Praying for Those You've Forgiven (7 of 12)

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5 for our time of study in God's word this morning. We're coming back to the subject of forgiveness. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be praying for those You've forgiven, Praying for those you have forgiven.

We have seen that the topic of forgiveness is a very important topic. of immense practical value. All of you this week have probably encountered situations where you have needed to forgive, right? And all of you, whether you're maybe aware of it or not, have probably done things this past week that have required forgiveness from others.

And so this is a topic that is very important. You ought to rejoice in this because of how crucial this topic is and its application to every area of life. And you ought to be thrilled that your brothers and sisters here in the Cornerstone family, your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, that they're all here being taught on the subject of forgiveness, because that's something you're going to need from them. And you want everyone in your life to be good forgivers of you.

This is a mother lode type of issue. You think of all the other areas that you might be interested in that you might think is of practical value. You might say, man, I want to I want to learn about joy and about holiness and about contentment and about peace. I want to learn how to have a good marriage.

I want to learn how I can flourish in my relationship with my children or with my parents or other relationships that are in my life. Well, those things are immensely practical. The subject of forgiveness intersects through all of them. In fact, if you don't know how to forgive, you will fail in all of these other areas.

If you do learn how to forgive and to think gospel, reason from the gospel to these issues and these situations where you're wronged, and you put the gospel on display and grant real and meaningful forgiveness to those that have wronged you. If you learn how to do that and begin to do that, you can slay. 1000 giants in the process. If you fail here, and you don't learn to forgive, you don't choose to forgive, then you've just given birth to 1000 giants.

And you have fed and nourished those 1000 giants that are hell bent on your destruction. And your diminishment as a person, your disassembling as a person. Let's look at it this way to refuse forgiveness is to choose anger and bitterness. It's not a passive thing like, Well, I just, I refuse to forgive.

No, you're actively choosing anger and bitterness. There's always that choice before you forgiveness or anger and bitterness and everything that goes with that, and you make a choice. I will refuse forgiveness and in the process of that, I'm actually choosing anger and bitterness. And anger and bitterness defiles and it destroys.

We are our own worst victim of the anger that we have against others. In her book, choosing forgiveness. Nancy Lee Demas shares a letter that she received from a man, a grown man who was a church member and a deacon in a church involved in service at this particular local church, and yet he in this letter is describing The way that anger and bitterness was destroying him. Listen to what he, he shares.

He says, My daddy left us when I was 2. I wanted a daddy so bad. I hated him for leaving me. I hated him so much.

I wanted him to die and go to hell. I grew up in the mountains. There is a lot of superstition in the mountains. They said if you drove a nail in a tree and spoke the name of a person while driving the nail, that person would die.

There was a big pine tree near where I grew up. I went to that pine tree day after day, driving nails and speaking the name. Of my daddy. He goes on to say, I do not know how many nails I drove in that tree, but my daddy did not die.

I hated him so much. Isn't that typical of anger, driving a nail into a tree, cursing his father. And his father's totally unaffected by it. But what effect did it have on this man who's writing this letter, this son?

He goes on to say, the hatred I carried for my daddy wrecked my first marriage and is threatening my second. I am a shell of a person. I do not have any close personal relationships. Little did this man know.

That the nails he was driving into that tree. were actually being driven into his own heart. Those nails being driven into the tree were being driven. Into his first marriage and being driven into a second marriage and being driven in between him and anyone else that he might have gotten close to.

We ought to hate, anger and bitterness because of the way that it disassembles and destroys souls and relationships. We ought to renounce it and we ought to realize that when we refuse forgiveness, we're actually choosing. Bitterness and anger. Let's say no to that.

And let's say yes to forgiveness, and embrace the journey of forgiveness and all of the freedom. And the blessing that comes with that. That's what we're focusing on in this series. We're learning how to respond when somebody has wronged us.

And when someone wrongs us and we're feeling angry and bitter over the wrong that they have done, what do we do? Well, there's a total of 4 steps, and we've looked at the 1st 2. Step number 1 is go to the cross and do some gospel thinking. If you find yourself on the first floor of anger and bitterness and you want to To the 2nd floor of grace and forgiveness toward the person who's wronged you, then go to the cross and do some gospel thinking and you will experience the gospel as the power of God to get you into forgiveness, or the place of forgiveness.

