Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Nyberg. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
9.45 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com.
Now here's our pastor, Todd Niver. I want to read a verse of scripture
from the prayer that the Lord taught His disciples to pray.
And it's something that we should be praying every day, every prayer. Verse 12, and forgive us our
debts as we forgive our debtors. I want to speak to you upon this
subject, forgiving others. Can you and I pray like this? Father, forgive me of my sins
the way in the same manner in which I forgive those who have
sinned against me. Our Lord taught us to pray that
way. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, as is
a conjunction meaning in the same manner. It's even translated
even as or like as. Father, forgive me in the same
manner that I forgive those who have sinned against me." Verses
14 and 15 of this same chapter, the Lord makes a comment on this,
and I think it's interesting. This is the only part of this
prayer that our Lord made a comment on. He says in verse 14, "'For
if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive
your trespasses. But if you forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
Now, when I read that, sometimes it blows my mind to think about
that. Is that works? Well, you know it's not works.
But he does say this, if I fail to forgive you, the Father will
not forgive me. Listen to this passage of scripture
in Mark 11, beginning in verse 25. And when you stand praying,
forgive if you have ought against any. Now, don't even continue
your prayer if you find out you're harboring an unforgiving spirit
towards someone. If you haven't forgiven, stop.
You first be reconciled to your brother. That your father may
also, which is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses,
but if you don't forgive, neither will your father, which is in
heaven, forgive your trespasses. Now, our Lord actually says when
you pray and you remember that you've got something against
someone, they've done you wrong, Forgive them right then and there.
Don't even continue in the prayer until that is taken care of. If we do not forgive, we will
not be forgiven. Now listen real carefully. You and I will be wronged. We will be sinned against. We
will be slandered. We will be maligned. We will
be misrepresented. We'll be judged by others harshly
and critically. We'll be thrown under the bus.
We'll have things attributed to us that just are not true.
We'll have things projected upon us that are not so. Not only
will we be wronged, We will wrong others as well. We will be just
as guilty as those who have wronged us. How many times have I wronged
someone or misrepresented them or projected something upon them
that was not true and harshly judged and criticized them? How
many times have I thrown somebody under the bus trying to protect
myself? We will be wronged and we will wrong people. You know
what that's called? Life, being in a sinful world,
being a sinful person around other sinful people. That's what
that is. And what are we to do? Forgive. I am either a forgiving person
or I am someone who harbors bitterness and resentment and anger for
how I perceive I have been wronged. I may do a good job of masking
it, but it's going to come out at some point. I am either a
forgiving person or I am an unforgiving, bitter person harboring resentment
toward those who I believe have wronged me." Now, this thing
of forgiveness is a gospel issue. This isn't pop psychology. This
is a gospel issue. If I fail to forgive, I've certainly
never understood the gospel. As a matter of fact, if I fail
to forgive, I've proved by that I've never really been forgiven.
You see, the glory of the gospel is that it begins with the complete
forgiveness of sins. That's what the Lord does for
those He forgives. There's not some formula we need to follow
and blanks we need to fill in and things we need to do and
dots we need to connect in order to have forgiveness. No, God
begins with the complete free forgiveness of sins, all sin
for Christ's sake. If you're forgiving, You know
that it's because He forgave you freely for Christ's sake. He didn't forgive you because
you asked. He didn't forgive you because you were sorry. He
didn't forgive you because you intended to do better and never
commit that sin again. He forgave you completely freely
for Christ's sake. And if I do not forgive, I prove
by that that I haven't been forgiven. Now forgiveness is not optional. It's a command. We are commanded
to forgive. And forgiveness is ongoing. It's
not something you do once. You know, when the Lord said,
Peter said, how often should I forgive? Till seven times?
And the Lord said, no, till 70 times seven. That doesn't mean
after 70 times seven is 490. That doesn't mean on the 491st
time I don't have to forgive anymore. It means I'm to forgive
continually, nonstop, all the time. When we have a problem forgiving,
when we sin against God, we project the attitude we have upon Him.
We think he's resentful and angry and ready to punish us because
of our sin. I think it's very interesting.
If I would want to understand forgiveness, the first time it's
ever mentioned in the scripture is in the story of Joseph, when
his brothers asked him to forgive them of what they had done to
him. Now, you want to talk about somebody
that was wronged, Joseph. Now, Joseph was the favorite
of his father. Let me give you the story, and
then we're going to go into Genesis 45, but let me give you the story.
