Forgiveness
Note for my church:
• We need to be careful of our vision.
• We have just built this wonderful building.
• We have a vision to expand, by knocking out that wall.
• We see a “crowd” of people coming through that door.
• See… We need to stop watching out for the crowd, and focus on the “next” family or the next person.
• Don’t let a blur of faces be your vision.
• We need to start focusing on the individual person and individual family.
• If we do not focus on individual people, then all we will have is a blurred picture for a vision.
• Our vision needs to be precise, our focus needs to be clear.
• Our focus is people, not a crowd.
Sermon Tonight
• Because we will be dealing with individual people. It’s important that we understand the couple of concepts about people.
• And one such subject is what I preaching about tonight.
• Here are a couple of quotes for you…
If ignorance is bliss, why is the world not a happier place.
Quotes”
Alan Minter, a Boxer said - "Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing - but none of them serious."
Anonymous Manufacturer - "How to store your baby walker: First, remove baby."
.
Bumper stickers
• There are 2 types of pedestrians, the quick and the dead.
• "Watch out for the idiot behind me!"
Overview outline:
I. forgiving others
II. god forgiving us
III. Forgiving ourselves
a. What we’ve done to others
b. What we’ve done to ourselves and
Outreach
• Dealing with outreach we will be dealing with all kinds of people.
o Smart and stupid
o Learned and Uneducated
o Clean and Dirty
o Tall and short
o Pretty and Ugly
o Sweet and … Not so sweet
• So… Let’s start our outreach lesson tonight.
A Sunday School teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said, "Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness of sin?" There was a short pause and then, from the back of the room, a small boy spoke up. "Sin," he said.
Bits & Pieces, May, 1991.
Forgiving Others
• Forgiving others is an important part of outreach.
• Outreach???? (You didn’t think I would be talking about forgiveness under the title of outreach, huh!)
a. Yes, Forgiveness
b. Because we live in a city where everyone knows everyone.
c. We know everything about them when they come in our doors. (all cities are like this)
d. Some of the people in our city have been trouble, some have even done things against us personally.
e. We must forgive them before they even ask for forgiveness.
• Sitting here at church it’s easy to say “I could forgive somebody.”
• When dealing in an everyday life scenario it’s a different story.
• The scripture teaches us that it is very important to forgive others.
• If we learn to forgive others, that gives God permission to forgive us.
• If we fail to forgive others, the God is not allowed to forgive us.
A number of scriptures and Matthew discusses forgiving other people.
Mt 6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Mt 6:14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
Mt 6:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
• A number of sermons discuss this situation as well.
• We find this very hard with some people and easy with others. That is why this is one of the most talked about topics when discussing forgiveness.
• Bro. Moore, are you sure people want to be forgiven?
o There’s a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read: Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father. On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Bits & Pieces, October 15, 1992, pp. 13.
o Yes, People want forgiveness!!!
• The only thing that not forgiving others does, is build up bitterness in your own heart.
• Bitterness –
o 1. hard to bear; grievous; distressful: a bitter sorrow.
o 2. causing pain; piercing; stinging: a bitter chill.
“Forgiveness is a funny thing; it warms the heart and cools the sting. “
William A. Ward.
• I don’t want a grievous heart, distressful heart, piercing stinging pain in my heart.
• God help me to clean the bitterness out of my heart by forgiving.
Blasphemy
• I have even heard a lack of forgiveness being described as blasphemy.
• And if we’re not forgiving of other people, then we do not believe that God can forgive us.
• If we do not believe God forgives us, the scripture becomes invalid.
• If the scriptures invalid, God is void.
• Thus, blasphemy.
God forgiving us
• And it’s important that we understand that God forgives us.
• And without the full knowledge of God’s forgiveness life becomes very bitter.
• In adult Sunday school class and we just discussed Atonement.
• Atonement, is compensation for a wrong
• We owe a great dept for the injustice we have committed towards God.
• God decided to pay that dept for us.
