Good morning. Our scriptures found this morning on page 287 in the Bible under your seat in front of you. This is first Samuel 241 through 7. After Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told, David is in the desert of Ngeti. So Saul took 3,000 chosen men from all Israel and set out to look for David and his men near the craigs of the wild goats. He came to the sheep pens along the way. A cave was there and Saul went in to relieve himself. David and his men were far back in the cave. The men said, This is the day the Lord spoke of. When he said to you, I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish. Then David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul's robe. Afterward, David was conscience stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master. The Lord's anointed or to lift my hand against him. For he is the anointed of the Lord. With these words, David rebuked his men and did not allow them to attack Saul and Saul left the cave and went his way. Sarah is good to see you back again. Sarah is working with Perform University Fellowship in Alabama as an intern there. And we are certainly glad you're home. We've been for the last few weeks looking at the life of David in the Old Testament, the book of First Samuel. And we continue this series that I've entitled an undivided heart this morning. I want to talk to you about the subject of forgiveness. That is forgiving someone who has hurt you. How many of you have been hurt by somebody in the past? Anybody? Yeah, I think it's pretty sure that universal condition we've all been hurt by people in the past. The question is what did you do with the pain? What did you do about it? You know, I can think of several things that people do with the pain of being hurt by someone else. For example, they might try to forget about it and just hope it goes away. A second thing they might try is taking it out on somebody. Either the person who has offended them himself or herself, or perhaps your spouse, or your dog, or your kids, or yourself. But a third option is to forgive the person. And only that third option really works. But it's hard. It's really, really hard to forgive. Now, before this morning, we dive into this text. I want to start off with a, I guess you would call it a pastoral observation. Let me give you this observation about the subject of forgiveness. I want to say that forgiving someone is not something that we can be simplistic about today. We can't be simplistic about this subject. It's a complex issue. What I mean is that I can't offer you a formula or a technique to easily forgive someone who has hurt you. Every situation that you run into is going to be different. I find a lot of times that when people hear sermons on forgiveness, they want three steps to forgiveness. Or five easy ways to forgive someone and let someone off the hook. Or a strategy that works every time. But there is no such thing. And the reason there is no such thing is that forgiveness is but one piece of a bigger picture called reconciliation. See, ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings have had problems with each other. As one of the evidences of our sinful nature, we hurt each other. And God's plan is that we be reconciled. That's part of his grand, redemptive purpose that he said in motion through the coming of Jesus Christ, that human beings live in harmony with each other and be reconciled with each other. But to get there, it can often be pretty messy. Forgiveness is not something that you can wave like a magic wand and make pain suddenly disappear. No, you have to work at it. It's a process. And sometimes there are other things that need to be done besides forgiveness in order to reach the goal of reconciliation. For example, you may need to confront the one who hurt you many times. You and that person may need to get counseling together. You may need to get church leaders involved if it's a serious offense. You may need to establish boundaries around yourself to protect yourself. You may even in extreme cases need to take legal action against that other person who has hurt you. See what I'm getting at is that there's this cheap version of quote-unquote forgiveness out there that's really not forgiveness and it often can provide an easy escape from other steps that you and I need to take in order to be truly reconciled with our fellow man. Does that make sense? You don't understand what I'm saying. It's a complex issue and so don't look for a simple easy way to forgive in this sermon today. This is something we'll have to talk about often to look at it from another different angle from time to time. But having said that pastoral observation, I want to start off now with two big ideas. Two big ideas that hopefully will give you a framework to understand this subject and then after that I'll offer some practical guidance on how to forgive. It won't be a formula but hopefully it'll be some takeaways that you can use in your relationships and your dealings with other folks. So two big ideas first of all. Forgiveness looks so foolish that most people refuse to do it. Biblical forgiveness looks so foolish that most people refuse to do it. That's my first big idea and it's in verses one through four of our texts this morning that Sarah read. Now let me give you a little bit of a background here as we've seen if you've been here in a series for the last few weeks. David is running away from King Saul. David is terribly outnumbered. He has, we're told in the previous chapter about 600 men gathered around him while King Saul has 3,000 soldiers. That's a five to one advantage for King Saul over David. And David and