died an atoning death and was
raised the third day that we might be brought before you that
we might stand perfectly and wholly before you and as the
song said because our sinless savior died my sinful soul is
counted free and we thank you lord that that is in fact the
case it's not anything that we think do say or feel but Lord,
it's rather that he came, he lived, he died, and he rose again.
And we thank you that you provided this for us and glorify your,
we ask that you would glorify yourself in us. Help those that
are sick today. We ask that you would heal them.
We ask for those who are in pain that you would find a way of
easing their pain. We ask that you would just help
all of us to glorify and honor you and serve you faithfully.
And we ask you this in Jesus' name, amen. Good morning, everyone. As always,
it's awesome to see you all. And I don't know what Siri's
trying to do here, so if she starts talking, we'll just let
her. Last week, I was taught a bit
out of the life of Joseph. And I'm gonna recall some of
that today. So if you're not familiar with the story of Joseph,
here's a quick synopsis. He was born the youngest of many.
He was favored by his father over the rest. God had purposed
to put him in a place of prominence for the sake of reconciliation,
for the sake of preservation for the remnant of Israel during
famine. But the process through which
God put him into these places was a trial to say the least. It was pure torture. It was very
painful. His brothers and their envy of
him because of the father's love and then now the dreams that
God was giving him about how they would bow down to him in
some way, they sold him into slavery. They took his bloody
coat back to the father and told the father that Joseph was dead.
Then in prison, he proved himself a worthy servant. and put in
charge of Potiphar's house. Then Potiphar's wife tried her
little fanciful things and ended him back up in prison. Then he
interprets the dreams of Pharaoh and Pharaoh makes him co-regent.
Basically, Pharaoh puts him in charge of everything. And then sometime, as the Lord
had promised, as the Lord had shown him in the predictions,
famine came and who come into the court of Egypt but the brothers
who left him for dead. And he forgives them. Now I didn't
have time last week to illustrate the opposite side of the story.
I didn't have time last week to really get into, we saw Joseph
as a type of Christ, the forgiving one, the one who was sent before,
the one through whom reconciliation came, the one who would provide
for those in need, those who were in need of filling, he would
be their fulfillment. But what about the brothers?
What about the offenders? Do they get a free pass? Do they
just get off of any consequence whatsoever? Well, we'll talk
about that some today. But I want you to see today,
have one mission today. I want you to understand, I want
you to comprehend very clearly so that you may apply it to every
aspect of your life. I want you to understand that
love, from a divine point of view, is the ultimate essence
of being fulfilled and living a free life. I want to say that
again. I want you to understand that
love, from a divine point of view, is the absolute essence
of living a fulfilled life. Jesus says, I came that they
may have life and have it more abundantly. We mess that up when
we think that that means about the ins and outs and the nuances
and the idiosyncrasies of this normal walking on this big rock
spinning through space. It is about understanding and
living in the love of God. Now that, of course, as we've
had many conversations through the last decade plus two, is
that we are often misunderstanding what that means. We often misapply
love. We often just really malign it
because we feel as though it's the way we feel, rather than
the place we are, and most importantly, the things we do. The things
we do. So when we look at the life of
Joseph and we see that the reason God put Joseph there is to show
us the picture of Jesus, you understand that, right? Joseph
is not the life lesson. Joseph is not the model. Joseph
is the commercial of the truth. He is the commercial. Your life,
your marriage, your relationships, your trials, your blessings is
a reflection of the truth. So all the things in the world
that looked before the cross, that looked to the cross, it
was to look to the cross. The narratives of scripture.
We really mess up when we think that the Bible gives us lessons
to learn and live by, by emulating the lives of those before us.
And the only emulation that we have, the only copying that we
should do is resting, ultimately, with great peace and the love
of God. The love of God. Now see, most anybody hearing
what I just said in the world who aren't really grotesquely
bothered by the idea of a divine person would say, yes, I agree
with that. So there are distinctions. There
are things that as we learn and grow in grace and we learn and
grow in knowledge that we are to then take and unpack and parse
in a way that we become clearer in our understanding, that we
begin to apply more perfectly the things that the Bible teaches
us. But never should that clarity become our assurance. Never should
that growing become the moniker through which we stand before
the Father and say, look, I'm growing. No, it is just the grace
of God, the love of God, the purpose of God, the plan of God,
and the absolute power of God that establishes us to stand
before Him. The song we just sang is a really awesome depiction
of the gospel. We are not seen as sin because
Christ has stood in our place. When the Father looks at us,
He sees us as His children, holy and worthy and lovely. as a bride
prepared for her wedding day without blemish, spot, or wrinkle,
you see? You see the image, you see the
picture, you see the metaphor? And so we look here, I wanna set
the stage of the opposite side of that, and I don't even wanna
say opposite, of the equal side of love, and that is reconciliation. The whole point of the good report
is that it's a reconciliation of God with his people. It's
a reconciling love. It's settling differences at
great cost. Now, some of us can relate to
Joseph in this narrative. We've been maligned. We've been
mistreated. We've been hurt. We've been left for dead. We've
been somewhat emotionally or culturally murdered. And some of us can relate as
the brothers. We've done the murdering. We've
done the maligning. And beloved, I think if we all
just sit here for just a second and we just breathe a couple
of breaths in and just breathe out and we think, honestly, we're both. All of
us have done wrong and all of us have been wrong. Now there's
a scale in our little courts. There's a relative idea that
in our courts, well, what I went through was worse than what you
went through. It doesn't matter. As I've said just recently here
from this platform, is that the fear of a child, of the monster
under their bed, which is absolute absurdity in the cognitive mind
of an adult. That fear is equally as real
as if someone kicks down your door and comes in with a bat
in the middle of the night. It doesn't diminish it. So embrace
the experiences of those around you. Embrace your own experience
as authentic, as valid, as something that you have experienced. Do
not belittle what you've gone through. Because if you don't,
Well, let's put it in the positive. If you belittle your experiences,
if you make light of them, you will never and you can never
expect other people to understand them. And you will never put them in
the right perspective. You'll always be thinking, well, I deserve
this. Well, you know what? We deserve
a whole lot more than this. We get that, okay? We've read
the Puritans. They're all dead. Let's move on. Let's move on
to the culture that we live in today that's not bred through
that lens. Yes, we live in a collective
society. We live in a pluralistic society. We live in a tolerant
