Transcript: Don't Waste Your Feelings on People Who Don't Value You - David Jeremiah

Some years ago, at the end of one of our services, a woman handed me a book that I had never heard of before. I thought it was a rather strange book to be giving your pastor, for the name on the book was The Sunflower. I took it home, and it stayed on my shelf in the back place for a long time. One day I was absentmindedly going through some of the books that I wanted to put away, and I came across this book, and I began to read it, and I couldn't put it down. The book written by Simon Weisenthal tells of the tragedy that he experienced in a concentration camp And the story that begins the book is one of the most awesome presentations of forgiving and forgiveness that I have ever read As he begins to write, he places himself one afternoon in a police concentration camp He had been assigned that day to clean rubbish out of a hospital That the Germans had improvised for wounded soldiers carried in from the eastern front A nurse walks over to him out of nowhere, takes his arm, orders him to come with her and leads him upstairs along a row of beds where wounded were to the side of a bed where a young soldier, his head wrapped in a yellow puss-stained bandage, was dying. He was maybe 22 years of age and an SS trooper. The soldier, whose name was Carl, reached out and grabbed Wiesenthal's hand as if he feared Wiesenthal would run away. He told him that he had to speak to a Jew. He had to confess the terrible things he had done so that he could be forgiven. Or he could not die in peace. What had he done? He was fighting in a Russian village where a few hundred Jewish people had been rounded up. His group was ordered to plant full cans of gasoline in a certain house. crammed people into that house until they could hardly move and then threw grenades through the windows to set the house on fire. The soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone who tried to jump out of a window. The young soldier continued his story to Wiesenthal. He said, Behind the window of the second floor, I saw a man with a small child in his arms. His clothing was a fire. By his side stood a woman, doubtless the mother of the child. With his free hand, the man covered the child's eyes. Then he jumped into the street. Seconds later, the mother followed. Then the young man said, we shot. Oh my God, I shall never forget it. It haunts me to this day. We shot them all. The young man paused and then said, I know that what I have told you is terrible. I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. I know that what I am asking is almost too much, but without your answer, I cannot die in peace. There was silence and the sun was high in the heaven. God was somewhere. But here, two strangers were all by themselves caught in the crisis of forgiveness. A member of the super race begging to be forgiven by a member of the condemned race. Weisenthal tells us what he did. I stood up, he said, and looked in his direction at his folded hands. At last I made up my mind, and without a word I left the room, and that German went to God unforgiven by me. Weisenthal survived the concentration camp, but he wondered for a long time whether he should have forgiven the soldier. and his book, The Sunflower, is the most interesting presentation of that you will ever read. For the first chapter is the story I have just told you and the rest of the book are essays written by people responding to the question, should he or should he have not forgiven him? Some people, and some of you perhaps here today, do not need a story like Weisenthal's to tell you that forgiving is difficult. You have felt the unfairness inside of yourself. You have known what it has been like to be hurt deeply. Lewis Smedes in his book on forgiveness tells of Jane Grashop. Jane and her husband Ralph had finally brought their three children through the crazy maze of adolescence and gently pushed them out of the house. Jane was glad they had flown the coop Finally she was going to have a life of her own Finally she was going to get back on her own track and make something of herself But a family tragedy stopped her Ralph's younger brother and his wife were killed in a car crash And left three children ages 8, 10, and 12 All of them left to Ralph and Jane Jane was too compassionate or too tired to disagree with taking them she took them in not for a month but for the duration. As for Ralph, he was gone a lot. A traveling man on the road making deals. Nine years grown by in this story. Two of the kids are gone. The only one still home is 17. His mind bent slightly out of shape but still functional. In a few years, Jane and Ralph would be home free. Not quite. Jane's body had gotten a little lumpy by this time. while Ralph's secretary, Sue, was a dazzler. Besides, Sue really understood his large male needs. How could he help falling in love? He and Sue knew that their love was too true to be denied and too powerful to be resisted. So Ralph divorced Jane and he married Sue. Ralph and Sue were very happy and they dunked their happiness in a warm religious froth. Their convivial accepting church celebrated their newfound joy with them. They were kept afloat in togetherness by their affirming Christian community. But Ralph needed one more stroke of acceptance. So he called Jane to ask her to forgive him. And he asked her to be glad with him that he was finally a happy man. And he said, I want you to bless me. And she said, I want you to go to hell. That's what the story says. How could she forgive and throw away the only power she had left, the power to hate, the energy of her contempt? Her contempt was her power and her dignity and her self-esteem. It was unfair to ask her to forgive. The least the louse deserved was a steady stream of her scorn and hate. when we ask people to forgive and when the Bible says we're to forgive are we being ripped off and betrayed there's a lot to be said for not forgiving you know an awful lot why should people cut and thrust their way through our lives and leave us bleeding in the road and then expect us to forgive everything and act as if nothing went wrong forgiving is an outrage against dues paying Americans And yet, here in this prayer, this awesome prayer, Jesus said, when you pray, pray like this. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And it almost appears at first blush as if Jesus has conditioned his forgiveness of us upon our forgiveness of others. What could this possibly mean? Well, it is interesting to me how quickly the Lord Jesus goes from give us to forgive us. Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. It is an interesting thing to me that we could make a case for this being the most important section of the prayer. I think I could prove that to you if I were an attorney. Because you see it's the only verse in all of the prayer that is repeated for emphasis at the end of the prayer. Look in your Bibles at Matthew chapter 6 and verse 12, where Jesus gives this request, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Notice that the prayer goes through the 13th verse and it ends. And then when you get to verse 14, Jesus returns to this particular part of the prayer. And he says, for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Of all the verses in the prayer, of all the sections of the prayer, this is the only one that Jesus returns to for emphasis. It's as if he is saying to us, please don't miss this. This is critical. In fact, someone has said, if you get your arms around this, you can learn how to get along with everybody all the time. What an awesome thought. The first thing I note as I look at this part of the Lord's Prayer is that it at least it puts into our computers each day a consciousness of sin. For we're not talking about overspending here when the word uses debt. For it is translated elsewhere as trespasses and in Luke the prayer says forgive us our sins. Jesus is not talking about overspending He's talking about those who sin against us Those who do evil things He's talking about the evil in the world And if nothing else, when we pray this prayer every day It's a good thing for us to remember that we live in a fallen world, don't we? We live in a world that is filled with sin and debt and trespasses And we are all impacted by it We are all touched by it in some way You cannot go through a week without feeling the sting of the evil in our world When I first began to preach In the early church that I pastored One of the men in our church gave me a book by Carl Menninger The book was written in 1973 And I will never forget one little section of the book Where Carl Menninger said he had done a survey Of the historical documents of the United States And that not one single mention have been made of sin Since Ike made the mention of it In his inaugural address quoting Abraham Lincoln saying something about the fact that we need to confess our sins and our trespasses to God. Menninger said from that moment until 1973, which was 20 years, there had not been one mention of sin in any of the public documents of our nation. And I dare say it hasn't gotten better since 1973. The only time we hear about sin now is when it being used to describe the people who should be talking about sin So at least if nothing else happens when we pray this prayer we awake to the realization that is a good realization for all of us That we live in a fallen world, but this is not about the consciousness of sin, this is about the confession of it. Jesus said When you pray, pray like this Forgive us our debts As we forgive our debtors And then in Matthew 6, 14 and 15 He gives a commentary The idea that is before us is that When we seek forgiveness for our own sin against God For which we are indebted That we are to forgive those who have sinned against us This is pretty heady stuff. Our relationship with the Lord cannot be right until our relationship with others is made right. In fact, Jesus has intimated at this very thing back in the fifth chapter of Matthew when he says in verses 23 and 24, Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that thy brother has ought against thee, leave your gift at the altar. That's your God relationship. forget about your God relationship for a minute and go get your person relationship straightened out then come back and get your God relationship right. The Talmud which is the rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament says he who is indulgent toward others faults will be mercifully dealt with by the supreme judge himself. And isn't it interesting that even later in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 43 we read you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor, hate your enemy But I say to you love your enemy bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be the sons of your father Jesus says if you want to be known as a god child walk around with the spirit of forgiveness in your heart because that gives you away And in ephesians chapter 4 and verse 32 Paul wrote to the ephesian believers and he says we're to forgive even as god for christ's sake has forgiven us That's the standard Proverbs 19.11 says that it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression. There's something very special about a person who learns about forgiveness. But if Jesus included it in his prayer and commented on it after his prayer, he illustrated it masterfully with the story he told in Matthew 18. This is a familiar story to us. If you want to follow in your Bibles, you can turn to the 18th chapter of Matthew. kind of follow along as I review the story. Actually, the story itself begins in the 23rd verse. This provides us a final illustration to help us understand what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. The text, beginning at verse 15, deals with the issue of forgiveness. But in verse 21, Peter says, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him, Until seven times, and Jesus said, I say not unto you until seven times, but until seventy times seven. Indefinitely, infinitively, unendingly forgive. Then he tells this story in verse 23. He says, there's a kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants. And when he has begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. Now I want to stop there for just a moment. I want to tell you how much ten thousand talents is. 10,000 talents is so much money that it's hard for us even to conceive. For example, one talent could be worth about 6,000 days' work. So it would take this man 19 years working six days a week to earn one talent. And he owed 10,000 of them. How could a servant ever get in that kind of trouble? But he did. I don't know if he was embezzling or made bad investments, but he was in terrible, terrible straits. He had nothing with which to pay. If it is hard to believe how he got in that kind of trouble, how stupid he was to get in that kind of trouble, the thing that is even more difficult for us to comprehend is what he said when he was brought before the king. The servant fell down and worshipped the king and he said, Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. And when we know how much he owed and we hear what he says, we almost want to laugh out loud. Sure. Right. That's the stupidest thing I ever read. He would have to live 190 years and put every dime he ever earned into his debt. This man was a fool no matter how you look at it. And so we're filled with angry responses that he would do this and respond this way. Well, you know the story. The Lord decides that he can't pay. The debt is too great. So he says, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to forgive you all. Now, let's stop for a moment. Make sure we have the cast straight. Who does the king represent? God. And who is the servant? All of us. We owed a debt we could not pay, and he forgave. How could he forgive a debt as astronomical as that? How could he forgive a debt that was so great that the only way he could cope with the greatness of it was to send his own son to the cross and let him die? now the scripture says in the story that once the servant was forgiven he went out and some of those who owed him money came to him and while their sum is a paltry sum in comparison to that which he had been forgiven it was a great deal to those who owed it and they came and said we can't pay would you forgive us and the bible says that the one who had been forgiven so much by the king, grabbed hold of them by the throat and demanded that they pay him everything they owe him. And when the other servants saw what happened, they went and told the king and the king was furious. And the Bible says that the Lord delivered him to the inquisitors. He brought him in and he was thrown in jail. And then the scripture says, and listen carefully, here's the application. so my heavenly father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses and there's the same word do you get that do you understand what jesus is saying in matthew chapter 6 verses 14 and 15 in matthew chapter 18 in the story what jesus is saying is We are to forgive others what they owe us because we ourselves have been forgiven so much. And if we will not forgive them, then we will never experience the joy of the forgiveness which is ours. Our forgiveness of others is conditioned upon God's forgiveness of us. And he has forgiven so much. How could there be anything that would be too great that would slip out from underneath the category of God's forgiveness? Now, I have written down in my notes next to this passage in Matthew chapter six, four things. And I want to just run them by you quickly, because this is what this passage teaches. Number one, it teaches us that we're to forgive because we are forgiven. Number two, it teaches us we're to forgive just as we are forgiven. Freely, fully, unconditionally. Number three, we are to forgive that we might be forgiven. That's the gist of the passage. And number four, we're to forgive before we need to be forgiven. Now before we go any further to make application of this to your life and mine, let me ask this question. What is going on here? How can our forgiveness of others in any way condition God's forgiveness of us? Does that not make salvation a work? Does it not sound as if that in order for me to earn God's forgiveness, I have to go out and find everybody who has anything against me and forgive them? Does that not sound as if we have moved away from grace and faith and justification and now slipped back into a salvation