his men are sort of playing a cat and mouse game with King Saul trying to stay away from him. Right now in chapter 24 they are hiding out in a place known as the desert of Ingeti. It's an area on the western coast of the Dead Sea. It's filled with springs and flora and fauna and steep rocky crags and caves. And so we find out in chapter 24 that something absolutely amazing happened. Because David was in this one particular cave. He and some of his men were in one particular cave and they were back in the back just resting trying to get away from Saul when guess who comes into that very cave? King Saul. Saul shows up into that same exact cave to go use the restroom. Now you know they didn't have porta-potties back then. And when you got to go you got to go. Saul had to go. So he went back into this cave where David was hiding. Now if you're one of David's men you're back there with him back in the back. Saul can't see you. What do you naturally conclude? Well you conclude that this is David's moment. Why you're going to say God is such a God of Providence. Why look David? Your enemy is right there. He doesn't even know you're here and he's very vulnerable right now. So they whispered to David, verse 3. David, this is the day the Lord spoke of when he said to you, I'll give your enemy and your hands. Come on David. He's all yours. He's got it coming. Kill him. Take him out. The vote was 600 to 1 in favor of killing Saul. Why? Because to forgive him would the utterly foolish. Utterly foolish. It would make no sense. The man's no good. You would save. You were there beside David. You would say the man's no good David. He's already tried to kill you several times. You know, Saul is a disobedient, narcissistic, wicked king. God has already rejected him. And David, you've been anointed. The next king of Israel. It's your time. Take him out David. But David doesn't do it. He spares Saul. David, we would say. What are you thinking? Not only does he deserve to die, but it's obvious that God has opened the door of providence and landed him in your hands. I saw a bumper sticker one time that said to air is human? To forgive is out of the question. Some of you are 24 fans, right? The show 24. I'm going to be a spoiler. If you still have it on your machine and you're going to watch it, I'm going to tell you something you might want to stop your ears in the last episode of 24. Okay, some of you are doing that. In the last episode of 24, Tony Almeida is in Jack's hand, literally. Jack's got his hand around Tony's neck. Tony has been the worst guy in the last few episodes of 24. He deserves, we would say, to die. I was watching the show and I said, go ahead, Jack, do it. I was just like David's men, Saul, take him out. Go ahead, David, take him out. Matthew 18, a pretty well-known passage of scripture. Matthew 18, Jesus is talking to Peter. He's been talking about forgiveness. And Peter says to Jesus, Lord, Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother when he sins against me? And here he's feeling very proud of himself. He's going to be very generous and very giving and very gracious. Lord, should I forgive him up to seven times, expecting Jesus to say, wow, Peter, you've really learned a lot. But no, Jesus says, no, I tell you, not seven, but 77 times, which was Jesus' way of saying, you never stop forgiving. You do it over and over. You let people out of caves all the time. Isn't there a little voice inside your head though when you hear that saying, but that's foolish. If I keep on forgiving this person, she's just going to take advantage of me. If I let this person get off Scott free, what's he going to do? He's never going to learn his lesson then. But that's the thing about forgiveness. See, there's a foolishness to it. That's why most people in the world never try it. That's the first big idea. Here's a second one, just to give you this framework. The second big idea is this, that forgiveness is so freeing that you are the fool if you don't do it. Forgiveness is so freeing, so liberating that you're the fool if you don't give it to someone else. Let me read the rest of the story now. Sarah stopped at verse seven and now I want to read beginning verse eight to the end of the chapter. Listen carefully to what happens between David and Saul, verse eight. It says, then David went out of the cave and called out to Saul. My lord, the king, when Saul looked behind him, David bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He said to Saul, why do you listen when men say David has bent on harming you? This day you have seen with your own eyes how the Lord delivered you into my hands in the cave. Some urged me to kill you but I spared you. I said I will not lift my hand against my master because he is the Lord's anointed. See my father look at this piece of your robe in my hand. I cut off the corner of your robe but did not kill you. Now understand and recognize that I am not guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion. I have not wronged you but you are hunting me down to take my life. May the Lord judge between you and me and may the Lord avenge the wrongs you have done to me but my hand will not touch you as the old saying goes from evil doers come evil deeds so my hand will not touch you. Against whom has the king of Israel come out? Whom are you pursuing? A dead dog, a flee? May the Lord be our judge and decide between us. May he consider my cause and uphold it? May he vindicate me by delivering me from your hand. When David finished saying this Saul asked is that your voice David my son and he wept aloud. You are more righteous than I he said. You have treated me well but I have