Ephesians 4 | Forgive Like You’ve Been Forgiven

We pause our Acts series to walk through Ephesians 4 and make a clear, urgent case for Christian forgiveness that is honest about harm and powered by grace. We name what forgiveness is, why it matters for our souls and our church, and how to practice it before the sun sets.

• identity in Christ driving a transformed life
• what forgiveness is not and common errors
• absorbing the debt as the shape of mercy
• anger’s danger and making room for the devil
• swift, truthful confrontation for reconciliation
• words that build up and heal community
• preaching the gospel to our own hearts
• urgency to reconcile while we can

Chapters

• 0:00 Reading Ephesians 4 And Framing The Theme
• 3:50 Identity In Christ And A Transformed Life
• 6:45 What Forgiveness Is Not
• 13:20 What Forgiveness Is: Absorbing The Debt
• 20:30 Grace-Powered Forgiveness In Real Life
• 23:40 Why Unforgiveness Invites The Enemy
• 28:10 Choosing Forgiveness And Addressing Conflict
• 34:00 Words That Heal: Build Up, Don’t Tear Down
• 38:00 Preach The Gospel To Yourself
• 42:30 Urgency: Reconcile While You Can

Transcript

Reading Ephesians 4 And Framing The Theme

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you have your Bibles, we're taking a one-week break from the book of Acts today. And we're going to go to the book of Ephesians, chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4. I want to welcome all those watching online this morning. This is when I'm really thankful for the technology that we have when people can't get out. And so praise God for you who are watching or listening online. I'm actually, when you get the text, I'm going to ask you to stand. I am going to read it up front this morning. So please stand in honor of the reading of God's word. Paul writing to the church of Ephesus pens these words, beginning in verse 17. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, that would be the pagans, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you have learned Christ, assuming that you've heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief steal no longer, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for the 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, tender hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. It's the word of God for the people of God. One of all the Christian disciplines, forgiveness may be the most difficult because it requires us to release what feels justified, deserved, and deeply personal. Two weeks ago, through the book of Acts, we saw that conflict, even within the church, is inevitable. Today we're gonna see why forgiveness in conflict is not optional, but it is essential to living the Christian life. So in chapter in the book of Ephesians, chapter one's chapters one through three, the apostle Paul writes about who we are in Christ, the way that the that Christ has saved us by grace through faith in him, and the glorious new creation that we are because of him, our new identity. Is anybody grateful that you are a new creation in Christ? Amen. So that's chapters one through three. This is who you are, Paul is telling us. But then in the second half of the book, four through six, Paul tells us how we should live in light of that new identity. When Jesus changes, when when you come to Jesus, let's say it like this, he transforms you. Amen. And that means a true Christian should live according to that transformation. There ought to be, you know, no doubt when people look at you that you are truly in Christ. So I want to focus on one key element of that new life, and that is the subject of forgiveness. It's a mark of the true believer. And so let's focus on verse 32. Paul writes, be kind to one another. Well, you ought to smile. Come on. Tender-hearted. How are you doing? Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. You know, I want you to listen today because this is a vitally important message, because unforgiveness, better, bitterness, resentment, you know, it puts our church at stake, at risk, and it puts your salvation at risk. So today I simply want to talk about what forgiveness is, why it's necessary, and teach about how we can walk in forgiveness. So, what is forgiveness? Well, let me start by saying what forgiveness is not, because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what forgiveness truly is. In verse 25, we're told to speak the truth with our neighbor. And here's what that means: forgiveness is not turning a blind eye to offense. You know, forgiveness requires us to say, this was wrong, what you did to me. And we don't we don't downplay it. We don't say, oh, it's no big deal. No, we don't turn a blind eye to offense. Like, like if forgiveness if we were to say this wasn't wrong, you know, it's okay, then what would there be to forgive? So forgiveness is not downplaying sin or offense. Secondly, forgiveness is not the same as