Why we must forgive? The injuries against you, the offenses against you are the trials that perfect you. Well there’s one final point to make along this line, number ten, and this is something to think about. I remember years ago when I was thinking through these things and I was teaching the book of Philemon which is the great story of forgiveness where the Apostle Paul asks Philemon to forgive the runaway slave Onesimus and take him back. And I had thought about all the things that I put in my little list so far to you, and then one other thing struck me like a bolt and sort of pulled everything together, and it’s this: the injuries against you, the offenses against you are the trials that perfect you. If you respond with vengeance, you are literally interrupting the best work that God can do in your life. You need to be offended. Your pride needs it, your self-will needs it, your independence needs it. All the difficulties that you have in life, all the offenses that come against you, you need to learn to embrace those offenses. All the criticisms, all the injustices, all the persecutions, all the mistreatments, all the misunderstandings, all the misrepresentations, all of those which look to you to be wounds and severe attacks are, in fact, the very trials that perfect you. First Peter 5:10, “After you’ve suffered a while, the Lord make you perfect...perfect.” After you’ve suffered a while, the Lord make you perfect. James 1 verse 3, “The testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect result.” The testing of your faith produces endurance, that is an enduring, strong faith. You want that, so let it happen. “Blessed is the man who perseveres,” verse 12, “under trial for once he’s been approved, he’ll receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him, therefore consider it all joy, brethren, when you fall into various trials.” The best illustration of this is in 2 Corinthians 12...2 Corinthians 12, we’ve talked about it through the years. This is by way of reminder. In verse 10, Paul makes an amazing statement. “I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ’s sake for when I am weak, then I am strong.” He had learned through his suffering that it was the trials that God used to perfect him. He has just talked about one of them. In verse 7 he says, “To keep me from exalting myself because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, he had personal visits from the ascended Christ and a visit to heaven which he referred to in the opening of the chapter, too wonderful to even be spoken of. But because of these revelations, he would be tempted to exalt himself. So there was given him a thorn in the flesh. His flesh would rise up and be proud and so literally there’s a sphere...the word “thorn” is a stake with a sharpened end. There was a stake rammed through his otherwise proud flesh, a messenger of Satan, an angelos of Satan, a satanic angel, a demon. I believe this was the demon that was leading the destruction in the church at Corinth which was breaking his heart. Why did the Lord let a demon get into the church in the form of false teachers, embodied in false teachers to disrupt this church to which he had given so much of his life? To keep me from exalting myself. Isn’t it an amazing thing to think about, that the Lord would even give a demon, empowered false teachers the right and the opportunity to go into a church and tear into that church if the end result would be the humbling of its pastor? So, I prayed...he says in verse 8...three times that it might leave me. I prayed on three different occasions...Paul is saying...I asked the Lord to stop this by His great power, shut down this demonic operation that is tearing into this church that I love. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, I’m not going to stop the trial, I am going to ramp up the grace for power is perfected in weakness.” You’re not weak enough, Paul, you’re not weak enough. You’ve had too many visions, you’ve had too many revelations, your flesh tends to too much pride, you need to be humbled. And the way to humble you most readily is to humble you at the point of where you see your greatest success, to have the church turn on you. Any of us who are in ministry wonder why most of the criticism that comes against us comes...well it comes often from within the very church from where we are shepherding. But if it’s not inside the church, it comes from other churches and other pastors and other Christian leaders, certainly it comes against me from those sources. Rarely does persecution come to me from the world. Rarely do lies and slander and evil speaking come against me from the world. Almost ninety-nine percent of the time it comes from inside the church. And it can be heartbreaking and you sometimes want to rise to defend yourself against these things. But you learn like the Apostle Paul that this is all part of the Lord’s humbling you when you have been blessed. So, He says to him, “My grace is sufficient for you for power is perfected in weakness.” The less you trust yourself, the more useful you are to Me. So Paul’s response, “Most gladly therefore I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” Folks, the bottom line, what I’m saying in this, is this...your injuries, the offenses that come against you, the lies that come against you, the misrepresentations that come against you, the accusations, the persecution that comes against you, all of these things constitute the trials that God uses to perfect you. That’s what you want, that kind of perfection. God is at work and He’s making you strong through the offenses that can make you angry. But if they make you angry and bitter and hateful and vengeful, you’re just getting weaker and weaker and weaker and you’re in a position to be cut off from the fellowship of other believers because they won’t want to be anywhere around you and you’re putting yourself in a position to forfeit the temporal blessing of God that comes with the forgiveness that comes with your forgiveness. God is at work making you strong and making you holy through these very things. So, be very little concerned about personal injury, okay? Be indifferent to it, even within the family, even within the marriage, even within the circle of friends. Be much more concerned about your own personal holiness and understand that by those wounds and injuries that come more deeply from those that are close to you, being wounded in the house of your friends is the toughest to deal with, but embrace those. Be much concerned about the personal holiness that they produce. So when offenses come against you, which could tempt you to be unforgiving, be immediately forgiving because your far more concerned about the work of holiness that the Lord is doing in your life than you are about the offenses. I guess summing it up, an anonymous saint wrote long ago, “Revenge indeed seems often sweet to men, but it only is a sugared poison. Its aftertaste is bitter as hell. Forgiving is sweet, it enjoys peace and the consciousness of God’s favor. By forgiving, it gives away and annihilates the injury. It treats the injurer as if he had no injured and therefore feels no more the pain and sting that was inflicted. Forgiveness is a shield from which all the fiery darts of the wicked one harmlessly rebound. Forgiveness brings heaven to earth and heaven’s peace into the troubled heart.” So pursue forgiveness, for God’s sake, for your sake, for the sake of the church. - John McArthur
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 06:50:20 +0000