society. Thank you. I thank the Lord for
that. I would have been burned, drowned, hanged, or shot many,
many times if we didn't live in the type of society that we
live in, if we didn't have the First Amendment with the establishment
clause. Thank the Lord that every cult
that exists in the world today started in westward expansion
in these United States. That's an amazing testimony to
liberty. And it's an amazing opportunity
for us to be able to be in a position where God has shown us true liberty,
which is found only in Jesus Christ. which is true love, which
is a story of reconciliation that only we can understand by
the Spirit of God. So reconciliation, whether you're
the brothers, whether you're Joseph, or you understand that
you've in some way, in some sense, even if it's not really as bad
as others, have experienced being both. Reconciliation is the goal,
and reconciliation is the essence of Christian life. Now hear that. That's the third time I've said
that, but it's a different way in which I've said it. Reconciliation
is the goal and the essence of Christian life. It's deeply linked
to spiritual fulfillment. And remember, I talked about
fulfillment being the beginning and the end. It's the end game
and it's where we start. Being fulfilled in life as Christians
is the point. And we cannot find fulfillment
unless we start in fulfillment. And it seems ridiculous and quite
honestly, philosophers have been trying to figure this out for
millennia. and they can do nothing but blah, blah, blah. That's
all they can do. That's the most prolific and amazing, awesome
response to this conundrum. It's just blah, blah, blah. We
just, we can't. It is what it is and that's the
end of is. What is is, even mean is. Who knows? Who cares? To live,
Paul answers it very clearly, is Christ. There's what is is. To live is Christ. To leave this
world is far better. Because this world is not what
it's about. So if the love that we are experiencing,
that the love we understand, that the reconciliation that
we're trying to put together, if life in and of itself is centered
on a temporary journey, consider the life we live as the bus that's
getting us to glory. And it's a bus without seats,
but with great opportunities. It's a big bus. We can sit anywhere
we want within reason and law. But quit putting our mind on
these things. And don't put our mind on these really, you know,
ethereal, aesthetically improper ideas of what glory is and what
heaven's like. You know, we got Dante and he's
really reinforced what hell is to most of us. And it's absolutely
not taught like that in the Bible in any sense or any depiction.
Not once. Not once has there any depiction
of that. It's just, it's creative. I love
it. It's amazing. But it has informed
our view subconsciously. The same thing with heaven. I
mean, I think of heaven, when you think of heaven, I mean,
you automatically think of some cinematic thing that clouds and
puffy things and little chubby babies with wings and I mean,
you know, you think the Renaissance for that. They established the
painters and the artists and the poets and the illustrators
and the sculptors established that. You think it's Vogue or People
magazine that calls body images? No, it's the sculptors. It's all of the things in this
world that have told us who we are without giving us an opportunity
to actually think that's who we are and to agree with it or
disagree. And the same thing is true in
the Bible. Being fulfilled is a place that you're put, and
fighting for that fulfillment is the journey that you're on,
and ultimately that fulfillment, as we talked about last week,
is the love of God in Christ Jesus. And anything else that
adds to that is just an overflowing blessing. It's just an overflowing
blessing. Being full has a relational component. Why? Because we are not beings
to be alone. I mean, it's just not the way
it is. Even the most isolated creatures on the world have partners,
have mates. Maybe the black widow. There
are exceptions. Still has a mate for a minute.
Or the praying mantis. See, don't emulate that. I don't
want to be the receiving end of that. But we looked at some areas of
Scripture last week. about the love of God, about
the adoption, about being brought into the fullness of things.
And Paul says in 2 Corinthians, it's not where I'm going to be,
I'm going to be in a lot of different places, but Ephesians, you know, Brother
Trey's been teaching in Ephesians, there's going to be a lot of
reflection and pointing there, but I am going to spend some
time in a minute in Psalm 51 when we talk about David. But in 2
Corinthians 5, starting verse 18, or verse 18 and 19, we see
these words, God reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ
and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. And that us is referring to not
just the apostles, but the apostles' protégés and mentees, and the
disciples of the apostles, and then us as the church, us, and
the people he was talking to there in Corinth. We have the
ministry of reconciliation. Paul talks to the church of Rome
and he says, as long as it is up to us, as far as it is up
to us, reconcile one another. Seek to reconcile, seek to love,
do these things in this way. And that's all we can do. We
can't make someone else have a change of mind, repent. We
can't make someone else have a change of disposition. We can't
make someone else admit that they've done wrong. But in the
conversations that we have in this life, we spend a whole lot
of time trying to either angrily express our frustration with
someone not seeing their error or just passionately pleading
with people to try to see or change. And it's really a fool's
errand, it's not gonna happen. And what's crazy is if we are
even successful, it's typically manipulative, and we don't even
know it. And as soon as something else
changes in that dynamic, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually,
or experientially, it all falls apart. So the little house that
we think is being built and is such a strong structure is just
a house of cards and toothpicks. And life is like a toddler with
a tricycle running through the living room. On fire. with sharks chasing them from
a tornado. Yeah, there you go. So there's
a picture. And we thought Sinai was tough. Ephesians, Paul talks about the
reconciliation of two groups. And I remember I taught this
to our high schoolers in our homeschool group for years, and
I taught Ephesians one year. And I had a little podium like
this and I was talking. And I always use the emphasis is that if we
look at the top of this platform as the truth, as the gospel of
being reconciled to God, and we see that underneath it is
just all of humanity. This is Paul's illustration of
Ephesians chapter two. There are people who are far off and
people who are near, but God brings them all near. What does
he say? To reconcile both groups to God in one body through the
cross. So if this is the cross on top,
Everybody else is down here and the pagans and the Greeks and
all the other different people groups and the they were all
the way down They were under the stage under the dirt and
the core of the earth They were so far away from the top, but
the Israel was right here They were literally building their
houses at the top of this underneath it though. They're still separated
from the same distance They were separated But they could see
it and not see it. They were there, they could hear
it, they could experience it, they could touch it. That which was from
the beginning, which we have seen, which we have heard, which
we have touched with our hands. The eternal life that we proclaim
to you. This is 1 John 1 and beyond. When that was beheld to them
and they were there, everybody else said, well, you know, we're
not close to this because look how far away we are. But the
Bible says that God brought those who were far off to Himself.
