What If I Told You Forgiveness Was possible?

It's just always a joy for us any time we get to spend the weekend at Chapel Hill. We love it here. We feel like we travel so much that there's a few pockets of places that feel much more like home than other places and this is one of them. So thanks for making us feel so welcome. We are excited about being here two weekends in a row. We're here today, this weekend. And then next Friday and Saturday, we're gonna be back at the Atlanta campus and we're gonna be bringing the full Forgiving Forward seminar. If you've not been to one of those, you need to. I'm gonna explain to you in this session kind of why. But it's Friday night, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Literally, you're gonna get your world rocked. It's not because we show up. It's because this message is really that strong and powerful. It's exciting that this church is so committed to this concept of forgiveness that they let us keep coming back and training new people. If you've been through it before, come back again cause you need to learn it better, I'm pretty sure. So that's what we're gonna do. And today's gonna be a powerful message. It's gonna be a difficult message for some who've never heard it. But we're gonna ask the Holy Spirit to communicate to you through His word and His servant. Because you didn't come to hear me, you came to hear God. So let's just bring our hearts together and let me lead in prayer as we start:

Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Thank you for the grace that has poured out, not just on us, but on the people who wounded us. So open the eyes of our hearts so that we can understand the hope of your calling in us. And we will understand what it is you are requiring of us when it comes to how we deal with wounds. And still, the only way that's going to happen is if you do it. So be in me, everything that's needed in this space today. And we will praise you for it because you're the one who deserves the glory. In the powerful, strong name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

What if I told you that forgiveness isn't a process, it's a decision? And what if I told you that you don't need a lot of time to make that decision? And what if I told you, the concept that's out there that, "OK, it's going to take time to deal with this wound and process it and get through it"...  What if I told you that's exactly the opposite thing that you ought to do? And what if I told you that the purest evidence of the Christ-Life in us is when we choose to forgive instantaneously?

Jesus died, he'd resurrected, he ascended into heaven, he commissioned the church and the disciples and some others were gathered in an upper room and they were still skittish. They were nervous about what was going to happen. They didn't know, but they were just told to hang together until the Holy Spirit shows up and he shows up in Acts 2.

He comes upon them and there's great power and these timid guys become power guys and they go out into the street and Peter preaches this amazing, incredible first sermon of the church. The church is launched, three thousand people the first day. That's a pretty amazing church growth plan. And then they just go out and it begins to explode. Crazy, amazing things were happening. And it's not a coincidence that God did this on the day of Pentecost because the day of Pentecost was the festival, one of the festivals of Israel. And in this festival, everyone from all over the world, all the Jews that had been dispersed, would come back to Jerusalem for this celebration. So you had Jerusalem teeming with outsiders, people not from Jerusalem, people visiting. If you're visiting from out of town and you see the Holy Spirit do what he did, you're going, "Wow, this is incredible. It's only happening here. I'm staying where the action is." And they didn't leave. They didn't go back home.

And so after a while, if you stay in a place, your vacation money kind of runs out and you run out of money. And they were running out of money, particularly the widows who were coming and they didn't have a lot. The foreign widows were in trouble and they needed some help. But yet the local widows, they still needed help too. And they're all trying to figure out who's going to take care of who. And they brought it to the apostles. And the apostle says, "Hello, this is a really important thing, but it's not something we should do. We need to devote ourselves to the calling of a prayer, in the ministry of the Word, and expanding the gospel. But physical needs are really important, so let's pick out seven guys, we'll call them deacons, and they'll take care of these physical needs." And so they pick seven guys full of the Holy Spirit. One of the guy's names was Stephen. And they started ministering to the needs of the ladies. 

Stephen evidently didn't stay deaconing very long because suddenly, we find him out in the streets preaching. He's proclaiming the message that Jesus was the Messiah and the guys who had instigated the crucifixion of Jesus were not impressed with any of that. So they brought him before them to confront him and tell him to stop. Stephen responded by teaching them a history lesson in a form of a sermon. He went back and, from the whole history of Israel, showed them how that from the very first day, they would reject the Messiah and the prophets that God had sent to them. They were stiff necked and all this stuff, so he's kind of confronting it, giving them a history lesson. Then, at the end of that lesson, he comes to this verse and he says this, Verse 51: "You men who are stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears and always resisting the Holy Spirit, you are doing just what your fathers did."

This did not come from the "How to Win Friends and Influence People Guide." Not altogether that politically correct. 

"Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become, who received the law as ordained by angels, yet you did not keep it." They didn't like hearing that.

