This past Sunday I preached from Luke 17:1-6 on Faith to Forgive. I didn’t get through the whole sermon, but the Lord is moving me on to another sermon on Faith. So, I thought I would share the rest of my thoughts of forgiveness here in my blog.
Forgiveness is one of the hardest things to do in life, especially when it comes to forgiving family members. I don’t know why that is, but it just seems to be that way. I know that in my family it has been my experience. I’ve seen it between myself and my brothers, I see it with my own children, and I have also seen it in other families that I have counselled. The thing that bothers me in my personal life as well as in the church is that as a “believer” we have been forgiven of everything that we have done and yet we have trouble forgiving our brother or sister for the offense.
Jesus says here in this passage that offenses will come. So, we know that they will come. It is a part of life and there’s no escaping that. I don’t care where you go on this earth you are going to run into an offense somewhere. What do you have in place to handle those offenses? That’s what we’re talking about. That’s what the Apostles were seeking from the Lord.
Jesus tells them that if someone comes and seeks forgiveness you’re to forgive them. If they offend again and again seek forgiveness, you are to forgive. 7 times 70. Look at their response. “Increase my faith.” Now Jesus is talking about forgiveness. Why did they say, “Increase our faith.” What in the world does faith have to do with forgiveness?
If you’re going to talk to me about increasing my faith, I understand that when Peter is out on the boat and the winds and the waves are beating the boat and the boat is rocking and Jesus rebukes him for not having enough faith. I get that. Faith calls those things that are not as though they were. I ought to speak to the winds and the waves, and then Jesus says, “Peace be still.” I can see the relevance of faith when I’m attacked by everything else, but when it comes to human conflict, I’m not using my faith for the conflicts I have in my life.
I heard a pastor say, “Faith should inform your lifestyle. We have a generation of people who have faith today, but the faith does not inform their lifestyle. You have faith, but the faith is not getting through to your lifestyle. You believe it. You cherish it. You rely on it, but it does not inform your lifestyle. There’s a blockage somewhere in your heart. You’re a Christian in your heart, but you have a blockage and the blockage doesn’t let you throw off what you need to throw off. So, you keep carrying tons of debris.
Jesus said, “Offenses do come.” It kind of sounds like on the regular. Like eating food comes on the regular. Like if you eat today, you’re not going to be hungry anymore. It’s going to come on the regular. So, you need a perpetual, ongoing system where you can incur, pull out of it what you need to know, and throw off what you don’t. That way you’ll be healthy enough to keep going from faith to faith and glory to glory, from level to level. However, if you believe the offense, which always has some nutritional value in it, if you believed that the offense destroyed you, stopped you, ended your promise, cursed you, then you have to hold on to your bitterness. Because now the offense shut my life down. That means that you have more faith in your offender and what they did to you then you have faith in the God who delivers you out of the snare of the fowler. INCREASE MY FAITH TO BELIEVE, that no weapon formed against me shall prosper. If you really believe that, that means I may be delayed, but I’m not denied. I may be a setback, but I’m an overcomer.
I’ve been preaching the Gospel for 28 years. I’ve been consistently in the Kingdom of God for 32 years. I’ve been in church all my life. I have heard more sermons than I can count grits at breakfast, but I don’t like grits, however, I couldn’t think of another food small enough to get the point across, I have almost never if ever heard a sermon on this text. The one that I’ve heard is the one about having the faith the size of a grain of a mustard seed and moving the mountain. Never anything about speaking to the tree. Why does Jesus use a tree here? I understand the mountain. The mountain is an obstacle. It’s standing in between me on the road to destiny. I have to move it out of my way, so I can keep going on the highway.
Everyone likes to preach about the mountain. The external mountains that stand in our way. Why do I need the same amount of faith for a tree? I understand the mountain. Think about the time that this was written for a moment. They didn’t have excavation equipment. They didn’t have bulldozers, cranes, dump trucks. Moving a mountain was a miracle, but moving a tree wasn’t. you could cut down a tree. You could take a saw and tear down a tree, even in the Bible day. You didn’t need any special equipment to move a tree. Yet Jesus said that it’s going to take just as much faith to move the tree as it did to move the mountain.
Well, I’ll leave you with that thought and we’ll delve into that next time. The thing that I want to encourage you this time is to forgive. Matthew tells us that blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. You can’t be pure in heart if you aren’t willing to forgive. I encourage you to forgive. I know that it’s hard, but isn’t the relationship more important than the offense? Think about all the things that the Lord has forgiven you. Until next time…
Pastor Rob