by works? I don't think so How many of you know that there are two kinds of forgiveness? How many of you know that when you accepted the lord jesus christ as your savior when he came to live within your heart at that very moment when you made that decision At that moment there was something that happened in the court of heaven and you were judicially forgiven The blood of jesus christ god's son was applied to your account your sins were remitted and taken away, and you then, before God, were viewed as you are viewed now, clean and whole and forgiven. When God in heaven looks at your account and he sees all that you have ever done, over it is stamped, paid in full, forgiven, absolutely, completely forgiven, judicially free. Hmm. message, prayer, and personal relationships. Friends, there's not anything outside of salvation that's more wonderful than to forgive and be forgiven. The Lord Jesus gives us a lot of information about that, not only in the Lord's Prayer, but in some of the illustrations that he used in his parables. It's a terrible thing to live your whole life with an unforgiving spirit. as many have said, when you refuse to forgive, you don't hurt the person you don't forgive that much. You hurt yourself. Oftentimes when you refuse to forgive, the person you should be forgiving doesn't even know they should be forgiven. But you're torturing yourself by not forgiving someone who may have hurt you. The Bible says, as God has forgiven us for Christ's sake, we can forgive others. Out of the reservoir of his forgiveness, we can forgive other people. I hope you learn that lesson, put it into practice, maybe today, as a result of being in the Turning Point classroom, studying the Bible together with me. We want you to know there's a book that you can get that contains everything we've said in this series and much more. It's called Prayer of the Great Adventure. It's a Multnomah Press book. It's 265 pages. and you can get this book from Turning Point by going to davidjeremiah.org. There is also a study guide you can get at that particular place and there a whole series of CDs you can get in a CD package There is another resource you can get in a different way This one is called Answers to Questions About Prayer It a brand new answer book that we have just released from Turning Point. We'd love to send you a copy of this 146-page hardcover book, and we'll do it for a gift of any size during the month of July. Send your gift, and then just say, Dr. J, please send me the book on prayer, and you will get it right away. Well, we're ready to begin the last part of this prayer and personal relationships message. Let's go to Matthew 6, 12, and this is Friday, and this is Turning Point. The idea that is before us is that when we seek forgiveness for our own sin against God, for which we are indebted, that we are to forgive those who have sinned against us. This is pretty heady stuff. Our relationship with the Lord cannot be right until our relationship with others is made right. In fact, Jesus has intimated at this very thing back in the fifth chapter of Matthew when he says in verses 23 and 24, therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there, remember that thy brother has ought against thee, leave your gift at the altar. That's your God relationship. Forget about your God relationship for a minute and go get your person relationship straightened out. Then come back and get your God relationship right. The Talmud, which is the rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament, says, he who is indulgent toward others' faults will be mercifully dealt with by the Supreme Judge himself. And isn't it interesting that even later in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 43, we read, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor, hate your enemy, But I say to you love your enemy bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be the sons of your father Jesus says if you want to be known as a god child walk around with a spirit of forgiveness in your heart because that gives you away And in ephesians chapter 4 and verse 32 Paul wrote to the ephesian believers and he says we're to forgive even as god for christ's sake has forgiven us That's the standard Proverbs 19.11 says that it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression. There's something very special about a person who learns about forgiveness. But if Jesus included it in his prayer and commented on it after his prayer, he illustrated it masterfully with the story he told in Matthew 18. This is a familiar story to us. If you want to follow in your Bibles, you can turn to the 18th chapter of Matthew. Kind of follow along as I review the story. Actually, the story itself begins in the 23rd verse. This provides us a final illustration to help us understand what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. The text, beginning at verse 15, deals with the issue of forgiveness. But in verse 21, Peter says, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times, and Jesus said, I say not unto you until seven times, but until 70 times seven. Indefinitely, infinitively, unendingly forgive. Then he tells a story in verse 23. He says, there's a kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants. And when he has begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him 10,000 talents. Now I want to stop there for just a moment. I want to tell you how much 10,000 talents is. 10,000 talents is so much money that it's hard for us even to