Alright, I want to ask all of us a question as we begin to dive into what we're gonna talk about this morning. And it's a really simple question. What is something that you are very generous with? What is something that you give generously? Every person gives something generously. Every person. It's just that we can give good things and bad things. Right? We can be very liberal with the good things we have. We can also be very liberal, very lavish with things that maybe aren't so good. And sometimes we need to be more generous with things that we're stingy with. Sometimes we need to be more stingy with things that maybe we are generous with. For example, I have always been generous with words. They just sort of come out of me. They have since I was a child. I never had a moment where I said, you know what, I'm gonna talk a lot. It just happened. And so in first grade, my teacher sat me at a desk that she called the island, and I sat away from all of my other uh classmates. I had a teacher that called my mom crying because she couldn't figure out how to get me to stop talking, and my mom was like, join the club. You know, I cry every day. Every day, lady. You get them just a few hours a week, deal with it. Um where where it really hit home for me was when I was in my early 20s. I was in a meeting uh with some other people, and uh, and this gentleman who's one of the mentors in my life, I'm really grateful that God's put him in my life. And uh after the meeting was done, he said, Justin, you talk a lot. And I was like, Yeah, I know. He's like, No, no, like way too much. And he no, he said, he said, you weren't in charge of this meeting, and you were the youngest one there, and you talk the most by a mile. If you're the youngest one in the room and you're not in charge, you should never be the one who talks the most. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, that's that's right. So I I am very liberal with my words, I'm very generous with them. I give them out a lot, and believe it or not, this is actually me being more stingy than I used to be, right? It's just something that I give generously. Some people are generous with money, some people are generous with time, with talent, some people are generous with criticism and with blame. Some people are generous with their opinions even when they don't know what they're talking about, right? Like, just get onto social media or honestly turn on the news, and you will find people who are generous with opinions that aren't even valid. We give something. Always we give something generously. And today we're gonna talk about something that Jesus challenges us to give more generously than anything else. Today we're gonna talk about something that we should be giving more generously, more readily, more lavishly than anything else we give, and it's not money, it's forgiveness. That the thing we should give the most generously is forgiveness. Now, for some context, we're in a series right now called Pieho P-Y-H-O, stands for prayer heart out. I'm wearing a Pieho shirt. Someone made this last Sunday and brought it, and I said, I will wear it. And uh, and I've had some people walk up to me and say, hey, where can I get a Pieho shirt? And I'm like, this is the only one. This is it. And uh if if we if we printed a bunch of Pieho shirts, would you guys would you guys grab those? Would that be something anyone want? All right, we're gonna do that then. We will do that, and they're $100 a piece, but you already got excited, you already raised your hand. So uh, I mean, you're it that you're stuck. That's how it's gonna be. No, no, seriously, we'll we'll make some pie ho shirts because this is something we're really passionate about. Pieho stands for pray your heart out. We're we're talking about how we can pray like we're meant to pray. James 5.16 says the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. So your prayers are meant to be powerful and productive. Your prayers are meant to do things. The prayer offered in faith, the Bible says, will heal the sick. Our prayers are meant to accomplish incredible things. But very often, if you talk to someone who maybe does even pray and ask them, hey, are your prayers powerful? They might say, Ah, I don't always think so. Is your prayer life productive? Do you see things happening in your life or in the world around you as the result of what you're praying? And sometimes we would hedge on saying yes to that. Prayer often becomes confusing, it can become a struggle, it can become monotonous and routine, but that's not what it's meant to be. So we're studying how to pray. We're trying to learn how can we how can we pray our hearts out? How can we pray in a way that is powerful, that is productive? And we're really doing two things. Number one is we're praying. We have to do that. One of my favorite quotes by a really great leader, I read a book uh years ago, he said, You will forget what you hear, you will remember what you see, and you will learn what you do. And so we