Concluding Counsels: When We are Offended or Offender

Introduction: The Challenge and Encouragement of Forgiveness

0:03 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday evening, August 17th, 2003, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Well, those of us who were gathered here this morning will know that we come tonight in the ministry of the Word to the final message in a series of 14 sermons that I've preached on the theme now concerning forgiveness. And for me, personally, it has been a most challenging series, issues that I have been wrestling with in some areas literally for years in trying to sort out my own conscience and my own actions in the life of Scripture,

0:49 years in terms of helping the people of God in pastoral endeavors to sort out various aspects of the biblical doctrine of forgiveness, especially mutual. But it has not only been challenging to me as a preacher, but it's been very encouraging. I think I have received more explicit, immediate, verbal encouragements from you, the Lord's people, in this series than in perhaps any series that I can remember for a long time, if at all. Now, I'm wise enough and experienced enough to know that it is not always the things that seem to meet immediate need that are meeting.

1:32 At the same time, as the Apostle Paul could say of the Thessalonians, now we live if you, the people of God, stand fast in the Lord. It is always the source of great reward and rejoicing when the servant of God has reason to believe that what he is preaching is helping the people of God. For this is what he lives and prays and labors to accomplish. Well, as we came to message number 13, this morning, I began with an extensive overview of the series and then moved into what I called my final words of counsel,

Review of Previous Counsels: Offender and Offended

2:13 practical counsel concerning the matter of forgiveness, having dealt three weeks ago with counsels to those of us who are in the position of being the offender. That is, what are we to do when we are the one who has sinned against a brotherhood, brother or sister? And I began this morning to give three counsels to those of us when we are in the position of being not the offender, but the offended. That is, what do we do when we are sinned against?

2:51 And according to the Scriptures, you and I, until we are glorified, either in two stages or one, two stages if we die and join the spirits of justment, men made perfect. One stage, if we're alive at the coming of the Lord Jesus, we will constantly find ourselves in the role of both offenders and offended. This is assumed in the Lord's prayer. It is assumed in apostolic directives to the churches.

3:24 And therefore, we ought to be clear in our understanding as to what God both requires of us and what He is committed to do for us when we are the offended, and what we are to know and to do when we are the offended. And so this morning, as I sought to give these final counsels to the people of God when they are the offended, I gave this one word of counsel, and it was this. Tolerate nothing less in yourself than the God-like disposition of forgiveness

4:05 filling your heart by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is never a time in any situation, no matter how grievously we have been offended, when we have the luxury of tolerating for one moment in our hearts anything less than the God-like disposition of forgiveness. The God-like disposition of forgiveness filling our hearts by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Long before it may be right for us to confer forgiveness,

Counsel 2: Pray for Courage to Obey Matthew 18:15 and Luke 17:3

4:42 the disposition of forgiveness must be present in our hearts by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Now tonight, I want to give the final two words of counsel to us when we are the offended. In addition to that first word of counsel that we tolerate nothing less in our hearts than the disposition of forgiveness, counsel number two is this. We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18, 15 and Luke 17 and verse 3.

5:25 We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18, 15 and Luke 17 and verse 3.

5:26 We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18, 15 and Luke 17 and verse 3. We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18, 15 and Luke 17 and verse 3. We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18, 15 and Luke 17 and verse 3. We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18, 15 and Luke 17 and verse 3.

5:27 We must pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18.15 and Luke 17.3. I read them again in your hearing as we have done several times in the course of this series.

Understanding and Applying Matthew 18:15 and Luke 17:3

5:47 Matthew 18.15 If your brother sinned against you, you are now the offended. Your brother has sinned against you. You have not spun a sin out of the stuff of your own hypersensitive psyche.

6:05 You know what a hypersensitive psyche is? It's an unloving psyche. It makes sins out of stuff that are no sins. That's what hypersensitivity is.

6:16 It is an unloving, demonic ability to make sins out of no sins. But if your brother sins against you, that is, he violates the law of God, he breaks that second command, there has been some manifestation that he has not loved you as himself, and in so doing he has violated the law of God in such a way that the judgment of the ordinary discerning believer will be carried that indeed he has sinned against you. Because if he does not hear you, you are to take one or two more that at the mouth of two witnesses or three, every word may be established. That is, every word charging this brother,

7:00 laying before this brother the nature of his sin. And surely you cannot do that before two thinking, discerning Christians, if the sin is that, well, so-and-so really is ignoring me because he has a grudge against me. And how do you know it? Well, last Sunday he walked down the aisle and just as he got to me, he looked away.

7:24 Oh, he did. And that was the sin? Oh, yes. And you go to the brother and come to find out what happened is, walking down the aisle, he suddenly remembered that he promised his wife that he'd go get the kids out of the nursery.

7:39 And he had forgotten. And in that moment of remembrance, he turned away to fulfill a promise to his wife. He didn't sin against you. You spun a sin out of the stuff of your stinking self-centeredness and hypersensitivity.

