Forgiveness
10/13/02 GNLCC 1 Samuel 25:1-30 Matthew 6:9-15
Forgiveness is one of the most precious ingredients needed in building loving and lasting relationships. Let’s suppose for a moment you were the owner of a store and your product was bottles of forgiveness.
What marketing strategy would you use to advertise? Would you show two couples yellow and screaming at each other, but after visiting your store, the couple would be looking at each other all starry eyed and ready to join their lips in a very romantic passionate kiss.
Would you show a person stealing someone’s money, but who is later caught and arrested? But after using your product, the person is at peace again with person who was cheated.
Would you show a teenager running down the hall in tears after being ridiculed by other teens. But after purchasing your product, she and the other teenagers are the lunchroom table laughing and talking together. In your commercial, who is the hero, the person who receives forgiveness, the person who grants it, or the bottle of forgiveness itself?
As the store owner, what would do about issue of the price to charge for the hurt caused? How does the price of forgiveness compare for the person who lied on you, to the price of the person who ran off with your husband or your wife? Is the same quality of forgiveness needed by a child to a parent as from a parent to a child?
Is the price higher or lower for forgiveness needed for something that happened 20 years ago as for something that happened 20 minutes ago? Is the price going to be fixed so that everybody has to pay the same amount or will it be on a sliding scale so that everyone could afford it? Will there ever be special
sales on forgiveness where you can get two for the price of one?
Think for a moment of a time when you did something that hurt somebody pretty badly. You might not have had any intention to hurt them, but you did. You went to the person to apologize but they didn’t want anything to do with you. They simply gave you the hand, or hung up the phone, or simply said “I don’t care, so whatever”
At first, it might be kind of nice to have an alternative store to go to and simply purchase some forgiveness for yourself. But would you pour the bottle of forgiveness on yourself to feel forgiven, or would you try to persuade the person you hurt to let you pour it on them so that they could forgive you?
If you were the person that was wronged, would you feel cheated knowing that someone could go and purchase a bottle of forgiveness, that could cause you to have to forgive them? Don’t you have a right to be as upset with the person for as long as you please, and don’t you have a right to be bitter toward the person till the day you die.
Isn’t one of the privileges of being hurt, the right to get even and get revenge? Don’t you have a right to burst a blood vessel and have a stroke because your blood pressure goes sky high just thinking about the evil this person has done to you. Aren’t you entitled to every time you see them, you just want to go choke them by the neck. Sometimes our rights can make our lives absolutely miserable.
Let’s talk about a young man named David. Here is a young man that fell in love with God while spending time out on the grassy hills, day after day watching his father’s flocks of sheep. He sang praise song after praise song to help pass the time away.
As he went about being a shepherd by defending the sheep from lions and bears, leading the sheep to water to drink, and taking the sheep to one green pasture after another, it struck him later in life to write to one portion of Scripture a lot of people know. Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
David had enjoyed being out in the rolling green hills carefully watching and taking care of the sheep and their lambs. One day God decided to interrupt David’s choice of career. He sent the prophet Samuel to anoint David to be the next king of Israel. The only problem was, there was already a king by the name of Saul, and he was not interested in giving up the job.
God blessed David so that David left the sheep and went to become a giant killer. He killed Goliath and won the king’s heart. David was given a beautiful room in the king’s palace. The king put David in charge of the army, and God used David to win one battle after another. The king was happy until he heard the women sing a song, King Saul has slain thousands in battle, but David has slain 10,000’s.
From that moment on Saul was determined to kill David by any means available. David spent the next fourteen years of his life being chased and pursued by Saul. Saul was intent on killing David and everybody who helped him.
Saul wiped out a whole city of priests because one of them gave David some bread and the sword David had used to kill Goliath. On two occasions, David had the opportunity to kill Saul and get his revenge on him, but David would not do it. He was trying his best to trust in God to do the right thing.
David had a group of about 600 men following him running from place to place in the desert. David had gone from the peace and safety of the hills as a shepherd, to the luxuries of palace living, to doing his best to make a life out in the desert and caves. There were a lot of things he could become bitter about.
He did not ask God for this situation. He did not ask to be anointed the future king. He thought surely if he forgave Saul twice, Saul would quit trying to kill him. He was wrong.
In chapter 25, the guy Samuel, who had told David he would become king was now dead and the kingship was nowhere in sight. It almost seemed like what’s the use of trying to do the right thing. It certainly had not improved his situation.
