Turning Towards: Forgiveness Ps 103:1-18, Luke 23:34
Lent Series; March 12, 2006
Intro:
Imagine starting your week out with a clear plastic bag and a sack of potatoes. For each person that wrongs you, you must take a potato and write that person’s name, date and what the wrong was onto the potato.
And then you must put that potato into your clear plastic bag. It must stay in that bag until you have forgiven them for that wrong. How long would it be before your bag filled up with potatoes?
Imagine next that not only do you fill the bag up with all of the ill will and resentment and bitterness you have from these unforgiven incidents, you must also carry that bag with you everywhere you go. It sits next to you in your automobile on the drive to work, sits in your lap as you dine out at your favorite restaurant, and it nestles close to you as you sleep in bed at night.
Everywhere you go, it goes with you.
Imagine how it begins to stink after a while. Imagine carrying those same potatoes (and adding new ones too!) with you day after day, week after week... ...month after month, and year after year. After a while those heavy potatoes of unforgiveness will start weighing you down, don’t you think? They will become hard to bear. And they sure will cause a stink! (adapted from Jimmy D. Brown, http://www.sermonillustrator.org/illustrator/sermon8/unforgiveness_stinks.htm)
Turning Towards Forgiveness:
Today is the second Sunday in Lent, the season during which we prepare to re-live the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. I want to re-iterate my challenge from last week – that during the days of Lent we would give up noise, and find places of silence that might enable us to hear the voice of God. I challenged us all to 30 minutes of silence, every day, so that we might listen for God’s voice rather than the other voices all around us.
Our theme for this year is “Turning Towards.” Lent is a journey of repentance, and this year I want to focus not so much on the sins that we need to turn away from, but more on the life in Jesus that we need to turn towards.
In this first sermon, I want to talk about turning towards forgiveness.
Vertical, and Horizontal:
Turning towards forgiveness is something we need to do in two dimensions – first, we need to turn vertically towards God and accept His forgiveness offered to us, and second we need to turn horizontally towards each other and choose forgiveness in our relationships. I want to talk about both.
Turning Towards God’s Forgiveness: Ps 103
Psalm 103 Of David.
1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-
3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
6 The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
7 He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children-
18 with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
Breaking it Down
That is a long passage, with a lot in it. Back in seminary, I learned a helpful trick to dissect long passages, which I want to show you on the screen. It is pretty simple, very much like an outline of the ideas, and is just a matter of writing the passage out and breaking up the ideas into a little chart. The most important ideas go on the left, and the ideas that all go together get lined up underneath. It works really well with this passage, and helps us see the main points.
(breakdown on powerpoint slide; included at end of this written copy).
Wouldn’t you like to turn towards a God like that? Let me ask a pointed question or two: have you experienced the forgiveness of God? Have you turned towards Him, allowed Him to embrace you and take your sins and remove them as far as east from west?
Listen to this, from a man named Oswald Chambers: “We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the atonement which He has worked out for us. It does not matter who or what we are; there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. It is not earned, but accepted. All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at a door other than the one that Jesus has opened. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.”
There is a way to be free from guilt, from condemnation, from hopelessness, and from slavery to the things we do that wreck our lives. That way is to turn to Jesus, and accept the forgiveness offered and promised.
Turning Towards Forgiveness in our Relationships: Luke 23:34
I said there were two dimensions involved in turning towards forgiveness – the “vertical” dimension of accepting God’s forgiveness which we just talked about, and the “horizontal” dimension of turning towards forgiveness in our relationships with one another.
Here I want to take us to the cross. Now, every year at Lent when I go back and re-read the gospel stories of the crucifixion, I never cease to be amazed at the simplicity with which the story is told. Very little elaboration, no detailed descriptions, no Hollywood musical crescendo to heighten the tension. Just the plain facts of the story.
Listen to Luke: “32Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.” (Luke 23:32-34).
As we talk about turning towards forgiveness, let us look to Jesus as our example. As He is being crucified, He forgives. And prays that those crucifying Him might be forgiven.
Who has wronged you? In your sack, what are the potatoes and whose name is on them? As we look to the cross and hear Jesus forgiving, then look back into our sack of things we haven’t yet forgiven, what do you want to do?
Now, I suspect some of you will be quick to point out that that was Jesus, after all. He could forgive, He was perfect and full of love. Perhaps that is too much to expect of us after the way we have been hurt. While I see that point, let me respond with the observation that while Jesus does demonstrate a higher forgiveness, He is also forgiving a far graver sin. You and I have been hurt, yes; but we have not been crucified.
Let me share some perspective on forgiveness from a Bible Scholar named William Barclay: “There is one eternal principal which will be valid as long as the world lasts. The principle is -- Forgiveness is a costly thing. Human forgiveness is costly. A son or a daughter may go wrong; a father or a mother may forgive; but that forgiveness has brought tears ... There was a price of a broken heart to pay. Divine forgiveness is costly. God is love, but God is holiness. God, least of all, can break the great moral laws on which the universe is built. Sin must have its punishment or the very structure of life disintegrates. And God alone can pay the terrible price that is necessary before men can be forgiven. Forgiveness is never a case of saying: "It’s all right; it doesn’t matter." Forgiveness is the most costly thing in the world.”
With deep respect to Dr. Barclay, I think there is something more costly than forgiveness: unforgiveness. Nelson Mandela has famously said; “resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for it to kill your enemy.” Forgiveness is costly because it requires us to let go of our right to justice and retribution; yet I believe unforgiveness is more costly because it creates bitterness and hardness in our hearts, which then chokes life out of us.
I know forgiveness is hard. I have seen the hurt, which is very deep. I know the wounds, and have felt some of them myself. But it sets us free. When we forgive, we find out that we can start to live again, that we can find joy again, that we can love again. As hard as it is, that is certainly something worth turning towards!
Conclusion:
I’ve given each of you a potato, and you can probably guess what comes next. That symbolizes the wrongs that have been done against you, which you have not yet forgiven. Feel free to even write them on your potato if you like! Now I want you to take that potato home, and I want you to decide what you are going to do with those wrongs. It is your choice, and my prayer for all of us is that God would so overwhelm us with His forgiveness as we saw in Ps103, that we would have the courage to extend that forgiveness to others.
Breakdown of Ps 103
Praise the LORD,
O my soul;
all my inmost being,
praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD,
O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-
• who forgives all your sins
• and heals all your diseases,
• who redeems your life from the pit
• and crowns you with love and compassion,
• who satisfies your desires with good things
• so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
• The LORD works righteousness and justice for all
the oppressed.
• He made known his ways to Moses,
• his deeds to the people of Israel:
The LORD is
• compassionate and
• gracious,
• slow to anger,
• abounding in love.
• He will not always accuse,
• nor will he harbor his anger forever;
• he does not treat us as our sins deserve
• or repay us according to our iniquities.
For
• as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
• as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But:
from everlasting to everlasting
the LORD’s love
is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness
with their children’s children-
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
