Her name was 66730, or at least that was the name she went by. Her father had died in a German Concentration camp as did her sister. Her freedom, her dignity, her humanity had been stripped away by those who imprisoned her and yet she survived. They had robbed her of everything she ever possessed but they couldn’t rob her of the one who possessed her, Jesus. She saw every day in Ravensbruck as a chance to minister to someone more needy then herself, and then one day she was released. As suddenly as she had become a prisoner she was freed, and her solitary aim was to minister to others. When the war was over she began traveling and speaking sharing her Saviour and the vision that He had given her. And then one day, something happened, something that shook her to the very center of her being, why don’t you let me read you her account of what happened, oh you probably wouldn’t know her as 66730, you would be more apt to know her as Corrie ten Boom.
“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there, the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsy’s pain blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message Fraulein, “ he said. “To think, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendall the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man: was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that this worlds healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
One of the scariest parts of the Lord’s prayer is Matthew 6:12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And then Jesus does something he hasn’t done before in the Lord’s Prayer he offers commentary in Matthew 6:14 & 15 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
If you’ve ever prayed this have you ever stopped to listen to what you are saying? You are asking God to forgive you in exactly the same way that you forgive people who have done you wrong, no more no less.
Many people have the same concept of God as the German poet Heinrich Heine. Heine was on his death bed and his priest told him that God could forgive his sins to which the poet responded “Of course God will forgive me; that’s His job.” Well according to this particular portion of scripture, he doesn’t have to.
This one concept was so important that Christ not only mentioned it in the Lord’s prayer he went back to comment on it. He literally uses three times more words to define what he said then he used to say it.
When you get to this part in the Lord’s prayer you are in effect saying, “Lord if there is someone whom I haven’t forgiven then don’t forgive me.” Ouch! Forgiveness is tough. There is no doubt about it and you may have been hurt by someone in ways that I can’t comprehend.
Too often today we are shown that the only way to bring about closure in these instances is to seek revenge, retaliation. But that doesn’t bring about closure. You see the news about some of the people who were allegedly abused in the Shelbourne boys school. They’ve taken their cash and spent it on dope and then blamed the government for giving them what they wanted.”
Confucius said “Before starting down the road to revenge dig two graves” You don’t just forgive for the other person you need to forgive for yourself.
1) For your health We are all familiar with the physical aspects of stress and anger. Ulcers are simply one indication that the body isn’t coping well with some of the internal struggles caused by unforgiveness.
2) For your head. When we are consumed by the need and desire for revenge it’s difficult to think of other things. We come to the place that not only do we have a one track mind but the train’s been derailed as well.
3) For your soul Jesus is very clear on this point, If you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven and the price for not being forgiven is to lose your soul.
I scar really easy, I can just give myself a scratch and I will have the reminder of it for quite some time. That’s true of most people in the physical sense and in the emotional sense. The truth is this, when we are hurt we carry scars some of them big and some of them small, but we carry scars. The summer I was thirteen I had my first opportunity to try Scuba diving. I was thoroughly enjoying myself using my cousin Dana’s equipment and had just submerged again when it happened. Another cousin of mine was there with his speed boat and when he started the engine in gear and it ran over me just as I was kicking down with my fins. What I managed to do was to kick my left foot into a propeller driven by a 50 hp mercury outboard. That’s right ouch. That propeller cut through skin, tissue and muscle clear through to the bone before my foot kicked back away from it. Stuart was devastated, they rushed me up to the hospital emergency room where a doctor sutured my instep back together. Kind of slowed me down for the rest of the summer. Hurt with every step I took, there was no getting around it for quite a while it was a painful memory, not made in the least bit less painful because it was an accident. That was almost a quarter of a century ago, I still have the scar, it’s faded but it’s still there. And every morning when I put my socks on I see it, and there are times I can almost put myself back there, can almost feel the warmth of the air, the cold of the water and feel the bite of the propeller. But it doesn’t hurt anymore, it’s healed, completely but the scar is still there. Healing brought healing but it didn’t erase the scar. When we are hurt by someone whether it was intentional or accidental it cuts, and if we allow forgiveness to heal it then we might have a scar and that scar might cause us to remember the hurt but it don’t hurt anymore. We need to realize the healing of forgiveness doesn’t necessary erase the scars. You might bear the scars of sexual abuse, or physical abuse, maybe you have the scars of betrayal in your marriage or of a divorce. Those scars may never go away, they may always be there but that doesn’t mean that healing hasn’t taken place.
