So guys, come on up and then you can just get started and I'm gonna get rolling into today's talk because it's kind of sad for me. Today is the last in the series of the space between us. I'd like this to go on for a long time because the more I study it and discover what it is that causes us, that causes our relationships, that just kind of fizzle out. The more I want to talk about it.
I'm actually thinking about doing a summer series kind of spinning off of this series. But if you spent any time in the scriptures at all and looked at any of the books or the letters that we've compiled into what we call the Bible now, the scriptures spent in an ordinate amount of time talking about relationships, how we get along with another, which is always interesting because I've been in the church for a long time. And it doesn't seem like the church in general spends a whole lot of time talking about relationships. It spends a lot of time on other things, but very little on how you and I deal with one another.
So here's what we know. This is, this is, and here's the reason they spend so much time dealing with the way we treat one another, because it's incredibly important, so important, how we treat one another, that Jesus and his final prayer, if you were here, you know we share, we talk about this when we kick off the series. Remember when Jesus prayed, right before he was arrested and was going to be crucified, this was his prayer, it was for you. He says, I pray for those who will believe in me through the disciples message that all of them may be one, Father, as we are one, I am them, you in me, so that they may be bought to complete unity.
So important, it's Jesus' final prayer. And then he gives, right in his prayer, two reasons why it's important. Here's the first one, he says, because then the world will know that you sent me, that I'm not just a good teacher, I'm not just a moral leader, the world will know, by the way they get along with one another, by how close they are in a relationship, the world will know that I am who I say, I am, I'm the Messiah, I'm the Holy One sent from God, I'm on a rescue mission, redeeming, restoring and renewing people, I'm reconciling people to God, satisfying the just nature of God through my death on the cross. And offering them life both now and eternal.
Jesus says they're going to know that, not based on how slick our church services are, not on how often you go to church, they're not going to know it because you've given a lot of money or you go on missions trips. He says, they're going to know it, you're going to see this at the end of the service so powerfully this morning, I just, as I watched it this morning, I'm like, yeah, that's it, that would do, that would make people believe. He says, they're going to believe that I am who I said I am based on how you treat one another. And then he gives a second reason.
Second reason is the world to know that you love them as you've loved me. As we love one another, not as we judge one another, not as we rebuke one another or correct one another, as we love one another, as we maintain a little space between us, the world is going to know that God is not the God of the big stick, just waiting to smack them, that God actually is love. We went over a third reason too, if you've been around and it was key. We are, as the Apostle Paul tried to describe to the Corinthian church, he says that we, not you, we are the body of Christ.
All of us together form the living, breathing representation of Jesus in this world. And so each of us in this body is a part to play. And so in a very real sense, in a practical sense, in terms of our purpose and our calling in this world, we find that as we find our way into the whole. Paul used kind of that funny, those funny stories about, you know, the ear and the eye.
And you know, I was making, joking about the foot, right? Like, what good is a foot? I mean, it's wholly, it's wholly horrible until you attach it to a body. Right?
And there it finds its purpose. I mean, what good is an eye or an ear apart from the body? But we find our purpose and our beauty as we connect into the whole as we become one. And that's why when there's space between us, when we break relationship with one another, it matters so much to God, because it's impacting who he says he is to the world outside of these walls.
Here's what we've discovered throughout the New Testament. Here's what you can find. Your relationship with God, the health and maturity of your relationship with God, is determined by the health and maturity of your relationship with the people that God is bringing into your life. Remember, we in that one scripture, Christians have used it forever.
Oh, you know, Paul's gone. I just had to give you a problem because you weren't mature enough to be moved on to deeper things. Well, what was the indication of it? The indication of it was the relationships were a mess.
They love one another. And so if you want to determine where you are spiritually, you don't look up. You don't look at your prayer journals. You don't even look at your giving records.
If you want to know how you're doing spiritually, how are you doing with other people? How's your marriage? How's it going with your kids? Your boss, your neighbors.
How much space has been created? All right. So with that as background, I want to touch on, because I only have one Sunday left in this. What I think are the two issues that create the most space for us.
