Hello, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the pastor, Church of the Messiah.
And those of you who have listened to some of these other sermons,
this sounds a little bit different than what you normally would hear.
And so I just want to let you know that what happened is that on the 25th of August,
I preached a sermon on Mark chapter 2, verses 1 to 12, the story of Jesus and the paralytic.
And I did the sermon, it was recorded, and then something happened.
The person in charge of the recording by accident deleted the sermon recording and wasn't able to recover it.
So what I'm doing now is I'm redoing the sermon, so to speak.
But I'm in an empty room and I'm going to do the best I can to redo the sermon.
And so that's why things sound a little bit different.
It's going to feel a little bit different as well.
So let's begin with a prayer.
Father, I ask that you would pour the Holy Spirit upon us.
Father, we both need forgiveness and we need to learn how to forgive.
And we confess before you that we are confused about forgiveness.
And so we ask, Father, that you would bring the wisdom of your word, the wisdom of your son,
deep into our heart, that we might learn our need to be forgiven by you,
our need to live out of the forgiveness that comes from you,
and that we might learn how to forgive as he has forgiven us.
And this we ask in the name of Jesus, your son and our savior.
Amen.
Okay.
One of the things that you hear all the time in the world,
not only in the world, I heard it in the coffee shop just the other day.
You hear it in Christian circles as well,
is that people have to learn how to forgive themselves.
So it's one of those things that if they say it in a movie,
people just say it as if it's great wisdom,
that you have to learn how to forgive yourself.
Now, there's a bit of a problem with this.
Let's just think about this for a second.
A few years ago, a fellow who has since moved out of the city,
there's a couple of years ago, a fellow did me great harm.
He wronged me.
He betrayed my trust more than once, and I only discovered it later.
He affected my reputation.
He did something that ended up meaning that I had to spend a fair bit of money
and a lot of stress to try to deal with it.
It caused me leadership problems in my church.
He wronged me, and he did it intentionally,
and he did it for his own advantage.
And it wasn't right.
And, you know, it's funny.
In preparing this sermon, I was thinking about it,
and I realized I think I've more or less forgiven him,
but I don't think I've forgiven him all the way,
and I have to go back to praying into the situation to learn how to forgive him.
But here's the point.
He never has apologized.
He's never owned up to anything he's done.
He brazened his way through everything that happened
and has never acknowledged anything as having been done wrong.
But let's say all of a sudden, because I know people who know him,
I know people who are friends of his,
have all of a sudden,
I discovered that he's really starting to feel bad about this,
what he did to me.
And he's brought it to God and confessed it to God,
and now he's working on forgiving himself.
Now, just pause here for a second.
This is like, you go, what do you mean?
Like, I go, whoa, what do you mean he's working on forgiving himself?
Like, why is he working on forgiving himself
when he's never actually said sorry to me?
Like, shouldn't he actually try to apologize to me
before he tries to forgive himself?
Like, what does that even mean that he's working on?
Like, in fact, it would actually make me think less of him,
that he's trying to forgive himself
without actually trying to make amendment of a life
or apologize or anything like that.
You see the problem?
And that's separate from another issue,
which is an issue altogether
with the whole issue of forgiveness,
is that for many of us,
it's almost as if we have to choose to be,
do something which is just
trust and get justice or forgive,
and that you have to choose one or the other.
Because some of you might say,
George, I don't even understand
why you're trying to work on forgiving yourself.
Like, why are you even doing that?
Like, what you should have,
I mean, not forgiving yourself, sorry, I misspoke.
George, I don't understand
why you're even praying to forgive the guy.
Like, George, you shouldn't have done that.
What you should have done
is you should have gone after the guy.
You should have made sure everybody knew.
You should have embarrassed him.
Like, you should have gone after justice
rather than learning how to try to forgive him.
Well, in the midst of these types
of very, very current issues,
there's a story in Mark's gospel about Jesus,
which is very, very helpful for us to understand
and try to think these things all through.
So if you're turning your Bibles
to Mark chapter two, verses one to 12,
Mark chapter two, verse one,
and as you turn to that,
it's the story which is famous amongst Christians
is the healing of the paralytic.
And it must be considered a very important story
because there's three, four eyewitness biographies of Jesus.
And out of the four ancient biographies of Jesus,
three of the ancient biographies tell this story.
And so it must be a really important story
if it got told in three of the eyewitness biographies.
And that's what Mark is in both,
we know that Mark was both an eyewitness
and an earwitness himself to many things in Jesus's life.
He was also a close companion
of many of the people who were eye and ear witnesses
of the things that went on in the story of Jesus.
And he wrote when the eyewitnesses,
many, many, many eyewitnesses were still alive.
And in fact, actually, scholars have often believed
that he did a little tiny interesting thing
of putting himself in the story very briefly.
If any of you have watched any of the Marvel movies,
you'll know, I mean, now Stan Lee just died recently,
but you'll know that if you watch those movies,
they always had some tiny instant,
just a few seconds maybe,
where Stan Lee, the creator of,
the guy who was behind Marvel Comics,
where he gets into the story.
