The Art of Grace

Thank you, Mrs. Call. I enjoyed that very much.

I'd been thinking about this sermon for more than a week, probably a couple weeks. You know, I like to cook ideas some for a while, as I was mentioning to some of the men at the workshop earlier today. And I knew a lot of what I wanted to say, but I didn't. I was having trouble coming up with an introduction. And it turned out I was still thinking of it, still trying to come up with an introduction, one afternoon that was kind of breezy. And I said, ah, it's breezy enough to take Connor out and try flying that kite that we made. We made kites as part of the arts and crafts at Camp Kautubik this year, and there were a few kits left over. So I worked with Connor, we made one of the kites. And I thought, we can go out and do this. Now, I'll mention, I do realize that he's three years old, and he's not really ready to fly a kite. But I thought, if he goes with me, he might share some of that joy that comes when you get a kite in the air. I think most of you have probably experienced that. It's hard to put your hand on why it's so much fun, but it's really neat.

Well, we went out there, we were doing this, and I got the kite up once or twice. It wasn't as steady a breeze as I would have liked. And once I had it up and it came back down, and I was winding up the string, and Connor was saying, Daddy, Daddy, let me hold the string. I want to hold it. Okay, if I get it up again, I'll let you do it. So this time I got it up there on about 30 feet of line, I think. You know, not real high, but it was up there flying. I said, okay, Connor. You know, it's staying up there now. We had this sort of a spindle that the string was around, so I put that in his right hand, and I said, hold on to the string with your left hand, because otherwise it'll just come off. I said, don't let go of the string. And I looked up and it's going, and then it's all like, it starts fluttering. I looked down, he let go of the string. I was like, Connor, I stopped, I grabbed it. You know, it didn't hit the ground, I got it back up. Now it's a little higher.

I said, okay, Connor, now don't let go of the string. I look, and within a few seconds, here it comes again. He let go of the string again. Give me that. I probably raised my voice a little more than I should have. And, you know, I took it from him, and you know, but I very quickly realized I've got an idea for my introduction. Because this demonstrated part of what I wanted to say leading in, that Connor had done something to fall short. He let me down. And at the same time, I realized, okay, Frank, get over it. You should have expected that. And Connor had let me down and fallen short on what was a pretty small thing. You know, now I could have chosen to be upset about it. And as I said briefly, I raised my voice. I was a little bit upset. But all I had to do was say, Frank, you're the one that gave him the string. He's three years old. What do you expect? So I could have chosen to continue to be upset, or I could have said, you know, forget about it. But one thing I did decide is I wasn't going to give it to him a third time. Because he wasn't ready. He would let me down again. And that's where I say this episode illustrates an inevitable fact of life, is that sometimes people let you down. Not every person, not every time, but it will happen. And of course, I don't have it written down here, but we realize that the inverse of that is true. We're going to let other people down sometimes. Not necessarily planning on it or meaning to. Now, there are small letdowns, like forgetting the instructions for how to fly a kite.

There are big letdowns, like committing a sin with lifelong repercussions. What do we do when someone lets us down? Well, I can give you one short and easy answer right now, if you'll join me in turning to Matthew 6. Matthew 6, hmm, my notes say verse 14 through verse 14. I think that's a typo. Matthew 6, we'll begin in verse 14. This is part of the Sermon on the Mount. And actually, it's following up what's considered the Lord's Prayer, or we call sometimes the Model Prayer. And Jesus said, if you forgive men, they're trespasses. They're letting you down, you could say. Your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive men, they're trespasses. Neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. I find it interesting, this is not worded as a thou shalt do this command. He doesn't say, thou shalt forgive people. But if you think about what happens if you don't. And it says, if you don't forgive people, they're trespasses. God's not going to forgive you yours. And I think of the Apostle Paul writing, when he was theorizing if Jesus Christ hadn't really been sacrificed and risen from the dead, is where he says, if that happens, then you're still in your sins. And if God won't forgive you your trespasses, you're still in your sins and you have no hope. Because, as Paul also wrote, the wages of sin is death. So, to put it very briefly, as I said, the short answer is, you and I, in all of us, must forgive others. We must forgive. The only alternative is eternal death, outside of God's kingdom. Now, I could pack up and go home. But I was saying, that's the easy part. That's the what. The more difficult part to answer is how. How do we forgive others? That's not so clear-cut. Being told you have to do something and being told how to do it aren't the same thing. Now, I'll mention, I heard a minister recently that I really respect discussing some of this, and he described it as an art, not a science. And he called it the Art of Grace, which is the title I gave this sermon. And, to be honest, that sounded so profound to me when it came out of his mouth. Right then and there, I said, I want to look into this. I want to give a sermon on that topic. Not only because I thought the phrase was good, the art of grace, but that concept. I said, there's a lot into that. So I'm going to proceed first by telling you how we came to that, sort of some of his message that illustrated it. And partly it touched me because it was referring to summer camp. And I'll just mention the minister that I heard say it was Daris McNeely, who I served under as a camp director for several years. And this past year, I was directing the camp at Catubic, and I was looking for someone to give the sermon on the Sabbath to close out camp, because it was basically my, it would have been my turn in the rotation, but you all know what I sound like when I come back from camp. So I said, I need someone else who can give a sermon, who can speak. And, you know, Mr. McNeely has been part of the camp program for many years, so I invited him and he was happy to attend. And he told me, I'm going to give a message. I want to talk about some lessons that I learned as a camp director. Well, I was eager to hear this. I thought, maybe I can learn some lessons.

