GREATEST OF ALL TIME | Week 2 | Sermon

So again, I'm a big golfer. I love golf. I'm probably the only nerd in the place that watches like every golf tournament. I can tell you about it. Like I just man, I love golf. I'm a fan of it. I've got a bucket list of golf courses that I'm trying to get to at some point in my life. And a couple weeks ago, I actually got to go play one of those courses, Kate. It's on the West Coast in California up in Monterey. It's called Pebble Beach. It's a really iconic golf course. If you know anything about it, they hold some of the biggest tournaments out there and it's just, it's amazing. It's right on the water. It's right next to the beach. It's a beautiful place. It's an incredibly historic place for golf and always has been on the bucket list. Well, a couple months ago, I had a random coffee conversation with a guy that I didn't know before that meeting named Tim. And Tim is just a hilarious dude. He's very eccentric and eclectic and he tells stories and you're like, you're either like the most interesting person I've or you're crazy. I'm not really sure yet. But

in this conversation, we just had a great time and I'm walking out of this coffee appointment with Tim

and I go to get into my car and he goes, hey, you play golf, right? It's like a very like Tim thing. And I'm like, yeah, man, I play some golf. And he goes, okay, next time we meet, we gotta meet at a golf course but it's gotta be a cool golf course that you pick and we'll meet there.

So I literally, I jokingly say, awesome. I'll meet you at Pebble Beach. Right? I get in my truck, I drive and I go home and true story, I say true story like the rest of my stories aren't true but I like I'm

sitting at the kitchen island with my wife and my phone rings and it's Tim and I answered on speaker phone and he's like, hey, does this date or this date work for you? And I'm like context man, like what are we talking about? Right? He's oh, I'm on the other line with Pebble Beach and those are the only dates that they have in like the next six months. Does this date or this date work? And I'm like, oh, that's funny. You know, And he's just like silent on the other end. He's like, no, the lady's on the other end of the phone, like which date? Like we need to book it. And so I'm like, I guess this date he goes, okay, awesome. I'll email you the confirmation.

And then he hangs up. And then I get an email confirmation that says we're playing Pebble Beach in like a month and a half. And I look at my wife and I'm like, I think I'm playing Pebble Beach with a guy that I like barely know. And she's like, you can't go, like what if he kills you? I'm like, yeah, but if I get to play Pebble Beach first, you know, like

you gotta risk it sometimes to get the biscuit. You know what I'm saying? Like I'm okay if I die post playing Pebble Beach, but if it's pre, I will be upset about that, right? And so I literally, I end up going, we fly out there and we go and play this course called Spyglass, which is another amazing golf course out there. And then we go and we play Pebble Beach and I've got a photo of a guy that's now my good buddy, Tim. And man, this is the iconic hole of Pebble Beach. It's Hole Number 7. It's a little downhill par three that sometimes it's the wind is getting crazy. It's about a 100 yards, but sometimes people have to hit five and four irons to get there. And it was literally like one of the most amazing days ever. Walked around, I probably said it to Tim like 10 times. I'm like, man, I don't know what heaven is gonna be like, but this has to be pretty close, right? Like just like an amazing golf course right on the ocean with good food and good people. Like this is going to be heaven. And it was like a spiritual experience walking around and seeing the history of it all. You go past this thing that has all the like past major winners that took place at Pebble Beach and it really is just an amazing place and nobody's in a hurry. The people that work at Pebble Beach, they know that it's like a big deal and so they kinda go through and make it like Disneyland for you. Like literally before you tee off, a guy in a full suit with a top hat walks you through like the history of the course and tells you about the day and like I'm like, I'm here for all of this. Like let's get all the festivities. Like I am so down for all of this. Nobody's in a hurry. Like it's just an amazing experience.

And then in the sovereignty and the providence and goodness of God, I played decently too. And so it just was like the cherry on top of the cake, right? So we finished and then we've got a jet to the airport and make our flight to come home. And truly the whole flight home, I'm like looking

at photos of the whole time. I took all these videos and I'm like putting them together to put on my Instagram because I'm like a wannabe golf influencer.

And so I'm like posting those and stuff and just reliving the whole experience just like floating on cloud nine, right? Well, then our plane lands and we pull into our gate to get ready to de plane.

