Sunday 31st August 2025

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons. Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 31^st August 2025

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: Forgive us… As we forgive.

Scripture Reading:Ephesians 4:25-32

 The Bible reading today is from Ephesians chapter four, starting at verse 25. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor for we are all members of one body. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth. But only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger. Brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other. Just as in Christ, God forgave you.

The title of our message, forgive us as we forgive. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that we gather as your holy redeemed people, that we've been washed clean by the precious blood of Jesus forgiven, sanctified, set apart. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would come. Speak now to our hearts. Let the power of God's word convict us. Comfort us. In Jesus' precious name we pray.

Amen. So this lady here, her name is Dawn Smith Jordan. She's a Christian speaker and recording artist. She's known for a ministry of faith and forgiveness. In 1985, her 17-year-old sister Sherry, was kidnapped and murdered after her body was found. What the killer did is he phoned the family several times, and he described in detail the gruesome way in which he'd murdered Sherry.

Okay? It was a a terrible, heartless thing that he did in time. The Murderer Man, by the name of Larry Jean Bell, he was caught, convicted and sentenced to death, but this is not where the story ends. A few years later, he wrote to Dawn's family telling them that he'd, he'd come to faith in Jesus Christ. He'd be given his life to Jesus.

He'd become a Christian, and he asked them perhaps the hardest question I'll ever face. He said, will you ever forgive me for what I've done? I can't imagine how they process that trauma. You may be familiar with the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. He once wrote an nonfiction book called Pictures Notes of Edinburgh, and in this anecdote in this, he's got a, a series of anecdotes.

He tells the story of two unmarried sisters who shared a single room in a, a large apartment. One day they had a sharp disagreement on, and I quote, some point of controversial divinity. In other words, they fell out over some aspect of theology, okay? They were talking about God, and in the midst of their conversations, they had a sharp disagreement.

Now their dispute was so bitter, they never spoke to one another again. Okay? Not a word was said, nothing kind, nothing spiteful, just silence. Now, instead of resolving their dispute or one of them moving out, they both stubbornly insisted on remaining in the apartment. Neither one wanted to to yield to the other.

And so for the rest of their miserable lives, they continue to live in the same house where they shared this single room and Stevenson wrote. A chore line drawn upon the floor, separated their two domains. It bisected the doorway and the fireplace so that each could go in and out and do her cooking without violating the territory of the other.

So for years, they coexisted in hateful silence, and at night each went to bed listening to the heavy breathing of the enemy. Now, this hostility didn't just affect them. They've got visitors coming to the house, and those visitors were exposed to the hateful silence as well. And this hateful silence was noticed outside the house too.

Every single Sunday they would go to church. Now, Stevenson's book was published in 1896. Now, given the period, there's no doubt that the Lord's Prayer was recited during these church services. And so the question is, did these sisters really pray it? How? How could they stand there and pray that prayer with that hostility and estrangement between them?

Think about the prayer that Jesus taught us, our father in heaven, not my father, not your father, but our father. How could these two sisters truly pray? Our father a shared father and remain bitter and estranged? And what about the petition? Give us this day our daily bread. We heard from that shoreline that was in the house.

These sisters cooked and ate together in that same house, and yet they failed to recognize and partake together of the provision that God had given them. Now, if either of these, you know, didn't work, then what about the next petition? Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

Can you imagine how difficult it would've been for them to stand there in that congregation and strain out the those words? Could you imagine the bitter pill it would've been that you have to swallow as you say those words in front of everyone in a congregation that knows you two aren't getting along?

Honestly, there's no way they could have remained in bitterness and unforgiving towards each other if they truly prayed these words. Now, think about this. It's one thing to wrestle with unforgiveness for someone who's violently murdered a loved one, it's another thing altogether not to forgive a family member over something as trifling as a theological difference.

Now, our reading today was from Ephesians chapter four. It finished with these words, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave. You we're called to forgive one another. Now inherent within these words is the reality that even as Christians, we will hurt one another.

