As We Forgive

For who art in heaven, how would be thy name? Diking them come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our deaths as we also have forgiven our debtors. Matthew 18 verse 21. So Peter asks Jesus, Lord, how often shall my brothers sin against me and I forgive him up to seven times? Jesus says, I don't say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves, and when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him one who owed him ten thousand talents, but since he did not have the means to repay, his Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children all he had in repayments to be made. The slave therefore falling down, prostrated himself before him saying, have patience with me, and I will repay you everything. And the Lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denari and he seized him and began to choke him saying, pay back what you owe. So his fellow slave fell down and began to entreat him saying, have patience with me, I'll repay you. He was unwilling. He went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was old. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their Lord, all that had happened, and summoning him, his Lord said to him, you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you entreated me, should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave even as I had mercy on you. And his Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was olden. So shall my Heavenly Father also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart. Amen. May God bless this reading of his holy and infallible word. You may be seated. Philipiancy writes of an experience in the life of Simon Visenthal. One bright sunny day as Visenthal's prison detail was cleaning rubbish out of a hospital. For German casualties, this is in 1944, Visenthal is a Polish prisoner of the Nazis. His prison detail was to work in a hospital for Germans, for German war casualties. The nurse came to Visenthal and said, are you a Jew? She signaled him to accompany her, apprehensive Visenthal followed her up a stairway down a long hallway until they reached a dark musty room where a lone soldier lay swathed in bandages. White guys covered the man's face with openings cut out from mouth, nose, and ears. The nurse disappeared, closing the door behind her to leave the young prisoner alone with a spectral figure. The wounded man was an SS officer, and he had summoned Visenthal for a deathbed confession. My name is Karl, said a raspy voice that came from somewhere within the bandages. I must tell you of this horrible deed because you are a Jew. Three times, as Karl tried to tell his story, Visenthal pulled away as if to leave. Each time the officer reached out to grab his arm with a white, bloodless hand. He begged him to listen to what he had just experienced in the Ukraine. In a small town abandoned by the retreating Russians, Karl's unit stumbled into booby traps that killed 30 of their comrades. As an act of revenge, the SS rounded up 300 Jews, hurried them into a three-story house, doused it with gasoline, and fired grenades at it. Karl and his men encircled the house, guns drawn to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Karl said the screams from the house were horrible. I saw a man with a small child in his arms. His clothes were a white. By his side stood a woman, the mother of the child, doubtless with his free hand. He covered his child's eyes, and he jumped into the street. Seconds later, the mother followed from the other windows for burning bodies. We shot. Oh, God. I am left here, Karl, said with my guilt. In the last hours of my life, you are with me. I do not know who you are. I know only that you are with you, and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights, while I have been waiting for death, time and time again, I have long to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn't know whether there were any Jews left. How chilling. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you. But without your answer, I cannot die in peace. Bees and Thal, an architect in his early 20s, now a prisoner dressed in a shabby uniform marked with a yellow star of David, felt the immense crushing burden of his race bear down on him. He stared out the window at the sunlit courtyard. He looked at the eyeless heap of bandages lying in the bed. He watched the fly buzzing the dying man's body. At last I made up my mind, Bees and Thal writes, and without a word, I left the room. For years, after the war, Bees and Thal was gripped with remorse and guilt. That is, inability to extend forgiveness to a dying man. He was so troubled by that experience that he took about to write and tell that story to numerous professors, theologians, ethicists, novelists, and ask what they would have done, what they thought was the right thing to do. I think of the 30 to 40 he asked only about six said he should have extended forgiveness. Most like novelist Cynthia Azic said, the man should die unshribbon, he should go straight to hell. One Christian wrote back, I would have strangled him with my bare hands in that bed. Yancey said he was struck by the illogic of forgiveness or another way to say it is by the logic of the terrible crystalline logic of unforgiveness in a world of unspeakable atrocity, forgiveness just seems unjust, unfair, and irrational. I mean, can you go out and slaughter other people and at the end of your life ask forgiveness and get it? That just seems wrong. Let's say something. One will expose the