He decided to do right just one more time. There was a guy by the name of Nabal who was very wealthy. Nabal’s money was tied up in his huge flocks of sheep and goats. His biggest problem was having enough help to keep thieves and robbers from helping themselves to these large flocks of animals.
Without telling Nabal or getting his consent, David took it upon himself to assist Nabal’s servants. With his 600 men, David was able to protect all of Nabal’s flocks from the wild animals as well as from would be thieves and robbers. It was the best financial year Nabal ever had. Not one sheep or goat was lost. Nabal gave a big party at roundup time for the workers.
When David heard about it, he sent messengers to Nabal saying, “good health to you and may long life be yours. My servants and I watched your sheep for you and, while we were doing it, not a single one was missing. Check with your own people and they can vouch for what I’m saying. Now since this is a festive time, give my young men whatever you might have on hand as your way of showing appreciation.”
Instead of showing appreciation, Nabal insulted David’s men. He basically called them a bunch of thugs from who knows where, and stated he was not about to give them anything.
When David heard the insult, he immediately told his men, “put on your sword, we are going to go to war, and we will get rid of this fellow who has insulted us.” David had an overwhelmingly superior military force to go against the few men in Nabal’s household.
How much forgiveness is needed to deal with an insult? If David goes to war and some of his men are killed, how much forgiveness will be needed by their children when they learn their fathers are dead because David was insulted over not being appreciated. When we are insulted, we are not able to see clearly, because revenge cloudies our minds and our judgment.
Last year as a nation, we were tremendously insulted by the attack on 9/11. Our judgment became cloudy as we began to surrender freedoms in order to get revenge. Americans were arrested and put in detention because they looked middle eastern and no trial dates were set. Prisoners could no longer talk in secret to their lawyers in prison.
Government agents could come to our worship services not to worship, but to spy and see who does what and who says what. Our e-mails and phones calls could be intercepted without our knowledge. We dropped bomb after bomb on Afghanistan in search of Al Quida. Who knows how many people we killed that had nothing to do with 911.
Who’s walking around today with missing arms, legs, or is blind because of bombs we dropped on Afghanistan. . How many people do we need to ask for forgiveness in Afghanistan alone?
Do we owe them anything as a nation, or are they guilty by association? What about the 22 members of the wedding party that were killed when we dropped a bomb on them in Afghanistan. Did they deserve to die because they lived there? Should they be able to sue us?
No instead of talking about healing, reconciliation, and forgiving we’re still dealing with insults. We have been insulted that we, with all our intelligence and surveillance, could not find Osama Bid Laden, and so now we have turned our attention to Sadaam Hussain.
We claim that he is the great producer of terrorist and terrorism. Yet we ignore that all the highjackers on the planes were from Saudia Arabia. Not a single soul was from Iraq. What conditions in Saudia Arabia produces situations that Saudis are willing to die to kill Americans? We do not want to talk about those kind of things. How many nations have disobeyed UN resolutions that are not our target today.
Like David, because of an insult, we are ready to go to war to demonstrate our mighty power to inflict pain on those smaller than us. God has not appointed us a nation to be some kind of righteous policeman, when we continue to support nations that are brutal in the treatment of their own people.
Will we consider removing the government of Sudan for its brutal murder and imposition of slavery on the Christians in the southern part of that nation? Will we consider removing the government of North Korea for its starvation of its people? Will we remove oppressive dictatorships wherever we find them because of the potential threat they may impose?
For the past 10 years we have been bombing Iraq. How come we never see any pictures of the people killed or the children maimed or the women left as widows? Have our bombs been more kind to the Iraqi people than Sadaam Hussain? How many Iraqis must die before we consider that we have done them a favor by replacing their government? How many cities will be bombed?
Will we bomb their cities and simply called the destruction of homes, hospitals, and schools, unintentional targets. How many grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and aunts, nieces and nephews, sons and daughters must be blown to bits and then be referred to as simply collateral damage.
What’s our responsibility toward Iraqi Christians who are our sisters and brothers in Christ? What happens when our bombs fall on muslim mosques that are full of worshiping people? Will the muslim nations sit idly by and say nothing as Christians destroy their places of worship? If Iraq’s neighbors are so afraid of an immediate attack from Sadaam, why haven’t their armies signed up to fight?
Which American families do you vote to have their sons and daughters killed in this war that seems to have no plans beyond dropping a lot of bombs on people who had nothing to do with 911. If there was no 911 or if 911 had of happened in France, would we be ready to go to war now even though the exact same situation would exist in Iraq.
