lesson 11, a lesson on forbearance. So we'll get that up there. A lesson on forbearance. Now forbearance, the dictionary says, a command of temper, a restraint of passions. In other words, it's about self-control. It also says the exercise of patience, long-suffering, indulgence toward those who injure us, leniency, delay of resentment, or punishment. These things are not always easy to do. And as a matter of fact, let me go back to that one. It says the exercise of patience. So it's something you have to work at, right? I know I'm having surgery on my knee coming up, and they give me exercises to do before the surgery. So I'm trying to do those exercises, and I don't like to do them. Most of the time, you go to therapy and they say, this is what you need to do. It's really not what you want to do. As a matter of fact, I was doing some things to relieve the pain in my knee, and they said, that's exactly what you don't need to do. because it's caused some other problems with my knees, so I'm having to get that straightened out. But forbearance has to be worked on. Leniency, what's the other word there? Patience and delay of resentment. We have to forbear that. And I wrote this down. Liberty is the power of doing or forbearing an action. So that gives you, you have liberty to do that. But you have to choose to do that. But we are free to do that as Christians. We can forbear. We don't, just because somebody does us wrong, we don't have to tell them off. And we have the spirit of Christ in us to help us to not do that. So our scriptures for this lesson, and you have them there, but in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but we'll read the scripture it gives us for Matthew in opening up. It says, and while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, for the chief priests and elders, from the chief priests and elders of the people. Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same as he, hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus and said, Hail, master, and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they and laid hands on Jesus and took him. And behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priest and smoked off his ear. Then Jesus said unto him, put up again thy sword into his place where all they that Take the sword, shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?" Of course, we know from the other Gospels that this was Peter that did that. I found interesting that only John named Peter. The others did not. And also, in the other Gospels, we know from those that Jesus actually healed the soldier's ear, and his name was Malchus. So now we'll go on. We're going to read some of these other scriptures later. For our lesson goals, we need to realize that Jesus loves all people. We don't have any problem with that, do we? We don't, as Christians, That's just accepted. We know that. If we've been saved any length of time at all, we know Jesus loves all people. Then comes the hard part, and so should we. He is the greatest example of how we should behave. And we say, well, He's Jesus, and He's in us, so we can too, right? We have that ability because He is in us. Now, most Christians willingly forgive people for small things, right? It's small, just don't worry about it. And then, now, the more we perceive ourselves as being wronged, the harder it is to forgive. I know it's that way with me. I think it's that way with most people. If you really think it was bad, it takes a little longer to forgive somebody, right? especially when it comes to things that cannot be made right. And if they do something to you and they can't correct it, it's done, done deal, they can say I'm sorry and they can truthfully mean that they're sorry, they can apologize, but they can't make any retribution for it. It becomes harder to forgive. Erica Kirk recently gave that example of forgiving the man that killed her husband. And that's the ultimate forgiveness, right? To forgive somebody that kills somebody in your family. And that's what Jesus did. And she's following his example. Now then, where you say, well, with knowing Charlie Kirk, I'm sure she knew all the scriptures and she knew the Bible, so it was easier for her than for me. No. It was still her husband. We had the same ability to forgive that she had. Again, liberty is the power of doing or forbearing an action. You have that liberty. You have that ability to forgive. She didn't have to forgive. She chose to forgive. Forgiveness is a choice. You have to choose to forgive because your flesh will say, get back. Get back at her. Something that is also hard to forgive is that when someone continues to do something wrong to you and they could stop at any time, but they won't. You bring it to attention, they keep doing it. They say, I'm not gonna do it anymore, but they do it. What are we supposed to do? Forgive them. Gets harder, every time they do it, it gets harder. But that's still the example, Jesus told Peter, seven times 70. That doesn't mean 490, that means always. You probably got people in your family that have went past the 490, but we're still supposed to forgive them. Don't count to 490 though. You're saying, well, that's enough. That's all I have to do. No, just keep, Jesus never stopped forgiving. He never stops forgiving us. He is the example that we are to follow. And then number two, choose to allow the Lord to have his way in our lives, to have his way. And of course, that's what we're doing here in Sunday school, to learn Christ's way that we can follow him. And the outline will be the betrayal, the battle, and the binding of the arrest of Jesus. Now then, here we have, of course, we're studying about Peter, so we're focusing on his part in the scriptures, and he acted impetuously. In other words, he acted out just out of, it was just a reaction. Didn't really think about what he was doing. It was just in his flesh to do that. He thought that's what he needed to do. He didn't think whether he should or not. He just did it and he cut off the ear of the soldier. Well, have you ever acted impetuously? I'll answer for you, you have. All right? Say he cut off somebody's ear. I just said you acted impetuously. You acted, reacted quickly to something that happened and even before you finished, you realized that you'd done wrong, because you probably didn't think about it enough beforehand. James 19.1, 19.20 says, Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. A lot of times we have that reversed, right? Quick to speak, quick to wrath, slow to hear. Verse 20 says, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. So when we're mad, we're almost for sure not going to do the right thing. Now, we couldn't teach this in the teen class, because they probably don't teach this in history anymore. But in World War II, they had a saying, loose lips sink ships. Remember that? Learned about that? I know Eddie Smith does, because he might have been the one that wrote that. I don't know. But, and of course it was talking about, you know, if you know anything at all, you don't tell it because the enemy might find it out. And so, but Proverbs 8 and 13 says, he that answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame unto him. Well, I skipped what I was gonna say there. So that's true today. Loose lips sink ships, relationships. You say something too quick, the person just writes you off. Think before we speak. Again, Proverbs 18, 13. He that answereth a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame unto him. That's the reason we're to listen fast, or make sure we listen. So have we ever failed to show patience again? Yes, we have. Now here's when it says, A man that answers a matter before he hears it, it means to hear something intelligently. In other words, to think about what you hear. Not, you know, you heard the words, but you're mad, so you're not really understanding anything. You don't care what they say. Not just that the sound waves vibrated against your eardrum, right? You heard it if that happened, right? That's not what it's saying. It's saying that you took time to try to understand what's being said. We must think about what you hear before we speak about it. A lot of times, the first thing that comes to our mind is what we say when we really haven't considered what we hear. And that's what Peter's doing here. The first thing to come to his mind is to defend. When Jesus had already asked him to let him go, Have you ever failed to follow the words of David in Psalm 27? It says, wait on the Lord. A lot of times we don't. We don't wait on the Lord. It's easy to instantaneously to react to a situation. They don't require thinking, don't require any new knowledge, you know, whatever you have in your past, whatever thought, you just do it. But a Christ-honoring response, rather than a fleshly reaction, is more difficult. We have to think about what we're doing. We have to remember what Christ would have us to do. So this is, Lesson of Peter, again, is about forbearance. God wants us to be long-suffering, slow to wrath, and patient. Now, all these are combined and woven into forbearance. That's what forbearance is, that we have these attributes in our life. And of course our example again is Christ. Psalm 86 and 15. But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. So we have that capability. We have that attribute in us because Christ through the Holy Spirit is in us. So we can't say, no, I can't do that. No, you can decide not to do that, but if you have a desire to follow Christ, you can do that. 2 Corinthians 6 and 4 through 6, but all things are proven ourselves as ministers of God in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, By pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love and fame. So how do we get through all those hard things to get through? Through the pureness of the knowledge of God. And in Proverbs 16, 32, he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. Again, we've all done the opposite of that. Sometimes we hear somebody say something, or we think we knew something they did, or we think they knew something, and we'll talk to them, you knew this, you knew that, you shouldn't have done this, you shouldn't have done that, and we don't even take time to think, well, maybe they didn't know it. We want to get our point across. It says, he that ruleth his spirit, He that rules his spirit doesn't have an automatic reaction or circumstance. If you automatically, if you just, then you're not, you don't rule your spirit, you don't rule your conscience. He that rules his spirit displays an action that he has thought about and applied forbearance. Somebody says something to you, against you, they're totally wrong, okay, it was mean, So what we want to do, we want to say something that is about that much meaner than what they said to us, right? We don't want to say the worst, right? Because we might need that later. Just as long as it's worse. That's the way arguments are. I mean, you don't go for the throat most of the time, you know. You just make sure you talk what they say. But forbearance would be to think about it and then accept accept the wrong that's been done. That's what Jesus did. Was anything right about that day after Judas kissed him? Nothing was right. But he accepted it because it was God's will. So number one, we have the betrayal. I'm going to read Matthew 26, 23, 25, because Jesus had already foretold what was going to happen. So, I know that it was, I forgot to put that in there for you, but I've already said that. Relationships. So, the betrayal. So, he had already told him in Matthew 26, 23, 25, and I'm not going to read those verses. But it say, verse 24, the Son of man goeth as is written of him, but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. It had been good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said. The Judas knew it was. At this point, he had already made the deal, right? Nobody else knew it, but Jesus knew it, and he knew it. The betrayal of Jesus is one of the darkest hours in the history of the world. Because the Savior, the perfect man, was betrayed. When we hear that, I think the only person that we would compare Judas to, the only name, would be Hitler. Right? When you hear the word Judas, there's nothing good comes to your mind. When you hear the word Hitler, there's nothing good comes to your mind. Even Adolf, probably, unless you're putting seasoning on your steak, right? But it causes us really to just almost to get mad just to hear the name because we know what the name Judas, we know what Judas did. But then we have to realize that it was God's plan. Did Judas have to? No. He didn't have to, but he did. The fact that Jesus knew What Judas was going to do did not cause Judas to do it. The fact that Jesus knew you were going to be saved did not cause you to be saved. You got two ends of the spectrum there. Christ knew what was going to happen. He willingly went to the cross. The scriptures had to be fulfilled. In John 13, 27 it says that Satan himself entered into Judas. So Satan himself entered into Judas and so he was Satan's pawn. Just