The Beatitudes Pt. 3

Well, I've been going through two different sermons or sermon series, one on prophecy and one on the beatitudes. Last time I was here, I went through prophecy, so now we're going to go back to the beatitudes. And Aaron had to get up and try to do one of the beatitudes, you know, just so we're going to have a fight afterwards. You know, Aaron, I'm old, so, you know, you're bigger than I am, you're stronger than I am, you're faster. You have no idea how dirty I can fight.

We've been going through this series in which Jesus introduces the sermon on the Mount with a series of blessings. How to be blessed by God. As we've gone through these, it becomes obvious that it's not what we want. You know, it's like, oh good, he's going to tell me how I'm going to get blessing, have more money, have better health, have it. And all of a sudden he's telling us about blessings that we don't see as blessings at all. And yet they're the greatest blessings that God can give to us. It's what he wants to give to us. Sometimes we can look at the beatitudes as sort of a, of course, beatitude, just an English word that means perfect happiness. But we can look at them as sort of trivial. You know, this isn't the meat of the word. Actually, there's nothing more difficult that we'll do in our Christian lives and trying to live by those statements and receive those blessings from God. So let's go to Matthew chapter five and see where we're going to pick up here with where we left last time.

In verse three, Christ begins with blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven until we understand the poverty of our own spiritual lives until we learn to understand the nothingness of who we are without God. We can think we're very blessed. We can have lots of things, but just we're really blessed when we're poor in spirit. And what we receive is salvation, the kingdom of God. He said, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. I find that interesting and that we would say blessed are those who never mourn.

But in the lives that we lived, we mourn all the time the loss of something, the loss of a friend, the loss of a loved one through death, all the other things we experience in our lives, the loss of money, the loss of health, and we mourn. And the blessing here is when you mourn, God says, I will comfort you. That's the blessing. We would rather say blessed are those who never mourn, but it's not the way it works. He said, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. We believe blessed are the proud and the powerful and the strong, for they're the ones who inherit the earth. He's talking here about humility before God. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. That's an interesting blessing because you can't be filled until you hunger, until you desire, until it's a longing, an overwhelming longing like if you're starving or in desperate need of water. He said, then you get filled when you're in that desperate need. Until you experience the desperate need, you never get filled. The blessing is being filled. And then the one we're going to talk about today. Blessed are those, or blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Now, there's some subtle differences between the Greek word and the ancient Hebrew word and the English word, but basically, to have mercy means to feel sympathy for the misery of another. There is an empathetic response to what somebody else is going through. And so you feel mercy.

Mercy then usually results in an action. In fact, it's interesting in the Hebrew word, it literally, the chesed means that it's not only just a feeling or a concept, but it does produce an action. And that's why in some of the older translations of the English Bible, it's translated loving kindness. It's an empathetic response that produces kindness because of somebody else's bad state, poor state, where they are. Let's look at Micah chapter 6 in the Old Testament. Then we're going to spend most of the time in the New Testament, especially looking at some of the teachings of Jesus Christ. But at Micah, we have a summation here of Micah's entire ministry. He was sent to ancient Israel to tell them to repent because of the sins that they had committed against God, that their society was deteriorating. And he asked an interesting question. He says, with what shall I come before the Lord? Verse 6 of chapter 6 of Micah. And bow myself before the high God. Shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves a year old? He says, what is it you want, God? What is it you want of me? What do you want me to bring to you that you will interact with me? Is it more services at the temple? Is it better sacrifices? What is it that you will respond to me and my needs? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? 10,000 rivers of oil. Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression? The fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul? He says, is it enough if I give you—I'm doing all these sacrifices—what if I just bring you and give you my child? Bring that to the temple. He could maybe be a priest. Will that make us okay? Will that mean I could get mercy for you with my problems and to forgive me for my sins? He has shown you, O man, what is good. Verse 8. The response was, he's actually told us what God requires of us is very simple in one way and very complex in actually living it. What does the Lord require of you? To do justly. That means to be right in your actions, the way you act and treat others. It means making right judgments, by the way—justly, there is a legal term—it means making right judgments, doing what's right with God and treating other people right. To love mercy and to walk humbly before your God. To love mercy.