conceive. For example, one talent could be worth about 6,000 days work. So it would take this man 19 years working six days a week to earn one talent. And he owed 10,000 of them. How could a servant ever get in that kind of trouble? But he did. I don't know if he was embezzling or made bad investments, but he was in terrible, terrible straits. He had nothing with which to pay. If it is hard to believe how he got in that kind of trouble, how stupid he was to get in that kind of trouble, the thing that is even more difficult for us to comprehend is what he said when he was brought before the king. The servant fell down and worshipped the king and he said, Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. And when we know how much he owed and we hear what he says, we almost want to laugh out loud. Sure. Right. That's the stupidest thing I ever read. He would have to live 190 years and put every dime he ever earned into his debt. This man was a fool, no matter how you look at it. And so we're filled with angry responses that he would do this and respond this way. Well, you know the story. The Lord decides that he can't pay. The debt is too great. So he says, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to forgive you all. Now, let's stop for a moment. Make sure we have a cast straight. Who does the king represent? God. And who is the servant? All of us. We owed a debt we could not pay, and he forgave. How could he forgive a debt as astronomical as that? How could he forgive a debt that was so great that the only way he could cope with the greatness of it was to send his own son to the cross and let him die? now the scripture says in the story that once the servant was forgiven he went out and some of those who owed him money came to him and while their sum is a paltry sum in comparison to that which he had been forgiven it was a great deal to those who owed it and they came and said we can't pay would you forgive us and the bible says that the one who had been forgiven so much by the king grabbed hold of them by the throat and demanded that they pay him everything they owe him. And when the other servants saw what happened they went and told the king. And the king was furious. And the Bible says that the Lord delivered him to the inquisitors. He brought him in and he was thrown in jail. And then the scripture says and listen carefully here's the application. So my heavenly father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. And there's the same word. Do you get that? Do you understand what Jesus is saying? In Matthew chapter 6 verses 14 and 15, in Matthew chapter 18 in the story, what Jesus is saying is we are to forgive others what they owe us because we ourselves have been forgiven so much. And if we will not forgive them, then we will never experience the joy of the forgiveness, which is ours. Our forgiveness of others is conditioned upon God's forgiveness of us. And he has forgiven so much. How could there be anything that would be too great that would slip out from underneath the category of God's forgiveness? Now, I have written down in my notes next to this passage in Matthew chapter 6, four things. And I want to just run them by you quickly because this is what this passage teaches. Number one, it teaches us that we're to forgive because we are forgiven. Number two, it teaches us we're to forgive just as we are forgiven, freely, fully, unconditionally. Number three, we are to forgive that we might be forgiven. That's the gist of the passage. and number four, we're to forgive before we need to be forgiven. Now before we go any further to make application of this to your life and mine, let me ask this question. What is going on here? How can our forgiveness of others in any way condition God's forgiveness of us? Does that not make salvation a work? Does it not sound as if that in order for me to earn God's forgiveness, I have to go out and find everybody who has anything against me and forgive them? Does that not sound as if we have moved away from grace and faith and justification and now slipped back into a salvation by works? I don't think so. How many of you know that there are two kinds of forgiveness? How many of you know that when you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, when he came to live within your heart, at that very moment when you made that decision, at that moment there was something that happened in the court of heaven and you were judicially forgiven. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, was applied to your account. Your sins were remitted and taken away. And you then, before God, were viewed as you are viewed now. Clean and whole and forgiven. When God in heaven looks at your account and he sees all that you have ever done, over it is stamped, paid in full, forgiven, absolutely, completely forgiven, judicially free. Can I get a witness? How many of you are glad for that? Isn't that good news? And nothing can change that. Nothing. But there's a kind of relational forgiveness that's locked into 1 John 1, 9 and John chapter 13, where we're told the story of our Lord washing the feet of the disciples. Do you remember that wonderful story? And the disciples understood this illustration. It was to illustrate the fact that if you've been washed, you are clean every whit. That's your salvation. But every day when you walk on the earth your feet get dirty and once in a while they need to be washed and that's relational cleansing You can't ever fall out of judicial forgiveness, but you can