Joseph was the favorite of his father, the firstborn of Rachel,
his favorite wife, and she had another son named Benjamin. Joseph's
only full-blooded brother. But Joseph was the favorite of
Jacob. He loved him more than the rest
of his sons, and he made him a coat of many colors. And his
brethren hated him for it, and you can understand that. He made
a shameless distinction with Joseph. Now, we realize that
this is because it's a gospel type. The Lord Jesus Christ is
the favorite of the Father, and we rejoice in that. The brothers
of Joseph were very envious of him because of the difference
his father made between him and them. So they were out one time,
and Joseph came looking for them, and they said, here comes that
dreamer. If you'll remember, he had some dreams where he dreamed
that they'd all bow before him, and they hated him even more
for that when he told them those dreams. They said, let's get
this dreamer and kill him. And then they said, no, there
won't be profit in killing him. Let's put him in his pit and
see what we're going to do with him. And they put him in a pit.
And when the Midianites came through, they sold him as a slave
to the Midianites. And they took that coat of many
colors, which his father had made for him, and they dipped
it in blood, and they came back to their father. This is so cruel,
this is so cold-hearted. They knew how their father loved
that boy. He said, is this your son's coat? And Jacob was overcome
with grief, thinking that he had been devoured by some evil
beast. And so they sell him as a slave
to the Midianites. The Midianites go into Egypt,
and they sell him to a man by the name of Potiphar. And he
becomes a slave in Potiphar's house. And during that time,
Potiphar's wife tried over and over and over again to get him
to commit sexual sin with her, and he kept refusing. So she
finally said, he raped me. And he was thrown into prison.
Now you're talking about bad things happening. I mean, his
brother's selling, he's made a slave, and then he's thrown
into prison, accused of a sin that he did not commit. Now while
he's in prison, the Lord blesses him. And there were a butler
and a baker who had a dream, each a dream, and Joseph gave
the proper interpretations of those dreams. They were very
troubled because they didn't understand them, but Joseph let them know
what they meant. And so some years later, after the butler
has got out of prison, just like Joseph said he was through the
interpretation of that dream, Pharaoh has a dream. He has a
dream of seven skinny stalks of corn and seven fat stalks
of corn and the skinny stalks eating the fat stalks. And seven
skinny cows and seven fat cows. And the seven skinny cows ate
the seven fat cows. And Pharaoh was very troubled
over the dream. He didn't know what to think. And he went to all
of his wise men in Egypt, and none of them knew how to interpret
the dream. And then the butler remembered Joseph. There was
a man in prison that interpreted my dreams. And he can interpret
those dreams for us. So he's brought in before Pharaoh.
They bring him out of prison and bring him in before Pharaoh.
Pharaoh gives him the dream, and Joseph gives the interpretation
of the dream. There'll be seven years of plenty. And right after that, there'll
be seven years of famine, so grievous that the world's not
known anything like it. a famine for seven years, no
rain. Now, here's what you should do. You should take care of in
these first seven years when there's plenty, save all the
food you can, just keep making more and more food and save it
up. And then when that famine hits, you'll have plenty of food
and Egypt will be preserved. That sounded good to Pharaoh.
He believed the interpretation of the dream, and he made Joseph
the headman over all of Israel. If you were going to have food,
you were going to have to go to Joseph for it. So Joseph wisely
administered Pharaoh's interest in the food at this time, and
he had storehouses and storehouses of food saved up, and then the
famine comes. And Joseph at this time was the
most powerful man in Egypt. They said whenever he came, people
had to bow down before him. Most powerful man in Egypt. Now
that famine also is in Canaan. And Jacob and his boys start
getting hungry, and Jacob said, I've heard that there's corn
in Egypt. I heard there's food there. And so he sends his sons
to Egypt to get the food, and they come in before Joseph. They
don't know it's Joseph. They just think it's this powerful
Egyptian, but Joseph knew them. He didn't let them know who he
was, but he knew them. Can you imagine all the memories
that must have come back to him as to what they had done to him
and how his life had changed so drastically? But he asked
them of their father and their younger brother, and they were
amazed that he even knew they had one. And he said, when you
return to get more food, you're going to have to bring your younger
brother with you. Because he loved Benjamin. That was his
true brother. And he said, if you don't bring him back, you're
not going to get any food. So some years pass, or not years,
but months, and they run out of food again. And they say,
well, we're going to have to, Jacob says, go back to Egypt
and get food. And Judah says, we can't go there
because the man said that if we don't bring Benjamin, we can't
have anything because he was dead set against Benjamin being
brought there because he didn't want anything bad to happen to
Benjamin. Benjamin was now his favorite son. And this was the
time when Judah said, I'll be surety for him. Let us go down. I'll be surety for him. And Jacob
finally agreed to do that. So they went down. They come
before Joseph again. And Joseph makes himself strange
to him. He speaks roughly to him. And
they bring Benjamin before him. And so he gives them the food,
and he sends them back, but he places a chalice, a silver chalice,
his own drinking cup, in Benjamin's sack, and he plants it there.