You see him in some ways as a bus collector
or as a restaurant patron or something like that.
And there's a, people believe that Mark
inserted himself in the story as well.
Towards the very end of Mark's gospel,
his ancient biography,
there's a scene where Jesus has been captured
in the garden.
And this is the capturing in the garden of Gethsemane
and Jesus is going to die the next day,
but he's captured by soldiers and guards.
And the disciples flee.
And there's a young man who'd been following along,
watching everything.
And the soldiers go to grab him.
And the man is so afraid that he actually,
they grab his robe,
but he runs and the clothes rip.
And he runs away naked,
leaving his clothes behind.
And many scholars believe that that was Mark
having a Stan Lee moment.
But the main thing to understand here is this,
that what Mark is claiming to do in this book
is he's trying, he's claiming to tell you
a true story about Jesus and a real miracle.
That's what he's claiming in the eyewitness biography.
So here's how it goes.
Mark chapter two, verse one,
and it goes like this.
When he, that's Jesus,
returned to Capernaum after some days,
it was reported that he was at home.
And many were gathered together
so that there was no more room,
not even at the door.
And Jesus was preaching the word to them.
Now, just pause here for a second.
Most of us are familiar with the idea
that Jesus is from Nazareth.
And he was born in Bethlehem,
but he grew up in Nazareth.
And now Jesus is in his public ministry.
And he's basically the center of his ministry now
is a place called Capernaum.
And it's 32 kilometers northeast of Nazareth.
And it's on the shore of the Sea of Galilee,
which is a very large inland lake.
That's his home now, Capernaum.
You know, all the populations in the ancient world
at that time were fairly small,
but it was a sizable enough village.
And it was a pretty important place of commerce
for the region.
And that's now the center of where Jesus is.
That's when he's not out somewhere else.
He goes home.
He's in Capernaum.
So what happens here?
Verse three.
Remember, he's preaching the word to them.
And the room's completely and utterly packed
inside and outside.
They're all hanging around the doors and the windows
trying to hear him.
Verse three.
And they came, bringing to him a paralytic
carried by four men.
And when they could not get near Jesus
because of the crowd,
they removed the roof above Jesus.
And when they had made an opening,
they let down the bed
on which the paralytic lay.
Now, just pause here for a second.
This is sort of an odd story
if you're hearing it for the first time.
And, you know,
this wouldn't work very well
in our houses today here in Ottawa.
I don't know where you are
when you're listening to this,
but in Ottawa,
this wouldn't work very well.
You'd need chainsaws.
And if you took a chainsaw to a roof
and went through the different layers
to make a huge hole,
it would cause a huge problem.
It cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix.
And it wasn't that this was a,
I mean, it was a bit of a bother back then,
but where they lived,
it's a very dry area.
The roofs would have been flat.
It's fairly dry.
Roofs were flat, flat.
There would have been beams.
And the beams would have been covered
with thatch and then some mud.
And there would have been some,
an area of plank or something up there
because people use the roof in a sense
also as a living place,
sort of like a very, very large balcony.
And so there might've been another type
of a shady thing up there.
So most of the houses back then
would have had stairs around the outside
to make it easy for people
to go up and to be on the roof.
And they'd have to walk carefully on the beams
and go to the area where you could sit.
So it still would have been a lot of bother,
the thatch, the mud,
and you can just imagine the dust.
And you can just imagine,
this isn't like a holy, quiet moment of awe.
The homeowner is probably yelling
at these four guys.
There's probably lots of cursing.
And it's not a place of holy, quiet
as these guys wreck a big hole in the roof.
They've obviously come prepared with ropes
and they drop the guy down
right in front of Jesus.
People move out of the way,
banging into each other,
out of the way,
and they drop this guy right at Jesus's feet.
So how does Jesus react?
Well, let's look in verse five.
Here's how Jesus reacts.
And when Jesus saw their faith,
he said to the paralytic,
son, your sins are forgiven.
Now, just pause.
In the original language here, by the way,
it's a verbal tense called the divine passive.
So it's very obvious in the original language
that Jesus is saying two things.
He's saying that God has forgiven
all of this person's sins or wrongdoing.
And that, in a sense,
Jesus has also forgiven this person.
Jesus is God.
It's a very, very clear claim
that Jesus is God.
And that Jesus, as God,
has forgiven this man
of all of the sins,
all of the wrongdoing he's ever done,
all of the things he should have done
but didn't do.
You know, they're called like sins of omission.
You know, you know you should pay the money,
somebody their money back
because you have the money in the pocket
and they ask for it and you don't give them.
That's wrong, right?
That's a sin of omission.
Or you take money out of their pocket.
That's stealing.
That's wrong.
So one's a sin of omission.
One's a sin of commission.
And Jesus is saying,
all of your sins are forgiven.
Now, this is weird, right?
This is a very, very weird thing.
I mean, he didn't come there
to have his sins forgiven.
He's not asking to have his sins forgiven.
He came there to get healed
because he'd heard
that Jesus was able to heal people.
And he came there,
him and his friends came there
and said to be healed,
not to be forgiven.
