Real Men - What Forgiveness Is and Is Not

well howdy gentlemen i am super excited to be here with you i love you i look forward to it every week if you're new you're with the best guys and this is the best place to be amen welcome to real men love you guys so excited and honored to have you with us and uh just want to give a special shout out we've got some pastors in from i think three or four different states visiting us tonight looking at what we do with men's ministry wanting to go back do that in their own church for their own city and we just encourage you if you're at a table with those guys make sure you lay hands and pray over them before they go this is the last real men's for the quarter and if you are new uh you get a long sermon on sunday you get another long sermon on wednesday and i like to take the text and just make a leadership application for men and so what we're going to talk about now is forgiveness it is the heart and essence of all that we believe and how we behave as christians and without it men can't be healthy and i'm just telling you that if you are a man at some point in your life you're going to get betrayed you're going to get hurt you're going to get abandoned you're going to be taken advantage of and you're going to experience some sort of injustice and then the question is what do you do with that and i want you to learn how to forgive because i love you and i love your wife and i love your kids and i love your grandkids and what i have seen is that if you choose bitterness instead of forgiveness you are literally pulling hell up into your life i'll start with a bit of a story i've got my wife grace i love her five kids and it was some years ago we were in the most difficult brutal broken season of our entire life i mean feces and fan fully interfaced it was that kind of season and so what happened was it was and i've told the story before but i got up early and not early i got up one morning i'm in my pajamas i come out to the living room grace sitting on the couch with the kids and uh and it looked kind of official like it was organized i was like what are we doing and they're like dad you know what day it is like i don't know what day it is they said it's sunday and i'd been in the pulpit for a lot of years and had transitioned and we were in a difficult season and uh and the kids said dad we can't go to church and so we decided that we're gonna have church at home as a family and i said okay and so the kids organized it one had worship one had communion one collected the offering one led and worshiped they literally had church set up they said dad we decided you get to be the bible teacher i was like well that's great and so the problem was i didn't have anything prepared to talk on i i didn't know so i'm looking at my family and they're honestly very broken and my family at that moment was really hurting uh at a deep and profound level of the soul and um i was holding back tears i don't know if you've men some of you guys are like me your alphas you're strong and then when you see brokenness in your wife and kids it just wrecks you i can handle almost anything but when it breaks my wife and kids it just absolutely breaks me and i'm thinking to myself okay they're wanting me to say something to pastor this little flock and so i prayed and i felt like god led me to ephesians chapter four which is this text in the bible on forgiveness and so i started talking about forgiveness and the first thing i did i looked at my wife and kids they looked at me they're all crying well guess what i'm doing i'm crying my family's broken i'm broken and i stopped and i asked their forgiveness for things that i had done in my own sin and failures and shortcomings that it contributed to this very painful season that we were in and i wanted them to forgive me because i'm not jesus i have my part to play and then we stopped and did a deep dive bible study on forgiveness and the holy spirit was there present in a supernatural way that i've rarely experienced in any time in my life and i noticed something in ephesians 4 and that is it says to get rid of all bitterness and it says to not grieve the holy spirit of god and to not give the devil a foothold and the point is this if you choose bitterness you're literally inviting the culture of hell and the demonic spirits of hell up into your life hell is a place where no one is ever forgiven and satan never forgives anyone for anything so if you just do bitterness which is unforgiveness you're literally pulling the demonic and hell up into your life and then it says don't grieve the holy spirit because when you forgive you're inviting the culture of heaven down into your home and you're inviting the holy spirit down to do a supernatural miracle and that is to give you the grace to unburden and to forgive and to heal up so literally i believe that that moment on the couch with my family in my living room literally determines three to four generations of my family i can't overstate that moment we were going to go down into bitterness or we're going to go up into forgiveness we're going to go down into the demonic or we're going to go up in the holy spirit and i i had an opportunity there to either put bitterness in and on my kids to poison and sour their soul and then that would infect and affect them for generations or we could do forgiveness and then that could heal us and unburden us and deliver us potentially for generations and i didn't intend to do that bible study and i'd studied forgiveness many times but i had never seen this close correlation between the holy spirit and and satan and now that i've studied it matthew 18 and over in corinthians a lot of the times where the bible talks about forgiveness and unforgiveness it talks about the holy spirit in relation to forgiveness and satan and demons in regard to unforgiveness this led to a healing in my family that i praise god for my kids don't hate me my kids don't hate church and my kids don't hate god and and i praise god for that and as a result our family walks in forgiveness and i'm not saying that we're a perfect family and we've done everything right but this is the one thing that has kept us