Allen Jackson - Forgiveness and Resentment - Part 1
We're working through a series under this general theme of "A Change of Heart". I believe that's really the only solution for the ills that face us. I think we all know by now we're in another election cycle, but as I have said many times, I don't believe an election is going to fix us. We've had enough experience with elections where people that we thought would be the solution were elected and they may have enacted some policies that caused you to smile, but we don't seem to be able to hold that momentum. The form of government we have means that we don't choose kings or queens or monarchs or permanent leaders.
There's a sense of change amongst that so that the real momentum of the quality of life and the values that shape us come from the people of this nation. Because of that form of government, the leaders we have are a reflection of our hearts. And if we have a heart problem, we can't elect a leader to fix our heart problem. It's the same as physically. If you have a physical heart problem, you can't make friends with an athlete and get healthier. Wouldn't that be wonderful? We'd all go hire some skinny friends and invite them to go with us to the doughnut shop and life would be good.
Well, that's kind of the attitude we have spiritually that we don't really want to be bothered with change. We don't wanna embrace biblical values in our homes and in our families and in our peer groups, we want permission to live ungodly lives. But then we wanna hire people or elect people to stand up for godly values so we can get the benefits of godliness. And we've played that perverse game for so many decades now that we seemed a bit surprised that we are teetering on the brink of losing everything. And if you're not aware of that, we are.
And I think it is deceptive to cast that in terms of the end of the age and the imminent return of the Lord. I believe the Lord could return, but I believe what's far more prevalent and far more prominent in our lives is we're watching the collapse of an empire and that's not because our leaders are wicked, it's because our hearts have been far from God. So we picked up this theme of a heart change and what that would look like. If we can make an adjustment in our relationship with the Lord, I believe God can bring restoration and renewal to our land. I believe it can change our schools and our universities and our businesses and our homes and our churches. Wouldn't that be good?
I'm shocked. I travel a bit, not a great deal, but wherever I go amongst the people of faith and the people of God, the most prevalent thing I bump into is fear. "Don't talk about this. Don't talk about that. People will be offended". Folks, my Bible says, God hasn't given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and of love and self-discipline. And it's gonna take a change on our part. And so I wanna bring you, this is really a component to what we did in a previous session. We began talking about forgiveness and I wanna continue that discussion. In juxtaposition, the alternative to forgiveness is to be filled with resentment. You'll either practice forgiveness or resentment will be the filter through which you see the world and that'll grow into anger and hatred and all sorts of destructive things.
It's our change of heart that is essential. I believe we have to participate in all the processes. You need to vote. If you don't vote, repent, you're a coward. At the end of the book of Revelation, there's a list of people who go into the lake of fire just as a matter of passing. It's not in your notes, but that list begins and ends with liars and cowards. And in the middle is the people you'd be looking for all the immoral and the, you know, the perverse. But the list begins and ends with liars and cowards. So there's two things you don't wanna be: a liar or a coward.
So forgiveness and resentment are the objective today to understand the difference in which path is more fruitful for us. Unfortunately, we're walking through a season in American Christendom where cheap grace and sin without consequence and casual forgiveness are the common roadsides along our current spiritual highway. I believe they're dangerous because they're not accurate descriptions of the road that is before us. Grace, for the record, is not cheap. You see, grace, when it's extended, only emerges from tremendous sacrifice. And we have treated the grace of God shabbily. Refusing to recognize the reason that there's grace available to us was the tremendous sacrifice that God and Jesus made on our behalf. Grace should not be understood as something that's easy. If you benefit from grace, someone else has made a tremendous sacrifice for you to have that privilege.
And here's the part of the equation that makes that a reality. This isn't just opinion. Sin has a consequence always. Please don't ever doubt that's an eternal reality. Forgiveness should never be sought in a casual manner. To receive forgiveness is life changing. And I would submit to you that gifts that can alter the course of your life should not be sought or received with indifference. If you are not forgiven, if you fail to receive forgiveness, the full weight of your guilt must be borne by you alone. That is not a place any of us want to stand.
Jesus gave us some very clear instructions in Matthew 6. It's a very familiar passage. The disciples are asking for instructions on prayer and Jesus provides what became the template for probably the most repeated prayer. Certainly in the history of the church, he said this is how you should pray, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors". Translations vary a bit. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".
