The Church of Eleven22 - Grace Forgives - Run Over by the Grace Train - Wk 7

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

Forgiven people forgive people. Because Christ has cancelled all of our debt at the cross we should also forgive those indebted to us. Fill out the Debt Ledger at https://coe22.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Debt-Ledger-Forgiveness-2024.pdf - The Church of Eleven22® is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Eleven22 is led by Pastor Joby Martin and based in Jacksonville, Florida, with multiple campuses throughout Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. To find out more about how God is moving at Eleven22, go to CoE22.com

Amen and amen. If you got your Bibles, and I hope you do, I want you to grab them and quickly go to Matthew Chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18, we are in the eighth week, I think, many, many weeks of run over by the grace train. And so far, what we have been talking about is being recipients of the grace of God. And when we talk about the grace of God, that's primarily what we think about, about the grace that God offers to us.

But in our time together today, I want to ask you, what kind of grace are you offering towards other people. That we are going to talk about the reality that grace forgives. And when you have been run over by the grace train, when you have received the grace of God, we are not to be cul-de-sacs of the grace of God and have His grace terminate upon us, but we are to be conduits of the grace of God

that His grace would flow through us to other people. And because we have been forgiven, we have been called to be people that forgive. I probably send this sermon content out more than any other sermon that I've ever preached. And we do it, I don't know, there might be the fifth or six times that I preach through this content, and it's because we need it over and over and over. And so today's sermon is only for those of you who have been sinned against. The church spends a whole bunch of time talking about what we do when we sin,

but it doesn't spend a ton of time talking about what you do when you have been sinned against. And the reality is, is you are going to be sinned. against. Do you know why? Because currently right now you were sitting next to a center. So whichever one you think is the biggest center on your left and right, look at them and tell them, center. Yeah, because it's just true. It's just true. I mean, whoever the best person in this room is, and one of you is the best, all right? That you are also a center. And the Bible talks very, very specifically about the reality of forgiveness. And in the Bible, forgiveness is commanded of the believer, not suggested.

Forgiveness is a unilateral decision that no matter what the other person does who has sinned against you, the believer has been commanded to forgive. And I think forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood biblical concepts in the church today. There's a whole lot of reasons why a lot of people don't forgive. This is not an exhaustive list, but here's a few ideas. Honestly, this is like 31 years of ministry seeing this firsthand. One of the reasons people don't forgive is because they don't understand the true

nature of what forgiveness is. In Matthew chapter 18, Jesus is going to beautifully lay out exactly why we forgive and how to forgive. Jesus rarely does this, but he's going to put it. in step-by-step form, that there's three steps to forgiveness. And a lot of us don't, we don't actually forgive because we have conflated forgiveness with feelings. And I'm going to tell you that forgiveness and feelings are not the same thing. Forgiveness is commanded of God and a good thing.

Feelings are a gift from God to navigate this thing called life. They're just not our Lord and Savior, and they're make a terrible decision maker. Forgiveness, our feelings are a good guide or a good gauge, but they're not a great guide. And a lot of times you will think that you have forgiven somebody, but all sort of emotion erupts in your life at some other point, and then you will begin to doubt your forgiveness. So some people don't forgive because you don't understand the nature of forgiveness. We'll come back to that.

Another reason a lot of Christians don't forgive is because you don't actually acknowledge the hurt or the pain or the sin that has been perpetrated against you. And you'll begin to just try to overlook things. and grace does not call us to overlook anything that sin is a really, really, really big deal. See the cross of Jesus Christ. And so as I'm going to try to equip us to be a people that forgives because we have been forgiven, this doesn't mean that I am belittling or making light of the thing that has happened to you. In fact, the sin against you was such a big deal.

that the second person of the Trinity had to get up off of his throne, dress himself in humanity, be born of a virgin, live a perfect life, die a sinner's death in our place, had the blood drained out of his body through the nails in his hands and feet and a spear stabbing through his heart, push up on his nail-pierce feet, and become the propitiation for our sin. The sin is a really, really big deal.

And for you to say it's not a big deal, is to look at Jesus on the cross and say, that might be a little overkill. So we're not belittling sin. The third reason people don't forgive is because honestly, you just don't trust God to be the judge. And you think if I let them off the hook, then they're going to get away with it.

And the crazy part is, that's like trying to kill the rats in your house by you eating the rat poison. It's never, ever, ever going to work. Another reason, nobody will ever admit this one, but if you go through the process of forgiveness, you realize it'll take away your excuse for your bad behavior and your bad attitude. If you actually forgive the person who has sinned against you, then now what's your excuse for drinking so much to self-medicate? Now what's your excuse for flying off the handle at your kids all the time?

If you actually forgive the people that are hurting you or had hurt you, then what's your excuse for your bad behavior? And then another reason I think I see where people don't actually forgive is because you've confused the idea, the biblical ideas, of forgiveness and reconciliation. And these are not the same thing. Forgiveness is a unilateral commandment that Jesus gives to all followers of him because we have been forgiven. Reconciliation is to be pursued, but just because you forgive somebody does not mean that you have to be. be reconciled to them. Reconciliation requires two parties that are willing to play along, and reconciliation requires true confession and repentance. In other words, if the other party does not change, then reconciliation will never happen. So with all of that in mind, hopefully,

if you hadn't found Matthew 18 by now, I guess give up. I don't know, I gave you like four minutes. Jesus is going to give a principle and then a parable. He says this in verse 15. He says, if your brother sins against you. Now there's a lot here. This is like a whole sermon just in this one sentence. The first word is if, if your brother sins against you. Jesus could have said when your brother sends against you.