How many Americans have some generals in some Pentagon room decided is an acceptable number of American deaths? What if things don’t go as we plan and the Iraqis score some key victories, will we use the very weapons we want to make sure nobody else ever uses?
Will it make you feel proud if one of our young people in the services end up in coffin down here with an American flag on it.
I say this as a warning to our nation. We have enough sins of our own to deal with today. It is presumptuous and foolishness to assume that God is on our side in this conflict. God may use this situation to humble us as a nation.
Let us remember Jesus taught us to prayer “Our Father” not to the “God Of America.” The same love that Jesus had on the cross for Americans, he had on the cross for Iraqi’s.
Our bible teaches, that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth. If God allows the war to be brought to our own soil, we will lose freedoms as never before and we probably will never regain those freedoms again. What may be at stake is not the rise and fall of Sadaam, but the end of our freedom as a people.
Sometimes it is better in life to count our losses and move on rather than to seek to get revenge. David was a man after God’s heart, and yet his desire to get revenge was about to me a major blunder in his life. He didn’t know that while he was preparing for war. God was already preparing an answer for his situation.
David was saying, “it’s been useless for me to watch over Nabal’s property in the desert making sure that nothing was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God punish me, if by time the morning is over I have not killed every single male in his house and on his staff.”
Do you see how neglecting to consider the option of forgiveness can turn us into monsters. Here is a man of God ready to kill people who had nothing to do with the insult. He’s even claiming that God is on his side, and that God will take it personally if he does not go out and kill everybody. Nothing was further from the truth.
At the very moment David was claiming God wanted him to do this, “God was sending Nabal’s wife Abigail to David with an apology and with more food than they could have possibly eaten. She also reminded him that God had called him for a higher purpose and that for him to take revenge would decrease his power in the future.
David had the wisdom to see that he was totally wrong about what God had wanted him to do. He accepted her offer and turned and went away with him men. The very man he wanted to remove, suffered a heart attack the next morning and died 10 days later. God does not need our schemes, our plots or our armies to remove people whom He intends to remove.
David spared not only the lives of the men in Nabal’s household, he saved some of his own men’s lives as well. The only thing that changed was that he was willing to forgive the insult. Forgiveness is not a spiritual gift, it’s not a talent, it’s not an inherited trait, it’s not something you can put in a bottle and sell.
Forgiveness is a choice on what our response will be to a given situation. God’s reference point for forgiveness isn’t what the other person has done to us, but rather what God has done for us . All of us have sinned against God.
When God sent Jesus Christ to die for us, even then we were spitting in God’s face by saying, I will do as I please no thank you God. But God knew without his forgiveness, all of us would spend eternity in hell as consequences for our wrongdoing and payment of sin.
Jesus willingly paid the price to suffer for all the hurt, the betrayals, and the disobedience we imposed upon God. There is not a day that goes by that we do not live in some way contrary to God. That is why we are told to pray daily and to ask for forgiveness daily, and to grant forgiveness daily.
Insults are going to come to us in all kinds of ways. We are insulted when others ignore us. We are insulted when our children bring home awful report kids. We are insulted when we are yelled at. We are insulted when things are taken from us. We are insulted when we are betrayed. We are insulted when we are wronged by others. How are we going to handle it?
Our options are forgiveness and bitterness. There is no in between. Jesus did not provide us as Christians with the option of bitterness. Bitterness destroys homes, it destroys churches, it destroys choirs, it destroys relationships.
Bitterness produces pride in us causing us to think we are more righteous and that we just don’t have to deal with them anymore. We have roots of bitterness growing in our midst that’s hurting some of our ministries. No group can be an effective witness for Jesus Christ, when members in the group are holding things against each other. Today is the day to let it go.
Jesus takes the issue of forgiveness so strongly, that he tells us point blank, if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. We can play church and look religious, but God isn’t a part of what we’re doing.
Don’t let that ex husband, ex wife, ex boyfriend or ex-whatever rob you of the greatness God wants to accomplish in your life. Don’t buy Satan’s lie that it’s impossible for you to forgive. God never asks us to do anything that He has not equipped us to do.
Forgiveness is not a feeling to be whipped up. It’s a choice to give up the feeling we have that we are entitled to some kind of justice. Let it go and move on. Let the justice part be left up to God.
You really are the owner of that forgiveness store. But the only forgiveness you can dispense is when others have hurt and insulted you. Although the temptation is to try to put a price on different situations and amounts of hurt, the price is still the same for them all.