And I've dubbed them maybe just so you can remember them and think about them this week. Doubts and differences. Things that create massive space between us relationally. Differences and deaths.
Let me start with the harder one. The harder one that I mean, I just would rather. You know, I like people who are like me, right? I mean, I just do, right?
I like cowboy fans. I like met fans where people of character and substance formed over many years of pain, right? So I like people like me. I don't like people that don't like me, right?
And so that's kind of the first thing I want to talk about today because what creates distance in relationships, what creates different distance in a marriage, in a family, in a church, are differences. At some point in your life, somebody that you were in a relationship with, maybe it's someone in your family, someone you love, someone you've raised, they're going to do something that you didn't want them to do or worse yet. They're going to turn out differently than you wanted them to turn out. Or they're going to become something that you had hoped that they wouldn't.
Or different than you raised them to be. Maybe it's people at work or in church or maybe it's people that, you know, you just had the discussion who's coming for Thanksgiving. Well, they're not. Do you know who they voted for?
Did you see what you posted on Facebook? Do you know who he's living with? They don't do what you want to do. They're different.
They don't think like you act like you look like you vote like you and so they can go down to atlases here. So what happens in these moments where there's this discovery of these differences. In those relationships that we stumble upon with each other, where others don't act or believe or do what we want them to do. If you're like me, I usually respond in very two ways, progressively.
The first thing I try to do is to try to fight and win an argument. I like to show you the errors of your ways. I'm really big on this. I'm actually pretty good at it, much to my wife's annoyance.
Because this is just like I was, you know, many of you have been doing SDI, right? We wanted to give you a very practical tool for reducing the space between us. And so over 100 of you did this and everybody, even this morning, talking about that and how helpful it's been. I'm a red green guy, which means I want to win and the way I'm going to win is I'm going to overpower you with facts and numbers and data to get you to believe the way I believe.
To make it clear to you that I'm right and you're wrong. Now, here's the relation issue. I've won a lot of arguments. I have no friends.
Right? I mean, I, who would want to hang out with me? Because I always have to be right. Because if you think differently about an issue, I can tell you why you're wrong.
It just comes quite naturally and easy for me. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I shared with you that I belong to this, it's so embarrassing. I belong to this Facebook page full of pastors and international workers for the gospel. And so these pastors are always fighting over issues on this page.
At one point, somebody just wrote, you know, literally wrote, thank God this is not open to people in the church because this would be terrible. This week, I'm not exaggerating about this. You should, I can't tell you to lie because you're in church, but you could lie and go and get on this page and really be disheartened like I am. But at one point, I at one point the administrator had to shut it down.
I'm not joking. He put a meme of a guy beating a dead horse because that's what's going up. Right? I mean, well, I'm going to win the fight.
Your position is unacceptable. I know God. I know God's ways. I know what's right.
I know what's wrong. And you don't. And so I'm going to have to prove to you why I'm right. Here's the second thing.
If I can't get you to come over to my side. You know what I do? Dismiss you. You are now officially dead to me.
Find another church. I don't really mean this by the way. I don't. But I mean, you know what I mean?
That's kind of like my MO. Like, hey, man, if you don't want to think like I think, vote like I vote. Believe about this issue, the way I believe about this issue. Right?
If you don't want to do that, then you should go hang out with people that think like you. Hence, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, there is a news channel now just for you. So you can only hear what it is you want to hear and not get frustrated by all those people on the other side of the issue. This is what's going on in the world.
It's going on at unprecedented levels at this point. Because we like to be by people. We like to create space and distance from people who aren't like us. Do you know what she believes?
Do you know what he's done? And as a result, what we communicate to people who are different than us, think different than us, have different values, especially people in our family, is that it's unacceptable. I can't accept your position on this. I can't accept that you're becoming like.
I can't accept your decision here. I can't accept that you. I didn't raise you this way. I didn't teach you to act like this.
This is unacceptable. And that's kind of a harsh word. But it's even harsher when you felt it in your life. Somebody that you love or somebody who you wanted acceptance from communicated to you that you were unacceptable because of who you are, what you like or decisions you made or how you feel about someone.