impotence of our hearts more than the challenge of forgiveness. We don't do it. I don't want to say we don't do it very well. In many cases, we don't do it at all. The world says forgiveness doesn't make any sense. Jesus says love your enemies. First Corinthians 13 says love is not accounting, not holding one's, not keeping an accounting of one's wrong, love does not take into account a wrong suffered. Jesus says that the mark of the redeemed heart, the mark of the heart of the one who's been impacted by Jesus, who is a child of God, who is a son of the Father, is that they are able to bear injury without having to retaliate. They are able to bear injury and still long for the party who injured them, long for their good. That's the moment Jesus said, pray, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are sin against us. This is the mark. As we forgive those who sin against us, we show that the true character, the true mark of the grace touched heart. Now here's the question before explaining, where do we get that heart? Because frankly, that's not describing our hearts. Where do we get that kind of gracious heart? To take your sermon out on, if we're to be a forgiving people, if we're to be the people marked by forgiveness, in fact in a survey, they ask college students, non-Christian college students to describe different religions and to pick sort of one trait that was outstanding about different faith claims, and when it came to Christianity, they said college students in a vast survey said, the most remarkable thing about Christianity is the call for love your enemy. Nobody else says that. Nobody else asks for that. It's the most remarkable trait. Wouldn't we want that to be true? Then we want to be known as the people who love those who injure them. Well, how do we get our stubborn hearts anywhere in the vicinity of that? Here's the first thing. It's the first thing to be a forgiver. We must see our need for forgiveness. After all, Jesus doesn't say a first say, forgive others. He says, when you go to God, the people who know God, go before them and say, what? Forgive us our sins. The first, to be a forgiver, you have to have be forgiven. To pray, forgive us our sins, presupposes that you're aware that you have some. Forgive us our debts means that you're in debt. Forgive us our trespasses means that you have trespassed. You've violated the law of God. You're an idolater. You're a rebel. You have a wicked heart. We have no hope in this world, except in the sovereign mercy of God. Here's the whole problem, is we are by and large, blind, blind who we are, and blind to how great is our need. So to be a forgiver, the first thing that has to happen is there has to be movement in our seeing our need for forgiveness, and that takes us to the parable in Matthew chapter 18, a king decides to clean up his books, doesn't he? In the course of the accounting, he finds that the books are completely in a way, completely out of balance, and he goes to his slave, who owes him a vast sum of money, one of his servants, one of his workers. We don't know how this amount of money has been lost. We don't know if it's been lost through outright theft and dishonesty, through the graft, corruption, through mismanagement, but he demands payment. Now what is this individual, oh, the Bible says he owes 10,000 what? Now a lot of you, right away, just say, I know what a talent is, that talent is one year's wages. He owes 10,000 times one year or a year and a half wages, that's in today's. So in today's economy, if we just modestly said, a year's wages are 30,000, 40,000, a year and a half wages, 40,000, I figure if I modestly said, that means he owes 400 billion dollars. Now I might mind you, Jesus isn't recounting a true event, he's telling a story. He's telling a story with this kind of figure to shock, to catch your attention, to see how ludicrous it is, what we hear next in this story, he owes 400. He is personally responsible for the loss of 400 billion dollars. And the king, the Bible says, the king says, there's no way you can, you know, you're off to jail, you and your family, this will cost you essentially your life and the life of everyone you know so great as your dad, but he says, no, no, please, give me patience, give me time. Let's know what he says. I will repay. You see the picture, Jesus, hey, the check is in the mail. I'll cover this. You're meant to look at that and you're meant to laugh. You're meant to see the utter ridiculous claim of this person who says, I will repay. I can cover this. I can make up. I can live 10,000 years and give you every dime, a whole cover this step. Completely ludicrous, he's completely blind. He doesn't see his need at all. He doesn't see the depths of his depravity, the true nature of his condition. He just doesn't see it. And Jesus is, of course, not describing any particular man he's describing who. In fact, he said that for the disciples, he said, you don't see either. A woman comes into their house where Jesus is dining and she makes this absolute scene. She washes his feet with her hair and with her tears. And she's known as an immoral woman and the rest of the people there are like, she's touching him. He seems to know her. He even seems to kind of like her. She's all over him. This is unsavory. This is shocking. This is revolting. This is disgusting. And Jesus turns to them and he says, no, what is shocking revolting and disgusting is that this woman knows her sins are great. She lives much because she's been forgiven much when I came