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Lesson Six:
The Secret
Ingredient For Creating A Strong Family
"Forgiveness"
Introduction: On July 6, 1535, Sir Thomas Moore,
personal friend of Henry VIII and the Lord Chancellor of England,
was standing in front of a group of men who had just condemned him
to death. Although he had at one time been one of the most powerful
judicial officers in England, he had fallen out of favor with Henry
VIII over the king's divorce of Catherine of Aragon and marriage to
Anne Boleyn. The charge against him was treason, and the execution
was to be excruciating. The decree read that "he should be carried
back to the Tower of London and from thence drawn on a hurdle
through the City of London to Tyburn there to be hanged till he
should be half dead; that then he should be cut down alive, his
privy parts cut off, his belly ripped, his bowels burnt, his four
quarters set up over four gates of the City, and his head upon
London Bridge." Fortunately, the King relented and granted him a
merciful beheading. But in the face of the lies that had been
perpetrated against him and in spite of his unjust condemnation he
said these words to his judges:
"As the Apostle Paul held the clothes of
those who stoned Stephen to death, and as they are both now saints
in heaven, and shall continue there as friends forever, so I verily
trust and most heartily pray that though your Lordships have now
here on earth been judges to my condemnation, we may nevertheless
hereafter cheerfully meet in heaven in everlasting salvation."
Can you imagine being able to say something
like that to a group of your peers who had just sentenced you to
death by this method?
Last week I told you that I was
going to be sharing a secret with you this morning, and the secret
has to do with creating a strong family. We all know there isn't a
magic pill we can take, or a secret incantation we can recite that
will guarantee perfect families; but there
is
a discipline that we can invoke in our families that will enable us
overcome anything (and I want the magnitude of that word to sink in
- I didn't say "most or "the majority," but "anything") our
adversary can throw at us. And that is the virtue of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the key ingredient in keeping a family strong and
united. It is crucial to success in a family. It is primarily what
sustains relationships over the long haul.
The unpleasant truth of the
matter is that we are all sinful, fallen, creatures. When the Bible
says that "no one is good -- not even one. All have turned away
from God, all have gone wrong, no one does good, not even one. All
have sinned and fall short of God's expectations," it was stating a
universal truth. And the most fertile ground for this truth to
manifest itself is in the close confines of a family.
I have never had to ask a
customer to forgive me for offending him. I have never had to ask a
co-worker to forgive me. I've never had to ask an employer to
forgive me. I've only once or twice had to ask a friend to forgive
me. I've only once had to ask a church to forgive me - but I
regularly have to ask my immediate family to forgive me.
You can liken it to a Petri
dish. Do you know what a Petri dish is? It is a little container
with a solution of salts and amino acids that hastens, or
accelerates the growth of bacteria or microbes. That is what the
family does to this issue of our inherent sinfulness - it is an
incubator. We are all going to fail / offend / misinterpret /
disappoint each other because we are all fallen, sinful creatures -
and the only thing that will keep that sinfulness from destroying
the relationship is forgiveness.
Turn with me to Prov. 19:11.
"A man's discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory
to overlook a transgression." The word "glory" in this verse is
tiphara. It sounds somewhat like our word tiara, or crown;
and this word "glory" was even used to describe a crown. The Bible
uses the phrase "crown of glory" several times, and it conveys the
idea of visible nobility. That tiara / glittering crown catches our
eye and draws our attention to it. The Bible says that the ability
to forgive / "overlook a transgression" is an act of visible
nobility. The ability to forgive catches our attention - and it is
a glorious virtue. Sir Thomas Moore did a lot of noble things in
his life, but none of them compare with his conduct before his
executioners when he categorically forgave them and said he was
looking forward to seeing them in heaven.
People in our society today are
filled with bitterness, anger, and hatred because they can't
forgive. Psychologists tell angry people to vent
their anger and get it out (story of D.E.) instead of forgiving the
offender. Doctors tell angry people to take a pill to
help them feel better instead of forgiving the offender.
Authors tell us to blame someone else for our anger instead
of forgiving the offender. Dr. Susan Forward is considered by some
to be the nation's leading psychotherapist. She wrote a book called
Toxic Parents which put her as #1 on the New York
Times Bestseller list. It has a chapter entitled "You Don't Have
To Forgive," and in this chapter she conveys the
prevailing attitude of our culture when she says, "We should place
the blame for our present problems on our parents, because that is
where it belongs. They poisoned us, we all had toxic parents."
Everywhere we look in our
culture, the message is the same, "Don't be a forgiving person."
Why are there 300,000 lawsuits filed in the United States every year
- because as a people, we aren't very forgiving. Why does the
United States employ 70% of all the lawyers in the world! That is a
staggering percentage! Two months ago, the world had 6.6 billion
people on it (Sept. 2007). At the same time, the United States had
301 million people in it. That means our country contains 4.5627 %
of the world's population, but we employ 70 % of the world's
lawyers. Why? Because we don't forgive. Sometimes I wonder if we
shouldn't change the United States motto from e plurbus unum
to victimus et non responsibilus. That isn't
a genuine Latin phrase, I just made it up, but it conveys the idea
that "I am a victim and not responsible."