Often times painfully, this gets communicated. You now, because of that, are unacceptable. And this, I mean, is just such a common, powerful relational dynamic. I see it most often, and I'm not talking about anybody in this room, okay?
But I see this most often in relationships between parents and kids. Especially for those of us that are trying to follow Jesus and our kids are trying to follow whatever the kids are doing. And so what tends to become kind of our normal MO is to communicate to our children first not in a spoken matter. First, it's like by not engaging or create some space.
It might be just kind of a look. It might be kind of a turnaround walk away. But then over time, when things start to get bad, 16, 17, 18 years old, then sometimes it even gets communicated. Not under my roof, not in this house.
We have a little running joke in our house that if you get a tattoo, you don't get a college education. That's just kind of like our thing, right? Like you're free to get a tattoo if you want to pay for school. Then you can go do whatever you want.
If you have a tattoo, I want you to know you're acceptable to me too. Now see, if you've seen this dynamic play out, especially in a home, you know how damaging unacceptance is. Because the reality is, there are very few things as attractive as acceptance. We have deep into our souls this desire to be accepted.
I want to be accepted. So do you know where I gravitate towards? People that accept me. If you accept me, I would like to come hang out with you.
But if you don't accept me, whatever it is about me that you find unacceptable, well then I don't want to be by you, right? This is why that parent child relationship thing, you see your kids, they gravitate towards people, friends and communities where they feel accepted. The truth is acceptance makes them much more open to what those others are saying than to what you say. And I have to tell you parents, I've watched this play itself.
I was just thinking of somebody in our extended family, as in my nuclear family, then our extended family. The dad loved God and a couple of the teenagers didn't. It was just very clear, this is unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable, you're unacceptable. I've seen it twice just in people that don't know and love.
The dad loved the kid. The kid couldn't be further away from the dad than they are. Because somehow I got communicated, you are not acceptable to me. If acceptance isn't found in your home or in your faith, then your kids are going to find another home and they're going to find another faith.
Paul was writing to the church in Rome and this topic came up. Here's what he said. He goes, May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind towards each other. Here's this one, this unity thing again.
That Christ Jesus had, so that with one line and one voice, you can glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. One is unity. And Paul is saying, I'm asking God to give you one mind, one voice. Why?
Because when we're unified, God is glorified. People know who he is. But then he says something that's really interesting. In the NIV they flip the words around.
In other versions it says, therefore, okay, and the NIV it ends with then. Here's what it says. Therefore, accept one another. For God to be glorified for you to be one to reduce the space between us, you have to figure out a way to accept one another then.
In fact, the word that Paul uses in the Greek here means to receive unto oneself, to bring into your circle, to not cast out, but to draw near. Accept one another then. Paul goes on just as in the same way as with the same depth and width and height and breadth that Christ accepted you. How much should I accept somebody who doesn't think like me or vote like me or share my values or hold my opinions?
How much should I accept somebody that I didn't raise on this way but they're doing these things? How much should I accept them? Well, how much did Christ accept you? So here's what's so key to this.
Most of us, we get this backwards. And this was taught a lot of us by our moms and times. Most of us, we were taught that we get accepted when we change. That if my behavior becomes acceptable, then I'll be accepted.
When we do what we're told to do, then we'll be accepted. I want you to understand something. This is not how Christ treats you. Some of you may be getting involved in the church sometimes, running up in the church blinds us to some of these things.
You understand if you came from outside of the church like I did, that when you were accepted by Christ, I was accepted by Christ long before I was all that acceptable. I was a freshman at Rutgers and I have to tell you, it was very inconvenient coming to faith as a freshman in college. And I was less than acceptable, but Christ accepted me. Some of you know this, right?
It's God's acceptance of us that drives change in our lives. We get it backwards though. We think that we can drive acceptance if we can get them to change. We get them to change.
I won't accept you because you're not changing. That's not the way you were accepted by Christ. You were accepted by Christ. In fact, here's how the scripture explains it.
God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet sinners, while we were still actively engaged in sinning. Long before we cleaned up the junk, how do we even Jesus accept us?
He died for us. Paul actually finishes his law with this. He goes, therefore accept one another. As Christ accepted you, what does this do?
