There's a button that was missing. Cool. Nice. The power button.
That's a new one. All righty. So recently, we were talking, I think it was me and Nick and maybe my family or something. We were just chatting about what would you rather have in life?
Control Z, which most millennials will know what I mean. That means the undo button on your computer, basically. Or would you rather have copy paste? And so I think we kind of agreed that both were very useful.
But my favorite one was Control Z. I like that. Because when you're going through life, and you do something really stupid, and then you just want to go back and just do it all over again and try again. So I could take my notes here.
I could highlight them all. I could delete them all. And then they're gone. But I can hit Control Z.
And they're all back up. So I can actually work with my notes again. So rather than just losing them completely. But in life, when we go through something, sometimes we want to just do it over and try to start fresh.
The great promise from scripture is that there is actually there is a kind of a Control Z. And it's God's forgiveness. It's his blotting out of our sins. He takes our sins.
He deletes them. There's just no sins anymore. He doesn't recognize them. So he recognizes his son and his work on the cross.
So I want to speak on forgiveness. That was something that crossed my mind was this idea of the fact that we actually get a second chance at life when we commit ourselves to the Lord. So I want to actually turn to Luke chapter 5. And I have a lot of scripture in this.
A lot of different scriptures in this. So you don't really have to turn to every scripture that I have here. But Luke chapter 5 and verse 17 is an important one. It's a story of Jesus healing the paralytic.
And so Luke chapter 5 and verse 17, on those days he was teaching, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea from all Jerusalem and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed, a man who was paralyzed. And they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus.
But finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up to the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles in the midst of Jesus. And when he saw in the midst before Jesus, sorry. And when he saw their faith, he said, man, your sins are forgiven. And the scribes and Pharisees began to question, saying, who is this who speaks blasphemies?
Who can forgive sins but God alone? When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier to say? Your sins are forgiven to you or rise and walk.
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins. He said to the man who was paralyzed, I say to you rise, pick up your bed and go home. Immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home. Glorifying God.
An amazement sees them all. And they glorify God. And we're filled with awe, saying, we have seen an extraordinary thing today. I found this to be such an interesting passage.
It's so full of truth, about forgiveness, actually, and about healing, God's healing, which is basically forgiveness in our sins. The thing we're introduced to, so Jesus is teaching in a house. And there's Pharisees all around. There's scribes and Pharisees.
There's people from all different backgrounds all around them. And these men bring in one man who is paralyzed. So what's this man's biggest problem? Jesus points it out.
He says the first priority here. Son, your sins are forgiven. His biggest priority, his biggest problem, was not the fact that he was bedridden and paralyzed. And Jesus points this out.
Your sins need to be forgiven. And this is an important illustration when we're next spoke on sin, not too long ago. And it's society's biggest problem. Our biggest problem is not COVID-19.
Believe it or not, it's not wearing a mask. It's none of this stuff. It's not countries rising up and wars and all this stuff. It's sin.
It's separation from God. And so Jesus points that out here, that his first priority was not to be healed from his paralysis, but to be forgiven. The Pharisees knew that this is a big deal. Even though the Pharisees were not believers, they knew that this is a big deal.
They read the Scriptures. They know that God is the only one who has the power to forgive sins. And so they pointed that out to Jesus. They said, who is this who speaks blasphemies?
Who are you to do this, to say your sins are forgiven? Well, we're on the street. We don't tell people that they are saved. We tell them how to be saved.
But only Jesus can actually tell someone that your sins are forgiven. And that poses the question to each and every one of us. Are your sins forgiven? Has Jesus himself, has God's word told you that your sins are forgiven?
So I want to share about the Lord for a minute, about his richness and about his qualification, to be able to forgive sins. So I want to point to the only person in the entire universe and outside the universe who can forgive sins. And that's Jesus Christ. In Ephesians chapter one, we've been doing this study for college and careers.
Ephesians, and it's been really, really great. I mean, the word rich appears in Ephesians so many times. It's a very rich book. So Ephesians chapter one and verse seven.
In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known for us the mystery of his will, according to the purpose which he set forth in Christ. As a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth, our greatest problem is our separation from God, it's our sin. And we needed someone who is powerful and is rich to be able to redeem us from that. We don't have the means.
We don't have the means to satisfy that need. We're not able to forgive ourselves or each other. The way that God is able to forgive us. We're not able to blot our sins out.
And this is something we encounter on the streets sometimes. We hear people say, I forgive myself. I've done a lot of bad things. Maybe someone's been in prison.
Maybe they've, maybe not even that. Maybe they've told the white lie once in their life. That's it. And they've forgiven themselves for that.
