Forgiveness

And I'll just read James 5, 19 to 20, but we're going to look at a number of scriptures today. And this won't be the bulk of it, but the bulk of it's a longer passage that I don't want to read the whole thing of at the beginning. So James 5, 19 and 20. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

You may be seated. We are in what is supposed to be part four of four of the series on church discipline. this was originally going to be point four of a single sermon several weeks ago and and as i was looking at all of it i thought well we can we can make these points a little bigger now i'm looking at this one thinking well this could be two sermons so hopefully chairs are comfortable i'm just kidding i won't i won't do that to you but but what i want to do is is remind you of what we said about church discipline, that it's deliberate, that it's discreet, and it's directed toward the purity of the church. And because what I'm going to talk about today is basically just the term forgiveness.

We're going to discuss forgiveness, what it is, what it isn't, who needs it, why we do it, when we give it, all that stuff. And we're going to not look at every aspect of forgiveness that's possible to look at. and so you may walk out and think well he didn't talk about this type of forgiveness or whatever that's a possibility because what I'm still trying to have a bit of a focus on is how forgiveness is is the desperately needed discipline in our church and in the church so we're in part four discipline is desperately needed in the church and it's because we all need to be forgiven we all need to be forgiving. So let's start first and foremost James 5 19 to 20 right after James talks about helping people by praying over them and if you read the end of James 5 and you see that it says that someone is sick and the elders should pray for them and anoint them with oil.

There's some stuff there that people have dealt with the oil and some of these things. But what I want you to see there is the context that it gets to at the end is that what we're talking about is somebody who's spiritually sick. Somebody who has sin and they want their sin prayed for that they may be forgiven of their sin. See in verse 16 it says, Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

So I've heard people say, well, this is if you're actually physically ill because of your sin, you would go to the elders and get the oil and the prayer and you could be healed. And I've also heard people say that it's really kind of more of a metaphor for when you're so sick with your sin, you need people to pray for you. So you go to people who care about you in your church, people who have robust prayer lives, people who are close to God, people who are living in fellowship with Him, who are praying according to God's will, And you ask them to pray to help you with your sin.

If you have sin in your life and you really truly are repenting, if you really want it gone, you will ask people to pray for you whose prayers you think will be effective. But what's important here is in verse 20, James says, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. And so what we see is that when we discipline one another in the church, when we're deliberately helping one another see their blind spots, when we're opening up ourselves to one another to be helped in the sanctification process, when there is a person who wanders, we actually are credited by God here.

It says we save his soul from death. Now we know in the grand scheme of things and in the overarching plan of salvation, it's God who saves people. We understand that. But this phraseology that James, the brother of Jesus Christ, uses is that whoever brings back a sinner will save his soul from death. And he's talking about individuals. You could argue, well, God's the one who brings them back.

Well, sure, but what it's talking about is if you love your brothers and sisters enough that you go to them when they're wandering, and you assist them with their sin, you are bringing them back from death. So if you imagine the way discipline works itself out, somebody sins, let's say it gets past the first couple points, they're in front of the church, and they're being publicly exposed for their sin, they're being told it's time to repent, that we're afraid for their soul. That act, when they repent, is actually what they will credit with bringing them back.

If the person continues to leave, then you didn't bring back the sinner and their soul, we believe, probably isn't saved. So it's desperately needed. But one of the reasons why we need to do discipline, so that was more of a separate topic than forgiveness, is that we all need forgiveness. So turn to Psalm 32. one of the neat things about humanity is that apart from if you were conceived of the Holy Spirit I can look out among you and I can know that every single one of you is a sinner like we have one sinner writing in marker in his Bible there Quit doing that you going to regret that Michael I know that you're a sinner because you are descended from Adam and Eve.

Jesus was descended from Adam and Eve in a unique way where the Holy Spirit conceived Him. And He was conceived without sin. So I can tell you that we all need forgiveness. So look at Psalm 32, verses 1 and 2. We're going to jump around a couple verses here. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man against whom Yahweh counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. There's the word forgiveness in there. If your transgressions are forgiven, you're blessed, you're happy. We all need this. We've all failed. Look at Psalm 85, verse 2.