can't really learn to pray unless we pray. And so we have committed to pray more for one another as a church than we ever have before. If you go to our mobile app, download that, there's a section now called Pray. And if you click on that, you have three options. One is, I will commit to pray. The second is pray for me. That's how you submit prayer requests. You can also do that at the back four columns on paper. And the third is answered prayers. We want you to tell us when God has answered a prayer. We want to start sharing those answered prayers. We've already had some come in. It's awesome. If you commit to pray, what it's gonna do is take you to another app that we have have started using called the Echo Prayer App. This is amazing, by the way. You download that app, you subscribe to the His Hands feed, you can search for it, and then when we update prayer requests, they're gonna show up in that feed, and you can scroll through and you can click on them and pray for them. Um, I spent some time this morning praying, and there were three that really jumped out to me, so I just clicked on them, spent a few minutes praying about them, and it was it was really powerful. So download that and join that cause because we want to be praying for one another more than ever before. Number two is we're learning from Jesus. We're committing to pray, but we're also committing to learn from our master, from Jesus. Like I'm a Jesus follower, so what Jesus says matters more to me than what anyone else says. Because I am a Jesus follower. And look, there are some things that Jesus says that I wish he didn't say. There are lots of times where Jesus says things, and I'm like, oh man, I wish you would have phrased that differently. But I'm a Jesus follower. And so when Jesus says something, I want to pay attention. And in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus actually teaches us how to pray. He actually teaches us how to pray. You know, in religion, gods demand much and give little, but in our faith, we have a God who's given us more than he demands. And Jesus has actually given us the example that we need to follow. He's given us the way to pray. It's really, really powerful. Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 9, he says, pray like this. Now come on, that's that's like simple and clear, right? Anyone with me? Okay, good. You guys are quieter than the 9:30 people, and that doesn't make any sense. All right? Unless maybe it's because you're further away from your first cup of coffee, then it does make sense, all right? But you you have my permission to be engaged. Here we go. He says, pray like this. That's so clear, that's so obvious. Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. We've been going through this kind of piece by piece. This is the prayer that Jesus gives us as an example. He says, pray like this. And it's not five pages long. It's so short, it's so simple, but it's powerful. And I'm telling you, if you would if you would pray your version of this prayer every day, you would see your life change. Honestly, if you would pray this prayer every single day and believe it and really let it sink in, you would see your life change. This prayer is it's profound, it is powerful. And so we're examining this prayer today. We're on verse 12. He says, Forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. Now, this prayer that Jesus gives us, it's so short that we can run into the temptation of just reading through it really quickly and then moving on. But but if you'll stop and take each statement that he says at its face value and really examine it, you'll find that this is actually pretty intense. What Jesus says here, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. This is like, this is super, super intense. So I want to unpack this for a minute, okay? Number one, he says sins. Let's talk about that. We don't need to go into great detail about this. In fact, just a few weeks ago we talked about sin. The Bible talks about it all the time. In our day and age, to say that someone has sin in their lives, that's like offensive. Because we think sin is doing really bad things. But if if you were in Jesus' day and someone says you have sin in your life, you'd be like, yeah, clearly. It wasn't nearly as big of a deal as far as the shock of that word, because they lived in a time when they understood that sin is like a part of us. We live in a time where we're told that we're all good. We're born good. I don't know how this world you ever came about that we are born good, because like children, they're not born good, they're born horrible. They don't do anything that they're supposed to. They don't even like go to the bathroom where they're supposed to. You have to teach them every good thing to do. There's not one child who comes out just naturally honest. You know, they're liars. They're all liars. You have to teach them to tell the truth. You have to like threaten, think about it, parents, be honest. Let's just like take away