The Art of Moving On

July 19, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Feel what God is calling us to do. And then our meditation text, and this one is a familiar passage for many. But I wanted to do the New Living Translation. So it reads a little different. But I think we need to get it. And this is what we want. Let's read. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it. But I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Amen. All right. Was there another verse today? There we go. Okay. I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us. Amen. I ain't looking back. Come on now. I'm trying to press forward. That's good, isn't it? Amen. And so I want to look at our main text, Luke chapter 22, verses 47 through 51. I want to encourage you to read it and to meditate on how Jesus handled betrayal in his own life, that I think is a platform for all of us. And here's how it reads. While he was still speaking, a crowd came up. The man who was called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus asked him, Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? Matthew's version said, do what you're gonna do, friend. Implications they had a good relationship. When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen or what was going down, they said, Lord, it's on. No, I'm sorry. Lord, should we strike with our swords? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off the right ear. John's gospel said that was Peter. But Jesus answered, No more of this. And he touched the man's ear and healed him. Parallel passage you can read is in Matthew. Uh over there in Matthew 22. I think it's 24. No. 22. Sorry, excuse me right now, y'all. Forgive me on that. But there's a parallel passage to this as well, and you can read that as well. So I want to just put a put a title on this text. I want to talk about the art of moving on. The art of moving on. Last Sunday we talked about the theology of forgiveness. And in that word, we we define forgiveness as giving up the right to do to others what they did to us. We wanted to be clear on it because we we understand that as Christians, a lot of times we get confused and boggled down when it comes to forgiveness. Forgiveness in its simplest terms means I give up the right to do to others what they have done to me. Put another way, forgiveness is not reconciliation. It is not forgetting what somebody did to you. Forgiveness is not tolerating someone who only intends to cause you further harm. No, forgiveness says we surrender the right to get even. That's all forgiveness is. He says sometimes there are individuals under major issues that are fast forgivers. They're quick to forgive in order to avoid their pain. See, some people forgive quickly to escape confrontation. In other words, they forgive quickly. You know what? I forgive you because they really don't want to deal with the issue. I forgive you, it's over, let's put it behind us, it happened. We don't need to talk about it. Right? That's why we become such a passive-aggressive culture. That's why we can talk noise on social media, but we're quiet when we get in folks' face. Because we don't like confrontation. And I wish I could preach this. This is a whole sermon right here. Because theologically that goes against everything we believe as people's faith, as a people of faith. Because to go into somebody's face is the same thing we do on Sunday morning. When we go into God's presence, the Hebrew word literally means to go in God's face. And if I can't talk to somebody face to face, don't tell me you're talking to God face to face. But sometimes people forgive quickly because they're trying to avoid confrontation. I don't want to confront this issue. Others forgive quickly to avoid the clutches of bitterness. I get it. Because many of us understand if you hold on to something for too long, it'll transform you into something ugly. It'll make you and shape you into something that you're not. And the truth is, there's really two sides to this forgiveness thing. It's a two-edged sword. You can give too quickly, or you can forgive and hold on it to, I mean, I'm sorry, you can hold on it, hold on to it for too long. And if you hold on to it for too long, it'll make you like the very person that injured you. And so if you're not careful and you hold on to an issue too long, the abused becomes like the abuser. If you hold on to it for too long, the betrayer becomes the betrayal. The betrayed becomes like the betrayer. If you hold on to it for too long, the oppressed becomes just like the oppressor. There's a reality that you gotta let that thing go. But there's a danger, you can hold on to it for too long. And so we struggle with that because we don't want to be caught in the grip. But then I have to agree with Smeeds. I think for many times people forgive quickly because they're trying to avoid the pain. Pain that the relationship might be altered forever. The pain that I gotta face the very person that hurt me deeply. And I don't know if I have the emotional constitution to say what I need to say without losing control. The pain that when I face the person and tell the truth, though I've forgiven them, you gotta see last Sunday sermon to get that. Though I've forgiven them, the relationship might be over. And so we'd rather just forgive quickly, be done with it, because I can't imagine not having this person in my life. I'd rather forgive quickly. The pain of their absence is too much to bear. So the question is fair: how do we forgive in a way that addresses the pain? Or moreover, how do we just move on? That's why I call it an art. This there's no science to this, there's no ABCs to this. Because sometimes the very thing you're trying to leave, it won't leave you. Amen. How do you move on to something that won't let you move on? That's real, ain't it? And I see that in this text. Uh we learn something from the master when we see Jesus betrayed by Judas. And even though Judas, which many suggest from Matthew's version, where Jesus calls him a friend, maybe that they were close friends. That Jesus is able to still move on to his purpose. Judas sought to kiss Jesus. Don't treat that with a modern eye, y'all. A kiss in that age was something that's what exchanged between family members and the closest of friends. Some of you have friends that you almost treat like family. Treat them like brothers and sisters. They show up at your special holidays and all of your special events. Well, they they did the same thing, except they didn't just show up at the events, they solidified the friendship and the closeness of it with a kiss. Even to this day, in ancient part in the uh Middle Eastern world, they still solidify that with a kiss. And here comes Judas, and for that ancient audience, it would have been the height of incomprehensible betrayal and hypocrisy. Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. And yet Jesus moves on. Which leads me to my thesis statement this morning. Here it is own it before it owns you. How do you move on? What's the key to moving on? You got to own it before it owns you. You gotta take responsibility for what happened to you. Doesn't mean you excuse what happened to you. Doesn't mean that you forget what happens to you. Doesn't mean you act like what happened to you didn't happen. What it means is now that it's been put in my yard, it's been put on my property, I gotta take responsibility and manage this thing in a way that it doesn't do further damage, but I do it in a way that helps me to move forward. We gotta move on. We can't blame and blame folk for what they did to us, y'all. Even though they're wrong. Somebody said it so well. Blame may shift the weight, but it never lifts the burden. See, we can blame folk, and for a moment we may feel better. But after a while, the the burden stays. And it's responsibility when we own it. That's what actually lifts the burden. We got to own it so that we can lift the burden. It's no different than how we handle our cars and our car repairs. I was remembering just this week when I was in seminary, I had a car and I kind of ignored some of the repairs it needed because I just didn't have the money. Same man. And you know what happens when you ignore some repairs, somebody. And what should have been minor, I had to extra I had to change out the entire transmission, y'all. And and y'all, I still think about the money I spent in change. You don't ever want to change the transmission in your car. That thing was painful because the more I put it off, the more I put myself in pain. At some point, I had to deal with what was wrong with my car. That's all I'm trying to say, y'all. I'm not saying that we ignore what happened to us. I'm not saying we act like what happened to us didn't happen. What I'm saying is at some point we got to address what happened to us. If we keep putting it off, it's gonna be something worse that we cannot handle. So, how do we own this thing? A couple of things very quickly, and I'm not your way. Number one, we gotta frame it God's way. We gotta frame it God's way. In other words, we don't ignore what happened to us, but we gotta frame it with God's perspective. And that's what we see Luke here doing in this passage uh in verse uh 47 while he was still speaking to the crowd. Uh, the man called Judas came up to him uh and he approached Jesus to kiss him. And Jesus identified, Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? And Luke here, when he gives this thing, he wants us to understand this is in the context of Jesus going to the cross. It's in the context of him headed to something bigger and greater than him. And he doesn't just focus and isolate on this one event. And so it says to all of us, we have to learn to see the issue within God's greater purpose. In other words, framing it does not mean we ignore what happened to us. Framing it means we acknowledge it, but with the right perspective. Because if we frame it with our own perspective and we frame it with our hurt feelings, it will hold us back. It will