Giant of Unforgiveness [Part 1] | Pastor Wayne Cordeiro

today i want to talk to you about killing the giant of unforgiveness part one next week we'll continue with part two but first let me warn you this is not going to be an easy battle because innate and wired into every single one of us is the need to defend to right a wrong to fight if threatened and come to think of it 90 of the movies we watch have to do with an injustice that needs to be made right isn't that right from rambo to clint eastwood from the equalizer to john wick from star wars to the gladiator from frozen two to kung fu panda three those are my favorites but they all deal with revenge making something right that was wrong especially in a shoot-em-up kind of movie you make money off of revenge you don't make money off of forgiveness that's just how it is we've become so accustomed to identifying with and siding with the one who's been wronged that when one guy like kills off the whole syndicate or the whole corrupt police department they take him down or the whole cia is destroyed you can hear people in the theater cheer like yay kill them all send it dude isn't that true for example let's say there's a movie called break in okay bad foul evil criminals break into a house of a former highly trained navy seal they ransack the house he shoots the family dog kills the cat destroys the home beats the tar out of a 68 year old grandfather to within an inch of his life and then they leave now when the former navy seal comes home he sees all the destruction blood is everywhere and grandpa's barely breathing and he calls the police and they say well sorry we just can't do anything because they're corrupt too then the cameras show him outside rain is pouring down and he's screaming in anger then he goes back holds his bleeding grandfather gathers his dead dog and cat next to him calls his wife and then he says something like this because i became a christian at new hope honey let's forgive them let's forgive them the wife says god is good and grandpa wakes up good all the time and they all smile hug one another and ta-da the end like no way people who are in the theater who bought tickets they're starting to throw popcorn at the screen demanding their money back and they go out find a dog to shoot and they come looking for older people like me but i'm long gone why because i can still run but forgiveness doesn't sell tickets unforgiveness does resentment and anger let's admit it forgiveness doesn't come naturally for any of us and it's not fun but it can be learned your future and maybe your eternity depends on it and today i want us to see the magnitude and the power of forgiveness we've all experienced times when forgiveness was easy to discuss but hard to live we've all felt the pain of betrayal when an unkind word was spoken against you or someone brought a false accusation against you or when a spouse walked out on a marriage leaving you with small children or time when a business partner left with all the clients and money or a parent that was supposed to protect you instead abandons you or worse yet abused or violated you well today we're going to visit with a person in the bible where the giant of unforgiveness destroyed his life and the life of many around him it's the tragic story of one of david's sons the story of absalom which extends through four chapters in the second book of samuel oh it's filled with plenty of deception jealousy scandal i mean it's a classic case of unforgiveness and sadly absalom's story is going to end tragically and a giant of unforgiveness ends up killing him but i'm getting ahead of myself let's let's rewind king david had many sons and the most well-known of course was solomon then among several others was absalom now absalom was a great warrior and absalom had a sister named tamar now she was a babe she was well known for her beauty and her her babeness whatever well way over on the other side of king david's vast land holdings was a little-known half-brother named amnon now amnon sees tamar absalom's full sister amnon sees tamar at a family picnic while he's eating uh kosher dill pickles they're jewish and and his heart goes bitter patter now it was not only love at first sight but by the time he was finished with his pickle he was totally obsessed with her beauty and then through deception amnon tricked tamar into entering his private tent he violates her takes her by force and it was when it was over amnon is so disgusted with her that he kicks her out of his tent now in the culture of that time no man would ever marry a woman that had been sexually abused or violated so if amnon wouldn't have her then she'd be doomed to live a life of shame and loneliness so tamar now crying flees back home now when her real brother her full brother absalom sees her in distress he asks what in the world happened tamar blurts out the whole story exposes what amnon did and now absalom is incensed at this horrible injustice he replied he says just wait don't do anything i'm gonna take care of this myself and it was at this point that the seed of unforgiveness and resentment took up residence in his heart and slowly but surely it's going to drain his whole life his seething unforgiveness germinates for two years and it's leaking acid into every area of his life and then one day the opportunity came to take revenge it was a festival time for sheep shearing so all the royal family gathers and and in this tradition it's kind of like a party and they bring everybody together for a good time so absalom invites amnon remember the half-brother the one who violated his sister invites amnon to tag along but what amnon doesn't know that he's about to be killed absalom huddles with his cronies and the bible records this conversation listen absalom said when amnon is in high spirits from drinking wine and i say to you strike amnon down then kill