Slide 1
A grudge is pain on repeat.

Slide 2
Genesis 4:23-24
Lamech said to his wives:
“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
    you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
    a young man for striking me.
If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold,
    then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”

Slide 3
Sin creates an escalating cycle of retaliation.

Slide 4
Matthew 18:1–4 | Humility: become like a child.
Matthew 18:5–14 | Protect “little ones” and pursue the wandering sheep.
Matthew 18:15–20 | Confront sin directly and pursue restoration.

Slide 5
Matthew 18:21-22
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Slide 6
The word translated “forgive” in Matthew 18 is from ἀφίημι (aphiēmi). The word can mean to send away, release, let go, cancel, remit, or forgive.

Slide 7
Lamech says: “I multiply vengeance.”
Jesus says: “My people multiply mercy.”

Slide 8
Forgiveness is:
A decision: I will not seek vengeance.
A process: I continually release the anger as it returns.
A direction:  I am moving toward mercy rather than bitterness.

Slide 9
Forgiveness can reduce anger, anxiety, and psychological depression while also improving mental well-being. Therapeutic models of forgiveness are not a one-time moment, but a process. – National Institute of Health

Slide 10
The Global Flourishing Study (Harvard, Baylor, Gallup, and the Center for Open Science) tracks more than 200,000 people across 22 countries and one territory. They have found that people who were more dispositionally forgiving tended to report better well-being about a year later across multiple outcomes, especially mental health, purpose, relationship satisfaction, and hope.

Slide 11
Matthew 18:23-35
“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Slide 12
A talent was worth about 6,000 denarii.
A denarius was a normal day’s wage for a laborer. 
Ten thousand talents isn’t “a lot of money.” It’s an unpayable debt.

Slide 13
Unforgiveness feels like control, but it functions like a cage.

Slide 14
Forgiven people forgive.

Slide 15
Forgiveness does not always mean:
“I trust you again.”
“I remove all consequences.”
“I pretend it did not happen.”
“I give you the same access to hurt me again.”

Slide 16
Forgiveness means:
“I release vengeance.”
“I refuse to let bitterness own me.”
“I entrust justice to God.”
“I remain open to repentance and restoration where it is truly possible.”

Slide 17
3-Steps of Forgiveness from Matthew 18:
1. Name the debt
2. Release the right to collect
3. Repeat as necessary

Slide 18
“I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self-destructive. If you hate somebody, you’re not hurting the person you hate, you’re hurting yourself.” – Louis Zamperini

So the science says that there’s something about our brain that remembers bad things more easily than we remember good things. If you think back to your childhood, any moment that involved pain or struggle, those moments, your brain just tends to latch onto and remember those things far easier than the really great moments that we had. So for example, right now, if you think back to junior high, probably most of it’s in this room can remember a time in junior high where somebody said something mean to us or somebody bullied us, or, or we just had a moment where we were embarrassed and it was the most embarrassing thing ever. And now, decades later, sometimes when I’m going to bed at night, my brain likes to remind me, you remember when you were embarrassed back in the sixth grade? Because our brain latches onto those things.

And partly, I think because of this negativity bias, when someone in particular wrongs us, it’s hard for us to let those things go instead of just letting those things go. What our brain really wants to do is to get revenge. They wronged me, therefore I need to wrong them back. Think about just how common that is in movies, one of the greatest movies of all time, but Princess Bride, Ango Montoya, what is his character? Hello, my name is an Eagle Montoya. You kill my father, prepare to die. Like his whole thing is getting revenge for his dad. At the end of the movie, he gets revenge, and then he turns to the dread Pirate Roberts, and he says, I don’t know what to do next. Like my whole, that was it. That was my shtick. And now it’s gone, but I’m lost without that thing.

Think of really famous movies. The Godfather, all The Godfather is about is revenge. Someone did something wrong, the other people did something worse, and they did something worse. And it just escalates. A more recent movie franchise, John Wick, they murdered his dog and they, they have like nine movies all connected to that guy’s revenge over his dog. So there’s something about us that wants to hold onto a grudge. And then remember, and remember and remember, and, and here’s the thing about that, that’s unhealthy. What a grudge ultimately is, is pain on repeat that I, that I remember that time in middle school when something bad happened to me, and all that pain just gets repeated in my heart and my mind and my soul. And for some of you in this room, you, you have some type of a grudge or some type of unforgiveness or, or some type of thing, and it’s a deep, deep wound. And so when, when I talk about something as silly as a junior high embarrassment, you say, okay, but my thing is way deeper than that. But when we hold onto it, we just allow that pain to resurface and resurface and hurt us over and over and over and over again. But that, that’s the culture that we live in, that that’s the result of a broken world all the way back. And it’s some of the very

Earliest pages of scripture we see.

Why. Look with me in

The Book of Genesis, if you’ve got a Bible turn with me over to Genesis.

We’re gonna be in chapter

Four just very briefly,

And then we’re gonna camp out in chapter 18 of Matthew. But starting in Genesis chapter

Four, this is right after

Cain kills Abel. This is Cain’s son. We’re introduced to a guy named Lambic. And Lambic is not a great guy.

It, so Genesis chapter four, starting in verse 23, it

Says, lambic said

To his wives, plural. So here’s

What we know about Lambic so

Far, son

Of Cain, and he’s the first person to have

Two wives. So

First person practicing polygamy. Now it’s a side note,

The Bible

Never affirms polygamy. It always condemns, polygamy. It’s just sinful. People

Chose

To do it anyway. And Lambic happens to be the first Aah and Alah,

Those are his wives.

Hear my voice,

You wives

Of lambic, listen to what

I say.

Second strike

Against this guy. He’s also the

First person to ever refer to himself in the third person. So Lambic not a great guy,

It gets worse. He says, I have killed

A man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Kane’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lambics is 70 sevenfold.

He says, okay. I was wounded

By someone, he struck me. And so I responded, not just tit for tat, not just he wounded me. So I’m gonna wound him. I responded by killing him. And then he has this line,

He

Says, my revenge is not just gonna be equal to the wrongdoing that has come against me. It’s gonna be 77

Fold what they deserve. You see, all the way

Back in the very

Early chapters of scripture,

Here’s what we learned, that sin

Creates this

Escalating cycle

Of retaliation.

You wronged me, therefore, I am going to wrong you.

What does it create? It creates war. It creates fights. It

Creates arguments. It creates battles.

If

You look at most world

Wars,

Most

Huge wars that have happened

Over human history, it came down to this very simple concept

That there

Was a wrong, and then someone returned the wrong with a worse wrong. And then someone returned that wrong with an even worse wrong. And it escalates until there’s all

Out war.

Even in the United States, you think of some very famous conflicts, the Hatfields and the McCoys,

That

Those were two families in the United States,

That

They lived right next to each other. They were neighbors and one wronged the other, and then the other wronged and back. And then it just kept

Escalating,

Escalating, it escalated so much that it lasted generations of families that

Were at war

With one another.

And so this is the culture of the world. This

Is just the normative pattern

Of behavior

Of the sinfulness in our world that is in our heart. And then Jesus jumps onto the scene. And Jesus, in Matthew chapter 18, he, he’s talking about his kingdom. He’s saying that the kingdom of God, it looks different than the world around us. And so in the the chapter at the very beginning, he does something that’s a little bit crazy, that they’re discussing who’s the greatest? How does one become the greatest? And he says, okay, in the kingdom of God, here’s how you become the greatest. And then he takes a little child and he brings the child in, in front of all the adults. And in the first century, a child was seen as basically worthless, that they were meant to, to stay outta sight, outta mind. They didn’t have value. And so he takes someone, that culture would’ve said, Hey, they’re not important. And he puts ’em at the center and he says, unless you have the humility of this child, you can’t be great in the kingdom of God.

He says, you, you want to be in my kingdom. It requires humility. And then the next thing he does is he, he gives this parable of the lost sheep, the, the shepherd that leaves the 99 to go find the one. And so still with the child is the centerpiece of this conversation. He’s saying that in the kingdom of God, we protect the one, we protect the weak that God values the lost sheep and will chase after the lost sheep and the kingdom of God. Each person has value. And then there’s this, this famous exchange where it talks about when you see a brother who’s sinning, what should you do? And Jesus says, well, first you should go to the brother and you should point out the sin. And then if they ignore you, you should bring another Christian. Then multiple people should go to that person seeking repentance and reconciliation.

And then ultimately, if that person denies those things, that, that you should move on from that person. So understand that in a second. When Jesus is talking about forgiveness, it’s distinct from reconciliation. Forgiveness can lead to reconciliation, but forgiveness does not always require reconciliation. And then in verse 21 is where we pick up Peter asks this question to Jesus. It says, then Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me? And I forgive him as many as seven times now. Now understand this is coming on the heels of this person that Jesus is explaining, Hey, when someone is sending, you should go to that person and, and have the conversation with that person. And so Jesus said, well, how many times should this go on? And I should continue to forgive this person. Now, we, we know from some other non-biblical writing that, that the Jewish mindset, the Jewish teaching of the first century was that three was the number that you should forgive somebody up to three times. So if that’s what the Jewish teaching in the first century was, Peter is already taking that and raising it up a notch. He’s already saying, okay, everybody around here is probably saying three. I’m gonna say seven. Now we don’t really know the context. Like maybe it was just this genuine question. I like to think just because of the personality of Peter that Peter’s being the teacher’s pet. And he’s like, Hey, Jesus, like you think that we should forgive seven times because I’m twice as

Good as everybody else.

And then instead of saying, yes, Peter, you’re the man. That’s the right answer. Verse 22 says,

Jesus

Said to him, I do not say to you seven times,

But

77 times. Now, depending upon your translation, the Greek there on the number is a little bit interesting. That it could be 70 times seven or it could be 77. We’re not it

Could be translated

Correctly in Greek either way. We’re not a hundred percent sure, but my assumption is that he says 77 times, that’s how ESV translates it

Because he’s

Hearkening back to lambic

That, that he’s, he’s

Saying, okay, remember how Lambic says that revenge would come 77 times? Jesus is saying forgiveness should come 77 times.

That word

Forgive in the Greek is an interesting word because what we think of forgiveness as okay wrong. And I I tell somebody, Hey, you say, I’m sorry, I

Say I forgive you. That’s

What we think of as forgiveness.

But the Greek word for forgive is this Greek word

A femi. And a femi can mean forgive, but it also can mean to release

Or to let go of

Or to cancel or to remit.

So the picture

Behind forgiveness is that I have this wound, this burden that I am carrying with me. And to forgive someone is to

Take

That wound and to

Release it. It’s to let it go. It’s

To move on.

That that so

Often a wound that we carry can become the identity of

Who we are.

That everything about my life becomes

Based off of this

One thing that happened, this one thing that happened to me.

And

So the Greek understanding of forgiveness is that I’m releasing that thing in order

That

I might move on.

And so

Jesus intentionally

Hearkening

Back to the

Idea of lambic. He’s

Saying, the world around us is this concept of

I

Multiply vengeance. You do something wrong to me. I do something wrong to you. And then Jesus says, in my kingdom, my people,

Instead

Of multiplying vengeance, they multiply mercy. He’s saying it’s gonna look

Very different.

And now here’s what I want us to understand about forgiveness.

We

Think of forgiveness as, okay,

Hey, I just say you’re

Forgiven, and that’s

It. And forgiveness

Is really more nuanced and deep than that. It’s really these

Three

Different things that, that first there

Is this

Decision. So it’s this decision in my life to say, okay, I’m going to forgive, meaning I will not seek vengeance. I’m gonna lay

That aside.

But then it becomes this process where I’m continually releasing the anger. Every time, those same emotions, those same feelings, those same hurts come back to me. I’m continually forgiving. I’m continually letting it go. I’m continuing to turn it back to God and say, God,

Help me to forgive.

And then those two things together help us have a new direction that I’m moving toward mercy instead of bitterness. The the New Testament idea that Jesus is trying to get us to understand is forgiveness is less about the other person. It’s not about what they deserve. It’s about me. It’s about me experiencing freedom. It’s about what I deserve. If I’m gonna walk in truth and life, it’s beneficial to me to forgive and to let go. Modern science would back this up. Look at what new research from the National Institute of Health tells us. Forgiveness can reduce anger, anxiety, and psychological depression while also improving mental wellbeing. Therapeutic models of forgiveness are not a one-time moment, but a process. There’s a current ongoing study done by the Global Flourishing Study. This is a combination of Harvard and Baylor Gallup, the Center for Open Science.

Hey, here’s what they’re doing. They’re tracking more than 200,000 people across 2 22 different countries, one territory. And this is what they found. People who were more dispositionally forgiving tended to report better wellbeing about a year later across multiple outcomes, especially mental health, pur mental health purpose, relationship satisfaction, and hope that that what Jesus was saying 2000 years ago. Now, the modern science would say the healthiest thing for you in your life is to forgive. Now, again, intellectually that’s easy. Hey, we should forgive. But emotionally, when I have a pain, a hurt, a struggle that I have been carrying with me, the idea of letting that go seems impossible. There’s a beautiful story about a guy named Louis Zini. Louis Zini has had a documentary made out of him. I think there’s been at least three movies that have been made about his life. Unbreakable was made about 12 years ago.

Louis Amini in 1936 was an Olympic athlete, became pretty famous. Now, he was kind of this, this nobody that ends up in the Olympics and does really well. He doesn’t win the race that he’s in, he’s in this long distance race. But he sets a record on his last lap, like something gets into him. And on his last lap, he, he’s way in the back and he almost catches up to everybody. And so that just causes him to become this star. This Olympics is right before World War ii. So World War II happens. He, he joins the Air Force in 1943. His plane is on a rescue mission. And the crash, almost everybody in the plane died. A few of them survive. They end up in two different lifeboats. They’re in those lifeboats for 47 days just drifting in the middle of the ocean. They barely survive. They catch a seagull, eat the seagull. They use another seagull to to go fishing. They have sharks that are surrounding them. Some of the people that were on the lifeboats died. Finally they see land. They make it to land after this 47 day ordeal, which just seems impossible except the land that they wash up on his enemy territory.

He ends up in a POW camp for two years.

For two years he’s a prisoner of

War. But somewhere in those two years, they learn his identity. They say, Hey,

This guy, this guy Louis,

He’s famous over the United States of American. So they go to him, they say, we want you to make a radio

Broadcast

That condemns the United States of American. He says, I absolutely will not do that. And so they start to torture him, and

They try to torture

Him until he would be willing to say terrible things about the United States. And so for

Almost two years, he’s tortured

Every single

Day.

And then the war ends, and he’s saved,

He’s rescued.

He, he comes back to the United States of America. He gets married. He, he tries to move on, but every night he has nightmares remembering the torture, remembering what was done to him. And he says that every night, all he could think about was revenge. All he could think about was doing to them the very things that they had done to him. He struggles with

PTSD.

He becomes an alcoholic.

His wife is about to divorce

Him. His, his life

Is just a total

Wreck. And then in 1949, he goes to a Billy Graham’s crusade. And at the end, he, he, he

Starts

To leave. And then something about the

Holy Spirit just just gets a hold

Of his life. And he walks forward and he hits his knees and he gives his life

To Jesus. And he would tell you that, that

That moment didn’t just wipe

All the bad away.

But that moment he realized that he needed to

Forgive.

And that decision became a

Process.

And over time, he continually, more and more and more just said, every single day, I’m gonna forgive. I’m gonna forgive my captors. I’m gonna forgive the people that tortured me. I’m gonna forgive the things that happened to me. And he wrote letters

To the people

That had tortured him, knowing that they might not ever see him. And those letters said, I want you to know that I forgive

You for

What you did to me. And I also want you to know that

Jesus loves you, that his life was wrecked

Because of the unforgiveness. And then through the power

Of the Holy Spirit, he experienced

Freedom

Through

Forgiveness. Let’s keep going in verse 23.

So Jesus says that we should forgive

77 times. And then he gives this

Parable. He says, therefore,

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who

Wished to settle

Accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold

With

His wife and children and all that they had in payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denari seizing him. He began to choke him saying, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servant sa what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant.

I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And you should not have had mercy on your fellow servant. And should not, you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you. And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also, my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Now, it’s a parable. So it’s a made up story, but there’s, there’s some pieces to the story that we miss. Like for example, at the beginning it talks about 10,000 talents, and we hear that number and it means nothing to us. And so, so to help put that, frame that so that we hear it the same way. Someone in the first century would’ve heard that a talent was worth about 6,000 denari.

And one denari was considered one day’s wages. So 10,000 talents. When he says that number, it’s not meant to be a big number. It’s intentionally meant to be an unpayable debt. Like if you do the math on, okay, here’s a normal day’s wages. It’s somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 years of labor, like 200,000 years of labor. So, so people sometimes try and calculate, they say, well, it’s, it’s worth roughly $10 billion today. And that’s not the point that Jesus is trying to make. He’s trying to create a number that is so massive that people would recognize it is impossible for this servant to ever pay this debt, which is why it also becomes comical when, when the servant is like, Hey, just gimme time and I’ll pay it off because it’s impossible to pay off it. It’d be like you or me owing $10 billion and saying, Hey, just let me, let me start making monthly payments.

And I I got you. I’ll figure it out. Like it’s not a real number. It’s a number that’s just so crazy. The point is, this servant is incapable of ever paying it back. And the king looks at the servant and says, you can’t ever do this on your own. And he doesn’t create a payment plan. He says, no, it’s just released freedom, grace, and mercy from the king is what the servant received. Then the servant goes out and he runs into somebody that owes him money. Now, also interesting, he, he doesn’t say like a nominal amount. He doesn’t say, oh, well, he, he runs into somebody and this person owes him 50 bucks. Like he intentionally makes the numbers significant, roughly $50,000. Hey, hey, this is a big amount. He, he’s trying to get us to understand this is not forgiveness. Talking about the person that cut you off in traffic.

This is forgiveness about that wound that you are carrying because you were deeply wronged and that servant won’t forgive because our human nature is not to forgive. Our human nature is, hey, you have to pay it back. And in the first century, if you had a debt that you could not pay, you went to a debtor’s prison until you could pay it off. And what we saw in the, the first account that was very common, we’re not gonna just put you, we’re gonna put your whole family into a debtor’s camp until you pay this off through labor. And so he who receives so much forgiveness, looks at the wrong in his life. And he says, I can’t forgive that. And then the king calls him back in. And then Jesus gives us this line where he says, likewise is our father in heaven, that in the kingdom of God, the forgiveness we have received an unpayable debt that we cannot fathom means that practically we need to also forgive others.

One of the fascinating things about the story is that the servant, the first servant, he deserves to go to prison, but because of the grace of the king, he, he doesn’t end up in prison. But then because he doesn’t give forgiveness, where does he end up at the end of the story, right back in prison. It, it’s trying to help us to understand that unforgiveness feels like control. And when I hold onto that hurt, when I hold onto that pain, when I hold onto the struggle, it feels good to ruminate on it in my mind over and over and over again, and replay it in my mind and think about what I could have said and what I could have done and, and how I could pay this person back. But that feeling of control over that rage and that anger and that bitterness and that unforgiveness, it functions like a cage.

It ends up a prison that is controlling me that I can’t let go of. And Jesus is saying in his kingdom forgiven, people forgive. Now, now probably if you’ve been around church, you, you’ve heard something familiar enough to that phrase, almost exactly that phrase, maybe that exact phrase, forgiven. People forgive. And it sounds so easy. And yet that is really, really hard. Like it’s hard with kids when my kids do things to each other, one messes with the other or that they mess other their screen time or they’re unfair, or they eat their candy or they punch each other in the face, which doesn’t happen often. But if you got kids, like at some point there’s physical alterations that happen. And when you have them sit down and, and work through forgiveness, that’s hard. As a kid, I’m sorry, I want you to say it.

No, say like, you mean it, like you’re sitting down and working through the whole thing, and now you gotta say you’re forgiven. Even though the kid’s like angry and clearly they don’t forgive their sibling, say you forgive ’em right now, like it would sometimes bad parenting. But that’s what we do. Like, Hey, this is what forgiveness looks like. And it’s hard then for very, very minor stuff. But you know what’s really hard is I know that some of you in this room, you’re saying, okay, hey, I, I get, I can comprehend that kind of forgiveness, but you don’t understand what I’m going through right now that, that maybe you had a spouse that was unfaithful, that betrayal. You say, wait, wait, you’re, you’re asking me to forgive that? Or even worse, I, I, I met someone this weekend and they said that their child, their adult child had been murdered.

Like, I cannot even fathom, I cannot even understand that concept of forgiveness that is beyond my understanding. And so I’m not saying, Hey, you should forgive, be because I understand the pain that you’re walking through. I’m saying forgiveness. We think it’s about that person and whether they deserve forgiveness or not. But that’s not what scripture is trying to teach us. Scripture is trying to teach us that forgiveness is about us and not them. It’s about what we deserve. That if we wanna walk in freedom, if we wanna walk in truth, and we wanna walk in joy, I’ve gotta release the cage of unforgiveness that will hold me captive for the rest of my life unless I do something about it. And it’s not always possible by myself, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, I can take things that just seem impossible and over and over and over again, through a process of God help me with this.

And now I also wanna add this caveat. I’m not telling you that forgiveness means you’re pretending like nothing ever happened. So forgiveness does not always mean things like, Hey, I’m gonna trust you again. Forgiveness does not always mean that I’m gonna remove all the consequences and pretend it never happened. It does not always mean I, I’m just gonna pretend like, Hey, this, this never, ever happened before, or this idea that I’m gonna give you the same access so you could hurt me over and over and over again. That that’s not at all what we’re talking about. That, that I can forgive someone and still say, you’re an unhealthy person in my life, and so I’m not gonna allow you back into my life to hurt me again, but I’m gonna let go the bitterness. And instead here, here’s what forgiveness does mean. Forgiveness means I am releasing revenge.

I’m releasing vengeance. I’m saying it’s not my part. It’s not, it’s not my job to get revenge on that person. It means that I’m going to refuse to let bitterness own me or define me or to shackle me. It means that I’m going to entrust justice to God instead of on my own. I’m gonna say, Hey, God, revenge is yours. You are a God of justice. I I don’t need to take justice on your behalf. Forgiveness also means I remain open to repentance and restoration where it’s truly possible. It doesn’t mean it’s always possible, but sometimes it is possible through the power of the Holy Spirit. And God uses that as a beautiful healing thing. I wanna give us three practical steps of forgiveness that we see right here in Matthew chapter 18. The first is to name the debt. Now, now, some of you in here, you named the debt 35 minutes ago, like the moment you heard that we were talking about forgiveness, your mind went right to that thing that for so long you’ve been holding onto, or maybe it’s very recent, maybe it’s really recent, and this is the thing that you have been holding onto.

Your first step is to name it right now in your heart and your mind to God. What is that thing that you’ve been holding onto that you have never forgiven? And then the second step is to release the right to collect, Hey, this is a debt that I’m owed, but I’m going to release it.