So lest you believe that forgiveness is a New Testament concept, lest you've fallen victim to the teaching that the Old Testament God was like the big, mean, angry God, usually kind of an old guy with white hair when people draw pictures of him, and he's all angry, and then Jesus came, and Jesus kind of made him not so angry with people anymore, and almost like it was a shock. Lest you think that's how God is, which is what I was really taught growing up. Psalm 85, 2.

You forgave the iniquity of your people. You covered all their sin. Say la. You withdrew all your wrath. You turned from your hot anger. Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation towards us.

So we all need forgiveness. We've all failed. And what we need to understand is that when Jesus Christ came into the world, He didn't come in to partially do a job. He's not like you and I are. He doesn't get things part of the way done. When he was on the cross and he breathed out and said, It is finished, he cried out with a loud cry, in fact.

When he cried that out, he was talking about your sin debt before God was completely paid off if you're a Christian. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, became a man, and never once sinned. He did every righteous thing that anyone has ever been called to do. He perfectly obeyed God's law. He fulfilled it, not abolishing it. And when Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross, when he was treated like he was guilty of a crime that deserved capital punishment, Jesus Christ really did truly suffer the penalty that sinners deserve in their place.

And when Jesus Christ said, it is finished, what he was announcing was that the payment, the penal substitution that he had to provide, the payment had been provided to God himself. Jesus Christ being God himself also is the one that was offended by our sin. And so what Jesus Christ did when he was on that cross is he fulfilled God's plan and he forgave sinners.

And he rose again from the grave three days later. And if you believe that, then what we say is that you're born again and you're a Christian. And you need to trust and walk in his ways. But what does it mean to be forgiven? Because it's kind of a word that we toss around a lot. And I think some people don't understand what it means.

I think some people don't really think it through. And so I want you to know that forgiveness... and of course I have these horrible notes that I lose track of oh forgiveness doesn't mean that something's okay let's start with that when Jesus Christ was punished on the cross and he died and when he had to cry out my God my God why have you forsaken me that was not an announcement that hey by the way all your sin is okay. In fact, that was the announcement that your sin is so vile and wretched and ugly that for you to have even an opportunity to be allowed to talk to God one time, somebody had to die and it had to be a perfect man.

And the only man who could do that was the son of God, Jesus Christ, who became incarnate and then lived the perfect spirit filled life. So forgiveness does not mean that something is okay. What forgiveness means is that someone other than the offender, someone other than the person who committed the crime, who committed the sin, has to pay the penalty.

That's what forgiveness means. And what it means usually is that the victim of the crime pays the penalty. So if somebody steals a hundred dollars from you and then they pay you back the hundred dollars and you say, I forgive you, you didn't really forgive them. Okay? You may have forgiven the disrespect or the offense of them, but you certainly didn't forgive them of the stealing.

They paid it back. When you forgive someone, you are the one incurring the penalty. When God forgives people, He incurred the penalty. Jesus Christ Himself took the penalty that sinners deserve. So forgiveness means that someone other than the offender pays the penalty. It's usually the victim.

Justice means that the offender pays a penalty. So you have to have in your mind these different words that are theological terms. There's forgiveness and there's justice. If justice is done, then forgiveness didn't happen in that sense with that individual. Jesus Christ on the cross was able to allow, basically, I don't want to say allow, but Jesus Christ made it so that God could be both just, love justice like he does, and the justifier of the one who has faith in him because Jesus Christ made atonement for sinners.

He paid the penalty sinners deserve so that justice could be done A penalty was paid but he also allowed people to be justified in the sight of God by offering forgiveness because he already paid the penalty This is why we believe that if you're truly forgiven by Jesus Christ for your sins, you will never pay a penalty. I've heard people say, we're all going to at least stand before God one day and we're going to feel sad about the things that we failed to do correctly in this life. I don't think so.

Jesus Christ paid for every single sin of every single one of his people perfectly and there will be not a shred of remembrance of it when his people stand before God Jesus stands before God and he's perfect and God loves him perfectly and in him he is well pleased and he has no stain of sin whatsoever on him and if you are united with Jesus Christ if you have union with Christ because of your adoption as God's son or daughter God sees you no differently than he sees Jesus. And so God cannot have anger towards you. He cannot have wrath towards you.

His disposition towards you is nothing but perfect eternal love. This is why Jeremiah is able to say that you have loved me with an everlasting love. Because that is how God loves. It's the only way God can do things is eternally perfectly. and so you're forgiven even if your repentance is imperfect so some of you came to Jesus Christ and you said yeah I want to be forgiven I want to believe that you died for me and and then you repeated some of the same sins that you know sent him to the cross and then some of you think to yourself well maybe I'm not maybe I wasn't really sorry Maybe I wasn't truly sorry enough because I did it again.