the whole no, my child's an angel. You have to threaten your child to behave like a decent human being. You do. You have to be like, I will remove everything you love in life unless you do what you're supposed to do. And then they're like, fine, I'll do it then. We're not born good. We're born messed up. But we've been taught this whole, we're all born good, just follow your heart, you're good. Like, okay, whatever. Sin is it's like a natural state for us. And sin does not mean do horrible things. Sin actually just means not be all you could be. The normal word used in the New Testament for sin is the Greek word hemirtia. It means to miss the mark. It's actually an archery term. And so to sin doesn't mean you do this horrible, awful thing. It means you fail to be the person you could be. And we all sin. Now, sin has a price. In fact, it's interesting, Jesus in this prayer doesn't use that Greek word. He uses another Greek word that means debt. That's why some translations of this prayer will say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It's not talking about money, it's talking about sin. But the idea is that sin has a price. And the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. And we hear that and we're like, ooh, that's that's a big, it's a big wage. You know, you can't really ask for more in someone's life. And what we have to understand in this, and it's kind of tough for us to understand sometimes, but it's important, is that God takes sin really seriously. We as people, we take some sin really seriously. All of us have have sins either in our lives or outside of us that really bother us. We see it, even if it's in us, and we're like, man, that's bad. That shouldn't be. That's bad, that's gotta go. At the same time, we're selective. All of us have sin either in our own lives or in someone else's life that we're like, yeah, I don't care about that. That doesn't bother me. That's I don't that's fine. But God, God's not selective like that. God sees sin as a major problem. He takes it very, very seriously. So he deals with it seriously. But here's where it gets good How does God deal with sin? What's his solution to it? Well, Jesus tells us in this prayer, he says, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. God's solution for sin is not payback, it's forgiveness. Like, okay. 11, 15 people. This is God telling you. Think about sin. You probably have some of it in your life somewhere, years ago, you know, way, way, way long ago. Before you figured all this stuff out. And God is saying that my solution to your sin is forgiveness, not restitution. That I'm not gonna ask you to pay back what you owe. Forgive us our debts, the debt of sin. I'm not gonna ask you, this is God saying, I'm not gonna ask you to pay me back. I'm gonna forgive. That's like really good news. That's really good news. Like, and I'm not, by the way, I don't want you to feel guilty for not responding appropriately, right? Because sometimes it's like, should I say amen? I don't know what kind of church this is. Should I clap? I don't want to be that person. But but I will say this: if you got a letter in the mail today that said your mortgage has been forgiven, you would freak out. Right? You would freak out over several thousand dollars, probably like, hey, mortgage company, we've forgiven your loan, your house is paid off. You'd be you're forgiven. You'd be like, Yes! You would post it on on social media, you would call people, you would run outside your house screaming like a crazy person. And this is God saying, I will forgive your debt of sin. It is forgiven. Come on. All right, thank you. Thank you. Maybe you guys just haven't sinned as much as me. It's like that's a big debt. Forgiveness is God's solution to sin. Now, Jesus, he paid the price. He paid it in full. So he is our restitution. Forgiveness is God's preferred way of dealing with sin. But but notice in this prayer, it goes two directions. Right? He says, forgive us our sins, talking to God. You know, God, forgive us our sins. That's vertical. As we forgive those who sin against us. Now he's going horizontal. He's connecting forgiveness from heaven with the forgiveness that we give to other people. And now we're in this whole concept of people sinning against us. And look, that is something that we should not have to think hard about to connect with. Has anyone ever sinned against you? Has anyone ever wronged you? Right? I mean, come on. You don't have to use your imagination to think of five people who have wronged you in your life. Because we've all been wronged in, like honestly, we've all been wronged in ways that are so inconsequential they don't even matter, but we remember them. For example, I'll give you one from my life, fourth grade. Mrs. Allen's class. She was my teacher in fourth and fifth grade. Love Mrs. Allen. Um, Aaron Bates, one of my classmates, Aaron Bates, a liar and a thief. Okay? And I'll tell you why, I'll tell you the story. Mrs. Allen gave us an assignment, it was like