Getting to the Place of Forgiveness - Part 2 (2 of 12)

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 for our time of study in the world, in the word this morning. We are in the world. We're doing a study in the world of the word.

We're continuing to look at the subject of forgiveness, a very important issue. I think you will all agree there are many issues in our lives, complicated issues that we deal with in our lives and relationships and our homes and our, our families, our marriages, and a lot of that stuff lies somewhere downstream of unforgiveness many times and bitterness and anger. And so if we want to fight smart in our lives, we want to climb upstream as high as we can go and to fight some of those crucial battles, and that battle for forgiveness is one of them.

If we can fight and win this battle and learn the art of forgiveness, then we in one fell swoop can slay 1000 other giants at the same time.

And so we're studying this topic of forgiveness and our focus last Sunday and today and next Sunday is going to be more along the lines of getting to the place of forgiveness. We live in a broken world where evils are done. We saw testimony of that on Monday of this past week at the Boston Marathon. Senseless evils are committed.

And people are injured and killed and wounded and left devastated as a result. And so we live in a broken world full of broken people and committing sins, and some of those sins are directly committed against us. And how do we respond when such evils are done against us? There's probably a variety of things we would say that we need to do when evil is done against us, but I would submit that the most important thing that we need to do is to forgive.

Last week, we learned that there are two key words for forgiveness. One of them that literally means to send away, to send away the sin, or to send away the sinner who sinned against us. And there's also the word grace that is used for forgive. In the New Testament, and putting all that together, we came up with this definition.

I put it in your notes again this morning, because modified it a little bit based on what we talked about last week, but to forgive is basically to do this. It is to send away the sin from between you and the one who committed the sin against you, and to hold that sin against him. No longer be to send away the offender from the vengeance that he deserves from you as a result of the sin he has committed against you. It is to release that person from the prison of the vengeance that he deserves from you as a result of a sin against you, and to release him and to let him go and to send him away and freedom from that vengeance and retaliation.

That you would love to visit upon him as a result of his sin. And to forgive is to positively favor that person with blessing that he does not deserve. To forgive is to do more than just withhold retaliation. It is to release the person from the retaliation he deserves, and then to pursue that person and actually do real and practical good and kindness to that person.

Who has wronged you, kindness that is undeserved. So that is what it means to forgive. The question that we're asking is how do I get there? You may say, I know what forgiveness is, and I know that I'm supposed to forgive particular people who have wronged me, but Pastor Milton, you have to understand I am wounded and I am hurting.

I am reeling. I am staggering in response to the wrongs that have been done against me. And when I read in the Bible, what forgiveness is, and I see that I am called to forgive these people that have wronged me, I have to say that I'm just not there. I am at point A.

And point B, really far away, is the place of forgiveness, and I'm not there. Well, if that's the case, a couple things. Number one, let me discourage you from something. And that is, let me discourage you from sitting around at point A.

And just thinking, well, I'll forgive whenever I find myself in the place of forgiveness. Don't expect that to just happen. Don't expect to just find yourself one morning in a forgiving mood. And you just forgive everybody because you're feeling like it.

You're not going to get to that place of forgiveness, automatically. You will get there deliberately, if you get there at all. And so I would encourage you not to wait. but also, I would encourage you also with the fact that God understands that you're at point A.

He understands that point B, the place of forgiveness is far away from where you might be right now. And he actually gives you a powerful tool that is designed to move you from point A. to point B, the place of forgiveness, and that tool is the gospel. Do you realize that part of the purpose of the gospel is to move you, to transport you from point A to point B's?

that you need to be at in your life. You realize part of the purpose of the gospel is to move you to the places where you need to go and to be as a Christian. Paul affirms this in Romans chapter 1 and verse 16. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God.

It's the ultimate location where God's power resides and does its most phenomenal work. So if you hunger for the power of God in your life, Paul is telling you where you will find God's power in its thickest density, and that's inside the gospel. You say, Well, it's the power of God for what? Look what Paul says.

