Forgiveness—Why Should I Forgive
Jeremiah 1:4-8 Romans 12:9-21 GNLCC 7/3/2011
Today we start a new series on the Apps For Life. Apps is short for Applications, which are programs that you can run on your smart phone to help you in life. There are are Apps to help you count calories, to help you shop, to help you with a to do list, and to count the distance that you run.
But as great are the Apps are, they can’t make you stop eating, control your spending habits, do the things on the list or actually get you to jog. You have to do these things. We are going to be looking at the Apps of forgiveness, encouragement, confession and trust. But for the Apps to do any good, we have to put them into practice.
Today we are going to look at Forgiveness. Is there anybody here, who has ever been hurt by somebody and you know you did not do anything to deserve what was done to you. Is there anybody here who would like to give someone a piece of your mind for what they said or did to you? Is there anyone here who has visualized in his or her mind what you would like to do to get even with somebody for what they did to you. I want you to know something else.
Everybody here is going to hurt somebody. Even when you are trying to do the right thing, somebody close to you is going to misunderstand you, and will be hurt by it. When you do something good for someone else, someone is going to be jealous of your actions, and feel hurt because you did not do the same for them. There is a lot of pain in our families, because we think somebody else got more of what we deserved or somebody got away with something and we did not.
In life none of us can get everything we want or everything we think we deserve. So all of us have been set up to be hurt. All of us are going to be hurt. We have too many unrealistic expectations of ourselves and of others. There is no pass through hurt free card in life. The future of our lives is often shaped by the hurt we experience as we go through life. But what’s even a greater factor in shaping our lives is how we choose to react to the hurt. There are really two options. We can hold a grudge or we can choose to forgive.
Now the option of holding a grudge looks really good and for a while it feels good. It feels like you’ve done something when you say “I’ll never speak to that ole whatever again.” You get pleasure out of rolling your eyes when you see that person. You enjoy telling them off in your mind. It feels good to imagine walking up to them and just knocking the day lights out of them. You feel a sense of triumph if you find out something bad happened to them. You even spiritualize it by saying “Ahh hah, God don’t like ugly.
Holding a grudge is the natural thing to do when you have been hurt? But does holding a grudge really work? Some of the grudges that stick to us the hardest are the ones we had a role in creating the feelings in the first place.
Here comes you baby’s daddy, and now that you see what everybody tried to tell you before you fell in love, your blood pressure is going off the charts you are so angry at him. You’re still angry at your parents, and won’t let the kids visit their grandparents. You won’t show up at family events, because that person is going to be there.
You hate your teacher because of that failing grade you got that kept you from graduating or being promoted. You just get mad at everybody each time you think about your exspouse, your ex boss, your ex whatever. People know not to get around you when that person is on your mind. Is holding that grudge really working for you?
The longer you hold a grudge, the longer the grudge will hold you. You’ve got chains that you don’t even see holding you down. You can’t really move forward in life because a grudge keeps pulling you back to that incident in the past. The deeper you hold on it, the deeper it clings to you.
The emotional weight will become too much for you to handle. You become an angry person without realizing what you’re doing. You lash out at anybody that looks like that person, acts like that person, reminds of you that person or has a place in your life like that person.
A grudge does very little to the other person. The worst part is, they may not even know you are holding a grudge against them. They may be thinking oh you know that’s just Keshana or Jawal, he or she has always been crazy like that. Holding a grudge hurts the person holding it. It’s like carry around a rattlesnake. Eventually you are going to be seriously hurt by it. A grudge is our way of thinking, this is going to keep the other person from getting away with what they did to me. Holding grudges do not work if you want to move forward in a relationship.
There is a better way. That better way is forgiveness. Why should you make the choice to forgive. In order to release the other person, but even more importantly in order to release you, to be released from the grudge. Some of us won’t admit the chain of the grudge in our lives. I’m not holding a grudge, I just don’t speak to her. Is it natural not to speak to your sister, your brother, your child, your parent, your pastor, your co-worker? Of course it’s not. Of course you are holding a grudge. The first step is to admit it.
I want you to know that forgiveness, works better than grudge holding. If anybody has reason for holding a grudge, it’s God. How many of us will acknowledge we have been blessed by God with things we did nothing to deserve. If you’re alive, you didn’t turn on some button to make it happen. You didn’t create your lungs to breathe. You didn’t make the brain that allows you to work.
You didn’t determine the place where you were born. God did all this for our behalf, and yet all of us have put our hands in the face of God, and said, “I’ll do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and don’t you dare do anything about it.” Can you imagine a two year old talking to you like that without you sending them to the third heaven. Yet with our little puny bodies, we shake our fist in the face of an All Powerful God.
