It did not awaken it, it awakened me.
I read a bumper sticker many years ago
that said, some mornings I wake up grumpy
and other mornings I let him sleep in.
I trust you have got over your grumpiness
this morning.
It's good to be in the presence of
God, isn't it?
Just to worship Him, you every morning.
There is mercies.
He daily loads us with benefits.
Not just a meager little ration that will
get us by, but daily loads us.
The prodigal said when he thought about the
father's house, he said, there's bread enough and
to spare.
Not just that dad's got a little bit
of bread, maybe I can, you know, twist
his arm and get a slice, but bread
enough and to spare.
Wonderful, isn't it?
I want to continue this morning to sort
of excavate a little bit for these next
couple of sessions and then we'll move into
another realm I trust.
There is a portion of Scripture there at
the end of Matthew, Matthew 7, where Jesus
talked about the two men that built their
house, or their houses.
One built on the sand, the other built
it on the rock.
And somebody said that in order to get
to rock, you have to excavate everything between
yourself and the rock.
And I think we need to do that
spiritually.
Whatever it is that stands between us and
the rock.
If we don't, then when the floods come
and the storms rage, then the house will
not stand.
It may look good for a while in
the good weather, when everybody's praising God and
things are going well, it may look as
good as anybody else's house.
But the storms come and they will test
again the quality.
It's interesting that if you look up in
the dictionary, the definition of sand, it's fragments
of fragmentary rock.
I think we've tried to do a lot
of building on fragments of truth.
We've built whole movements on one little grain
of sand, faith.
Whole movements on one grain of sand, prosperity.
One whole movement on another grain of sand,
but you put all those grains of sand
together and compact them and you have a
rock, the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's dangerous to build on fragments.
It's dangerous to build on sand.
On Christ the solid rock I stand, all
other ground is sinking sand.
I want to speak to you this morning
on the theme of forgiveness, because I am
convinced after many years now of ministry, that
one of the single greatest detriments to personal
revival is the area of unforgiveness.
Revival is still a mystery to me.
There's a sovereign element to it that I
don't fully understand, I guess because it is
sovereign.
There is also man's side of seeking God,
the hunger, the thirst after righteousness and so
on.
But I do believe that we can have
personal revival.
I had the privilege of working with an
older man of God back in the mid
-sixties in New Zealand, by the name of
Neville Winger.
He has now gone to be with the
Lord, a wonderful servant of God.
He told me the story of a friend
of his who was a missionary in Borneo,
that's East Malaysia, working there in the sort
of the jungles of that nation, translating the
scriptures.
Working with him was a national worker.
It's no longer politically correct to call them
natives, but a national worker.
And as he was using this national worker
to help him to select the best words
and the way to write and translate the
scriptures, they came across the portion of scripture
there in Mark chapter 11, verse 25, when
it says, when you stand praying, forgive if
you have anything against anyone, in order that
your father may forgive you.
And of course the missionary was concentrating on
getting the right words and saying it in
the right way, but when he said this,
the national worker was pricked in his conscience
and he said to the missionary, why don't
we do that?
The missionary didn't quite understand, because again he
was concentrating on what he was doing, and
so the national worker again said to him,
he said, why don't we do that?
He said, why don't we do what?
He said, well, why don't we do what
this verse says?
And realizing that God was speaking to this
young man, the missionary said, well, we have
to walk in obedience to God's word.
Consequently, this man went back to his village
and then from his village went to a
neighboring village and began to apologize, ask forgiveness,
because over the years, over many years, there'd
been tremendous animosity between these two villages.
There'd been all sorts of bloodshed, all sorts
of abuse and pillage and thievery, even murder.
And so he began to apologize.
As a result of that, the Spirit of
God was released in that particular valley and
a revival broke out that impacted that entire
region, all because one person was willing to
go to a brother and ask for forgiveness.
There is tremendous power in forgiveness.
Now, we don't kill one another anymore.
We don't shed blood, although that is possible,
but we simply kill relationships.
We avoid one another, we move to another
church, we no longer speak to certain individuals,
no longer associate with certain individuals, we avoid
contact, we begin to criticize and so on.
And yet, unforgiveness really is like a cord
that ties the hands of God from working
on our behalf.
Here is God, we talked about last night,
the fact that He is the Creator of
the heavens and earth, and yet this God,
with all of His power, all of His
majesty, all of His greatness that we've been
singing about, is rendered, if you like, absolutely
powerless by our unwillingness to forgive.
We no longer have access to His forgiveness,
we no longer have access to His grace,
we no longer have access to His mercy,
no longer have access to who God is,
because we are not willing to be like
Him.
And so we bind, again, God working on
our behalf.
Now, every believer here, and I know that's
the vast majority this morning, we've experienced the
love of God, the forgiveness of God, the
kindness, the goodness of God, we sang about
that again.
The fact that He took our place on
Calvary, He became the substitute, the Lamb of
God, that takes away the sin of the
world.
And yet, why is it that we are
so reluctant to extend that forgiveness that was
given to us to others?
And one of the greatest problems, I think,
in the body of Christ, is this unwillingness
to forgive, unwillingness to be reconciled one to
another.
