Forgiveness- (Doug Batchelor) AmazingFacts©

if you're visiting we're very thankful that you're here and exciting because of the promise that Jesus made where two or three gather in my name I'm in their midst and if we've gathered in his name then it's a very think that the Lord Himself is here with us now we're living in some interesting times I think we're living in what you would call the last days which is exciting some might find it frightening and we see things that are happening in the world today politically just last week a Russia technically invaded the Ukraine and we see things that are happening in the world religiously how many of you are aware about the Pope's message that was played at that charismatic gathering let me see how they show me your hands have you seen that or heard the video did any of you see it with my commentary oh good well you must be some of those 600,000 people that have clicked either on YouTube or Facebook we were really shocked and if you know if there's anyone left just let them know and so that's important some people said are you going to talk about that today not any more than what I've just said really I'll tell you why in listening to the comments and and reading some of the banter related to that it is very significant I think there's I think there's prophetic implications it's another step a landmark prophetically if things we always knew were going to happen and for me you know the the Pope's recent appeal for unity that came a few days after I was at a religious broadcasters convention about a week ago in Nashville and at the conclusion of this convention where you've got leading religious programmers from around the world that were there we even met some who do our programming in India were there and the last message was given by Jack Hayford who is a fairly well known evangelical minister they were giving him a Lifetime Achievement Award and have you ever sung the song majesty he wrote that he's a charismatic pastor very sincere man but his message was that we need to put aside the divisions and the barriers between the denominations and all love and unite together and it was a lot of the same kind of thing that we've been heard coming from the Vatican this week I mean it sounds good but when you really dissect what's involved in that it can be troubling it basically says that the expense of truth we should lay aside any of the truths that divide us and just embrace each other on the things we hold in common so while I was thinking about those things I thought it'd be very important to talk about a very simple principle in the Bible for Christian living and that is of forgiveness both accepting and passing on forgiveness if you would make it to the kingdom we need to receive God's forgiveness and we need to share God's forgiveness and we may need to receive it more than once that's tongue-in-cheek of course you do and you're going to need to share it more than once maybe even with the same person now my favorite story to illustrate this truth is found in the Gospel of Matthew and I think you only find it here Matthew 18 as a parable Jesus gives and I'll start with verse 21 Matthew 18 verse 21 then Peter came to him to Jesus and said Lord how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him up to seven times now why did Peter say that first of all he noticed that Jesus was very forgiving the religious leaders in the time of Peter scribes and the Pharisees they pretty it's thought that God forgave people in a major way three times something like baseball that after three strikes you're out and you can look at you know King Saul you can point out three great areas where he rebelled against God ultimately going to the witch but with David he only had two strikes with that Sheba number in Israel and so he could be forgiven and so they actually had developed a theology that God forgives three times but Peter noticed how forgiving and merciful Jesus was and he thought well I ought to double that because he is so merciful and maybe add one because it's a nice biblical number and say seven times and he may be expecting Jesus to say haha Peter that's very kind of you're finally getting the message or even to think Peter you might said you're going a little too far six times or four times seven but jesus answered and he said I say not unto you seven times but seventy times seven a part of the reason Jesus our Peter might have said to Jesus seven times you know mark 16 verse nine it says he appeared first to Mary Magdalene out of whom he cast seven demons and Peter had read where it says in proverbs 24:16 a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again but the wicked will fall by calamity you might fall seven times and rise again job five verse 19 he will deliver you in six troubles yes in 7 no evil will chew so there are these different verses he thought 7 was a good number but Jesus didn't say 7 he said spendy times 7 why did the Lord say that does God have a ledger in the sky where he chronicles how many times we kneel and ask for forgiveness and when he gets to 490 then it's curtains do you have that with others if you're a parent where in the continuum of time did your children reach 490 did you then your forgiveness dry up at that point you know it's interesting that when Daniel was praying in Chapter nine and saying Lord how long until the Messiah comes I mean look at it we're here in Babel and we're captives because of our disobedience and our sins you read that whole prayer of Daniel 9 he's basically saying I'm amazed at your mercy your long-suffering your mercies never end you're still willing to forgive how long until the Messiah comes and he says seventy times seven seventy weeks are determined upon night people what's a week seven day seventy times seven and really and it wasn't seven seventy times seven times of forgiveness but he's talking 490 years of forgiveness most of us don't live that long so really it's an unlimited number