The Forgiveness Revelation

Introduction

Mentioned started Friday night, continued through yesterday, and they had uh good Bible study. They had good discussions around the theme of identity, and as we had announced going into the weekend, there were some tough subjects and tough things to discuss. And uh I commend all of our young people who participated throughout the weekend. I commend them for bringing guests, and uh uh hopefully it was all very beneficial. Of course, leading them in that study in those discussions were our speaker this morning, brother Dan Langford. Dan uh hails originally from Tennessee. He’s been preaching the gospel for about 10 years. Uh has worked at churches in Kentucky and Tennessee, and he’s currently working in uh Colorado Springs, Colorado. He’s the father of uh three young boys, and uh he was really glad to be here yesterday because he got up and found out that it snowed back at home yesterday morning.

So as he stepped out in the 80-degree sunshine, he was very happy to be here. His passion is working with teens, helping them to study and explore the Bible and to take it very seriously, and to take their Christian walks and their faith seriously, and even share it with others. And so, as I said, we’ve had uh good discussions. He’s a very capable preacher of the gospel, he’s exceptionally good with young people, and we’re pleased to have him here today. So I welcome Brother Dan Langford. Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Uh, it’s good to meet so many of you. I’ve worshipped here one time, like everybody. I’ve been here on a Disney trip, and uh worshiped in this congregation once upon a time then.

And so it’s been really nice to spend a few a few more days with you and to get to know many of you this morning as well. So thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to speak to you today. You know, when you think about it, there have only been a handful of uh innovations and and inventions that have truly changed the world. I know that everybody that goes on Shark Tank says that their invention is going to change the world, but the reality is if you invent up an if you invent a new way to put up Christmas lights, it’s just a new way to put up Christmas lights. Okay, so that’s kind of Shark Tank, okay. But when you think about inventions that have truly changed the world, there are a handful of those.

And I think you could easily make a case that one of the most important of those is the ability to capture, generate, manipulate, and apply the power of electricity. I started trying to make a list of different ways that we are used to electricity being at work around us that say a generation 200 years ago would not have even been able to conceive. And the list got absurd in no time because it is literally everywhere around us. Most of us are wearing something that is powered by electricity at the moment. Okay. It’s just everywhere. It has changed the entire scope of how humanity works in every quadrant of the globe. However, if you watch very many period movies, and if you kind of think back a little bit, and even I’ve learned if you go into the historical archives of various newspapers, into the comic strips, into the cartoons from 100 years ago, 125 years ago, 150 years ago, you will find plenty of references to the very vocal naysayers and critics that said this whole electricity thing is never gonna take off.

It’s never gonna become anything substantial. And especially we don’t want it to be because, quite frankly, it’s dangerous or it’s problematic in some way. I know I’m gonna lose my man card by making this reference, but in Downton Abbey, there, okay. I remember one particular episode of Downton Abbey where they had just had electric lights installed in the main house, and the Dowager Countess was sitting at dinner just complaining about the intrusiveness of electric lights and that brightness at all hours into the evening, and how it was just such a terrible intrusion on their normal lives. But it changed the world. And so you kind of wonder why is it that sometimes when something is so wonderful and so helpful, when it enters the world, why is it that some people are so vocal in being naysayers about it and being skeptics of it?

You know, I think the same thing happened when Jesus introduced in a new kind of way God’s particular brand of forgiveness into the world. Because it is literally a world-shaping idea. There were two nations, well, there were really all the nations, but there was one nation that was separated from all the other nations of the entire world for literally thousands of years. And the concept of forgiveness has the power to bring those nations together. It has the power to heal broken marriages, it has the power to reconcile siblings that are at odds with each other. It has the power to reshape all human relationships if we’ll let it happen. But I know and you know that when Jesus first introduced God’s brand of forgiveness in a new way into the world, that there were so many naysayers and skeptics and critics.

But I want to remind us this morning why this is such an important and truly powerful concept. So I’d like you to have a Bible today, and I’d like you to open it to Mark chapter two, and that’s where we’re going to spend a good amount of our time this morning. Because I just want to make sure that we understand how forgiveness really works, what its blessings and benefits really are, what good it can really bring into this world as God actually teaches it. And I want to do most of that, not all of it, but most of that work from Mark chapter two. And so I’d like to begin with a public reading of Scripture from Mark chapter two, verses one through twelve.

And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven. And some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, how does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming. How can anyone forgive sins but God alone? And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic? Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise up, take up your bed and walk. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.