There's been far more churches that have split
over unforgiveness, over bitterness, over resentment, than there
has been over false doctrine, or any other
single problem.
This gentleman that I mentioned a few moments
ago that I worked with in the early
sixties had a saying, and he used to
say to me, he said, David, we're all
damaged goods.
Somewhere in the course of life, we've been
dropped, so to speak, we've got our dents
and our bruises, and I imagine we could
start on the front row here and go
and spend an hour or two or three
or four talking about all the hurts and
the disappointments and the bitternesses and the wrongs
that have been done us, the business deals
have gone sour, the working with another brother
that has turned and he's become now our
enemy.
Again, parents that have disappointed us, brothers and
sisters that maybe have turned against us.
Again, all the hurts, the resentments.
I imagine there's a tremendous amount of testimony
that we can produce just in a congregation
of this size this morning.
We live in an imperfect world, and those
imperfect people, again, cause us pain, and we've
caused others pain as well.
And we need to know what it is
to rid ourselves of all the bitterness that
gets in our spirit, that root of bitterness,
that not only defiles ourselves, but springs up
and defiles many.
I was thinking this morning when I was
just looking over my notes that 22 years
ago, my wife and I moved from New
Zealand to Texas, lived there for just a
little over a year, and then went back
to New Zealand and spent another 10 years
there.
During that time, we built a house, and
my parents built a house, and in the
area where we lived, the field around the
house, there were some small trees about this
big, pine trees.
I remember rooting those up with my bare
hands and planting them just outside our house.
Those trees now are some 30 or 40
feet tall, and I would challenge and defy
anybody in this room to try and uproot
what I uprooted 20 years ago or 22
years ago.
They have grown.
They've established a root system now that is
so vast that it isn't possible to uproot.
And so strongholds, or rather footholds, become strongholds.
And unless we deal with those footholds in
the early stages, they're almost impossible to be
dealt with later on.
And so it's important that we learn to
walk in forgiveness.
It's amazing what we are capable of doing,
isn't it?
Even as believers, the bitterness that we can
have, the anger that we can have, the
resentment that we can have.
Two years ago, I was traveling with the
revival team from Pensacola.
We were staying in a hotel, and as
I opened the door of the hotel, there
was the morning newspaper there that I picked
up, and later on that afternoon, I began
to browse through it.
And there was an article in the newspaper
that I have a photocopy of here.
I have the original somewhere in my Bible.
The title is, Dad.
And then it says, Revenge led to baby's
life, comma, death.
Let me read you the article, June the
19th, 1999.
On Father's Day, Amy Schoenebager found her infant
son, Tyler, face down in his crib, dead.
Two days later, just hours after the baby's
funeral, Ronald Schoenebager told his wife that he
had killed their son.
The next day, he told the police not
only did he kill the boy, he planned
the crime even before the child was conceived
as a way of executing revenge on his
wife.
Tyler didn't die of sudden death syndrome as
the coroner had ruled.
Schoenebager said he confessed to the suffocating his
seven-year-old with a plastic wrap.
He said it was revenge because Amy, before
they were married, had refused to cut short
a vacation to comfort him when his father
died in 1996, three years previous.
Schoenebager said that he planned to make Amy
feel the way he did when his father
died.
He married her, got her pregnant, allowed time
for her to bond with the child and
then took the baby's life, according to an
affidavit.
It goes on to say that Schoenebager said
of his confession that on the evening of
June 19th, he wrapped plastic wrap around his
son's head and face and then left the
baby's nursery to get something to eat and
to brush his teeth.
Twenty minutes later, he said, he returned, removed
the plastic, placed Tyler face down in the
crib before he went off to bed.
Amy Schoenebager, 29, had been working that night
as a grocery cashier.
When she came home, she went to bed
assuming that Tyler was asleep.
She found his body the next morning, Father's
Day.
Schoenebager, who worked as a tire retreading center,
told police he confessed because the image of
his son's face, flat and purplish from rigor
mortis, had haunted him.
Amazing, isn't it?
What we are capable of doing, we get
hurt, we allow that hurt to fester, we
feed it, we entertain it, it grows, it
becomes a root of bitterness, we plan revenge
over a two or three year period.
Here is a man married that woman knowing,
intending to get her pregnant, intending to allow
seven months for the mother to bond with
that beautiful little baby, all to get even,
to make her feel the way he felt.
We have a story very similar.
I won't go into it.
You know it.
The story of one of David's sons who
saw that his stepsister was violated, or his
sister rather, violated by his stepbrother.
He waited for two years.
During that two years, after everything had died
down, he planned revenge.
And after two years held a party.
During that time of feasting and celebrating and
so on, he took the life of his
stepbrother.
We are capable of such incredible evil and
we have got to know what it is
to walk in forgiveness.
About 25 years ago, I sat under the
ministry of David Duplessis.
David Duplessis was referred to as Mr. Pentecost
because of his desire to bring the body
of Christ together.
And he was ministering on the Lord's Prayer,
Matthew chapter 6.
And he made this statement.
