During the COVID-19 quarantine, Calvary Chapel Rosarito has been providing live streaming topical devotionals every weekday. The video shown above is the devotional from Thursday, April 23rd, 2020, on the topic of Forgiveness. The following, is the full text of that devotional.
WELCOME
Good morning and welcome! I’m very blessed to be with you for this morning’s devotional. If you don’t know me, I’m Gary Wiram and I’m not a Pastor here at Calvary Chapel Rosarito. But, you may be familiar with me and my Wife, Ruth, from seeing us around church. Ruth leads the Monday evening Bible study for English- speaking ladies, called Sister Sojourners. You may have seen me as part of the Connections Ministry in between services on Sundays. And you may be familiar with both of us as the Leaders of the Seniors Ministry known as Legends.
INTRODUCTION
Many of our recent devotionals have focused on topics aimed at helping to get us through this challenging time of COVID-19. This morning I want to offer exhortation to take advantage of this time by dealing with a topic most of us find challenging even during normal times. That topic is Forgiveness.
The aspects of this topic that I want to address this morning are:
- God’s forgiveness for us.
- Our forgiveness of others.
- Forgiveness for the unforgivable.
As we begin, let’s pray for the Lord’s blessing on this time.
Father, thank You for this opportunity to look to You to see how You can make beauty in our lives from the ashes of this current crisis. Give us ears to hear what You want to say on this topic today. And, give us hearts to be obedient to Your direction. We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
It seems that it’s a Calvary Chapel Rosarito requirement to include a joke in every teaching so I want to start with this:
Pastor Carlos recently got a pet parrot. Unfortunately, it had a bad attitude and used fowl language … Fowl language, get it?! A Parrot, a Bird, Fowl! … Anyway, Carlos tried everything to change the bird’s attitude and clean up its talk but nothing worked. Finally, in a moment of desperation, he put the parrot in his freezer. For a few moments he heard the bird squawking, kicking and screaming and then, suddenly, all is quiet. He opened the freezer door. The parrot stepped out and said, “I’m sorry that I offended you with my language and actions. I ask for your forgiveness.” Pastor Carlos was astounded at the bird’s change in attitude and was about to ask what changed him when the parrot continued, “By the way, may I ask – what did the chicken do?”
GOD’S FORGIVENESS FOR US
Seriously, I want us to begin by taking a look at God’s forgiveness for us. Of course, understanding God is completely beyond us. And, certainly, God’s forgiveness is too big and too complex for us to fully grasp. But, looking to His Word can help us to get a sense of it.
John 3:16 is probably the most well known of all Scripture, even with unbelievers. It tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Although it’s beyond me to understand why God so loved the world, at least I understand that His love for the world is why He provided for our redemption.
And, Ephesians 1:7 Tells us, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,”
I suspect we’ve all been taught the difference of Grace from Justice and Mercy. Justice is getting what we deserve. We deserve spending eternity in Hell. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. I guess that would be not going to Hell but maybe just ceasing to exist when we die. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve … eternal life in Heaven with God.
Forgiveness is a key element of God’s Grace. It is a gift, as the Scripture says, “according to the riches of his grace,”. This gift is solely from God’s love for us. There was no other pathway to Salvation without it. There’s nothing we could do to earn it and we certainly don’t deserve it. It’s a gift.
And, it is a gift that cost God a great price, a price that is also beyond our understanding … “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,”.
Those three little words, “through his blood”, don’t seem like enough to fully define the price that God paid for our salvation. A more detailed description would be to say God the Son chose to leave His glory in Heaven, to come to earth, to take on flesh and blood and to live fully as a man only so He could sacrifice that flesh and shed that blood in order that we might have eternal life.
He gave himself for us. As Romans 8:32 tells us, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”
We need to remember that God’s forgiveness is conditional though.
1 John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
“If we confess our sins” … Repentance of our sins is required by God’s conditional promise. That won’t be a part of our eternal lives because there is no sin in Heaven. But, while living in this sinful world, we need to repent and to do so continually.
OUR FORGIVENESS OF OTHERS
Next, I want to address our need to extend Forgiveness to others.
The Scripture we refer to as The Lord’s Prayer, says, “… forgive us our (sins), as we forgive those who (sin)against us.”.
Forgiving others isn’t natural for us but it is tied to our forgiveness from God. Thankfully, as we are forgiven, we are supernaturally given the capacity to forgive.
If, however, we fail to be gracious with that gift, we risk having our grace withdrawn. That is illustrated well in Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unmerciful servant. This is the story of a servant whose master forgave a debt he owed that was so great he couldn’t pay it. But then he was unwilling to forgive a small debt that was owed him by another servant. As a result, when the master who had forgiven him his debt learned about this, he turned the unmerciful servant over to the jailers to be tortured.