reshape us and redefine us into something we were never designed to be. But if we allow God to define it, if we allow God to step in, not only will we keep who we are, but God will do something in spite of it to make us greater. Too much erroneous Christian thinking on this because we kind of assume that if God allowed it, it must have been his will to hurt us. Y'all know I'm telling the truth. Well, God allowed it. And I don't know, I'm not standing here to say I always understand the full sovereignty of God. It's a complex and confusing thing. But hear me well. God is not the author of evil. I'm gonna say it again. God is not the author of evil. John says there is no darkness in him, which means, as people of God and people of faith, God does not bring evil action against us, but for whatever reason, he has a way of using that as an opportunity to show us how we're greater than any evil that may come our way. And so the real question is not to get lost in the details of why it happened to us. The question is, are you still here? And you gotta ask yourself the question through all that I've been through and all that I've suffered and all the loss, why does God still have me here? See, I know you've been abused, but you're still here. I know you've been betrayed, but you're still here. I know you were lied on and they did you wrong on your job, but you're still here. I know they cheated on you, but you're still here. I know you suffered significant loss when you lost your loved ones, but guess what? You're still here. And if you're still here, God is saying, I know something bad happened to you, but you can frame it in a way that you can move on. Help me out, Joseph. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Brothers came to him and thought that Joseph was gonna get them now that daddy was gone. At least that's what I would have done. But Joseph let them know, no, no, I know what God did in my life. Matter of fact, Joseph, I think I believe he reframed the narrative because the text never tells us whether or not he got over the hurt. He surely forgave them, he surely restored them, he surely cared for them. But you can forgive and restore and do all that. That doesn't mean your heart just stopped hurting. So Joseph has this narrative in his mind. You meant it for evil, but thank God I didn't stop there, because if I had stopped then, I would have killed your behind. But God meant it for good. It was something designed to destroy me. But thank God, God showed me a way that I can get through it. That's why I gave you a meditation verse with Paul here. Paul says here that look, I was the least of apostles. That's why I'm always looking forward, trying to forget some things behind me. Because, see, there was a time in my life that I persecuted Christians. I was chasing down Christians and killing them and putting them in jail. And if you read Paul's letters, there's a sense that he always felt guilty about all that he did to the church. But when he would talk about that he was the least of all apostles and that he didn't deserve to be an apostle, he would talk about that he persecuted the church, but he talked about the grace of God. In other words, I may have done some bad things in my past, but I'm serveing a God that can turn you around and give you a better picture. So in Philippians 3, he said, I'm trying to forget those things in the past. Because I got grace in my future. I don't care what has happened in your life. When you frame it with what God has done in your life, He can always turn that thing around. Ah, number one, we gotta frame it. But then number two, we gotta name it God's way. Jesus calls what it is. You're gonna betray me with a kiss? He calls that thing out. Watch this, we don't like this. First, he confronts him. He confronts him with the truth, confronts him calmly, confronts him man to man, confronts him with the truth. I don't know about you. I'd have added a few extra words in this edition. How the blanket and blanket, you gonna do me, and I did all this for you. That's not what Jesus does. Which means, watch this. If we're in that spirit where our hearts are so broken and it's filled with anger and angst, we may need time. Time to get ourselves together, time to calm us down. But if you're gonna move on, for a lot of us, there's some things that need to be said, but you gotta say it in the right spirit. You can't say it for vengeance. You gotta ask yourself the question: why am I doing this? Am I doing it to punish them? Then that's not forgiveness. And you've left it again. Remember, forgiveness says, I relinquish the right to do to you what you did to me. And so, though we may not do it physically, sometimes we do it verbally. Preach or true. So, yeah, you say, Well, Pastor, I ain't I ain't cheat on them, but verbally with your words, you show getting it out emotionally. So that means, watch this, we gotta watch ourselves in terms of how we want to say it. We gotta give ourselves time to say what needs to be said. We gotta get in the right spirit to be able to speak the truth and to speak it with love. Because watch this, the goal is not to punish them, the goal is to confront it with the truth with the hopes that they would acknowledge what they did was wrong. That's the whole goal. The goal is to simply present the truth. They may accept it, they may not. And we have to ask ourselves what the uh purpose of that is. So, number one, when he names it, he confronts it. That's tough, but that helps it move on. The second thing I would put here is not only does he name it, but he calls it out for what it is. He speaks truth to it. In other words, uh uh naming it or verbalizing it is the first step to moving beyond it. Because many times things happen to us, we just keep it to ourselves. And there's a whole lot of elephants in the church, amen, that many times we may verbalize it with our friends and everybody else, and we never take it to God. Because God is the one that can handle it. And we really miss this because throughout the Old Testament, the saints understood this reality. Many times when they were taken advantage of and they felt betrayed, they would take that before God, the book of Lamentations, Psalms 13, Psalm 69. Many Psalms where the saints would come and they would pour out their heart and their anger to God for what had been done to them. And they would do that within the context of worship. Psalm 73. I'm just gonna read you a few lines. This is a prayer written by Aesop. He says, This surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. He said, But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. Now he's not talking about he's slipping off the front step of his house. He's saying, I almost quit the faith. He's saying I almost deconverted. Why did you almost slip? He said, I had literally lost my foothold, for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. Here I am struggling with diabetes. I'm trying to live right. Here's this fool doing everything wrong. Seems like he ain't ever getting sick. That's what he's saying. They are free from common human burdens. They are not plagued by human ills. Therefore, pride is their necklace. They clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity. Their evil imagination has no limits. In other words, he said, look, I'm trying to live right. I'm trying to live the straight and narrow. And I can't even make two dollars. This fool is robbing folk. This fool is doing everything wrong. It seems like he's getting richer, and God, you ain't doing anything about it. He's calling it out as it is. And for many of us, we need to say it like we mean it to God and how it made us feel. So here it is. I'm gonna really bring this thing home. And so I heard the story, came across the story of two historians who were experts on the life of Thomas Jefferson. Two historians. And one historian had been digging through his private effects and things, and somehow he had access to it, and he found a box that many had overlooked. And in this box were a treasure trove of letters that Thomas Jefferson had written to Sally Hemings. Y'all know who Sally Hemings is, right? I'm here to speak truth. I ain't here to lie, I'm here to speak truth. You know, Thomas Jefferson talked about all men are created equal, but on the on his plantation in Monticello, he on the down low with Miss Hemings and got a whole clan of children to prove that look just like him and her. I ain't got time to preach all this. But anyway, he finds the box with the letters that show that it was more than just this master slave relationship. There was a love affair going on. And so he and this colleague, they decide, you know what, we can publish this. Actually, it's the first one to really put it out in a historical way before they even did the DNA and all that kind of stuff. And so they want to publish the first article together and do a presentation at a local uh historical society, which is really big time in these Ivy League schools. So he's working with this guy, uh, and they're working together on it. He's the one that brought him on. The guy he brought on didn't know anything about it. He was the one that discovered the letters, he's the one that revealed it. All the guy did was help him uh put together the article. When it came time to do the presentation, the guy's colleague did the presentation. And when he did the presentation, he listed himself as the sole author and the one that actually found the letters. And of course, the original guy, like y'all feeling right now, was livid. He was hotter than fish grease, okay? This brother was upset. And so somebody asked him, How are you feeling about all this? And here's what he said. He said, Annoyance, but that's not quite it. That's not what I feel. Some disappointment? No. Indignation? Yes. But a lot more too. Grief, to be sure, but none of these is what I'm feeling right now. What I really feel, here it is, is rage. My blood is boiling, and I hate that man. I wish he would get fired and die on the spot. See, y'all