It is the power of God into salvation. Imagine salvation as a realm, and he's saying the gospel is the power of God to transport you into that realm of salvation. And then once you're inside of that salvation, the gospel continues to be the power of God to take you deeper and deeper into all things salvation. And so here you are, you're inside of salvation as a brother or sister in the Lord, a believer in Jesus, and, and somebody is wronging you in your life, and you find your heart welling up with bitterness and with anger and unforgiveness against them.

And so you're in sight of salvation, but you see that you're called to forgive. to forgive that person. And in your mind, you're thinking, I know I'm supposed to forgive, but I'm just not there. Forgiveness lies somewhere deeper into this salvation thing than where I find myself right now.

Well, how do you get from where you are now to that deeper place of forgiveness? What's the gospel? That will get you there. And that's why we want to make use of the gospel and getting us to the place of forgiveness.

And we just shouldn't be content to say, well, I'm just not there. I'm just not there. I'm just not there. No, there's a way to get there.

There's transportation available to get you there. And that is the gospel. Imagine that I called you at some point this week and you answer the phone and I said, Hey, I got real good news. Imagine you're at home and I say to you, I've got real good news.

I'm on the church campus right now at Linden Street and I have $1000 for you right here on the church campus. I've got $1000 for you. What would you say? Would you say, Pastor Melton, I'm sorry, I'm just not there.

I'm just not there. And I'd be like, Well, what do you mean? I'm just not on the church campus right now. I'm just not there.

would you just hang up the phone and just settle for the fact that you're just not there? No, you would look around for some means of transportation, whether it's a car or a bike or something, and you would make use of that transportation to get you from wherever you are, point A to point B, which is on the church campus where someone is holding $1000 for you. That's the way we need to use the gospel. There is a place of forgiveness.

There is a place that is inside of salvation where if we find ourselves in this place, we will both be able to forgive and we will want to forgive the person who has wronged us. And it's the gospel that gets us there. We can state it this way, the gospel is the power of God into forgiveness. It is the power of God to transport us to that place where we are able to forgive and want to forgive those who wrong us ultimately.

A the broad view of what we're covering here in this series, we're going to see that there's 4 total steps of forgiveness, and steps 23, and 4 are more unpacking the mechanics of what forgiveness looks like and how to execute that forgiveness. Step 1 though is the one we're going to spend the most time on, and that is more the path to forgiveness. Step 1, if you want to truly biblically forgive. what you need to do, step one is go to the cross and do some gospel thinking.

Go to the cross and do some gospel thinking. And if you do that, With a heart that is open to God's spirit, you will find yourself being transported to a place where you are able and you want to forgive. It is at the foot of the cross where we see clearly. when you are confused and blinded by your circumstances, blinded by the wrongs that have been done against you, and you can hardly see straight and, and understand what you're feeling and what's going on and the right response when you find yourself in those situations where you cannot think or see straight, the best place to go is to the foot of the cross.

It is there that you can see most clearly. Rebecca Manley Pippert in her book Hope Has Its Reasons says this regarding how we can see at the foot of the cross. She says, dust, rusty nails, and blood notwithstanding, the ground at the foot of the cross is the only vantage point from which to view life clearly, to see things there. is to see them truly.

You will never have a clearer vision of yourself and of others and how to behave in your circumstances and how to forgive in the face of wrong. You will never have a clearer vision to see through all of these things than when you are at the foot of the cross. And that's why we want to go here and essentially do a 3. around the cross, and behold Christ and Him crucified, and see what we can see, think upon what we see there and allow God through these gospel thoughts to transport us to the place where we need to go.

5 thoughts in total that we'll be looking at this morning. that we can think at the foot of the cross, that God can use to transport us to the place of forgiveness. There's more, and we'll look at those other ones next week. But today, just 5 thoughts that we can think at the foot of the cross, through which we can experience God's power to reorient our thinking.