Why should I do it in order to bring praise to God? When we accept people, I want you to remember this for what I'm going to show at the end of the talk. When we accept people who are not like us or who have disappointed us or frustrated us, that brings praise to God. Of course it does.
You know why? Because it's completely unnatural. Completely unnatural. Nobody anymore accepts anyone.
I only like who I like because they like the things I like. If you don't like the things I like, then I don't like you. But when you start liking people that aren't like you, people start to listen to that. You know, it's funny.
Jesus, we have this picture of God that gets so screwed up in our minds because we think he's like us, right? He's an old story, God created man in his own image and we return the favor. Right? And so we thank God, thanks like we do.
So we tend to think you'll be accepted when your behavior changes. When you start to live up to how I raise you or what I believe in or when you think like me, then I'll accept you. But that's not how Jesus lived his life. He accepts everybody like from the worst people in the world.
Read the Gospels. It's everywhere from the woman at the well to the sinful woman who comes in an anointing's feet with oil, onto Zacchaeus, the traitor to his country, the tax collector. People that were a million miles in theory from God, Jesus accepts them long before they change. When they turn towards me, says things like her many sins have been forgiven.
Today, salvation has come to this house. Look at what Jesus is doing. Some marritants and lepers and centurions and Canaanite women and divorcees. They're all accepted and they're accepted long before they changed.
Do you know what the commonality in their story was? It's his acceptance that fueled the change. See, if you're thinking that by not accepting people, you're going to get them to change. You're only going to lose friends and families and sons and daughters.
You and I know this. As followers of Jesus, we have blown this. If I went to the streets of Mars, then I said, give me one word to describe an evangelical Christian. I would be there a long time before they just are so accepting.
So wonderfully accepting of other people's views. They just never seen anybody like it. It doesn't matter what you believe. You're welcome.
They want to be with you. They want to have dinner with you. That's not what we're known for. For most people who don't think like us or look like us or believe like us or have values like us, our reputation, what we're known for is unacceptable.
You are unacceptable to us. We know it's right. You don't know what's right. So until you get your life right, you're not invited to the party.
I think about all the culture war stuff that we got ourselves tangled up in. There's nothing wrong with standing up for what you're believing. This is not what this is about. This is about communicating to people that they are unacceptable.
Because we're known as the people that go around telling everybody that all the things are wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. Let me tell you all that bad mode.
That's what we do. We think that's what Jesus was, God incarnate. You don't see him walking around telling people all the things are doing wrong. You see him accepting people that are furthest from him.
Acceptance breeds change. Acceptance breaks up hard ground for the gospel. Jesus didn't come to win anybody's arguments. Jesus came to win people's hearts.
Why? Because he wasn't trying to get them to conform to some kind of standard or rule like we often are. Keep the rules. Obey the standards, the ones that I set, the ones that I hold and then you'll be acceptable to me.
Jesus understood something Paul had later right about. This is really, you know this. We just don't live it. For our struggle isn't against flesh and blood, but against rulers and against authorities and against the powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil and the heavenly realms.
I actually like the contemporary English version of this better because it just puts it out there. We're not fighting against humans. We're fighting against forces and authorities and rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world. So church, why are you fighting humans?
Acceptance is not approval. God doesn't approve of our choices. God doesn't approve of the stuff that we get ourselves wrapped in. But he does do this.
God understands things. One of the things that's been helpful to me in terms of acceptance. I mean, I can say controversial things right now, but I don't want to get emails. But you give me a position that you would go, well, this is an ungodly position, right?
What I've started to do is figure out ways to understand the way other people see it. Let me understand how they see it. You know what's really interesting about that? That's what God did in Jesus for you.
Jesus came. He accepts us because he understands us. Jesus, I think how crazy this is, Jesus, the sinless one sees things from our point of view. Doesn't mean he agrees with us, but he sees things from our point of view.
He in Christ has allowed Christ to share all of our experiences. So Jesus knows what it's like to be tempted. Jesus knows what it's like to suffer. Jesus knows what it's like to be in pain.
