Marriage: Forgiveness and Forbearance

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Thank you, Pastor Luke. Good morning, everyone. How are you this morning? Good. It's good to see you. We've been, we have started two weeks ago, I guess three weeks ago now, a series surrounding marriage and how marriage is God's idea, right? Something that God, that was not the harebrained idea of man or woman, but that something that God established in the very fabric of creation. And because marriage is God's idea,

God gets to define it and God gets to draw the boundaries around it and God gets to give it direction and God sets its purposes. And while all of us, I don't think any of us who have been married are married, go to the altar with the hope that we will be really unhappy.

Sometimes that does happen but most of us most of us enter into the covenant of marriage with some expectation at least of having that relationship be fulfilling to ourself, maybe fulfilling to our family maybe be the start starting our own family but, what has often become the case in our culture is that marriage is pursued primarily as a way to fulfill something in me, right an emptiness that I have a desire that I have something that I need or want a sense of love from someone else the opportunity to be in a vulnerable like emotionally and physically intimate relationship and none of that is, inherently wrong in fact it is a fruit of marriage that god that is god honoring, but the primary the primary focus of marriage, is not our personal happiness,

Our personal fulfillment. Scripture speaks of marriage as a way in which. God has given us the gift of marriage so that there may be an, incarnational relationship here on earth that reflects the type of love that is expressed from Jesus to the church so that my marriage, and your marriage and all of our marriages when aligned in faithfulness to Jesus should be, should tell the world a story about how much Jesus loves them, about how much Jesus loves the church. And so primarily speaking, marriages are meant to point people to Jesus. They are meant to be a reflection of the love expressed from Jesus to the church, to those who have believed in him by faith.

But I don't, we talked a little bit about this last week. I don't know if you know this or not.

You are married, your spouse, if you're married, your spouse is a sinner, right? Did you know that? No. For goodness sakes, no, I would never say such a thing, right? Yeah, you are married to a sinner. Not only are you married to a sinner, but unfortunately, your spouse is also married to a sinner.

Nope, not me. And not only are you married to a sinner and not only is your spouse married to a sinner but your marriage exists, within the context of a world that has been broken and marred by sin,

So you're married to a sinner, your spouse is married to a sinner, and the environment that your marriage exists is a broken one, one broken by sin, one in needing of redemption.

And all of this and more, this is at its very foundational level, but all of this and more can make marriages very difficult sometimes.

It can kind of make the dynamic a little bit complex once in a while dealing with all these sinful people that we have to live with and be in relationship with in the context of a broken world but listen in a world, where in a world where our most dearly held relationships, the ones with our spouse can create the most deep and damaging and hurtful wounds in us, God has offered us a gift. In a world where we're married to sinful people, where we are sinners ourselves, and in a context where our marriages exist in the context of a broken world, God has offered us a gift, in light of all those realities to help bring wholeness, and oneness and covenant unity back into a relationship that is meant to reflect the love that he has for us. And that gift that God gives us is the gift of forgiveness.

The gift of forgiveness is something that God offers to us, not just on our behalf from him, but as a gift, that we can express and give to one another in the horizontal relationships of our lives. It is certainly a factor in our vertical relationship, meaning that God gives us the gift of forgiveness for the benefit of, the redemption of our own souls, but he also gives us the gift of forgiveness so that we can pursue horizontal peace, and intimacy, and love with those around us.

Listen, we serve an incredibly gracious and kind God. Incredibly gracious and kind, full of love.

And sometimes we, sometimes we can get into the habit of confusing the things that God does and who God is. Okay. And what I mean by that is, is this, like, sometimes we say that we, could say things or even have thoughts that like, well, God does forgiving things, right? Like God extends forgiveness as if it is something that exists outside of who he actually is and something that he just like kind of takes out of his bag of supernatural tricks to offer to us. But scripture speaks about God's forgiveness in a little bit different way. It's not just something that God does. Forgiveness is a part of who God is.

It is a central pillar to his very being and his very identity. It's not something that he has to muster up the will to do or to give or to offer. It is a natural overflow of the nature of his character, meaning he doesn't have to work hard to do it. He's not reluctant to do it. He doesn't have to think about whether or not he wants to do it or will do it. It is simply who he is. God is a forgiving God.