Jesus even died to forgive your imperfect repentance and I would dare say your imperfect belief at times. If you think about all the times in your life that you've doubted him. All the times that even for just a moment you wondered, is he really God? Is he really coming back? is he going to keep the promises I read about in the scripture? Those are sins by the way.

The reason I reference them as things that need forgiven is it's actually sin. I know it's praise today to doubt God but in fact doubting God is sin because God doesn't lie and he's perfect. But Jesus died even to forgive those things because he knew that you were weak. He knew you were imperfect. so turn to Matthew 15 we'll go back to the past Matthew 18 I think, I'm sorry the passage that we've been working from Matthew 18 what I want to say is we all need to be forgiving this is the fruit of salvation so if you were keeping track, this is the third point actually the whole thing seems a little scattered probably to me but first we want to save people's souls by bringing them back Second, we all need forgiveness.

Everybody in here needed it. Everybody still needs it. Everyone you know needs it. But we all need to be forgiving. The third point, it's the fruit of your salvation. Listen to this passage.

After the passage we've been studying in Matthew 18, 15 to 20, 21 says, Peter came up and said to him, to Jesus, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times. So Peter kind of gets what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying you have to forgive your brother. That there's no place for bitterness, for resentment.

There's no way you can harbor these things. 1 Corinthians 13 hadn't been written yet. Where it says love doesn't resent. Love isn't irritable and bitter. But Peter understands. And so Peter thinks, hey.

People make fun of Peter a lot. And we're all probably worse than Peter. But he says, hey, if my brother sins against me, I'll forgive him as many as seven times. And I think Peter kind of hoped Jesus would sort of be blown away here. Like, whoa, you are a holy God. Like if he was going to make someone pope, like this would have been the moment, right?

Seven times. Some of you are ready to kick someone out of your life if they offend you twice. Peter's probably doing pretty good. We can mock him because we know the rest of the story. So Jesus says, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. Some people's Bibles, it says 70 times seven.

I don't know the difference between the two, the textual criticism stuff. If somebody wants to look that up, you can come teach it. The point is this, there's an innumerable number of times that someone's going to offend you because love doesn't keep any record of the wrongdoing in the first place. So by the time somebody has offended you 77 times or 490 times, if they keep failing and they keep coming back and asking for forgiveness, you keep granting it because it's a command of your Lord.

That's the point of it. And some of you married couples that have been married more than 490 days, you know that you need more than 490 forgivenesses in you in order to keep things going. Okay? Some of you kids with brothers and sisters, but 490 days what's that a year and four months or something so if you've had a brother or sister for more than a year and four months i'll bet you probably needed more than 490 forgivenesses in you to be able to get along and still love them so you have to be forgiving listen jesus says not 70 times 77 time not seven times 77 and 23 therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

So here's a story Jesus is telling. It's a parable. It's not a real story. He says this is what you can compare it to. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. My Bible says one talent is worth 20 years wages for a laborer So now he saying 10 so 10 times 20 years is 200 years worth of wages Okay?

Some of us couldn't imagine a lifetime's worth, right? This is 200,000 years worth of wages. So the point is this, don't worry about how much money it is, it's unpayable. Nobody's going to earn this much money is the point. Nobody will ever be able to pay it back. and since he could not pay his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and payment to be made so basically the guy said well I'll get what I can out of you okay 26 so the servant fell on his knees imploring him have patience with me and I will pay you everything so this guy you know promises to pay out of pity for him the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt the master paid the debt basically right this guy owed him the money the master forgives him we have forgiveness going on here so this is a good story so far but when that same servant went out I'll give you a little hermeneutical tip here if you want to know Greek ask Bert he's our Greek scholar now if you want to read the bible in English which is what 99% of us are going to do anyway.

You see the word but, and you stop and you think, why is that there, right? Like the word therefore. The word but is a transitional word. It's telling you something happened that you just read about, and now I'm going to tell you something that's going to be a contradictory or a little bit of a different angle to look at. It's going to be a different way to understand what we're talking about.

