| |
April 6, 2008
|
Restoring the Christian Soul
|
Pastor Brian Shimer
|
|
“God Keeps His Promises (forgiveness)"
1 John 1: 1-10
- I have mentioned before that my computer does not know the word “unforgiveness” but rather every time I type it underlines it in red, which in the computer means it is misspelled. When I do a spell check on it, the computer has no other words to recommend to me. It is a totally unknown word. Now, in a computer, it is simple to “add a word to the dictionary” and then it would never underline it again, for it would remember it. But I don’t want to do that, for I want to always remember that in my life, the word “unforgiveness” has no place, it doesn’t belong, it ought not to be in my internal dictionary, it ought always to be underlined in red.
For I am called to forgive – I am called to forgive those who trespass against me, as we pray weekly in the Lord’s prayer. No matter the heinousness of the crime, it is mine to forgive, to release another from my harsh judgment, to unchain them from my own hatred that God would be free to work in their lives.
Now, to forgive is never easy! But it is necessary for God did not make me to live with “unforgiveness” in my internal makeup. God knows that to not forgive will kill me, literally. “Unforgiveness” must continue to be a word that I cannot spell in my life.
Last November 17th the front page headlines on the Oregonian Saturday edition said: ‘I will pray for you; you can pray for my family”. These were not the normal daily headlines!
This statement was spoken by Tiffany Yeom whose 41 year old husband Chester had been shot and paralyzed March 9th 2007 during a convenience store robbery by 28 year old Jimmy Kashi. Tiffany came with her two children to the courtroom in order to offer Kashi forgiveness for what he had done to their lives, saying, “My family forgives you for your actions, but your actions have cost us many things.” This is wonderfully honest forgiveness! It is saying, we will not hold you in our judgment, but we acknowledge the pain we are experiencing because of your actions.
Chester at that point was in an adult foster home receiving 24 hour care and as far as I can research is still under such care. The young robber apologized to this family, saying, “I hope that after I’m done with my 35 years in prison I can come to some of your sons and daughters and offer my own help.” He will be 62 when released from prison. He thanked them for the Bible they gave him and left the courtroom. (by aimee Green, The Oregonian, 11/17/07 Saturday Edition A1,A9, ubp).
Such forgiveness is astounding – so much so it makes the front page – and it was the only appropriate response for them as Christians to make.
A year prior to this article, in another Saturday edition from October 14, 2006, the headlines reflected another act of forgiveness by the Amish community after the shooting deaths of the schoolgirls on October 2nd by Charles Carl Roberts. In this article Ron Mock, son of Dick and Mary was quoted saying: “The idea of forgiving our enemies for what they have done to us, it’s in the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus emphasizes (that people should) follow in the example of God who forgave us our offenses against him to the cost of sacrificing his own Son” (from article by Schellene Clendenin, The Oregonian, 10/14/06 Saturday Edition, A6, ubp).
- We have spoken many times of the obedience of forgiveness – how it is not easy, how it does not say that the wrong done was somehow okay, how it is not a way to pretend that the crime was never done and mostly how it is what Jesus commands us to do, because He loves us, for our sake and the sake of the one who has harmed us. In these moments today, I want us to look at the other side of the forgiveness coin. Not only are we to offer it, but we must also receive it.
If I were to name the three greatest hindrances to growth in Christ they would be the failure to accept who I am, as I preached last Sunday, the failure to forgive others as I have preached many other times and then the failure to receive forgiveness.
The hard work of forgiveness for the Yeom family in the shooting of the husband/father was immense. There is no denying that! But it will be equally immense for the one who feels responsible for what happened to them. Mr. Chester Yeom had offered to manage a friends mini mart for the day while the friend attended a church function. That friend has needed to accept forgiveness – not for anything he had done wrong, but for his sense of responsibility it what happened to his dear brother in Christ because this man agreed to man the store!
In addition, the man, Jimmy, who committed the crime and his accomplices also, must receive the forgiveness offered. Here the true guilt needs to be faced, the action repented of, and the forgiveness received.
So, forgiveness, of course, needs to be received for the truly sinful actions, about which we feel guilt— like the actions of Jimmy – but also, forgiveness needs to be received for things about which we feel guilty, even when we are not. Like the friend for whom Chester was manning the store – his would not a true guilt for he had done nothing wrong. But still he must say: ‘Yes, I believe I am forgiven’. This is true of countless situations – like a child who carries the sense of responsibility for her parent’s divorce. This is a typical thing for a child to believe that somehow he or she is the responsible party in the parent’s breakup.
An older person may carry around a sense of guilt that he or she could not come to church, because of illness or infirmity, yet, this is a false sense of guilt for which he or she needs to receive forgiveness.
At the healing services we have watched as many have received the healing sought as they simply offered the forgiveness to themselves that God has already offered. They had to pray: ‘Lord, I forgive myself for this and such’. Others have prayed to forgive God for something – releasing God from their harsh judgment which then freed them up to receive and experience the healing God wanted to bring to them.
Is there anything in your heart or life that you are carrying around, like an old suitcase packed to the gills for which you need to receive forgiveness, for which you need to say, “I forgive you” to yourself, for which you may need to say to God, “I forgive You”?
- John was writing to people beset by those who disbelieved much about who Jesus was and what Jesus had done. They were surrounded by people who claimed they had no need for the forgiveness provided in Jesus. They claimed they were without sin, claimed to have never sinned, claimed to have fellowship with this God, who is LIGHT, while their lives were full of darkness. John wrote to encourage them, to straighten them out.
