Freedom of Forgiveness – Part 1
Peter M. Ascough
Father Lawrence of the Monks of New Skete, Cambridge, New York, once preached a profoundly simple sermon about his annoying experience of walking a country road and having a small stone enter his open-toed sandal. He first felt the pebble, but pretended it was not there. He kept on walking. Finally he began to wiggle his toes and then he tried to arrange his foot around the stone. And he kept on walking. In exasperation, he decided not to think about it. But then, all he could do was think about it and feel discomfort. Finally he stooped down, took off his sandal, and shook out the pebble. As he stood up and looked around he realized that he had walked a quarter of a mile on a lovely road but had not seen a thing. He had been preoccupied with the rock.
There are many things that can preoccupy our minds and our attention so that we miss the beauty of the world around us. This morning we want to identify one, something which all of us have probably experienced. Some will have shaken the pebble out and moved on while others may still be carrying the pebble around this morning. For some it may be a pebble, while for others it may be a huge boulder that overwhelms.
What I am talking about is how we individually and as a church deal with those who have hurt us, specifically the sin of unforgiveness.
We’ve all been hurt at some time or another. We have all felt the sting of being offended by some word or action of another person. Carrying this offense around is like a pebble in our sandals. It rubs our feet raw, distracting us from the beauty around us and it traps us.
I want to tell you a story of my being trapped and why I have been so passionate about preaching on this topic. Darryl and I have talked about it for a few months and feel now is the time God has led us to speak.
Most of you know that I worked at a church in ON for about 5 years as their youth pastor. It was a great place. The youth were awesome, not quite as awesome as here but close, my co-workers were genuine and loving people and we had made a number of good friends in the congregation. However, one of the pastors had issue with me. I know that I am not perfect and am sure I played my own part but I could not figure out what was up. There were a number of occasions where he hurt me deeply and publicly. But he could do it in a way in which he still looked good and there was enough going on behind the scenes that was unknown to so many. My desire is not to air the dirt to make him look bad rather it is to let you know that we agonized for a long time as to whether to confront him, whether to leave or just “suck it up” as it tore us up on the inside. Through much prayer we felt God was given us the go ahead to leave but to leave well. So we did. I thought I was free. It was over. But it wasn’t.
I had taken the bait. In Luke 17:1 Jesus said to his disciples, “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come…” However, the New King James gives a closer translation to the Greek which says, “It is impossible that no offense should come…” In other words, you will be offended. The Greek word used here is skandalon which refers to the part of the trap to which the bait was attached. Being offended is like the bait of a trap.
2 Tim. 2:24-26
24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
When we allow an offense to be planted in the soil of our hearts, it puts down roots of bitterness and produces fruit such as anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred and envy. This fruit leads to insults, attacks, wounding, division, separation, broken relationships, and betrayal. We become trapped in this attitude of sin.
As Mennonites, and probably other church cultures as well, there is sometimes the feeling that, well that was in the past, it’s over just leave it there. Or they left so it’s a done deal now, no use in bringing up past hurts. That’s a lie. We don’t bring them up just to re-hurt people, rather we need to bring them up to deal with them, to find healing and forgiveness and freedom. Leaving them alone only allows the seed of offense to grow. We need to allow God’s Spirit to lead us, in his timing to deal with the hurts of the past as well as not allow the hurts of the present to take root.
This is what happened to me. We left the church and although we left well, I still felt very offended by what had happened to me. I became more and more absorbed by what was done wrong to me. The pebble was rubbing my foot raw but I refused to stop to take it out.
I was too proud to admit that I had been offended. “No I’m fine.” But this offence affected ministry I was still trying to do. Sure God still used me to preach, to teach, to encourage and to serve but there was little excitement in it. I was growing cold. My attitude was becoming more and more critical. Instead of pure living water flowing from me it was tainted with bitterness, criticism and negativity.
The walls had gone up, I was not going to get hurt again. Unfortunately, the walls not only kept people out, they also kept me in. My focus became more inwardly focused and everything I did was filtered through this hurt and rejection and I found it harder and harder to believe God.
After ON we were in Labrador for 3 years. Our time in Labrador was a great experience. Not just because of all the wonderful things we got to see and do, and the friends we made but also because it was the beginning of the healing process for me. I began to see this offense I was carrying around. I knew that is was directed toward this pastor and in fact had grown to include that whole church. I knew he wasn’t planning to track me down and seek forgiveness but I knew I needed to forgive him.
Mark 11:25-26
“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Matt. 6:14-15
“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Strong words, my forgiveness is based on my forgiving others.
