Choosing Forgiveness | Luke 23:32-34

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All right good morning everyone. It's good to see you all this morning. Good morning if you're tuning in online. Thank you for joining us there as well. And yeah, if you're new or newish, my name's Aaron Borland. I'm one of the pastors here. And some of those responsibilities that I hold are a lot of the times I'm up here leading the music.

But I also re recently took am responsible for the connections formation department and they gave me a microphone. So I'm gonna talk about that for a minute. If that's not okay with you, I don't know how I'd know, so I'm gonna do it anyway. So the connection formation department is a department that has been tasked with helping new people connect into the life and the vibrancy that is South Fellowship Church.

And then formation is just helping adults learn how to live in the way of Jesus for the heart of Jesus. So just disciple all adults at South. Just a minor thing like that. One of the things that you may have heard about already is our class that's coming up, emotionally healthy spirituality.

And this is a key thing. I, you heard about it maybe last week. If you haven't heard about it yet, I would highly encourage you to go there. It's a great class. The content's amazing. It has this unique ability to unlock people's spiritual journeys. If you've been walking with Jesus for years and years, this content sometimes unlocks new depth and new growth.

So it's a great class. I highly recommend it. It's also, if you're new, meant to help you connect and get to know people. And find people who might be your people to journey with in faith. So good stuff. But I want you to know a couple things about this class. One, we're gonna keep on offering this in, potentially spring, fall, spring, fall, this sort of thing.

So this isn't your only chance to get to this class. And maybe just, maybe one of the ways that you can support South as a church family is to actually invest your Wednesday night. For the kids program that will be taking place at the same time slot. If you're noticing something, there's something going on south midweek, and you're right, we're gonna be offering this class designed to help people connect and grow deeper.

And we're doing dec discipleship with kids and then the students are meeting, it's like there's a south midweek thing happening and my team and south staff really believe that this is a really. Mission critical sort of time slot to help our whole church family go deeper. Now, if you decide to serve in the discipleship program for our kids, and it's this catechism program you're actually paying dividends to advance this, the health of this church twice.

Once by investing in the kids and helping them learn how to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. And then second, you're helping their parents have time and margin to do some deep soul work themselves. So it's a double win. And so I don't know where you're at. I hope that eventually over the next few years, everyone gets a chance to take this class.

But maybe you just have a conviction in your heart. I would love to invest in the health and the vibrancy that is this church by serving kids. I'm also talking about this and rambling on and on because I don't want to talk about this. I don't like this topic. I don't like anything about it. I don't like being angry and I don't like when people are angry at me.

I don't like forgiving people and I don't like when someone has to forgive me. 'cause that usually means I've been as stupid and I've made a mistake. And so it's a heavy topic to deal with and for most of us, it comes really close to home. And here's why. Where there is anger. There are wounds and when forgiveness is needed, scars remain.

This topic comes close to every human heart. Forgiveness and anger is something that regardless of whether you want to hear this topic or whether you like are interested, but also a little bit, feeling some tension around it. That makes a lot of sense because there's wounds involved, there's scars involved, but here's the reality, we just have to deal with it.

Every single human being has to deal with anger and forgiveness, because let's be honest, humans are the worst. Humans are the worst sometimes, right? Sometimes we just put our foot in our mouth and we hurt someone without even trying. And then there's other times where human beings inflict wounds upon other humans that are deeply painful.

So this topic is really important and I think we all kind of sense that. And yet it's very, it's a tender place. Is this, the series touches all of our scars. It touches all of our scars. I just wanna pray briefly before we dive in. F father, I pray that you would help me to be clear and help me to articulate your heart for us and for those who've wound, those who've wounded us,

give us sensitive hearts to your spirit's leading. Amen. So Alex kicked off this series. Anger and forgiveness last week. If you weren't here last week, please go back and watch that message. 'cause I think it's so important and I think it'll surprise you because he deals with this low hanging fruit of forgiveness.

And let me give you a little bit of a summary of what some of the things he, he taught out of this imprecatory prayer in the Book of Psalms. That means som a psalm or a prayer of vengeance. And he said maybe just maybe. The best you can offer to a person who's offended you is instead of taking it out on them, you say, God, I would like you to take it out on them.

That's maybe all you can offer them. That's all you can muster is 'cause you have a couple different options. Alex talked about this last week. You have a couple options. You can either stuff your anger and humans don't hold, that kind of thing well. I know this is my primary method. You stuff your anger and then no.