trust, and this is something many people miss. So let's just say, for example, say you hire a babysitter, and you and you know, you've got young children, and you the babysitter comes over, you and your spouse are going out on a wonderful date night, and you're excited. And you you tell this babysitter, you say, listen, uh I here's the kids' bedtime. I want them in bed by eight o'clock. I don't want them to have candy. I want them to eat their dinner. Uh, don't let them outside. You know, I want to, it's cold. I want them to stay indoors and and stay with them the whole time. Like watch them until they go to bed because they're sneaky little kids, right? Can I get a witness parents? And so you enjoy your date night and you come home, and the babysitter's on the couch with her boyfriend. She doesn't know where the kids are. You look out, you're frantic, you look outside out the back window, and they're running around in the cold in only diapers. And what you see is that their supper is still in the refrigerator, and on the table is a bag of jelly beans half eaten. And it's well past their bedtime, and yet they're not asleep. Who's gonna be a little frustrated with that babysitter? Do you have to, as a Christian, forgive her? And I assume it's a her because you don't trust your kids with teenage boys, right? They're too ADHD. And so um, listen, you have to forgive that babysitter. But trust is gonna have to be rebuilt. You don't say, Well, I'm a Christian, you know what? I know you really messed up, but what are you doing next Friday night? No. So forgiveness is not the same as trust. Um, thirdly, forgiveness is not denying justice, and uh, this is really important. If somebody does something illegal, you can forgive them and still press charges. Forgiveness also, there's a lot of confusion around this. Forgiveness is not forgetting. It is humanly impossible to completely forget an offense that's done to you. Now, over time, you may not think about it all the time, but how many still remember, like if you see something from years ago, you've forgiven them, but you still remember the hurt that they caused you. You know, people think that God has divine amnesia. That that, you know, the Bible says, well, he remembers our sins no more. Well, God is all-knowing. All right, he does not have divine amnesia. When it says he remembers your sins no more, it's not that he has forgotten what you have done, but praise the Lord, it means that he does not hold those sins against you. So forgiving is not necessarily forgetting. So then what is forgiveness? Well, number one, it is giving up the right of personal revenge. You know, how many of you have ever thought, come on, you can't lie in church? I can't wait till I see that person the next time. And how many of you do this? You rehearse for a full week. You know, you've got a meeting with this person next Friday, and you talk out loud, and here's what I'm gonna say, and you rehearse those angry, vengeful words. And some of you are like, I know right, I'm gonna punch him in the face. Ephesians 4.32 says this be kind to one another. And this is in the context of forgiveness. Be kind, be tender-hearted, forgiving one another. You surrender, when you forgive, you surrender the right to retaliate emotionally, verbally, and relationally, and physically, by the way, just in case you're wondering. Aren't you glad that when Jesus forgave us, that he didn't retaliate? So, well, I'll forgive you, but I'm gonna make you pay. So we give up our right of personal revenge. Secondly, in forgiving, um, we pursue reconciliation. You know, and and I want you to notice that word pursue, because reconciliation takes how many people? Two. There are people who have left this church angry for one reason or another, and I have begged them, I have reached out. Hey, it's it's okay if you want to go to another church, but don't leave here angry. Let's work it out. And they ghost me, and they have no desire to reconcile, which is not the heart of a true Christian, by the way. And so we pursue reconciliation. Forgiveness takes one person. You can forgive somebody even if they don't want reconciliation. I'll point out one more thing about forgiveness, and this I learned from Keller, of course, and it's my favorite point. Give credit where credit's due, right? Here's what forgiveness is it is absorbing the debt. This is so rich. Every wrong, every offense creates a debt, and someone has to bear the cost. So here's the choice when somebody offends you. You can make that person pay, and you've probably said that like I have. Oh, I'm gonna make him pay. I'm gonna make her pay. And you can do that through coldness and anger or revenge, or you can pay the debt. Let me just give you an example of this. Uh, some 20 years ago, my uh stepfather Tim he borrowed some jet skis. You know, he had a boat and he said, Man, I'd love to have some jet skis for the family to go