in this room. You have showed me no honor. You have shown me no deference. You haven't cared to wash my feet or anything of such kind because you are completely clueless to how great are your sins. She knows her sins. You need forgiveness. You ought to have been like that and more, but you are clueless to who you are. You're very aware of who she is, but you are utterly clueless to who you are. Oh, isn't this so great, Nate? God opened my eyes. Open my eyes to see that which is obvious. We have this propensity to be blind to the true nature of our condition. To mist that which is glaring, often to everyone else. Somebody sent me a story this week about family with a young, you know, six-year-old in the car driving down the road when in the car in front of them had a sunroof and out of the sunroof popped a young woman with no clothing on. And there she stood waving at the traffic through the sunroof and the couple quickly told their six-year-old boy, you know, don't look at, you know, don't look. What she's doing is bad. And he said, is he averted his eyes? He said, I know, mommy and daddy. That girl doesn't even have her seatbelt on. Our ability to sort of miss the very obvious. What would you think if Mike Tyson were here at this morning giving a lecture on Propheian speech, disgusted by the profanity and coarseness of our culture? What would you think of Britney Spears was standing up here talking to the young girls in this church about their modesty? What would everybody here be thinking? Clean up your own act. Who are you to lecture anybody else? You're the chief sinner in that area, guess? Guess what? Every time that you find fault with someone else, you know, those very sins are exiting you. Every time you find fault, every time a critical word comes out of your mouth, and here's what ought to really scare you, is by and large the people that are with you, when those critical words come out of your mouth, you know what they're thinking? Don't they see they're only describing themselves? They won't say that. They don't have to because Jesus did. He said, get the wrong out of your own eye, turn around with tweezers, picking splinters out of everybody else's eye. You've got a railroad tie in your own eye. Shouldn't that be enough to keep your attention that you've got all this energy and effort to find fault with everyone else we are oblivious to who we are? There is one blind spot that is particularly troublesome, and that is our bitterness. If there is a sin that is subterranean, unseen, uninvited, it is anger, it is an unwillingness to forgive. We don't see it. We don't know that it's there. It's subterranean. Do you know how many people in this room have already said, is this stuff unforgiveness? This is a good sermon. I know exactly who needs to hear this tape. You've already got somebody in mind that you are going to get this tape for. This sermon is not for them, it's for you. The fact that you are thinking of someone else ought to be an indication that perhaps you need it the most. That's the thing about anger. You know, I have found that I have a great ability with weeds. Reads thrive under my leadership and care. The thing about weeds is that you can, you pluck them out and you kill them, but guess what? You're only pulling off the top. You know that under the ground they are running everywhere. Little devils, you know, so it is with our anger. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 15, seats to it that now root of bitterness. Bitterness is a root. Seek to it that now root of bitterness, springing up causes trouble, but that in your life bitterness does not get rooted. It starts to send out its shoots because it will twist you and gnarle you and it will defile your heart. Well, you know, some experiences I have with my parents were pretty, you know, my first marriage would happen in that, my relationship I had with this abusive boss and that I'm over all that. It's not affecting my life, I'm over it, I'm past it. Not affecting my parenting, it's not affecting my relationships or relationship with the opposite sex, my relationship with authority, I'm over it, oh really. I just give myself too much credit, it's the most hidden, you know one of the most powerful things you can do, it takes an immense amount of security to do it, to actually go to people who love you and care about you or perhaps to go to people who don't and ask them what they see in you, ask them to tell you the truth about what they see because our eyes are so blind but we will not be for givers until we see our needs for forgiveness, how great is our need like the prodigal who wakes up in the pig pen and says I am not even worthy to be called your son like David who wakes up finally at the words of the prophet Nathan and can say against the Lord and the only have I sinned. My sin is ever before thee, wash me, make me clean, I say I can say I am a man of unclean that I live amongst the people of unclean lips, dear holy, seeing our vast need, a friend of mine who pursued a relationship with a woman other than his wife wrote me this week and said I have brought untold damage on the lives of people around me by my foolishness but in the midst of my fall and the midst of my foolishness and midst of the pain that I have sowed, he said there is a certain sweetness because I have never needed Jesus so much, I have never needed grace like I need it now, hunger for grace, how about you, I am experiencing the tenderness of God for let me in on my sin and I am thankful that he is very slow