7:53 And it's a wicked, rotten, foul, disease. In a self-centered, me-ism age. Now, we're talking about when the brother has sinned against you. If your brother sinned against you, now then, what is the clear command?

8:11 If your brother sinned against you, go tell a trusted friend about it. No. Say nothing. And stew in your own foul, self-pitying sin.

8:28 No. Go show him his fault. Go show him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, as we saw in our careful study of that passage, that means if you are able to get into his conscience and persuade him that he has indeed sinned against you, he owns that sin, seeks your forgiveness for that sin.

8:53 He is willing to forgive you. He is willing to forgive you. He is willing to forgive you. He is willing to forgive.

8:59 He is willing to forgive you. sin you confer forgiveness upon him what has happened you have gained your brother that sin that would have caused a breach to some degree causing you to lose your brother that is lose the open-faced unimpeded spirit suffused relationship of love you have gained him back and how did it happen you did what jesus said convinced that your brother sinned against you his own conscience is either not troubled him so that he has come to you he has come to the altar

9:38 perhaps for several lord's days offered his gift his conscience is not smitten him concerning the thing that you believe was a real offense he may not be willfully overlooking it or deliberately submissive merging it in silence it just may be a blind spot it has been real sin but a blind spot and you go and you help him to see his sin and because he's hungering and thirsting to be like christ and because he does not want to grieve the spirit and because he has the disposition that we spoke about in the previous messages that he counts the smiting of a brother to be oil upon his head he's grateful that you've come you've shown him his offense and it's his his

10:22 joy, amidst his sense of grief and sorrow to say, my brother, the last thing I'd want to do is to offend and cause you grief. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? And you then freely, joyfully extend that forgiveness and the relationship is restored. The clear command is there. Likewise, in Luke 17 and verse 3, Luke 17 and verse 3, take heed to

10:53 yourselves. If your brother sin, now again, it's real sin, not phantom sin. And I hope you will remember that distinction. It's crucial. It's real sin. If your brother sin or sin

11:09 against you, it's obvious that that's the implication because later on in the book, later on in verse 4, if your brother sin against you seven times in the day, so it's assumed that the sin is not generic. It is specific, interpersonal. If your brother sin, that is against you, rebuke him. Seek to bring his conscience to own the reality of his sin. Feel

11:35 the weight of the guilt of his sin with a view to seeing him do what? If he repent, forgive him. If he expresses, he owns the sin, expresses grief and sorrow for the sin, seeks forgiveness, you are under a solemn responsibility to forgive him. Now, these two verses, if there were no others, make it abundantly clear that when someone sins against us and the offense is such that either we cannot or should not cover it with the blanket of love. First Peter 4 and verse

12:13 8, have fervent love among yourselves. Love shall cover a multitude of sins, hamartia, sins, moral offenses. There are some moral offenses that can be covered with a blanket of love. Some cannot and ought not to be and where that is true, our responsibility is clear. If your brother sin against you, go.

12:36 If your brother sin, rebuke him. If he repent, forgive him. Now, granted, we must not go, without a disposition of forgiveness, filling our hearts as we saw this morning. Granted, we must go prayerfully seeking to frame a gracious and a winsome way of telling the brother or sister of his or her fault or rebuking him for that sin. But my brothers and sisters,

The Necessity of Obedience: Avoiding Spiritual Septicemia

13:07 go, we must. Few commandments are more uncomplicated and clear in Holy Scripture than are these. If your brother sin against you, go, tell him his fault between you and him alone. If your brother sin, rebuke him. If he repent, forgive him. And I remind you of the words of Jesus, he who has my

13:34 commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me. He that loves me not keeps not my word or the words of John in 1 John chapter 2. Hereby do we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that says, oh, I know him and keeps not his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. And in the Great Commission,

13:59 Jesus said, make disciples, baptizing them into the name of the triune God, teaching them to what? To observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. I am under solemn obligation. As a servant of Christ, in the train of that apostolic commission, to teach you, God's people, to observe this clear command. It is not a nice suggestion. It is not an optional but desirable

14:35 directive. It is King Jesus among his subjects saying to you and to me, when we are the offended, the one sinned against, if your brother sinned against you, go tell him his fault. If your brother sinned, rebuke him. Now, if you don't, the unresolved issue will fester like a puff sack in the soul that will produce a kind of spiritual septicemia. You know what septicemia is? When the

15:14 stuff in the puff sacks gets in the bloodstream. And you become systemically sick. The whole system is poisoned from the toxins going out from that puff sack. And if you go to the doctor and he discovers that you've got such a puff sack that's producing septicemia, you know what he has to do? He has to lance your puff sack. He's got to scrape

15:44 out the bad stuff, irrigate it with antibiotics, and then suture it. And he can pick you up and send you home. Without it, it could kill you. And what is true of the body with puff sacks that produce physical septicemia is true of the soul.

