(Pastor Alan)That was Jesus speaking in Matthew chapter 5, in the Beatitudes.

Transcription

1 Introduction It really is my privilege and honor to be here today, to bring God s Word to you. When Pastor Steve told me that I would be preaching I was, like he said, a little apprehensive. I was reminded that today my words are really not my words. They re words straight from God. Will you join me in prayer as we just open up and get ready to hear God s Word together? Father, thank you for today, thank you for Your love for us and Your goodness toward us. Father, thank you for Your promises that we have in Your Word. Lord, I pray that today my words would be Your words. And Father, I pray that the ears of those that hear would hear with Your understanding and with Your Holy Spirit conviction, so Father we just look forward to what You are going to do today. And we are going to thank you in advance. In Christ s Name... Amen (Audio from house) You ve heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have 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, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Pastor Alan)That was Jesus speaking in Matthew chapter 5, in the Beatitudes. I have a question for you. How many of you like to go to the movies? We ve got a few of you. Well, I ve got to tell you I love to go to the movies. As a matter of fact, I have some friends from out of town with us this week. They ve come to visit. Their go-to date night is Friday night movie and dinner. Isn t that right, guys? Yeah. As a matter of fact, Monday night we re going to a movie together so we enjoy movies I love movies. Here s the reality: There s all kinds of genres of movies action-adventure, comedy, drama and then you ve got some of those movies that are kind of all by themselves they re alone. I mean you know what I m talking about those kinds of movies that cause cult followings like Star Trek and Star Wars those kinds of movies. I also like the superheroes don t you? Superman Batman Spiderman. And I kind of have this affinity for the Avengers: the Hulk, Captain America Thor Black Widow Ironman just to name a few. But you know what I found is when you re watching movies, you can find spiritual applications. You really can, if you re looking for them. Sometimes they re good and sometimes they re not so good. So Monday, when Steve came to me and said, Hey, Alan can you take this Sunday for us? He reminded me that we re in this #WeLoveHOU and How To: Have It All series and that this particular week was on forgiveness and reconciliation. So immediately my mind went to Ironman 3 Take a look (video clip from Ironman 3: I m Tony Stark I build neat stuff. I ve got a great girl. Occasionally I save the world. So why can t I sleep? (Unknown voice) You elected me on a single platform. I will defend this country at all cost. The Mandarin must be stopped. You don t know who I am You ll never see me coming (female voice) What are you going to do about these attacks? The whole world is going to be watching. (Male Voice) The question: Where is Tony Stark? (Tony Stark) 1 P a g e

2 Things are different now; I have to protect the one thing that I can t live without that s you. (Male voice) Today is the first day of what s left of your life. Do you want an empty life or a meaningful death? You re not a man; you re nothing more than a maniac. (Tony Stark) I m not afraid of you. Not politics here just good old-fashioned revenge. (Pastor Alan) Now, I don t know how many of you are Ironman fans, but this is Ironman 3. So, as you can tell, it s the third movie in the Ironman series. By this time, this guy by the name of Tony Stark, who is Ironman, his identity has been made known to the world. Tony Stark is this brash but brilliant industrialist that has created all of these weapons and all these secret things, and now his identity being known, his personal life is taking a turn for the worse. The reason is because this guy by the name of Mandarin goes after him. So he destroys his home, he destroys his inventions, he destroys his super-suits, his relationships, and they re all destroyed by this guy. So Stark, in an effort for retaliation, he goes on this harrying quest to get back at the Mandarin. He wants revenge; he wants retribution. So he goes on this odyssey of rebuilding his life, but this odyssey is also one of revenge. He wants to go after and get vengeance against that one that has hurt him. He wants to go after the Mandarin and get revenge against him. If you ll notice, in the movie, Stark said in that trailer, he said It s not about politics it s all about revenge. So the whole movie is all about revenge and Tony Stark going after his enemy going after someone who has wronged him. Now, I ve got to admit we can identify with that, right? Maybe one of us? Two of us? (Laughter) I mean, we can sympathize because when we have been wronged, what s our natural tendency? We want to get back at them, right? We want to go after them. It s not like, Well, I sort of get that or I ve sort of been in that place. No. When you ve been wronged, your natural response is I m going to get that person. I m going to get back at them I m going to show them who s boss. If they re going to cause me pain, I m going to cause them more pain. Man, I ve got to tell you. I experience that on the golf course. (Laughter) I used to be competitive. I used to be okay not so much anymore. I ve got to tell you when my son was growing up David I wanted him to have a love for the game of