about it because I am a coward and I would run away, you know just remember that, if God were to really show you who you were like now, you would come completely undone, your revulsion at who you are would be too great, God is merciful, he has to be, we are frail, he knows we are frail that he just pulls back the curtain a little bit at a time, each time urging us more and more to run to the cross as our only hope, God showed me just a little bit of my heart this week, there is a new installment every day, need I say any more than this lesson to me of my wickedness came as I was shopping with my wife, couldn't you just finish this day but interestingly enough it didn't come directly in an encounter with my wife as we were, as we were shopping in came light, you know she sends me on these little errands, you know, go over there and get back, come back meet me in the, meet me in the deodorant aisle, you know, as I came back to put my stuff you know in the car, there was another member of seven rivers church there and that person as we spoke said, your wife said to tell you she is hurrying and I said why she hurrying, I mean I thought why she hurrying, we are not in a hurry, why does she feel that she has to hurry, well the answer is because she has been scorched by the impatience of her husband, she has been scorched by the idea that she'd better do things right or she will face my eye, I will be standing by the door of King Martin and you know there's a certain humor to that but to have a wife that they couldn't even relax while she's shopping and to have God say you did that to her, cause me to say God be merciful to me, the sinner, I don't want my wife to be that way, why would I do that, what is so foul about me, God be merciful to me, the sinner, there is only one way you can start to see who you really are and that is if there's somewhere safe enough to tell your secrets, where could that place be, that's point two, if you're going to be a forgiver you must see your great need but you will never see your great need, you will never be honest and transparent about who you really are, unless you see the heart of forgiveness and I'm talking about the heart of our God, unless there's somewhere that it's safe, somewhere where there is grace abounding for the greatest of sinners, do you realize that if you're religious and I don't want you to be religious, I want you to be a Christian, Christianity is not religion, it's the end of religion, religion says, you try to live in such a way that you merit God's favor, that's not Christianity, if you're religious you can never see your sin because of your whole future depends on achieving a certain amount of righteousness and goodness, then you can't really see the truth about yourself because it runs against your entire program, your entire program is to make yourself look good, so you're not really interested in seeing evidence to the contrary, but if that evidence to the contrary is there, you'll blind yourself and you will deny it, you know Hindus say that Hindu scholars have said that it takes 6,800,000 reincarnations to get rid of all your sin, that's what religion says, religion says you will never end your work, but the more you rotten stuff you see about yourself, you just add non-reincarnation, I mean you're just adding on more work, you're just adding on more, so you'll never be able to see that unless there's somewhere safe, where would you find that? That's our parable, what happens? The yet-ridden man begs for mercy and the Bible says in chapter 18 verse 27 Jesus says he encounters a king who is a big-hearted king and the king says what? He has pity, he has compassion, do you know that word is the foremost word used about Jesus' emotions in all the Bible? He had what? Compassion on them, he had pity on them, this is the heart of the king, the king has pity on the man and the king says I will, I will forget your death, I will pay your death and he sets him free, we will never see the greatness of our sin until we know there's somebody who has a heart that is vast, now don't understand the king doesn't just say, I forgive you, I forgive you, risk it away, seems to be gone, then in a understand that the king knows that somebody's life is going to be given for that debt, it was either going to be the life of this man, this rebel and his family, this corrupt servant or it would have to be his life, it would have to be the king's life, you don't lose $400 billion and have no accounting for it, this is the end of the kingdom, when the king says your debt is forgiven, I will bear it, it will cost him a hideous and horrible price, what does that make us think of? Think of the father or the prodigal son, what would you think if you were watching a state funeral, just imagine a queen of England, parishes and it's his vast ceremony in this funeral and they're coming in Westminster Abbey and they're bearing her coffin and there was the president of the United States in a bathing suit, what do you think of he saw that? You'll be shocked, you'll be shocked at the inappropriate ness of that display, guess what the Bible says that there's this horrible son who steals his father's money and insults his father and wishes him dead, who comes home and the father does something as shocking, he gets up off out of his house and he runs, he runs no other, no, no I'm senior in that culture with display that kind of emotion, it was shocking, it was inappropriate, when Jesus would tell the story of the parable, the prodigal son, people would