Description
FORGIVENESS: THE REAL F WORD
Collateral Damage
Ed Young
April 17-18, 2004
[A park bench is placed in the middle of the stage. When Ed comes on stage, he is carrying a dog leash with him.]
A couple of weeks ago, I was at one of those fake gas stations. It’s really a liquor store, but it does have some pumps in front for you to fill your car up. And while I was filling my car, I was just, you know, looking around; and I saw this guy jogging, and he had this long leash with him, and on the end of the leash was this monstrous Doberman. Now, I love dogs so I was checking this scene out, and I watched him cross the busy freeway. And then I watched him and the dog run past me, and I thought to myself, “Well, I guess this guy is going to go in and get something to drink.” And sure enough that’s what he did.
He took a leash, sort of like this one, and tied it to a bench in front of this fake gas station. And the bench was a pretty substantial one—it was anchored in concrete and all that. The Doberman was left tied to the bench while the guy went inside to buy something.
I was looking back at this dog, and all of a sudden, for some reason, this dog got startled. You could see the whites of his eyes. He took off and made a mad dash toward the busy freeway. And he took off with such force, with such torque, that he ripped the bench out of its supports, out of the cement! He was dragging this puppy behind him, sparks were flying; and I’m saying to myself, “This dog’s gonna get smashed! He’s going to get hit. Oh, no!”
Cars screeched to a stop. He runs towards this SUV that was turning left, but he stops short of the SUV. Then the bench swings into the SUV. BAAM! Parts were flying. Then the dog turns and runs towards a Volkswagen behind the SUV. This car is also turning left, but the dog stops short of that, and swings the bench—BAAM!—into the Volkswagen.
I’m like this. [Ed shows his shocked expression at the scene he had witnessed.] The owner of the fake liquor store is chasing after the dog. His master comes out spilling Gatorade everywhere trying to catch the dog. I couldn’t believe it!
When it comes to today’s subject matter, The real F-word, a lot of us are a lot like that Doberman. A lot of us are leashed up to anger, resentment, and unforgiveness. We don’t really realize it, but we are dragging this around through life, and it’s causing some serious collateral damage in our relationships. It’s damaging ourselves, and more importantly, it’s smashing up the potential that God wants us to live out in this one and only life.
UNLEASHING UNFORGIVENESS IS UNNATURAL
I’ve discovered something about the real F-word. Unleashing unforgiveness is unnatural. Bottom line? I don’t like to do it, and you don’t either. When someone hurts me, when someone damages me, when someone says something against me, I like to hold a grudge. I want to get them back. And when someone tells me that I should forgive them, I should release them? Man, I don’t like that. That flies in the face of every instinct I have.
I want you to think about something as I talk over the next several moments. Who is sitting on your bench? There are people there. Could it be an ex-spouse, a parent, a coach, someone who did something to you that no one really knows about except that person, yourself, and God? Maybe someone messed you around in the business world or has said some hurtful things to you at your school. Who is sitting on your bench? You might be saying, “Well, Ed, this person on my bench, man, they died about a decade ago.”
Do you realize when we harbor unforgiveness, do you know what we’re doing? We’re saying, “Okay, you control my life. I’m the X-Box. You’ve got the controls. You control my life. You hurt me. You messed me around. You control me. You ruined my life. You keep me from all this potential.” That’s what we’re saying.
I’ve lived that way before, and it’s no way to live. Years ago a man really hurt me and my parents. And for two years, twenty-four months, I was leashed up to unforgiveness. I said, “I’m going to make this guy pay. I’ll get him back. I’ll show him.” Until one day something supernatural happened to me. Naturally we can’t unleash unforgiveness, but something supernatural happened to me, and I’ll talk about that as we continue. But let me pick up a story that Jesus told in Matthew 18.
If you have your bibles, turn to Matthew 18. Jesus had been talking about this whole subject. He’d been talking about the real F-word; and Simon Peter—check this out—obviously was dealing with a similar circumstance in his own life. Obviously, someone had messed him around. And he was thinking about all this stuff, so he was all ears. He started asking Jesus these questions. And Simon Peter made some serious assumptions, some assumptions about forgiveness that were wrong, some assumptions that we all have made.
So check out his question that he asked Jesus in Matthew 18:21, “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’” Check out the tenor of that question. Simon Peter is trying to show off because rabbis during that day taught that if you forgave someone three times, I mean, that was monster forgiveness. And here’s Simon Peter coming along, “Hey, Jesus, you know, I am a disciple. I’m a spiritual stud. How many times should I forgive someone who hurts me? Seven times?” Like “Jesus, isn’t that incredible? I’m the man! I mean, isn’t that phenomenal?”
