Not Forgiving Is A Not Option!

Matthew 6: 9 – 15

I would ask that you would stand and let us repeat together the Lords Prayer.
"Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, for ever. Amen"

The Lords Prayer is is the most important prayer recorded in all Scripture
because it serves as a model prayer for all Christians.
After Jesus taught on prayer, He commented on only one of these petitions.
It was the petition regarding forgiveness.
Jesus gives a warning to those who choose to neglect it.
Not forgiving is not an option!

As we talk about forgiveness you might think about someone who has wronged you,
and you have never forgiven that person.
Perhaps he or she has hurt you, and wronged you, and cheated you, or misrepresented you in some way.
It could be that he or she hurt your wife, your husband or your children.
You may have tried to forgive that person, but you have not and you feel that you cannot.
Sometimes the hurt is so deep that it turns to revenge for you don't want to let them get away with it.
Then there are those who would ask why they should even have to forgive them.

There are several reasons why it is important to forgive.
A lack of forgiveness is often indicative of deep-seated bitterness which robs
the spiritual vitality of the soul.
The real problem with bitterness is that it spreads like a plague until it affects
every relationship in our lives.

A lack of forgiveness is spiritual sickness.
The roots of forgiveness goes deep into the hearts of men and women.
If you are an unforgiving person, you are a spiritually, sick person.
The roots of anger, bitterness, jealousy, guilt, and hatred will torment your soul.

If you have an unforgiving heart, it will be impossible for you to live an effective Christian life.
Once you look at life with eyes of bitterness, you will never see it in proper prospective.
For example, if you are a single person who has been jilted by someone,
you may look at love in a negative manner.
You may make the comment after such an experience, "I'm not going to get hurt like that again."
When someone says those things it tells us that they have not forgiven that person
and that their bitterness is controlling their lives.

Having your trust violated always hurts.
Perhaps, someone has financially defrauded you.
They made certain promises that never came through for you.
You trusted that person with an investment or maybe even with your life savings,
and that person let you down.
Now you have a bitterness toward him or her in the subconscious of your mind.
Your resentment and hostility may appear suppressed to others, but it is sill buried in your soul.

Some years ago, I was visiting in a home with a Christian lady in her early 80s,
and a husband who was 83 years old, and who was not a Christian.
As I talked to him about becoming a Christian, he told me that it was no use talking to him
because he would never become a Christian.
I wanted to know why he would say that.

He told me about a prominent member of our church who employed him back in the days
of the Great Depression to look after his farm and his garden.
Here is what he said, "He told me that he could only pay me a few dollars a month.
But he said that when the depression was over, he would repay me with 3 acres of land.
The depression had ended and everyone was doing well, so I went and asked this man
for the 3 acres of land that he promised.
He told me that I would never get that 3 acres of land and that I might as well forget it."

The this man said to me that he could never forget what he owned him, and after all he did
for that man while trying to provide for his wife and three children.

So, here is what he said to me,
"I cannot become a Christian because I'm going to kill that man before I die.
I have waited until my children are grown and have their own families.
I promised him that day that one day I would kill him, and I will."

On one winter night with snow on the ground and on the roads, this 83-year-old man
was found by his son in law in his bed clothes walking barefoot in the snow
with his shotgun and on the way to that man's house.
He was prohibited by his son-in-law from killing that man who had wronged him so severely.
Three weeks later, this man died.

If you do not get over your bitterness, you will never be able to trust anyone again.
You will question the motive of everyone and will always wonder what hidden agenda is really
behind their attitudes and actions.
You will began to develop the kind of paranoia that motivates a person to
"do unto others, before they get a chance to do it unto you!"

Once our lives have become clouded with bitterness and resentment,
it is impossible for us to enjoy life itself.
Bitterness that only keeps us from forgiving also keeps us from living.
Bitter people cannot love, or laugh or enjoy life.
Bitter people become loaded with self-pity and self-centeredness.

Once a person decides not forgive, he or she is destined to a second or third-rate existence
as a human being.
This kind of inner turmoil will lead a person to self-torment and emotional anguish.
If this describes you, you will play the incidents of your bitterness over and over
like a broken record until you become spiritually and emotionally drained.

I read up about a Greek legend of a man who was tormented by a strange veiled figure.
Every time the man sat down to a meal, the veiled figure would appear out of the darkness
and steal his food.
Every time he was about to have a little happiness or success, the veiled figure would appear
and snatch it away.

Finally, the man became determined to find out his tormentor's identity.
He waited until the precise moment when the strange figure appeared and grabbed
the tormentor by his veil.
As they struggled together, the man pulled back the veil only to discover
that the face of the tormentor was his own face.

Many of us are our own worst enemies.
Our unforgiving spirit eats away at our spiritual vitality until we self-destruct.
The Bible says, "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty;
and he that ruleth his spirit that he that taketh a city." (Proverbs 16:32)

In other words, a person who can rule over himself is greater than one who can conquer a city.
Self-discipline and self-control are two of the greatest assets we can develop.