treated you badly. You have just now told me of the good you did to me. The Lord delivered me into your hands but you did not kill me. When a man finds his enemy does he let him get away unharmed? May the Lord reward you well for the way you treated me today. I know that you will surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel will be established in your hands. Now swear to me by the Lord that you will not cut off my descendants or wipe out my name from my father's family. So David gave his oath to Saul then Saul returned home but David and his men went up to the stronghold. What I said was that forgiveness is so freeing that you're a fool if you don't do it. You might know that this past week I spent a few days with my my daughter Rebecca who lives in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. She's the child of ours who has three children. The two youngest ones are two sons, Eben who's almost five and Tate who's about two and a half. Well I bought I took Eben out for a granddad Eben time and I bought him a boat, a play mobile boat. It's got all kind of knick-knacks all over it, a motor boat that he can play in the pool and the bathtub and so on. And he put this boat together and on the back of it was this neat little flag, plastic flag. Well you would know Tate got hold of this boat and he broke the flag in half. That was made of plastic. We're not going to fix that. And I was crushed because it cost a lot of money to buy that boat but the boy who was really crushed was Eben. When he saw what Tate had done, Eben collapsed in a pile of tears and anger. And the thing is he wouldn't let it go. He stayed that way for hours. His anger just spiraled out of control. So get this. Now not only was his boat broken but Eben was bitter toward his brother on top of it. Now I use that illustration to just say that's the way unforgiveness works. Someone hurts you, for example, and you get mad and bitter and angry about it, which is natural. But as long as you hold on to those feelings, it just hurts you. So now your pain has multiplied. You're hurting from the offense itself and now on top of that bitterness is eating away at you inside. Meanwhile, the offender just walks away. You know, he's recovering while you're in a pile reminds me of Hebrews 12, 15. It says, see to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. The Bible is warning us against letting anger become a bitter root that grows and grows and gets worse and worse and worse. As I was reading the rest of chapter 24, did you feel David's freedom in this passage? David is free for one thing. His conscience is clear. He doesn't have Saul's blood on his hands, right? He didn't kill the Lord's anointed. That's freedom. But not only that, he's literally free. At least for a while. In verse 22, it says, Saul returned home. He's remorseful. Now sure, I know that in a couple of chapters, chapter 26, Saul's remorse will have disappeared and he's right back at his evil ways again. But for now, the forgiving gift that David gives Saul really lets David relax. He can come out of hiding. By giving Saul the gift of forgiveness, David doesn't have to live with internal conflict and dissonance, you see. He is integrated. He has an undivided heart. He feels good about himself. He's been true to his convictions. That's uplifting to one's own heart. There's a Catholic priest by the name of Albert Hayes who said this and it's really, really true. He said, it takes a lot of energy to keep a wound open, to keep a grudge alive. The longer I allow a wound to fester, the more bitterness, anger, and self-pity poison my blood and eat at my heart. That's true. So how do you get rid of bitterness? You forgive. You forgive. Okay, so for unforgiveness, a rather forgiveness may look foolish. That was big idea number one, but it's the most freeing thing you can do. That's big idea. Number two, so the question is, how do we do it? How do we forgive? Let me offer four points of practical guidance for forgiving that person who has hurt you, and they come right out of 1 Samuel 24. The first thing that you must do when someone has hurt you, and this we resist and we fight, we want to skip right over it. The first thing you do is take a deep inward look, take a deep inward look at your own heart. Why was David conscience stricken in verse five? Why did his conscience bother him about cutting off a corner of Saul's robe? Because, and we may not know this from our culture because this is a different culture, but in David's time and in David's day and in David's culture, what he had done was he dared to challenge and compromise the dignity of the royal office of the king of Israel by cutting off the corner of that robe. And he'd come that close to killing the lords anointed. David knew that he had the potential in his own life and his own heart to sin greatly against God by doing that. You see what I see about David is that he is more concerned about his own lack of character in that cutting off of day of Saul's robe than he was about the injustice that was handed him by King Saul. It's amazing, isn't it? Notice what David says about himself in verse 14. In fact, I'm going to tweak the version most of us have in our laps right now. It's the new international version. It's the one from which I read earlier. I'm going to tweak it a little bit. Verse 14. It says against whom. This is David speaking to Saul against whom has the king of Israel come out? Who are you pursuing? And then in our NIV it offers the next two phrases as questions, a dead dog, a flee, but other versions have these as statements. And I think that's the better way to read what David is saying. He's