Well, as part of this, he told a story from early on in his years directing. And I'm glad to tell you, this is a story that does not involve me at all. Because it's an incident, actually it's an incident that involves several people that became my friends, but I didn't even know about it until about seven or eight years ago. And the incident happened about, I'm trying to think about, 17 or 18 years ago. So it happened, you know, long before.

But, I'm half looking at my notes and half not. It was a good lead-in to making this point. Back in 1996, was the first year the United Church of God used the facility in western Pennsylvania, known as the Boy Scout Reservation Camp Heritage. Or they called it the Heritage Reservation. That first year there, we had 220 campers.

And by comparison, you know, Khatubic is often our biggest camp at 120. So imagine, you know, taking our biggest camp now and adding an extra hundred. And it was Mr. McNeely's first time going to camp. He'd never even been a camper at camp, let alone, you know, he hadn't been on staff, he hadn't been a director. So, and I don't say this to belittle him, his job. Actually, things went really well. But he had to rely on a lot of people that he didn't know very well to serve as staff. I was one of them. I'd never met him until I walked in that door at orientation. Well, you know, we had bumps and growing pains. It was a rainy year, and we were staying in tents, learning the facility. But boy, we had a great time. It was a good, successful year at camp. You know, a lot of campers built good friendships. Many staff bonded and became friends for years afterwards.

But Mr. McNeely explained that about five or six months after it was all done, and he was back at his office, this is when he was still in Indianapolis, he got a phone call. One of the young men who'd been serving at camp had been, you know, you go through times where you're growing and learning. And this young man had realized he'd made some mistakes in the past and was in the process of changing his life, and he felt the need to confess.

And so he called Mr. McNeely, which I'm sure Mr. McNeely, he didn't tell us what he thought, but I'm sure he was going, oh, because apparently this young man, along with several other staff members, had been involved with breaking some rules at camp. And I don't want to get into details. I don't know, actually, I couldn't tell you for sure the names of all the people involved, but I know some.

But he was feeling guilty. He wanted to confess, you know, what he had done, but he also felt compelled to give the names of the other people involved. And it wasn't a terrible thing, but it was, there was potential for harm. Luckily, nobody had gotten hurt. I don't know of any property damage, but it broke a rule of the Boy Scout Reservation. If they'd learned of it, we wouldn't have been able to use that facility again, probably. As it was, we used it for 14 years. Well, since Mr. McNeely found out about it, he said then, okay, he had to follow up.

So he had a list of names of people who'd served, some of whom he didn't know very well. He had to get there and call them up. Okay, is this true? Did this happen? Were you involved? And he said to a man, well, it was man and woman, they said, yes, I was. They didn't try to hide. They didn't try to cover up. They expressed great regret. They were very sorry. He said every single one of them, and they asked to be forgiven. They asked for another chance.

And I put a note, I'm sure glad that didn't happen to me my first year as a camp director. You know, I'm glad Mr. McNeely, well, it's funny, he was actually younger his first time as a camp director than I was. But he'd been serving in the ministry a lot longer, had more experience. So he didn't tell us as part of a sermon what exactly went through his mind. But he told us, I gave them all another chance.

Every single one of them, he said, okay. He let them come back again the next year, because they all wanted to. He said, I'm willing to wipe the slate clean. Most of them he gave the same job or even one with greater responsibility. And that was a very good thing. As I said, I know some of the people. I learned of the story seven or eight years after it happened, and my jaw kind of hung up. I was like, you've got to be kidding.

I didn't know this. I know all you guys. How did I not know about this? Well, I was the older guy. I was one of the squares. So I wasn't included, and I'm glad. I didn't have to make the decision whether or not to participate. I just didn't know about it. But as I said, several of those people went on to become, many of them are strong members of the church right now.

Pillars in their congregation. So Mr. McNeely said, I think I made the right decision for giving and bringing them back. Then he made the point, though. He said, you know, other incidents have happened. Over the years, well, actually, that's when he used the phrase that I borrowed. He said, this is one of the lessons I learned as a camp director. People are going to let you down, and you have to decide then what will you do. People will let you down. And he mentioned what Jesus Christ taught. We have to forgive.

And then Mr. McNeely said, learning to forgive and how to act afterwards is part of the art of grace. Because he mentioned, as I said, with these people, because of their attitude, because of what they said, because of their examples, he said, I'm going to give them another chance. But he said, there have been other cases over the years where people at camp, and he was focusing on camp because that's where we were, he said there are some people that he had to send home.

Not that he found out later. Sometimes you found something that happens last night, this person has to leave camp. Or he found out later, he said, there are some people that he did not allow a second chance to come back. Now, does that mean he did not forgive? No, not necessarily.

And there's an important thing. A large part of that act of grace is not only forgiving, but then deciding what do you do afterwards. Does forgiving mean everything goes back to as though nothing had ever happened? Not necessarily in every case. Now, I'll say that story from camp resonates with me, and although it occurred to me, if I tell it that way, as I said, I didn't want to give specifics or names, it might sound really amorphous to all of you and not resonate the same way it does with me.

So I'll mention there are some similar stories. Well, there are stories in the Bible of people making mistakes and of forgiveness, and I want to go look at some of those. But before we do that, I want to consider more of the basic instruction on forgiveness. It comes up in the Bible a number of times. Let's turn, if you will, to Luke 17. Luke 17 will begin in verse 3. Some of Jesus' parables deal very strongly with the act of forgiving when people let you down.

Well, I'm off-stride. I didn't have my water out yet. Luke 17 in verse 3. Jesus Christ said, Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. I want to stop right there. He says, we read earlier that you have to forgive.