But when the same servant, so this guy who had already been forgiven a lifetime of wages times 200,000. When he went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. So that would be like 100 days worth, right? So, you know, if you're looking at a year as 250 to 300 days, like less than a few months worth of wages, somebody owed him.

And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe. seems a little extreme but he did it right I think that Jesus wants us to understand what's in this guy's heart there's a lot of hatred you have to really hate someone to choke him to choke him for money he owes you that's going to be pretty difficult how's he going to pay you some of us would cut off our nose to spite our face explain that one later if you want so his fellow servant did exactly what he did he fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. So this guy says the same exact thing the other guy said that got him some mercy. And he refused.

He refused to forgive him and have patience with him. And he went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. That was always strange to me. Like, how does he pay it in prison? We can talk about the prison system another time too. Like, there's some problems there.

But when his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed. People looked around. OK, this is in the analogy. This is the church. The fellow servants are looking around like, wait a second. You just received 200,000 lifetimes worth of debt relief.

Right. And this other guy owed you a little bit. and you couldn't just pass on like .005% of it or whatever it would be. I tried to do the math in my head. Forgive me if it was wrong. They were greatly distressed. This bothered them.

And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. And the master summoned and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servants as I had mercy on you? So here's the point of the passage, right? He should have been ready to dispense similar mercy to others that he had received.

And what he had received was forgiveness of more than he could have ever paid. And he wasn't willing to even forgive a smaller mercy towards someone else. and in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt well this guy remember owed 200,000 lifetimes of debt right so he's still there we're here 2,000 years later that guy is still paying his debt and the point is that he's in hell this guy didn't love the master truly he says so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you so then jesus makes it personal if you do not forgive your brother from your heart so you might read the story and your first thought might be well wait a second god forgave the guy so does this mean we can lose our salvation and and that's a reasonable question and the rest of the scripture teaches us we can't but one of the things calvin points out he says you know though he offers mercy to all, yet severe creditors from whom no forgiveness can be obtained are unworthy of enjoying it. So God casts out mercy towards all.

So in this story, the guy was forgiven the debt, but obviously Jesus's point is that if you don't respond like a person who was truly forgiven a debt like that, what you're showing is you never really received it in the first place. This guy I never actually was truly repentant. Turn to Psalm 119, verse 60. You need to forgive others because God's commanded you to do it.

So you should be motivated, first of all, by your own forgiveness. You are such a wretched, wicked man. vile sinner that if you were the only one that had ever lived, Jesus would have had to die in your place. Your sin against God is far greater than even the smallest little thing that anybody could ever do against you. And it's also greater than the biggest thing anybody's ever done to you.

You have offended God infinitely more than anyone has ever offended you. And if God has forgiven you, you should be more than motivated to forgive others. if he's granted you freedom from the penalty of your sin it should be your desire to see others forgiven and to do it yourself in Psalm 119.60 Psalmist says I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments I'll turn to Ephesians 4 I'm going to toss around a little bit in the Bible Ephesians 4 and then we'll go to Colossians 3 kind of parallel passages anyway Ephesians 4.30 do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption how do you not grieve the Holy Spirit of God well let's see what he says let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice bitterness is basically what grows from your resentment okay so bitterness is something that that happens because you feed your resentment because you feed your anger because legitimately okay some people are just bitter maybe i suppose legitimately someone has wronged you we live in a sin cursed world and you are surrounded by other sinners Sinners will wrong you and offend you. That's going to happen.

Resentment is when you continuously feel the pain over and over again. It's a Latin phrase, resent, to re-feel. That's the root word of resentment. You're feeling it over and over again. So yesterday somebody cut you off in traffic. You're still mad about it today.

That means you're resentful. And it's sin. And you're hurting yourself. One of the old sayings with resentment is, resentment is, I hate someone, so I drink poison. Yeah, it sounds stupid, doesn't it? Easton Space, let me know.

Yeah, it's stupid. Some people say, you let somebody live rent-free in your head. It's another phrase. Where all of a sudden, this person who did something to you, and they're not still doing it, they're either out of your life, or they've repented, they're done doing it, or they're just not part of your life anymore, and you still let the pain affect you daily.

