well hey everybody and welcome to Highlands Fellowship it's so good to be with you today i do want to take just a
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second as we get started just to let each of you know at our Bluefield campus at our Marian campus at Bristol those of
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you here in Abington if you're at one of our venues whether it be the Highlands country one of our cafe venues out in
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chapel uh guys thank you for joining us online and on TV but you guys are part of the Highlands family and we're one
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church in multiple locations because we want to help people experience life with Jesus so at all of our campuses and
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venues those of you who are new with us I want to say welcome today and please know that you are welcome and that you
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are loved and and let me just say it this way welcome home because Highlands
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is home and we're so glad that you're here today we're going to be continuing our series called the stories of Jesus
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and what we want you to do is we want you to come and listen to these wonderful stories in God's word that
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Jesus told or that he was part of and many of these messages will be about the parables that Jesus told and a parable
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is really a story that's designed to teach a lesson and Pastor Steve he kicked our series off with a with a
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great message a very powerful message where we learned from the story of the good Samaritan that Jesus told who can
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be a neighbor who can you be a neighbor to is really what Steve was asking and and who's lying in your ditch just
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waiting for you to come by and help them up and help them out great stuff great
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stuff today if you have your Bible with you or a Bible app go ahead and open those up to Matthew 18:es
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21-35 that's where we'll spend our time together today if you don't have a Bible that's okay we'll have it for you on the
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screen but what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking at the parable of the unforgiving servant so
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let's read this story together and then we'll work our way through it and then we'll see how how it affects our lives
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day to day so Matthew chapter 18 21-35
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says this then Peter came to Jesus and asked Lord how many times shall I
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forgive my brother or sister who sins against me up to seven times jesus
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answered "I tell you not seven times but 77 times or other translations say 70
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times seven." Verse 23 "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who
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wanted to settle accounts with his servants as he began the settlement a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was
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brought to him since he was not able to pay the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he
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had be sold to repay the debt at this the servant fell on his knees before him
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"be patient with me," he begged "and I will pay back everything." The servant's
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master took pity on him canceled the debt and let him go but when the servant
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went out he found one of his own fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver
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coins he grabbed him and began to choke him "pay back what you owe me," he
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demanded his fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him "be patient with me
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and I'll pay you back." But he refused instead he went off and he had the man
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thrown into prison and until he could pay the debt when the other servants saw
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what had happened they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened then the master called
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the servant in you wicked servant he said i canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to shouldn't you
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have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you in anger his
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master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed this is how my heavenly father
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will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your
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heart so this is the parable of the unforgiving or unmerciful servant you
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know I I heard the story one time and I I thought this would be a good one to share for you during this message today
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and it's about a man who was bitten by a dog which was later discovered to to have been raid the man was rushed to the
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hospital where tests revealed that he had in fact contracted rabies and at the
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time medical services medical science they really had no solution for this problem his doctor faced the difficult
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task of informing him that his condition was incurable also
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terminal he said "Sir um we'll do all that we can to keep you comfortable but
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I can't give you any false hope there is nothing that we can do my best advice is that you get your
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affairs in order as soon as you possibly can." So the dying man he sank back in
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his bed and he he was just shocked and and finally he rallied enough strength
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to ask for a pen and some paper and so then he set to work with great energy
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about an hour later when the doctor returned the man was still writing vigorously he said "I'm so glad to see
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that you're working on your will." And the guy said "This ain't no wheel doc this is a list of all the people that
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I'm going to bite before I die." Right you know many of us live and die with
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that kind of list written in our minds if not on paper and it's easy to talk
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about this idea of forgiveness but in reality it's much more difficult cs Lewis put it so well when
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he said "Forgiveness is a beautiful word until you have something to forgive."