So they come back after him when they're returning back, and they
accuse him of stealing this, and he says, I'm going to keep
Benjamin. Now, at this time, this is when Judah says, oh,
I've become a surety for him, let me be taken in his place. Now, at that time, Joseph could
refrain himself no longer, the scripture says, and this is when
he makes himself known to his brethren. Then Joseph could not
refrain himself before all them that stood by him. And he cried,
Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with
him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. They
had no idea who he was. And he wept aloud, and the Egyptians
and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren,
I'm Joseph. Doth my father yet live? Can't
you imagine how freaked out they were at this time? He says, our
brother whom we sold as a slave and told our dad he was dead. And his brethren could not answer
him for they were troubled at his presence. I'm sure they were
troubled at his presence. And Joseph said into his brethren,
come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said,
I'm Joseph, your brother whom you sold into Egypt. Now, he
hadn't forgotten what they had done, obviously. Some people
say, well, you can't really Forgive if you haven't forgotten. No,
that's not so. You're not going to forget. He
remembered. But look what he says, verse
5. Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that
you sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve
life. The Lord was orchestrating all these events. For these two
years hath the famine been in the land, and yet there are five
years in which there shall neither be earring nor harvest. And God
sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth
and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not
you that sent me hither, but God. I know you meant it for
evil, but God meant it for good. He's in control of everything.
You know what? Forgiveness really is rooted
in an understanding of the sovereignty of God. He said, you did this. I remember it, but God did it.
Somebody says, how can you reconcile those two things? They don't
need to be reconciled. Men do what they want to do. And God
sovereignly controls everything, even the free actions of men. Now, Joseph had been horribly
wronged. And he forgave his brethren, and he forgave them before they
had asked for forgiveness. Somebody says, well, you can't
really forgive somebody unless they truly ask for your forgiveness
and apologize to you. Until that happens, you can't
really ask, you can't really forgive. Let's analyze that for
a moment. When the Lord said, Father, forgive them, they know
not what they do. Had they asked for forgiveness?
No. You see, How many sins have you
committed that you never confessed? You didn't even know you committed
them. So you can't confess what you don't know you commit, but
most of the sins we've committed, I would say, we don't even know
we've committed them. We didn't confess them. If you've
got to confess every individual sin before you'll be forgiven,
for one thing, you don't have time enough in the day to do
it, and for another thing, you don't know what they all are.
Forgiveness does not come in response to our confession. Forgiveness
comes from sheer liberality. How does God forgive? Freely,
without a cause in us. Now, if you accidentally bump
into my car and put a dent in it, and I say, I forgive you,
Give me your insurance card. I didn't really forgive you.
No, I forgive you when I said, I forgive you, I'll take care
of it. Do not worry about it at all. When we forgive, we remove our
right to make the other person pay. I forgive you, I just don't
want to be around you anymore." That's failing to forgive. That's still punishing someone. Now, remember, if a believer
wrongs you, Christ paid for that wrong. That sin was placed upon
Christ, and God satisfied. Why aren't you? Can't you be
satisfied with what God's satisfied with? And if an unbeliever wrongs
you, think of this, he's gonna pay for that sin in hell. Do
you feel a need to add to that? No, forgive. When we refuse to
forgive, we're practicing sheer hypocrisy. If I fail to forgive
anybody of anything they do, but I don't deserve to be treated
like that, somebody says. No, we deserve to be treated
worse than that. If God treated us the way we
treated Him, He would treat us with such severity because of
our continual sins against Him. Sinning the same sins over and
over again, confessing them and then committing them again. David
said, my sin is ever before me, but thank God it's not before
Him. You see, God forgives sins for Christ's sake. He needs no
other reason. He has the same reason the sin
you've sinned just now and the sin you've sinned the first time
you ever sinned are forgiven for the same reason, for Christ's
sake. It was the blood that covered them. God justified you and made
it to where you didn't have any sin if you're a believer. God's
reason for forgiveness is always the same, Christ only. And that must be every forgiven
sinner's reason for forgiving other sins. for Christ's sake
only. Joseph forgave all they did because
he had an understanding. He had been forgiven freely.