1. Forgiveness Justifies the Sinner, Not the Sin

And 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. I love that passage. Now, from that as our background, I want to show you four things, five four or five things. I can’t remember to tell you the truth. Four or five things that authentic forgiveness does. And the first one is to my mind, the most important one today. So if you’re a note taker, you can divide up your page, but make sure you leave plenty of room right here, because this is the most important part of what we’re going to talk about today. Forgiveness, brothers and sisters, justifies. Forgiveness justifies. Do I need to do a reset down here for this to work on the screen?

Okay, let me see what I can do. We’ll see if we can make that happen. I really want you to have these notes. They’re helpful, I think. All right, there we go. Forgiveness justifies, okay? And I think we see that easily enough. I think we understand that. Forgiveness as God gives it, as Jesus gave it to this paralytic man, is justification. It is taking someone who was wrong and making them right. But we need to see very clearly in this that what forgiveness does is it justifies the sinner, not the sin. And y’all, there’s a big difference between those two. All of us who are honest with ourselves have to admit that sometimes there have been times when I came up with some justification for my sin.

When I figured out some way to say, Well, I know that what I did was wrong, but I want you to believe that it was right, and here are the reasons. We’ve all tried to justify sin in some way rather than actually repent of it. But that’s not at all what forgiveness is meant to do. And you can see that by what Jesus says and what Jesus doesn’t say here in Mark chapter 2. Jesus doesn’t say to this paralytic man, He’s, you know, wow, it’s amazing the faith of your friends that they lowered you here into this space. But you know what? I’m realizing now your sins weren’t that big a deal. It was no big deal what you did in the past. Jesus doesn’t say that, brothers and sisters.

He says, your sins are forgiven. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And this man is no exception to that. And Jesus knows his past, and he knows what you did was wrong. And I am in no way going to change that. I’m not going to change whether that was right or wrong by what I say to you right now. But what I’m telling you is that you are forgiven. And that was true of the paralyzed man, and it is true of us as well. The sins of the past and the sins of the present, they are sinful, and they always will be. Jesus is not going to change the nature of sin. He doesn’t change the wrongness of it. But he can change the consequences of it, brothers and sisters.

And that’s the gift of the gospel. Jesus gives release from that man’s sin’s current power. Not from their wrongness, but from their power over him. And I think it’s really important that we as God’s people understand that grace, grace is never an excuse for sin. Sin is always sin, and forgiveness doesn’t change the nature of a sinful action, of sinful words, or of sinful thoughts. But when we say grace gives us an excuse, why it’s now okay. That’s called cheap grace. Okay? That’s the kind of thing where you look at it and you go, well, that sin didn’t really cost anything after all. There’s no price to be paid. There’s nothing that went wrong there. It was cheap, and so the forgiveness of it is cheap.

Let me ask you something, though. You’re a good Bible students, you know this. Most of you have been around the Bible for a good long time. Is sin cheap? And is the cost of forgiveness cheap? It came at the cost of your Lord’s life, his body and blood, as our brothers so excellently pointed out to us earlier. Cheap grace, brothers and sisters, is an excuse, and it’s pitiful as an excuse. But God’s grace gives forgiveness. It doesn’t change the nature of the sin. It still costs just as much, but God paid the price. And that’s the good news of forgiveness for us. Cheap grace is an excuse, but God offers legitimate, thoroughgoing, grace-filled forgiveness. And that’s what we really want. Now, this is important for us to understand, especially, first of all, as we think about our own standing before God.

That God has not excused our past, any of us. He has not said, well, you turns out you were a good person after all. No, you weren’t. But the past can be forgiven. And those are different. Because the one will let you stand before God thinking yourself to be clean and righteous and okay to be there. The other will let you stand before God with God proclaiming, you are allowed to be in my presence. You are welcome to be with me. Now I know, I know that it’s a tendency among Christians who take our discipleship seriously. It’s a tendency among those of us who take good moral living seriously, to think that if we talk too much about God’s grace, it is going to give people an excuse, isn’t it?

And actually that was the case even in Bible times. In Romans chapter 6, as Paul’s been talking about grace through chapter 5, when he opens chapter 6, he says, so what am I saying then? Am I saying what you’re going to think I’m saying, which is that if we have the grace of God, we can just keep on sinning because grace will cover it up. What’s his answer to that? Romans chapter 6. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. Because that’s not how this works. And we need to see that as well. Grace, brothers and sisters, the forgiveness of God will justify the sinner, but it won’t justify any sin. And I hope you can see that doing that and doing it that way is infinitely more difficult than justifying sins and saying it was not a big deal.

2. Forgiveness Releases

And just by seeing that, I hope that it shows us what a gift it is to this paralyzed man in Mark chapter 2, when Jesus says to him, Your sins are forgiven. And I hope you can see what a gift it is for us as well. That is the uniquely better message of the true gospel. It is that forgiveness releases us. And that’s the second point that I want to make this morning. Forgiveness releases. And it releases people in two ways. One of the original language words for forgive in the New Testament is the same word that was used in Old Testament language to talk about releasing slaves, or releasing a debt, or releasing an animal, like sending it out into the wild or something like that.

It’s one of the same words that’s used to release in all those cases.

You remember reading about this in the Old Testament? Every 50 years in the land of Israel, they were supposed to hit a point where they were to release all the slaves, give freedom to every slave in the entire land. And if you purchased a piece of land from somebody’s ancestral farm that it belonged to their family, in that year, you released it. And it went back to its original owners. So that even if they had lost everything and gone completely bankrupt, they’d get their land back and God would restore them to a place among his people. But it’s the idea of release. And y’all, when I see Jesus say to this man, your sins are forgiven, it’s the release that this man needs. He is released from the power and from the captivity of his sin.

And not only that, he is released not only from his sin itself, but he is released from the power that sin brings into the world. How is it that a person comes to be paralyzed in the way that he is right here? You say, I don’t know, Dan. Maybe it was some sort of accident or maybe some sort of disease or some sort of defect or something like that. Yeah, but how does any of that stuff get to even be in God’s perfectly created world? Y’all, that stuff is only here because sin is in this world. Diseases and accidents and terrible things like that. That sort of thing is only in this world because sin is in this world. And Jesus comes to this man, and he not only says, your sins are forgiven, but just to show you that I have that power, I’m gonna release you from the effects of sin in general.

And you’re gonna stand up and take your bed and walk home. What an incredible display of the power of God when he releases and he shows us this idea of the year of Jubilee. That this man is released from his own sins, from their power, and from the power of sin in general. Now, what does that mean for us? How does that change how we think about forgiveness? How do we receive release when God says your sins are forgiven? There’s two ways that this happens for us. And this is the point in the sermon where I’m going to kind of start a transition here because we’re going to talk, we’re talking so far about how forgiveness from God is a blessing to us. But I’m going to show you that if we really understand that, then we have to necessarily make a transition to understanding that the way we forgive other people is a crucially important part of our walk with him.

And this is where we start to make that transition because when you think about the power that sin has to release, obviously, it releases the person who has sinned from the guilt of that sin. It releases that person. So in terms of us receiving forgiveness from God, we are released from the guilt that we have when we stand before God. And that’s a wonderful blessing. But can I say to you as well that in terms of us being the forgivers, the offended party who has to give forgiveness, that if we truly understand what kind of forgiveness God is asking of us, it will help us to release any grudges that we may be tempted to continue to carry. And this is one of those areas, again, this is where the sermon starts to make a transition.

3. Forgiveness Reconciles Rather Than Vindicates

But this is one of those areas where we struggle. And I say we, I mean humans. We struggle to do this, to understand this correctly. This is where we start to run into those vocal naysayers, those who say, that’s not gonna work. I don’t want that. That doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not a good thing to have in this world. God’s gonna show us that it is, but it’s gonna be a little tougher to see that. Because forgiveness means that the offender is released from all guilt, and the offended needs to be released from any grudges. And that kind of gets us to this next point, where when we talk about forgiving other people, and we talk about us being the forgiver, we start to see that forgiveness is meant to reconcile people.

Forgiveness changes the world, as I said in the beginning of this message, because forgiveness has the ability to reconcile rather than to vindicate. I like the stories in the Bible where you just find Jesus doing something nice. This is one of those stories, you know. You kind of you kind of look through the Bible and you’re like, why do all these miracles happen? And we know some of the reasons. I think I you you’ve probably heard uh some of the reasons explained as to why miracles are done, that it validates truth, that uh shows uh it shows an identity of a person, validates Jesus’ claims about who he is and so forth. But can I tell you one of the other main reasons that miracles are often done in the Bible?