Forgive me my sin as I forgive those who sin against me. Both sides of the equation are essential. In order to receive God's forgiveness, we have to be willing to forgive others. It's not optional. You can't ask for forgiveness and harbor unforgiveness. You can't ask for forgiveness and choose to be a person filled with resentment or you'll bear the weight of your own failures. Not suggesting it's easy, but we're presented with the formula. Verse 13, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one".
It's so important that before Jesus taught us to pray for deliverance from temptation or from evil, he said it's essential that we know we need to be forgiven and that we'd be willing to forgive others. He provides clarification in the next verse. "If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don't forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins". He amplified it. He made it about as simple as it could be stated. If you'll forgive, God will forgive you. If you won't forgive, God will not forgive you.
You see, forgiveness is not an emotion. It's a decision. You make the decision before your emotions catch up. Most of us don't want to forgive when we're mistreated. When evil touches our lives, we don't wanna forgive. We wanna see retribution. Somebody cuts you off in traffic, you wanna see somebody cut them off in a God-honoring, Jesus-loving sort of way. So Jesus is really giving us a pretty radical counsel. He said it's gonna be necessary for us to forgive. It's necessary for us to recognize our need of forgiveness.
You see, it's a stumbling block. There is a God and he can be known. It's the revelation of scripture. But we can't define God on our terms any more than we can define gravity on our terms. And some of us are angry. We don't like God's terms and so we rage against him and we rebel against him. It's not fruitful. We won't change God. God's not gonna take a vote. And if we outvote him, he's not gonna change his character. In his mercy and his love and his kindness and compassion, he has revealed his character so that we might submit to it and benefit from his kingdom. If we don't want to submit to him, we have the opportunity of spending our lives and eternity apart from his kingdom, but the alternative is a kingdom of darkness, a place of torment and destruction. Those are the options. There's not a third rail, there's no gray area.
So faith in a living God becomes a transformational thing. I wanna take just a moment because I think there's some confusion on this. We think of our relationship with God as a transaction. I talk to people a lot and they say, "Oh yeah, Pastor, I'm a Christian. I've been born again. I said that prayer. You know, I did that church thing for a while". I'll read you a verse. In 2 Corinthians 3:17, "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit".
It's not describing a transaction where we encounter God and we offer him a prayer and he offers us a ticket for heaven and then we put the ticket in our pocket and think "Good, I'm great. Now I can do what I wanna do for the rest of my life". It says we are being transformed. It's a verb tense that says it's ongoing. It's a continual present tense. It's not something that happened one time in the past. It isn't punctiliar. It's an ongoing event. We are being transformed. That's very different from the transaction of salvation. And I believe in being born again. Please don't misunderstand me. But a transactional face is I have to meet the obligations. I have to fulfill my responsibilities. It's confining, it's self-righteous. It asks the question, when is enough enough?
"When have I done enough? Have I served enough? Have I volunteered enough? Have I given enough? 'Cause I wanna cut back on all of those things. I want some me time". I hear that quite a bit. I've been around church a while. "Oh, we're gonna build another building". I hope so. I hope we keep outgrowing them. I hope we need more spaces for students and more spaces for babies and more spaces... That was enthusiastic. "Well, you know, how big is too... when can we stop"? I can tell you we can stop. When all the lost people in middle Tennessee are, "Well, but Pastor, that's not my problem. I'm born again. I'm going to heaven, me and my kids and my wife, us four, no more. We're good".
Understand, we've been coached to a self absorbed faith and we have this transactional mindset that says, "You know, I've done my God business and I'm gonna get on with life. I wanna do things I wanna do and chase the things I wanna chase. Those are my priorities". Well, transformational faith is different. Transformation is dependent upon a power beyond me. I recognize that dependency, and it requires me to live in a state of gratitude and thankfulness because I need outcomes that I can't deliver. I can't save myself. I don't wanna walk with an arrogance that says I have my God business completed because there's a God and I'm not him, and I need to please him today, irrespective of who I was yesterday. I'm not suggesting I earn my way to heaven. I say every day is an opportunity to be pleasing to God.
Transformational phase brings responses that are fueled by that gratitude. It means we're in pursuit of God. We seek God. We haven't mastered him. We haven't, people say to me, "You know, I read the Bible". Oh, well, if that's the case, you can be done with sports 'cause you've seen the game. No more Food Network, 'cause you've had a meal. Transformational faith is cultivated from humility and wonder and adventure. It's often initiated by desperation. It's not demanding. It's a recognition of tremendous need and approaching God with a humility that says, "I have no place else to turn and I present myself to you". In transformational faith, proximity is cherished and is sought after. What could I do to be in the midst of people who are seeking the Lord? I'd like to be with those people. What can I do to be in the presence of the Lord?
In Luke chapter 23, we see Jesus on the cross. Through the agony, he's being tortured to death. He's been accused unjustly. His trial was a mockery. He's been handed over by the Jewish religious community to the non-Jewish Roman civil authorities and they have mocked him. They have beaten him almost to death and now he's being tortured publicly on a cross. And from that place in Luke 23 and 34, Jesus says, "'Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.' And they divided up his clothes by casting lots".
I wanna ask you a question. Who do you imagine was the beneficiary of Jesus prayer? I don't believe it's the Roman soldiers casting lots for his clothing. I believe it was him. He could not afford to step out of time into eternity filled with resentment and bitterness and hate, more aware of injustice than he was of his need for the mercy and grace of God. You say he was perfect. He wouldn't have been if he'd had been filled with anger and bitterness and hatred. Father, forgive them. I'm gonna ask you another question. If you think the prayer was for those who were torturing Jesus to death, do you think there were no consequences? Do you think there were no consequences for torturing Jesus? Do you remember what Jesus said to Judas?
"It would have been better if you'd never been born". We have drunk so deeply from the cup of sloppy agape, those shabby grace, that we've imagined no consequence for sin. Remember what Jesus said? "If you cause one of these little children to stumble, you need to find a millstone, a big rock, a heavy chain and deep water". For those of you who say Jesus was all about love, he was. He loved those kids a lot. You mess with them, he will drown you. In fact, really what he said is, "That'll be a better day for you than when you see me". He was establishing a principle. The children matter.
That's why our voices for faith in our schools and that they'd be empty to pornography and sexualizing our little children long before they're emotionally and physically mature enough to process that. But the principle at the moment is that your choice to forgive is about you. It's not about the nature of evil in the world. If Jesus could do that through the haze of being tortured to death, he'll give us the strength we need. Unfortunately, right now, our nation is being divided by hatred. Those fomenting division don't have our best interest as their motive, violence, entitlement, envy, discontent, the language of oppressor and oppressed. Those dominate public discussions.
Typically, the government is presented as our resource for change. They are the ones that are gonna arbitrate change. They're gonna make something better. For the record, if you haven't studied or you haven't paid attention, human governments have never resulted in justice and liberty for all. Those things come from God. Even our own founding documents suggest they come from our creator, not from governments. So just some fundamental principles about forgiveness. We'll touch them quickly. They're not new to those of you who have been here a bit. Forgiveness is not optional. You can't choose not to forgive and imagine you'll be forgiven. Jesus said it. We've already read it. It's foundational.
If he's teaching us to pray, it may be you have to pray, "God, I need the strength to forgive. Give me the will to forgive. Forgive my rebellion, Father, I've held on to anger and resentment". Some of us are angry at God. We don't like the hand he's dealt us. We don't like our circumstances. We don't like the way our life has unfolded. We don't like who stepped in and stepped out and the timing in which they've done that and we're angry at God. It's not a fruitful place.
Forgiveness is not optional. Matthew 6:14, Jesus said, "If you forgive men when they sin against you, your Father will forgive you. If you don't, he won't". Secondly, there's no statute of limitations on forgiveness. You can't outweigh God on this. There's no threshold of suffering. You can't say, "Well, my pain was so great that I'm justified. What was done to me was so egregious. The weight of the injustice was so overwhelming, I feel totally justified in hating". Matthew 18, "Peter came to Jesus and said, 'Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?'" Can you hear Peter's had enough? "All right, I've forgiven now. How many times? How many times? Seven times"? "And Jesus answered, 'I tell you not seven, but seventy seven times.'"
You can see Peter going, "Ugh". Not asking it, no more jeopardy for a 1000 with Jesus. You understand that there are voices that are doing their very best to create hatred and resentment and division by refusing to allow forgiveness to take root in our hearts. They teach it in our schools. They shout at us in the media. Unfortunately, it resonates across too many churches. I can give you some very simple examples. We don't have to be complicated. We have forgiven the Nazis for the 40 million deaths of World War II. We have. We've forgiven the Japanese for Pearl Harbor. We've forgiven the Islamic terrorists for 9/11.
If you like a bit more pedestrian approach, we've forgiven Sam Bankman-Friedman for the collapse of FTX and the hundreds of millions of dollars that evaporated. Those that know a bit more of history, we've forgiven the Muslims for invading Europe, the Mongols for invading Russia and eastern Europe. We've forgiven the Vikings for raiding southward into Britain. We name our sports teams after them. But we are taught to hate the Europeans for migrating to North and South America. We pump that into our children and our students. We celebrate it. We refuse to do anything but maintain the hate. It's illogical, it's embittering, and it's destructive.
If this logic is kept in place, if we're gonna hold that, we ought to begin to cultivate hate for everybody that's pouring across our southern border. I'm not suggesting that, I don't think it's appropriate. They're taking billions of dollars from US citizens, overwhelming our educational system and our health care systems, our available housing. Again, I'm not trying to point hatred at the people invading our country. I am trying to direct your attention that we need to wake up and understand the grand manipulation of academia, the media, the politicians, and many who seek to divide us. The route I would submit to you is spiritual and the church has an essential assignment.
There's a third piece of forgiveness. Forgiveness can be achieved quickly. It's a decision. Your emotions will catch up, your emotions will not start there, your emotions will scream at you while you're making the decision. You're familiar with that process. It happens if you ever work out. If you exercise just modestly, you've made a decision to exercise, but your body is screaming at you, "What are you thinking"? You've been on the other side of that. You're having your third piece of dessert and it feels so good. But your mind is screaming and saying, "You're gonna be sorry for this". "Oh, shut up".
So that tension between your choices and your emotions is a very real part of the journey through time. It's a part of your spiritual formation. If you're gonna grow up spiritually, you're gonna have to learn to make decisions that honor God whether your emotions will support them in the moment or not. You've had enough emotional Christianity. And then your emotions are good, God, could they add value to your life? But they're lousy directors for your life. Your emotions change with the weather or how somebody looks at you. It's the child leaving church. The mom says, "Did you see that ugly look that lady gave me when we walked faster"? And the little girl said, "Oh no, Mom, you had that when we came in".
Forgiveness can be achieved quickly. Mark 11 says, "When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive your sins". I'll tell you how to figure that out. If there's somebody's name that's mentioned and you wanna clench your fist, but there's a scene you remember and it automatically brings angst to you. You see, trying to forget or act like it didn't happen or refusing to talk about it is not the same as forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a decision to cancel the debt that you think was incurred when you suffered a wrong, and we emotionally or physically, in whatever way, we hold markers and we think, "Well, I'm not turning loose to that. I'm gonna hold that. I'm gonna hold that thought, I'm gonna hold that memory. I'm gonna hold that feeling. I deserve something. I deserve an apology. I deserve restitution. I deserve something. I was treated unjustly, and I'm gonna hold that," and you're certainly entitled to do that. You have the freedom to do that. God's given you the ability to do that. But you should understand that if you hold that, you are also forfeiting the forgiveness that you will need.
And given that option, I would strongly encourage you to practice forgiving. It's a decision. I put a little sample prayer in your notes, I think. I gave a place for you to put in the blanks of the names, of the person, and the offense with some specificity. Did I give you that? I did not. Well, you should have been here for the previous session 'cause I gave it to them. Why don't we just say that prayer together? You can repeat it after me. All right, we'll do it in a generic way. I would encourage you to do it in a more specific way in private later on. But I'll give you the introduction to the prayer. Let's just pray it together. You can repeat it with me:
Heavenly Father, I forgive everyone who has wronged me, for anything that has been done to me. I release them in Jesus's name and I ask you to forgive me of everywhere I've sinned against you. And Holy Spirit, if there is anyone I need to forgive, bring it to my mind that I may release them. And I thank you now that I have been redeemed from the hand of the devil through the blood of Jesus, amen.