a contest. There was gonna be a prize for the winner. We were studying weather, and so we had to make a poster. It was like an art science project kind of combo thing. Had to make a poster about a type of cloud. Now I chose cumulonimbus clouds, okay? Here's a picture of a cumulonimbus cloud. They're the big boys, the big, tall clouds. Uh, Warren, who's our drummer this morning, gave us these pictures. You may not know this. Warren is a storm chaser. So when there's a tornado, Warren gets in a truck and drives toward it, right? I don't know why you're clapping for that. That's literally insane behavior. I would Warren's a really good drummer, and we need him around for a while. So a different career path. Anyone, just something different. You know, he's a storm chaser. He loves weather, he knows a lot about it, so he sent us these pictures. Cumulanimbus, that's what I chose. Aaron Bates, he went with cirrus clouds, which are just kind of a cop-out, because they're those like wispy long clouds. Like, you just kind of have to draw lines, you know? And I thought, hey, cumulonimbus, that's aggressive. That's me really like taking a chance, that's a hard thing. Aaron went with cirrus, and you know, whatever. I'm not bitter about it at all. And Mrs. Allen, she gave us a tie. She said, we tied. Like, that's not how life works. Things don't, you don't tie, someone wins. Don't announce a contest and then declare a tie. You can't do that. Like, Miss Allen, take a stand, make a choice. Again, not bitter at all. We tied, and so we each received a prize, and it was an identical prize, and the prize was this really nice set of markers. Remember, we're fourth graders. And so this wasn't like a Crayola set of markers. These were like really nice, fine-tipped primo markers that Miss Allen happened to have. She gave us each an identical set. Now, I'm not really an artistic person, so I didn't use mine a lot. I'd break them out for projects here and there, but I kept them in my desk. Aaron, he was like an art guy. He doodled all the time, and I would always notice Aaron using his markers. Like every day, he'd be he'd be drawn with his markers. Well, about a month later, one day, I decide I'm gonna break out my markers that I won, that I really should have been the only one who won for, because I didn't cop out and go with Cirrus Clouds or whatever, but you know, again, not bitter. Um I pull out my markers and I open up the case, and the markers are all like frayed, like the felt is really frayed, like it's been used a lot, and they're really smooshed, you know, like they've been pressed really hard. And I'm like, what? I've only used these like twice. And then I look over at Aaron Bates, and his markers are pristine, like brand new. And you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes, right? You don't even have to be a fifth grader to figure out what happened. I'm like, that jerk switched his markers from mine. It's like a swap. And so I confronted Aaron about it at recess, because we're in the fourth grade. That's what you do. I'm like, I'm gonna deal with this at the monkey bars. So I go up to Aaron and I was like, hey, did you take my markers and put your markers in my desk? And and he did that thing where he acted like too surprised by the accusation. You know, he was like, What, what, what? No, how could you suggest such a thing? But I knew he didn't fess up, so because he didn't fess up, I had to do what you gotta do. I went to Miss Allen. I was like, Miss Allen, Aaron Bates stole my markers. You know, I looking back at it, I have to feel so bad for teachers because these are the kind of things that they deal with, like on a daily basis. Aaron stole my markers, and I want him to give me it's he stole me, swapped him, I know it happened, and Miss Bates, or sorry, Miss Miss Allen, might as well have been called Miss Bates because she took his side. Um, she like she's like, Aaron wouldn't do that, Justin. He's a sweet kid. I was like, you don't know Aaron like I do. I ride the bus with Aaron, he's a jerk, and he's a liar, and he's a thief. And he got away with it. Got away with it, never fessed up to it, but I knew. And for years I've been waiting for a set of markers to show up in my mailbox with a note from Aaron saying, I'm really sorry it was me, you know. No, not really. That doesn't matter at all. That's my whole point. It's inconsequential. Who cares? It's markers in the fourth grade, it has not affected my life. One iota. However, if you say Aaron Bates, I go, Oh, the marker thief. You know? It's stuck with me. And I use his real name, by the way, because I haven't seen him since seventh grade. He lives in a different state, I'm pretty sure, unless he's moved here since I moved from there. And it's a really common name. So I think I think we're safe using his actual name, okay? All of us have an Aaron Bates. All of us have someone that has done something insignificant, inconsequential, but it still bothers us. We've all been sinned against. We also have