The Rock and the Hard Place – Part 1
You Are Forgiven
Scriptures: Psalms 103:10-11; Jeremiah 31:34; Romans 8:31-39; I John 4:8, 16-18
Introduction:
First and foremost I want to thank Cynthia and Anthony for covering for me during my sabbatical. The last two months have allowed me to shut my mind down and just allow God to quieten my spirit and minister to me. I also want to thank each of you for supporting them during my time away – you are all a blessing to me.
Now some of you may have thought that I spent my time away writing sermons so that when I returned I would have several written, but that would have defeated the purpose of the sabbatical. However, I was able to outline this series (with some input from my brother Barry) that came to me one day while we were on vacation – I will tell you more about that revelation later. This series is titled “The Rock and the Hard Place” and part one is subtitled “You Are Forgiven.” You may be wondering what forgiveness has to do with being between a rock and a hard place and I will tell you that there is a direct correlation. Let me begin by sharing a few thoughts about what it means to be between a rock and a hard place.
When someone says that they are “between a rock and a hard place” what they are saying is that they are between two equally different or unacceptable choices. This term was first used back in the early 1900s and gave the impression of being crushed or caught between two rocks. They are stressing that there are two opposing forces restricting their movement and based on this the person is unable for some particular reason to do what they would like to do, such as act or not act in a certain way. When someone makes this statement they are looking at both (the rock and the hard place) as having a negative outcome based on their final choice. In part one of this series I want you to know up front that being between the rock and a hard place is not the real problem. I will stress this point throughout this series. The key concept that I want you to gain from this series is knowing and understanding who our heavenly Father is and believing and acting on what He has said without compromise or apology. This in and of itself represents a “rock and a hard place” for many Christians. You see, we have all failed so many more times compared to the number of victories we have experienced. Some of us have allowed our personal failures, and the failures of those around us, to define our theology – what we choose to believe about God and His standards. In other words, what we believe about God and His standards are not solely based on His word, but what we and those around us have experienced. If I am a “good person” then does that not override my sin that is “normal” by the world’s standards as everyone else is doing them? There are times when we will place ourselves between a rock and a hard place because our theology is defined by our failures. This is what I want to address in this series. I took a hard look at myself while I was on my sabbatical and it is time that we take a hard look at ourselves individually and as a Church family.
This morning, as an introduction to the series, I want to lay one foundation of truth about God’s forgiveness. I want to remove all doubt, opinions and/or confusion that may exist in our minds about what happens when we truly repent. I want you to know that we are forgiven and that our understanding of this impacts our ability to walk in faith with God.
I. What God Says About Our Forgiveness
I shared with you a few minutes ago that we need to know and understand who our Father is and believe and act on what He has said without compromise or apology. The first thing we need to believe and act on is the fact that we have been forgiven. This is important for every Christian because we have a tendency to live in the past where our sins are still alive. We remember them, think about them and make plans to “try” to move beyond them. Even though we have repented and recognize that God has forgiven us, we are still trapped in the shadow of them and wonder if God is also remembering them when we sin next. This uncertainty impacts our ability to walk in faith and believe that God hears us when we pray. To put this issue to rest, we must know that to God our past is over and He does not hold anything over us that have been covered by the blood of Jesus when we repented. Let’s read a few Scriptures pertaining to this. Turn with me to Psalm 103:10-11.
“He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.”
David wrote that God, even prior to Christ’s blood being shed for the remission of all sin, that God was a forgiving God and had not dealt with those who worshiped Him as they deserved. In other words, even though man may have deserved punishment, God, through His great lovingkindness, was merciful and forgiving. He wiped our past clean. Where we were once filthy rags, He washed us in the blood of the lamb and we came out white as snow and perfect as a new cloth. This is the God we serve. Isaiah 1:18 says “Come now and let us reason together’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land.” God reached out to His people and gave a promise that even though their sins were great and red like crimson, they would be washed away. Think about how someone removes stains from white clothing by adding bleach to the washing cycle. God has bleached our sins to where they no longer exist – those that we have repented from. They have been washed away!
When Nikki and I were in Florida, I took long walks along the beach. If you have ever walked along a beach, you will notice that the farther away you get from the water, the more footprints you see in the sand. When you get closer to the water, the sand looks smooth as if no one has walked on it. Well, on this particular day I was walking along the beach closer to the water where the water would often wash up around my ankles. There were several people walking in front of me as I just walked and listened to my gospel music. At one point God spoke to me and I looked down at the footprints being left in the sand by those walking in front of me. Their footprints stayed imprinted in the sand until the water came in and washed them away. As I watched this happen over and over again, God said to me, “This is what I have done with the sins of My people through My Son Jesus Christ, I have removed them just like this water is removing the footprints from this sand.” I turned around and looked back from where I had come and noticed that my footprints had also been erased. As I continued to walk, God began to minister to me about how we truly repent from sins and ask for forgiveness which He grants and then we proceed to live in the shadow of those sins. He told me that His forgiveness is just like the waters washing away the footprints – it’s like they were never there. First John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” When we confess and repent from sin God cleanses us – PERIOD!!! The problem is not God, it is us!
