Measure for Measure (Part 3 of 3)

Forgiveness can sometimes feel like it's beyond our ability today on Truth for Life weekend will learn how it's possible, and why forgiveness is essential to the life and health of our souls. Here's Alastair big concluding a message titled measure for measure. He's teaching from the book of Luke chapter 6 verses 36 through 38. When we think in terms of forgiveness. We have two eyes. The question, where is forgiveness. First of all to be found in the answer of course is that forgiveness is found in God. It is found in the character of God the father.

Let me quote to you from the psalmist and some 130 he says if you will. Lord kept a record of sins overlord who could stand, but with you there is forgiveness. Therefore, you are to be feared. When Daniel speaks of God in chapter 9 and verse nine he describes God in this way, the Lord our God is not sinful and forgiving. Even though we have rebelled against him. So, when men and women tonight asked the question. You know with Lady Macbeth. How can I get these dreadful spots out of my hands.

How can I be cleansed from a guilty conscience where can I turn to eradicate that the deeds of my past and have a sense of freedom and a sense of forgiveness. The answer is we may turn to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and to this one alone while says somebody.

What if I don't need to be forgiven. Surely forgiveness is only necessary for those who have offended and you're saying to yourself I the way I approach life as I tried to do to others as I would have them do to me. I try not to have a spirit of judgment in me and I know that I'm not perfect by that I don't really see any need of this story of a dying Christ and of the shedding of his blood. But, of course, none of us will go to a God for forgiveness unless we understand that we need to be forgiven. The Bible says that without exception, apart from Christ, the sinless son of God, there is no one who has ever been sinless. Paul says, for all of send Andy come short of the glory of God.

Therefore, all are guilty and all are in need of forgiveness. The Bible describes our sin and variety of ways. It says that we are broken God's laws.

It says that we have deviated from God's path that we are falling short of God's standard that we are guilty of rebelling against him. We are guilty of filthiness that we are actually debtors. Of course that is not necessarily a very popular notion this evening. The idea that you and I tonight are debtors, some of us take pride in the fact that were really indebted to nobody at all and we worked very hard all of our lives to ensure that we minimize as much debt as is possible. What the Bible says when we turn to it is that each of us is in God's debt, and that's why Jesus tells the story in Matthew 18 to make the point so clearly like the servants in that story each of us has a debt to settle and the indebtedness gets worse with the passage of time. In fact out indebtedness is so vast that it is impossible for God's ever to communicate. We are like the first man in the story Gould so much he owed millions and millions in comparative terms today with her when he said you know if you just give me a chance I'll pay it all back. It was a very nice sentiment, but it was totally impossible, and so for him to try and rectify his circumstances was not even likely, and therefore the master forgives him his dance now. The message of the Bible is simply this, that you and I are in debt. The debt must be settled. I cannot settle the debt.

So unless someone else can step up and settle it for me, then I am in dreadful state and the good news of the Bible is that God made him that is Jesus, who had no sin, who had no debt to be sin for us to be indebted for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. In other words, that he might take all about indebtedness and we might be granted all of his credits. Now this is good news for those who realize themselves to be debtors, God holds an account with your name and with mine the data so vast that we cannot Cleveland Christ, however, has borne the penalty and has eradicated the debt for all who believe in him and all who cast themselves up on his mercy, making it possible for us to have the debt canceled can I ask you tonight. Have you ever factored that in. Have you ever thought data. Have you ever consider the possibility that the reason you feel as unfulfilled as you may feel the reason you feel as wretched as you sometimes do, is not actually because of all the superficial and circumstantial things that you been wrestling with in your life, but it is a far deeper level than that and you been unable to really explain it. Financial indebtedness is a dreadful weight on anyone's mind. One of the greatest keys to disruption in a marriage is in the financial realm when it reaches a point and epidemic point of the family are now no longer able to cope with these things and the matters are so overwhelming that it sets them at all odds with one another and at odds with everyone else.

It is a dreadful feeling in the same way by our very nature.

We are indebted is why Jesus said that we should pray in the Lord's prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And the main lesson in the parable that Jesus told them that we just read was simply this, the forgiven sinner prompted by a grateful heart must always then forgive whoever is trespassed against him, and must then do everything in his power to bring about reconciliation because if we do not exercise that element of forgiveness we call in question whether we ourselves have been forgiven. Now this essentially brings us full circle to where we were this morning, which is where I want to get to this matter of the hypocrisy of an unforgiving spirit the absolute hypocrisy of an unforgiving spirit.