And what happens is that pain hurts more and more. And then it gets bigger and bigger. And it grows into something called bitterness. That's why some of you, when your spouse is mad at you, you look at them and you think, why are you mad like nothing just happened? And then you figure out like, oh, you're mad about like something from Thursday. or even better you know God forbid that people have to deal too much with this but you're mad about what the last guy did or you're mad about what the last girl did you know sometimes we project onto people in our current situation errors that people in our past made they may even be heinous crimes don't let a root of bitterness grow up inside you is what the book of Hebrews tells you.

The book of Deuteronomy pretty much tells you you're not one of his if you let that happen. Continuing, though, what's the antidote to bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander? 32, Ephesians 4, 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and then what's he say? He says, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. You're commanded to forgive.

It's not just, hey, you got forgiven. This is a great idea. like it makes sense logically even though it does I'm not just appealing to you hey do this thing that God never said but it kind of makes sense to me like he said forgiving one another it's implied this is a letter to the church Ephesians wasn't written to people to say hey here's how to get along with non-believers in your neighborhood here's how to get along at work he says forgiving one another we're going to offend one another people are going to offend you I hate that it's true I wish I didn't offend you I wish I wasn't selfish I wish I wasn't hurtful this is why we have a chapter of Romans 7 where we can just cry out who's going to deliver me from this body of death we can be excited that we're going to be delivered from this daily impossibility of actually walking in love we just can't do it we're imperfect. I wish there wasn't a chapter break sometimes.

Chapter 5, Ephesians 1, right after 32, be kind to one. Just a quick note, it doesn't say be nice, okay? If you don't know the difference between kind and nice, figure it out, ask me, talk to your parents. It doesn't say be nice anywhere in the Bible. Be kind. But look, he says, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.

Imitate God, he's saying. Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. A fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Walk in love as Christ loved you. You should be able to forgive others because Christ forgave you. Christ took the penalty that you deserved actually on himself.

And he was the offended one. So if someone offends you, and Jesus Christ has died for that person, in particular in the church, if somebody offends you when they offended you they offended God far more than they even offended you in that moment And if God found it in his heart to forgive that person how dare you hold that against them still? Are you a better judge than God?

God has deemed that that penalty was paid. Colossians 3, another command to be forgiving. I just want you to see that it's commanded. I'm not making this up. Colossians 3, 12. We'll just start at 12.

Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. Why do I have to bear with someone if we're all perfect? If I expect everyone around me to be perfect, I can ignore all these commands about bearing with one another. I'm supposed to expect to have to bear with one another. bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive this is all the result of actually loving people Jason read about Ephesians the church of the Ephesians today in Revelation 2 and it says that they abandoned their first love and they need to return to that and I've heard people say over and over that somehow this church didn't love God anymore and I reject that notion completely because I don't think he would have written to him as a church and commended all their works if they didn't love God the works they did at first and you can read about it in the book of Acts is the Ephesians loved one another and I think the Ephesians were losing their love for one another in their zeal for doctrine I think they were excited to find false teachers and then they were excited to fight the battles against false teachers that we need to fight and to say hard things against people who are saying wrong things and I think that they got a little too excited about it and actually in the act of maybe disciplining one another they had lost their love for one another.

But in Colossians above all these things we were just told to do he says put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. When you love one another you'll bear with one another you'll forgive one another and you'll do it with meekness and patience. and I'll tell you what you may go to your grave having never gotten the apology that you expected from somebody and that's okay because you're going to go to your grave with a whole bunch of unconfessed sin and a whole bunch of stuff you didn't even realize you were doing that offended God every moment and he's still going to glorify you and put you in heaven so do it he told you to do it finally the most important reason why we're forgiving this is what the author Paul just referred to is because God's forgiving you're to imitate your heavenly father we're not forgiving by nature we're not we're actually hateful we deceive ourselves though we say no no it's not that I'm not forgiving I'm just I'm just I believe in justice and so this person who has done this wrong thing He needs to pay the penalty. And I agree that in the court of law and in the justice system that we have, I believe that there should be justice carried out by the government that's been appointed by God.

I agree with that completely. And I've seen some situations, you know, I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but, you know, I think O.J. Simpson was clearly guilty of murder. And I think he got off back in 96 or whenever all that happened. And I think if you see what's happened in that man's life since that time, he has received a weird form of justice. There was a later time that they weren't even sure he did something and he got found guilty of it.

And you could almost tell, well, they were just, they were trying to execute justice for the previous injustice, right? So if you don't know who O.J. Simpson is, sorry, or I'm not sorry, but sorry about the analogy. So I agree people deserve justice and there's a place where we try to get justice in this world and I'll tell you what, the person who has offended you the most, the person who hurt you, who deserves justice, the person who deserves maybe execution, the person who deserves a rotten prison, the person who doesn't deserve any good thing for the rest of this life, if they get off scot-free in this world, and that's a horrible travesty of justice, God will remember their evil deeds.

And they will be punished for all eternity. for a lot more than even that one thing that they did to you or two things or maybe months long worth of things they've done to you. And if by his grace he chooses to grant that person mercy and forgiveness, then we praise the Lord for that. And we're thankful to know that he's added someone to the family of God who was no less deserving of it than you.

No more deserving either. We think we're just. We think we love justice, but really we hate people. We want to withhold forgiveness, and we think it's a good idea. God is forgiving. Turn to Exodus 34.

We sing holy, holy, holy today, and I love that song. I'm not convinced that the fact that the Bible says holy, holy, holy a couple times somehow makes that the attribute of God that we have to have the highest focus on. I've heard people, I think, put an improper focus on it just based on that phraseology. The Bible also describes God a number of different ways and a number of different passages, all of which are very important.

Exodus 34, verse 5, Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there, Moses, and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. It just proclaims his own name. That's how awesome he is. Just saying his name is the greatest thing. And Yahweh passed before him Moses and he proclaimed Yahweh Yahweh a God merciful and gracious slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

So I'm not at all opposed to preaching God's holiness, and I think it's wonderful. In fact, His holiness has to be here. None of this makes sense. My point is this. This is a whole long passage about God being merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, faithfulness. And then in verse 7, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

But who will by no means clear the guilty? How can anyone be saved if you won't clear the guilty? Jesus Christ was treated as if he was guilty your guilt was imputed to him while his righteousness can be imputed to you that's how it says God forgives iniquity transgression and sin what's the difference some people think there maybe isn't one it's just repeating words but I'll say you know sin is not doing what we ought to do transgression is crossing over God's law into doing something we shouldn't shouldn't.

Iniquity is when we twist God's law and make it something it's not. Those are some definitions for you. If it helps you, there are three different ways we can violate God. How about Psalm 145, 8 and 9? I know a few of you guys have this one memorized in here. Psalm 145, 8 and 9.

I'll give you a minute to turn there. Yahweh is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. It's almost a parallel passage, right? Jonah is going to quote this passage. Later on, Jonah will quote it. Yahweh is good to all and His mercy is over all that He has made.

We have a holy God. We have a God who is just. We're thankful for that. We walk around this world daily thankful that God has actually put into each and every one of his human creatures some sense of justice or it would be mass chaos all the time. It is amazing when you understand how depraved man truly is that any of us ever walks to the store or lets your kid out of your sight for two seconds.

There is a general nobody's as bad as they could be practically speaking going on around here. But the same God who's holy and just, who's rightly provoked to anger by our wickedness, this God is also the God who's gracious. That means he gives gifts to those who don't deserve it. He's merciful. It means he withholds punishment from those who do deserve it.

He's slow to anger. He's patient with us. Do you realize that you should have gone straight to hell the moment you first sinned? So you could argue the moment you were conceived. The moment you first maybe, we'll just expand this out. The moment you first knowingly knew you were, I'm going to do something God doesn't want me to do.

You could have gone straight to hell in that moment. God would have been perfectly just to do that. and yet some of you he's given you decades I was 30 years old when I believed the gospel that was a long time from a human perspective for God to be patient with me and allow me to inflict punishment on maybe some people that didn't deserve it some Christians there's people in my past who I hurt very badly God allowed that Turn to Matthew 6. One final passage about forgiveness.

If you haven't understood this yet, Matthew 6, 12. We desperately need to forgive one another because each one of us desperately needs forgiveness. Forgiveness is the logical result of good discipline and deliberate discipline. we desperately need to forgive one another because we ourselves need it as well we need it from God first of all so it should be almost easy to dispense it should almost be silly like I can't wait to forgive someone that's the attitude you should have and then also we need forgiveness because we're going to offend one another and we've been forgiven by one another much we need to forgive because our heavenly father forgives verse 12 and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors we're at when we pray the lord's prayer or the disciples prayer some people call it we're actually calling on god to be as forgiving to us as we are to others it's like kind of a tricky way jesus will almost say snuck it in here right some of you've been saying it since you were little kids i prayed the lord's prayer over and over since I was a little kid.