golf, the way that I did. So I began to teach him and show him how to play golf. What was interesting was it didn t take me long to realize he was a much better golfer than I was. His natural golf swing, his ability to play golf was much better, and it came easier for him than it did for me. Here I am, the dad I m encouraging him I m teaching him how to play I m looking past his mistakes and his mental errors. I m really encouraging him to do the best that he can do and be the best that he can be. After all, I m the dad, right? That s my role. So, what happened? One day on the golf course, do you know what? He beat me. He beat me, and I m like, NO this can t happen. I m the dad, I m the teacher; I m the one who taught him how to play golf. So after those 18 holes, my natural response was, I ve got to get back. As a matter of fact, David, we re going to go out and play 9 more holes, winner takes all, no excuses, no mulligans no me helping you at all you re on your own, I m on my own I m going to take advantage of everything I know to hurt you because I want to win (Laughter) Then it came to me. I know it s 95 degrees outside; I ll ride the cart and I ll make him walk. I ll get water and I won t let him have anything. I will take all my resources and take advantage of them for me, and I m going to abuse him because I want to beat him. Well I ve got to be honest with you. That really didn t happen, but I tell you what did happen I encouraged him, I told him how proud I was of him and of how good he had become how good he was he had been working at it so hard. But I ve got to tell you, in the back of my mind, he wasn t going to beat me again. There was no way Right, David? (voice from audience) I still beat you. (Laughter) You can t say it when the kid is in the audience, right? 2 P a g e

3 Here s my point. My point is this: There are times when someone hurts you or someone beats you or someone takes advantage of you and our response is to get even. We want to get back at them. We want to win. We want to seek revenge when someone has wronged us. But here s a question: What if there s a better way? What if revenge isn t all it s cracked up to be? What if we realize that when we seek revenge, really all it does is leaves us this feeling of emptiness. You see, Jesus understood our desire for revenge. He understood how hard forgiveness can be for us. He knows our sin nature. He knows our desires. So here, in Matthew chapter 5 that you just heard read earlier, He twists the natural thinking and the process of His day by saying something very radical. He gives this new message of love and forgiveness and acceptance, and He gives this message remember the norm of the day was an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth. In other words, if somebody wrongs you, you go and wrong them in the same way. But Jesus turned it around, and He twists their way of thinking by saying, If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other one also. If someone sues you for your cloak, give him your tunic too. If somebody makes you go one mile, go two miles with him. Wow what? Are you kidding me, Jesus? Are you telling me if someone hurts me, if somebody takes advantage of me, if somebody wrongs me I am just supposed to let them continue to take advantage of me? You mean I don t go after them? You mean I don t go and get and do to them what they ve done to me? Now, I want you to understand this To many of the people in Jesus day, this type of speaking, this type of message was offensive. It was offensive to them. I mean, a Messiah who would turn the other cheek? They wanted a Messiah that was going to go and get them retribution against Rome. They were under Roman oppression. They wanted to win and retaliate and defeat their enemy, but Jesus suggests this radical new response to injustice. What He says is instead of demanding our rights, give them up freely. Now here s the thing just like the Jewish people of Jesus day, our natural first response is to get even. Our natural desire, when someone hurts us, we want to get back at them. Instead, what Jesus says, Do good to those who wrong you. Man I want to keep score, though. Not only do I want to get even, I want to win I want to get ahead. You see, to love and to forgive, is not natural. It s supernatural. Look again with me in Matthew chapter 18, verses 21-22: Then Peter came up and said to Him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. Wow. What Jesus is saying here is when people hurt us, when people wrong us, when it comes to how we re supposed to respond to them, we should err on the side of forgiveness and not vengeance. Let me say that again We should always err on the side of reconciliation rather than revenge. So what Jesus is saying is, Extend forgiveness to those that hurt you. Go after reconciliation; don t go after revenge. God desires reconciliation over revenge. So today, what we re going to do is we re going to look at three principles that we find in the Bible that help us understand how we can choose reconciliation over revenge how we can extend forgiveness that leads to healing in our lives when people hurt us. Heres the first principle: 1. Own What Needs To Be Owned And Release What Needs To Be Released. Let me say that again You have to own what you need to own, and you need to release what you need to release, so that we can respond in a way that honors God. Look with me, if you will, at Romans 12:14-21: Paul is speaking Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is 3 P a g e

