Series: Christmas is For-Giving
Message: Christmas is For-Giving 3 “Accepting Forgiveness”
Topics: Forgiveness, Jesus, Church, Hurt, Pain, Receiving Forgiveness, David
Text: 2 Samuel 12:22-23, Matthew 1:21-22, 2 Corinthians 7:10
Date: January 22, 2011
Pastor: David McBeath
REVIEW/PREVIEW
It is January 22. Is anybody ready for us to take down our Christmas decorations and be thru talking about Christmas? I promise this is the last week for our sermon series Christmas is forgiving. We will get the decorations down this week. Why are we talking about Christmas 4 weeks after it is over? Because God gave us the most wonderful gift on Christmas morning: Jesus! And his gift, like the Energizer Bunny who keep going and going and going, keeps giving and giving and giving, in the form of forgiveness!
We started this series by learning how to forgive those who have hurt us. Last week we learned how to initiate and ask for forgiveness for the hurts we’ve caused others. And this week we are going talk about forgiving ourselves and moving on with our lives as we receive the forgiveness of God thru the gift of Jesus Christ.
INTRODUCTION: All Fun & Games ‘Till Someone Gets Hurt
Let me start my message with a saying we have all heard 1,000 times from our mom’s and dad’s at least 1,000 times. It is all fun and games until _______________? Yes, someone gets hurt! Or Someone pokes an eye out!
Lightning’s Mascot ThunderBug
Did you all hear about the Bruins vs. Lightning Hockey game on Monday Night? Sportsnet article reads, “It all fun and games until a bruins fan gets squirted with silly string. During Monday night’s Lightning game, the Bruins weren’t the only ones upset in Tampa. A large man sporting a Bruins Stanley Cup T-shirt gets hosed with silly string by Lightning mascot ThunderBug and immediately blows his lid. After chasing Thunder up the steps, tackling him and yelling all up in his plush, oversized grill, the fan is ejected from the Times Forum. Take a look at the picture!
Somebody should have taught that mascot that it’s all fun and games until _____ ____ somebody gets hurt, and he was about to get hurt if it wasn’t for security!
Red Couch Cushions & My Boys
Parents you know what I’m talking about. You’ve probably said it 1000 times yourself. We have! My boys are rambunctious to say the least. I don’t know how many times they have taken all the cushions of the sofa and loveseat in our back room pile them up then try to run and jump on them. It is a lot of fun for them. But they stack the cushions so high that they aren’t real stable. I tell them you better think about what you’re doing cause it’s all fun and games until__________. Do they listen? No! And you know what eventually happens. They jump, the cushions fall and they end up hitting the laminate floor with a thud, or the miss their landing, hit the side stack of cushions, bounce to the left banging their head on the coffee table.
Wrestling & My Boys
Here’s another example. My boys have just taken up the sport of wrestling. They aren’t going to meets or anything, but they spend every Tuesday and Thursday across the street at their school learning how to wrestle. I don’t know why we thought this would be a good idea. But we did and actually we love it because it gives them a chance burn off a ton of energy after school. They come home and they are tired! And that is good for mom and dad because bedtime is much easier. They go to sleep right away and are not up 20 times asking for a drink of water or telling us there is something scary in their closet. The boys love it ‘cause they get to fight each other (in a sense) and they don’t get in trouble!
However, there has been one surprising “side effect” (I guess you would say). But again, it probably shouldn’t have been surprising. You see, the want to practice their wrestling moves at home where there are no soft mats. They have a great time practicing at home. It’s all fun and games until one of them takes the other down too quickly and he gets hurt! ….And then you know what come next! The tears and the inevitable words and the inevitable words “Mom…...Dad…..he hurt me!” What do we say? Come on you knew what you were doing! It is all fun and games until ______________!
Boys Boxing Video
I was on you tube this week and I came across a video that I’m sure is prophetic of what I have in store when my boys get older take a look!
And when the parent enters the room what are they going to say? Say it with me. It’s all fun and games until….____ someone gets hurt!
Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt and in real life, unfortunately, a lot of us can experience a significant amount of pain related to the wrong things we’ve done and the people we’ve hurt.