To them he declared that since God is light and since there is no darkness in God, whatsoever, then, when God is in our lives we will walk in His light. That light will bring to light places in us which we need to acknowledge, which we need to confess. And in that confession, there is great healing and redemption.
So he wrote that oft quoted famous verse 9, a true promise from God – that “if we confess our sins, He, God, is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Notice the “if” – the experience of that forgiveness and that cleansing is dependent upon us. We must “confess”. To confess is not a negative word – it is a word that simply means to agree with God about something – it means to “say the same thing” as God does. To “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” is to agree with God that this is true. To “confess” that I have harbored hatred toward myself or another, is to agree with God that this is true.
So, first, we agree with God, by saying, “God here is this thing to which I had held”.
Then the promise of God follows. Note John says that God is forever faithful and forever righteousness! God does not change. God will always be faithful to the one who says, “God here is the truth about me”. God loves truth and loves to apply His grace and forgiveness to our lives. We must simply ask.
And this faithful and righteous God will do two things. God will first forgive us – free us from the sin, the thing, the belief. God breaks the chains of that sin! The slavery is ended. Then, God will cleanse us from it. Notice both are necessary. Sin – even the sin of an attitude, a false belief, a level of false guilt, the unwillingness to believe that Jesus’ death can be applied to my life – this always pollutes our lives and hearts and we need not only forgiveness but cleansing.
- Like the proper setting of a bone, like the lancing of a boil releasing infection and allowing healing, like the release of the flow of blood back into a limb from which it has been deprived, forgiveness frees, heals, cleanses.
You have all experienced this at one time or another – you can recount how wonderful it feels to actually tell someone “this is what I did” and to have them say, “I forgive you”. Therein you have experienced some measure of what God does.
And yet still even when we know what we must do, when we know that we cannot “hold onto that thing” any longer for it will kill us, even when we know God has forgiven us for something we will resist receiving what God offers for multiple reasons. We will act as if the word “unforgiveness” can be stored in our lives.
Again at our healing services how many have we seen set free because they simply took the step of forgiving themselves, of truly “receiving forgiveness” for something which God had long forgiven but they had never received? I have truly lost count! We will say to the hurting one, “can you pray and forgive yourself for this thing?” I have seen years slip away from their faces as they receive what God has done.
Such a scene was written of beautifully by the author Penelope Wilcock in her novel The Hawk and the Dove a story set in a monastery in the 1700s. Within this scene the Abbot, Father Peregrine, is in conversation with a younger monk of tender heart named Francis who believes wholeheartedly fears that God cannot forgive him for being himself. He is terrified that God will abandon him for he does not deserve God’s love, is not good enough.
‘This is what you fear?’ Father Peregrine asked him gently. ‘Francis, look at me. This is the thing you fear? That God will abandon you?’
‘Yes. How should he not? What is there of worth in me?’
Francis begins to sob out the pain of this utter disbelief that God could love him, even him. He cries out his feeling of worthlessness. This darkness held within. It is a kind of confession of the truth of his heart, while the Abbot pats his head, and prays that the God of love would drive out this deep fear.
Finally, the tears subside for a moment and Francis sits back defeated saying:
‘There you are, then. This is me,’ he said, with an attempt at a smile that wrung the abbot’s heart. ‘What now?’
Father Peregrine looked at him. He could think of nothing to say.
Francis turned his head aside and looked into the dying embers of the fire. He said in a voice flat, tired and sad: ‘The brotherhood of this community is like a lighted room in a house. There is the warm fire of life and fellowship on the hearth, and the brothers are gathered safely round it, and outside it is night. Out in the darkness, where no light is, you can stumble and fall on the stones, and the cruel thorns tear at you. I am here in the light and warmth of the house, but I belong in the darkness, I can’t forget the darkness, it draws me. This light, this warmth, this brotherhood – it’s not for me. I don’t deserve it, it isn’t mine. I’m here on false pretences. I don’t belong.’
He looked desperately at Peregrine. He is tortured by this, the abbot thought, so says slowly to this young man: ‘If you cannot put the darkness out of your mind, my son maybe you should face it. Open the door of the lighted room and go out of the house and look at the darkness. What is there?”
This incredible scene ends with Francis looking out into the darkness he sees in his own heart, that sense of being wholly unworthy of the love of God, that unforgiveness he held against himself for being, and in the sanctified imagination of his heart sees a garden. He walks into that garden and there sees Jesus, weeping for Francis. Francis joins his Lord, he surrenders to the Savior’s love for him—and in this experiences the forgiveness of this attitude against himself. He is forgiven and cleansed. (QUOTES FROM Hawk and the Dove Triolgy by Penelope Wilcock c. 2000, publ by Crossway Books, Wheaton, Ill, p 252-255, ubp)
- True a fictional story, but I have seen it enacted countless times. The word unforgiveness is not in our vocabularies as Christians. We cannot act as if it is. Instead, God calls us to receive forgiveness, receive the cleansing God has promised. God will keep his promises. We must simply agree: ‘Lord, this thing, this thing is not of you, here I surrender it to you.’
Today is communion Sunday when you are invited to the meal of God’s forgiveness. As you come, as you receive, bring to the Lord who loves you that thing you hold, that belief you have, that attitude that needs cleansing, that part that is burdened and be freed. For God is faithful and Righteous and will forgive you and cleanse you from ALL Unrighteousness.
|
|
|