Word & Deed: Forgiveness, Part I

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Word & Deed: We are Witnesses: Forgiveness, Part I
with Travis Aicklen

Scripture: Matthew 6:9-15, Colossians 3:12-13, Romans 12, 2 Corinthians 5:19, Isaiah, Ephesians 4:31-32, Mark 11:25-26, Ephesians 4:26-27
Intro: Jesus, in teaching the Lord's Prayer, emphasizes one key action: forgiveness. This sermon explores the misconceptions and realities of forgiveness, highlighting its importance in our lives and witness.
Key Points:

• One Job: In the Lord's Prayer, forgiveness is the primary action Jesus calls us to. We are to pardon and release those who don't deserve it.
• Misconceptions of Forgiveness:
  • It's not approving of the offense.
  • It's not excusing the offense.
  • It's not automatic reconciliation.
  • It's not denying the offense.
  • It's not forgetting the offense.
  • It's not neglecting justice.
• Realities of Forgiveness:
  • It's a release.
  • It's stopping keeping score.
  • It's refusing to punish.
  • It's being merciful.
  • It's from the heart.
  • It's an absence of bitterness.
  • It's an ongoing process.
• The Spite House: Holding onto unforgiveness traps us in a small, confined space, hindering our freedom and witness.
• The Cross: Jesus' sacrifice demonstrates the ultimate act of forgiveness, tearing down dividing walls.

Conclusion:

• Forgiveness is a mandate, not an option, for Christians.
• Bitterness is the alternative to forgiveness.
• Forgiveness is a release, not a recoding.
• We must rehearse forgiveness as much as we rehearse the story of the hurt.

Call to Action:

• Reflect on areas of unforgiveness in your life.
• Practice releasing those who have hurt you.
• Choose to stop keeping score.
• Rehearse forgiveness.
• Receive communion as a reminder of Christ’s forgiveness.
• Participate in the forgiveness prayer offered.

Transcript

Hey, can we put the Lord's Prayer up on the screen?

Let's read this together.

This then is how you should pray.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

In the prayer, this model prayer that Jesus prayed, there's a lot of things that God's willing to do for you.

There's a lot of things that God's going to do. He's going to lead us, He's going to deliver us, He's going to forgive us, He's going to send His kingdom.

And in this prayer, there's actually only one thing that you're called to do.

You got one job.

What is it?

Forgive.

So Jesus is saying to His disciples when you're praying to me, because remember, this prayer is the result of Jesus' disciples coming to Him and saying, "Could you teach us how to pray?"

And what He's saying to them is when you're talking to me, when you're praising me, when you're petitioning me, when we're communicating, I want you to make sure you're doing this one thing.

I want to make sure that you're doing what I do. I want to make sure you're pardoning and releasing people who do not deserve to be pardoned or released.

The word "forgive" shows up six times in this kind of model prayer passage. And I just want to ask the question,

like, you got one job.

How's it going?

How's it going?

I'm aware when I bring up forgiveness that two things are possible. One, what's coming to mind is some of your deepest pain. If you weren't there already when Mike and Tim shared about their lives, you were probably like, "Oh, wow. Yeah."

So I'm aware that some deep hurt comes up as I bring up the topic of forgiveness. I'm also aware that some deep shame comes up because I think we know that we suck at it.

It's not going that well, is it?

So we're going to talk about forgiveness. We're in a series called Word and Deed, and for the next few months we're talking about how we are witnesses.

And our lives say something. What we do testifies to the world around us. What we do and don't do says something about who our God is. And we want to represent Him well. That's why we're in the series. That's why we're pressing into it. If we were good at this stuff, we wouldn't be talking about it.

But we're all here needing to do some work in this area of forgiveness. So we're going to talk about it for the next few weeks. It's not fair to—I mean, two weeks ago we talked about marriage. Last week we talked about friendship. Naturally it follows that we would talk about forgiveness because I'm not sure your friendships or your marriage is going to go that well without getting better at this thing called forgiveness.

Colossians says, "Therefore, as God's chosen people," that's

who you are. That's your identity. That's your place. "Holy and dearly loved, clothed yourselves." This is the better church clothes. You look nice today. I'm sure you ironed that shirt. This is the better thing to wear to church.

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

"Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you."

In preparation for this sermon, I was

listening to another pastor preach, and he talked about

a wealthy businessman in the Seattle area. And this guy was actually a millionaire, and he owned a really small, awkward lot. In an upscale neighborhood in Seattle.

The lot was really unusual because it was between two houses, and it was five feet wide, and it was a hundred feet long.

He didn't know what to do with the lot, so he went to one of the neighbors,

and he asked him, "Hey, why don't you buy the lot next door? You can put a garden in it or extend your yard."

And the guy was like, "Yeah, I'll do that, but I'm only doing it as a favor." And he offered him one-tenth of what the lot was worth.

So he went to the other neighbor, and the other neighbor offered him even less because the other neighbor also knew he had nowhere to go.

One of the two of them had to buy it. And so these two neighbors kept driving the price down on a guy who felt like this property was worth something.

He got so enraged, he was so mad and so wealthy that he hired an architect, and he built a house on a lot that's five feet by a hundred feet. And he moved into that house, and he showed them by living in it until he died.

This is the spite house in Seattle, Washington.

And as I looked at this and thought about this, I found myself thinking to myself,

"Who lost here?

You really stuck it to them by living in a car for the rest of your life.

This house stands to this day as a monument to our ability to forgive."

The spite house is not just in Seattle. There's actually others. There's a spite house in Boston. There's a spite house in Florida.

We've got a spite house in California. There's spite houses everywhere.

And I think we can laugh, and it's like, "This guy's a clown." But let's be honest, we've done the same thing.

We now are trapped, stuck, living in a really small space because we'll show them.

We'll make them pay.

I would describe the mountain that way. That's how I would—is that every one of those guys just moved out of their spite house,

and they were like, "Oh my gosh.

It was like years of this."

And everyone's like, "Wow, these vows that I've made have trapped me,

and I thought I was making someone else pay, but my house is five feet wide, and I want out."

And they just went to work thrashing it. It was a week of kicking down walls and going, "This really isn't worth it."

Our God, in speaking of representing him well, our God is known for being forgiving and merciful.

In fact, he's actually known for tearing down dividing walls,

the wall that stood between us and him. He tore it down.

So instead of building it up higher or fortifying it, he came and he went to work to make sure that we don't have to live in such small, confined spaces. So in order to represent him, we've got to grow in our ability to tear stuff down,

not erect and build these walls, not divide ourselves from others, but to go to work on the fences that keep us from one another.

C.S. Lewis has this famous quote that you've probably heard. He says, "Everyone says forgiveness is

a lovely idea until they have something to forgive."

So we love the idea of it. And I know that I don't probably need to sell you on

the idea of forgiveness. You understand how important it is. You probably know that as a Christian, it's not an option. It's a mandate for us. In fact, you're in sin if you're in unforgiveness.

It's not like, "Oh, this makes sense and it's reasonable," and it's not for us. It's not.

And we've got to get good at it because life just, it hurts.

Life hurts.

And so we've got to get good at this because we've hurt the people we love.

We've been hurt by the people we love.

It hurts and wounds have been piling up for years. And forgiveness is such an important part of this so that we don't drown in a sea of regret, pain, anger, and bitterness.

And again, I'm not even sure I need to describe that because everyone knows what that is too. I wanted to ask a question, which is, "Are you the type of person who's willing to do something even if you know you're not going to be good at that something you're about to do?" I've noticed that some of us are willing and excited to put themselves out there even if it means failure. For the rest of us, we want to make sure that we're going to be good at whatever we're going to do before we do it. How many of you would say you're not willing to make a fool of yourself and try something? If you don't know if you can land it, you're not going to do it. Hands up, loud and proud.

How many of you are like, "No, I'm willing to go out there and be the worst person at pickleball?" You're like, "It's not that bad."

I've discovered that for some of us, we think that forgiveness is just impossible.

Like we've tried it, we know we stink at it, and so it's like, "I'm just not going to do that. I can't do that. If I could do that, I would do that. I'm not going to do that."

I discovered in probing around and asking questions that we have some misconceptions around forgiveness.

Some of those misconceptions keep us from actually engaging in forgiveness because we think it can't be done.

It's impossible to do. I've tried it before. It didn't work, and I'm not going to do it. What I want to talk about today is what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not so that we have a good idea of what we're trying to do so we can go, "Oh, yeah, still impossible, but I did have some misconceptions around it." Is that okay with you guys?

These things come from R.T. Kendall's book, Total Forgiveness. I don't want you looking at me and thinking that after a week on the mountain, I came up with this. I did not.

The first thing that forgiveness is not—this is a

myth about forgiveness—is that its approval of what they did.

And some of us resist forgiveness because we think we're in some way approving of what someone did to us. Listen, the grace of God is not God's approval of your sin. He hates sin.

He hates it. Jesus forgave a woman caught in adultery, but he didn't approve of what she was doing. He said, "Go, leave your life of sin."

He said, "I don't condemn you," but he also spoke the truth to her and said, "Cut that out."

So God didn't approve of sin in biblical times. He doesn't approve of sin in our day either, right?

The second thing is that people don't want to forgive because they feel like it's excusing what someone did.

They were excusing,

and I find a lot of people, instead of forgiving someone, they excuse it.

So it's kind of like, "Well, my dad was doing the best he could."

How many of you have said that?

Or, "Well, I was just tired." You know, it's not an excuse. There's actually a recognizing of what was done and a giving of forgiveness.

Moses is leading the children of Israel across

the desert, and if you've read that story, Moses is really aggravated with their complaining, and so is God.

God's had it with their grumbling, and then God eventually offered to Moses like a new deal.

So God tells Moses, "You're right. This is a tough group that you have to lead. They don't follow very well. They're stubborn. They're unteachable, and so here you go, Moses. I'm going to wipe them out, and we're going to start over with a new nation. Let's get a blank canvas."

Moses rejected God's offer, began to intercede for the people, and in his prayer, Moses doesn't excuse their complaining. Moses doesn't come before God and say, "In their defense, God, we're in a desert."

In their defense, God, I know they're complaining. I know they're complaining, but we've been eating the same thing for a very, very long time, and if there's just something else to eat, I think you'd, I don't know, there'd maybe like be less complaint.

He doesn't excuse their behavior. He appeals to God's mercy, and he says, "In accordance with your great love,

forgive the sin of these people."

Forgive them. It's not just a desert or that they've been eating the same thing for 40 years.

Pardon them. Do it again, just like you did before, until they left Egypt until now. Acts numbers 14-19. God did forgive them. He didn't excuse them. I know it's hot, and your feet are probably hot on the sand.

The third thing, people resist forgiveness because

they think it's reconciliation,

and forgiveness and reconciliation are two similar things. They're related in some ways, but they're two very different things.

One of the things that I think is really interesting is

in Romans 12, it says that we should be at peace with one another. We should forgive and be at peace with one another, and that's not necessarily that we would be in partnership with one another.

So understand that if you've had a business partner who you feel like embezzled and stole money, to forgive them is not to say, "Let's go into business again together." Those are two separate things.

This is something you can do on your own, and reconciliation is not.

That's a two-way street.

I was thinking of this passage. Second Corinthians 5.19 tells us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. So that's what God has done in Christ. But then Paul implores us, "Be reconciled to God."

So what he's saying there is that God has done this in Christ. Please do your part to be reconciled to God. Please get in on this, because it's meant to be not just peace, but partnership.

Reconciliation doesn't happen until both parties agree. So you can forgive on your own. That person, we learned that this week, that person doesn't even need to be alive to forgive them.

The fourth thing is

denying what they did. Forgiveness is not refusing to take the offense seriously. It's not like a no big deal, don't sweat it. Have you ever tried to ask someone's forgiveness, and they feel awkward, so they're like, "It's no big deal."

It's almost like, "Shh, shh,

don't bring that up." "Well, no, I really want to ask you forgiveness." "Hey, man, that stuff happens."

"No, no, no, when it happened, it was wrong." "Yeah, I know, but that was a long time ago."

That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about denying what someone has done. In fact, I would say you can't really forgive until you clearly see what someone has done and recognize, come to terms with how they've hurt you.

It's not repressing the truth.

That's not what it is.

And denial is not the easy way out.

The fifth thing is that forgiveness is not forgetting.

This is one of the great Christian myths to forgive is to forget. And the biblical basis for this came from a passage in Isaiah that says that God forgives our sins, and He remembers them no more.

And that does not mean that God

doesn't remember your sins.

Do you know that?

I've heard some people talk about like a heavenly encounter where they come before God and they bring up their sin and God's like, "I don't know what you're talking about."

There's a huge problem with that. The biggest problem with that is that you know something God doesn't know.

Like you know Bible stories that God doesn't know. You're like, "Yeah, but I think David slept with Bathsheba." And God's like, "I can't remember."