Then you leak it out in other forms of grumpiness and grou with everyone else around you. So you might be angry at one person. You stuff your anger, and then everyone else in your life gets to you just leak out negative emotion upon them. Bad idea, not helpful. The other option is you can take it out on them.

You can ruminate and find ways to get back at the person who hurt you. Also not recommended in the way of Jesus, right? But the third option that Alex gave us last week is you can say, God, I can't stomach this person anymore. And so rather than me taking out, I'm gonna give vengeance to you. I'm gonna ask you to take him out, and then you trust him to do what's right.

And that's the low hanging fruit. And so as Alex was preaching last week, I was just blown away because he and I talk about these series, so I knew the flow of the series, but as he was preaching, I was realizing the genius. Of the flow of these three weeks that we're gonna be talking about this topic because it starts with this sort of low hanging fruit of relinquishing the scepter of justice to God and trusting it in his hands.

And then today we're gonna be talking about how do we go to the next phase where we might just maybe actually begin to long to forgive them from a heart of forgiveness. And then next week I would encourage you to come back to learn what does it take to actually reconcile. To actually reconcile.

So when the series started and we were prepping for it Theresa and a few other of us on staff joked that Alex and I should stage a big fight and then have to forgive each other as like an illustration. And because I'm not very good at acting, I'm instead, I'm gonna just offend him now.

So this is how he summed up his message When anger can surface. And be trusted to God, our joy can start. So let me give you a little context of why this slide is interesting. One, that's a great point, but two, I noticed that, oh, the last few times I've preached, I've put a picture of the person I quote up, and that's a, you guys are fans of that.

I heard from so many people, your fans of that. So I thought, how could I, what picture should I put up of Alex? Our wonderful lead pastor who loves the Lions. I thought we should remind everyone how huge of a Broncos fan Alex is. So here's the fun experiment. While Alex is away on vacation, I'm gonna wound him deeply by presenting him in a Bronco's jersey looking more holy than I've ever seen him look, by the way, I don't think I've ever seen him look this holy.

Quote him and then see if he can forgive me for that before next week when he has to preach on reconciliation. Fun experiment. All right. I'm glad you're on board, but I should have put up a normal slide because we have to take his points seriously too. When anger can surface and be trusted to God, our journey can start.

So this is the first step. Anger rises up and you say, I trust this anger. Into your hands to do what is right. And so that's heavy though. It's deeply heavy. This quote for forgiving is hard. It takes time and it involves pain. It's not just simple declarations of automatic reflexive action, false forgiveness.

This is the risk we're gonna run today. Is you're gonna hear me say you should forgive because that's what Christians do. That's not what I'm saying. False forgiveness is going through the motions without anything changing inside it's lip service and it actually interferes with authentic resolution and as stranges people from their real feelings.

So how do we take the next step in a journey towards actual forgiveness without doing this false forgiveness where you're like yeah, I forgive you. You're trying to just sweep it under the rug. I what I Can I just maybe say that kind of forgiveness is the first kind I recog I told you about where you just sweep it under the rug and you bottle it up.

Archbishop Desmond two two said it. This word forgiveness is not cheap. It's not fe facile. I don't know how to say that word, but that word basically means it's not light. It's not something you take on lightly. It is costly. Reconciliation is not an easy option. It costs God the death of his son. So forgiveness, we're gonna approach the subject.

We're gonna try our best to lean in and learn from this. But it's not light. I wish it was.

And so coming out of Alex's message last week, when we give justice to God and going into the topic today, first I want you to hear me say one thing. The only way we can approach this subject wisely is to recognize this fact about who God is. God's takes justice so seriously. Because we can't trust him to take the scepter of justice unless we believe he's actually gonna do something that makes things right.

We preached several messages on the justice of God over the last year. So if you are interested in that, I can, I talked a little bit about my experience growing up in Rwanda and some things like that. So if you have some interest in that, find me afterwards. I can show you where. Some reading you can do, but trust me, God takes justice deadly seriously so we can trust the scepter of justice to him and we can trust that as we forgive.

Justice is still done. Let me show you one text that reminds us of how seriously he takes it. Woe to those who make unjust laws to those who issue oppressive decrees to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice From oppress the oppressed of my people, making widows in their prey robbing the fatherless.

