around the cross. And what's been so rejoicing to my heart is that when someone has made that journey around the cross a full 360.

By the time they're done with that journey, To hear them say, I want, pastor, I want to forgive. Somehow they got from the first floor of understandable anger and bitterness. To the 2nd floor. Of grace and forgiveness, and I submit to you this morning that it is the cross that gets you from that 1st floor of anger and bitterness and unforgiveness to the place of grace.

When we're all in a department store and we're on the 1st floor and we want to get to the 2nd floor, most of us will find instead of climbing the walls to get to the 2nd floor, we'll go to the escalator. And we'll just take one step. And we'll just stand there And 45 seconds later we find ourselves on the second floor. And I always think of that when I think about this 360 around the cross, because that's, that's the power of the cross.

If today you're in a place of unforgiveness and anger and bitterness against those that have wronged you, and you want to get to that second floor of grace, that escalator that you need is the cross. If you're willing to just come to the foot of the cross and do a 360 and just, Lord, show me what you want to show me. Here at the foot of the cross, and I'll receive it. If you allow God to take you on that journey, you will find yourself at a place where you not only are able to forgive, but where you want to forgive.

And so all we're going to have time to do this morning is get started on these truths. We'll see how far we go, or we can get this morning, but we're gonna begin looking at some truths to ponder at the foot of the cross. that God will use to transport you to the place of forgiveness. Listen to what JC Ryle says.

He says a spiteful, quarrelsome Christian is a scandal. It is doubtful that such a one has sat At the foot of the cross. It's real interesting language there. He's not really questioning the salvation of such a person.

He says a spiteful quarrelsome Christian. So he's, I'm not even going to question the salvation of that person. But he says, when I see a spiteful and a quarrelsome Christian, I conclude that it is not likely that that person has sat at the foot of the cross. He may have been saved.

At the cross, and by Jesus' death. But it's evident he doesn't pull up a chair, as it were, and linger there, and sit there and stare and think and ponder deeply about what he sees there. A Christian who is spiteful and quarrelsome is someone who does not spend enough time at the foot of the cross, who does not spend enough energy thinking deeply about what he sees at the foot of the cross. Well, we want to try to fix that and give you some tools to think about and ponder in moments where you find yourself struggling with, with anger.

And let's begin with the first thought or truth that you can ponder at the foot of the cross. Seriously, guys, when you're wrong, and you're like, I just, I want to lash out, I want to retaliate. I want to be bitter forever against this person. I don't want to forgive.

That's when you need to run to the foot of the cross, and stare at Jesus, that Christ and Him crucified, and then begin to think on some of these truths that are observable at the foot of the cross. And the first of these truths is this. Here's the first thing you can observe to be true. At the foot of the cross.

And that is this, that Christ has suffered as I am suffering right now, and infinitely more so, which means I am never alone. And any pain And Isaiah 53, it's interesting. This is a doctrine that we don't really talk about as much as we should. We, we talk a lot about when Christ was on the cross.

He bore our sins and our iniquities, and that is affirmed all over the place in Scripture. It's even taught in Isaiah 53. and we're going to get to that. But there's something else that Jesus bore when he was on the cross.

And that is Our every sorrow, and our every grief. He didn't just bury your sins, he bore your sorrows at the cross. Isaiah is looking ahead into the future and beholding Christ and Him crucified, hundreds of years in advance. And before he even gets to the subject of him burying our sins, the first thing he observes is this, that he is a man of sorrows.

and acquainted with grief. And Isaiah says, surely, indeed, with certainty, Our griefs he himself bore. and our sorrows. He carried.

When Isaiah beheld Jesus hanging upon the cross, that was the first thought that came to his mind. That's my sorrows and my griefs that he is bearing. And carrying At the cross. We need to understand that every pain, every sorrow that we feel physically, relationally, emotionally, spiritually.

Every pain that you have ever experienced throughout your life. When Jesus was on the cross, He had those exact pains placed upon himself, and he felt them. It's almost as if when Christ was going to the cross, He said to his father, Father, when I, when I get to the cross, I know that I'm going to be bearing the sins of the world, but when I'm on the cross, can, can you arrange it so that every sorrow and every grief that my people will ever know Can you make it so that all of those griefs and sorrows and all of their nuances and intensities, that those griefs and sorrows would be placed upon me so that I can feel them too?

And the father said, OK.

OK. Why would Jesus do that? Jesus did that because He wanted to feel what you feel. In your every pain.

He wanted to feel what you feel in those moments. Where you are wronged. He wanted to taste those things for himself so that you would never be alone in any pain. You would always have a friend who gets it.