You don't have to suffer and forgive in silence. So if your brother sins against you, rebuke him. That doesn't mean cuss him up one side and down the other either, but it does mean you can let the person know, Hey, you let me down. This is not supposed to happen. So speaking up is okay. Rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.

He presents this as though it's automatic. When someone repents, and I'd say for the sake of presentation here, we could say repentance can be equated somewhat with apologizing. And I'd say repentance involves change. It's more of the heart and changing your person. It's hard for us to judge what's in the heart. Sometimes it takes time to know if a person is repented. But let's just say, like I said, if we can assume, at least in many cases, apologizing equates to repentance, saying that seven times in a day, they step on your toes and say, I'm sorry, you forgive them seven times.

And I noted when he started this out in verse 3, he said, take heed to yourselves. Jesus gave this instruction because it's not about the person who keeps sinning and needing to repent. It's about the person who needs to forgive. It's about the person who's been wronged. He's saying, if you don't forgive, then you are in trouble. And I'm not saying it as me talking to you. I'm saying, Jesus Christ talking to all of us.

He's telling me, Frank, don't go. If you don't forgive someone, you can be in big trouble. And of course, that won't be easy. I didn't read the last part of that. I said, if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns you, saying I repent, you shall forgive him. And the apostle said to the Lord, increase our faith.

They were saying, this is tough. You want us to do what? You better help us with this. We need faith. We need you to increase it. Now, do you believe God can increase your faith? I do. I think faith is something he gives us, and we build. But it comes through his Spirit being in us. So, it's not wrong. I wanted to emphasize that. Part of how we are able to forgive others is by God working in us to build the mind of Christ within us. And that's, that occurred to me during the workshop. Somebody quoted Philippians 3 verse 5.

Because I said, I think I've got that noted in my sermon notes, but I don't think I wrote down the actual Scripture. Which, in a case like that, I would tell somebody in a workshop, never try to look up a Scripture while you're up there at the lectern. And yet, I'm doing it right here. Mmm, it was right there. That's why I would say don't do that. Well, it's in Philippians 2.5. I was looking at 3.5. Is that it? Yes. Let this mind be within you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2.5. I want to equate that to the disciples.

When Jesus told them to do something that seemed impossible, they said, Lord, increase our faith. This is how it can be done, with the mind of Christ in you. But there is more to it. Let's turn to Matthew 18, after that little side trip.

Matthew 18, beginning in verse 21. By the way, for visitors here, there's not a tornado on the way. This happens pretty regularly. Just a test. Matthew 18, in verse 21. Now, this isn't Jesus just bringing this up. Peter prompts this from him. And we often say, maybe Peter was feeling proud of himself, at how generous he thought he was being.

And then Jesus Christ said, no, you're barely touching the surface. And verse 21, then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said, no, I do not say to you seven times. But up to 70 times seven? That's...okay, not seven. 70 times seven. That's what, 140? No, 490. Yeah, math isn't my strong suit. Okay, and then, but he doesn't stop there.

If we need to read the next verse, therefore... I say, that therefore means because of this, because of this extreme need to forgive, listen to this parable. I'm reading this in, but I say, that's what the therefore means. It's connected to what he just told them. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he'd begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed 10,000 talents.

Now, this is a unit of measure we don't use today, but it's a lot. 10,000 talents is more than most of us would earn in a lifetime. So it's a ridiculous amount, and it makes you wonder, how in the world does this guy get in debt this much? And I don't know, it doesn't say it, but it's mostly given this for the sake of contrast. He was not able to pay, so his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and his children in all that he had that payment be made. So 10,000 talents is worth the value of this entire family as slaves, plus everything they owe, and that probably alone wasn't enough.

So the servant, therefore, fell down before him. He dropped on his knees, and he said, Master, have patience with me, and I'll pay you all. Now, the master's probably thinking, you're not going to be able to pay me everything in your whole life, but I respect that attitude. You know, the guy's on his knees, groveling, and the master of the servant was moved with compassion.

Now, and we should realize that the master represents God in this case, and God is moved with compassion for us, and he released him and forgave him the debt. Forgave him? Doesn't say he gave him an extended payment plan. He said he was willing to write it off. I'm going to forgive you the debt. You don't have to pay it back. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denari. Now, I've got a better idea of how much 100 denari is, because if we look at the parable of the workers in the vineyard, they would be paid one denari for a day of work.

So, a day's wage is not equal to about a denari, so 100 denari is about a third of a year's salary. Not necessarily for a high-paying person, but imagine what you make in a third of a year. That's how much this guy owed. It's still a fair bit. Imagine a lot of us might spend that much on a car, a fairly new car. So, this guy owes this guy enough to buy a new car.

But that's a pittance compared to how much he'd already just been forgiven. And, you know, if you owe that much, you probably could pay it off if you're diligent. And that's what he said. Yeah, in verse 29, So this fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged, saying, Have patience with me, and I'll pay you all. And unlike the other circumstances, this is probably possible. It will require patience, but it could be repaid.

But he would not. No. Just, sorry, I'm not going to do it. He went out and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. And that's always struck me as amusing, because how much money can you earn to pay off a debt when you're in prison? Not a lot. And that ups his fellow servants. When they saw what was done, they were very grieved. They came and told the master what had been done. And his master, when he called him, said to him, You wicked servant!

I forgave you all that debt, not because you earned it, because you begged me. He had compassion. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you? The master was angry, and he delivered him to the torturers. Now, I'm not sure the difference between prison and torturers, but I'm pretty sure I'd prefer prison. Delivered him to torturers until he should pay all that was due him.