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But why is forgiveness so hard i think first forgiveness is difficult because it's not natural to us uh the natural
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human impulse is to get even right it's to get revenge forgiveness goes against
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the grain of human existence of human nature secondly forgiveness is hard
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because it doesn't come across as fair it doesn't seem fair to us to forgive
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without just payment really seems to to to be a sense of injustice to us we want
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to be vindicated don't we and today in in our series on the stories of Jesus
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the Apostle Peter also struggled with this issue of forgiveness in Matthew
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chapter 18 Jesus has been addressing the subject dealing with this this idea of a
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brother sinning against another and so as as Peter listens to the Lord teach he gets caught up on this one
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aspect so what does this mean about how much I'm supposed to forgive how many
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times I'm supposed to forgive someone who has wronged me well so Peter directs
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his question to the Lord in Matthew 18 21 where he says this Lord how many
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times shall I forgive my brother or sister who has sinned against me up to seven times
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so Peter makes two mistakes that that are apparent to us the first one is that he assumes that his brother or sister
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will sin against him and him not against them right and secondly Peter wanted to
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set some kind of limit like some kind of limit on forgiveness of how many times
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would be appropriate and then he wouldn't have to do it anymore and in all fairness uh Peter was actually
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pretty generous with his limit he asked if forgiving seven times would be sufficient so the rabbis of that time
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what they taught is that one must forgive three times and this was actually drawn from a misunderstanding
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from the book of Amos which says that God would revoke punishment against them for for uh three transgressions but not
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for four so they taught that God himself never forgave more than three times so
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to Peter's credit okay he is more than doubling what the rabbis taught during
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that time now I believe that Jesus surprises Peter with his reply in verse
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22 when he says Jesus answered I tell you not seven times but 77 times as I
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said earlier some translations say 70* 7 so it can mean either 77 or 70* 7 is
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like 490 but but the meaning is the same it is a call for unlimited
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forgiveness and and really by the time you forgive somebody that many times
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you're probably in the habit of forgiving and you'll not need to set any type of limit in answering Peter's
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question Jesus told a story that has come to be known as the parable of the unforgiving servant and in this story
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Jesus deals with our two greatest needs with regards to forgiveness as human
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beings so in the first part in verses 21- 27 he deals with those who need
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forgiveness and in the second half verses 28-35 he targets those of us who
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need to forgive others so here's what I want you to understand first is
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this man's first great need is receiving forgiveness it's receiving forgiveness
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and so let's read this passage of scripture again it's Matthew 18:es 23-
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26 it says "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants as he
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began the settlement a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him
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since he was not able to pay the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to
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repay the debt." At this the servant fell on his knees before him "be patient
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with me," he begged "and I will pay back everything." So here's a man that owes
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an enormous debt the the amount of money that he's referring to was an
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astronomical amount and the point was that that his debt was inconceivable it
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was unable to be paid back there is no possible way that he could ever repay it
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confronted by the consequences of his actions he pleads for more
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time verse 27 reveals that it's the character of the master and not the
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character of the servant that produces this this forgiveness of the debt the
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master made the decision based on compassion so in Matthew 18 27 it says
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the servant's master took pity on him canceled the debt and let him go another
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version says "Then the master that of that of that servant was moved with
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compassion he released him and forgave him the debt." The master forgave his servant
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out of out of compassion for him out of compassion for his
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family and we've got to see ourselves in this story if we're going to be able to
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learn from this parable of Jesus we we've got to see that if we added up all
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of our offenses against God all of our sins against God throughout the years it constitutes this kind of debt
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one that we cannot pay an absolutely impossible amount
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our rebellion our selfish acts and thoughts our our willful choices our
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hatred or our lack of love toward others and the hurt that we've caused other people our pride our anger our lust our
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bitterness our lies all of these sins add up through
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the years to a staggering debt that we owe God which we cannot pay
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but then there comes the good news and it's the wonderful good news of the
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gospel of Jesus Christ that we can be forgiven in the name of Jesus
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Christ and I suspect that there are some of you who are here today who have done something to someone and you have never
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asked for forgiveness and according to Matthew 5 24 if your brother has something against
