Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
(A Painful Path)
I. A Painful Path to Un-forgiveness
Here's the way it works..
Someone betrays us… lies about us… deserts us…says painful things
to us abuses us mentally, emotionally, perhaps even physically…
The first things we all feel is 1) hurt. Maybe you
had a long history with that person… maybe you had years of
experiences… maybe you loved them as much as you ever loved any one
in this world…. And then they wounded you…
Soon after the hurt comes 2) feelings of rejection.
How could someone we thought so much of …do something so mean to us.
How can they not see how much we are hurt…how can they not care?
Somewhere after the hurt and rejection usually comes…
3) Bitter thoughts - usually we replay the tape
over and over…and each time we play the tape in our mind…it sound a
little harsher…like nails on a chalkboard inside our mind….we
progressively get angrier and angrier.
4) Bitterness - Then comes…all-out, heart wrenching,
bitterness
Bitterness - an excessive desire for vengeance that comes from
a deep inner resentment of someone.
Now we are starting to descend into a place where God clearly
warns us not to go… let me show you…
Hebrews 12:14-15 Make every effort to live in peace with all
men and to be holy…. See to it that no one misses the grace of God
and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile
many. (NIV)
By the time bitterness begins to grow in our hearts we are
starting down a trail that will take us…
a) from a person, deeply hurting on the inside… who has a
intimate, friend, relationship with God,
b) to a person, deeply hurting on the inside… who at the same time
is squeezing off… their intimate, friend, relationship with God,
It's the ultimate "adding insult to injury" or perhaps better said
"adding injury to insult"…
The one you most need, in your life, when suffering emotional pain
is God…and if we are not careful… our pain, wrongly responded to, can
cause us to push away the very God we are so desperately needing.
I don't want to beat, too much, on a horse I've been whipping….
But this is a critical passage for every one of us to understand
Ephesians 4:26-32 "In your anger do not sin"… 27 and do not
give the devil a foothold…. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of
God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31Get rid
of all bitterness, (first on the list) rage and
anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. (NLT)
The last step on this downward spiral of un-forgiveness:
1) Hurt
2) Rejection
3) Bitter Thoughts
4) Bitterness
5) Hatred - 1 Jon 2:11 But anyone who hates another brother or
sister is living and walking in darkness.
II. A Portrait of the Journey from Un-forgiveness to Forgiveness
I found a dude in Scripture that you may recognize. If anyone had
a right to be bitter and filled with hatred…it was this guy. His teen
age years were filled with dreams and hopes for the future…his
attempts to share those grandiose dreams made him less than popular.
How rejected would you feel if your ten older brothers, abducted
you…in your hearing made plans to murder you… and in a last minute
show of mercy decided to simply sell you into slavery. There seems to
be grounds there for feeling at least a little betrayed!
Once he became a slave to Mr. Potiphar… things were looking up
until Mrs. Potiphar tried to seduce him… He does the righteous
thing…and ends up in prison.
What's this guy's name? _____________ Do you imagine that Joseph
was buried in that filthy dungeon and the whole time he was saying
about his brothers and Mrs. Potiphar…."Father forgive them for they
know not what they do?"
…or did he spend at least part of the time… working through the
process toward forgiving those who had so clearly wronged him? Don't
you imagine that one of those Joseph struggled to forgive was his
beloved Heavenly Father…. who had allowed it all to happen? Huh?
Finally he gets his big break… he correctly interprets the
butler/cupbearer dream…he tells Pharoah's cupbearer not to forget
him…watch the attitude in the statement:
Genesis 40:14-15 And please remember me and do me a favor when
things go well for you. Mention me to Pharaoh, so he might let me out
of this place. 15 For I was kidnapped from my homeland, the land of
the Hebrews, and now I’m here in prison, but I did nothing to deserve
it.” (NLT)
Is there any chance at all… that Joseph is sitting in prison still
nursing the wrongs that have been done to him? ( Sounds like it) The
cupbearer promptly forgot him leaving him, rotting in his dungeon….
Dr Martin Lloyd Jones said: The worst thing that can happen to a
man is to succeed before they are ready! In Joseph's case… God sure
wasn't going to let that happen…
Joseph correctly interprets Pharoah's dreams. He is immediately
elevated from prison rat food to Prime Minister of Egypt. When the
promised famine arrives…here comes his betraying brothers.
What would you and I have done? If there had been a sliver of
un-forgiveness left in Joseph's heart…. this was his chance to vent
it.
If you had complete power, right now, over those who have wronged
you in the past how would you treat them?
Your honest answer to that question …. is the answer to whether
you have or have not forgiven them..
Notice the elements that were part of Joseph forgiveness of his
brothers.
1) Not publicly exposing their evil deeds - When Joseph
finally revealed who he was to his brothers…why do you think he put
every Egyptian out of the room? Because he didn't want a single
person to know what his brothers had done to him 22 years earlier.
He knew that if word leaked out that his brothers had kidnapped
him and sold him into slavery… the Egyptians would hate his
brothers….and Joseph plan was to bring them all to Egypt and let
them live out their lives in blessing.