And who felt exactly that every pain you ever feel of any sort, Jesus can say I felt exactly that because I wanted to. Because I wanted to be the one right beside you right now in the middle of this pain. Who is your dearest friend. It's interesting that when Christ was being crucified, They offered him wine mixed with myrrh.

That was a medication to numb his senses to the pain. And what did Jesus do? He rejected it He refused the medication. Why?

Because what he's saying is, I want to feel it all. It'd be one thing if Christ came to us and our pain and said, Hey, I, I just want you to know that I, your pains and sorrows were placed upon me when I was on the cross, so I bore your griefs and your sorrows. I was heavily medicated when I did so, but I just want you to know I bore those. But he would say, No, no, no, I, I refuse medication because I wanted to feel the full awfulness of every grief and every pain that you have ever known or will ever known so that I could be with you inside your circle of pain.

One of the interesting things about pain. Is that pain Isolates. There's nothing that isolates us and makes us more alone than pain. Is that not true?

You think of the moments where you felt the loneliest in your life, and undoubtedly most of those moments were moments where you were in tremendous pain, and nobody got it. When we are in pain, just imagine a circle of pain. And we are there all alone inside that circle, and there may be other people around us even trying to comfort us, but they are outside that circle of pain. Some are very sympathetic, and they, they do a good job of getting inside that circle of pain with us to one degree or another.

But those are exceptional cases. The truth is that there is nothing that isolates us any more than pain. And I've noticed that, that a lot of times when we retaliate, when someone retaliates against another person who has wronged them, I don't know that it's always because they're just an evil person and they're viciously retaliating. What drives some of our retaliations is simply the fact that we're alone.

We are so alone in our pain, and we don't want to be the only one hurting. And so we lash out. In order that others may hurt the way we are hurting so that we now feel less alone in our pain. And Jesus gets that.

And he says, Listen, I did something for you to cut at the root of that. You, you truly are never alone in any pain, because when I was on the cross, I didn't just suffer the horrors of the cross, and of crucifixion, and the punches and the slaps and the crown of thorns and the wrath of God, the justice of God upon me. I didn't just experience that, but when I was on the cross, I also took your every sorrow and your every grief and your every tear, and I experienced that. So that I could be your closest, dearest, most sympathetic friend.

Right now in the midst of this pain you are experiencing as a result of this wrong that somebody has done. Against you, in ancient times there used to be cupbearers who would, it would be a terrible job. The king was afraid he'd be drinking something poisonous, so the cupbearer would drink first, and if he didn't fall over dead, then the king would say, OK, I can drink this now. And so the cupbearer, the king would never really receive a cup to drink that had not been tasted by the cupbearer.

And there's a sense in which the suffering that we experience in this life when we're on the receiving end of wrongdoing, there's a sense in which Jesus is our cupbearer. And he assures us that I will never I will never hand you a cup of suffering. There's no hurt that you will ever experience, that you will ever have to drink from that I myself have not tasted thoroughly. And so we have An intimate sympathetic friend who experienced all that we have experienced in the way of pain because he wanted to.

Because that's the savior he is and the friend that he wants to be. when you are on the receiving end of wrong, go to the foot of the cross and begin your train of thought by pondering. What Jesus bore in terms of your sorrows and griefs while on the cross. Let me just share this with you.

I really, this is as far as we're going to get this morning, 0.1. So, if you want your money back, we'll provide that for you as you leave. let me close with this. John Perkins, was a civil rights activist and reformer.

He grew up in a small town in the heart of racist Mississippi. Decades ago, his own brother was killed by the town marshal. It was shortly after that, that John Perkins said, I'm out of here, and he moved, I believe, to California, vowing never to return to Mississippi again. And he was doing quite well and living quite comfortably, making a good living for himself, but his conscience began to prick him and God got a hold of him and said, Go back to Mississippi.

Go back into the heart of racist Mississippi and be an ambassador for peace and reconciliation between the races. And so John Perkins amazingly gave heed to that call, but upon returning to Mississippi, he was repeatedly beaten, harassed, and imprisoned by the police who did not want him back in Mississippi. On one awful occasion he was arrested and through the full length of a night he was beaten, he was kicked, he was stomped on by the police and the guards who were in a drunken frenzy that night, and one of them even took a pistol that had no bullets in it, but John Perkins didn't know that.

They took a pistol and put it right up against his head, and they would pull that trigger again and again through the night, and Perkins never knew from one moment to the next.

If that would be the end of him, he had an open head wound, barely alive, and yet they made him clean up his own blood. Near the end of the night, one of the guards took a fork. And jammed the fork down Perkins' throat, causing enormous damage. Perkins struggled with bouts of post-traumatic stress and depression after that, and he found himself laid up in a hospital after that incident in the hospital bed after the surgeries had been performed, and he found himself utterly consumed with hatred and bitterness against the white man.