Next verse: "Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the quick and they began gnashing their teeth at him." I don't know what gnashing of your teeth looks like, but I don't think it's very pleasant. They were incensed by what he said.

And then it says, "Being full of the Holy Spirit" — which is kind of evidence which side God was on – "he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." And I'm thinking, that's pretty cool. I mean, can you imagine being in a conflict and people are really angry with you. And you look up and you see God in heaven and Jesus standing right next to him. You get this vision of that. I'm thinking, "Okay, this is going to turn out well. We're all right. I've got the backup. We're good, let's go. Bring it on, guys. I got Jesus and I got the Father. We're good."

And so he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God." I got God on my side guys, you need to pay attention to me. And it says, "And they cried out" — this is the crowd — "They cried out with a loud voice, covering their ears." I mean, this is like a three-year-old. "Nah nah, I'm not gonna listen to you."

"And they rushed upon him with all one impulse and they drove him out of the city."

Whoa, this isn't working like I thought.

"And they began stoning him."

Now, this has nothing to do with drugs. This is about these guys grabbing big rocks and throwing them at his body. This is an act of murder. When a crowd grabs rocks and throws them at you, they're not your friends...they're your enemies. And they're murdering him.

Verse 59 says, "They went on stoning Stephen, as he called on the Lord and said, 'Lord Jesus receive my spirit'." Here's the thing: Stephen very quickly understood, he's not coming out of this alive. He knew they were killing him and he was about to die.

And falling on his knees — when that next to the last rock hit him and took his strength away and he was knocked to his knees — he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord sic 'em!" That's what I would say. Don't laugh, you would say it. "God, can you just stop this?

With his last breath, he said, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." What...?

"Lord as I'm dying because they're murdering me, will you please do me the favor of forgiving them?" That's not our normal response, but it's supposed to be.

The clearest evidence of the Christ-Life in us, is our instantaneous decision to forgive when we're wounded. You're thinking, "Well, yeah, that's Stephen. I mean, he was one of the big guys. He saw Jesus and he at least knew the guys who did. He's being trained by Peter, hello. He's got all the things. And I just saw all the miracles and stuff and all these things crazy happening...well, of course he would do that."

But things have changed in 2,000 years. We've evolved as a culture. Things are different. It's a whole different thing. We got a lot of other things to think about and a lot of other religions. It's a lot different now. 

Is it really?

A year ago, we were in Israel and… God connected us through some friends with a church called Narkis Street Congregation in Jerusalem. We walked in. We didn't know anyone there, they didn't know us. We walked in and there were two ladies in the church. The pastor was leading a Bible study somewhere. We walked in and there was the "church lady." You know, the church lady? All these churches have church ladies, they're like 117 years old and they're taking care of the coffee and tea and taking care of everything. They are the "church lady." So she was there and then there was a lady named Marika who is just— she's attending there and she just showed up early. And so, Toni's setting up our table with our resources and — we have the book in Hebrew and in Arabic now, which is kind of crazy — she comes up and asks Toni what we were there for, what we taught. She saw the book "Forgiving" and she goes, "Oh, I love forgiveness. It's one of my favorite topics. I've got a big forgiveness story. Would you like to hear it?"

We're always up for hearing forgiveness stories. "Sure, tell us your story."

Well, Markia was 76 years old. She was a single lady who, 30 years prior, God had told to come to Israel from Holland. She immigrated from Holland to Israel to be a foster mother for Arab orphans. She had over 30 orphans that she had fostered throughout the years. This is a crazy story, right? And in Jerusalem, you travel by bus. Cars don't work, you just can't. So she happened to be one day, about 18 months prior to our conversation, she was traveling on one of the buses, sitting by the back door in a seat when these two Arab men get on the bus at a stop and one sits in front, one sits across from her toward the back. And as the bus started moving, the guy in the front stood up and began opening fire with a gun, killing passengers and wounding passengers. And the guy next to her jumped on top of her and stabbed her five times. And when he thought he had done his job with her, he goes to somebody else. Well, in the bus with the bullets flying, the glass in the door next to her was shattered. She's laying there, "Do I play dead so he doesn't come back at me? But I'm afraid if I do that, I'll bleed out. Or do I run?" She chose to run. So she darted out the door and starts running down the street. These are her words. This is what Markia told us. She said, "I said, Lord, help me." And she said, "The Lord said to me. I will not send help for you until you forgive the man who just tried to kill you." What...?

And she did.  

"Ok, Lord." Lady of faith. "I forgive the man who just tried to kill me, for trying to kill me."