He says, I want you to love it. Now, you and all, I love mercy because we want it from God, right? We want God's mercy. But remember, this is not just the fact that He looks on us and has pity on us. It's an empathetic response. His mercy is an empathetic response to the state we're in, the needs that we have, our own sin. Well, when we talk about mercy here, we're going to talk about it in two broad concepts that become very practical in the way that you and I live. Two very broad concepts that are really difficult. They're really difficult. I just want blessed with God's mercy, right? God, help me out. I have a problem. Help me out. I need a job. Help me out. I need healing. Help me out. I need this. I need that. And please forgive me for my sins. I want your mercy. I want an empathetic response from you. But the blessing is when you are merciful, you receive mercy.

So we must be merciful also to receive the blessing.

How do we apply that? Let's go to Luke 10.

This is a parable you all know by heart, but we need to review it from time to time. Because I faced a situation this week in which this parable came to mind and in an application of something I needed to do. Verse 25, They hold a certain lawyer, stood up and tested him, saying, What shall I do to inherit eternal life? What is it I must do to have salvation? To be welcomed into the kingdom of God? What is it I must do? And he said to him, What is written in the law? What is your reading of it? You know the law. Okay. You're a lawyer. In other words, a lawyer wasn't the way we think here. This lawyer was someone who knew the law of God. He was studying Torah. He knew, and his job was to apply Torah to everyday living.

He says, you know what's in there? How would you apply it? What do you think the law tells you about having a right relation with God so that you can receive eternal life? And he answered and said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. The two great commandments. He pulled them out. He knew what they were. Of all the things that's in the Old Testament. He says, I know these two. This is the foundation of what God wants. He wants us to give our entire lives, everything we are, to Him. And He wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And Jesus says to him, you have answered rightly. He says, that's exactly what God wants. You got it right. You got it right. Do this, and you shall live. That's interesting here. Jesus didn't say anything beyond that. So now, there has to be clarification. Okay? As a Jew, he believed he loved God with all his heart and mind and soul. But there's another problem here that has to be worked out. And so he asked Jesus, but he, wanting to justify himself, in other words, say, I'm right in my approach. So I just want your opinion on this.

Asked him, who is my neighbor?

That's the question we ask all the time in dealing with instances of life. Who is my neighbor? You know, if the person next door needs help, but what if they're three blocks away? Is that my neighbor? What if it's somebody in another city? And neighbor? Well, that would mean, say, a Muslim. That can't be my neighbor. Who is my neighbor? Is a pagan my neighbor? That would have been a question he would have asked. Yeah, but my neighbor would be a pagan. It would have to be someone who worships the true God. So define neighbor for me. Now, what's interesting here, as Jesus' parable doesn't strictly define who a neighbor is, it defines what a good neighbor is.

And he leads the man down a path to an answer. What is a good neighbor? "...that Jesus had sent him a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead." I mean, you walk down the street, you see somebody that's stripped almost naked, laying curled up in a ball on the street. You're pretty reluctant to go over and see if he needs help, right? I mean, people get killed doing things like that.

Now, by chance, a certain priest came down the road. When he saw him, he passed by the other side. And likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked and passed by on the other side. Now, he's using two types of people that were considered great spiritual leaders in the Jewish world. And, I mean, the Levites had been chosen by God to be His representatives. You know, we can look at this sometimes and think, oh, these were just a bunch of arrogant people. No, the Levites were chosen by God to be the tribe that represented Him in all of Israel. And the priests were ordained through a process that had been carried down by, set up by God, to serve Him in the temple and to teach people the way of God. And He says, they saw this man and said, wow, is he drunk? What's his problem? They went around him and he moved on.

And a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was. When he saw him, he had compassion.

Samaritans weren't Israelites. They were people who pretended to be Israelites.

When the northern tribes were taken off into captivity, the Assyrians brought in people from all over their empire and settled in northern Israel. And since Samaria was the capital, they became known as the Samaritans. They worshiped God while being pagans at the same time. Remember, we come along Simon, the Samaritan, in the book of Acts, who wants to be a Christian, but he's also involved in paganism. These are the Samaritans.

Now, Jesus didn't even say a lot of good things about Samaritans, except He told His disciples that when I'm gone, you go preach to them. You go to them.

