Moving from “Snippy” to Parakaleo

, we're doing a verse by verse study through the book of First Timothy and As we continue in our study of this book, we're just going to come back briefly to 1 Timothy 5:1-2 just to set the stage for what we're going to do today. 2 weeks ago, we came to chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, where we learned, where Paul says in verse one, do not sharply rebuke, which means to verbally bash somebody, to verbally strike at somebody in a punitive way. but rather appeal, and we saw that this Greek word appeal is paraakkaleo, that means to move towards someone, to come alongside of that person and to minister to them help, comfort, encouragement, exhortation, even admonishment, but doing all of that in a spirit of love.

Even after expositing verses 1 and 22 weeks ago, I didn't feel like, ready to move on, but It's a breathtaking command that we have in verse one.

Don't verbally bash, but instead move towards older men, younger men, older women, younger women. In fact, everybody is what he's saying. Move towards them, come alongside of them and minister to them in in love. I asked Carlos Cueir last week if he, having seen him preach that very sermon that he preached last week on video, And asked him if he could open up Colossians 3 to us to help us to learn what we need to wear instead of verbally bashing someone, we need to move towards them and paraaleo them.

We learned last Sunday the clothes we need to wear when we do that, right? And it's gentleness and patience and love, forgiveness and forbearance and meekness. That's all in Colossians 3. Because sometimes we might say, well, yeah, OK, I feel like bashing someone, but I'm not going to do that.

Instead I'll parakaleo them, and we start walking towards them to paraaleo them, and they see us coming and they run in the opposite direction. You ever seen someone coming to you to minister and you're like, No, I'm not interested. Well, you need to be dressed properly for that, and we learned some beautiful things to adorn ourselves with as we do that. I want to focus this morning on one of the things that we learned last Sunday that we are to adorn ourselves with, and that is a spirit of forgiveness.

In fact, the title of the message this morning is Moving from Snippy to Pericaleo. Moving from snippy to Perakaleo, and the basic question we're going to try to address this morning is this, in fact, I was asked this last week, basically, the question goes something like this, I know I should move towards someone who's wronged me and minister to them, but I don't feel like doing that, all right? I would rather lash out at them. I think that would go well, and I would feel better, but instead I know I'm supposed to move towards them and minister to them and love.

I know that's where I'm supposed to be. I don't feel like doing that. I'm going to need some help in getting from where I am now to where I am supposed to be. That's the question.

How do I get from where I am now and wanting to lash out at somebody who's wronged me to where I need to be ministering to them in love? And we'll focus on that question and answering it this morning. In order for that to happen, guys, forgiveness is absolutely essential, absolutely essential. I remember a number of years ago, probably about 8 years ago, I got a phone call from a guy.

that I had met a few times, but he, he said, Pastor Milton, I, my wife and I need some counseling. And I said, Well, what's going on? He said, Well, my wife is mad at me. And I said, OK, what is she mad at you about?

And so he listed off the dumb things he had done in his married life, and, and, and I said, OK, how do she's mad at you? How is she showing that anger? And he said, Well, she won't let me in the house. And I said, Well, how long has this been going on?

He says, It's been a couple months now. And I said, Where have you been living the last couple of months? And he said, Well, I've been living in a motorhome in the back of our house, like a camper in the back of our house. And so I used my diagnostic skills and And over the phone assessed the situation and said, I agree, you and your wife need some counseling.

And so they showed up in my office and I had not met this woman before, as I recalled and we started again and he mentioned the things that he had done and how sorry he was for them and she listed off all the reasons she was angry at him and she was just very stiff and unforgiving, just very angry at him. And there was a point in the meeting where it was just obvious we weren't getting anywhere, so I said to her, I said, Ma'am, are you ever going to find it in your heart to forgive your husband?

And she said, no. And then I said, well, do you at all see yourself as a sinner before God?

have you ever broken God's law and stood in need of his forgiveness? Have you ever sinned against God? And she said, No, I haven't. So again, I'm not the brightest counselor in the world, but, but I realize this woman doesn't even, she's not even a believer.

She can't give grace to her husband because she doesn't even have grace. She's not received that from the Lord. She hasn't received that from the Lord because she doesn't even see her need for it. And so I began to walk her through the law and taking her to the cross and helping her to see the magnitude of the sins that she had committed against God.

And how she needed his forgiveness and it was amazing how the Lord showed up and began to work in that woman's heart. I wish it always happened like this, but God just showed up and in 20 minutes this woman was weeping and saying, So what, what do I do? What do I do? I've sinned and there's, there's, there's no hope.