That's what they say. But we're not qualified for that. We don't have that qualification. We can't do that because once we've broken the law, then we're guilty.
We're guilty and we don't have the power to forgive ourselves or anyone else. So God has the qualifications. He has the power to forgive. So why is God the only one who has the power to forgive?
Well, in Hebrews, chapter 9, I'm going to read about that. Hebrews, chapter 9, and verse 22. I called this the invoice for our forgiveness. So this is the payment requirement for our sin.
Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. So why can't we forgive ourselves? Well, because it would cost us our life.
And not just our life here on Earth, but our entire eternal life in eternity. We would need eternity to pay for our sins. And we wouldn't even come close. The Lord talks about how if we're guilty of one sin, we're guilty of the entire law.
And that means that we're in order for us to be free, that even eternity spent in hell, punished by God, is not enough to pay for our sins. And this is really important. God needed someone perfect, someone who followed his law. The greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
The thing about that is that if we're not explicitly loving the Lord our God with all our soul, mind, and strength at all times, every single moment of every single day, then we're guilty, we're sinning. That is sin, anything that's not explicitly loving God. And so right now, I can stand before you and say I'm 100% guilty. And so we're all of you, we're all guilty.
We're all very guilty. Not only do we not love the Lord our God, but we actually do things that are the opposite of loving the Lord our God. We actually commit things that God say are atrocities. I don't think I pronounced that right, but anyway.
So the only way for us to be forgiven is through the blood of Jesus Christ, through his death. And it's because he lived a perfect life. He loved the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength at all times. He's God himself.
He actually is God. And he was able to give himself. We heard about that this morning. He gave himself for us.
And that's just an amazing truth. So in first Peter 1, 18 and 19, it says, we're not redeemed by corruptible things. We're not redeemed by perishable things. Things that rot away, like silver and gold.
Right now, our money is not really worth a whole lot. Our economy is not doing great. Money goes away. It doesn't really last.
But we're bought with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus, which has an eternal perfect value. It is the most precious thing that we possess, that we can possess, is to have this forgiveness from the blood of the Lord. And so that's kind of my intro. So those are some things about the Lord.
He is not only rich enough to forgive us. He's not only powerful enough to forgive us, but he's also willing. He was willing to give himself for us. He was willing to give his blood.
He was willing to die for us. And that speaks of God's love. That just speaks of his amazing mercy. It's nothing about me.
It's nothing to do with my goodness. Remember, we're so guilty. We don't love the Lord our God. But he is willing to give us this free gift of salvation and forgiveness.
Now, does he do it? And then is he gonna take that away? So is he gonna give us that gift? And then say one day, ah, you know what?
Never mind, I kind of wanna take that back. No, he doesn't do that. Not at all. He wouldn't be God if he did that.
It says in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 16 and 17. This is about a new covenant. This is about the new covenant in his blood. This is actually from an Old Testament passage.
It says in Hebrews 10, 15, it says, and the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them. In those days, the clear is the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts and I will write them on their minds. And then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.
Where there is forgiveness of these, there's no longer any offering for sin. God remembers our sins no more. It's as if they were never there. It's like a control Z.
It's a complete blotting out of our sin. A lot of people that we meet, again, I go back to the street ministry because God's taught me a lot through that. But when we meet people who say, well, my good works, at the end of the day, they're gonna obey my bad works, and I'll be all right. God will look at that and be like, that's fine.
But that's not how it works. Our sins need to be blotted out. They need to be completely removed. We can't please God.
Even our good works, because they're not done explicitly through the love of God with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength, then even our good works are sin. They are filthy rags. They're corrupt. And so this is why we need our sins blotted out.
We need them forgiven. And the wonderful thing about that is that God is willing to do that. That's something that's amazing. The requirement, you see a requirement and a payment.
God requires something. And then he says it's paid, because the Lord paid it. Jesus paid it. I wanna turn to Psalm 103, one of my favorite Psalms.
I think it's one of the most popular Psalms. And I think we look into this quite a bit at the Lord's Supper, but it says in verse 10, He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor pay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
The Father shows compassion on his children. It's a Lord's compassion on those who fear him. I think I was just supposed to read the first 12. Anyway, that's good.
It's all scripture. So as far as the east is from the west, I really love that illustration, because I think my dad pointed out a while ago, if you go from north to south on the earth, then eventually you're going north again. So the north actually does meet the south at some point at the south and north pole, actually at the equator. So, but the east is from the west.
If you travel east, you're never traveling west again. You're just traveling east. Yes, that's east. And if you're traveling west, same thing, you're not going.
You're not going to start going east. You're just going to keep on going west. That's how far our sins are removed from us, eternally. They're eternally wiped out.
God has completely blotted our sins out as believers. Why did he do this? As far as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear us. The heavens above the earth, he may be talking about heaven itself.
I think when he talks about the heavens, he's talking about the stars, the universe. The universe is constantly expanding. So therefore, that's also, as far as we're concerned, it's an eternal number. It's something that doesn't end.
We can't measure it. It's as high as the heavens are above the earth. That's how high his steadfast love is. That's how deep it is.
Sometimes we kind of forget that, I think. I think we think God is either A limited. I know I do. I think that he's either limited or he doesn't care.
But he does. This shows us that he cares so much. He cares as far as the heavens are above the earth, which is not measurable for us as humans. He does not deal with us according to our sins.
He does not repay us according to our iniquities. I like contrasting this with Isaiah 53, but he was wounded for our iniquities. He was bruised for our sins. For our transgression, sorry.
He was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our sins. The Lord not only doesn't deal with us according to our iniquities. He actually took the punishment for them.
And that's allowed him to be able to forgive us of all our sins and blot them out. So forgiveness, there's kind of a backwards. So on the street we meet people and they have it backwards a lot of the time. And we have it backwards sometimes too.
I'm sure a lot of us have gone through this before where we believe that in order to serve and glorify God, we need to serve and glorify God. We need to please him by doing things. And then we'll gain favor with God. We will gain forgiveness.
That's what people say on the street. That's what we see that all the time. People believe that their works are what gains forgiveness from God. This is not true at all.
Remember we talked about how our good works are filthy rags. Our good works are done not in love for the Lord. They're not done explicitly to love the Lord our God. Everything we do.
So therefore we can't gain favor with God through our works. We need to be forgiven first. And then the purpose of our forgiveness is to allow us to serve God and to worship him. I'm gonna turn to Isaiah 6.
I'm jumping all over the place. So hopefully people can keep up. Or I don't know if it's up on the screen or not. I didn't give them a PowerPoint.
So maybe next time I will. I'm gonna read Isaiah 6. That's not Isaiah 6. There it is.
This is about Isaiah when his ministry started. When the Lord spoke to him, when his ministry first started. In the ear that King Yuziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple.
And above him stood the seraphim, each having six wings with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, holy holy holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with his glory. The foundations of the threshold shook, the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called.
The house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost. I'm a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people with unclean lips.
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having his hand, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth. And he said, behold, this is touch your lips.
Your guilt is taken away and you're sinned atong for. And then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? And whom will go for us? Then I said, here I am, send me.
And he said, go and say this to the people. And I'm actually going to stop there. Because the main point of this is that Isaiah's sins needed to be forgiven. His sins needed to be dealt with.
The Lord didn't, kind of like from my last message, the Lord didn't just say, oh no, you're fine. Your people are fine. He didn't say anything like that. Keep on working.
You'll be all right. No, he had to have his sins blotted out. He had to have his sins taken away. And then the Lord called him to go and follow him and to serve him.
This is the way it is for us. We need to be forgiven first. That's the first priority. Before we can serve the Lord, we need to be forgiven.
And another example is Psalm 51. This is David talking about this horrific sin that he committed. And when I say horrific sin, it's really no different than any of our sins. It was a sin of lost and murder, which Jesus says that we've all committed in our hearts.
I'm going to read from verse 10 of Psalm 51, created me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Resolve unto me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, oh God, and my salvation. And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. The Lord opened my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
When God forgives us from our sins, we can't keep it inside. We can't keep it in here. We want to praise the Lord for it. We want to show his work.
We want to show his. And so one of the purposes of God's forgiveness to us and our salvation is for us to declare his mercy and his wonderful gift of salvation to other people. There's a cause and effect. The Lord will create a clean heart in David in this case, or in me.
Restore unto me the joy of your salvation. And then he says, and then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. This is God's way of working in us to actually do the things that glorify God, and do them from a willing heart and a loving heart towards God. And that's really important.
It's a great, I found it to be a great tool in evangelism, just to talk about forgiveness, talk about the fact that the Lord is powerful enough and willing to give us this wonderful gift and to blot out our sins. Another thing about forgiveness is it illustrates God's love and mercy. It's something where I think that it's an attribute of God, his mercy and his love. Mainly his mercy and grace that wouldn't necessarily be shown unless there were sinners to forgive.