And to help move us to the place where we are able and ready and willing to forgive. Thought number 1 we looked at last week at the foot of the cross. I behold Christ and Him crucified, and I can observe this to be true. I can think this at the foot of the cross, and that is that Christ has suffered as I am suffering right now and infinitely more so, which means I am never alone in any pain.

At the foot of the cross, we observed that not only did Jesus bear my sins, but he also bore my sorrows. Isaiah 53:4, Isaiah, looking into the future, beholds Christ being crucified, and the first observation that he gives voice to is surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried. Isaiah comes to the foot of the cross, and he's like, wow, indeed. Our sorrows he bore.

And our griefs He is carrying while on the cross. He'll later talk about Him burying our sin. But before he even gets to that, he relishes the fact that Jesus, while on the cross, bore our sorrows and griefs. We sang earlier in the service, the song I Stand amazed by Charles Gabriel.

And one of the verses that we sang, we all gave voice to this theological reality. He, Jesus took my sins and my sorrows, and he made them his very own. This is the double bearing that happened at the cross. Jesus took my sins upon Himself, but not only that, He took my sorrows upon Himself, and he made those sins, and he made my sorrows his very own, and he felt them.

Every sorrow, every grief that we ever know that we will ever experience on the receiving end of any wrong that anyone ever does against us, Jesus felt exactly that at the cross. He intentionally placed himself under your sorrows and griefs, every one of them, because he wanted to feel everything that you would feel. In the way of pain that you have experienced throughout your life, including on the receiving end of wrong. Which means you're not alone in any pain.

You've got this intensely sympathetic friend who is with you inside your circle of pain, who gets it and who loves you and who knows exactly what you're feeling because he allowed himself to feel exactly what you're feeling when he was on the cross because he wanted to. There's power in having Such a friend. Edward Shilito. The poet who himself witnessed the carnage of World War I wrote a poem entitled Jesus of the Scars.

In the last stanza of that poem, he compares Jesus to other deities, and he says the other gods were strong, but thou wast weak. They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne. But to our wounds. Only God's wounds can speak.

And not a god has wounds, but thou alone. Jesus is the only deity put forth by any religion that came into this broken, messed up world and placed himself under our every sorrow and our every grief, and who felt it all because he wanted to feel it so that he could be our intimate sympathetic companion, every step of the way. When you enter into any pain as a result of somebody wronging you, you are entering into in that moment to something that Jesus experienced 2000 years ago.

Your pain is a pre-experienced pain, pre-tasted suffering.

Christ already tasted it. He already experienced it. And as a result, as the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews chapter 4, in verse 15, that we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. That word sympathize literally means he suffers with, he feels, he suffers with us and our experiences of sorrow.

And grief Here on this earth. When we feel, he feels, even now, when tears form in our hearts. They fall from his eyes. There is a connection between us and Jesus, so much so.

That's why Jesus confronted Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul was persecuting the church, and Jesus said, Why are you persecuting me? What's he mean by that? To persecute my people and to cause them pain is to persecute and cause me pain.

I feel what my people feel. I have borne their every sorrow and their every grief. We must believe and cherish Christ as the ultimate sympathetic friend inside of our circle of pain. and what, guys, if you neglect this precious truth, and it just doesn't mean anything to you, you don't even think about the fact that Jesus sympathizes with you and your pain.

He has felt it all and he's with you together with you in your pain. If you neglect that and don't think about that, you need sympathy. And you're going to now press other people in the service of being your sympathizers, or you're going to be inflicting hurt on other people to get other people to be just as miserable as you are. But Christ gets it.

He sympathizes with us in our sorrows and in our griefs, and we can observe that to be true at the foot of the cross. We are not alone in our pain. There's a second thought that we can think at the foot of the cross, as we behold Christ and Him crucified, especially when we ourselves are hurting and on the receiving end. of wrongs that have been done against us.