And I then very happily began to share the gospel with her of what Christ had done for her and dying on the cross, shedding His blood for her, and how that if she would put her trust in Him, she could have all her sins forgiven. And I said, Would you like to do that? And she said, Yes. And so we prayed, and she prayed the most beautiful, heartfelt prayer to the Lord.

And I prayed after her, and when we were done praying together, we all looked up and I looked at her, she looked at me. And I then said, now back to your husband. Are you ever going to find it in your heart to forgive him? And she leaned back in her chair.

And she said, yeah. Yeah, And she reached out her hand and extended forgiveness to him. And I know that husband loved the gospel that night because he got to be back in his own house again together with his wife. That is the power of the gospel, and it doesn't always happen that quickly, but that journey that that woman took from Snippy.

To a place of forgiveness is the journey that not only a person like she needs to make at the point of salvation, but it's a journey that all of us have to make over and over and over again. And so we're going to try to break that open and learn about that journey that we must take toward forgiveness. Real quick. Let me just define what forgiveness is.

Two words for forgiveness in the New Testament. One of them literally means to send away, and the other means to give grace. And a good working definition of forgiveness is to release a person from the consequences that he deserves from you or that you believe he deserves from you as a result of his sins against you. And then it means positively to show him in a practical, serving way favor that he has not earned.

So it's to lift the sin off of them and to withhold from them retaliation in any way, shape or form, and instead to actually do active kindness to that individual. That's what it means to forgive. Give and what we'll look at today is 3 steps in the journey of forgiveness. Just what all is involved in forgiveness?

How can I get to a place where I want to forgive and then in forgiving, what is it that I'm actually doing? How do I actually do forgiveness? 3 steps this morning. Step number 1, and this is where we're going to spend most of our time, is this go to the cross and do some gospel thinking.

If you need to forgive someone that has wronged you and in your heart you're just feeling resistant to that, you don't want to forgive, please make this your first stop. Don't just like, I got to forgive. I've got to forgive. I'm going to resolve to forgive.

Don't do that. Make your first step the cross. Go to the foot of the cross and start doing some gospel thinking by the grace of God. when you're at a department store and you want to go from the 1st floor to the 2nd, most of us just step right onto an escalator and stand there, and then the escalator takes us where we need to go, right?

That's what the gospel is, that's what the cross is. If you're in an angry place and you're having trouble forgiving, but you want to get there, go to the cross, just step onto those grounds right there at the foot of the cross, and it will take you where you need to go. And at the exit point where you're like, OK, I'm ready to move on now. Now you will be exiting at a very different point than the point at which you arrived in your marriage relationship.

you're going to be dealing on one level or another with wrongs, maybe daily, at least weekly. If you don't learn forgiveness, you're never going to do marriage right. We're never going to do church right if we don't learn forgiveness. It is so critical.

And whenever we are wronged, our first stop needs to be the foot of the cross, and there we need to do. Some gospel thinking. JC Ryle says this a spiteful, quarrelsome Christian is a scandal. It is doubtful that such a one has sat at the foot of the cross.

He basically is saying, I, I can tell you whether someone has spent any time at the foot of the cross. I can tell you that by how they respond to wrongs that are done against them. All right, go to the foot of the cross, that's your first stop, and behold Christ and Him crucified, and then just start doing some gospel thinking. Here's some thoughts that you can arrive at at the foot of the cross.

Thought number 1, I have committed greater evils against God. Whatever wrongs have been done against me and however much pain those wrongs have caused me, I myself am guilty of greater wrongs than these against my God. God is an infinitely lovely, righteous, holy, glorious, loving, generous being. And every single sin we have committed against Him is as infinitely bad as God is infinitely good, right?

We measure the greatness of a crime by the standard of the greatness of the one that the crime is committed against. And therefore every one of the millions of sins that we have committed throughout our life is infinitely evil because it is committed against an infinitely holy, righteous, loving, and good God. We see something of the severity of our sin, the hostility of it at the foot of the cross, because we realize at the cross, that it was our sins that killed Jesus. There's other ways of looking at that, but one of the biblical ways of looking at the cross in terms of what killed Jesus is it was our sins.

Literally in the Hebrew text it says Jesus was pierced through from our transgressions. He was crushed from our iniquities. It was our sins that nailed Him there, as the songwriter says. It was our sins that killed him, making us.

Therefore, violators of the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill. We are murderers, and we killed Jesus Christ, God the Son on the cross, and in that act we revealed sin for what it really is. Sin is at its heart a hostile, vicious act against God. It is the heart murder of God.