Okay, and then the moral of the story, as they say, is in the last verse. So my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. This whole parable is meant to help us put things in perspective. No one has sinned against any of us more than we've sinned against God. We've let him down, but he's willing to forgive us. And so, he's saying, but God's not going to forgive you. Remember what we read in the sermon on the Mount? If you don't forgive your brethren their trespasses, your heavenly Father won't forgive you yours.

I'm reminded of Romans 2 and verse 1, which I'm not going to turn there, but I'll cite it. That's where Paul said, you're inexcusable, O man, whoever you judge another. For wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself. You do the same thing. Also, we say, wait a minute, I don't do that thing. Well, you do the same thing in the fact that you let other people down.

You sin. We all do that. And that's why I'm saying we're all guilty. People will let me down, but unfortunately, I will let other people down. And all of us have let God down. And I'm using that term, let you down, because it's a nice euphemism. People will let you down. And it could be small. But, letting go of the string is a small way of being let down. There are other bigger things ruining someone's life as a big way.

We've all let God down. What's his reaction? What's his reaction? He'd be justified in just obliterating us. The death penalty, the wage of the sin is death. But, instead, he gave his only begotten son. Most of us know John 3 16. He gave his only begotten son that... Now, my mind just went blank. I'm going to turn there and read it. I hate it when that happens. I've got a Bible in front of me. You can see, I didn't type that one into my notes.

I just put down, he gave his only begotten son as a sacrifice. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The perishing is what we deserve. Everlasting life is what we get instead because of Christ's sacrifice. Now, and I'm mostly saying this because God wants us to realize and to think about putting things in perspective.

With that perspective, it should be easier to forgive others. Because... and it's good to know when we forgive others, we're practicing a godly trait. We're doing what God does. And God wants us to become like he is. So forgiving someone else is doing a godly thing. I like the fact that I can do something that God does. Oh, now I'm going to qualify that, though, going in because still, we can't forgive in place of God. It takes his forgiveness to remove sin. We can't do that. But as I said, I think this helps us to consider some of the how we do it.

I've already mentioned two ways to help us forgive. The first is draw on the mind of Christ. Draw on the mind of Christ that is in you through the Holy Spirit. And a simple way is pray and ask God to help you to forgive. And again, I'm not saying you, as in, you all need to do this and I've got it down. Let's all of us pray to God and ask for help. But the second, the second way to help, I think is for me to think of my own sin.

Think of how much I want and need God to forgive me. And when I do that, it makes it easier for me to forgive others. And I want to add a third that I didn't dig out of Scripture, but I think fits. And it's a simple thing that I drew from a lot of areas in life, and that's practice. The more you do just about anything, the better you get at it. If you practice, you start with something small.

Think of the time someone took the last cold coke out of the refrigerator, and you really wanted a cold coke and it wasn't there, but you said, I'm going to let it go, I'm going to forgive. Okay. Or the time someone was driving down your street way too fast, and that made you mad because they're putting people in danger.

If you can learn to forgive, let it go. Start with some smaller things, and the more you forgive small things, I think the easier it gets with bigger things because you develop, there's what they call a muscle memory for doing actions. I think there's a spiritual or mental memory for going through thought processes or an emotional experience. If you do it over and over, it gets easier. As I said, I can't turn to a Scripture that tells you that, but I'm going on my own experience that I think it's true.

There is another issue that I haven't addressed, and it is an important one. What if the person is not sorry? What if they don't repent? Now, I have to admit, Jesus didn't tell his disciples that they had to forgive a brother seven times in a day. If that brother comes back and says, no, I'm still not sorry, I do not repent. He said, if your brother sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day, he says, I repent, you have to forgive him.

Okay, so he didn't say it, but what about Matthew 6.15? He said, if you don't forgive your brother and their trespasses, your father won't forgive you yours. He didn't say there that they have to be repentance. Hmm. Now, I probably could make an argument that it's implied. Of course, because God doesn't forgive us and give us eternal life if we don't repent.

But, I don't want to make that case, though. For the simple reason, I believe that, even though it's hard to do, that we should forgive someone even when they're not repentant. Not because it's going to help them, but because it's a good thing for us to do. Now, I can imagine just about all of us can think of someone who's done us wrong and never been sorry, or at least never let us know about it. You know, it could be someone who bullied you when you were in school, maybe an old boyfriend or girlfriend that treated you badly, maybe a coworker who lied about you, took advantage of you, and they never seemed repentant about it at all. And I just made those up thinking of some examples. Probably most of us have experienced one of those. There must be several others. And then I thought, you know what? I'm embarrassed to have to say this, but I think I could put myself on the wrong side of those situations, almost as much or more as being on the right side. Now, I've never been a bully, but I thought... It's funny, as soon as I started thinking, a particular case popped into mind. When I was, I'm not sure, 3rd or 4th grade, a family moved into our area, and there was a little boy that was in my class, and he was kind of goofy-looking.

And he had large front teeth, and we caught him Bucky Beaver, and teased him and made fun of him. That was really mean! That was totally uncalled for. As I said, there's worse bullying, but still, I'm not proud of that. And I'm not telling you that because it's, oh, look at me. What's interesting is, I moved away to a different neighborhood before I grew up enough to realize how badly I'd treated him.

Me and the other guys. And I never got a chance to apologize. And I couldn't even do it now because it's funny, I remembered what we called him. I cannot remember his actual name. So, you know, if I bumped into him today, I might not recognize him. I knew him as a little kid with teeth that were too big for his face. They probably fit now. What I'm saying is, I didn't get a chance to apologize.