And here's the second thing we can think, as we observe Christ and Him crucified, and that is that apparently, sometimes God purposes that those whom he loves deeply, be painfully sinned against. Right. think about it. Here's Christ being crucified on the cross, suffering horrible evils that have been committed against Him, leading to his death.

And we see this one suffering, and we ask ourselves, what does the Father think of him? What did the father think of Jesus? He loved him. He loved him more than we can imagine.

The Father spoke from heaven in Matthew chapter 3 verse 17, and he never did this for anyone else but for his precious Son. He thundered from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, and He pleases me well. I love Him. The Father loved His Son more than any other in the universe, and yet this supreme object of the Father's love is writhing upon a cross, gasping for air, the recipient of the most painful wrongs ever committed in human history.

If we run the math on that, we have to conclude that apparently sometimes God providentially plans that those whom he loves deeply be painfully sinned against. These sins that are being committed against Jesus the night leading to his death, and then the day of his crucifixion. These were no accidental, unexpected occurrences. When Christ was suffering, he didn't look up at his father and his father said, I'm sorry, I had no idea this would happen today.

This is out of my control. No, it says in Acts 2 that this man Jesus delivered over by the predetermined plan and the foreknowledge of God. was nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men. This was on the Father's daytimer, as it were.

It was scheduled that these wrongs would be committed against His Son. This is shrouded in mystery, but we know based on Scripture that the cross was no accident. This was the plan of God, that the supreme object of His love would suffer. The wrongs that Jesus suffered on that awful day in human history.

And we think that through and we're like, OK, I, I observe here at the foot of the cross that sometimes God allows those whom he loves deeply to be painfully sinned against. This helps us hugely because it delivers us from the naive notion that if God loves me, then I'll never hurt. I'll never suffer, and God will protect me from anyone ever wronging me in a way that is exceptionally painful. Now that naive notion dies at the foot of the cross.

But it also lifts us up, because sometimes when we find ourselves on the receiving end of wrongs that are desperately hurtful to us, and it seems to just come and wave after wave, and it doesn't go away, it's just getting worse. It's easy in such moments to begin to wonder, does God really love me? Does he love me as much as he loves these other brothers and sisters that aren't going through what I'm going through? But at the foot of the cross we're comforted because we observe that no.

God the Father loved no one more than Jesus, and he suffered more than any other person. God sometimes purposes that those whom he loves deeply be painfully sinned against. Then we look up at our Heavenly Father. And he looks at us and says, By the way, I love you too.

makes you want to run, doesn't it? We pause at the foot of the cross and appreciate the fact that, what, If On my path that lies ahead. At the present time or in the future, I'm on the receiving end of painful wrongs. That's a part of God's plan.

And he loves me. And if God loved His Son so much, And yet purposed for his son to suffer and die on the receiving end of multiple wrongs, then what makes me think That I am supposed to avoid such a fate in my path from day to day. There's a 3rd truth that we can ponder at the foot of the cross, a third thought that we can be thinking at the foot of the cross that will transport us to a place where we with hearts full of grace can give grace and forgiveness to those who have wronged us.

And that third thought is this as we behold Christ and Him crucified.

That God the Father can be completely trusted. On the receiving end of any wrongdoing. God the Father apparently can be trusted completely on the receiving end of any wrongdoing. You see, guys, when you stand at the foot of the cross and you behold Jesus dying, you do not just observe a man dying, you observe a man trusting.

Jesus is not just dying on the cross, he's trusting his Father, while on the cross. It says in 1 Peter chapter 2, he kept on continuously, literally entrusting himself to him who judges righteously, and he bore our sins in his body, while on the cross. Peter's doing something really precious for us. He's pulling back the curtains, and he's allowing us a glimpse into what was going on in Jesus' heart and in his mind.