And so at the foot of the cross, maybe before you arrived, you were like all in a boil about someone else's sin and how dare them do this and I'm so angry, but then you come to the foot of the cross and you take some time to think about your own sin and you realize, what, as bad as this person's sin is against me, it's nowhere near the magnitude of my sins against God. Now guys, we're not going to stop here, alright? We're not going to close in prayer right here. We're going to move from here in just a moment, but I really want to make this point.

In the culture of Cornerstone, I want us to be a people that make a big deal about our sin. Some people are expert at making a big deal out of other people's sin. We want to become good by the grace of God at making a big deal about our own sin. Paul Tripp says, and I love this, he said, When you make a big deal out of your sin, you're making a big deal out of what Jesus died for.

You're glorifying God. You're glorifying the gospel. When you minimize your sin, you excuse it, you minimize it, you're minimizing what Jesus died for. So you're unglorifying.

The magnitude of the gospel. So in the culture of Cornerstone, I want us to be a people. God wants us to be a people that make a big deal out of our sin, where husbands make a bigger deal out of their own sin than they do their wives's sin, and wives make a bigger deal out of their own sin than they do their husband's sin. so we make a big deal out of our sin and we genuinely biblically see our sins against God as greater than anyone's sin.

Against us. And that we're struck by this reality. This is taught in passages like Matthew 7:3 where Jesus says, Why do you look at the speck that's in your brother's eye, but you're not noticing the log that's in your own eye? Jesus is saying, I don't care who I'm talking to.

Anyone that's hearing my words, I'm talking to you. And as he speaks to you, it's interesting. He doesn't say, Why are you looking at the speck in your brother's eye, but not the speck in your eye? He doesn't say that.

He's saying, your sin is a log and your brother's sin is a speck. And but if Jesus were talking to your brother, he would say, Your sin is a log and your brother's sin is a speck. No matter who he's talking to, he's telling us that we need to be willing to be honest about our own sin issues before we go dealing with somebody else. And even as we deal with somebody else, and as we do so, we make a bigger deal out of our sin than we do the sins of other people.

You guys know the story in Matthew 18 of the, the servant, the slave that owed his master 10,000 talents, you guys know that story. I was reading actually this week, a guy who was guesstimating the value of that in modern day terms, and according to his calculations, it was over $7 billion OK. That'd be tough for most of us to pay $7 billion. I don't know how accurate that is, but let's just say billions, OK?

It's a billion dollars debt. No way he could ever pay that debt, but the master forgives him anyway. That servant who's been forgiven of that massive debt then goes out. Out and encounters a fellow servant that owed him in modern day terms about $17,000.

That's a lot of money, right, but nothing compared to what he owed to his master. But he grabs that guy by the collar and says, Pay me everything that you owe me, or else the guy pled for mercy and this unfaithful servant did not give it to him. When the master heard this, the master called him into his presence and the master said, I forgave you all that debt. And I like the wording there.

The reason we don't forgive people of their smaller debts is because we forget the magnitude of the debt that we have been forgiven. We need to be mindful of the debt that we owed to God, that we realize that however great the sins of others are against us, they do not compare to the magnitude of the debt that we owed to God and the sins that we committed against Him. There's a second gospel thought to think at the foot of the cross, and that is glory to God. Christ has purchased my forgiveness and justification.

Yes, my sins are big, but God's grace is bigger, and on the cross Jesus shed His blood. So that he might thereby purchase my forgiveness, and through his shed blood I can have forgiveness and the cleansing of my conscience from the stain of the sins that I have committed throughout my lifetime. At the foot of the cross, I observe that I have been forgiven of all that debt that I owed to God. My sins were big, but God's grace abounded infinitely more over, my sin.

And I have been forgiven and justified. Let me give you a technical definition of justification. It's an instantaneous legal act of God in which He 1 thinks of our sins as forgiven and thinks of Christ's righteousness as belonging to us and therefore #2 declares us to be just or righteous. In his sight that's from Wayne Gruden's theology book.

Basically justification is largely something that happens in the mind of God. It's a decision of God to think of us a certain way from now throughout all eternity. God says, I will always, always think of you as forgiven. I will always think of you as righteous in my sight.

Clothed with the righteousness of Jesus, and I will never ever think another thought or do any deed or allow anything into your life or feel any emotion toward you that is not fully governed by those fundamental thoughts. I will always think of you as forgiven and righteous. Have you lost your sense of amazement of that? the more time you spend at the foot of the cross, the more amazed you are at that.

And what? Amazed people freely forgive. They freely forgive. Our sins are big.

God's grace is bigger. I've committed millions of sins throughout my lifetime. Every single one of them was infinitely evil, and yet by believing in Christ, I get justified. God thinks of me as forgiven and as righteous with the righteousness of Jesus.