We have several examples in scripture of this. The prophet, or not the prophet, the early Old Testament figure, Nehemiah, I guess we'd call him a revivalist, said this in Nehemiah 9.17. Said, they refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Our God is a God who is eager to forgive. He is abounding in steadfast love. He is slow to anger, gracious and merciful. The prophet Micah had this to say about God. God, who is a God like you pardoning iniquity over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. Thank God it's again, right? He will again have compassion on us and he will tread our iniquities underfoot, you will cast all of your sins, into all of our sins into the depths of the sea.

Probably one of the most significant passages of scripture about forgiveness is from Psalm 103. Many of you know this. It says, he does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. For as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. How far away does God remove our transgressions from us? Well, as far as the east is from the west. It's a kind of a euphemistic way of saying like the distance is infinite. It.

We, we are, God removes our sin from us in such that he, that he is, it's almost like he's unable to bring it back up again. It's gone. It has disappeared as far as the East is from the West.

These scriptures say to us that he is, God is gracious, right? The God that we serve is a gracious God. He is a compassionate God. He is slow to anger. He is abounding in love. He delights to show mercy. It says he treads our sins underfoot. He hurls our iniquities into the sea. He separates us from our transgressions as far as the east is from the west. He is not reluctant to forgive. He is eager. He is willing. He is ready.

And at great cost to himself, we, you and I, are offered forgiveness from our sins.

It was often said that, well, forgiveness is free. It's maybe free to you in the sense of like a transactional nature, but it was not free to God. The offer of forgiveness to you and I came at great cost to God himself. The Apostle Paul says in Colossians 2, he says this, And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. It cost God something to offer forgiveness to us. What it cost was the cross. It cost the nailing of his son on the cross. We are redeemed, the scripture says, by the blood of Jesus Christ. This is our forgiveness, which is an outpouring of the riches of God, of God's grace. Paul says this exact thing in Ephesians chapter 1. He says, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. That the riches of God's grace sent his son Jesus to the cross so that by the

Blood of Christ shed in that place, you and I may experience the forgiveness of our sins. The washing away of our iniquity. Forgiveness cost God something significant.

It cost him his own life in Jesus Christ. It cost him the shedding of his own blood, the penalty that was due us,

God assumed himself. Now, you may be sitting there this morning, maybe thinking and wondering, hey, we're in like a marriage series, right?

Why are we talking about God's forgiveness of us? Where's the, like, when are we getting into, like, how do I forgive this idiot I live with conversation?

And I'm sensitive to that because my wife lives with an idiot. So I know, I know that is a primary question when it comes to forgiveness and being married to a sinner and living with a sinner and, having a marriage in the context of a sinful and broken world. I am sensitive to that. And I really struggled, honestly, with this message in particular,

Not because I didn't know what to say, but because there was so much that could possibly be said. It's like, how do I just, what is it that the Lord wants to have said and get us out of here at a decent hour?

It really is the honest question. But listen, it is. Why talk about God's forgiveness extended to us so much in a series where we're focusing on our marriage, our marriages, our horizontal relationships.

And it's for this reason really grasping god's forgiveness for you is the number one key, in your ability to forgive others,

Meaning if you if if if you have not, come into agreement in your heart with the offer of forgiveness of god through the shed blood of jesus on the cross for you.

And have not let that truth take root in your heart, then. You don't have any solid footing from which to pursue real, authentic, lasting forgiveness of those that you are in relationship with. Whether that's your spouse, or your kids, or your parents, or your friends or the person sitting next to you or whomever, grasping God's forgiveness for you is the number one key. In the ability to forgive others and having an understanding of the treasure of God's forgiveness having an understanding of the length, of God's forgiveness, of the timing of God's forgiveness, like how, how soon after, you sin and ask for forgiveness, does God forgive you? It's like, I got to think about it for a little bit. I'm still really hurt. I got to make you just kind of like hold the pain that you've done for me. I got to make you, I'm going to make you suffer under it for a few days. And then when I think that you've suffered enough, then I'll let you know, Hey, I've forgiven you. We can move on into real life. Like, But that is a dynamic that we often in our flesh hold in our human relationships, right?

