Well, we welcome all of you who are watching online this morning. You're part of us at Compass, part of the church, and especially at Marina and at Padre, and at Padre tonight, the evening worship service. We welcome you. We're one church at three locations. But as always, we welcome those inmates in Soledad and locally. And today, I think this message is just spot-on for the situation you're in. And my prayer is that there would be more and more freedom in your heart because of what you hear today. God bless you, and thank you for watching. [applause] I think most people don't realize that forgiving is almost selfish, because of the huge benefits to the one who forgives. We think the opposite: that to forgive is a gyp to us. It's unfair. But it's actually almost a selfish thing to do, because of the blessings Jesus said come from it. And that's what Jesus meant when He said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the merciful." Happy are those who forgive. And we're thinking, "No, He can't be serious. Forgiving doesn't make you happy." And do you believe Jesus there? Most people do not. Most people have what I call a relational graveyard in their heart. A relational graveyard. These are people who did something bad to them, and they've buried that person, that relationship, in their heart. I wonder, if I knew you well enough, whose name could I mention that is on a gravestone in your cemetery, your relational cemetery? Almost everyone has this relational cemetery, filled with the unforgiven. Got any relationships that began so well but ended poorly? That could be a marriage; the first year was so happy. It could be a best friend, a person who's been a friend for years, but then they betrayed you, and you couldn't believe it. There's nothing more common than a relationship that begins so well but ends poorly. C. S. Lewis, I think, got it right when he wrote, "Jesus's most unpopular teaching is forgive the inexcusable without exception." It's true, because it's just so unnatural, and it feels so unfair. Feels like we're letting them get away with it. Most people don't realize how radical Jesus was in the ancient world when He taught forgiveness. Most people who don't know the history of religions are unaware of the fact that no religion in the ancient world taught forgiving. Forgiving only came to this planet when Jesus began to teach, "Forgive one another as I've forgiven you." That's when the idea of letting people go came into the world. When I lead a tour to Israel a year from now, for me, one of the highlights is to take people to the Israel Museum, because it's filled with archaeological treasures. The science of archaeology, proving the Bible is historically accurate. We go from exhibit to exhibit, where before, unbelieving academics questioned whether or not the Bible was true. Like, Pilate was a figment of imagination, and he never existed. And then you find the Pilate Stone, where he dedicated a temple to Caesar. So I take people there because I want to build up their confidence that the Scriptures are the very Word of God, and accurate. But one of the most interesting exhibits is a collection of curse tablets. They are small pieces of clay with a person's name written on it, and then below it, what the worshiper wanted his god to do to this person, to punish them and get revenge for him or her. Curse tablets. And so a person would write the name of someone on there, and then write out how they wanted them to be hurt by their god, and take it to the temple. And they had hundreds of gods in Rome. Take it to the temple of their god, hand it to a priest, and have that priest pray that the god would do these bad things to the person whose name was on the tablet. Forgive? Never. Even get your god to punish them. Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said that Jesus's teaching was for people who were too weak to stand up for themselves. That resonates with us. Only the weak forgive. That's what Nietzsche said. He said, "Forgiving is a gyp. Getting revenge, punishing them, that's justice. Forgiving someone is unfair to you. Punish them instead, and get even. That's what a strong person would do." And that is the common mentality among people still today. I have a friend who often says, "Don't get mad, get even." And believe me, he has done that many times. Revenge is big business. The fact is, Nietzsche, honestly, has more followers than Jesus. And so revenge, if you didn't know it, is big business on the internet. There are hundreds of websites offering to help you to get revenge. I just did a little research on that, and it's page after page. Websites came on my computer like payback.com, cheatingspousesrevenge.com, one of my favorites, revengelady.com. If a man has betrayed you, that's the one to go to. And then one of the best is mastersofrevenge.com. And for all these websites, for a price, they'll do things that get revenge against the person who has offended you. Like, they'll spread rumors about the person. They'll write falsified letters and circulate them among their friends under the name of the person. They'll hire people to accuse this person of disreputable deeds. They'll mail pictures to their spouse and to their friends that have been Photoshopped to show them in compromising situations, and so on. For a price, they'll help you get even. My guess, though, is that not many of us have used these websites. We have other ways of getting even, don't we? Gossip behind their back works. That's a way of getting even. So does a cold shoulder, or withholding affection in a marriage. Harsh words or wounding criticism works. There are so many ways to punish a person who has done us wrong. Freud called Jesus's teaching about forgiveness nonsense. And of course, he had an expansive graveyard of buried relationships. Freud was really quite famous for how many friendships he broke off and had nothing to do with again. The fact is, anyone who will not forgive always has a big relational graveyard, because people are