Jesus doesn't agree with us, but he sure has had to accept us. Like him, our goal is to stop winning arguments and start winning hearts. There's a tradition, a large Australian ranch. And oftentimes in Australia, these are located outside of the city, they're on dry hard land.
And so in those dry, barren places, there's big expanses there. And so on these cattle ranches, they're trying to keep the cattle from wandering off. They've figured out there's two ways that work to keep the cattle from stright. One is pretty simple.
If you want to keep the dogs in the yard, what do you got to put up? A fence. We do this all the time, right? If I want to keep my kid a certain way, I want to keep my church a certain way.
We put up a fence and we define the proper boundary, the acceptable behaviors. We tell people if you want to be accepted by God or by me or by my church or by my mom and dad, you've got to stay within the fence. You know what the other way they discovered is to keep the cattle there on the farm? Dig a well.
In a dry, hard, unaccepting world. That's what acceptance looks like. You dig a well. Think of the gift that would be to the world, especially in our culture, this politicized polarized world.
If those of us that were followers of Jesus, instead of constantly trying to define who's out and who's in with a fence, what if we started digging wells? While you were yet a sinner. While you were yet a sinner. Christ died for you.
Except one another, then just as Christ accepted you, don't build fences. Dig wells. Second topic. It's a topic worthy of a year's worth of study.
It's simply going to get a couple minutes today. It has to do with debts. I never saw this before until I was working on it this week. What we looked at difference is now I want to talk to you about what separates us, this concept of debts.
What do I mean by debts? It has a lot to do with the concept of forgiveness. Luke records a story of Jesus teaching. It's in Matthew 18.
It's kind of a famous story about how you handle differences within the church. First you go to the person and bring somebody else and you go to the church. Luke is listening to this. Maybe he's processing a dynamic of somebody he's in conflict with and what would it look like to try to settle this conflict.
So at some point, shortly after Luke actually comes up to Jesus and asks him a follow-up question. He says, Lord, given this teaching about conflict, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sends against me? Up to seven times? Which I know I'm guessing Peter's probably thinking, this is overkill, right?
At some point I erect the fence, at some point I create the space, at some point our relationship is done. How many times should I do that? Like once I know I should give a second time, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice. That whole thing?
How many times? Seven, would that be good enough? So Jesus goes, well, I'll tell you, not seven times. But 77 times, it's kind of like a preposterous amount.
He goes on and he tells a story which I never related to forgiveness before. Stick with me on this. This is a story about debts and forgiveness. Therefore, Jesus said, let me explain something to you, Peter.
Let me explain something to you who harbor grudges. Here's what the kingdom of heaven is like. It's like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold.
I don't know how much that is, but we could all agree that is a lot of money. Ten thousand bags of gold, he was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children, and all that, all they had, be sold to repay the debt. Look, you got the 10,000 bags of gold, you owe me?
No? Give me your kids. I can probably sell them off for something. Well, this, the certain fellow needs before him.
He said, be patient with me. Just give me a little more time. I'll figure out a way to get you 10,000 bags of gold, which is kind of preposterous, right? Just be patient.
I'll get it. I'll pay everything back. Well, the servants master took pity on him. And here's the key words here.
Cancelled the debt. You see that? You see what this was? This was a debt issue.
He canceled the debt and let him go. And it's just at this point, Jesus introduces us to this powerful relational dynamic about forgiveness. Because when somebody hurts you or betrays you or stabs you in the back, you name the offense that's been done to you. There's always a sense as if this person has taken something from you.
A lot of times, most of us, it's not an issue of like, you know, they stole my bike. That happens sometimes. But a lot of it is more like, you know, you stole my plans. You stole my dreams.
You know, you go through it. I had for my kids and for my marriage. I had my retirement. I had these things.
Respect has been stolen from me. And so now as a result, we have this thing deep within us that it seems to cry out, you owe me something. There's something that you owe me, you took something from me, and I demanded something back in return. This is where we get the terminology.
You owe me an apology. I'm owed something. You created this created a debt, right? I am now kind of the master and you're the servant.
