Is there anybody you just can’t get along with let’s Dive Right In all right James I started with that line because today’s thoughts are going to center around forgiveness yeah and there are a lot of people that make it hard on us there are people that we don’t necessarily like the personalities
Clash with ours or have different ideologies and in all of that we see the room the the arena in which conflict comes now I’m going to argue that the only Arena where you avoid conflict is when we all Center our relationship with Jesus at the heart of it yes but when we
Get away from him and his commands we have all kinds of room for trouble to exist and so I’m going to start by reading a verse two sure for you Romans 138 it says do not owe one anything except to love one another the one who loves another has fulfilled the law so
Talk to me about forgiveness yeah well you know there’s a lot of stuff but before I go into this conversation I want to go to a verse in Luke 92325 because I think we have to have the platform to understand to navigate a conversation of forgiveness and if you
Fail to understand what we should stand on then it’s really easy to get offended in a conversation about forgiveness but it says uh Luke 9: 23-2 he says then he said to them and said to all of them if anyone wants to follow after me let him
Deny himself take up his cross daily and follow me for whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life because of me will save it for what does it benefit someone if they gains the whole world and yet loses or forfeits himself and what is this saying
Is Jesus says if you really want to live for me and live with me you need to get up on your cross and what happens a lot of times in conversations over offenses is we’re not getting up on the cross we’re coming and sitting down with our
Hands out ready to fight or the other person is just being defensive you know the whole time and and so we have to make sure that every Christian who’s watching this podcast and we’re going to go into this conversation get on the cross because if you don’t uh you’re not
Going to come to the conclusion in the end properly so Galatians maybe has a lot of uh subtle meanings doesn’t it when it says I’ve been crucified with Christ nevertheless I live and you’re saying that we should be imitating that life of uh surrender a in which we say
Look I just give it for for others and so a lot of these areas in this Arena where struggles come where we end up with conflicts there they are things that are not necessarily or at least they are artificially related to our relationship to Christ rather than truly
Related to it if I could really just if I could capture the Heart of Jesus in our generation there are a lot of things that the church today argues over and divides over yeah and struggles with forgiving one another over that Jesus would say what in the world are you
Doing right well I mean if we skip over to Matthew 18 for a moment let’s go there real quickly you know he he lays down uh this order and is that if if your brother sins against you go to him right and work it out but we kind of
Kind of re um write that scripture and it’s not if your brother sins against you because sin would imply that he violated a commandment of God well we instead interpret it and say if they break if he breaks one of your rules your rules I want I want to highlight
That word right your rules and in fact if you look at Jesus’s Ministry he broke a lot of rules in fact this is a humbling statement Jesus didn’t get crucified because he broke God’s laws he got crucified because he broke our laws and they hated him for him in fact you
Remember in John after he raised Lazarus from the dead they plotted to kill him and he they literally say something to this effect it’s not a direct quote he’s going to ruin our way of life yeah you know um they got mad at him because he wouldn’t wash their hands he calls them
Out saying hey you guys will do this rule that you focus on but neglect honoring your parents you know and so he he went after rules that got in the way of them obeying God and so we had to be real careful if I’m getting offended over something that there’s not really a
Commandment for and I’m getting angry then what am I what am I doing what am I doing and that’s what we’re doing so that the parable that Jesus tells you’re right there Matthew 18: 21-35 it’s right after this whole theme where somebody where Peter says if how many times do I
Forgive my brother if he sins against me say seven enough and Jesus says 7 time 70 that’s what you all you were referring to right after that he tells this Parable and he tells this Parable to support that truth he then tells the parable about a guy who owes a bunch of
Money he goes before the de the person that he’s indebted to and the guy says throw him in jail yeah and the servant begs and says please please I’ll do every just don’t don’t do this please just give me more time and the man has compassion the king the ruler has
Compassion over him and then he says I’ll just forgive you and so the guy then goes out to someone who owes him a lesser amount of money and takes him basically by the throat and says pay me back and the guy begs and he goes no and
He has him thrown into prison right horrible horrible story well in the end what happens is that the servant the the the king or the ruler finds out about it and brings that servant back in and says why did you do that I look what I
Forgave you I forgave you of a sum of money that was the equivalent of you could never repay it and and you basically thrown this guy in jail over a day’s wage or less what in the world and so he throws him in prison that’s right and when you consider that you realize