16:03 When you are conscious your brother, your sister has sinned against you, and it is not an issue that you can or should cover with a blanket of love, and you are conscious that there is now an ought against, and you don't go and you don't go. deal with it biblically, you've got a puss sack in your soul.

16:30 And that puss sack will poison the whole inner life of the child of God. No, the going and the telling or the rebuking is putting the scalpel to the puss sack. The owning of the sin, the seeking and the conferral of forgiveness, gospel forgiveness, is scraping out the gunk. The verbal affirmation of repentance and forgiveness and commitment to Christian love, that's the irrigating with the antibiotics.

17:07 And the commitment to reestablish the fractured relationship is the suturing of the wound. And there's no other way to get rid of the puss sacks of these interpersonal grievances but to do what Jesus said we're to do.

17:29 He's so concerned about it, I remind you when we gave that directive to those who are the offenders, that when conscience is awakened in some more intimate spiritual intercourse with God, if you come to bring your gift to the altar and there remember, in dealing with God, conscience is awakened and the light of God's presence illuminates dark caverns of the soul. Leave your gift before the altar. Go, be reconciled to your brother. Then come and offer your gift.

18:03 Why? It is only a healthy soul with the puss sacks of interpersonal tensions created by sin, resolved by gospel dynamics. Only such a soul can profit from the worship of the living God. And so, we must pray for what?

Why Obedience to These Commands is Difficult

18:24 For moral courage and spiritual dignity. Grace to obey that clear command. But some of you may say, well, Pastor, why is it so difficult? If I were to do a little survey and say, how many of you find this easy?

18:39 Raise your hands. I'm quite confident if I were a betting man and you were honest, I could make a little money. I'd lay ten to one odds not a hand will be raised if I asked how many of you find this easy. Why is it so difficult when what we should do is so clear?

18:58 I mean, some things are difficult because the way is not clear, right? You say, if only God would give me light on what to do in this or do in that, I think I'd be able to do it with alacrity and joy. But we're not sure. And so we have to cry to God that He would make His way plain before us.

19:14 But this is plain as the nose on my face. As plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante's face.

19:24 If your brother sinned against you, go! Tell him his fault between you and him alone. You don't need to know a word of Greek to know what to do. You don't need to know what that's saying.

19:34 If your brother sinned, rebuke him. If he repented, forgive him. You don't need to know a word of Greek to know what that means. Why is it so difficult?

19:44 Well, let me tell you why. Reason number one, because of what Paul calls in Romans 7.21 the horrible, ugly reality of indwelling sin. Remember what Paul said in Romans 7.21?

19:58 I find then the law that to me who would do good, evil is present with me. My will, renewed by the Holy Spirit, is set upon doing the good. That's the testimony of every true child of God. I delight after the law of God in my inward part.

20:21 But Paul says, I find then at the point of seeking to do good, when my renewed will under the impulse of the Holy Spirit would move in the direction of the will of God as revealed in Scripture, when I would do good, evil is present. And as John Owen so perceptively described it, never, never is indwelling sin more active than at the point when we would do the thing that is most good. I've illustrated it this way. How many of you, coming home from a busy day, mind exhausted, body exhausted, and you say, in spite of all of that, I didn't have time to read my Bible this morning.

21:06 I'm going to read my Bible this morning. I'm going to read my Bible this morning. I'm going to read my Bible this morning. I'm going to read my Bible for 15 minutes before supper and find all kinds of indisposition coming over.

21:13 Oh, well, it's a shame. It's dishonoring the Lord to read the Bible with a tired mind and all that. But if you say to yourself, well, I'm going to just look at the sports page for 15 minutes, suddenly you're all alive and all alert. Who got so many RBIs and who's hitting?

21:28 Why? Indwelling sin is not activated when you're going to read the sports page, but when you're going to read the Word of God that is going to be read, but when you're going to bring spiritual dynamics to bear upon the withering and shrinking of the power of that sin, it cries out, spare me, spare me.

21:48 Now, few things are more good in keeping a healthy soul, in keeping a healthy congregation, in keeping a healthy marriage, a healthy family, than dealing biblically with the issue, what do I do when I am the offender? I'm the offended. What do I do when I'm the offended? The Word of God is clear.

22:14 To do good means I go and I tell my brother. My brother may be my wife, my husband, my child, my pastor, a dear friend. It matters not if your brother, anyone within the household of God, sin against you, go tell him his fault. Why is it so hard?

22:36 Indwelling sin becomes viciously active in any attempt to do that which is good for our souls. One man of God has described it this way. As Christians, we all have an anti-God energy yet remaining and active in our souls. We have an anti-God energy.

23:02 That's indwelling sin. It is not latent. It is active and powerful and never more active. Then when we are concentrating upon doing some specific good.

23:15 Second reason why it's so difficult and we're so reluctant is there's a real devil. And it's interesting that it's in this very context of dealing with interpersonal tensions that the apostle gives this warning in Ephesians chapter 4, neither give place to the devil. Putting away truth. Speak truth every man with his neighbor for we are members one of another.

23:39 Be angry and do not sin. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil.

23:51 Here's an interpersonal tension that's creating anger and wrath. One of the ways to resolve it may be Matthew 18, Luke 17. And if we don't, what happens? We give place to the devil.

24:04 The devil, the opposer. The one who delights when people have fractured relationships because they're not happy. That's the fruit of the intrusion of sin into the human race. There's a third reason why we're so reluctant to do it.

24:19 It's the consciousness of our own sins. We are so often the offender. We say, who am I to go to someone else and point the finger at them as the offender? And it's the sense of our own failures that causes us to say, I can't go.

24:37 I mean, if this brother or sister to whom I'm going were to come to me every... How can I go?

24:43 It doesn't say, if your brother sinned against you, and you have been a sterling example of the most consistent Christian for six months, go. It gives no qualifications, folks. No parentheses. None whatsoever.

24:58 If your brother sinned, go.

25:01 Indwelling sin says no. There is that anti-God energy in the soul. The devil would deceive us and bring us thousands of specious reasons as to why we shouldn't go. The consciousness of our own sins.

25:17 Fourthly, the fear of being rebuffed.

25:22 The fear of being rebuffed. Remember what Solomon said, the fear of man brings a snare. And so often when our feet would begin to move in obedience to Matthew 18 or Luke 17, the moment we start, the fear of man lassoes our feet and we don't go.

25:42 Cat gets our tongue.

25:45 We don't speak. The fear of man brings a snare. We're afraid of being rebuffed. And nobody, unless he is sick, psychologically likes to be rebuffed.

25:58 And because we've not cultivated what we addressed in the previous thing, the counsels to the offenders, we've not made it plain that we are open and willing to be shown our sins. We don't make it easy for people to come and we know here's a brother, here's a sister that has not earned a reputation of being easy to be entreated, welcoming the pointing out, it is sin. Nonetheless, we've still got to go. If your brother's sinned against you and doesn't pay parenthesis and he or she has the reputation of being very gracious in receiving those who point out his sin, go.

26:32 It doesn't give the qualifications. Now you and I ought to be such people, but alas, we aren't always that. It doesn't exempt us, folks. If your brother's sin, go.

26:47 No qualification, no parenthetical exceptions. The fear of man brings a snare. It brings the snare and there's only one cure for the fear of man. That's the fear of God.

The Benefits of Confrontation and the Display of the Gospel

26:58 The fear of God. Now you see, sometimes the offender is ignorant of his offense. And the best thing you can do is to go and tell him. And here I'm going to get personal because I do have to live with me.

27:13 And I won't name names, but there was a situation a few years ago where a brother was very honest with me and said, you're doing something that offends me. I said, brother, please tell me. I don't have a clue what I'm doing. The last thing I would do is knowingly offend you.

27:29 And if I did offend you, the first thing I'd do is ask your forgiveness. He said, well, you know, when service is over and you go up and down the aisles and greet people,

27:41 he said, I'm offended when you interrupt my conversation with someone else. It gives me the impression that what you have to say is more important than what I'm saying. I said, my brother, God is witness. My only motive in doing that is when people don't come through my door and greet me, I'm a shepherd.

27:58 I'm a pastor. And I want them to know that they're important to me, important enough for me to make my way down the aisle, through the pews, all around the place to let them know I'm delighted to see them. My only motive was to express my love, but it was ill-expressed as far as you're concerned. You found it offensive.

28:16 I'll never do it again with you. I ask you to forgive me. You say, that's ludicrous. No, it isn't ludicrous.

28:23 I was doing something that was an offense to him and I was not aware of it. He was my friend. By helping, he was helping me to see it was offensive. Some of you sitting here have come to me after I've preached and said, Pastor, something you said in the sermon I found very offensive.

28:42 I don't think there's one of you that would say, you found me bristle and say, who in the world are you, little peon? I'm the preacher. I've been preaching for 50...

28:48 No. I've said, help me. Where did I offend? And either I've tried to help you to see that perhaps you shouldn't have taken offense or more cases than not, I've said, thank you.

28:59 By the grace of God, I won't do that. Again, there are many witnesses in this place that before a service was over, my conscience has smitten me that I've said something that probably was unnecessarily offensive in the sermon and before you were dismissed, I owned my sin and asked your forgiveness. But you see, often we don't know. And if we go, we're helping a brother or sister that wants with all his heart to walk in holiness and integrity before God and before man.

29:31 So, dear, dear brothers and sisters, I urge you, let us plead with God that we may be given the moral courage. That's what we need. And spiritual grace. What is moral courage?

29:50 Well, I mean by that simply this.

29:54 The courage to do what is right no matter what we feel. The moral courage.

30:03 This is what ought to be done. It is right that it should be done and consequences be what they may in dependence upon God's help and spirit. I'm going to do it.

30:19 And look upon every such situation in faith that it will be a theater to display the gospel at work. Because see, that's what happens when we go to one another as offender and offended, offended and offender. And we own our sin. And we ask forgiveness.

