MATTHEW 6:14-15 “I CHOOSE TO FORGIVE – PART 2”
A) Let me remind you of something that is very important in this message, and that is,
if I am ever to forgive someone, I have to make a decision – It’s a choice.
* It is not our human nature to forgive someone who has deeply hurt us.
* We have to decide ... We have to make a choice to forgive ... And when you choose to
forgive those who hurt you, you take away their power.
* I began this message last week with this point .......
(1) I CAN’T CHANGE MY PAST – I CHOOSE TO FORGIVE
A) We all have things about our past that we wish we could change.
* Things we’ve done ... Things others have done to us ... If we could just live our life over,
we’d do some things differently.
* But we can’t go back, and God didn’t make us to carry the weight of the past.
* We don’t have the capacity for that, so we’re gonna make a good choice today, right now,
the choice to forgive.
B) The context of our passage comes on the heel of the Lord’s Prayer – v.9-13.
* If you look at what He said next, you can tell what He was thinking next.
* He was thinking about the part of the prayer that gives them forgiveness ... And what He
was thinking was, “Yea, people gonna have a hard time praying that.”
C) “Forgive me my debts.” ... Luke’s gospel says, Forgive us our sins.”
* Jesus uses the word “trespasses” which means, “My stumblings – My failings ...
My fallings ... And we all fall in many ways.
* You’re at church today with a lot of people who have fallen in a lot of different ways,
including the person that’s talking to you right now.
D) You think about the ways that we’ve failed God ... Have you thought of them?
* Now pray this, “God, I want You to forgive me the way that I forgive other people.”
* I don’t hardly know of anybody who really feels that way ... How many people want God
to forgive them better than we forgive other people? ... It’s just really hard to pray that.
* Well, Jesus knew that they’d be hung up on that, so He went on and said in v.14-15 .......
E) You really ought to choose this forgiveness thing.
* And let’s make sure we know exactly what we’re talking about here.
* What is forgiveness? ... Here’s the definition: A decision, an act of my will, a choice .......
* That’s the first thing – It’s a choice.
LET ME ADD SOMETHING TO THE DEFINITION NOW
A) To release a person (set free) from the obligation that resulted when they injured me.
* Every time someone hurts you – Every time someone acts against you .......
* Every time someone punishes you and takes from you, you have a choice to make.
B) What choice do you have? ... You cannot change the past .......
* And God did not give you the capacity to carry it forward ... So what remains for you?
* Just the choice to forgive ... Cause if you don’t choose to forgive, that stuff will pile up on
you till it crushes you and throw shrapnel into every person that you love and care about.
C) Unforgiveness will destroy you and those around you.
* Forgiveness is a decision – It’s a choice – It’s an act of my will to release a person from the
obligation that resulted when they injured you. (Crisis and a process)
* The first thing you have to do is you have to see your unforgiveness as sin ... And you have
to know that God is not gonna forgive you if you don’t forgive others.
D) Here’s the thing – People got all kinds of crazy excuses for not forgiving.
* So I’d like to cover some of those (Get sweatshirt and put it under coat)
E) Unforgiveness is cancer in your soul and you carry it around with you.
* And here are some reasons people give for not forgiving .......
* The hurt is too big ... But when I think about that, I think, the bigger the hurt, the more
you’d want to get it out.
* The size of it is no reason to hold it – If anything it’s a motivation to take it seriously and
get rid of it.
HERE’S ANOTHER ONE: TIME WILL HEAL IT
A) Yea – I don’t think that’s gonna go away with time.
* It’s not going away just because you’ve flipped some pages on the calendar ... But I’ll
tell you what it is doing – It’s getting worse.
* This thing is getting worse, and it’s getting all red and now it’s starting to ooze, and yuck,
it’s growing hair ... You’d go to the doctor to get it out.
* Doc, get it out of me – I don’t want that in me.
B) But how many people are going day after day, week after week, month after month
gathering the disappointments and pains of the past?
* Big things – Hard things to let go ... I understand – All the more reason to get it out.