Amen? Do I need to remind you you you're sitting next to a sinner? You wrote here with a sinner. You live with sinners. You have produced sinners, okay? Everybody's a sinner. So if your brother, so you can just expect this to happen, part of the reason I teach this over and over and over and over is because this sermon will land on you differently depending on what place you are in your life. And so even right now, if you don't automatically, when I say the word forgiveness, some of you automatically, you're like, Sheila, all right?

Okay, hang in here. We're going to tell you how to forgive Sheila here in about 25 minutes, all right? And if some of you're like, well, I don't really know who this is right now, then take copious notes because there will come a day when somebody is going to sin against you and then you probably won't remember the three steps. You'll have to go back and do the work, all right? But if your brother sins against you. Now, the first question that you need to ask when a person sins against you is, is this person my brother in Christ? Is this person a believer in Jesus Christ? because if the person is not a believer in Jesus,

your first conversation is actually an evangelism conversation, not a fellowship conversation. Man, we're the worst at this in the South. You still are required to forgive this person, but you primarily need to have a conversation about all of their sins being forgiven at the cross of Jesus. And then secondarily, you can talk about how the blood of Jesus impacts our relationships one to another.

And oftentimes, we hold people, especially in the South, we hold people to a standard that they never claimed that they were ever going to walk in. I don't know why we expect non-Christians to act like Christians. And so the first question is, is this person a brother in Christ? Again, if not, share the gospel first. So if your brother sins against you. The next question is, is what they did against you an actual sin? and I've looked through all the Proverbs, the wisdom literature of the whole Old Testament,

and I can't find one place in the Bible where it says, if somebody gets on your nerves, that's a sin. I wish it was in there, but it is not. So the real question you have to deal with is, am I just personally offended? And honestly, the younger you are, the more likely you are to be offended all the time. I'm not sure how that works, but that's just true. Old people, you're just grumpy, though. So whatever. So it's kind of a continuum, all right?

I'm right in the middle, so I'm kind of both. So, but is it your personal preference that has been ruffled, or is it actually somebody went against a precept of God? And so if a believer has actually sinned, last part, against you, against you, that this is not your opportunity to be a spokesperson on behalf of somebody else. This is about if somebody who is a brother or sister in Jesus has actually sinned, broken a law of God against you. So if it falls into that criteria, then here's what you do.

If you just did this next part right here, our whole world would change. You ready for this? Jesus says, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. This is crazy. This is revolutionary. You ready? Jesus would have the audacity to say, that we're supposed to talk to people and not about people.

That's it. That's it. You're like, what? Then what would we tweet about? I don't know. I don't know. We could actually go to work and do things. It'd be amazing, okay?

Honest to goodness, if church people, if believers would just do this one thing, it would change everything. I can't tell you the number of conversations I have. All right, when we first started to church, A long time ago, I used to do counseling, which was a terrible idea, okay? It's a terrible idea. Don't come to me for counseling. It takes about three seconds.

I'll tell you what a sinner you are, and I just point you to do a sermon. Listen, I'm not holding anything back in the sermons for the private one-on-ones. Everything I know about the content I'm sharing with you right now, okay? And there's only three major sins, less of the flesh, less of the eyes, pride of life. I figure it out about two seconds. Say you'd be more like Jesus. It's serious.

I'm terrible, okay? Go see somebody that's a professional in this. And so oftentimes what would happen, though, with somebody, especially married couples, they are the worst. God had come to me. Well, pastor, let me tell you what's going on with my wife. And he'd tell me this whole thing. I'd be, oh, okay, cool.

Well, have you told her? No. You dummy? It just says, look, go talk to her about this. And he's like, no, I thought, I tell you, you tell God God gets her. I'm like, no, no, no. That's not how it works, man. If someone has sinned against you, then you go and you tell them their fault between

you and him alone. Now, I don't have a Bible verse for this, but this is just wisdom. It doesn't say text it, tweet it, Facebook it, or avoid it. Anything that is sensitive or serious, I would encourage you to not communicate digitally, but actually. You're welcome. That's just free. Now, I'm going to give you a little caveat here. Okay, so here's where we are so far. If somebody sins against you, then what you're supposed to do is talk to them and not about them. And also, those of you who have been in church for a long time, this includes prayer request time at your disciple group. I mean, need to play for Tammy.

Have you seen her? No, don't do that. Go talk to Tammy and leave her out of the prayer request jar. You understand. Okay, so. Now, here's one little caveat. This is for like typical kind of relatively healthy relationships. Nowhere in the Bible is it ever going to encourage you

to put yourself in an unsafe relational situation again. If you have been abused, this does not mean that you go and you confront your abuser one-on-one. This is not what we do. This is where a lot of people, the church has messed us up really bad and it is equal to some abusive situations in the past. And for that, I would just say the church has been wrong. This is where there's been a confusion

between forgiveness and reconciliation, okay? The Bible says this in Romans 1218. it says if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Sometimes it's not possible that you've tried and you've tried and you've tried and it's not possible to live peaceably. That would be a way to say reconciliation. We are still called to forgive that person, but we are not called to put ourselves back in an unhealthy situation or an unsafe situation.