So, I prayed, “Father I forgive him. I do not hold anything against him anymore. I will not let his offence toward me hold me anymore. I release him, he doesn’t owe me anything. I say to Satan, get lost, I forgive him.” You’d think this would be the end of the story right, but not quite.
I want to pause here for a minute though. You might be listening this morning and thinking, ok I get this story so how does this apply to me. It applies to you because there are many here this morning who are in this same position I was in. And don’t start looking around the room thinking, yeah he’s talking to this person, or that person. There is a good chance the Spirit is talking to you. We will all get offended.
Granted for some offense are like me being pushed by Reuben. He tries to hit against me and he bounces off. It has no impact on me. But there are others that hit us like a sledgehammer. They wound us deeply and these wounds don’t heal overnight and if not properly looked after, may never heal.
And the worst part is that they come from those who we are close to. A parent, a brother or sister, a friend, a fellow believer, a person in leadership we trusted, a co-worker, etc. See when we have no relationship with someone we have no expectations of them, like a zero. So when they give us a 10 we feel blessed. However, those we are in relationship with, those who we trust and share life with we have an expectation of them giving us a 20 so when they only give us a 10 then we’re offended. And truly and genuinely we are offended. I’m not trying to minimize the hurts that others have done to us. There are many legitimate times that we have been and will be hurt. I guess what I’m trying to say is my wrong action of unforgiveness going to make their wrong action of offense better? Do two wrongs ever make a right?
Those who can’t forgive have forgotten what they have been forgiven from. Jesus took the ultimate sacrifice to remove all sins from us so that we can be holy and pure and have eternal life and we then try to hold such a small offense in comparison against each other.
I could go on but let me quickly finish the story so that Darryl can give us the good news that we’re not stuck. See I had forgiven this man but something was still bugging me. I would think about him or the church and I would get all upset again. We would go to ON and I refused to go there to visit even though the place was full of friends. So I wondered, what’s wrong with me. I have forgiven this guy, I have said it and believed it, I know God has heard it, so what’s missing.
What was missing was a change in the attitude of my heart. See I had forgiven him while still holding the pain. Like saying, “I forgive you cause you did this and this and it really hurt and you better ask for forgiveness but I going to forgive you anyway because I’m great and your not.” Bitterness was still in my heart. I was yet to be free.
It was after reading this book (The Bait of Satan) which we’re preaching out of this morning that I found my answer. Darryl is going to talk about this further but what needed to happen was that I needed to learn to love him the way that I would want to be loved and also needed to pray for him the way I would want to be prayed for. This took time, but when it happened, I was free.
I went back to the church this past summer for the first time in 9 years. The pastor has since died so reconciling with him in person will never happen for which I regret. But there is healing and warmth towards the church, I can pray for their blessing and growth, I can pray that God would richly bless the pastor’s family as they continue to minister in other places. I felt freedom, I felt healed. My prayer is that we can as individuals and as a church move from a place of bondage a place of unforgiveness, to a place of freedom to forgive and love.
FREEDOM OF FORGIVENESS
Part 2
Darryl G. Klassen
Pete has shared with us a very personal part of his journey to forgiveness, and I can testify to the difference it has made in him. Since coming home from holidays this summer there has been a noticeable peace in Pete.
When Pete shared the book The Bait of Satan with me, I was confronted with my own personal offenses and how I had handled them. It is amazing to think how badly we as Christians deal with our hurts. I know I have a lot to learn and I need to return to the principles Jesus taught us about forgiving others.
To build on that thought I want to turn briefly to Matthew 18 and the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. We know this story very well and so I want to look at two aspects of the parable and make a couple of applications.
This parable features three main characters: the king and the two servants. The king calls to account the outstanding debts in his kingdom and finds the first servant owes ten thousand talents or 4.5 billion dollars. This is an enormous debt that would require a hundred lifetimes to repay. There is no hope for this servant to pay his king what he owes. However, the king forgives the servant and sets him free without any future expectations.
The servant turns on his fellow servant, however, and demands payment for a debt of a hundred denarii, or about four thousand dollars. The sum is not as large as the first servant’s debt but let us not minimize the figure. It is a third of year’s salary. If you think of losing a third of your salary in comparison you can begin to imagine the offense that this is to yourself and your family. What you have to do without is unforgiveable it seems: food, renovations, vacations. Now you have to scrimp because you are out a good chunk of livelihood.
It is not necessary to compare the billion dollar debt with the thousand dollar debt. The point is that an offense is an offense; when you are hurt, it hurts. When someone wrongs you it sits like a weight in your stomach.