Can’t Forgive Themselves and Move Forward
I’ve talked to different people throughout my ministry who can’t seem to get over the things they’ve done. Maybe you’re a parent who has layer upon layer of pain, regret, and guilt related to your children. Maybe you say things like: “You know what? I my kids wouldn’t be in the trouble they are in today,… if I was a better, parent, …if I would have paid more attention, …if I would have quit think less of myself, and more of them, …if I would been more serious about my faith when they were growing up… I’m the reason they turned out like this.
Maybe you’re a business person who made a mistake. You say: “Man, last year we had a great and then I made some stupid decisions. And now, we are struggling just to make it week to week. I’ve had to let some of my employees go. And I can’t forgive myself for the hurt I’ve brought their families!
Maybe you’re a husband or a wife. You did some pretty stupid things with members of the opposite sex while you were in high school or college. And you can’t get past it! It still haunts you and its hurting your marriage today, because you can’t forgive yourself.
I could go on and on, but you get my drift. And you know what it is in your life that you are hanging onto, that you just can’t forgive yourself for! A lot of us carry a lot of pain, a lot of regret, and in our study today we are going to look how to move beyond the pain and move into the blessings and abundant life that God has for us in the future.
TWO KINDS OF SORROW (2 COR. 7:10)
The bible tells us that there are two kinds of sorrow we can have for the wrong things we’ve done. One will move us forward. One will not! One leads to an abundant life. The other imprisons us to our pain, our guilt, our shame. Take a look at 2 Corinthians 7:10. This is what it says: "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death."
Worldly Sorrow
Now let’s begin with the worldly sorrow 2 Corinthians 7:10 talks about. This type of sorrow will not move us forward. It does not lead to and abundant life. Instead it imprisons us! We become chained to the pain and guilt we feel for the wrong we’ve done. Take a look at this video called The Cell and see if you can relate.
Video
This is what worldly sorrow does to us! It imprisons us. It ruins our lives! The text says it kills us! It leads to death! Most of us carry around this kind of sorrow whether we are Christians or not. Non-Christians carry this sorrow, because they have not come to the place where they have learned that all their wrong doing is forgiven when the place their faith in Jesus Christ.
By the same token many of us who call ourselves Christians walk around with this same pain inside. We know Christ has forgiven our sins, up here in our heads. We believe it here in our heads, but we don’t believe it here in our hearts. In our hearts we think it is too good to be true. And when we believe this about our sin and our wrong doing it kills us! It kills us on the inside! It kills our relationships! In a real sense it kills our quality of life!
Godly Sorrow
Now let’s talk about Godly sorrow. 2 Corinthians 7:10 says that it brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret! And it leads to the abundant and fulfilling life Christ talks about giving us in John 10:10. Salvation from our sins is not some pie in the sky that we have to wait for when we die. It begins now, as soon as we accept God’s gift of forgiveness thru Jesus!
SALVATION/FORGIVENES IN GIFT OF CHRIST
Like we have been saying for the past 2 weeks Christmas is forgiving. Remember the Christmas story. Joseph is upset because he thinks the woman he is engaged to cheated on him. So, when the Angel goes to Joseph to tell him know that this is not the case because the baby in Mary’s womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit, the angel also says this: Look at Matthew 1:21. "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
You know what Jesus means? It means the Lord saves! And the verse goes on to tell us that Jesus was going to be born on Christmas morning to save his people from their sins. In other words he came to move people forward! He came to help us get past the guilt and the same our wrong doings cause!
How does Jesus do save us from our guilt or our sin or wrong doings that imprisons us? He forgives! He forgives the wrongs we’ve done! That is what John the Baptist said Jesus was coming to do. Look at Luke 1:77, John says that Jesus came: "to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins."
Let me stop here for a moment. If you have never placed your faith Jesus who came to forgive you of sins, will you do it today? According to 2 Corinthians 7:10 you just need to repent. Say God I know I’ve done wrong and I’m sorry. Please forgive me with the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for my sin. That all you need to do! If you truly believe he will forgive you! And then you can begin the process of forgiving yourself! You can begin to move forward with your life and escape your prison of pain.
HOW CAN WE MOVE FORWARD
Now let’s answer the question how can we move forward. How can we move from an earthly sorrow to a godly sorrow? Here are three things you can do, whether you’ve just accepted Christ a moment ago or did it years and years ago and still struggle with forgiving yourself.
ACCEPT WHAT CANNOT BE CHANGED
First, you need to accept what cannot be changed. That is what King David did in the Old Testament. Let’s consider his example. Remember the story? David is a person that God says is a Man after his own heart! Quite a compliment for God to say that! But Dave was far from perfect, wasn’t he? I mean sinned in some pretty horrendous ways.