God is willing to forgive as often as we are willing to genuinely repent and when I say that I always like to issue a disclaimer and qualify it do not take God's abundant never-ending mercy presumptuously to think that because he's so merciful and willing to forgive that I can just continue to plan on sinning and repenting because while God is willing to always forgive if you're willing to really repent you can lose your capacity for repentance you can numb your own conscience by taking God's mercy for granted so it's not the problem that he's going to run out of forgiveness the problem is you may run out of conviction and the desire to be forgiven we all know people when they first come to the Lord how God's working in their lives and they're convicted about their sin and then sometimes you do a check with them 20 years later and they're still going to church but they still have that same sin but it doesn't bother them anymore you can get to the place by presuming on God's mercy that you lose the ability to repent and so then Jenny Jesus follows up with a parable and so if you continue reading here in Matthew 18 he says therefore the kingdom of heaven verse 23 the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle with his servants and when he begun to settle accounts one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents now Kings would often they would contract with different people in their cabinet to be responsible for the taxes in different districts and if you were like the king of Persia who had a hundred twenty seven provinces you might have a hundred and twenty seven different tax collectors that were responsible and they were paid handsomely but eventually there was some bookkeeping that was done and this man who was brought before the king he had been responsible for the Kings money and instead of raising money he had run up the royal credit card he not only had not been collecting but he had squandered ten thousand talents now to understand that I read a commentator last night Adam Clarke he was from England Adam Clarke said if it was gold a talent is a weight so we don't know is he talking talents of silver talents of gold and if it was talents of gold he said that would exceed the national debt of the British Empire and he wrote that when the British Empire was all around the world it could represent one talent of gold would represent a year's wages for a well-paid individual ten thousand talents would be ten thousand years even Methuselah couldn't work that all right so the number that's being picked here is an astronomically absurd number it's a debt the point Jesus is making this is a debt that cannot be paid back at least the individual can't pay it back now we might wonder how can somebody possibly squander ten thousand talents of the Kings money you know you start looking at what the government does and it becomes more believable doesn't it after a while $300 for a hammer or something you all remember that report that came out and as he was not able to pay uh-huh his master the king commanded the he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and that payment be made now this was a pitiful scene you know he's brought out may get the books he shows the books it's in black and white you can't escape the data and he realizes there's no excuse and he says can you pay this he said no I can't pay that and he said okay hand him over according to the law he hands him over to the law according to the law all that he has is to be confiscated and if that's not enough and it certainly will not be enough his house has to be stripped his house has to be sold his family's to be brought in his wife is to be sold as a slave and part of someone else's harem his children to be sold as slaves and while the whole family is in their suffering the consequences now of his debt it's a pitiful scene they're crying and his weeping and wailing and daddy daddy and the man falls down before the king and he says please have mercy on me have compassion have patience with I will pay it all back what are the chances he's can be able to pay it all back it's absurd but you read on and it says the servant therefore fell down before him saying master have patience with me and I'll pay you all and the master of that servant had compassion it says he was moved with compassion and he released him now the word compassion is different from the word pity compassion means comes from the word like when you say sympathy our pathos it means to feel what another person feels trying to relate to feel what someone else feels and you know it's like the government tells us I feel your pain I have my doubts but I believe God does and so and that's something that Jesus it says he was moved with compassion at the people because they were hungry so he fed him he felt what they felt the king is moved with compassion his heart is moved and he released him he said okay undo their handcuffs let the family go and he forgave them the debt meaning he said all right you can have your house you can have your things back I'm not setting up a payment program I'm riding next to your name forgiven and I am going to freely forgive what's happened here well how would you feel do you think that man just woke up one day when he was called to the Royal Court and found out oh I I wasted ten thousand I had no idea or do you think he knew about it he knew about that debt it was probably crushing him yeah it's probably all he could think about you ever have bill collectors call you you ever have your name get turned over to a collection agency I did been a long time our credits good now but years ago I neglected to pay something and boy they just say haunt you and they dog you and it wrecks your credit and I won't ask you for a show of hands I'd be embarrassing but can you imagine having a high-powered collection agency trying to get 10,000 talents from you the burden that you constantly think about he couldn't do anything without thinking