Immediately, a Jewish man pulled up in a Mercedes, got out of the car, took off his shirt, wrapped up her worst wound on her arm, put her in his Mercedes, drove her to the hospital and dropped her off and disappeared. She was being treated in the hospital next to the one of the assailants. And here's this: some people died, but of all the people who survived, she healed quicker than any of the other ones. In about four or five days in the hospital, they'd sent several times, the crisis counselor people. Then they came to her and they said — on the fourth visit or so — they said, "We need to ask you a question. We don't understand something."

"What don't you understand?"

"You are where we try to get every one of our patients and we never get them here. How did you get here?"

She said, "I forgave."

You see, God expects forgiven people to forgive others so much so, he connects his forgiveness with ours. You know the Lord's Prayer, right? What's the one clause in the Lord's Prayer that has a condition attached to it? It's forgiveness, but it's not the condition we would expect. I'm thinking, if Jesus is gonna give us a model prayer to pray about forgiveness, it would be something like "help me forgive others the way you have forgiven me." But it's exactly the opposite of that, isn't it? What Jesus tells us to pray is: "Dear Heavenly Father, please use a standard I use in dealing with people who wound me as the standard you use to relate to me."

Well, I don't want God using anything as I do as his standard, particularly how I deal with wounds. But that's what Jesus says to pray...and it's not the only time he says it. He says it multiple times throughout the Gospels. But the most shocking statement Jesus ever made, I believe in all of Scripture— when I saw this after many years of reading it and it finally jumped out at me, this was an "uh-oh moment" for me. This was an "oh, my” moment in Scripture, because this will shake your heart when you see this. In Matthew 18, Peter asks Jesus a question: "How many times do I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Is seven times enough?" Well, Peter knew that Pharisees said if someone sinned against you twice, you had to forgive. Three times, if you want to be generous. After that, don't have to forgive, probably shouldn't. So when Peter was saying seven times he was doubling the maximum of the Pharisees and adding one, going, "Did I do good Jesus? Do I get a gold star?" And Jesus said, "How about 70 times seven?"

That's 490 times, which is an unlimited number when you think about it. Because if you're in the 460s and you're still counting...there's a pretty good chance you've not been forgiven because you will not keep track that long.

Then Jesus says something very significant. Whenever you read in the Gospels, Jesus says, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like..." you want to pay attention because what he's doing, he's taking the curtains of heaven, he's opening them up to give us a glimpse as to how God wants things to work. He says, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like..." and he gives us a story, a natural account to teach a supernatural truth. And here's the story:. 

There was a ruler who came to collect debts from slaves who owed him money. Now notice, you've got a ruler and you've got the slaves under their authority. And the first one he came to owed him 10,000 talents.

He says, "Pay me what you owe me."

"I don't have it."

"Then I'm going to throw you and your family into debtor's prison." Which is a dumb concept to me. Have you ever figured that out? If you can't pay for it while you're out working, how can you pay for it while you're in the joint. Particularly if your family's thrown in with you. But that's kind of what they would do. And this guy didn't ask for forgiveness, he asked for time. "Please, please, please give me time. I'll pay it back." But the ruler gave him more than he asked for. He forgave him the debt.

Well, how many of you know what a talent was worth? Most people don't. It's worth 60 mina, is that helpful? A mina was worth three months wages. So one talent is 60 times three= 180 months. One talent is 15 years' wages. One talent. This guy owed 10,000 of them. That's 150,000 years worth of wages. "Please, please, please give me time?!?"

No one's giving you a 150,000 year mortgage. I'm pretty sure of that. That's 7.5 billion dollars at 50,000 a year — which is the median income in the U.S. — that the ruler forgave. Which means his net worth came down by that much and net worth of the slave came up by that much. I'm thinking if it's me, and I just got that kind of a gift, I just might be in a good mood. I'm just thinking I'm throwing a party. We're bringing Chick-fil-a, ribs, and brisket. We're getting all three animals involved. 

This guy didn't do that. He went and found another slave. Not someone under his authority, someone on the same line with him who owed him 100 days wages. That's $16,000. And he says, "Pay me what you owe me." That's a manageable debt, right?

"Please, please, please give me time."

Yeah, that's possible. But the first slave choked the second slave and threw him in prison. The ruler heard about it because, face it, fellow slaves, they always rat you out. He summoned him and he said, "You wicked slave." Not a compliment. "I forgave you all that debt because you asked for mercy. Should you not have also had mercy on your fellow slave the same way I had mercy on you?"