The statement of Jesus it really comes to Bear you remember in the model prayer Jesus said forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors yes it’s the only the only statement out of the model prayer that Jesus further uh uh defines is that and he says if you do not
Forgive your brother from the heart neither will I forgive you yes yes and verse 35 says so also my heavenly father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from the heart so he kind of restates what you’re quoting from the prayer that’s right and
And you put all that together and you realize forgiveness is a serious thing because it’s and he’s really TR I think the the contrast here James the the guy that owes so much money that it’s it’s billions of dollars compared to a day’s wage let’s just put it like that and
He’s saying any conflict you have with a with a person on earth is basically that valuable compared to how God has forgiven you so whenever somebody offends you here you just think about how much you’ve been forgiven and suck it up yes now here here’s the thing is
That can you tell me how many times you sinned against God how many times have you s against God M good oh my goodness today yeah today yeah can can you what’s not even close what’s the number okay can you think of someone and then start thinking about all the things they did
To you yeah yeah well well I hear what you’re saying you see what I’m saying we and I’m not saying you can think of everything but we do a better job at keeping track of people’s offenses towards us but we won’t keep track of our offenses to God yeah okay and that’s
Kind of what this is calling out is is because if you know the math of how much he owed the guy who who represents God it’s an outrageous it’s like saying I owe a zillion billion jillion dollars it’s not even comprehendable amount at that time period and then the guy’s
Saying well don’t worry about it and then I go out and I strangle someone cuz owes me like $1,000 yeah and it’s like wait you just got forgiven a zillion billion dollars you can’t let go of a thousand and really what he’s saying look I gave you in fact if you want to
Think you know what Jesus would have preferred for this Parable to turn out is the man is for given this huge sum of money and he’s so grateful and thankful that he no longer owes this much money anymore and he goes out to all the people who owe him anything and he says
Guys don’t worry about paying me anything because I’ve been forgiven given okay but instead he gets the exact opposite the guy goes out and he wants to still get paid what he’s what he’s owed not learning the lesson from his gracious Master to let go of those
Things wow well and and this again just drives home the reality that God places tremendous value on forgiveness it is a it is a Godly trait yeah a Godly trait I and I’ve I’ve often said that I believe one of the primary reasons that the Earth was created and
This is just a thought in my heart I can’t necessarily prove this by pointing to any one verse but I think the exercise of Earth being created is largely circles around this was an environment this was the perfect little kind of Petri dis experiment where God could show all that has ever
Been created and I’m talking now about things created beyond heaven and earth uh things that are in the dwelling place of God angels and principalities and powers in heavly places that’s Ephesians 1 through3 I think that this is the the environment to where God can say I’m
Going to show you how I’m different from every other being yeah it’s in and it’s in forgiveness yeah in fact if if the church if there’s one thing the church is supposed to be known for it is forgiveness and whenever people see a church and there’s all these offenses
Going on and we’re yelling at each other and all these things we do not know who Jesus Christ is there’s what was the main lesson that Jesus taught the world I will die for you I will forgive you and if the church is hostile and mean and unforgiving we have not learned the
Lesson of the penalty of our sin and that it’s been washed away with and what’s scared about this Parable if we don’t get it how did it end for that man what he forgave he unforgive and God says if you don’t forgive others then I won’t forgive you yeah and again it
Makes us Godlike um it it it is a Godly trait and and so that’s why when you see someone who refuses to forgive you know who their father is yeah and so here’s the thing you know in in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 it talks about don’t be
Ignorant of the schemes of the devil in that context it’s kind of going back to um the immoral brother of chapter 5 of First Corinthians and the church is having a hard time receiving them back or knowing what to do and and Paul’s really talking about forgiveness in this
Text the scheme of the devil one of his main tricks on the church is he tries to get the church to get caught up in unforgiveness so here’s what he’s trying to do Jesus wants us to get on our cross daily Satan wants us to get off of our
Cross and put others on it you know that’s what he’s really trying to do which is what they did to Stephen remember when he was stoned Stephen got on his cross that day and they put him on him on it and the church sometimes acts like the people picking up the
Rocks Stony Sten instead of acting like Sten so there you’ve got Hebrews chap 12 don’t you which is the idea that your go goal is to pursue peace with everyone yeah in fact yeah Hebrews 12 uh let me read this starting verse 14 says pursue peace with everyone and Holiness uh
Without it no one will see the Lord now that’s a big statement that’s huge so we better have peace or I’m not going to get to see the Lord verse 15 make sure that no one falls short of the grace of God and notice this and that no root of