people who have sinned against us in extremely profound ways. We all have people in our life's history who have hurt us deeply, maybe even intentionally done something that has wounded us. That's what happens when people sin against us. We're wounded, and what's the solution for people sinning against us? It's forgiveness. Dang it. Right? It's not payback. It's not payback. Like, if you've ever said to yourself, I'll forgive that person as soon as they ask for forgiveness, beg, you know, realize the error of their ways, pay me back. That's not forgiveness. That's restitution, that's payback. If you ever think to yourself, oh, I'll forgive them as soon as they that's not how forgiveness works. So forgiveness is the solution to our sin problem with God. Praise God for that, right? That it's not payback. Yeah, okay, good. Yes, we're getting into this. This is good. But forgiveness is also the solution for when other people sin against us. Not as exciting. Right? But check this out, and this is where it gets really intense. I said earlier, this is this is intense what Jesus is saying here. He says, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. And you could translate this just as accurately by having Jesus say, forgive us our sins as much as we forgive those who sin against us. He is establishing a link between the forgiveness we receive from God and the forgiveness we give to others. He's literally praying, God, forgive us our sins in proportion to how we forgive those who sin against us. That, I don't like that. I just don't, right? This is not the only time Jesus says that. In case we're like, is that really what he's saying? Let me read you a story. Matthew chapter 18. Peter comes to Jesus. Peter's one of Jesus' closest friends and followers. He says, Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Like, how much is enough? That's what he's saying. Seven times? No, not seven times, Jesus replied, but seventy times seven. And then he tells a story. He says, 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 he 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. And then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his 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 and I will pay it. He pleaded. But his creditor wouldn't wait. He had the man arrested and put in 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 they told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, You evil servant, I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you? And then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid. His entire debt. That's what the Heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart. Oh my goodness. Like Jesus, don't say that. Like I said, I'm a Jesus follower. What Jesus says matters more to me than what anyone else says, and I wish Jesus never said that, but he did. Matthew chapter 6, verses 14 and 15. If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. This is Jesus talking once again. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. I'm gonna put it down. Because I don't like this. Like, don't you wish it said that we would be forgiven more than we forgive others? Like, wouldn't it be awesome if Jesus prayed, God forgive us even more than we forgive those who sin against us? God, give us twice as much forgiveness as we give away. That would be so much better. But Jesus didn't say that. He establishes this link between the forgiveness we receive and the forgiveness we give. And the simple truth of the matter is it feels really good to be forgiven. It feels really good to be forgiven by God. It feels really good to be forgiven by anyone. But it is hard to forgive. Sometimes it is the hardest thing in the world to forgive someone, especially if they have sinned against you in a really, really intense way. But Jesus says you must forgive us in proportion to how we forgive others. How do we do that? Because I don't know, if you're like me, you read things like that and you're like, that's a bit of a problem. Because you know, Aaron Bates, I'm still thinking about that, just a little bit, you know, and I gotta forgive him. And by the way, Aaron, if you happen to be listening to this, maybe in podcast form one day, I forgive you totally, forgive you. Don't don't even worry about sending me the markers. If hit my email address is jmctier at his handshirch.com. I'll send you my address in case you want to, you know. But uh no, like there are people, I'm just gonna be be totally honest. There are people that I have said I have forgiven, but I really haven't, if I'm honest. Because the stuff keeps coming up. When I forgive people, I and this was something that someone gave me, I have this mental picture of actually walking with them to the cross and standing in front of the cross. Jesus is on it. And it's like, I forgive you. It's really hard to stand at the foot of the cross with Jesus, who said, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing as people killed him. It's really hard to picture