sinful. They're weak. They make mistakes. And forgiveness really fits human beings. And if we're not in the forgiving, then our graveyard grows bigger and bigger. You know, I was thinking about this. When you look at the ways that people get revenge on other people, what do you notice? It becomes very clear that evil becomes good and justified in revenge. For a person who is a vigilante and who just wants to get even, almost anything is justified. And this is why nice people do bad things. People ask, "Why would a Christian do that?" Because they were getting even. Christians, even nice people, will do bad things. Evil becomes good when you're angry enough. Yes, it does. We do things we know are wrong, because if that's what it takes to pay back and to teach them a lesson, then it becomes necessary. And that's why God said to Cain, as he was thinking of ways to punish his brother Abel, God said to him, "Sin is crouching at your door." When we are angry, and it becomes frozen, and we don't release it, our mind turns to things that really are sin in God's eyes, to get even. Evil becomes good to the person who will not forgive. When I was in graduate school at Princeton, the professor who taught preaching was a retired Presbyterian preacher, pretty old guy. And one day after class, he took me aside, and he told me that I would fail as a preacher, and that instead I should give that up and become a YMCA worker. I remember this as clear as day. He looked me in the eye, and he said, "You believe Jesus is God. You believe the Bible is the Word of God. You believe that Jesus rose from the dead. You believe all sorts of things that modern people will not believe, and you will fail as a preacher. Save yourself the embarrassment of that, and become a YMCA worker." Now, do you think that that old coot still bothers me? [applause] I just tell you that because saints forgive easily, but I'm not a saint. And forgiving, for me, is almost always a battle in my mind. I have to argue against that part of me that loves Nietzsche and scoffs at Jesus. That part of me that doesn't believe "Happy are those who forgive." You see, I have my Christian self, but I have a part of myself that is not yet fully Christian, and it loves Nietzsche. Honestly, how about you? So how do we motivate ourselves to do something that's just so unnatural? Well, first, motivate yourself with this truth: forgiveness is not something we do for other people. It's something we do for ourselves. I'm thinking about a 50-year-old woman who was a member of my church in Denver. Her husband had a very open affair with his secretary. He made no attempt to hide it. He took phone calls at home. He went out on dates with this woman, for almost a year. He openly had this affair before his wife, and he blamed her for the affair. He said that in their 27 years of marriage, he had never been happy, that it had been a living hell, that's his words, to be married to her. He told her that he was going to grab happiness while he could with his secretary. That he was not going to go through his life with his faithfulness and be as unhappy as he is. Instead, he was going to grab happiness with this woman. But he lived at home another nine months, criticizing his wife in ways, honestly, that I can only describe as cruel and vicious. He called her fat and other really demeaning things. He said he was embarrassed to be seen with her in public. He shredded her self-esteem. Trust me, she lost 50 pounds because of what he was doing to her. And then he filed for divorce after nine months, and he left. There's more. On the day that would have been their 28th wedding anniversary, he had a lavish wedding with his secretary. That was not coincidental. It was cruel and calculated to destroy her. And it almost did. She had to sell the home she had raised three kids in, because she could no longer afford it. A few months passed. She came into my office to tell me the latest, and it was that he had called her to ask her to forgive him, and I quote, "if he had done anything wrong to hurt her." And then he asked her to bless his marriage to his secretary. I asked, "What did you tell him?" She said, "I told him to go to hell and hung up." [laughter] And honest to God, I almost cheered. [laughter] The brazenness of this guy. She had heard dozens of sermons about Jesus saying, "Blessed are the merciful. Happy are those who forgive." But in this situation, with what he had done to her, she believed Nietzsche, not Jesus. That was the only fair thing to do: to get even with him. And who could blame her? She chose to become bitter and search for a way to make him pay. But I tell you, bitterness and resentment are an emotional cancer. It ate her up inside. It actually affected her face. It colored her physically. Bitterness does that. It changes your countenance. It made her an incredibly self-centered person, because all she could think about was her pain. Annie Dillard writes in one of her books, "Refusing to forgive is allowing someone to live rent-free in your head." So true. Rent-free. Inside her head was a collection of DVDs with all the bad things that her ex had done. And over the years, she added more detail to these DVDs and played them over and over in her head. And the emotional torment of it all just grew in her. Each time she did so, she relived the pain, the humiliation, the anger. All of us have experienced that. You relive it again and again. Blessed are those who forgive. Are any of us allowing someone to live rent-free in our head? Got DVDs of bad things that you play, that they've done? It will eat you up. Blessed are the merciful. Happy are those who forgive. We've got choices. Bitterness is not compulsory. You can forgive. Yes, you can. It's a choice, not a feeling. Secondly, tell yourself the truth: the only way to heal and move past the past is to forgive. Forgiving is letting go of the memories, the accusations, and that heals our memories. Life is like a trapeze bar. You can't move forward until you let go of the bar you're hanging on. And as long as we're holding on to our grudges, we cannot move forward in our life. I think it's stunning that the Greek word for "forgive" means to let go of. To let go of revenge, of bitterness, of grudges. To let go of rehearsing what they did to us. I think this is right, but you have to decide for yourself, and that is: no one can forget what they keep rehearsing. No memory can be healed that we keep rehearsing. Blessed are the merciful. A few years ago, I spent a summer in Jerusalem taking graduate seminars in Judaism and archaeology. And one of my favorite professors was Rivka. She was brilliant. I mean, brilliant. And one day she told us that when she immigrated from Poland after World War II to Israel, she forgave Hitler. She forgave Hitler for the death of her parents in the ovens of Dachau. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. I asked, "Why? He murdered so many of your people, and even your own parents. Why would you forgive Hitler?" And she said, "I forgave Hitler because I didn't want to take him to Israel with me and into my new life." Oh my gosh. A lot of us have taken our ex into our new marriage, our parents into our family. Blessed are those who forgive. She refused to allow Hitler to live rent-free in her head. She forgave him and moved past the past. I'll say it again: forgiving is almost a selfish act, because of the benefits to the one who forgives. So who is unforgiven in your life? Honestly, who's living rent-free in your head? And the DVDs occasionally play. People say they cannot forgive. What was done to them is too awful, too cruel. It is unforgivable. They happen to be an exception to Jesus's commandment to forgive. And my answer is always Rivka. I mean, if she can forgive Hitler, how can you say you can't forgive someone? Don't say you can't, because you will never do what you say you can't. You can forgive. It's a choice. And as Paul says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Remember this: Jesus never gives a commandment that's impossible for you to do. That would be cruel. He's not taunting you with this commandment. If He gives this commandment, He's saying you can do this. And this leads to abundant life. You'll never have a truly blessed life until you make the choice. Happy are the merciful. And third, motivate yourself by this: only forgiving breaks the cycle of an eye for an eye. The cycle. Gandhi famously said, "If we live by an eye for an eye, soon we'll all be blind." And I was thinking this last week, you know, that happens in marriages. Refusing to forgive, bringing up the past, supercharging an argument with past wrongs, blinds us to the good in the other person. It just does. We get focused on the bad, and it blinds us to all the good. And I'm sure there are relationships here today that are increasingly becoming blind to the good in the other person, because we're so angry at some things that they have done. If you want a great marriage, become a great forgiver. Otherwise, you'll lose sight of the good in the other person. Yes, you will. One of the best books I've read is by Lance Morrow. The title is Evil: An Investigation. Sounds kind of dull, doesn't it? But it actually is a terrific book, full of insights into how to forgive, and why marriages go bad and relationships are buried. He says, and I quote, "Hurt people become vigilantes. Nothing is wrong when you are punishing bad behavior." Nothing's wrong for a vigilante. In the name of justice, people are made to suffer. Vigilantes. He uses the example, interestingly enough, of the Bosnian-Serbian war. And he asked this question. This bloody war, when people who had been neighbors and friends slaughtered each other in neighborhoods. He asked, "How did this war begin?" His answer is that the Serbs never forgave the Muslims for bad things they did in 1389. 1389. Bad things they had done 600 years ago were unforgiven. And finally, when the opportunity came, the Serbs got even. The same thing can happen in a marriage, or with someone at work. Why forgive? Because I promise you, if you don't forgive, it's going to start other wars. It will start other wars, and more blood will be shed. Forgiving is not a feeling. It's the choice to let the past go. Frozen anger and grudges are simply a war waiting to happen. Now, right about now, in my spirit, I know that probably half this crowd has rejected everything I've said. There's this sense of arguing against the Scriptures, and Satan will walk the aisles and give you thoughts and help you do that. Because if we have been in a place where we have refused to forgive, what it's done to us is harden our heart. Not softened it; it's hardened our heart, till when teaching like this comes from Jesus, we can't believe it. And that's a sad thing, because we will never have abundant life until we learn to forgive as Jesus said to forgive. Blessed are the merciful. Happy are those who forgive. Jesus said it. It's true. So as we come to communion today, surely one of the things many of us need to ask forgiveness for is the refusal to forgive other people in our past. The refusal to forgive is a sin against God's commandment. But worse, it prevents us from having abundant life. So I pray that as we come to this, as God brings people's names to your mind, that you'll ask forgiveness for that, and on the spot say, "Lord, I forgive them. Help me to forgive them. Help me to forgive them." I hope you'll do that. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He took the bread, and He broke it, and He said, "Take, eat. This is My body, broken for you." And in the same manner, He said, "This cup is the new covenant of forgiveness in My blood. Drink you all of it." The Lord's Supper. He paid a tremendous price for us to be forgiven of all things. And all the disciples could think of was when Jesus said, "Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Blessed are the merciful." Lord, help us to do that now as we take communion. Speak to us. We pray in Your name. Amen.