On the other hand, compare your hurts to the pain we caused our heavenly Father. Our sins and offenses were so great we could not pay them in a hundred lifetimes. But Jesus died for us, an enormous cost to our Father, and forgave us our debts. Compare the great forgiveness of God with our personal hurts and ask yourself, “Do I have the right to carry this hurt?” Do I have the right to withhold forgiveness when God has so graciously forgiven me?
The second feature of this parable that is worth pointing out is the audience Jesus speaks to with his story. John Bevere, who writes Bait of Satan, says that Jesus is speaking to people in the kingdom of God. He says the king is God and the servants are Christians. Being an exegete I thought, no they’re not, but promptly went to my Bible. Sure enough, the last thing the king says to the servant is this: “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” And then Jesus explains his parable. Jesus never explained other parables. He says, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt 18:33 & 35).
The question is: how will God treat Christians who do not forgive? Three things stand out:
1) The unforgiving servant is turned over to torture. Having an unforgiving spirit is torture. Like they say, holding a grudge hurts me more than it does you. Bevere suggests that we allow demonic persecution into our lives when we harbor resentment.
2) The unforgiving servant has to pay off the original debt. That is an impossible task. We might say, “I love God but I don’t love the person who has hurt me.” Then you are deceived and you do not love God, for John writes, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). In other words, we have not understood our salvation in Christ and we still live as those who are indebted to God.
3) God the Father will do the same to any believer who does not forgive a brother’s offense. This is not meant to be harsh but loving. Jesus is telling us that we need to settle our hurts with each other and get on with kingdom work.
Each of us carries some hurt from the distant past or from very recent events. Someone has crossed the imaginary lines in your life and offended you at some time. You avoid them. You might even talk ill of them (we call this ‘getting it off our chests’ or in reality ‘collecting allies’). But the truth is, you are living in bondage to your hurts. Wouldn’t you rather be free?
There are three steps to freedom that Pete and I would like to invite you to take this morning. You might be at different stages of this journey and so you and the Holy Spirit know where you need to begin or continue the journey. What do you do with your offender?
1) Forgive him/her – Paul challenged the believers in Ephesus, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you” (4:32). Admittedly this is a process. You may have to forgive them again and again (shades of 70x7).
As Bevere says, forgiving someone is not going up to them and numbering their faults and then forgiving them (“you did this and this and this, but I forgive you…”). Forgiveness is heartfelt and true.
Sometimes we wait to forgive expecting the person to know what they have done and to come crawling with tears. Not going to happen. Besides if God had waited to forgive us until we apologized we would still be in our sins. Christ’s example was to forgive us BEFORE we repented.
2) Pray for him/her – So you have cried before God and forgiven so and so. Then the old feelings come back and haunt your nights and your daytime lulls and you seethe again with bitterness. What’s going on? It’s a process. And part of the process requires going to our knees and praying for your offender. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44).
Praying for them is loving them. It is more than praying, “Bless so and so. Give him a good day.” When we pray for our “enemies” Jesus calls us to pray for them what we would pray for ourselves (love your neighbor as yourself). What do I pray for myself? I pray that God would reveal Jesus to me throughout the day, his love and his goodness; I pray that God would make me an encouragement to others; I pray that I would have success in being like Christ. Pray that for your adversary or the person who has hurt you. Pray a real blessing on that person. And do it again.
3) Reconcile with him/her – What? Please not that. Yeah, you have to go to him or her and refuse yourself a defense or an excuse for your actions. Wait, that sounds like an apology. Yeah, rather than go with a spirit of revenge or “I’ll show him” we go with a spirit of reconciliation, a spirit that is humble and ready to build a bridge not tear one down.
Truly we have all sinned. And when you think of when you were hurt you have to admit there were things we did that were offensive in response. We may have to go to the person who hurt and say, “I have had a critical spirit towards you and spoken badly of you to others, please forgive me.”
You know what I hate? I have a sensitive spirit. I always feel like I have to be the one to apologize even when the other person is seemingly at fault. But my curse is a blessing too. I don’t want to be at odds with anyone; I hurt when there is a rift between myself and a fellow believer. So we look weak – so what? Go and be reconciled to your brother or sister.
Jesus said, if you are offering a gift at the altar and then remember you have a brother who has something against you “First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift” (Mt 5:24). Why does he counsel us to interrupt our worship to make a relationship right? Because we just can’t worship God or serve God or be right in his sight when there is a broken relationship in our lives.
Today we invite you to experience the freedom of forgiveness and to begin the journey toward healing. We want you to be healed and we want to help you heal your relationships. We can make an incredible spiritual impact on our lives if we open ourselves up the forgiveness of God.
AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment