Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
"You Are Forgiven"
King David has gotten himself into a heap of trouble… After carefully
following his God from shepherd boyhood…. to head of state and
spiritual song/Psalm writer… He sees a naked woman bathing in the
house down over the hill….lures her (a married woman) to his home and
into his bedroom. He commits adultery with her…. then in-effect
murders her husband by sending him onto the front lines of war and
removing all his backup …
You all know that story…it's not surprising…but I want to show you a
follow-up conversation between David and God that really should be
surprising.
Psalm 86: 1 Bend down, O Lord, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I
need your help….. Save me, for I serve you and trust you. You are my
God. 3 Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am calling on you
constantly…. 5 O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full
of unfailing love for all who ask foryour help. (NLT)
Most of us, in this room, will read David's statements and say, Amen!
That's true! When we sin God is so ready to forgive.. he is full of
unfailing love… ... but why is that true? Why should God forgive us
just because we ask him to?
Worse yet…when we sin over and over… What makes us think that we can
keep coming back to God for forgiveness and he will hand out
forgiveness like a grandpa giving candy to his grandchildren?
God does freely forgive, by the way, but why???
We began to trace a trail of the word forgiveness, in the Bible, here
on Wednesday evening, and I was startled by some of what we found. We
don't read of God's forgiveness, in the Bible until we get to Moses
and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai.
Then… forgiveness was promised only after the blood of a sacrificed
animal purchased it.. and the word used simply means "to cover up"
sin… not erase it.
Psalm 32:1 Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose
sins are covered. (put out of sight) 2 Blessed is the man whose sin
the LORD does not count against him…. (NIV)
David is really getting a Divine revelation here when he says:
5 O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing
love for all who ask for your help. (NLT)
Do you realize how strange the entire concept of forgiveness is?
Where else, in the world around you, do you find the idea of
forgiveness demonstrated?
Not in natural nature? You walk out into a thunderstorm you are going
to get wet and maybe struck by lightning. Even if you're a Christian
there isn't a little umbrella of sun over your head…
When was the last time you saw two dogs scrapping it out in your
yard, and suddenly one pauses… and barks…"I forgive you"… and turns
and walks humbly away.
Is forgiveness a normal behavior in any corner of the world, as we
know it? No!
Forgiveness is abnormal behavior for sinful humans, apart from God!
Several here have lived through horrifying wars, even World
Wars…right now we are living through a "world terror war" where it is
considered virtuous, by some, to kill and mutilate as many of their
fellow human beings as possible for the sake of ….what?
Forgiveness is abnormal behavior for sinful humans, apart from God!
Jim McKeegan, and I, were in Africa traveling 13 hours north on
public transport. Our van clipped a van coming the other direction
shattering both driver's mirrors. Both vans stopped in the middle of
the road. Everybody in both vans piled out…and got into a "fist-
throwing brawl" right in the middle of the road.
Now, what did Fred, sitting in one van, have against George sitting
in the other van? Nothing! Fred had never met George. The two vans
were traveling in opposite directions coming from distant origins. So
why were they fighting?
Why weren't they out there pumping each other's hands, thankful that
they had made it through a harrowing experience together.
Forgiveness is abnormal behavior for sinful humans, apart from God!
Even the concept of a forgiving God…is abnormal to human beings. Of
all the major religions that have formed over the centuries… only
Christianity and Judaism…teach a God who forgives.
Only Christianity teaches a God who erases one's sin and the guilt of
one's sin.
The whole basis of Islam is that a person's performance will/or will
not convince "merciful" Allah to send them to paradise instead of
punishment.
Christians, sometimes/often, get caught in the trap of believing that
God's forgiveness is tied to our performance. If I do enough good
deeds to earn God's favor…then he will grant me forgiveness.
If I can outweigh the bad things I have done by counter-balancing
them with good deeds… God will not send me to hell.
That's not what the New Testament says.. That theology might have
been true in the early parts of the Old Covenant/Testament but it is
not part of the New Testament Gospel…at all!
I'll tell you what it is…it's a man made system of trying to control
sinful behavior.
I explained to you all last month how god's way is to change sinful
behavior in us from the inside out. That's what the New Covenant is
all about… God no longer writing his law on tablets of stone but now
writing them in our hearts..
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The concept of forgiveness also changes from the Old Covenant to the
New! If you sacrificed the proper animals in the Old Testament God
would "cover" your sins so that neither you nor he would have to look
at them. He promises that along with the New Covenant… that is going
to change..