And again, as somebody who's been on a lot of flights lately, it's literally like one of my biggest pet peeves when the dude that's like four rows behind you the moment they start to deplane, he's convinced that he's gonna be the first guy to get off the plane. So what does he do? He grabs his stuff and he starts bull rushing to the front like we're not all trying to get off of the same plane. Well, this dude gets stuck and he's now right next to me. And so he's got like his backpack on and he's in such a hurry. He's like kind of wrestling around and he starts bumping into me.

And I go from like blissful peace and joy to like, I'm about to have to choke slam a dude in the middle of this airport and hopefully nobody's recording like pastor Daniel choke slamming a guy in my Pebble Beach gear. I'm still wearing like my golf clothes, you know?

And all of a sudden in a moment, all the peace and the joy and the happiness that I had from living this like idealistic morning was just gone in an instant.

I don't know if you've ever been there. Like you're at a stoplight and you're actually paying attention. You're not like texting or on social media and the light goes from red to green and because you don't hit the gas like the instant it goes green, the dude behind you just lays on the horn and you're like, somebody's about to go to heaven today. Know, like this is how you die, sir. Like this is like what is wrong with you? Like why are you in such a hurry? It's amazing to me how in that moment you can just have all of your your peace and joy and stuff just gone and all of a sudden something comes out of you that you didn't even really know was there.

What we're going to look at over the next few weeks is Jesus inviting us to look at those moments and to learn from them. To realize the truth is is those moments are much better indicators of the true condition of our heart and our soul than we realize.

And that anger doesn't just happen randomly, it comes from somewhere. It comes from something. What Jesus is going to say in this beginning part of the Sermon on the Mount that we need to look at is friends, the truth is that the kind of big idea that we're gonna unpack to get today and over the next few weeks together

is that what comes out of us, it's the best indication of what's actually in us. But we don't like to admit that.

Right? When we get in a conversation and things get heated and we say something or do something that we later regret, we'll come back and we'll say something like, hey, I'm really sorry I said that. I didn't mean that. I don't think that's true.

I think the truth is is when we're pressed and when we're stressed and when life is caving in on us, we will actually say the things that are really actually in us, though we might not always like what's in us. The Bible says it is out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth will speak.

What I want us to do this morning is to look at the very first thing that Jesus is going to talk about anger. And he's going to ask us the question, friends, why are we so angry?

And I don't know if you've experienced it on social media or you've tried to have a conversation with somebody about anything, but it just seems like no matter what, we just get to a place where we're all angry with each other. We're all fighting.

And I think sometimes we don't even know what we're angry about anymore, but we're just angry. No answer is ever good enough. No position is clear enough. And we're just mad and we're angry as a country. I think we've become more angry than we've ever been before and we may not be able to solve it nationally,

but we can solve it inside of our own hearts. We can address it inside of our homes. We can begin to change the wirings of our communities and begin to answer the question in our hearts, why are we so angry? I was looking at polls this week that said that only 35%

of people that responded to a poll said that there's anything going on politically that would make them proud as an American. Whereas 97% would say that there's something going on politically that would make them incredibly mad.

I'm not saying that it's all based on politics and politics is the total thing to blame, but I think it is a perfect personification of where we sit as a country. We're just mad.

And here's the problem with anger that's left unchecked is doctors tell us that it doesn't just stay there, that it eventually will bleed itself out in all kinds of bad ways. It'll lead to increased blood pressure. It can lead to increased anxiety. It can lead to manifestations of all kinds of diseases and it can even be a cause to a shortness of our life that anger is a really big

deal. And what we need to do this morning is look at the blind spots that we don't want to admit that we have and be willing to do the hard work to go where is this coming from so that we can begin to be people who walk by the spirit

and not by the flesh that rules us. Amen. Matthew chapter five verse 21. Here's how Jesus begins in this section of the sermon on the mount. He says, you have heard it said to the people long ago, you shall not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, Raca, which means you fool is answerable to the court. And anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fire of hell. Here's what Jesus is going to do six times in this section.

He's going to reach back into the Old Testament. He's going to reach into the covenantal law that all of these Jews would have known, especially all the religious leaders that are sitting on the Hillside.