He said, this is the most dangerous prayer
that you can ever pray.
And he was referring of course to verse
12 where we pray, forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors.
We are specifically asking almighty God to forgive
us according to the standard of which we
forgive others.
He said that is the most dangerous prayer
because it will be answered.
The book of James has a verse that
it terrifies me.
And it says that judgment will be merciless
to the one that shows no judgment or
no mercy rather.
Judgment will be merciless to the one who
shows no mercy.
That's a frightening verse, isn't it?
If anything should cause us to walk in
constant forgiveness, we were asking God to soften
our hearts, that verse should.
Knowing that one day you and I will
stand before almighty God and instead of mercy
we'll receive justice because we never extended the
mercy that was shown us.
I picked up a book a little while
ago out of my father's library that is
now mine.
And it was quotes from Oswald Chambers.
An entire book where somebody has gone through
all his writings.
And under the heading of forgiveness he makes
a statement.
The forgiveness of a child of God is
not placed on the ground of the atonement
of our Lord.
That got my attention.
Let me read it again.
The forgiveness of a child of God, not
a sinner.
The forgiveness of a child of God is
not placed on the ground of the atonement
of our Lord but on the ground that
the child of God shows the same forgiveness
to his fellows that God his Father has
shown him.
In other words, after you're saved you can't
come and say, Lord, on the basis of
the blood of Christ forgive me if we
are not forgiving another person.
The blood has no effect.
Took me a while to sort of believe
what he said.
Once you're saved, it's no longer based on
the atonement but on whether or not you
forgive.
Again in Matthew 6 out of all the
things that are mentioned in the Lord's Prayer
Jesus could have very easily highlighted the kingdom.
Could have very easily highlighted the fact that
his will is to be done.
That we are to hallow his name.
But instead, at the end of that prayer
Jesus said this in verse 14 For if
you forgive men their transgressions your heavenly Father
will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive then your
Father will not forgive your transgressions.
Interesting, isn't it?
That out of that great prayer that most
of us could say by rote maybe even
backwards that the one single item that Jesus
sort of highlighted and drew out of that
was the matter of forgiveness when it comes
to praying.
And said if you do not forgive your
Father will not forgive you.
Hence the statement here of Oswald Chambers.
Forgiveness then is based on whether I will
forgive and release somebody else.
And so the Bible is full again of
exhortations to believers that we are to walk
in forgiveness.
Luke chapter 6 It says Be merciful, verse
37 Just as your Father is merciful do
not judge and you will not be judged.
Do not condemn and you will not be
condemned.
Pardon or forgive and you will be forgiven.
That word in the Greek means release.
It can be translated divorce.
It can be translated to send away.
Release.
Let go of that thing.
Whatever it is that is eating away at
you.
That thing that has sat there maybe for
many months, maybe for many years.
That deep resentment, that bitterness towards a parent,
towards a brother a sister, a workmate where
you've been violated in some way.
Let it go.
The best way I think to describe it
at least modern way is to look of
one of those helium balloons that are so
popular these days at anniversaries and birthday parties
and you know that that thing just automatically
stays up there because of the helium and
you know the moment you release it, it's
gone.
It's irretrievable.
It just floats up and up and up
and up and it's gone.
There's no way that you can get back
that thing.
Why?
Because you've released it.
The Bible says release and you will be
released.
Set free others and you will be set
free.
I find there's so many believers that are
bound.
God is wanting to release you.
When I was pastoring five years ago now,
a little four years ago I guess, I
had a number of people in my congregation
that were going to see a counselor for
marriage and they were talking about how great
this man was.
Turned out that he was a Jewish believer
but he was charging a hundred dollars an
hour and a lot of people that were
in my congregation couldn't afford that and so
I called him up one day, introduced myself.
I said, I've heard wonderful things about you.
Some of the people in my congregation have
been to you for counsel and I made
a suggestion to him.
I said, would it be possible for you
to come and do a seminar and we
will give you five hundred dollars for the
afternoon and instead of just dealing with one
person, we'll get as many people together as
possible.
The church will pay for it and you'll
get some money out of it but we
have a lot of people that just can't
afford your expertise.
He agreed and so the day was set.
We advertised it and announced it.
We had a number of couples in the
church that came.
I guess maybe 30 or 40, 50 couples
showed up and he spent most of the
morning speaking about forgiveness and he said, as
believers we really do not understand forgiveness and
one of the illustrations he used, he said,
you know, he said, I used to have
a car, a particular car that was one
of my favorites of all the cars I've
ever had.
He said, it was just a particular model
that wasn't very popular and he said, I'd
sort of fitted it out with some extra
things but he said, I had to get
rid of it and he said, I reluctantly
had to sell it.
It was just like an old coat.
It just sort of fit right and felt
right and everything about that car.
He said, I love that car but he
said, I sold it and he said, about
three months later, he said, I happened to
be in the parking lot of a particular
mall and he said, there was my car
and he said, as soon as I saw
it, he said, there was this bond and
he said, I just wanted to go over
and look at it and he said, I
was so tempted to open the door and
just sit in it one more time.