4 honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. You see, when it comes to people that hurt us, Paul says what we re supposed to do is to bless them. We are to bless those who persecute us, those that hurt us, those that are against us, those that wrong us Paul says, Don t take revenge. Instead, if your enemy is hungry, go buy him a steak. (Laughter) If he s thirsty, go get him a Big Gulp. (Laughter) But isn t that totally opposite of the way we feel? Isn t that totally opposite of the way we think to our natural tendency? That is totally opposite to the way the world has programmed us. This way of thinking sounds crazy. I mean, it sounds like it s from a different planet. It s from some type of alien Oh, wait a minute we are aliens in this world, aren t we? Wow; it s different. It s not our natural way in our flesh, but it s the way that God responds. So, when we think of someone wronging us, our natural, in-our-flesh response: Get even. When someone hurts us, our natural tendency: Take revenge. But Paul comes up with this crazy idea of blessing those who persecute you. He comes up with this crazy idea that, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if they re thirsty, give them something to drink. It goes against everything in our natural self, everything that we ve been taught in this world. So what Paul is saying is, Own what you need to own and release what you need to release. What in the world does that mean, Alan? I m glad you asked. Look at Romans 12 again: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Listen; I know some of you in this room today have been hurt. I know you ve been hurt badly. You ve had friends that have wronged you. You ve had a boss or a friend or a neighbor, or maybe even a family member that has hurt you. Maybe you had a parent that abused you or a spouse that abandoned you or maybe even you had a church that condemned you and judged you. But somewhere along the way you ve been hurt. Maybe it s emotionally, maybe it s mentally maybe it s even physically. I know you ve been deeply hurt. Now listen I don t want to make light of that today. I don t want to say that is okay behavior. But what Paul is saying is this: You can t own what they ve done to you. That was their choice, not yours. They chose to hurt you. They chose to cause you pain, and you can t own that. You can t even say, Well I deserved it. No, you didn t. You can t say, Well I had it coming. No you didn t. You cannot own the hurt that someone else has put on you. But what you can own is how you respond to them. You see, what Paul is saying is that you need to release their choice to hurt you. That was their choice. But you need to own the way you react and respond to them. Then he goes on to say, If you want to respond in a way that honors God here s the twisted thinking bless those who persecute you; bless those who cause you harm. Wow. Man, get your head around that. That is craziness. I mean, that s upsidedown thinking in today s world. After all, when people hurt us, when people harm us man, we want to go after them. Our natural response is to attack, right? We want to go on Facebook we want to go on Twitter on Instagram we want to let the whole world know what they ve done to us. We want to write them a nasty . We want the whole world to know how terrible they are. We want to attack. But Paul says to bless. God tells us to bless them, not to get even with them. That doesn t mean what they did is okay. It doesn t mean that you continue to let them abuse you, but what it does mean is the way you respond to them is to bless them because that honors God. Paul says, Bless those who persecute you. As far as it depends on you, live peaceably with everyone. So some of you did. You walked in here with friendships or relationships that are broken. You ve got family members that are just out of whack. There s some hurt and some pain that goes deep. You ve been wronged; you ve been 4 P a g e

5 taken advantage of. But Paul says, As far as it depends on you, to live at peace with everyone. And Jesus says, in Matthew chapter 5, to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You can t own their choice to hurt you, but you can own your response. Not only do you release the actions that they ve committed against you, but here s the thing. You can also release blessings into their lives. Let me tell you. Back before I got into ministry, I was in the banking industry. I was in the presidency of a bank. We were a community bank that was going regional; it was growing like crazy. We were actually even taking some of the things we did nationally. We had a local attorney that came to me; he wanted to go on staff with us. You know how that is. When things are successful and growing, people want to be part of it. So he wanted to come on staff; he wanted to give his talents for the bank, but the reality was, we didn t hire him. And because we didn t hire him, what he did was he began to slander me. He began to make up stories, he began to tell lies, and do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to go get him. I wanted to go over to his office; I wanted to hurt him I wanted to shut him up I wanted to take him out I wanted him to know that he s not going to say and do something against me. But here s what I did instead. I had this moment of clarity clarity that only comes from the Holy Spirit. Here s what I did. I went and purchased a small gift it wasn t anything special, but I went and got