Someone has hurt us. They live in close relationship with us. So we see them quite often or interacting with them quite often. We are maybe ready to forgive them in our head, but we don't think they have quite suffered enough for what they've done to us.

Right? And so we hold on to the articulation of that forgiveness for a little bit. So they feel the weight and pressure. So they really understand what they've done. And then after they've squirmed for a few days and the relationship has suffered for a few days, and it's like a rubber band that has been stretched and ready to break, then we'll let them know, okay, we're good now. I'm ready to forgive you. This is not how God forgives. Right?

And so if we are going to have relationships that, are just immersed in the type of forgiveness that brings freedom, and brings life and brings joy and brings redemption into our horizontal relationships, we have to take upon ourselves the character of God's forgiveness, the way in which God has forgiven us, the way in which God interacts with us in the midst of our sin. See, because when scripture talks about forgiveness within horizontal human relationships, my forgiveness of Sherry, hers of me, your forgiveness of me, mine of you, it always talks about it from the foundation of God's forgiveness of us. Meaning that like the basis of this forgiveness right here is this forgiveness right here. We've talked about this several times over the last few weeks that our marriages, and then our relationships are always fixed and healed vertically, before they are fixed and healed horizontally.

Meaning like I might be able to pursue relational. Like a relational healing with just say my wife. I might be able to pursue relational healing from my wife, but if I don't deal with, if I've hurt her, but if I don't let the Lord deal with the sin that is in my heart that created the horizontal relational fracture here, then I might mend the relationship but I've not dealt with the root that created the fruit of hurt.

Okay. And so eventually we'll, I'll just return to that rotten fruit, right? Cause the root is still the same.

But if I submit my life, my heart, my will, my, my, my thoughts, my words, if I submit them to the Lord saying, Lord, fix this here so that I am less likely to hurt the people here. And when I do hurt the people here, Lord, let me return to this here to understand how I may pursue forgiveness that brings human relationship back into the flourishing way. Our marriages are fixed vertically before they are fixed horizontally.

Maybe one of the most important questions that you can ask yourself if you're if you have a relationship or many relationships that are struggling and you're like I don't know maybe what maybe maybe what's happening is I'm I've been holding on, maybe my relationships are the fruit now of long-held unforgiveness in my heart, maybe I've held on to unforgiveness for a long time. And now I'm recognizing the fruit of that unforgiveness in my relationships. Sometimes it takes a really long time. Sometimes it happens really quickly, right? But the process of now addressing that is to come back here to the vertical relationship to say, have I, as a child of God, as a daughter, as a son, have I experienced the forgiveness of God for me?

Have I been forgiven? Have I repented of my sin before the Lord, and said, Lord, by faith, Heavenly Father, I believe,

That what Jesus did on the cross in the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood,

Is what is offered to me for the cleansing and washing away of my sin-sick soul. And I receive from you by faith forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ.

Have you experienced forgiveness from the Lord? And beyond that, because there's a dynamic that happens when you hear a pastor say something like that,

And we tend to process that here. Well, yeah, I've said that prayer before. I've asked the Lord to forgive me. I've read these scriptures. I'm present and accounted for this morning in this sermon. I get it. But listen you we all know I know that there is a there is a vast difference, between processing something up here and living it here,

I know that Jesus has forgiven me because like the old kids, the whole Sunday school song, Jesus loves me. This I know, right? For the Bible tells me so. I know that Jesus loves me, but do I know that Jesus, do I live my life,

Out of an identity of being loved by the Father? Do I live my life out of an identity of one who has been forgiven of much?

Because when the truth of God's word takes that 18-inch road trip from my head, to my heart, something changes.

And it's not just what I know that changes, it's now who I am. That in that moment, I go from being someone who knows about forgiveness to someone who is like the Lord himself, eager to forgive, gracious and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love to the people who have hurt me. See, has that reality moved from our heads, something that we hear and just try to understand into our hearts.