him don't you be afraid have an eye giving you this order so be strong and brave so absalom's men did to amnon but absalom had ordered done right an eye for an eye wrong see the story doesn't end there it begins it begins a lifetime of resentment and mistrust wars and even a coup where soon absalom afraid of his dad's reprimand decides to kill his own father you see that's what unforgiveness does it never dwells alone takes others down with it it leaks acid into every area of your life and you never know which direction that acid is going to flow or effect it's never satisfied i wish the story had a happier ending but it doesn't absalom's attempt to get rid of his father fails and he's tragically killed in the end but before we make that same mistake let's learn from absalom's error and let's find out where we can get the power to forgive deal deal the writer of hebrews tells us and i quote says this see to it that no one falls short of the grace of god and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many interesting the bible refers it to a root of bitterness a root you see you can't see a root it's underground right but if it's kept alive it only grows deeper and though it's invisible bitter roots always bear bitter fruit some years ago i was a youth pastor for a local church and and we would hold youth camps at a place called clark creek for for several years we would take high school students there a week at a time now our water source was a mountain stream where we'd scoot water for drinking and cooking and because it was a state camp a forest ranger would come on mondays and he'd test the water with his little tube and he put some chemical in it to ensure that the bacteria count was at an acceptable level after all it was an open mountain stream where we were drinking well after drinking the water all week this forest ranger came and he tested the water and he said to me hey stop i said suddenly don't drink this water i said ah too late we've been drinking it all week he said well don't drink it until i get back he warned us like i thought oh no we've already been drinking it so i thought you know what he means is like don't die till i get back so i can tell you what you died of so comforting well he put on some rubber boots and he disappears and about two hours later he returns and says okay you can drink the water so i asked him could you like give us a hint as to why we couldn't drink it before well he said when i got to the source of the stream where the water came sort out of the mountain he said i found that a deer had died and it was in the stream and its rotting carcass was lodged between two rocks in the middle of the stream so appetizing but good news as you can see i'm still alive today no casualties some of the kids later began sprouting little little antlers but other than that they're okay today as far as i know but let me ask you a question is it time that maybe you might take a trek to get rid of a deer that died a while ago just like the one that had died in that stream and there it was sitting in that water decomposing and everything downstream was being affected contaminated by that and the same thing can be true in our lives where something that died long ago should have been removed but resentment is one of the rocks and unforgiveness is the other where it's wedged in between and it flows into the rest of our life it's like a bitter root it contaminates and then we wonder why things just aren't right i used to lead a bible study it was every friday morning 6 30 a.m and one day one of the men that came to the bible study said hey you know wayne after 10 years i had to call my ex-wife and ask her for forgiveness i said 10 years you held stuff for 10 years he said oh yeah almost apologetically said yeah so i was curious so i asked him the stuff you held for like 10 years tell me about it well he said i just couldn't take it anymore it was as if there was a little vial then he describes this is so interesting he says it was like a little vial of acid sitting right behind my heart and every time i moved it spilled and when i think about it again every time i did resentment filled the glass again and when i moved the acid spilled again and burned my heart again and again and again ten years of this he said it was killing me so i finally forgave because i had to get my heart back the only question he said i had was why didn't i do this sooner i thought wow what an accurate explanation and you see you see that's exactly what unforgiveness becomes if it's left unresolved it slowly turns to resentment and the acid spills and by the way the word resentment comes from the latin word resento two words re which means again and senta which means to cut so resentment these two words together make up the word resentment which means to cut again and again and again you see resentment is every time you rehearse the injustice you expose your heart to be cut again so what's the remedy here's what the bible says now at first glance it's going to seem very strange it's a strange request but peter one of the twelve do you remember him he he must have not been getting along with one of his roommates so he came to jesus with this unusual request it's a question it seems like maybe one of the other disciples had been really bugging him and so he complained this is what he said lord how many times shall i forgive my brother who sins against me up to seven times in other words lord i'm up to here with my brother how many times do i need to let this dweeb go before i put his lights out i mean this is the seventh time he's done this last chance for him to stay alive and just say the word lord and your servant peter will be happy to lay him down to rest you know what i mean but jesus's answer is uncanny he said to peter i tell you not just seven times but seventy times seven now i can hear peter time out time out time