He said, it meant so much to me
and he said, then I realized I didn't
have a right to that car anymore that
I had signed off on that car that
when the person bought it from me, I
signed the title deed and it was now
in his name and it was no longer
mine and I didn't have the right to
go back and I had absolutely no claim
on that car.
He said, that's what forgiveness is.
We sign off.
We release.
We have no claim whatsoever.
It's gone.
We don't keep mulling over.
We don't resurrect it.
We don't keep it in a file and
pull it out and think about it.
It's gone.
We've released it.
In 1969, my wife and I were living
in California, working with Youth With A Mission
and Winky Prattney, some of you know Winky,
I know he's ministered in this country.
He was a very good friend of mine.
I was the best man in his wedding
many years ago now and Winky and I
were talking.
He was outside the Youth With A Mission
base where I was working and he actually
lived there before he was married and he
was opening his mail and we were chitchatting
and he opened a particular letter and he
began reading the letter to me.
The letter began something like this, Dear Winky,
you may or may not remember me, but
I'm the girl with the two mothers.
And then he began to tell me the
story.
He said, you know, let me tell you
about this.
He said, about two or three weeks ago,
I was in Springfield, Missouri.
I was taking some meetings.
David Wilkerson was supposed to be there and
for some reason had to cancel.
They asked me if I would come.
Springfield is the headquarters, as you know, of
the Assemblies of God in America and he
was speaking at the Evangel College.
And on the last night of his meeting,
two girls came forward, asked if they could
talk to him.
One had a problem.
The other was there for sort of moral
support.
And this girl began to pour out her
heart about her life.
But she said, I have a problem.
She said, I've been in the school now
for whatever it was, six months or a
year or something.
And she said, every single night at two
o'clock in the morning, I wake up
with this incredible fear.
A fear that I just can't shake.
She said, it happens every single night at
two o'clock.
And she said, I'm so terrified.
A fear just comes into the room that
grips me that I have to get up,
put on the light, waken my roommate.
We've got to pray for a while.
It takes me ages to get back to
sleep and so on.
And she said, I just can't go on.
And then she began to tell her story.
She said, I was adopted as a child.
I've never seen my birth mother.
The mother, my adoptive mother that took me.
She said, I don't really feel treated me
right and so on.
And she began to sort of pour out
some of her problems.
And as she did, God spoke to Winky
and he said to this girl, he said,
you know, God's just told me something.
Two o'clock in the morning represents your
two mothers.
And unless you're willing to forgive them, you
will continue to have this problem.
And she was adamant.
She said, I could never forgive them.
I could never forgive my birth mother even
though I've never met her because she rejected
me.
She gave me up and so on and
so forth.
I could never forgive my adoptive mother because
of the way she treated me, the injustices
at least that she felt and so on.
And Winky tried to reason with her that
forgiveness is not a feeling.
It's the obedience to the will of God.
He suggested that she call or write a
letter.
And she said, no, I can't do that.
And so the conversation basically was over.
He had to dash off and catch a
plane or something.
And so here it was two or three
weeks later and he is reading this letter.
Dear Winky, you may or may not remember
me, but I'm the girl with the two
mothers.
The letter went on to say how that
night with the help of her roommate, she
did what was the hardest thing for her
to do.
She wrote a letter releasing her mother.
Winky had told her, don't draw attention to
the wrongs of your mother.
Draw attention to the fact that you had
a wrong attitude towards her regardless of how
she treated you.
Mother, I'm sorry for the way I'd responded
to your love.
I'm sorry for not being the child that
I should have been and so on and
so forth.
Please forgive me.
She said her mother then responded and I
don't have all the details.
I was talking to Winky just recently and
he said, you know, somewhere I must have
that letter.
He said, I'm a bit of a rat
and he says, I know I put it
away somewhere.
I would love to get a hold of
that letter but it detailed how the mother
gave her a contact with her birth mother,
her natural mother and she had contacted her
birth mother for the first time in her
life only to discover that her birth mother
was a Christian and that her birth mother
was looking for her and she was saying
for the first time in my life I'm
going to meet my birth mother.
She was all excited.
You see the Bible says release and you
release God to work on your behalf.
God's hands are tied until we forgive.
Here was this girl again crippled if you
like in her spirit with bitterness, with resentment
and God was saying, listen, if you're going
to be my child, I want you to
demonstrate my nature, my character.
I forgave you, forgive others.
The Bible talks a lot obviously about forgiveness.
Moses prayed and he said, Lord show me
your glory.
How many of you would like to see
the glory of God?
I think sometimes we misunderstand the glory of
God.
We think it's some sort of big, you
know, shimmering cloud that moves into a meeting
and sort of startles everybody in.
I don't think so.
It may be that but when Moses said
show me your glory God revealed his nature,
his character the essence of who he was.
He said Moses stand here in the cleft
of the rock and my glory as it
passes by I'll declare it unto you.
And there in Exodus God spoke and it
says the Lord passed by and proclaimed the
Lord compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in
loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness
for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.
That's the glory of God.
A God of grace, a God of mercy,
a God who abounds in loving kindness, who
forgives iniquity, who forgives transgression, who forgives sin.