Or if a grandfather has sin to get somebody, and the family, then it is not the Christian thing to do to trust your kids back in that kind of unsafe situation. This is what Paul is saying here in the book of Romans. In fact, the next chapter, Romans 13, talks about how the leaders of the government have been given to institute justice. And so if you have been abused, then you let us know so that we could participate in Romans chapter 13, call the authorities, prosecute, and while we're doing that legally, then spiritually, what you were working through is the process of forgiveness. So prosecute and forgive. But outside of those kind of situations, Jesus says, if somebody stands against you, go and talk to them

one-on-one. And then sometimes this happens, okay? And if he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Now, have you ever done this? Have you ever been riding around? If you're wondering right now, well, who am I supposed to have a conversation like this with? Have you ever had those imaginary conversations in your head? You don't what I'm talking about? Like, when the sports radio is on the commercials, you're just driving around, got nothing to think about, and all of a sudden that parsing pops up in your head again, and you're like, and in your mind, do you all do this? I do this all the time. And so, like, I had these imaginary conversations with people who have done me wrong. And what I do is, man, I am so smart. I am so witty. There's usually a crowd. And I point out the

two or three things that I need to tell them, and they falter their face, grovel, I hear French horns and angelic choir, and they say, I'm sorry. That's how it goes in my mind every single time, all right. And then I pull up to whoever I'm thinking of in my mind, usually home, and I go, all right, let me, hey, I need to say something to your face. And they go, okay. And then in every single, every single conflict, okay, if there's a big conflict pie, some slice of the pie is your responsibility. Now with me, it's typically just like, you know, about 1%, if we're honest. But I'm willing to own up to my 1%, but what I find over and over and over,

with normal, relatively mature adults that are semi-healthy human beings that can like, you know, live and eat and all those kind of normal kind of activities. And I have a conflict, I have this conversation, so I need to point this thing out to you. and then, I don't know if you realize this, they also have a perspective. And what begins to happen is almost every time they begin to give me some information that I don't feel like I had when I was having my imaginary conversation about them without them, right? And they share something, and I almost always find myself go, oh, I don't know that. and so much, so much potential conflict is reconciled if we would just decide to talk to people

and not about people. And so that's, Jesus says, if we'll just do this, especially in the church, but if we'll just do this, it'd change everything. But it doesn't always go that way. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Well, what does this mean? This means if one-on-one you guys cannot figure out how to be reconciled or figure out how to be unified here,

then it is really important for you. This is not an intervention. This is not take two or three guys with you and be like, all right, y'all hold them and I'll hit him. That's not what we're doing here, okay? This is to take a mature, objective third party that can help you guys see where the conflict is and who needs to own what in the conflict. it. This is why, by the way, I would highly encourage you, one of the reasons, I would highly encourage you to be in a disciple group. Like if you got sideways with a friend of yours or somebody sent against you, a business partner, send against you, and they were a believer, then do you

have a group of friends that you could call up and say, hey, listen, we're having a hard time seeing eyeball to eyeball on this, and we know that you love Jesus. Could you, would you mind stepping in this for the sake of unity in the church? And would you help us wrestle this thing out and to see what our steps forward are. This is so very important. And again, I try to urge you all the time to be in these kind of disciple-making relationships. And if you wait to begin them when you need them,

it's too late. It's like a retirement account. If you wait till you retire to start building it, you don't have a retirement account. You have a problem. If you wait till you need Christian friendship to rely on Christian friendship, you're going to have a problem.

And so I hope and pray you've got some people around you that can help you navigate relationships, and they would be more concerned about unity in the body than they are your feelings. Verse 17. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Let me tell you what it doesn't say.

It doesn't say tell it to the church service. Some churches operate that way. Can you imagine if that's how we ended every service? All right, today at the end of the service, we're going to sing, we're going to bring, and we're going to pray. And if all the sinners, we just line up over here, We're going to tell everybody what sin you did this week. It'd be a long service, wouldn't it?

Right, right. But if people reject you confronting their sin individually and then with some objective third-party mature believers around you, then the next step is to tell the church, I think what this means is tell the church leadership. Let some pastors, some elders, some folks that have been established in the church for a while help navigate this. And if he refuses to listen even to the church,

let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Now, historically, some churches have said this means you kick people out of the church. Let me ask you this question. How did Jesus treat the tax collector and the Gentile? Did he put him in leadership? Uh-uh, not unrepentant ones. So he did not lower the qualifications of leadership in the church,

but he offered them the same gospel that he offers to you, and to me. Then he says, truly, truly, I say to you, this is a, it's not a misquoted verse, but it's an out of context verse

all the time. Ready for this? Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whether you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. In other words, in other words,

reconciling relationships, forgiveness between brothers and sisters in Christ is of eternal significance. And it's so eternally significant, and he keeps on going. Again, I say to you, if you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. This is nothing to do with worship services. People quoted about worship services all the time. It has nothing to do worship services. Because it just says two

or three. There's like two thousand here. Does he not show up? They're like, nope, too many, only two or three. Okay, no, that's not how it works. Here's what he said. Is you, it's, you, look at a relationship that has been fractured by sin and you were leaning in to try to make this relationship right and from your eyes from your human perspective it seems impossible and jesus says but when you lean in to that kind of grace-filled relationship where you're going to allow the grace of god to flow through you and onto somebody else then i promise i will be intimately involved in the offered in that relationship. And these relationships are of eternal importance.