So understand, Jesus now is going to use what the whole society, the Jewish society, who worshiped the true God, would see as a bad guy, a person who makes the worship of God with paganism. So I'm going to put this into a term we can understand. So a Catholic priest came along, okay? Because we see Catholicism as what? Well, they claim to worship the true God, but it's all been mixed with paganism, and it has been. So that's how this would make sense in today's world. So a Catholic priest comes along, and he bandaged him, pouring oil on his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He sent him on his own animal, brought him to the inn, and took care of him. And on the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will come, I will repay you. Now, it's very interesting. He's not making Samaritans here as super righteous people. He uses him as an example. Here's a person who's actually answering the question, which has to do with the second greatest commandment. The Samaritans didn't keep the first great commandment. They did not worship the true God, but they did help their neighbor. So he's setting this up because now this teacher of the law has to give the answer he does. It's because Jesus says, so which of these three do you think was the neighbor to him who fell among the thieves? And he said, he who showed mercy, he who showed mercy on him. And Jesus said, go and do likewise. Go live that way also.

God requires of us to do justly, to be humble before him and to love mercy. As I said, it's a lot easier for us to love God's mercy towards us than understand what it is to show mercy to others. I had a situation this week, a woman called me from Alabama. I looked at it online in Alabama and she said, hi, are you with the church of God? I said, yes. She said, well, my daughter just moved to Murfreesboro and she had a job as a, delivering from Walmart, but she had to use her own vehicle and her vehicle shut down.

And she can't work and she's running out of money. Can you help her? I said, well, does she have a chance for another job? Well, she said, yes, she's applied for another job. She has a master's in theology and she's going to be a chaplain at a hospital. So I said, that's a different church of God. I said, there's a number of church of God's here in town.

I bet the one she goes to is Pentecostal. And she said, well, yes, but when I went online, yours has a big globe. So I figured you had to be a big church. I said, no, that's just, we like to reach people all over the globe. We're actually a very tiny church. I said, so she needs to get ahold of, you know, where they'll recognize her as a member and take care of her.

She said, okay, well, she'll start calling around, but she said, could you at least give her maybe two to three days worth of food? She just gave her two or three days worth of food. And I said, well, have her call me. So she called me and she said, yeah, if you just give me a little bit of food, that's all. Just to keep me going. She says, I can't get my van fixed, but I've got to do something.

I'm applying for jobs. Right now, you know, I've got through the month where my rent and everything's paid for, but she says, I just don't have anything. Now, I have to admit, I hate to admit this, part of me said, well, why don't you call your Pentecostal Church?

You know, and you always wonder, is it a scam? But you know, along throughout the years, I've decided something based on this. When someone's right in front of me and they ask for food, I'll give it. It's that simple. I don't care who they are. I don't care what their background is. If they ask for food, I'll give it because that's what this is all about. So I said, okay. I said, my wife and I will be right over with some food.

So we got her a little, she was real close to the Walmart where she lived. So we got her a Walmart card and went over and gave it to her. I said, it's not much, but it's, you know, we want to give this to you. And she thanked us and said, this will help so much. Now I can keep going until I can get another job. At least I got three to four days. And, you know, went up the stairs, the door apartment waved. And the issue is not whether she deserved it, not what church she went to, whether she was an atheist or not, actually isn't the issue.

The issue is if I receive mercy, I should give mercy. Now that doesn't mean, you know, just recently Kim and I, I don't know why it was late at night and why I wanted to get something to drink. I don't know. I stopped it and went to get a, I wasn't a Coke. I don't drink Coke, whatever it was I wanted to get in. And I went in to get something. And afterwards I got in the car and Kim said, do you realize the neighborhood we're in?

We're in. I didn't really think about it. So I got in there and realized, hey, I'm probably the only guy in there without a gun. You know, it's this that everybody stopped and looked at me. It was really strange. Everybody stopped and looked at me. I walked in and I bought something.

I went and paid for it. And as I walked out, a man walked out with me. Hey, man. He said, can you buy me some cigarettes? I said, no. You want some food? He said, no, I just want some cigarettes. No. He said, why not?

Because they're not good for you. I said, I'll help you. I won't participate in your own self-destruction. I just won't do that. But I'll help you. I don't need food. And off he goes. I got in the car and Kim said, what are we doing here? I said, I'm just getting a drink.

You didn't want one. So I don't know what the problem is. I just went in to preach the gospel, girl. Just let me along. It's what I do. Okay? So he got a little preaching too and off he went.

We're not supposed to hurt people and participate in their self-destruction. But mercy is mercy. And the whole point of this is it didn't matter whether the person deserved it or not. If you receive it, you give it. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. It's what we must become. Look what Jesus says back here in Matthew 5 in the same section of the Sermon on the Mount here, just beyond he talked about the Beatitudes in chapter 5.

