Turn your Bible to Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, we're just going to read two verses. Ephesians 4, we'll begin reading in verse number 31, just the last two verses of this chapter. Ephesians 4, 31. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. Amen. We'll end the reading there at the end of those two verses. Let's seek the Lord in prayer together, and then we'll come back to the scriptures this morning. Let's pray. Our Father, now with our Bibles opened, we are very free to lay ourselves open before you and admit that we need help. We pray that you would take away the natural defenses of the flesh against your word, where in our heart, in our mind, we would seek to hold your admonitions at arm's length, and our sinful flesh would rise up seeking to justify ourselves But we pray for humility and grace today to receive your word as it is in truth, your word, and write it on every heart. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. I'll get much deeper into the theme for the youth camp this evening. But just to give you a summary of it now to explain my message by way of some introductory comments here, Dr. Stephen Pollack is a camp director. And this year, he chose as the theme the Lord's Prayer. But not the Lord's Prayer really from the perspective of prayer. But the theme was living the Christian life through the filter of the Lord's Prayer. And so there are six main petitions put to us there in that model prayer that Christ gives. And so each of the messages, there was an introductory message, a concluding message, but each of the messages by each of the ministers focused on a particular theme there, a particular petition of the Lord's Prayer. And so my assignment was that phrase in the Lord's Prayer, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now, I think most of you know I'm quite the big fan of Dave Ramsey. And so this prayer, forgive us our debts, is not an admonition to get your credit cards paid off. That's not what we're talking about with debts, because the Bible makes it very, very clear in the parallel passage in Luke 11, verse four, Christ says there, when he recounts the Lord's prayer in another context, The way he phrases it there, he says, and forgive us our sins. So there's no denying the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, what we're asking for is for the forgiveness of sins. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And that's the admonition that's given. So my topic, my subject, my theme is that of forgiveness. One of the most influential pastors alive today, who wrote a book on that subject of forgiveness, he began his book with these words. Forgiveness. Nothing is more foreign to sinful human nature, and nothing is more characteristic of divine grace. Nothing is more foreign to sinful human nature, and nothing is more characteristic of divine grace. Perhaps only bitterness is more dangerous in the heart of a Christian than unforgiveness. But yet I would submit to you that bitterness and forgiveness are ugly twins, and they will both like a cancer, literally eat you from the inside out. Unforgiveness destroys friendships. Maybe it's destroyed some of yours. Unforgiveness destroys marriages. Unforgiveness destroys churches. Unforgiveness destroys and scatters families. It causes young adults to leave the home with very strained and broken relationships that cause heartache and grief and pain for years and years to come. It is foolish of me to try to preach a message to you on the subject of unforgiveness if you don't even know what unforgiveness is. It's kind of ridiculous. It's a fool's errand for me to stand here for however long I'm gonna be here and preach to you on a topic and you don't even know what I'm talking about. That doesn't make any sense. I would submit to you that too many Christians don't have a correct or biblical view of the subject of forgiveness. I say that because by casual observation, even in my own heart and others, we often don't exhibit a right understanding of the biblical doctrine of forgiveness based on how we treat one another, based on how we demand other people treat us, based on the lack of assurance that you have that you are a Christian, and you don't understand forgiveness, I know it's true, based on how you think in your mind God treats you. Because you think God treats you the same way you treat other people. And that's just not the case. God is not like us. So, before we go any further, it is absolutely necessary that we establish what in the world are we talking about when we talk about forgiveness. Let me illustrate. Turn with me to Luke 17. Look at a verse here. Luke 17, verse 3. Luke 17, 3. This is why this is important. I want to establish this need for a definition, and why we have to make sure that we're all on the same page before we go any further. Luke 17.3, the Lord there speaking, and he says, if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. And if he repent, forgive him. So here's the deal. How can you know that when the dust settles on whatever Luke 17 3 is talking about, and you have forgiven him, how can you be positive that you have done what the Bible is commanding you to do? How can you know that I did that? I forgave according to what the Bible commands forgiveness is. How can you know you've done it? And so how can you obey the command if you don't even know what forgiveness is? So I want to give you a moment just to think, meditate in your own heart. Many of you take notes. You might jot this down someplace, maybe not in line with your notes, but just off to the side. Write down or think to yourself, just I'll give you a moment, how would you define forgiveness? What is it? What is forgiveness? And so just take a moment and think in your own heart, your own mind, what is this? What is forgiveness? As you think about that definition, I want to break down some scripture for you. There are basically seven words in the Bible. that are translated as forgive or forgiveness. And by looking at those words, we really begin to formulate a good and relatively comprehensive understanding of what this word means. In these seven words, there's three in the Old Testament, so three Hebrew words. There's four used in the New Testament, so three Hebrew words, four Greek words. The first Hebrew word that you would discover is a word that means to cover. It means to hide or generally to do away with something. And so we sang this morning Psalm 32. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. That word covered is this first word that I'm talking about. It's to cover, it's to hide something, or it's to do away with it. The second main word is also used here in Psalm 32, verse 1, and it's actually translated in that verse as forgiven. And that word, as you analyze it in the Old Testament, means to lift up, to pick up, to lift up with a purpose of removing it someplace else. So we have two of the main words are used there in Psalm 32 and verse 1. But the major word, the word that's used most often in the Old Testament, translated as forgive, it's a word used about 36 times, but it's a word that means to pardon. or to spare. Now, to use that definition, pardon, is not super helpful because forgive and pardon are so close synonyms that it really doesn't help us in an understanding. But it is helpful when you realize that this particular word is only used for God forgiving his people. That word is never used in interpersonal relationships. Men are never the subject of that verb. Men are always the object of that verb, and God is the subject. God is the one who does that kind of forgiving, that pardoning, that sparing. That word is used once as an adjective in Psalm 86.5, describing God as a forgiving God. a God who forgives. So those are the Hebrew words. When we come to the Greek words, we get much of the same ideas. The first Greek word you would come across is a word that's normally used for divorce. That might be surprising to you. But the word for divorce, in the sense of releasing something by sending it away, it's translated as divorce. Moses gave you a bill of divorcement. But that word is translated as forgive in other places. Romans 3.25 uses a word that's translated as remission. Romans 3.25 translated the remission of sins. It means to pass over something. There's another word used in Luke 7, verses 42 to 43. It's the Greek word charizomai. Several of you will be familiar with the Greek word charis, that means grace, chorizomai. It is a word that means a gracious or a free cancellation of a debt, of a gracious canceling or a doing away with something. But a graciousness is emphasized in that word. But the other word that's used about 40 times, the main, the primary word, is a word that means to send away or to let something go. It's used in a context not translated as forgive or forgiveness in Matthew 13, 36. Then Jesus sent the multitude away. He sent them away. He forgave them, but it's not any religious theological context there. They were in one place, and Jesus sent the multitude to another place. And that's the word, though, that's translated so often as forgive, even when Christ was on the cross. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. So anyway, when we start to put all of these words together, we start to form a definition of forgiveness. And the idea emerges of separating the sin from the one who committed it. That's kind of the cream that rises to the top when you start to analyze these words. And so separation becomes fundamental to our understanding of what forgiveness is. I want you to look at two other verses, Isaiah 43, and then put a finger in Jeremiah 31, 34. Isaiah 43 and Jeremiah 31. These verses go together, helping us in our understanding and definition of this word. What are we talking about? What do we commend to do? When in Ephesians we're told to forgive one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you, and that passage in Luke, when a person repents, we forgive them. What are we doing? When we pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive those that trespass against us. What are we doing? Are we doing what the Bible commands that we do? But look at these verses in Isaiah. Isaiah 43, 25. This is God the Father speaking. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake and will not remember thy sins. Not remember thy sins. And then Jeremiah 31, 34, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. I will remember their sin no more. Now, in our Sunday school class, the adult Sunday school class, we've been for several weeks now, over three months, we've been studying the attributes of God. And when we study the attributes of God, we learn at the very beginning that God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. And he's all of those things in all of his attributes. And so when we apply that to the knowledge of God, we come to the conclusion that God is omniscient. And so when we argue that God is omniscient, what we're arguing is that God knows all things. God never learns anything. And the fact that God is omniscient means He knows everything all the time. And so how? How can Isaiah and how can Jeremiah talk about God forgetting something when obviously God is omniscient? How can these two things go together? Well, to answer that, I'll put it to you this way. God is saying that what He is doing is making a commitment of His will to put away your sin. And he promises that he will not bring your sin back up when he deals with you. He's making a commitment of his will to take it off the table when it comes to