Jeremiah 31:34 And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor
will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the
Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me
already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I
will never again remember their sins.” (NLT)
What does that clearly say is going to change?
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No more covering sin with the blood of sacrifices. When Jesus dies on
the cross for our sins and rises from the dead defeating sins power
in our lives he open the door for our sins to be forgiven and
forgotten.
Colossians 2:13-14 … Christ, …he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled
the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it
to the cross.
I want you to, clearly, see how unique this is… no other man-made
religion even comes close to this..
1) No one else teaches that Creator God is a God of love
2) No one else teaches that God takes a personal interest in the
lives of his creation
3) No one else teaches that man is a sinner and needs redemption
4) No one else teaches that there is nothing mankind can do to atone
for his sins
5) No one else teaches that God loved us so much that he bore our sin
penalty
7) No one else teaches that God in human form took all sin on himself
8) No one else teaches that God died the death we all deserved
9) No one else teaches a God who defeated death and offers all
eternal life.
10) Nobody else, no one, nada, teaches that when we come to our
precious Savior in repentance, He freely forgives us our sins,
releases us from the guilt of those sins, separates our sins from us
as far as the east is from the west… he doesn't require us to earn
our way to freedom from sin by our right actions… He did it…He does
it…it's all about HIM… not about us!
Do we understand this awesome truth…
This the car-bomb-killing of the elusive international terrorist Imad
Mughniyeh: "the suspected mastermind of dramatic attacks on the U.S.
Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks that killed hundreds of Americans in
Lebanon in the 1980s,"
Had he come to our Savior in true repentance last Sunday, his sins
would have been separated from him as far is the east is from the
west. We don't even want that to be true. He killed hundreds of our
brothers and sisters…He deserved to die… Yeah he did..
If God held hid confessed sins against him he would have to hold our
confessed sins against us…wouldn't He? If God made him earn his way
out of his sinfulness.. he wouldn't have been able to in a hundred
lifetimes…
For that matter…neither would we!
Ephesians 1:7-8 He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased
our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. 8 He has
showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
(NLT)
NT Greek: APHIEMI - "send forth, forsake, omit, put away, yield up"
Whatever sins you have committed…it's not up to you to atone for
them… that's what the whole coming of Jesus, dying on the cross, and
rising from the dead already did for you.
Colossians 1:13-14 For he has rescued us from the dominion of
darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in
whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (NIV)
1) The redeeming happened long before you were ever born
2) The price to bring you into the kingdom was paid in full 1980
years ago
3) Your redemption is already waiting for you.. if you have not
received it
4) There is nothing you can physically do to make you more save-able
to Jesus
5) He promises to erase/cancel your debt of sin… if only you will ask
him…
To you who have already accepted forgiveness: here is how the Bible
describes you:
Colossians 2:13-15 You were dead because of your sins and because
your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with
Christ, for he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record of the
charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 In
this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed
them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. (NLT)
Here's the thing:
If I say I have a gift for each of you up here…all you have to do is
walk after church and pick it up…and you choose instead to walk out
the door and leave it here…
1) Your gift will remain here unopened
2) You will live on without the benefit of whatever the gift was
If you say…Chess… I'm not worthy of receiving your gift… let me go
out and do some good deeds to make me more worthy to accept your
gift… guess what;
1) Your gift will remain here unopened
2) You will live on without the benefit of whatever the gift was
There are three mindsets that keep people from receiving God's
forgiveness
1) They don't know forgiveness from their sin is available to them
2) They think God will not forgive them until they earn his
forgiveness
We've dealt with both of those already…
You know what a third problem ... with many people in this world….
freely accepting the gift of forgiveness from a loving God really
is?...
3) Forgiveness presupposes guilt - I am a sinner!
a) Accepting guilt opens up my moral consciousness to my sinfulness
b) Moral consciousness demands that I be accountable for my sinful
behavior
c) The whole idea of forgiveness suggests that I cannot fix myself
d) In order to be forgiven, I must submit my will to my Creator
4) We have piled up such a debt of sin… we can't imagine that God
will simply cancel our debt, erase our sin, separate it as far as the
east is from the west….
Will He…will He? Is there anybody here… who has sinned so much… that
their mountain of sin is bigger than God's has the ability or
willingness to forgive and forget?
1 John 1:8-9 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling
ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins
to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all wickedness. NLT
1) Faithful ________________________________________________________
2) Just ___________________________________________________________
3) Forgive ________________________________________________________
4) Cleanse ________________________________________________________
For Conclusion:
"Steps To Forgiveness"
(Click Here)