30:38 And we extend forgiveness. What are we doing? We are giving a demonstration of the gospel. The gospel of sin and grace and forgiveness.

30:48 And we're seeing the gospel percolate through our human relationships. That's what the church is all about. It's not a company of perfect people. It's a company of people radically changed, but not perfectly changed.

31:02 Who as they wait the full consummation of grace in the coming of the Lord Jesus, the gospel is what makes them tick and makes them relate and keeps them bound together in spite of the fact that they are all still offenders and offended because this gospel is for offenders and an offended God. That gets you excited? That gets me excited. That keeps me from disillusionment and despair.

31:35 And when you've got a tacky situation and you're in a situation and you're in a situation and you're in a situation and you're in a situation you say, oh my, I'm too old to get into these bees' nests and hornets' nests and piles of spaghetti of tangled relationships. I say, no, Lord, only the gospel can sort that mess out. Then to see the gospel do it. It just makes you all the more confident in the gospel.

31:57 You say, hey, I'd like to do this for a little while longer before I go to heaven. See the gospel working in these things that cause people in the world to spend years with unresolved grudges. I've read some horror stories in some of the books I've read in preparation for this series. One husband and wife 40 years didn't talk to one another.

32:17 It all started over a bar of soap.

32:21 True story. You say, ludicrous. Some of you have got things right now if you don't deal with them they could grow into that kind of a ludicrous situation.

Counsel 3: Pray for Integrity to Keep the Four-Fold Promise of Forgiveness

32:32 My second word of counsel to you God's people as I give it to myself. When we are the offended pray for the moral courage and spiritual grace to obey the clear commands of Matthew 18 and Luke 17. And then thirdly and finally not only are we to tolerate nothing less than a disposition of forgiveness have moral courage to obey these two passages but thirdly pray for the moral integrity and spiritual grace to keep the four-fold promise and commitment of forgiveness. Pray for the moral integrity and spiritual grace

33:17 to keep the four-fold promise and commitment of biblical forgiveness. Think with me. You're the offended you've been sinned against. You have gone to the one who sinned against you with a heart pregnant with the disposition of forgiveness.

33:39 Prayerfully seeking God's wisdom to point out his or her sin in a gracious, loving, tactful, accurate, biblical way.

33:52 You've gained the consent of their conscience that they indeed sinned against you. They've sensed you've come not to beat them because they sinned. You want to win them. Your whole spirit in dealing with them says I want to win you.

34:05 I want to win you. I want to win you my brother, my sister. And so they say to you John, Mary, Pete, Sally I see my sin. Even now as I speak to you my heart is in pain.

34:17 My heart is lifted up to God for his forgiveness. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? You say to him or to her I am a forgiven sinner and for Christ's sake and because of his grace to me I cheerfully, freely, unreservedly forgive you for this, for that, and for the other for which you sought forgiveness. Now, when you say those words I forgive you what are you doing?

34:48 What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you saying well, I'm just going to forget the issue until it comes up again? Or I'm willing to just let bygones be?

35:00 What are you doing when you say biblically I forgive you? Well, as we saw in a previous study when you freely, graciously, unreservedly extend forgiveness that is you do what Ephesians 4.32 says forgiving one another even as even as God in Christ forgave you you are making a promise and a commitment that has four prongs to it. Number one you are making a commitment and promise I will not deliberately bring the forgiven offense to mind or willfully allow it

35:45 to remain in my thoughts should it come to mind against my will. That's the commitment and the promise you're making. When God forgives what does He do? He wills not to remember our sin.

35:57 Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. I have blotted out as a thick cloud your sins. I have cast them behind my back. I have buried them in the depths of the sea.

36:19 Forgiveness is a promise and a commitment on our part not to deliberately bring the forgiven offense to mind or willfully to allow it to remain in our thoughts should it come to mind. For you computer geeks I want to throw out a little teaser to you. When we dealt with this originally I said when it comes to mind in spite of ourselves by the law of association certain things will happen and boom we remember the thing that was the offense for which the person has sought forgiveness for which we extend it. Forgiveness we have a delete key in the soul and we've got to push it if we need to push it a hundred times a day.

37:02 But we've also got a part in the computer of the soul where we refuse to type in the key word and do a search for it.

37:12 You see you can sit down and say I want to remember that offense of my wife against me. You can do a search for it bring it to remembrance relive it. No, no. Forgiveness says I will never do a word search.

37:25 I'll never do a search for it. It's done. It's buried. It's out of sight.

37:30 The internal computer with that issue has crashed. Never, never to get back online.

37:38 And should against my will it be brought to my mind I push the delete key. That is forgiveness. Now I'm saying my word of counsel to us when we are the offended and someone has sought our forgiveness we must have the moral integrity and spiritual dignity and grace to keep that commitment and promise that we will not deliberately bring the forgiven offense to mind or willfully allow it to remain in our thoughts. Second aspect of forgiveness I will not raise the forgiven offense with the offender ever

38:21 unless the mutual commitment to edification demands it. That's a little a less that I added since we dealt with this some weeks ago. In other words if I have determined by the grace of God to forgive as I am forgiven God never drags my sins up in front of me to zap me with them again. He may remind me of my sins to help me in my progress in grace.

38:54 God even says through the prophet Ezekiel that you shall remember your sins and be ashamed and never open your mouth when I have forgiven you all your iniquities. There is a remembrance that is productive of sanctification. It may be that there's an offense that I've committed against my wife and she has extended forgiveness but it's in the interest of my sanctification to talk with her about that offense that I may learn how better to avoid it in the future. That's entirely different from my wife saying there you go again that's what you did last week.

39:32 That's what I'm talking about. Forgiveness doesn't do it. There's no you're going about it again. You always fill in the blanks.

39:40 Some of you live with a you always husband or wife. That's a wretched existence.

39:46 What you're doing is you're saying I'm not truly forgiven. When the issue is forgiven I am making a commitment and a promise not to raise the forgiven offense with the offender. Thirdly I will not raise the forgiveness of the forgiven offense with others.

40:05 It's dealt with. It's nobody else's business unless others were aware of it and to testify of the grace of God that it has come to gospel resolution.

40:17 But I never raise it with a negative desire in my mind or in my heart. And fourthly I will not allow the forgiven offense to remain a barrier to a restored relationship with the one I have forgiven. I will not allow the forgiven offense to remain as a barrier. The reason I went and told my brother his sin was that I might gain him that the barrier removed relationship might be restored.

40:50 Broken trust as we saw may take a long time to be restored. But face to face communion in the context of forgiveness sought and extended puts us in the context of restored human relationship. Therefore when we look at that person we do not see the forgiven offense there as a veil through which we must look. No we will not to remember it.

41:20 It is dealt with. It is put behind us. And I say as a word of counsel my brothers and sisters since you and I will be not only the offenders but the offended until we go to heaven pray pray for the moral integrity and sincerity and sincerity and spiritual grace to keep that four-fold promise and commitment of biblical forgiveness.

Maintaining Forgiveness Amidst Feelings and the Luxury of Transparency with God

41:48 What is moral integrity? That's the uprightness expressed in determination to do what is right no matter how I feel. There may be times when everything in your feelings are experiencing or you are experiencing in your feelings the aftershock of the fracture of the relationship between you and God caused by the sin of another. And though they've owned the sin and sought forgiveness those aftershocks will reverberate in the soul.

42:19 And it's in times like that if you are at the mercy of your feelings you're going to go back on the commitments and promises of forgiveness inevitably. It's in those times when you've got to know what it is to take your feelings and smash your heel into them.

42:38 My soul feels the aftershock of the betrayal of the disappointment of the horrific sin committed against me. What do I do? I have made a promise and commitment to forgive. I will not be whipped around by my feelings.

42:58 Oh God, give me grace and moral strength and integrity to maintain the posture of a forgiving sinner to my forgiven fellow sinner. And it's in times like these that promises such as Hebrews 4.16 become especially precious. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

43:35 Have you, child of God, at least begun to learn the luxury of dealing with God in such a way that you're really comfortable with the fact that He knows all about you? You know, it's a queasy kind of unsettling thing when you get around someone that seems to be able to read you. You say, wait a minute, I feel naked. How come you know so much about me?

43:59 There's something about being totally known that's spooky to us. And I fear there are many Christians that have never gotten comfortable with the fact, God, you know everything about me. You set your love upon me in Christ before the foundation of the world. You sent your Son to die for me.

44:19 You raised Him from the dead. You sent your Spirit who in time opened my eyes, drew me to Christ, gave me a new heart, enabled me to repent and believe the Gospel, united me to your Son. You've given me a new life in Him. And Lord, you did all of that knowing me through and through.

44:38 And you get comfortable with the fact that God knows all that funky, crazy, rotten stuff that goes on. And you just tell God. You lift up. You say, Lord, right now, I feel like retracting every single promise and commitment of forgiveness.

44:52 I feel like being nasty. I feel like bringing back that sin to that wife, that husband, that son, that daughter, that work associate. Lord, you know me, Lord. You know I feel as mean as the devil right now.

45:05 But I've got no luxury to follow my feelings. Lord Jesus, give me of your Spirit. Lord Jesus, give me timely help. I need help, Lord.

45:18 I'm committed to stand by the commitments of forgiveness. But, oh, Lord, I've got no strength. Give me that strength. You know what happens?

45:28 You come to the throne of grace and you obtain. You obtain. You don't go there just to get something dumped out in the ears of God that we may obtain. Get something.

45:39 And what do we get? We get grace to help in time of need. Try it. You'll like it.

45:48 Begin to live that way. Begin to live that way. Oh, I can't tell God that. That'll, that'll offend God.

45:56 You don't think He knows it already?