sure fall out of relational forgiveness. Can't you? The best story I know to tell you to help you understand that is this story out of my own life When I was a teenager my father had a chrysler Beautiful chrysler the nicest car you ever owned. He was a poor preacher didn't have a lot of new cars but this was a new car and he was really proud of it a Chrysler Newport never forget it that's when those cars were big old cars you know great big old cars I was not yet at the age of driving but I was getting close and I thought I was ready and one day when my dad was gone and my mother was gone they had gone on a trip someplace he had left the keys to the car on the table and I was home alone and I thought why not why not and young people if you're listening to me Listen to the whole story because I got in a lot of trouble. I want you to know this. All right. I drove this car where I lived in Ohio, out in Cedarville. We didn't have a lot of major highways or paved roads. We had a lot of gravel roads that went out into the country. And I figured I didn't want to get in a well-traveled place where somebody would see me. So I went out on a gravel road. And I was testing out this car, man, and its power. And it was awesome. And it was kind of dusty because of the dust. All of a sudden, I looked up and some farmer in his farm truck was coming the other way. And he either didn't see me or he didn't care. because he took his half out of the middle. And the next thing I know, that wonderful Chrysler was in the ditch on the side of the road. The front of it was all messed in and wrinkled up and I was sick I knew I was in big trouble And pretty soon a farmer came along and he had a tractor and he pulled me out Somehow I got that car home I think if I remember right I could only turn left. I had to keep turning because I couldn't turn the other way. I got the car home and I put it in the driveway and then I had to wait. Oh, the awesomeness of the wait. Would God he would have come home when I did. But several hours later, my father came home and I'll never forget it. I was looking through the window in my bedroom watching. My dad walked out. He just stood there like frozen for a few minutes. And then he walked in and he walked by me and he said, David, did you do that? I said, yes, sir. I did. I expected some bad things to happen. He didn't say a word. I'm not kidding you. I was shocked. He didn't say a word. He just shook his head and walked into the bedroom, left me sitting there. He didn't say a word at dinner. He didn't say a word at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner the next night. Two days passed, not a word. Suddenly he hit me. This is my fault. So I went to his office. He was the president of the college there. And I knocked on the door and he looked. He was kind of surprised. I said, can I talk with you? He said, yeah. I said, Dad, I'm really sick about what I did. I was deceitful and I was wrong. And I know we don't have the money to be dealing with this. I disappointed you. I ruined our trust. And I guess what I want to say is I'm sorry and will you forgive me? He got up and came around from the desk and put his arms around me and hugged me. And he said, David, you are forgiven. And you will pay for the car. Now, the question I want to ask you is this. When I was experiencing the silence of those days, was I still my father's son? Was I? He may have had thoughts about that, but was I still, I mean, judicially, was I my father's son? Was I? I was judicially forgiven, but was I relationally forgiven? No. And what I had to do is go and get it right now. Here's what Jesus is saying. Listen up. He's saying, if we as believers don't deal with the forgiveness issues in our lives with other people, we will not be able to go to God and receive the relational forgiveness that we seek when we get our feet dirty walking on this earth. It will get in the way. It will be very hard for us to say, Lord, forgive me for what I've done, because immediately we'd be reminded of those who are seeking that same thing from us. God wants us to take his forgiveness given to us and pass it out to those who need it in our lives. And Lewis Smead says Jesus grabs the hardest trick in the bag. Forgiving. And he says we have to perform it or we're out in the cold. Way out in the boondocks of the unforgiven cold. He makes us feel like the miller's daughter who was told that if she didn't spin gold out of a pile of straw before morning she would lose her head. And no rumple still skin is going to come and spin forgiving out of our straw hearts. And Jesus is tough on us because Jesus knows he knows that it is a matter of incongruity to receive his forgiveness and not offer it to others. So the only way you can heal the pain of the hurt that will not heal itself is to forgive the person who hurt you. forgiving stops the reruns have you noticed forgiving heals your memory and changes your memory's vision when you release the wrongdoer from the wrong you cut a malignant tumor out of your life you set a prisoner free and then you discover the prisoner you set free was you American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr saw this after World War II and he said we must finally be reconciled with our foe, lest we both perish in the vicious circle of hatred. End of quote. So you say, Pastor Jeremiah, that's great, and I understand what you're saying, but how does this work? How do we go about doing this? I just want to say three or four things to you that I think are