his interaction with you. You are forgiven. As one preacher put it, God has self-imposed amnesia with respect to your sin. Or he goes on with some wittiness to say that he casts your sin into the depth of the sea and he posts a sign that says, no fishing. We so often get a fishing pole out. and we drag up all of our old sins, do we not? And we put the trouble hook on and we're dredging the bottom, reeling in old sins from the past. But God says, no fishing. Your sin is gone. It is removed. It is separated from you. So God has purposed in himself to purposefully not keep a record of your sin. And so if we put all this together and kind of take all this and funnel it down to one crystallized definition to make sure that we're doing, like when the Bible says forgiving one another, are we actually doing that? When we're obeying Luke 17, three, forgive him that we're actually doing that. What are we doing? And so the definition is that forgiveness is a gracious act by which you make a commitment of your will not to hold the sin of the offending person against them, thereby clearing the way for a restored relationship. I'll read it one more time. Forgiveness is a gracious act by which you make a commitment of your will not to hold the sin of the offending person against them, thereby clearing the way for a restored relationship. It means that you have canceled the debt that you perceive the other person owes to you. You've relinquished every right to make the other person pay for what they did. You've released them. You have, in that sense, you have set them free. They owe you nothing anymore. They are forgiven. That's my introduction. So if we come back to Ephesians 4.32, I've had you turn a few places, so you may have lost that. So go back, Ephesians 4.32, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Three questions that I want to put to you from this text. Three questions. The first question is why to forgive? The second question is who to forgive? And then the third one is how to forgive? Why, who, how? So let's start with why. Why to forgive? Well, it's on the page. It's in the text. Why to forgive? Well, because God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. That's why. And we can move on to point two, but we need to say more. Why to forgive? Because God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. You are a sinner. that needs forgiveness. And when you come to understand that you have been forgiven of so much, it makes forgiving others easier. And I have to emphasize that I said easier, not easy. Forgiveness is not easy. There's nothing more contrary to sinful human flesh than forgiveness. So it's not easy. But when you come to understand, I've been forgiven of so much, well, now when you deal with others, it's easier to forgive. Some, maybe some of you, have a lot of trouble forgiving other people simply because you never have personally been forgiven. You've never been saved. You've never been born again. You've never experienced the forgiveness of Christ, the forgiveness that comes from God through Christ in your own heart. and you are your whole life, you are angry, you are bitter, you're annoyed at everything around you and everyone around you, because you have never been set free. You still are in bondage to your own sin, You don't know what it means to be set free from sin. You don't know what it means to be forgiven. And so you're not only holding on to your own sin. But you are holding on to everybody else's sin that has sinned against you. And if that's you, my plea to you would be simply to come to Christ. And receive that forgiveness. Come to him and be forgiven. But when you consider that God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you, it changes your understanding of forgiveness. Think about it this way. What has anybody ever done to you that is worse or that is even remotely equal to what you have done to Christ? Has anyone ever done anything to you that made it necessary for you to die? Your sin against God made it necessary for Christ to die to pay the penalty of that sin. You've not done anything close to that. Nobody's ever done anything to you close to that. Sometimes when we talk about forgiveness, people get quite angry. Some people sit naturally with their arms folding, so I'm not calling anybody out if you have your arms folded. But when you start to preach about forgiveness, some internally, sit there with their arms folded, quite angry, and would say in their heart, preacher, you have no idea. If you had any idea how badly I've been hurt, then you would understand why I can't forgive that person. If you just knew the backstory of what happened to me, you would understand why I'm justified in remaining angry at that person that did that thing to me. If you just knew the details, you would agree. Well, I can put it to you straight and put it to you straight from scripture. If that is your heart attitude, And you say in your heart, I cannot forgive that person. I will not forgive that person. You're not saved. You're not a Christian. Now that's heavy, and that's harsh. But I didn't say it. That's not my idea. When the Lord gives the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6, 9 to 13, for that is the kingdom, the glory, and the power, kingdom, power, glory forever, amen, Verse 13 is over, verse 14. Four, if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Right, so what I just said, that's not, I didn't say that. That's what Jesus said. If your heart If your spirit is unforgiving and refuses to forgive, you have every right to question whether or not you have ever been born again. If your heart is unforgiving and you refuse to forgive, you have no legitimate leg to stand on to say, I am a Christian. That's what Jesus says. So why should you