And you can well imagine,
you know,
you can well imagine
that the guy and his friends
think, well, that's very nice
and very pious.
But at the end of the day,
they probably are crushed.
They're very, very disappointed.
They didn't want to have
some statement about their sins
dealt with.
They wanted healing for their friend.
The guy wanted healing.
And there'd probably be disappointment.
Now, that's what's probably
going on within them.
But there's a group of other people there
who are looking at it
in a very, very, very, very different way.
And let's see what happens
because it's not that
they're just thinking
this is sort of odd.
He came for healing
and the guy's forgiving his sins
and their sense of disappointment.
No, these other people,
they heard what Jesus said
and it sort of shocked them.
And they have a very,
very different take
on what happens.
Listen to what happens.
It's verse six.
Now, some of the scribes
were sitting there
questioning in their hearts.
Why does this man speak like that?
He is blaspheming.
Who can forgive sins
but God alone?
Now, just sort of pause there
for a second.
Now, the first thing
you have to understand here
is what's a scribe?
Okay.
So, there's no real equivalent
to what a scribe is.
The version of the Bible
that I've just read
gives you a good literal
translation.
But what you need to do
is you need to think about
somebody who's both a lawyer
and not only a lawyer
but also a professor of law.
And you need to know somebody
who is an intellectual.
And you need to have somebody
who's,
who maybe is an expert
in cultural studies.
And then you also have to have
somebody who's like a YouTuber
commenting on the culture
that lots and lots of people go to
because they see this YouTuber
as being very authoritative
about what's going on
in the culture.
And they want to hear
his or her cultural commentary.
And if you could think of somebody
who's both a lawyer
and a law professor
and an intellectual
and a cultural studies professor
and a YouTuber
all rolled up in one,
you have a scribe.
Okay?
That's what they are.
They're these multifaceted experts
in how the culture works,
how thinking works,
what means what.
And they're there.
And what they pick up
is not,
wow, this is weird.
This must be really disappointing
to this guy
to have this, you know,
silly statement about sins
being forgiven
when he wants to be healed.
They don't think that at all.
They pick up instantly
that Jesus has made a claim
to be God.
That's what they pick up on.
And, and for us,
we would take up
the idea of
somebody wanting to be God
and thinking that's cuckoo land.
And some of you listening to this
come to Church of the Messiah.
Some of you listening to this
have visited Church of the Messiah.
Some of you listening to this
have never been to Church of the Messiah.
We're, we're in urban Ottawa.
There's lots of crazy people
walking around the streets.
I mean, not lots,
but they're, you know,
you don't have to go very far
or wait very long
before you'll meet somebody
who's obviously,
you know, mentally ill
and who might think they're God
or do other types of
things like that.
But they don't think like that.
They think this guy,
here's a dude
just standing there,
obviously a human being.
And what he's doing
is he's claiming to be God.
And from their context,
it's blasphemy
to, to try to think
that there can be anybody
other than only God is God.
And how can you be God?
You can't make that claim.
It's, it's just wrong.
So what does Jesus do
about all of this?
Now, here's one of the things
which is so interesting
about Jesus.
And you see it all the way through
the, the, the,
the biographies of, of him
is Jesus walks towards the problem,
not away from it.
He walks right towards the problem
to deal with it.
Look at, look what happens next
in verses eight through 11.
And immediately, right?
Immediately,
Jesus perceiving in his spirit
that they, that's the scribes,
thus questioned within themselves,
said to them,
why do you question these things
in your hearts?
Which is easier to say
to the paralytic?
Paralytic, your sons are forgiven?
Or to say, rise,
take up your bed and walk?
But that you may know
that the son of man
has authority on earth
to forgive sins.
He then turns to the paralytic.
I say to you, rise,
pick up your bed and go home.
I'm going to just read that
verse 10 and 11.
I'm going to read that
verse nine through 11 again.
Which is easier to say
to the paralytic,
your sons are forgiven?
Or to say, rise,
take up your bed and walk?
But that you may know
that the son of man
has authority on earth.
That is not only
that he has the power,
the scribes say
he has the ability
to make that type of thing.
He says that I have the ability,
an authoritative ability.
And just so that you can know
that I have this authoritative ability
on earth to forgive sins,
he then says to the paralytic,
I say to you, rise,
pick up your bed and go home.
Now let's just pause here
for a little bit
and just think about
what's just taken place
in Jesus' response.
So the first thing
you have to understand here
is that Jesus is not saying
that the man's sin
caused the sickness.
He's not saying
that you need to forgive
to be able to be healed.
He's not saying
that you need to be forgiven
to be healed.
He's not saying anything
like that at all.
He's not encouraging
the man to forgive
and because he's forgiving,
he's now able
to psychologically forgive.
It somehow frees him up
from some psychosomatic problem
and he's now able to walk.
None of that's going on.
He's not saying
sin caused the sickness
or you need to forgive
to be healed
or anything like that.
What he's doing here,
and I think this is
one of the reasons
why this story
is in three of the biographies,
is that Jesus
throws down the gauntlet.
He throws down the gauntlet.
Throwing down the gauntlet
is like a bit of a challenge,
right?
It's an expression
about making a challenge.
He's throwing down the gauntlet.
He's challenging
every religion,
every spirituality,
every philosophy
to put up or shut up,
so to speak.
You know,
what he's saying is,
I'm going to give you
some evidence
that what I'm saying
is justified.
I'm going to give you
some way to vindicate
and justify my claims
because, you know,
talk is cheap.
You know,
Muhammad can say
that he is the prophet of Allah.
Well, but what's the proof?
Like, what's the proof?
You know,
in Hinduism,
you can say,
well,
that there's the reincarnation
and there's karma
and there's yoga
and there's all these practices,
but, yeah,
like, talk is cheap.
Like, how are you going
to prove that, right?
And you can have
your native spirituality
and you believe this
and believe that
and in a sense,
Jesus is saying to them,
yeah, but how do you prove that?
Like, why,
what evidence is there
that I should actually believe
that this is something true?
And it would be the same as well.
It would be the same for Marxism.
It would be the same
for different philosophies
and theologies
and personal spiritualities
that people around us
and maybe some of you
who are listening
have developed
bits and pieces
of this and that
as you're trying
to make your way
forward spiritually
and Jesus is saying
that I'm not just talking
about spirituality
or religion
as if it's untrue.
It's just something like,
it's like a personal thing
that you happen to like
that gives you
a moment of peace.
I'm making,
I'm making claims
about the very nature
of the world,
the nature of reality
and I am willing
to do something
that vindicates,
that justifies
these remarkable claims
that I make
and I would say
that only Christianity
out of all the religions
and spiritualities
of the world
is falsifiable.
Jesus lays down
this challenge
and it's only
the Christian faith
that lays down
such a challenge
and is able to meet it
if you look at the evidence.
And the claim is
that Jesus
by his mere
act of will alone
is going to be able
to heal this man.
Now some of you
might say,
okay,
one moment George
here,
I don't understand
how these types
of authorities
are connected
and here's how
they're connected.
See the fact of the matter
is,
is that both are impossible
so to speak,
right?
On one hand,
I can't say to you,
a listener,
all your sins are forgiven.
I forgive
all of your sins.
You say,
George,
like you don't even know
the things I've done.
You don't even know me.
I'm just listening to you
on your podcast.
You know,
you don't know me.
How can you,
like who do you think
you are that you can think
that every single wrong
thing I've ever done
and every wrong thing
I ever will do
that somehow another
George,
you forget,
like that doesn't
make any sense,
right?
So that's impossible
but the healing's
impossible as well.
So here's the thing,
what Jesus is saying
and this fits in
with the whole
understand,
the Christian understanding
of the world
and how the world
has developed
and came to be
and Jesus is saying
that if in fact
there is a God
who's created all things
and sustains all things,
if in fact
there is a God
who does exist,
who has created all things
and sustains all things,
then if that is the case,
every act of wrongdoing
is somehow
an act against him
as well as the creation
or the created being
or the person
that you've wronged.
and so only God
is implicated
in all wrongdoing
and therefore
you need God
and only he
can do something
that might involve
your forgiveness
for every single thing
that you've ever done
because he's the only
constant in your life.
Your mom might not
be the constant,
your dad,
your brother,
your sister,
your friend.
Only God is constant
if in fact
there is a God
that does exist
who's created
and sustained
all things
and the same God
who's created
and sustained
all things
is the only one
who could perform
by, in a sense,
a mere act of will
such remarkable healing.
So you see,
what he's saying
is that the two things
are connected
to point to the same God
that you and I
don't know
whether or not
your sins are forgiven
because that's invisible
and you can make
some type of claim.
Religions and spiritualities
are making all sorts of claim.
You know,
you chant this mantra
and it will help you
in your whole cycle
of birth and rebirth.
You, you know,
you say these prayers
and it makes you draw
close to the God
or to the goddess
or whatever
and people can say
all those things
but there's no way
of knowing
whether those things
are actually true or not.
But what Jesus is saying here
is that if there is a God
that does exist like that
and I am able to do something
that only God can do,
that shows that
as something
that only God can do
that these other things
that only God can do,
it makes sense
that I can do them as well.
That's how the argument
is working.
And by the way,
when I was talking about this
to a guy in a coffee shop
just very recently
and he was asking me about it,
he said,
well, what's the historical evidence
for this happening?
You see,
this is the,
there is no particular
historical evidence
for this particular miracle today
although there would have been
in John's,
in Mark's time
because in Mark's time
because it was written
while there were eyewitnesses
who were alive,
that would have meant
that somebody
who hears about this story,
some pagan who hears
about this story
in the Decapolis,
he can just get in a boat
and go across the Decapolis
and he can go to Capernaum
and ask around
as to whether this story
had ever happened,
see if he can meet
the four guys,
the four dudes
and the paralytic.
I mean,
you know,
when it was published,
the people who,
over what I read,
Mark's story,
his biography of Jesus
would have included
people who liked Jesus
and those who didn't like Jesus
and all of them
could have commented on it
but you see,
the big thing is for us
is that it's helping
to set the stage
for the great thing
which culminates
each of the four biographies
and Mark's biography included
and that is
the death of Jesus
upon the cross.
Everything in the story,
just read the story
of Mark
or Matthew
or Luke
or John
as a story
and you'll see
they all culminate
with Jesus dying
upon the cross
and him being truly buried
and on the third day
the grave being empty
and the resurrected Jesus
or the message
that Jesus is resurrected
ringing out.
The tomb is empty.
The grave clothes
are positioned
in such a way
that only something
like a resurrection
of the body
could explain
what happened
and people can hear
that is something
if you've never looked into it
there's good historical reasons
to believe
that Jesus really did die.
In fact,
everybody understands
that he was,
very few people now
would doubt
that Jesus lived.
Lots of historical evidence
he lived.
Everybody knows
he had to die
and there's lots
of historical evidence,
good historical evidence
that points
to the best solution
to the evidence
being that Jesus
rose from the dead.
The gauntlet
of all the,
the importance
of all the miracles
is made clear
in this story.
And so,
Jesus is claiming
not that he's going
to do surgery,
not that he's going
to pray to a God
or God to do this,
but that he himself
by the mere exercise
of his will
will heal this man.
So what happens?
Well,
that's how the story ends.
Look at verse 12.
In verse 12,
and he rose immediately,
that's the paralytic man,
he rose immediately
and picked up his bed
and went out
before them all
so that they were
all amazed
and glorified God
saying,
we never saw
anything like this.
So,
some of you might say,
oh yeah,
yeah,
they didn't know science.
Listen,
science only
creates the wow.
Just because
they didn't know
a whole pile of science
doesn't mean
that they didn't know
what he was talking about.
The fact of the matter is
they would have known
far more about this
than we did
because,
you know,
there was a very physical,
you know,
people lived in tiny,
tiny places
and they didn't hire out help.
They did the help themselves.
They got their hands dirty,
so to speak,
with each other's sicknesses
and issues
and if this man
had been paralyzed
for a while,
they would have seen
how skinny
his little stick legs were.
They would have seen
the atrophy of the muscle
and what happens
in this miracle
is that
it's not as if
Jesus says this thing
and then they all look
and whoa,
all of a sudden
he's able to twitch
his toe a little bit.
There must be some healing
or whoa,
look at this,
we can stick a stone
on his toe
and there's a bit
of a reflex
and for us,
it's okay,
you know,
if that happens,
okay,
it's good news,
you're not paralyzed.
There's still some feeling there,
there's still some movement
and it isn't that
Jesus just did this
but if you can just think
about the fact that,
you know,
the man's muscles
had atrophied
and whatever it is,
by the mere will
of Jesus alone,
new muscle
is there in the legs
new nerves
are there.
The problems
that were there
maybe that were causing
blockages
by an act of his will,
they are removed,
the new connections
of the nerves
and the new muscle
that needs to be there,
the new muscle memory
that needs to be there,
it's all created
by Jesus.
We now look at that,
it would have been
a huge wow to them
because they would have,
the guys who carried him
and probably helped his friend,
they would have seen
his little stick legs
and then later on
they'd say,
lift up your rope,
look at that,
you have muscles again,
dude.
Like you have flesh again,
dude.
Like that's what
they would have said.
And you don't have to have
a science degree
to understand the miracle,
science just increases
the wow.
and the implication
of the story
is that
if he could do this,
then it makes
complete and utter sense
that he has
the authority
to forgive sins.
So let's unpack this
a little bit more
as we try to bring this
up to an end.
Here's the first thing.
God himself
has invaded,
you see,
these are the wonderful thing
about the stories
of the gospel
is that it's helping you
to understand
by a story,
to enter imaginatively
and emotionally
into the story
and it's teaching you
at the same time
at a story level
profound,
conceptual truths.
God himself
has invaded
his fallen creation
to begin to put
things right
by offering full
and undeserved
forgiveness
to his sinning
image bearers.
I'll say that again.
God himself
has invaded.
Only God
could do
what Jesus
just did.
And Jesus
just did it.
So God himself
has invaded
his fallen creation
to begin
to put things
right
by offering
full
and undeserved
forgiveness
to his sinning
image bearers.
That's human beings.
So some of you
say,
whoa,
George,
whoa,
whoa.
Undeserved?
Still sinning?
Like,
okay,
that,
George,
there's just a problem
here with this.
Like,
undeserved forgiveness
and still sinning?
See,
here's the,
here's the issue
for us.
It really,
that's why I worded
it the way it did.
Remember I said
at the very beginning,
you probably don't,
but if you,
you might remember
at the beginning
I said,
you know,
for a lot of us
in our culture,
it's as if you have
to choose between
forgiveness or justice.
When you face
a situation
and something's wrong
you've been wronged
in some type of way
and it's as if
all of the different people
are going to counsel you.
They're either going to tell you,
well,
listen,
forget about justice
and forgive.
And others say,
forget about forgiving,
get justice.
And,
and,
and that's the thing.
You see,
on one hand,
we think,
well,
justice is a really,
really,
really good thing.