Well that's a legitimate question, isn't it?

And then it says, "And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay what he owed." Well, what is it he owed at this point? What did he owe? He didn't owe the money because if you forgive the debt, you can't reclaim that debt. But he owed something. What is it he owed? "Should you not have also had mercy on your fellow slave the same way I had mercy on you?" He owed what we call Forgiving Forward. And ‘the torturer’ in that day was a man who was assigned to the jail; who is skilled at exacting the greatest amount of pain for the longest amount of time without someone passing out or dying.

Think Braveheart, at the end of the movie. Anybody ever seen "24?" Any episode Jack Bauer was in, somebody was getting tortured. Horrific experience.

Jesus now leaves the parable. He returns to answering Peter's question. Remember who Peter was, right? He was a leader of the disciples. The one Jesus said, "I'm gonna hand the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven over to you." In other words, "I'm gonna die, resurrect, and I'm going to send into heaven and we're gonna create a marketing firm called, I don't know, the church. And you guys are gonna be responsible for taking the message of the gospel to the world." So if anyone's gonna get special treatment, it might be the guy Jesus trains to take the message of the gospel viral. Jesus says this: "My Heavenly Father will do the same to you...Peter and you other guys, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart." 

The same what? My Heavenly Father will do the same what? Well, in the context of Matthew 18, it cannot mean anything but hand you over to the torturers. God withholds his protection from us when we don't forgive. In fact, that word torture is also translated "torment." It's used 18 times in the Greek New Testament. And with every other example, maybe one exception, every time it's used in connection with hell or demonic activity. God gives legal — listen to me — He gives legal authority for demonic forces to torment us when we choose not to forgive. And it's not because we've been wounded. It's because we haven't forgiven the wound.

Torment looks like bitterness. It looks like depression, anxiety issues, all of the addictions, sex addictions, alcohol addictions, drug addictions. It looks like paranoia. It looks like control issues, anger issues, some physical issues. And they're all related to our choice to not forgive.

We were teaching this in Dallas and there was a break one night. We're staying with some friends and they lead a small group and they said we're going to have a grilling night. Just a social night, we're not going to do any teaching. You guys get the night off, just connecting with people, getting to know their small group and stuff. So that's great, we'll do that. It's awesome. And as we're getting ready for that event that night, looking for the relaxed day and just calm conversation, Jim, the host, came out to me and he said, "Bruce, I'm so sorry someone invited Larry."

"Ok, who's Larry?"

"You don't understand, Larry's the most bitter man I've ever met. He sucks the life out of every room he walks into with his bitterness. And I wanted you to have the night off."

I said, "It's OK. We're good. No problem." So Larry shows up and I meet him. "Hello." I don't spend a lot of time with him because of other people I'm supposed to connect with, that's kind of what the night was for. I'm doing all this connecting and meeting with people, and then Larry stays. Then people leave and Larry stays, and everybody's gone and Larry stays. Couple of ladies were  talking with Toni and Diane about decorating stuff and there's Larry, just sitting on the couch waiting, I don't know what for. He's just there. So I sit down in the chair next to him. I said, "So, Larry. Tell me your story."

And Jim is going, "Don't ask him that! He will tell you." Here's Larry story:

About 10 years earlier, they were in a large church in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and the pastor seduced his wife and his under-age daughter and other women and other under-age daughters. In fact, the pastor is now serving a sentence in Huntsville prison. Larry said, "I wanted to kill him. I was on my way to kill him and God literally stopped me. And I will never forgive him." I said, "I get it."

And, he said, "About a year ago, my son, who had served in the war as a Marine, he came home with PTSD and he had some kind of encounter with a lieutenant in the Dallas Police Department that went south. My son was convinced that there was corruption in the Dallas Police Department, so he made it his life mission to expose that and became a real nuisance to the police department. And yet, he's struggling with PTSD. He's supposed to be at a Bible study one night. He calls his buddy at the Bible study and says, "I just shot myself."

Now, understand, he's a Marine. He shot himself here. That was not a suicide attempt, that was a cry for help.

Well, the buddy hangs up the phone, calls 911. 911 dispatches a patrol car with two uniformed police officers to the young man's apartment. And the lieutenant he'd had the encounter with was off-duty, but he heard this, he says, "I'm close by, I'll go too." So the two uniformed officers and the off-duty lieutenant shows up, finds the young man in his bathroom, bleeding on the floor, and they shoot him six more times.