And we looked at a number of gospel truths that we can ponder that are powerful that God can use to ready us for forgiveness. There's a 2nd step. of forgiveness, and that is choose to forgive. At some point, you got to call it in and make the choice you choose to forgive.

And then Actually forgive. I threw that in on the, at the end there because, it's not just make a choice to forgive. A lot of times, I've made a lot of choices to do a lot of things, and then I didn't act on that choice. so what we're learning here is choose to forgive, and then act on that, make the choice and then forgive.

We've looked at what forgiveness looks like and how it is to be executed. We learned that we should forgive in the context of prayer. Jesus says, when you stand praying, forgive. So prayer is something we do while we're praying in the presence of God.

We are to forgive in a way that is shaped by God's forgiveness of us. We are also to forgive as a means of shaping our experience of God's forgiveness of us. So I moved to forgive because of the way that God has forgiven me, but I also, out of a holy greed, I want to forgive those who have wronged me because it takes me deeper and my experience of God's grace and forgiveness towards me. We've also learned that we should forgive with specificity.

so we're naming the person. Here's the offense. Here's the hurt that this has caused. Here's the justice that I believe that they are entitled to that I would love personally to visit upon them.

But God, in your presence, I say that as one who has been myself forgiven of far greater sins, That I've committed against you, that you have forgiven me of, I forgive this person for the wrong that they have done against me. In the process we are forgiving as a sacrificial offering of ourselves to God, the dying that is entailed in forgiveness. We're, we're not just forgiving that person, but we're doing something very special before God. We're offering ourselves.

As a sweet smelling sacrifice to God that pleases Him well. Well, we, two weeks ago ended on this final point of what forgiveness looks like in the way that it gets executed. And that is that we are to forgive persistently. Peter said, how often should I forgive?

7 times. Jesus said, no, 70 times 7. So when we forgive, we're not just saying, I forgive you now, and this is it. Don't mess up again.

True forgiveness is saying I forgive you now, and I am willing to forgive you 489 more times if need be. That's what we're called to by Jesus Christ. And so we need him, we need to be immersed in the gospel, if we're going to live this way. Basically, when Jesus calls Peter and all of us to forgive in that way, he's calling us into a lifestyle, not just a lifestyle where we forgive from time to time, but a lifestyle where we go crazy with forgiveness.

That's what he wants. He wants us to be a people that forgive in such a way that the world looks at us and says, You guys are crazy. And is there anyone that looks at you and your life? And observes the grace that you show toward those who wrong you.

Does anyone look at you and say, Man, you are crazy? Well, the gospel is crazy. And if we're mirroring the gospel toward those who have wronged us, showing them how God has treated us who wronged him, and the grace he's given to us, then our lives will become over time as crazy as the gospel is. And so we're called to forgive and to forgive persistently.

Now, we ended with this question, and that is, I, forgave someone 5 minutes ago and I find myself angry again, it seems like forgiveness isn't working. What do I do now? And you remember how we answered that? If you ever ask that question, the answer is, that's great news.

Forgiveness is working. It worked for a whole 5 minutes. And now you need to forgive again. If the essence of forgiveness is sending away the sin from between you and the person who offended you, and to send away the person from the prison cell of your wrath, then that means that however often they're in that prison cell of your wrath, and however often that sin is between you and that person, however often that occurs, you need to forgive.

And if it's 490 times, if it's 1000 times, this is what we are called to. I want to raise a related question that is similar. But it's nuanced a little differently. And this is a question that from time to time, we are asked here.

and the question goes something like this, I forgave somebody, but I find myself angry at them again. Does this mean that I never truly forgave them in the first place? So this question isn't so much saying I guess this forgiveness thing isn't working, it's more getting at the fact that Maybe I'm not working. Maybe my forgiveness that I thought I sincerely gave yesterday was not sincere after all.

Maybe you forgave someone a week ago and then something has happened and your heart is boiling over with anger. And now you're thinking, man, I guess my forgiveness a week ago was a sham. and the devil loves to come to us in such moments and say, what, you are a pathetic mess. You thought you forgave a week ago.

Look at you now. It was a joke what you did a week ago. It meant nothing. It was a sham.