Now, I am repentant, but he doesn't know it. I can think of less amusing stories. As a teenager and in my 20s, there were times when I wasn't especially kind to some girls who liked me. I can think of one that I dated on and off in college, and, oh, I want to be with you, oh, I don't think I want to be with you. In the long run, the way I treated her wasn't nice. And I really feel bad about it. I am repentant, but I haven't had a chance to really express that to everyone to whom I've ever not been that nice to. Now, I think it does make a difference that I've talked to God about it, about each and every one.

I've repented and let him know. Repending to God is what really matters in the long run, and that's the point I'm getting to. Understanding this should help us to be more forgiving of others, even if we don't perceive any repentance in them about their action.

All sin is against God. All sin is against God. It's a violation of His law. It's a disruption of His order in the universe that He establishes. I want to turn to Psalm 51 as a scriptural basis for this statement, because I'm saying something you might say, Well, wait a minute.

I'm not sure if I buy that, but I still think it's true, and I think this will help show it. Psalm 51, now most of us are familiar, this is a Psalm that David wrote to express his heartfelt repentance after his sin with Bathsheba. He basically seduced her and committed adultery with her, and then schemed to kill her husband. And then later he repented, and a lot of what he felt in his repentance and thought is written here.

Let's read starting in verse 3. He said, For I acknowledge my transgression. My sin is always before me. And he's writing this to the Creator God. He said, Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. When I first noticed this, it really made me stop and ponder. This is kind of tough to grasp. I thought, you know, I wonder if Bathsheba ever read this?

And he said, What do you mean, against you and you only? What about me? And when Uriah comes up in the resurrection, this is part of Holy Scripture. Millions of people have read this. Uriah might say, Hey, David sinned against me. But when ever someone hurts me, he's sinning against God. The sin is against God. I'd say not even against me, although we could use that phrase, because sin, the word sin, could have more than one definition.

But I want to make the point. God's nature and his being determine what is sin and what isn't. When we do something that violates the way God is, when we're going against his way of love, we're sinning against God. And I'll mention also, of course, all of us belong to God. Every single person, and Uriah and Bathsheba belong to God. When David hurt them, he was hurting what belonged to God. God gave Uriah life in the first place.

God had the right to remove Uriah's life. God could have protected Uriah and not allowed him to die. Or he could have resurrected him immediately. And I thought, if God had prevented David from hurting either Bathsheba or Uriah, David still would have needed to repent, because he had sinned in his mind. He was guilty. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that to lust after a woman in your heart is as bad as committing adultery, and to hate your brother in your heart is as bad as murder. And now, having said that, I don't want to minimize the value of stopping short of the action. A sin in our mind, and then a sin physically, it's a further sin.

So, especially when you're young, you might say, Well, I've already done it in my mind. I might as well go ahead and... No, no, that's not true. It's still better to stop, even if it's a struggle to stop. But I'm making the case that sin is against God, and so our repentance needs to be to God. Everyone will have to answer to God for his sin, sooner or later. And it's God who has to grant the ultimate forgiveness. So, I imagine people will come up in the future in a resurrection that I have wronged, who I never got a chance to apologize to.

You know, that boy that I knew in the fourth grade who I insulted? He's going to come up, and hopefully I'll be there, and he'll learn that God forgave me a long time ago. So, won't he have to forgive me? And I'm hoping in his mind if he... Now, he probably doesn't even remember the incident. I mean, I don't remember bad things that happened to me, but...

Oh, so...but hopefully he has forgiven me. If I turn around and think of people who have wronged me, you know, even if I want to say they sinned against me, ultimately, no matter how I feel about that person, whether I've forgiven that person or not, that person has to repent to God and be forgiven by God.

My forgiveness is irrelevant when it comes to eternal life. And that person who's done me wrong either will repent and be given life or will not repent. And a person that refuses to repent shares the fate of everyone who refuses to repent. The lake of fire, you know, eternal death. Oh, and that makes sense. A person's ultimate fate, eternal life or eternal death, is totally in God's hands, not mine. So with all that, it makes sense that...

Well, it might...it should help me to think I can forgive people, even if they haven't expressed any repentance to me, because it won't hurt them or punish them anymore if I don't. So I say, you're not...you know, I'm going to hold this grudge until you repent.

Who's that hurting? Me. I'm the one that's tied up in knots and it's bothering my head and I'm just grinding myself up inside. It's not hurting that person. And it won't affect how much God does or doesn't forgive them when the time comes. As I said, it just hurts me. In my mind, if I can forgive, though, and know that it's all in God's hands, where it's eventually going to end up anyways, that's what I need to do.

And I'll say, that sounds like a lot. To me, I thought this is a heavy subject. So I said, when I was inspired, that's where I said, all that came to mind when I thought about the art of grace. It's a difficult concept with a lot to it. It's not a science, it's an art. But if we keep in mind God's forgiveness, His mercy to ourself and His mercy to others, that should help us. But there's another practical matter in all this.

And I alluded to this earlier. Forgiveness is one thing, but how do you relate to the person afterwards? That's a different thing. It's not the same thing. You can forgive, but still have a different way of interacting. Now, if we think back to the stories I told to begin this message, it's worth noting, as I said, after Connor let me down by dropping that string twice, I didn't give it to him a third time.

Now, that doesn't mean I'll never give it to him, but I decided, hey, he's not ready for this. I need to allow some time to pass for him to develop and grow and change, and then we can resume that part of our relationship. Flying a kite isn't a major part of a relationship, but that could represent a lot of things. As I said, Mr. McDeely told the story of giving some people a second chance when it came to serving at camp, but not giving some people another chance. And that didn't necessarily mean not forgiving them, but it meant for the good of you, for the good of the campers, for the situation, it's best if you're not there.