And the police investigated it and they no billed it. No charges filed. For reference, Larry's family is white. And Larry said, "I will never forgive them." I said, "Larry, you gotta forgive. And I taught him Matthew 18 like I just taught you.

And when it's all said and done he says, "I understand it, I get it, but I cannot forgive him." I said, "Well, are you enjoying your torment?" I said, "Do you see that room back there" and pointed to the bedroom and said "I'm gonna sleep in there really well. You, however, will not. You're going to sleep in torment. Why would you want another night of torment?" And he chose — difficult for him — to forgive the pastor, his wife, the police officers involved, the police department themselves and everything in Larry's countenance shifted. Everything. Jim is going, "Uhh." Jim still talks about it: "I've never seen that kind of a change."

It transformed Larry. In fact, the next night we were finishing up the seminar and Larry came, and Toni came to me and said, "You got to hear Larry's story. You've got to hear the after story." So I called him up at the end, I had no idea what I was going to say. The first thing he said, he looked at the pastor. He said, "Gary, I want to apologize to you because I've blamed you and held you accountable for what someone in your position did. And that was wrong. And I want you to know, I'm on your team. Whatever you need, I'm behind you."

Then he told this story: Larry is a contractor, he works in Dallas. Contractors, where do they go almost every day, multiple times a day? They go to 7-Eleven to get some coffee or something. So he pulled into a 7-Eleven that morning and he said before last night, if I pulled into a 7-Eleven and there was a police officer there, I would go to another 7-Eleven — which is not a really big deal in Dallas. It's like every 87 feet they've got one — but it's still inconvenient. But this day he parked and there was a police officer. He got out of his car. He walked up to the two officers and he said, "Sir, can I have a moment? Can I apologize to you for holding you accountable for what someone in your uniform did? And I want to tell you, I'm grateful for the service you provide for our city. And can I buy you some coffee?"

You see, God withholds his protection from us when we don't forgive. He unleashes it when we do. He gives legal authority for demonic forces to torment us, but he rescinds that authority and he commands them to leave, the moment we choose to forgive. 

And the big question then is, why? Why does God discipline unforgiveness more harshly than any sin we can commit as a believer? Because forgiveness is at the core of the gospel. You can't cut the gospel anywhere. It doesn't bleed forgiveness.

In Luke 24, if it's not the last, it's one of the last conversations Jesus has with his disciples. He says, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and rise again on the third day. So that — " and that "so that" is important. It's a purpose clause. A purpose clause always means that what precedes is not the main event, it's the means to the main event. The main event always follows the purpose clause. So would we all just kind of agree that the death and resurrection of Jesus is sort of a big deal? It's a big, big, big, big, big deal, but it's not the main goal. It's the means to the main goal. What's the main goal? That repentance for forgiveness of sins be proclaimed in His name to all the nations. Forgiveness is at the core of the gospel.

You can't cut the gospel anywhere, it doesn't bleed forgiveness. The gospel is simply this: In the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sinned, not only did man lose a lot, but God lost a lot. We lost a relationship we were designed to have with God. God lost the glory we were designed to give him. And God said, "I want my kids back and I want my glory back. But there's a problem. There's a sin debt. It's more than 150,000 years worth of wages. There's zero possibility they'll ever be able to make it right. Jesus, is there something you're willing to do about it?"

"Yeah, Dad. I got more than enough righteousness in my account. I can cover this."

So he leaves heaven, he comes to the planet, lives thirty three and a third years perfectly. On the cross, stretched out his arms and he said,"It is...almost done." Right?

No.

"It is finished."

What was finished? The payment for the sin debt of the world. 1 John 2 says, "He, Jesus, is the satisfaction for our sins, but not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world." So that means people do not go to hell because they've not been forgiven. They go to hell because they've not repented to receive the benefit of the forgiveness. Because every sin ever committed by anybody, anywhere on the planet, in any point in time, in history, past, present or future was paid for by Jesus on the cross. It's finished. There's nothing left to pay.

Three days later, when God the Father, by the power of the Spirit, raised Jesus from the dead, the Father said, "I agree. I receive the blood of my son as payment in full for the sins of the world against me." So when we say God may forgive, but I won't, we're saying, "Dear Heavenly Father, I do appreciate the fact you place so high a value on the blood of your son, that you receive it as payment in full for the sins of the world against you. But what they did to me, what they did to my family, what they did to the people I love...I need something more than that. The blood of your son is not enough to satisfy me." And what father would easily handle the crowning achievement of his son being devalued by the very ones he achieved it for? We say it this way: The blood of Jesus covers all sins, including the ones that wound me, and you, and us.