And we're like, oh, I guess so. And I thought I was sincere. I thought it meant something, but I guess it was a sham. And that discourages you from even trying to forgive again.

This question is, is often asked. By someone who's just been on the receiving end of a lecture. From the offender. that they tried to forgive.

And they maybe it's a spouse who forgave and now something's happened and they're feeling anger and they're maybe showing that anger and the spouse that they forgave who had originally offended them now looks at their anger and says, Well, it's obviously you never forgave me. or you would not be angry right now. And it's someone on the receiving end of such a lecture that might sometimes come to us and say, explain this to me. I genuinely forgave it seemed, but now I'm angry.

Does this mean that my forgiveness was not sincere and genuine? So that's the question. Does this anger mean that I never truly forgave in the first place? Let me give you Three answers to this question.

OK. Answer number 1 is maybe it may mean that you did not truly, sincerely, genuinely forgive. And so you do want to be open to that possibility. Go back and examine your heart and your forgiveness.

Maybe you really were not truly forgiving that person. The second answer is, please understand this, that your present anger absolutely does not necessarily mean that your past forgiveness was insincere. It may mean that it was, sincere, but you changed your mind. We do that, right?

we make right choices, and it is genuine and of the Lord, but then we change our mind. And we don't stick to, to that. That happens to all of us. And what, the beautiful thing is that Jesus doesn't come to us in such moments and say, what, your forgiveness wasn't.

Sincere. It wasn't for real after all. No, he doesn't so much come to us that way. You think about what Jesus said to the Ephesian Church.

He says, I have this against you. You left your first love. He could have said, You guys have left your first love, and what that shows me? It shows me you never loved me in the first place.

You guys are a joke. You've never loved me. And if you ever did, you wouldn't be leaving your first love the way that you have. Is that what Jesus does?

No, what he says? He says, hey, Remember from whence you have fallen, repent and do the deeds you did at first. what he's saying by that? This ought to be so encouraging to us.

He says, remember where you fell from. You used to be there. I remember where you were. I want you to remember where you were.

And I want you to repent. And I want you to go back and do the things you were doing at first. I remember what you used to do. I haven't forgotten, you have, but what we had was real.

And it was genuine. But you've left that and I'm now calling you back to that. That's the beautiful heart of Christ, approaching us in our moments of failure and sin. And when you have genuinely forgiven someone, yesterday and today, you find yourself, something's happened and you're boiling over with anger.

Jesus doesn't say, you were never sincere. You're a joke. No, he'd be like, hey, remember where you were yesterday? I remember.

Let's go back. Come back where you were yesterday. And so that would be the second answer to the question, but the third answer to this question, was my forgiveness really sincere after all, and I want to camp here for a few moments, is this to understand that some sins that are committed against you are multifaceted. they're multifaceted in the, in their execution, the way they were carried out, and they're multifaceted in the consequences that they set in motion that you may be experiencing, and thus requiring multiple moments of forgiveness.

Does that make sense? so someone may sin against you. And in that moment you may not understand 97% of the full scope of what they've done and all of the consequences that their sin and failure have set in motion. All you can do is forgive to the degree that you have that awareness.

but what's going to happen in the days and weeks and months and years to come is that there'll be other facets of that sin that you've forgiven that you've not even thought about that you're going to become aware of, and you might find in those moments anger rising up within you. That doesn't mean you never forgave. It just means That there's a new facet of that sin that you've not encountered before, or a consequence that you've not experienced before of that sin, and now it's time to forgive for that.

There's a picture on the screen of a, I don't know what they're called a disco ball.

You tell a lot about my dance history there. But they hang those from ceilings and they just spin slowly and, and a disco ball like that has a lot of facets to it and normally lights are on and as that ball spins the light is hitting the different facets and they sparkle and so that's just part of why people do that. It adds to the ambience apparently. Well, take that disco ball and, and understand that that's the way some sins are.

They're multifaceted. And on the front end of maybe experiencing someone's multifaceted sin, you may forgive them. But there are so many facets that the light has not yet shined upon. And what needs to happen is when the light does shine up on those facets, you're going to feel anger and in those moments don't question the integrity of your previous forgiveness just realize I'm now being confronted by this new facet that I'm staring at.

