Overcoming Adversity Part 4 - Learning how to forgive totally changed my life | Mark 11:20-26

So this week, we are going to finish this mini-series on Overcoming Adversity as Jesus ends it with teaching on Forgiveness! Yup, Forgiveness. Not what you'd expect - but it is absolutely key to overcoming obstacles and adversity.

“Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.” So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

-- Mark 11:20-26

A few weeks ago our friend pastor Dave Connolly spoke to us on this live stream. Well, Dave has a brother called Mick who is married to Lyn. Back in 2002 something awful happened in their family.

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How would you react if that happened to a member of your family? Your mum or dad. Your brother or sister. Your son or daughter, or your friend. What does God have to say about our pain? Does the Bible give us any clues on how to deal with such situations or other situations which are perhaps not quite so drastic but in which we still experience hurt?

The Bible is made up of many smaller books. One of those books is called 2 Corinthians and it has this to say:

“All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. He always comes alongside us to comfort us in every suffering so that we can come alongside those who are in any painful trial. We can bring them this same comfort that God has poured out upon us.”

-- 2 Corinthians 1:1-4 (TPT)

I’m not going to go into the subject today of why God allows suffering because that’s a huge topic in itself. But these verses and many others show that God cares when we suffer and he wants to comfort us and he wants us to comfort other people who suffer.

Now hopefully most of us won’t have to deal with a situation like the one Mick, Lyn and their daughter Joanne had to deal with but we have all been hurt by other people and probably will be hurt in the future. Some of our hurts are relatively minor (such as a friend forgetting our birthday) and some hurts are much bigger and can have a devastating effect on us. So apart from comforting us, does God have anything else to say about this matter? How can we overcome situations such as this in our lives?

Well, today we are looking at the book of Mark chapter 11 verses 25-26 and in these verses, Jesus has something to say about overcoming these situations but I think the answer can be a bit shocking. Let’s read today’s verses.

“Jesus said, “When you are praying if you are angry with someone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven will also forgive your sins. But if you don’t forgive other people, then your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins.””

-- Mark 11:25-26 (NCV)

When someone does something to hurt us we can often feel angry as these verses recognise. Jack talked about anger a few weeks ago in the Livestream and we saw then that anger is sometimes the appropriate response to things that happen. But we’re not to stay angry. These are quite hard-hitting verses and can lead to lots of questions. Is Jesus really saying God won’t forgive us if we don’t forgive other people?

Does he really expect people like Mick and Lyn to be able to forgive the people who murdered their son? Isn’t God meant to be all-loving and forgiving? If so, how can he not forgive us? Why should we forgive people who have hurt us? Why do we need God’s forgiveness? Does forgiving mean we then have to be friends with the people who have hurt us? How can we forgive?

These are some of the questions we’re going to look at today and in the Between Sundays videos later this week.

To give you some background, I’ve lived in Liverpool for a long time now but I didn’t grow up here. I grew up in the South East of England and then moved to the South West of England when I was 18 to study and then to work. Although I had always believed in God I properly committed my life to Him when I was about 15. Over the next 9 years on the outside everything probably looked ok, but on the inside, my mind was a mess and my emotions were all over the place. I was stuck in a negative cycle. I would try to get close to God and as I did my mind would go crazy with negative thoughts and anxiety. So I would back off from God and feel a bit better. Then I would repeat this whole process again.

**I felt dark on the inside. **

It was while I was living in Cornwall that I decided I had had enough of living like that. I told God that I would give Him one last chance and if He didn’t make this faith thing work for me then I would walk away from Him for good. So, I ended up moving to Liverpool to do a gap year with the church here.

It was one of the worst years of my life. It felt like all the things I had my security in were pulled from under me.

It was also one of the best years of my life. It felt like God had taken my challenge very seriously and He began to teach me His ways. As I started to understand spiritual things more and put them into practice, things began to change over the months.

During this time, one of the things I really began to understand was in the area of forgiveness. I had grown up in church and had heard about forgiveness for years but really it was all head knowledge that deep down I hadn’t really grasped and I didn’t have a clue how to do it. One of the leaders of my gap year challenged me that I needed to forgive and that made me angry and revealed how I really felt about the subject. I thought, why was I the one who had to do something? I was the one who had been hurt. And if I forgave, I could no longer blame people for the way I was. I would have to take responsibility for how I was. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted someone to blame and be angry at.

As I finally submitted to God’s ways and forgave people and released them from what I felt they owed me I found so much freedom even though it took me weeks to be able to do this initially. Before it was as if an invisible thread kept pulling me back to the past when I tried to move forward with my life. After I forgave it was like that thread was cut and I was free.

So I’m going to share some of the things I learnt during this time and as always I have a book recommendation for you. It’s Forgive, Release and Be Free by Joff Day. This book goes into much more depth on the subject but I’ll share some of its insights with you. It’s based on another passage from the bible that expands on this subject. I’ll read it for you and comment as we go along.

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?””

-- Matthew 18:21

The rabbi’s had suggested that three times was a reasonable number to forgive someone so I think Peter thought he was being generous by suggesting seven but let’s see how many times Jesus said…

“Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.””