But He didn't bring them to the ledge of the barrier. He brought
them through it. He didn't bring them to the curtain
of the Holy of Holies and let someone intercede on their behalf.
He snatched them through it. How did He do that? Through His
flesh. The dividing wall of hostility was torn down. This is reconciliation. So it
doesn't matter where you are in your Christian faith. It doesn't
matter how long you've been studying this, that, or the other. It
doesn't matter how astute you are or how dumb you might feel. You are in no place except in
Christ or not in Christ. You're either in the love of
God or you are out of the love of God. And you don't put yourself
in there and you certainly don't keep yourself in there, even
though a lot of people pretextually love to take Paul's teaching
of the Thessalonians, where it says, keep yourself in the love
of God. But he tells us how, by what, resting in the fact
that he keeps us in the love himself. Paul in the Romans says
the same thing. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And he lists
every possible realm in the cosmos and even in the mind. Every possible
option. So reconciliation is not a secondary
aspect of Christian living. It's not secondary. It's not
something that we should be doing. It is the life that we are living.
It is the point of living. But just as I said already in
this introduction, Just like we mess up love, just like we
mess up heaven, just like we mess up the idea of hell, just
like we mess up the idea of all sorts of things, we have messed
up the idea of reconciliation and we've messed up the idea
of fulfillment. Because reconciliation with each other is not our fulfillment.
But when we see reconciliation, it overflows our full cup. Because
our cup is full in Christ. Matter of fact, the cup is Christ,
we're in the cup. And he's not wanting or lacking. Reconciliation is foundational,
and it's mandated by scripture, and it is the only way that we
manifest, it is one of the only ways, I won't say the only, it
is one of the most essential ways that we manifest the love
of Christ in our lives. God's love says that he loved
us in this way, that he gave the son, the only one that he
had, that the believing ones would not perish, but they have
everlasting life. John goes on to say that God
is love, and that we love Him because He first loved us. So,
let's talk about a couple of things. Let's talk about forgiving
those who hurt us. Let's talk about being forgiven.
And let's talk about the unfailing love that binds, which I've already
sort of unpacked here as the introduction. In Genesis chapter
50, where we were last week, we see that Joseph forgives his
brothers. So, let's turn there. Genesis chapter 50, starting
in verse 15. And this eats my soul to joy. So if I pause, I'm just needing
to. When Joseph's brothers saw that
their father was dead, they said, it may be that Joseph
will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did
to him. So they sent a message to Joseph saying, your father
gave us this command before he died. Say to Joseph, please forgive
the transgressions of your brothers and their sin because they did
evil to you. And now, please forgive the transgressions of
the servants of the God of your father. Joseph wept when they
spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell
down before him and said, look, we're your servants. But Joseph
said to them, do not fear for I am in the place, for am I in
the place of God. As for you, you meant evil against
me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people
should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear. I will provide for you and for
your children." Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. And Joseph and his brothers remained
in Egypt for 110 years. Now, there's a lot there when
Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. It's pretty touching.
It's amazing. And then Joseph dies, and that's
the end of Genesis. That's the end of the beginning.
That's the end of the start of it all. That's the end of the
outline of the gospel. And the last quote in the book
says, These are the sons of Israel's
swear, saying, God will surely visit you and you shall carry
up my bones from here. And so in a simple way, in a
temporary way, in a metaphorical way, in a picture, Christ and
Joseph. Joseph points to the death of
Christ and that the death of Christ is still effectual, but
yet Joseph did not rise from the dead except in Christ. And
Christ is alive today. See, Joseph did not let go of
the hurt. Listen, forgiving someone else is not letting go of the
hurt. That's why I said what I said about your hurt. Have you ever
been told, just let it go? Just don't think about it. Just
let it go. What is that? Have you ever been
in chronic pain where you couldn't move and you prayed for the Lord
to kill you? I have. And before I went through
that, I never understood it. I never understood what, is it
really that bad? Yes, it's really that bad and
worse. And the hardest part about pain
sometimes is that we don't know when or if it will ever end.