And I need to apply grace to this facet, and I need to travel all the way around this disco ball until I have fully applied grace. To all of the facets of this sin. Just an example, and as I share this example, let your mind go in all the directions of what you guys are going through in your life. but imagine that there's somebody in your life that you do something for or you loan money to, and they owe you, let's say $5000.

they promise to pay you, they don't live up to their word. They prove faithless. And that hurts you, personally and financially, but let's say that you forgive them for that, and you do all the right things before God, you forgive them. Well, Let's say on the other side of that forgiveness, you're feeling great, but then the next Sunday, you show up at church, let's say they're a member of Cornerstone, and that person comes driving in with a brand new car that they just bought.

Well, that's a brand new facet. That you've not thought about before and the light is shining on that and it is sparkling big time and you find anger welling up within you and what do you do in that moment? Do you think, man, I thought I forgave them, and yet here I am angry? No, this is a facet you had no idea about.

Now you're understanding a little bit of the depths of their heart. They're not just not paying you because they can't, they don't want to. And you're coming to understand that better and feeling anger over that. And now in that moment God would say you need to forgive for this facet also.

Let's say you had promised your children or your family that you were going to do something and you were making that promise that our family will do such and such because you were counting on that money coming in, but that money does not come in and your children come to you and say, Dad, can we do such and such? You said we were going to do this this summer. And you look at them and you realize we can't do this. Because we don't have the money for it, because this person has not paid me what they owe me, and as you look into the disappointed faces of your children, You feel anger rising up.

Why? Brand new facet. A facet of consequence of that person's sin. What do you do in that moment?

Well, you now need to forgive for that particular facet. Of that person's sin. Understand that when Peter, or when Jesus said, forgive 490 times, he wasn't only saying, your brother sins, you forgive, he sins, you forgive, he sins, you forgive, he sins 490 times, you forgive one time for each of those. A part of what would have to be embodied in what Jesus is saying is there may be times where someone sins against you one time, and you have to forgive them for that one sin 490 times for each facet.

Of consequence of their sin along these lines, there, there are many sins that are multifaceted in this way where the consequences go on and on and on, and you are stung with the pain of those consequences requiring multiple moments of forgiveness for what somebody has taken away from you. But for the sake of illustration, I would say that the sin of adultery is perhaps one of the most multifaceted sins that people can commit, and I would just say if you're here today and you are messing around and you're involved in an adulterous relationship or you are on your way to that, you need to repent.

You need to repent right now and you need to confess that sin to God. And to your spouse, and get some help.

We would love to, to help you. That's all we are here. Cornerstone is broken people being saved through the Lord Jesus Christ. We've seen God do amazing things.

In the lives of people that have committed adultery and in marriages that have been hit hard by by adultery. I shared that in the first service what I just said right now, and a guy came up to me and said, I got saved at the very end of an adulterous relationship. so God can do amazing things, but you need to repent and don't mess around, with this. Let God save you and help you and let us as His people help you also.

but understand that when adultery is discovered, a, the offended spouse. In that moment of discovery, they can forgive, but they don't understand 99% of the magnitude of what's fully happened and all of the consequences that this sin has set in motion. And for them, forgiveness is not just something you do at one point in time, but it's a journey, a multifaceted journey, a journey around that disco ball, forgiving for all of these multiple facets. and a person who has forgiven their spouse's sin of adultery, they may experience God's grace in that moment of forgiveness, but a week later they may be boiling over with anger because something has happened rather than being defeated by that and thinking their forgiveness was not genuine.

What they need to realize is, no, this is a journey and there's a brand new facet here that the light is shining on that I now need to forgive. Is that making sense? A quick illustration, number of years ago, there was a, a couple associated with our church. The man was found out to be involved in an adulterous affair with someone at work and the wife discovered that and she was, was absolutely understandably devastated.

that day they were in my office and we were meeting together. The husband was broken. He was repentant. It was obvious that God's grace was at work in him to bring him to this point, and the wife, as hurt as she was, it was amazing.

She, she looked at me and she said, Pastor Milton, I love my husband. I am hurt by this, but I forgive him. And she seemed startled by the love that she had for him. She's like, I forgive him.