from great pain devastation and harm and it led to a full year of studying the subject of forgiveness in the bible and so what i want to do i want you to experience deliverance healing freedom unburdening and health i want your family to be healed and delivered i want any demonic torment out of your arguments or your relationships or your bitterness your past i don't want the worst day of your life to be present in every day of your life i want you to forget what lies behind and press forward for the calling that god has for you and so all of this culminates with where we find ourselves in romans chapter 12 and we're going to talk about what forgiveness is and is not we're going to compare and contrast so he really is getting to the heart of forgiveness here in romans 12 and i'm not going to deal with the whole text that we covered last weekend but just this section bless those who persecute you blessing is the test of forgiving you can't bless someone until after you have forgiven them he is here echoing jesus who says to bless your enemies you can't bless someone unless you've forgiven them and you can't prove that you've forgiven them until you bless them blessing is the testing of forgiving a lot of guys to be like i forgave him do you want good for him no if you can't bless them you haven't forgiven them blessing is the test of forgiving sometimes it's saying and doing nothing sometimes it's saying or doing something that is gracious in response to something that is godless so he goes on bless those who persecute you and do not curse them he says it twice because as men we didn't hear it the first time right how many of you guys your justice guys your competitive your ex-military your ex jocks you're like no we return fire we counter punch and counter-strike now he says live in harmony with one another pay no one evil for evil but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all here's the big idea if possible it's not always possible some people won't give up the fight but if possible so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all just go for peace beloved god loves you and you're his sons and he's your father and this is the father here giving some instruction to his sons and it doesn't matter how old you are god's still your father never avenge yourselves it's about forgiveness but leave it to the wrath of god for it is written vengeance is mine i will say repent i will repay says the lord so let me uh next slide please let me look at what forgiveness is not so let's look at what it is not and what it is first of all it's not ignoring denying enabling or continuing what happened okay if somebody is in business with you and they're stealing from you should you ignore that no should you deny that just not deal with reality no should you enable that and allow it to continue no instead forgiving someone is not continuing the sin pattern but it's forgiving the sin that's been committed up until that point and what some people will do they'll say well i just forgave them but if you're allowing them to continue to do evil you're actually not loving and helping you're enabling number two uh forgiveness is not enabling someone to continue to harm themselves or others let's say there's someone that you're responsible for maybe it's your wife maybe it's your kid and let's say they have self-destructive behavior you can forgive them but not enable them if they're an alcoholic or a drug addict let's say tragically you've got a kid or a grandkid like that you can forgive them but that doesn't mean that you enable them to continue the behavior so what forgiveness does forgiveness is forgiving someone for what they have done but it's not enabling them to continue to do that which is wrong and this is where you get codependent dysfunctional relationships oftentimes these are the hardest positions we find ourselves in as men maybe it's our kids or our grandkids or maybe it's even our wife and they're not healthy and they're not well and they're making really bad life decisions that are self-destructive and we're trying to enable them to keep them from kind of hitting rock bottom in the bottom falling out the truth is we need to forgive them but we don't need to enable them we need to forgive what they have done but we do not need to help them continue to do that which is wrong number three it is not forgetting now it says in jeremiah 31 34 the lord says i will remember your sins no more how many of you have forgiven someone and then it comes up again right maybe maybe it's because they did it again you forgave them then they did it again and it triggers what they did before sometimes there will be things in life and sometimes it's even demonic accusations revelation 12 10 says that satan is the accuser of the children of god that accuses them day and night sometimes satan will take something from the past and just bring it to the forefront of your mind and all of a sudden you're flooded and emotionally brought back to a point where something catastrophic or difficult happened to you or was said or done regarding you and you're reliving that moment and sometimes what people will say is well you just need to you just need to for you need to forgive and forget okay so when it says that god forgets here's what i'd like to tell you god actually still knows one of the attributes of god is that he is omniscient or all-knowing so here's what we here's what we know about god god doesn't forget things right we forget things right you forget where your keys are you forget where you parked your car um we forget we forget all kinds of god doesn't forget any it's not like god's in heaven gone what's that guy's name again that's tony i i don't know why they don't do name tags there's so many of them i mean god doesn't forget things god knows things what it means is god knows it but he chooses not to have that past live at the forefront of his thinking regarding you so think of it in this way if someone has sinned against you offended you hurt you betrayed you abandoned you abused you traumatic damage to you maybe even catastrophic damage to you is it something that lives at the forefront or is it something that you don't