And, we're going to look at a few other gospel thoughts to think at the foot of the cross, but if this is all, if this is all the distance you traveled, you're going to be well on your way to being able to forgive. I was reading a couple of weeks ago. About a couple whom the author calls Jeremy and Cindy. And Jeremy had committed adultery.

And shattered his wife when the discovery was made. She was just her whole world collapsed. What what her present was was just shot. She didn't know what she was dealing with at the present time.

Her whole future that she saw day by day, that was shot. She didn't even know what the future held. And then her past, all the ways she had interpreted her past and her relationship with her husband was all just shattered. She didn't know where to go.

started off crying out to God for help and then withdrew even from Him and just retreated to a very lonely and dark place where she struggled mightily with anger and bitterness. But what? Eventually through the help of others, she learned how to go to the foot of the cross and she learned to think the two gospel thoughts that we just covered. And it made a profound difference.

Let me let her tell you. The difference it made, she says. Over time I began to see my own sinfulness and God's grace and mercy for my sins. It was very hard to look at my own contribution to the breakdown of my marriage.

I wanted to just focus on his part. Her husband's part and leave the blame there, but God opened my eyes and helped me to see that even as a victim of my husband's sin, I could not claim innocence in my marriage and certainly not before a holy God. She goes on to say this, the gospel gave me power to forgive my husband. Christ had died for both our sins, dying in our place and drinking the full cup of God's wrath we deserved for our sins.

Through the revelation of this truth, I was humbled and disarmed. We, my husband and I, were more alike than different. And from this standing place, forgiveness flowed. Isn't that awesome?

That's the power of the cross, that's the power of the gospel. Everyone's on the same footing at the foot of the cross. Just sinners condemned, deserving to be condemned by God for the sins we've committed, and yet graced with an amazing grace. And she was able to look at her adulterous husband and say, actually, the more I think about it, We're, we're more alike than different.

We are sinners in need of God's grace. Timothy Keller in his book, The Prodigal God says it is impossible to grant true forgiveness to someone you feel superior to. It is impossible to grant true forgiveness to someone that you feel superior to, but you'll never feel that way about anybody when you're at the foot of the cross thinking gospel thoughts. You get on that escalator and it'll take you exactly where you need to go.

But what, while we're at the foot of the cross, let's do a little bit more gospel thinking. Because I told you guys recently, I'm making a list of just all the things I can know just by, gazing at the cross. What are all the things that I can learn just by looking at Christ and Him crucified? And let me give you just a few of these that's attached to this subject.

Here's something you can legitimately learn at the foot of the cross, and that is sometimes God purposes that those whom He loves deeply be painfully sinned against. Is that legit? Am I stretching anything here? Who is the apple of the Father's eye?

Whom in all the universe does the Father love with a love we can't even begin to fathom? It's Jesus, the Son of God from heaven. God's voice boomed. This is my beloved Son, and to Him.

I am well pleased. The Father delighted in Jesus. He loved Jesus. There's no question about that.

And yet here's Jesus getting nailed to a Us getting mocked and ridiculed. Here's Jesus getting a crown of thorns just beat down into his brow, being slapped and punched and spat upon, tied around a stone and whipped again and again and again. This is, this is the apple of the Father's eye. Jesus loved God the Father loved Jesus profoundly, and yet God purposed for Jesus on this day to be sinned against in these ways.

At no point would Jesus look up into his father's eyes, and God the Father's like, I'm sorry, I couldn't do anything about this. I couldn't prevent it. No, this was actually in God's plan. In Acts 2:23, it says, This man Jesus, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men.

There's mystery involved here that I can't resolve, but on that day 2000 years ago, it was in the sovereign plan of God, determined before the foundation of the world that Jesus would be sinned against painfully, horribly, because God had something he wanted to accomplish through that. We learned that at the foot of the cross, and then we look up at our Heavenly Father. And he says, By the way, I love you too. And makes you wanna run, doesn't it?

I love you like I love my Son Jesus. what, if God loved Jesus the way He did and purposed for these wrongs to happen to Him, then who do we think we are that we can get through life without ever being wronged? Without ever being wronged painfully. God allows these things, purposes, these things to happen in a sovereignty, because there's something he wants to accomplish in you and through you, just like he wanted to accomplish through Jesus.

That leads to another gospel thought we can think as we see Christ shedding His blood. On the cross we can observe that, what Christ wasn't just shedding His blood so that my sins would be forgiven. He's not just purchasing my pardon. He's not just shedding His blood so my conscience can be cleansed by this blood, but in shedding His blood, He was purchasing me.