And And I knew that God's grace was on her and that God was enabling her to do that, but I could also tell that she was in shock. And she didn't have a clue of the magnitude of what she was dealing with. And so I told her, I said, this is great. This is God's work in you to bring you to this point.

but let me just tell you right now that there are moments of anger to come. And when that happens, let's, let's work together through those things. Let's meet together and talk through them. Her initial reply was, I don't know.

Like, I don't know if that's ever going to happen. I feel love in my heart for my husband. I forgive him. And I said, OK, that's great, but let's talk down the road when the anger comes.

Well, about 2 weeks go by and They're doing phenomenally well. He's repentant, he's broken. He's made a clean break. God's doing wonders in his heart.

He's doing wonders in her heart. She's showing him grace each day, moment by moment, and experiencing victory, but two weeks go by, and her birthday arrives. And this husband is on his way home from work and he's like, I want to get my wife a dozen red roses for her birthday. So, he stops and gets the roses and he brings them home and he comes in the house and he hands her these dozen red roses.

she receives the roses and says, thank you. I appreciate this. This means a lot. But then as she's standing there looking at the roses, something triggers in her head.

And she starts thinking, she's like, wait a minute. My husband gave me a dozen red roses for my birthday last year. And the affair was going on last year. Which means that the roses he gave me last year didn't mean anything.

They were a lie. How dare he give me roses for my birthday this year. And suddenly, like a volcano. Seemingly out of nowhere, a rage welled up within her and came issuing forth upon her husband and She began yelling at him.

She threw the roses in his face. The poor guy was like, things have been great. It's her birthday. I gave her roses.

And the bottom drops out. He didn't even know what was going on. She didn't know what was going on, and she called crying, and she wasn't crying out of rage. She was crying out of disappointment with herself.

And she said, Pastor Milton, I'm just so disappointed. Because I thought that I had forgiven my husband. And I was able to tell her what we're talking about right here, and that is, what, don't let the devil or anyone take this away from you. You forgave your husband to the degree that you understood all of the facets that you understood in that particular given moment.

But what just happened today is the light shined on another facet you've never thought about before. That's where your anger has come from. And what you're going to need to do now is apply grace to that facet and forgive, and there are many more of such moments of forgiveness as you make this journey around. All of the facets of this sin.

So is that helping you guys? Do you understand that? I just, I feel burdened that you not be discouraged by anyone saying to you or the devil saying to you that your forgiveness is not for real if at a later point you're feeling anger because something has triggered that anger in you, and it's absolutely critical in situations like this for a husband. in the story that I just told you, for him to not look at his wife in her moment of anger and say, well, obviously you never forgave.

You're a bitter, angry person who's never forgiven me in the first place, or you wouldn't be angry like this. What a husband should do and what this husband did is he took it on the chin and said, I want to hear everything from you. I want to know the hurt that I caused you. I want your hurt inside of me.

I want to be a student of your hurt and of your pain that I have caused you because this is a part of my education, and I want to walk with you through this new facet of my sin. And how it's affected you that you've never encountered before. That's where real healing can happen in a relationship, but I've seen it happen the other way where a spouse, a husband in a situation like this distances himself from his wife in her moment of frustration and anger and lectures her on the nature of true forgiveness and questions the integrity of her forgiveness.

So understand that this is the nature of many sins requiring multiple moments of forgiveness.

This is what Christ calls us to when he calls us to forgive persistently. Not just one time, but persistently. And you may be saying, we talked about this two weeks ago, like, man, the thought of going around that disco ball and forgiving for every facet of, of someone's sin against me, that sounds exhausting, undesirable, and impossible. And my response is, yes, it is impossible.

But what's harder? Going around that disco ball, and when the light shines on each of those facets, you make the choice for anger and bitterness. New facet, I choose anger and bitterness. Another facet, I choose anger and bitterness.

Another facet, I choose anger and bitterness, and you go all the way around that ball, and you always make the choice for anger and bitterness. That's the impossibly hard way. That's why people are weighed down as if they're trying to live their lives with a 150 pound bag on their shoulders, and they're exhausted. They're empty.