He's coming back for what sort of a
church?
A glorious church.
Man's sin and what came short of the
nature of God.
And so he's going to reconform us into
the image of his son, the glory of
God.
We need to demonstrate God's nature and character.
The psalmist says in Psalm 103 who forgives
all our iniquities, who heals all our diseases.
He forgives all.
And we need to walk again in that
same forgiveness, releasing, forgiving all.
Ephesians says, be tender-hearted, forgiving each other,
just as God in Christ has forgiven you.
And whether you turn to the Old Testament
or the New Testament, God is always a
forgiving God.
Even in the Old Testament, God taught the
nation of Israel to forgive.
Oh, I know we think of the eye
for an eye and the tooth for a
tooth.
Let me give you a scripture, Exodus 23,
verse 4 and 5.
One of the laws, if you like, that
God gave to the nation of Israel.
And he says this, If you meet your
enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you
shall surely return it to him.
Now notice here you are walking along a
road and you see your enemy's ox or
his donkey.
Today that would be the same as his
car, his mode of transport, his means of
livelihood.
Not only was it transport, it was his
tractor.
This was an agricultural country.
So if you meet your enemy's ox, you
return it to him.
That is not natural.
After all, this is the man that has
despised you, this is the man that has
swindled you, this is the man that has
betrayed you, this is the man that has
criticized you, this is your enemy.
This man hates you, you hate him.
And you're walking along and you notice, here's
his donkey or his horse.
And you think to yourself, naturally speaking, ha
ha, this is great.
I'm three miles from home, it's five miles
from my enemy's house by the time he
wakes up in the morning.
He won't be able to get to work
on time, he's going to be fired or
whatever, you know.
Maybe he'll never find his donkey, maybe he'll
never find his ox, his tractor, he won't
be able to plow his fields anymore, it
serves him right, ha ha ha.
You know, and possibly you'll pick up a
rock and throw it at the thing so
it gallops off even a little bit faster
and further.
That's the natural response, it's your enemy.
Get even.
The last thing you want to do is
take that ox and bring it to the
one that you hate.
He goes on to say, if you see
the donkey of the one that hates you,
lying helpless under its load, you shall surely
refrain from leaving it to him.
You shall surely release it with him.
Here again, you're outside, you know, some store,
supermarket, whatever they had in those days and
your enemy is inside, the man that hates
you, it says.
And the donkey has collapsed because of the
heat of the day and this man has
overloaded this beast of burden to the point
where it's collapsed and you know that it's
just a matter of minutes before it's going
to expire because of the weight of the
load lying on it.
It's struggling.
And again, the natural response says, ha ha
ha.
Serves him right.
He's in there drinking, should have been looking
after his animal.
I don't have anything to do with this,
you know.
Thank God, vengeance is mine, Lord.
You know, and you stand there watching this
thing just sigh its last, almost.
The last thing you want to do is
take the burden off it, get it back
on its feet and return it to the
master.
You see, God is a God of forgiveness.
Even in little things like this.
And we have many, many illustrations of that,
don't we?
Proverbs 25.
If your enemy's hungry, feed him.
But Lord, I'd rather starve him to death
to get rid of the problem.
If your enemy's hungry, keep him alive.
Lord, I don't want to keep my enemy
alive.
Lord, if he's thirsty, give him water to
drink.
In so doing, you'll heap burning coals of
fire upon his head.
Now, you know, for many years I thought,
you know, this is where you do something
nice to somebody that hates you, so you
make them really feel miserable.
In other words, your motivation is, you know,
this is your enemy and he's done all
sorts of nasty things to you and so
you bake him a cake and present it
with a big smile on your face, but
inside, you know, you're really making him just,
oh, feel worse.
Nothing to do with that.
I read in a book on customs and
culture of the Old Testament or the Bible
where what would happen is that men would
be out in the fields out in some
of these desert regions and at night time,
of course, they would light a fire.
The fire was there to cook over, to
protect them again from the elements, to ward
off any sort of predator, lions or bears
or whatever and it was a means, obviously,
of staying alive in many ways.
But occasionally, the fire would go out and
if the fire went out, you could literally,
you know, succumb to the coldness of the
night and have problems.
Again, you were not able to feed yourself.
Various predators could come and maybe take an
animal from the flock if not take your
own life.
And what you would do then, you would
look if your fire went out and maybe
there on the horizon was another camp and
you would see the embers burning and so
you would make your way over and you
would ask if you could have some coals.
And that person then would give you some
coals from the fire.
You would put those coals in an earthenware
pot as they still do in many countries
and put that pot on their head like
they do in Africa and other places and
you would walk back again that mile or
two miles back to your camp and you
would rekindle your fire as a means again
of staying alive.
We keep burning coals of fire on somebody's
head.
We keep them alive.
We sustain them.
We bless them.
Oh, this is our enemy.
But this is the law of God.
You see, we've been taken out of the
kingdom where we can have revenge, where we
can get even and we've been brought into
another kingdom.
A kingdom of kindness, of forgiveness, of mercy,
of grace.
We've got to learn to operate in those
kingdom principles.