Yeah, we're gonna say things. We're gonna do things that will cause offense. Now, when you open your Bibles and read Ephesians for the entire section of text that precedes this statement deals with relational sins, and it starts all the way back in verse 17. Paul is speaking to the church and he tells him, you're no longer to live Like those who don't know God.

He then goes on to talk about how unbelievers, those who don't know Jesus, those who haven't been renewed and redeemed, those who don't know Jesus live in the futility of their thinking. They've got darkened minds and their hearts are hard to the ways of God. He says they've lost sensitivity to, to what God wants to do.

And then Paul says that because we know God and because we are being recreated into his likeness, we therefore ought to be like him. He says, we need to get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger along with every form of malice. Instead, we ought to be kind and compassionate to one another. Now, you're probably hearing us and say, well, duh, this is Christianity 1 0 1.

This is the basics. This is who we ought to be about. And so the question is, why does Paul need to remind us not to tear each other apart? Why does he need to remind us don't live this way, instead be kind and compassionate to one another? Why? Why does he have to do that? Surely this is something we already know.

Look what Paul says in verse 30. He says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Do you see what this says? It says that when we hurt one another, we hurt God. Did you get that? When we hurt one another, we hurt God. Do you know? As a parent, it grieves me.

When my children fight, they don't do it much anymore, but when they were little, it used to hurt me to see when they didn't get along, when they wouldn't share, when they would call each other names. Every single one of us wants families that are united in peace and love. Amen. God is no different. It hurts God when his children bicker and fight.

What Paul is saying here is that we're sealed by the Spirit for the day of redemption. What that means is that whilst the Spirit is alive and at working on us now, we are not yet perfect. We are awaiting a future day when we will become all that God wants us to be. But until that day, we will sin. We will sin against God and we will sin against each other.

This is a reality. We may have the spirit working in our lives. We may be better than we were. The spirit's doing something good in us, but boy do we know how to, you know, walk out of the flesh. Yeah, I know how to act out of my flesh. I did it last night and that's what this entire section of the letter is about.

We are not yet complete. And so life in the body, life in this body means that we will get friction points. People will hurt us and we will hurt them. Can I tell you? You can't be in community or close relationship with people and not expect pain. Broken, wounded, people rubbing up alongside each other is a recipe for friction and pain.

The antidote is to forgive one another, just as in Christ, God forgave us, and here's where it's at. For those of us who long to be like God, because I believe if you've truly met Jesus. If you've been born again, then your heart's desire is to be like God. Yeah. Can I tell you, we are never more like him than when we extend forgiveness to those who have sinned against us.

You're probably familiar with a well-known expression to earth is human, to forgive is divine. You're familiar with that, and Paul captures this sentiment in the verses that follow in Ephesians, he says, be imitators of God. Therefore, as dearly loved children. And live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Understand what Paul's saying here. He's saying forgiveness is not natural, and forgiveness is not easy, and it can hurt because just like the forgiveness we receive in Jesus, it's sacrificial. Tim Keller writes, forgiveness is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving rather than retaliating, you make the choice to bear the cost.

Forgiveness ain't easy and forgiveness hurts. It hurts because to forgive well means absorbing pain rather than inflicting that. Did you get that to forgive? Well, we have to absorb some pain rather than the desire to inflict it on someone else. And it's costly just as the, the cross was costly to God.

But there is a reward when you go through the pain of being sinned against and yet choose to release the person who sinned against you. You know, without the need for revenge or retaliation, you become more like God. That's what this verse, that other verse was saying, you become an imitator of God when you bear the cost just like Christ Bo for us.

And we choose not revenge or retaliation, but to absorb the pain, we become more like God,

can I tell you? When we allow ourselves to be wronged and to be heard, and yet commit to this path of forgiveness and release, it is for us. You know, we experience in part what it means to be like God, and from the inside of this experience, we learn more about what it means for God to have forgiven us.