rinse when they hear that, that can't be a description of God, he can't have that kind of art, can't be that one, could the king be that big-hearted, could the king be the running father, that's absolutely shocking but Jesus walks into the world and what does he say, they throw it at his feet, a prostitute, or a woman caught in adultery and what does he say, neither do I condemn you, everybody asks condemned her, neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more, why could he say that, why could only he say that, we can't say to somebody your sins are forgiven but Jesus could say it because he was going to what, he was going to pay down her death, it wasn't cheap to say, why don't you do that, why don't you go your way, go your way, don't do it anymore, it wasn't frivolous, it wasn't frivolous, it was horrible, costly, I pay, that's go your way, Jesus could say to the lame man, he wanted healing of his limbs, Jesus could say your sins are forgiven you and the Pharisees can tear their hair out and say, who does he think he is, does he think he's the king,

only the king could forgive the death, you know what's ludicrous in Matthew 18 is that the servant acts like the king, the servant when he's forgiven, he goes and finds another servant who holds him or there are patents of money and he strangles him right, and you read the story you said, who do you think he is, he thinks he's the king, he's acting like the king running around saying, pay me that money or I'll send you to jail, who doesn't even have the right to send anybody to jail, who does he think he is, he's a pitiful little servant acting like he's the king, you know the amazing part of the parable is it reveals to us the heart of Jesus, the king who acts like a, not a servant or acts like a king, it's the king who acts like a servant who says, I'll be choked in your place, I'll be choked, it's the big hearted king, that's where we experience this love, and if you don't viscerally, tangibly, rationally, emotionally, experience that love, you'll never be a forgiver, you'll never be a forgiver, they said in the East African revival as the Holy Spirit was moving through and conversions and genuine evidence of biblical revival taking place in that continent that as worship would happen, people would stand up and confess the atrocities that they had committed to one another, but as they confess their sins, the rest of the crowd would begin right in the middle of their confession to sing the doxology. It was as if your sin is vast and it's great, but the grace of God is greater and we are just going to drown out your confession. With the love of God, we're just going to come right over the top of your confession and just swallow it with the righteousness and holiness and goodness and mercy of God. It's the prodigal son who comes home and says, I'm not even worthy to be your son and the father says, well darn right you're not and you'll pay, you'll pay, that's not what he says does he, he says shush shush. Turn the batten cap. Get my rod, get my ring, get it, my son's home, my son's home. In our heart of hearts we can't believe this, we cannot believe in the mercy of God. We cannot believe that he could be that welcoming, but he could be that big hearted, that he could be the running father, that he could be the big hearted king. My wife and I watched the movie this week from a couple years ago. It's based on a true story, it's called Dead man walking. The story of sister Helen Prasion begins a correspondence with a death row prisoner. He is a wicked, I mean, he's not only a murderer and a rapist, but Matthew Poncellet is a murder, a rapist, a racist, a neo Nazi. I mean, he's about as foul and has every got foul characteristic that you could assess. He is as wicked and as unattractive as you could create. And he, she begins a relationship with him and she holds his feet to the fire. She tells him he will never be free until he confesses, until he encounters God, until he confesses what he's done, until he's honest, until he stops defending himself. It's a beautiful picture of grace because her love boars in on him. Until in the final scene of the movie, shortly before his execution, she's been with him almost night and day. The last week of his life is the hours tip towards his execution. He breaks down sobbing, tells her how he's been reading the gospels. And Matthew Poncellet confesses his sins, his crimes, and cries out for Jesus, and this Catholic sister says to him, Matthew Poncellet, you are the beloved son of God. You are a beloved child of God. And he says, I've never been beloved by anybody. And when he's taken to his execution and there he is strung out with the drugs going into his veins and there sits the family of the people that he has offended and the state frankly rightly applying justice to him