out on the water. And we were young, and the and my brother and Nikki and I, we had never ridden jet skis, and so we were all on those all day. I mean, they they were very powerful. We stayed on the lake all day, had a great time. So when Tim delivered the sea-doos or jet skis uh back to the owner, they found out that the motors were messed up. And here's what happened. We were at, I think, uh Laurel Lake this time. And those engines were so powerful that when we started on, you know, in the shallower water and we were revving those up, you know, like a motorcycle you want to kind of peel out. And so we were wanting to get, you know, our speed up as quickly as possible. The the jet skis were so powerful that they sucked up these massive rocks and tore the motors up about$15,000 to$20,000 worth of damage. Now, the only person that wasn't guilty of that was my stepdad. He could have made us pay, or he could have absorbed the debt himself. And guess what he chose to do? You're like, we have no clue. We know your stepdad. He's so generous. Listen, he absorbed the debt and he never brought it up again. He wasn't angry at us, we didn't do it on purpose, we sure learned a lesson. He absorbed the debt, and that's what we must do when we forgive. We absorb the debt. Is that not what Jesus did to us? See, God doesn't just turn a blind eye to sin and say, ah, it doesn't really matter. Oh, it matters the wages of sin is death. Jesus paid it all. All to him I own. Sin had left the crimson stain, but he washed me white as snow. That debt had to be paid, and easily Jesus could have said, They're gonna pay. But oh, are you grateful today that at Calvary on a cross, Jesus Christ mocked, beaten, scorned, gave his life. It was not taken from him. He said, My life will not be taken, I lay it down. He could have called a legion of angels at any time and said, It's enough, these people don't deserve it. Not dying for him. But oh, he stayed, and then he cried out, It is finished, debt paid. So, how could we not bear the debt of those who have offended us? So, forgiveness is about us refusing to retaliate and about absorbing that debt. And listen, that is not natural. That is not natural. You're like, shoo, I'm glad to hear that because I was feeling pretty guilty. Ephesians 4 17. Look at this. Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. Now think about this. Paul is writing to Christians. Why does he have to say this here and then also turn around and say, hey guys, forgive one another. It's Christ has forgiven you. Because they're not doing it. Because even for the Christian, it's hard. And by the way, the the it is impossible for the world on a grand scale to practice forgiveness like this. And here's why. Because we have a fallen nature, because sin has not only impacted our relationship with God, but but it has destroyed relationships with one another. And naturally, like Cain and Abel, listen, we want vengeance. We want them to pay when someone has hurt us. I love the story of the man that was written uh bitten by a rabid dog. And so he goes to the doctor and he says, It's not looking good. You're gonna die. So the man takes out a piece of paper and he starts writing furiously. Well, the doctor looks at him and said, Wow, this is awesome! He said, You're making a living will. You must own a lot of property. The man said, It's not a living will. I'm making a list of all the people I want to bite before I die. And is that not the way in our flesh that we think? So, how can we forgive as Christians? It's by the grace of God and the transformation that Jesus does in our lives. Verse 23 and 24. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self after the likeness of God in true righteousness, in holiness. God, uh, or excuse me, Paul is using this clothing metaphor like he does in Colossians. And he says, Listen, you've got new clothes when you come to Christ. You take the old clothes off, the ones that are sinful and broken, and you put on these new clothes of grace, the fruit of the spirit. And so he says, Don't walk as the Gentiles take off those pagan clothes and put on these new garments. Forgiveness, it's part of our new nature. It's by grace. I love this story. I subscribe to Christianity today, and um, I just read maybe in October a story that that just drives home this idea of forgiveness that comes by grace. Yasir Eric grew up in Sedan and was raised by radical Muslims, and he was taught to hate Christians so deeply, and he did. Once when he was a teenager, he ambushed a classmate, Zachariah. Zachariah was a Christian, he stabbed him multiple times and left him for dead. And uh, Yasser, he walked away rejoicing, thinking he had done a great service to God. Years later, by God's grace, Yasser became a Christian. He lost his family because of it, his inheritance, and his homeland. It cost him everything. But you know what? Yesur eventually became a pastor. Isn't