• If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent us an educator; If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist; If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist; If our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer; But our greatest need was forgiveness, so God sent us a Savior.
Unknown.
• I won’t continue talking about this because most of us have heard about the great forgiveness that God has in store for us.
• Most of us are home folks, we know that God wants to forgive us.
• We know that this is a very important part of our daily lives.
• So why is it there are times that we feel like God has not forgiven us.
• I believe my final subject is the reason that we feel this guilt inside of us.
Forgiving ourselves
• We need to learn to forgive ourselves.
(Take a duffle bag. Through out the rest of the sermon you will be filling it with bricks. Use a rope and tie it around our waist.)
• Their aspects of life that we’re not quite sure what to with.
• Most of us as Christians have no problem understanding that we have to be give other people.
• Most of us as Christians have no trouble understanding that god will forgive us.
o This is because we understand the love of god.
o Us so we understand that god is a compassionate God.
o When you understand the characteristics of god, becomes easy to believe he loves us a note to forgive us.
• But can we forgive ourselves.
Their two things to consider when forgiving ourselves.
The first is what we have done to others
• When someone walks to those doors and we know that we have done them an injustice at some point in our life. And immediate concern comes into our mind.
• It does not even matter if that person remembers or not.
• We remember it, and it becomes a weight in our lives.
• Most of us do not want a deal with this.
• So what do we do?
• We put it in our past.
o This may seem to be a good thing. But, just putting it in our past is not good enough.
o You see when god forgives, He eliminates the problem.
o Because god lives in the past, present and future. He is able to eliminate all record of the situation.
o This is important because of the day of judgment.
When we stand before God on the day of judgment. We will be held accountable for everything we do in our lifetime. When God has the erased all records, our mistakes cannot be held against us.
We have heard this will eliminate all argument the devil has against us.
o On earth, however, it’s a different story.
o When we place these things in our past they stay there.
o Most of us do not like to deal with our problems.
o That doesn’t just mean big problems.
o Most of us will deal with our major problems.
Bills
Kids
School
Work
o But, when it comes to other people we like to put it on the back burner.
o The reason for this is most of us don’t know how to deal with people.
o The Bible teaches when we have done something wrong to someone, we’re to go to them and ask for forgiveness.
• The things that we do to other people.
o There are times that we say things to people that we know we should never have said. ( place a break inside the bag and this time around your waist)
o Their actions we take against people. (place a brick inside the bag)
o Attitudes toward other people that we should not have. ( place a brick inside the bag)
o Thoughts about people we should not have.( plays a break inside the bag)
See, the thoughts are things people don’t even know about that you know about.
The next subject is the hardest of all.
This would be forgiving what we’ve done to ourselves.
• Their are things that we have done ourselves and to ourselves that we know were wrong.
• David said “Psalm 19:12
“Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
• There are sins that we have committed against God in our heart of hearts.
• These are things that may never be discussed among friends or family.
• We find ourselves not even discussing it with God.
• And we won’t even admit it to ourselves.
• These sins are the hardest sins to be forgiven of, not by God, but by ourselves.
o Why? Because they are usually things that we did, knowing they were wrong.
o Repentance is a turning away.
o Turn away and forgive yourself
• We must learn to forgive ourselves.
• We know the Bible teaches if we do not forgive that we cannot be forgiven.
• And I believe this goes for ourselves as well.
• We must learn to forgive ourselves.
• This way God is free to forgive us.
• We need to take our past and cut it away.
• These things do not need to be in our past (Show a brick) they need to be in the forgotten folder.
• Let god have all your mistakes.
• It’s time that the hounds of your past the cut away.
Conclusion:
(Cut the rope that is holding you)
• Now you are free to advance in the Holy Ghost.
• Easy pattern to follow.
o Ask
o Give
o Need
• Pattern description
o Ask God and others for forgiveness.
o Give Forgiveness
o Allow yourself to receive forgiveness.
Let’s pray that God will help us to forgive.
Not only in forgiving others. But God help us to forgive ourselves!