bring to mind and you don't live constantly in light of um there is a uh a researcher named luskin he teaches i think it's at stanford he oversees something called the forgiveness project and he wrote a book called forgive for good he's a clinician i don't get the understanding that he's a christian but he uses this analogy he said when something happens in your life you decide where it lives in your house does it live at your dining room table so every day you sit there for breakfast lunch and dinner and remember it does it live in your bedroom so that it comes between you and your wife or is it something you put in a box and you take it out to the garage and you put it up on a shelf and it's out of sight and you kind of forget about it by forgetting what god is saying is not that you don't know that it happened but you choose where that information resides okay now let me say this i had a bitterness toward my wife grace and it did great damage in our marriage for many years and obviously it was my fault her name is grace so what should she get i mean god was so obvious with me he's like her name is grace that's what she gets and i forgot that okay and so she did something and it doesn't matter what she did i'm not going to talk about it and i rather than forgiving her i held on to it i or a grudge i was bitter i was unforgiving so when we would have an argument are any of you married okay so you know what this is like okay so you have an argument and what i would do is i would use this as my as my trump card not my donald trump card but my trump card and what that would mean is if we were disagreeing i would pull this out and i would shove it into the argument and that meant that i could now present myself as a righteous victim and i would shame her and shut her down and so she lived for years in sort of frustration with me because i wouldn't let it go i wouldn't leave it in the box in the garage i kept slamming it on the dining room table because i was bitter and uh and god god will allow you if you will forgive and release to still have something be something you know but you're not always thinking about it some of you there are people and literally you're thinking about them too much there are hurts there are circumstances there are things in your past that they're on the forefront of your mind and they need to be in the box you know on the shelf in the garage of your life that's what it means that he won't remember it's also not trust and reconciliation so this is one of the biggest myths regarding forgiveness that if you forgive someone you should reconcile with them give you a horrific a question i've been asked many many times a gal grows up and is sexually assaulted or abused by a grandpa an uncle or a dad she grows up becomes a christian forgives her abuser which is a miracle and then she has children should she allow her children to be with the uncle the dad or the grandpa who abused her yes or no and i get this question all the time and the question is usually well i've forgiven him shouldn't we be reconciled no because you can't trust them they're not safe see forgiveness is free trust is earned there's a big difference okay forgiveness is free trust is earned if you back your car into my car and i decide not to you know call your insurance company and i say you know what i'm just gonna let it go i'll fix the car i'm gonna put grace on it i forgive you i'll just pay the debt that's very different from i'm going to drop my kids off at your house and trust that they're going to be safe there's a big difference between forgiving something and trusting someone and some of you need to know that some of the people that you have forgiven are still not trustworthy and many of them are family and this is where we tend to lose our line of discernment as men sometimes we will allow family to say and do things that we would not allow anyone else to do meaning extended family and what i would say is you can forgive people including extended family but you should not trust them unless they are trustworthy because forgiveness is free and trust is earned forgiveness can be given in an instant trust is earned over time forgiveness is grace but trust is earned so for example uh some years ago when our kids were little somebody came up to me after service and they met well they said hey we know you got five kids you're super busy we'd love to watch your kids i said no they said well don't you trust me answer no they're like i don't know you i just have this general rule i don't trust people i don't know so i have a lock on my house with a door you know i don't know you so i don't trust you and there is this myth among christians that if we forgive people we should trust them and or we should reconcile with them are there certain people that you can forgive but you should not do life with or at least life as you were doing it okay give me some examples permission to speak freely drinking buddies maybe you're a guy who's out with the boys making all kinds of trouble you meet jesus you decide to clean up your life you come to real men welcome [Music] and then your old buddies are like hey man we're friends let's still hang out answer i love you but i i i i don't do the bar scene anymore that's not what i do our relationship has changed because my relationship with god has changed and and how many of you guys when you get married your buddies are like what the heck man you've changed you're like yeah i got married it did change no not for you guys because you're single but i'm married so you're going to go to the bar and hope to get lucky and i'm going to go home and i'm lucky so you know yeah you go to the bar i'm not going other relationships that we can't go if we forgive them we can't go right back to the relationship we used to have maybe a toxic debt maybe you've got a really bad dad extended family member maybe there's somebody in your family that's just totally unhealthy meddling in your business telling you what to do crashing in on your life causing lots of pain you can say i forgive you but i don't want that relationship i can't have that relationship because i can only be close to people who are healthy and i