Forgiveness (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So, this morning, we're looking to continue what we started last week, just on the topic of forgiving others, right?

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There's obviously God's forgiveness unto us, but then there's forgiveness amongst ourselves, between ourselves, forgiving other people, forgiving man.

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I have handouts over there and at the sound booth, if you would like to follow along, there's plenty of those.

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We worked through questions one through six on there last week.

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I'll give you just a moment to grab those. A little bit of review for you and then we'll move on.

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This is a pretty extensive topic, so I'm trying to do it justice, trying to hit the high points for everybody, but I will preemptively ask your forgiveness and not being as thorough as maybe we would like to be.

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So, let's just briefly open in prayer here. Heavenly Father, our dear Lord, thank you that we can call you

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Father. Thank you for making us your children. Thank you for teaching us your ways, making us more like you.

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Lord, thank you for forgiving us when we were your enemies. Thank you for sanctifying us,

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Lord. It is such a wonder that we can be made to be more like Christ.

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That we can have any pure thought, any pure motivation at all is a blessing.

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Help us to learn your truths, your ways, your heart of forgiveness, and help us to be the most forgiving people on this planet,

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Lord. That the world would know us by our love for one another and even for our enemies.

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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So, just brief review.

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We talked about forgiveness, trying to define it, looking at God's forgiveness to man, looking at man's forgiveness to man, you know, is there any difference?

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You know, if you look at number one, we had a really basic definition where we asked the question, is this true or false, right?

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Forgiveness is pardoning someone else when they have wronged you. Not incorrect in and of itself, but we unpacked that there's a lot more to it, right?

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There's the loaded word pardon, which is more of a legal word that would apply to God's forgiveness to us, right?

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We aren't justifying anybody when we forgive them, right? There's that difference.

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There's the perfect forgiveness that God has. There's the imperfect forgiveness that we have, recollecting and bringing back to memory what we've already promised not to hold against someone, right?

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So there's another piece of it, is it's not only pardoning or letting go of the wrong against you, but it's resolving to leave it there, to not bring it back up again, to not hold it against them.

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And it also raised the question and made an important distinction.

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I think it was Mark Arnold that said, well, there's another side to forgiveness where there's, you know, like, what's the other person doing?

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Like, is there an apology? Is there forgiveness? And what he was getting at is reconciliation.

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What we later all agreed on is that forgiveness and reconciliation while they're associated are not one and the same, right?

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We can forgive someone and maybe they're passed on.

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Maybe they are out of the picture and out of contact, but our heart can be right with God and we never had that opportunity to reconcile.

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Or they could just remain bitter and unrepentant and we can still have forgiveness in our heart towards that person.

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So we continued from there looking at, you know, what does it mean when we say the phrase, like, our slates are wiped clean, right?

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And there was some really healthy, debate's too strong a word, but some healthy conversation around that, right?

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When God justifies us, indeed, our sin is separated as far as the east is from the west.

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And though he can never forget, he can perfectly resolve to never remember in a way that we can only hope to do, right?

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There's wiping our slate clean in the spiritual sense, which is completely and utterly true, but yet we still live in this temporal carnal world and there are institutions that the

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Lord himself has set up that hold people accountable for the consequences of their sins, right?

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Whether it be prison or even, you know, sometimes we call it, you know, sometimes people in the world will call it karma.

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As Christians, I think we use that word maybe flippantly sometimes, but, you know, I call it swift justice.

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You know, someone does something wrong and someone else happens to be an instrument of the Lord at that time and corrects them.

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Maybe wrongly so, but nonetheless, they had a correction. We then looked at, particularly number four here, why should we be forgiving others?

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And there are kind of two or three main things there. It's God's heart to forgive. I mean, the phrase, we're never more like God than when we're forgiving,

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I don't think can be refuted, right? It's his heart and we're his children.

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If we are his children, we should have that element of his character.

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We looked at specifically Deuteronomy 34 for that, when God introduces himself to Moses with the tablets on the mountain and he says he's quick to forgive iniquity and transgression, slow to anger, and he adds, but by no means, you know, leaving the guilty unpunished, right?

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So we also start to get the idea that forgiveness comes at a great cost and we all know that, right?

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We go to Bethlehem Bible Church, we're believers. We know that Jesus paid the ultimate price for our sin, right?

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And so our sin is imputed to him and his righteousness is imputed to us. The other piece here, and this was all setting the table kind of stuff, was where we ended last week in number six.