In fact, when Jesus and John 17, one of the things that he prays for is that the church would be as unified as God the Son is to God the Father. This is a really, really big deal. So here's what Jesus says. Somebody sins against you? Are there your brother? Was it a sin? If so, I talk to him one-on-one.

If that doesn't work, get your disciple group, get a couple people there. If that doesn't work, get some leaders of the church. And if that doesn't work, you offer them the grace that you would offer an unbeliever. But you don't ever give up on them because God never ever gave up on you. And it may seem impossible, but we all know this very well. If the tomb is empty, anything is possible. So that's his teaching. And you would think everybody get down under their notes, but cool, we're out for lunch early at church.

But it never goes that way. Why? Because there's this one disciple named Peter. And Peter's like, I have a couple questions. I'd like to say a few things. And then Peter came up and said to him, of course he did, right? There's some dead air. There's an opportunity for me to say words.

And Peter said, Lord, appreciate your teaching on forgiveness. But, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Now what you don't realize here, maybe, is that Peter is going to be the hero of his hypothetical story. Notice this? He doesn't say how often will I send against my brother over here and my brother had to forgive me. No, no, no, no, no. You can understand this because I am right in the middle of this story. And the reason that he's saying this is because this is crazy. In the Old Testament, I don't know if you realize this, but forgiveness is not an old covenant value. It's not.

Nowhere in the Old Testament are we commanded to forgive that way. In fact, in the Old Testament, there was the doctrine of equal response as opposed to unequal retribution. This is why Moses comes along to a people who used to be a bunch of slaves working in Egypt and they were told what to do, when to do, and where to do it. And now they were going to have to cohabitate and live with one another and be neighbors with one another.

And he says, all right, all right. If somebody pokes out your eye, then you get to poke out their eye. But what they were doing up to that point is if you poked on my eye, then I cut off your head. and if you stole my goat, I cut off your head. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We are going to practice an equal response, not just retaliation and retribution.

And so Peter thinks he's like about to be the star people of the class. When he walks up and he's like, well, Jesus, people sinning against me, obviously, all the time. And so how many times should I forgive them? As many as seven, seven, seven. That's what he thinks, as if he's like, you know, like a superhero of the faith, big F on his chest and his case, like, seven, you know, that's what he's thinking. Well, the problem, the misunderstanding with this question

is still rooted in his own self-righteousness. And so his question is actually trying to limit the amount of grace that flows through us. And Jesus is going to turn this thing upside down and say, no, no, no, my grace towards you is limitless. And so here's how he answers it. And Jesus said to him, I don't say to you seven times, but 77 times. Now, here's the thing.

The ESV, the translation I preach out of, it says 77. Literally in the Greek it says 70 and 7, okay? So it could either be 77 or 490, if you just do it mathematically. But here's how we know it can't be 77, literally, or 490. Anybody married? So if it was 490, what would you go? Four months into your marriage.

So like, hey, dude, you got three left, and then we're done. You know, so the number seven is a number of completion, and then 70 is the number of completion with a zero on it. When you put a zero on a number in biblical times, it basically meant to infinity and beyond. So to say seven in 70 would be like a hyperbolic number, like we would say, like it's a bazillion, you know. Sometimes I'll say that. I'll be like, oh, traffic was so bad. There was like a million cars in front of me. Well, a million cars wouldn't fit between my house and the church.

But you know what I mean. I got to seven. I was like, one, two, a million, all right? That's just like this. So basically what Jesus is going to say to Peter is, Peter says, so how many times do I have to forgive? Seven? And Jesus is basically going to say, well, Peter, let's talk about this for a second.

How many times have I forgiven you? And he'd be like, let's say, it'll be one, two, a lot. so he reframes everything. And now he's going to go from principle to parable. Parable is just a Bible term that means to lay alongside of it. He's going to tell a story, and he's talking about money in the story, but he's not actually talking about money. So it's not a money sermon whatsoever.

But the reason that Jesus reframes this with a money illustration is so that we can get our head around what forgiveness actually is. and I think what he's trying to do is make sure that we separate feelings from a decision of the will to forgive. And he is going to talk about, we'll see it in just a second, he is going to talk about when somebody sins against you, I need you to start thinking of it as like a debt, debtor relationship. When somebody sins against you, they have taken something from you and they owe you something. They have created a debt, debt, a debtor relationship. And so here's the story that he tells. Verse 23, he says, therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his service.

Underline that. This is the picture that he is painting of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is settling accounts with somebody who owes you something. Verse 24. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. Now, the moment Jesus said 10,000 talents in this story, everybody's like, oh, this is a story. This is not a real thing. Because 10,000 talents was greater than the national GDP of Israel during this time.

This would equate to almost a trillion dollars now. One talent is 20 years wages. So this was 10,000 20 year wages. In other words, this is what it would take this man, 200,000 years for him to earn this much money. And so people heard this amount of money, and they're like, well, this is a, who even has that much money? okay and so this is the story so one guy owes him 10,000 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 in other words this guy has incurred a debt that he could never pay back also don't miss this Jesus is not talking about money

is something about forgiveness is that when we sin against other people and we harbor unforgiveness it does not only affect us. It's not simply this man that goes to jail. It is this man and his wife and his children that are affected by his decisions. And so the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay back everything to which again. Everybody listens to the story. He goes, oh, that's impossible. You see, this man is simultaneously asking for mercy. Don't give me what I deserve. Please don't send me to jail. And he's asking for grace. Would you give me what I don't deserve? which would be to cancel my debt. Verse 27,

and out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him, and here's the key, forgave him the debt. Again, Jesus isn't talking about money. He's using money as an illustration to talk about forgiveness. Here's how he reframes the idea of forgiveness.