When I refuse to forgive somebody else.

It says this that I have minimize the enormity of my offense and I choose to maximize the enormity of their offense that I have not understood my need of forgiveness from God, for if I had recognizing all that I then I would be quick to forgive others who need forgiveness from me and when I failed to forgive someone from my heart, then I exaggerate their offenses against me. While at the same time making little of my own. No CS Lewis has a wonderful little comment on this in one of his little red works. Some of your CS Lewis friends will of Reddit firm seed in the elephants but it's on forgiveness and I was reading it. Just this afternoon as I followed up my studies in this morning and I want to read just the section for you for giving does not mean excusing many people seem to think it done this. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who is cheating or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. In other words that you say. Well, either never really happened but if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive the keep on replying. I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise exactly.

That is precisely what you have to forgive.

This doesn't mean you must necessarily believe his next promise. It doesn't mean that you must make every effort to kill every trace of resentment in your own heart. Every wish to humiliate or hurt him to pay him back. The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God's forgiveness is this in our own case we accept excuses to easily.

In other people's we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins.

It is a safe bet a lot of certainty that the excuses are not really so good as I think as regards other men's sins against me.

It is a safe bet on order certainty. The excuses are better than I think one must therefore begin by attending carefully to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame. We still have to forgive him. And even if 99% of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses.

The problem of forgiveness begins with the 1% of guilt that is left over to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable and you this is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury, but to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life to keep unforgiving the bossy mother-in-law the bullying husband the nagging wife the selfish daughter the deceitful son and so on. How can we do this is what people say and I'm prepared to forgiven this ones I'm prepared to forgiven this half a dozen times.

However, very forgiven. You know, 70 times or whatever it is, but there's a limit to how many times are born, unforgiving northern residents. How can we do it only I think by remembering where we stand by, meaning our words. When we say in our prayers each night, forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.

We are offered forgiveness on no other terms to refuse it is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves.

There is no hint of exceptions and God means what he says. In other words, it is not possible for us to slide off by saying well I forgive you but I want you to know that I will never forget to be guilty of the hypocrisy of the unforgiving servant is harmful in the extreme. And as we said this morning.

There is nothing that will eat out a heart prejudice our thinking quicker than an unforgiving spirit and the reverse is also true that is nothing that will grant liberation freedom and joy and peace of heart and mind faster and quicker than the genuine experience of forgiveness failure in the discovery of forgiveness leaves me in the bondage of my indebtedness and prevents the possibility of my being able to forgive my brother or my sister from the heart and says Jesus such an unforgiving spirit is not simply harmful, it is in the end, hopeless because the unforgiving person. This is Jesus speaking is destined to ever lasting punishment to ever lasting punishment because of a refusal to forgive spend eternity in hell for refusing to forgive because by my refusal to forgive. I am saying that I have never truly discovered the forgiveness which God has made possible in the person of his son and that loved ones is what makes this so staggering in its implications because some of us have developed an approach to life that allows us having established the top 10 list of sins that we most dislike in other people and we keep that list Windows and we refer to it with regularity and we pride ourselves in the fight that we have not.

Airmen strayed from our ways in relationship to the top 10 on the list Jesus as you know I'm not really concerned about your list of the moment. I'm concerned about whether you're prepared to forgive your brother or your sister from your high see we cannot drive the world until we ourselves are driven our flag flies over the castle of our hearts can never be unfurled unless God would breed from heaven. The Christian says love is the flag flying high from the castle of my heart for the king is in residence here. Joy is the flag flown high from the castle of my heart for the king is in residence here pieces. The flag flown high from the castle of my heart for the king is in residency and abuse at all really, really, why we are not forgive your brother from your hearts will award you think you are God you really think you're the judge. You really think you have the freedom to condition to assume you know others motives to assume you know the motivation of their hearts to assume that you can see inside of them. Who do you think you said you again unless we learn to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you, then we should never put our heads on the pillow at night with any sense of assurance are tall that if we diet in our sleep. We will awaken in the presence of Christ. You see, and what do we tell people if you raise your hand when someone asked you to raise if you sign the card when somebody told you to sign a car if you said this and you said that at a given moment in time, then you can fall asleep any night in the total assurance that you're going to have a master question. Do you ever find that in the New Testament is, is there ever a place where Jesus says no what is Jesus uses government areas M and tell your story you want to know how many times you forgive your brother an unlimited number of times and let me just illustrate it for you. Here's a guy who is best that he can repay. He cries out for mercy. He has shown mercy and then he goes out and strangle some poor wretch the works in his office as he owes him five bucks. Do you think he says that this guy has understood the immensity of the forgiveness that he is enjoy. The answer is no is an understated adult because if he had understood what it was to be forgiven a debt that he could not ever to repay. Don't you think he would've said to his brother, sister hey, it's okay I forgive you.