It’s to be nice. Is that profound? Not so much, but it’s true. Why is it that God allowed his power to be used to make an axe head float in water? It’s because somebody borrowed it and broke it, and the prophet felt bad for that person having broken something he borrowed. So we did something kind for him and he got it back. You know? That’s the entire reason for that miracle. Why is it that Jesus says to this man, your sins are forgiven, and you can rise and take up your bed and walk and go home. What is his reason for that? Is it to shame the Pharisees and to show them their hypocrisy? Well, it actually does that in this story, but it’s not his reason, is it?

Because his reason is to show kindness. Now, in the process, what does he do? Yeah, he shames the Pharisees, you know, and he makes them look really bad. But his purpose is simply to be a blessing to someone who needed him. And y’all, when we think about being forgiving people, we need to make sure that that’s our motivation as well. For us, the purpose ought to be the same. It’s not that we would win the day. Our purpose is to win the person. And that’s why it’s a super important lesson for us to learn biblically that forgiveness forfeits the moral high ground. You know what I mean by that, don’t you? In a fight between two people, who’s always favored to win? Well, whoever’s got the high ground.

You know, there’s just an advantage of being able to kind of lean down and put extra pressure on your opponent in that way. Sometimes we use somebody’s sins and our unwillingness to forgive as a way to keep the high ground. Sometimes when somebody says, you know, there’s been a fight, there’s been some sin against the other party, and we figured we’ve resolved it, but then weeks later, months later, years later, we bring it up again. And we try to use that as a way to get the high ground to say, well, listen, you did this thing to me, so I’m clearly superior to you, so I win today, too. Can I just say to you, brothers and sisters, that’s wrong? That’s not forgiveness. Because if you forgive something like that, you don’t have it anymore to use as the moral high ground.

It’s not as though you still have it in your back pocket, but you choose not to use it. No, no, no, that’s not it. You don’t have it anymore. Because forgiveness, last point in the sermon, releases. If it’s truly forgiven, it won’t come up again. Because true forgiveness says, I don’t need the moral high ground. Because I don’t need to win this argument over you. I don’t need to win against you in any way. What I need to do is forgive you so that we can be one. Forgiveness is not interested in winning over somebody. Forgiveness is interested in winning somebody. And so Jesus said in Matthew chapter 18 and verse 15 If your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault between you and him alone.

And if he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Not if he listens to you, you have won the argument. That is so not the point. It sounds so petty to think that Jesus would talk like that. Because he’s not interested in arguments being won. He’s interested in people being reconciled. And that’s what we want too, brothers and sisters. If somebody sins against me, it is not my goal to best that person in a moral standoff. You sinned against me, so now I’m better than you, and that settles it. No. You sinned against me, and I will forgive you from my heart, so that we can be one again. Now let’s just kind of take stock of all three of those ideas real quickly there.

4. Forgiveness Is Active

That God, that forgiveness justifies, forgiveness releases, and forgiveness reconciles. Because if we can learn to do those things, to forgive like God forgives us, then we’re well on our way to keeping Jesus’ commandments. Because Jesus said in Colossians chapter, or the apostle Paul rather said about Jesus in Colossians 3 verse 13. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive others. So forgiveness justifies the sinner. It releases the sinner and it forgives and reconciles the sinner to the other party. And so we need to make sure that we learn to forgive others as well, just as Christ has forgiven us. Which leads us, which leads us to the fourth idea here, that forgiveness is active. Forgiveness does something. Listen, I think we’re all understanding the fact that Christians are supposed to forgive others.

That seems obvious enough. That’s not really the problem. That’s not the passages that we struggle with. But I gotta tell you that if we really understand the full depth of God’s forgiveness in Jesus, the passages where we struggle are the ones that say, you be forgiving to the same level, of the same quality, in the same humility as Jesus was forgiving to you. Oh, now it’s tougher. That’s something that’s a lot tougher to wrestle with. And this is all over the Bible. Matthew chapter 6, verses 14 and 15. The only bit of commentary on the Lord’s prayer that Jesus actually gives, it’s the only phrase that he actually offers any commentary after he models prayer for the apostles. He says, if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours. And so we’ve got to learn to be willing to actually do this. So let me just give you a couple of simple but powerful bits of guidance that can you can use to be more effective at this, okay? So the first one is if forgiveness is going to be active, let’s learn to speak words of forgiveness to other people. Here’s what I mean by that. Most of the time when somebody says to you, I’m sorry, what’s the response? Most of the time you can mouth it to me. What’s the response? I tell you, I’m sorry for what I’ve done, and you’ll say, It’s okay. Yeah, exactly. That’s the way that most of us respond.