I have known people who claim to be Christians and who are filled with resentment and bitterness.
I have known some who even claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit,
but they are really filled with hostility and revenge.
They may really know the Saviour, but they do not have the joy of His salvation.

People like this are never truly free.
Their spirit is bound with chains of bitterness.
They cannot live life or love others as they ought because their hearts are so heavy with guilt.

I love what Booker T. Washington once said.
Booker T. Washington was a famous black educator who was often criticized and maligned
by his peers in the white community.
They argued that he would never succeed in reaching a high standard of education
or in building a quality institution.
But Washington was a man who had a deep faith in Christ.
He had God in his life, and knew that God could overcome every obstacle before him.

Washington once said, "I will never allow any man to destroy or to denigrate my soul
by making me hate him."

Whenever we allow ourselves to become consumed with hate, we will eventually become
like the object of our bitterness.
Our hatred does not destroy others -- it only destroys us.
You are only hurting yourself if you refuse to forgive those who have hurt you.
We must forgive in order to rid ourselves of that spiritual sickness in our souls.

I have heard people say, "I will forgive but I cannot forget."
That has been often repeated, but the concept of "forgive and forget" is much easier to say
than it is to do.
I have known people to say that they have forgiven someone,
but then they say, "But I just can't forget!"

Forgiving and forgetting must go hand-in-hand.
It is impossible to truly forgive without forgetting, and it is impossible to forget without forgiving.

You may put the offense out of your mind temporarily but you hide it away in your heart,
and there are times that it will still rise to the surface of your mind.
You may have been wrong by your wife or husband, and you have said, "I forgive you."
But ever since then, you really don't really love them as you did before.
Some couples think they have forgiven each other and yet they are still filled with resentment
years later over an incident that the other person thinks is long forgotten.

Whenever our spirits become restricted towards another person,
it is because we are still harboring resentment toward him or her.
We cannot fully love others if we are unwilling to forgive them thoroughly and completely.
True forgiveness is an issue of the heart.
It must began internally before it can work externally.

I don't know if you've heard the life story of Corrie Ten Boon.
She was a great Christian woman who was put in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II
for hiding Jews in her home.

She told of the terrible and degrading experiences she had to endure in a concentration camp.
She told of the times that the S.S. guard would take her from her cell, walk her down the hallway
to the shower, and make her strip naked in front of him and take a shower.
Then he would stand there watching her, making degrading remarks to her the whole time.

Corrie's experiences in that concentration camp were terrible.
They were almost beyond imagination.
Her sister died in that camp, but Corrie lived to tell of her experiences after the war.
Rather than becoming bitter, she traveled all over Europe as a spokesperson for forgiveness.
She urged Christians to forgive those who have done harm to them during the war.

One day, while speaking on forgiveness in Munich, Germany, Corrie finished her talk
and walked off the platform to meet the people who had gathered to meet her personally.
They shook her hand, and told her what her message had meant to them.
Then out of that crowd, a man approached her with his hand extended toward her.
At first she did not recognize him, but when he spoke she knew his voice.

He said, "God's forgiveness is good, isn't it?"
As Corrie looked into his eyes, she realized that he was the same S.S. guard
who had degraded her in the concentration camp years earlier.

She wrote, "I thought in my heart I have forgiven him, but as he reached out his hand,
my hand froze by my side.
I could not reach out to him.
Here I was, the world-famous forgiver and I had come face-to-face with a man I couldn't touch.
I prayed to God, 'God, forgive my inability to forgive.'

When I asked God for that, He gave me grace and I reached out and took his hand and said,
'Yes, God is good.'"

In that moment of confrontation Corrie realized that she had removed the incident
from her conscious mind, but she had never fully removed it from her heart.
She learned in that moment what each of us must learn -- that forgiveness is a matter of the heart.
We must not merely forgive with our lips, but with our hearts.
Only then can we truly forget and live above the offenses and hurts of others.

Whenever we get hurt by someone else, we are usually quick to judge
that person's motives or intentions.
But God reminds us that we do not have the final verdict in the matter.
We are not God.

Only God knows the hearts of men, and only God can render right and proper judgment.
We cannot possibly know all the motives, circumstances, and backgrounds of those who have hurt us.
Therefore, we must be willing to forgive and leave judgment up to God.

Someone has once said:
"There is so much bad in the best of us
And so much good in the worst of us,
That it ill behooves any of us
To criticize the rest of us."
-- Source unknown

None of us is above reproach.
The Bible reminds us, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
None of us will reach perfection this side of heaven, and none of us will ever be omniscient enough
to know everything about everyone else.
So, we are incapable of rendering a fair and final judgment on any matter.

That is not to say that people can wrong others and simply get away with it.
That cannot happen!
God said, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Romans 12:19).
God will hold every action of our lives accountable to His righteous standard of judgment.
One day God will balance the scales and recompense the evil done against us by others.