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We should only forgive when someone apologizes or repents, which was a true or false question.

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And there's some not conflicting but seemingly conflicting scriptures, right?

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You can read Luke 17, 3 and 4, where it says, you know, if your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

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Period, right? We looked at Mark 11, 25, and its corollary,

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Matthew 5, 23, and I think we're going to spend a little more time on that to kick off this morning. But Mark 11, 25 actually talks to the one that is offended, not the offender, and says, when you are praying, forgive if you have something against anyone.

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And then the corollary, Matthew 5, 23, right, to the offender, when offering a gift, if someone has something against you, leave your offering and be reconciled.

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And then, of course, in Romans 12, 18, if possible, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all, right?

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So we've got a command to the offended, we've got a command to the offender, and then we've got a command to both.

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It's like, look, it's your duty, both of your duty, to essentially to be reconciled, to live in harmony, to act in love towards one another, to live peaceably with all, so far as it depends on you.

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Control what you can control, right? I mean, that's the mantra for a lot of people in business, especially sales.

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I know I kind of live by that. When I have sales goals I have to reach. But I think it aptly applies here.

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So there were some other questions that were raised that I don't think we've totally put to bed yet.

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We concluded that, answer to number six, we should only forgive when someone apologizes or repents.

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I think ultimately we concluded that that's false, right? There is a sense in which we can't have complete reconciliation if there's no repentance.

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But if we were always waiting for an apology to forgive, would we truly be like God in our forgiveness?

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I think the answer is no, right? I think we have to say that. But again, the balance that doesn't put an unfair duty on the offended is

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Romans 12, 18. Both are commanded. The other thing is,

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I think Andrew Smith pointed this out, it's not always our duty to inform someone that they're forgiven, right?

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Like the flippant, I forgive you. I didn't even know I did something wrong, but thank you so much for harboring that bitterness all this time and not informing me, right?

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So there enters the idea of overlooking an offense or being forgiving in such a way that does it really require an exchange and true reconciliation?

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Or can we forgive them in our hearts and move on, right? So we're starting to ask that question.

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I don't think we've fully answered. How do we reconcile? When do we need to reconcile?

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When has a true break occurred? What does overlooking an offense look like? So that's some of the stuff that we'll deal with today.

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So let's look at number seven here. Well, I guess, are there any lingering questions on number six?

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We should only forgive when someone apologizes or repents. Ultimately, I think we're going to conclude that the consensus was that that's false, but also that it's not quite that simple.

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Any lingering questions on number six or comments? Okay, let's move on.

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Number seven, the duty to reconcile is on the offender. I know

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I spoke to that a little bit already, but what do you folks think? Let's flesh that out a little more. Albert is saying no, the duty to reconcile is not on the offender, okay?

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Any comments? Anyone disagree? I think it's the same as number six, okay?

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Anything else? Did you have something to say? Yes, that's huge, right?

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Yes, agreed, agreed. Duty is the catch word, right? So much of what we've talked about so far is between the offender and the offended, period, end stop there.

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But the reality is we live public lives, and we are called to know one another and love one another and to some extent be involved in one another's lives.

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So that's a great point, right? I mean, when it talks about in Luke 17, if your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

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Well, that's really the first step in Matthew 18, which then involves others if that doesn't go so well, right?

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So excellent addition, Wes, thank you. Yes, and I think continuing with that, sometimes there's plenty of times when a fault, a wrong against someone is not seen, right?

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The offender does not know the offense until it's brought to their attention.

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And denying them that awareness is denying them an opportunity to reconcile, explain, whatever.

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And what you were just saying, like how our reactions also often involve some sin, some wrong against the person.

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That's a wonderful way to begin that reconciliation process, right? When you said

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X, I said Y, and Y was wrong, and I'm sorry for that.

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Pause, wait, yeah. I just wanted to say, something John just said is really good about money that doesn't matter.

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Yeah, yeah. And the more time goes by, the recollection of the matter and the details fade away, and it becomes less and less fruitful to discuss.

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Yes, so I'm going to call an audible here. I had this question near the end, but I suspected

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I might move it up. So if you look at number 17, what about overlooking an offense?

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Whatever happened to just not keeping a record of wrongs, overlooking an offense? Let's start with what does overlooking an offense really mean?

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Can we get some thoughts on that? Does it mean

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I don't do anything about it, and I just delete it? What do you got, Becky? So I want to break this into two pieces.

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One is, what is overlooking an offense? Becky, that is a direct answer to that question. Thank you.

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Go ahead, Wes. I want to interject one thing, though.

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So it sounds like the consensus is, in terms of definition, overlooking an offense means it does not need to be dealt with with the other person.

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It's dealt with and deleted in our minds. That's an important distinction, and that's an important attitude to bring into play here that we haven't really brought up, is the slow to anger thing.

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Mal, and then Mike. Like I choose not to be offended? Is that kind of...

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Yeah, so you're getting to the second half. Yeah, so I think you're starting to answer the other half of the question, which is, okay, well, if we know what overlooking an offense is, when do we do it, and when do we not, and why?

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Mike had something. Yeah. So let's zoom in on that a little more.

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I'm trying to not have these be totally distinct questions. I'm trying to weave something together here.

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I do have an agenda. It's imperfect, but I'm trying.

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So let's spend some time on that. Mal raises an excellent point. Scott, you do as well, right?

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Like, we can't, like, overlooking an offense cannot mean just being forgiving, but still talking about it, and then, like, overlooking it.

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It must mean literally not bringing the offense to the offender and expecting to have this reconciliatory exchange every single time because that's just not sustainable, right?

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It's also not the heart of God. So we've got that. Mal raises an excellent point that, yes, but at some point, you know, the problem is no longer are we offended, are we being forgiving?

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The question becomes, and this is our underlying motivating factor here, love.

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What's the loving thing to do? If we ask ourselves that question, we're going to have a better chance of arriving at the right answer, right?

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What's the loving thing to do? I saw this thing happen. I'm not even sure of all the details.

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I don't know where that's coming from, and it seems out of character.

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It seems like a one -off. Delete, right? It seems like there should be nothing more than that, but then there's, you know, is this a pattern, right?

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And then we start to get into the not keeping a record of wrongs territory, but is it a record of wrongs?

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Like I'm a police officer, you know, and there's a warrant out for their arrest, right?

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That's a problem. A memory of something that occurred that I chose not to hold against someone, but now

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I'm seeing it happen again. If I want to deal with it because I'm offended, then there might still be a problem in my heart that we need to reconcile, but if I want to deal with it, if the motivation to deal with it is

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I love my brother, like I don't want them to be continuing in this un -Christlike manner.

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I want to call them to a better, you know, a better way to be more like Christ, then

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I think that would be appropriate, right? I think it would actually many times be inappropriate not to do that, right?

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I mean, the Bible praises someone that saves a brother from their own sin. So the underlying principle here has to be love.

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We have to be asking ourselves, what's the loving thing to do, right? It's never the loving thing to do to be proud.

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We know that. Did you have something, Corey? I think when the Bible says to keep a record of wrongs, it's...

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You mean it's not easy? None of this is easy, right? So I kind of want to keep this nuance, this idea of when do

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I overlook an offense, when do I not, and sort of the decision matrix of am

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I being, what is the loving thing to do here? Like let's kind of keep that uploaded in the

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RAM of our minds, right? Keep that in the front of your minds right now. And let's start to juxtapose one or two other ideas.

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So if we look at... Did you have a question,

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Boaz? I might jump around here. If we look at number 12, number 11 and 12 are almost two sides of the same coin, but if we look at number 12, does repentance always come before forgiveness?

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We're asking a question that picks away at like, okay, there is an exchange that needs to happen, right?

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So we've decided this is a moment where we're not going to overlook an offense. Then what do we do?

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How do we go about that? So does repentance always come before forgiveness? Thoughts, congregation?

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Amen to that. I think we've obviously touched on this when we look at God's forgiveness to us, but I mean, do you want to live in a world where repentance must come before forgiveness?

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I mean, we can't. We literally can't in terms of our standing with God, in terms of our standing with other men.

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I don't want to live in that world. It should come before forgiveness though, right? So again, we have to come back to the idea of separating forgiveness from reconciliation for that to work, right?

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Any other thoughts on that? You know, what

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Steve's talking about, I mean, I fully agree with. We see that obviously in God's heart. We see that in the father of the prodigal son, right?

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His posture, his attitude towards his son is one of forgiveness. The reconciliation, of course, happens thereafter.

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And you know, there's some conflicting ideas here, right? I'm not going to say answers, but there's conflicting ideas here that we have to ponder and deal with.

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I think part of the answer lies in the question, who is really offended when someone sins?