helpful. There are four stages, basically, that you go through. First of all, when you're trying to figure out how to deal with forgiveness and the act of forgiveness, the first stage you go through is the stage of hurt, isn't it? I mean, it hurts when somebody causes you pain so deep and unfair that you cannot forget it. You are pushed into the stage of hurting stage. Number one of forgiveness, because you see, if you don't hurt, you can't really deal with forgiveness. How many of you know people that are flippant in their forgiveness? I forgive you. I forgive you. They don't know what forgiveness is all about. It's just kind of a, you know, a vocal pause. But forgiveness starts with the feeling of the pain. And then after hurt, I'll be honest, comes hatred. You cannot shake the memory of how much you were hurt and you cannot wish your memory well. And you sometimes want the person who hurt you to suffer like you are suffering. And whether you like to admit or not as a Christian, you go through the process of hate and you start making up speeches you'd like to give if you have the chance. And you construct little scenarios where they're walking along the highway on a dark night and you're driving along and no one's around and there's your chance. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. You go through this whole thing. Hatred. And then comes stage three. Healing. You're given As someone said the magic eyes To see the person who hurt you in a whole new light Your memory is healed and you turn back the flow of pain And you're free and you say I feel the hurt I've experienced the hate but by the grace of God I forgive And then the last stage is the coming together again And sometimes that person gets back into your life Sometimes that person can't come back into your life and you have to be healed all by yourself But that's the process And that's what jesus is teaching He's saying every day when you pray Pray like this Forgive us our debts lord As we forgive our debtors Lord As we forgive those Who have hurt us We accept the forgiveness you have offered to us Remember I said there were four things. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We forgive just as we have been forgiven. Remember that? Then I didn't give you the fourth one. The fourth one is we forgive before we need to be forgiven. And I never thought about that before. But if we pray this prayer every day, isn't that true? Every day we get up and we pray, Lord, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, give us this day our daily bread. You know we need our daily bread, Lord. And Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Present tense. Lord, sometime today, somebody's going to do something that will be mean and nasty and hurtful. Create within me a forgiving heart, a forgiving spirit. And then try this one on. You walk out of your prayer closet and you're not out on the highway very long before somebody does it. I mean, they do it. and they look at you, and before they can speak, you say, I've already forgiven you. You what? Yes, I did it this morning. You did what? When I was praying this morning before I got out on the highway, I forgave you. I didn't do it until five minutes ago, I know, but I forgave you ahead of time. You're weird. But can you imagine that? Can you imagine just kind of every day creating within yourself that kind of a spirit? forgiveness before you need to be forgiven, before you need to offer it. Jesus said that those who live by God's forgiveness must imitate it, and that our only hope is that we will come to grips with this truth, that we cannot hold the faults against others when our faults have not been held against us. Our forgiveness is conditioned upon the forgiveness that we have received. It is very seldom that a poet captures the essence of a passage of scripture. I think they used to write poetry like that a lot more in days past than we do now. But of all the passages I have taught, here is a poetic reminder that is very close to the heart of its truth. Forgive our sins as we forgive. You taught us, Lord, to pray. but you alone can grant us grace to live the words we say. How can your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart that broods on wrongs and will not let old bitterness depart? In blazing light, your cross reveals the truth we dimly knew, how small the debts men owe to us, how great our debt to you. That's it. The secret, the real secret of forgiving others is the cross of Jesus Christ. Whenever you're feeling like it's too big, too hard, too tough, too awful to forgive, go to the cross. And remember that there was a day in order that we might be forgiven that the Son of God hung there between heaven and earth and poured out his life's blood for us and forgave us. of all our debts. And now in the light of that and in the power of that and in the spirit of that, we can turn to others and say, you are forgiven. I forgive you. Well, amen. Amen. I think this might be the most powerful part of the prayer. And I think I've heard more about this part of the prayer than any other part. simply because when people get a hold of the concept of this particular section and begin to put into practice the beautiful experience of forgiving and being forgiven, everything in life changes. I hope that will be true for you as you forgive those who need to be forgiven and accept the forgiveness of others. Well, we'll take a break for the weekend. When we come back, we're going to talk about prayer and protection.