If you would please turn in your Bibles to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 4. Thank you for praying for me. This is a hard sermon to give. In some ways it's a hard sermon to hear, because in some ways it's a ripping off of old scabs or reopening of scars in some way, but I think very necessary, and as we get into it I think you'll see why. Paul's letter to the Ephesians chapter 4, we'll pick it up in verse 25, and I'll be reading out of the English Standard Version. The verse we're going to be looking at particularly is the last verse in the chapter, verse 32. Let's begin reading at verse 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one and of another. Let me stop real quick to say Paul is going over the new life. Our pastor took us through this passage and reminded us of things that are true of us now that we're in Christ. Be angry and do not sin. Let not the sun go down on your anger. And give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. And I'll repeat that last phrase, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. One of the things that is very important that we know clearly as Christians and that we teach our children is that we live in a fallen world. And when you live in a fallen world, you have many hurts, many hurts, many hurts. Some of them are just temporary, short term. Some are catastrophic. If you live in a fallen world, there's the reality of sin. Paul says, explaining what the whole Scriptures teach, for all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So if you live on a fallen planet, then it's a record of our sinning against one another and being sinned against, and that incurs hurting people. Over the years as a pastor, I came to see the policemen and pastors We know too much of what happens on this fallen planet. And this evening, behind placid faces, there's people already going over in their minds some things that have been done to them or that one big thing that was done to them. Pastors and policemen know these kinds of things. I'm afraid many policemen become cynical because they don't have the power to do anything about it. They can catch criminals and hopefully see them incarcerated, but they can't really change human nature, and pastors have the gospel. So the things that we're going to talk about tonight you can read about in the papers, you can watch it on the evening news, or you can pray about it at prayer meeting. And sometimes they're too awful that you can't even pray about it out loud at prayer meeting. As I said, with the reality of sin comes the reality of hurt and pain and suffering. Some sins against you are relatively small, like someone not saying hi to you in the hall. Their mind's a million miles away, they don't say hi to you, and you go, well, I can't believe they didn't speak to me in the hall. But other sins are horrific and become life-altering sins. What do I mean by a life-altering sin? A friend of mine was a pastor in Cincinnati and his mother worked downtown in a jewelry store and it was held up one day and the robber shot her and killed her and left because he could. And they never did catch who did it. And his mother was gone and she was murdered. A couple I know hired a babysitter to watch their three small children when they went to a movie and the babysitter had her boyfriend come over and the boyfriend and the babysitter did bad things to the children. He had his business and his life savings stolen by Christian partners. They decided to close their independent insurance agencies and start a whole new insurance company. They put their monies in. He went away on vacation and came back, and they had cooked the books, got some new lawyers, reorganized the company, and he was out of all of his startup money and his place in the company. And he got to start over with nothing. Oh, man, one of my professors was watching TV in the 80s. And one of the biggest miniseries on television was something called The Winds of War. Some of you may have seen that when it was on TV in the 80s, early 80s. Well, the soundtrack for that miniseries, my professor had written as just for fun in graduate school when he went to Michigan State, but he had never published it. And someone had stolen his music and was making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of it from the TV miniseries. This woman filed for divorce without biblical grounds against her husband, accused him of many things, including being a homosexual, personally called each and every woman in the church to tell her side of the story, and then after the divorce was over, she admitted that she had made some of the things up to make her husband look bad. His father left his mother, and he never saw him again, and he was only a few months old. And I can go on to the list of awful things that happens to people. And I didn't want to become too lurid, lest children who are here ask questions that you don't really want to get into when you get home. But you know the kinds of things that are happening in our fallen world. I had a pastor in seminary who estimated in the many years that he pastored, probably 40% of the women sitting under his ministry on any given Sunday had been molested as a child. When I told that to Dr. Fred Malone in Louisiana, he said, well, in the corrupt culture of Louisiana, he thought the estimate was closer to 50% of all the women looking at him on an average Sunday had been molested as children. What do you do with these awful things? What do you do with these awful things? On the Sunday that I gave this message at my church, I looked out at the congregation, and I knew almost all of their lives. I counseled many of them. And I was tempted to stand in the pulpit and cry, but while that might show empathy, it really wouldn't be helpful, and some people would be embarrassed. But it was so painful to look out at all these people, wondering what I was going to preach on this Lord's Day. What are some things we aren't to do? What are some things that if you were awfully, terribly, horrifically hurt, you shouldn't do? Well, first of all, don't pretend it never happened. Some people just kind of try to turn off or in some other way pretend or act like it never happened. It never happened. I don't want to talk about it. It just didn't happen. And that's not true. It did happen. And if you don't deal with it right, it'll be the sin that keeps on giving and giving and giving the rest of your life. You have to face up to it. Number two, we are not to perpetually condemn and judge this other person and going over and over and over and over in my mind so I can condemn them. Corrie Ten Boom once told the story of, if you're not familiar with the name, some of you older Christians might have heard her name, but she was in a concentration camp during World War II. Her family were smuggling Jews out of Holland and they were caught and they were put in a concentration camp. And out of Corrie's family, she was the only one who survived. Her father and mother and brother and sister all perished. She was released because a typist was typing up some numbers for people and mistyped something And they pulled her number and they said, you're being released, and they released her. And later that day, everybody her age was gassed and killed. But she and her sister had made a pact while they were in this concentration camp. They would have Bible studies and prayer meetings in their little room. And Betsy, who was the spiritual hero of the book and the movie The Hiding Place, and Cory's the, you know, let's nuke all the Nazis. And Betsy said, no, we have to live for Christ here. We have to have a Christ-honoring demeanor. And they had made a pact one day, and they said, if we ever get out of this hellhole, we have to go all over the world and tell everybody who will listen that no matter what hellhole you're in, Christ can be deeper still. Well, Corrie was released, everybody else is killed, so she has to follow through on her promise as she's speaking at churches. And she struggled the first time she saw a Nazi prison guard came to her German Lutheran church to hear her speak. And he didn't recognize her, but she recognized him from the concentration camp. And as often happens, they have you go to the back afterwards and then people go by and shake your hand. And she was shaking hands and talking to people and counting how many numbers before he came and would stand in front of her and stick out his hand and ask and just thank her. He didn't know who she was. And when he finally got in front of her, she said, I looked at his hand for what seemed like about five hours, but it was only a fleeting couple of seconds, and I willed that I would forgive him for Christ's sake, and I did. I put out my hand, and that moment I chose to forgive him, shook his hand, he didn't know what had gone on, he left. But she said a couple of years later it was even harder because she said, I expected non-Christians to sin against me. That's what sinners do. But I didn't expect a brother or a sister to sit against me. I didn't expect someone who I trusted as a Christian to sit against me. And she said, one day her editor came by her apartment outside of Amsterdam, Holland to talk to her. And she started talking about something that had recently happened and how she'd been done dirty by Christians and how upset she was. She got herself worked up and she said, I can prove that I'm right. I can prove that they did it. And she went over and pulled out these files and she had all the papers. And while she's pulling the papers out and starting to turn around, the editor put his hand on her arm and said, Corrie, Corrie, you're always talking to us about forgiveness. And it appears these people really did do you wrong. But you've kept on to the condemning papers, so every time you see those papers, you know that you can condemn them in your heart because you're right and they're wrong. Just get rid of them. Forgive them. And she realized that she had kept the papers to prove that she was right and they were wrong, and she, in tears, went over and threw them in the fire and burned them up. They had done her wrong. But you can't just act like nothing happened. You can't become consumed with bitterness. Bitterness is when you just can't let it go, and all you can think about is what they did, and they'd done you dirty, and it was awful and hateful and horrific. And you become a bitter person, and nothing is worse than to see a person who's become embittered by someone else's sin. I said certain horrific sins are the sins they keep on giving, because if you don't deal with them right, they will haunt us our whole life. We're not to become, this is number four if you're keeping track of the six things we're not supposed to do, we're not to become perpetual victims reliving the event, reliving our powerlessness to stop it and to lead lives of fear and defilement. I've known people who, this happened, admittedly, and they were victims, admittedly, but because of the way they didn't handle it, biblically, that sin kept victimizing them. They couldn't get beyond that sin. They were a perpetual victim. Closely related to that is the mindset number five, where their sin against us becomes the defining characteristic of our life. Oh, you know, this happened to me. Okay? Has anything else happened to you? Well, this happened to me. I get that this happened to you, but has anything else happened? Well, for these people who aren't handling it right, it becomes the defining characteristic of their life. That, to me, is a tragedy. And the sixth and final way we're not to handle it personally is to enact vengeance personally. You know, one of the reasons why the Death Wish movies were popular in the 70s and early 80s just because we all love vengeance. And the cold steel of a pistol in our hand shooting someone who did something to us feels comfortable to the fleshly heart. And I got my vengeance. You know, you broke my heart, but I broke your nose. You broke, you know, you hurt me, but I ran over you with a car ten times. Justice for the sin must be obtained in accordance with the law of God. The laws of God state that God is going to exact vengeance. Romans 12, 19. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So going around and getting carnal vengeance isn't the way to deal with what happened to me either. Now, none of these strategies which I've just mentioned work. They all fall short. And people who only try these things remain a victim, remain with this life-defining sin often their whole lives. They make no progress. And two things. I want you to be happy, healthy Christians, and I want you to glorify God in your lifetime. And you and I are not going to glorify God if we're bitter, if we have a critical spirit, if we're a perpetual victim. if we're exacting vengeance ourselves. So, the rest of our time is going to be looking at how should we deal with it. And our text, excuse me, our text for today is just the last part of verse 25. Forgiving one another just as God and Christ forgave you. just as God in Christ forgave you." And I know some of you are already thinking in your mind, how is this even possible? You don't know what was done to me. Surely God is asking too much. How in the world are we to forgive other people these awful sins that they've committed against us? And our text simply and clearly says, just as God in Christ forgave you. Now that is the key to how we are to forgive these awful hurts. How did God in Christ forgive you? Well, some people have the most incredibly ludicrous and naive and downright stupid ideas of how God forgives. Well, he just gets big hearted about it and says, I forgive you, or I'll turn the other cheek, or I'll get over it. That's not how God has forgiven a single sin in history. That's not how God forgave you in Christ. God's forgiveness of guilty sinners is based solely, based solely on the finished work of Christ plus nothing. Having obeyed the Father perfectly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, he loved God with all of his heart, mind, body, and strength, loved his neighbor as himself, he lived a perfect life as the God-man, and he earned the right to be our substitute. He became the innocent sacrificial lamb. Romans 1 says that God raised him from the dead to prove his claims to deity, to prove that he was indeed the sacrificial lamb, that his claims were true. He fulfilled all the laws, demands, and the Father shows by not letting him stay dead. You know, you might have questioned if Christ was, was the Father pleased with him, or was the Father on the outs with Christ? Because if he stayed dead, then his claims were bogus, and maybe the Father was still mad at him. the Father raised Him from the dead, and the way in the Bible of forgiveness is always, is always, is always by either you dying for your sins or a sacrificial substitute taking your place. That's the only way any and every sin is dealt with. Going all the way back to Eden, the penalty for sin is death of the sinner. Every sin, this is important for you to get, and one of the main points to carry home in your head, every sin that has ever been committed in the history of the world will be punished. Every sin. It will either be punished on the unrepentant sinner who will bear the sin against you and all the other sins he's committed upon himself or herself personally in hell for the rest of eternity, Or that sin was judged on Christ and He bore the hell of the punishment of that sin on the cross at Calvary. No sin ever gets off free. No sin ever gets off. No sin hires a shyster lawyer and somehow manages to evade justice. God's holiness and God's righteousness demands that perfect justice be meted out on every sin. God's forgiveness is based on legal categories. It's forensic in nature. The word forensic has to do with the law. A forensic pathologist is a doctor who works for the state, who looks at dead bodies to find out how they died or were killed, and gives legal information. Okay, well, when it comes to Christ dying for us, we have the forensic nature of how He died. He died to fulfill the law. The law said, if you break me, you are worthy of death. And the sinner that breaks the law is worthy of death. And so Christ became the innocent substitute for all of the sins committed by all of the people He would atone for. God's holy character is horribly offended at our sinning. Every one of our sins is cosmic rebellion, treason. And you would sin against one of mine? You would sin against one of these people that's created in my image? You hate me so much that you would harm this person created in my image? God help you. And you're under the wrath of God. God's Word teaches that the consequences of punishment of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. What does sin pay? It pays only death. The only remedy, the one remedy for the cosmic nature of sin is either the death of the sinner or the death of the perfectly innocent substitute in the sinner's place. But somebody has to pay for each and every sin, and that includes