that wild? And so after preaching at a conference, a man approached the stage and he walked with a horrible limp. And he the the man asked, Yasur, he said, Do you recognize me? It was Zachariah. The boy he attempted to kill survived. And here's what Zachariah did on that day at the altar. He opened his Bible, and on the front inside cover was a list of names. And Yesir Eric's name was at the very top, and here's what he said. Because you hated me so deeply, I always prayed for you. Wow. How does that happen? Only by the grace of God. Forgiveness is not easy, but it's not optional. Why is it necessary? For many reasons. Number one, from our text we learned that unforgiveness gives the devil an opportunity. Don't miss this. Ephesians 4 28. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Now, from the English reading here, we don't get the weight of what Paul is saying. The Greek word here is the word topas, and it literally means. Un inhabited place. So let me just clarify this for you. When you remain in anger and you have an unforgiving spirit, you are making a nice little room for the devil himself to come in and to stay with you. We're making more a room when we do that in our own lives. Few things will make you more miserable than unforgiveness in bitterness and resentment. It's been said that unforgiveness is like drinking a poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die. It will kill you, not the other person. We make the devil a room in our own lives when we unf when we don't forgive. And secondly, this is really important, parents. When you don't forgive, you make the devil a room in your home. You know one way to make your kids hate church? It's by gossiping and slandering about everybody in the church. The preacher, which is the most common. Why are y'all shaking your heads? Yep. Listen, I've seen this. We had to guard from this. We've gone through so much hurt in 25 years of ministry. Oh my goodness. And I learned early on, particularly when my kids were young, that I couldn't talk about it because they were going to end up hating the church. And thank God, by God's grace, they're both here and serving in ministry. Thirdly, you know, when we, and this passage is written in the context of the church, you know what unforgiveness does within a body? It invites the devil into our services. The threat that's upon the church is not from the outside. You go through Acts, and when threats came in from the outside, the church just got stronger because they banded together. You know why churches are crushed? Every time from the enemy within. One of the reasons I felt led to preach this today is because God is growing, doing great things. I mean, how many salvations and baptisms have we had over just the past three months? There's three of them in a row right here, four of them, five of them. Goodness gracious. And I just keep seeing people, wow, it's awesome. And the devil hates it. He hates it. And so you know the way he makes a room here by slander and gossip and malice and complaining and grubling and unforgiveness. So you might want to forgive, that's my point. It's necessary also because unforgiveness grieves the Holy Spirit. Oh my goodness, we don't want to grieve the Spirit. It says that clearly in verse 30. Do not grieve God's spirit. Like that didn't go well for Ananias and Sapphira. I'm just saying. Unforgiveness, complaining, resentment, you know what it'll do? It affects the Holy Spirit in your life, and you will feel so distant from God's presence. There was, um, how many of you read that old book by John Bevere, The The Bait of Satan? In that book, you know, he talked a lot about the power of forgiveness. He did many conferences, wrote that book. And so we did one particular conference that he wrote about. And he said, This man was in there. Uh, he came to the conference, listened to you know, these several sermons about forgiveness, and he left. And um I don't even know if that John Bever met him, uh, but sometime later he ran into this man, and the man said, Hey, I was at your conference. He said, I want you to know this. As soon as you're he said, I used to come to conferences like that in church, and he said, I would see people raising their hand and crying during the music, and they would be rejoicing at the preached word. And he said, I wondered what was wrong with me. He said, I felt nothing. I thought these people were just faking it. But he said, I did something immediately, like as soon as I left the conference. He said, I went to a payphone. Remember those? He said, I went to a payphone, and I called my mother, who was extremely neglectful and hurtful during my childhood. He said, I have a lot of scars because of her, and I have resented her my entire adult life. But he said, I called my mom. I said, Mom, Jesus has forgiven me, and I want you to know I forgive you. And he said, It's like a 5,000-pound weight was lifted from his shoulders. And he said, The next time I went to church, he said, I felt what the other people felt. Do not grieve the spirit. Forgiveness also is a necessary fruit of salvation. This is sobering. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 6:14? He says, For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. And then he gets really explicit here. He says, But if you do not forgive, he doesn't say, I understand. No, he says, if you don't forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father in heaven forgive you. That's sobering. Pastor John Piper said this. He said, the greatest risk that we face as a church these days, it's not that we may lose an organ, or that may what we may lose money, or that may we may lose members, or that we may lose staff, or that we may lose reputation. He writes, the greatest risk is that we might lose heaven, because one way to lose heaven is to hold fast to an unforgiving spirit, and so prove that we have never been indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. The greatest risk is that we might lose heaven because we are unforgiving. Forgiveness, it's necessary. But again, it's not easy. So, how in the world do we do it? Let me just move through this, give you some advice here. Number one, we see in verses 22 through 24, forgiveness is actually a choice. So I'm just gonna read a part of 22 and a part of 24. Paul writes again, put off your old self. It's a command, it's an imperative. And then he says, put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. You have to choose. You have the power by grace to forgive. You have to make that choice. Father, not my will but yours be done. That's the in the Lord's Prayer. What's it say? Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me. That's a daily prayer. Getting offended is inevitable. Staying offended is a choice. Can I say that one more time? Getting offended is inevitable. Staying offended is a choice. So you've got to choose to forgive. Secondly, you've got to address conflict and you've got to do so swiftly. He says again in this passage, speak the truth with your neighbor. And I've said this many times about love and forgiveness. You say, Well, I love people, I love the people of God. Love demands confrontation. You love your spouse, love demands confrontation. You love your church, and you want to have strong relationships, forgiveness and love demand confrontation. I know that it might seem noble to just sweep something under the rug. Well, I'm just going to forgive them and just sweep it under the rug. It's not what we're called to do. And let me tell you why. Because if you don't address problems swiftly, oh, they grow and they grow and they become more serious, and you become a bitter, hateful, resentful person. You will. You've got to do it swiftly. You go to the person in love, you speak in love with the goal of reconciliation. You know, some people will say, Well, you know, I'll be able to forgive in time. I don't have to address it. Time will heal it. That's like having a wound. You know, you have a deep cut, let's say, and men sometimes were stubborn. Your wife says, Oh, you know, you need to go to the doctor. I don't need to go to the doctor. And you say something like this, it'll heal with time. And Carol, you've been a nurse for a long time. What happens if you don't go to the doctor? Grows and grows and gets infected. Gets infected, and that can you can lose an arm or your life, right? And that's what happens with anger and bitterness and unforgiveness and offense. You say, Oh, it, you know, I'll get over this. No, you won't. Not when it's a real offense. And it will fester, and you'll end up hating, you'll have an offense, you know, uh, somebody, one person will have offended you, and you'll end up hating the whole church. That's what happens. So you've gotta forgive, and you've got to do so swiftly because the Bible says, Don't remain in your anger. Now, is it an is it a sin to be angry? It's not. But it's a sin to stay angry. But James says this, this is important. You know, well, first of all, verse 27, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Don't give a foothold or opportunity to the devil. One way to let the devil in is to let the sun go down on your anger, meaning that you can't waller in anger. You've got to, you've got to pray, get through it, address the problem. But James says this be slow to anger. So if you're somebody who just gets angry all the time, if you're always angry, always upset, that's not good. But there are times when you will truly be offended and you will rightly and justly get angry. But you can't stay that way. You've got to forgive, you've got to take it to the Lord. I I I love this quote by Frederick Buchner in his book Wishful Thinking. He writes this: He says, Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. He says, to lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last