Throughout his suffering leading to his death. And here's what was going on in the psyche of Jesus. Here's what was going on in his heart with regard to his disposition towards his father, and that is that he kept on trusting. His father throughout the entire ordeal, and he never stopped.

Jesus was arrested the night before his crucifixion, and as he was bound and taken away, in his heart, he's essentially saying to his father, Father, I'm trusting you. Whatever lies ahead in the coming hours, I am trusting you. And they put him before the Sanhedrin and false accusations are leveled against him and they find him guilty of blasphemy, and they end up blindfolding him and I would imagine as the blindfold is going around his, his eyes to where he cannot see that Jesus is saying to his father in his heart, Father, I'm trusting you.

I am trusting you.

And then bam, comes the first punch. And then the 2nd, and then the 3rd, and then the 4th, and between every blow, Jesus is saying, Father, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you. Jesus is taken before Pilate and more accusations are brought against him.

And as he stands before Pilate and the howling multitude, crying out for his crucifixion, Jesus stands there in his heart, trusting. His father The crowd cries out for his crucifixion, and Pilate goes along with the crowd, and Jesus is like, Father, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you. Pilate hands him over to be scourged.

The Roman soldiers put a crown of thorns upon. His brow and as they're weaving that crown of thorns, Jesus is looking at that and he's saying, Father, I'm trusting you, I'm trusting you. And then they take that crown of thorns and they put it on his head, and then they take a reed and they beat that crown of thorns into his brow. And Jesus says, Father, I'm trusting you.

I'm trusting you. He's then taken to a large stone and the clothes are stripped off of his back and he's tied around a great stone so that his skin would be as taut as possible and as he's being tied around that great stone in his heart he's saying, Father, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you. And then Came the searing pain of the lash of the whip.

Again and again and again. And Jesus In between every lash. Kept entrusting himself to his father. I'm trusting you, Father.

One thing leads to another, and he's given a cross that he needs to bear to Golgotha's Hill, and they arrive at the destination for his crucifixion, and his body is laid on the cross, and they stretch out his arms and his legs and he's saying in his heart, Father, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you. And then the nails are driven through his hands and through his feet. And he kept trusting.

See, Jesus kept on entrusting himself to his Father, and the situation just kept getting worse. But he kept on trusting, and the cross is hoisted into place, and for six awful hours he is gasping for air and writhing upon a cross, hanging naked in front of a gawking world, mocking and ridiculing him. At noon, the sun turns black and darkness comes over the face of the land, and the Heavenly Father turns his back on Jesus, begins to treat Jesus. With the fury of his wrath, treating Jesus as if he had committed every sin you and I have ever committed.

And Christ for the first time ever suffers rejection from His Father, and he cries out in pain, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You have forsaken me. And I'm asking, why have you forsaken me? And there's no answer.

There's no answer. And Jesus in his heart is like, well, I'm trusting you, Father. I'm trusting you. All the way to his final breath.

Before Jesus breathes His last. Luke tells us that Jesus cried out with a loud voice and said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last all the way to his dying breath. Jesus, right before he breathed his last said, Father, I'm about to die now.

But I'm, I'm entrusting my spirit to you. He trusted all the way to the bitter end. Trusting his father. Now I want to ask you this morning, was the Father worthy of his trust?

Did the Father come through for Jesus? I have a theory that he did. OK. On the 3rd day after Christ was buried in the tomb, the Father raised him from the dead with glorious resurrection power.

Days after that, the Father raised Jesus to his own right hand, the highest position of honor and glory and authority and all of the universe. John 1:18 tells us that Jesus is right now, present tense in the bosom of the Father, meaning he's in the embrace of the Father at the Father's right hand, and the most glorious position. of intimacy with the Father imaginable. And from that position of lordship and honor and glory and total deliverance and intimacy with the Father on the other side of all of his suffering, Jesus holds your face in his hands in the midst of your suffering, and says to you, you can trust my Father.