and the family with their hatred boring through the window at this young man as he's executed. There sits Sister Helen Prajan reaching out to him, reaching out to him. She said, as you die, look in my face because I want you to die seeing a face of love. I want to tell you something. Five years ago, I would have watched that movie an hour that said, what is thinking, liberal? Because I didn't understand the big-hearted king. How big-hearted is the king? I didn't understand that I'm the recipient of that mercy. If there's no mercy for him, there's no mercy for me. Either you believe in the forgiveness of sins or you don't. You can't believe in the forgiveness of sins just for sinners like you. God, help me see my sin. God, help me see how big-hearted you are. And then the last point of this sermon is, help me extend the grace of that forgiveness for others, which is a terribly difficult thing. Peter said, Peter thought he was being so gracious. How many times do we forgive? Seven times? Listen, the Peter said, one time, we thought that was pretty great. The rabbi said, you had to forgive three times. I don't know where they came up with it. Peter thought, I'm going to be, I get this whole grace thing. We're going to do three, double, plus one. Jesus says, you still don't get it. And I don't have the time to tell you, I think Jesus says, no, you forgive 77 times. You said, where does that come from in the Bible? 77 times. If you go all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible, when Lambic boasts that he has a, somebody injured him and he avenged his injury 77 times. It wasn't an eye for an eye. It was, if his eye was out, 77 other eyes would be put out for the injury done to him. It's the twisting of man as a result of sin that he demands vengeance, not just one on one, but 77 times I will be a revenge for the injury done to me. And Jesus takes that beautifully and says, the gospel is the exact opposite. 77 times you're injured and you take no vengeance at all. It's powerful. Now here's the problem. Is in our heart of hearts, we want to choke people. Our hearts instinctively refuse to forgive. We are in this parable, brothers and sisters in Matthew 18, and we are not the big hearted King. We are the servant who won't forgive. We withhold forgiveness. We demand justice and we want to choke those who have injured us as I was writing the sermon this week. I got involved in a situation where our youth group, our medical youth group was having some trouble getting back home from their mission strip. And I was talking to somebody on the phone, not from this church, somebody who was causing their trouble. And I mean this Dozo. As Adam Jones said, we needed, this was a law enforcement officer. And as Adam Jones said, we needed Andy of Mayberry. We got Barney Fife. When I got the phone with this guy, I'm right in the middle of the sermon. I walked out the windy bus desk and I said, I want to choke that guy. And I went back in and finished the service. I literally, I wanted to, I wanted to choke. I didn't really want to choke him. You know, we don't really want to choke our most of us, hopefully. You know, people who have heard us, but we choke them by doing what? We withhold our love. We withhold, we become a lift. We become cold. We withdraw. We stop investing in the relationship. We move away. We have this thing. Sometimes we actually gossip and slander and so this sort of thing because resentment is sweet. It feels so good to long for justice. We literally want to see other people hurt. We want to see them lose their jobs. We want to see them feel pain. We want to see them fail. We want to see them dishonor. We want to see them struggle. Admitted. That's the way we are. It feels so good that I warn you. Resentment is not only sweet. It's bitter. And it will creep inside of you and it will gnarle your heart. So this morning, before we leave, I'm going to ask you to say, who is it that you're withdrawn from? Who is it that you judge? Who is it that you have this thing for? Because I want God to set you free. Because it's not destroying them. It's destroying you. And so the last point of discernment is, how is it that sex must be compelled by the gospel? Our hearts have to change to be able to do this, which is so foreign to us that by this is don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with the good good. But how? Well, we must see that whatever sin has been committed against us, it's a pittance compared to the sin that we've committed against the big hearted king. How can the people here for given much demand payment? The second thing we have to see, not only is our sin a pittance compared to our fence against God, but second, we must not lose sight of the commonality of the offender. Have you noticed that when somebody does something against you want to demonize them? Did everyone have angelicals like to demonize for eight years? His name was Bill Clinton. We created caricatures in our mind of who Bill Clinton was. There was far worse than what he really was. It isn't to say that his politics or his morals or other things weren't flawed. But listen to what I'm about to say. Whether it was Bill Clinton or whether it's Hillary Clinton or whether it's Gary Condod or whether it's OJ Simpson or whether it's a thousand other people we see in the news, we love to hear of their flaws. We love to look down our nose at them. We love to picture them in the most unflattering life. And the person who has met the big hearted king begins to say when they hear of other people's floppers and other people's flaws, they say that's in me too. Whenever you find yourself critical of another person, you have to be able to say that's in me too. In fact, it's more in me than in them. And if you don't think that you're worse than Bill Clinton, I'll meet with you after the service. If you honestly sit here today and say pastor, I don't see that I am worse than he is, then I promise you, you're right, you don't see. And frankly, I probably wouldn't help to meet you here after the service because only God would help you see. I didn't see. I'd be patient with you if you don't see. I understand if you don't see, I didn't see. Our hearts are slow to see. But we are not the forgivers