Let me just toss in here…If we are actively telling everyone, who
will listen, just how bad someone treated us… it could very well mean
that we are dealing with un-forgiveness and bitterness. Causing
others to think less of our offenders is a form of personal
vengeance… it's us attempting to punish them!
2) Not keeping record of wrongs - (1 Cor. 13:5)
Complete forgiveness is a choice! It's not a feeling…at least at
first… but it is a conscious act of the will.
It's a choice to look squarely at the record of wrongs that
have been done to us… then choose to erase it…. to destroy the
record!
Here is in effect the promise that you are making to your
offender…
1) I will not bring the matter up to you!
2) I will not bring the matter up to another!
3) I will not bring the matter up to myself!
When we get there… that's complete forgiveness!
Let me show you something interesting…
When God promises under the New Covenant to forgive mankind's sin.
Does he promise to "forget" our sin… or to "not remember" our sin?
Hebrews 10:16-17 "This is the covenant I will make with them after
that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I
will write them on their minds." 17 Then he adds: "Their sins and
lawless acts I will remember no more." (NIV)
What is the difference between forgetting something and not
remembering it?
Forgetting is passive. You don't control your
forgetting…it just happens.
When you forgot an important appointment with someone…it wasn't
the product of a carefully controlled mind…forgetting comes from
uncontrolled, weakness of mind…
Not remembering is active… I have direct control over what
I choose not to remember!
To not remember means: I will not bring these matters up to you,
or others, in the future. I will bury them and not exhume the bones
to beat you over the head with them. I will never again use these
sins against you. Your emotional debt to me is canceled!
So:
1) Not publicly exposing their evil deeds…
2) Not keeping record of wrongs…
3) Refusing to "punish them" - giving up the natural desire
to see them "get what's coming to them."
Colossians 3:13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and
forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave
you, so you must forgive others.
Notice, how we're continually pointed back to how God forgave our
sins…completely canceled our sin debt..
1) Does God ever keep record of our forgiven wrongs?.... No!
2) Does God desire to see us get what coming to us?... No!
3) Does God rat us out to our friends for sins he has already
forgiven?...No!
God promises us… that he will "Not remember" our sins for all the
rest of time… and he wants to help us achieve that same calm place of
rest with those who offend us.
4) Relaxing into the "absence of bitterness"…
Our forgiveness of others is far more about our relationship with
God…than it is about our future relationship with our offenders.
Reconciliation with our offenders can be wonderful… but realistically
in may cases it is improbable… and in some cases downright
impossible.
I don't want to underplay reconciliation either… It is part of the
model of Jesus forgiveness of us… and comes with a command…
2 Corinthians 5:19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world
to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And
he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. (NLT)
But reconciliation is an end product of forgiveness… at the very
core our forgiveness of others is our relationship with God. God Holy
Spirit is grieved when we hold un-forgiveness in our hearts. God is
not "at home" in a heart where un-forgiveness is filling up several
of the rooms.
The ultimate value of un-forgiveness is that it unclogs the
channel allowing the unhindered flow of God's grace into and through
our lives. Un-forgiveness in your spiritual heart is like a plague
buildup in your physical heart. It will choke off the flow of God's
grace and give you a spiritual heart attack.
I have personally discovered that there is a very close link
between being bitter at someone who has hurt me and bitterness at a
sovereign God who didn't stop it from happening.
I remember one time in business when a Realtor in Stuart,
literally, took me to the cleaners for over $20,000.00. As she sat
across the table, with her attorney, she looked over at me with a
smug look and said… Sam you're out of your league on this one…
She was right…the whole concept of trying to get a commercial roof
free of charge was outside my scope of thinking.
I struggled for a couple of years with trying to forgive that
woman…but there was an even bigger issue for me. I remember walking
miles and miles on the road around my house trying to deal with the
fact that my loving sovereign God had allowed her to get away with
it.
I think this whole issue of us forgiving our offenders is a deeply
spiritual issue… that involves us allowing God to sweep clean the
rooms of our spiritual house so his Holy Spirit can feel at home
dwelling in us. If one of the rooms is filled with bitterness toward
Fred or Sally… that room needs to be swept, and scrubbed. If there is
a scum on all the walls that is bitterness against God himself… those
walls needs sanitized. If there is a closet of un-forgiveness toward
yourself for how badly you have handled some portions of your
life…That needs to be part of the overall cleansing.
1 John 3:18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love
each other; let us show the truth by our actions. 19 Our actions will
show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we
stand before God. 20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our
feelings, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if we don’t feel
guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence. 22 And we will
receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the
things that please him. (NLT)
Conclusion:
Remember…even though forgiveness requires a mental choice on our
part, the completion of the work of grace, in us and through us, is a
"God thing."
Our part is to provide a willing heart… ready to let go of the
emotional IOU's we have accumulated…
The opportunity for true cleansing and healing comes when we enter
into a grace partnership with God toward total forgiveness.
The actual grace to forgive… flows from the Source of all
forgiveness…through us… and out into the lives of our offenders… Our
reward is a spiritual house swept clean of bitterness and the free
flow of the grace of God into, and out through, our lives.