And that goes physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, all
sorts of things. We don't know when it's going to end. We don't
know when the pain of loss is going to end. It may not end
and it's not something we can just say, I'm over. Some personalities
can make those things appear that way and in their own mind
feel as that's what they've done. And they can say, I'm just a
little sort of let it go. No, you didn't. Your subconscious
is constantly gnawing at you. And you're unconsciously aware
of the fact that there is a wound and a pain, and you've set it
aside and you've put some type of other structure in its place,
but it is boring, like a little bee on the porch. It is boring,
a perfectly round hole. And one day, all that salt is
just gonna fly out and get in your eyes. And you're gonna go,
what's happening to me? Forgiveness is not letting go
of the hurt. Joseph didn't just say, that's
all right. Que sera, sera. It is what it is. What will be
will be. That's not forgiveness. That's not reconciliation, letting
it go. It's deeper than that. What did he do? He proactively
loved them. Now we'll get to their responsibility
in a minute. He proactively loved them. He did something for them. He
put himself in the authority and the position that he had,
and he actively exercised this privilege for their benefit,
because he wanted them to see more than that. Let me change
what I'm about to say. He wanted them to be okay. And then they saw. It wasn't
about Joseph anyway, it was about God's purposes. No different. In Matthew chapter
18, Jesus tells Peter to forgive, right? Peter's like, okay, well
the law says we should forgive seven times. What say ye, teacher? I say seven times seven. 70 times times seven. What is
that? 490. So do you have your little card
out? Do you have the tick marks in by tens? Or hundreds? Or sevens? Are some of you sitting
at a place where you're about to get to 489? Have you really
been counting? Paul tells us in Corinthians
13 that love keeps no records of wrong. Love forgives all things. It bears all things. It endures
all things. that love covers a multitude
of sins. Listen, you ought to understand
about the idea of seven is not a numerical value in Semitic
culture. It's a picture of perfection,
of completeness. On the seventh day, God rested,
for he had finished his work. That's all it means. It never
means anything about counting anything. So when someone says
forgive seven times, it means forgive continually. And to make
it exponential and say seven times 70, and to put some math
in there, It means come on, get over yourself, quit counting. We also see that division in
the context of multiples of 12. And the number eight, it's big
stuff, no pun intended. He proactively loved his brothers.
In Matthew 18, Jesus tells Peter to forgive not seven times, but
70 times seven. In Ephesians chapter four, be
kind and compassionate to one another. Verse 32, forgiving
each other in the way that Christ forgave you. See, the New Testament
radicalizes. It takes forgiveness and just
like blows it up into this crazy proportion. But it's not letting
go of the offense. It's not just saying, ah, forget
about it. It's pushing us to extend grace. It's pushing us
to extend grace through the fulfillment that we have in the grace that's
been given to us through the Lord Jesus. You didn't do this
to me, he said to his brothers. God purposed it for your good. And that's fulfillment. The act
of forgiving, You know, we can always see, Thanksgiving's coming
up, you know, and I always like to see the commercials that I
don't really see anymore because we stream stuff that we want
to see rather than be forced to watch stuff we don't care
about. You know, but the commercials are like, be thankful, be thankful,
be thankful. You know, I'm thankful, I'm thankful.
But see, to say thank you, right, to be thankful as an attitude,
it implies something. It implies that there is someone
that you're thankful to. You can't just be thankful Well,
I'm thankful. You can say I'm glad of this.
I'm happy with this. I'm excited about having this
thing or this position or being where I am, but you can't say
thank you. Thank you has to have a recipient. So to be thankful means that
you're telling someone else that you're glad that they did or
gave something to you. It's someone else doing something.
So it's funny how we can even say, I have a thankful attitude.
I have an attitude of gratitude. But there is an object to gratitude.
It's not an essence. It's not this euphoric feeling. It's not a mindset. It's a one-way street of thankfulness
to someone else for what they've done. And forgiveness is the same way.
It's not just a moral requirement. The world says we need to be
thankful. The world says we need to be forgiving. The world says
we need to be kind. The world says we need to be
compassionate. And the world is right. But why? It's not just a moral requirement.
It's a source of spiritual fulfillment. Why do we live in a life sometimes
in our lives so unfulfilled? It's because we're not exercising
the things that fill us. We're not resting in the things
that fill us. When we see the life of Joseph
and we see the life of Jesus that it points to, we find that
it's not about just morals and high roads and being the bigger
person. It's about tapping into a promise. Like Jesus says to the woman
at Sychar, when she says, how is it that you would ask me a
woman to give you a drink. And he says to her, I will give
you water and you'll never thirst again. And she says, how is it
that you would give me water and you have no bucket to dip
water from? He says, the water that I give will
well up over into eternal life. Think about that picture. Think
about that fulfillment. What is he talking about? He's
talking about reconciling her to righteousness, to God, to
himself. And she's thinking about water.
And that's right. That's what we're thinking about.
Even when we have some theological understanding of things, we're
still thinking about the surface level of things. We're thinking about
water. We're thinking about drinking. We're thinking about the physical essence
of our existence or the emotional stability of this physical world.
rather than understanding that we're not just doing good, we've been declared good. We're
not just doing what's required of us by being forgiving and
grateful, we are actually exercising that which flows from the fullness
therein, Jesus. And we align ourselves with the
very heart of God, which is very fulfilling. Very fulfilling. So what can we do? I've already
said what we can do, but let me point them out. We need to
acknowledge our pain. We need to acknowledge we've
been hurt. We need to acknowledge that we're not supposed to just
get over hurt. We need to pray for the strength
to forgive because it is not within ourselves to do it. And then, as I've already said,
like out of Romans, we need to take whatever steps we can take
to reconcile in any way that we can, but we are not responsible
for the other person and their response to us. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It involves also an action that
begins with these things. As we see the life of Joseph,
as we see the perfection of the life of Jesus, they modeled forgiveness. And they were both fulfilled
in it. So do not fear. I will provide
for you and your little ones. Thus he comforted them and spoke
kindly to them. Father, forgive them. They do
not know what they're doing. I don't have that spirit in my
flesh. I have that spirit given to me
by God. And oh, my flesh loves to argue legally with that and
justify my pain and justify my actions and justify my thoughts.