that and then to look at someone and go like, but I don't forgive you. So I've done that before with people, and then walks away being like, it's forgiven, it's done. And then two weeks later, I'm like, you know what, that bro, I cannot believe they oh my goodness. And I gotta go back to the cross again. That's the good thing about the cross. You can go as many times as you need to. Every single day, every single minute. I can think it's very easy for us to go check on the forgiveness box, like, yeah, yeah, I forgive people, but but do we forgive as if our forgiveness depended on it? I mean, we could spend days and weeks talking about all the theological implications of what Jesus says here. But at the very least, we can say this: God is just as serious about forgiveness as he is about sin. He takes forgiveness just as seriously as he takes sin, and he tells us that we should, at the very least, we should forgive as if our forgiveness depends on it. How can we do that? As we get close to wrapping up, I want to suggest that there's only one way you can do that. There really is only one way you can actually forgive that generously. And we actually find it illustrated in a story with Jesus in Luke chapter 7. I'm gonna start in verse 36. One of the Pharisees, those were the religious teachers, asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. Now, at this point, you're like, this is weird. What is happening? In that culture, it was customary to wash the feet of people as an act of service. And if someone was very important, you would actually go a step further. You would not only wash their feet, you would anoint their feet. And you might anoint their feet with oil, that was what was customary. This perfume was probably worth more than a year's wages. And she is actually anointing, she's anointing Jesus' feet in this incredibly elaborate, expensive way. Okay? She kept kissing his feet, putting perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She's a sinner. And then Jesus answered his thoughts. Think about that for a second. Simon, he said to the Pharisee, I have something to say to you. Go ahead, teacher, Simon replied. Then Jesus told him this story. A man loaned money to two people, five hundred pieces of silver to one and fifty pieces to the other, but neither of them could repay him. Sounds like a familiar story. So he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Now who do you suppose loved him more after that? Simon answered, I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt. That's right, Jesus said. And then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn't greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. I tell you, her sins, and they are many, have been forgiven. So she has shown me much love. But a person who has forgiven little only shows little love. And then Jesus said to the woman, Your sins are forgiven. The men at the table said among themselves, Who is this man that he goes around forgiving sins? The answer is he's Jesus. And Jesus said to the woman, Your faith has saved you, go in peace. Okay, so this woman, yeah, I love Jesus. This woman understood that she had been forgiven much. And so her response was elaborate. It was passionate. And Jesus says, Those who are forgiven much will love much, and those who who aren't forgiven much, they will only love a little. But here's where it gets really interesting. Did this woman have any more sin in her life than the Pharisee? Like on the surface, yes, because her sin was maybe more obvious. It was more obvious, right? It says she was an immoral woman, she could have been a prostitute. That's kind of what the innuendo is suggesting there. This man is like a pastor, he's a Pharisee, he's a teacher. But if you read the story of Jesus, there's no one that Jesus speaks as intensely to as the Pharisees. He tells them time and time again that you guys are hypocrites. You're hypocrites. You watch the outside, but the inside is filthy. He tells them that they're self-righteous. If there's anything that Jesus takes like offense to, real offense to, it's self-righteousness. These people, they have they have just as much wrong with them as anyone else. But they fail to see it, and Jesus time and time again challenges them. He's like, You think you're so good. You've got your own issues. Just admit it. Let he who is without sin throw the first stone. That's what Jesus says. But this person just doesn't believe that he needs to be forgiven much. The only way that we can be generous with forgiveness is if we believe that we've been forgiven much. I've been forgiven of so much. Honestly, like I look back at my life, and there are just so many seasons in life where, to be honest with you, I've struggled to forgive myself at that season. It's hard for me sometimes to look back at 21-year-old Justin and forgive him for how he almost messed up his marriage. And God forgives all of it. All of it. Like we've all been forgiven of so much. We've all been forgiven of more than we