And when you look at Ephesians 2, another passage we've been studying in college and career, Ephesians chapter 2, we talk about 8 and 9 all the time, but how it's not about works, it's not about so that we don't get proud. It's through God's grace. But right before that, it talks about in verses 5 and 7, even when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ, by grace we have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, something we don't deserve at all. So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
I think from this I see that one of the main purposes of our existence and our salvation is for God to put his mercy on display in our lives and for all eternity. It's for him to show this wonderful attribute that he has, this power that he has to forgive sins, even something that turns against him, he can redeem. And it's a powerful, very powerful thing. It's something that when people see that, when people see someone who was not following Christ, and then now they're alive in Christ, it's a powerful thing to see.
And it glorifies God. I think at the end of the day, that's the purpose of our salvation and our existence is to glorify God. It's to show that he is merciful and that he actually loves us and that he's able to redeem us, even though we turn against him. I was going to add in humility is essential for both sides of forgiveness, for the forgiver and the forgiven.
It says that in Philippians 2 that Jesus humbled himself. And that was in order to forgive us. He left his bride in heaven. And it's amazing.
He had to humble himself in order to forgive us. And in our daily lives with each other and with other people, forgiveness is losing our pride. It's forgetting about our pride and saying, OK, I'm willing to look the other way. I'm willing to blot that.
Or Christ blotted that out. I'm willing to remember it no more, just like him. That's humility. The other side of it is to ask for forgiveness.
That takes a lot of humility as well. And this is how we receive forgiveness from God. He says he gives grace to the humble, but he resists the proud. The most important thing, the most important decision we can make in our lives is to humble ourselves before God.
Acknowledge who we are. Acknowledge that we don't love the Lord our God with all our soul, heart, soul, mind, and strength. And we can come before him and humbly ask for forgiveness. And the wonderful thing is we've read today is that he's willing to do that.
He's willing to forgive us. Forgiveness is a command from God. It's something God commands us as believers. It's a heart issue.
It's something that is in our hearts. It's not something that can be external. Forgiveness is not an external thing. As much as it may be conceived that way, you might be able to fake forgiveness maybe, but it's hard.
It's really hard to fake forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness can only come from the Holy Spirit. It can only come from God's working in our lives. And there's no shortage of sin to forgive.
There's lots of things that happen that we need to forgive. We need forgiveness for that. God needs to forgive us for it. Or that God is willing to forgive us for it, that we need forgiveness.
There's no shortage of sin. Like I said, it's every moment of every day. We have a heart that wants to go the other way. And we need forgiveness.
Every single day, we need to ask God to forgive us. According to what Jesus says in the Lord's Prayer, we need to ask for forgiveness every day. We need to have repentance as an attitude. It's a change of attitude.
It's a lifestyle. It's something that happens every single day. As much as God saves us once and we're safe forever, what we're safe from is an attitude of hardness towards God. And so this attitude of softness, God works in our hearts.
And we need to allow him to do that and to ask for forgiveness every day. There's no shortage of grace from God to pass on. Again, back to Ephesians 1 verses 7 and 8, God is rich. He's lavished his grace on us, which means that he's just poured it out to the point where it's almost silly how much grace we have from God.
He's just given us so much grace, so much mercy. And we can pass it on because God has given it to us. And he's commanded us to pass that on. Ephesians 4, 32, I have to bring that one up.
It was part of our marriage counseling, actually, from Sime and Ime. And it's about forgiving one another as Christ forgave you. I'm actually going to turn to that passage because it really, really just sums up just our attitude as believers towards each other. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.
Jesus, or God plainly states it, that we are required to forgive each other, as God forgave us. So I just want to end with just an invitation to people here. If you haven't received this gift, it's not like a step-by-step process. It's not like something where you follow this prayer or whatever.
It's simply humbling yourself before God, realizing that you're a sinner, calling out to him for forgiveness. It's the most important thing. It's the only way we can serve God. It's the only way we can please God is to be forgiven.
And God's forgiveness is complete. It blots our sins out. He remembers them no more. He removes them as far as the east is from the west.
So I want to close in prayer. And maybe we can sing one more. I was thinking of singing Create in Me a Clean Heart. So I'll give Lakeon or Fola.
I don't know if that's in the system. But anyway, I'll pray. I'll pray. And then we'll sing that.
Heavenly Father, Lord, thank You for Your mercy, for Your forgiveness, Lord, for Your gift of salvation. And for Your wonderful love, God, I just pray that You would give us the strength to serve You, that You would give us the willingness, Lord, to love You, and the ability to genuinely love You from our hearts, Lord. I pray that You would bless our day today, Lord, that we would honor You and that love You in Jesus' name. Oh, Keith.