First, he is walking around on the roof of his palace taking it easy while he should be leading his army. While he is up there something catches his eye. A naked woman! It’s a woman he knows. She is his good friend Uriah’s wife!
What should Dave have done? He should have got off that roof and quit looking at her! But that was too hard for him to do. Instead he stays up there lusting after her! Then his lust gets the best of him! He sends for someone to bring her to him and sleeps with her and she gets pregnant.
Realizing what he has done is illegal. He tries to cover it up. He brings Uriah home from the battle and tries to get Uriah to go spend time with his wife. But Uriah wont! He says if my men are on the battle field how can I eat and drink and sleep with my wife. Dave realizes this isn’t working . So he sends Uriah to the frontline where he knows he will be killed.
So we have lust, adultery, an attempted cover-up, and then murder! If there is anyone who has guilt in his life, it’s David. If there is anyone that would have a hard time forgiving himself, it would be David.
Those of you who know the story, know what happened to the baby. The baby boy got really sick. David was beside himself. It broke his heart. For seven days he didn’t eat and prayed, “God this isn’t the boys fault. It’s my fault Please spare his life.” But on the seventh day he got the news that the baby died. David carried the guilt of his sins. He knew he was the guilty one and it affected someone who was innocent. What did David do to move forward? Look at 2 Samuel 12:22-23. Here it what it says:
He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
David accepted what he could not change!
Ian and JoJo
How many of you have had kids that had a favorite doll or stuffed animal? When Ian’ was little his favorite stuffed doll was JoJo. It was his favorite cartoon when he was little. How many of you remember JoJo’s Circus? He watched this cartoon all the time until he was 3 or 4 years old. It was so cute! Anyway, he lost his doll, and was beside himself. He was sad and cried for days! He could not accept what could not be changed! So you know what Mom and Dad did? We got on Ebay and bought another! And paid a fortune because Disney was not making the doll anymore!
Keegan and Fuzzy Blanket
The same thing happened with Keegan. You see he had a fuzzy soft blanket that he took everywhere. Shortly after we moved here, we took a family vacation to Rochester in the middle of winter and stayed in a hotel that had a nice pool. On the way we stopped at a Burger King. Because Keegan didn’t go anywhere without his fuzzy blanket, he took it in with him. We tried to tell him to leave it in the van. But he wouldn’t. Well, you know what happened, don’t you! We left the blanket in the restaurant. When we realized it that night we were already in Rochester and were not going to drive back to Buffalo. Keegan was beside himself. He cried every night.
Eventually he had to accept what could not be changed and move forward with his life. He did! And we should to. What is in the past is in the past it cannot be changed but it is forgiven by God. It has been removed as far as the east is from the west! But we still carry the pain in our hearts. We have to accept what cannot be changed. We have to accept our fuzzy blanket or JoJo doll may not come back.
GIVE IT UP TO GOD
The second thing we must learn to do, is what David did. We must learn to give it up to God. Whatever the burden, the guilt, the heaviness, the regret that we are carrying, we must learn to give it over, and give it up to God. Look at 2 Samuel 12: 20 20. "Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped…."
Basically this verse says that after 7 days of fasting and crying without taking a shower or changing his clothes, he took a bath, put on some deodorant and new clothes and went to church. In other words he turned to God in the middle of his lowest time. David gave his pain up to God and found peace, and this is what we should do as well.
Inward, Outward, or Upward
But all too often we don’t. Many times we turn inward. We say, “I can’t believe this happened, I feel so bad about what I did! I am such a miserable person… and on and on and become imprisoned by our guilt! We become a prisoner to that inward focus to the point we cannot enjoy the life God has given us!
Or we turn outward. We believe we are bad on the inside. We don’t feel we have any value or worth. So we do things to be validated by other people. We get a good car and nice house and put on nice clothes so people can say look at how successful George is! Look at how cute Sally is in that new dress. We need the praise of others so we can feel good about ourselves and while doing this we become enslaved to the things we think will earn us praise from those around us!
Sometimes we turn so outward we move out of the way! We take drink the alcohol so we don’t have to be ourselves for a while. We take hit or snort a line to get out of ourselves and out of our mind. Our pain imprisons us and then the drug does!