I'm being bought here. In 1 Corinthians 6:20. Paul says, You've been bought with a price. Therefore, this is what your life is to be all about from here on out.

Glorify God in your body. And so at the foot of the cross, we can observe that I am purchased and owned by God, and now I live to serve His purposes, not mine. we, we forget this gospel truth, right? We'll talk about, yeah, I'm forgiven and I've got a home in heaven, but another gospel truth that we learn at the foot of the cross is we've been bought, therefore we are owned and operated by God, and we get when we get up in the morning, it's not about what we want to do, it's about what does our Master who purchased us want us to do.

Sometimes we think we're being sinned against, and we're not being sinned against actually. It's just that someone has done something at cross purposes with our selfish agenda. A man's like, Man, I can't wait until this Saturday or Saturday's finally here. I'm going to veg out the whole day.

I've had a tough week. I'm going to watch 3 college football games, one right after another. I've got my chips and I've got my salsa and I've got all this spread all ready for me, and I hope that my wife leaves me alone and my kids are quiet and don't distract me from my vegetative state. And so that Saturday comes and the guy's doing that and the wife shows up and she's like, honey, with our honey do lists, I need this and I need that and you're feeling sinned against, or the kids are, kids are arguing or they're making noise and it's interrupting your ability to hear what's going on in the football game.

And so a guy in a state like that, he's living for himself, but he's like, Oh man, I'm being sinned against here. I'm feeling angry. I want to verbally lash out, but I need to forgive. So I need to go to the gospel so the gospel can help me to forgive my children and my wife for getting in the way of my selfish agenda for the day.

The gospel doesn't work that way. You see what I'm saying, that sometimes we think we're being sinned against when if we're really honest, it's just that someone has done something at cross purposes with our selfish agenda. So this, this gospel thinking right here under point D, don't just do that when you've been sinned against. This is the way you need to be thinking every morning when you get up.

I've been purchased. I am owned and operated by God. And then when someone wrongs you, your thought needs to be, it must be true. That in God's plan for me today, I be sinned against because God in His sovereignty has something he wants to do in me.

And through me See, it's not about you. It's about him and serving his purposes. Jesus was entitled to be treated so much differently than he was on the day of his death. But he didn't complain.

He received it. The full force of all those evils done against him, and he glorified God. There's one other gospel thought that we can think at the foot of the cross. And that is that forgiveness.

is suffering. Now. I'm going to admit to you guys, I'm still trying to figure this one out, but I've spent like the last couple of months really mulling this over and I'm heading somewhere with it, and I hope that I can understand this better as time goes on. But there are people, Timothy Keller, he got me, Timothy Keller is the guy that got me thinking about this in his book The Reason for God.

He said, there are people who, who say, why couldn't God have just forgiven everyone of their sins? Why did he have to have his son die and shedding His blood and crown of thorns and all that suffering going on? Why couldn't he have just said, I forgive and let bygones be bygones? Timothy Keller basically says people who say that don't understand that forgiveness is suffering.

It is suffering We learn as we gaze at Christ suffering the way he did, we actually learned that oh, so forgiveness involves suffering. Forgiveness hurts. Keller says this in his book, he says everyone who forgives goes through a death and experiences nails, blood, sweat, and tears. Forgiveness is costly suffering.

Forgiveness at first always feels far worse than bitterness. I love the realism in that because sometimes we can just paint a real naive picture of forgiveness. Hey, just forgive and you'll feel free. That freedom will come.

But forgiveness is suffering, especially at first, and it hurts worse than bitterness. That's why people choose bitterness over forgiveness. Keller goes on to say this, forgiveness means refusing to make them, the perpetrators, pay for what they did. However, to refrain from lashing out at someone when you want to do so with all your being is agony.

It is a form of suffering. You not only suffer the original loss of happiness, reputation, and opportunity, but now you forego the consolation of inflicting the same on them. You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself instead of taking it out on the other person. It hurts terribly.

Many people would say it feels like a death. How many of you have forgiven a person and you felt this pain? Just raise your hand, be honest. OK.

Ken Sandy in his book The Peacemaker says it slightly differently, but he's after the same idea. Forgiveness, he says, can be a costly activity. When you cancel a debt, the debt doesn't just simply disappear. Instead, you absorb the liability that someone else deserves to pay.

Similarly, forgiveness requires that you absorb certain effects of the other person's sins and you release that person from liability to punishment. This is precisely what Christ accomplished at Calvary. Imagine you own a home. You've got a nice beautiful brick wall on the side of your property.

Someone is at your house. They're being careless and they're backing out of the driveway just doing really silly stuff, and they ram into that wall and do $5000 of damage. And let's say you're thinking is, what, I'm going to try forgiveness here. I'm going to forgive this person of what they did, and what that means is I'm not going to make them even pay for the cost.

I will, it'll be taken care of. I will forgive them of the full debt of what they did. What happens? You officially do that.

And then you go to bed that night and you wake up the next morning and amazingly the debt's gone, the wall's repaired, everything's in its proper place, and you're like, Man, I love this forgiveness thing. It's really amazing. I forgive people of the debt they owe me and somehow it gets taken care of. Is that forgiveness?

No, forgiveness in that instance is, I will not make this other person pay the $5000 that they should pay for what they have done. But the debt doesn't go away. You have to carry it. You in a way have to suffer vicariously for that other person.

You've got to get estimates or do the work yourself, and you have to carry that $5000 debt or that cost. You lift it off of that person, and what that means is you absorb that in yourself. And we can learn that at the cross. That's what Jesus did.

He lifted our sins off of us and what we deserved in the full debt. And he said, I will absorb that in my own person. And we look at that and say, wow, what a, I guess that's what forgiveness is. It involves suffering in somebody's place, instead of making them suffer.

When we forgive, we're absorbing someone else's sin and letting that bring death to a part of us that felt entitled to better treatment. We're letting that sin, as we absorb it, bring death to that part of us that wants to retaliate and bring justice to that person that has sinned. Against us. Well, let's move on.

The first thing you need to do on the journey of forgiveness is go to the foot of the cross and do some gospel thinking, and here's just a few gospel thoughts that you can think that you can legitimately learn. And observe and infer from the cross. But then once you've done that gospel thinking, and obviously you need to be in a spirit of prayer because God can only give you the power to do this and so forth, but having done so in dependence upon God celebrating the salvation He's given to you, then you move forth from the cross, choosing to forgive that individual the way you've been forgiven.

You basically say, I will mimic what's happened to me.

The grace that's been given to me, I will be that grace to the other person. I will be a living embodiment of that grace to that other person. As Christ absorbed the cost of my sin, I will absorb the debt that someone else owes me. I will absorb the cost of their sin, and I will lift it off of them, and I will not hold their sin against them.

I will choose to forgive the way that I have been forgiven. Be kind to one another, Paul says in Ephesians 4, tenderhearted forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you. He's saying you've been forgiven, so forgive. But he's also saying, the way you were forgiven, do that.

And the way you were forgiven is you had someone that you sinned against who said, I will absorb that. I will carry that myself. And not make you pay. And so you need to make that decision.

I will, I will absorb the cost of this in my own person and not make this other person pay. Forgiveness is crucifixion, and every time you're wronged by another person, that's an invitation from God into a deeper experience of being crucified with Christ and what all that means. Now when I forgive someone, I wish I could say whenever I'm wrong, I instantly do this. I don't.

Sometimes I wait way too long until I get a splitting headache and, physically exhausted, emotionally exhausted, and then I'll do the right thing. But, but when I do it right, when I do forgive properly, I go to the foot of the cross and do the very things that we've been talking about, then in the presence of God, I will basically do this. I will tell God what the person has done to me, and I will, I will, I will give God their name. All right, here's who did it.

Here's what they did. And here's the pain that it's brought into my life, and God, here's how angry I am. Here's what I feel like doing to this person. Here are the consequences.

I really feel like visiting upon this person as a result of what they have done that has brought pain into my life, and I hope you're comfortable with that honesty. God, God already knows what we're thinking anyway, right? So we're not hiding anything from Him. So God would say, what, just come and speak these things to me, and that's actually biblical to suffering Christians in First Peter who weren't suffering natural calamities or a flood or whatever, they were suffering by at the hands of unbelievers that were maligning them.

that were slandering them, reviling them, and putting them, sinning against them in a way that was putting them through burning, blistering ordeals. That's the language Peter uses to describe the sins that were being done against them by nonbelievers. Peter says to these suffering Christians, suffering at the hands of other people, sinning against them, he says, I want you to cast all your anxiety on God because He cares for you. Just go to God.

Just give Him the whole mess. And a couple verses later he says, and I want you to know that these same sufferings are being accomplished in your brothers, so around the world. So clearly the context is suffering. Come to God and just, God, here's what I'm feeling, and if you want to cry, just cry.

a lot of times I like to just imagine myself crying on God's lap and just even if words won't express it, just let the tears express it and And then whatever your thoughts are and your anger and your frustration and even if you're wondering, God, why did you let this happen and why have you forsaken me, how long are you going to sleep up in the heavens, O Lord, those are all the questions that you find in the saltar. The psalmist in many of the psalms is describing the evils being done around him and against him and the way it's making him feel, the pain it's causing, and sometimes when he's got doubts and confusion to express to God, he seizes the opportunity to do that.