saying to Saul, Saul, who have you come out against? Who are you pursuing a dead dog? A flee. That's what I am. David had taken a deep inward look. I want to say something kind of hard. I guess you pay me to say these things. Just know that I've said them myself to me. Do you know why some of you are having trouble with forgiveness? Because you think you're better than that person who hurt you. You would have never hurt anybody the way that person hurt you, right? You're above that type of thing. You've never treated anyone badly, right? You've always treated people with the utmost of kindness and respect. You've always told the truth. You've always resisted words of gossip. You've never cheated on somebody. You've never lost your temper. You're above all that. We know better. Guess what? You're a flee. And so am I. We're fleas. We're broken. We're sinful. We're all guilty in this area. You are quite capable of doing the same thing that that offender has done to you and worse. In fact, things you've done are worse. Jesus said, Matthew chapter 7, something we've all heard, why do you look at the spec of sawdust in that person's eye and ignore the plank, the board that's in your own? In other words, I take it that Jesus is saying for every look at someone else's sin, take 10 looks at your own. I love this about David. No wonder he's called the man after God's heart. He had a sensitive conscience. He wasn't afraid to look at the plank in his own eye. Now, come back next week. You're going to look at chapter 25 with me and David's going to be totally opposite. He's going to be inconsistent with this in chapter 25. But for now, David has a sensitive conscience. Good for him. Good for you. First thing you do is you take that deep inward look. Second, what do you do? Practical guidance. How to forgive. You acknowledge the pain. You acknowledge it. Verse 11 of our text, notice what David does. He acknowledges the reality of the offense. He says in verse 11, see my father. He's speaking to Saul. Look at this piece of your robe in my hand. I cut off the corner of your robe, but did not kill you. Now, understand and recognize that I am not guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion. I have not wronged you, but you are hunting me down to take my life. See, David is confronting Saul with the truth of what he's done. He's acknowledging this hurt me. You're hunting me down unjustly, Saul. I don't deserve this. I've not done you wrong. You've done me wrong. You know what? I think sometimes we short-circuit the forgiveness process by saying something like, oh, it's all right. It's okay. It's no big deal. Or what we do is we carelessly release people from the seriousness of what they've done by saying something like, that's just the way he is. Or she does that all the time. It's okay. No big problem. No. It is a big deal. That's not just the way he is. So you have to first tell yourself that you've been hurt. Then you've got to tell God that you've been hurt. Then you might even have to tell that person that you've been hurt. Some of you have told me your stories in this area. I know how deeply some of you have been hurt by your spouse, for example, by your parents, by your kids, by a friend, or whatnot. And for many of you, the most courageous step you took was writing that letter to that person, and spelling out this hurt me, or having that hard conversation with that person, and saying this hurt me. That took a lot of courage, and you did it, and that's right and good. It's hard, isn't it? Many times we would rather keep the pain inside and push it down, then bring it up and feel it all over again. We don't want to revisit that experience. We'd rather paste on a smile and say some nice fine Christian cliche, and instead of speak truth and cry real tears and make somebody else feel bad. But listen, friends, recovery begins with honesty. David says, I have not wronged you, but you have wronged me, so you acknowledge the pain. The third thing you do, and this is the big one, you cancel the debt. You cancel the debt, you let the one who hurt you go free, you let him or her walk out of the cave. What I mean is, you eventually have to come to the place where you say, I forgive you. If not directly to the person, at least in your own head, I forgive you. I will not hold this over you. I am setting you free from my sentence of judgment and condemnation. Walk. Verse 7 is where we see what David did. Verse 7 says, David rebuked his men and did not allow them to attack Saul and Saul left the cave and went his way. David led him out of the cave. He didn't hold Saul guilty. Someone has said that forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. Say that again, forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. See, Saul had tried on several occasions to kill Saul, right? We've already, we've already, to kill David. We've already learned that. He, Saul had been hunting David down like a criminal. He'd been spreading bad reports about David and false rumors about David. And you know what? We didn't even look at chapter 22. We skipped over that in this series, but if you were to read for Samuel 22, you would find out that Saul was responsible for the death of perhaps hundreds of people in this town called Nob, all because of his hatred of David. Saul is a very bad man. But David makes a decision. He refuses to repay evil with evil. David decides by an act of will to overcome evil with good. He let Saul off the hook. Did you notice in this chapter that I read that he calls Saul his master? He calls him his father. He calls him the Lord's anointed. In verse 8, he bows down before Saul and lies