about now the king is said forget it you're free that problem that's been crushing you for years it's gone how would you feel I would have walked out of the palace on cloud nine I would have been walking on air I would have been skipping I would have been so happy free at last free at last I would have been wouldn't you have felt like that you had that kind of burden you've got a burden of ten thousand talents remember that's a weight you got ten thousand talents weighing you down and then the King says forgiven you would have thought yeah you would have been jumping for joy you would have been so happy but instead of rejoicing what does he do this is where the story gets sad goes from just joy and exhilaration and and happiness says but that's servant he went out and he found one of his fellow-servants who owed him a hundred denarii I that's about a hundred days wages it's a hundred days wages if you don't make very much that's a hundred days wages for the poorest people a good worker could make it in a week and he goes and he finds a fellow servant that owes him a hundred day's wages and he lays hands on him and he takes him by the throat that's getting a little personal and he says pay me such a Chokin say pay me what you owe me now why is he doing that well first of all I don't think I don't think that he really believed that the Kings forgave him he wouldn't have gone out and found someone else right away and said pay me your $42 after he's just been forgiven 52 million why are we sometimes unforgiving with others maybe we don't realize how much we've been forgiven now before I go any farther in this story don't miss the very obvious lesson that 10,000 talents represents our sins against the king it represents a debt we can never pay before I was an adventist I used to go to a Pentecostal church and there was a sister there who was a preacher her name was Chloe root Clarisse tombs and I remember she'd get up get very excited when she preached he kick off her shoes and say she's on holy ground and she taught everyone a song and it's he paid a debt he did not owe I owed a debt I could not pay I needed someone to wash my sins away that's a lot of theology is pretty good actually iota did I could not pay he paid a debt he did not owe and so this man had a debt that he could never pay forgiven this other fellow he could forgive him that ten thousand talents I just used an illustration to bring it on another level the distance between the earth is approximately and the Sun 93 million miles that represents God's forgiveness to us takes light about eight minutes to get from the Sun to the earth 93 and that's going 186,000 miles a second 93 million miles our sins at hundred pence forty-two dollars that represents our debts to each other God is willing to forgive us the distance between the Sun and the earth and we are often not willing to forgive each other one foot that's the kind of ratio that you find in this story and God just forgives me the distance between the earth and the Sun and then I go take you by the throat because of one foot when you stand at the foot of the cross and you see what Jesus is suffering for your entire life of sins against everybody including heaven and after he's forgiven all that you see him bleeding for your sins for you then to go take your neighbor by the throat because they gossiped about you how do you think haven't views that is that appreciating the mercy after God forgives me as much as he's forgiving me it makes it a little harder for me to be hard on you unless I don't appreciate or believe he's forgiven me see if that servant left the king's palace thinking all right ten ten thousand talents where am I going ten thousand starts somewhere where he doesn't believe the Kings forgiven him and so he's trying to go collect from everybody else because he doesn't believe he's forgiven you see how important is to believe God forgives you if you really believe God forgives you it makes it so much easier to forgive everyone else but if you don't believe that God has forgiven you you're going to still be angry and brooding I won't ask you to name any names but I bet we all know some folks that are always talking negatively about others there's one or two of them out there right you talk to them they've always got kind of little caustic nasty things to say about other people they're always pointing the finger do you see what they did you heard the expression that when you got one finger pointing away you got three more pointing back but you know what's often happening pointing out the sins of others is often a diversionary tactic used by those who do not really believe that they're forgiven they are still struggling with guilt for their so they redirect the guilt by pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong always talking about what the church is doing wrong and I've got a good list too just like you and always talking about what someone else in the church did and how the church is managing things wrong and and sometimes that's really just a cloak for it they don't really believe God is forgiving that and I'm not seeing there isn't a time where we should be our brother's keeper and there is accountability and sometimes sins must be addressed I'm not saying that I'm saying a lot of time where we talk about what everybody's doing wrong we gossip about others you know a lot of people have tried to cover up gossip like saying it's a prayer request got something you need to pray about listener you know she's sort of sanctifying gossip we'll call it a prayer request you know what I mean he didn't really believe he was forgiven takes his brother by the throat and it's like he's getting even with him it's like vengeance sometimes a person hurts you and you think you're getting even by talking bad about them now we have all done things to hurt others how many will admit it we've all done things that have heard others sometimes it's been deliberate sometimes we'll say something