SPEAKER_01: Hi, and thanks so much for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you enjoy this message by Pastor Ralph Mum.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get in my head.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, worship team.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Well, happy Fourth of July and uh happy 250th year of America.
SPEAKER_00: Happy birthday.
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, how many were alive in 1976 for the bicentennial?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, yeah, quite a few.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: You remember that?
SPEAKER_00: I was like 20, 22 years old.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so needless to say, uh, I probably won't be around for the tricentennial because I'd be like 100 and whatever.
SPEAKER_00: But some of you, if you're under the age of like 45 or 40, you probably may see the tricentennial, right?
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be awesome?
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
SPEAKER_00: So my wife and I and my two sisters went to Europe in May and we um traveled around Germany, spent two weeks there.
SPEAKER_00: Germany and Austria, Switzerland.
SPEAKER_00: It was beautiful and had a good time.
SPEAKER_00: And I love going to Europe.
SPEAKER_00: And um, because actually my parents are from Germany, and so it's kind of going back to some roots.
SPEAKER_00: And um, my oldest sister, she was born in Germany.
SPEAKER_00: She's she was two years old when they uh my parents immigrated to the United States along with a lot of of her their relatives, and um my mom was pregnant with me on the boat, she was six months pregnant, uh, coming over on 11 days on the and they said the sea was pretty pretty rough, and she almost had me at sea.
SPEAKER_00: So, but I was born here and uh three months after the ship landed, and uh so I'm a naturalized citizen.
SPEAKER_00: But my sister, my parents made their citizenship, they were so happy to be uh citizens of the United States.
SPEAKER_00: My sister, when she became of age, she had to make her citizenship too.
SPEAKER_00: So, all that to say, when being in Europe was fun, but when we came back to the states and you go through the airport and through customs, and then you see on the wall, welcome to the United States of America.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I just get this warm feeling, like, yes, I'm a citizen, I belong here, and it's such a great feeling.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're talking about today, what it means to belong.
SPEAKER_00: We all belong.
SPEAKER_00: We want to belong, right?
SPEAKER_00: We want to belong to uh to a family or in a marriage.
SPEAKER_00: But first off, talking about belonging, we belong to the Lord, first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: If you're filling out your outline, that's number one.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah 43 it says, Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name.
SPEAKER_00: You are mine.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that good news, Steve?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that good news?
SPEAKER_00: Steve, you are his.
SPEAKER_00: He calls you by name, he knows your name.
SPEAKER_00: That's so awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Philippians 3.20 says, But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: One of these days, when I die, I'll cross over and whatever heaven is like, I don't know, but I know Jesus will be there.
SPEAKER_00: And um, maybe there's a big thing, you know, welcome to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You are home.
SPEAKER_00: You are finally home.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've read this book.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned it maybe a year ago, Imagine Heaven by John Burke.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Christian writer, he's written several books, and um he interviewed hundreds of people that have had these near-death experiences and they experienced like while they were like on the operating table or in an accident or underwater or something, they kind of went to heaven and back, something.
SPEAKER_00: And he interviewed uh lots of people.
SPEAKER_00: He put the hundred best stories, the most uh stories that have a lot of uh, you know, for him, the the credibility, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: And he says that almost to a person, people that have crossed over and come back said they felt more at home than they ever felt.
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And then he points out that Philippians 3 verse, that we our citizenship is not here.
SPEAKER_00: Your real home is in heaven, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna feel when you get there, you're gonna feel at home.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's where you really belong.
SPEAKER_00: We also belong to one another.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second thing.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to one another, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you, one of you, speak the truth with his neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: For we are members of one another.
SPEAKER_00: We belong, right?
SPEAKER_00: All of you, how many are in any kind of a relationship, friendship, or I'm sure all hands should go up, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're all have relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one relationship is as early as uh Genesis, God saw that man should not be alone and create a helper and a helpmate, and he created woman.
SPEAKER_00: So we have marriage.
SPEAKER_00: On the slide, you'll see this picture is my mom and dad getting married in Germany in 1951.
SPEAKER_00: And she's around it.
SPEAKER_00: They were there were eight brothers and sisters, so all of them are there with their spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Some Muslim had spouses.
SPEAKER_00: They all immigrated to the United States also.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I put that picture there because they came to America to start a new life.
SPEAKER_00: They heard America is a good place, start a new life, and um, and they did a great life.