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Becky, that is the very next verse in my notes. Excellent. Psalm 51 .4, against you. You only have

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I sinned. So that begs the question, how can that be so? I don't know if this is my original idea or not, but I have a quotation that says,

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God is the only innocent one in the room. I think we often forget that in the throes of our taking offense, right?

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And sometimes it's appropriate to, hey, this is a problem. This needs to be dealt with. But we focus on that.

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And there's a, you know, there's the very clear reality that God forgave our infinite debt, right?

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We've got the parable of the unforgiving servant, which plays right into this, and the massive debt which he was forgiven.

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And then his unforgiveness towards someone that had just essentially infinitely smaller debt unto him.

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And of course, he's, in that parable, right, he's called unto judgment, but it's not ultimate judgment.

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It's discipline, right? He's turned over to the jailers or the torturers, if you've got the KJV. But at the same time, he's a fellow servant.

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He's a part of that king's kingdom. So there is a sense in which we have to ask, what happens when we focus on the offense unto us instead of, right, the offense unto

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God, instead of our own offense unto God, instead of God's forgiveness of so many great offenses, infinite offenses unto him, and we're just looking at ourselves and our thoughts and our feelings.

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And when we do that, of course, the offense is magnified. When we look at God's forgiveness unto us and our offenses unto him, the offense of others unto us is minimized.

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So I think that's an important thing, an important perspective to have when we are offended is to focus less on the offense, less on the offender, and, you know,

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I think it was over here, somebody said, to think about why are we offended and take that to the next step.

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And from what have we been forgiven and how have we wronged others? How could we then not forgive this offense?

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So it's, you know, I think I would tend to agree with you that it's hyperbole, right? I mean, there's still a real sense in which someone has been wronged, a person has been wronged, but the much, much, much bigger issue is that God has been wronged, and yet he's forgiven us when we've wronged him.

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Any other thoughts on that? Psalm 51, for against you, you only have

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I sinned, and the idea of repentance coming before forgiveness or not.

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Okay, one other thought here that I want to introduce is,

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I think someone touched on this earlier, but we're told, and the world gets this wrong all the time, and I think even in Christian circles we get this wrong often, but the world will always tell us, stop judging me, don't judge me, right?

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And we take judging to mean, well, we should still be discerning, right?

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We should still have eyes to see with the right perspective. But the reality is, we are not the judge, right?

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Even if we are offended, are we the one to mete out justice? No, never, right?

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Now maybe we do, but we shouldn't have, right? At which point, we have a whole separate, whole additional problem.

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But we were never the judge, but I could tell you, when I'm offended, I feel like I'm the judge.

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Like I hold the keys of death and Hades itself, and you know, of course

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I'm not thinking rightly, but I just think, I didn't do anything wrong here, or I did this one little thing wrong,

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I've already apologized for it, they've got all this against them, and if I'm not thinking rightly,

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I'm going to let them have it. If I'm thinking maybe slightly less worse, I might think

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I could let them have it, but I'm not going to, in which case I'm self -righteous and proud. So there's all these wrong ways of dealing with this, but they're all kind of based on this false presupposition that I think we all tend to, which is like,

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I'm offended, I'm righteous, you know, I'm not going to stand on the chair, but like I'm standing up here,

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I am guiltless, you know, my slate has been totally cleaned, so you must forgive me, please come and grovel, you know.

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But we're not the judge, right? Like my kids will come to me, and you know, he did something to me, and John to your point, right, it's almost never 100 % wrong here, and 0 % wrong here.

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It's rare, but it does happen. And if I'm the father, and they're the children, and this child sinned against this child,

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I mean ultimately they still disobeyed my rules for my house, and the offense to disobey my rules that I've set up for each other's benefit, everyone's benefit, that's a greater offense than, you know, what they did to the other.

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And of course with God in reality to us is infinitely more than what we're talking about, but I mean if you've ever had that experience with your children, and you're like, you can see them being unforgiving, and you're like, look, like you disobeyed me first.

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This wouldn't have happened if you didn't do that, and break this rule. And that's,

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I guess that, I don't know if that helps, but that's how I start to see, okay, it's really more between God and the believer than it is about the believer and the other believer.

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I don't know, hopefully that helps. Any other thoughts on that? I want to read a quote here from Brad Hambrick.

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He says, Forgiveness inherently classifies an offense at the top level of wrongness.