-- Matthew 18:22

I’ll do the maths for you on that. That’s 490 times. That’s a few more than seven though I don’t think Jesus meant that we should stop forgiving when we reach 490. He’s using a big number to signify there’s no limit. We should forgive people each time they hurt us.

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.”

-- Matthew 18:23-25

This man basically owed a debt that he was never going to be able to pay back. How would you feel if you owed so much that you were about to lose everything: your home, your business, your job, your possessions. Maybe you are in that situation. Many people who get into serious debt do end up losing their family because the stress of the situation leads to a breakdown of relationships. What would you do?

“At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’”

-- Matthew 18:26

He’s desperately trying to negotiate a deal. Trying to gain time so he can find a solution. How do you think the king responded to this? Would he be willing to negotiate? Would he lower the debt, or would he insist that the servant had to pay everything? Let’s see.

“The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.”

-- Matthew 18:27-30

Wow. Does anyone wish they had a bank manager like that? How do you think he felt after that? He’d been about to lose everything but it all turned around because the master had pity on him. Notice the king didn’t get say ‘I forgive you for owing me the money’. That wouldn't have been much use to him. He not only forgave him for owing the money, but he also cancelled his debt. If he hadn’t cancelled the debt he could have come to the man at any time and said, ‘pay what you owe me.’ This is a key part of forgiveness.

So the servant has been forgiven and released from a huge debt he could never have repaid. How would he feel about the king now? How does he react? Does he go out and celebrate?

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.”

-- Matthew 18:28-30

A hundred silver coins are nothing compared to what the first servant had owed the king. How do you feel about this guy now? I feel a bit gutted. How can he treat someone like this when someone else has been so good to him? What is going on? The book I mentioned suggests that the first servant didn’t really accept the king's offer of release from his debt. He just saw it as more time to work out how to pay it off.

“When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

-- Matthew 18:21-35

The bible talks about how all of us have missed God’s perfect standard of love. The bible calls this sin, and how that is like a great debt that we owe God just as the servant owed the master a huge debt. Some of us know that actually, we’re not great people. Others may think, I’m not that bad. I’m actually quite a good person. But that all depends on the standard you use to judge yourself.

If you compare yourself with a criminal you will come out looking great. If you use God’s standard, however, you’re not going to do very well.

Sin is a huge barrier between us and God. The bible says that the wages of sin are death. Death means to be cut off from God who is the source life. I think we’ve all felt that barrier between us and someone else when either they’ve done something to hurt us or when we’ve done something to hurt them. The relationship is broken or at least damaged.

Now, the bible says that God is just. And as God he is more just the most just person on earth, He can’t just let us off because to do that he would have to compromise on His justice. But He’s also a God of love. The bible doesn’t just describe God as loving, it says He IS love. How can God love us and still be just? He does that by paying the debt of our sin Himself just as the master in the story takes the servant’s debt on Himself.

How does he pay our debt? As Christians, we believe that God Himself came to earth in human form as Jesus Christ, and died on a cross to pay our debt so that God can be both just and loving at the same time. He removes the barrier so that we can have a restored relationship not just so that we can live a good life. This is fantastic news.

Does that mean we can get our sins forgiven and then live how we want? Just as it would be foolish and disrespectful for the servant in the story to be forgiven then go and purposefully rack up more debt, it would be foolish and disrespectful for us to do the same with God.

But we have to receive this gift of forgiveness. If we think God is just giving us more time to get more points and pay off the debt ourselves, we will tend to do good things to try to get in God’s good books instead of doing good things out of love for God and our of gratitude to Him. And we’ll expect other people to do things to get into our good books too.

Just as the master in the story expected the servant to then let other people off the debts they owed him, so does God expect us to forgive others as He has forgiven us.

Do you remember the couple I mentioned at the beginning, Mick and Lynn? How did they choose to deal with their situation? If you notice, they made a choice to forgive even though no-one had said sorry and they pursued justice. Also, they were able to make the decision to forgive very quickly but I’ve taken much longer to be able to forgive much smaller issues. Lynn actually went onto visiting in prisons, talking to the prisoners about the impact of crime on families and communities and sharing God’s love with them.

So, we’ve seen a little bit about what biblical forgiveness is. In the Between Sunday session I’m going to look at what forgiveness is not, covering:

1. Forgiveness is not throwing away wisdom.

2. Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation.

3. Forgiveness is not approving of, or diminishing, what someone has done.

4. Forgiveness is not a denial of wrongdoing.

5. Forgiveness is not enabling wrongdoing.

6. Forgiveness is not doing away with justice.

7. Forgiveness is not waiting for an apology.

8. Forgiveness is not forgetting.

9. Forgiveness is not waiting until you feel like forgiving.

I’ll also cover the practicalities of how to actually forgive? Do join me for that.

For now, I’m going to leave you with more words from Jesus:

“When you continue to embrace all that I teach, you prove that you are my true followers. For if you embrace the truth, it will release more freedom into your lives.”

-- John 8:31