You took something from me, you owe it to me. And so the servant owed the master. There's a debt incurred and it was a big one. But the master decides to offer mercy and he cancels the debt.
Get the story. Now, you come up with a payment plan. He doesn't discount it to a little bit of debt. He goes, you know what?
I'm just, don't worry about the 10,000 bags of gold. It's canceled. You don't owe me anymore. It's a very conscious decision.
You're free to go. Don't worry about it. You don't owe me anymore. Done, gone.
But then watch what happens. Remember, this is sort of forgiveness. But when the servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 silver coins, like a couple dollars. Like nothing compared to the 10,000 bags of gold.
He grabbed them and he began to choke them. Payback what you owe me, he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him. This should sound really familiar because it's word for word.
Be patient with me. I'll pay it back, but he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and they went and told their master everything that had happened.
And so the master then called in the servant. You wicked servant, he said. I canceled all your debts because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant?
Here comes the key phrase, just as I had on you. And an anger is master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay back all the owed. And then it's this really uncomfortable verse because everybody's like, oh, Jesus, he's so sweet. He's so nice.
This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister. No lip service from your heart. Every time I get up and talk about forgiveness, it's always hard because, you know, it's one thing to forgive somebody that's still your bike. It's another thing to forget somebody that's still your child.
That's why this is such a tough teaching. This is why Jesus is so serious about it. One of the reasons is that because he's a good father, God knows what unforgiveness is doing to you. The cancer that it is in your soul, in fact, you guys know, right, or refusing to forgive.
It's like just holding on to the grudge. You know what it's like every time that person comes up, every time you see them, every time the name gets mentioned, it's like a sore. You ever have a sore that's fine until somebody touches it? And then it's like, oh.
God understands. He's like, you don't live that way forever. You want to live enslaved to that person forever? You don't have to.
You could forgive them. You could cancel their debt. And I think the other reason is most of the dumbest things ever done have been done trying to get even. Maybe you've done some of them yourself.
So God's saying, look, one reason you've got to forgive is because of the issue that's going on within you. What's going to happen to you? The master in this story, he explains forgiveness perfectly. What is forgiveness?
It's a conscious decision, almost spoken out loud, almost written down. It was his choice. He didn't have to forgive, but he chose to forgive. I don't have to forgive you.
I could sell your son. But you know what? I've changed my mind. You've canceled.
You're free to go. The second is that forgiveness is essentially making the decision that somebody that you think owes you doesn't owe you anymore. You don't owe me anymore. I'm making a decision.
You don't owe me anymore. I'm going to cancel the debt. That's what forgiveness is. In fact, in the Greek, the word use forgiveness there has this connotation of giving a gift.
You are offering, in a sense, a gift to somebody who's already taken something from you. You're choosing to cancel a debt. Which sounds impossible? It sounds ridiculous.
It sounds like it couldn't happen. They stole it from you. They took your hopes and your dreams and your plans and your promotion and your money and your wife. You want me to forgive?
And just give them more. I mean, they already got something from me. Now you want me to give them more? They cancel the debt?
Doesn't seem fair. How is that fair, God? Aren't you fair? Doesn't seem fair.
I don't make any sense until you understand something that the master said to the servant. He said, you should have had mercy on him just as I had on you. In fact, Paul said the same thing to the church in Ephesus. He said, look, rid of all your bitterness, rage, and anger, rolling and slander, along with every form of malice.
Well, that seems kind of hard. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. See, the power to forgive only comes to the proportion you understand how much you've been forgiven. Like if you don't understand how much God has forgiven you of in Christ, it is going to be very difficult for you to forgive anybody.
The master tells the servant, you should have forgiven just as I forgave you. Like that guy should have understood, man, I have been forgiven a massive debt. How can I know getting out God? And what I think Jesus is saying to his followers is you realize the debt that I have forgiven you of.
Think about what we've done to God, how we just constantly put everything ahead of him and how we use his money and his stuff and his people for our own goals, our own purposes. We forget him, we steal from him, we give him lip service, we try to use him like a gumball blessing machine, we pile up sin after sin after sin. And you know what God does? He makes a very conscious decision.