SPEAKER_00: Some people said you shouldn't have kids.
SPEAKER_00: You know, war they came through the war, they saw a lot of death, a lot of destruction over there in Europe, in Germany.
SPEAKER_00: But they came over and had me and my two sisters, and the next picture is what developed.
SPEAKER_00: That picture was taken five years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And um, there's actually that picture was uh on July 4th in um 2021.
SPEAKER_00: And my son Nathan, who will be preaching next week, he uh is and his wife and kids are not in that picture because they were getting ready to have their third child, little Levi, over in San Francisco.
SPEAKER_00: And so their whole family, so six of them are gone out of that picture.
SPEAKER_00: But um, and Levi, if you see him this morning, he was here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I think he's already gone home.
SPEAKER_00: But wish him a happy birthday because his birthday is July 5th today, turn five.
SPEAKER_00: And there's also six babies who have been born since that picture was taken between my sisters and us.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh add 13 people to that picture, and it's still growing because two of the girls way on the far end, they're not married yet.
SPEAKER_00: And um, so who knows how many of there will be?
SPEAKER_00: There's like 30, 31, I believe, now.
SPEAKER_00: So we're made for a relationship and another relationship or a community that we belong to a church.
SPEAKER_00: This picture is taken from the uh uh vacation Bible school.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you are in this picture?
SPEAKER_00: Are a few of you in there?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So we there were like 200 helpers helping these 500 kids have a good week of vacation Bible school, and it's so great to be part of a church, a community.
SPEAKER_00: We belong there too, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so I put that picture on.
SPEAKER_00: If you have come in here and you you're not part of a church at all and you're looking for a church, I invite you to come to see our Bible church.
SPEAKER_00: Make this your church home.
SPEAKER_00: You belong here, so make it your church home if you can.
SPEAKER_00: So, talking about relationships, uh a couple weeks ago I started looking up stuff, um, and I found a Harvard uh university study on relationships.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the longest uh relationships on adult development.
SPEAKER_00: They started in 1938 and it's ongoing, it's over over 85 years old.
SPEAKER_00: And this study, you can Google it and you find it.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What's the secret for a happy life?
SPEAKER_00: Harvard University, and you'll you'll see this study and you can get into it.
SPEAKER_00: But it was they studied, start off with over 250 guys like sophomores.
SPEAKER_00: Uh John F.
SPEAKER_00: Kennedy was part of the original study, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: But they uh studied these guys and their whole life, but they also decided not just Harvard type people, men, we should include um men like inner city, you know, like poor people.
SPEAKER_00: So they got another four or five hundred guys involved to go along with that study.
SPEAKER_00: And then they also included women eventually because Harvard was an all-men's college originally.
SPEAKER_00: So they included the wives of women, and then they started following their children and their children's children and everything.
SPEAKER_00: And what they did, they I mean, they go into the homes over the years.
SPEAKER_00: They kept having funding for this study.
SPEAKER_00: They interview people, they uh they give them questionnaires, they actually take uh medical records too, and they had over 10,000 pages of data and information.
SPEAKER_00: And when that's all said and done, this is what they came up with.
SPEAKER_00: This is so interesting.
SPEAKER_00: It revealed that the ultimate key to a happy and healthy life isn't wealth, money.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that fame or career success.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, the single most powerful predictor of a long-term well-being is the quality of our relationships, and that embracing community helps us live longer and be happier.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: It takes a study like that to prove the Bible because Jesus, I mean, talks about relationships to love one another, to get along with people, to have good relationships, and it's not the quantity of relationships, it's the quality, how you develop those relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have a lot of friends, just maybe a few.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's a um, they're not here this morning, but uh, well, Craig uh is one of the men I meet with in John.
SPEAKER_00: We've been meeting once a week for over 30 years, and it's a relationship that just developed out of a the old Promise Keeper time, and uh we still meet.
SPEAKER_00: We don't do any big Bible study or anything, we just talk about our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We first we talked about our wives and our kids, now it's our grandkids and and them getting you know married and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, it's it's a um I encourage, especially guys and and women too, to have friends like that that you can meet with regularly and that hold you accountable, that really care about you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not talking about friends like guys, you know, drinking buddies or something.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about guys that really care about you and really support you.
SPEAKER_00: If that when the chips are down or you're having problems in your relationship with your wife or whatever, they support you and they they help you.
SPEAKER_00: So I would highly encourage that for both guys and girls.
SPEAKER_00: They found that the four daily pillars or the four daily habits of people that are um happy and success or uh happy and healthy in the study.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, they practice their faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Took a study like that to prove the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, staying close to your family.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, building real relationships or friendships.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, building real friendships, and then four, find meaning in their work.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll say those four again.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, practice your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, stay close to the family.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, building real friendships, and number four, finding meaning in the work, in your work.
SPEAKER_00: So this summer we've been talking about the narrow path to um of life, you know, to a good life, the narrow path.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it takes that narrow path.
SPEAKER_00: And I I put down here three ways we follow that narrow path to positive and lasting relationships, because relationships are what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, they even in that study they said they can predict your long-term health, even into your 80s, by your relationships more than they could by their health uh medical records, you know, their cholesterol levels and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00: They could predict, like this guy's got good relationships, they probably will live happier and healthier.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus showed us in John 13, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
SPEAKER_00: You also are to love one another.
SPEAKER_00: By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just Jesus didn't just leave us alone and say, Oh, go, go love everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Be happy, love everybody.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Love them like I'm gonna show you how.
SPEAKER_00: And he showed us how to love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, wouldn't that be nice nice to have, you know, somebody show us how to love and how to get along with people?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he showed us, and I'm gonna go through those.
SPEAKER_00: He showed us how, you know, it's like parents.
SPEAKER_00: You tell your kids, you especially you young parents, you tell your kids, no fighting, stop fighting.
SPEAKER_00: But are you giving the example?
SPEAKER_00: Are you actually like not fighting with your spouse, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now, I understand some of you have grown up, you didn't have a good example, maybe at home, and I get that, and that does hurt, but the Bible does give us instruction, and you can go to the Bible, even if you've had bad examples, let's do it right.
SPEAKER_00: He's showing you the right way to do it, like you're you know, get along, share, share with your brother or sister.
SPEAKER_00: Are you sharing?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what you're telling them, are you backing it up?
SPEAKER_00: Say sorry, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: You've all heard that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Are you apologizing to your spouse?
SPEAKER_00: Do they see you apologizing?
SPEAKER_00: Do they see you apologize to them or to their siblings, maybe?
SPEAKER_00: It's all about the example, and Jesus sets the example.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing he shows us how is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is grace.
SPEAKER_00: My daughter up in Seattle, Washington, she's 36 years old.
SPEAKER_00: She um she has three little ones, a little three-year-old, two-year-old, and a baby.
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Dad, life is hard.
SPEAKER_00: I go, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: She said, I just, I mean, and she didn't know what I that I was talking about this this morning.
SPEAKER_00: She goes, Wow, you know, life takes a lot of grace, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: With her husband and with the children, a lot of grace.
SPEAKER_00: And she mentioned that word two or three times.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, you know, you're just building my sermon for me.
SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of grace for each other.
SPEAKER_00: In Colossians 3, we read those words.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, it's by grace we are saved, right?
SPEAKER_00: It was by grace.
SPEAKER_00: We don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: And it was by grace.
SPEAKER_00: In his book, uh Paul Tripp, in the Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands, he mentions this his grace, God's grace, results in reconciliation, restoration, and peace.
SPEAKER_00: The impossibility of sinners becoming godly become possible, becomes possible through his grace.
SPEAKER_00: By grace, parents can pursue rebellious teenagers with patient, persevering love.
SPEAKER_00: By grace, a wife can put away bitter memories and fully forgive her husband.
SPEAKER_00: By grace, people can exit the prisons of depression, anxiety, and compulsion to live in hope-filled freedom.
SPEAKER_00: And by grace, those bound by lust, greed, fear, or vengeance can live in the purity and courage of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, it's all by grace.
SPEAKER_00: I have a picture here of um my wife and I.
SPEAKER_00: This one goes way back.
SPEAKER_00: It's over 50 years old because uh next month we're gonna celebrate our 49th anniversary.
SPEAKER_00: And um, but then we we actually were uh dating for quite a while before that.
SPEAKER_00: So we were, I think, our first year of college in this picture.
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I, we were our girlfriend at the time, we're dating, not married yet.
SPEAKER_00: We're part of a singing group in uh down in Southern California at a church where we uh attended.
SPEAKER_00: And I show you this picture, flip to the next one.
SPEAKER_00: There we are just a few months ago in Hawaii, and um I tell people that, especially when I counsel like uh married couples, and I tell them, I said, you want to get from that first picture to that picture, but it's gonna take a lot of grace.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of grace.
SPEAKER_00: People say, Oh, you have a great marriage.
SPEAKER_00: No, we don't.
SPEAKER_00: We have a normal marriage with all its ups and downs, all its problems.
SPEAKER_00: We have four kids, two boys, two girls.
SPEAKER_00: We had it all.
SPEAKER_00: Now we got 12 grandkids, too.
SPEAKER_00: But you go through ups and downs, but you go through it together.
SPEAKER_00: No, we don't have a great marriage, but we have a great God who has shown us how to show grace to each other.
SPEAKER_00: So, one more thing.
SPEAKER_00: There are smiles on our faces because the next picture I thought I'd throw this in is hula pie.
SPEAKER_00: Because we just finished off dessert, that hula pie.
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, uh, I can show a lot of grace to my wife, but when I order hula pie for dessert, she'll love me till the day I die.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is hula pie covers a lot of wrongs.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I know that's a verse in the Bible, but I I'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's to make that relationship work, it takes a lot of grace, but also takes some fun too, right?
SPEAKER_00: We put some fun in our marriage and we have hula pie.
SPEAKER_00: I wish they I wish I could find it here in the States, but anyway, number two the narrow path to positive and lasting relationships is humility.
SPEAKER_00: Humility.
SPEAKER_00: I would say that the greatest obstacle, like when I do counseling in my office, whether it's married couples or family or friends or whatever, I find the biggest obstacle is pride.
SPEAKER_00: Pride and self-centeredness.
SPEAKER_00: We could just care what we care about, and our culture is telling us the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's about you, right?
SPEAKER_00: You like I want what I want, how I want it, when I want it, and I'm not concerned with you, you know, and if two people, a married couple or whatever, it could be co-workers, it could be friends, it could be, you know, any number of relationships, two people are not getting what they want, you have a problem, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, how do you solve that problem?
SPEAKER_00: One of them is to be humble and maybe practice a little bit of humility in your life and get rid of that pride.
SPEAKER_00: There's a verse in Prov, I don't have it up here, but Proverbs 13 10.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 13 10.
SPEAKER_00: Four words.
SPEAKER_00: You should memorize this.
SPEAKER_00: Pride leads to conflict.
SPEAKER_00: It's through pride that we have all this conflict.
SPEAKER_00: I carry a key around with me.
SPEAKER_00: I think I mentioned this, I don't know, a couple years ago I did the sermon about the keys to our hearts and how we give Jesus all the keys to all the rooms in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And but we sometimes reserve one key, one room, a closet or something we want for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And for me, I I'm not ashamed to admit it, it was pride.
SPEAKER_00: And I carry that around to let me know be humble, right?
SPEAKER_00: Be humble.
SPEAKER_00: And so, um, and I don't know with you, but humility is something that we um it's hard, and that but that's the narrow way, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the narrow way that Jesus took.
SPEAKER_00: James 4, verse 6, he said, He gives more grace.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to The humble.
SPEAKER_00: What if Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
SPEAKER_00: What if Jesus stood his ground and said, I'm not gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna die on this cross.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go there.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not my fault.
SPEAKER_00: It's their fault.
SPEAKER_00: I hear that so much.
SPEAKER_00: It's their fault.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus lived a sinless life.
SPEAKER_00: He could actually say that.
SPEAKER_00: It was none of his fault.
SPEAKER_00: Our human sin.
SPEAKER_00: None of it was his fault.
SPEAKER_00: It was all our fault.
SPEAKER_00: And it says here in Philippians 2, there's a misprint.
SPEAKER_00: I think here says Philippians 4, but it's Philippians 2, verses 4 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others.
SPEAKER_00: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: See again, he offers us his mind, his way of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Have this mind in youth, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, and being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He surrend he surrendered.
SPEAKER_00: He submitted his body, everything.
SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, to the Roman authority he submitted, to he didn't have to, but he did.
SPEAKER_00: To the Jewish leaders he submitted, he didn't have to, but he did.
SPEAKER_00: To all the people he submitted also.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have to, but he did that too.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we think we're a little more important than Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to submit.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be humble.
