The Divine Crash

Scripture: Jonah 4:1-10

Today’s sermon recorded like normal.  You can listen to it at the bottom of this post or on iTunes, click here. Today’s sermon was about forgiveness. Click the picture to read my sermon notes.

Prayer:  As soon as we say forgiveness, some of us get a picture of someone in our head and we say “Not that person, not what they did.”  Help us to move beyond that.  To see that forgiveness is possible and that we do not need to let them control us.

So Jonah is incredibly vindictive and not much for forgiving like God forgives. Instead Jonah holds on to the hate and bitterness he has for these people. And then when he has lost everything he whines and wants to die.

Perhaps we can take a lesson from Jonah in what not to do.

To often we think that forgiveness means everything someone did is okay and so we don’t forgive because it would mean that they get away with it and we can’t be angry with them anymore. but that isn’t forgiveness.

Forgive is not condoning

Forgive is to live free from bitterness, hate, rage.

Forgiving always brings up: What about….what about….what about….from little things like taking your parking spot to the big stuff rape, suicide, and theft.

Forgiving is not forgetting.  If he has done it 11 times in the past forgiving is not forgetting

Some people are toxic  They will hurt you by being around you.  Forgiving is setting up boundaries so they cannot hurt you again.

Forgiveness makes it okay to get out of abusive relationship.  Let mistakes catch up with a person, let the court system get involved

Forgiving does not always mean reconciling

Forgiving does not mean you get back together.

Forgiving is a state of the heart, it does not mean everything goes back to the way it was.

Forgiveness is different than justice and consequences.

- It is okay to call the police when people break into your house and steal your stuff.

Forgiving is personal.  You forgive people, not institutions, organizations or faceless groups.

- No one has ever been wronged by the church.  Only the people in that church.

- That school, that place fired me and I will never forgive that business.  You can’t forgive the business only the people who made that decision.

- You can’t forgive faceless things.  Only people.  That is where the issue is.

Forgiveness is a process.

- It starts with a decision now and takes time.

- Sometimes the wrongs we have suffered has shaped us for years and now we have to unlearn certain behaviors and it takes time.

- Even entertaining the idea that this person might be forgivable is a great step.

The truth is forgiveness NEVER says it is okay.  Forgiveness does not mean we can’t be angry.  Forgiveness means we don’t let that person control us anymore.

Greek: Aphilmei  to depart from one and leave him to himself so that all mutual claims are abandoned

Hebrew: Nasa to take away

When we don’t forget we hang on to things that do not give us life.  They kill us, slowly and surely we end up dying because we can’t let go.

When people hurt you and we can’t forgive them we end up like Jonah sitting alone with nothing.

Yet when we do forgive we stop letting them hurt us and we are free, we can go on living the story God has laid out for us.

Because God has laid out a story for us, for you.  a story where hurt and pain does not have the last word but where there is hope, forgiveness, fresh starts, love and of a resurection into a new world where all things are made new where all things that are good will last and all hurt and pain will fade away.

This is God’s story for you and when we forgive we can live into that story.

So then, who do you need to forgive?  Who is that person that you picture in your mind when we say forgiveness?

Friend?

Spouse?

Child?

Parent?

Maybe today in prayer you call out to God for the strength to forgive.  To not let the pain of their actions overtake your being and to live out the story that God has for you.

Sermon Audio

 

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Sermon by RevBT