Again, Jesus is a rabbi and he's sitting down and he's getting ready to teach which anytime a rabbi sat down, it meant that what he was about to teach was incredibly important. And he goes, you have heard it said that anybody that commits murder, they are under judgment.

And you have, because you're like, I haven't murdered anybody. You're walking around patting yourself on the back thinking that you're killing it for Jesus. And he's like, here's what the law was supposed to do.

The law was not supposed to be something that you patted yourself on the back because you were able to fulfill it. It was actually supposed to show you the impossible standard that we could never fulfill on our own that would show that we needed a savior. And so what Jesus is going to do is he's gonna move from action

and he's gonna go into motivation. And he says, what I'm telling you is that anybody who's even looked at a friend and called them a bad name, anybody who has had anger at somebody else in their life, you are storing up the same judgment

as what you've always understood the old testament law to be for somebody who commits murder. What he's just done is he's completely leveled the playing field saying that all of us in this room based on how we've lived and how we've behaved, we have stored up judgment against ourselves.

And he actually says that you are potentially going to have to face the fires of hell. And most theologians tell us that Jesus was probably where he was sitting, he could point over to what was called the Gehenna Valley, which is essentially the Jerusalem

place where they take all their trash, it was the dump. And over there is literally this burning pile of trash to try to get rid of most of it. They would light it on fire and Jesus in his teaching would use it as an illustration to say, look at that, how smelly, how nasty, how disgusting,

how hot and how smoldering it is. It is like most of you inside of your soul

and you have to understand you're storing up judgment against yourself. It's going to produce something out of you that you don't want to have happen. It's going to come out sideways. It's going to erupt out of you eventually. And those moments where it comes up, where you look at your kid, when you look at how they loaded the dishwasher and you kind of just snap, that's coming from somewhere.

It has nothing to do with the dishwasher. It has something to do with something that's deeper inside of you when you need to address it.

You can't just justify it and say, well, I'm Irish. This is just what we do, right? Like I have friends that are like, that's just how Mexicans fight, man. We're just passionate people. And it's like, no, no, no. None of us have a natural predisposition that justifies us being just angry.

Right? We have to allow the Holy Spirit to search our soul and go, where is this coming from? Because I don't want to store up judgment against me. I don't want these things to come out and produce things inside of the people around me that is not going to produce life.

What Jesus is saying is that anger is a really big deal. We need to look at it and ask the question, where is it coming from? And as he continues, he's gonna start to draw the connections into potentially where the anger is coming from. He says in verse 23,

he says, therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, he says, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift. Here's what Jesus says.

Jesus makes one of the most important connections for us to make. He says, sometimes when we come to church and it feels like we just don't feel anything anymore. When we sit down to read our Bible and it just feels like God is so distant and where we used to hear his voice and we don't hear it anymore and we feel like God has just left us and we're like, is he even there anymore?

He's saying sometimes the spiritual disconnect that you feel, the brokenness in the vertical relationship that you're experiencing, here's the reason why, Is because there's conflict in your horizontal relationship that is affecting your vertical relationship.

He's saying that you and I can't disconnect our vertical connection to our horizontal ones. He's saying for some of us, the most spiritual thing that we can do this weekend is to not sing a song and to read a Bible verse, but it's to walk out of those doors and seek reconciliation with the people that we've hurt and the people that have hurt us.

He says, it's so important that if you're in church, you should just get up and leave. And so this is your moment, if you need to go deal with some stuff, like let's just do it right now. Like imagine people just walked out, right? He's saying that sometimes we just wanna go through the religious activities and we forget the point of all of it that is supposed to produce in us a heart that is running after reconciliation

with people. He's saying that we can't just walk around with all the brokenness in the relationships and as much as we can control it, we need to pursue reconciliation so that we don't have the anger and the bitterness that's in us.

And oftentimes the anger that we have just burst out of us in moments, it is connected to brokenness that has happened to us and it's brokenness that we've done to people. It says we have to figure out a way to deal with that. We have to figure out a way to overcome the anger that we experience.

So the question then becomes how do we overcome anger? If this is really that big of a deal and what Jesus is inviting us into is not just a way to get to heaven one day but with the invitation of faith is really one to begin to experience heaven on earth to begin to walk as an entirely new creation.