this gift. I went over to his office. I said, Hey, man; I am just here because I want to let you know that I want to pray for you, and I want to pray for your practice. So do want to know what I did? I prayed for him right then. Then I gave him the gift and I said, Hey, I m giving you this gift because I want you to know that I care for you; I love you. I want what s best for you. You see in my flesh, I wanted to hurt him. But what I did instead was I chose to do it God s way. Instead of attacking him, I blessed him. Let me tell you God honored it. Hopefully there will be a day here soon when I can give my testimony and tell you how God has honored those kinds of choices in my life. Anyway, you can see that the reality is that we can t own things that people do to us or against us. We have to own how we respond to that. If we want to respond in a way that honors God, then we bless those who persecute us. Own what you need to own, and release what you need to release. 2. Reconciliation And Forgiveness Models What God Has Done For Us. The second principle for seeking reconciliation and extending forgiveness instead of revenge is this: Reconciliation and forgiveness models what God has done for us. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5: It says this: All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Now what s happening here is Paul is writing to the church at Corinth. The church at Corinth was a messed up church. They were infighting, they were back-biting, they were going after each other, so Paul writes this letter to tell them, Stop you need to reconcile. You need to get in order with one another. The cool thing that Paul tells them is, Hey by the way. This isn t my idea. This is God s idea. This all started with God. This idea of reconciliation came from God. It was God who thought up forgiveness instead of revenge. It s God s idea. So, here s the thing, and you need to catch this. You need to hear this. In our natural state, we were God s enemies. Think about that. We were God s enemies. In our sin and our rebellion and living our own lives and ignoring who God is and ignoring God chasing after us we were in rebellion to God, and we were his enemies. Instead of God choosing revenge against us instead of God choosing to get back and destroy us, God chose reconciliation. Wow. Think about that. He chose to forgive you; He chose to forgive me by sending His Son, His only Son, to take our punishment, to pay our debt on the cross, so that we could be reconciled to God. Do you see it? Reconciliation forgiveness it s God s idea. It starts with God. What Paul is saying is, extending forgiveness, seeking reconciliation when we ve been wronged, when we feel it s our right to seek revenge what we re doing is we re following God s model when we seek reconciliation. 5 P a g e

6 Not only are we modeling to the people that have sinned against us, we re also modeling it for the world that sees it. You see, reconciliation forgiveness models what God has done for us. You know, believe it or not, back when I was in high school, I was an athlete. I know you can t really tell from this tone and this cut physique I just blame it on the shirt, really (Laughter) but I was an athlete in high school. I played football I played golf I ran track I swam. Believe it or not, I was pretty good at some of those sports. I set school records in swimming. I won the mid-indiana conference in golf. But my choice sport my sport of choice was football. I loved football. I loved it. As a matter of fact, our coach he was such a great defensive guy he was all about defense. When it came to what he wanted to do, it was all about the defense. He would reward and honor defensive plays over offensive plays. I remember when our quarterback would throw a touchdown pass, he d come off the field and he d shake his hand and say, Hey great job, Todd. Or maybe our running back, Rocky, would run for a big run; he d come off the field and he d shake his hand and say, Way to go, Rocky. But you knew, if you made a stop on defense you knew that when you came off the field, you were going to get a chest bump from the coach so bad that it would knock you over. He modeled and loved defense. So I remember our junior and senior year, we were actually rated the number one defense in the entire conference. I remember what we did before my senior year is we played this game it was a scrimmage, but we played it like a normal game. It was a Friday night, the lights were on concession stands were open we sold tickets. But all it was was our offense playing our defense. It s what it was. I remember midway through the first quarter, a punt was made and a guy returns the punt all the way back for a touchdown. So he comes off the field, and I remember the coach saying, Great job; way to run that back. A little bit of a smattering of applause out with the fans The very next series of plays I was playing middle linebacker on defense and our quarterback, Todd, goes back to throw a pass and I was on a blitz call. I broke through the line, and I sacked him for a 10-yard loss. I got up and I looked and the crowd s going crazy. The players and the coach on the sideline man, they were high-fiving each other, they were chest-bumping each other they were going crazy. It was just crazy how much they were going about this tackle that I made. I mean, after all, this was a scrimmage game. It had absolutely nothing to do with our season, but it had everything to do with what our coach was all about. So