Forgiveness can only be effective when it rests on the promise of God's judgment.
We don't have to do the judging of others.
God will do that!
Our responsibility is to cleanse our own souls by forgiving those who have wronged us
and having confidence that God will properly deal with them.

Forgiveness is also the key to getting our prayers answered.
If we don't believe that God is really in control of our lives, we are not going to pray
with faith and fervor because an unforgiving heart is an un-trusting heart.
We cannot forgive others unless we truly trust God.

Forgiveness also reminds us that we have not been given the right to judge others.
Our willingness to forgive is our way of trusting God to do the judging.
We don't have to worry about getting even because God keeps the books and He knows what He is doing.
We must concentrate on keeping our hearts right and leave the justice of God.

Our willingness to forgive others is directly related to God's willingness to answer our prayers.
In Mark 11:22-26, we read one of the most amazing statements in all of Scripture.
Jesus said, "Have faith in God.
For verily I Say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed,
and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things
which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray,
believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

This is one of the greatest promises from Jesus.
He tells us that the power of prayer is linked to the prayer of faith.
The answers to our prayers are related to the extent of our willingness to believe His promises.

Then Jesus added a further condition.
He also made it clear that our ability to get our prayers answered is also directly related to forgiveness.
He said, "And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any:
that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
But if ye do not forgive, neither will your father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses" (verses 25-26).

So there is little doubt that forgiveness is necessary if we are to get our prayers answered.
How can we expect God to hear our prayers when we are unwilling to forgive those who have wronged us?
After all, we have wronged God and we have sinned against God.
We can even pray with great faith and still not get prayers answered because unforgiveness is a sin,
and it hinders our own relationship to God.
God is under no compulsion to respond to an unforgiving heart.

It is interesting to see that in 1 Peter 3:7, the Bible tells husbands that their prayers
will not be answered if they do not have a proper relationship with their wives.
Husbands are told to understand their wives, to honor them, and to share the grace of life with them,
"that your prayers be not hindered."
You may be struggling with problems in your business, your personal life, your finances,
or even problems with your children because you have failed to meet the needs of your wife.

God remains silent because you have not honored your wife.
In most cases where tension exists in a marriage, it is because one or both partners have failed
to forgive the other.
The greatest dishonor we can show each other is to be unforgiving.

Not forgiving disqualifies us for a life of faith and life of prayer.
Not forgiving is our way of telling God that we really don't trust Him to do what is right.
Perhaps you have prayed for something for years with an unforgiving heart,
and you have not seen a single answer to your prayers.

Some Christians have even become cynical about the matter of prayer.
Some will say, "I have heard all that stuff about moving mountains before, but it doesn't work!
God has never worked miraculously in my life."
It just may be because you have been unwilling to forgive those who have wronged you.

Jesus made it very clear that we can only expect to be forgiven when we are willing to forgive.
Not to forgive is not an option!

God will not forgive us until we are willing to forgive others.
Although God has a great flood tide of forgiveness for us, He will restrain it
until we ourselves forgive those who have wronged us.
He is willing to forgive all our sins, mistakes, and blunders by the power of the blood of Christ,
but we will never feel forgiven until we are willing to forgive.

There are those who say they just don't have forgiveness in them.
They need to be reminded that none of us has it within ourselves to forgive.
Forgiveness is a gift of God.
It is the result of His grace at work in our hearts.
Whenever I face the forgiveness of someone who has offended me, my flesh says,
"No," but my spirit says, "Yes."

All of us have that spiritual battle inside us between our carnal and spiritual nature.
Whenever my flesh resists spiritual truth, God seems to say, "Just think about Jesus!
What would He do?"
And when we focus our heart upon Him, we remember that He was beaten, cursed, spat upon,
ridiculed, and crucified.
A crown of thorns was jammed into His brow.
Blood ran down His face.
His back was beaten raw by a cat-o'-nine-tails whip.

He was stretched upon a cross and His hands and feet nailed to that cross.
Then He was suspended on that cross between heaven and earth.
On that cross He bore my sins and the sins of the whole world.
Yet, as He looked down from the cross at the jeering mob that were abusing Him,
He said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

If Jesus Christ could forgive us, how can we not forgive those who have wronged us?
The heart of the matter of forgiveness is realizing that God is greater than all our hurts.
He can deal with those who wronged us if we are willing to forgive them.

Who has hurt you?
Is it your wife, your husband, your parents, or other relatives, an ex-wife, an ex-husband,
a former business partner, or your present business partner, your boss, or your friend, or a neighbor?
Whoever it may be, God can enable you to fully and completely forgive them.
Not to forgive is not an option.

Bring your hurts and your unforgiving heart to the Lord.
Then God will heal your hurts and mend your heart with the power to forgive.

Sermon adapted by Dr. Harold L. White