As I said, Mr. McDeely said, people will let you down. And aside from forgiving them, you have to decide when, how, and if to give them another chance. Maybe I should have said if, when, and how. But those are things to decide, and how do you decide it? It's not easy. That's what I say. It's part of the art of grace.

There's not, it's not a scientific principle. I can't turn to a scripture that says, if this happens, this is the answer. If it's that, there's the other answer. As I said, it might be different in different cases. Sometimes you need to keep some distance between you and a person that you really do forgive, but you need to not necessarily have the same type of relationship you had before you forgave them, you know, for your own sake.

As I said, I can't point to some scriptures that give the mechanics of this, but there are some examples, and I want to turn to one particular extended story that I think, actually, I would view it more of a cautionary tale. It might show more of what not to do than what to do. And we'll begin if you'll turn to 2 Samuel 13 is where we'll pick it up. 2 Samuel 13. I'm going to summarize most of the story, most of 2 Samuel 13, because I actually went into this earlier in a sermon that I gave sometime earlier.

I couldn't tell you how many weeks it's been. But this is the story of Amnon, King David's oldest son, in line to be heir to the throne. And Amnon developed a big crush on his half-sister. I described that. He thought he loved his sister Tamar, and he followed this harebrained scheme that his cousin gave him to get to be alone with her. And he ended up raping her. And then he decided, I don't like you very much. And he kicked her out and embarrassed her, devastated her.

So he sent her away humiliated. Now, that's a bad way to treat someone. That's not an easy sin to forgive. And Tamar had a brother, a full brother named Absalom. And Absalom was not the forgiving type. Let's pick up in verse 20. 2 Samuel 13 and verse 20. After all this happened, Tamar goes to her brother Absalom's house. And remember, King David had a number of wives.

So you've got a lot of half-brothers and sisters. We presume that Absalom and Tamar had the same mother along with the same father. Absalom, her brother, said to her, Has Amnon, your brother, been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister. He is your brother. Do not take this thing to heart. That's easy to say. Well, I'm not sure if it's even easier to say. So Tamar remained desolate in her brother Absalom's heart.

When King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. I would say so. And Absalom spoke to his brother Amnon, neither good nor bad.

For Absalom hated Amnon because he had forced his sister Tamar.

Now, if we just look at that, I'll move on. But a lot of things, I think, maybe weren't handled that well. And some things, we're not sure how they were handled. It says King David was angry, but it doesn't describe him what he'd said or did to Amnon. Did he punish him? I would think if he punished him, there would have been some mention of it.

There's where I wonder, did David forgive him? Well, I said forgiveness is something we have to do, but that doesn't necessarily mean we go on carrying on as though nothing had happened. So there's a lot of gaps in this story. But I will mention Tamar was whose daughter? David's daughter.

So no wonder he was angry. Think if somebody treated your daughter that way. David didn't have Amnon killed. Now, if I remember correctly, I think that was a sin punishable by capital punishment.

But I want to focus in on what Absalom. Absalom and probably Tamar were certain did not forgive. But he also did not express how he felt. And I think there's a point worth noting. It said that he spoke to Amnon neither bad nor good.

Instead, he schemed for revenge.

That's not good. I'll just make a note. Romans 12 and verse 9 tells us that revenge is God's. It says he will repay. It's not for us to do. It wasn't for Absalom to do. Now, in the legal system of the day, would allow a close relative to exact punishment. If someone murdered someone in your family, a close relative could exact that punishment. Absalom could have sought punishment. But scheming for a secret revenge, the way he did, was not part of the legal system. What Absalom did, he waited. He waited and let time go by. Long enough that most people might have thought it was water under the bridge. It had been forgotten. Two years later. So two years go by. And I've learned two years can go by just like that. But... And we don't know what was going on with Amnon. But two years later, Absalom invited all of his half brothers to come to his place for a festival because he'd sheared his sheep. And if you have a lot of sheep, sheep shearing is a big deal. It's a time for a celebration. You've made a lot of money. And he invited Amnon along with the others. It looked on the surface like, okay, Absalom's gotten over it. He's forgiven. He's willing to have a brotherly relationship with Amnon. But if we'll look up in verse 28, we'll see that that was not the case.

Now Absalom had commanded his servants, saying, watch now. When Amnon's heart is merry with wine, when I say to you, strike Amnon, then kill him. Do not be afraid. Have not I commanded you? Be courageous and valiant. So the servants of Absalom did to Amnon, as Absalom had commanded. And all the king's sons arose, each one on his mule and fled. Now if you want to glance down to verse 32, it tells us Absalom had determined this from the day that Amnon had raped Tamar. So for two years, Amnon's been scheming and plotting this. He determined, I'm going to kill that guy. But as I said, the way he went about it, I'm hesitating because I want to make the case, I think Amnon deserved the death penalty. I don't have any qualms with the fact that he was punished for his sin. Now that's not to say eternal punishment. There's no sin that you cannot repent of and have God's forgiveness. I'm talking about in the judicial system of the day, you know, crime deserves punishment. But we can wonder what might have been. How could things have been different? Because this story isn't over. The repercussions are going to go on and on. How different would several people's lives have been if David had taken charge and said, okay, Amnon did this, we've got to take action. Now we might be able to forgive him, but certain things have to be done. Maybe the death penalty had to be imposed. It shouldn't have been done the way it was. Not to mention how different it would have been if Amnon had been repentant. There's every indication that he was not sorry. He just, you know, it said at first he loved Tamar, then it said he hated her more than he had loved her. And that's why he humiliated her and sent her away. You know, and apparently was not repentant at all. Things might have been different if he were. But without wondering what might have been, let's look at what happened, because down in verse 37, we'll see Absalom fled. So he got out of the country before he could be punished. He went to Talmah, the son of Amahud, king of Geshur, and David mourned for his son every day. So Absalom fled and went to Geshur and was there three years. And King David longed to go to Absalom, for he was comforted concerning Amnon because he was dead. This appears to be a case of David being able to forgive one son for killing the other. And I'm going to say that's beyond my comprehension. For one thing, I only have one son, so I don't have to worry about another one. But in the sermonette, we saw one son killing another, and it's a horrible thing. It's very disruptive. Not an easy thing to forgive. I guess maybe David realizing what Amnon had done, maybe, as I said, he was comforted. He realized things were there, and he longed for Absalom.