why were all these players going insane on the sideline? Because the coach modeled it for them. The coach modeled it. What was important to the coach was important to the players. So I want you to hear this: If it s important to our God who is our leader, our Savior, our coach it needs to be important to us, as His followers as His disciples. (Clapping) So God models reconciliation for us. God models forgiveness for us. It s important to Him; it needs to be important for us. He showed us how to respond when someone hurts us. He showed us that we need to seek forgiveness and reconciliation, as far as it depends on you. You see, God chose to reconcile Himself to us. He modeled that for us. Again, when we re modeling that for those that accuse and hurt us, we re modeling it for the world as well. 3. I Will Never Have To Forgive Someone More Than God Has Forgiven Me. Principle number three: I will never have to forgive someone more than God has forgiven me. Oh, Alan you don t know how much they ve hurt me; you don t know how they wronged me; you don t know the pain they ve caused me. You re right; I don t know. I don t know what they ve done to you, but I do know what Jesus has done for you. We will never have to forgive more than we ve been forgiven. We ve been forgiven by Christ dying on the cross for our sins. 6 P a g e

7 Matthew 18:21-22 Again, Peter came up and said, How many times do I forgive? Seven? No, seventy times seven. Then right after that, Jesus goes into the story, like Jesus always did, to give this principle and bring life to it. Here s what He says, starting in verse 23: Therefore, the Kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. You see, what Jesus was teaching his disciples was forgiveness. He told them the story of reconciliation where the servant owed ten thousand talents and couldn t pay it. By the way, one talent, in today s value, is about 1.25 million dollars. Think about that. Ten thousand would have been 12.5 billion dollars. I can t even imagine that. So he has forgiven his entire debt and then he goes and finds another servant that owes him a hundred denarii, which in today s value is about 20 bucks and he wouldn t forgive him, and he cast him into prison. So what did the master do? He found out about it and he say, No more. I m not going to forgive you anymore. I m not going to have mercy on you anymore. You see, here s the thing. Then he goes on and he says, And so will our heavenly Father do to us. Wow that s serious stuff. But Jesus understood that forgiveness is a serious matter. It s a serious matter. In Hebrews chapter 10, Paul writes, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds, then He adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless sins no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. What Paul is saying is that when we fall under the forgiveness of Jesus, when we seek His forgiveness, God remembers our sins no more. Wow He separates them as far as east is from west. I don t know how God can forgive but He does. That s what the Scripture tells us. What Paul says and what Jesus knew is that we will never have to forgive someone as much as God has forgiven us. That s why it s so important that we get this forgiveness thing right. That s why it s so important that we forgive others and we seek reconciliation over revenge. When we forgive someone that s hurt us, when we forgive someone that has harmed us, here s what we re doing. We re treating them the same way that God treats us. Both Jesus and Paul understood that when we refuse to forgive and we seek revenge, hear this: It doesn t hurt the person; it only hurts you. It doesn t hurt them. It only hurts us because unforgiveness never hurts our intended target never. So a few months ago, our pastoral team was invited out to shoot some skeet on a skeet range. Well, the fact that I m not from Texas I don t own a gun. As a matter of fact, very few times in my life have I even shot a gun. But, you know, I want to be part of the guys. I want to go out and do the thing shoot some skeet whoo hoo (Laughter) so I m like Alright, let s go. So we go and we get there and luckily we had an instructor that understood some of us were novices at guns, so he asked the question, How many of 7 P a g e

8 you would like a little more instruction? Well, I m one of the guys that raised my hand. Luckily, I wasn t the only guy So what he did was he took us to what they call, the beginners range. (Laughter) He said, Now, here at the beginners range, it s a little easier to hit the targets. They re a little bit slower, a little bit easier to hit. So, I m going to show you how to load the gun, how to shoot the gun all those kinds of things. So he does that but I didn t really understand until after I had shot the gun a few times that these shotguns had multiple shells. Some of them had two but some of them even had more. So once I realized that, instead of just going boom I m like, Hey, it s got several shots boom, boom, boom I was like Rambo. I was just shooting at these targets. What was so cool about this beginners area was you had more than one shooter at a time. You could have me and another guy and another guy what they do is they would release skeets for all of us to shoot. I ll never forget, in my Rambo range, I m shooting and all of a sudden I see one of these skeets just blow apart, and I m thinking Yes I got one. and my instructor chuckles and he laughs and he goes, That s great, Alan but you didn t hit the right skeet (Laughter) you hit somebody else s; You didn t hit the target you were supposed to hit. You see, what he was telling me was, even though they pulled it and I shot, I missed what I was supposed to hit. You see. when we hold on to unforgiveness and bitterness, we think we re hitting the target by going after someone else, but we re missing the target because we re only hurting ourselves. We re killing ourselves. We re not going after the one that we think we re going after. It really affects us. When we hold onto this unforgiveness and this bitterness when we say, I refuse to forgive them. I refuse to let them off the hook. I want them to experience and know the pain that I ve experienced. The problem with that type of thinking is they haven t given it a second thought. They re going on with their lives; they re not thinking about you and they re not thinking about how they ve hurt you, but it s killing you it s killing you. You have to understand this. No matter how much you ve been hurt, no matter how much pain someone has caused you, you will never forgive as much as God has forgiven you. You know, when you hold onto unforgiveness and bitterness, it s like drinking a glass of poison every day and expecting it to kill your enemy but it only kills you. We have to learn how to forgive because we will never forgive more than God has forgiven us. No matter how deep the wound is, no matter how bad the pain, no matter how deep the hurt goes, when we forgive those who have wronged us, we learn to treat them the way that God treats us. So here s a question: How do I respond today? What do I do with what I ve just heard? First of all, I believe there are people in this room that have been hurt deeply. I know you ve been deeply wounded. You ve had pain inflicted on you. You ve had someone absolutely abuse you. Listen I don t want to make light of that. I don t want to say, That s okay Because you have been wronged, you have had bad things done against you, but you have the choice today of how you are going to respond. If you re going to hold onto unforgiveness, you re not going to hurt your enemy; you re only going to kill you from the inside out. So your response today is forgiveness. Choose forgiveness. Choose to heal over hurt. Freedom is only found in forgiveness. It s the only place that you ll find it. So maybe that s you today. Maybe you walked in here hurt and wounded and refusing to forgive. So, today, your response is to forgive. But for others of you, maybe you walked in here and you re the one that needs to be forgiven. Maybe you re the one that s hurt someone. Maybe you re the one that has inflicted pain, and so your response today is reconciliation. What that means is you go to the person you admit that you ve wronged them you ask them for forgiveness to seek reconciliation, as much as it depends on you. Paul says to live at peace with everyone. And then there s this third group of people. There s a third group here in this room today and that s that you need ultimate forgiveness. By the way, ultimate forgiveness is only found in Jesus Christ. That s it. You ve gone through your life, you ve rebelled against God you re living your own life apart from God. You re making your own choices, not considering God. He has been chasing after you; He s been wanting to take hold of you, but you have ignored Him at every turn. You re full of unforgiveness, you 8 P a g e

9 want freedom from it. You want to be forgiven, but you don t know where to turn. Today, where you need to turn is to Jesus. The answer for you is to find full and complete forgiveness in Jesus. If one of those people is you today, I want to give you a chance to respond here in just a minute. We re going to have some prayer partners up front where you can come and they ll pray with you. They will help in any way that they can. I want to remind you that God loves you. God loves you, and He wants you to have life and have it abundantly. He wants you to find freedom and forgiveness, and He wants you to have forgiveness in His freedom of Christ. So will you pray with me? Father, we thank You for today. Father, we don t understand this idea of forgiveness in our natural person. We understand that forgiveness and reconciliation is supernatural and it only comes from You, because You modeled it for us. Father, you gave us forgiveness freely. Scripture says while we were still sinners, while we were still apart from You, while we were still in rebellion from You, You sent Your Son so that we might be reconciled to You. So Father, if there s someone here today that needs to have that full forgiveness of Christ, I pray that they would make that decision today. Father, if there s someone here that needs to release the hurt, the pain that they ve experienced from someone else, Father, I pray that they would choose to respond in a way that honors You, by letting go and forgiving and even blessing. Father, for those that may have been the one that has inflicted pain, Father, I pray that You would bring that to their mind so that they might reconcile with the one that they have offended. Father, You have set the example; You have shown us the way. Father, You have done it for us, You have modeled it for us. It s not like we have to question how. Father, we just need to follow Your lead. So today, Father, I pray that You would touch us where we need to be touched, move us where we need to be moved, and lead us where we need to be led. We will give You praise. In Christ s Name, Amen. 9 P a g e