face down on the ground as a show of respect and humility. He says in verse 13, my hand will not touch you, Saul. And did you notice in verse 9 something I find very, very interesting. Verse 9, David even comes up with an excuse for Saul's behavior. Did you see that? He says, Saul, pardon me, why do you listen when men say that I'm bent on harming you? See what David is doing is he's shifting blame off of Saul onto Saul's men. He's giving Saul an excuse. You know, we excuse our behavior all the time. God is calling us to give excuses for other people's behavior to find reasons why they might have done what they did to us. Trying to get into their shoes and figure out wonder what pain she's in that made her treat me the way she did. See what you're doing is you're canceling the death. David is saying surely it's their fault, not your Saul. You were given bad intelligence. David, let's all go. Now, this is real important here. Oh boy, I know I told you last week I was going to get you out earlier. I was going to make up for it. Well, you've got to forgive me, right? Okay, keep going. I will but I'll try to hurry because this is so very vital that you get this. When you forgive someone, when you forgive someone, what happens to the pain of the offense? Does it just poof disappear like magic? You know, better than that. Of course it doesn't. No, when you forgive, what happens is you absorb in yourself the pain of the offense. You pay the debt yourself. Hebrews 9.22 says that without the shedding of blood, there is no such thing as forgiveness. That means that forgiveness always costs you something. There's always a cost. The hurt just doesn't go away. You absorb it into yourself instead of exacting it upon the offender. And you know what? You may have to keep cancelling that debt again and again and again. In other words, the heartache and the loss that you experienced the first time may come back into your consciousness again for days or weeks or even years. Some of you know this all too well. And when this happens, you absorb the debt again. You do what Jesus said. You forgive 77 times. Every time you want to treat that person like a voodoo doll and stick a pin in him, you refuse to do it. Instead, you pay the debt yourself. Every time you want to sneak a bad report about that person into a conversation, you keep your mouth shut and you pay the debt yourself. Every time you want to hope and we do this, that something bad happens to that person. You pray a little prayer of blessing over her, over him and you pay the debt yourself. You shed your own blood instead of taking theirs. That's what forgiveness is. But I can hear somebody out there saying, but what about justice? Doesn't justice matter? Yes. If I just cancel the debt, will I ever get vindicated? Yes. Will the wrongdoer ever get his due? Yes. So what do you do? You trust in God and leave vengeance to him. You trust in God who is your defender. Verse 15, David says, may the Lord be our judge? That word judge means defender. May the Lord be our judge and decide between us all. May he consider my cause and uphold it. May he vindicate me by delivering me from your hand. I want you to know this morning. God cares about justice. He cares about your suffering. He cares about your cause. He cares about your victimization. There is coming a day when God will make all wrongs right. There is coming a time of judgment when, as it says in 2 Thessalonians 1, 6, God will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to those of you who are troubled. I love what the him writer said when he put it this way. God hears your size and counts your tears and he will lift up your head. What you must do meanwhile is really trust God to do the right thing. Wait upon his timing and see to it. He will see to it that you're vindicated and that the offender will be punished unless the offender also trusts in God. If the offending party trusts in Jesus Christ, you know what happens? Then his debt is gone. See Jesus did something that can cancel everybody's debt, no matter how bad it is. He absorbed in himself on the cross the sins and the crimes of every single person who trusts in him. Jesus did something so foolish that the angels themselves are amazed. He left heaven, came to earth, became a man, lived the perfect life that we were expected to live, died the death we deserve to die. He shed his blood so we wouldn't have to. From the cross, Jesus said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing and the Father forgave us. And he says now to every single person who repents and trusts in him, go free. You're no longer condemned, you're no longer guilty. I take your sins upon myself and give you my righteousness. Your debts are paid in full. We owed an infinite debt to God. We could never pay that debt off but it's been cancelled through the blood of Christ. And now what God is saying for you and me to do is go. Go cancel other people's debts. Go set them free. Overcome evil with good. And don't be surprised if you find out that the person that you've set free is you. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gift of forgiveness that you've given us. Thank you, Lord, that we are free. And now we have a charge. Lord, here at UPC, we have been given a commission to go and set other people free. That's why we're here. Would you help us within our fellowship to be good at letting each other go free? And would you help us collectively to go out into East Orlando and the rest of the world and cancel people's debts and set them free and give them the joy of knowing the gospel, the good news that Jesus came to forgive us. And we ask this in his name. Amen.