You can totally trust my father. I trusted him the whole way through the gauntlet. that he ordained for me and the wrongs that I suffered, and he came through for me, and he will come through for you. At the cross we observe not just a man dying but a man trusting.

What an amazing thing this is. Compare the first Adam to the second Adam. Adam is in the Book of Genesis, in this lush Garden of Eden, freshly created by the hand of God. And God says, gorge yourself, eat of everything except this one tree.

And Adam has all of this loving provision and a beautiful wife that God has created for him to enjoy relationship with, and Adam, surrounded by all of that lush provision, chose not to trust God. And then Jesus. Thousands of years later, it finds himself on the opposite extreme of Eden, in the worst circumstances imaginable. Hanging upon a cross.

The worst suffering anyone's ever known, the worst circumstances anyone has ever known, and he trusted. His father So we know that it's possible. To trust on the receiving end of wrongdoing. That we suffer, and we also observe that our Heavenly Father is most worthy.

Of our trust in those moments where we are on the receiving end. of heartrending pain. As a result of the wrongs that are done against us. There's a 4th thought that we can think at the foot of the cross as we behold Christ and Him crucified in those moments where our hearts are reeling and we're, we're fuming and we're angry, we're upset, we're feeling vindictive and bitter against those who have wronged us, and we know we're supposed to forgive, but we're just not there.

So in helplessness, we come to the foot of the cross and we just stare. And as we stare, We are led to a 4th thought that we can think. And that is Wow. At the foot of the cross, I see that I have committed greater sins against God than any person has ever committed.

Against me. What I'm about to say is intensely personal. And it's not for the faint of heart. Now I'm going to do something very personal with you.

And telling you some things about yourself and about me that may be the hardest things that you've ever heard. In your life These are not flattering truths. At the foot of the cross, we discover. The worst thing that there is to know.

about ourselves. And when someone has wronged us, and we are preoccupied with their wrong and fuming over their sin against us, and then we come to the foot of the cross and we come face to face with our own sins against of all people, God, that begins to bring us a healthy perspective if we go in the right direction with it. There is grace, there's powerful, transforming grace that comes on the other side of allowing yourself to go where we're about to go and to think. What we're about to think.

At the foot of the cross, we observe that we have committed greater sins against God than any person has ever committed against us. And Isaiah 53:5, Isaiah. Who himself is doing a 360 around the cross. He gives voice to this particular observation and literally in the Hebrew it reads this way He, Jesus on the cross was pierced through literally from our transgressions.

He was crushed from our iniquities. Most English translations say he was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. That's a true. theological truth, and he affirms that later in the chapter.

But if we go with the literal wording of verse 5, Isaiah is pointing us to the fact that Jesus was pierced from our transgressions and crushed from our iniquities. In other words, it was our transgressions that pierced him through, and it was our iniquities that crushed him to death. There's a variety of ways of looking at Christ's death and what killed him. Isaiah is telling us, here's one of the ways to look at Christ's death and what killed him.

You killed him. Your sins killed him. If it is true that our transgressions and our iniquities are the instruments of Christ's death, then that makes us all violators of the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill. You see, guys, one of the purposes of the cross.

is to show us for what we really are. And to show our sins for what our sins really are, sin. In its essence. is murder.

It is the murder of God. This is such a harsh view of sin that we would have never believed it if it were not for the cross. The cross shows us beyond any argumentation that if God came into the world, And revealed Himself for who He is in all of His goodness. and stood in between us and our sin.

We would kill him. That's exactly What we did when Christ came and it was our transgressions that pierced Him and our iniquities that crushed him to death. John Stott says, until you see the cross as something done by you, You will never appreciate that it is something done for you. We stand guilty at the foot of the cross.

And now we turn from the cross and we look at our sin, and suddenly we see sin differently than we saw it before. We see sin for what it really is. It's murder. It is the murder of God.