Now, I don't know for sure, as I said, how David perceived all this, but we can see a problem in the fact that he chose not to interact with Absalom. He felt this way, said he longed to go to Absalom, you know, he was comforted. But it seems that Absalom was totally ignorant of this. David missed him. David wanted to spend time with him, wanted to talk to him, but he didn't, and Absalom didn't know anything about it. And we'll see that as we go a little further. And now there's a carry on this might have been a family trait.

We read earlier that after Amnon raped his sister, Absalom said nothing to Amnon, neither good or bad. It seems that now David said nothing to Absalom, either good or bad. And I can only wonder if David had sent a messenger to Absalom, what if he went to him and said, I'm willing to forgive you, I love you, but I need to not see you for a while. I need to get some things sorted out in my head, and perhaps then we can have a relationship as father and son.

That's a possibility. I'm making this up. Perhaps if he'd said, I want to have a relationship with you, but for political reasons, because it'll look bad for the country, I can't have you come back right now. Or, there's a possibility he could have said, look, everybody knows what happened, you can come back. He didn't do that.

He didn't say, well, I love you and forgive you, but I need to not see you for a long, long time. I'm just saying, just getting the words out there, if Absalom would have started thinking differently. How many of us have had similar situations in life where we've been hurt by someone, and we just have trouble getting over that hump to tell them what we feel?

Even if you say, I'm mad at you, I don't want to see you again for a long time, tell them that. Sometimes that can be a part of that forgiving process. As I said, forgiving and how you relate to someone isn't necessarily the same thing. But it seems that David didn't do any of these things. He seems to have said nothing. And we get that the whole next chapter, verse 14, shows that Joab, the commander of the army, saw that David longed for his son Absalom, but wouldn't talk to him.

So Joab made this weird scheme, I could say weird in some ways clever. He gets this wise woman to disguise herself and come present this legal case to David, where his judgment is going to be such that she'll say, well, hey, if you're going to judge this for my sons, what about your own? Why don't you bring your own son back?

And if we go to chapter 14 and verse 21, and after all this, David says to her, now tell me the truth. Did Joab put you up to all this? I said, boy, you're smart. Yeah, he sure did. And he said, okay, bring Joab in. And in verse 21, the king said to Joab, all right, I've granted this thing.

Go therefore and bring back the young man Absalom. Joab fell to the ground on his face and bowed himself and thanked the king. And Joab said, today your servant knows that I found favor in your sight, O Lord, O king in this matter. For the king has fulfilled this request to a servant. So Joab arose to Gesh, went to Geshir, brought Absalom to Jerusalem.

But there's an important thing. In verse 24, the king said, let him go to his own house. Do not let him see my face. So Absalom returned to his own house, but did not see the king's face. Now, how did that make Absalom feel? Okay, you can come back, but you're not allowed to see the king. Now, here's where I could speculate, but I'm not going to, because later, Absalom tells us exactly how he felt. In verse 32, because after some time of this, Absalom says, hey, I want to get Joab to go tell the king, let me see him. And in verse 32, when Joab finally comes, Absalom answered Joab, saying, look, I sent you, saying, come here, that I might send you to the king, to say, why have I come from Geshur?

It would have been better for me to be there still. Now, therefore, let me see the king's face. If there's some iniquity in him, in me, let him execute me. So he's basically saying, look, I might as well have stayed where I was. If I'm evil, have him execute me. But if not, let me go see the king. So Joab went to the king and told him, and when he called for Absalom, he came to the king. He bowed himself as his face to the ground before the king, and the king kissed Absalom.

Now, you could interpret this different ways, but especially knowing what happened later, I look at this and say, this probably wasn't a warm reunion. It probably wasn't, okay, it's all water under the bridge. We're going to be close and have this relationship. Maybe it had been too far damaged. You know, maybe if they'd have talked earlier, that could have happened. And there's why I say, we know what happened next. Or if you don't know, it's worth reading.

Of course, soon afterwards, we read of Absalom's plot to pull a coup. He staged a coup to take over the country and have his father killed. Now, I'm going to kill David, and I'll get to be king. That sounds like someone who didn't rebuild a good, strong relationship. Could things have turned out differently if David had talked to Absalom? And there, I can't say for certain. But as I said, if we see this as a cautionary tale, we can see more bad examples than good. And David is one of the characters in the Bible that we look at as an example of repentance.

We see, you know, we see, read more of his life than most people in the Bible, and we see he made some bad mistakes. But he repented, and God forgave him. Apparently, Absalom wasn't quite so forgiving. Now, Absalom ended up dead before David did. You know, he tried to take his dad's throne, and he lost that battle. Now, I'm not saying that was just because of this, but, you know, things could have been different. Now, there are some special circumstances in all this we should note. There's one special circumstance that doesn't apply to any of us, at least not now. And that's the fact that David was king.