forgive? Because God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. And that's the reason why you can forgive. But now we come to the who, who to forgive. Well, Ephesians 4, in its context, what it's dealing with is forgiveness inside the body of Christ. Several months ago, I preached on the one and others of the New Testament. And forgiving one another, obviously, is in this context. We are to one another, one another. All the Bible's one another's that we're to do to one another, we are to one another, one another. But when we deal with this who, let me just skip ahead to a question that inevitably, inevitably, if you give this any thought at all, is going to come into your mind. So we'll just deal with that question now. Do I have to forgive someone if that person does not come to me and ask for forgiveness? That's a valid question, right? If the person never comes to me, they never apologize, do I have to forgive them? Well, I quoted Luke 17.3 just a moment ago. If thy brother trespass against thee rebuking, and if he repent, forgive him. And so it naturally raises the question, well, what if he doesn't repent? What's my responsibility? Do I still have to forgive? Or is it OK for me to continue to harbor bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness in my heart? Well, you can hear by me asking the question. That way, you know the answer, and you know where we're going. But to answer that question seriously and honestly, we need to understand something very important. And this is where often the confusion comes in. There's a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. There's a difference in those two things. Reconciliation requires two parties. It takes two to be reconciled. But forgiveness is something you can do all by yourself. in your own heart all alone, you can forgive. If another person has sinned against you, they never repent, they never apologize, maybe you don't even know where they live anymore. Like, you parted ways a long time ago. And, I mean, you couldn't call them or text them if you wanted to. I mean, you don't even know where they are. But there's still that thing. You can't be reconciled if they still have animosity toward you. But yet you can still forgive them. You can still release them of that debt that you perceive that they owe you because of the wrong that they committed against you. But the question really has two answers. Do I have to forgive someone if that person never comes to me and asks for forgiveness? Well, there's two answers to that question. On the one hand, the answer is no, you don't have to forgive them if they never ask for forgiveness. You don't have to do that. But the other answer is yes. You must forgive them, even if they don't ask for forgiveness. And I would just remind you of point number one. Why do you forgive anyway? Because God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven me. And when I come to understand what it means to be forgiven in my own heart, then how can I sit and stew in bitterness and unforgiveness against my neighbor without just releasing them of that? And so really you have two options. Option one is forgive the person, release them from the debt that they owe you, and you move on. You move on with life. Option two, is harbor bitterness and anger in your heart that will eat you alive, destroy you, and suck all the joy out of your heart. Those are your two options. So option one, forgive the person. Option two, destroy yourself. That's where you're left. You forgive them, or you destroy yourself. That's all you got. But when it comes to who we're to forgive, we so often have a wrong idea. We think to ourselves, in this relationship I'm in, and now I'm really speaking more to you adults. Young people have this in a sense as well, but especially us that are married. We get this wrong idea. If this person loves me the way they say they do, then they shouldn't be sinning against me so much. Well, that's not the right way to think. It's not, in our relationships, it's not that we demand other people to sin against us less. It's that we are required to forgive them more. We have to forgive more. I heard a preacher give an illustration about it this way, and he tries to turn it into a math formula. He says, let's just pretend that in my interactions with you, I sin one out of every three times. I sin more than that, but I sin one out of every three times. If we have an interaction, say, three times a month, then that would mean I would sin against you once a month. And you could probably deal with that. And you could probably bear and stand to be around me if I sinned against you only one time a month. But let's say our relationship is a little bit closer and we interact with one another three times a week. Well, now I'm sinning against you once a week. Every week I sin against you. you would probably start to be a little bit more annoyed, and you would probably start thinking, what in the world is with that guy Derek? He's all the time doing this or that. I'm not sinning anymore. I'm just sinning one third of the time. But the proximity of our relationship is such that you perceive that I sin against you far more often, although I'm not sinning more. Well, now let's say we're married. And our interactions are dozens of interactions a day. Poor Lydia, right? Dozens of interactions a day. Now I'm sinning against you thousands of times a year. Thousands of times I'm sinning against you. Although I'm not sinning anymore than I normally sin. It's just the closeness of our relationship makes it such that you perceive those sins, you recognize those sins, you're hurt by those sins so much more often, because our relationship is so much more close. Well, if you look back at Ephesians 4.32, it's important to note that the diverse does