until we can look at other people and other flaws and say, what I see in them, it's more in me. Where do I get off being the prosecutor? And the last point is you'll never be a forgiver until you decide you can trust the big hearted king because Romans chapter 12 says what, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, you know what you're supposed to do for your enemy? Feed him. You know what you're supposed to do for your enemy close him. You know what you're supposed to do for your enemy? Love them. If justice and vengeance needs to be served, you leave that to me. So the bottom line and forgiveness as well, I just can't let this go because I believe in justice. No, the bottom line is you can't let it go because you trust yourself and not your father. You know I trust the father. Colossians chapter three says those who have been chosen of God holy and whoever put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you. It was South Africa. It was before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. White police officers were coming to confess their gross atrocities. When officer Vanda Brock stood before the court and confessed to a woman that eight years earlier, he had taken, they had taken her son, her 18-year-old son, they had killed him and they had burned him. They put him on a spit and roasted him over a fire. And eight years later he had to confess that they came back and killed her husband. They shot the son but the husband, they tied to a stake, they douse with gasoline and before her very eyes they burned him to death. The officer said his last words, he's never forgotten, he couldn't get over them. His last words as he died and the flings were directed to his wife, he said forgive them. So as he confessed his sins, the court turned and asked the widow what she would demand of this man. This is the Reconciliation Commission. What would be required for reconciliation? And she stood up and she said I want three things. She said I want him to take me to where they dumped my husband's body because I want to scoop up the ground there and give what ashes might be there, what remains a decent burial. And she said and secondly this man robbed me of my family but I am a young woman and I have a lot of motherly love to give. So two days every month I want him to be required to come and live in the ghetto with me so that I can be his mother.

And the third thing I would like is for him to know that I forgive him and the word Jesus Christ will forgive him too if he will confess these sins to the Father and so that he might know that I truly do forgive him, I want him to be required to come across the courtroom and hug me. And when he fell into the arms of that woman, the entire courtroom began to sing amazing grace. And it said that the officer fainted who wouldn't? He'd met a daughter of the big hearted King. He'd tasted forgiveness.

Who wouldn't be blown away by that? Would you bow your heads, don't put your books away, bow your heads, I want to give you a chance, praise teams gathered, like them to open the curtain and be prepared to sing, I just want to give you a chance with heads bow, would you identify someone you have bitterness towards, somebody you have disdained towards, somebody you look down on, somebody you distance yourself from, for some of you God gives your eyes to see that maybe a list longer than the membership of this church, but would you ask God right now to open your eyes and cause you to be honest, somebody that you need to deal with. Father, would you help us with this? Is your head bowed, could you identify somebody from whom you're demanding justice? That there's somebody that you've choked, you've choked them, you want them to pay. Father, would you help us to see that we justify our anger, we think it's okay because of what was done to us, it's only fair. Show us our hearts, Father. With heads bowed, you know, you're free to think about the fact that your debt before God is, about your debt before God would be greater than

you've been forgiven so much, how could you have heard someone else accountable for so little? Are you free to consider that what you find so foul on someone else is so present in you? We ask God, God, would you, would you soften our hearts even right now? Now, now, will you repent with heads bowed, will you repent of your ungracious spirit? Maybe you're not ready to forgive this morning, it's too abrupt, it's going to take a whole hot more time. Will you repent of your unforgiveness? God will forgive you even of your unforgiveness, Christ forgave perfectly, that righteousness covers you, we never will. So, will you rest in that righteousness and be able to go safely to God and say, I'm a mess, you are the big hearted King, I want to experience your embrace because my heart needs to get softer towards a lot of people. Will you with your heads bowed right now? Father, help us with this right now, help us to go for it, help us not to turn away. Will you have to pity? Will you take compassion? Will you go before? Lord and say, God, give me a lot for someone I haven't had lot for and forgive me my bitterness, tear out the roots of this bitterness that some mild up my heart.

Will you at tell God that you're willing to pay down somebody else's debt? You'll bear the cost of the injury they've done to you and you're going to let them go.

Now, as the praise team sings, just keep your heads bound. We continue to do as we begin to just say, God, this grace that we've tasted, we so much want to convey it to others.