45:59 He knows that plus a lot more you don't know. For He has searched us and known us. Knows our thoughts from afar before they register in your head. He knows them.

46:08 And He knows them deeper. And all of the, all of the various windings of them, what produced them, why we, all of that, He knows it. Learn the luxury of living comfortably before the eye of an all-knowing, all-loving God who deals with you through me, the mediator, even the Lord Jesus, who is at His right hand, a high priest, touched with the feeling of our infirmities. I hope as you read the Gospels you see how utterly frank Jesus was in His dealings with the Father.

46:44 Father, now is my soul troubled. What shall I say, Father? Save me from this hour? Something in me, Father, wants to say, save me.

46:54 But no, no, no, no, Father.

46:57 To this end was I brought forth. Father, I glorify Your name. You see the frankness and the honesty of our blessed Lord. Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

47:12 Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done. He prays again, Oh, Father, if the cup cannot pass except I drink it, Your will be done. He's comfortable with transparency with His Holy Father. He calls upon us to know something of that.

47:33 That's a purchased blessing for us as the people of God. And as we do, He will give us not only the moral courage to obey Matthew 18 and Luke 17, but He will give us the moral integrity and grace to keep that fourfold promise of forgiveness in all of our relationships to one another.

The Fruit of Practicing Forgiveness in the Church

48:00 These, then, are my concluding counsels and I hope two things will come out of them and then I'm done. Number one,

48:09 I hope as you reflect upon these counsels, pray them in, and the best way to remember them is practice them. There's nothing like practice to rivet the truth to the soul, to the understanding. Begin to practice it. I challenged you husbands and wives the other day to go home and ask one another, Am I, as the offender, am I evidently, passionately longing to be like Christ enough that I'm easy to approach about my sins or am I prickly, defensive, self-justifying?

48:46 I don't know how many of you did that. I hope at least one or two of you did. I did.

48:54 Did you?

48:59 If we begin to take these things seriously, practicing them, they become part of a way of life. And then, it's not such a big deal to say the words that right now, for some of you, stick in your throat, I have sinned. Will you forgive me? You've said the I'm sorry thing for so long, you feel awkward even saying the words I've sinned.

49:22 You've just been telling people for years how you feel rather than saying how you judge yourself and how you need the forgiveness of another. But you do it a dozen times and lo and behold, because the thing is then resolved, you say, Hey, this is wonderful. I could get hooked on this. I was snotty to my wife and I went to her and said, Honey, I was snotty.

49:43 That's sin. Can you forgive my snottiness? You've knocked the ball right at her feet, in her court. You're standing there waiting for her to hit it back over the net.

49:52 And she may not be used to doing this because all you've done is come in and mumble, I'm sorry, I wasn't very nice. And she walks away saying, Well, that's interesting. He wasn't very nice. I know that.

50:02 You don't need to tell me that. I hope he doesn't feel good about it. But when you say, Dear, I was snotty. That was sin.

50:09 Will you forgive me? She must now take the ball and say, Yes, I do forgive you. And then you have every right to say now, Sweetheart, are you telling me you're making a foreclosed commitment? You are willing not to remember this again so that I'm not going to hear the next time I'm snotty, Oh, you're always snotty?

50:29 Is that what you're doing, dear? Well, by God's grace, no good. Secondly, dear, are you telling me that you're never going to raise this issue with me again? I'll try.

50:40 Good. And are you telling me, dear, that you're not going to speak about this when you get together with the ladies and you grouse about your snotty husbands? You're going to...

50:47 Well, that'll be hard, but I hope not to. Not helping me. And dear, are you going to let our relationship be restored now and not go through a half a day of pouting and punishing me to do some kind of emotional penance? Are you ready to wrap me up in a real hug and plant a big one on me?

51:15 Come on, dear.

51:18 Plant a big one on me. Now I've used a little humor. But I think you see the strand of truth and seriousness behind my humor. Is that the way you...

51:27 Then you walk away and say, Hallelujah! The gospel something! The two sinners lived in raised the barrier! The gospel has smashed it!

51:42 Wiped it away! Restored relationships because of Christ and His gospel. I hope this becomes a way of life in your families.

51:54 I had one couple tell me this morning that this series has made a profound impact on their marriage. Man, that's enough to make me dance up in the aisle three times. If you weren't so reserved and thought I'd go crazy if I did it. But that doesn't mean I don't want to sometimes.

52:09 I never have, but it didn't go that I didn't want to. That's what you live for. To see God's truth take root in the hearts of God's people. I trust this will not just be interesting stuff.

52:20 It'll be the stuff of your homes, of your marriages, of our relationship to one another. I don't know a time in our 40 years when we have enjoyed a greater spirit of multi-level sustained love and unity in this place. Now we may have, but I don't know a time. May have been times when we've known as much, but I don't believe we've known as a greater measure.