I think this will help us as we make a decision of the will to forgive people that have sinned against us. You've got to quit thinking about how you feel about it, and here's what you've got to say. see that when somebody sins against you, it's like they owe you something. It's like you need to settle accounts with that person and they owe you something. They have taken something from you and they owe it to you. And this guy, this merciful king, decides to forgive him the debt. He

cancels it and says, you don't owe that to me anymore. So far so good. Verse 28. But when that same servant went out. He found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denary. This would be a few thousand dollars. And you would think the rest of the story would go, hey man, I just got forgiven a trillion dollar debt, so don't worry about your $2,000 debt. In fact, let's go to McDonald's and you can supersize it. You would think that's the way it goes. That's not the way it goes. Instead, he seizes him, he begins to choke him, so it goes all UFC on him, pay what you owe. And so his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him. And if you pay attention, he's going to use the exact same words

that the servant before just used. Have patience with me and I will pay you. He refused and went out and put him in prison until he should pay the debt, which would be never. I don't know if you know this, you don't get paid a lot in prison. You'll never make enough in prison to repay the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed.

They're looking at this event and they're like, dude, this doesn't make any sense. How could this guy who was just forgiven a debt that he could never repay in 20 lifetimes, how could this guy who was forgiving so much not be able to forget this debt over here, which could actually be paid back? It just doesn't make sense. So then these are the kind of people, though, that run your HOA. They're going to go tell the boss.

Ready? That's what they do. and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. And then the master summoned him and he 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. So you see where Jesus is going here. He's saying, if at the cross I am going to forgive you of,

all of your sin debt, past, present, and even future, help me understand how it makes any sense whatsoever, no matter how atrocious the sin that somebody has committed against you, it pales in comparison to all the sin of every believer who has ever put their faith in me, and you have received forgiveness, then how in the world could you withhold it towards somebody else? That's where Jesus is going in the parable.

But then these next couple of verses, if you take your Bible very seriously, this should scare you. He says, and in anger his master delivered him to the jailers. Literally that word is tormentors, 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.

Now, is this saying, if I forgive you, then I'm open up to the forgiveness of God towards me, No, no, no, no, no. You'd have it backwards there. It's the other way around. It's saying that because I have been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, then forgiveness has to flow through me towards other people. The point is this, forgiving people, forgive people. That's it. Forgiven people, forgive people. The way I would say it in Dillon is this way. It's not very good English, but it's theologically accurate. If you ain't given it, maybe you ain't got it. This is what Jesus is saying. So here's what he says. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not

forgive your brother from your heart. Now, if I were to tell you right now, therefore, be not merely heroes of the word. And so deceive yourself, but go and do what it says. Go and forgive from your heart. I still think all of those same reasons that we started off the sermon with would still be there. because you still might not know exactly what it looks like to forgive somebody from your heart, to cancel someone's dead. So let me ask you a question. Who do you need to forgive? In fact, Jesus is going to say this is so important,

this is so important, that when you go to a worship service and you begin to look around and you know that there's somebody over there that has sinned against you before you bring your offering to the Lord, that you would first hold on to that and you would go and be reconciled to your brother, you would offer forgiveness to that person because our horizontal relationships impact our vertical relationships very, very significantly.

Parents, you know this, right? You're in your station wagon, heading down I-4 to Orlando to the happiest place on earth. I ain't seen a happy person there. I've been there 10,000 times, but whatever. You can spend the most money you've ever spent on the vacation

being the nicest, whatever station wagon you got, and if the kids ain't getting along, it ain't going well, right? Imagine what our Heavenly Father has to put up with when he looks in the back of his station wagon. We're not good. And so our horizontal relationships matter like crazy. So who do you need to forgive and have you forgiven them?

If your answer is no, why not? And some of you might say, well, I don't want to. Well, do you want to want to? Could you at least start there? And I think one of the biggest reasons people haven't forgiven from their heart is because, again, It's a misconception of what forgiveness actually is. And in the parable that Jesus tells teaches us here, he reframes forgiveness again, not as a feeling, not as something you get over, but as a decision of the will to cancel the dead.

So there's actually, I'm not usually a step-by-step kind of preacher, you know, because life isn't usually like four steps to anything. But what Jesus does here is he lays out three steps in order to settle accounts with people who have sinned against you. We call this a debt ledger around here, a debt ledger. Let's see why in just a second. It's on one of the pages in the book. I can't remember which one, but that doesn't matter.

I think you can text the word, what do you text? Forgive or debt ledger? You text the word forgiveness to 44, 1122, and you can get a debt ledger, and here's what I'm going to, I'm going to dare you to go through this process. and I'm guessing single digit percentage people will actually do this this week.

And one of the reasons is because it's hard and we're Americans, we don't do hard things. And this is very, very, very hard, okay? It's hard. The first step's easy. The second step, hard. The third step, impossible, without the grace of God. So that's it.

How about that? What if you went to a trainer? So I got three steps for you. One, easy. two, hard, three, impossible. Ready, let's go. All right, that's what we're going to do. Step one in creating a debt ledger is first, is you identify who has sinned against you. You identify who has sinned against you. Now, for some of you, again, that's easy. The moment, I said forgiveness, you were like, Tammy, all right, cool, right, Tammy's name now. Now, I would

highly encourage you that we don't have enough time left in the sermon for you to actually go through the whole process. This is the kind of thing that I'm going to give you the instruction and you do it at home. But step one is, now. listen, if they're sitting next to you, don't just write it around. I'm like, Randy, and point an arrow. I'm working on this, you know? No. You don't start there.