It means that we have to be people who are not ruled by anger but we are people who systematically

overcome anger. The question is how do we overcome it? That's what I want to spend the next few moments talking about. Here's what's amazing when you look at the scriptures. The Bible tells us so much about how to live our life. It gives us so much insight into really how to thrive

as a human. It's not just ancient stories talking about old people and things that happened thousands of years ago. It is an incredibly practical toolkit from God on how you and I are supposed to live as his followers and as his many Christ, right? Christians.

And here's what the Bible tells us about how to overcome anger. I'm telling you it's five points. They're gonna spell out anger. Your mind's gonna be blown but it's, you you can just pretend like it's not that big of a deal. Okay? Here's the first thing we have to do if we're gonna be people who overcome anger. It starts by acknowledging your trauma.

Okay. The A in overcoming anger is acknowledging your trauma. All of us in this room, we share in a common trauma. The Bible says that we were born of Adam, which means that we were born into sin. Whether or not we like it is another conversation,

but the reality is that all of us were born into this world with sin being our default. We were born into conflict. We come out of our mother's womb with our first word not being yes and yours but no and mine. Our default is selfishness.

We are born hostile to God because of the sin that happened in the Garden of Eden and it has caused a traumatic break in our relationship with God, in our relationship with each other. And for us to begin to pursue reconciliation, it starts by us really wrestling through the question of who are we in Christ?

And by inviting Jesus into our life, acknowledging his lordship over us, it begins to start the process of healing. It begins to restore what was broken in our vertical relationships and then it gives us the power through the Holy Spirit to begin to mend the brokenness of our horizontal relationships. But if we don't acknowledge that trauma,

we'll never be able to get to the other traumas of what has happened to us.

Here's the reality of us living in a broken and fallen world. We are like cars heading down a freeway trying to go in the same direction, but there's black ice everywhere and in our going and in our striving and in our trying, we just constantly are bumping into one another and causing conflict and causing tension and hurting each other. And in the middle of all of that, we try to figure out who we are.

In the middle of all that brokenness, trauma happens to us. Things have taken place to us. Parents have disappointed us. Friends that were supposed to be loyal betrayed us. Spouses that were supposed to not betray our trust, betrayed our trust.

People who weren't supposed to take advantage of us, take advantage of us. People die unexpectedly

and it's traumatic and you will try to just suppress it. But when you just suppress it, eventually it will come out in really sideways ways. If we're going to be people who take anger as a big deal and realize that what comes out of us is the proof of what's in us, we have to start by acknowledging the things that have happened to us.

And almost more importantly sometimes is we have to acknowledge the things that we've done to other people. It's easy for us to say and raise our hand and say, yes, in some circumstances I was victimized.

But here's the part that we don't like to realize that I think most of us are also in the camp of. We've also been ones in different seasons and different aspects that have done the victimizing. We have hurt people just like hurt people have hurt us. And both things need to be dealt with and remedied and acknowledged.

And if not, and you just continue to stuff it and act like it didn't happen and act like it was never there, Eventually, it will come out in these really sideways ways. And the opportunity is to look at those moments and see them for the blind spots and the warning signals that they are saying something isn't right with your soul.

Because here's what we have to understand. The Bible tells us it is not flesh and bones that we wage war with, though we think it is. It's not the physical world that we're engaging with where the real fight is. The Bible says that it's with spirits and principalities. That's where the real battle is.

What it means is that if we could right now, if I could for a second just peel back the layer between the physical world that we can all see and the supernatural world that is right above us, spiritual battle that is taking place over your life right now in this room, the battle that is taking place over your marriage, over your home, over your kids, over your job places, over your communities,

I'm telling you if we could see it, we would wake up to the fight.

If we could see it, we would realize there's a very real enemy that is trying to destroy every single thing that God is trying to do in our lives. And maybe just maybe we would engage in the fight. We would go, okay, I have to do something about this because my default,

I'm not just going to stumble into a life of peace. You are gonna have to fight for it. You're gonna have to make a choice to put a flag in the ground and say, you know what? I refuse to allow the enemy to have a foothold into my life. See, here's the end as we build out anger that I'm telling you, it's gonna be brilliant. You're gonna be proud of me when you get to the end of this. Here's the end. You have to make a decision that you are never going to give the enemy a foothold into your life.