But sometimes,
you know,
you're not going to get
the justice you want
and so you've got to learn
how to forgive
because it makes you feel better.
Or,
or others will go
from the perspective of
it's very obvious
that often people
are able to forgive,
truly forgive another person.
There seems to be
a type of peace
and wholeness about them,
togetherness about them,
which we all desire to have.
And,
and so you,
you need to pursue forgiveness.
But if you,
if you do that,
you sort of have to give
justice a pass.
Right?
And that's why
a lot of advice
about forgiveness
is either about
learning how to forget
what went wrong
or giving the wrongdoer
a pass,
you know?
And so this,
what I've just said
is like,
you know,
the,
the person's still doing bad
and,
and undeserved
and a lot of times
what we think of
as trying to forgive somebody
is just actually making excuses
for them
or believing their excuses.
But,
but,
this is what's so amazing.
And only the Bible,
only the gospel grounds
our belief that forgiveness
is important
and justice is important
and only the Bible grounds
and helps us to understand
both forgiveness and justice
in such a way
that neither is violated
and both are fulfilled.
Only the Bible does this.
And that's what's being pointed to here
in this story
and is unfolded
in the entire gospel.
And,
and,
and you see,
here's,
here's what you have to understand.
You,
you,
my second point,
you only forgive the person
whose wrongdoing is inexcusable.
This is what all forgiveness really is.
You only forgive the person
whose wrongdoing is inexcusable.
There's,
you know,
the fact of the matter is,
is if they have a good excuse,
then,
you don't really forgive them
because they didn't do anything wrong.
You know,
if,
if you,
if,
if a,
if an old lady,
if I,
I pushed an old lady
really,
really hard on the road
and,
or tackled her or something,
jumped on her and tackled her,
she'd,
might say,
she's going to have to figure out
how to forgive me.
But if,
if she finds out that I did that
to mean that she didn't get hit by a car,
all of a sudden,
she wouldn't be trying to come up with
giving me an excuse.
She'd be thanking me,
right?
So that's,
it's always what's left over
when all the excuses,
the real,
not excuses that are bad excuses,
just like it's a pile of,
you know,
hooey that we try to get around
taking responsibility for actions,
but when there's real
extenuating circumstances
that make you understand
the situation completely different,
that's not forgiveness.
It's always about something
that was wrong.
And,
you know,
for Christians,
since God knows everything,
he already knows
the extenuating circumstances.
He already knows what they are.
He knows them better
than you know them.
So it's not a matter of God
having to know that.
Forgiveness is always dealing with
that which is left over,
which is just wrong
and has to be dealt with.
But,
then we don't really know
what to do about that
because it seems as if,
well,
you'd,
I don't know,
like,
George,
here's the next point.
If justice is,
here's what the Bible would teach.
If justice is compromised,
it is not forgiveness.
True forgiveness
is a mercy
that upholds justice.
This is really important.
This is what the Bible teaches.
This is what the gospel grounds
and helps us to understand.
If justice is compromised,
it is not forgiveness.
True forgiveness
is a mercy
that upholds justice.
You see,
that's what the Bible reveals
about the God
revealed in the Bible.
Many of you have heard me say,
I don't believe in the God
that Canadians believe in.
I don't.
If I,
if the only God that existed
was the God,
if the only God
that you could believe in
was the God
that Canadians believed in,
I would be an atheist.
Okay?
If the only God
that you,
that anybody had ever heard of
was the God
that most Canadians believe in,
then I wouldn't believe
in that God.
I would be an atheist.
I would think that God
is bad in all sorts of ways.
I believe in the God
revealed by Jesus
and the God revealed
in the Bible.
And in the Bible,
the God who is revealed
is a God
who is always just
and always merciful.
And he's 100% just
and 100% merciful.
And he's never merciful
at the expense
of his justice
and he's never just
at the expense of mercy.
And what Christians believe
about the cross
is that in the cross,
when Jesus dies in my stead,
when Jesus,
in a sense,
sees my great need
that I have done wrong
and there's something
that needs to be done
about that
and that because
of the accumulated wrongdoing
and failure to do right
that has happened in my life,
that if I was to really,
in a sense,
be judged for that,
it would unmake me.
And so Jesus,
out of love for me,
comes and stands,
takes my place,
takes the punishment
in my stead.
And in that particular act then,
justice is still given.
It isn't as if God just says to me,
ah, George, you know what?
I like your smile.
I like your style.
I like your jokes.
And so I'm going to give you a pass.
And you know,
all those people
who you wronged,
who want justice,
well, it sucks to be them.
No, that's not what happens.
What the Bible teaches
is that the full justice of God
is on display
when Jesus dies upon the cross
and the full mercy of God
and the forgiveness of God
is available,
is on display
as Jesus dies on the cross.
That's why the glory of God
is revealed in the cross.
That's why God is revealed
most perfectly and fully
with Jesus dying upon the cross.
And then you say,
well, how is this possible?
How is this possible?
Well, here's another thing
you have to understand
to help you understand the cross.
You cannot forgive a person.