And that's why we find these words embedded in the prayer that Jesus taught us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. I like this insight from Chad Bird. He says, in the Lord's Prayer, God does this and that while one and only one action is ascribed to us forgiving the trespasses of others, it's that central to the Christian life.

As I said last week, this prayer that Jesus gives us consists of six petitions. The first three have to do with God's glory. They're distinguished by the word Your our Father in heaven. Hello, be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done. The second set of three petitions, they focus on our wellbeing and as and are distinguished by this word us.

Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins lead us not into temptation. You can see that clearly these final set of, you know, petitions. They're focused on our wellbeing and our good. Now, here's my point. How can we expect God to give us the things we ask of him if we are not prepared to give the thing, the one thing he asks of us.

You got that. The first petition that concerns us in that, in this prayer is this petition where Jesus says, I want you to ask, and this is what we looked at last week. Ask God for daily bread. Ask God to meet your physical needs. Jesus then follows this by saying, you also have a spiritual need. Ask God to continually cleanse you from sin, but when you ask, be sure to have a forgiving spirit.

Can we ask God to give us daily bread? And expect him to answer if we're not prepared to give the one thing, the one and only thing he asks of us. And more than that, can we expect to be forgiven if we withhold forgiveness from others? Jesus taught us to pray for. Forgive us as we forgive. In other words, deal with me God, in the same way that I deal with others.

That's what it's saying. In Luke chapter six, Jesus says, given it will be given to you a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you now despite what the TV evangelists say. This ain't talking about, you know, financial, planting a seed and getting back in abundant harvest.

It's not talking about money at all. Jesus is talking about forgiveness. In the verse that fo uh, that is immediately prior to this, he says, forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. The measure you use to others is the measure Jesus says, will be used to you.

Forgive us as we forgive. Now, this part of the Lord's Prayer is what Augustine St. Augustine called the Terrible Petition. He said that if we pray for forgiveness with an unforgiving heart, then what we are indirectly asking for is for God not to forgive us and just in case we misunderstand this or seek to minimize it, Jesus lengthens this and repeats it at the end of the Lord's prayer.

He says, for if you forgive other people, when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.

John Wesley tells of an encounter from his time as an as a missionary to the American colonies, and he came across a general in the British Army named Ja James Oglethorpe. Now this general was known for his pride and his unyielding nature. He was a very proud man. He once declared, I never forgive, and I'm so proud of my hatreds, and no one ever crosses me, and I always pay accounts.

To which Wesley replied then, sir, I hope you never sin. Did you get that Nancy Wesley's reply was then, sir, I hope you never sin if you never forgive. Wesley says, you better not sin. Puritan author Thomas Watson, put it like this, A man can as well go to hell for not forgiving. As for not believing, that's pretty stern.

Charles Spurgeon said. Unless you've forgiven others, you read your own death warrant when you repeat the Lord's Prayer. This is the scalpel I was talking about. This is the open heart surgery minus the anesthesia. This is pretty tough stuff. Yeah. C Lewis says No part of Jesus teaching is clearer. And there are no exceptions to it.

He doesn't say that we are to forgive other people's sins providing they're not too frightful or provided. There are extenuating circumstances or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all. However, spiteful, however mean, however, often they're repeated. If we don't, we shall be forgiven none of our own.

Lewis has a shorter, more famous saying. He says, to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable. Because God has forgiven the inex inexcusable in you.

The experience of knowing God's forgiveness should produce in us a forgiving spirit. That same grace that comes into our hearts is the same grace that enables us to forgive. It is a gift of God to be able to forgive someone else. We can't do it in and of ourselves. It, it's gotta be a gift we receive from God.

Now let me add a pastoral touch. I know you need some pastoral touch right now.

Trust me when I tell you this, this word first examines me before it examines you. When I stand up here, trust me when I say that the pastoral touches this, I said earlier, we're not yet complete. God's spirits at work in our lives and he is changing us. Yes, we're not who we once were. We are being changed.