I was Catholic. We prayed that prayer a lot. So if I hold an unforgiving spirit towards someone and then I pray this prayer, I'm actually asking God to be unforgiving toward me. And he'll answer that prayer. That's one of the few prayers of the unrighteous he'll answer is he'll withhold forgiveness from you if you're going to withhold it from others. You can't even properly worship God if you're not forgiving your brothers and sisters.

He says, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. Jesus gives you a bit of almost a formula here. One of the ways that you know you going to receive forgiveness on the last day is that you live walking in forgiveness yourself He says but if you do not forgive others their trespasses neither will your father forgive your trespasses One of the surest ways to know that you are probably not a Christian is that you're unforgiving.

Spurgeon said, do you find it difficult to forgive one who has wronged you? Then you will find it difficult to get to heaven. Spurgeon also said a whole bunch of really really good things on forgiveness and I could have filled the whole sermon with them but we withhold forgiveness basically because we don't understand it either we haven't received it ourselves so that we don't even have any experiential idea of what it is or we don't see the enormity of our own sins so some of us have been forgiven by God Maybe you're a new Christian or maybe you're just not that serious about it yet.

And you don't actually recognize how big your sin was before God. You're the guy who thought he was forgiven just a little bit. Jesus has a passage about that where the two guys, one was forgiven more than the other. He says, who's going to love the guy more? And the Pharisees like, well, the guy that was forgiven more like we've all been forgiven more than we could imagine.

That's the whole point. he who is forgiven much forgives much just a reminder forgiveness doesn't mean that the thing the person did is okay it means that someone other than the offender has to pay the penalty for the sin the victim justice would mean that the offender pays the penalty so if you believe God has forgiven you that means that you believe that Jesus paid the penalty for all your sins. If a Christian sins against you, Jesus has already been judged in his place and there's no conflict, there's no condemnation, excuse me, nor wrath of God remaining for that sinner. So don't try to be more just than God, more righteous than God.

Forgiveness doesn't mean that people aren't held accountable either. So this is one of the aspects of forgiveness I'm not going to get to talk about much. It just means that we're held to a higher standard. Our discipline implies vigilance against past sins creeping back up. So if somebody comes to you and requests forgiveness and then they continue to sin in the same manner, it is proper to question their repentance, but it's not proper to just decide, well, they can't be repentant because they failed again.

We have to bear with one another in love and be patient with them. But if you request forgiveness, it is a good idea to try to think about, like, how can I do better next time? How can I do better? But you will never be perfectly sorry. You'll never be perfectly repentant. And so you go and you ask forgiveness when you sin.

So you desperately need to forgive others. if you believe that someone won't sin against you again or they'll embody perfect repentance that's twisted and backward it's unhealthy and harmful you should expect people to offend you even unnecessarily at times and you go to them in love and you pray that God grants them repentance forgiving someone who has sinned against you and doesn't deserve any mercy at all is the most Christ-like thing you could do in this world. A church or a marriage or a family cannot survive if its members are not forgiving. Every church is filled with men and women still struggling against the flesh.

You will be sinned against and you will sin against others. You have blind spots that your covenant community can see and in fact is commissioned to help you see so that you may mortify your flesh. neglecting discipline is the spiritual equivalent of abandoning exercise and eating nothing but junk food. Except if you avoid biblical spiritual discipline, that will destroy you eternally rather than only physically.

So today I want you to rest in God, who for the sake of his son has already forgiven you the debt that you could never pay. imitate your heavenly father as you are conformed to Christ's image and seek to show forgiveness and participate in the sanctification of his bride who he is coming to rescue from this evil age pray with me father you are gracious and merciful abounding in steadfast love slow to anger forgiving iniquity transgression and sin to thousands of those who love you. And you will by no means clear the guilty. So we thank you that Jesus Christ took our guilt.

We pray that you would help us to experience the forgiveness of sins. Those of us who have tasted and seen that you are good we thank you for the forgiveness that's already been provided. We ask you to help us to walk believing this is really true. I pray for the church here today that we would be a church that practices loving discipline. That we would be willing to talk about hard things, to forgive one another for our sins against one another, that we would be willing to overlook a multitude of sins or even minor offenses, and that we would grow in our union with Christ and that would grow us all closer together.

Amen.