But can I just ask you a question? If somebody truly sins against you, they’re truly repentant, they truly come to you and say, I am sorry. Does that make what they did okay? It doesn’t. And that’s important for us to realize. And this is back to our first point this morning. Forgiveness justifies, but it does not justify the sin, brothers and sisters. What it does is it forgives the sinner. And so I’ve taught my kids, and I, and I’m trying to learn this myself, it’s helping that I’m trying to teach them because that means I gotta actually do it, you know. But I’m teaching my kids, my nine-year-old, seven-year-old, and three-year-old sons, that when we say I’m sorry to each other, the but the response is not it’s okay, because sometimes it’s not okay.

And it wasn’t okay. But we will learn how to forgive each other. So when someone says I’m sorry, the answer is, I forgive you. And y’all, I know that sounds like a really little change, but it is a big, it makes a big difference. That’s one of those things that if we can learn to actually speak the language of forgiveness, then we’re gonna be that much closer to doing things, to doing relationships the way that God wants us to. Second piece of advice for you on putting true forgiveness to work, express gratitude for God’s forgiveness. I know that we very commonly end a prayer with, God, we want you to forgive us of our sins. We ask you to forgive us of our sins, and we should do that.

But can I just suggest for you that sometimes the best thing you can say in prayer is, God, thank you for the forgiveness of our sins that you have given. Thank you for your love for us, that even though we have done such terrible things and our sin has cost you so much, you are a forgiving God. Speak words of gratitude for God’s forgiveness. Third, and this comes right out of the point right before this don’t work to win, work to mend. Work to fix relationships, not to win arguments. How do you do that? Apologize quickly when you need to, and apologize sincerely. Not so that you can get it over with, but so that you can fix what’s broken between you and that person. And then if you’re on the other side of it, forgive readily and forgive completely.

Now, all of that sounds well and good. I think all of that message message so far sounds well and good until you get to a point where it actually kind of has to, it becomes raw and it becomes real.

It hasn’t been that many years ago that a female police officer was convicted of murder because she unlawfully entered the home of a man named Botham John and she took his life. Y’all know this case that I’m talking about? Now, what’s really interesting about that is at the sentencing hearing, after she had been convicted by the jury of murder, when it came time for her to be sentenced, her sentence was given, and the victim’s brother spoke at the hearing, and he sat up, sat at the mic for a good long time, and he had a lot to say, but these were the important words that stuck out to me on that occasion. He looked at her and he said, If you truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself and say, I forgive you.

And I love you just like anyone else. And I don’t want anything bad for you. I want what’s best for you. And the best thing for you would be to know Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re talking about, brothers and sisters. But can I tell you something that I saw after that? What I saw after that was the internet lit up with all the commentary of people coming back and saying, Well, wasn’t that nice? Wasn’t that nice? He could do that. That was nice, but it doesn’t actually fix anything. Wasn’t that nice? But I don’t think he should have done it. All that does is make excuses for the way that his brother was treated. Yeah, he might forgive, but we never will. That’s not okay, no matter what.

5. Forgiveness Welcomes the Forgiven Into Fellowship

You can’t forgive something like that. Look, y’all, when electricity was brought into the world, there were people that said, that doesn’t work. We don’t want that. It’s not a good thing. We want to be rid of that. There were vocal skeptics and naysayers. And I’m telling you that if we really get forgiveness, and he does, if we get it, there are always going to be people that don’t want any part of it. At least not the real thing. But we’re going to continue to be grateful for it. Because that’s what God’s given us. And we’ve been called to give the same to others. Now listen, I added a point here, and this one kind of goes with what we’ve talked about with the teenagers. I originally wrote this sermon, and this is where it ended.

But I want to make sure that we’re clear on something here because we’ve been talking in the teenage studies this week, yesterday and the day before, about some difficult stuff. We’ve been talking about a lot of a lot of the just very contentious social things that exist in the world today. And it thinking about that made me want to make sure that we add this point in here as well. That if we truly understand forgiveness, then we’re going to see that forgiveness welcomes the forgiven people into fellowship with us. Because y’all, with just a little bit of thinking, it doesn’t take much to realize the entire reason for the church is forgiveness. The whole reason we are the church as God’s people is because we are forgiven by Jesus Christ.