Our God is a big God who can take all that mess, cast all of these anxieties on Him. But then, having done so and expressed all of that in the presence of God, what I like to do in God's presence is then rehearse my sins against Him, rehearse God's grace that's given to me, and the magnitude of that grace, and then say, God, in your presence, I officially forgive this person.

I officially forgive this person and release them from the consequences. I would love to visit upon them. There's an accountability that goes with that. Sometimes we're like, OK, in my heart, yeah, I, I'll forgive, and then we're not obligated to stick with it.

But if you're doing it in God's presence, there's an accountability, and you verbalize it, even verbalizing it out loud, hopefully in a private place, there's an accountability that goes with that. There's a transaction that's occurring between you and God with regard to this other person. So the second step is to forgive the way that you have been forgiven. And then there's a 3rd and final step that my personal belief is that forgiveness is not complete until you've done this, alright?

And I've known people that will do steps 1 and 2, and they'll claim they've done steps 1 and 2, but they are not going to do step 3. All right, you want to see it. Well, I'll show you anyway. Step number 3, make yourself an agent of blessing in that person's life.

The very person that has wronged you, don't just withhold from them the consequences that they deserve for their sin. Actually make yourself an agent of blessing in that person's life. That's when your forgiveness is complete. You do this first of all by praying for them.

Just start praying for that person. And you're like, oh, I'll happily pray for them. I'll pray for God's judgment to rain down on them. well, not so fast.

Pray for God's blessing in their life. Does that seem weird? Pray for God's blessing in their life. Matthew 5, Jesus said, you've heard it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. In other words, pray for anyone that mistreats you. Anyone that in any given moment is acting as your enemy and that you and your heart is feeling is an enemy. They're mistreating you.

Pray for them so that you may be sons of your Father. In other words, so that you may be just like your Father who is in heaven, for He causes His Son to shine on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. See, we're not talking here about praying for judgment. We're talking about praying for God to send blessing into the life of that person.

And yeah, pray for God to bless the person. In the way of transforming them, pray for that. There are people that are so bitter they don't want someone to be transformed. I'm serious.

A wife, for years is praying for her husband who's been bound in sin and maybe doesn't even know the Lord and, and praying for that, getting other people to pray with her, and then God begins to do a miracle in that husband's life and he begins to be transformed. And that woman's nightmare has just begun. And I've seen it at times where a woman in that situation will go into a deep depression. Because there was anger there that she didn't even know about.

And now this guy's walking with the Lord and all his sins are forgiven. God just forgave all his sins and, well, wait a minute, what about, what about all the stuff he did to me? So yeah, pray for transformation. And when the transformation might happen, be happy about it.

But also pray for God to just bring any random material blessing in that person's life. I dare you to do this. And then don't just pray for them. But here's what's gonna happen.

This is what's happened to me. As you pray for that person, God will eventually say, I'm gonna need an agent of blessing. I want to bless this person, but I'm gonna need someone to do that through. And when God says that to you, how are you going to respond?

Lord, I, that's what my brothers and sisters are for. I'm glad there's many people available to be a blessing to this enemy of mine. No, what God wants you to do is to say, Here I am, Lord. I'll be that agent of blessing.

And this is actually what we're told to do in Romans 12. Paul says, Never take your own revenge, beloved. But leave room for the wrath of God. But if your enemy, literally in the Greek, if your enemy is being hungry, you be feeding him.

This is not just talking about a one time thing. You be feeding him, and if he is thirsty, you be giving him a drink. So if you see a need in your enemy's life, you be the one to step up to the plate and render blessing to address that need. There have been times in my life where, I've been trying to forgive someone and I think I've forgiven them and then 5 minutes later I'm angry again and then I forgive and I'm angry again and I'm fighting this defensive battle like I'm wanting to lash out but I know I can't, so I'm trying to forgive and the battle just goes on day after day after day and wears me out.

But I have found that When the Lord touches my heart and says, hey, why don't you do something for them? Do something for them. Every time God does that, I always protest, like, no, no, I don't want to do that because I, I'd rather strangle the person. But God's instead saying no, do something kind for them.

But after wrestling with that, it's like I'll, I'll start, OK, what, what does this person need? Or even if I can't think of something they need, is there, is there some Nice gestures or something that would actually be, they'd be happy to have it or to receive it. And so I'll start thinking about that, what would that be? And then the Lord will give me an idea and then I'll start working on making that happening, happen and I'll purchase something, go to the store and get it and, and then end up getting it to that person either in person or anonymously and I don't say, hey, by the way, I've been struggling with anger towards you, so here you go.