I believe that the reason the church is so impotent in our culture, is because we haven't learned to forgive. The watching world around us is saying, "You're not smoking what you're selling, dude. You want me believe in the forgiveness of God, but you're not willing to share with anybody around you."

I have a life philosophy that I live by. You want to know what it is? Never eat barbecue prepared by a vegetarian. It's just not going to turn out good. I want my barbecue cooked by a big fat guy with barbecue sauce dripping out of his beard. I want to know he has tasted this stuff, he's enjoyed this stuff and I'm just getting the overflow. People need to know we as a church have tasted the stuff, we've enjoyed the stuff, we've relished in the stuff and we're sharing the excess with other people. We have to become forgiving people immediately.

I believe that unforgiveness is at the root of all relational conflict, including the racial divide in our culture, because people are expecting someone else to fix something Jesus has already fixed. Forgiveness is applying the blood of Jesus as payment in full for every wound I ever have or will suffer. Here's the big question for you: If the blood of Jesus is not enough for you, what would be? What would satisfy you?

When we were in Israel last year, the main reason we went was to go to the Dead Sea area to teach a conference with Arab church leaders and Messianic Jewish church leaders. And even though they're all Christ followers, they're like this because the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Isaac have not forgiven each other for what Dad did. Historically, they brought their reconciliation things together, and it's always been, "These are my grievances, what are you going to do to fix it?" And the other side will say, "Well, these are our grievances. What are you going to fix it?" And who's gonna go first? We said, "Whatever your grievances are, Jesus already fixed it. Your torment is not because of what happened, as horrific as it was, your torment is because you haven't forgiven it." When they received the message, when they repented of their sin of forgiveness and they freely administered forgiveness to one another and blessed Him as the evidence...it just changed the room. We're told what happened that week had never happened in Israel before. It just changed everything.

Forgiveness is to be instantaneous. The clearest evidence of Christ's life in us, is our choice to forgive when the rocks are tearing at our body, while we're still bleeding from the stab wounds we were given. That's why this church keeps bringing us back. Because the pastor and the staff understand if the church doesn't get forgiveness right, nothing else works.

We've come and we'll be here next Friday and Saturday. And I'm going to teach you this again. I will teach you the model: How did Jesus forgive? So bring other people. I'll cover this again because you need to hear it too. How did Jesus forgive? What's the model that Jesus— how do we deal with reconciliation and all that? Man, that's a very powerful question for people. And we've got the answer for that. Then we're going to teach you the protocols, the elements of what is required in heaven's protocols of forgiveness to where, if you have these elements, God will say, "Yeah you have forgiven and you get free." Then we're gonna teach you how to recognize unforgiveness and do with somebody else what I was able to do with Larry on that couch. Because this is the gospel. It is the message. We don't have anything else. Because if you don't value the cross, if you don't celebrate the blood, if it's not enough for you...what are you doing?

See, you got to get this right. It's not just cause Hebel shows up, this is not my message. We just borrowed it, it's been on loan to us...but we really want you to get it so that you can be an instrument of peace. Let's understand, there's a demand out there for justice. And I love it, I get it. I get justice. But there's a lie that says: "No justice, no peace." It's a lie from hell because peace has never come from justice. There's no one who's ever received the justice they demand, that ever walks away in peace. No parent, witnessing the execution of his child's murderer, walks out of that room in peace because peace doesn't come from justice. It comes from the injustice of the cross.

And if you want to talk with me about your injustice, I'll talk about your injustice. But I'm only going to talk about it after I get done talking about all the nuances and all the blessings and all the glory of the injustice that Jesus went through to give me peace. And by the way, you might not want to hold your breath because I'm probably never gonna get done talking about that. So we'll just kinda put yours on hold until we're done. So don't worry about it. We may eventually get to it, but probably won't, because that's all we're going to talk about in heaven forever.

Let's just celebrate the cross. You've got two assignments. Your assignment is due today: repent. It just means, change your mind. "God, I now understand that my unforgiveness devalues the blood of Jesus. And whoa, I never, ever want that to be true. I am so sorry. Please forgive me for my sin of unforgiveness. And would you teach me how and I'll immediately forgive." Then go and sign up and come this weekend so you can know for sure how to forgive.

Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you that you have given your son and we're going to declare it. I'm just going to declare it: It's enough. Your blood is enough. The blood of your son is enough. And Lord, we pray that you will just make that so real to us that we can not ever, ever hesitate to forgive. Teach us, Lord. In the powerful name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.