And so we’re going to have to understand forgiveness correctly in order to keep welcoming people among the fellowship. All of us can easily say that God has forgiven us of so much. And we should be, we should be mindful of that. Because if God’s forgiven me of a lot, then I need to be willing to forgive others to the same level. There’s a whole conversation between Jesus and Peter where he said, forgive up to 70 times seven times. You be as forgiving as God is. Okay? So we’re gonna have to do that. But I know, and you know, and even the Lord knew, that there are times when somebody’s list of things to be forgiven is a long one. And there’s some stuff on that list that is bigger than other stuff.

And I know that. So sometimes this gets to be a difficult discussion. One preacher talked about how many Christians, he talked about how many Christians struggle to forgive and to have meaningful fellowship with anyone who has committed that sin. Whatever you call that sin, that just seems more wrong than the others to you in some way. Yeah, we struggle with that. We know that a church family is supposed to be a place whose fellowship door is open to everyone whose repentance is real and who actually avails themselves of God’s forgiveness. But sometimes, sometimes it’s gonna be kind of tricky to invite some people into our fellowship because we look at them and we think, well, they’ve committed that sin. But can I say to those of you who have been Christians the longest and whose faith is the deepest, can I say to you with all the love in my heart, we better make sure that we are open to fellowship with everyone whom God has forgiven.

Because there are gonna be people who come to us who either are women that have had abortions or are men who’ve encouraged them to have abortions, and someone’s life was taken by those actions. And we’re gonna have to decide is that person, when God forgives them, welcome among his people? And the answer will be yes. And we’re gonna have people, we’re gonna have people who have come to us who have practiced some aspect of the LGBTQ plus array of sins, and they have turned away from that. They’ve been forgiven by God, and they want to be in fellowship with Christians. And the question we have to answer is, are they going to be welcome among us? And the answer better be yes. Because whatever you say that sin is, whether you’re talking about people who practice sorcery or some sort of witchcraft, who permanently damage their minds and their hearts with some sort of substance.

They’ve taught false doctrine, maybe they’ve taught all out heresy somewhere in this world, but they’ve been forgiven and they want to come to Christ. People that have had extramarital affairs or abandon their families, parents that have abandoned their children, children that abandoned their parents, any of these number of things, if they’ve done these terrible things, when they come to Christ for forgiveness, will we believe that he’s forgiven them? And will we welcome them among us? And the answer, brothers and sisters, because we are Jesus’ people, it better be yes. The world needs to hear Christians call sin wrong. The world needs to hear Christians offer forgiveness in Jesus. And the world needs to hear Christians welcome all forgiven people into our fellowship. When Saul of Tarsus turned from a persecutor of the Christian faith to one of its most faithful preachers, he came to the saints in Jerusalem where he had persecuted their own people, and he wanted to join the disciples.

And the book of Acts tells us that he wanted to join them and they wouldn’t let him. Why? Because they were afraid. They didn’t believe that he’d truly been forgiven. And so they would not let him into their fellowship. But what happened? Anyone remember the rest of the story? Anyone remember who it was? Yes, right. A man named Barnabas believed that he had become a disciple, took him and brought him to the apostles, told him how he had seen the Lord on the road and truly been forgiven of all that he had done. And so the story says that even Saul of Tarsus came in and went out among the disciples. And he was part of their family in Christ. And we’ve got to make sure, brothers and sisters, we’ve got the doors wide open for forgiven people to be part of our family in Christ too.

Conclusion

When Jesus first made God’s particular brand of forgiveness known in the world, it bothered some people. How can you do that? But it’s a righteous way to bless the world.

May God help us to live out this kind of stuff in our relationships. And wait, may we ever be more grateful for the ways that God has given forgiveness to us? Now I think that all leads easily, don’t you, to an invitation at the end of a sermon. Because the question is really simple, but it’s really poignant. Do you want to be forgiven by God? It will not make what you have done right. He will still ask you to turn away from sin in your life. He will still ask you a lot. He will ask you to be forgiving to others, just as he is forgiving to you. But do you want it? Because he’s offering it. And if you want to talk to somebody, either to me or one of the elders of this congregation about how to receive that, about getting baptized so that those sins are washed away.

And we would love to have an opportunity to talk to you about it. So you can come, you can talk to me, or I’m just going to impose on the elders of this church and say you can come and talk to one of them. Because we want to do our best to shine the light on the path that will lead you into God’s presence when you’ve been forgiven. And so if we can do that for you, if we can help you in some sort of spiritual way, why don’t you come and let us know while we stand and sing this hymn together?