In verse 43, Now you have heard that it is said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That's not exactly in the Old Testament. It's sort of a twisting on things, but it is how human beings look at things, right? You love your friends. You love your neighbors, but you can't love your enemies. Because why? They're your enemies, and everybody has enemies. Everybody has somebody that doesn't like them or out to get them or treats them poorly. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who spitefully use you, and persecute you. And here's the example he gives. That you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for he makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rains on the just and on the unjust. It's very interesting, because Jesus did talk about how God punishes evil. There's no doubt in the Bible God punishes evil people. And we pay prices for evil that's in us, right? There's justice from God in that there are consequences for the evil we do. But even an evil person can get up in the morning, look out at the sunrise and say, that's beautiful, and that is a blessing from God. That's it. I just don't take evil people and make them all live in absolute darkness all the time. And yeah, they may get ready and have good season and eat pretty good. He said, I don't bring constant judgment on the world.

He said, so you should not either. Now that doesn't mean God is saying evil's okay. He will punish anyone who doesn't repent. There is a lake of fire. And there are terrible natural consequences for evil. They're just there and they happen. And sometimes God steps in and says, you know, enough is enough. And he wipes out entire places like Sodom and Gomorrah. It reaches the point where the evil is so destructive, he has to stop it.

So God's not justifying evil here. What he's saying is, when you have a chance to show mercy, do it, because that's what I do. When you have that chance, do it. He says in verse 46, for if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And this despised people in Judaism, because they worked for the Roman government. And the Roman government many times would make them do it. Matthew was a tax collector. He wasn't well-liked in society. Because why? He collected taxes for the bad guys.

And a lot of times tax collectors were known for skimming off the top, too. And if you greet your brother and only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. He's saying here, what we have to understand, if you've been given grace when you find the opportunities, you give grace back.

Which is, remember, an empathetic response to someone's dire consequences, to the issues and problems that they're having.

It's a lot easier for us to have, show mercy, have an empathetic response to each other, isn't it? We just naturally have empathetic responses within the family, within the church. You know, every time I read a prayer request, or Kim says, oh, Gary, did you read this? We have a five or 10-minute discussion about it.

We pray about it. Because we're having an empathetic response, we're asking for God's mercy. So, this empathetic response is a daily response to our neighbor, and who is just no more than the person in front of us. That's all it is. It's the person right in front of us. But you can't save all of them, can you? That's what you can't help all of them, can you? I've been in homeless shelters and thought, God, I can't help all of them, right? I've come to help one man. If I find him, he's my neighbor, and I will help him. I remember one time searching for a man who was going to commit suicide. There were hundreds in downtown Austin, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of homeless people. And I'm just searching through homeless people all over the place. At night, trying to find one man I know, hoping he hadn't committed suicide. And I'm like, God, I can't help all of them. I can't even do anything.

But if I can find the one man, I can help him. For one night, maybe, I don't know. But at least I can help him now.

That's where we have to get to. That we understand the mercy God's given us, and we give it to others because it was given us. It's not justifying evil. It's not allowing evil. It's not participating in evil.

There's a big issue among evangelicals right now, because one of their leading ministers gave a sermon and said, if two transgenders were getting married, go to the wedding. And I agree with all the other ministers, no you don't. That's not a wedding. When two transgenders marry, that's not a wedding.

He can't go to that. Calling it a wedding is a spitting on the sacred concept of marriage. But you know what? If my neighbor was a transgender and he was hungry, I'd feed him.

Why? Well, I've got some mercy, and God sends rain even on the people. Right? But I'm not going to go participate in it. I'm not going to go to the activity. I'm not going to say this is okay.

But the idea that my neighbor is just the person right here, and you don't have to qualify them in terms of the simplest acts of mercy. The simplest acts of mercy. The second great broad concept of mercy has to do with forgiveness. Obviously. It's God's empathetic response to our hopelessness and His love for us that allows Him to forgive us. Okay. I now have to forgive other people and be merciful. But what if the person's wrong? Well, they probably are if you have to forgive them. What if they're absolutely wrong? What if what they've done is so horrible that it's damaged your life? Yeah.

