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Guest (Male): With the real effects of bitter unforgiveness, here's Pastor Tom Keller.

Pastor Thom Keller: It's been said that unforgiveness is like you drinking poison, thinking it's going to kill the other person, the person that hurt you. It'll kill you. And if the sin committed against you has you emotionally embittered, then that person owns you. And they will own you until you forgive them.

Guest (Male): It's said the heaviest thing anyone can carry is a grudge. And while the only remedy is forgiveness, it's a challenge, especially when someone gets inside your head. Today's study the Word with Pastor Tom Keller will help meet that challenge. Last time we considered where things go wrong in relationships and how they're made right. It starts with forgiveness. Here now with the conclusion of that teaching from Colossians chapter 3, Pastor Tom once again.

Pastor Thom Keller: Now I would postulate that the first cause for our broken relationship with God is our sin. And our broken relationship with God can only be reestablished by us seeking forgiveness. It's the first cause of our broken relationship, sin. A Sunday school teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said, can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness of sin? There was a short pause, and then from the back of the room a small voice spoke up and said, sin? That's not a problem for us, is it, sinning?

And in mirror fashion, I would again suggest that the first cause of our broken relationship with others, listen, the first cause of our broken relationship with others is likewise getting stuck in the mire of sin, ours or theirs, which can only be reestablished by way of forgiveness. Either our seeking forgiveness from them or our granting forgiveness. The argument of first cause of nearly all broken relationships. And this is why this issue of forgiveness is such a huge issue in our Christian life. My guess is, my guess is, of the people that I meet with in prayer counseling, 90% 80 to 90% of the relational issues that we look at, unforgiveness is the first cause of that continuing break that is never been dealt with.

And this is why Jesus spoke so often and so strongly concerning forgiving one another. In Matthew 6:14, but when you were praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your father in heaven will forgive you your sins, too. You ever think of take that literally? When you're praying, first forgive so you don't forgive, stop praying? Wow. Don't pray until you forgive? That's strong. And then in the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6:12, it says this, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And in Matthew 18, Jesus gives a great insight to the hidden cost of unforgiveness.

In Matthew 18, Jesus starts the discussion with Peter by answering a question that Peter had asked about a repeat offender like you and me. Matthew 18:21, Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times? The rabbis taught three times. And Peter started to figure Jesus out, and he said, I'll double it and add one for good measure. That's probably a safe number. Seven times? No, not seven times, Jesus is like, but 70 times seven. And then in the context, in the backdrop of that unlimited forgiveness, Jesus goes on to tell a story about forgiveness.

Matthew 18:23, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn't pay. So his master ordered that he be sold along with his wife, his children, and everything owned to pay the debt. But the man fell down before his master and begged him, please be patient with me and I will pay it all. Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave that entire debt.

But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. Be patient with me. Same thing he said to the king, this man says to him, be patient with me and I would pay it. He pleaded, but his creditor wouldn't wait. He had the man arrested and put in the prison until the debt could be paid in full. When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset.

They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, you evil servant. My translation says, you hard-hearted wretch. I forgave you that tremendous debt just because you pleaded with me. Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you? Then the angry king the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. That's what my heavenly father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

Do you get the story? Man owes the king millions of dollars. He says, be patient, I'll pay it. The king realizes he can't pay it. He says, look, it's forgiven. That guy goes out on the street, finds a guy that owes him a couple thousand bucks, grabs him by the throat, says, pay it up. He says the same thing, be patient. No nothing doing, you're going to prison. The king's friends find out. They tell the king. He brings him back in. And he says, you hard-hearted wretch. I forgave that huge debt just because you asked me to.

You won't forgive this measly little pittance? You're going to prison. In verse 34, the King James version says, and his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors. Listen, this is critical. And delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him. Delivered him to the tormentors. In Greek, the word is taste. and it means one who elicits truth by way of torture as on the rack. The word is used interchangeably as a term for a jailer because the business of torturing was assigned to the jailer. Now do you get the point?

The king placed this unforgiving man in prison in prison. And as such, handed him over to the master of the prison to torture him until he paid back every last cent. But here's the kicker. Here's where you and I walk into the story, where we walk into this prison if you will, and where we are stretched out on the rack. Listen to verse 35. So my heavenly father will do to you do what? Turn you over to the tormentors. So my heavenly father will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses.

Did you get that? If you refuse to forgive those who wronged you, you will be you will be Listen, can Jesus lie? No. Then you will be you will be right now in jail, turned over to maybe already are in jail, and into the custody of the jailer himself, Satan, so that you can be tortured until from your heart you forgive those who have wronged you. You know, people say, why would God allow that to happen? Because he knows unforgiveness is so devastating that if he let us just bypass it and forget about it and move on, it would continue to cause a cascade of problems in our lives.

So he set turns us over to to the tormentors so that we're constantly reminded by that. And how do we do that? Verse 35. How does he do that? Says that's what your heavenly father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart. You stop refusing to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart. You choose to forgive. You say, but you don't know what that man did to me. No, I don't. And I would never try to minimize his or her sin against you. But here's the truth.

Your refusal to forgive them injures you and even others because people stuck in bitterness hurt people, even those who did not hurt them. It touches more than just those two people involved. It's been said that unforgiveness is like you drinking poison, thinking it's going to kill the other person, the person that hurt you. It'll kill you. And if the sin committed against you has you emotionally embittered, then that person owns you. And they will own you until you forgive them. I've said that to many people, and some of them get really angry when I say it.

I say, you know, until you forgive that person for what they've done, they own you. They say, that man does not own me. I hate that man. He does not own me. And I say, well, I don't want to disagree with you, but based upon the raw emotion I just heard, it sounds like he's rending space in your head right now. I think he's in there. And here's how you get him out of your head. In fact, this is the only way you get them out of your head. You forgive. You say that man doesn't deserve forgiveness.

Maybe he doesn't. But do you want to be tied to him emotionally for the rest of your life? You know, something that is in my nose, but this is important too. Children, we're all children. You know, if you become embittered at your parents and never get over it, you will focus on the wrongs that they did to you. And we become like what we focus on. It doesn't matter why we focus on it. It's immaterial. If we focus on it for good reasons or bad reasons, doesn't matter. We will gravitate toward what we focus on.

Any sport, where your eyes go, that's where you're going to go. Where your eyes go, where is where the ball is going to go. What you focus on is your emotional focus will take you there what you focus on. I love the story about two twin brothers. And the one admired the attributes of his the positive attributes of his father. The other brother hated the negative attributes of his father, and he focused on that. Both those brothers picked up those attributes. The one that focused on the positive picked up the positive. One focused on the negative picked up the negative.

Why? Because it was their emotional focus. You will gravitate toward what you focus on. The reason why is immaterial. It's the focus that determines where you go. And if you think about it in a perverse sort of way, doesn't he win and continue to make you angry and emotional every time you think about him? If he pulls that off really, isn't he winning? You say, but I don't feel like forgiving him. I'm just going to wait until I feel like it. A lot of people get stuck there. Listen, there are some things that were done to some of you that are so horrific, so horrible that if you will forgive only when you feel like it, you're never going to forgive because you're never going to get that feeling to forgive.

And as a result, you're never going to get freedom. Instead, you forgive as an act of your will. You make a determination because God says I should. I choose this day to forgive this man for what he did to me, for what she did to me. It's a prayer something like this. Lord Jesus, I choose today as an act of my will to forgive whoever, my uncle, for what he did to me. What he did was not right. And by forgiving him, I'm not saying that what he did was right because it was not. But I am not his judge.

I am not the jury. I'm not the executioner. I take my hands off of that and I give that to you from this point forward to deal with it. And I pray that the reality of what really just happened that was broken in the spiritual realm would play out in my emotional life as well. Now let's talk about your feelings after you forgive. People forgive and they say, you know, I don't feel like anything's different. Well, your feelings and the reality what happens in prayer are two different things. And I use example, if you went to New York City and you're walking down an alley one night or 2:00 in the morning, what are you doing in an alley 2:00 in the morning?

But that's another story. You're walking down an alley at 2:00 in the morning and I jump out of the corners and I go boo. Like that. I scare you. You're terrified. You start thinking you look for something to pick up to hit me with or your something. And then you see it's me. And you go, you jerk. You're my pastor. What are you doing here? Why did you yell boo? I could have killed you. Now here's the point. When I yell boo initially, your feeler and your thinker are pegged. Your thinker is thinking, how can I defend myself?

How can I how can I protect myself? Your feeler, your heart is racing. As soon as you see it's me, your thinker goes to zero instantly. No danger. You know that. Your thinker is zero. But your feeler is still up here because your heart's still racing. It takes time for that to fall down, but it will follow over time where your thinker is. And the same is true with forgiveness. When you choose to forgive, it is broken in the heavens. And when it's broken there over time, your feeler will begin to drop. But if you don't forgive, that unforgiveness will hold that feeler at 100.

It will. The only chance. So people say, well, how I experience this? What would this look like? And I tell them, it's typically something like this. You're bitter toward your father, and he's living in another state. And you go visit him for Thanksgiving. And you forgave him two months ago. Now you're with me. You think everything's going to be peachy keen, maybe not. But this is what you will experience. You'll know it's different. You'll know something's different. What I've experienced people saying is they realize that that person no longer has the power over them that they had before because forgiveness gives power.

It does. Unforgiveness gives power. And as a part of this understanding is that our forgiving them, I believe in a very real way, unties us from them in a way that actually helps God do a redemptive work in their life as well. I I can't I can't give you chapter and verse for that, but I believe there's a there there's a a connection, a spiritual connection, that in some way until we forgive, it doesn't allow God to do all that he wants to do in the life of that person either. So does my relationship with him change over time?

You'll I believe you will sense over time your your feeler coming in line with the reality what happened. And then people will say, do I need to tell them that I forgave them? So if I go to God and forgive, do I need to go tell them that I forgave? You know, let me give an example. There's there've been some situations where Sue and I have met with women or Sue's met with women, and they they had an abuser in their past. And just in a counseling setting, they decide they're going to forgive that abuser for what they did.

And a couple of days later, a week later, they come back and they're feeling really good and they say, wow, I feel so free. I want to go tell my abuser I forgave them. And and they're all cheery about that. And I say, listen, listen, listen, if God tells you to do that, you do that. But if he doesn't, I want you to think that through because if you go and tell him you forgave him forgave him, you need to be ready for anything he could say to you, anything. He could deny it. He could say you're lying.

He could say you deserved it. You got to be prepared for all that. If you're not prepared, if that's going to spin you, then don't go. If God tells you to go, go. The important thing is not that. The important thing is that you went before the Lord and forgave them for what they did. Mary Johnson lost her son in 1993 after a teenager by the name of Owen Israel got into a fight with him at a party and shot him. With so many unanswered questions, Johnson went to visit Owen in jail. After their first contact, she said, quote, I began to feel this movement in my feet.

It moved up my legs and just moved up my body when I felt it leave. I instantly knew that all my anger and hatred and animosity of 12 years that I held in my heart was over. I had totally forgiven him. The two now live as neighbors in the same duplex. And Johnson has even referred to Israel as her son. Owen says, quote, I admire Mary for being brave enough to offer forgiveness and for being brave enough to take that step. It motivates me to make sure that I stay in the right path. In an interview with Real Simple magazine, domestic violence survivor Pascal Cavanaugh said that she never thought she would reconnect with her mother, her abuser during her adult life.

However, in 2010, her mother suffered several strokes that left her unable to communicate or take care of herself. With no one else to help, Cavanaugh began to sit by her mother's bedside and read to her. Through this, Cavanaugh says, the hatred that she had for her mother dissipated in the forgiveness and love. Third story. After a long shift at the fire department, Matt Swatzell fell asleep while driving and crashed into another vehicle, taking the life of a pregnant mother, June FitzGerald, and injuring her 19-month-old daughter. According to Today magazine, FitzGerald's husband, who is a full-time pastor, asked for the man's diminished sentence and began meeting with Swatzell for coffee and conversation.

Many years later, the two men remain close friends. FitzGerald says, you forgive as you've been forgiven. Mark Twain said this, forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel of that that has crushed it. Listen again. Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. You know, God wants to set some of you free today. He really does. You know, I've said I could I could really make almost every Sunday one of two themes. One is forgiveness, and the other is taking up and holding onto an offense.

Those two are so critical in our lives. Forgiveness and taking up and holding onto offenses. Today it's unforgiveness. If there's someone, something in your past, you know, home this morning I pray that that God would let your heart be open enough to see where there are resentments in your life that you've kind of covered over, that you've kind of locked the door to. Because there is a part of your life that you're going to be tormented. You know, I've said this before, everything you've ever done, all the things that we've not dealt with in life that we should of the way God tells us to, they're all running on the hard drive.

And although you're not consciously aware of that event, it's always in the background. And so when you don't have peace, when you can't sleep, when you're when you have anxiety, when you're when your stomach is in knots and you really can't put a finger on it, I'm telling you that is a part of what that's about. It's that on the background running on the hard drive. And it gives Satan access to torment you. So I hope and pray that we can deal with this right now.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Pastor Tom Keller on Study the Word, and we're in a study of Colossians right now. Would you like to give this a second listen? Either go to our website at ccleb.com or visit our YouTube page. Simply subscribe to our channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, and you can watch our services live or on demand. That includes the series in Colossians. For those interested in a CD copy, call 717 273 5633. Once again, that's 717 273 5633. Study the Word is listener supported. With your help, we're able to reach thousands of people all over the world.

Please consider sending in a gift today, and you can give online at ccleb.com or call 717 273 5633. Or if you prefer to write, jot down this address. Study the Word 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046. And we also want to invite you to join us for a Sunday service, either in person or online. For more information or to watch the live stream, visit ccleb.com or again go to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon. And now to conclude our time with prayer, once again, here's Pastor Tom.

Pastor Thom Keller: Let's do some business with God. If there's someone that comes to your mind or there are a number of people that come to your mind, I'm going to encourage you right now to let go of that, okay? So you pray this prayer quietly in your heart. Just say this after me. Lord Jesus, I choose this day to forgive this person for what they did to me. And by doing that, I'm not saying what they did was right. It was not. But I am not their judge. I am not the jury. I am not the executioner.

And I turn that all over to you. And so as an act of my will, I forgive this person for what they did. And I pray that over time you'd allow my feelings to catch up with what really just took place here today. And I ask this in Jesus' name.

Guest (Male): Amen. If you've prayed with Pastor Tom, would you let us know? It would be a great blessing to hear from you. And just drop by ccleb.com and leave us an email. And then join us next time for Study the Word as we continue through Colossians with Pastor Tom Keller, an outreach of Calvary Chapel Lebanon, Pennsylvania.