Remember I said earlier,
if justice is compromised,
it is not forgiveness.
True forgiveness is a mercy
that upholds justice.
Here's the thing.
You cannot forgive a person
without pain,
in quotes,
the satisfaction
justice requires.
You cannot forgive a person
without pain,
the satisfaction
justice requires.
I'll give you an illustration
about this.
So let's say I have a friend
who is moving
to another country overseas.
He can't bring his SUV with him.
And so I have a conversation with him
and we decide that I'm going to buy
his SUV for $12,000.
And just before he leaves,
he's giving me a bit of a discount
because he's tried to sell it,
he can't sell it,
he has to leave,
he wants to sell it.
And so we agree.
And so I say,
well, listen here,
I can't give you $12,000
right off the bat.
How about if every month
I give you $1,000
for 12 months?
At the end of the 12 months,
you have $12,000
and here's $1,000 in cash.
And because he's my friend,
there's no contract written down.
He takes me at my word
and he takes $1,000.
He gets on the plane,
he goes to another country.
And now,
but he's hoping on that $11,000.
$11,000 is a lot of money.
It's going to matter to him
and he has plans for it.
He's going to use
the next month's $1,000.
He's going to use it
to help buy some furniture.
Every month,
he's going to use that $1,000
for me to buy some furniture
and do some other things
to get set up
in the new place
that he's living.
But the next month comes up
and there's no e-transfer
from me for $1,000.
There's no wiring of money.
I don't do it.
And in fact,
he sends me emails.
He tries to call me
and he discovers
that I've changed
my phone number
and I've changed
my email address.
And month and month
and month goes by
and I don't pay him the money.
I stiff him.
I keep the van,
the SUV.
I don't give him
the $11,000
that I own.
And I take means
to avoid him.
Now,
this eats away at him.
He thinks about it
and thinks about it
and thinks about it.
He thinks about it
every time
he's going to buy something
and he realizes
he was originally
going to buy that thing
for his new condo
or his new apartment
or his new house.
He was going to use
the $1,000 to pay for it.
He thinks about
going into debt himself
that he hadn't planned
or reducing his savings
that he hadn't planned for.
And he thinks about it
and it irks him.
I've betrayed his friendship.
I've broken my word.
I've hidden on him.
I've ripped him off.
And all of those things.
And it eats away at him
and eats away at him
and eats away at him.
Now, by the way,
just remember
one of the things
about forgiving yourself?
If I told you
that I was feeling bad about
and I was learning
to forgive myself,
wouldn't you just say
that's just
bleepity bleepity bleep?
That's not what required,
George,
if you've done something
like that
to learn to forgive yourself.
That doesn't mean anything.
That's, in fact,
deeply wrong.
But let's go back
to my friend.
He wants satisfaction
at a whole lot of levels.
He'd like the $11,000.
He'd like an apology.
He wants satisfaction
as connected to justice.
But let's say one day
a person who's talking to him
and says to him,
we'll call him Bob,
says,
Bob, you're beating yourself up.
You know,
he lives thousands of,
he lives across the ocean,
across a continent,
across the ocean.
You're never going to see him again.
You're never going to get the money.
And this is just
eating away at you,
making you bitter.
You're losing sleep.
You just got to forgive him.
And let's say
by a bit of a miracle,
he is able to forgive me.
What happens?
He has to pay
himself.
He has to pay himself
the satisfaction.
He has to forgo
the satisfaction.
He has to swallow
the loss of $11,000.
He has to swallow
his desire
for me
to acknowledge
I've done something wrong.
He has to swallow
the thing he'd wanted to do
to maybe let all my family
and my friends
in the church
know that I've been
a bad pastor
and I've done wrong things.
He has to swallow
all of his desires
for justice.
He has to pay
the satisfaction
that justice requires.
Why do people do it?
The more you forgive,
the more you are free
from the evil
done to you.
That's why our culture
understands that there is
something powerful
about forgiveness.
The more you forgive,
the more you are free
from the evil
done to you.
You see,
the evil that I had done,
if I had done this
to that man,
the evil that I had done
to them,
it eats him up.
It makes him angry,
you know.
Maybe it makes him
afraid to come
and maybe he can also
be afraid to confront me
because maybe I'll say,
how dare you say that?
Like,
you gave it to me
for a thousand dollars.
You have the paperwork?
Like,
you know,
you didn't sign a contract.
I'm not breaking,
just your word
against mine
and maybe I would
win the argument
and he would get red
and flustered
and embarrassed
and all of that
type of thing.
But the more you forgive,
the more you are free
from the evil
done to you.
He doesn't get consumed
by all of this.
The great human example
about this
over the last 20 or 30 years
is Nelson Mandela.
He wasn't a saint.
By any stretch
of the imagination,
he'd done some wrong things.
But the punishment,
apartheid,
was a great evil
and the punishment
done to him
was a great evil.
And one of the things
which is so remarkable
about Nelson Mandela
is that he understood
that if he was to be free
and if the country
was to be free
and to move forward
and prosper,
they had to forgive.
They had to,
in a sense,
pay themselves
the satisfaction
that justice requires.