This gets a little complicated. We'll break it down in a little bit of time we have to try to look at it, but forgiveness is the required response of someone who has been sinned. You know, someone that a sin act or offense has happened. Repentance is the action of the person who committed the sin.

God offers us forgiveness. Christ died for every human being, whether they end up saved or not. In other words, God offers forgiveness. That's amazing. No, no, He died for you, no matter who you are. But I hate Him. He died for you anyways. Now, if you don't repent, we can't have a relationship. And eventually, if you don't have a relationship with God, you can't receive salvation. But the forgiveness act was already done and then offered. So if we're going to be merciful as God is merciful, we have to learn to forgive. Now, forgiveness doesn't mean justifying the sin. Remember what I just said. There are people who God has offered forgiveness to who are going to refuse it, who will end up in the lake of fire. If they don't accept the forgiveness, you can't have a relationship with God. But God has offered it. Everybody gets the offering of forgiveness. Because He died for all humanity, it says, for every one of us. So we have to forgive somebody. That act of forgiveness has nothing to do in one way with their repentance.

Peter said, live peaceably with all men if it's possible. Well, it's not possible. Some people, you can't solve the problem between them. And therefore, what you do is you forgive, but you don't have a relationship. Does that mean I just forgive them and forget what they did and erase everything they did? No. Forgiveness doesn't mean ignoring the sin or what somebody did to you. It does mean that you give up the need to make the person meet your expectations.

I'll forgive you when you do this. No, I just give up this emotional response to you. It hurts. It makes you angry. That's normal. But you give up the need to make the person meet your expectations. But you give up this need to, you have to meet my expectations, or I'm going to feel this way toward you till the day I die. It means you are willing to not think about the offense so it doesn't control you. It means that you don't go around just talking about it all the time. I mean, we have to talk about some things, but talking about another person's offense just makes it worse because you have to emotionally let go of certain things.

So forgiveness means that you have to break out of the dark room. And here's what I mean. When you're sick, you live. You ever been sick when it gets worse and worse and worse? And pretty soon all you know is laying in bed, right? It's like the world around you gets smaller, the room around you gets worse and worse, and then you're just in bed. That's all there is.

Is the darkness of the room and you're in bed, you crawl out of bed to go throw up or whatever, you come back in. And the whole world is now this one little room. If we don't forgive people who have sinned against us, hurt us terribly, we emotionally create a little dark room that we live in.

We become emotionally sick and we stay in the dark room all the time. And all we think about is how sick I am. You know, when you've really been sick, you know, just ask somebody, what's that scar? And they want to tell you the scar, right? Ask me if I've had COVID. It'd probably take three or four minutes of me telling you, oh yeah, let me tell you it wasn't right. You know, it was terrible. And I got diptherian, barry-barry, and I was dying. And yeah, and it goes, no, I don't exaggerate that much. But you know, I mean, it was a traumatic experience. I can tell you all about it.

We do that. It's there. It's in our head because it was a traumatic experience. You know, people say, oh yeah, I broke my arm when I was a kid. And they could tell you all about it. How old were you? Four. What else do you remember about being four? Nothing. But I do remember breaking my arm.

What we do is we take what we won't forgive. What we do is we take that damage and we live in it. The memory is going to pop back every once in a while. It's going to. It's a memory. You get it, race it. But when it does, we just crawl back in the room, turn out the lights, and we're in bed. Emotionally sick again. Forgiveness is refusing to do that, which means that you have to give up the need to punish the person.

We have to give up the need to punish the person. You don't excuse it. Believe me, there's punishment. There are terrible results to every bad thing we do. And everybody someday stands before God. When people come and say, I can't forgive somebody, I always tell them this.

Do you want them to be in the lake of fire? Well, no! What do you want? I want them to say, I'm sorry. Yeah, we all do.

I remember years and years ago, this man would be dead now. This was a long time ago. I didn't know what happened to him.

He was just despondent. And one day I just sat down and said, what's wrong? And a man had done something terrible to him and hurt his life. Just hurt his life. And the man who offended him and hurt him died. He says, it's if he's reaching up through the grave and grabbing me and pulling me down into the grave with him. And I can't let go of it. And every day I think about what he did to me and he reaches up and grabs me. I said, you have to forgive him. How can I forgive him? He's dead.

Once again, do you want him to go to the lake of fire? No. Okay. Then go to God, say, forgive him, raise him up and help straighten him out so he doesn't have to go to the lake of fire.