Like I could have given you text after text the entire morning. Could have been reading after reading of God's taking justice deadly. Seriously. And so the question we have for our today, for today is how do we move beyond the hurt to a place of real forgiveness? And I think the first thing we learn in this passage and in this context and what Jesus does here, I'm gonna read it briefly for you again.

Just this one section, verse 34. Jesus said on the cross, father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. How do we get to a place where we can say like that, what Jesus says? The first thing I think we can learn is forgiveness is possible because our wounds are real, but they don't, they tell our story.

They don't always tell the whole story. Forgiveness is possible because it's our wounds are real. But they only tell our story. They don't tell the whole story. So let me introduce you to this concept of frame of reference. Frame of reference is used in all sorts of different fields, but in psychology it's the ability to look at a situation or a harm that's been done and then take yourself out of the moment and then look at the same situation from someone else's perspective, and then maybe from another person's perspective.

Part of what Jesus does on the cross here is he removes some of the harm that's being done to him on the cross, and he changes the frame of reference and he starts to see the person behind the wounding that he's receiving. Stephen Covey says it this way. We see the world not as it is.

This is not our fault by the way we see the world, not as it is, but as we are or as we are conditioned to see it. So when we are wounded, our experience is absolutely real and the wounds are absolutely real, but they're just our experience. Are you tracking with me? Let me just give you a visual example.

If I throw this picture up, what do you, what's your first reaction?

For some of us in the room, this actually happened to me this last week. I was playing disc golf and this dog, I'm like, about to throw my disc, and this dog just runs up and bumps against my leg. What's your reaction to this moment? For some of us in the room, the reaction is terror.

Oh my goodness, an unleashed dog is running towards me. For others of us. By the way, this happened this morning. Theresa saw this slide in preparation, like she proofread my slides and said, oh, a dog. So that's some other people's response. Why is that? It's all about frame of reference for some of us, we didn't grow up with dogs.

Dogs can be scary for all of us. Maybe you've had a really bad experience with a dog. A dog attacked you, whatever it may be, and so your body, even in your subconscious, will react to an image like this because of your frame of reference. In other words, you see the world not as it is. Because we don't know yet.

Is this a good dog or a bad dog? Look at its face. It looks happy, but it also looks dangerous. Is that a smile or is that like intent to attack? Like so what does truth, where is truth in this image? It depends on your frame of reference, right? Should this scare us or shouldn't it?

I don't know. The only way I would know that is to understand deeply your frame of reference. I think that this is what the gospel writer of Luke, which is where we're at, this is what he continually does. Luke's theology of sin and brokenness in the world is such that he establishes a different sort of frame of reference and the reference that he wants us to remember is that sin, generally speaking, actually maybe always.

It doesn't just stem from the person's intention, it stems from deeper roots inside of brokenness. So Luke consistently talks about sin, but then in close context he talks about ignorance. That when someone's sins, they commit an act of sin and an act of ignorance and foolishness, whether they know it or not.

So let me show you a few examples. Luke 1941, he says, as he approached Jerusalem, Jesus is approaching Jerusalem, and he saw the city, he wept over it and he said, if you even, you had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is his hidden from your eyes. Jesus looks over this city of Jerusalem.

He's approaching Jerusalem. He knows he's moving towards the cross and towards death, and he looks out of this and he weeps because he says, you don't even know. You don't even know that the author of Peace and Life is walking into the city. You have no idea. Frame of reference. Another one. This is the same author Luke wrote, acts as well again.

Now, fellow Israelites. I know that you acted in ignorance as did your leaders, so Luke really wants to make sure that, and I could give you a couple more examples, but. This is the main point is that Luke wants us to know that sin and brokenness is always also an act of ignorance and foolishness.

So I just need to say this pastorally, acknowledging ignorance doesn't excuse evil. It shows it's bigger than the one who caused it. So this is why this is so important. To forgive someone to say they didn't know what they were doing does not excuse their evil. In fact, it makes their evil bigger and here's why.

They have no idea what they were doing. Jesus says on the cross, I don't even have an idea what they're doing. If you were wounded by someone. The wounds that they inflicted upon you will cause your frame of reference to shift, and every single time you see a dog in the future, you're terrified.

Or every time you encounter another person in the future that looks similar to the person who harmed you, like you don't even know that you're doing that. There is ramifications for every wound that is bigger. Broader than the person who caused the wound and to the person who's wounded. So acknowledging ignorance doesn't lessen the evil at all.

In fact, it says there's variables at play here that I don't even have an idea about. And so it actually acknowledges what evil actually is, which is this sort of virus that extends way beyond the act in and of itself. So please know 'cause I'm gonna recommend that we learn how to forgive. But you need to know you're, when you forgive someone, you are not lessening their evil in any way, shape, or form.

In fact, you're acknowledging for what it actually is a devastating act that has ripple effects that will shape generations. So our wounds are real, but they tell our story, not the whole story. So imagine with me the person who hurt you. What happened to them that day or when they were six? When they were three, that led to the brokenness that caused your pain.

Now we're talking and you don't know, and I don't know, but that's the start. The next thing we can learn from this past is that Jesus knows and feels the wounds you. Feel Jesus knows what it feels like to be deeply damaged. If you don't believe me, let me just walk you through some of the passages just in the Book of Luke.

We're just gonna stay inside of Luke here. Let me look. Look at this. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, Judas, one of his own closest followers betrays him. His friend stabs him in the back. And his friend knows that this is gonna lead to his friend's death. Judas gives Jesus over to the chief priests, Luke 22.

He's then betrayed again by a kiss from Judas. Judas doesn't just tell the people, tell the religious leaders who Jesus is. He comes up and he kisses 'em. It's like this extra painful, intimate act of injustice. Jesus felt this Peter, out of all the disciples, Peter denies him three times, and then Jesus locks eyes with him.

These are his closest friends. They're the ones who understand his heart more than anyone else. They're supposed to be in his corner. False accusations. Luke 23, 1 through two false charges are brought before Pilate. We have found this man subverting our nation. They make all these false accusations.

Luke 23, 5 and 10 a crown. The crowd manipulates and falsifies witnesses. They bring false witnesses for him. Injustice, Pilate confesses, no guilt. So by the way, this is the irony of all of this story, is that every single authority figure in the story of the crucifixion in the gospel of Luke declares Jesus not guilty, and he ends up on the cross anyway.

What is, what's going on here? They declare him not guilty. Jesus is condemned. He's mocked and insulted. Luke 2263 through 65 guards mock him. They blindfold him and demanded prophesy. Who hit you that time? Luke 2311. Herod and his soldiers ridicule him. They mocked him. Dressed him in elegant robes.

Luke 23, 35 through 39 mocked by the leaders and he and soldiers. He saved others. Let 'em save himself. Aren't you the Messiah? Not to mention the excruciating pain at the hands of the Roman guards, and then his own nation was the one who handed him over to this situation. He was there to redeem the people of Israel and to redeem humanity and his nation throws him to the wolves.

Jesus knows and feels the wounds you feel, and yet, forgiveness is possible because Jesus sees beyond his wound and into theirs. Unbelievable vision. That Jesus can see beyond all of this betrayal, all of this wounding, and see past his own pain in the moment and see the wounds of those who wound him.

This is what he does on the cross. This is what he does on the cross when he says this amazing, famous prayer, Jesus said, father, now remember all that I just shared with you. Father, forgive them for all of that. Father forgive them for all of that, for they do not know what they are doing, and they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

So forgiveness is possible because Jesus sees beyond his wounds and into theirs. One more thing for us this morning. Forgiveness is possible. It doesn't excuse the wound, it sees the wounder. This is. We're we come in, this is the step where Jesus showed us, the way He showed us what was possible. If we're able to change our frame of reference to the bigger story of those who wound us, it's possible when we or have this ability to eventually get to the place where we don't excuse the wound, but instead we see the wounder.

So this is the journey of forgiveness. The journey is this. It starts on centering in our pain. This is what Alex talked about last week. It centers in our pain and we say, God, take 'em out. Let me give you some 15 creative ideas that you could do to them. But you gave the scepter of justice to him.

It centers in your pain. And then seeing through Jesus' eyes, it's seeing the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world and how God is trying to heal the world. And then eventually you can join Jesus in mercy. I forgot to put this slide in here for you, but there's, if you if you're there and you're thinking, yeah, Jesus can do that, 'cause he's God, not a few months later, Steven, the first martyr of the church, praised almost an identical prayer as he's getting stoned to death.

He says, father, forgive him.

But the only way you get to that place is when you're able to see from a different frame of reference, see the bigger story of what's going on. And so forgiveness is when we can say, with Jesus, father, forgive them for they do not know what they're doing. This is what forgiveness is. It's when we acknowledge the ignorance and the brokenness of the one who wounds us.