Doesn't it? We're at war. We're at war. Forgiving those who hurt us is
a path to personal fulfillment. But what about the brother side
of things? Remember, I told you I was going
to do this. What if we're the ones that need forgiving? And
we are. We're all Joseph, and we're all the brothers. We've
all been hurt, and we've all hurt someone. Turn to Psalm 51. Y'all know this. You know the
context of Psalm 51? had a best friend, a man who
would lay his life down for the cause of David. His name was Uriah. And I'm gonna say some things
this morning about this that are gonna upset some of you.
I'm just gonna go ahead and let you know. I'm gonna go ahead
and tell you. It's gonna upset some of you because you probably
haven't viewed these things in the proper context of the authoritarian
ideals of kings. And we live in a society that's
often very quick to blame people who are victims. And I'm gonna
tell you right now that's nonsense. And I have given myself permission
to see through it and to not worry about how it's perceived in truth. But David is the king. There's
no greater person above him. There's no power above him except
God alone. He ruled and his word was law. Just like all kings and queens
throughout history, people who are totalitarians or authoritarian
or dictators. They have the power because of
fear, manipulation, and whatever else they use to get what they
want. They're able to say things and it happens. And so whatever
the king wants, the king gets. And Uriah is one of these people
who serves out of love and out of self-fulfillment. Believing
in the cause believing in the guy like David and Uriah went
to war for David as a general and he put his Friends and his
brothers and his cousins and his fellow men in harm's way
for the sake of the freedom of Israel While David, who was a
warrior, he wasn't a coward, he wasn't a guy who like, let's
just go to war and see what it costs, but I'm safe. He also
was a fighter, but in this particular moment of history, David was
not on the front lines. The king cannot really be there
because that's disastrous, right? But Uriah was there in his stay.
Uriah was faithful and loyal. And David knew this. And while
Uriah was fighting Bathsheba, Uriah's wife was bathing. And David was peaking. David
was a voyeur. David was a sex offender. See, that offends us, doesn't
it? He'd gone to the penitentiary.
for watching somebody take a bath in 2023, and rightly so. You see what I'm saying? And
so David, by his word as the king, ordered that Bathsheba
be brought to him. There's no other way that would
have happened. And then we know the story, Bathsheba. but comes with child. And David's
going, oh, I have messed up. Uriah's gonna be, I know what?
My great man Uriah, let's give him a break. Let's bring him
home in a furlough so he can rest. But Uriah was a faithful
man and he slept outside in the yard because his mission and
mine was still to serve David on the battlefield. And so David's like, send Uriah
the best wine I have. And then when he's drunk, you get the cover up, right? Even in drunkenness, Uriah was
a fateful man. So the only recourse David had
was to make himself a hero. And he orders all of the army
when they go onto the battlefield to step backward at the charge
so that Uriah runs out into the field by himself and he dies.
And then they throw him a parade, and then a big celebration about this great
man who served Israel, who served God, who served the king. And
I feel so bad for his wife. I'm going to bring her into my
home, make her my own. And we know what Nathan tells
the king. He says, you the man. Because Nathan tells David about
this horrible man who had all the sheep that he could ever
have and had all the wealth that he could ever have and had everything.
And there was this one man and he loved this little tiny sheep
as a precious, I don't know, what do you call it? Is it a
pet? I don't know. It wasn't livestock, it was this
precious companion, this one little lamb. And he loved this
lamb dearly. And this man who had all these
thousands and thousands of sheep, he just went in and stole this
man's lamb and killed the guy. And David goes, who is this?
Who is this man that I might put him under justice? And Nathan
says, you're that man. Psalm 51. It's David's worship
song to be sung in the assembly about himself. I write music,
I'm not writing songs like this, y'all. Have mercy on me, O God. According
to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot
out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions
and my sins as ever before me. I pluralize that. against you,
you only have I sinned and done evil in your sight, so that you
may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
Behold, look, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my
mother conceive me. Look, will you delight in truth
in my inward being and you teach me wisdom of the secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop, bathe me and I shall be clean. Wash me
and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear your joy and your
gladness. Let the bones that you have broken
rejoice. Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out my iniquities. Create in me, O God, a clean
heart, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from
your face, and do not take your spirit from me. Restore to me
the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach your transgressors
your ways, and I will teach sinners will return to you. Deliver me
from blood guiltness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my
tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my
lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not
delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased
with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do good in Zion in your pleasure. build up the walls of Jerusalem,
then will you delight in the right sacrifices and burnt offerings
and whole burnt offerings, then bulls will be offered on your
altar." So you see what David's saying here, right? There's a
couple of lines I want to bring out here and I want to think.
Being forgiven is not getting away with it. David comes to this place by
the purposes of God because he didn't get away with it. He got
away with the shame and the public disgrace of what he'd done, but
he did not get away from the consequences of what it caused. It destroyed him, it destroyed
his family, it destroyed the kingdom, and it split everything
in half. He never ever had it good again. But he was fulfilled. Now I want
you to hear this. Because sometimes when we are
in the position of forgiving someone, it comes with resentment. Because why should they get away
with it? Nobody's getting away with it.
and the righteousness of God and the court of grace, we do
get away with it because Christ suffered for it. So we didn't
get away with it, we transferred our guilt to the innocent and
they died in our place. We didn't get away with it, somebody
else took the payment. And we also don't forget about
it. You see? So being forgiven, the offender's
responsibility and their own spiritual fulfillment. It doesn't
go away. In Luke, Jesus tells the masses
there when he's teaching, if someone changes their mind and
asks for forgiveness and repents, he says, you must forgive them.