I forgive you for the hundredth time when we are prepared to live with that spirit of generosity. The promise of God is clear if you don't judge, you won't be judged both immediately in terms of interpersonal relationships.

If you don't have a judgmental spirit, the chances are you will not be responded to in that way and it's also true.

Ultimately, in terms of standing before the bar of God's judgment.

We escape judgment on that day because we are in Christ, and we know that we are in Christ because we declared by the compassion of our heart which chooses not to excuse but to forget. Do not be condemned. What's the promise you will be condemned either forgive and what's the promise you will be forgiven.

Dear and was a promise it will be given to in good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over, the picture actually is of grain. There and of a man or woman who would have had I cannot blow see talk hanging over the belt and when the guy is putting out the grain and its overflowing it.

On into the folds of his blouse and there it is hanging and he's got grain all over the place… That's the way that God operates. And that's the way I would like you to operate to when I was at school in England, there was a man called Mr. Entwistle and I finish with this. I'm not sure is a good way to finish but I've started now so I have to, but I went to school with a bunch of boys and girls too and we used to go out at lunch time to Mr. Entwistle Shaw, which was in the bottom level, which was street-level of a large terraced house, and you essentially walked in on street-level to what was the underground level of his of his home where he lived above the shop and every day he would produce produce out apples and oranges in bits and pieces and flowers and different things and display his wares and he had more insight and we used to go in and buy bottles of Paul which were in glass bottles which had talks on them that you couldn't unscrew you had to take off with an open and we would go in and get the bottles while he wasn't looking and shake them like crazy so we would turn away from him and we would shake the bottles like like fury and then we would take them occupants of course way for them to open a tall banana just go up his nose and over assured and all over the place and eventually he got smart honors and he decided that he could do no detect and so was a great game and he would take a bottle and he would look at it and he would say that Luke sure to me you open it. I don't know if there is any volume this illustration are tall except to say this except to say this not to be a sense in which people are looking at us and saying you know you look sure to me. I mean, you look like with just the slightest little notch you you would just overflow with generosity and with richness and with compassion and with forgiveness and with an absence of condemnation as opposed to the kind of containerized ridges, self-assured, critically glancing pharisaical judgmental smart Alex, one of the reasons that people find attendance in churches quite distasteful because they cannot be sure that although God is a God of forgiveness that they're going to encounter the same spirit among his children since they cannot see God they can CI's will be dreadful for them to begin in their own picture with so what overflows from your life.

Mercy and forgiveness were judgment and condemnation your listing to Truth for Life weekend that is Alastair big confronting the hypocrisy of an unforgiving spirit her truthful life. There is one thing you can always count on. On this program you will be invited to open your Bible much because our mission is straightforward. We want to teach God's word without adding to it, or taking away from it. It's teaching you can trust to be true.

And as the Bible says it will make you wise for salvation. If you're listening to Truth for Life.

For the first time, or if you are uncertain about God's mercy and forgiveness and want to understand his salvation plan more clearly.

We posted a short helpful video on our website that effectively explains the gospel. Jesus life and death and resurrection, and what all of that means for your life. You can watch the video by searching Truth for Life.org/the story I assume you're part of a local church if you're a follower of Christ, and you're not part of the local church you're missing something that's vital to your walk with Christ.

Whether you been part of the local church for a short time or it's long been a part of your life. We want to recommend to you a book called love your church written by Pastor Tony Marita.

This is a book that explains why were to be united with fellow believers in the context of a local church. It's in the local church where we form community where we read God's word. Together we share the Lord's supper and we teach God's word to the next generation. This is the final weekend will be offering the book. Love, your church, you can find out more about the book how to get your copy when you visit our website Truth for Life.org and by the way, if you don't already own a copy of Alastair big's book pray big it's available along with the corresponding study guide to download as an audiobook from our website. Both the audiobook and the study guide are completely free this month. Find out how to pray boldly and consistently like the apostle Paul again. Get your free copies Truth for Life.org/pray big Bob Lapine thanks for listing so often the Bible instructs us to look up word not in word but next weekend will hear about three stories Jesus told, prompting his listeners to closely examine themselves. Find out why next week Bible teaching of Alastair big is furnished by Truth for Life were the Learning is for Living