Charles Spurgeon says sin. Is de aside. Every sinner, if he could, would kill God. For he says in his heart, no God, sin in its essence is the murderer of Emmanuel.

God with us. I'm sure there are some in this room who would say, I totally reject that. I cannot stand the thought of that. Yes, I'm not perfect.

Who is perfect? Yes, I fall short, but I am no murderer of God. Well, the cross says that you and that I are. The cross also provides salvation and forgiveness to those who are willing to accept this assessment of their sin.

We need to allow in a sense, the cross to Deliver to us the traumatic blow of uncovering us for what we are as murderers of God. And our sin for what it is as essentially the murder of God. What the cross shows us is that essentially if you could just take any sin, all sin is connected. All sin has the same DNA.

You could take the smallest sin that you've ever committed, you can lay it on an operating table, you can cut into that sin, and you can search for and then pull out the nucleus of that sin, and then you can cut into the nucleus of that sin and find the DNA somewhere in that nucleus, and then you can. Decode that DNA and if you could decode the DNA of even the smallest sin, it would reveal the murder of God. That is the essence. Of all sin And so we come to the foot of the cross, and we're like, we're like looking at someone else's massive sin against us, and we're fuming and we come to the foot of the cross and suddenly we are brought low ourselves and we're realizing I too have sinned against someone.

In fact, I have sinned against Jesus in a fatal way. I have sinned against Jesus in a way that is infinitely greater than anyone has ever or will ever sin. Against me. I really want to challenge you guys to make a big deal out of your sin.

When you make a big deal out of your sin, Paul Tripp says you're making a big deal out of what Jesus died for. When you minimize your sin, you're minimizing what Jesus died for. Don't, don't do that. Christ suffered and died so that we would have forgiveness for our sins, and to make light of our sins, to excuse our sins, to minimize our sins is to minimize the very thing that he died for.

And it also chokes our ability to give grace. To other people Think about it this way, and I know we've talked about this before, but what comes naturally to all of us in our moments of conflict or where someone is wronging us, what's natural is to look at their sins and to be obsessed with their sins. And to not look at our own sins. And even if we do acknowledge our own sins, we see our own sins as smaller.

than the sins of other people against us. But there's a problem with that. The problem with that is this that if, if I view someone else's sin on a scale of 1 to 10 as a 10, And it's a real big deal. I can't believe they would do such and such against me.

a scale of 1 to 10, that's a 10 level sin. And then I would say, Well, yeah, I've sinned too, but I talk about my own sin in softer, more understanding terms than I do the sins of the other person. And I honestly view my own sin on a scale of 1 to 10 as maybe a 2 or a 3, and the other person's sin is a 10. If I'm thinking that way, here's the problem with that.

If I view my sins as only a 2 or a 3, then I will only experience God's grace to the level of a 2 or a 3, right? And we can only give to others what we ourselves have received. And if I'm walking around with only level 2 or level 3 grace inside of me, I will never have enough grace to give to this other person to cover his level 10 sin. That's why it's so critical that we learn to think the way Paul did.

when he says that I am the foremost sin of all, and there's some people very uncomfortable with that who would try to rescue Paul. I don't think that way, don't think that way. And Paul would say, don't rescue me from that. That's my path to deliverance.

When I see myself as the chief center of all, that means that I see myself as the chief recipient of grace, compared to everybody else. And I am the level 10 sinner, and I got level 10 grace. And anyone who sins against me will never sin against me in a greater way than I sinned against God. And God has forgiven me for my level 10 sins against him.

And so what, you just committed a level 2 sin against me. I got plenty of grace for that. Timothy Keller says it is impossible to grant true forgiveness to someone you feel superior to. And if you're up here in this moral high ground, and you view yourself as better than somebody else, and as less of a sinner than somebody else, and you try to forgive them from that exalted position, of pride.

You can't do it. You can't do it You need to be lowered, and it's the cross that lowers you beautifully so that from that position. of understanding your sin and the magnitude of it and thus the magnitude of God's grace, you are now able to grant true forgiveness. And that leads to the 5th and final thought.