And the greatest foothold that he has into most of our lives is the things that we've done and the things that have been done to us that people don't know about.

And what he wants to do with those things in the secret is he wants to continually re traumatize you with him. He wants to blame you for things that weren't your fault.

And if we don't deal with them and acknowledge them, he will have a foothold into you and it will be almost impossible for us to break some of the generational cycles that our families have been stuck in. We have to refuse at some point to go, you know what? I refuse to give him a foothold into my family.

I'm not going to give him access any longer. And so I'm willing to go to the hard places and walk through some of the difficult things because I don't want the enemy to have a foothold into my family any longer. I'm not gonna allow him to dominate my marriage any longer.

Here for me, when I was 19 years old and gave my life to Jesus, I was like, it's gonna be all rainbows and sunshine and butterflies for the rest of my life. It's like me and Jesus just dancing through flower fields and probably six months into being a Christian, like literally,

I was driving one day and I stopped at a red light and all of a sudden it was like somebody put a movie in and all of these memories started flooding back to me. And they were all these really traumatizing memories of me as a kid. And at first I was like, man, what is this?

And then the truth was is I started to remember all of these things that I had kind of suppressed of abuse that I had gone through as a kid. And all of a sudden as like a new Christian,

all of these memories started to pop up. And I learned with a counselor years later that she said, it's amazing how God has wired us. That oftentimes when really traumatic things happen to us, God in His sovereignty and in His protection will take that memory and actually hide it in the reserves of your brain. And then when the brain detects that it's in a healthy enough place to deal with it, all of a sudden they'll bring them back out to process through them.

And I knew in that moment I had a choice.

I could go back to what I had done for the last four or five years, which was just party it away, be the fun guy, just go, you know what? I'll just act like this isn't here. I'll just go back and do what I've done and suppress it for a little bit and try to as long as I can keep this thing at bay or

I can try to acknowledge it and talk about it. And so somehow I don't even remember I called my sister and through a series of events I ended up in counseling and I had to begin to make a choice to say, I am not going to allow my future to be stolen like my past was.

And at some point, you have to make the same decision as well.

You have to choose what your future is going to look like. You have to make a decision to go, I am not going to allow the enemy to have a foothold into this thing any longer. Here's what Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter four. He says, you and I can be angry and not sin. We can have a holy anger towards the things that have happened to us, the things that have taken place, but don't let the sun go down on that anger And don't give the devil an opportunity.

Let the thief no longer steal. Here's what he's saying. He's saying you have to make a decision if you're gonna let that person have any more rented space inside of your mind.

How many more moments are you going to allow the enemy to steal from you because of what has happened? Because of the betrayal? Because of the broken trust? Because of the loss? Because of the circumstances?

How much longer are you gonna allow the enemy to use that to steal from you? You have to make a decision to go, I'm not letting him steal from me any longer. I'm going to start to choose to fight for forgiveness, for freedom,

because I'm not gonna be a person that's just ruled by my emotions. Instead, I'm going to rule them. But here's what I've learned. The pains that we don't process, they will eventually process us.

And if we don't deal with them, I'm telling you, they will deal with us and they will come out in all kinds of sideways ways. What comes out of us is the best indication of what is in us. Here's the third thing we have to do if we're gonna be people who say we are going to refuse to allow anger to rule us. We're gonna overcome it. We have to develop a reality that says that grace is better than anger.

We have to get to a place where we really believe that grace is better than anger. Grace is stronger than anger. But here's what I've learned. The hard part is, is that anger is easy. Anger is cheap. Anger is safe because it keeps everybody at least a little bit out here.

And as I've searched even my own heart in weeks, the last few weeks of my life, I look at the moments where like my kids are like, man, why is dad so mad? And I'm not the guy that like gets explosive but like I just shut down. I get really quiet. I get really irritable and I signal to everybody,

don't talk to me right now. Leave me alone. And they know like just stay away. And the truth is, is it's because I don't know how to say,

I'm really scared right now. I don't know what's on the other side of this. I'm trying to be the one leading us through this, but like I'm kinda terrified. I don't know what's on the other side of this. I'm kinda freaking out, but that's hard to say. That feels intimate to me. So instead,

I'll just project anger and anger keeps you at bay. Anger keeps me feeling like I have some level of control. But the truth is, is I know as a follower of Christ, that grace is better than anger. That grace is actually a better choice for myself than anger.