shocked. Because some of you, with what folk did to you, that's how you feel. And you won't be honest with God with how you feel about what somebody did to you. And the first step to overcoming exactly what somebody did to you, you got to tell God exactly how you feel. Lord, if it was legal and I didn't get the death penalty, I would have taken them out a long time ago. You can't say amen saying, just say yes. Just say yes. Just say yes. Feel better already, don't you? Feel better already. Let me give you the last one. Here it is. So so so so we frame it God's way. We name it God's way. Here's the last one. We leave it God's way. And so the disciples recognize what's going on. They're mad with Judas. They're mad with the guards. They're ready to pull the sword. One disciple asked, Should we strike him with the sword? Peter didn't even listen. He didn't even wait. See, Peter from the south side. Peter didn't even wait. He just went right at it. But now he hadn't been to the shooting range either. So, because he was trying to kill him, but he missed and cut off his ear. And look what Jesus said. None of this, enough of this. He answered, no more of this. And he touched the man's ear and healed him. Hear me well. How do you really move on on a devastating wound? Here it is. You have to have a bigger purpose that makes a difference in the world. What I love about this passage, Jesus, possibly his best friend Judas, betrays him on his way to the cross. He didn't change who he was. He healed his enemy. He did not destroy his enemy. Somebody needs to tell a political party that here and a whole group of Christians here. And he kept going to his purpose. What I'm simply trying to say to us, if you really want to come through this thing God's way, you've got to make sure you have a purpose that's bigger than you. And Jesus said, I'm not gonna let some little Judas stop me from going to the cross. Because I know if I get to the cross, it'll be salvation for everybody. If I get to the cross, there'll be forgiveness for everybody. If I get to the cross, there'll be healing for everybody. I gotta stay on this path. I gotta get to the cross because I got a greater purpose. And if I stay with my purpose, it doesn't matter what they've done to me, and what they've done to me can't reshape me and redefine me. It's my purpose that has called me and defined me, and I will continue with my purpose. That's the issue. No matter what you're going through, God's challenging you on your purpose. So here it is, here it is. They tell me, they tell me that that a mosquito, a male mosquito has 10 days to live. From birth to death, 10 days. A female mosquito lives 46 to 52 days. Y'all know sisters live longer than us, right, brothers. So I don't know why a female mosquito lives longer than a male mosquito, but a male mosquito only lives 10 days. And you know what a mosquito's gonna do in those 10 days? He's gonna sting somebody. And can I say it like I know he would say it? I only got 10 days on this planet. But you better believe before I leave this world, I'm gonna make my mark on somebody. And I wish somebody would get that. If a mosquito only has 10 days to make a difference in this world, what does that say about your life? Your life is not an accident, you're not here just trying to survive. God has given you a purpose. You have a reason for being, and I don't care what anybody has ever done to you. They can't hurt or wipe out what God's purpose is on your life. If Jesus had a purpose, he's giving you a purpose. Hold on to what God has for your life. Do like Paul, forget the past, press on to the forward, and God will fulfill his purpose in your life. The way, the art of moving on, stay with your purpose, and God will make a difference in your life. Father, we bless you and thank you again for your word. Thank you for this day. Thank you for all that you say and do. As we wrap up this series, Lord, for a lot of us, it's very difficult to move on. For what people have done to us. Thank you for the template that you left us here with. That even though Judas tried to deter you and trip you up, you stayed on your path, headed to the cross, brought forgiveness to the world, redemption to mankind. We have salvation because you stayed the course. And Lord, that reminds us we all have a purpose. We all have a way in which we can nudge the world and make a difference. That nothing can outweigh the purpose you have for us. No hurt, no pain, no trauma, no betrayal, no abuse can overrule or override the purpose that you've destined for all of us to walk in. So, God, I pray right now that purpose would begin to be real in this house. Purpose would happen in the hearts and minds of your people. That they would know that they're not here by accident. No, they're here by providence. That you arrange a purpose for each and every one of us to make a difference in this world. In the mighty and masterless name of Jesus Christ, we pray. And everybody said, Amen. Come on, give the Lord a hand clap of praise today.