the big hurt done to you. The Old Testament is full of this understanding of God forgives sin, and He gives us a billboard that runs throughout the whole Old Testament ending with Christ. The billboard is the sacrificial system. begins in Genesis, when Adam and Eve are discovered to be in their sin, they discover in their shame, their nakedness, they now have a problem. And what does God do? He says in Genesis 3.21, And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, and he clothed them. I don't know that the animals volunteered to be skinned. I suggest that the Lord kill those animals, sacrifice them, so to speak, for Adam and Eve, and their skins were now clothing them. You go, well, that's kind of scanty exegesis. Do you have anything better than that? We'll go to the next chapter. In Genesis chapter 4 verses 1 through 5, Cain and Abel brought their sacrifices. Cain brought the sacrifices of the grain offerings from the ground. They were not accepted. Abel's offering of animal sacrifices from his herd was accepted. God chides Cain. You know the rules. You didn't bring the right thing. The understanding is animal sacrifices were already the way to approach God. It was a pattern from the beginning of time on down through to get into the books of the Old Testament. You go Genesis, you go Exodus, you have the Passover lamb. And then Leviticus, you go, whoa, that's a hard book to read through with all these sacrifices and gory stuff. And it's not one of my favorite books. It's just far too gory and far too detailed. Well, if you actually take the time to slow down and read the gore and read the details, it describes everything that Christ was to do on the cross. There are six sacrifices divulged and explained in gory detail in the book of Leviticus, six sacrifices that had to be offered for every conceivable kind of sin, intentional and unintentional, accidental sins. You name it, there are sacrifices in the book of Leviticus to cover it. Well, when Christ atoned for our sins, it's using the language of the book of Leviticus to say that everything the book of Leviticus showed in the typical manner or something that was to happen in fullness later, it came to fulfillment in Christ. All these six sacrifices were fulfilled in Christ. Christ fulfilled every conceivable kind of sin that you could do. He fulfilled it by atoning for it on the cross. The book of Hebrews, summing up the Old Testament, says in verse 9, Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Leviticus 17.11 says, The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your sins. For it is blood that makes atonement for the life. This was meant to be a description of what an ultimate lamb that God would ultimately provide would do, but this was a temporary symbol, so to speak, a billboard of what the reality would be. So when John the Baptist is talking to his disciples and Jesus comes walking by, John quiets his disciples and says, behold, look, God's lamb. who takes away the sins of the world. Not just the sins of the nation like at Passover, not just the sins of, excuse me, at Yom Kippur, not just the sins of a family like at Passover, not the sins of the individual sinner, so to speak, like the priest dealt with on a daily basis, but a whole world of sinners is gonna be covered by the work of this Christ. The idea of a substitute is this, what is the substitute doing when he's gaining us forgiveness? In the Old Testament and New Testament, there's a total of seven words which talk about how God forgives our sins. And since He covers our sins, He doesn't have to look at this awful mess. And then it says, He bears them away, He takes them away to be disposed of, and finally, He pardons them. And that's what happens. Now, I'm telling you how God deals with us and our sin, and we're leading up to, and how is this all going to horribly apply to the horrible sins that were done to us? Jesus fulfilled the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. Everything that's talked about as coming in fulfillment, Christ fulfilled. So in Matthew's Gospel, 26-28, it says, Christ's blood was shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. I'm a sinner. That's great news. I need a Savior. I need to be forgiven for my sins. 2 Corinthians 5.21, perhaps my favorite verse. For God made him who knew no sin. Jesus To become sin, where? On the cross. That we, me Paul, you Corinthians, us believing sinners, that we believing sinners might become the righteousness of God in Him. My sins go to Christ. His righteousness comes to me. I am forever pardoned and forgiven. I am forever bearing the righteousness of Christ. In one sense, it's the world's worst swap. In our sense, it's the world's greatest swap. I go free, I now have the righteousness of Christ, and there is not one sin that I've ever or will commit that is clamoring for my condemnation, because Christ fulfilled the demands of that broken law. Colossians 2, Paul says, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God made you alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all of our trespasses. by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. What do we say in the Lord's Prayer? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It's not talking about finances, it's talking about the debt of obedience that we owe to God. It's talking about the debt of righteousness that we lack. Not only do we need to have our sins or the commission of wrong acts atoned for, but look at all the stuff we've never done. Look at all the righteous deeds we've never done. We have a huge debt of unrighteousness between us and God. Forgive us our debts of the stuff I never got around to doing. The way I didn't treat other people, the way I didn't treat you, Lord. That's all been canceled by the work of Christ. We're forgiven. Hebrews 9.26, Christ has appeared for all at the end of time, at the end of the ages, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Christ has appeared once and for all at the end of time, at the end of the ages, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Once and for all. I don't need to go to the priest every day. I don't need to call up Brandon every day and say, Pastor, forgive me, I have sinned. Okay, my son, what have you done? And he listens on the phone while I confess my sins. my priest, Jesus Christ, atone for all of my sins once and for all." Hebrews 10 verse 14, another one of my favorite verses. For by a single offering Christ has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. If you're a Christian, that verse is your testimony. Christ atoned for your sins once and for all, forever. He's given you His righteousness, and He's going to spend the rest of your earthly life making you and me holy. But I have perfect righteousness. Well, let's apply the saving work of Christ and how God forgives us. God just didn't decide to get over it. God didn't say, well, you know, I'm having a good day sitting out here in the rocking chair in the front porch of heaven, and I feel good, and y'all come in, I'm not ticked today. Is that how God deals with our sins? No, it's ridiculous. God is just and righteous and holy, and every single sin is an affront to him. A sin against one of his children is an affront to him. A sin against another human being is an affront to him. You can kill an animal in the Old Testament and you'll have to pay a cash penalty. You kill a human being and it's your life. We are made in the image of God. A cow is not. A chicken is not. We are made in the image of God. To be a manslayer, to kill a human being, is to strike out at God. Well, how can we apply these lessons about forgiveness and God's holiness and how God cleanses to those who have horribly sinned against us? First of all, let me begin by saying there's a difference between justice and vengeance. There's a distance between justice and vengeance. Justice wants the sin and the wrong to be lawfully punished by God's justice and perhaps by the civil law. Some sins are not only sins against God, but they're breaking of human laws, civil laws, and you should be punished according to the law. Vengeance wants to exact punishment and hurt myself personally with no recourse to God, no recourse to His justice, no recourse to civil justice. I want my pound of flesh. I want my quart of blood. As I said, that's why revenge movies and payback movies are so popular. They make us feel comfortable because that's the way of the flesh. but we must view God's holy justice rightly if we're to trust Him for the solution. Forgiving one another just as God in Christ forgave me. He didn't forgive me by turning the other cheek. He didn't forgive me by forgetting about it. He didn't forgive me by saying, well, if you live long enough, you just get over it. God didn't get over it. He didn't turn the other cheek. He dealt with the wrongness of the sin. He condemned that sin. Here we go. If the person who sinned against you and hurt you so terribly never repents and comes to Christ for salvation and cleansing, then they shall personally bear the penalty of that awful sin in hell along with the rest of their sins forever. If they never repent of that sin that was so awful against you, plus their other sins, if they never repent of these sins and come to Christ in a saving way, They will bear the just penalty of God, His holy wrath on their sins forever and ever and ever. And when they've been in hell a hundred thousand years and they look up and they say the words forever still flashing, it's because God doesn't change. He's not going to say a million years from now, you know, I'm feeling pretty good today, I'm going to commute your sentences. He said it was forever. Every sin that has ever been committed will be punished. No sin gets away with it. No sin ever gets away with it. Do you believe that? Do you believe that God winks at some sins? Do you believe He kind of just says, well, boys will be boys, and girls will be girls, and that's okay that they did this. I'm feeling good today. His holy and just character does not change. He is forever and placidly opposed to sin. And whether it's sin against him personally, sin against one of those created in his image, sin against a Christian. When Stephen was stoned in the book of Acts, he says, I see Christ standing at the right hand of the Father. Why wasn't Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father? Because Christ was standing because one of his was being martyred and he was going to receive him into heaven. Christ was engaged in the death of his servant. God knows all things. He knows the things that are committed in darkness where men don't see, but God sees. And He will fully punish those sins in eternal misery in hell. Should the person who sinned this awful sin against you become a Christian, then Christ was damned for those sins on the cross Himself. That sin, which is the issue, that sin, that thing that was done to you, was placed upon Christ, and it was damned on Christ, and he represented this guilty sinner who came to Christ on that cross. You're concerned about pulling out this fiery harpoon. It wasn't a fiery dart, it was a harpoon. And you open the door, and they stuck it in your chest, and it's been burning there for how long? Well, the only way you're gonna get that pulled out is by recognizing that this awful thing, this sin, is what I want justice for. And