And this could be your ex. This could be your parents. If you're an older Christian, this is going to be really, really hard for you to admit if your parents are sitting against you because you have so much honor and respect. This could be that partner that you started that business with. And now he runs the business, and it was all your ideas. This could be that friend that shared things about you that you shared with them in confidence,

or this could be that friend that just completely, they promised you that they were going to be like, you know, your bro for life and they ghosted you. Sometimes this could be your child. This is sometimes hard. Because, you know, you don't think your kids owe you anything, but this could be your child. Sometimes it's hard for people because you think,

well, the person that I need to forgive is not even alive anymore. That's okay. Right, that person's name down. One of the things that you're going to find out about forgiveness is forgiveness is like unshackling the locks and then realize you're the one that's going to be set free. And so step one is identify the person that hurt you, that sin against you. Step two. This is the one that most Christians won't do.

Write down what they owe you. What their sin against you was. And a part of the reason that many, many Christians won't walk through this. is because you've had it covered up for so long. You've avoided it for so long. It's so far back in the past. You're thinking, why in the world but I want to go through all of that pain again

to walk through that process? Yeah, I get it. But if you had a broken arm and you went to see the orthopedic, guess which arm he's going to reach out for? If he reached out towards your broken arm, my broken arm, my, whoa, whoa, whoa, doc, why don't you mess with my left leg?

It's fine. That doesn't make any sense at all. God himself is the great physician, and sometimes he puts, his hand on the thing that hurts the most, and it is in that handling of the pain that he creates the healing that we actually need. Now, and I know some of the things that have happened to you have created some really significant scars in your life.

You know, Jesus has no problem with scars? That Jesus actually identified his resurrected body by his scars? He's like, look at my scars. No problem with scars. In fact, scars are evidence that there has been healing. really, really bad is when a wound doesn't heal, but you just cover over it, and it begins to fester. And that's what unforgiveness will do to you in your life. And so the first step is, who is it the sin against me? And the second one is, what did they take from you? And again,

don't ever minimize the sin against you. It costs Jesus his life in order to pay for that. And so here's the kind of thing I'm talking about, man. Some of you are talking about your ex, and you harbor so much unforgiveness. And you've never said it this way, but let me give you some words. You stood in an altar, and she made a promise to you. She made a vow to you, and she promised before your friends and family and God himself that I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, I will leave and cleave only unto you. And she can keep a promise.

And she left you, and now she's clear. cleave into somebody else. And she owes you fidelity. Or maybe he left you and he ran off with somebody else. And now your whole life, you dreamed of being a mom and just having this family, right? And you just wanted to raise kids in the church. And now you've got to go drop your kids off with him and some lady you don't even like and you don't get them all the time that you want with them.

And you're at home by yourself, feeling sorry for yourself. And I get it. I get it. And the reality is, is somehow you felt like that you deserve. to be treated that way, and I'm just telling you, nobody deserves to be treated that way. That person took something from you that they promised that they were going to fulfill a vow. That's what I'm talking about. Or again, maybe it's a partner that you started a business with, and let's be honest, you were the smart man, you had all the ideas.

But he was the charismatic one, and now he's got the company and the money, and you don't have the job that you always dreamed of. Or maybe it's a friend that took your reputation. or maybe it's your parents. It's the weirdest thing, man. I don't know how to explain this stuff. I try to stay in my lane, but, you know, it's almost like our brains hit record for the first 18 years.

You ever notice this? And they just hit repeat for the rest of our life. You ever notice that? And listen, man, your parents are trying to do, I'm not trying to beat anybody up. But we're also, the Bible says that we should not overlook sin. The Bible says that careless words

stabbed like a sword. And maybe as you look back on your childhood, there are some significant wounds that were doled out at you. And if you're honest, it hurts, man. It really hurts. Or maybe, I mean, I think this is oftentimes, while abuse is so, so, so bad, is that the people that you trusted most to protect you actually were the ones that violated you. What did they take from you?

This one can be tough. If you got a prodigal kid, and you would never say it this way, right? You would never say it this way. But you're angry at them. And you're like, you know what, you owe me? You owe me money, and you owe me time, and you owe me peace. I mean, there are so many nights we stayed up and we chased after you, and you have no idea how many times you made us feel like somewhere between a neglecter

and an enabler because we didn't know exactly what to do. And in the number of nights your mama has cried herself to sleep and you're angry at them, but you never, you never admitted that. Who hurt you? And what have they taken from you? and the next step in creating a debt ledger and what feelings are associated with what they owe you.

Now, guys are the worst of this. We only have a few feelings. They all start with age. I'm not going to say them right now because you'll forget everything else. But what is it? Sometimes you look at your situation that you find yourself in

and you feel hopeless. Or you feel dirty or devalued or helpless. What is it? See how this is not the kind of thing you can do? in a little five-minute break, like in a sermon, this is going to take a minute. But I dare you, if you're serious about the words of Jesus, about forgiving someone from your heart.

See, the reason you've never been able to forgive them from your heart is because you didn't even acknowledge, you never settled accounts. You never spent the kind of time to say, here's who send against me, here's how they send against me, what they owe me. And the feelings associated with it.