This is designed to help me. I'm completing my forgiveness, just want you to know that. which actually makes me more spiritual than you are. no.

You don't even need to get into all that. What I have found is on one such occasion, I was at the store. I had the item in my hand before I even made the purchase. I was at a place of total victory.

I'm like, oh my God, I'm not angry at this person anymore. And I was, I hadn't even made the purchase yet, but I was rejoicing over the victory that had been accomplished in my heart that defeated months of anger and bitterness. And so we act on these things as God tells us to, and then that's when the forgiveness becomes complete. The way I would like to say it with someone, when you're in this stage of forgiveness, here's what to do.

Put your heart into something and then give that something to the person who's wronged you, whatever it may be. You may not even be in a place where the relationship is such that you can even give something directly to someone, do it anonymously. Bless them in some anonymous way. And in doing that, you'll be amazed at what that will do for your heart and completing the forgiveness in your heart towards That person.

Jesus says in Matthew 6, where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be. So what? Why don't you take your treasure and deposit that into someone that God has called you to forgive. And you'll be amazed at how your heart will follow that.

And what? God's not asking us to do anything that he hasn't done for us, right? Amen. God didn't just say, well, here's all the sins you've committed.

I'll tell you what, I'll withhold vengeance. And judgment, but don't even think of getting close to me and don't ever ask me for anything else. Just be thankful that I'm not judging you right now. Is that how he is?

No, God's like, I'll withhold judgment. And then every day we get up and he's like, Here's some sunshine and And here's a nice gentle breeze to caress your face, and here's, here's another heartbeat, and here's another gallon of air of my air that you can breathe, and here's 2 million more red blood cells that you can have every second of every day, and he's loving us with gospel love, a relationship with Christ, even though we still grieve the Holy Spirit. He's loving us. His love for us will never die.

And he is bringing us into his embrace. He wants relationship with us, even though that relationship still brings him pain as we grieve his Holy Spirit. He doesn't move away from us but towards us and lavishes his love and generosity on us. And all he's saying is, can you, can you just mimic what I'm doing in the power of Christ?

Can you just do what I'm doing to you? Can you do that to other people for their lesser offenses? That they have committed against you. That is forgiveness.

And this is what we are called to do as believers. And if you can do forgiveness right and the power of God that he gives to you through Christ, you will have Much more success in journeying from the instinct to verbally lash out at someone to the other extreme of moving towards them in loving and gracious ministry. Let me ask you to bow your heads. There's no way that we can travel through this fallen world without Wronging others, requiring them to forgive us and forbear us, and that happens a lot more often than any of us imagine, as people have to forgive in their heart and forbear and stick with us.

God does that every day. But also even in the church community. The world in which we live, we're going to experience many wrongs, many wrongs. But how we respond to those wrongs will make all the difference whether we will be a church.

And we will be Christians that truly glorify God and put the gospel on display because we're a living embodiment of the gospel. Some of us can be really good at speaking the gospel and explaining it to others, but we're called to go deeper and actually be a living embodiment of the gospel. And God actually in his sovereignty allows these wrongs to occur against us so that he can bring us deeper into Christ's death. So that he can do great things through us and even show forth the beauty of His grace.

And some of your lives The headlines are all about the wrongs others have done against you. How about changing those headlines and make them headlines of God's grace? That are proclaiming the grace that God has given you and the grace that you're now able to give to those that have wronged you. May that be our story.

We're going to take up an offering in just a moment. We would encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give. Let's pray together. Father, what an amazing God you are.

What an amazing salvation you have granted to us, and we've only looked at a, actually a portion of the full scope of, of the salvation you've given to us. This thing is big, Lord, the gospel is huge. And just taking a few minutes at the foot of the cross to do a little bit of gospel thinking, it. It's, it's so powerful.

That's why Paul says that the message of the cross is the power of God. So may we live here, Lord, and think. Deeply of these things because they make a difference and they change and turn our hearts in the direction that you want them to go. They take us from the 1st floor to the 2nd and then the 3rd.

And we hardly had to make the steps, we just stepped on and we got transported by, by the gospel. Ultimately by the God of the gospel. Lord, teach us to forgive, teach us to forgive. May the world see the gospel on display in our midst.

And may, may we experience it in each other. Receive these funds that we give to you, Lord, as a part of our offering. We gladly give them to you, to you who gave yourself for us. In Christ's name, and all God's people said,