tooth some morsel, both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back. In many ways, hear this it's a feast fit for a king. But then he writes the chief drawback is that what you are woofing down at that feast is yourself, the skeleton at the feast is you. Boy, that'll preach. Don't stay angry. Number four, don't tear others down, build them up. Verse 29, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as good for building up as it fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. What's the old adage that you heard growing up? If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Parents, that's good advice. You ought to listen to your own advice. It is, listen, it is so difficult to hold an offense against someone that you constantly build up with encouraging words and that you pray for all the time. One of the um pieces of advice that that Ron Ham or not Ron Ham, Don Wynn always gives, actually, you would probably give the same advice. He said, You want to fix your marriage? He said, the greatest thing you can do is pray with your spouse every day. It's real hard to complain about somebody and to be um in disunity with somebody and to be remain frustrated or angry with somebody, you're like your spouse, if you're praying for them and building them up. And I want you to notice what it says, though. It says, build them up as it fits the occasion. So this is a little harder for some of you, but uh listen, no, the what this means is don't blow smoke. We need to work to find real, what would you say, giftings and the blessings that people have? You know, don't just say, uh, this is uh I didn't realize this until somebody from another state pointed this out. They said, Chris, everybody here just as a tagline in conversation said, appreciate you. Have you noticed that? Like I did it, I said, Well, I don't do that, and then I started, I do it all the time. Appreciate you, appreciate you. Listen, don't just give a general, I mean, it's fine to say I appreciate you. Say it like that, at least the full word. But listen, we're lazy in Kentucky. I'm just saying, I don't have time to say that whole word, too many syllables, right? Uh, but here's the thing think about and tell people why you appreciate them. My my love language, in part, is words of encouragement. And I I don't want the praise of man, that that's not what I'm saying, but I want you to understand when the when the deacons or other elders or some of you get up and just say, Pastor, I appreciate you. Oh, that's really nice. And and I do appreciate that. But but those of you who, the many of you who had said, Pastor, thank you for preparing your sermons so diligently. Thank you for coming to see me in the hospital. Thank you for preaching my mother's funeral and for sitting with our family. It's not just the pastor that needs that. Every one of you need that. We need to be intentional in encouraging one another. Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson says, it's amazing what encouragement does for others. And he said, people who are so broken and isolated, he's and then he said this: he said, it's amazing how little encouragement people need, but they're not getting it. Build others up. And then finally, and most importantly, preach the gospel to yourself, as Hunter said during communion a couple weeks ago. Preach the gospel to yourself every day. Look at Ephesians 4.32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. That's the motive. Because God in Christ forgave you. And this means two things. It means number the one, number one, all the time, you have to acknowledge your own sin. If you don't, you'll become holier than thou. Jesus said this. So if you're gonna confront somebody, call them out. He says, take the log out of your own eye first before removing the speck in your other eye. He's saying, Listen, you're more messed up to the person than the person you're mad at. You know, if you're angry with your spouse and you're gonna call her out, you just remember you're just as messed up, if not more, than her. The spouse has said, Amen. Listen to this. Here's why we don't like to acknowledge our own sin. He says, If if you're going to, uh Sidney Harris writes, she says, if you're going to be angry with others, you don't have to deal with your anger at yourself. You know why people don't say I'm sorry? You know why people won't think about their own sin and they'll be very angry with you and call out your sins? I'll tell you why. One reason is because it makes them feel better about their self. They think, well, I know I've got issues, but at least I'm not like him. It's the old bully in the schoolyard. You find out why is he, you know, picking on people? It's because it makes him feel better and he's insecure. So you got to acknowledge your own sin, but here's what you got to do: you've got to revel in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Every