And we have numerous again illustrations there of
the book of Hosea, God demonstrating to Israel
His willingness to time after time woo back
this bride that was forever committing adultery.
And, of course, we have it expressed through
Hosea.
We have the story of Joseph after 13
years of being betrayed, hardship, 13 years in
prison in which he was in irons.
He was afflicted, the Bible says.
The Word of the Lord tried him.
He was in chains.
I imagine that he thought maybe at certain
times of the year, you know, this is
the time of my brother's birthday.
This is dad's birthday.
This is, you know, whatever.
This is all these various days when the
family would be together.
He could have very easily grown extremely bitter.
I've been deprived seeing my nieces and nephews.
I've been deprived of this.
I've been deprived of that.
I wonder if my father's still alive.
I wonder if my mother's alive.
I wonder what's happening at home.
I wonder, you know.
And that resentment could have built and built
and built and built and built.
And, of course, his brothers expected that after
they realized who he was.
And they concocted a plan.
You know, dad said, by the way, dad
said before he died that you need to
forgive us, basically.
Joseph is able to say, listen, you meant
it for evil.
God meant it for good.
What a beautiful demonstration again of releasing.
We've got to learn to do that.
And so God is looking for a people
through which He can demonstrate again His glory,
His nature, His character.
We are to be the proclaimers of the
excellences of Him who calls us out of
darkness into His marvelous light.
I've been reading a book lately, just grabbing
it here and there.
But there's a chapter dealing with the sort
of eternal purpose of the church.
And part of that eternal purpose, see, mentions
this from Ephesians there where it says that
now through the church may be made known
to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of
God or the ways of God.
And one of our responsibilities as a church
is not only reaching the lost and the
dying world, but it's also to demonstrate to
principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God
that we don't retaliate the way the enemy
would retaliate when we are part of His
kingdom.
That everything in the kingdom of God is
contrary to Satan's kingdom.
We have that brought out, I believe, in
the book of Job.
That was the whole thing, that He might
demonstrate to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom
of God that God had wrought in this
man Job.
Where Job says, I don't believe you God.
The only reason Job loves you is because
you made him a multimillionaire.
Anybody can love you.
That's not genuine love.
That's not genuine faithfulness.
He says, you take all that away and
I'll show you what sort of man Job
really is.
I know you're bragging about him.
You think he's the greatest.
You think he's a man that fears you.
You think he's a man of integrity.
You think he's a man of righteousness.
He's not really.
Anybody can act like that when he's got
all these goodies around him and everything's going
well.
God says, okay, I'll take you up on
the challenge.
And I'm going to prove to you now
the manifold wisdom of God that may be
known now to principalities, to you, Satan.
That it's possible to redeem somebody out of
your kingdom.
It's possible to change the nature from your
nature to my nature, Satan.
I'll take you up on the challenge.
See, we have a responsibility.
Every time we forgive, we demonstrate to principalities
and powers a manifold grace of God, a
manifold wisdom of God, a manifold ways of
God.
And when we don't forgive, there's no testimony
to principalities and powers.
There's no testimony to a lost and a
dying world either.
I heard Corrie Ten Boone share a little
bit of her testimony.
How many years after the war, she was
back in the particular town where she was
incarcerated in that concentration camp.
And at the end of a meeting, a
gentleman made his way forward and introduced himself
as the warden of that particular concentration camp.
And he had seen a flyer of some
sort saying that she was going to be
there.
He remembered her name.
And he came and he said to Corrie
Ten Boone that he was now a Christian.
And he was here to ask for forgiveness.
And she said in that moment when he
put out his hand asking for forgiveness, she
said, I had flashbacks to those days in
that concentration camp, all the cruelty, all the
abuse where my father died, my sister died.
The days that we stood outside in the
snow naked.
The fact that we were deprived of food
and so on and so forth.
All the indignities that she suffered.
And she said in that moment she said
something rose up within her.
Why should I forgive?
And then she said just as suddenly she
said the love of God was shed abroad
in my heart by the Holy Ghost.
And I put out my hand and I
said, Brother, I forgive you.
We need to know how to release.
Let me just take a couple of Scriptures
before we close.
Matthew chapter 18.
A familiar portion of Scripture but a very
vital portion of Scripture where Peter comes, of
course, to the Lord and he says, Lord,
how often shall I forgive my brother up
to seven times?
And I think Peter was looking for a,
you know, well done, thou good and faithful
servant sort of response.
Peter, this is incredible.
I mean, you've got it.
I mean, you can actually forgive seven times.
Good on you, Peter.
I'm amazed at your progress, brother.
And Jesus said, Peter, no.
Seventy times is seven.
Jesus was not setting a limit on forgiveness.
He was saying, basically, when you've forgiven that
often, you're automatically a forgiver.
One of the writers says in Luke's account,
in one day.
In one day.
But when you've forgiven once and twice and
three times and four times and five times
and six and seven and eight and nine
and ten, you lose track and you just,
it's just part of your nature.
And so Jesus gave the illustration for this
reason, the kingdom of heaven.
Maybe compared to a certain king who wished
to settle accounts with his slaves.