Yet we still await this future day of redemption. What it means is we are not yet perfect. It means we still struggle with sin, and one of the sins we still struggle with is the sin of unforgiveness. And just like every other sin in our life, it is a sin for which we still need forgiveness. Do you get what I'm saying?

We still need forgiveness for having an attitude that sometimes where it's hard to let go and to forgive others. And what we need to do is allow God's grace to meet us at that point. If you are struggling with unforgiveness, you need to allow God to meet you with his grace at that point. Okay? None of us here, no one, no one is perfect in the way they forgive only God and what Jesus is talking about in the Lord's prayer is our posture towards others.

If you are struggling with unforgiveness to understand you're not aligned, Jesus is not talking about those who are incomplete in their struggle, sorry. Jesus is not talking about those who are incomplete in their struggle to forgive. He's actually talking about those who have no desire to forgive. Does that make sense?

Yes. All of us struggle with unforgiveness and Jesus is not talking about those people who are incomplete in that way. He's talking about those people who say, Lord, I have no desire to forgive.

Please know our struggle with unforgiveness will be with us until the day we meet Jesus. And we need to be real about that. Yeah. But we also need to be real about what Jesus calls us to, to forgive as we've been forgiven, I'm sure that for some of us here, this is hitting close to home and it can be difficult to hear.

Some of us here have suffered inexcusable wrongs that have left scars, scars that may never heal in this lifetime. And as you're hearing is maybe, maybe you, what you're hearing is you're saying forgiveness can feel like we're given a free pass to those who have heard us, and it's like we're being asked to call things okay.

That are not okay. Can I tell you? That's not what forgiveness is about. Forgiveness is not about denying what's been done to us. It's not pretending that nothing bad has happened to us. I like what Bishop Desmond Tutu said. He said, forgiving is not forgetting. It's actually remembering, remembering and not using your right to hit back.

Let me lighten the mood a little. I saw a joke recently. A therapist says to their client, I need you to write letters to the people who have wronged you and then throw them into the fire to which the client replies, okay, but what do I do with the lettuce?

Had to lighten the mood a little. Now we know. Well these words from the Apostle Paul, he says, do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone if it is possible. As far as it pen depends on you. Live at peace with everyone. Do you know sometimes we can forgive people.

That doesn't always mean there's reconciliation. Reconciliation is the next step. Forgiveness is the first step. He says, do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written. It is mine to avenge I will repay. Sister. Lord. Do you know what revenge is? Revenge is you paying twice for hurt that someone else did to you.

Let, let me explain. When we're hurt, when you are drowning in the pain of that hurt, we can feel that the path to healing is to hurt the other person back. Okay? Don't get mad. Get even. And while we might feel a little bit better in the short term, in the long term, it will always cost us far more emotionally and spiritually than we would ever want to pay.

'cause when you take revenge, it's gonna do something inside of you. It's gonna take you to a place you don't want to go. The only thing revenge does is add our wrongdoing on top of someone else's. Listen to what Philip Yancy says in the final analysis. Forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving one another, sorry, by by forgiving another.

I am trusting that God is a better justice maker than I am. Forgiveness is not about letting the other person off the hook, and it's not about calling things okay that are not okay. It's about placing that person in God's hands. Forgiving is not about denying the bad thing that's happened to you. And saying, it's okay.

I'm called to forgive and forget. That's not what it is at all. It's about saying, I relinquish my right to revenge and I place that person into the hands of God. This is why forgiveness is an act of faith. In fact, I believe forgiveness is one of the deepest acts of faith. It can take faith to say that God sees that God knows and that God will repay.

Amen. It takes faith to say that God has seen the hurt that's been done to me, and it takes faith to say that God will deal with this in his time and in his way. It's trusting that God will deal rightly with those who have wronged us. Think about this situation we've had recently with the National Redress Scheme.