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When we say, I forgive you, we are saying the only thing that could make right what you did was

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Jesus's substitutionary death on the cross. And for someone wanting to excuse their sin, real forgiveness is offensive.

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We have some friends that, you know, whenever their child apologizes, they make a sticking point of the other child saying,

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I forgive you. Sometimes we go, oh, it's okay, it's no big deal. No.

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Saying I forgive you is positively asserting there was an offense here.

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There is something to forgive. But the blessing of it all is that there can be forgiveness, and there is forgiveness, and that we are all forgiven.

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You know, we see in 1 Corinthians 1 .18, For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

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So just trying to bring this in for a landing. We're still at 15 ,000 feet.

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I put these questions out there. I knew we wouldn't get through all of them, but it gave me ammo to pull from to meet my agenda.

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So we kind of already addressed 14. 13 we addressed earlier.

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I think here's where we're not going to be able to address 16 here, although I think it's a good question that we need to work through.

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Number 18. The world so often talks about,

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I mean it's just constant, forgiving yourself. I showed my wife an article not too long ago.

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Actually, I think it was a real article, and then I saw a Babylon Bee article that totally nailed it.

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It's a mom saying, I choose not to feel guilty about my daily hour massage and the time away from my children.

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I choose not to be guilty because I need that. But we are told so often by the world that we need to forgive ourselves.

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What do you say to that? Is there some truth to that? What is going on there?

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There's the question of why do we feel the need to forgive ourselves. I agree with everything you said, but there's more to unpack.

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Sometimes we say we need to forgive ourselves, and we actually are trying to justify ourselves and exonerate ourselves.

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First John tells us though, if we say we have no sin, we make God a liar. There's no way to do that.

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It's purposely a question to get dialogue, but it's a better question to ask if a believer, if an unbeliever rather, is being told to forgive themselves, then they have a real problem because there is no forgiveness.

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You look at so many people in the LGBT world, in the transgender world, so many people that have had abortions, so many people that have done significant atrocities, murderers and what not, and you look at their suicide rates, and you go they're off the charts.

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Why? Because they're dealing with guilt, and they can't forgive themselves because they know it doesn't fly.

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But then you have, what about when a believer says it, and that's a different story, right?

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Look, if we have repented, if we have been justified, if we are a believer, then we truly are cleansed, and we have

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Christ's righteousness. And to believe otherwise, there's appropriate level of examination to make sure we're in the faith, but if we believe otherwise, we are spitting upon the righteousness of Christ.

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Truly. So it's a misnomer in a sense. It's not forgiving ourselves.

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It's recognizing God's forgiveness and applying it to our lives. And we're talking about believers, of course.

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When we don't forgive ourselves, and we wallow in guilt instead, what happens?

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Are we not made impotent for God's purposes? I mean, what if Moses quit right after killing the

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Egyptian? Just wallowed in guilt the rest of his life. Never recognized

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God's forgiveness. I mean, sometimes, you know,

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I'll feel guilty about something, rightfully so, but then I need to recognize after repentance that I'm reconciled to God.

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I've already been justified. So when our mind is wallowing in our own guilt inappropriately, it's often because we're stuck on ourselves, right?

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If you're in a pit, what's the way out? It's not looking into yourself. It's not looking at the walls.

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It's what Jesus taught, the Israelites in the wilderness, right?

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With the serpent on the staff. Look unto Jesus, and you will be saved.

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I don't think it's that separate from what we do when we're forgiving others.

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When we realize just how much we have been forgiven, and how utterly perfect and complete that forgiveness is, it gives us, it lets us tap into the infinite well of God's mercies and forgiveness and love unto others.

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So I just want to read with Romans 4, 6, which is Paul ultimately quoting

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David in Psalm 32. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom

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God counts righteousness apart from works. Quote from Psalms, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

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Blessed is the man against whom the Lord does not count his sin.

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Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what a wonder that we can call you

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Father. We thank you for your forgiveness. We thank you for your loving, forgiving posture towards us.

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We thank you. It knows no bounds. Your mercies endure forever. We thank you for separating us from our sin, for putting to death the enmity between us and you.

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Lord, help us to not be easily offended. Help us to be very slow to anger.

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Help us to be more like you. Help us to be so aware, so acutely aware of our offenses to you that all other offenses to you and to us just roll like water beads off a duck's back that we might be the most forgiving people, the most loving people, that the world would see your glory through your people's loving forgiveness towards one another.