not say, and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, sinning less against one another. That's not what it says. It says, be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. And so one of the problems in families, one of the problems in churches, is not that we have too many sinners in it. It's that we don't have enough that are ready to forgive. And so if we give a short answer to this question, who are you supposed to forgive? Well, the answer is you forgive anyone that sinned against you. You forgive anyone that sinned against you. Why? Because God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. And so you forgive. Who? Everybody that has sinned against you. And so now we come to how. How am I gonna do this? Well, you can't. You can't do it. You're absolutely powerless to do what this commands without the Holy Spirit in the heart. It's impossible to be done without the Holy Spirit in the heart. But how to forgive? Let's come back to our definition. Forgiveness is a gracious act by which you make a commitment of your will not to hold the sin of the offending person against them, thereby clearing the way for a restored relationship. And so the author's right when he says nothing is more foreign to sinful human nature, and nothing is more characteristic of divine grace than forgiveness. This is contrary to the flesh. This is only possible through the work of the Spirit. It's the only way it can happen. But we forgive by making a commitment of our will not to remember the sin committed against us anymore. When someone asks you to forgive them the first time, you forgive them. There's a sense in which we can say, this can be taken to the point of ridiculous, but hear me out. There's a sense in which when they come to you the second time and ask for you to forgive them, and you say in your mind, well, now that's twice, what that proves is that you never forgave them the first time because you're keeping a record. you're keeping a list. And when they come the third time and you say to yourself, well, now that's three times, it just proves that the first two times you really didn't forgive them. When we hold on to an attitude of forgiveness, really what we're trying to do is make the other person pay for what they've done. We want to make them pay and we want to try in some way to punish them for this bad thing that they did to me. How can I punish them? How can I let it be known to everybody so that everybody knows what this person does so that they know that I'm innocent in this, I'm the victim, I'm the one that's been wronged, I'm the one that's been hurt, they're the bad guy. And I want everybody to know that they're the bad guy, so that they know that everybody knows that they're the bad guy, so that they'll be embarrassed, and so that they'll be hurt for hurting me. And so what we do in relationships, we try to make other people pay by withholding attention, affection, or honor. That's what we do. We try to make them pay by withholding that attention, affection, or honor. And so I'm angry with you. Go away from me. I'm angry with you. I can't be in the same room with you. And so you slam the door and you shut yourself in your bedroom for however long. I'm not going to deal with this. And so I'm going to withhold affection. I'm going to stay in there, and you know why I'm in there. You know I'm mad at you. And you're going to be out there knowing that I'm mad. And I want you to feel the pain that I feel. I want to punish you because I'm angry, because you hurt me. I'm not going to deal with it. I have to confess my personal favorite, the silent treatment. or just a general coldness of presence. You married people know what I'm talking about. That's one of the most destructive things to a marriage, when you just turn off the affection and just cold, just cold. I'm not going to hold your hand. I'm not going to put my hand on your shoulder in the kitchen? Cold. You stay in that room. I'll stay in this room. You hurt me, and you're going to pay for it. Or the ever popular death stare. That's another one. You hurt me. And I want this expression on my face to remind you of how you hurt me. I want you to feel it. I want you to remember what you did. And I'm going to try to hurt you. It's kind of silly, all those. It's kind of like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. Does that make a lot of sense? But that's what we do. That's what we do. That's obviously how not to forgive. That's not forgiveness. None of those things are forgiveness. All that is harboring bitterness, wrath, clamor, evil speaking. All that. But where to forgive? Some of you try to punish your parents. Some of you try to punish your children. I'm not going to call you on your birthday. I'm not going to give you the honor that you deserve as my mom or my dad. I'm going to keep you at arm's length. I'm going to tolerate you is all I'm going to do. How to forgive? You release them of their debt. You purpose consciously in your own will. I release you of that. You don't have to pay. And so that brings up the question that's often asked in the context of forgiveness. What about that phrase that we hear so often, forgive and forget, forgive and forget? Well, on its face, it would appear to be a biblical concept. Because did we not read Jeremiah 31, 34, just one of those verses? For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. And so does it not seem that God operates with a forgive and forget type mentality? Well, remember our definition, it's an act of the will. It's a commitment of the will to release a person from their debt. forging the path forward for reconciliation. Well, think about this phrase, forgive and forget. For us as humans, never mind God, but for us as humans, forgetting is a malfunction. When you forget