It doesn't lessen what they've done. It just simply acknowledges that it's bigger than even them. May I suggest. That forgiveness is this. Forgiveness is when we can say with Jesus, I forgive them because they don't have a clue. They don't know what they have done. So when I say that I need to acknowledge a couple things real quick before we close.

What if they did know what if they weren't confused or blind or weak, but they were just being cruel? And I stand by what I said. No, they don't. Even if they were trying to harm you, even if they stayed up late at night for months and months and ruminated and found ways to harm you in the most creative ways possible, they have no way of knowing the pain that they caused.

They have no way they can't know. Because only you could feel that pain. Only you have your frame of reference. And second, they can't possibly know the ripple effect of brokenness that will sweep through all of humanity for generations. Because of that wound I, they can't possibly know. So I stand by the statement they have no idea that the Roman guards think they're murdering and killing another enemy of the state.

The Jewish religious leaders, they think they're protecting God's reputation by murdering Jesus, and they're completely wrong. They have no idea that they're murdering the author of life and the creator of their own salvation. They can't know. They never will, but God does.

So this theologian. Mela vol said it this way. The cross is not forgiveness, pure and simple, but God's setting a right, the world of injustice and deception. Why is this important? Okay, I need to move towards a close for you 'cause we're gonna take communion, which I think is a beautiful picture of what we're gonna be doing today and asking ourselves to forgive and trying to find it in us to actually forgive the cross is the only reason forgiveness is possible, not just for God to forgive us.

But for us to forgive others, I'll say it this way, apart from the cross, forgiveness may be unwise, even immoral. It might not be good for you to forgive if it hadn't been for the cross, but through the cross it's possible because justice and mercy meet the only reason forgiveness is possible is because justice will be served.

The person who harmed you, justice will be served. It might be served at the cross and the cross will deal with it, and we could talk about atonement and how that works with them, even though they might end up in heaven, but the cross deals with their sin. So it's safe now to forgive. Justice will be served.

If you forgive the one who harmed you, it will be served. Without that, I don't recommend forgiveness. 'cause they might do it again and justice will not be done. And this is when you start to talk about the atrocities in the world like Rwanda or apartheid in South Africa, or other major atrocities or the Holocaust justice, like you can't make reparations for the face.

These kinds of things. You just can't do it. In 2012, I'm reading from. One of my favorite authors, Fleming Rutledge, on the subject of justice. In 2012, Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia and Warlord, was sentenced by international tribunal to 50 years in PRI Prison, the first conviction of a head of states since the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty, aiding and abetting, as well as planning some of the most heinous, brutal crimes recorded in human history.

And there was a sentence that justice had been served or a sense in which justice had been served. However, the chief prosecutor said in a press conference, the sentence today does not replace amputated limbs. It does not bring back those who are murdered. It does not heal the wounds of those who were raped or forced to become sexual slaves.

Human systems of ju justice are crucial. Are. Crucial to the functioning of a society, but they can only do so much human justice cannot make right what was wrong. Therefore, we need to stretch our definition of justice. Only God can actually repair a wound and he will one day. So when we gather to the table, I'm gonna invite the band up and invite the communion servants.

I wanna remind us this, that communion is a table, both of justice and of mercy. It's the ability that we have to say God's gonna do right? So I can relinquish the cept of justice and I can actually see the wounded person and say, I don't know what led to in, in their story led them to harm the way they did.

But forgive them for they know not what they do. Forgiveness is when we can say with Jesus, I forgive them because they have no idea what they've done. But God does. God does. He sees it all, and he's the only one with the wisdom and the power and the mercy and the justice who could ever weigh the scales properly.

So we can forgive right down to the core of who we are and we can let go. This is hard stuff. If you need a counselor to help you through this process, we can recommend a counselor to you. Yeah, this is heavy work. It's not light. It's such heavy work that Jesus had to die for it. And so we're going to enter into a time of communion.

And when you take communion today, I just want you to remember that the body and the blood of Jesus is this beautiful invitation. To remember that justice has been done and that we can let go of the wounds that have been inflicted. You can stand and come and take communion when you're ready.

There's also gonna be prayer team around, and if you just need to pray, you don't need to share with them why you need prayer. You don't need to necessarily name names, but if you're like, I just need to deal with this in some way, shape, or form, I'd encourage you to take advantage of that.