And somehow or another,
that was able,
Mandela was able
to do that.
And we see that around us
all the time,
that people somehow
or another are able,
it's not forgetting
and it's not making excuses.
It's not saying,
well, you know,
apartheid wasn't really
that bad.
Can you imagine
Nelson Mandela
ever saying that?
Well,
apartheid wasn't really
that bad.
No,
he didn't forget it.
He didn't make excuses
for it,
but he forgave
and he was free.
But you see,
here's the thing.
In a sense,
in a sense,
forgiveness,
then,
is a bit of a mystery.
We know it can happen
and we know it's important
because when real forgiveness
happens,
we are free
from the evil
done to us.
Only the gospel
grounds
the mystery
of forgiveness.
only the gospel.
If that is true,
if on the cross,
Jesus,
God himself,
is dying for you
because he loves you.
Jesus died on the cross
to bear
the satisfaction,
in quotes,
that justice requires
for the inexcusable wrong
that you have done
and I have done.
In other words,
he died that you might be forgiven.
That is the gospel.
Because he loves you,
Jesus died on the cross
to bear,
in quotes,
the satisfaction.
He himself bears
the satisfaction
that justice requires
for the inexcusable wrong
that you have done,
that I have done.
In other words,
he died that you might be forgiven,
that I might be forgiven.
That's what's happening
on the cross.
And because Jesus is God,
right,
God himself
has invaded
his creation,
created order,
that is why you can see
that anybody can forgive.
If it ever is possible,
it grounds it.
It makes it
understandable
if God is,
in fact,
behind it.
He does it
on the cross.
That's just in terms of,
but the cross
is more than just
grounding it.
It's something
very important,
is that we,
in fact,
have been separated
from our creator
and we are in rebellion
against him
and we are separated
from him
and what Jesus does
on the cross
is more than just
ground my ability
to forgive.
He is the means
by which I am forgiven
by God
so that I can once again
become his child
and live with him forever.
And when,
the satisfaction
that Jesus does
for me on the cross
is for every wrong
that I have done
and every good
that I fail to do
from the moment
of my conception
to the moment
of my death
with nothing left over.
He knows it all.
He sees it all.
He forgave it all.
And it's on that basis
that I am made right
with God.
Not weighing my merits
but pardoning my offenses.
A couple of last points
then.
Here's the first one.
And if you want,
you can go online
and you can see this point.
If you,
I'm going to just say it
very quickly.
I just want to bring,
I've already gone 45 minutes.
I just want to bring it
to a close.
Here's the thing.
When you have done
something wrong,
you should never seek
to forgive yourself.
You need to die
to your pride,
humble yourself,
acknowledge the wrong
you have done,
repent,
seek to amend your life,
where possible,
make restitution,
and then ask the other person
for forgiveness.
Say it again,
but you can go online
and see it if you want
at Messiah.ca,
at church,
you know,
just Google Church of the Messiah
sermons on August the 25th.
It's a sermon called
The Man Who Can Forgive Sin.
Just say it again,
when you have done
something wrong,
you should never seek
to forgive yourself.
You need to die to your pride,
humble yourself,
acknowledge the wrong
you have done,
repent,
seek to amend your life,
where possible,
make restitution,
and then ask for forgiveness.
And here's the final point
I want to leave with you
before I pray.
Because of the gospel,
I will come to Jesus
for forgiveness.
I will proclaim to all
and sundry his offer
of full forgiveness,
and I will learn
to become one who forgives
for the good of the world
and the glory of the Lord.
I'll say that again.
Because of the gospel,
that's the good news
of what Jesus came to earth
to do and accomplish
for you and me on the cross,
all out of love.
Because of the gospel,
I will come to Jesus
for forgiveness.
I will proclaim to all
and sundry his offer
of full forgiveness,
and I will learn
to become one who forgives
for the good of the world
and the glory of the Lord.
Friends,
there's no time better than now
if you have not done it
to call out to Jesus
and ask him to be your Savior
and your Lord,
to thank him
for dying on the cross
so that the justice
that you could not bear,
that he would bear
on your behalf,
that you might be forgiven,
and that by putting
your faith and trust
in Jesus
that you can become
God's child forever.
You can be made right
with God
as you call out to him
to come into your life,
to be your Savior and Lord,
that you thank him
for what he's done for you.
Call out to Jesus.
Father, I ask that you
pour out the Holy Spirit
upon all who have heard this,
both those on the Sunday morning
at Church of the Messiah
a few weeks ago
as I'm recording this
and all who are listening
to it now.
Father,
help us to forgive.
Grip us with the gospel
and as we are gripped
by the gospel,
help us to forgive.
Help us, Father,
as we are gripped
by the gospel
to acknowledge
when we have done wrong
and seek forgiveness.
But most of all,
Father,
grip us again
with the beauty
and the glory
of the gospel,
how Jesus
bore in himself
the satisfaction
that justice required
so that I could be
forgiven by you
and by faith in Jesus
become your child forever.
Father,
grip us with this truth
and this I ask
in Jesus' name.
Amen.