And when you get done with the, a very, very, very difficult work of walking through that and honestly confronting that sin and how it impacted you, then what you will have in your hand is what we call a debt ledger. And you know what a debt ledger is? Like if you went to your bank and you've got a mortgage, you would go to them and they have a piece of paper and it tells exactly what you owe. And in your hand, you will have this debt ledger. And I want you to think about it like an actual legal document. Like if you took this person to court in front of God, you'd be like, see God, here's what he did to me, here's what she did to me, here's what they said about me, here's how

they left me. This is what this person owes me. And you'd be right. Now, here's the part that without Jesus, it's virtually impossible. You have a decision on what to do with this debt ledger, okay? You have a decision. And as far as I can see it from the scriptures, you've got one of two options. Now, one little caveat. If you're here and you're not a believer, though every scientific study on the planet will say life goes better when you live a life of forgiveness, but it uses this phrase more like you somehow emotionally try to compartmentalize and get over some things. All right, it still goes better. I'm just going to tell you, if you don't owe Jesus, I have no idea to tell you how to forgive somebody. But when you get this debt ledger,

you've got one of two options. One is you can hold on to it. And you can decide I am not going to forgive. For whatever reason you want to, that you can decide, I will not forgive. Now, if you do this, unforgiveness that metastasizes is bitterness, and that is your future. That's it, okay?

I've been doing this way too long. You ever meet that grumpy old man, and he doesn't even know why he's grumpy? I can almost guarantee you, if you dig back down into it, It has to do when he looks out and he thinks somebody owed him something that he didn't get. And I'm just telling you it's going to leave you to a broken and barren and bitter life. That will be your future.

So if that's the route you choose, then I would highly encourage you to take your debt ledger and go ahead and blow it up real big poster size and laminate it and post it in prominent places in your life. Just put it in your office. And when everybody's like, why are you such a jerk, then you can be like, Sheila? It ain't my fault. Look what Sheila did to me. Okay, look right here. I got it all written out. That's what she took and that's what she owes me and that's how I feel and that's why I hate you. Okay? Seriously, put it on your phone, make it like your screen, you know, like where you see it every day where you can just be reminded why you're such a broken and bitter and barren human people.

And why I say barring is because no life, especially abundant life that Christ has for you will ever be produced out of that thing. I mean, you think about it. You know what? The one thing everybody in heaven has in common? They've all been forgiven. You know what the one thing everybody in hell has in common? None of them chose forgiveness.

That heaven's culture is forgiveness. So you've got one of two options. You can hold on to it. Or the second one, let's use Jesus' language, you can cancel the debt. You see how in doing this, you're not minimizing this. You're not looking at it and be like, well, abuse is not that big a deal. You're actually saying, this is such a big deal.

Jesus had to die on the cross. If this was the only sin on the whole planet is what he did to me or she did to me or what they said about me or how he touched me, whatever it is. If this was the only sin on the planet, Jesus would have come and paid with his blood on the cross. This is what a big deal it is. That this sin was responsible for the death of God.

So it's not minimizing it. It's actually looking at Jesus on the cross and saying, thank you. Now here's something that's just true. That person can never give you back what they owe you anyway. That's it, man.

That's it. You can't go back to when you're eight. They can't take the words back. They can't take the betrayal back. In fact, the problem is if you try to hold someone in debt for what they have taken from you, when it talks about some kind of relational debt that they have, they can't make it right anyway. And they may apologize and apologize and apologize, but they can never give you those years back. And so your decision is, am I going to hold on to it or am I going to cancel the debt?

And Jesus would say, here's the reason that you canceled the debt. is because God canceled your debt. That's it. That is the reason that would drive you to do this. Now, let me tell you something that you hear a lot when you talk about forgiveness. People say this dumb things. Well, you just got to forgive and forget.

No. What do you mean? Who told you that? Doesn't the Bible say God forgives and forgets? No, dummy. If you got a Bible that says forgive and forget, get you a decent translation by people with more than a third grade education.

No, no. The Bible says in Jeremiah, God remembers our sins no more. Don't make up words. in there. Okay? And what it means when it says God remembers our sins no more, it doesn't mean that he doesn't remember. Like when the nation of Israel and the Psalms cry out, God remember us. God's not like me when I'm like, I'm trying to remember. What's your name again? That's not what God's doing. When the nation of Israel is crying out of God, would you remember us? Obviously,

he knows who they are. He set his affection on them. He's saying, will you pay attention to us? Will you put some of your emotion towards us? Will you look on us? And so when he remembers our sins no more, then he doesn't put his emotion or attention or affection on the things that we have done wrong, he puts his emotion and attention and affection on Jesus. And if you're in Christ, then you are clothed in him

so his righteousness is put on you. So you don't forgive and forget. You forgive and remember. And here's why. I hear this a lot. People are like, well, I forgave her, but don't ever bring her name up again, you know. All right, we might not be done. Of course, the moment you decide to make the willful decision to cancel somebody's debt,

you're going to have all kind of emotions. Half of it's what you eat and how much sleep you have, okay? And of course the enemy is going to try to bring up some emotional trap to convince you that forgiveness didn't work. I know you were in church and you even went down to. at the altar and you did your debt ledger and you cried a little bit, but you're still mad at her. See, it didn't work. And here's what I think.

