This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. If you have your Bibles, let's open up to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 6. The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 6, we'll be picking up in verse 35. This is the reading of God's word. But love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great. And you will be sons of the most high for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful even as your father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. This is the reading of God's word. A question for every day and a question for this morning. What has God done for you? What has God done for you? It's a question that applies to all of us actually. A question that applies to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who are following Him. And it's a question that applies to those who have never followed Him. To the non-Christian, you have God to thank for every blessing that you have ever known. Even though you do not worship Him, even though you do not follow Him, He blesses you. God has done so much, even for those who do not follow him, even for those who do not call themselves Christian. For Christians, he has done abundantly more. The commands of this passage demand that we have some understanding and more than actually some understanding that we have a deep understanding of what it is that our God has done for us. In the passage before this, and that's why I started it in verse 35 and not in 36, where we'll be starting in the sermon today. But in the passage before us, we discussed how God has across all time been kind to the ungrateful and to the evil, the ungrateful and the evil. If you remember that sermon, the painful part of it is we're not talking about other people. We are talking about us. We cringe because we, the people of God, have been the ungrateful and the evil. God's people across all time have always been ungrateful, for God's blessings. They have always sought to practice evil. That's the people of God, not even just the rest of the world. And God has been kind to us. So much better to us than we could ever deserve. And it's this momentum that carries us into verse 36, where we are really fleshing out just how kind he has been to us. Look at verse 36. Be merciful, even as your father is merciful. We consider God's mercy to us. Again, Jesus is addressing people that we would call believers. Only those who know Christ, who are following Christ, can truly call God Father. So what mercy have God's children needed? You look at the whole Bible, and it is Example after example after example of how we have needed mercy in all ages. God's people have perpetually been ungrateful and evil. And that means that in all ages, God's people have needed mercy. Ingratitude and wickedness. They're sin issues. They're not personality quirks. They are matters that demand cosmic justice. And what must a holy and perfect judge do with our sin? He must punish it. From life's first cry to final breath, God's people need mercy. God's people need mercy. Every day of their lives, They violate God's law. Every day justice cries out for our punishment and not just consequences, not just worldly consequences, but the punishment for eternal crimes. It is eternal punishment. Every sin calls down hell upon the sinner. And yet God never gives them justice. God continues to pour out mercy upon us. This is the story of the whole Bible. The pattern is that even the very best of the people of God, they act out in ingratitude. They act out in wickedness. And what does God do? What did he do when Adam fell? What did he do when Abraham wavered? What did he do when David murdered? What did he do when Jonah rebelled? What did he do when Peter fled? When Paul persecuted? What did he do? He was merciful. Every single time God was merciful. God's people have never borne the full consequences of their sin. God has always spared them the punishment that they deserved. All of the people that I mentioned, what did God do? They were not only spared, they were restored. God wasn't just happy to say, fine, I won't punish you, but I'm not talking to you ever again. That's what we would do. God restores them. God preserves them from their sin. And this is the same treatment that we enjoy today. Have you ever sinned and not experienced the full punishment your sin deserved? It's like how many times we can't even count. Again, we're not talking just consequences. You may be able to say, I paid dearly for my sins, but the fact that you are here and you're not bearing eternal punishment in hell shows that you have not received justice. Every time that you have not gotten the just punishment for your sin, you are receiving mercy. Time and time again, you have broken God's law. Time and time again, you have been wholly guilty. No appeal court necessary because you were guilty. No doubts at all. Yet God has not poured out justice on you. God poured out mercy on you. Even this week, we needed it. Did you yell at your kids this week? Did you curse your coworker in your heart? Did you give in just one more time to your pet sin? And what did you receive? Mercy, upon mercy, upon mercy, upon mercy. It is obvious that you are a recipient of divine mercy because you are, in all your sins and failures, hearing about God's mercy. That is God's mercy on display. The ultimate act of God's mercy, of course, it's our Lord Jesus Christ. who came for his enemies, not to pour out justice upon them, but he came to pay for their sins. The mercy of God is most clearly seen in our Lord Jesus Christ. The mercy of God was not about overlooking our foibles or letting just a few things slide. The mercy of God is when the father sends his son to die for guilty criminals. God could not let a single sin slide. No, every sin was paid for. But God in his mercy did not require that payment from his people. We deserve the punishment. Yet Jesus Christ paid the penalty. Do you have that in your hearts? Do you believe that? Is that deep down? Do you have that conviction? Because you're going to need it. You are going to need that to be strongly rooted in your heart to even approach this subject. We can only show the mercy Jesus commands if we have received the mercy that Jesus paid for. We can only give From what we have been given, only a forgiven enemy of God can then go and show mercy to his own enemies. He who has been shown much mercy, shows much mercy. Be merciful, even as your father is merciful. Verse 37 takes us into perhaps the most flagrantly misused verse in all the Bible. Maybe only with the competition of God is love has a verse been so misunderstood. Verse 37, I read it for you again. Judge not. and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. You ever heard some misunderstandings on this one? Man, they're everywhere. How has this been misunderstood? It's been misunderstood to say that the Bible says there's no such thing as moral standards. It's been misunderstood to mean that there is no such thing as correcting others. Because it ends up sounding something like this. You can't tell me that the way I'm living is wrong. You can't judge me. Don't judge me, hypocrite. The way it's popularly misunderstood is this verse has become a surefire defense in the hands of the indignant. In order to understand this passage, man, we have to unravel a tangled mess of ideas about judging. First off, what does it mean to judge? Well, it's to judge a person to be guilty and liable to punishment. When he says do not condemn, he's basically just using a synonym. They're the same thought. Is there any time when judging is a good thing, Judge Dave Gamble? in actual courts, right? We expect judges to actually say so-and-so is guilty and liable to punishment. That is not the problem here, okay? That kind of judgment, we're not going to worry about it. Are there other times where judging is appropriate? Well, it starts to depend on what we mean, I think. When we share the Christian faith, Part of that message is that one who refuses to believe in Jesus Christ is guilty and remains guilty and is liable to receive eternal punishment. So, it's impossible to discuss salvation without discussing guilt and sin. You see that? You think Jesus is forbidding us from talking about the faith that he came to give us? No, that just doesn't do it justice, does it? Are we forbidden by the Bible to label as sin what the Bible told us was sin? No, that can't be the problem either. So what's the problem? What does this even mean? Well, the problem is found most clearly in our attitude. The problem is found most clearly in our attitude. What's the context here? It's God's abounding mercy for his people. They deserve punishment and yet they received mercy. So how do you think God wants the recipients of divine mercy to behave? He wants them to behave in accordance with the mercy they received. Does that make sense? He wants them to behave in accordance with the mercy they have received. The people of God should be quick to show mercy. The people of God should long for mercy to be shown to others. The people of God should not be known for their severe justice. They should be known for mercy. They should resemble their merciful father. If we put this into real life, isn't there a huge difference between two people? And one of them says, pleading with someone who rejects Christ, they're pleading with him saying, stop, your sin is leading you to hell. And then on the other hand, the person who actually just sort of declares, you're going to hell. Isn't there a huge difference in the attitude behind those two people? One's hoping for mercy. The other is actually hoping for punishment. What about when we see someone doing something we believe to be wrong? Take in the field of, say, parenting. No one's ever judged one another for parenting, huh? You see someone parenting their children and you believe with all your heart that that's the wrong way to do it. Isn't there a difference between thinking to yourself, that's a huge mistake. I really hope that doesn't go as bad as it looks like it's going to. And then on the other hand, that is a huge mistake. They are going to see in five years how bad of parents they are. Huge difference. One hopes for mercy. The other is like looking forward to consequences. As always, Jesus is concerned with our heart. He's concerned with where our heart is. Jesus doesn't want us to merely act merciful. He wants us to actually be merciful. And this is not an option for the people of God. We must be merciful. You must not be the eager judge. You must not be the perpetual critic condemning all you see. And along with showing mercy, you must also forgive. Verse 37, the last part of it says, forgive and you will be forgiven. Believers are commanded to forgive. Now what's forgiveness? Forgiveness means to remove the guilt resulting from wrongdoing. Jesus commands every one of his disciples, which is another way to say every Christian, to forgive those who do wrong to them. He commands his disciples to release the wrongdoer from the guilt of their sins, to refuse to take vengeance into our own hands. And to everyone who knows what it is to be deeply sinned against, this is maybe the hardest thing that God could ever ask you to do, isn't it? But God actually hasn't just asked you to do it. He has commanded us to do this. Just like we did with mercy, we have to do the same thing with forgiveness. We think about God's forgiveness. Every child of God has his or her sins completely forgiven. And that's all the sins that you've sinned on, you know, practically from a rooftop. They were so public. And it's the sins that you did in secret that no one ever will find out about. A complete and total forgiveness for it all, child of God. You are released from the guilt of your wrongdoing, and that's something sometimes you really need to focus on believing. When the Lord forgives you, you are released from that guilt. God has refused to punish you. That's good news, really good news. And now let's go deeper. I want you to think about the how and the why of forgiveness, of God's forgiveness. How did God forgive us? At great cost is the answer. At great cost. God refused to punish you. And instead the father poured out his wrath on Jesus Christ. The father punished his son for the sins of a criminal. The son laid down his life for the sins of an enemy. Words cannot describe how costly it was for God to forgive his people. Why did God forgive? See, it wasn't because we deserved it. It wasn't because we were nice people and God thought, you guys just need another chance. It wasn't because God said, I don't know how I'm going to advance my kingdom if I don't restore these people back to some working order. It was grace, pure, undeserved grace. He chose to give us what we did not deserve. He chose to forgive us the sins that we never could have paid for ourselves. Purposeful love spurred him on to forgive the least lovable people in all of creation. And if that is how God forgave, we should expect that we too will be called to forgive like our Heavenly Father. Forgive as your Heavenly Father forgives. See, how will we forgive? Just like our God at great cost. When you talk just worldly matters, just financial matters, when you talk about forgiving a debt, When someone does that, they are bearing the loss of those funds. Forgiveness of that debt means the debtor doesn't pay and the creditor is forfeiting the right to be repaid. It is costly work to forgive debts. And it is the exact same when it comes to forgiving sins and forgiving one another. Tim Keller said it well, he said that God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver. No one who is seriously wrong can, quote, just forgive the perpetrator. But when you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bury it yourself. All forgiveness then is costly. All forgiveness is costly. See, forgiveness isn't a magic button that we get to press. Forgiveness will always cost you and forgiveness can never be cheap. You will pay in order to forgive others. Why would we ever do that? Why would we take that upon ourselves? Why do we forgive? We forgive because we have been forgiven. We forgive because we have been forgiven so much. Do you even realize how much you have been forgiven? You have been forgiven a debt that you had no hope of paying. You've been forgiven more often than you can even remember. You have been forgiven of vile, wicked offenses. And you have been forgiven of habitual neglect. Even one sin would have been enough to have condemned you. And yet your God, with your many times one sins, yet your God refused to let you be condemned. Your savior shed his own blood for every act of omission and commission alike. You were as guilty as could be. And now because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, you are washed white as snow. Your life's work is to reflect regularly and deeply on your forgiveness. Reflect on it first of all, because it glorifies God for his people to understand a bit of what he did for them. But you reflect on it because it is the only way that you will rise to the command of forgiving those people who don't want to forgive. The truth of the matter is, is that so often it's not just that it's difficult to forgive, it's that we don't want to forgive. I know I'm supposed to forgive, but I do not want to. I don't feel like I can. What do we do about that? What do we do about it when we don't want to forgive other people like Jesus is commanding here? Well, first, you recognize that when you refuse to forgive, you are now adding your own sin to the problem. When you refuse to obey Jesus Christ's command to forgive, you are adding your sin to the problem. See, whoever sinned against you, that was their sin. And it was not justified, it was not deserved. But as you struggle to forgive, you have to see it clearly. You are struggling now with your own sin. We all know what it is to struggle with forgiving people. We all know what it's like, but we need to see that struggle clearly. And that is that it is a crucial problem. And it is one that the child of God cannot be content to just let it go. We have to strive with all our might to overcome when we feel like we can't forgive other people. And we're only going to overcome that by returning to what we've already discussed. It all comes back to how have you been forgiven? What has God done for you? You remember that famous parable of the unmerciful servant. He was condemned because after being forgiven a staggering unpayable debt, he then refused to forgive his fellow servant of a much smaller debt. The reasoning behind that teaching was that the unmerciful servant was expected to reflect on the incredible forgiveness he had just received. And then he was supposed to go and do likewise. You have to reflect on how much you have been forgiven. You just call it abstract theology and we know the right answers. In our theology, we know that we have sinned against God way more than any human being could possibly sin against us. We know that, right? That's a easy answer on some Sunday school test. But in the moment, in real life, When the pain of that sin hits, when the betrayal hits, when the violence hits, when the anger hits, when the abandonment hits, it's hard to keep thinking about theology, isn't it? The pain is bigger and harder and more severe than we had ever imagined. So as a result, we cannot imagine forgiving it. But what you know is still true. What you know of God's word and of God's character and of what he did in the gospel is true. The theology is still true. You just need to see it anew. That painful sin, that unjustified sin against you, it is a fraction of how you have sinned against God. When you are experiencing terrible pain, from someone's sin, at the very same time, you are being shown how much God has forgiven you. Because your sin against God is 10,000 times worse than what that person did to you. And what did God do? He forgave you. And he forgave you and he forgave you and he forgave you and he's forgiving you and he's committed to forgiving you to the end. And he did so eagerly. God never made you crawl back to him. He forgave you eagerly. He forgave you willingly. He forgave you sacrificially. He forgave you. When you can't imagine forgiving someone for that one time. When you can't imagine forgiving someone for those 100 times. You have to come back. And you need to see yourself as God saw you. You need to see your sin as God saw it. When you see yourself in that light, in that horribly unflattering light, then, then and only then will you be able to forgive as Christ commands. I don't claim for a moment that this is supposed to make it easy, but this is what makes it doable. Christ's forgiveness is what makes your forgiveness possible. As you have been forgiven, brothers and sisters, go and forgive. We forgive at great cost because we were forgiven at a far greater cost. Verse 38. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. This is a similar point as the others, but now it's kind of from the positive light. We are called to give. And we are called to bless others. This is a lot like what we talked about with do unto others as you wish they would do to you. God calls his people, not just to sit on the sidelines waiting for a chance to do something, but to get off the sidelines and to go out and bless and to bless even your enemies. If you missed my sermon, it was just a couple of weeks ago on the golden rule. I recommend go back and listen to it because Jesus's words are convicting. It's the sermon called Outrageous Love. You can go download it. I'm not going to rehash that all now. We just don't have the time. But here in this passage, the picture Jesus uses, it's a metaphor. And if it's a metaphor for measuring things like grain or something like that, you're out at the market and you're making sure you're getting back that full volume. The full measure, it's, you know, packed down, you make sure it's level. Well, now it's not just that, but it's on top. It's even pouring over, pouring over into your lap, into the, there's kind of a loose garment you would wear as a pocket to bring home what you had just bought. Here, the measure has been generous and it overflows to the benefit of the recipient. But with this picture, Jesus leads us into, into an element that's frankly pretty hard, as if the rest of it was easy, right? But he leads us into something hard and I saved it for the end. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Each command that Jesus has given carried an edge to it. And it's an edge that I saved until right now. Each command had the implied warning that a refusal to obey would carry a consequence. If you judge, you will be judged. If you condemn, you will be condemned. If you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. If you do not give, you will not receive. If your standard is severe, unmerciful and unforgiving, Do not expect grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Don't expect it from others, but more importantly, don't expect it from God. Mercy, compassion, grace, forgiveness, these are supposed to be a part of the Christian identity. As in, they absolutely must be a part of us. So look at your heart. Are you a merciful person? Are you a merciful person? Or are you an exacting person? Are you a severe person? Is your normal way of thinking judgmental and critical? Do you really want people to get what they deserve? If as a way of life, you are an unmerciful and unforgiving person, it may be because you have not received mercy and you have not received forgiveness. Any Christian who regularly, hear that word, who regularly refuses to forgive and show mercy, you should question where you stand with Christ. I do not, nor can I judge the state of your salvation. I don't want that job. I'm not able to do it. but the fruit of unforgiveness in your life, if it is in your life, that is troubling. Let's be clear, all Christians sin. All Christians sin repeatedly. When we repeatedly sin, though, there's supposed to be a difference. A Christian's response is repeated repentance. A Christian's response is repeated faith in the one who forgives, the one who restores. A Christian's response is a repeated return to the one who shows mercy to the guilty. If you struggle with forgiving others, but you do so with humility, if you do so with humility before the Lord, if you do so while you're still trying to trust him, while you're still trying to obey him, again, I am not your judge, but I look at you and I'm inclined to think that you are a Christian struggling with sin. I don't wanna go pummeling your conscience. It's not what I'm trying to do, but if you're a person unbothered by the lack of forgiveness in your life, if mercy is a language that you've never learned, if severity and criticism characterize you, then you should really question whether you are right with God. Jesus' teachings, in this passage particularly, they make it clear that the disciple's life, it's supposed to look like something. It's not merely what we say we believe, it's whether those are the beliefs that we actually live by. If you have a hard heart, If you don't forgive, if you don't show mercy, then I offer to you that today is the day for you to come and find forgiveness and mercy from God. If your so-called faith doesn't look like faith that the Bible talks about, let today be the day that your so-called faith becomes real. living, saving, forgiving, mercy showing faith. And to all Christians, let the call of Christ be clear. We are a people who have received mercy. So let us show mercy. We are a people who do not fear the judgment of God, so let us be hesitant to hold judgment out over others. We are a people who have been forgiven a debt greater than we will ever fully know, so let us forgive the debts of those who have sinned against us. We are a people who have been shown extravagant grace. So let us show extravagant grace to those in our lives. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the grace you showed us in our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace that by definition we did not deserve, we could not earn. When we were at our worst, Christ Jesus came for us. You washed us. You cleansed us. You made us new. You gave us new life. You gave us new hope. Now, Father, help us to stand on that foundation and forgive. Help us to stand on that foundation and show mercy. There are people right now that some of us are picturing and we don't know how it would be possible. Lord, help. Help us to see ourselves clearly, how much we needed, and help us to go live out our theology. We don't want to just be people who talk theology. Lord, help us to live it out. We thank you for the incredible forgiveness that we know in Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.