The Gift of Forgiveness
Dec. 7/8, 2002
Intro:
Earlier in our service, our children came and lit the second candle of Advent – the candle of peace. It’s purpose it to guide us in our preparation for celebrating the birth of our Lord by focusing our thoughts on the peace that Jesus came to bring.
For a season where we light a candle representing peace, our culture has done a pretty good job of making it as hectic as possible. Most of us run through December at full pace, franticly trying to do all the things we need to or want to do, get all the preparations ready, make everything just perfect.
As I reflected on peace, the question came: what is true peace? What does the Bible mean when it speaks of peace? When the angels appear to the shepherds to announce the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem, saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests,” (Lk 2:14), what do they mean by this wish of peace? What are they announcing?
Let me make the question more personal: what would it mean for you to find peace? Some of you are thinking, “take my kids for three days, then maybe I’ll find some peace…” Or maybe you’re thinking, “take my spouse for three days…” Maybe you’re a teenager thinking, “take my parents for three months…”
I know that for many of you gathered here today, you are not at peace. You are full of turmoil, of conflict, of a running battle. And the season makes a lot of that worse – everyone expects the world to be full of happiness and joy, expect you to have a smile on your face: “come on! Cheer up, it’s Christmas!” As if that somehow lessened the pain of a loved one lost this year, as if that would make the credit card bill mysteriously pay itself off, as if that would lessen the strife and anger that you feel in your home every time you walk through the front door.
It’s a good bet that some of you had a fight before you even made it out of the door to come to church. It’s safe to assume that as many of you look back over the previous week you see a complete absence of peace – work is a place of conflict, your family hasn’t been getting along, a friend disappointed you. Your soul feels more like a violent storm than a peaceful lake. And now hear you sit, in God’s house, looking fine on the outside, but inside there are some parts of your life that are tearing you apart. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit of God would speak to those parts of you today.
The Root of Turmoil:
As I reflected on the absence of peace in our lives and in our world, I came to the conclusion that the root of all the turmoil is this: a lack of forgiveness. We are filled with anxiety and turmoil internally when we know we have done things that are wrong – we recognize that we have done things that come between us and God and those things sit in our soul and erode us and fill us with fear and dread. We’ve been bad and we fear God’s judgment. The same connection between a lack of forgiveness and a lack of peace is evident externally also: our world and our relationships are filled with conflict and turmoil because a wrong has been done, and the response has been something that causes more harm, the response to that more harm still, and the cycle goes on and on and on. We see that in individual relationships, in families and friends, and we see that in global relationships between ethnic and religious groups.
Zechariah 3:8-10
This past week, Marshall White shared with me Zechariah 3:8-10, which prophecies ahead to Jesus. God says, “I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. (this “Branch” is an OT Messianic title) 9 See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone, (this “stone” is most likely another Messianic image, the eyes being symbolic of seeing everything) and I will engrave an inscription on it,’ says the LORD Almighty, ’and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day. (note there the promise of forgiveness – the removal of sin in a single day. Now, vs. 10 tells us the result of that removal of sin: 10 " ’In that day each of you will invite his neighbor to sit under his vine and fig tree,’ declares the LORD Almighty." (this final picture is an OT image of peace – people sitting together, without conflict.
The Lord is saying that through the Messiah, He will bring forgiveness. As a result of forgiveness, there will be peace. See the connection? Peace comes as a result of forgiveness. I believe that if we want to celebrate Jesus as bringer of peace, we have to talk about forgiveness first. Because forgiveness brings peace. That is my main message for you today: forgiveness brings peace.
Chains in the front and chains in the back:
Here is a mental picture for you of the person who doesn’t know forgiveness: it’s like your entire body is wrapped in chains. They imprison you, they trip you up every time you try to move forward, and the more you struggle with them the more entangled you get.
Some of those chains stick out behind you, and are held by someone behind you who is in control of those chains. These represents the things that you have done which are wrong – the sins that you have committed – and the holder of the chains is God. You can fight and try to rip them out of His hand, but all you’ll succeed in doing is pulling them tighter around you. Or you can ask Him to forgive you. You can confess to Him all the sin in your life, and ask Him to set you free. And He will. He will forgive, and He will carefully unwrap you and set you free and cast those chains away. All you need to do is ask: 1 Jn 1:8-9 promise us this. Once God has forgiven you, you are free to seek the forgiveness of others you have hurt, and mend those wrongs, and a few more chains fall off.
Some of those chains stick out in front. These you will discover lead to others, and you will discover that they tangle you and trip you also; but unlike the last bunch, these ones are in your hands. You control these. These are all the pain that others have caused you – they are chains of anger, bitterness, hurt feelings, betrayals. These chains choke the life out of you. The prescription is the same; but now instead of asking for forgiveness from someone else, the requirement for freedom is that you forgive the one who has wronged you. You let it go, you drop the chains from your grip, you choose to forgive. And that sets you free from the rest of those chains.
Forgiveness isn’t easy:
This is not an easy thing to do. There is great cost, great sacrifice required for forgiveness. This Holy Infant whose birth we celebrate testifies to this: forgiveness required the giving of His very life – earthly and heavenly. When we approach God and ask for His forgiveness we know it comes quickly and gladly; we must also recognize that it comes with incredible cost. The cost of the cross.
William Barclay in The Letter to Hebrews wrote, “There is one eternal principal which will be valid as long as the world lasts. The principle is -- Forgiveness is a costly thing. Human forgiveness is costly. A son or a daughter may go wrong; a father or a mother may forgive; but that forgiveness has brought tears ... There was a price of a broken heart to pay. Divine forgiveness is costly. God is love, but God is holiness. God, least of all, can break the great moral laws on which the universe is built. Sin must have its punishment or the very structure of life disintegrates. And God alone can pay the terrible price that is necessary before men can be forgiven. Forgiveness is never a case of saying: "It’s all right; it doesn’t matter." Forgiveness is the most costly thing in the world.”
In a similar way, forgiveness is not an easy thing for us to give to others. Those chains are strong, and they are there for a reason. We were hurt. We were wronged. We deserve to be able to punish people, to imprison them in these chains, to make them feel as we felt. Justice requires it. But here is the truth: those chains don’t imprison others, they imprison us. We suffer far more from our anger, from our bitterness, from our hurt feelings. Our lives are awful when they are filled with those things, and they rob us of freedom.
Forgiveness must begin with an honest understanding of the wrong:
We cannot forgive until we honestly admit how deeply we have been wronged. We cannot and should not pretend we were not hurt, we do not feel angry, we were not wronged. To say, “no problem, I forgive you,” is not forgiveness but rather self-deception. God didn’t do that for us! He said, “This sin is a huge problem. The rift is wide. The pain is great.” And then He sent an angel to announce to Joseph, “(Mary) will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matt 1:21). God recognized how deeply He has been wronged by our sin, and then sent Jesus to save us from that by bringing forgiveness.
You and I cannot forgive until we admit that we have been hurt. Until we say out loud, “What happened to me was WRONG, and it hurt.” THEN, and only then, can we decide what to do with those feelings – then we can decide if we will hold on to those chains or if we will let them go. That is a hard thing to do, but with God’s help, we can.
David Augsburger, Cherishable: Love and Marriage, pp. 141-144, writes: “Forgiveness is hard. Especially in a marriage tense with past troubles, tormented by fears of rejection and humiliation, and torn by suspicion and distrust. Forgiveness hurts. Especially when it must be extended to a husband or wife who doesn’t deserve it, who hasn’t earned it, who may misuse it. It hurts to forgive. Forgiveness costs. Especially in marriage when it means accepting instead of demanding repayment for the wrong done; where it means releasing the other instead of exacting revenge; where it means reaching out in love instead of relinquishing resentments. It costs to forgive...Stated psychologically, forgiveness takes place when the person who was offended and justly angered by the offender bears his own anger, and lets the other go free. Anger cannot be ignored, denied, or forgotten without doing treachery in hidden ways. It must be dealt with responsibly, honestly, in a decisive act of the will. Either the injured and justifiably angry person vents his feelings on the other in retaliation (That is an attempt at achieving justice as accuser, judge, and hangman all in one) or the injured person may choose to accept his angry feelings, bear the burden of them personally, find release through confession and prayer and set the other person free. This is forgiveness.”
Will you experience forgiveness, in all its power, today? As I began, I talked about the pain and turmoil that many of you carry today, the burden of anger and bitterness and hurt feelings. I’ve tried not to make light of this, make it seem easy or without pain. But my desire for all of us is that we would be free from those spiritual and emotional chains that rob us of life, and I believe forgiveness will do that – forgiveness from God for our sins, and us forgiving others for their sins against us. Will you do that today? Right now? Will you ask God to forgive you, and experience those chains fall? Will you forgive that person you are so angry at, so hurt by, and experience those chains fall?
But what I’ve done is too bad to be forgiven
Some of you come to a point of feeling like you cannot be forgiven – what you’ve done is too wrong, too horrible, too frequent. God, you feel, simply cannot forgive you for that. Have you felt that before? To that feeling I say this: look at the cross of Jesus Christ. Is that not good enough to take the penalty for your sin? Was that not enough? Was Jesus sacrifice somehow not strong enough to forgive you for your wrong? That feeling is a lie from the pit of hell that angers God because it keeps us tied up in our sin, keeps us imprisoned in our chains. Rom 5:8. “The vilest offender who truly believes…”
But I still feel guilty after asking for forgiveness:
(In the Grip of Grace; Max Lucado)... A boy was shooting rocks with a slingshot. He could never hit his target. As he was in his Grandma’s backyard one day, he spied her pet duck. On impulse he took aim and let fly. The stone hit, and the duck was dead. “The boy panicked and hid the bird in the woodpile, only to look up and see his sister watching. After lunch that day, Grandma told Sally to help with the dishes. Sally responded, “Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen today. Didn’t you Johnny?” And she whispered to him, “Remember the duck!” So, Johnny did the dishes. What choice did he have? For the next several weeks he was at the sink often. Sometimes for his duty, sometimes for his sin. “Remember the duck,” Sally’d whisper when he objected. So weary of the chore, he decided that any punishment would be better than washing more dishes, so he confessed to killing duck. "I know, Johnny," his Grandma said, giving him a hug. "I was standing at the window and saw the whole thing. Because I love you, I forgave you. I wondered how long you would let Sally make a slave out of you.” He’d been pardoned, but he thought he was guilty. Why? He had listened to the words of his accuser.
But I don’t feel like forgiving someone else:
Years after her concentration camp experiences in Nazi Germany, Corrie ten Boom met face to face one of the most cruel and heartless German guards that she had ever contacted. He had humiliated and degraded her and her sister. He had jeered and visually raped them as they stood in the delousing shower. Now he stood before her with hand outstretched and said, "Will you forgive me?" She writes: "I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I prayed, Jesus, help me! Woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms and sprang into our clutched hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ’I forgive you, brother,’ I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in that moment!" To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.
But I’ve been hurt too deeply:
Let me tell you a story from Alberta history: Cree Chief Maskepetoon met Rev. Robert Rundle, and at their first meeting declared "I will never become a Christian as long as there are horses to steal and scalps to take." Nevertheless Maskepetoon became a staunch friend to Rundle and his attitude towards religion began to change. He became a great and feared warrior, but then later became a Christian and a champion of peace.
John McDougall (son of pioneer missionary George, for whom McDougall United is named) later told about the murderer who stopped to shake hands with him while he was traveling with Maskepetoon. When John said "This man wants to shake hand with you," Maskepetoon, apparently under great strain, gave his hand in greeting. He later said to John, "that man killed my son and I often longed to kill him but because I wanted to become a Christian I have kept, with great effort, from avenging my son’s murder. Meeting your father and sitting beside you has softened my heart and now I have given him my hand. It was a hard thing to do but it is done and he need fear no longer as far as I’m concerned."
The story continues: on another occasion the Crees were camped near what is now the city of Wetaskiwin when the Blackfoot asked for a truce. The truce was granted and the Blackfoot came to smoke the pipe of peace. One of their number had murdered Maskepetoon’s father years earlier.
Maskepetoon saw this old warrior, his father’s killer, approach with the others. He ordered his best horse saddled and brought to the tent, then ordered the culprit to stand before him. The murderer expected to be killed. Instead he was asked to be seated. The Chief handed him his best, richly decorated suit. Then Maskepetoon spoke, "you killed my father. The time was when I would have gloried in drinking your blood, but that time is past. You need not fear. You must now become a father to me. Wear my clothes, ride my horse. Tell your people that this is the way Maskepetoon takes revenge."
"You have killed me, my son!" cried the old murderer. "Never in the history of my people has such a thing as this been known. My people and all men will say ’The young Chief is brave and strong and good. He stands alone.’"
Conclusion:
Do you see the power of forgiveness? It turned a fierce warrior, who desired nothing more that to steal horses and men’s scalps, into a man who could shake the hand of the man who killed his son. It turned him into a man who could look his father’s murdered in the eye and say, “you killed my father, you must now become a father to me. Wear my clothes, ride my horse.” I want to leave that image in your mind, because it is almost the exact thing that God says to you and I: “Your sin hurt me deeply. You killed my son – your sin killed my son. Wear my clothes, ride my horse. You must now become a son to me.”
Christ was born to bring peace to our world, a peace that comes through forgiveness. Let the chains fall today. Ask God for forgiveness, and then pass that forgiveness along to others. Then you will know the peace of God, which passes all understanding, and which will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