I think the reason that the enemy wants to try to undermine your forgiveness is because if he can convince you that forgiveness on a horizontal level can't work, then surely you can't be forgiven on the vertical level by an almighty perfect God. And so the reason that you, I want you to actually do a debt ledger, and if you decide you're going to cancel the debt, I don't have a Bible verse for this. I would highly encourage you to do something physically that remind you that you have made the decision to cancel the debt. That you would cut the thing up or bury it in the ground. The best one I've ever heard years ago, about eight years ago, I was teaching on this.

This guy had been through, his marriage was tough, and he did the hard work, man. It's been about two months on it. And he got to the point where he was ready to cancel this debt. And he burned it. put it in a little urn, he's a surfer, and he paddled out at the pier at Jackson Beach, and he took the ashes, this may be illegal, but I don't care. And he took the ashes, and he sprinkled the burnt ashes

of his debt ledger in the ocean. And the reason that he did that, he said, is because every single time that the enemy would bring back the whispers, if he had to, he'd drive back out to the beach, and he would go looking, with wave after wave that just kept coming in. He was reminded, nope, that debt has been canceled. She doesn't owe me that anymore. because Jesus has canceled my death.

And again, the reason that we do this, the reason that we do this, there's only one reason. The driving force behind it is the grace of God. Because if God is listening to my sermon, which he is, he is, and he likes it, way more than you do.

And he said, you know what, I'm going to do what the pastor said to do today. And he decided to say, all right, who has sinned against me? The list will be long, would it not? And let's just say he decided. to start with me, because I'm probably the worst one. He wrote down, Jobie Martin, what has he taken from me? And he could write down every time I lied, and every time I was

prideful, and every time I chose my way instead of his way, and every time I tried to rob his glory, and every time I tried to make much of myself. And if he wrote it on a scroll, I mean, you could roll it out and it would go to England and back. And he would have a debt ledger against me. and because of the grace of Jesus, what God decided to do, not because of anything that I have done to earn it, because he is a good and gracious God, is that the cross of Jesus Christ, Jesus pushes up on his nail pierce feet and he says paid in full. That the debt has been canceled. Colossius 214 says it this way. by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands this he set aside nailing it to the cross. So church, forgiving people, forgive people.

I'm not saying this easy. It wasn't easy for Jesus. It cost him his life to forgive us. But the good news is on that cross when he says, it is finished. He didn't say he was finished because he wasn't finished. three days later after canceling the debt paying our sin debt in full he comes up out of that grave and he walks in a brand new resurrected life

and because he walked out of the tomb you and I can walk in a way that we thought was impossible why because if the tomb is empty anything is possible and so maybe you're here tonight and maybe you've never received the grace of God personally maybe part of the reason you've never been able to give out forgiveness in your life, it's because you have never received the unmerited forgiveness that God offers to you through the cross of Jesus Christ. So I would love to give you that opportunity to

receive that forgiveness once and for all right now. Would you bow your head? Would you close your eyes? And even though I have not fully explained all that Christ has done, maybe right now for the very first time, you begin to understand that God has a debt ledger on you, that you have sinned against the Almighty God, and there is nothing that you could do in and of yourself to earn that forgiveness. That just like the man in this story, he had a debt that he could never, ever, ever repay, and you realize that your sins against the Almighty God or something that you could never, ever work out on your own.

But today, in this very moment, you realize that by his mercy and his grace, if you will just call on the name of the Lord, if you will just believe that when Christ died on the cross, somehow that counted for you, then he will cancel your debt. And even more than that, he will adopt you into his very own family. And even more than that, he will give you riches and eternity that you can't even fathom. And so if that's you, in this moment right now, and you are ready to receive the grace of God for the forgiveness of your sin debt for the first time in your life, then I would just ask you to call on the name of the Lord. The Bible says all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

And if you're doing that, would you just lift your hand as high as you can in this moment? We'd just say, Father, here I am. God, I call on you for the forgiveness of my sin. Praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God. Our good and gracious Heavenly Father, God, we love you more than anything because you first loved us. And God, we thank you and we praise you that Jesus came to seek and save sinners like us and to forgive us of all of our sin. and Spirit, we're going to need your help this week. We're going to need your help in this next season of our life as many, many people hearing this sermon.

They're going to know immediately the person that ascend against them and what they have taken from them. And they've been harboring that unforgiveness. And God, it's been festering into bitterness. And God, we want to be healed. And so, Lord, we know. We know because you have forgiven us, we have been called to forgive. And so, God, I pray. I pray that what costs you everything at the cross,

you would fill us up with that same kind of grace and your lavish love would spill all over us and on to the people around us. And we would forgive because we have been forgiven. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Church, would you please stand? There's no way we can do this on our own.

And so anybody here saying, you know what, this week I'm willing to begin to take the first steps to forgive. Then we're going to sing, we're going to sing, we're going to sing. We're going to sing like we need, like everything depends on it because it does. That the whole church together, we're going to join our voices together to sing like one big prayer to the God who forgives. Because it'll take that God-size forgiveness flowing through us for us to be able to cancel

the debts of those in our life. And we're going to pray, and we're going to pray. So if you know, man, if there's somebody right now that you know you need to to go through this hard work with, and I'm going to invite you to come down, and I'm telling you, it's this incredible promise of God. He says, if you'll draw near to me,

I will draw near to you. And so we're going to pray, and we're going to bring our ties and our offerings, our first and our best. And so we respond to the good news of the gospel. We're going to sing, we're going to bring, we're going to pray. Let's go.