justice comes when Christ deals with this sin. It is the sin that you want punished. It's the sin itself which defiles you, stains you, pollutes you, ravishes your heart, makes you miserable, robs you of peace and joy. It's the sin against you that you want punished. And God is gonna punish each and every sin. and especially these awful sins. This awful sin will not go unpublished. Brothers and sisters, it won't. Can you believe God that He will in no way clear the guilty? Can you believe that? Do you know one of the greatest sins that can be committed in the Old Testament is to be an unjust judge? There's many verses in the Old Testament about being an unjust judge. In some situations, you don't know what in the world God's doing. God says, can you believe that the judge of all the earth will do right? If I condemned unjust judges in your society, what would you say of me if I'm an unjust judge? I will let nothing pass. I will deal with everything. Everything will be dealt with perfectly. He will not let the guilty go free. By forgiving the other person, regardless of whether or not they repent, you're releasing them from accountability to you and turning them over to God in His perfect accountability and His perfect justice. They do owe you something civilly, and they do owe you something before God, but they owe even more to God. You're releasing them by forgiving them. You're not saying it didn't happen. You're not saying you aren't worthy of condemnation. You're simply saying, I'm releasing you from the guilt and condemnation that I might have exacted from you. I'm turning you over to God, and this is the way that you keep from being a perpetual victim, because the sin is or will be punished. The sin will not always be in your face, the defilement will not always be there, the stain, the pollution are carried down the drain with the holy justice of God the Judge. By forgiving the other person of this awful sin or sins, you're telling God that you believe Him, that vengeance is mine, belongs to the Lord, that this sin is not going to get away with it any longer, and that God will judge it, or if He would, that He'll damn it perfectly. This sin no longer has the ability to define you, to control you, to victimize you. And I've dealt with so many people who this happened X number of years ago, and it's still an active, on-the-job, on-the-clock sin, day after day after day. Because they've never either known or chosen to deal with it biblically. In a fallen world, we're sinned against. We've sinned against people today. We'll undoubtedly sin against people this week. Some sins are horrific. Some sins are so terrible. I once had a boy come to me at a conference. In God's providence over the years as a pastor, I probably had 45 women come to me and confess things that had been done to them by others. And we would weep together and talk about what to do. But this one conference I was speaking at, a young man asked to speak with me. We went over to a side alcove and I said, what's up? And he looked at me. He looked at me, and he put his head down, and he just began bawling. I tried to think, what is the worst conceivable thing that I, as a 20-year-old man, could have happened to me? And I said, you were victimized by a male for X number of years. And his head shot up, and he goes, how did you know that? I said, I just tried to think of the worst possible thing that would break your heart like this. He goes, that's exactly what happened, from the age of 8 until 16, until I was strong enough to get rid of him. I don't want those things to define you, to victimize you, to make you a perpetual victim in life. This can be dealt with. This can be something that becomes part of your past, like a distant memory, like when you wake up from a dream and whatever the stuff was that stayed in the dream, it didn't come with you. I'll give you an illustration of how this works. When I was in seminary in Chicago, my daughter and son were out in the backyard, and my son graduated that day from a wiffle bat to a wooden bat. It always happens. And so he was throwing up rocks and hitting them with the wooden bat. My daughter, being rather ignorant of baseball, walks up and just catches his follow-through across her face and hits her on the cheekbone and lays her cheek open. So we jump in the car, blood everywhere, and you race to the emergency room. And thankfully, there was an eye surgeon on duty that Sunday afternoon. And you know, it always happens on the weekend, but you're at the emergency room, and the eye surgeon said, you know, because she's a girl, you'll probably want someone who does really tiny stitches to do this, because you don't want her to have this disfiguring scar or something, like a zipper, like guys used to get on their knees for surgery. You want someone who can really do a good job I said, you're an eye surgeon, aren't you? He goes, yes, I am. I bet your stitches are really small. He goes, actually, they really are. I said, why don't you do it? So he sewed her up, and then first there was this big, red, hot-looking line, and then after a while, it was a pink line, and then after a while, there was a white line, and now if you looked at my daughter Sally today, you'd never know that her face had been laid open. It just disappeared. Now, forgiving can begin with, it still looks hot and red, and you keep on, and the temptation, their name comes up, and you're tempted to go there, and you remind yourself of the whole thing again, and God's way of dealing with these sins, and forgiving them, and turning them over to God, and trusting God's holy justice. That's a minute or so out of a day, and then over a period of time, It's just something