Something that actually displays or displaces an old identity and creates a new one, the reason that this is so important, is because if we try to forgive the people in our lives just from, the foundation or the ground of our own emotional will rather than our identity,

We will almost always come to a point in a relationship where we're like, you know what? I know that it takes a willful decision to forgive this person. I don't feel like it, so I'm not going to.

It hurts too much. They've done too much or they've done too little. And so because I don't feel like forgiving them, guess what? Not gonna.

But listen, that is a life that is built upon what we know up here.

But someone whose heart has been transformed by God's forgiveness of them is no longer the person that lives within the context of their own will, we now live out of the identity of one who has been forgiven,

So that forgiveness is not so much like a decision of our will or a choice that we make, it now is just who we are. I have been forgiven of much from the Father. How can I do anything but extend the same forgiveness to those around me?

And that is exactly how the scripture talks about forgiveness, is that our forgiveness of others has a direct and proportional, relationship to our heart knowledge of God's forgiveness of us.

The apostle Paul says it in Colossians chapter three, verse 13, he says, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against one another, forgiving each other as what? As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

What is the relationship between our forgiveness of others and God's forgiveness of us? It's like direct, directly proportional, right? You have been forgiven, so you must forgive. Like, well, oh, I don't know. Paul may have had it wrong. Well, I'll tell you who didn't have it wrong is this guy, Jesus, when he said in Matthew chapter six, for if you forgive others, their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Now, you don't need a degree in Greek or Aramaic or know what was going on in the ancient Near East with a obscure Jewish teacher in that time to kind of get the point here. Jesus directly relates God's forgiveness extended to you to your forgiveness extended to others.

Don't forgive? Cool. No forgiveness. Not as a way to bring pressure but as a reflection of being like you don't understand the depth to which you've been forgiven.

And this isn't the only time that Jesus says something similar. He says it in a different type of way in the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew chapter 18,

Where the parable goes essentially, right? That a master brought in someone who owed him a debt that was unpayable and was going to put him in jail until he could work it off. Well, he had no ability to actually work it off. So when the guy begged for forgiveness of the debt, the master was like, you know what?

Okay, I recognize there's no way you can pay this back. There is no way you can get out of this debt on your own. I forgive the debt, go. And then that guy who is forgiven goes out, pulls in a servant that owes him money a much lower amount, demands repayment and then does not offer the same forgiveness, as he received and so what does the big master do he drags that guy back back into his office being like I have forgiven I forgave you of all of this and your first response upon my forgiveness of you was to bring judgment and.

And an unmerciful spirit against someone that owed you something else. Jesus is like, this is the way the Heavenly Father,

Deals with you when you refuse to forgive someone from your heart. That's how Jesus ends that parable.

Tosses him into jail where he will be there forever. You see out of out of his forgiveness of us, comes the grace necessary to forgive others and I don't want you to I want you to listen to that again because this is I think my experience one of the things that we misunderstand about forgiveness the most. Out of God's forgiveness of us comes the grace necessary to forgive others. Forgiving others comes to the power of God's grace.

We need supernatural empowerment from the Holy Spirit to forgive people who have hurt us.

If we think we can do it from just gritting our teeth, you know, hiking up our boots, like just trying really hard to forget about what they did, to move past the hurt under our own strength, in our own will, by our own devices or methods. Listen, man, the flesh is strong. The flesh is strong.

And so without the supernatural gift of God's grace and hand upon your decision and effort to forgive others, it is,

Humanly impossible to forgive. It is only possible through the forgiving work of God through Jesus Christ, now empowered to you in his Holy Spirit. Forgiving is a grace that you must step into. God, I have been hurt. This is difficult. I don't feel like I want to do this. But Lord I'm refusing to walk in life according to simply how I feel because I know that you have made me a person who has been forgiven,

You have you have you have changed and altered my identity as a son as a daughter and so because you have changed me here,

That is how I will live. Now, there are some unique challenges, admittedly. There are some unique challenges of forgiveness in marriage.

One of the most unique challenges, I will say this. First, we have to remember that there, do you want your marriage to last? I want mine to last, right? There are no lasting relationships without forgiveness.