As far as the east is from the west, you know.

That's not what this is.

What it means is that He no longer responds to us in light of those sins.

They no longer derail our relationship with Him. To say that God forgets is to say that He feels about us the way He would feel if He had forgotten.

That's what we're saying. When we say that God remembered, is it like, "Oh, a thought popped into His head?" Is that what we're saying?

When it says God remembered Noah,

was that like a, "Oh, I left a hose on." You know, that's what—I'm always looking to add like two inches to our hot tub.

And then like 12 hours later, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I left a hose on." No.

It means—it means that He's now remembering—sorry.

It means He's renewing His work with that person in the situation at hand.

He's remembering Him.

Okay?

So, when—this is important—I wasn't trying to be funny. This is important because when you think the task is to forgive and to forget, you quit because you know it's not possible.

That's not it. What is possible is to remember what has happened but not treat the person in a certain way.

Six,

forgiveness is not neglecting justice. It's not a pardoning of what they did or a removing of all the consequences.

R.T. Kendall says it this way, that you can forgive someone and testify against

them in court.

So you don't have to neglect justice. What you do usually have to do is say, "God, I'm not in a place to administer justice because I'm clearly hurt, and I don't trust myself to see this straight. So I turn them—I turn this over to you, over to the authorities.

You can forgive someone and call the cops on them."

Okay. What forgiveness is.

The primary word that Jesus used for forgiveness in the Greek communicates release.

And I think it's a great way to read it. Any time you read a passage with forgiveness, I think you should read the word release.

Try this, "and release our debts, as we also have released our debtors.

For if you release other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also release you. But if you do not release others from their sins, your Father will not release your sins."

And when you stand praying, it is Mark, and when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, release them so that your Father in heaven may release you from your sins.

So what it is, forgiveness is a commitment to stop keeping score. Forgiveness keeps no

record of wrong. So you're choosing to stop keeping score. Why do we keep track of our offenses?

Well, it's to use them.

We keep track of them to use them, to prove what happened,

to wave them in front of someone's face, to keep the upper hand, to point the finger. Isaiah tells us that God blesses the one who does away with the pointing of the finger.

And I think you know why Jesus told Peter, "You need to stop keeping score when it comes to forgiveness." Remember, Peter said, "Hey, how many times should I forgive? Like seven?" And he's like, "Yeah, try 70 times seven.

Like just stop keeping score."

And the reason he said that is because when it comes to keeping track of life's hurts and justices and conflicts, we've all got some pretty crazy math going on.

We do.

Avery, she's our oldest and it was infuriating to watch her share something with her younger sisters.

You know, one for you, two for me,

two for you, three for me, three for you, five for me. And I'm watching her push all the like lemon and orange and Remy's direction while she takes everything Barry to herself, you know?

You're like, "This is jacked up math you're doing right now."

And when you're hurt, you can't be trusted to do the math.

And you should really question your own virtue.

You should question your ability to keep score.

The second thing is, it's refusing

to punish.

When you've been hurt, you got only two options.

And I know you're like, "What man? I'm an American.

I always have more than two options."

Here you go. If you've been hurt, you get two options,

forgiveness or bitterness.

Dang it. Are you sure?

I think so.

We're told in Ephesians that bitterness leads to malice.

Bless is you hurt me and now I'm going to hurt you.

I will make you pay. You will get what's coming to you. And when you forgive, you no longer delight in evil.

The third thing that forgiveness is, real forgiveness is

being merciful. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

We're told to be godly and when we hear that, we of course know that we're

not supposed to be omniscient, right? When I say you should be like Jesus,

you don't automatically think, "Oh yeah, I should probably be the son of God."

You know that there are attributes that he and he alone has and you know that there are some ones that we can rep.

We can represent certain character traits that our God carries. Mercy is one of them.

Be merciful as our Father is merciful. That is the command.

Grace is getting what you don't deserve and mercy is not getting what you do deserve.

So being merciful is to show mercy.

Fourth it's

a hard issue.

True forgiveness is not lip service. It must take place in the heart or it's worthless.

Jesus says this in one of his parables, "You must forgive

from the heart," right? And that's what we tell our kids, right?

Say you're sorry, sorry. Say you're sorry, sorry. No, no, no. You have to mean it, sorry. You have to, it has to be from your heart. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, you do. You do know what you're, you do, you know what you're doing.