Well, a punishment we get, he's dead. That's about as bad a punishment as you can get. Okay.

That's what happens with sin. It eventually kills all of us. Yours, the sin he did against you, is that the only sin he ever committed, you know, he died. Let it go. His explanation of that was just so profound to me because that's what we do.

We did a Beyond Today program a number of years ago where we interviewed Andy Diemer. Did any of you ever see that? It was a long time ago, a few of you. Andy Diemer is a minister in the United Church of God. I've talked to him a little bit about this. Steve was particular. He was the host that helped produce the program. So I wasn't part of that production, but... And I don't have all the details, and I know he doesn't mind me telling this. So I'll just give the general details. I don't know all the close details, but his daughter got involved. She was, I think, an older teenager, got involved with some pretty rough characters. And a young boy killed her.

So Andy was, you know, it was just so devastating. Well, you know, and then just the police come in, and then you find out what happened. And, you know, it's just traumatic. And he goes to the trial. He sits through the trial. And this young guy, who I think was a drug addict, he committed crimes. He said he had no hope. He had no chance. You know, from when he was a kid, he had no chance. Everything was just, he was involved in violence, and people did things to him. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And now here he had committed murder, and they sentenced him to a long time in jail. And he said, he asked the judge, can I say something to him? And the judge said, yes. He said, well, you know, as a Christian, I just want to tell you that God has given you a second chance. Now, I don't know his exact words. You can watch it and see it. But I'm paraphrasing it. And I hope you take that chance. They didn't give you the death penalty. So you have a second chance to get your life straightened out. And I hope you take that chance. And, you know, that's not what most people would have said. I mean, I've heard of the cases where people got up and said, I hope you go to hell and burn forever and ever and ever for what you did. You know, he's telling the guy, I hope you get a chance. And he said, I think the judge or the lawyer said, I've never heard anybody say that whose daughter had just been murdered. But, you know, Andy doesn't hate him. Is he angry with him? Yes. Does he think he committed a terrible sin? Yes. Does he think he has to repent? Yes. Does he think he's... If he doesn't repent, he could end up in like a fire. Yes. Is Andy live with that loss every day? Yes. Is Andy controlled by what happened to him? No. Because he did an act of mercy.

Yeah, it hurts every day. I can't imagine living with that all your life, right? But it was an act of mercy that simply said, he didn't say, oh, it's okay. Judge let him go. Okay. That's not what he said. No, you're getting whatever, you know, you're probably your life in jail. And that's justice. But I hope this can lead you to something else, lead you to God. I thought that was one of the greatest examples in my life. I've seen somebody because I think, wow, could I do that? Could I do that?

Because you see, when you don't forgive, you build a barrier between you and God.

There's lots of scriptures about forgiveness. Forgive as you are forgiven. So if you're forgiven and you refuse to forgive, now that doesn't mean we're not going to have confrontations. It doesn't mean sometimes somebody says, you know, somebody needs to be sometimes put in their place. I'm not saying, you know, every time we have a confrontation or a little anger is shown, that's not what we're talking about here. Because afterwards everybody's okay. Oh, it might take a while, but everybody's okay, right? We work things out. Why do we work things out? Well, for one thing, we want to be a peacemaker, right? We heard the sermon that. And secondly, we want mercy from God.

So we have to pass it on. Also, if you don't forgive, you get stuck. You get trapped in the event, and you never get over the event. Emotionally, you watch that movie over and over and over and over and over. You know every line, you know every scene, you know exactly. It's like you've watched it a thousand times, and you get up the next day and you watch it again. You're trapped in the emotional story that you can't get out of. Instead of saying, that's part of my life. It's part of my story. It isn't my story. It's just part of my story. And this is hard. This is so hard. Whether it's, you know, someone murders a child, beats you up, commits a sexual crime against you, swears at you, chews you out, steals something from you, punches you. I mean, we do. People do terrible things to other human beings. And at some point, we let go of that. And if we don't, we build a barrier between us and God, and we live in the trauma. And we make all kinds of bad decisions because we live in that trauma.