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you you got to go and you got to be reconciled to your brother is there anyone that you need to go to
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this week and to ask for forgiveness so man's first great need is
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receiving forgiveness and man's second great need with regards to forgiveness is to extend
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that forgiveness all right verses uh 28 through35 and again let's read this
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passage together i think it's so important that we hear the words of Jesus Christ and know the stories that
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he's telling us so Matthew 18 28-35 says this "But when the servant
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went out he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins and he grabbed him and began to
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choke him." "Pay back what you owe me," he demanded his fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him "Be patient
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with me and I will pay it back." but he refused instead he went off and had the
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man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt when the other servants saw what had happened they were outraged and
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went and they told their master everything that had happened then the master called the servant in "you wicked
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servant," he said "I canceled all that debt of yours because because you begged me shouldn't you have had mercy on your
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fellow servant just as I had on you?" And in his anger the master handed over
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handed this man over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed this is how my heavenly
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father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brothers and sisters from your
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heart you know you you would have expected that this man who was forgiven
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so much would go out and he would joyfully share his experience with other
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people but he didn't instead he arrested a man who owed him much much less a much
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smaller amount i mean it was still a significant amount it was basically uh four months
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wages and so it still compare it pald in comparison to what he had been forgiven
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but he had this man thrown into prison and there was obviously something wrong with this man's heart and and that is
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the major emphasis of this story although he has the legal right to
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demand payment for the debt he certainly had no moral right at this point it's
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impossible to receive forgiveness gratefully on one hand and to refuse it
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vengefully on the other so the idea is that a a transformed heart must result in a
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changed life that offers the same mercy and the same forgiveness that has been given from God
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somebody who does not grant forgiveness to other people shows that their own
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heart has not experienced God's forgiveness and to use the Lord's words
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to accept God's forgiveness and then to refuse it to other people to refuse to
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forgive somebody else is wicked we see that in verse 32 so so let me say this as strongly as
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I know how what happened to this man will happen to each one of us unless we learn to
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forgive we also will be thrown into jail and tortured you know really the world's
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worst prison isn't a place like Alcatres or you know Devil's Island because those
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are places that only can confine our bodies the prison that Jesus is
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describing it shackles our souls and the saddest part is that we put ourselves
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into this prison what is the most miserable of
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prisons well it's the prison of an unforgiving spirit that's what it is so
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the alternative to forgiveness is in the end an endless process of hurt and and
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bitterness and anger and resentment and self-destruction
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you know I heard this story of the effect of the prison of bitterness and
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unforgiveness there was this woman and and she was in her 80s and she said you
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know 50 years before her aunt had said something to her that insulted her and this woman had
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never forgiven her 50 years later she could actually recount the event to
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precise detail and she felt all the same bitterness she felt all the same anger
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and all the same resentment welling up within her as when it originally occurred and it's no wonder that by this
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time she had become a very bitter irritable quarrelome unhappy woman who
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could find no happiness in life whatsoever because she was still in the
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hands of the torturers 50 years later
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someone has said that forgiveness is is like letting go of a bell rope i mean if you've ever been to a country church
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that has a bell up in the in the in the steeple and there's a rope that comes down and and you might remember if
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you've ever tried to pull one of those you can pull it and it and you have to tug a little while before you can get it ringing but once it's begun to ring you
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merely maintain the momentum right and as long as you keep pulling the bell
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rope it keeps ringing and they said "Forgiveness is like it's basically just
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like letting go of the rope." And it's that simple but when you do so the bell
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actually keeps ringing because momentum is at work however if you keep your
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hands off of the rope the bell will begin to slow down and it will eventually stop and it's like that with
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forgiveness when you decide to forgive the old feelings of unforgiveness they they may
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continue to come they may continue to be present and present themselves after all
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you know they have lots of momentum right but if you affirm your decision to forgive that unforgiving spirit will
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begin to slow and will eventually be still forgiveness is not something that
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you feel but it's something that you do it's letting go of that rope of