The Father will not forgive you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

Number five,

it's an absence of bitterness.

Bitterness

as I said earlier is your only other option.

You can forgive or you can grow bitter.

And bitterness I've discovered has way more to do with proximity than it does the magnitude of the offense.

A burglar breaks into my home, you know, steals all my valuables in my underwear drawer, you know.

I don't know.

Just making something up.

I don't know, pretty easy because that person has no proximity to me. And I can pretty quickly go like, "Oh, they're probably on math." You know, I could like make up a story and be like, "Well, that's probably what I would do if I was in that situation."

One of my kids does the same thing and now all of a sudden there's proximity and that's where the bitterness comes in. It has nothing to do with it being a big deal. It has everything to do with how close they were to you. That's what usually triggers bitterness.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice.

We can be sure that there's no bitterness when there's no desire to punish or get even

or we release them. You owe me nothing.

Instead of choking them out, you owe me.

We release them.

Number six,

and this is good news. It really is. For those of you who want to quit on forgiveness,

you need to know that it's ongoing.

It's not like a one-time event. Sometimes it's one and done. Praise God for that. Praise God for the people who have a testimony that they flushed their

unforgiveness down the toilet and never had a craving to make another person pay again.

But some of us, there's layers to this, right? So it's a process and we have to keep forgiving.

When bitterness shows itself and painful memories flood back in, you forgive again.

I was talking with Deborah Avanales this week and she was saying, "You know what was so helpful to me is when," I don't know where she heard it, you can ask her, "but she said you should rehearse forgiveness as much as you've rehearsed the story."

And I thought, "Wow, that's it right there.

That's it."

As much as you tell the story, as much as the record goes round,

you should forgive.

You should forgive and bless and release and keep doing it, right?

It's really cool. Like, honestly, the hurt that you carry, you didn't get here. You didn't get there overnight. You know that, right?

The unforgiveness is keeping the wound open.

You're nursing it. It's going round and round. You didn't get here overnight and you're probably not getting out of here overnight.

It's not going to be 30 years of you playing the same hits.

And then in three seconds you're spinning something else. I don't know.

Worship team, would you guys come? Church, would you stand with me?

And would the ministry team and the men who just came down from the mountain, would you guys make yourself available to pray?

We'd love to tear down some walls, do some demo. If you're here and you're like, "Oh, that looks like my house. It's five feet wide and I'm interested in a more spacious place,"

we'd love to pray with you and for you.

We're going to come to the table and we're going to take communion.

And this right here, behind Brandon Burton, that's a cross.

That's the most recognized symbol in the world.

Except for we know now that the cross that Jesus hung on doesn't actually look like that. There's no top to it. Did you know that?

It's more of an uppercase T than a lowercase T.

Okay?

Here's the other thing you need to know about that symbol because as a child I used to picture that Jesus hung 15 feet in the air.

Is that how you saw it? 15 feet in the air and I saw like John hoisting up Mary with the sponge.

Or maybe he's got a stick and he's trying to get it 15 feet up there to Jesus. No, that's not how Rome crucified people.

They crucified people at eye level because Rome wanted to send a message. They wanted you to see the sights, smell the smells, hear the sound, and know that if you were to cross Rome, this is what would happen to you. They wanted you to see it up close, not remove it from the people.

Here's another message because the kingdom of God was wanting to send a message with that cross too.

And would you hear the message again from the cross? Would you see the sights?

Hear the sounds?

See what our Lord suffered so that we could live free?

Would you get the message, hear the message again? As you come to the table, remember his body broken for you. Remember his blood shed for you and bringing us back to Colossians 1.

Let's forgive as we've been forgiven.

Please get in touch with the reality that you've been forgiven.

Please know that he's extending forgiveness to you and then offer that to others.

Worship, come to the table, stand with someone to let you know how this is going to look. Here it is.

Who do you want to forgive?

What do you want to forgive them for? And then we'll lead you through saying this. Father, I forgive blank for blank.

Father, I release blank for blank.

I let you go.

I release you. You owe me nothing. We'll walk you through saying that out loud.

Then we'll ask you, is there anything that you've done in response to the hurt that you want to ask forgiveness for so that you can own your part of it? Okay?

Jesus, thank you for that cross.

Thank you for your mercy.

May your love and mercy flood our hearts.

Give us something to give away.

May we be in touch with what it costs you to release us.

Amen.