and we said oh I'm just kidding and we weren't kidding we meant for it to bite mataf ik whatever son says it just kidding that's almost code for no I'm not a lot of people say something a little bit cutting or you know whatever they're just kidding yeah not even says that in Proverbs sometimes we'll say something hurt someone will say it was in sport Solomon says you know it wasn't and how many have been hurt by others and some things that we do to hurt each other are very serious and they're hard to forget you know sometimes we go through life if you don't learn to forgive and you start making a list it ends up hurting you it ruins your experience it's like an anchor you're just never going to fly as a Christian until you can learn by God's grace to let go of these things and you can't do it without his help I heard a story years ago about this man back before Louis Pasteur discovered the cure for rabies and you know you got bit by a rabid animal back then that yet what do they call hydrophobia and eventually after a few days you sort of lose your mind and you start to rant rave and technically you're rabid and you've ever accused someone to be in rabbit it means you know the ravine so this man had they just discovered that the animal that bit him was rabid and the doctor said it is hopeless and the man said doctor you have a piece of paper and a pencil said yes and he gives it to him he starts to furiously write is that you don't have to write so fast if you're making out your will you've got several days probably he said I'm not making out my will I'm making out a list of every one I'm going to bite before I die and that's and that's actually how some people think the devil's like that he's come down with great wrath because he knows his time is short so he wants to take as many with him as he can instead of thinking about others thinking about vengeance and we've all got that kind of potential in our in our lives where to learn to forgive people the way Jesus forgave there's a few verses on that proverbs 26 verse 7 whoever digs a pit will fall in it and he who rolls a stone will have it roll back on him Chinese proverb says whoever chooses revenge really digs two graves one for the person that you're trying to trap and one for yourself when Haman got upset because Mordecai would not bow down to him he built the gallows for Mordecai it so consumed with himself who ended up hanging on those gallows Haman did he was hung on the gallows he had prepared for someone else and well you know one of the most important reasons to forgive is you just destroy your own experience I remember hearing one time after the civil war that Robert le the famous southern general he was visiting one of these Southern Belles uh actually she was in a more mature woman who had a plantation that had been just all smashed up by the northern army and and the house has been wrecked because they used it as a headquarters and she had this beautiful oak tree that was up on a hill it was perfectly symmetrical silhouette she was telling robert e lee this tree was beautiful tree it was hundreds of years old look at what those blankety-blank Yanks did to the tree the cannon shot is just destroyed it will never look the same again and she went on and on and robert e lee listened for a moment he said madam cut it down and forget about it because you can you can make a monument if you want to to something someone else has done to hurt you and you could take it out and refresh it every now and then and you know if you've got those little monuments in your life and letters you're saving because you might use it as evidence someday burn it cut it down let it go you're just you're dragging yourself down when you do that you know if you're born again makes it a little easier to forget the offenses of what happened to that other person in another life because you're a new person and you're a new creature forgive oh but you know it's pretty hard to forgive and forget if you only knew I'm tempted to tell you a little have done to me or ain't no I'm boy and if I let it bother me what people said about me I'd never have any peace you can go online I get a fresh dose every day if I wanted to so you gotta have a thick skin after a while you'll never you just get consumer that stuff you just have to forget about and focus on what God's plan is for your life if the devil knows that he can distract you by what others are saying about you you're never going to get anywhere because he'll always have somebody that will be talking about you but there's more serious things how do you forgive when someone may be molested you way that happens the little girls and little boys how do you forgive when it happened to your child that gets pretty difficult I mean you know at some point we figured there's the unpardonable sin and we draw the line and say well you know God doesn't expect us to forgive that I'm not talking about forgetting because you know it's only by the grace of God that any of us can go on with some of the painful things we could ask for testimony time right now and say I want you to tell me the worst things ever happened to you that worst thing is someone ever did you I'd be an interesting testimony service wouldn't it probably wouldn't be healthy it would be a long one yeah and I'd try and top every story that you could tell which goes to show that while I forgiving you don't always forget God casts our sins into the depths of the sea and he really like like Isaac looked upon Jacob and he blessed him as though he was the elder brother God he closes his eyes to our sins when we have the robe of Christ's righteousness he forgives us right but it's not so easy how do you deal with that I remember reading about Clara Barton who is they you know a famous nurse and help her during the Civil War and someone she was somewhat of a public figure and someone had been saying some very unkind things about her and another friend came over and wanted to engage