And I mean, I wonder what it would look like as we as a people of God began to live a life that says and lives grace is better than anger. Paul writing to the multi ethnic church in Rome that was trying to bring together all types of different cultures and people of different backgrounds, different cultural upbringings, different socioeconomic

classes to live as one united group of people. Here's what he says, you're gonna bump into each other. You're gonna have conflict but look what he says in Romans chapter 12. He says, do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Dear friends, never take revenge.

Leave that to the righteous anger of God For the scriptures say, I will take revenge.

I will pay them back says the Lord. Instead of your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they're thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads. I'm like, I don't even know what burning coals of shame are but that's what I want for my enemies. So like let's do that. Right?

He says, don't let evil conquer you but conquer evil by doing good. Here's the question that Paul forces us to wrestle through in Romans 12. Do you really believe that God is just? And do you really believe that if you do nothing that God will get revenge for you? Or do you feel like you have to get vengeance for yourself?

See, when you really believe that God is a just God, which he is, the cross proves how just and righteous of a judge God is. Sin had to be dealt with.

And if we really truly understand that God is just and that God will make straight what is broken right now, that God will get vengeance for us, it begins to free us from feeling like we have to get vengeance for ourselves, that we have to get vengeance for our family, that we have to get vengeance for our spouse and for our kids, that we can trust that God is going to do that, that God is going to work. And then it begins to free us to really live and believe that grace is better than anger. It frees us to engage with our enemies when they're hungry and give them something to eat. Which again, if you start to read between the lines, what is Paul saying? What do we give them to eat? We give them the one that referred to himself as the bread of life. We give them Jesus.

He says, give them something to drink when they're thirsty. What do we give them to drink? We give them the one that referred to himself as living water whose invitation to a broken woman at a well all by herself

was that if you invite me into your soul, not only can I redeem and restore what has been broken and taken from you, but I can also begin to produce in you a living spring that will come a bubbling spring outside of you that will spill over to all the people in your life, your enemies included?

And you begin to see here's God's plan for reconciliation in the world is to use his followers, not through our power, but through his strength to begin to see our enemies, not as people that we need to get vengeance from, but as people who are hurt themselves, who are broken themselves.

And maybe just maybe we can play a small part in their reconciliation, which is just a mind blowing thought. But that's what God wants to do. God wants us to be people who really truly at the core believe that grace is a better response than anger. But do we really actually believe that?

Or do we believe that we have to do it? Because here's why we have to get to a place of believing that grace is better than anger. Because what God is gonna ask us to do next is the really hard part of this whole thing. At some point, you and I have to here's the e.

We have to extend forgiveness to each other. We have to become people who are willing to say, I forgive you. And almost more importantly, I'm asking you to forgive me. See, it's one thing to mentally acknowledge it. It's a whole another thing to go to somebody else and ask for forgiveness.

Here's what's wild. When you look at the scriptures, it says that we when we confess our sins to God, that's where we find forgiveness. But you know where healing is found? Is when we confess our sin to somebody else. When we go through the horizontal reconciliation process that we find healing.

You can find forgiveness bringing it to God, but in order to find healing for your soul to finally be at rest, we have to go through the process of asking for forgiveness and extending forgiveness to the people that have hurt us. But it's not natural. It's not our default. Our default is to hold on to grudges.

It's to not let anybody off the hook. And it's because I think sometimes we don't really understand what forgiveness is. See, forgiveness is not a license that what you did is okay.

It is not letting somebody off of the hook. It is just saying that I'm no longer holding on to the consequences of this. I am no longer going to be the arbitrator of justice. I am letting go of this as much as I can. And again, this is not a license to stay in abusive situations. If something is happening, we always

need to alert the authorities. Yes and amen. But this is saying that I can let go of this and I can begin to allow this person to be let off the hook. It doesn't justify what they did, but it begins to free me from the pain of holding onto this any longer.

Here's what Paul says to the church in Colossians about this idea of forgiveness. Colossians chapter three. He says, since God chose you to be holy people that he loves, you must see, he doesn't say you should or you could. He says, you must. You must clothe yourself with tender heart and mercy, with kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Make allowance for each other's fault. Live in a way where you understand they're going to hurt you. Build margin into your relationship with your spouse to not be shocked by it but to build margin into it. Forgive anyone who offends you. Remember,

the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others. I love the picture of what Paul says here. He says, just like you got out of bed this morning and you made a decision to go into your closet to pick out the outfit that would represent your style.

