Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Force of Forgiveness*

*Psalm 51              July 15, 2001*

* *

*Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 12:1-13*

 

*Introduction:*

 

          I doubt that anyone here would say that relationships are not important.

We live in relationship with each other.

We are either made or broken by our relationships.

When our relationships with others are going good, then we are doing well.

When our relationships with others are going bad, then we are doing poorly.

Relationships are vital to our well-being.

Your relationship to your spouse is vital to the well-being of your marriage.

Your relationship to your employer is vital to your job.

Your relationship to your children is vital to their success.

Your relationship to your teacher is vital to your grade.

Your relationship to the police is vital to your freedom.

But there is one relationship that is much more far-reaching than the rest.

It is your relationship to your God.

Your relationship to your God is vital to your eternal security in him, your fellowship with him, and your worship of him.

Now if I asked you to name the thing that affects your relationships, especially your relationship with God the most, I imagine you might say it is love since love is greater than even faith and hope, and love is the greatest commandment, and God himself is love, and whoever does not love does not know God, and we are told that God so loved the world that he sent Christ, and Christ had greater love than any man since he laid down his life for us.

So love is paramount in our relationship with God, and with each other as well.

But I wonder if love might not also be known by another name?

In its connection with relationships, I wonder what else we might call love?

I suggest to you it is "forgiveness."

If love is such a powerful force in our relationships (and our experience tells us so as well as the Word of God) we also must know the force of forgiveness in our relationships.

Can there be love without forgiveness, since "to ere (sin) is human, but to forgive is divine?"

We are all sin-prone people with a constant need of forgiveness from God as well as each other.

Forgiveness is a necessary factor in healthy relationships.

You might argue that there could be forgiveness without love (this is forgiveness as a duty without feeling) but I would argue that love is also a purposeful decision.

Love is better with emotion, but it begins with a decision.

So let me say then that forgiveness is a force in our relationships like unto the power of love.

Just like love begins with God, so does forgiveness.

Without forgiveness, our relationship with God is either non-existent or grieved or broken depending upon various factors.

Let me illustrate:

 

/          James Garfield was elected president of the U.S. in 1880, but after only six months in office he was shot in the back with a revolver.

At the hospital, the doctor probed the wound with his little finger trying to seek the bullet, but he couldn't find it.

Then he tried a surgical probe and couldn't find it.

So he took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. and tried to keep him comfortable despite the summer heat, but he was growing weak.

Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and over.

In desperation they even asked Alexander Graham Bell (the inventor of the telephone) to see if he could locate the piece of metal inside the president's body.

But he too failed.

The president hung on through the rest of the summer and even into September, but he finally died then – not from the wound but from the repeated probing which caused a fatal infection.

The body could have coped with the bullet but not the continual probing which infected him.

And so it is with our sin when we keep probing instead of letting it go.

The doctors would not forgive that bullet.

We could say that the force of forgiveness could save your life./

We could look at it another way too.

/Amputees often experience some sensation of a phantom limb.

Somewhere, locked in their brains, a memory lingers of the nonexistent hand or leg.

Invisible toes curl, imaginary hands grasp things, a non-existent leg feels so sturdy a patient may try to stand on it.

For a few, the experience includes pain.

Doctors watch helplessly, for the part of the body screaming for attention does not exist.

One such patient had a serious and painful circulation problem in his leg but refused to allow the recommended amputation.

As the pain grew worse, he grew more bitter.

"I hate it!

I hate it!" he would mutter about the leg.

At last he relented and told the doctor, "I can't stand it anymore.

I'm through with that leg.

Take it off."

Surgery was scheduled immediately.

Before the operation he asked the doctor, "What do you do with legs after they're removed?" "We may take a biopsy or explore them a bit, but afterwards we incinerate them," the doctor replied.

The man proceeded with a bizarre request: "I would like you to preserve my leg in a pickling jar.

I will install it on my mantle shelf.

Then, as I sit in my armchair, I will taunt that leg as it taunted me.

Hah!

You can't hurt me anymore!"

Ultimately, he got his wish.

But the despised leg had the last laugh.

He suffered phantom limb pain of the worst degree.

The wound healed, but he could feel the tortuous pressure of the swelling as the muscles cramped, and he had no prospect of relief.

He had hated the leg with such intensity that the pain had unaccountably lodged permanently in his brain.

And so it is with the phenomenon of guilt.

We can be obsessed by the memory of some sin committed even years ago and it never leaves us, cripples our ministry, our devotional life, our relationships with others.

We live in fear that someone will find out our past.

We may try to work overtime proving to God that we are truly repentant, but we erect barriers against the enveloping, loving grace of God to forgive./

Yes, we need to come to God to forgive because we need the force of forgiveness in our lives lest we become consumed by our sin, or in our sin.

Remember our Scripture passage in 2Samuel 12:1-13?

King David was in a heap of hurt because of his sin, but he knew what to do with it so it wouldn't fester and kill his relationship with God – so it wouldn't remain a bitter memory that separated him from his God.

He knew his sin must be spiritually amputated and incinerated.

He knew he needed to focus on the solution and not the problem.

He knew he needed the force of forgiveness in his life, and he knew where  and how to find it.

And we can learn some things about forgiveness from him in a psalm he wrote after he was confronted about his sin by the prophet, Nathan.

Let us turn to Psalm 51 on page 889 of our pew Bibles.

*Big Question:*

 

/How can we find the force of forgiveness in our lives?/

*I.

Cycle One*

 

*          A.

Narrative (vv.

1-2)*

 

The basis for full forgiveness is found in who God is and not in what we have or have not done.

*          B.

Implication*

 

We find the force of forgiveness in God alone.

We plead the nature of God to forgive (who God is).

We plead the power of God to forgive (what God is able to do).

 

*          C.

Illustration*

 

*          D.

Application*

 

*II.

Cycle Two*