something, you have malfunctioned. So we all have had some interaction or some knowledge though distant or more close, to someone with dementia or Alzheimer's. They've malfunctioned. They don't remember their spouse that they were married to for over 50 years. They don't remember the names of their children. They don't even know where they are. Their brain has malfunctioned and they forget. Forgiveness is not you having a brain malfunction. That's not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is a commitment of your will. Forgiveness is a conscious choice. There's a sense in which forgetting takes the glory out of forgiveness. I say that from the perspective that it's not so much that I forgot what you did to me. No, I remember what you did to me. I'm choosing to ignore it. I'm choosing to not deal with it. I'm choosing to not factor it into the interaction that we have now. because I've forgiven that. It's off the table. Remember in our definition, separation. That sin and you are separated from one another, and I don't deal with you in the context of that sin you did to me. I deal with you on a blank slate. Now, I have to add in here, please don't misunderstand. Please, please, please don't misunderstand. I have to add here. When we talk about God's forgiveness to us and our forgiveness to our neighbor, we have to be careful not to put an equal sign between those two things, okay? It's not the same, though it is similar. We have to be careful, right? God does not just ignore our sin. God does not sweep it under the rug. He doesn't just pretend like it never happened. No, it's been punished and paid for by Christ, right? In our interpersonal relationships, in our forgiveness, we don't punish. We're making a commitment of our will actually to not punish on purpose. We're not punishing. We're forgiving. Now, again, don't blow this out of proportion and take this out of context. That does not mean that sin doesn't have consequences. You show up late for work. You work for me. You show up late for work. I forgive you. You're forgiven. Let's try to be careful. The next day you show up late for work, we're going to have a little bit longer conversation maybe. I can forgive you. Now, as a Christian boss, does that mean I have to forgive you 490 times, 70 times 7, and you can be late for work? 70 times 7 times? No, that's not what it means. Sin has consequences. I can forgive you, but you don't work for me anymore. You lie to me, I can forgive you, but I don't trust you with information anymore. hurt me enough, I can forgive you without continuing a relationship with you. I can forgive you, and we still part ways. But in my heart, my conscience before the God of heaven is clean. But you're not hurting me anymore. Our relationship is is finished. Now, that's so rare and so the exception to the rule. I mention that because I don't want people confused. That's not the purview of the message. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about relationships where we love one another, we're in community with one another, we're in fellowship with one another, and we forgive one another, and our relationship goes on to higher ground. That's the sermon. That's the message. But sin has consequences. Sin has consequences. Being unforgiving is too expensive. It takes too much time. It takes too much mental effort to try to keep a list of who did what against me, when, and why, and what were the circumstances, and trying to remember all the details. It takes too much energy. So forgive. Release. The offender from their debt, and you move on with your life. The other alternative is just to remain bitter and angry in your spirit all the time. And nobody wants to be around you. Nobody wants to be with you. Because all the time you're just fuming bitterness. It makes you an ugly spirit that nobody wants to have anything to do with. and you drive everybody that you love away from you. They don't want to be around you either. You're better off simply forgiving, because God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. So if you go back to our little pause earlier, where I asked you to think about a definition. Those of you at camp, you cheated. You've heard this before. But if you think of a definition, were you close? Is your thinking biblical? Maybe as a preach, you have been thinking about somebody that you need to call. Pick up the phone. Send the email. Send the text. Apologize. Forgive. Whatever the Holy Spirit would lead you in your heart to do. I hope everyone here knows what it is to be forgiven. You start at the beginning. I have experienced in my own heart God, for Christ's sake, forgiving me. I know what that means. And so I forgive. I'm ready to forgive. And may the Lord help us. It's not easy. May the Lord help us. Let's close in prayer. Father, we do acknowledge that we have been dealing with things this morning that are very difficult for our sinful human nature. We all to some degree would prickle up against these things and not want to hear them. But yet we pray that by your spirit, you would write them on every heart. We thank you that you have begun a good work in the heart of so many. And we pray that we would be sanctified in the inner man to forgive one another, even as you, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven us. And so help us. Give us rest this afternoon. We pray that you would give us good fellowship one with another on this Lord's Day. And tonight, as we recount some of the way that you move by your spirit in the youth camp and the different messages and the different encouragements that we know, we pray that you'll make it a happy time of rejoicing and report and testimony of your goodness and your greatness to us this evening. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.