But if they don't, there's no instruction for that. If someone
doesn't seek reconciliation, and you have tried reconciliation,
there's nothing more that you can do. If you try reconciliation,
that person does not have a repentant heart, that means a change of
mind about what they've done. If they don't say, listen, I
know I did that, even if it's I didn't mean to, I can see now
that I hurt you, I can see now that I did that, I can see now
what I've done, I'm sorry. You accept it, you receive it,
but it's still not over, is it? It's not over for anyone. This
is where the fulfillment comes in. This is where the idea that
repentance is not just beneficial for the one sinned against, but
it's also crucial for the sinner. If I'm going to forgive, I have
to change my mind about what has happened to me. And I have
to change it through the lens of Christ, because that's the
only lens that makes logical sense. Honestly, I'm a fool if
I seek to forgive someone who's going to do the same thing over
and over again without a conversation about that. But just like love, I love cheese
pizza, I forgive you, it's not to be that flippant. I love you, but I'm going to
work on forgiving you. That's a better statement. And
the way we're gonna work on forgiving you is that we're gonna have
a conversation about this, and then we're gonna be reminded
the gospel, and then God is going to grant us this repentance together.
And that reconciliation is not always the way things were. Sometimes
it's a new chapter, and things are okay the way they're going
to be. David says he knows his sins. In verse four of Psalm 51, it
says, against you and you only have I sinned and done evil in
your sight. Now, could you imagine Uriah's wife going, what? You murdered my husband, your
best soldier. You took advantage of me. You abused me. You made me an
obstacle, I mean, a spectacle, an object of your glory. How
dare you say you've only sinned against God? Uriah's parents,
I object! I mean, you know, can you see
them? You lion king, you! Sinning against all these generations. What did Joseph say? Joseph said the same thing. Joseph said that that which you
have done, that you thought was evil, God purposed for good. Do not fear. He asked a question,
am I in the place of God? You see the difference. What does my forgiveness have
to do with anything? Or my unforgiveness have any
power over you if God has forgiven you? And if I sin against you
or you sin against me, really, ultimately, the sin is going
straight up. We're sinning against God. And
the only court that it matters where our sin is actually counted
is in the court of righteousness. The indictment is not, James
Tippins cannot indict you, nor judge you, nor sentence you for
anything you do to him. Neither can you to me. Sure,
temporary things in certain aspects of the judicial system, but when
it comes to the reality of full forgiveness, every offense is
offense directly to God and that makes it even worse. It makes
it even worse. Especially when we realize that
what God has done is taken that offense and placed it on Christ
and crushed Him in our place. Reconciliation is not one-sided.
It requires the offender to take steps. It requires the offender
to seek fulfillment. So what do we do? When we've
offended someone, when we've hurt someone, when we've done
things repetitively or even once purposefully or either unknowingly,
we have got to take time to look inside. We've got to take time
instead of being defensive, we have to take time to look and
go, you know what, they're right. Sometime in 2008 or 2009, I was
sitting with a group of people after a conference and this older
pastor, he's not old, they're just older, was telling a story about one
time that somebody had accused him of lying to them and he had
not lied to them. And one of the guys with me just
jumped back and said, man, I tell you what, I wouldn't have tolerated
that. Just got all upset, just, rah! Put up, people call me a
liar. And the man touched the guy's
arm, he said, listen. He said, I am a liar. Because I have lied. So for this
man to tell me that I lied to him, though it was not true,
he calls me a liar. Being called a liar should not
offend me, for it's true of me, because I have lied. And I'm
like, so what did you do? He said, I thanked him for reminding
me that I'm a liar. But I assured him that I had
not lied to him. And we reconciled. But see, what
would I do? I'm not a liar. What did the
children do? Take that back. And then they
go lie. Johnny hit me. He did not hit
you. He said something ugly. We prove what we are. But we're not just reconciling
with others when we seek forgiveness or when we forgive, we're actually
reconciled to God. Now, when I say that, I'm not
talking about in the judicial sense, I'm not talking about
in the gospel sense, I'm not talking about in the work of Christ, but I
mean emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, we're renewed. Because
when we live in a place of tension, even when we're not thinking
about it, we've stored it in that little tiny place in our mind where
it never pops up. It still is a problem with our spiritual
growth and it's still a problem with our fulfillment. It's still
a problem with our happiness. It's still a problem with our
joy. It takes away from everything. And so we have to take these
steps. But we also have to recognize that if the offender does not
actively seek forgiveness, there's really little that we can do. Little that we can do. And forgiveness
sometimes on the part of the offender is stopping the behavior.
Making amends, making restitution for something that was costly. Now you fill in the blank. It's
not making them pay, it's making it right. You see it all the time in stories
and movies. You see it with Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus came to the awareness
that he was a thief. He had it. All he had to know
was, I'm forgiven in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, from
this point forward, I'm just gonna live and not do this anymore. He couldn't live with himself
in that. He's like, I can't live knowing that I live the way I
live with the means that I have that I got them through thievery.
I'm going to give it back, and I'm going to give back the interest
that I've made. I'm going to give it all back." Now, God did
not ask that of him, and God's not specifically asking that
of you, but it is the example. What did Christ do? He gave it
all. But Christ isn't a sinner. He took it all. He took all of
it. He took the nature, he took the
hostility, he took the wrath, he took the justice, he took
the sins of omission, the sins of commission, all the other
stuff the evangelicals have come up with these little quippy sayings
throughout the centuries. All the non-biblical context,
out of context stuff that we try to find and we read in. He took it all. He took every
bad thought, every bad word, every bad deed, every ill desire,
every unconscious thing that is not pure before the Lord,
and he put it all in himself, and he identified himself as
a sinner, and he died in our place. David knew there was nothing
he could do to seek the face of God. and find it if God hid
himself from David. He knew there was nothing he
could do to find forgiveness that God had to grant it. But he was
absolutely repentant. He had had a changed mind. That's
what the word means. Repentance means a change of disposition.
Literally and only ever does it mean a change of disposition.
The way I'm thinking about this, you know what? I've changed the
way I think about it. And I'm seeing it from a different perspective.