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payback i mean how many of you have ever heard this about the idea of forgiveness that's not fair it's not
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fair i is forgiving fair well there are many people who if
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if they don't say it they certainly think it but forgiving someone isn't fair basically what you're doing is
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you're letting off letting that person off free and clear and offering nothing to the victim except the risk of more
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pain and I want to tell you a story about a a man by the name of of Simon
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Weisenthal and Simon was a Jew he was architect by profession who was put into
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a Polish concentration camp by the Nazis in World War II a and one day he was
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assigned to clean off the trash of a hospital being used for wounded German soldiers and so a nurse took Simon to
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the bed of a young man a young German SS trooper named Carl who was dying and and
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Carl had told the nurse that he must speak to a Jew a and and he grabbed Simon's arm and he said that he had to
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confess the terrible things that he had done so that he could die with peace and he wouldn't be able
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to die in peace unless he had been forgiven so So what had he done well his
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group had rounded up about 200 Jews in in a Russian village and forced them all
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into a house full of cans of gasoline and they threw grenades through the
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windows setting the house on fire and Carl was ordered to shoot anybody
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who tried to get out of the burning building and Carl said to Simon "I've
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longed to talk about this with a Jew and beg forgiveness for without it I cannot
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die in peace." So there they were a member of
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the super race begging to be forgiven by a member of the condemned race
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and this is what Simon Weisenol says he did he says,"I stood up and without a
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word left the room." The German went to God unforgiven
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by man simon Weisenthal he survived the concentration camp and told his story in
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a book called The Sunflower and he ends the book with an awful question to the
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reader what would you have done what would you have
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done and the question behind that story is one of
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fairness not losing sight of of guilt and and or
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justice is it fair to forgive why should that soldier even die
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in peace why should anyone anywhere forgive this murderer as if nothing had
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ever happened so do you hear the concern behind
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Peter's question how many times should I forgive my
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brother was Jesus right about forgiveness well what Jesus does in his
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story is to consider what happens if we refuse to give because there are only two real
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options for responding to the deep hurt that we didn't deserve one of them is
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forgiveness okay that's one of them the other is vengeance any other response to
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to to what's happened is really a form of of denial such as forgetting excusing or or overlooking wrongs okay vengeance
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is the only alternative to forgiveness and that's what the servant
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was doing in Jesus's parable he his servant owed him a debt
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right he had not paid it so he threw the guy in jail and you know
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how it works we've been unfairly hurt life is out of whack the scales are out of balance revenge is the age-old way of
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trying to get even right those who think that killing one another is the only way to get even they
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go on killing each other until everybody's dead and they never get even and let me tell you why because pain
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given and pain received never balances out it never balances
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out forgiving is what gives us a chance in the future to live in
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peace remember that forgiving is is really a remedy for something that has
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already happened and what happened is unfair and will never ever be fair
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forgiveness does not it does not balance the scales any more than revenge does but it is the only way to move forward
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and this is what our good God teaches us in his word
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getting even is really a loser's game because it leaves you with more pain
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than really what you had in the first place because the first pain is the original hurt all right it's what's been
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done to you the second pain is is remembering the wrong that has happened and the third pain is is the the
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vengeance stage of wishing at least as much harm or as much pain on the person
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who inflicted pain on you and if you let yourself get caught up in that pain you
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allow the person who hurt you once go on hurting you in your memory until the day
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you die and it doesn't make sense at all isn't that what happened to the
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servant who refused to forgive he was thrown into prison and tortured do you see what Jesus was
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trying to get across to Peter the only way to heal the pain that
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will not heal itself is to forgive the person who hurts
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you the first and sometimes the only person to to get the benefit of
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forgiving is the person who does the forgiving
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another question that's that people ask a lot is this is forgiveness being
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honest like doesn't forgiveness falsify reality like when we forgive aren't we
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acting as if the the bad thing that happened didn't really happen or that
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the magnitude of what happened like it wasn't really as bad as it really was
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the Bible says "No it's just the opposite forgiveness is the one truthful
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act that bears any chance of healing the wounds of a jacked up world that's done
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wrong by the people that we're that are in it right we know we didn't deserve it
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well how is that honest well forgiving is honest about what happened because we
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only forgive when we have admitted that what was done was bad it was really
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wrong and it has no place in the way that we treat each other forgiving is not about denying
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it's not about ignoring what's happened forgiving begins to it begins by looking
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the incident right in the face and calling it what it is a wrong that never
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should have happened forgiving is honest about the person who's responsible for it
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basically somebody has to has to be responsible for the wrong and so you've
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got to hold that person responsible if not there's really nothing to forgive like we we excuse people that make
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allowances for uh and make allowances for people who who accidentally hurt us right
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but we're only able to forgive if we hold the person responsible and if we know that the
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person that we're forgiving could have chosen not to do what he or she
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did forgiveness requires honesty with ourselves as
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well no one can forgive someone else unless they are aware of their own need
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to be forgiven that's what the unforgiving or unmerciful servant
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forgot he wasn't honest about his own debt that he had been forgiven
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of in our anger when we're wronged we we begin to feel a bit
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self-righteous don't we but just as there is more to the person
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who hurt us than the guilt for doing it there's also more to us than the fact of
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our painful innocence we too have failed and we are
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also flawed and there's no real forgiveness until we see that in ourselves as well
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almost always when we think about forgiveness the Holy Spirit flashes
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names and faces across our minds people who we either need to ask
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forgiveness from or to extend forgiveness to so let's do this by going to the Lord
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in prayer let's pray together guys as you're praying today I
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I just want to start by asking you a few questions first do you need to ask someone for
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forgiveness like can you think of a person right now that you've [Music]
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wronged and you've not yet owned up to
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it are you ready to do that today and if that's the case I just I
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just would say ask God to help you with that
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secondly do you need to extend forgiveness to someone who has wronged you like is there somebody who has
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wronged you and you've never been able to let go of it well guys today it's time to
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forgive are you ready to forgive that debt and then
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lastly do you need to admit that you're a sinner and ask God to forgive you
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today because if you've never done that now's the
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time he stands ready to forgive you if you'll just ask him to so do you need the forgiveness of our
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good God today i know that forgiveness is an extremely
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difficult topic to discuss but as I read this story of the
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unforgiving servant or the unmerciful servant I can't help but sit here and
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think about my own life and understand that I have sinned so many times
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i've hurt so many [Music] people and God has forgiven me such a
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huge debt one that I could never ever
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repay and so for me to hold a sin or a wrong against someone
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else would be [Music] hypocritical and I tend to do it
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but we can see very clearly in God's word today that if we are to accept the
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forgiveness that God gives us without then giving forgiveness to other
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people it's not right so God I come to you today and I
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pray that you would allow me to forgive the wrongs that have been
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done against me because I've been forgiven of so much
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[Music] more and if there's any of you that are like me today who struggle with that
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same thing today's the day to release those things if we've wronged someone it's
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time to go and ask for forgiveness if someone has wronged us it's time to
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forgive and even more importantly than that if you have never asked God to forgive you
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of your sins and for you to follow after Jesus Christ with your life and to be saved and to be free from the prison of
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guilt and shame God will release you of that debt
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and he will allow you to live in freedom with him as a follower of Jesus Christ
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so if that's you you can pray this prayer and say "God I believe that you sent your son Jesus Christ to die on the
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cross to be buried and rose again the third day so that I could be freed from
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my sins and I could be forgiven of my sins." And today I want to experience
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that free gift of grace that you give and I want to follow you with my life
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i've tried things my own way it doesn't work i'm holding on to grief and bitterness and hatred and I want to get
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rid of it today I give those things to you and I want to live in your freedom
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today and if you've done that I believe with all my heart that as you experience the forgiveness of
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Christ you will then be able to forgive it's the way it works but as we do help
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us not to forget all that we've been forgiven of god you're a great God we
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love you we praise you it's in Jesus name we pray and everybody said "Amen