Almost thirty years ago I dropped a coffee carafe, now I’m sure that you are wondering why in the world would Denn have a coffee carafe right, especially as an infant. When the carafe slipped out of my hands I reached to grab it and as luck would have it I caught it, just as it broke. The result was a neat little slice on the edge of my pinkie finger. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t all that deep, didn’t even hurt that much, but it didn’t heal. Oh it scabbed over and started to heal but then it would fester and hurt and get infected all over again. One day I finally got fed up with it and decided to investigate for myself, still being of an age where my brain hadn’t fully engaged I got myself an ice cube and a razor blade, held the ice cube over the half healed cut until it got numb and then I slit it open with the blade, neat huh. What was really neat was that as a result of my superior surgical skills I discovered a little tiny pearl, well it looked like a pearl, it was really a little sliver of the coffee pot that my body had covered to make it less of an irritant but it was keeping the cut from healing, once I had taken it out the cut healed right up. Is the spirit of unforgiveness keeping some of your hurts from healing. If you haven’t forgiven there can be no healing. No healing for you, or for the relationship between you and the person who hurt you, or worse yet there will be no healing in your relationship with God. Physical hurts take time to heal, so do emotional hurts. Oh by the way one of the reasons why I scar so much is that I tend to pick at my hurts, that will increase spiritual scarring as well.
You’ll remember perhaps the Guptill principle of spiritual growth that says that everyone grows in their spiritual life to their own personal point of disobedience. Well the addendum is You will never grow in your spiritual walk beyond your unforgiveness.
Matthew 6:13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. too often when we think of the word temptation we think sin. And if that is reality then we are confronted with one of two problems. The first being how can we come to grips with a God who would lead us into sin. You say don’t be silly preacher, God wouldn’t lead you into sin. Then that leaves the second problem if temptation is sin and God wouldn’t lead us into sin why for would Jesus put this request in the prayer.
The easiest way to clear this up is to find a biblical definition of temptation. At the very beginning of Christ’s ministry an incident happened I’ll let Matthew tell you about it, Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. You see what happened here. Jesus was tempted by the Devil but it was the Spirit that led him to that point.
In 1 Corinthians 10:13 . . . He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. So now we have God allowing temptation. Now the problem here is that the word temptation is being misused. Some where along the line we have given the word temptation an evil twist, we have taken temptation to the next step and made it sin.
What it actually means is to be tested, to be proved, to be strengthened. That’s why the very best steel is called tempered steel. It’s the same root word. And so what Jesus is teaching us to pray is this, “Don’t let me be tested by more then I can endure.”
Matthew 6:13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. not deliver us from evil, but deliver us from the evil one. Evil is not an impersonal force which surrounds the world, instead it emanates from one person. And that person is Satan. his very name means the adversary, and in the Greek that is the one who pleads a case against some one. He is in name and fact the accuser. Satan is real he is not a joke, he’s not some dude in long red underwear with a pitchfork and horns, he is real. Satan is personal and his weapon is temptation. And like all enemies he won’t attack until he finds a nitch in your armour.
Where will temptation come from? 1) Sometimes it comes from outside of us, from our friends and peers. Usually when we talk about peer pressure we’re talking about teens, and during those formidable years we are under intense pressure to conform, to be like the others. And we can pick up all kinds of nasty habits during those years, just so we won’t be different. But don’t kid yourself, adults are every bit at risk of peer pressure as teens are. Fudging a bit on a business deal, not taking a stand on a particular issue, not defending the church or fellow Christians when they are being attacked.
2) Sometimes temptations come from those who love us the most. Having been to Bible College I have met guys who felt very strongly called to the ministry but Mom and Dad, who were Christians were putting the pressure on for them to do something different more secure with better pay. The same goes for some who God had called to overseas missions. It’s a scary game to play, so your kid gets a secure job but he’s out of God’s will, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that one.
3) Temptations don’t have to come from outside forces, sometimes they come from within ourselves. every man and every woman has a weak spot. A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. every man woman and child has this flaw. And mine and yours are different. Satan won’t attack me at your weak spot or you at my weak spot. You gotta find your weak spot and guard it.
But temptations can also come at our strongest point. Many a fortress has fallen where there was no defence. 200 years ago most of Canada was known as New France. And the military center was in Quebec city, and it was virtually impregnable. It sat on cliffs overlooking the St. Lawrence River and was surrounding on three sides by unscaleable cliffs and so only one approach had to be defended. But James Wolfe and his troops scaled the unscaleable cliffs and defeated the French forces on the Plains of Abraham, and that is why today the Francophones are the minority and the Anglos are the majority.
Don’t ever look at a fallen brother or sister and say “That is one thing I would never do”
Can you honestly pray those two things, can you ask God to forgive you the same way that you have forgiven others? Or would that be a dangerous thing to do? And do you really want God to keep you from temptation or is your prayer more like Augustine’s was early in his life when he prayed “Make me good but not yet” Maybe you’re not even in the place where your prayers can be answered because you’ve never actually established a relationship with God. If that’s the case He’s only a prayer away. As the worship team comes to lead us in one more song I would encourage you to take a good look at your spiritual condition. If you need to start that relationship with God it’s as easy as praying Lord I’m sorry for all I’ve done to displease you. Please forgive me and make me a new creation. It’s that easy, and if you do that this morning we’d love to know about it.
PowerPoint may be available for this message, contact me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