HERE’S ANOTHER ONE: I’LL FORGIVE WHEN SHE SAYS “I’M SORRY”
A) Sorry: That’s not coming any time soon – They’re not coming back to tell you that
they’re sorry.
* And the reality is, that that person is such a selfish pig, they’re off doing the same thing
someplace else.
* Do you think they’re thinking about you today? ... Duh, news flash – They’re not.
B) The reason they sinned against you is because they’re selfish.
* And I think you’re gonna be a better person than that and I think you’re going to a better
place with your life.
C) And if you’re holding on to it thinking that somehow you’re gonna punish them .......
* You’re gonna show them – They’re gonna see the resentment in you, and it’s gonna make
them feel bad, and they’re gonna say, “I’m sorry,” ... NO – That’s not coming.
* In fact, all that unforgiveness that you have is gonna turn into bitterness.
* There’s nothing more bitter than being bitter – You’re the one getting hurt.
HERE’S ANOTHER ONE: I CAN’T FORGIVE IF I CAN’T FORGET
A) You have that backward – You won’t forget until you forgive.
* The crisis and the process of forgiveness is the act of forgetting.
B) You say, “I’ll never forget it.” ... God will heal that.
* God will bring you over weeks, and months, and even years – God will bring you to the
place where that doesn’t hurt anymore.
* It can be touched – It can be reminded – It just doesn’t hurt anymore.
* There’s a scar there – You remember, but not in that painful and torturous way.
C) You’re just aware that God allowed something to happen.
* He’s used it for good – He loves you – He’s making you into an amazing person through
the difficult things in your life, and you don’t need to hang on to it and cherish it like that.
* No, you’ll forget the pain through the crisis and process of forgiveness.
D) Lastly – This is pretty important – If I forgive them, they’ll just do it again.
* Someone has got to pay – I agree, someone has got to pay – That’s God’s job.
* Let me show you a verse of Scripture – 2 Thess. 1:6 “Seeing it is a righteous .......”
E) In other words, In God’s justice, He will pay back those who hurt you.
* God loves you – And if you’re one of His children, then give that to God. (Rom.12:19)
* You don’t want to get between the hammer and the work on that.
* You want to let God do God’s thing, and you show God that the love of Jesus Christ has
penetrated your heart, by choosing to forgive.
BUT PREACHER – IF I FORGIVE THEY’RE JUST GONNA DO IT AGAIN
A) Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you put yourself in a position to be injured again.
* Forgiveness doesn’t require that you can’t say to a person, “Hey, we’re not gonna go there
again – I’m not gonna put myself in that place – We’re not going there again.”
* That’s not wrong ... “Yea, but I thought you said we can’t bring it up to the person.”
* Let me qualify that then – You can’t bring it up to the person except as you bring it up for
their good. (Isn’t that how God forgets?) God brings stuff up to me ... Heb. 8:12; 10:17
B) One of my things is I can be too intense in a pressure filled situation.
* Just a couple of months ago ... God has grown me in that a lot.
* But I can get in a pressure filled situation – I can feel my temperature rising, and the Lord
will convict me and say, “Bo, watch out, you’re gonna blow it here.”
C) And what do I say? ... I thought You said You wouldn’t gonna bring this up to
me anymore – I thought You forgave me.” (I would never say that to God)
* But He’s bringing it up to me because He loves me and because He doesn’t want me to
fall – He doesn’t want me to fail.
* So even when the Scripture says He will cast our sins as far as the east is from the west,
or puts them in the bottom of the deepest sea, He doesn’t forget.
D) Can God forget stuff? ... He doesn’t forget.
* Here’s a way better thing that God does ... He treats me like it never happened.
* The problem is, if we think that God forgets – Well, what if He remembers?
E) Of course He doesn’t forget – He chooses not to remember them no more – He treats
me as though it never happened.
* And that’s what forgiveness is – I treat the person as though it never happened.
* I don’t bring it up to them, except where to bring it up would be loving and to their advantage,
to keep them from falling into that again, whatever that thing might be.
F) So hopefully that’s some detailed processing of how forgiveness works.