Bitterness Springs up causing trouble and defiling many bitterness you know means like it’s a bad taste in your mouth it’s it’s it’s like and and be honest with you when Peter not Peter when stevenh was being uh killed and murdered was he acting bitter in that moment towards hostility
He was not bitter instead he extended what hope and forgiveness for those individuals and standing among them was Saul who later became Paul mhm and I guarantee you he remembered that Steven didn’t die the same way as other people he didn’t get bitter and hateful towards
The end and started cussing at the crowd he loved him to the end I bet he never saw that before yeah yeah it’s it’s so amazing we see it displayed in so many people we we see it in even though we don’t have record of M M much of it or
Most of it we see in the martyrs and stepen is emblematic of it just a spirit of of forgiveness and a humility that has a total disconnect from this world which makes it makes us enemies of the World by the way yeah and it uh also
Shows a Unity that they had that they had a Unity through this forgiveness and through this purpose that they had adopted because of their relationship with Christ that separated them from the world it made them a fraternity a Brotherhood of uh of people that lived by a whole different rule a whole
Different whole different path whole different pattern and and because they follow the rules of Christ in fact there’s a great passage that says that our citizenship is in heaven and the word citizenship is not a passport citizenship is like when when I was in high school they used to have
Citizenship classes and it taught you the rules of the land yeah and so it went through the Constitution and it went through the rules and the laws and how you how you are to act as a citizen what is the rules what are the laws by
Which we live and so when he says our citizenship is in heaven he’s saying the rules by which we live come straight from Heaven well James as you’ve already said that’s completely different from the rules that are on Earth yeah and so it’s contrasted in James James says that
There is the way of the world and that there is the way of of Eternity the spiritual path and or the Heavenly one and he’s saying that this heavenly wisdom comes from above where Earthly wisdom is From Below yeah there’s the Divide yes and there’s why we can’t have
Unity and there’s why politics ideology culture ethnicity those things will always be divisive divisive in our in the world yeah by Nature because they all have different root rules and the only way to have Unity is to have Christ at the center yeah uh so
I want to carry us back to where you kind of left off and that is the the church struggles Christians struggle to have Unity oftentimes and it’s be not because the rules of God aren’t clear it’s because they have exchanged the rules of God for
The rules of man and so they divide and fight and bicker and have this poisonous bitterness not because God’s laws divide them but because they made their own laws yes and What’s So Scary is uh if you go to Ephesians chapter 4 there’s I I believe there’s an order here that if
You don’t deal with offenses correctly you go through this natural order and it says notice it says in verse 31 let all bitterness anger and wrath shouting and slander be removed from you along with malice I believe there’s an order when you get offended you become bitter and
Then from bitterness you become angry and from anger you become wrathful and you start shouting and you do slander and then you you know false accusations you know through malice come out but the problem is Mike is nine times out of 10 the majority of the time we’re we’re
Getting bitter over things that have nothing to do with God yes that that’s what drives me crazy I wish I could say that when I see this happening it’s because someone violated the Commandment of God but the majority of time that I see this it’s because you did something
That broke one of the rules one of your one of their rules yeah one of my rules one of their rules and Jesus did this all the time let me give you an example of I encountered this in college and I just give me a few moments here I had a
Good friend of mine he uh he was real big on respect and he had his own rules for respect and one of his rules on how to be respected was his girlfriend can only hug him and her family and if any guy walks up and gives his girlfriend a
Hug then we have a problem so one day at church he was with his girlfriend and some friends from the college were there and they ran up to her and they gave her a hug and he grabs him and this is on the church parking lot grabs him and
Throws him to the the concrete and he says don’t you touch my woman now step back did the guy who just gave that girl a hug who’s not his wife commit a sin no did anyone sin in this moment yes the guy that threw him to the ground the guy
That threw why because he was because within seconds he went through all this he went straight to bitterness anger wrath shouting slander and and he had some words to say to this guy but the guy didn’t break he didn’t sin he didn’t sin but this guy he fell into sin the
Majority of our fights and our arguments are like that yeah I broke your rule so you’re upset I didn’t break God’s rule like I said earlier at the very beginning of this podcast we put Jesus on the cross not because he broke any of God’s rules he’s sinless it’s because he
Broke our rules can we even apply that even to churches and struggles they have with what is both a combination of Theology and then also the the church the rules of that particular Church yes so there are ways we can interpret theology we say well I know the Bible