They're a shell of a person, because they're walking the impossibly difficult path of repeated anger and bitterness rather than choosing forgiveness. Moving on to step number 3, the, the 3rd step of forgiveness, and this now is talking about going above and beyond forgiveness. It's what you do on the other side of your moment of the forgiveness transaction. And that is pray for the person who has wronged you, pray for the person that you have just forgiven.

so here you are in the presence of God, someone's wronged you and you officially forgive in God's presence in prayer. And you name the person and the sin and so forth, and you say, God, I forgive them, and then you're done. The transaction's complete. And then you say, what do I do now, God?

God would say, well, I want you to pray. So I am praying, I, I'm praying as I'm forgiving them, and God would say, no, I want you to pray for this person you just forgave. So pray for them. Really?

What do I pray for? Do I pray for their, your, for you to judge them? do I pull out an imprecatory Psalm and began to pray for your judgment, the judgment that they deserve for their sins against me? What do I pray?

I pray for them. What do I pray for them about? And literally, guys, God says, I want you to pray for their benefit. For me, I want you to ask me right now, you have power with me in prayer.

And I want you on the other side of having forgiven this person to ask me to bless them. And some real and tangible way, go ahead, ask. Ask me to bless them. Have you done that?

Toward the people that have sinned against you. Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 5. He says, you've heard that 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.

You might want to mark that word persecute. imagine a category of all the people that wrong you. Some of those people that wrong you that you need to forgive are people that love you, that care about you, that have pledged their life to you. They may wrong you unintentionally or in a weak moment of sin.

They may just be careless and thoughtless, and they wrong you in the process of being thoughtless. But then in the category of those who wrong you, there are those who intentionally wrong you and feel justified in doing so. That's your persecutors. So for Jesus here to speak of those who persecute you, he's wanting you to think of the category of all those that wrong you.

And that is the farthest extreme of those who wrong you. These are people who willfully, intentionally do things to harm you, and they feel justified in doing so. So when he says pray for those who persecute you, he's not so much saying pray only for those who persecute you. No, he's denoting the extent of those that we pray for.

Pray for all those who wrong you and who let you down and disappoint you, including those who pursue you and intentionally do wrong to you, to harm you, and they feel justified in doing so. What do you do for them? Jesus says, pray, pray for them. Come into the presence of my Father.

And pray for them. Look what he says in the next verse, verse 45, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. In other words, that you may be like him. You'll be like him if in your heart you're wanting the Father to bless them, for he, this Father that you are praying to, he causes his Son to shine on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Jesus says, let me warn you, before you come into the presence of my Father and ask him to bless that person who wronged you, Let me forewarn you. That my father actually loves to do this. He loves to lavish blessing on the undeserving. In fact, you see it every day.

He causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and rain to fall upon the righteous and the unrighteous. it'd be nice if we lived in a world where You could identify the righteous and unrighteous by just blessings that people experience in their life. You're driving through some, farmland somewhere in this country and And you see sunlight falling upon a piece of farmland and the sunlight ends at the property line and you're like, well, that's obviously a Christian, that's a righteous person there and then as you're continuing down the road, you see some farmland and there's no sunlight, it's all darkness and the sunlight stops right at the property line and you can go, well, that's obviously not a righteous person.

Or rain is falling and it's falling on someone's farmland and you're like, well, that's obviously a righteous person, but then right at the property line.

There's another piece of land that gets no rain and everything is dry and withered, and you say, well, that's an unrighteous person. Many of us, if we could, we would set the world up that way. That'd be the way we would run things if we were God. But that's not our Heavenly Father.

That's not the way he administrates His gracious providence. He is a God who lavishes sunlight. Upon the evil and the good, and he lavishes rain upon the evil and the good, and he is lavishing practical, meaningful blessing upon those who worship him and those who don't. Every moment of every day, God is just very generously giving heaping portions of his oxygen and his air to every person.

To breathe and to be nourished by food to be nourished by. This is a God whose heart is that generous that he lavishly displays that toward the righteous and the unrighteous, even towards those who live their whole lives and never once say thank you. And he keeps on giving. And Jesus says, When I tell you to come into the presence of my Father and pray for those who wrong you, this is not some little mind game that you play, a little pious thing to do.

No, no. Realize the power you have with my Father and realize that He is a God who delights to lavish blessing upon those who are undeserving. Jesus says, this is what I'm calling you to do. And so we're moving beyond forgiveness now, and what you do on the other side of forgiveness.