In addition to facing the challenge that forgiving others isn’t natural, it’s not uncommon for us to find ourselves dealing with having someone repeatedly commit the same sin against us. What in the world do you do about that?! Well, Jesus himself answers that question in a conversation he had with Peter. The account of that, in Matthew 18:21-22, says, “Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” Peter thought he was being very generous in forgiving someone seven times. That seems pretty good to me too. But Jesus completely blows that out and we need to remember that his 70 times seven doesn’t really mean 490 times. It means there should be no limit to our forgiveness, as is the case with God and our forgiveness.
FORGIVENESS FOR THE UNFORGIVEABLE
And if that’s not hard enough, there are those times in life when we have sins committed against us that we view as being unforgivable. We know, from Mark 3:28-29, that for God the only unforgivable sin is grieving the Holy Spirit. So, when we think of forgiving the unforgivable, what we actually have in mind is something that seems unforgivable by us. And, without the supernatural help of God, we may be right.
The story of the Prodigal Son may be one that, if we put ourselves in the place of the Prodigal Son’s Father, illustrates circumstances that would be unforgivable by us. And yet, the Father in this story did just that. As you know, this is the story of a young man who demanded his inheritance in advance. He took off with it to “a far country” and after it was gone, in order to survive, he went to work feeding pigs. A Jewish boy couldn’t sink much lower than that. In this story, we aren’t told how the Father felt about this Son when he first left. Maybe, at first, he thought the Son’s sin was unforgivable. We know from Luke 15:24 that he considered him dead. Regardless of that, after the Son had wasted his inheritance with his prodigal living, God brought a famine to drastically change his circumstances and his attitude. So, he returned home, just hoping that his Father might take him in as a servant. If the Father’s attitude needed changing too, apparently, that had happened. He saw his Son returning when he was “still a great way off”. It seems the Father was watching for and praying for his Son’s return. And when the Son returned, the Father celebrated by saying, “… this my Son was dead and is alive again.”
With sins of others that seem unforgivable to you, maybe you think, “The story of the Prodigal Son is a nice Bible Story but I’m dealing with issues of real life.” If that’s you, let me share with you a real life story. Much like the miraculous forgiveness that resulted from the famine that God brought about for the Prodigal Son, this is a miraculous story of forgiveness that was brought about as a result of this COVID-19 nightmare.
This story involves two people who I’ve known since they were a very young married couple. They haven’t been a married couple for a long time and like me, they’re no longer young. But I’ve stayed in touch with them closely enough over the years that I can appreciate their miraculous story. Here are the highlights … or low-lights, depending on your point of view:
- These two were both raised as Christians but they weren’t walking with the Lord when they met.
- They married when they were very young and they had a baby almost immediately.
- Their marriage only lasted a few years. They were just in their twenties when they divorced.
- For most of the time since then, any relationship they had with each other was hateful. No doubt, they both could have told you numerous reasons to justify the bitterness between them.
- However, they both maintained good relationships with their child, as well as their grandchildren.
- Although they both recommitted their lives to the Lord, it has been obvious that they weren’t able to embrace forgiveness for each other.
- But, they were aware of each other’s return to walking with the Lord and with that, they shared a concern for the salvation of their offspring. That concern was greatly heightened when the COVID-19 nightmare hit and it caused them to reach out to each other.
- In doing this, they thought that if, for the first time ever, they jointly reached out to their younger generations about the importance of faith at a time like this, it might just be what was needed to get their attention.
- So, they agreed to do that by sending a jointly composed message to their child and their now-grown grandchildren.
- Since then, they have used Facebook Messenger to keep the seven people involved tied together and to share encouragement daily.
It’s too early to assess the results of this with their younger generations but it’s clear that, through this, God miraculously accomplished what had eluded these two accomplishing on their own … their forgiveness of each other.
Since I’ve known these people for so long, I probably think that’s cooler than you do. But, for me, watching this happen has been incredible.
You’ve probably heard it said that forgiven people should be forgiving people. As they say back in Indiana, where I grew up, sometimes that says easy and does hard. When I find myself struggling with this, I find it helpful to play the lyrics of an old hymn called Take Up Your Cross in my head. It goes like this:
“Have you really given everything For the One who gave His all for you? Count the cost, take up your cross and follow Him!”
My encouragement to you today, if you’re troubled with having someone in your life that you haven’t been able to forgive, is this: Stop letting your limitations keep you from getting this done. Turn to your Father in Heaven for His provision. Even if it takes a miracle, He will get it done and He will bless you in the process.
Thank you for sharing this time with me this morning. I pray that it was a blessing to you, as it has been for me. I, truly, look forward to the time when we will, again, be able to do this six feet apart but face-to-face.
And, for now, I’d like to close in the way that we close each of our Legends gatherings. It’s with what is known as the Aaronic blessing.
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make His face to shine upon Thee,
And be gracious unto thee, And be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee,
And give thee peace.
God bless you.