Doesn’t say you can’t do that or can do that but we’re going to do it or not do it anyway like like my friend he would go to text to use the term respect or treat others the way you want to be treated boy if you know just because you
Should treat others the way you should be treated you don’t necessarily have to expect they’re going to treat you the same okay that’s why Jesus gave us a new commandment remember in in John 13:34 he says a new commandment I give you love one another as what as I have loved you
So the standard is Jesus because if I went by my friend’s standard I would have to have gone to him and says can you write out all your rules of respect yeah because I don’t know what they are yeah yeah you know and so we we make it
Complicated in fact in first John chapter 5 it says his Commandments are not burdensome but we make them because we add to them and in the church what we’ve done is maybe we’ve taken some good ideas but we’ve added them to the Commandments of the Lord and we’ve made
Them law like I know some people uh right now that if you were to start up the worship service with communion and not do an opening prayer you just offended that brother yeah but then you go to scripture okay but how did I offend you where’s the order of worship
In the book is it in the book of Acts well no but you you’re always supposed to start off uh the service with the opening prayer but communion points us to Christ is that a wrong is that a wrong thing right and and of course this this person would be upset because you
Violated one of the rules right but it’s not it’s not God’s rule it’s it’s your rule and you’re becoming bitter and angry right now because we did something that broke that rule and there’s the division and so division usually again as we started the podcast with division comes not because we’re following
Closely to scripture yeah uh often times it’s oftentimes because we have created our own rules that then create the the hot bed the the grounds upon which we can have that division occurs so the that’s why studying the scripture is so important and that’s why churches that
Are built upon the idea that here we’re going to follow the word word and the word only because that’s Christ we’re going to follow Christ and Christ only and when we do that then there is room for varying opinions and we will we learn not to be offended by someone
Else’s opinions yes and and the thing is in a perfect world if we ever do get offended it should be over that someone violated a law of God but even then when that happens how do we treat our enemies we love them well that’s also how we
Treat our neighbor so it doesn’t matter if you’re my neighbor or my enemy I’m supposed to love you and pray for you I’m supposed to get up on the cross for you in fact 1 John 3:16 Says because he died for us we are to give up our lives
For one another so we’re supposed to be sacrificial I know you did that and it hurt me but I’m going to die for you I’m willing to die for you I’m willing to suffer through this but here’s a here’s a harsh reality sometimes there’s offenses that are legitimate that can’t
Be reconciled one the person is unwilling to sit down with you and you can’t even follow the instructions that Jesus said go to them they’re like I’m not going to sit down with you get away from me and and and sometimes they die and you’re not able to work it out so so
What do you do you got to give it to God but there’s a passage here and I and I want to as we close out I want us to go here Romans 12:19 says friends do not avenge yourselves instead leave room for God Wrath because for God’s Wrath because it’s written Vengeance belongs
To me I will repay says the Lord but if your enemy is hungry feed him if he is thirsty give him something to drink for in so doing you will be heaping um fiery coals on his head do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good so if
You know that things are unresolved and this person is clearly in the wrong then wait on the Lord but here’s the thing that we have to be okay with there’s two ways that God will do Vengeance and I’m not talking about he’ll work through the law system that’s I’m talking about the
Final Vengeance here one if that person doesn’t come to Christ Hellfire yeah okay there’s nothing worse than Hellfire so when he says vengeance is mine says the Lord those who did not come to Jesus Christ he will deal with them on the last day and no one wants to be a part
Of that that will be Hellfire however there’s another way he takes out his Vengeance and that’s on the cross if that person who you hate and somehow you lose contact with and let’s say you both die and you appear in heaven you better be okay that he’s
There too and the sin that he committed against you he gave it to Christ and the Vengeance that he deserved went on the cross so there’s two ways he takes out Vengeance either by Hellfire or on the cross and we have to be okay with either
One yeah because in the end it’s true that uh we all live as Christ’s representative on this earth now if we’re his disciple if we’re one of his followers and that means that Christ uses us as a way to bring others to him and in regard to that there are many
Times when what God chooses to do is to use us as either a stone of judgment upon upon which they clash and they are crushed because of the way they treat us and they are unpenitent or because of the ways that we interact with them they
Caused to uh see who Jesus is and turn back to him so either way we are doing in many ways the work of Christ on this Earth by our willingness to forgive so be crucified with Christ make yourself available to be placed upon that cross
So that people can see in you the Christ Jesus your Messiah because your identity is totally hidden in him we’ll see you next time
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