You know the story how one owed him
ten thousand talents.
I looked up recently in Haley's handbook just
what that meant.
And a talent of silver, according to Haley's
handbook, is between fifty and a hundred pounds.
A talent of gold between sixty and a
hundred and twenty pounds.
And according to today's market, that's around four
to five billion dollars.
What's that?
Two to three billion pounds.
That's some debt.
That's some credit card.
That's impossible to get out of.
That's the whole point.
Here was a man that had an impossible
debt.
There was no possible way he could ever,
ever, ever pay off that debt.
And his master commanded him to be sold
along with his wife and children, all that
he had in repayment to be made.
I can imagine that man going home that
day, heavy, sad, knowing that this day was
going to come.
Not knowing when it was going to come,
but he was called in.
The books were opened.
He realized the enormity of that debt.
He looked at his wife and realized that
he'd never see her again.
She was going to be auctioned off.
He looked maybe at his two teenage boys
or daughters, realized that they were old enough
now to serve as slaves.
They would not be sold as a family.
They were slaves.
They'd be sold to the highest bidder.
If somebody wanted a young girl, there goes
the daughter.
Somebody wanted a young man, there goes the
son.
Somebody wanted an older woman that could cook
and clean and so on, there goes his
wife.
All the belongings were going to be taken.
His house was going to be taken.
And so he gets down on his face
and he pleads for mercy, have patience.
I'll repay you.
The Lord of that slave felt compassion and
released him and forgave him the debt.
I can imagine now that man going back
to that home, maybe at the end of
the day, bursting through the doors, grabbing his
wife, waltzing around, just swinging her around the
room and just absolutely full of gratitude, excitement,
grabbing maybe the kids, maybe the little kids
and holding them, clutching them and kissing them
repeatedly and we could stay together as a
family.
We're not going to lose our house.
We're not going to lose our possessions.
We're together.
Thank God.
The next day of course, he goes out
and he finds a slave that owes him
a hundred denarii, basically about three months wages.
And he demanded payment, began to literally choke
the slave.
His fellow slave saw what was happening and
reported to the master.
His master calls him in and he said,
you wicked slave, verse 32, I forgave you
all your debt because you entreated me.
Should you not also have mercy on your
fellow slave as I have mercy on you?
And his Lord moved with anger, handed him
over to the torturers until he should repay
him all that was owed him.
I have never yet opened a commentary and
found a satisfactory answer to the doctrine of
this particular chapter.
This man was forgiven, totally forgiven.
His debt was gone.
He was free.
But because he refused to forgive, his debt
was reinstated.
Every penny.
Again, I've never sat in a Bible college
that I remember and had a professor really
explain this to me.
And if it ended there, you could sort
of say, well, this is just a sort
of an illustration.
After all, Jesus said it's like the kingdom
of God.
You know, it's a sort of parable and
you can't take all the parables and you
know, take every single thing and sort of
detail it exactly and you know, so he
was just trying to get across the point
of forgiveness.
That's basically it.
Now, Jesus went on.
Notice the highlight.
Verse 35.
So shall my heavenly Father also do to
you, if each of you does not forgive
his brother from your heart.
To make sure that we got the message,
Jesus said, listen, this isn't just a sort
of a parable.
I'm not just going to talk here, you
know.
No, this is exactly the way my Father
operates.
If you do not forgive, I'll reinstate your
entire debt until you learn to forget.
Some of us wonder why we can't break
through into the presence of God.
Some of us wonder why God is not
as real as he used to be because
there's something that has come into our life.
God is saying, listen, if you're going to
be my child, you're going to have to
demonstrate again my kindness, my love, my forgiveness,
my mercy.
Just in closing, let me take you to
three portions of Scripture.
Matthew chapter 5 verse 23.
If therefore you're presenting your offering at the
altar and you remember that your brother has
something against you, leave your offering before the
altar.
Go your way.
First be reconciled to your brother and then
come and present your offering.
Now obviously this was prior to the cross.
Most commentaries would tell you that this is
a sin offering.
Here you are going into the house of
God, going into the temple, you're bringing your
lamb because you have got sin, you're wanting
that lamb again to be your sin offering.
And as you stand in line, you remember
that your brother has ought against you.
Things are not right between you and another
brother.
And the Bible says don't continue in line
there waiting for your chance to get before
the priest and to offer up the sacrifice
but immediately leave that lamb where it is
and go your way.
First of all, be reconciled to your brother
and then come, get back in line and
offer your sacrifice.
Why?
Because God said you won't be forgiven otherwise.
You're asking for my forgiveness.
You're asking for my mercy.
You're presenting this lamb and yet you're not
willing to forgive another brother.
First, I want to see that you are
worthy of forgiveness, if you like.
Go, reconcile with your brother.
Then come and then you will receive my
love, my mercy, my forgiveness.
But here is the thought of bringing your
offering over into the book of Ephesians.
Ephesians chapter 5.
Therefore be imitators of God, verse 1.
As beloved children, walk in love just as
Christ has loved you and gave himself up
for us.
An offering and a sacrifice to God is
a fragrant aroma.