I had a private conversation with someone who was not present the day I, you know, shared the outcome with the church. And a very good question was asked of me, and the question was, is there an any ongoing, any ongoing, uh, you know, risk? And to qualify my answer, I shared that the abuse was dead. Now, the person I was talking to said, well, you know, so they got away with it and it was an honest question.

My response was this, no one gets away with anything. There is a day of reckoning. God is merciful, and he's just, and he will not allow wickedness to go free. In asking us to forgive, Jesus is asking us to trust that he will deal rightly with those who have wronged us, and what he's calling us to do is to break those chains we sang about today, that chain of unforgiveness, that chain to get revenge.

He says, when you let go of that, you'll be set free.

I said, this wasn't gonna be an easy message. Let me share from personal experience, and I think I've shared in part some of this before CLA and I once went through a very difficult time with our Christian mission. A long story short, we were treated quite terribly, and what I did is I anchored my hope for healing in a form of satisfaction that never came.

And by that what I mean is I wanted an honest admission from those who had done wrong to us, along with a recognition of the deep hurt they have caused us. Can I tell you, it never came. It never came. I wanted God to do what I wanted to happen and I anchored all of my hope for healing in that. And it never came.

And because it never came, I never found closure. And for years I carried this sense of injustice. 'cause that's what it was. It was injustice. And the hurt that I felt was masked by anger. But the root was this injustice. I was thinking like, you know, they've gotten away with it. Can I tell you? Over time the anger turned to bitterness and it consumed me.

It ate away at my soul. One day I came a across this quote, it says, most people never heal because they stay in their heads, replaying, corrupted scenarios, let it go. I wonder, have you ever felt stuck in a cycle of unresolved pain where you're just playing those offenses over and over again in your mind?

And you know, you can't go on like this, but the hurt is so deep and so raw that you feel you'll never be whole again. I'll never be normal again, and I'm trapped in this cycle where un, where forgiveness seems impossible. Forgiveness is impossible given how I feel as I'm going through all of this stuff in my mind, I was not only replaying corrupted scenarios, I had this full scale Hollywood production going on in my head.

Thank you. I was replying over and over again the injustice, and then creating in my mind the steps that I could take to get satisfaction. This went on for years. Guess who suffered you? I can tell you firsthand that resentment and hatred are poison to our ourselves. There's that popular expression that says unforgiveness is like, was it like expecting, you know, drinking poison and expecting someone else to feel it?

Someone once said that our lives are like suitcases. There's only room for so much. You know what a suitcase is? There's only so much you can pack into that suitcase, and the more you hold onto things like anger and bitterness, the less room for God.

My situation came to a head one Sunday morning before church. You know, I was due to preach here that morning and I found myself in a fetal position in the shower. I was just in tears. This cycle of anger and bitterness was killing me, and I knew I had to truly release these things to God. I remember calling out to Claudia and I just let it all out.

The next day, we talked some more, and a moment came where I said out loud, God has forgiven them. Jesus died for their sin, and I can tell you in that moment, something broke. Something broke spiritually. What I was doing before God, I was acknowledging that what they had done was wrong and that Jesus had paid the price for their wrongdoing.

And if Jesus had paid the price for their sin, then who was I to hold onto it?

I wasn't denying the hurt. I wasn't minimizing their actions. What I was doing is I was grieving for what had been done to us and I was bringing those grievances to the cross. I brought them to that place where God dealt with my sin against him, as well as their sin against me. And in that moment, in that moment, this truth, something I knew I knew this, but in that moment, this truth made the long journey from my head down into my heart, and my heart was set free.

Do I still have times when I feel the pain of what happened? Absolutely. What happened will always be part of my lived experience. And because of that, I'll still have times when this, you know, this desire for justice and satisfaction flickers in my heart, but that's all it is now. It's a flicker, it's a passing moment.

It comes and it goes. Someone once said to me, you know, you're healed when you no longer need to talk about it. I can talk about it now, but I don't need to. Okay. Listen to when people talk, when they talk about their hurts and how frequently they do. If it's just under the surface, constantly boiling over, it's always gonna come out.