God then tells us, when you disobey me, your life is headed for destruction and you will have to pay for the wrong you have done, by being cast into the lake of fire at death. Then God loves us so much, that God says I have to pay the price for the wrong you have done, because you can’t do it. So God comes to the earth in the form of Jesus Christ, because we have messed up and have no hope of being in a right relationship God ever again because of our wrongdoing. Only somebody who was perfect and never did wrong could pay for the wrong we did.
Jesus was nailed to a cross to die to pay for our sins. We often see Jesus high up on a cross, but in reality Jesus was probably just a couple of feet off the ground. All of us was there at the cross, because he was there dying for each of us. Now I want you to imagine, Jesus on the cross, with his eyes swollen from the beating, with blood mixed in with dirt on his chest from the whipping, and blood dripping from the thorns that have been pressed down on his head.
Now I want you to go over to look at him and have him look back at you with his eyes. As you do, I want you to think of the worst things you think you have done as you walk toward him. His mouth starts to open and he gasps your name, and says,” You are forgiven.” You say but Lord, I don’t deserve it. He calls your name again and he says “ I know all about that too, and you are forgiven.”
I want you to know that nothing you have done can trump the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. You may say, but if you really knew what I have done then….to which I respond again, nothing you do can trump the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. When we stand near God’s forgiveness long enough, we recognize that not only does God’s grace and forgiveness flows into us, God wants it to flow out of us to others.
Forgiven people, forgive others. Forgiveness allows us to move forward with God, and it allows us to move forward with others. Grace comes to you, to flow out of you.
Romans 12:17 says 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. In our Old Testament Reading, God called Jeremiah into ministry, knowing that Jeremiah was going to be treated unfairly. He knew people would lie on him, slander his name, beat him, throw him in jail, and try to kill him. But God’s promise to Jeremiah was that God would be with him. Verse 17 lets us know we have a choice. It says “do not repay anyone evil for evil.”
First of all notice that the bible does not try to say that what happened to you was something small. It calls it evil. Evil is something sinister straight out of the pit of hell. It’s the devil attempting to destroy you. But we have a choice. We can pay back evil for evil or we can choose to forgive. Now if you are a believer, like Jeremiah, God has promised to be with you. God saw what happened to you.
Now the rest of the verse says, Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[a] says the Lord.
At the heart of the forgiveness is our ability to believe God will do what God says God will do. We want to hold a grudge to make sure that person does not get away with the wrong he or she has done. Forgiveness looks as though, we let them off the hook. When in reality, we didn’t let them off anything, we simply put our trust in God to do the right thing.
God says, vengeance is mine, I will repay. If we hold a grudge or try to get even, we’re saying, “God you can’t handle this one, I’ll do it myself.” So whose job are we taking away in order for us to get even? God’s job. I have found I make a decent pastor, but I make a lousy God. If I was God, some of you would have been taken to heaven a long time ago. For those of you who think you can be God. “how much do you need to do to a person to get even. How will you use that revenge to change the person to draw them closer to God?” I’m not smart enough to know the answer to those questions. I’d be tempted to just think about me, and not be big enough to realize that God may have a greater purpose than just me in mind.
God is working in me through forgiveness as well. God allows things in our lives to show us how we have or have not grown. God says, here is what I want you to do to the one who has wronged you verse 20 “On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”[b] 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
God’s point is that we do not overcome evil with with evil. If we try it, we will be overcome by evil ourselves. Revenge will backfire on you. We are called to overcome evil with God. Love is the more excellent way. God overcame the evil of our rebellion by choosing to love us.
For those of us who are believers in Christ, we have even yet a higher reason to choose to forgive. We are on a mission for Jesus Christ. We do not have the time to insists on making sure everyone respects our rights. Jesus was not respected, and he told us whatever they do to me, they will also do to you. Quit worrying about whether or not it was fair. It probably wasn’t because life isn’t fair. Nobody can be fair all the time. Jesus says, in effect, “Don’t worry about whether or not you are being treated justly.”
If we are constantly trying to make sure we got all we should have, by looking for justice for ourselves, then know this is a sign that we have taken our eyes off of Jesus and have put the focus back on ourselves. Stop looking for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will only begin to complain with a self pity party, as if to say, “Why should I be treated like this?”
In the devotional My Utmost For His Highest we find the words, “ If we are devoted to Jesus Christ, we have nothing to do with what we encounter, whether it is just or unjust. In essence, Jesus says, “Continue steadily on with what I have told you to do, and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance.”
God has a plan for your pain and for mine. Do not take it outside of his will for your life. Put your trust in God making your situation right, in God’s own timing in God’s own way. Jesus died to set us free from having to hold grudges. Jesus died to forgive us so that we can forgive others. Jesus died to teach us that God is the one who will repay. Jesus died to empower us with the Spirit to be able to overcome evil with good. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.