The price is always a choice to give up your sense of justice and leave it in the hands of God. You are the one choosing to leave the store as a different person. You’re pouring your bottle of forgiveness on yourself as you walk through the forgiveness of God.
Remember the command in God’s word in Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
2. Choice To A Given Situation
3. Based On God’s Actions Not Their Actions
4. Jesus Is Our Role Model
5. Forgiveness Is Needed Daily
6. Many Insults Are Headed Our Way
7. Options—Bitterness Or Forgiveness
8. Bitterness Destroys Many Things
9. Bitterness Brings Ministry To A Halt
K. Jesus Allows Only One Option
1. Forgiveness Is A Must
2. Don’t Let Others Rob You Of God’s Plans
3. Don’t By Satan’s Lie
4. No Feelings Necessary—Make A Choice
5. Let God Of The Justice & Give It To God
L. Back In The Forgiveness Store
1. You Can Only Sell To You
2. Remember The Price
3. Walk In God
Ephes. 4:32
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Ask The Lord, Who Do You Need To Forgive Today, And Then Go And Make It So!
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick 10/13/2002
Forgiveness 1 Samuel 25:1-30 Matthew 6:8-15
A. Forgiveness—A Very Precious Ingredient
1. The Owner Of The Store With Forgiveness
2. Marketing Strategy
3. Deciding On The Price & Purity
4. Ever Go On Sale
5. When You’ve Caused The Hurt
6. Going To The Store To Make It Right
7. Where To Put It On---I’ve Been Cheated
8. My Right To Get Even & Revenge
9. Right To The Point Of Misery
B. Meet A Man Called David
1. Grassy Hills, White Flocks Of Sheep, Shepherd
2. Observations Led To Psalm 23
3. Life Was Interrupted By God To Be King
4. Shepherd To Giant Killer To Army Officer
C. When Events Change In Our Lives
1. The Song 1,000 vs 10,000
2. 14 Years On The Run—Death To Many
3. Two Shots At Forgiveness—No Revenge
4. Betrayed By Friends
5. From Hills To Palace To Caves
6. Saul Is Relentless In Pursuit
7. Death Of Samuel—One Last Time
D. Meet A Man Called Nabal
1. Rich With Flocks Of Goats & Lambs
2. The Problem Of Thieves & Robbers
3. David Offers To Help At No Charge Up Front
4. Market Goes Way Up For Nabal—No Losses
5. It’s Party Time At The Nabal Estate
6. David Sends His Messengers To Be Invited
7. Nabal’s Response & His Big Mistake
D. What Happens When Insults Come Our Way
1. Who Are You Calling Thugs From No Where
2. David Is Insulted And Prepares To Go To War
3. A Superior Force Vs An Unprepared Enemy
E. How Much Forgiveness Need To Deal With
Insults
1. How Should Orphans Forgive David
2. Revenge Leads To Cloudy Judgment
3. The Insult Of 9/11
4. The Cost To Americans
5. Arrest, Detentions, Lawyers, Services
6. How Many Innocent Have Died
7. What Is Owed—22 Wedding Party Forgotten
8. No Osama—What About Sadaam
9. Saudi Terrorist Vs Iraqi Terrorist
10. Dealing With Real Questions
F. Has God Called & Appointed This Nation
1. The Role Of The Righteous Policeman
2. Sudan, North Korea & Others
3. Ten Years Of Bombing—How Many Dead
4. How Many Cities, Schools, Hospitals
5. How Many Grandparents, Nieces, Aunts Etc
6. Iraqi Christians—Do We Owe Anything
7. Destruction Of Mosques—What Then
G. How Justifiable Is It All
1. Any Plans Beyond The Bombs
2. What If 911 Never Was Or Was In France
3. How Many Americans Can Be Lost
4. What Of Our Sins As A Nation
5. What If We Suffer Heavy Losses
6. What Weapons Will We Use
H. Maybe The Need To Think Again
1. Whose On God’s Side—Our Father
2. God Loves Us All
3. Will God Send The War To Our Soil
4. Freedoms Lost Will Not Be Regained
5. What Is Really At Stake
I. When It’s Better To Move On In Life
1. David Prepared For War Without God
1 Samuel 25:21-22 David had just said, "It’s been useless--all my watching over this fellow’s property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. 22May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!"
2. From Man Of God To Monster
3. Claiming God On His Side In Error
4. God Intervenes With Abigail
5. David Admits Sin & Changes Course Of Action
6. God Removes Nabal In His Timing
J. Forgiveness Resolves Insults
1. Not Gift, Talent, Trait