day you say, Oh, I was broken, far from God. The Bible says, an enemy of God, but by grace Jesus came, bore my death, and I am forgiven in him. And not just forgiven, but but first John says that he cleanses us from all unrighteousness, meaning not only am I forgiven, but I don't have to bear the shame anymore. Like Jesus doesn't keep bringing up the sins of the past. He forgives us and he doesn't hold our sins against us. And let me just say, by the way, when you forgive uh your spouse, for instance, or somebody at church, don't keep bringing up the next time you have a problem, don't say, Well, you always do this. Have you ever seen the drawings? Are they called caricatures? That where they make, yeah, so right. So, so they're always disproportionate, right? How many have ever had one of those? I'm not brave enough to. So, like if you have a slightly big nose, your nose is like this, and the person becomes a nose, and that's it. When you know what happens when we are constantly angry with somebody, we we make them out to be that sin. That's all we see, and that's not them, they're a whole person, and there's so much more to them than that. And when you think about, well, they've really hurt me. Listen, some of you have been deeply hurt. And I don't, I mean, some of you had hard childhoods, you had experiences in high school and college, or your parents abandoned you. You have so much you could be, and you could say justly be bitter about. You might say, Well, I know, you know, somebody just talks about me, I could forgive, but this, this, this. And if you won't forgive them, here's what you're telling God. It's not wise for you to forgive me because you've done way more. Every sin you've ever committed is first and foremost against God. There's a parable about that. Oh, let's revel in the forgiveness we have in Christ. I'll close with this. Uh, you know, I did uh Carol's son-in-law, Kara's husband. I did his funeral, uh, part of his funeral yesterday. Oh, what a tragedy. Married less than a year, a father to Mila. Inside you. Listen, what a tragedy. What a tragedy. I said at the funeral, I said, you when when this happens, because people get bitter not with just one another, but against God. I said, You could get bitter or you could get better. And both Justin and Kara in the family chose to get better. And they they all they wanted, yeah, well, all they wanted at the funeral was me for me to make much of Jesus. That's it. Justin said this, 37 years old, by the way, saved, what, maybe just over a year? Is that right? And he's more mature than most of us. He said, if my death means that even one person comes to Jesus, it's worth it. But let me tell you the most moving part of this story that I heard. Justin several months ago had a falling out with his longtime best friend. His name was Eaton. And he hadn't eaten, I think back in February. Is that right? Eaton? Oh, Keaton. Not Eaton, okay. I'm just hungry. Um it's Keaton, but I got Mila right, just for the record. Um, so uh, so listen, man, I've ruined this. The the the moment. Moment here. Listen, Keaton and Justin in February, when they had this issue, they completely like they were they blocked each other's numbers and from Facebook and all of this, like they completely abandoned each other. It was a I don't know exactly what happened, but it was a major issue, obviously. So Justin months later finds out he has cancer and then goes downhill very quickly. And then he finds out two weeks ago that he had uh what 48 to 72 hours to live. And you know what he asked Kara, his wife, in palliative care? He looked at her and he said, I want you to get Keaton on the phone and tell him I want to see him. And Keaton came. What a day later, the day that Justin would take his last breath, and he went in that hospital room. And Justin was weak, but somehow they reconciled. He stayed in there a long time, didn't he, Carol? Do you know this? Do you know this? When Keaton left that hospital room, Kara immediately walked in. And Justin, like that, took his last breath. He was waiting to forgive Keaton before he passed. And in that moment, he could pass in peace. Beloved, forgiveness is not easy, but it's necessary. And you don't know how much time you're gonna have. And so my plea with you today is get right with people as much as possible today. Forgive today. Ask God to take away that resentful, bitter heart. Some of you are like the guy at the John Bevere conference, and you've had a troubled childhood and you've been bitter for years. I'm so sorry you went through this. But call your mama if you can find a payphone. Call your mama, call your daddy and say, Oh, what you did wasn't right and it was deeply hurtful, and I'm deeply wounded. But I forgive you because Jesus has forgiven me. And you will sense God's presence like never before. It will change your life. May the Lord help us forgive as He has forgiven us.