Debt, you owe me debt, canceled. He forgives. And when we get that, when we get it at heart levels, core levels, that's when it begins to become possible to start to truly forgive somebody else from the heart. We don't forgive because anybody deserved to be forgiven.
We forgive because we've been forgiven. We say you don't owe me anymore because we get that at deep levels because of our sin. We owe God a big debt and at the cross God made a very conscious decision at a steep cost. Don't forgive you to say you don't owe me anymore.
Andy Stanley's got a great quote on this. He said, in the shadow of my hurt, forgiveness feels like a decision or a word my enemy. But in the shadow of the cross, forgiveness is merely a gift from one undeserving soul to another. Accept one another as I've accepted you.
That's the new standard. Forgive one another as I've forgiven you. That's the new standard. And so now why?
Because if you grew up like I grew up, my relationship with God was all an upward kind of vertical relationship, right? I go to church. I do good stuff and God forgives me. But God is saying, I know if you want to understand how this works, the relationships that are sideways down here, they need to be right in order for this one to be right.
In fact, here's this crazy story. It's just so incredibly powerful. Matthew records Jesus saying it. He goes, therefore if you're offering your gifts at the altar, I mean, you bring in a substantial gift to God.
It could be your time. It could be your money. I don't know what it is. But if you're offering your gifts at the altar and you remember your brother or sister has something your gift right there in front of the altar.
In other words, you have to put something first before getting yourself right with God with this offering. There's something more important. Here's what you do. You leave that there and you do something that is more important to God than that sacrifice.
You go and you get reconciled to them. Then you can come and offer your gift. Who have you through word or deed told they are unacceptable? To whom do you got to go?
Who owes you? Who owes you? I was playing around with this week just thinking about things that people have done to take me off. Then I'm upset at it.
If I was writing down names, none of you were on that list. I just want you to know that. Go ahead and you know, Jim. Then I was writing down what he did to me.
Let me tell you what he did. He owes me. You know what I did right on it? Debt canceled.
You know the power of it. Debt canceled. You're accepted. So I was trying to find something to show you that sounds kind of theory.
But what's it like to forgive somebody that has deeply wronged you? Does it make any sense that people that are outside of the walls of the church and who God is and how he loves people, if we actually figured out ways to do these things and reduce the space between us and accept and forgive? And it reminded me of a story most of you saw a few weeks ago. The story of the Dallas police officer, Amber Geiger, who came home, and she went to her apartment.
And it was an African-American guy. She believed to be in her apartment. And she got scared and she shot him. But it turns out it wasn't her apartment.
It was his apartment. And he was just home, having a bowl of ice cream. And so as you know, this is not an isolated incident. There's a lot around this, a lot of injustice that's been perpetrated on African-Americans, in all kinds of names for all kinds of reasons.
And so this was a big deal. And there was a lot of people that were pressing very hard for her to get what she deserved. And then the reality is, justice does matter. But there's this first in the scripture that says that mercy, you see this at the cross, that mercy triumphs judgment.
And so many of you might have seen that at the hearing for her punishment, Grant Jean, who's the man that was shot, his younger brother, Bathum Jean, took the sand. And everything I just tried to teach you theologically, he showed. Check this out. I don't want to say twice, or for the hundredth time, what you've, or how much you've taken from us.
I think you know that. But I just hope you go to God with all the guilt, all the bad things you may have done in the past, each and every one of us, may have done something that we're not supposed to do. If you truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself. I forgive you.
And I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you. And I don't think anyone could say it. Again, I'm speaking for myself, not even bad for my family. But I love you just like anyone else.
I'm not gonna say I hope you rot and die, just like my brother did, but I personally want the best for you. And I wasn't gonna ever say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don't even want you to go to jail. I want the best for you, because I know that's what that's exactly what both of them would want you to do. And the best would be give your life the Christ.
I'm not gonna say anything else. I think giving your life the Christ would be the best thing that both of them would want you to do. Again, I love you as a person, and I don't wish anything bad on you. I don't know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug, please?
Please? Yes. By this, all men will know you're my disciples. By this, they'll know who I am.
By this, they'll know that God loves them if you would just love one another.