And that's why, just one other point I want to bring out here, we have to know the difference between justice and vengeance. Justice has to do with law. Andy Deamer did not ask them not to send a man to prison. That was justice. Vengeance would have been, when you come out, I mean, how many movies are there? When you come out, I'm going to hunt down and kill you, right? I've seen, I don't know, how many movies they've made. I've never seen any of the movies with him. What's his name? Yes. And he does, he did these taken movies. There's like 87 taken. They must have taken everybody. His daughter, I think, was first, and his wife, his dog, everybody, you know, his aunts and uncles, his best friends. Somebody comes along and takes him. And he's like, somebody comes along and takes somebody. I watch every trailer, and in every trailer, he says, at some point, he's on the phone and he says, you don't want to do this. I have skills.

I have skills. So that's how we are, you know. I have skills.

Vengeance isn't justice. They're two different things. Because with vengeance, we need to control the punishment and the response of the other person. We have to get payback. I can't be happy until you hurt.

And sometimes in this life, you don't get any justice. That's reality for every human being. All of us have things that have happened to us when the person didn't get justice. That's reality. Before you get too upset, before you get too upset over that, just think about asking God, would you give me justice for what I deserve? That changes it a little. I want justice for that person, but I don't want it for me, right? All the bad things I've done to people, just forgive me for that. But this person did something bad to me, and I want justice. We don't want God to be just. We want Him to show us mercy. And remember, God still doesn't...

Mercy as far as salvation only happens when we repent. I have to bring that back in there. Just like you can't have a relationship with someone who continues to damage you. But you have to still forgive them to the point that you are obsessed with what happened to you.

Because if you don't, you will ruin your life.

And that actually isn't that person's fault. It's yours for not letting go of it.

We have to learn to deal with those things. It's a long, hard process, because if not, you'll become bitter. And bitterness is a terrible thing.

People who are just bitter all the time, they're just mad all the time, they're just self-absorbed all the time. Bitter people can never really love anybody else, because they're just bitter. They're an angst all the time about what's happened to their lives, or what happened to me today, and all they see all the time, or how people are abusing them and mistreating them. You know the hardest thing in life to figure out? You figure it out as a child. Well, as you get older, as a child, you think everybody's doing something to you, right?

And then somewhere in life, you realize, you say, well, they're doing this to me on purpose. Everybody's doing this. They're doing it to me on purpose. I can remember one of our granddaughters. They're all, everybody's doing this to me on purpose. He said, you know what's going to happen when you get to be somewhere in your late teens? They're going to wake up and realize, no, they're not even thinking about you at all.

Most things that happen to you, everybody around you is oblivious that you even exist.

They're not doing it to you on purpose. Now, some people do things on purpose. You know what I mean? Some of the things that happened to us, nobody did it on purpose.

The person that almost hits you and you look at them and they're like, oh, I did it. They're scared to death because they realize they almost hit you. They didn't do that on purpose. But what do we do anyways? Shake your fist, tell them they're number one. You know, none of you do that. But occasionally, not very often. I've had a driver do that to me, but thank you, I'm number one. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

All of us want blessings from God. All of us want and desire God's mercy so that we can be forgiven. We desire mercy when He'll give us help, even though we know sometimes we don't deserve the help, but He loves us. He loves mercy. He loves giving. That's who He is. And He loves giving it to us. He doesn't always wait until we deserve it or somehow we're worthy. He gives it because it's part of His character. So, think more about God's mercy.

Think about all the things He gives you that you don't even pay attention of that your neighbor may get to. You know, a nice sunny day? Well, yeah, but maybe my neighbor's a bad person. They should have never got that nice sunny day. Think about all the things that God gives you, and then think about the mercy He showed you when He called you and you accepted Christ as your Savior, and He forgave you everything you've ever done wrong. Because I don't think we can fully comprehend how offensive our sins are to God. We talk about how people offend us. We offend God at a core level, because He's pure goodness. At a core level, it hurts Him and it offends Him what we do all the time, and He loves mercy. In other words, He doesn't hold on to that. Do you realize that He can't hold on to it? He'd be angry all the time. He doesn't hold on to it. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I was an idiot again. Yeah, you were. Let's move on. Why does He do that? Because it is not in His nature to just hold on to something like He has a grudge. Even those who are like a fire, isn't because God has a grudge against them. It's because they won't accept goodness. And He has no choice, because He can't allow evil to exist at that level in His family. So He doesn't hold grudges against you. He's angry all the time against you. He's always forgiving. He's always saying, I have empathy for you. Jesus Christ is saying, I have empathy for that person. I know what that's like. And so you get a little help. A little help along the way, and you're blessed. So remember, God's blessed you. Pass it along.