like if you're playing chess or checkers and you move that piece, that pawn Knight, bishop, whatever your playing chess, that checker piece has no control over where you move it. Once Satan had entered into Judas, he had no control, but he had already made his choice. I'm going to skip some here that I have. So he had made his choice, and now we're going to talk about the kiss of Judas is A, the kiss of Judas. Now that word kiss connotes love, tenderness, and affection. I know in some countries, that's the way they welcome the kiss on the cheek. We don't normally do that, unless we're real close to somebody, I hope. But Tim, don't shake my hand. I don't need a kiss on the cheek, right? But a hug, you know, sometimes, but still it's someone close. We don't meet somebody the first time and hug them or kiss them on the cheek. I know in some countries they do, but we don't do that. But it denotes an affection, or at least in other countries when they do it, it at least affects, you are somebody that I feel comfortable around, right? So when that kiss is given, it's a great devalue of what somebody, of the betrayal. I mean, they basically, they're giving you, they're showing you, telling you, telling everybody else around that everything is okay between those two people. But when it's used to betray, then it's a little more devaluing. So while the Passover meal was still going on, Judas had stolen away and actually urged by Jesus to do so quickly. He said, go ahead and do it. Do what you gotta do. Of course, again, the others, they didn't know what he was going to do. So, but the thing about Judas was, now you're gonna have to listen to all of it. Judas was not demon possessed. He was Satan possessed. There's demons and then there's Satan. The Bible doesn't say that he was full of demons or he had a demon. He was possessed by Satan. He no longer had control of what he did, none whatsoever. He couldn't choose but he'd already made his choice not to follow Jesus. And that's the choice everybody makes, not to follow. If you don't follow Jesus, you're not going to heaven. And Judas chose not to follow Jesus. And probably everybody in here is familiar with the story. There comes a point, I believe, that Satan leaves him. He leaves him alone. And what happens? He really can't believe what he's done. And he hangs himself. He cannot live with what he has done. Proverbs 27, 6, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. And then we'll go to B is the kindness of Jesus. Now, we talked about how that we don't go against somebody just because they went against us, because they spoke against us, we don't have to speak bad against them, or they've done something to us, we don't have to get back at them. So now we're gonna take it actually a little bit further. Jesus even takes that further. Jesus knew exactly why Judas was there and he still referred to him as friend. It's really just the amazing grace of Jesus. And although he knew one of the most despicable, he knew what Judas was going to do, and he still called him friend. And how could he do that? Because how Jesus felt about Judas did not depend on how Judas felt about Jesus. You see, when we knowingly sin, We're really saying that we know better than Christ, or this is okay. So Jesus still loves us just as much when we do wrong. And the reason he can do it, because how much he loves us does not depend on how we treat him. Okay, I said that. Jesus loves all sinners. They even accused him of being a friend of sinners, and he was a friend of sinners, not in the way that they meant it, but if he wasn't a friend of sinners, we wouldn't be saved. Christ was love and kindness incarnate, and we are to seek to be like him. Ephesians 1, Ephesians 4, 1 through 3. Therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you're called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now we're in verse three there, endeavoring. So like forbearance, to show forbearance, we have to endeavor. Endeavor means it's not just a, okay, I'm going to give them a little bit of leeway. No, you're working at it. You're digging at it. If you knew that, I mean, if you really believed that there was a treasure with $100,000 buried somewhere, and somebody told you where it was, maybe they even showed you a video of them putting the money in there, and they buried it, and you had every proof there was that it was there. and it was right there where they told you to dig. You would not go out there and scrape the leaves back. I don't think it's here. No, it's not here. You would dig. If you really believed it, you would dig until you found that money. Well, when Christ says that we are to give forbearance, then we have to continually, continually show forbearance towards somebody. Colossians 3, 12 through 14, put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, vows of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And of all these things put on charity, which is the bond perfectness. Christ shows us his mercy because he loves us. So if we will love somebody else the way that we're supposed to, then we can show them mercy. Think about how that Joseph, when his brothers betrayed him, even his father got was not pleased with him when he told him of the dream, one of his dreams, and how that he was sold into slavery, then he was put into prison, he was lied on, he was forgotten about, and then finally he comes out of prison, he's put up second in command in Egypt, and really he saved Egypt and most of that area from famine. But not once did we see where Joseph got back at anybody. When his brothers come down for Food. He didn't say, no, you remember what you did to me? Forget you. No, he took care of them. And that's the way we're to do. How do we, how do you treat those that mistreat you? See, right now, we need to have at least a thought in our mind, if I'm mistreated, I'm going to try not to get back at somebody. I've talked to people about that subject. And I say, I'll trade them the way I trade them and that's it. That's me. It's not supposed to be you. It's supposed to be Jesus. And we'll pick up there next week with number two, the battle. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this day that you've given us. We thank you for many blessings. Lord, we thank you, Lord, for salvation. And Lord, we thank you for your love, your forbearance of our wrongdoing, our sin, our misgivings. Lord, help us to have that forbearance for others. And Lord, that even before we are done wrong, that we have in our hearts the desire to forbear. In Jesus' name we pray.