You you were intentional with what you put on. He says in the same way you and I have to be intentional with what we put on as his followers. We have to put on gentleness and humility and kindness and compassion and forgiveness. It will not be your default option.

You will have to teach yourself how to put it on even when you don't necessarily like it. This is who you are. This is what we wear. And he says, just like God forgave you, you must forgive people.

Which you can sometimes hear to go, okay, does that mean if I don't forgive people that God is mad at me? No, no. God is giving a command here. Not because if you don't do it, he's mad at you. It's that if you don't do it, he knows what you will still have to carry, which is the reality of holding on to bitterness

and holding on to frustration and holding on to resentment. All it's going to do is continue to rot you from the inside out. So he says, you must forgive people so that you can begin to walk into the freedom that's on the other side of forgiveness. So you can begin to experience breakthrough.

But man, I remember when I was sitting in counseling and it was months into the process and my counselor said, Daniel, at some point you're gonna have to forgive them. I was like, yeah, I can't do that.

And she says part of how we begin to move towards forgiveness is to do the other thing that the scriptures command us to do, to pray for our enemies. She said, you need to pray for them. I said, yeah, I definitely can't do that.

But then she said, here's something you can do. Start by praying a really simple prayer and pray that you hope that he gets what he deserves. I was like, I can pray that prayer.

And she said, you you don't have to articulate or verbalize what is really on the other side of that prayer, but just start by praying a simple prayer and say, God, I hope that he gets what he deserves.

And for the first few weeks, I'd sit down, I'd do my quiet time, I would pray and at the very end I would pray and say, God, hope this guy gets what he deserves. And on the other end of it was all kinds of things I can't say in church. But what began to happen over time with participation in the Holy Spirit

is all of a sudden my heart started to slowly change. And I began to eventually after weeks and months of praying this prayer, I started to remember how God found me. And I started to remember the unmerited grace and favor that I was met with in the middle of my brokenness.

Because here's the part that I don't like to admit. I can stand here and tell you, hey, I've been victimized. But the truth is I've also hurt people. I have also in my sin, in my rebellion,

I have victimized people nowhere near the scale of what this guy did to me. But in the same way, I've hurt people because it's what hurt people do. We hurt people. And eventually, got to a place where I began to have my heart softened towards this person.

And I remember when I prayed the prayer and I said, God, hope that he gets what he deserves, which is the exact same thing that I got, which is the unearned, undeserved favor and grace where you came running after me in the middle of my mess. God, I pray that this doesn't define him anymore than it defines me.

And I hope he's able to walk into freedom and victory in his life in the same way that I'm trying to get there in mine. And all of a sudden when I started to get to that place and I started to release the bitterness that I've been holding onto,

all of a sudden the weight of the world, the thing that honestly had been probably the primary part of my identity up until that point, All of a sudden, the weight of all of it was gone. And I started to see, God, this is why you command us to forgive people. It's because there's freedom on the other side of forgiveness.

And I remember I took my high school kids to this camp and I listened to this guy again, you've heard it before, but making a conscious decision to hold on to unforgiveness, to hold on to bitterness, we're refusing to let the people off the hook that have hurt you, that have betrayed you and disappointed you.

Once you know the freedom that's available to you, what you are now doing is you're making a decision to wake up every day and to drink a toxic poison and expect it to hurt somebody other than yourself.

You're holding onto it thinking that it's going to affect them, but it doesn't affect them. And I remember I watched this guy, it was a really powerful visual for me where he stood there and he said, you now have a choice. Once you know the freedom that's available to you in Christ,

the freedom that can be found in forgiveness but you instead and choose instead of letting it go, you choose to hold on to it, you're making a conscious decision every morning to wake up, to go back to this thing, to drink from the well, not of living water, but of poison and toxic

that you think is going to affect somebody out there. But the truth is, is all you're doing is taking poison inside of you that is rotting you from the inside out. And he held up a cup and he said, how much longer are you gonna drink this water? When what Jesus offers you is to drink from the fountain of living water.