I don't need to talk about this now, but I can. I don't need to talk about it because I'm healed. But I still get those moments every now and again where something is triggered and it flickers up. You know, it used to be a prison and now it's just this passing moment. Understand forgiveness is a journey.

It's not something you do. Once you know Jesus, talk about 70 times seven. That's how often you should forgive. I once heard a guy say, you know, you forgive, and then you forgive again, and you forgive again. Because sometimes things just trigger and the memories come up. Forgiveness is a journey. It's a constant commitment that when something comes up and that pain is, you know, reignited or triggered, that you will once again release it to Jesus.

Some people say if you haven't forgotten and you haven't forgiven, can I say, please don't buy into this. It's easy to say, but it's almost impossible to do. I mean, I can forget, you know, it is possible to forget. Small, slight, someone cuts me off in traffic. Okay? But you don't forget life altering wounds.

Yeah, some wounds are so deep that we never forget, and what we do is we carry that trauma. The issue is how we allow these things to shape us. Here's something I've learned. We can only release those who wound us when we release the expectation that they can fix what they've done. Should I say that again?

We can only release those who wound us when we release the expectation that they can fix. The wrong that they've done to us. I was holding onto this hope that I would find healing through, you know, an honest admission, them raising their hands and say, we've done you wrong. And while in, in part it could help, it could never truly bring the deeper healing I needed.

Healing comes from Christ alone, from standing at the foot of the cross and realizing that the debt owed to me has been paid by him. I want you to get that. You stand at the foot of the cross and you realize the debt that's owed to you has been paid by Jesus was this alone. That set me through from the cycle of bitterness and pain.

And I can tell you now, whenever a memory of what happened is triggered, I just bring it back to God and what he has done. You know, in my life through this, my wife can attest. I'm not the person I was. God has used this to, you know, change me, to make me more like him. I have included in the friendly messages some prayer points along with a reflection.

Now the reflection is based on the Channel seven spotlight that was recently air. Did anyone see this? If you haven't seen it, go online and watch it. Where you can see here is a picture on the right is a man named Danny Abdullah. He's a Christian man. On the left is Samuel Davidson. Davidson was drunken on drugs when he got behind the will and killed three of Danny's children and his niece.

Now they met recently inside the maximum security prison where Davidson is serving 20 years. Okay. It's an incredible story of the power of forgiveness, but when this was put online, just looking at some of the comments, people would comment positively saying, what a remarkable man this Mr. Abdullah is to forgive like this.

But many of the other comments were, there's no way I could sit in the same space as this guy and not rip his head off. Amen. This is a powerful witness to Christian forgiveness. Check it out. There's a reflection in the messenger. There's also some prayer points for us to pray. Please pray during the week.

Let's also pray. Now, let's close in prayer

as your head's about, I wonder is there something you need to let go of? Is there something that's been done? It can't be undone. It's happened, and you're carrying this hurt. You're carrying this pain.

Father, you know the things we've been through, you know, the hurts, the knocks, the pains, the deep trauma. Some of us carry. Father, we can find healing in Jesus. And Father, we know that sometimes our healing is a long process. It's a journey where you do something deep, deep, deep within us. Father, I pray, help us to come before the cross to release the debts that have been paid by Jesus to him not to expect satisfaction or seek retaliation.

Help us to entrust to you justice. That you've got this and that you've got us. Father, help us to forgive as we have been forgiven. And Father, we do that knowing that we don't forgive completely and we ask for your forgiveness for that. But help us to become more like you in learning to bring those things that have hurt us to you, that your grace might heal us.

And that it might flow out of us as a witness to your grace in our lives to others. Holy Spirit, come now and minister, we pray. Do something deep in the lives of those here. Help us to release and let go to create space for more of you in our lives. We ask this in Jesus' precious name. Amen.