Or we can turn upward and give our pain and guilt up to God, because he has forgiven it in Christ Jesus! He is the source of our strength and peace in times of pain. If we cannot give it up to God then we are just playing church and Christianity is a joke!
Isaiah 6:1
Look at Isaiah 6:1 for a moment: It says in the year that King Uzziah died. In other words in the year my world, my country was rocked, in the year our whole country fell apart. What happened? He experienced God’s presence! And what did he see? He saw the Lord seated on a throne. When we give our guilt and pain up to God, experience his presence, and understand that he is seated on his throne, in control of our world. We will have the peace to keep going!
FOCUS ON WHAT IS LEFT, NOT LOST
Finally, after we accept what cannot be change and give up our pain and guilt to God, we should focus on what is left, not what is lost. Focus on what is left, not what is lost.
Check out verse 24 of 2 Samuel 12. Look what David did after he messed up big time? the Bible says, “David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and lay with her. She gave birth to a son.” This is the second son, “and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved him.”
What do we see? Could God ever replace the first son that died? Never! Could the pain and loss of losing that first child ever go away completely? NO! But what did God do? God didn’t change the past, but God brought something new and that is what God wants to do for you! It wants to bring something new to your life! He wants to do something new in your life and thru your life! Our spiritual enemy wants us to look back, to look back and to live in the pain of the past. God wants us to forget about our past! It has been forgiven! So he can so he can do something new and wonderful in our lives beginning today! The Apostle Paul puts it this way: “I am forgetting what is behind, and pressing on toward what is ahead.” The problem with many of us is, we tend to remember the things we should forget (our sins and guilt) and forget what we should remember (our forgiveness and salvation in Christ Jesus)!
For those who are carrying the pain and guilt of regret, will life ever go back to normal? Well, the past cannot be changed but the meaning of the past can be changed. Let me give you an example:
Regals Rose Bowl
It is from the 1929 Rose Bowl, the University of Georgia against California. It was almost halftime and Roy Regals made an amazing hit and forced a fumble. Regals picked up the ball, but he hit the guy so hard that he was bit disoriented to say the least. So what did he end up doing? He ran the other direction. The wrong way! Rather than running toward his end zone, he ran the other way. The coach is screaming, “Somebody stop him.” The other team is dumfound that he is running toward their end zone. When finally, after sixty-five negative yards, one of his own teammates grabbed him from behind, pulled him back down at the two-yard line. His horrible playended up leading to a score for the opposing team. He went into half-time totally defeated and cried his eyes out. He had humiliated himself, his coach, his team, his university, and become the laughing stock of the football world.
At the end of the half time, the coach shocked everybody, and he said, “All of you who started the first half, back on the field to start the second half. Regals had started the first half,” and everybody else piled out on the field except Regals, who sat in the corner still crying. The coach walked up and said, “Regals, didn’t you hear what I told you? Everyone who started the first half … Out on the field!
Regals looked up with his helmet on, face buried, just numb from tears. He said, “Coach, I can never go back out there. I’m the laughing stock of football. I’m embarrassed. I’m going to lose the game for us.” The coach reached down and grabbed him by the face mask, pulled him up and looked him in the eye and said, “Regals, you are my player. You made a mistake. You are forgiven. Now, get out there and win the game!”
Those who saw the game, to this day will tell you, “Roy Regals played like a man possessed on a mission and helped lead to a substantial victory.” Why did he do that? What was the change from one moment of defeat to moments later, victory? What was the change? Where did it come from? It came from two things: 1. Forgiveness; and 2. A Second Chance. Forgiveness and a second chance. Forgiveness and a second chance.
Why did Jesus come? Why did the Angel tell Joseph to give him the name Jesus, the Lord saves, which means He will save His people from their sins? Why? Because, Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to what? To save it. To save it. Look at what Isaiah said. The Lord said through Isaiah, the Bible says this in Isaiah 43:18-19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” God says: “See,” I’m doing what? “A new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I’m doing … I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” God wants to do a new thing in your life! He wants to put a stream in your desert . He forgives your sins to give you a second chance, to give you a new life! A better life! To save you from the life that you have!!
Have you messed up in the past? Join the club! Don’t die there! Don’t die there. Godly sorrow leads to life. Worldly sorrow leads to death. Choose to the sorrow that leads to life and repentance thru the Good News of Jesus who came to save you by forgiving your sins! Let pray.