Simon Peter made an assumption. Simon was muddy about forgiveness. Forgiveness is more for the one who has been offended than the one who has carried out the offense. See, a lot of us think forgiveness is more for the person that hurt us. No, no. Forgiveness is more for us. They might not even know what they’ve done or how they’ve damaged us and we think, “Well, if they would do the forgiveness thing, it would be for them more than me.”
No, no. It helps us more than the people who’ve messed us around. But Simon Peter didn’t get it. So Jesus, when he answered his question, just launches into one of his classic stories because Jesus was the master story-teller. People throughout the Bible rarely said anything without giving a visual, and check out what Jesus went into.
Jesus said [Ed paraphrases Jesus’ teaching here], “Okay, Simon Peter, let’s say, for example, there’s this wealthy king, this guy who is rolling in the bling-bling, ca-ching, ca-ching. And let’s say he was going through all of his accounting and stuff and he decided that he was going to call in all of the people that owed him money. And let’s say this wealthy king discovered a servant who owed him a lot of money.”
Now I did the translations. If you take the amount of money this servant owed this king and put it into today’s money, this servant in this story owed the king $10 million. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of paper even for The Donald [Trump]. $10 million—that’s a lot. So this king called this brother into his palatial office and said, “Its pay day. Pay up. Okay, I need the money. Show me the money,” is what he said.
And you know what the servant did? Look at Matthew 18:26-27. Back then you couldn’t file Chapter 11 or Chapter 13. You were in serious trouble if you couldn’t pay up. “‘Oh be patient with me,’ he begged.” He fell on his knees, it says. “I will pay back everything.” The servant was saying to the king, “I mean, I promise you I’m good for it. I know I owe you 10 million, but man, just be patient.”
Now this king could have thrown this guy to the torturers. He could have put him and his whole family on the auction blocks. He could have done all that stuff, but this wealthy guy does something that is crazy. Check him out in verse 27, “The servant’s master (this king rolling in the bling-bling) took pity on him and canceled the debt and let him go.” Can you imagine owing $10 million and then the guy goes, “Hey, man, don’t worry about it. No big deal. I forgive you the debt.” How would you feel? I know how I would feel. “Puh! I’m a forgiven guy. The debts been canceled? This is outrageous! This is off the hook. I mean, wow! Ten million…Woo!” And if you owed me like a thousand dollars or a hundred dollars, I would go, “Don’t worry about it, man, it was only a thousand dollars. After all, I’ve really been forgiven, man, ten million!”
When someone has hurt us, when someone has trashed us, when someone has taken advantage of us, it’s like a debt has been created. We think, “They owe me. They need to pay.” A debt has been created. Remember that. Just think about that because the story continues.
You would think that this forgiven servant would just forgive. You’d think he would have this spirit of forgiveness going on. Well, the story says this. The story says that after this guy had been forgiven ten million, he searched for a guy that owed him eleven dollars—eleven dollars! He found him and started choking the guy. “Give me my eleven dollars. Give me my money!” And this forgiven servant threw the guy that owed him eleven dollars in prison. Well, the king rolling in the bling-bling heard about it and he was not happy. He kind of went on tilt. He was going like, “What’s up with this?”
Let’s pick it up Matthew 18:32-34, “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger, his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured.”
Isn’t it ironic? The king delivered the servant from prison, and now the servant has put himself back in prison? The same is true in your life and mine. We’ve been delivered as Christ-followers. We’ve been set free. We’ve been forgiven. The debt’s been taken care of. But when we harbor unforgiveness we’re putting ourselves back in prison, back into the condition that we used to be in before we understood and appropriated the forgiveness and the debt-canceling power of Jesus Christ.
And this next verse, Verse 35…. I’ll just be straight with you; I wish this verse was not in the Bible. I wish I could press the delete button. I wish I could take some white out, you know, and take it out. It’s so convicting. It just messes me up. It’ll mess you up, too, when you listen to it. Here’s how Jesus summarized this story. And I’m sure at this point, Simon Peter goes, “Man, why did I bring this subject up?” You know what I’m saying? Matthew 18:35, “‘This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
This guy had received forgiveness, but he hadn’t really experienced forgiveness in the depth of his being. And because he hadn’t really experienced it, he couldn’t share it with others. I think we’ve all been in the same boat haven’t we? We’ve received it. “Yeah, I’ve received forgiveness from Jesus Christ.” But we’ve not really experienced it in the depth of our being. And because we haven’t really experienced it, we can’t really share it with others.
Here’s what the Bible is saying—it’s so plain—“If we harbor unforgiveness toward others, if we are leashed up to the resentment and the animosity and the pain, God’s coming after us.” The Bible says that. I wish it was not in here. But that’s what it said. God’s coming after us. In other words, we will live a life of torture. We will live on the treadmill of torture. Can you imagine trying to do a treadmill while you are leashed up to a bench with four or five or six or seven people on it? That’s the picture.