At least not healthy ones you can live in misery for the rest of your life, if that's what you if you're just going to grit your teeth through it but there are no lasting healthy life-giving relationships without forgiveness, if you are in a relationship with someone for long enough whether it's your spouse or a friend or a co-worker or whomever you're going to have to forgive them, and they're going to have to forgive you because there's going to be hurt. There's going to be pain. There are no lasting relationships, without forgiveness, but forgiveness in marriages in marriages, you know, it, it has some unique challenges. And one of the primary challenges is that we got to live with these people.

Like if I do something to hurt Aldo, Aldo sees me once or twice a week at best.

Right? And so there's like this separation where like my stench isn't right in front of his face all the time.

And so there's like a, all right, I got some space. The hurt isn't so pronounced. Announced it's not right here all the time but like listen in our marriages, if our if we've been hurt in the context of our marriages that person shares a bed with us we may be sharing meals with them we may be raising kids with them going to family functions with them and they're right here the whole like it a bit a really unique challenge of forgiveness and marriages that we got to live with these people all the time.

And that can feel really suffocating. It can't feel really suffocating. It will be really suffocating if there is not a heart and a spirit of forgiveness.

But there is hope here. I want you to hear that there is hope. And I'm just telling you right now, we're going to talk about forgiveness more. I had the series planned for four messages. It's not enough. We're going to go further than that. Okay. So,

We probably won't talk about sex next week. Well, I just warned everyone that we were going to be talking about sex and marriage at like at that week. And right. I want you to be aware of when that is in case you want to make arrangements for, to be sick that day. Sherry is already sick. So is my teenage son.

I don't feel good. But listen, there is hope. There is hope here. Even in the unique challenges of forgiveness and unforgiveness within marriage, there is hope.

I want you to hear me right now. And I believe this with all of my heart. The tension that you are experiencing now can be released through moment-by-moment, day-by-day decisions to forgive.

Another reason that forgiveness is uniquely challenging in marriage is because the hurt is often very deep.

As is most of life, the ones who love us the most and are closest to us have the power to hurt us most deeply.

Because of the intimacy that is shared, the hurt often goes very deep. Some of the deepest hurts in our lives happen in our homes. But the hope here, listen, the hope is that while some of the deepest hurts happen in our homes, some of the most profound joy, safety, pleasure, intimacy is found on the other side of forgiveness.

On the other side of that hurt. Finally, a unique challenge of forgiveness in marriage is that we underestimate, the will of the enemy to destroy your marriage.

We really kind of classically underestimate the will and desire of the enemy to destroy what God has brought together. Everything that God loves and creates, the enemy is seeking to twist, maim, destroy, and separate.

So in the midst of God's creation of covenant marriage, the enemy has a strong will to destroy that. And we often overlook the work of the enemy to create division and divide and pain and hurt within our marriage. But listen, forgiveness is a weapon against the will of the enemy in your marriage. Like every time the enemy is like, yeah, you be offended by that. You hold that. Hold that in your heart. You deserve to be angry.

You deserve to be angry. Like, ah, no, I actually don't. I have been forgiven of much. So I will forgive much. The enemy is like, we take away the tools. We take away his tools when we are eager to forgive, because if he can't leverage offense against two people, and all that there is the identity and character and nature of God within us to eagerly and abundantly forgive, and his ability to destroy our marriages becomes very small.

Listen, God is, we serve a merciful God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. He delights to show mercy. He treads our sins underfoot. He hurls our iniquities into the sea. He separates us from our transgressions as far as the East is from the West. He is not reluctant to forgive us. He is eager and willing. And he invites you to take upon yourself the same identity of one who is eager to forgive. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you, Lord, for being one who is eager to forgive, for being gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Lord, you do not revisit our sins upon us, but you separate us from them as far as the east is from the west.

Lord, I pray that the truth of your word that speaks about the depth of your forgiveness would be something today that does not just sit in our mind,

But that moves into our hearts. Lord, may we apprehend the height and depth and length and breadth that is the love of Christ for us. What sent him to the cross, what shed his blood, what broke his body is a desire to redeem the world to himself.

Lord it is in that depth that you offer us the power and grace necessary to forgive help us Lord to do so in Jesus name amen.