her and say well have you heard what she said about you she didn't comment they change it but yeah didn't you hear what she said what are you gonna aren't you going to answer and she says don't you remember what she said and Clara Barton says I distinctly remember choosing to forget and just sometimes people will try to stir these things up the devil might even use those near to you to try to grub up muck up as it says in pilgrims progress painful memories don't fall for that Martin Luther said you may not be able to keep the birds from flying over your head but you can prevent them from making a nest in your hair at least most of us Jen the other idea being that you can't help if a fleeting memory of something painful that's happened to you it may go through your mind but don't let it nest there when you realize that it's happening say Lord thank you for helping me forget about that and then move on and overcome evil with good by thinking about something else and you've just got a you know change your focus at that point so back to our story parable doesn't end there finds his fellow servant takes him by the throat says pay me what you owe so his fellow servant I'm in Matthew 1829 his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying have patience with me and I will pay you all word for word verbatim what he had said to the king falls down before his friend just like he fell down before the king does the same thing now if I owned ten thousand talents if I owed you ten thousand talents you may as well just forgive me because you're never going to get it back unless it's ten thousand talents of you know dirt or something I could probably find that but if it's gold or silver we're in trouble but if I owed you $42 I'll bet you I can and I hadn't if I didn't have a penny to my name I could find some resourceful honest way to get that before the Sun Goes Down or at least a couple days I could pay you back but this man would not forgive his friend even after he begged him I wouldn't get down on my knees if I owed you $42 I wouldn't like it very much if he took me by the throat you realize what's happening here his friend is being extremely humble he's pleading for mercy he's submitting the other one is powering it over him taking him by the throat and yet we do that sometimes in our relationships when we don't forgive and he would not but he went and he threw him into prison until he should pay the debt now you know what that prison is we don't really have debtors prisons in America now we've got what you call 4:11 in chapter 13 chapter 7 with all these chapters at your file if you can't pay your debts there's several options one is to reorganize if you're a business and some you might just declare bankruptcy and the court then will find out what assets you have and give you a certain amount to live on and you don't want to file bankruptcy unless that's a last resort but they didn't have that back then and if you couldn't pay your debts they had a prison and in the debtors prison it wasn't like the American debtors prison where they just locked you up until family or someone could pay it off they actually could some kings if you had money you couldn't pay they put you into prison and they tormented you and I guess they had a price list on the wall it said you owe $50 ten days on the rack twenty lashes something like that but you were tortured everyday they kept you alive so you could suffer until they figure like you had suffered enough or someone in your family came and redeemed your debt how would you like to go to a debtors prison only ten thousand talents that would hurt right that'd be pretty you're not going to get out anytime soon but he would not throw him in prison well eventually the fellow servants of the King they knew this character that had squandered the Kings money they were aware what had happened when his fellow-servants verse 31 saw what had been done they were very grieved and they came and told their master the King all that had been done does our King hear about how we treat each other you know what John says how do you say you could love God who you can't see and you can't love your neighbor who you do see one of the principle messages in first John through though all the Gospel of John as well and second John in third John my little children loved one another you know what was the greatest testimony for the early church others that were not Christians wrote about the Christians behold how they love each other Paul said but if you bite and devour each other and are consumed of one another is it possible to have a cannibal vegetarian I mean some of us might boast of being vegan but we bite and devour each other with our words that's what Paul is talking about if we don't forgive each other now how are we to forgive each other to what extent is God asking us to forgive each other not only does the Bible say that you're to forgive one another jesus said you're to love your enemies someone wrote one time that it's interesting God says love your enemies and he says love your neighbor could it be that God knew that our neighbour often becomes our biggest enemy and neighbor is an eye brother and sometimes it's even those within the family boy and I come from a rough crew of family my mother and father had our wedding they got divorced when I was three even after 30-something years they would not even get in the same pictures with each other I was made me so sad they had a fight right there at the wedding I wasn't nervous about marrying Karen but I was so nervous about my mother and father being in the same room my mother and my grandmother didn't talk to each other for nine years it just it was just I shared this message last time I shared it was in Romania in December man came up to me afterward he said God told you to share this message I hope he's right but he said my father and my brother have not talked in years and during the storm and I wasn't sitting with my father but we looked at each other and I went and he knew exactly what I meant needed to pick up the phone call me they lived in the same town went to the same church they hadn't spoken in years love your enemy love your brother sometimes there's lack of forgiveness in marriages where instead of marriage being enjoyed its endured because there's there's an issue that has not been forgiven and there's been hurt and you know if you're married to someone long enough something's going to happen you can hurt each other because we're selfish creatures and if you don't learn to forgive each other and the love you other marriage will end up being something that is bitter and it's something that's being endured and it might mean some confession needs to happen and a request for forgiveness but you know what are you supposed to forgive someone that won't ask for it well no this is a very interesting study and I don't have time to go in at all Jesus says if your brother comes to you if he sins against you forgive me if he comes to you seven times in one day and says I repent you're forgiven but what if he sins against you seven times in one day and he doesn't ask well first of all I wouldn't hang out with them but I still think you need it for different because and if you want to have a happy marriage you need to learn to apologize even when you think you're right can I get an amen that's how I'm just gonna stop right there I mean sometimes there's a disagreement and you know you're going to have to respectfully agree to disagree and you can say look I am really sorry what you're saying is I'm sorry that we've had this disagreement I love you I want to get along with you we may not always see this eye-to-eye sometimes you just got to hold your peace and you just gotta let it evaporate right just let it go isn't that right and just forgive each other and just doesn't mean you're always going to agree doesn't mean someone's always going to accept that or even ask but if you're in a Christian if you want to be happy you got to keep short accounts or it's going to just chew you up yeah sometimes it's friendly-fire who who tried to kill Joseph his brother sold him David's own King tried to kill him and his own son it was Judas that betrayed jesus the apostles fought among themselves which of them was the greatest sometimes it's friendly fire Cain kills Abel and sometimes we're forgiveness starts is right in the family if we're going to grow like real Christians if the world is going to testify behold how they love each other the Bible tells us forgiveness is not just a suggestion it's a command well let's return to our story so when the fellow servants saw what had been done they were very grieved and they came and told their master all that had been done and then his master after he had called him back in he's been forgiven he was set free the debt was canceled but it was still on the books now has God forgiven our sins when we come to Jesus but is there still a record there's an investigation that finds out if we're passing on that forgiveness see in this while let me finish reading this and I'll comment on that the master after he'd called him in this is verse 32 he said you wicked servant by the way that's the strongest words it can be used he was a servant of the king there's a lot of people that take the name of Christ they say they serve the king and he will declare their wicked why because they won't pass on the forgiveness they've received he said you wicked servant I forgave you all that debt ten thousand talents because you asked me what did he have to do be forgiven he asked said shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had compassion on you how does God want us to forgive the Bible says even as Christ has forgiven you so you ought to forgive one another that's a pretty that's a supernatural forgiveness how can we forgive like that you can't without God's help and God's Spirit and if it doesn't seem like it comes easy you don't rest easy until it happens you know why because God says you ever read the Lord's Prayer forgive us our depends on which version you're reading ones forgive us our debts the others forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us it's funny how kids sometimes hear things you know before they can read they hear they hear you singing bringing in the sheaves and they think you're saying bringing in the cheese he is the master and mighty mighty king I think he's a master mustard and everything is they hear all these interesting things I heard about this one kid that they were saying forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who trespass against us instead of trespasses but you know the only commentary Jesus makes on the Lord's Prayer after he's done with the Lord's Prayer he says for if you do not forgive each man his brother their trespasses then neither will your Father in heaven forgive you yours it cannot be any more direct it cannot be misunderstood but don't miss this God is not saying you all go forgive everybody and then I'll forgive you in the story who does the first forgiving the King he says now I have forgiven you freely not based on what you do with others I am going to first forgive you completely receive that forgiveness and if you really receive the forgiveness that I am offering live who ends up pain that debt the king does who pays for your sins the king after you receive that forgiveness he says now go pass it on if after you've received all that kind of grace and mercy from God you're going to go take each other by the throat that he said your forgiveness will be invalidated now I don't know about you but I don't want to stand before the Lord in the judgment owing ten thousand talents it says I better let let it speak for itself the master was angry you ever heard of the wrath of the Lamb what do you think makes Jesus so angry when we run merciful with each other the master was angry and delivered him to the torturers tormentors until he should pay all that was due him now you know we do believe in a lake of fire we do believe punishment for the wicked some people say seventh-day Adventist don't believe in Hell that's not true we don't believe it burns forever but we do believe there's a place of punishment and the Bible says every man will be rewarded according to what is written in the books that's why I want my sins under the blood of the Lamb don't you I just make me shudder to think about going to the tormentors for ten thousand talents how important is it that we learn to forgive each other not only for your happiness in this life not only for your witness but for your own eternal benefit it's not going to do you any good to have a vindictive and unforgiving spirit that doesn't come easy where do we get this it's through looking at Christ we are transformed into his image when you consider how much he's forgiven you it doesn't come naturally naturally we're selfish never seen little kids they fight and tussle with each other you push me I push you back it's kind of a a primal instinct that we all have to get even with others as we mature we become more sophisticated in the way we try to hurt each others we do it with words and thoughts I'd be embarrassed for you to see on my mental screen things I've I've concocted some extremely creative scenarios for people that hurt me I've had to ask God to forgive me about that give me a pure heart but sometimes we do it just in our heads but really it's all nurturing that unforgiving spirit when we need to pray for the mind of Christ as Jesus has forgiven us so we should forgive each other you know when I share this I often like to repeat a familiar story about when Leonardo da Vinci was painting that famous mural of the Last Supper there in the chapel in Italy he actually used live models and he'd get you know different ones to stand in for Thomas and for the Apostle John you know it says in the Bible that John was on his right and Judas was on his left it's pretty clear where they were sitting and then was beyond John so John outlines actually where they set during that supper but at the time he was painting the mural Leonardo da Vinci had very public and a very bitter dispute with another famous artist named Michelangelo of all things they were contemporaries they both architects they're both famous and they probably were proud but one began to criticize the work or the architecture of the other and then they began to hurl letters back and forth and these letters were public letters you know someone has an open letter open letters were sent back and forth and it was in the tabloids of Italy there's kind of raging insults that were going back and forth between Leonardo and Michelangelo and right about that time Michael Leonardo had a very creative idea it came time to paint the face of Judas so he got an idea he didn't need Michelangelo to sit for him he knew enough about what he looked like and he very skillfully painted in the picture of Michelangelo's face there he thought I'm going to immortalize what a scoundrel he is he put him in there in the place where Judas would normally be his face for the face of Judas and that kind of he was venting his spleen on that that felt good I guess for a little while but he had waited to last to paint the face of Jesus and as he was trying to paint the face of Jesus you know he just kept painting something and he said that's not right he had different models it came and there's other stories to talk about when he found different models for Christ but he just it went on for weeks he kept trying different models and different faces and he couldn't get the compassion and the love and the mercy of Jesus and that look in his eyes and exasperated and desperate he finally fell down and he knelt by his bed he prayed and said the Lord please show me the face of Jesus and he heard a still small voice say you will never see the face of Jesus until you change the face of Judas and he realized you know and he went and he erased that painted in whatever it is you're seen today whoever that was poor guy and and then he finally got the picture of the love and the compassion of Jesus and he put it in there and sometimes we have had a hard time seeing the love and compassion of Jesus because we're immortalizing a scoundrel somewhere in our lines we're bitter about something someone has done to us you know I just I was remembering last night as I was preparing this message any of you remember in 2006 there's an old order of Amish that live back there in was it Pennsylvania that dis shooter this madman took over a one-room schoolhouse and shot ten young girls between six and thirteen killing five of them then he committed suicide and the the media swooped down in on that and they expected all kinds of outrage and they were shocked by the reaction of this Amish community that went to the funeral of the shooter to comfort his family and his wife parents had just lost their daughters a few days earlier and they the media were dumbfounded they didn't know how to comment on this they couldn't understand it they thought they were going to get everybody all stirred up and have these people quote and say something about gun laws and gun rights and all they were talking about was this is what Jesus would want us to do well that takes all that's supernatural how do you forgive somebody that takes your child it's only through the Lord that could happen how can God forgive us didn't we do something to his son aren't we all responsible for the cross and yet is he willing to forgive us you know I want to pray to God will help me have that kind of spirit that kind of mind don't you it only comes from looking at Jesus and seeing what he paid for each of us

Channel: 11:11 Ministries

Views: 55,285

Rating: 4.8186812 out of 5

Keywords: Doug Batchelor (Author), Amazing Facts (Business Operation), doug, batchelor

Id: 49XinnNncVM

Length: 48min 44sec (2924 seconds)

Published: Fri May 09 2014