He was not only a father in the story, but he was the government. He administered the laws. So, you know, it's a difficult thing when you're not only a parent, but you've got to be the judge and jury, so to speak. I'm thankful we don't have to deal with that. You know, in God's kingdom, maybe we will, but that'll be different. The other special circumstance, though, will apply to us in a lot of cases.

And that is the fact that where there's a sin and a need to forgive someone who's in your family, when it's a family member who offends you or sins against you, it tends to hurt more. It can be harder to forgive. You know, there's this old saying that says, you only hurt the ones you love. I think that should be modified. I'd say you only can hurt the ones who love you. You know, because if an acquaintance or a coworker does you wrong, you might be able to brush it off.

I never liked him much anyways. I expect, you know, hopefully it's not like that. But when it's someone you love, it's harder to forgive. You know, it feels more like a personal betrayal. Sometimes it is a personal betrayal. You know, that's hard to forgive. Nobody's saying it should be easy. It's not easy. That's why we have to draw on the mind of Christ. That's why the Apostle said, Lord, increase our faith. Our feelings are hurt worse. How could you do that to me? I trusted you.

You know, we hesitate to forgive. You know, sometimes when the offending party is really sorry, might be begging for forgiveness. But then again, what if the offending party is not begging forgiveness? As I said, when the communication is lacking, that's a hard thing. Sometimes a person doesn't express how sorry they are because they think, well, you're my family. You should know how sorry I am. Don't take that for granted.

You know, none of us should ever take for granted what someone, you know, in our family should or shouldn't know about what we're thinking. The story of David with Absalom, and that story, they needed to talk. And they didn't talk. It would have been hard. Now, I'm not saying, oh, they should have just got together and had a couple beers and everything would have been sorted out. No, it would have been very difficult.

I'm certain. And that's why it's so much easier not to. You know, another thing that hurts with a family, now, some family members, as I said, sometimes someone sins against you, and you're willing to say, okay, I'm willing to forgive, but you need to keep your distance. It's going to be a while before we can relate to each other in the same way. But there are some family members you can't do that with. You know, if you've got a, say, a 12-year-old son who does something really bad, you can't say, sorry, I'm kicking you out. You're on your own. No. You can't do that. You just, you have to keep them.

You have to have that relationship. And it could be very painful. Now, I guess that's short of, say, they go into prison or juvenile detention. I mean, you know, there are cases like that. But what I'm saying is the art of grace can be especially difficult to practice within a family. And if I know that, how much more does God know that? He knows it extremely well. He's building a family, and He tells us to do the hard things.

And He knows it's hard. That lesson we should learn from David in Absalom, though, is when we're in a tough situation, it is better to talk, to communicate. You know, there's a time to tell someone, I'm hurt, I'm angry, rather than keep silent. In most cases, it's easier to forgive and salvage something from a relationship when both sides know what the other is thinking. Because, as I said earlier, we have to forgive. It can take a while. And sometimes it takes a long time. We don't have to maintain a close relationship with someone that we do forgive. And knowing how close and how to relate, as I said, that's an art, not a science.

And so I can't stand up here and tell you. That's why I told you this story. And you might be saying, well, He told us this long story, but didn't tell us what it meant. Well, sort of.

I'm telling you the story because it's something we have to interpret. We have to paint our own painting in each case. But we do have to work on it. As I said, family is family. It's tough. Deciding if and how much to have dealings with someone who's hurt you after you forgive is part of the art of grace. And I asked myself the question I wrote in my notes. Is this really worth so much consideration? Did you really need to talk about it this much, Frank?

Probably so, because we all know people are going to let us down. And we are going to let other people down. All of us, at one time or another, we're going to let someone down. And we're going to need to be forgiven. People can badly hurt and betray us.

We're God's people. We know about repentance. We're practicing it. We're learning it. Down to our core, repentance is a key part of Christianity. That's God's way of life. We have to be repentant. And we have to learn to let others be repentant. And as I said, it could be very small things. It could be big things. And I've been focusing, talking about earthshaking. The story of Absalom and Amnon, that's pretty big. And the small things, too. If someone did take that last coke, or I'll admit, I put coke, but I was thinking beer. When I was a single guy living in the house with the bachelors, a cardinal rule was you never take the last beer out of the fridge. You make sure you put some others in there. Because if you did take that last beer, you better be willing to ask for forgiveness. That's been a while now. Now it's coke. Actually, because Sue doesn't drink beer very often. And I don't drink it as much as I used to, so it's easy to always have a cold one. How did I get off track that much? Well, what I was going to say is, to become more like God, as we become more like Him, we should be more wanting to forgive. It should become part of our nature. But as I said, conversion is a process. We become that. We can't say, why aren't you there? You're supposed to be there just like that. And knowing that we have to do it and knowing how to do it are two different things. So I said, showing mercy and forgiveness is an art. It's the art of grace. And learning that art sometimes will require perspective. Think of God's forgiveness of us. Think of how much we need God's Holy Spirit to be able to develop those thought processes. And, as I said, I think practice can help. Practice almost anything you practice, you'll get better at. And of course, once we've learned to forgive someone, then we still might have to consciously decide just how much we will or won't or in what way we'll relate in the days ahead. And will it be a certain way for a while until we're ready for a different way? That's an art. Things to figure out. And all of that communication is important. First of all, talking to God. We have to talk to God about our need to be forgiven, our need to become like Him in forgiving each other. We need His help to do it. As we talk to God and then as we talk to each other, we'll become more proficient in that art, in the art of grace.