that doesn't come up anymore because the devil doesn't gain any good out of reminding you of it. Right now, all he has to do is say that person's name. Like this, just angry, or you're befouled by whatever they did, or all that stuff comes back to you. But as you deal with it, he has less and less ability to deal with you. What struck me one day, I was reading in the book of Revelation, and I was in chapter 6. And the question is, is it right to pray that God would deal with these sins, that God would deal with these awful things? Is it right to pray that God would judge them? In Revelation chapter 6 we have different seals being opened, and it says in verse 9 through 11, In other words, there were martyrs under the altar in heaven. They cried out with a loud voice saying, oh sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth. Then they were given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, meaning God's appointed a certain amount of finite number of martyrs before the end. who were to be killed as they themselves had been, and they were to wait. Now, I'm thinking, okay, these martyrs are in heaven. They're without sin, because when you go to heaven, your sin is left here. So it's not wrong to cry out for justice, it's not wrong to cry out for your murder in this case, your martyrdom, to be adjudicated. They weren't told to get over it, shh, you guys be quiet, don't you know you're in heaven, you shouldn't talk like that. Father will be angry with you for talking like that. No, they're just told to wait a little bit longer and God will deal with it. They weren't told to be quiet or hush or turn the other cheek or get over it. God is going to punish those who hurt and killed you. Well, how long do they have to wait? Well, two more verses, or four more verses. Later in the chapter, verses 15 and 16, it says, Then the kings of the earth, and the great ones, and the generals, and the rich, and the powerful, and everyone, slaves and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling on the mountains and the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand? Almighty God's getting ready to judge them. The Lamb of God who is the judge is getting ready to judge them. And they are scared to death because their judgment is imminent. And here are these two holy beings before them. Your sins committed against you will not get off free. They won't. C.S. Lewis said in his book, it escapes me the name of the book, In the name of the sermon, it escapes me. He's talking about why we should be careful how we treat one another. I think it's in the weight of glory. He said, if you could see someone a brief time after they'd been in heaven, they would be so glorious in their resurrected body that you'd be tempted to fall down at their feet and worship them like they were some kind of angel or god figure. He said, if you could see a person a little bit after they've been in hell, you would be tempted to run from them like you run from bad things in your dreams. You're not going to stand around and gloat on Judgment Day when you see people carried into outer darkness with their weeping and gnashing of teeth. You're not going to stand there with a sick smile on your face, clenching your tongue like, I told you guys. God is going to deal with them in a holy and just way, and you're not going to feel like that sin got off with anything. But if you don't forgive these people and release them from accountability to you to exclusive accountability to God, you're still carrying around what they did to you. That's not right. You don't glorify God that way. You don't enjoy your Christian life that way. A couple of concluding words. Forgiving other people doesn't mean you're about to become best friends with them. There's some really miserable teaching on forgiveness. I can forgive someone and they can repent. And there's a certain amount of reconciliation. But depending on what the sin is, it may take a long time, it may never happen, the trust is rebuilt. If I hired you as my babysitter and you molested my kids, it's going to be a frosty day in July before I ever hire you as a babysitter again. But it doesn't mean I have to go around hating your guts, wanting to see you killed, because I forgave you and you repented and a certain amount of reconciliation happened. If I forgive them and they don't repent, well, there's no reconciliation. But I'm free of their sins and they're still now under the judgment of God. If they repent, they come to Christ, they really become a new creature. I choose not to forgive them because I'm embittered. There's no reconciliation. But sadly, I still nurse their sins. Their sins are still winning, so to speak. My forgiveness and their repentance equals reconciliation, but rebuilding of trust may take a long time. It may never be appropriate to get as close to them again. In the book of Genesis, one of your favorite people in the Bible and mine is Joseph. And Joseph's life went south at the age of 14. He's sold into slavery by his brothers who were planning to kill him, but they go, no, he's just dead. But if you sell him to the Amalekite slave traders, he's gone like he's dead, and you make money off him. So that's a better deal. So they sell him into slavery to the Amalekite slave traders. He's gone. He's 14 years old. By the time you get to the end of the chapters of the book where he forgives his brothers, it's been 17 years. He's 31. He's been through all this miserable thing, spent time in prison. Now, they didn't recognize him because they were Canaanite herdsmen. They smell like the sheep. They probably weren't wearing a lot of right guard. They just were hairy, dirty, smelly sheep herders who