And you as a saint of God who has power with God in prayer, you can come into the throne room of God, and you can ask for favors, and we all do that, praying for ourselves, for blessing for. and for those that we love. And Jesus says, when you are in the presence of my Father, I want you to pray for your Father to bless those who have wronged you, even those who have intentionally wronged you, and you see them and they feel justified. And what they've done, they're not even repentant.

Pray for them, that God will bless them in some real and practical way. And so you guys dream and be creative. The people in your life that you're frustrated with that have wronged you, that, that you're struggling to forgive, don't just forgive and stop there, or you're emotionally going to be stuck there. Move beyond forgiveness and actually begin praying for them.

In terms of what specifically to pray for, one of the things that, that I feel like is important for me to do is to actually pray for just some practical blessing, some mundane blessing in that person's life, but we can transcend even beyond that. Let me just throw 3 things your way. Jesus, when he was on the receiving end of wrongdoing, he prayed for those who wronged him. He, he did this, the very thing that he's telling us to do.

He did this, and the ultimate place of suffering, as the recipient of evil, of all places to pray for those who wrong you, Jesus did this at the cross. In Luke 23:34 we learned that as Jesus was being crucified and mocked and ridiculed, It says, but Jesus was saying, indicating that these words came out of his mouth on more than one occasion. If you were at the foot of the cross, you would have heard this come out of his mouth, not just once, but more than once. Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

On the receiving end of this wrong, Jesus is praying for those who have wronged him, and he's praying the ultimate blessing upon them. He's asking his father to forgive them. Essentially, what he's doing is saying, Father, can you so work in these people's lives, that you will bring them to a place of repentance. and brokenness, that they will one day come to experience your forgiveness for these sins that they are committing against me.

We learn here that embodied inside of true forgiveness is the desire for God to forgive the person. It's a desire for that person to experience not just your forgiveness, but God's forgiveness. It's a desire for God to work in their life to bring them to a place of brokenness and repentance so that they too can taste of the same grace that we have tasted of. Forgiveness is not, God, I forgive them.

I really hope you nail them with judgment. I forgive them. I hope you never will, God. No, true forgiveness is God, I forgive them.

And I pray that one day, they will come to experience your forgiveness. For these very sins against me, they will know the joy of that forgiveness. It's interesting that Jesus praised this prayer. those that were at the foot of the cross heard this and were probably mystified by it.

But less than 2 months later, on the day of Pentecost, where thousands of people gathered and hearing people speaking in tongues and Peter preaching. about Jesus Christ, and some of these very people who were involved, who were complicit in crucifying Christ were gathered on the day of Pentecost, and they heard who this Jesus really is, and they are cut to the quick over the awareness of who they crucified, and they're like, what must we do? And Peter gives them the gospel, and there were 3000 souls who were saved that day.

And among them no doubt were some.

that were involved in crucifying Jesus. And within 2 months of Jesus praying this, some of them were living in the fulfillment. Living in sight of the answer to this prayer that Jesus prayed for them. Within 2 months, they're going to be walking a few inches off the ground beside themselves with joy over the forgiveness that they are now receiving from God for their sin and crucifying Jesus.

Jesus prayed for those who wronged him. By the way, when he said, Father, forgive them. You're included in that. Jesus was pierced from our transgressions.

He was crushed under the weight of our iniquities. we were just as complicit in the death of Jesus as those who were physically there. Martin Luther would say, don't deny it. You have the nails in your pocket.

We're all guilty of having crucified Jesus. And yet on the receiving end of this wrong, Jesus says to the Father, for all of our benefit, Father, forgive them. And God has worked in many of our lives and brought us to a place of repentance, so that we have tasted of forgiveness. We've been beside ourselves with joy over tasting this great forgiveness from God in answer to this prayer from Jesus.

Beyond that, Jesus prays for us in an ongoing way on the other side of our sins, not just in our moment of conversion, but even in our Christian life from day to day, Jesus continues to pray for us as our advocate before the Father. We learn in Hebrews 7. And in Romans 8, that Christ is always making intercession and praying for us. And in First John chapter 2, we learn a very touching way that he prays for us before the Father.