could even imagine. And if we live in light of that, if we actually believe that, if we can be like this woman who who's this amazing example to us, if we can believe that we've been forgiven of so much, then giving forgiveness to others, it's just it's just what we're gonna do. Because how could we how could we hoard forgiveness in light of how much we've been forgiven? But if if we believe that we've only been forgiven a little, it's gonna be really hard for us to forgive generously. I'm telling you, if there's any part of us that looks at a person or even a whole group of people and thinks to ourselves, at least my sin isn't like theirs, we are we are not in line with Jesus. Not even close. In fact, he has a parable that he tells about about a man praying in the temple, and the man was known as a sinner, and a Pharisee is there, and he's also praying in the temple, and the Pharisee's thinking, at least I'm not like that guy. If there's any part of us that looks at one person or a group of people and says to ourselves, yeah, Jesus has forgiven me, but I mean, I'm not like that person. They they need a little bit extra. No. Because remember, God's not selective in the way he views sin. So this is good news. If this feels heavy, it's not. We've been forgiven everything, we've been forgiven much. You have all been forgiven much, and so we've got to forgive much. We have to, because people are not perfect. No one's perfect. Some of you are are dating right now, and you think the person you're dating is perfect. They are not, they're not even close. To be honest, if you've only been on a few dates, they're liars, they haven't even shown you the real you yet. You don't know. Girls, you think he's like loaded and generous and he's paying for all these meals, and then you know, six months later he's like taking you to Wendy's for your dates because he's out of money, because it's a lie, it's all a show. No, no, seriously, like I don't I don't do weddings that often. I used to, I don't do as many anymore because I had two disastrous weddings. Once I called the bride by the wrong name during the ceremony. I know, right? That's how everyone acted. It was just the exact same as that. Um the second was worse. I just didn't show up. I forgot about the wedding. I just didn't go. I got a phone call uh about 10 minutes before it started, and it was an hour away, and I was like, hello, and she said Justin, and I was like, Oh, you're getting married today, and I'm supposed to be there, and I am not gonna make it. That was awful. Um I'm laughing, but on the inside, I'm like, please, that was bad. I've been forgiven much. That's what I'm saying. I've been forgiven much, okay? It's good. So I don't do that many weddings. And if you were thinking, hey, I'm getting married, let's have Justin do our wedding, might I caution you? Pursue other options. But when I when I when I do weddings, there's this one thing that I always do. I always have the the husband and wife look each other in the eye and say three words to one another out loud. And it's not, I love you. That's the third most important three-word phrase you can say in marriage. Number two, I was wrong. Or you were right. Those are interchangeable, right? I was wrong, you were right. Like, that's number two. I'm just joking. I love you is probably number two. That's that's meant to be funny. But number one is I forgive you. The more readily you can say, I forgive you to someone, to everyone, the more joy you will have in life, because unforgiveness is a poison, it leads to bitterness, it leads to anger. Anger gives Satan a foothold in our lives. That's biblical. Like, the quicker you can say, I forgive you, if you can even do it aggressively and preemptively, like if you can forgive people ahead of time, that's that's the way to do it. Because they're gonna need it. If you're sitting next to someone you love right now and you've never had to forgive them, then either you don't know something, or you just haven't known them very long because you're gonna need to, because we're not perfect and we shouldn't expect each other to be perfect. We've been forgiven much, so we should forgive much. Be generous with forgiveness, be lavish with forgiveness, forgive completely, forgive totally. But that can only happen if you believe, really believe, that you've been forgiven much. The apostle Paul said, I am the chief of sinners. And he wasn't exaggerating, we'd hear that and be like, No, you're not. Come on, you're Paul. No, no, he believed that. And if we have that same mentality, it's not self-degradation, it's it's just realizing where we are and how much God has lifted us up. If you believe you're forgiven much, you'll forgive much. Now, we're gonna wrap up. And what I want to do is actually take Lord's Supper as part of this experience today. We have bread and juice on the sides of the room. Some of you thought I forgot. I know it. First service, same way. People are like looking over like he forgot Lord's Supper. No, I did not. Give me some credit, okay? We're just messing with it a little bit. So here's the deal. Every week we take Lord's Supper together. We take it pretty much every week because Jesus said, when you get together, do this. And so we're like, okay, when we get together, we'll do this. Because Jesus said that. We like what Jesus, we don't do what Jesus says. But the cool thing about Lord's Supper is every week it's a chance for us to be reminded of the forgiveness that we've been given and how much it cost. Every single time we do this, it's not just an empty ritual, it's a chance for us to actually remember, oh yeah, this is the price that was paid to forgive me. And so as we take this together, here in a second, we're gonna stand up, we're gonna get the juice, come back together, do it together, pray, worship, be done. It's time for us as people to forgive generously. Now, this the series is on prayer, not forgiveness. And so, if you're like, well, how does this connect to prayer? It's really simple. The only way for you to forgive like this, to live this kind of grace-filled life, it's to pray a lot. And it's to pray what Jesus actually prays here. Notice that Jesus prays, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Well, if you know anything about the forgiveness of God, if you've heard this, God's forgiveness does not expire. If you get forgiven today, tomorrow morning, it's not like you start at zero, and if you do something wrong, you gotta be forgiven again. That's not how it works. When God forgives you, it is total, it is complete, it's it's lifelong. He forgives you for past, present, future. So why would Jesus have us pray daily for God to forgive us our sins when we're already forgiven? Well, I think it's because Jesus knows our tendency, our tendency to forget that we have been forgiven. It's one of the dangers of religion. That's why we're not a religion. This isn't religion, this is relationship with God. Because in religion, you start off as someone maybe who's humble and realizes, wow, God has forgiven me, but over time, you you just get away from that and you start to believe that you earned it, you start to believe that you're good enough, and you start to judge other people and look around you and be like, I'm not like them, I'm not like that person. But if every single day, if every single day you pray and you come to God and you say, Forgive me for my sins, or maybe what you want to pray is, Lord, thank you, thank you for forgiving me for my sins. If you start with yourself and you reflect daily on the forgiveness that God has given you just in the last 24 hours alone, every thought, every every omission of the truth, every little thing that maybe adds up to something big. Every day you're forgiven. If you start with yourself and you pray and you say, Forgive me, Lord, and you receive that forgiveness because it renews every day. The Bible says his mercies are new every day. When you receive that on a daily basis, guess what you're gonna be able to do? You're gonna be able to give it on a daily basis. We've been forgiven much by a very generous God, and he forgives lavishly, he forgives completely, he forgives generously. And so I want to encourage us, challenge us this week. Who do you need to forgive? Is there is there is there one person that comes to mind that you're like, I've got to forgive this person? And it might be of the smallest thing you can imagine, it might be a set of markers, or it might be something pretty big. And it might involve you just having to pray in your heart and say, Lord, I'm gonna turn this chapter, I'm gonna turn this page, I'm gonna consider it closed. They're forgiven, it's done. It may be that you need to reach out to someone and talk with them and let them know I forgive you. Maybe you need to ask them for forgiveness just to initiate that. Whatever it takes, but forgive generously. Be more generous with forgiveness this week than you have ever been with anything before. Because God has been that generous with you. Because he loves you. I love you guys. Pray with me one more time and we'll wrap up. Jesus, thank you for this day, thank you for this church, thank you for these people. This is such a special group of people, Lord, and we're all we're all just people with our own issues, our own, our own stuff, trying to let you do your work in our lives. And Lord, help us remember that. That it's not about our efforts, it's not about us striving, it's not about us working for this, it's about you doing the work in us. Lord, you have forgiven us. You you are full of grace, you are full of mercy, you are so full of forgiveness, Lord, that we need you to give us that same heart for people. We need you to give us that same ability to forgive completely and totally, no matter the offense. Lord, make us people who forgive generously. Help us be people who receive your forgiveness in fullness, in its full, Lord, so that we can give it away. And we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Love y'all.