Now regarding everything, everything that happens to you, every painful
thing, every difficult thing, every slight, every time you've
been wronged or misrepresented, remember God did it. and you
needed it, if you're a believer, he did it for your good and his
glory. Because Romans 8.28 says, and
we know that all things work together for good, to them that
love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Now, if we can't forgive because someone
hadn't asked, if we can't forgive because someone is not sorry
enough, or as we perceive they're not sorry enough, or they haven't
confessed it sufficiently, what we say by that is we really don't
believe that salvation is all of grace. That's what we say
with an unforgiving spirit. We really don't believe that
salvation is all of grace. We forgive because we have been
forgiven. And when you have been forgiven,
you will forgive. Now, I would like to read three
scriptures regarding this thing of forgiveness and forgiving
others. The first is found in Colossians
chapter 3. where Paul is exhorting us to
put on as the elect of God. Beginning in verse 12, he says,
"...put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, vows
of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering,
forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have
a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do
ye. Now how did Christ forgive me?
Number one, he forgave me freely, not because I deserve it, but
because he is God. He does what only God does, he
forgives. And He forgave all my sins, every
one of them. He didn't leave one unforgiven. And He doesn't hold me off. He
doesn't punish me or put me through a test. He receives me just like
Joseph received his brethren. He nurtured them. He loved them.
As a matter of fact, let's read about that in Genesis chapter
50. This is after Jacob had died. His brothers thought, well, he's
finally going to get us. Now that our dad's died, he's going
to pay us back. They were thinking about him the way they thought,
and they just projected those thoughts upon Joseph. So we read
in verse 15, and when Joseph's brethren saw that the father
was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will
certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And
they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, thy father did good man
before he died, saying, So shall they say unto Joseph, Forgive,
I pray thee, now the trespass of thy brethren and their sin,
for they did unto thee evil. And now we pray thee, forgive
the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And
Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brothers also went
and fell down before his face. And they said, Behold, we be
thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not, for am I
in God's place? But as for you, you thought evil
against me. But God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as
it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear
ye not, I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted
them, and spake kindly unto them." Now that is forgiveness. In Ephesians chapter 4, verse
32, we read these words, Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you." That word kind means gracious and easy, non-harsh, non-judgmental. Tenderhearted means compassionate,
forgiving one another for the same reason that God forgave
you for Christ's sake. And then in Matthew chapter 18,
we have where Peter was asking the Lord how many times he needed
to forgive. And our Lord gives this parable. Beginning in verse 21, then came
Peter to him and said, Lord, how shall my brother sin against
me and I forgive him until seven times? Jesus saith unto him,
I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times
seven. And like I said, that's not a
mathematical equation. That means all the time. That
means continually and ongoing. And then he gives this parable. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven
like unto a certain king which would take account of his servants.
And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which
owed him ten thousand talents." Now that equates to millions
and millions of dollars. It was a huge debt. But for as much as he had not
to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and children
and all that he had and payment to be made. The servant therefore
fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with
me and I'll pay all. Now that just wasn't so. He wasn't
able to pay all. Yet he makes his excuse before
the Lord, oh, have patience with me and I'll figure out a way
to pay you back all these billions. Verse 27, then the Lord of that
servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him
the debt. He just said, you don't owe anything
anymore. It was because of his great compassion.
You don't owe anything anymore. When God forgives a man, he forgives
him of all of his sins. He is set free. But the same
servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, which
owed him 100 pence. And he laid hands on him, and
he took him by the throat, saying, pay me that thou owest. And his
fellow servants fell down at his feet beside him, saying,
Have patience with me, and I'll pay thee all. Now that was $15.
He could have done it. Just $15. And he would not, but
went and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt.
So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very
sorry. And they came and told unto their Lord what was done.
Then his Lord, after he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked
servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desirest me.
Shouldest thou not also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant,
even as I had pity on thee? And his Lord was wroth, and delivered
him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto
him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if you
from your hearts Forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses. And there's a command, forgive
from your heart. Now, the Lord can enable me and
you to do just that. We have this message on DVD and
CD. If you call the church, write
or email, we'll send you a copy. This is Todd Nyberg praying that
God will be pleased to make Himself known to you. That's our prayer.
Amen.