When we sit and dwell our past sins and failures, it like watching a rerun of a movie or TV show: you know what is going to happen and the outcome is always the same. Just like you cannot change the ending of that movie, you cannot change the outcome of your past. Some Christians have this mentality in their minds that there are some sins that they cannot walk away from and they should not have to because what they are doing is “normal” and accepted in society (which actually puts them against that rock in their Christian life). Why are we so adamant about reminding God of our past sins and failures when He has wiped our past clean and empowered us to walk away from that lifestyle? We must understand that we cannot move forward into His promise land for us individually if we are living in regret of things in our past that we are no longer doing. Yes we might have messed up, but that is behind us. Just because we messed up before does not mean that we must mess up in the future. Turn to Jeremiah 31:34.
God spoke to Jeremiah and told him: “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” This prophecy pertained to the new covenant that we are all under. God said that under this covenant we will “know” Him and that He will forgive our iniquities and remember them no more. Do you understand what that means? God does not carry around a notepad with a list of our past sins. Once we repent and ask forgiveness, those sins are washed away as if they never happened. Paul reconfirmed this in Hebrews 8:12 when he wrote: “For I will be merciful to their iniquities, And I will remember their sins no more.” He also wrote the following in Hebrews 10:17-18: “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’ Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.” When God forgives us, He erases the act. At that point it is up to each of us to move beyond the sins we have committed and focus on our future. This same principle applies to mistakes we have made in our lives. I am not talking about “sins” now, but just mistakes that we have made that have changed the course of our lives. We must move beyond those in order to walk in the fullness of what God has for us now.
We need to understand that regret is a place of no ambition, no joy, no peace and not being able to see your blessings. This is a place of darkness and despair that God is trying to deliver us from. Man will hold us accountable for our past and try to influence us to live the rest of our life in regret; but that is man and not God! Think about God’s forgiveness in this manner. In our legal system there is a term call “double-jeopardy.” It means that once you have been acquitted or found innocent of a crime, you cannot be retried in court for that crime. This is our legal standard in which we operate by but which we do not apply to God’s forgiveness. Many of us live as if God is constantly retrying us for the sins of our past; sins that have been washed away by the blood of Christ. Accept that fact that God has forgiven you and move on. This acceptance will enable us to begin to truly walk in faith without question. We will no longer have to wonder if God is truly hearing us when we talk to Him. When the voices around us try to declare that we are unfit to serve God because of our past, remember it is God, through Jesus Christ, who has justified each of us and called us innocent. God has declared that we are qualified to serve Him. When you believe this, you will begin to think differently about your situation when you’re between that rock and hard place. Romans 8:31-39 records the following: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather Who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
II. Why We Must Know We Are Forgiven
I John 4:8, 16-18 say, “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
God is love and for Him, forgiveness is not an option. Think about it, when we choose not to forgive someone, there is an element of anger and yes, sometimes even hatred attached to the unforgiveness. This is not how our heavenly Father operates! We are forgiven every time we genuinely repent – that very instant! EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!! Does this give us a right to continue in sin? Absolutely not! But what this does give us is the assurance that when we call on our heavenly Father, regardless of our past, we can have full confidence that He is hearing us. God is a God of love, mercy and grace which is a part of His very make-up. This is a part of His very existence and cannot be separated from Him! This is why He sent His only Son to die for us – because of the love, mercy and grace that He has for us. God has declared that our faith in Christ as our Savior resulted in His blood cleansing us from all sin and unrighteousness – yesterday, today and tomorrow! The more we live in the memories of our past sins the more we will hold ourselves back from how God wants to gloriously use us here on earth. We must all stop allowing our past that God has forgiven us from to become the anchor that holds us back from the plans for our anointed future! If we do not begin to understand that we are forgiven then there will be doubts when we call out to God in our times of need.
Conclusion of Part 1
If you’re still sitting here wondering what does our being forgiven has to do with us being between a rock and a hard place, let me break it down for you this way.
When we hurt someone that we love we ask for their forgiveness. However, we know that we have hurt them and that the forgiveness may take a little time so we are unsure as to how they will respond to any request that we might make of them. Maybe they will be okay or maybe they will respond back by reminding us that we hurt them. Maybe things have settled down and you have moved on, but something else happens and everything comes back to the surface. This can continue for years when you have days when things are wonderful and days when your past overshadows your present. When this is the case you’re unsure as to how to respond or act in a given situation.
If we understand what God has done for us and that He is not like man, we can always walk confidently that when He says He has forgiven us, it is a done deal. We are forgiven and the slate is wiped clean. Because we know this, we can call on Him with the complete assurance that He hears us and will answer our call EVERY SINGLE TIME! When we are between a rock and a hard place it is our knowledge that God has restored us from when we failed Him that gives us confidence that He is with us. When we know that we are forgiven, our attitudes are different when we approach God. Our expectations are different because we are not ashamed. We do not have to wonder. We do not have to doubt. We do not have to be afraid! When we’re walking with God and believing and acting on what He says without compromise, some of our decisions, although difficult in the flesh, will be clear and all we have to do is act on them. Because we have repented, we are forgiven. Your sinful footprints have been erased by the waves of God’s love through the blood of Jesus Christ. Go forth now and walk a new path! As you go through this week, remember the fact that if you have repented from your sins, they are forgiven! You are restored in your relationship with God and being between a rock and a hard place is not the problem that we make it out to be - if we understand our Father.
I will continue next week with Part 2: “Are You Satisfied With Your Faith?”
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