That's what repentance is. Repentance has nothing to do
with us doing better or putting away sin, except that it's the
change of mind that causes us to make those changes. Don't
make it so big of what it's not. Make it for what it is. God grants
repentance to believe the gospel in its simplicity. You realize
that a good report is just a simple message. Christ paid it all. And when we rest that saving
faith, all the theological distinctions that come in and out of that
is the journey. And we're gonna ebb and flow just like the New
Testament churches did. They got it right, they got it
wrong, they got it wrong, they got it wrong, got it wrong, got it
right. But they were still in Christ. How is this even possible? Well,
I'll preach the end of the sermon that I preached last week from
a different context. And Hosea, the prophet Israel,
was sent to tell them about their disobedience. If you haven't
read that in a while, I really think you should read it. In chapter 11, let's just read it. When Israel was
a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. I called my son out. The more
they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing
to bells and burnt offerings to idols. Yet it was I who took
ye from the walk. I took them up by their arms,
but they did not know that I healed them. Can you see the picture? A little kid not being able to
walk and just holding them by their arms as they toddled around. I led them with cords of kindness.
the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the
yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. They shall not return to the
land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have
refused to turn to me." I want to preach this. Oh well. The sword shall rage against
their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them
because of their own counsels. My people are bent on turning
away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, He
shall not raise them up at all. How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Abdimah?
How can I treat you like Zeboim? My heart recoils within me. My
compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning
anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not
a man. The Holy One in your midst, and
I will not come in wrath. They shall go after the Lord,
he will roar like a lion when he roars. His children shall
come trembling from the west, and they shall come trembling
like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria,
and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord. Ephraim
has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with
deceit, but Judah still walks with God and is faithful to the
Holy One. So, what's the point there? We see what God is saying. We see what God is going to do.
We see that God is going to take them out of one level of captivity
and put them into another, from Egypt to Assyria. And we see
that he calls them, hey, please come. Come on. Come be reconciled. Come here. I'm here. Come on.
Let's be together. Let's be one. And they just keep
on running away. And they bring with them the
consequences of their own desertion, of their own hurt, of their own
sin, of their own escape, of their own running from God, who's
not a man, but God. He's not a human. Thank Him for
that. He doesn't act out of the flesh. What's the point of that? And he says, I'm going to do
this, I'm going to do that. I'm going to tell you right now that people
are bent on turning away and they call out to me, Oh God,
where are you? And then they run away when I
show up. But verse eight, how can I give
you up? How can I hand you over? How can I turn you into an enemy?
My heart recoils, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will
not execute my burning anger, I will not destroy you, for I
am God, the only one, holy in your midst, and I will not come
in wrath." Beloved, this is the message of Christ. God's relationship with Israel
is a paradigm for love that forgives and seeks reconciliation. God
seeks reconciliation. We're not seeking to be reconciled
to God. He reconciled us to Himself through
the cross. And if that is true, and my offenses
to you, or my offenses in my home, and to my wife, and to
my children, and to my friends, and to my community, and all
the things that I've done wrong, and all the ways in which even
purposefully have hurt others through my life, are truly an
offense to God, and he seeks to reconcile with me through
Christ in that, oh, can I not repent and seek reconciliation
with others? See, that's the hardest part
of forgiveness for me. It's because forgiveness in my
life has always been one-sided. People do things and I just forgive
them. I just let it go. That's not
forgiveness. Forgiveness is a contract in
which I and you sit down and we work out the problem and we
work out the pain. And when you say, I'm getting
up from the table, then my forgiveness is rested right there. And I
can forgive you, but that's as far as it goes. And I won't let you live rent-free
in my head. We can't let people do that.
And that is not something we can do without work, without
discipline, without spiritual maturity, maturing. We're never
spiritually mature. We're growing and maturing. And I've already quoted the proof
text for this in the New Testament from Hosea, God seeking after
us. And we see that 1 Corinthians
chapter 13, we see that love text and we think, how can I
do that? I preached that probably 10 times when I preached through
John's gospel. I used that text probably at least 10 times. And
we see love bears all things, love believes all things, love
hopes all things, love endures all things. But beloved, that
is a divine work. That is not something that there's
anything in our natural state, our natural body, our natural
emotion, our natural thoughts, our natural psychology, our natural
philosophy, even our natural theology, if you want to get
into that, can muster. It is something that God just
must plant and we rest in. And it takes discipline. Love
is not what I feel, it's not a fleeting emotion, but love
according to the grace of God and the passion of God and the
searching of God for His people to reconcile them to Himself.
Love is an enduring force and central to every breath that
I take as a Christian. And I don't like that. I'm not sitting up here going,
he's just great, I'm a poet, but I love Macabre. I would rather
read, write, and consider Edgar Allan Poe than I would anyone
else because I get that. I don't like it. Why? Because
I can't do it. You see? And we spend our lives
trying to do and be what we aren't and we posture and we pretend
to the point we don't even know who we are. And we don't even
know what we are, we don't even know where we are. And then we
start looking in the mirror and we go, huh, who's that standing in my
bathroom? Oh, that's me. We look in our soul and think,
who is this? And then we have a crisis, right? Could be a day,
could be a decade, we don't know. A crisis of faith. I remember I went through a crisis
of faith. 2003, four or five. It was building,
2005 is where it came to a head. I'm like, oh wow, that was my
crisis. Whoo, what a life to learn. I'm glad I went through
that early. I should have been the beginning
of the crises of faith in this thing called the crisis
of life. I should have been the title of the journal for that
period. If I were to rewrite those things
today, I'd be like, ah! Just a bunch of A's and H's with
exclamation points. Subtitle. That'd be the end of it. The unfailing love of God is an enduring force that is
central to our lives. The love that enables forgiveness
and reconciliation, as I've already said, is not human. It's divinely
implanted in us by God. It's divinely awakened and expressed
in us when we are disciplined to read the Word of God and to
be with the people of God. It is not gonna happen by accident. Some of you all have been blessed
with teeth that never need brushing and never need a dentist. I'm
not that type of person. If I went a year without brushing
my teeth, I'd be like this. I mean, they'd be gone, be over. Some of us, it comes easier than
others. Well, let's quit pretending. Let's start living. We're capable of such love. We're
capable of expressing such intimacy. Not because of our human capacity,
but because of God's divine power. Sound familiar? See, when I say
things like that, if you read the Bible often enough, these
things pop into your head. 1 Peter, God's divine power gives
us everything we need for life and godliness. I want to tap
into that. I want to feel it. I want to
experience it. That's not the point. You've got to know it.