John says, My little children, I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate literally toward the Father. Jesus Christ, the righteous, even when we fail and sin as believers, we can know in those moments of failure, that Jesus Christ, the righteous one, is in the presence of the Father, facing towards him and praying as our advocate on our behalf. That's the thing, you may say, man, praying for those that have wronged me, praying for God to bless them.

I don't want to do that, Pastor Milton. I absolutely don't want to do that. All right, fair enough. Take a few moments.

Later today, to meditate upon and celebrate the fact that you are daily as a Christian moment by moment, living inside of a salvation that comes to you because Jesus has already lived this out towards you. Every moment, even in your moment of saying, I don't want to do this, OK, I don't want to do this. You've got an advocate before the Father who's praying for you. And representing you.

You are the daily beneficiary of this amazing grace. You're being prayed for even in your worst moments as a Christian. And in calling us to turn toward those who wrong us, and to forgive them, and then to go before our Father and face toward our Father, and to advocate for them as it were, and to pray for God to do real and practical kindness to them. is an opportunity for us to mirror the gospel to them.

Lastly, knowing that we have Jesus as our advocate, praying for us the way that he does, we can pray for those who have wronged us. You think of the example of Stephen, read through Acts 7. Stephen knows that the Sanhedrin has murder in their hearts towards him. It comes out in the sermon that he preaches to them.

He knows what they're thinking, they want to kill him. And And as he reaches the end of his message, he looks up into heaven and he sees the heavens open and he sees Jesus Christ, the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, as his advocate facing toward the Father. He knows that he's got an advocate before the Father. He cherishes that.

what, you guys here on earth, you condemn me. You call me a loser. You say that I'm evil. I look up at my advocate before the Father, and I know I am covered.

I've got an advocate with the Father, and that is Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And it was in the certain knowledge and security of this. That Stephen with his dying breath could say regarding those who stoned him, Lord, do not hold this sin against him. As the stones are crushing into his body.

And his life is ebbing away. Steven says, Lord, don't hold this sin against them. May they come to know your forgiveness. We don't know about those that were stoning him.

Who knows what their stories ended up being? We do know one of those stories, a guy named Saul who was holding the coats of those that were stoning him. Supporting the stoning. And Saul came to know the grace of God.

Saul came to a place where he experienced God's forgiveness, and he was beside himself. With joy over tasting of the very grace that Steven prayed that he would experience. Paul is in heaven now. And he would say, I'm living inside of the good.

of the answer. To the prayer that a dying man prayed, a prayer of grace for me. And those who were involved in stoning him. So guys, who knows what stories God is trying to unfold here and how God has orchestrated things and you're being wronged in a way and when you choose anger and bitterness, that's a story stopper.

You're hindering God from doing what he wants to do. But when we choose forgiveness, to give forgiveness, and then to boldly come into the presence of God, and start asking crazy things for the people that have wronged us, praying that God would bless them in ways both tangible and spiritual, namely their salvation, and we're displaying that grace towards those individuals. There's no telling what God can do. With that.

It's not about us. It's not about simply the wrongs that have been done against us. God's doing something bigger in every situation where we are being wrong. God is always doing something infinitely bigger.

And will we allow ourselves to be caught up in his story of what he is doing and wants to do, and give grace, as he calls us to. Let's go to the Lord and ask him to help us to live this out. If you're here today, you've never tasted of this grace from God. Just even where you're seated now, just turn to God and cry out to Him to forgive you of your sins and Believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you will have grace to give to those that have sinned against you.

And your life will not be consumed with bitterness and anger. But even as Christians, we struggle, we struggle mightily. Let's go to God and ask Him to help us. Lord, we just, we come to you right now.

Sometimes we can be so petty. We can hold grudges, large and small. And then sometimes we are sinned against in ways that are deep and utterly profound. And legitimately heartrending.

And you're, you're teaching us something here about how to respond. Help us, God, help us, give us eyes to see as you see, to have an eye for the larger story of what you're doing and not be caught up in our own little petty kingdom and our own petty stories. May we not walk around telling stories about what this person did or said or that person did or said, but may we get caught up in the bigger story of what you're doing, God. And to be agents of your amazing grace.

Take us deeper and understanding these things and living them out, Lord, that we might glorify you thereby. We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to You, Lord. Receive these funds, do much with them for the glory. Of Jesus in whose name we pray.

And all God's people said,