Here we're told that the Lord Jesus Christ
brought an offering.
That offering was not a lamb.
It was himself.
He was the lamb.
But nevertheless, he brings before the Father his
own body.
Again, as a substitute for your sin and
my sin.
He was the lamb of God that takes
away the sin of the world.
And when Jesus is presenting himself to the
Father, there is all sorts of abuse that
goes on from the moment he's betrayed by
Judas, a deep betrayal, the night in which
he was betrayed.
Isn't it tragic every time we partake of
communion, we remember an act of betrayal.
Following that betrayal, there was all the mocking,
there was the scourging, as his back was
literally lacerated.
And then it says they plucked out his
beard, they grabbed chunks of his beard and
pulled it out and the Bible says that
his visage, his image was marred more than
all the sons of men.
His face was just blood everywhere.
Huge gaping holes where they ripped out his
beard.
And then they put a crown of thorns
on his head, the Bible says.
And the Bible says they were beating on
it.
It wasn't just sort of delicately perched there.
They were beating upon it.
And then they made fun of him, blindfolded
him, slapped him around and said, listen, if
you're so smart, tell us who did it.
Finally, they nailed him to the cross.
Now we need to understand that he was
the man Christ Jesus who was tempted in
all points like as we are.
He had feelings.
They strip him totally naked.
He's humiliated.
He's nailed to that cross, again, blood flowing
everywhere.
And there is a crowd mocking him.
You know, if you're so great, why don't
you come down from the cross and save
yourself?
Can you imagine what you would feel?
Pure, innocent, undefiled, all the railing accusations, all
the mockings, all the scourgings, all the beating,
all the humiliation of that moment.
How would you respond to those people?
And the Bible says there in Luke's account,
and you can read about all the abuse,
the fact that they beat him and so
on.
And the Bible says he was saying, Father,
forgive them.
He was saying, not just once, he was
repeating, Father forgive them.
Father forgive them.
And I remember reading that a number of
years ago, and I felt and sensed that
the Spirit of God said to me, that
if the Son of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, had never uttered those words, that the
Father could not have accepted His sacrifice.
When you bring your offering, and you stand
before the Father, and you know that your
brother has ought against you, there was a
crowd, maybe of thousands, maybe of hundreds, that
had everything against him.
Hurling all the filth, all the abuse, all
the mocking, all the scourging.
And before he presented that last act of
giving himself over to God, he reconciled with
his brother.
And even Almighty God Himself could not have
taken the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, His only
Son, unless those words of reconciliation had been
offered.
If He'd have died again, with resentment, with
anger, the man Christ Jesus.
Oh, sometimes I know, thank God that He's
the Son of God, but we forget, He
clothed Himself in human flesh, and suffered the
way we suffered.
He knew the pain.
He knew the rejection.
He was rejected more than all the sons
of men.
He came unto His own, and His own
received Him not.
And here in this climactic end to His
life, when all the pressure of the world,
and not only that, but all the sin
of the world is placed upon Him.
And He knew what it was to be
defiled with your sin and my sin.
He said, Father, forgive them.
And God was able, because of that act,
to extend to you and I forgiveness this
morning.
And if we don't forgive, we will never
know what it is to experience revival.
In our own personal lives, we'll never know
what it is to experience revival corporately.
Unless we can go to a brother, and
we can go to a sister, and say,
Brother, I'm here to ask for forgiveness.
My attitude has been wrong towards you.
I've resented you.
I've criticized you.
And God, who is rich in mercy, has
forgiven me.
And I want to ask that you forgive
me, Brother.
And then we release, and we untie the
hands of God, where all the resources of
the throne of God now come down into
your life, and into my life, and into
our life corporately.
Because we've been willing to do what Jesus
Christ did for each and every one of
us.
Let's just close in prayer.
Father, we thank you this morning for Calvary.
Lord, the hymn writer said, Mercy there was
great, and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary.
Father, we thank you for uttering those words.
Words that have reverberated down through the centuries
to my life, to the lives of brothers
and sisters here this morning that you forgave
us.
We crucified you.
We rejected you.
And Father, we're recipients this morning of your
love.
Recipients of your grace.
Recipients of your mercy, your kindness, your patience.
That you were tenderhearted.
Lord, you displayed the glory of your Father.
Father, give grace today, we pray, to those
that are bound with bitterness.
Those that, Lord, even now as we speak,
Lord, that memory is still present in their
life.
The pain.
Father, give them the grace to release it.
Lord, let it go.
Just before we move on to the next
phase, whatever God is wanting to do, why
don't you just release it right now?
Really release it.
Never to reclaim it.
And then go to that person, write that
person, call that person.
Don't expose them.
Don't embarrass them.
Take whatever responsibility is yours and say, listen,
I've reacted wrongly.
I've held bitterness.
Maybe a parent.
Maybe a brother.
Maybe a sister.
Maybe a boss.
Maybe somebody that's saved.
Maybe somebody that's unsaved.
Maybe a neighbor.
The purpose in your heart, Lord, before this
day is over, I'm going to make sure
there's nothing between my soul and the Savior.