And who of us can blame him? And what What in the world is powerful enough To overcome Such bitterness and hatred in the face of the intensity of the wrongs that were done against him. What power is there? What's interesting is that John Perkins, as he lay in that hospital bed consumed with hatred and bitterness against the white man, He did a journey.

He went on a journey, the very journey that we're beginning on today, and he started his journey at the foot of the cross in exactly the same place that we start today. Listen to him tell you about his journey. He says the Spirit of God worked on me as I lay in that bed, an image formed in my mind, the image of the cross, Christ on the cross. It blotted out everything else in my mind.

This Jesus knew what I had suffered. He understood and he cared because he had experienced it all himself. That's exactly That's exactly what we are learning here. That's exactly what Isaiah.

says in Isaiah 53:4. He had experienced it all himself. This Jesus, this one who had brought good news directly from God in heaven had lived what he preached, yet he was arrested and falsely accused, like me, he went through an unjust trial. He also faced a lynch mob and got beaten, but even more than that, he was nailed to a rough wooden.

planks and killed, killed like a common criminal. At the crucial moment, it seemed to Jesus that even God Himself had deserted him. The suffering was so great, he cried out in agony, he was dying. And imagine how Perkins, a Christian, who is being horribly treated by the prison guards.

Imagine that sense of abandonment that he would feel. I, I love God, I am his child, and I'm serving him and where are you God? The abandonment he would have felt would have been especially keen as well. But he's turning his thoughts now in the hospital bed to Jesus and, and saying that he suffered in the same way, he gets it.

And he was abandoned. But then he moves on from there and says, but when he, Jesus looked at that mob who had lynched him, he didn't hate them. He loved them, he forgave them, and he prayed God to forgive them. Father, forgive these people, for they don't know what they are doing.

His enemies hated, but Jesus forgave. I couldn't get away from that. It's a profound mysterious truth. Jesus' concept of love overpowering hate.

I may not see its victory in my lifetime, but I know it's true. I know it's true because it happened to me. On that bed full of bruises and stitches, God made it true to me. He washed my hatred away and replaced it with a love for the white man in rural Mississippi.

I felt strong again, stronger than ever. What doesn't destroy me will make me stronger. I know it's true. Because it happened to me.

So in his journey, he, he does get to a place where he observes the example of Jesus and giving grace, but notice that before he could even get to that place, he first had to make this stop that we're at this morning, and observing that Jesus, he suffered as I am suffering. And he gets it. He gets it. And he cares.

About what I'm feeling right now. Well, there's more stops that we're going to make in this 360 around the cross. This is the first of those, and this is as far as we'll be able to get. This morning, but let's go to the Lord in prayer and just ask him to help us.

And by the way, you've got information cards that are in your bulletin. Let us know how we can pray for you. Some of you are hurting, you're struggling, battling with anger and frustration and bitterness, and just feel free to share that. That's OK.

We, we'll pray for you about that. If there's any way we can minister to you, let us know that on the information card. Any prayer requests, we would, we would feel so honored to be able to, as your advocate just to go in the presence of God and And pray on your behalf. And if you need anything from us, let us know that as well, and our offering bags are going to come by in just a moment and feel free to Put those In the offering bags.

If you're visiting with us, let us know that as well. 1st time, 2nd time. Let's pray together and, and ask God to help us to To be clear in our sight and to be deep thinkers. At the foot of the cross, Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters that are here this morning.

Most all of us are hurting to one degree or another. And we're wrestling with wrongs that are done. Against us, large and small, maybe active wrongs that have been committed or just sheer neglect, write things that we felt entitled to that just have not been done. And we're hurt.

And we need, we need help. And we're, we, we say to you, Lord, that even if our hearts are not in a place where, yeah, we're gung ho about forgiving, we say to you this morning that we are willing to go on a journey that will take us to that place, and there's no better place. To begin that journey than at the cross. And so thank you for what you've shown us this morning, Lord.

There's so much more to see and we'll get to that, but just this morning, Lord, we We enjoy the sight of this deeply empathetic friend who who left his glories in heaven and abandoned his immunity to pain and came into this broken world and actually put himself under our every sorrow and grief, because he wanted to. No one has ever or could ever love us like this. And in our moments where we are reeling with pain, Lord, We, we need a friend like you inside that circle of pain.

Thank you for being here with us.

Our hearts are open to you and we're ready, whatever else you want to show us, we, we can take it from you because You are a wonderful, the ultimate friend. To broken sinners, you died for us. You shed your blood so that we would have forgiveness and You also took on our sorrows and griefs. So that we could experience your companionship.

And our pains. We thank you for this opportunity as well to give our offerings to you, receive these funds, Lord, and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. We give ourselves. To you also in Christ's name, and all God's people said,