* But now we want to get some more biblical motivation for actually doing it.
* I choose forgiveness – Here’s the first reason .......
(1) BECAUSE FORGIVENESS HAS NO LIMITS
A) That’s an awesome thing to be able to tell someone.
* There’s nothing that happened in your life that forgiveness can’t conquer.
* “But Preacher, I don’t have it.” ... I know you don’t – But God can give it to you.
* There’s nothing that you can’t be free from your past through forgiveness.
B) Peter was trying to put a limit to forgiveness – Turn over to Matthew 18.
* Let’s have a little honesty – Here’s what happens sometimes when I’m preaching.
* And as much as you’re trying to follow along with where I’m going, sometimes I say
something and then that makes your mind go off and you’re thinking about something.
* Well that’s what happened to Peter here because Jesus says here in v.15 .......
C) Then Jesus goes on in v.16-20 and tells a lot more stuff about that.
* But Peter did not go with, because he was still thinking about his brother.
* He says, “Dad gum that guy, he sins against me a lot.”
D) “And where is Jesus going with this? – Go work it out with this guy – I mean, I can’t
just keep letting him do the same thing to me over and over again.”
* So Peter gets himself all jacked up about that, and even though Jesus has already gone
and talked about something else –Peter is still on that – Look at v.21 .......
E) To the Jewish people, if you forgave a person for the same thing 3 times, that was
like mega ... 3 chances – 3 strikes and you’re out.
* And Peter, he was like, “Well, Jesus, you know, He’s always making everything more,
so, “Ok, I’ll go 6 – No wait, I’ll go 7, because that will blow Him away.”
* And so he comes to Jesus and says in v.21, “Hey, You know, my brother’s doing the same
thing all the time Jesus, and I was thinking about how often I had to forgive him.”
* “How about if I forgive him 7 times?”
F) Thinking that Jesus was gonna go, “You are an awesome disciple – Choosing you
was the best decision I’ve ever made – 7 times Peter? – You are blowing My mind.”
* Peter was like getting ready to receive all this when Jesus said instead, in v.22,
“How about 70 X 7?”
* Some people debate and says, “Well that means 77 times – Some people say, “That means
490 times.” ... Actually it means, “Don’t count.”
G) There are a lot of people in our world who are driven by the pain of the past.
* Things that have been done to them – Ways that they’ve been injured, and violated,
and trusts that have been broken.
* And listen, either you forgive and get free from it, or you use that to stoke the furnace
of your heart, and you say .......
* “I really don’t have any judgment for her, I really don’t – I wish God’s grace for her like
I wish God’s grace for me.”
SO LET’S TALK ABOUT OURSELVES
A) What is the manner of your life in that regard?
* Do you try to put a limit on forgiveness? ... Are you kind of like, “Well, there’s certain sins
you have to forgive and there’s certain sins that you don’t ever have to forgive?”
* Maybe you think it’s little things that you don’t have to forgive – Maybe you think it’s big
things you don’t have to forgive – The fact is, you can’t put a limit on forgiveness.
B) Maybe you think there’s certain people you have to forgive.
* Maybe you’re like, “Well, I got to forgive the people in my family, but I don’t have to
forgive that dog at work.”
* “I got to forgive the people that are in my little circle over here, but if it’s a stranger
or if it’s someone who crosses me .......”
C) Maybe you limit forgiveness, not by what you forgive, but by who you forgive.
* Maybe you limit forgiveness like Peter did on how many times you’ll forgive.
* You cannot put a limit on forgiveness, not according to the Bible.
* In fact, Jesus wanted to make sure they got this that He goes into this amazing parable
here starting in Matthew 18:23.
D) However, we are gonna close right here and pick up with the parable next week.
* Let’s go back to the title of my message – I choose to forgive – It’s a choice, a decision.
E) I want to repeat a statement I said earlier ... When you choose to forgive those who
hurt you, you take away their power.
* I will not let someone control me by having an unforgiving spirit toward them.
* Maybe you need to make that decision today like I have done ... Don’t let that person
control you by having an unforgiving spirit toward them.