came to get some food. He was the second most powerful man in Egypt. He was dressed up in Egyptian clothes, Egyptian aftershave. They wore their facial hair different. Everything about him was different. They didn't recognize him. So what does Joseph not do? He doesn't go, guys, it's me, look, it's Joseph, I'm here, yay, we're all together again. Well, that'd be really naive, if not stupid, because the last time he saw them, they wanted to kill him, but they just thought they'd make money instead. How does he know if they've repented? How does he know that they've changed? How does he know it would be a wise and prudent thing to do, to re-entrust himself to his brothers? So he tested them, twice, to see where their hearts were really at. And not until he was satisfied that something had gone on and their hearts had changed, did he reveal himself to them. We're not obligated to become best friends with people who sin against us in awful ways. We need to be careful that even though we do forgive them, we don't act in a naive way. The worst sins that have been committed are the ones that were committed against you, because we could each tell our stories, but your story is the most painful one, because it happened to you. But let me tell you that mental sins like Forgiveness or lack of forgiveness and bitterness and all the other things are things that are hard to deal with because they come up again and again and you have to learn to to deal with them when they do. You don't wait until you're raging, angry, crying, wanting to get a gun and shoot someone. The sin is way down the road there. How do you deal with it? As soon as that person's name comes up, as soon as that sin comes up, you have to deal with it right then. Now, last week I preached this message in Macon, and there was a football coach in the audience, and I said, football coaches are greedy for wins. They love to win. And Jake said, Amen. And I said, if I discover that you have a real crummy line, ladies, that's the guys who bend over and touch the ground, and the big guys knock each other. Now, if I discover that you're really weak over here, and I can run this way, I will run this way all night. I'll run and run and run and run, and you can't stop me, because the coach wants to win. And the devil's like that too. Oh, poor baby, do you not deal with things very well over here? Fine, I'll go right here. Again and again and again and again. Until what? Until I choose to forgive and entrust it to the Lord, Foom! That situation changes. And I says, I'll come back later in the game to see if you've fallen asleep or forgotten. And he tries it again later. But you pick up on it right away, and you remind yourself and the Lord that you've forgiven this person, that you've given them over to him. And so what? The devil, after a while, will just stop. I knew a person who told me once in November of one year, they thought they were going crazy. I said, well, you don't strike me as a person. I'm going crazy. Why are you going crazy? Because of what this person did. And all I have to do is hear their name, think their name, see a picture of them, and I'm enraged. I am totally enraged and it's out of control. And no one likes to feel like a sin has you by the back of the neck, like a black lab has a rat and is just shaking it, and the poor rat can't do anything. Well, the sin has you and you can't do anything. So this person, we looked at a biblical strategy for dealing with when people sin against you and forgiving them and turning it over to the Lord. This was in late November, February, eight weeks later. The person says to me, I don't even have to work at it anymore. It's just not there anymore. It's gone. It's gotten less and less, and as I've dealt with it, when the temptation to think about it came up, and I didn't go there, and I gave it to the Lord, it just doesn't come up anymore. You do not have to be a lifetime victim of those sins against you. It doesn't have to define your life. Oh, I'm the person who this happened to. That doesn't have to define you anymore. Christ should be defining you. His new life for you, and Christ should be defining you. You all have been great to Cindy and I since we've been here. These are lessons we've had to learn. I want you to learn them too because I don't want you victimized by other people's sins against you. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, I pray that you take my poor stammering lips and the things that I've said and seal them to our hearts. Little kids don't realize what a wicked world this is. That there are mean, hurtful people. That we can be mean and hurtful people. Some of us here have done things that we're thinking about. We're the perpetrators. We're not the victims. We were the perpetrators. Lord, I thank you that your blood can make the foulest clean. Your blood availed for me. Whether victim or perpetrator, I pray that you would help us to take these sins to you, to forgive the perpetrator, to turn them over to you, to believe and expect your judgment to come, to be free from that sin, knowing that that awful sin, it will receive justice and will be damned forever. I pray for any perpetrators who might be here that they would take their sins to you and confess them brokenhearted. And you will not despise a broken and contrite heart. You will draw close. And if need be, they will go then to the victims that they have perpetrated their sins against and make things right. Father, You don't want us to live as perpetual victims. You don't want us to live being defined by our sins against us, but You want us to be defined by Christ. Help us, we pray. For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.