That we can think at the foot of the cross that gets us well on our way towards the place of forgiveness. And that is, though, yes, I have committed greater sins against God than any person has ever committed against me, glory to God. Christ has purchased my forgiveness and my justification. That's so amazing.

At the cross, I I realize That I am far more of a sinner than I ever knew before, but I'm also far more loved and far more forgiven, far more blessed than I ever dared imagine. In Ephesians 1:7, Paul says, In Christ we have redemption through His blood and the forgiveness of our sins. All the sins that we've committed, these mountainous, infinite sins against God, they've been forgiven through the cross, through Christ shed blood. The slate has been wiped clean.

God has sent those sins out from between us, and he does not remember them against us any longer. And God has sent us away from the prison of the vengeance that we deserve for our sins. And he has graced us with the grace of forgiveness. Not only has God forgiven us of our sins and remembers them against us no longer, but in Romans 5:9, we learned that we are justified through His blood.

God says, I'll tell you what, I love you so much that because of what Christ did at the cross, I not only will forgive you of every sin and hold them against you no longer, but I'm actually going to make this decision today. The day that you believed in Jesus, God says, I today make this decision that I will forever think of you as forgiven, and I will forever think of you as righteous with the very righteousness of Jesus. And I throw down the gavel, Islam it down, and I thunder my declaration with enthusiasm that you are righteous in my sight.

And God also says, and I from this point forward will never think another thought about you.

I will never feel another emotion with regard to you. I will never allow anything in your life or do anything towards you. That is not fully governed by this decree, by this decision that I am making today about how I will think of you from this day forward as forgiven of all of your sins, and as righteous with the righteousness of Jesus. That is amazing grace.

Amazing grace. And guys, if we are swimming in the ocean of this grace, that's why as Christians, we have all people have the most courage to look at the hard truths about our sin. We can go there because we know we're loved and accepted by God. And the more we understand the magnitude of our sins, that doesn't discourage us, it actually deepens our capacity now to receive God's grace.

And enjoy His grace, we're all the more amazed at His goodness and His grace. And the more we understand and appreciate his massive overwhelming ocean of grace towards us, The more we are able to impart that grace to others who have sinned in a lesser way. Then we have sinned against God. There's more that we'll look at in the coming, next Sunday, but we'll stop here and pray that God will use these truths to help move us to a place of grace, joy in Christ and, and grace towards those who have wronged us.

Let's pray together. Father, if there's any in this room this morning that have Maybe heard your truth presented about their sin. I pray that you would use your truth to just help them to see their need for a savior. that they would not reject this diagnosis of their condition, but that they would receive it in all humility and know that Jesus is the savior for them.

May they run to you, Jesus, and cry out to you to be their Lord. And their savior Lord, the world. is afraid To look honestly at its sin. People who don't know Christ and who don't know grace are terrified of looking honestly at their sin.

Because it's devastating. It leaves them condemned. We know that we're we're loved and we're accepted. You give to us the greatest gift of all on the cross, and that is at the cross you show us that everything there is to know about us, and with that total knowledge of us.

You also move towards us with grace and forgiveness and say I love you. To be known And not loved is our greatest fear. To be loved. But not known is something that means very little.

But to be fully known by someone. And also fully loved by that same person who knows us totally. Well, that's just the greatest gift of all, and we have that in you, Jesus. Make us a people that are more amazed by this staggering grace.

May we swim in the ocean of this grace. that we would have much grace to give. To those who have wronged us, when people wrong us, we now have the opportunity to mirror. The very thing that you have done towards us and we get to reenact this gospel that we are the recipients of.

You are a good God, Lord, we praise you this morning. Thank you for this opportunity to give our offerings to you, receive these funds, Lord, and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. We say these things to you in Christ's name. And all God's people said, And then.