i i if my math is right time out that's 490 times are you kidding jesus okay okay 490 times i'll wait but then really then can i kill him you see what jesus was saying is this a 70 times 7 forgiveness is one that continues forgiving until the pain of that injustice no longer exists see because forgiveness doesn't always happen all at once it's a process for example let's say someone out of anger takes a pocket knife and slices your arm of course you're angry and at first you keep people away from bumping that arm you wrap it up you just keep everybody away from it because it hurts like crazy when someone bumps it or even comes near but eventually after a while you forgive because you got to move on it starts to heal and healing takes time where at first you have to guard it attend to it keep it clean keep it away from those who might bump into it but after a season it starts to heal the wound closes and of course there's a scar but when do i know it's healed when it doesn't hurt anymore when i touch it or bump into it you see that's what a 70 times seven kind of forgiveness does you keep forgiving every time it comes to your mind and instead of filling that vial back up with resentment you keep forgiving even if it's 490 times or you may have a scar when it's all done but you'll know healing has taken place because it doesn't hurt anymore now you're on the victory side now you can talk about it without doubling over but without forgiveness that time never comes we got to understand that we live in a pretty evil world and and we're not immune never will be from people injuring us intentionally or unintentionally so forgiveness plays a vital role in just the harmony of our life and the sooner i can forgive the better it's like this let's say i give you a hundred dollar bill and you grab it hundred bucks but as soon as you grab it i take out a lighter and i start i light it on fire well the flames start to eat this hundred dollar bill and soon it's like oh it's burning your hand ouch you say it's burning my hand so i say well let go of it no way it's mine ow ow that hurts finally this thing engulfs your hand ouch and when your hand is barbecued you finally drop it blaming me saying you burn my hand no i didn't burn your hand you did yeah you burnt your own hand when you refused to let go you see there's things we can't change so we give it to him we've got to let it go and the sooner the better sometimes we think we have to control that person like he had controlled us or we want to punish that person in our mind like he punished us and we hang hang on to it and it's burning us as that one saying goes resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die you see god promises to heal but listen you decide how long it's going to take god promises to heal but you decide how long is it going to take a year 10 years now we we don't want to come to wrong conclusions about forgiveness because forgiveness does not mean that something never happened because sometimes christians think well if i forgive then we're just kind of downplaying sin no no well are we getting soft on sin no what is forgiveness forgiveness simply is to keep me free from that person's sin and it means that the deadly toxin that's being excreted from that the root of bitterness is no longer going to mess up my water i don't give forgiveness because the other person deserves it no forgiveness is because your future and your family deserve it now here's some good news as difficult as it might seem here's the good news you don't ever have to go this one alone no the giant of forgiveness you can't do it alone god knows that that giant would require his ability and not yours let me explain do you remember that it was on the cross that jesus said father forgive them do you understand the magnitude of that simple statement it's phenomenal he was perfect yet he forgave you think what it wasn't even your fault i think when he forgave he knew that this forgiveness was not for them it was for you and for me why because if he had held resentments against his accusers he wouldn't have been that perfect and sinless sacrifice that was required for your redemption and mine you see when he said father forgive them he was actually thinking of us but here it is this awesome power that gave him the ability to forgive even when he was right even when he was suffering and it hurt because i doubted if he really felt good about saying that but he said it and that same power is available to you and me how do i know that here's what the bible says if the same spirit that raised christ from the dead lives in you then he will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his spirit who lives in you oh i love that in other words here's what it's saying if the same spirit that raised christ from the dead lives in you and me that same magnitude and ability is available to you and me as well because the same spirit that empowered jesus on the cross is the same spirit that's in you his power is available there is no valley so deep where his power is not deeper still if you haven't given jesus permission to come into your life to be your lord and savior i want to give you that opportunity at the end of this message but first let me remind you that one of the greatest things our hearts will ever know is the gift of forgiveness for us and through us and when we comprehend the magnitude of this we will have caught the very heart of god once we realize how much we need god's forgiveness you'll want to extend it to others because you see we're the ones that need forgiveness the most and the bible says all of us like sheep have gone astray in isaiah and in romans it says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god so that means we need forgiveness and then listen to david as he writes in his journal listen to what it says it says if you kept record he's talking to god if you kept a record of our sins no one could last long but you forgive us and so we will worship you so much is riding on our willingness to forgive than you'll ever realize here it is i want you to know what one of the most dangerous prayers there is to pray you want to know what it is i bet you haven't prayed it uh in the last day or two but i bet you've prayed it 100 times in your life let me tell you how dangerous it is where's that prayer it's the lord's prayer the our father when we come to that point in the hour father and we say forgive us our sins as we forgive those who what sin against us forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us you know what we're praying here's a dangerous part what we're saying is this god forgive me in direct proportion to how much i forgive others yeah forgive me only as much as i forgive others now that's a pretty courageous commitment do you catch that i don't know about you but i need a ton of forgiveness so you know what i'd better start forgiving forgiving like crazy now because i got to save up for judgment day i need a lot of forgiveness in my account but you say i just don't have the ability to do that you're absolutely right you don't but here's where your power will come from ready it will come by realizing the magnitude of his sacrifice for you when you realize what he's paid it changes your heart it emboldens you and something happens on the inside the more you see him the more you realize what he has done for you and that changes your heart let me bring it to a conclusion with this example let's say i excitedly drive madly into your driveway one afternoon not realizing that the little kitten you just bought last week is in the same driveway right where i'm driving and as soon as i come in boom boom oh no don't write me any letters it's just an illustration but stay with me you come out of the front door and you scream you killed my cat that was my favorite cat i just got it now it's gone i hate you and i say oh please forgive me no this is unforgivable you murderer never never never will i forgive you i'm so sorry you see i was just so excited let me explain i just won the powerball lottery for 300 million then i wanted to come and share the good news with you uh you say you won what and you wanted to share what yes i say i'm so sorry for running over your cat you know i know this will never replace your cat and i pull out my checkbook and i write a check for fifty thousand dollars i just won three hundred million but fifty thousand i say i know this won't ever replace your your sweet kitten but will this be sufficient enough for you to forgive me you grab the check 50 000 you look at that check and you say i forgive you i even love you and then i say okay anything else as anyone else ever offended you that you can think of anyone you say oh yes my husband my husband leaves his socks everywhere i'm sick and tired of this and i'm about to divorce him just then i write a check for 25 000 and i say here is this sufficient enough for you to forgive him too you grab the check and you say whoa wow you bet he can leave his socks everywhere and anywhere are you kidding i love my husband good i say anybody else offended you that you have had a hard time to forgive you say yeah my fifth grade teacher she made me say after school she was mean and i i i just didn't like her and i write a check another one for 25 000. i say now if i gave you this will you forgive her oh she says i love my fifth grade teacher a true mentor she was and then i say is there anyone you can anyone else you can think of well she says my pastor once offended me i said yeah here here's a dollar stop it probably was your fault anyway but i mean anyone else so finally i say hey listen it doesn't matter i tell you what and i write a check for a hundred thousand just in case just in case anyone else offends you in the future each time would you remember and forgive here absolutely she says you can just call me miss pardon i pardon everybody kind of like dolly i pardon everybody now she's got about 200 000 and now she has this huge incentive to forgive now as silly as that seems that's exactly what jesus did except he didn't give just a few hundred thousand dollars he bankrupted heaven and he gave everything he had he gave eternal life he gives his presence he gives a mansion he gives provision he banks up bankrupts heaven and he sheds his own blood the son of god and he says i paid it all so that you'll stay free from what this world tries to do and yet when we see all that jesus has paid the greatest price we say not enough i still can't forgive not enough you need to give more no no you know what we what we need to do is we need to see that jesus paid the greatest price in the universe so that you and i can remain free from other people's sins errors and the injustices of the world god will take the responsibility to make things right for the only for the things only he can resolve because you see it'll kill us if we try and he knew that so you know what he did he bankrupted heaven to incentivize us so that we would stay holy in an unholy world and even when things seem hopelessly lost he reminds us that we will find in our future far greater treasures than what we lost in our past he'll guarantee that he's paid for our entry fee into eternity with his blood for the forgiveness of sins for our sins as well as others maybe it's time for us to check our mountain streams and see what we need to un unwedge between the rocks of resentment and unforgiveness because forgiveness is a gift for you way more than it is for anybody [Music] else

Channel: New Hope West

Views: 67

Rating: 4.1999998 out of 5

Keywords: NEW HOPE WEST, WAYNE CORDEIRO, CHURCH ONLINE, ONLINE CHURCH, KILLING GIANTS, GIANT OF UNFORGIVENESS

Id: RE-t0jxrxl4

Length: 32min 22sec (1942 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020