SPEAKER_00: It's their fault, right?
SPEAKER_00: They started it.
SPEAKER_00: But you can end it.
SPEAKER_00: You can end it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there was a conflict between God and man.
SPEAKER_00: That conflict was sin, right?
SPEAKER_00: You've all most of you have heard about this.
SPEAKER_00: That the conflict that and how how was that conflict settled?
SPEAKER_00: It was settled at the cross where God sent his son, John 3.16.
SPEAKER_00: He loved the world.
SPEAKER_00: He did it out of love.
SPEAKER_00: I love the world so much.
SPEAKER_00: That he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not die but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: He gave us that.
SPEAKER_00: He humbled himself, he ended it, he reconciled us by humbling himself for death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He humbled himself.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, number three, forgiveness, the narrow path to positive and lasting relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: This is especially a hard one.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I left it till the end, because forgiveness is something that it's hard to say, I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: When I do any marriage type counseling or marriage service or you know, wedding, I say the most important words you can use or phrases you can use in your life in your marriage is forgive me, I forgive you, will you forgive me?
SPEAKER_00: And I I love you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I forgive you, will you forgive me?
SPEAKER_00: And I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the four.
SPEAKER_00: I don't say them enough.
SPEAKER_00: I know I don't.
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to um ask the communion servers if you could start passing out the elements because we're gonna be taking communion in just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted it's easy to talk about forgiveness and a lot of Bible verses, and I can throw, you know, you could I could throw a lot of Bible verses at you and tell you to forgive and all that, but I wanted to give you a personal example of what forgiveness looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Something that happened to me, and I shared this maybe a few years ago, but it's worth some of you may remember it, it's worth talking about again.
SPEAKER_00: This was some years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I owned a property in Merced, a corner property, and it was a commercial property that um I rented to a man, a gentleman by the name of Arturo, and he um he ran a uh it started off a good relationship, and he uh he did a like a Mexican ice cream with fruit and everything.
SPEAKER_00: It was really good.
SPEAKER_00: Every time I go down there, I'd love it because he'd give me free ice cream and all that stuff and had a good relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Then about almost a year later, he um he started not paying me my rent, you know.
SPEAKER_00: That we we you know, we have a lease agreement and everything, but he'd stop paying me.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like I would go down there and he would, I think he hid.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, one time I went down there, I was gonna meet him, and his son, I said, Where's your dad?
SPEAKER_00: His teenage son was working the ice cream place, and he said, Oh, I think he's gone.
SPEAKER_00: He's probably gambling your money away.
SPEAKER_00: I go, Well, that's great.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what am I gonna do now?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, my dad got back into like alcohol and some cocaine and stuff, and he said, I'm sorry about that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was probably a week or two after that, too, or a few weeks, that I get a call from my son who lived in Merced at the time, and he called me and he said, Dad, I think the uh that ice cream place is shut down.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, it's the lights aren't on, no power, no nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And so I I go, oh wow, okay.
SPEAKER_00: So Jenny and I went down there and we found it was shut down.
SPEAKER_00: He left all the ice cream, the power PGE, he didn't pay that bill either.
SPEAKER_00: It power was off, the ice cream was melted, it's getting moldy in the freezers, and um, so my wife and I cleaned it up.
SPEAKER_00: And that night I was at Yosemite Church.
SPEAKER_00: Yosemite Church, uh, Pastor Jeff was given a message on forgiveness, and it just hit me like a I said, no, God, I'm not gonna forgive that guy.
SPEAKER_00: He owes me a lot of money by this point, and and God kept nagging me, you've got to forgive this guy.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, but I even met with an attorney.
SPEAKER_00: We talked a little bit about how to go about and try to get some of my money back.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, God finally, you know, won out in my life and said, You got to forgive this guy.
SPEAKER_00: So I called him.
SPEAKER_00: He he wasn't answering any calls or text messages.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, he he answered the phone and uh so what do you want?
SPEAKER_00: I said, I'd like to just meet with you, Arturo.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, uh, what about?
SPEAKER_00: I said, just can I meet with you?
SPEAKER_00: Can we just talk?
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Okay.
SPEAKER_00: He met me at uh the the next Saturday, he met me at the uh that location.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Arturo, I what I did, I made this up so you can understand this.
SPEAKER_00: I I gave him an envelope, I said, here you go.