would love to be close to you but until you choose to get healthy i can't be near you because that's just not good for me and again sometimes it's extended family you're like well that's your brother yeah but he's terrible well that's your uncle i know and he's got no pants on you know we shouldn't have to vote about this this should be obvious you don't have to be discerning to figure this out how many of you if somebody flirts with your wife they're not your friend anymore true they shouldn't be if you don't agree ask your wife see if somebody flirts with your wife if somebody is you know stealing from you in business if somebody is an unhealthy extended family member causing drama and trauma in your life you can forgive them you don't have to reconcile with them and sometimes people will use this in a manipulative and religious way well if you forgave me we should just go back to where we were the answer is i may never want to do that again okay you can forgive people and not be as close to them in addition it's not a response to a repentant apology so when i was doing my deep dive study of forgiveness i got into an area of theology this would be a little controversial it was called biblical counseling and there is such a thing as biblical counseling but there is counseling that says it's biblical that's sometimes not biblical just because you go verses doesn't mean you're biblical satan quotes verses doesn't mean he's biblical he quotes verses to jesus and he messes them up so i was reading this book by a leading biblical christian counselor on forgiveness and he said that you can't forgive anybody until they repent and uses a case study let's say your dad did something like he abused you and then your dad died without repenting you can never forgive him okay does your forgiveness depend on their repentance now paul told us in romans insofar as is possible with you seek to live peaceably the person who is wrong needs to repent or apologize the person who is wronged needs to forgive and give grace the only way you have this peace is if both parties do their part and what he says is do your part if you were the person who was wrong say you're wrong and if you were the person who was wronged forgive them but peace requires two people to be involved and some of you are holding on to things and i i love you and i want you to be delivered but what you're thinking is i can't let it go until they apologize until they understand until they know and i could just see it some of you guys are older marriage fell apart your your kids are prodigals your business partner gutted you if you're a man on planet earth occasionally you're just going to have a head-on collision and the airbags won't deploy in your life and you're going to feel it and when those things happen sometimes the sense of justice in us just says you need to understand what you did you need to understand what it cost me you need to own it you need to say you're sorry and the point is what if they don't what if they don't if you're going to hold on to bitterness and not forgive them and wait for them to repent then what you're going to do you're going to attack them you're going to declare war on them you're going to assault them because what you're trying to do is just rain down hell on them to get them to see what they've said or done to hurt you so that they'll just apologize and the truth is even if they apologize nothing in you will be healed or changed unless you forgive them nothing in you will be healed or changed unless you forgive them jesus tells a story in matthew 18. one guy let's say he's a millionaire he lives in paradise valley and the uh he he he has a big big debt and he's upside down and he can't repay his debt so he goes to the debtor i'm paraphrasing the uh the story that jesus tells and the guy says you know what i'm just gonna forgive the debt i'm gonna eat the whole thing i'll just eat the million dollar loss because i love you and i'm gonna put grace on it pretty awesome that guy who got forgiven a million dollars goes home and there's a guy who owes him like a thousand bucks the guy comes up he's like i know i owe you a thousand bucks i can't repay the thousand bucks can can we work out a payment plan and the guy who was forgiven a million won't forgive a thousand what he says no way there's no grace for you not only am i going to make you pay it i'm going to punish you if you don't pay it on time and what jesus says is that the person who was forgiven but not forgiving that they'll be tormented by the jailer day and night most of the commentators think that the jailer is satan and the demonic the point is this we have been forgiven much so we need to forgive much that's where jesus teaches us to pray forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors that's where paul says in colossians in ephesians that we need to forgive others as god in christ has forgiven us the point is that our debt to god is always the million dollars and their debt to us is always the thousand dollars and we can't be excited that god would pay our debt if we're not willing to pay their debt because forgiveness is something that god gives us not just to enjoy but to share so that others would enjoy that being said if you are in a prison cell of torment and frustration the myth is that the person who offended you has the key to your jail cell that if they would just apologize if they would say they were sorry if they would own it if they would tell everybody the truth then the key would go in the lock and you'd be free from all of your torment the truth is you have the key you have the key to your own cell it's it's forgiveness you don't need them you need him this is far more about you and god than it is about you and them and i know many people they live tormented lives and the bitterness gets into them and it gets into their kids and it gets into their friends and it gets into their extended family and it gets into their grandkids and all of a sudden everybody's living in the jail cell of bitterness just jaded and angry and frustrated and stuck and broken and hurt and and sad and tormented it's demonic they're saying if you would just own it if you would just admit it and the truth is many of you have had people in your life come back and say i was sorry but if you've not forgiven them you're still living in the jail cell of torment another one it's sometimes about sometimes the other person doesn't even need to know you've forgiven them there are things that we forgive people of that they don't even need to know about right i'll give you an example some years ago there was a couple there was two couples they were friends and they hung out together and one husband the whole time was totally infatuated with the other guy's wife lusting after her just thinking about her not good okay does that husband they didn't ever do anything but does the husband who's married to the woman he's lusting after does he need to know it answer no nothing ever happened now this guy who's lusting after this other woman his wife needs to know they need to go get some help this guy's got a broken soul but sometimes we literally need to work this out with god and we don't need to involve a bunch of other people sometimes the way you know you're bitter is when you forgive them you get a lot of people involved so they all know what they did yeah i've forgiven them let me tell you what for you're better as soon as you involve other people who are not part of the solution you're making them part of the problem you're bitter that's not forgiveness and then the last one it's not god's forgiveness can you forgive someone and they still go to hell yes because he just told us in romans 14 a vengeance is mine says the lord he quotes deuteronomy so your forgiveness is not god's forgiveness what you're doing when you forgive you're saying i'm not going to convene a court be the judge and sentence a verdict instead i'm going to take your case i'm going to pass it up to judge jesus i'm going to let jesus try the case and decide what to do with you so you can forgive someone and call the cops if they've committed a crime you can forgive someone and testify in court if you're called to tell the truth you can forgive someone put them in god's hands and god sends them to hell so your forgiveness is not god's forgiveness and this is an act of faith for men because sometimes we think if it's out of my hands then it's not going to get taken care of and god's like my hand's bigger than your hand son trust me take it out of your hands put it in my hands this is an act of faith for a man so then what forgiveness is it's replacing demonic strongholds with holy spirit anointing i always like to say when all is said and done there's only going to be two cultures left heaven and hell which is the culture of unforgiveness heaven or hell hell everybody who's unforgiven is in hell nobody in hell is forgiven satan and demons will be in hell as well they are never forgiven of anything they're never forgiving of anyone jesus didn't die for demons only for people there's not even a possibility of demons getting the grace that we receive to be forgiven so hell is if you want to know what unforgiveness looks like it's hell okay heaven culture of forgiveness everybody is forgiven is there that's the only way you get there you only get there if you're forgiven and so your life every day things are going to happen and you as a man for yourself for your wife for your kids for your grandkids for your ministry for our church for your business for your legacy you're going to make one of two choices i'm inviting heaven down or i'm pulling hell up that's what i'm doing and the most emotionally charged moments that we make these decisions or when we're most hurt frustrated angry upset sick of it can't take any more [Music] but here's what i'm saying have you ever pulled hell up and it's made life better never and some men just live off of bitterness they just go from fight to fight and enemy to enemy those are very unhealthy men and they drag their wives and kids into the battle and it makes their family very toxic and very demonic number two um forgiveness is forgiving a debt owed to you so when you're forgiving so when jesus says in matthew and luke if my memory is correct the lord's prayer appears twice and one time he says forgive us our sins and another time he says forgive us our debts because to god sin and death are synonymous to sin is to accrue a that to god how many of you are finance guys your accountants cpas um you're those guys you're good with money you've accepted dave ramsey in your heart you're those guys you're the money guys okay um and so what happens is we tend to be very aware of our financial debt and not our spiritual debt because every month we get our bills we know what we owe but god doesn't send us the bill and so what happens at the cross of jesus he literally pays our debt the concept of ransom in the new testament and jesus death for our sin is a ransom it's the payment of a debt paul says this in colossians 2 he said that the record of our sin the full accounting of our transgression was nailed to the cross of jesus and he suffered and he died in our place to pay our debt to god okay when you forgive someone you are paying their debt it's going to cost you right if your dad was not emotionally present then he owed you all of that time and input and in forgiving it you're going to pay a price right if your wife is you know unfaithful to you and causes great damage and harm and you forgive her you're paying a great price forgiveness is where someone needs to pay the price and you decide that you will pay it vengeance is when you make them pay and god says do forgiveness don't do vengeance you pay don't make them pay and the point is simply this this is how jesus treated us jesus paid a debt so that he could have a relationship with us and we're paying a debt for the possibility of having a relationship with them and hoping that they have a relationship ultimately with our god but it's going to cost you something it's going to cost you time energy money it's going to cost you but faith says i trust my god to take care of me if i do what is right in his sight okay here's another one it is an act of faith in god to deal with them justly how many of you trust god for yourself trust god to take care of you okay how many of you trust god to take care of your family okay how do you trust god to take care of your enemies that one's hard faith is saying the same god who took care of me and my family will take care of my enemy and what he's not saying is it's fine it's no big deal they're good people he talks in romans 12 about your enemies they're your enemies they're bad they did wrong they're guilty in the sight of god it's so bad that jesus had to die for it it's that big of a deal but there's something really sick in our soul when we say god i trust you to deal with my sin but not their sin god i trust you to deal with my sin but i need to deal with their sin and faith says no the god who deals with my sin will deal with their sin and he can deal with their sin any way that he likes because here's the truth let's just be totally honest how many people have you sinned against and they would like vengeance on you from them and wrath on you from god true see we're both the victim and the villain we're the one who has sinned against and we're the one who sins when we're sinned against we want grace when they sin against us law justice so it's always law for you grace for me well the person that we sinned against what are they thinking law for you the point is simply this if god takes care of my sin he could take care of their sin he gave me grace i'll wait to see what he gives them he may give them grace he may give them law he may forgive and save them he may judge and torment them either way the god who dealt with me is the god i trust to deal with them how about this one it is uh getting the sin hurt burden away from your future this is this is one of the most significant things that can happen to heal a man so somewhere in your past there's sin there's something happened you're hurt and it could be one of two things it can either be a big thing or a little thing done by a big person so a total stranger may do something that was big but 10 years later you're not thinking about it when you're brushing your teeth in the morning someone you love like your spouse or your dad or your best friend or your business partner or your kid can do something that is comparably minor but 10 years later you're brushing your teeth thinking about it getting very emotional sometimes the hardest thing to let go of is a big thing sometimes it's a little thing done by a person who's big to us how much we love them means we've let them close enough to hurt us and so what he's saying here is that getting the sin heard burden away from your future is this paul says in philippians forgetting what lies behind i press forward you can't do both you can't drive down the freeway while you're looking over your shoulder you've either got to go forward or backward jesus says if you're going to set your hand to the plow don't look back otherwise you'll go off course now again luskin this researcher at the university of stanford and he teaches the forgiveness project at stanford he did a clinical study as a medical professional looking at people who forgive versus people who do not and he's not even talking about a christian forgiveness he's just talking about some secular version of trying to let it go people who forgive even if they don't know jesus lower rates of heart attacks lower blood pressure lower ulcers lower migraines literally bitterness physically kills you how many of you you know you know a little older guy and he's just a bitter grumpy i mean we're in scottsdale so we've seen these guys bitter grumpy angry sour dour life didn't go the way he thought the ex-wife is a you know she rides a broom to work you know he's just he's just sick of it he's just sick of everybody trump lost he's freaking upset you know he's just upset he's that guy hypothetically i know it's none of you guys but like we're just talking about a hypothetical guy physically what happens to those guys they're a mess heart attacks ulcers weight gain stress anger depression they're self-medicating with food or alcohol they're a mess you can look at them and just like you're not doing good it's bitterness that you are one person in two parts body and soul and if you don't forgive from the heart like the lord jesus says it will ultimately crush your body literally i believe that the reason that men don't live as long as their wives is because we're more prone to be bitter and unforgiving and angry and jaded i believe that is in large part why our wives outlive us and so what i want you to do is to release that forgive let it go take it out of your hand put it in god's hand whomever whatever the holy spirit brings to mind so that you can be healthy i don't know about you i want to i want to live a healthy life i want to live as long as i can i want to play with my grandkids someday and if i'm just waking up every day angry and bitter poisoning my soul and breaking my body then i am self-destructing and what happens is you ask some guys like why are you doing they're like you don't know what they did to me why do you allow them to continue to do it to you if you continually relive it what they did is something that you are repeating and reliving and as a result you are self-destructing and that's not good for you and what happens is well man everybody should be toying honestly a bitter jaded grumpy angry guy gets very lonely nobody wants to be with that guy we all know that guy and if you're that guy i love you you can be healed right now you invite the holy spirit you forgive and then the holy spirit starts to heal you up god is powerful and this is supernatural but we all know that guy you're like that guy just can't get over it he just can't let it go he just can't move on he each he's stuck every time you talk to him it's it's literally a driver on the cul-de-sac we're gonna talk about it again we talk about it all the time right i mean if jesus died for it at some point you gotta bury it and then you can't go back and keep digging it up and what it'll do it'll physically heal you a couple more uh it's seeking internal and external peace to be healthy paul told us in romans 12 insofar as is possible with you seek to live peaceably and here's the thing guys most men believe this myth once there's peace out there there'll be peace in here let me ask you this is there ever going to be peace out there how many of you guys have lived for more than 15 minutes and you've come to the obvious conclusion that we live in a freaking broken world with messed up people who are constantly annoying us true do you guys live somewhere that i don't because that's my experience so if i'm waiting for everyone and everything out there to be at peace and in order i will never have peace and i will constantly be in disorder and how many of you guys have said this as soon as i get through this season as soon as i fight this battle as soon as i close that deal as soon as the kids are out of school as soon as my mother-in-law dies like as soon as probably shouldn't have said that but just seeing if you're still with me so like we're we got pot of gold at the end of the rainbow i love my mother-in-law so i'm not talking about her but we we set before us there's gonna be peace i just need to get there when we get there is there ever peace no because peace doesn't come from out there it comes from the holy spirit in here the fruit of the spirit is peace so when paul says seek to live peaceably what he's not saying is that everything in your life is in order but your internal life is in order by the grace of god you can only get there by forgiving you see otherwise some of you guys are high control men as soon as i get the wife in line i get the kids in line i get the house in line i get the finances in line i get the investments in line i get the business says everything in line now it's all in order everything's in its place now i have peace no you don't because as soon as you get everything in order what's going to happen something's going to get out of order welcome to a broken and fallen world how many of you guys are control guys and you're like i just as soon as everything is okay i'm going to be okay then you're never going to be okay peace is something in here that helps you endure what is out there out there will not create peace in here and what forgiveness is is i'm gonna have peace in here i'm going to let it go i'm going to love the lord i'm going to invite the holy spirit i'm going to try to do the path of jesus i'm going to live under the reign of the prince of peace and the last one it's a witness to others who are watching you are men you are leaders you are influencers you are fathers you are husbands you are grandfathers you are business leaders you are difference makers you are legacy creators just think of the men in this room how many people are watching what we're doing and if we choose bitterness instead of forgiveness if we choose the demonic instead of the holy spirit we're discipling everyone who follows us to choose bitterness in the demonic and it becomes contagious and let me say this if you can forgive then you're discipling your wife to forgive and let me tell you that's helpful your girl if she can forgive it's going to go better for you last thing you wanna do is like i'm gonna model vengeance and bitterness toward my wife like sleep with one eye open a helmet and a cup on right like you put yourself in a nefarious position right i like marrying forgiveness girl not vengeance girl your kids if you will model forgiveness for them you know what they might give you when you make a mistake as their dad put some grace on it put some grace on it true or false if we have a culture of forgiveness in our life and our family and our church it makes it actually easier for people to apologize and own their heirs right if you already know that they've forgiven you you're like well i'll just own it if they don't forgive you you're like oh if i want to talk about it they're going to use it to shoot me it creates an environment of grace it it opens accountability it creates healthier relationships you don't have to be sneaking and hiding and denying and blame shifting you could just be owning and apologizing and i just want you guys to think about the fact that because you're leaders if you declare war on somebody you're taking your wife into the battle if you declare war on somebody you're taking your kids into the battle if you're a business leader you declare war you're taking your employees into the battle if you're a grandfather you are taking your grandkids into the battle and the question is why in the world would you do that only if you're bitter and have lost perspective and your mind do you think that that is a good life and a good legacy it's not it's not and i love you and just one thing comes to mind is i'm verbal processing i never prep for these we just kind of talk so thanks for enduring me i can just see it in my mind there's a guy named stephen holy spirit thank you for just bringing this to mind i didn't even think of this still right now so there's a guy named steven he's in the book of acts he um he loves jesus he's preaching jesus he's a church leader and there's a guy who wants to stop him from preaching jesus that guy shows up with an angry mob of bitter unforgiving self-righteous broken troubled demonic religious men what's his name saul of tarsus all of the bitter angry jaded men because you're either going to lead men toward peace or war he's he's a leader but he's leading men in bitterness toward war i can see it the apostle paul is leading these angry bitter jaded religious men they all lay their cloaks at his feet because he's the alpha and he's the leader and then they all engage and surround the a leader in the church named stephen they pick up rocks to stone him to death in their tribute to their bitter leader saul of tarsus stephen is dying i can see it stephen is dying and what does he pray father forgive them he says what jesus said on the cross he doesn't return evil for evil or reviling for reviling he blesses and does not curse and then it says that he looked up and the unseen realm was opened as similarly happened to isaiah and daniel and john in revelation he's in the scene world he gets to look into the unseen realm he gets to see into the throne room in the presence of god and it says that stephen looked and he saw jesus in the unseen realm standing to