And it's not about academics, and it's not about cognitive
information. It's about knowing it by the discipline, and then
God works in you. I tell people sometimes to read the scripture
when they're in a bad place, just like some of you have told
me, and what is our first response? That ain't gonna work. And then you and your pride,
because see, I'm a prideful person. I didn't know that, really. I'm
not profiling, look at me, I'm better than anybody else. I'm
profiling, I'm in control of this. I don't need that. I don't
need you. I don't need you to tell me what
to do either. And then I do it six hours later and it's like, you were right. This love of God, this power
of God is just too much. Too much in my head. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. According to Paul in Romans 5,
through Him we all have obtained access by faith into this grace.
resting in this grace by which we stand, in which we stand,
and in which we rejoice, and in which we hope for the glory
of God, the trueness of who God is. Not only that, but we also
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.
Endurance, character, character, hope. Verse five, this is what
I was looking for. And hope does not put us to shame. We've been using the phrase a
fool's errand in my house for 25 years. And that's when we
do things that are really just, we're going to the store to buy
something that doesn't exist. It's an errand for a fool. Hey,
go down there and buy the Schlemmer Diggy. They're $2.99. Don't come
home without it. You'll never see that person
again. And sometimes hope feels that
way, right? Like a fool's errand. But hope does not put us to shame.
Why? How are we not fools? Paul says, because God's love
has been poured into our hearts. Where is it? Through the Holy
Spirit, who he has given to us. It's God in us, not love in us. This is God loving through us.
God reconciling you to us through the, when I started out in 2
Corinthians, through the ministry of reconciliation that was given
to us. It's a two-way street, but it
is a divine work. And a fulfilled life is only
achieved when we engage in acts of love that are both receptive
and giving. We cannot control other people,
but we can control ourselves. We can control our disciplines.
We can control how we relate to our thoughts and feelings
and bodies, but we cannot control those. When we act from the place of
the love of God in a divine way, we align ourselves with God's
will, and it fills us up to such a place that we can't explain
it. We just live it. God's love is unchanging. God's
love for His people is forever. And it's always working to bring
us closer to Him. May we live as the offender of
God in a place of hope because of the love of God. And if we
can do that, then we can reconcile in our hearts and minds anything
that happens on this earth. as Christ has reconciled us through
his life, through his body, and through his blood on the cross.
Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the
love of Christ, for the outpouring of your work, of your mercy,
of your compassion. Father, I don't even know if
what I've said today is even applicable to my own life in
a real sense, tangibly and practically, but Father, I feel the practicality
of this work, of this spiritual thing. but I can't really put
my finger on what I've done or what anybody else has taught
or anything. So Father, if all of us are in the same way, help
us to just be settled. If that's the best that we can
do, that is the best place to be. To be settled. in our hearts
that you are walking for us and with us and living through us
and that we don't have to figure it out but father let's just
be and continue to learn and eventually just like exercise
of the body and of the mind exercise of faith will rest more strongly
today than it's ever rested and tomorrow the same help us to
live that way oh father to love one another, to be reconciled
to one another, and Lord, to accept the consequences sometimes.
and not feel a victim when we've paved it. But Lord, to also know
that even in that suffering, it has greater purpose. There
are so many things to look and see. And Father, help us to look
at the cross most of all. No, not the cross, look at Christ,
who is no longer there. The author and perfecter of our
faith. In his name we pray, amen. Some 400 years after Joseph and
his brothers were reconciled in Egypt, their descendants numbered
in the millions living as slaves among the Egyptians. And in the
Lord's timing, it was time for them to go. The Lord hardened
Pharaoh's heart with nine plagues And with the 10th, that was the
end of it. The Lord gave instruction to
the Hebrews. He said, this month shall be
for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of
the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on
the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according
to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. household is
too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall
take according to the number of persons, according to what
each can eat, and shall make your count for the lamb. Your
lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old. You may take
it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it
until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly
of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.
It shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts
and the lentils of the houses in which they eat it. It shall
eat the flesh that night, roast it on the fire with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat it. Do not eat
any of it raw or boiled in water. but roasted its head with its
legs and its inner parts, and you shall let none of it remain
until the morning. Anything that remains until morning you shall
burn. In this manner you shall eat it, with your belt fastened,
your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and
you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For
I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will
strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast,
and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am
the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for
you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. No plague will befall you to destroy you when
I strike the land of Egypt." Now, there was no difference
between the Israelites and the Egyptians, right? Except the
judgment of God passed over them on account of the blood. If you've read John 6 recently,
You might recall the strange instructions that Jesus gave
to the people. He said, you must eat my flesh
and drink my blood. When we read the Exodus, when
we read the Passover, when we read Jesus' instructions in John
6, we recognize that on the cross, he gave up his flesh. On the
cross, his flesh was struck and through our faith in that we
eat of his body. When you drink of this, you remember
the blood on the doorpost. You remember the blood of Christ
poured out for you. That is a covering for your sin. That when the holy judge looks
upon it, he sees the righteousness of Christ. Drink.