Next weekend I’m going to talk about the benefits, the monster benefits, of living a life of forgiveness. Did you know, physically, if we harbor unforgiveness it can, it can mess us up? Have you ever realized there is a huge emotional benefit to living a life of forgiveness, a relational benefit and also an all encompassing spiritual benefit? God wants the best from your life and mine and that’s why he challenges us to unleash unforgiveness. Because when I unleash unforgiveness, when you unleash unforgiveness, we’re like God because that’s who God is.
As I talked about last weekend—we messed up, we dropped the ball, we caused this cosmic chasm between ourselves and God because of our sin. Yet, God took the initiative. God did the work of forgiveness and gives us the potential to be reconciled back to him. It’s powerful stuff.
Well Jesus answers Simon Peter once again. If you’ll notice in Matthew 18:22, he says this [Ed paraphrases], “Simon Peter, you’re talking about seven times? Well, check this out, big boy. I tell you not seven, but seven times seventy-seven times. Do the math. This is just an illustration of–over and over and over again—so many times, Simon Peter, that you can’t count. It should be a habit, a lifestyle of what you do.”
Some of you are going, “Well, Ed, now you don’t realize what’s happened to me, man. You don’t realize what my father did. You don’t realize what my mother did. You don’t realize what my uncle did or my friend or whoever. You don’t realize what that coach said to me. I mean, my husband is saying this and my wife…. For me to, like, forgive them would be to minimize what they did to me. I’m not going to let them off that easy. I’m going to make them pay. I’m going to make them suffer.”
You’re not minimizing what they did. I don’t know what they did to you. You don’t what people did to me. We don’t know that; God knows. God tells us, though, to cancel the debt, to forgive them. We’re not minimizing that. We’re freeing ourselves up. We’re giving ourselves a gift that money can’t buy. Forgiveness—“give” is in the word. We give ourselves this ultimate gift. And also we’re giving the other person who messed us around a gift. We’re giving them room to change, and I’ll talk about that later. But don’t believe those lies. Cancel the debt. Cancel the debt. Say, “You’re forgiven.”
The Lord’s Prayer is the model prayer. Years ago I did a series on it. Jesus taught us how to pray. He taught his disciples to pray. He said, “This is how you pray….” Now, one of the statements in The Lord’s Prayer is something that I love: confession. It says we should confess our sins to the Father. I love that. And let me read what Jesus said. Matthew 6:12, “Forgive us our debts.”
Let me stop there. I’m great at that. I’m great at hitting my knees and saying, “God, forgive me of my sins.” You know what I like to do? I like to confess sins generally. I don’t want to name them in my life. I just say, “God, forgive me my sins. Whew! Yeah, that’s good. That’s done. Thank you very much.”
This next two-letter word in that verse, though, jacks us up: “as.” Uh-oh! I wish that word was not in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our debts AS we also have forgiven our debtors.” Whew! Well, it’s easy. I mean, if I can understand it, so can you. If God’s forgiven me, which he has, then I should rush to forgive others.
I see now. The Master, the King, that’s God. And the servant who’s been greatly forgiven is you and me. What are we going to do? Are we going to leash ourselves up to anger and resentment and animosity? Or are we going to say, “God, unleash my unforgiveness.”
You see, this whole unforgiveness thing is difficult because we like to hold onto it. It’s fun. It gives us the rush, a buzz. God says, though, “I want you by my power and my grace to do something that swims against the current of your instincts, that flies in the face of everything you want to do naturally.”
That’s why I’ll say it again. Unleashing unforgiveness is unnatural. And to go a little bit deeper, the reason I have a tough time with this and the reason you do is because we’re both humans is and it’s all about ourselves. It’s all about self. There are certain barriers that keep the people on our bench. There are certain barriers that keep us, you know, linked up to unforgiveness.
THE SELF-DECEPTION BARRIER
One is the self-deception barrier. We rationalize. We tell ourselves rational lies. We just say, “You know, what I did to that person is no big deal. Man, they totally overreacted. They’re an emotional basket case, anyway. It wasn’t that big of a deal. It was a long time ago.” Or we say, “What my mother did to me…? Yes, she was an alcoholic, but it didn’t really affect me, you know. I’ve just brushed that under the rug. I’ve swept it under the rug. It doesn’t affect me. Yeah, what that coach, what that teacher said to me during my childhood and stuff…? The stuff that happened doesn’t really affect me today. I mean, I’m telling you it doesn’t. Everything’s fine in my life. I’m fine.” Be very careful. That’s a barrier.
THE SELF-DEFENSE BARRIER
Another barrier is the self-defense barrier. And that’s the one that we love. That’s probably our favorite one. We say, “I’m going to get you back. You messed me around. You hurt me. I’m going to get you back.”
I lived like that, as I told you, for like 24 months. I thought, “I’m going to get this guy back. I’m going to make him pay. I’m going to show him. Revenge. I’m going to do it. I’m going to take care of it.”
Have you ever stopped to realize this? Forgiveness is a great act of faith, because what we’re doing when we say, “Debt canceled. I forgive you. I release you..” What we’re doing is we’re saying, “God, you are the ultimate judge. God, I give the situation to you. You are going to take care of this person better than I can. God, I trust you.”
That’s why Romans 12:19 says, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”
Yeah, but they started it. It was their deal. I know that. But our calling is to release them. Debt canceled. God will take care of them.
THE SELF-IMAGE BARRIER
There’s another barrier—the self-image barrier. We say, “Hey, if you think I’m going to admit that I was wrong or I’m going to admit that they messed me around you’re wrong. I mean I’m up here and I’d have to lower myself. They might think less of me and they might think this or that about me.”
Hey, let me tell you something. We are at our strongest when we admit the obvious to God and to others. We are in a great position of strength and influence when we say, “Debt canceled. I forgive.”
THE SELF-PROTECTION BARRIER
There’s another barrier—the self-protection barrier. “I’m just going to protect myself,” you’re saying to yourself right now. And a lot of you are breaking out into a cold sweat just thinking about having to do the forgiveness work that needs to be done. You get nervous thinking about sitting across the table from someone who’s harmed you or maybe you’ve harmed them or sitting in someone’s family room and saying, “I was wrong. Will you forgive me?” Talking to a spouse or a child or anyone else just messes with your mind. Don’t let it be so.
I know unleashing unforgiveness is unnatural. I know that. God, though, wants to do the work. God wants to release all of us so we can discover the totality and the freedom and the joy and this all comprehensive love that he has for all of us.
You might be saying to yourself, “Well okay, Ed. You know, you kind of left me hanging about the Doberman. Did the dog get hit?” I did. I left you hanging. Well, here’s what happened. As I told you, the owner of the fake gas station ran out into the street, into this busy freeway. The master ran out too. And when this Doberman saw his master, it was amazing. He kind of just chilled for a second, and the master grabbed the leash, and simply untied it from the tattered bench. The owner of the fake gas station took the tattered bench, and he threw it in the dumpster. And the master of the Doberman led him to safety. I did think, though, what in the world is this guy going to tell his insurance company? But anyway, that’s another story.
That picture, though, is what God wants to do throughout this series, friends, in your life and in mine. He wants to bring to our minds those names, those faces, those scenarios of situations that we’re holding on to. And if we’ll just stop in our tracks and look to him, our Master, by his grace and power, will untie and unleash us and lead us to safety. If we could see the place where God wants to lead us, physically and spiritually and emotionally and relationally, we wouldn’t believe it. That is the real F word—forgiveness.
I’m going to ask you to do something for me. I’m going to ask you to take your hands right now and just make a fist and bow your heads with me for a moment. So often in my own life as I pray, I’ve found it vital to do some things physically as just signs, as reminders to myself and as signs to God that I’m doing this stuff. So I want your clenched fist to represent something you’re holding on to. What kind of unforgiveness are you holding on to? What kind of resentment, what kind of anger are you dealing with? You know what the word “forgive” in the Bible means? “To release.” It means “to hurl.” Not to throw up, but to let go. Do you know what the word resentment means? It means to think again. And so many of us are thinking again and again and again about the person or persons who have hurt us. It could be that person seated next to you. It could be someone you’ll see tomorrow morning at work. It could be, again, a family member. It could be someone who passed away a long time ago.
Right now, as just a physical sign to ourselves and to God, let’s just unclench our fists and say, “God, I forgive them. I release them. Debt canceled.” And by saying this, just say this, “God, I’m not minimizing what’s happened. I’m not minimizing it. I’m just doing what you want me to do so I can discover the best that you have for me. Because, God, you have an awesome agenda that you want to lead me through, and I know the only way to do it is by living a life of forgiveness. God, unleashing unforgiveness is unnatural, but because of your power, I know it’s supernatural and I just open up my hands to you.” Just do that physically. Say, “God, I let go. God, I let go. God, I let go.”
Right now, God is doing some wonderful things in all of our lives. Let’s just thank him for that.
Over the next several weeks we’re going to talk about forgiveness in even a more profound and deeper manner as we see the benefits and the beauty and the richness of this whole concept that comes from God.