cheer for him whenever you see jesus seated on the throne daniel revelation isaiah he's always seated on the throne he's never standing in front of the throne there's one thing that gets the lord jesus christ off his throne in the unseen realm to cheer and to celebrate and to honor and it's a man who forgives jesus christ gives stephen a standing ovation i'll tell you guys that's better than vengeance i don't care about what they say i want to hear what he has to say okay and so what happens is stephen is dying he's echoing jesus he's praying he looks up he sees jesus and who hears him pray saul of tarsus a few chapters later who comes down from heaven to deal with saul of tarsus jesus like i got this he did romans 12. he forgave he didn't pursue vengeance and jesus said i'll get involved jesus literally comes down to deal with saul of tarsus literally he's on his horse knocks him on his horse literally knocks him off his high horse and then blinds him what he's saying is you were spiritually blind now you're going to be physically blind you need me to give you sight and insight physically and spiritually he then becomes converted what does he change his name to paul who wrote romans paul because stephen forgave him and prayed for him and jesus answered his prayer and he went from saul to paul he went from bitter to forgiven and forgiving and i believe this is one of the reasons why paul talks about forgiveness so much because he's experienced so much forgiveness let me say this paul is one of the greatest men who's lived in the history of the world and the reason he was great is because an even greater man forgave him and prayed for him i want jesus to cheer for you i want jesus off his throne for you i want him to drop the holy spirit anointing on you and your life and your legacy and your family i want you to live kingdom down and not hell up i want you to live in freedom not bondage i want you to live in deliverance and not slavery i want you to live for your future i don't want you to continually relive your past so we're going to give you a couple opportunities to pray for each other two things who do you need to write a processing letter for a processing letter is where there's somebody that you need to forgive and you sit down and you make a record of their sin but you don't keep it the bible says that love doesn't keep a record of sin god made a record of sin he nailed it to the cross of jesus he didn't keep a record of sin when we forgive someone we're doing our accounting and a processing letter is not something that you post on the internet that's bitterness right that's better anybody's like i posted my forgiveness on the internet oh satan helped that was not good you don't send your processing letter to anyone you don't post it you tear it up and bury it because jesus died for it you set it on fire because that stuff is the culture of hell who do you need to literally just have the funeral for in your heart what do you need to forgive you need to recount an account you know what you said this you did this here's what happened here's how i feel a processing letter can be very raw some of the psalms read like a processing letter and it's just between you and the lord not them and then because some of you men you've not had closure you don't it's like i want to do something i haven't been able to close the loop the processing letter is how you close the loop with the lord silent solitude prayer fasting get away with jesus make a record don't keep a record have the heart funeral and then be done with it and then number two how can we pray for you and if you're new our guys like to pray okay this is our last week of real men and i'll say this our goal for you is to take what we're doing here and take it to your house sit at the dining room table with your wife and if god blesses you with kids or grandkids open the bible have a discussion pray for each other lay hands and pray over them the whole goal of what we're doing here is to model for you to do something at your dining room table that then would be a pattern for generations amen thank you for the honor of teaching i love you with all my heart this is one of my highlights every week my heart is for you my heart is for your healing my heart is for your marriage my heart is for your family my heart is for your legacy it is a tremendous honor that i get to teach every week and i just want to say thank you for the great honor you give me to lead you as men i'm proud of you i honor you i thank god for you and i love you with all my heart so thank you for letting me teach this semester let me pray for you father god thank you for the men that are joining us live and online and god this message of forgiveness it's crucial god because we can't even be a christian and have you as our father in eternal life unless we confess our sins and are forgiven by the lord jesus but we can't be healthy unless we forgive others and god some men are saved but they're not healthy they're forgiven by you but they're not forgiving of others i pray against the enemy of servants their works and the facts i pray against the condemnation i pray against the accusation i pray against the torment and the haunting god who do they need to forgive what do they need to forgive holy spirit would you please give these men a name a picture an experience an issue if it is something that they need to release so that they can be released holy spirit we invite your presence to flow in us and through us with the culture of forgiveness and the culture of the kingdom and the heart of jesus and uh and god i just thank you for the revelation even teaching tonight that that the guy who's saying this was a bitter murderer but he got grace and he preaches grace may we be men who receive grace and give grace in jesus good name amen you

Channel: Real Faith by Mark Driscoll

Views: 3,955

Rating: 4.878788 out of 5

Keywords: Mark, Driscoll, ministry, thetrinitychurch, scottsdale, arizona, bible, teaching, gospel, theology, jesus, biblestudy, faith, bibleverse, hope, hug, help, love, christianity, christian

Id: UypYTjT5uq4

Length: 55min 24sec (3324 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021