My question for you this morning is, are you done drinking the poisonous water of unforgiveness and bitterness? And I know it's potentially hard to think about letting go of the hurt towards your parents or the spouses or the friends or whatever it is.

But what if God has something so much bigger on the other side of this than you could ever imagine. And maybe just maybe the things that you really want out of life. The soul that is at peace is potentially on the other side of you just making a decision to put this thing down. And to trust that God can deal with it.

And to trust that all of the big things, the big questions you might not be able to answer, but you don't have to. All God asked us to do is to bring him our brokenness. To hand it to him and let him deal with it. And maybe just maybe

we can begin to live the life of what we really actually want. Here's the R in how we overcome anger.

We remember friends, reconciliation has always been the goal. See the new testament tells us that you and I have been given the ministry of reconciliation. What does that even mean?

It means that the reason that you're not beamed up to heaven the moment you give your life to Jesus is because you now have an assignment here on earth. You are now on mission. You have a purpose and that purpose is to pursue the ministry of reconciliation

which means that we help people be reconciled back to their heavenly father. And in doing that, it begins to help them be reconciled back to the people in their life. And reconciliation

is always the goal. It's not always possible. There are some relationships that we will never actually fully restore in that they go back to how they used to be because of what was done. But what we can do is we can work through the bitterness and the frustration that's there so that it no longer has control and power over you. See, here's what I want for you.

It's the same thing that God wants for you. God's not asking you to lean in and do the heavy work because he's mad at you or he wants something from you. No, no, no. It's completely the opposite.

God wants something for you. And here's what he wants for you. Here's the invitation. Matthew chapter 11. I I close with this verse. Jesus said, here's the invitation. He says, come to me. All of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I'm humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light. Here's the beautiful invitation that Jesus has on the table for all of us. It is an invitation of a soul that is at rest.

He says, come to me and give me your heavy burdens. Give me your disappointment. Give me your frustration and let me put your soul at rest. I would say that that's the thing that all of us are really searching for in life. We try to manufacture it. We try to produce it with stuff and people and things and possessions.

When the truth is the only way to really have a soul that's at rest is to understand who we are in Christ and to trust him with the big things in life. To go, God, I I don't wanna be the person who's just angry anymore. I don't wanna be in the position where you come to me and ask me why are you so angry

when what I've offered you is to really live and thrive.

And so here's what I wanna do right now. I want you right now again, I don't think we come to church to hear a lecture and sing songs. I think we come to commune with our heavenly father. To engage with the holy spirit and allow him to minister to us. And so I wanna give us a moment right now to actually respond to what I think God is doing in the room. And so right now I'm gonna ask everybody in the room to just close your eyes and bow your heads and just trust me. I know this might seem weird but just trust me.

This is a moment between you and God. I believe this moment has been set up from the beginning of time and that this is a moment where some of us can step out of bitterness and into freedom.

And so what I want you to do right now when I'm talking about the thing that you need to forgive, that the person you need to let go of the bitterness from.

I want you to just visually, whatever that thing is for you. I want you to just visualize it right now. Everybody's eyes are closed. I want you to just close your fist and kind of hold it right in front of you. And just whatever it is, whatever that thing is, whatever that person is, whatever has happened, whatever you've done or whatever has been done to you, I want you to just hold onto it and visually right now, it's a moment between you and God.

And I want you to slowly right now just raise your closed fist up in the ear and say, God, this is me lifting this thing to you. Saying, I can't hold on to this anymore. God, I've I've held on to this for too long.

I'm not gonna let this define me any longer. And I want you right now again, just visualize yourself doing it right now. Open your palm and just begin to release it. With the faith that you have, release it and trust God with it.

And I want you right now to just pray a prayer like this in the quietness of your heart. Say, Jesus, right now with the faith that I have. God, I release these things to you. God, I walk away from harboring them myself. God, I let go of the bitterness. I let go of the disappointment. I let go of the frustration

so that I can embrace your freedom. So that I can embrace your grace. Father, teach me how to listen to you. To take your yoke upon me so that I can begin to walk like you and have the spirit produce out of me kindness and goodness and gentleness and self control.

Father, teach me how to walk with you. It is in the mighty name of Jesus all God's people said, amen and amen.

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