But let me tell you this
morning that the price of unforgiveness is very, very high. Two
things will happen to you if you don't practice the virtue of
forgiveness. These two ideas aren't original with me, I heard them
from Dr. John McArthur. 1. A lack of forgiveness imprisons people
in the past. That is the exact opposite of Paul's admonition in
Phil. 3:13 where he implores us to "focus all [our] energies
on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what
lies ahead." As I said last week, we need to be focused on
becoming everything that God wants us to be, and part of becoming
more like Christ is learning how to forgive. As long as you are
unwilling to forgive offenders and the offenses, you are chained to
both of them. You keep the offense alive. You perpetuate the
pain. It is the equivalent of picking at an open sore. You are
sentencing yourself to feel as bad now as you did when the offense
happened.
Now, I want to be quick to say
here that I am not trying to minimize the painful things that have
happened to you in the past. I know there are people listening to
me this morning who have had atrocious offenses perpetrated against
them, and I don't want you to think that I am glibly dismissing it
because I have lived in this little bubble all my life that keeps me
out of touch with reality. Some of you have been deeply, deeply
wounded by those who should have had your protection and best
interest foremost on their thoughts, and that makes the offense all
the more heinous. I understand that. But please do not dismiss the
truthfulness of what I am saying this morning because of my
inability to identify with your pain. A lack of forgiveness
imprisons people in the past.
2. And secondly, a lack of
forgiveness produces deep bitterness, what MacArthur calls a cancer
of the heart. It is malignant, and it distorts how you see life.
If you read the content of the suicide note left by Robert Hawkins
(the 19 year old who killed 8 shoppers in a mall this week), it
isn't hard to see how his bitterness at life and distorted
perception of reality was fueled by offenses over the course of his
lifetime in foster homes. And the ultimate result of this offense /
non-forgiveness / bitterness cycle is a distorted perception of life
that justifies killing innocent people.
People caught in this cycle are
hard to live with, work with, or even befriend, because they use
every conversation or relationship as a forum for the defamation of
the person he has been hurt by. But forgiveness bring complete
freedom from the past and from bitterness in the present. It is
liberating, it makes sense, and it is healthy. And to bring the
focus down to our issue at hand, no family can survive the absence
of forgiveness.
What I want to share with you
in the time we have left today and in our time next week is some
compelling biblical reasons why we should forgive.
I. It is the most godlike act a person can
do - Ex. 34:6-7
Then
the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the
LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding
in loving kindness and truth; who keeps loving kindness for
thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.
No human action is more like
God than forgiveness. When we threw ourselves at the mercy of God
and asked Him to forgive us for all our sins against Him, He
categorically forgave us, even though we hadn't earned His favor.
And never are you more like Him than when you forgive someone who
has offended you - it is a statement of unearned love.
In Luke 15 we have the story of
the prodigal son. You are familiar with his selfishness
- he couldn't wait for his father to die, so he went to him and
demanded his share of the inheritance prematurely. We are disgusted
by his greed in demanding wealth he had not earned,
and his immaturity as he wasted the money that had been so
graciously given to him. But he finally came to his senses, went
back to his father and started to ask for forgiveness. And as I
read the story I get the sense that his father interrupts him in the
middle of his forgiveness speech (he never gets the chance to say,
"Will you forgive me?") and lays out a "welcome home" party. There
was complete forgiveness.
The point of the story is that
we are all like the prodigal son, and God is the father figure in
the story. So it really isn't surprising that the father forgives
the son, is it? One of the preeminent characteristics of God is
that He forgives sins, and He expects us to do the same. Look with
me at Eph. 4:32 and 5:1. "And be kind to one another,
tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as
God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children." You
imitate God when you forgive, and it is hard to destroy a
relationship when you forgive every offense.
Let me take just a minute and
address a lie that Satan has perpetrated in this matter of
forgiveness. The lie is this. "I can't forgive someone until they
acknowledge their wrongdoing, repented of it, and then ask me to
forgive them." How many of you have heard that or some variation of
it? Well, it is a lie, because Biblically, you always have the
option to grant someone categorical, undeserved forgiveness. Here
are three passages that teach this truth.
1. According to the verse we
saw earlier in Proverbs, we always have the option to overlook the
offense.
2. According to the actions of
Stephen in Acts 7:60, we have the option to grant forgiveness to an
offending party even when they don't acknowledge their wrongdoing.
When he said, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them," it was his
crowning moment. It was the most glorious thing he had ever done.
And it is understandable why Stephen did it because he had seen
Jesus do the very same thing just a little while earlier.
3. According to the actions of
Jesus in Luke 23:34 as He was being crucified, we have the option of
granting unconditional forgiveness. Jesus looked at His
executioners and said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know
what they are doing." His executioners did not acknowledge their
wrongdoing, repent of their offense, and ask Jesus to forgive them.
Yet Jesus chose to grant forgiveness. So please don't buy into the
lie that the one who has sinned against you has to acknowledge it
and then initiate the forgiveness process. Caveat:
The difference between the human / divine dynamic in the context of
salvation and the human / human dynamic in a non-salvation context.
Conclusion: So
to wrap things up for today, your family is headed for disaster if
you accumulate offenses and don't learn how to forgive.
Parents - learn how to forgive your children. Don't wait
for them to come to you and ask for it. Children -
learn how to forgive your parents. Don't wait for them to come to
you and apologize. Brothers and
sisters - learn how to forgive each other. Don't carry
bitterness through your lives - initiate the forgiveness process and
free yourself. Spouses - learn how to forgive each
other. It isn't easy, but it is godly! And remember, you are never
more like God than when you forgive someone. |