52:45 And dear people, if this is the way we deal with one another according to these directives of the Word of God, that relationship is only going to deepen. And in a world where everybody's got a grudge against another and ill will against another, when people step among us and sense the clear air of human relationships sanctified by the gospel, by this, shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another. A love that turns the engines of the biblical directives to the offender and the offended. And they stay around us long enough and they know we're sinners.

53:24 But we don't allow the sin to fracture all the relationships like it does at the office, like it does in the neighborhood, like it does with relatives. And they say there's something different about those people. And when those of us who preach say the difference is the gospel, they don't sit there and scratch their head and say gospel's possible. What's it do?

53:44 These people are, you can feel the icicles when so-and-so passes so-and-so and you can see the looks and you can almost feel the heat of the glare. No, they come in a climate where the gospel is validated by the way you people live and relate to one another. That's what the church is all about. And that's what I hope will be the fruit of this series of sermons and the Lord will spare me long enough to see some of it.

Longing for Heaven: The Absence of Sin and Offense

54:09 Then I have a second desire. I hope considering the subject of forgiveness for 14 sermons will make you long for heaven. There's some things we're going to take to heaven with us. We've praised Him.

54:26 That's going to go on a much better way when we get to heaven. We've worshipped Him. We've delighted in one another. But there'll be no more owning of sin and extending forgiveness when we get to heaven.

54:40 Think of it. Human relationships augmented to the most unimaginable intimate level. I don't know what that's going to be, but it's going to be glorious. And in that most augmented, unimaginable level of interpersonal intimacy, never once will there be an against.

55:02 Never once. Not once. Forever and forever and forever and forever. And we can talk till our hearts content and never have our conscience smite us that we spoke in a hurtful or an offensive word.

55:20 We can look at one another and never read into our looks anything negative. You want to do a little fruitful meditation. You lie in your bed tonight. Think of what it'd be like.

55:29 Totally sinless, fully confirmed in righteousness, fellow human beings glorified forever in deep intimacy and never once a twinge of feeling an offense.

55:43 Isn't that going to be glorious?

55:46 Mucking around in some of this stuff for me makes me long for heaven. And I hope it makes you long for heaven. And it makes me ask the question of everyone sitting here. Is this the heaven you want?

56:02 Where sin is forever dealt with? Forever purged from every facet, every cell of your being? Physically, spiritually, mind, body, and soul?

56:15 And if your heart doesn't leap within you saying, oh God, that's the heaven I want. You're a lost man or woman.

56:24 And you'll have nothing but the outer darkness and the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Hatred between one sinner and another raised to its apex of intensity to go on forever and forever and forever and forever. Just the opposite of the glorious, the restoration of human relationships by grace in heaven. There will be the total absence of every last vestige of even any common grace that makes human relationships in a sinful world tolerable.

56:57 And you'll be given over and shut up to all the horrific expressions of hatred and ill will and jealousy and venomous bitter. Oh, my unconverted friend. God help you if that's what you want. What madness would make you want to die?

57:16 What madness would make you want to die? I don't want that. If something in you says, no, no, no, no. Whatever else I want, I don't want that.

57:22 Give yourself no rest till you know this Christ of whom we've spoken tonight, in whom there is forgiveness, in whom there is a renewal of the nature, a changing of all that disposition that drives you to selfishness and bitterness and suspicion and ill will. Go to Christ. He welcomes sinners. Go to Him as you are as we suffer.

57:47 Come tonight. Let not conscience make you linger nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness He requires is to feel your need of Him. Go to Him.

Prayer for Application and God's Presence

57:59 Go to Him tonight. Go to Him in this place. Let's pray.

58:11 Our Father, there are times when as we think and speak of what awaits us, we feel as though the fingers of our souls are just touching the edges of Your way. And everything in us cries out, O come, Lord Jesus.

58:32 Come and purge this poor sick world of all of its hatred and bitterness and animosity and ill will and jealousy, vindictiveness. Bring in the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwells righteousness and only righteousness. We pray that while we are yet here, You will help us to live the life of the age to come. That our lives individually and our families in our church, in our places of business and work and neighborhoods, O God, may our lives bear witness that the age to come has broken in upon us and we are living the life of heaven now.

59:16 Though not completely, yet really and powerfully. For You have said the kingdom of heaven is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy. In the Holy Ghost. So we call upon You to seal to our hearts these things upon which we've meditated tonight and in these past weeks.

59:37 And Lord, we would be bold to pray that we will be able to discern and see in our midst, in our families, in our marriages, in all our relationships, the fruit of our time together in Your Word. We pray that You will show us afresh that no word from You is void of power, that Your Word will not return to You void, but will prosper in that whereunto You send it. Hear our cry. Receive our thanks for Your presence with us this day.

60:08 Lord, how good it has been to be in Your presence, to be with one another, to sing Your praises, to enter into each other's joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats. Continue to sanctify our remaining fellowship with each other. Take us into the new week, filled with fresh confidence in Your grace, fresh determination to be light and salt to the needy world around us. Hear our prayers together.

60:38 We plead for such mercies in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.