SPEAKER_00: And he he said, What is this?
SPEAKER_00: And he opened it up, he looks at it, and he's like, It's a bill, and it was an itemized bill, close to ten thousand dollars, money he owed me for damages and everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I like he looked at it and he goes, You know, I can't pay this.
SPEAKER_00: I go, I know you can't pay it.
SPEAKER_00: So this is what I'm gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: I took it and I ripped it up.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Your debts paid.
SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me, seriously?
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna come after me or anything?
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I'm not gonna come after you.
SPEAKER_00: Your debts paid.
SPEAKER_00: The next few minutes was full of hugs, tears as we embraced, and he was pretty overwhelmed by what I was doing.
SPEAKER_00: And I I even told him, I said, Arturo, it's not me doing this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, because Jesus forgave my sin, I'm forgiving you.
SPEAKER_00: And then he invited me to breakfast, and so we went to breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I paid for it, so he didn't have any money and went to breakfast and we had a nice talk, and then later on, I drove home by myself, and I had to pull over on J59.
SPEAKER_00: On that highway, I had to pull over because I was tears were welling up in my eyes for what just happened.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, I was thinking of what what happened between me and Arturo.
SPEAKER_00: The relationship was restored.
SPEAKER_00: If he walked through that door right now, I'd give him a hug and he'd hug me.
SPEAKER_00: A relationship was restored.
SPEAKER_00: Even though he owed me a lot of money, it released me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: The relationship was more important than that.
SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, is the lesson I learned of what Jesus did for me.
SPEAKER_00: He ripped it up.
SPEAKER_00: All my sin, shoot, it'd be pages, it'd be a book of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus did on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He ripped it up, said, You're forgiven, your debt is paid, you're free.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to go back and say, Well, what about that little sin or that sin?
SPEAKER_00: It's covered.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what about don't worry about it, it's covered.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, sometimes hopefully, by what I'm talking about, this forgiveness and everything, as we enter into communion, you may have something against somebody.
SPEAKER_00: They could even be in this room or sit next to you, and you need to make it right.
SPEAKER_00: Because, like, like I mentioned, you can say, Well, they started it, yeah, but you can end it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus ended it, He ended it, you're forgiven, and now we belong to Him in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you, if you have a relationship, whether it be a husband, wife, or good friends, or sisters, brothers, mom, or you know, mom, dad, or parent, kid, or a kid with a parent, whatever, don't put it off.
SPEAKER_00: Don't put it off at all.
SPEAKER_00: You people say, oh, well, time heals all wounds.
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't, it gets worse.
SPEAKER_00: Take care of it, please.
SPEAKER_00: Take care of it.
SPEAKER_00: I wrote up a little prayer before we take communion, and I'm gonna pray it right now.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you could just, in your mind, just pray along with me.
SPEAKER_00: Dear Heavenly Father, I humble myself before you and confess my sin.
SPEAKER_00: I am so grateful for the grace that you have given me as your child and for forgiving me.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, grant me the strength to forgive those people in my life who have hurt me by the things they have done or the things that they have said, and help me to apologize to those who I have hurt by the things I have said or done, and show me how to make things right.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Take that little cup of yours, take the little bread out.
SPEAKER_00: That night that Jesus actually was betrayed before he went to the cross, he was betrayed, and later that night, his own disciple Peter denied him three times.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that guy.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knew all this was gonna happen when he did this.
SPEAKER_00: He took the bread and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: He ripped it up.
SPEAKER_00: This is my body which is broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: Take and eat.
SPEAKER_00: So let's take it together and eat.
SPEAKER_00: It said, in the same manner, after the bread, he took the cup.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, This is the New Testament, this is the new covenant, this is my new commandment.
SPEAKER_00: He said, This is my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Again, he ripped it up.
SPEAKER_00: This is for the forgiveness of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: So remember what it took.
SPEAKER_00: Let's drink together.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the love you showed.
SPEAKER_00: We don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't deserve it at all that you sent Jesus to die for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: That we are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Help us, Lord, to be able to do the same for our relationships, for the people that we belong with.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to be kind, to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be gracious, to be humble.
SPEAKER_00: Help us, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for loving us so much.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining us, church.
SPEAKER_01: We hope that you enjoyed this message.
SPEAKER_01: To find more messages like this, or to see where you can get connected or to give financially, please visit Sierra Bible.com.