I’m going to start to forgive this person. And, and then the next step is that you repeat that over and over and over and over again. I’m not gonna tell you, Hey, you just say a prayer right now and you say, Hey, I forgive that person. And then tomorrow, you never think about it ever again for the rest of your life. That if it’s a deep wound, it means that you have to continually bring it back to forgiveness and bring it back to forgiveness and bring it back to forgiveness and say, God, I can’t do this on my own, both through the power of the Holy Spirit. Would you help me? And maybe it’s a relationship you had with a parent that they harmed you in a terrible way, and maybe it’s a relationship that you have with a church. I I know that people have been hurt by the church.

Maybe you grew up in a church that hurt. You may maybe this po church at some point hurt you, that the challenge of the church is this, is the church is not filled with perfect people. It’s filled with a bunch of sinners and sinners hurt people. That that’s what happens. But the, the challenge is if you say, well, I’m just never gonna go to church because there’s a bunch of sinners there, there, there’s also sinners in your neighborhood and your HOA and your kids’ sports team and your gym at the grocery store, like anywhere you go, this is a part of life. And so I, I genuinely am sorry if you’ve been hurt by the church, but, but part of forgiveness is saying, Hey, I’m going to not let that thing be the wound that defines me going for it. I I talk to people that say, well, I, I don’t ever go to church ’cause I got hurt at church 20 years ago.

And, and that breaks my heart. But that’s not punishing the church that’s punishing you. Forgiveness is about releasing that burden and choosing to move forward. You remember our story about Louis Zamperini? There’s a beautiful picture from him from 1998 that year, the Olympics were held in Japan, Louis’s 81 years old. I I just want you to imagine being Louis and he was at a POW camp in Japan, and then now decades later, he, he is part of the Olympic ceremony running the torch. And he literally ran just past a place that decades earlier, he had been there in a concentration camp. But look at the picture on his face. You don’t see a picture of a guy that’s bitter and angry and torn up. Instead, you see someone who has freedom, freedom to forgive something that seemed absolutely unforgivable, freedom to forgive something that by his own power and his own might would’ve never happened.

But through the power of the Holy Spirit, he was able to forgive. And the person that benefited the most from that was not the people that tormented him, it was him. What’s really cool about this story is not only does he get to, to run and smile and experience joy in a place that was once torment, that while he was in Japan, he met some of the people that decades before had tortured him. And he gave them a hug. And he told them, I want you to know that I forgive you, and I want you to know that Jesus loves you. And here’s Louis’s own words on forgiveness. He says, I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self-destructive. If you hate somebody, you’re not hurting the person you hate, you’re hurting yourself. I know for, for some of you in this room, what I am teaching about today seems unfathomable. Like, Hey, you just don’t understand and you are right. I don’t, and even if we sat down and you explained the whole thing, I still wouldn’t truly understand your pain. But we have a God that does.

We have a God that understands your hurt and understands your betrayal, and understands your pain. And he’s not saying that that doesn’t matter or that doesn’t count in God’s economy and his kingdom. He’s saying you matter, your hurts, your pains, they matter. And he’s saying, I see you, but I also love you and I want what’s best for you. And if you want a joy-filled free life, the only way to do that is to remove the chains of captivity that unforgiveness are shackling you down to. And I’m not saying that you can do that by yourself, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, I do believe that God can do miracles. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, I pray right now for anyone in this room that is struggling with unforgiveness, God, I know that there are things in this room that that, that I could not comprehend. True deep hurts, but right now in the power of the name of Jesus, through the power of your Holy Spirit, I pray that you would do miracles across this room, that people could name those things of unforgiveness.

It doesn’t remove the consequence of that person deserves, but it, but it removes the that they carry, that they would release in God. And I pray through the pride of the Holy Spirit and the days and the weeks and the months to to come, that they would, through this process of forgiveness, continue to release it and continue to forgive and continue to forgive God. I pray for anyone in this room that they don’t know you. They’ve never experienced the forgiveness that you have to give us for what we deserve. God, I pray that today can be a day that they experience, that. I pray for anyone in the room that they need to forgive themselves, pray for anyone in the room, that they’ve wronged somebody else and they need to seek forgiveness. Lord, do a great work today. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen.