The Cost of Grace: Replacing Vengeance with Forgiveness

• Baptism and Covenant Theology [00:12:00 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor explains the theological basis for infant baptism, linking it to circumcision in Genesis and the promises in Acts 2, emphasizing that it is a sign of God's grace rather than a mechanism for salvation.
• Parenting as Storytelling [00:12:00 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor frames parenting as the commitment to be the 'primary storyteller' in a child's life, using the metaphor of passing down a narrative bigger than oneself.
• The Church as Community ('The Caravan') [00:21:00 ▶️ 📄]
  > Using the story of Jesus at age 12, the pastor illustrates that parents do not raise children in isolation; the church serves as a 'caravan' that shares the burden of nurturing the child's faith.
• Cultural Struggle with Forgiveness [00:37:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses Vox Magazine's article on America's struggle for forgiveness, noting that while forgiveness is popular culturally, society lacks a coherent story for atonement, leading to cancel culture and punitive attitudes driven by social media algorithms.
• Biblical Interpretation of '77 Times' [00:41:56 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor explains Jesus' command to forgive '77 times' by contrasting it with Lamech's 77-fold vengeance in Genesis, arguing that Jesus replaces a culture of excessive vengeance with excessive grace, using hyperbole to show that counting forgiveness negates it.
• The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant [00:44:45 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor breaks down the parable of the king and the servants, highlighting the astronomical difference between the unforgiven debt ($6 billion) and the unforgiven debt owed to the servant ($12,000) to illustrate the absurdity of refusing to forgive others after receiving God's mercy.
• The Church's Identity [00:46:35 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines the church's identity as an institution where forgiveness is 'plan A' and a core feature, asserting that stopping forgiveness before Jesus returns means the community is no longer truly being the church of Jesus.
• The Nature of Forgiveness [00:48:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines forgiveness not as minimizing sin or using magic words, but as a four-part process: naming the debt, identifying with the debtor, absorbing the cost, and releasing the person.
• Absorbing the Cost [00:51:06 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the metaphor of a broken lamp to explain that true forgiveness requires the forgiver to bear the financial or reputational cost rather than making the offender pay.
• Culture of Confession [00:55:10 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that a community's capacity for forgiveness is directly tied to its willingness to confess its own sins to God and others.
• Forgiveness as an Act of Will [00:59:10 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contends that forgiveness is a command and an act of the will that must be practiced before the corresponding emotion is felt, citing Mark 11:25.
• Long-Suffering vs. Cancel Culture [01:01:00 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts the biblical virtue of 'long-suffering' (voluntary suffering/patience) with modern 'cancel culture,' arguing that mobility and avoidance prevent the development of Christian patience.
• Long-suffering vs. Cancel Culture [01:02:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines patience as 'long-suffering' (voluntary suffering) and argues that modern mobility and cancel culture prevent people from developing this crucial Christian character trait.
• The Self-Imprisonment of Unforgiveness [01:04:54 ▶️ 📄]
  > Using the parable of the unforgiving servant and a quote from Rogue One, the pastor illustrates that failing to forgive imprisons the unforgiver, not the offender.
• Forgiveness as the Foundation of Justice [01:07:41 ▶️ 📄]
  > Citing the Mottlingen revival, the pastor argues that forgiveness does not undermine justice but is the necessary grace-based precondition for sustainable social justice and community restoration.

• Sermon Illustration [00:19:07 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor tells the biblical story of 12-year-old Jesus staying behind in the temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2). He highlights that Joseph and Mary traveled a full day (86,400 seconds) before realizing Jesus was missing, not due to negligence, but because they trusted the 'caravan' of the religious community. He uses this to illustrate that the church community shares the responsibility of raising children.
• Sermon Illustration [00:37:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor cites Vox Magazine and Elizabeth Brunig to illustrate the modern cultural inability to forgive, noting that while everyone wants forgiveness, no one knows how to negotiate it at a cultural level, leading to a lack of coherent atonement stories.
• Sermon Illustration [00:42:52 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references the biblical figure Lamech from Genesis 4, who declared 77-fold vengeance for being struck, using this as an example of early 'cancel culture' and excessive vengeance that Jesus' command to forgive 77 times replaces with excessive grace.
• Sermon Illustration [00:44:45 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, detailing the contrast between a debt of 10,000 talents (approx. $6 billion) forgiven by the king and the servant's refusal to forgive a debt of 100 denarii (approx. $12,000), illustrating the radical nature of God's forgiveness versus human pettiness.
• Sermon Illustration [00:45:48 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the parable of the unmerciful servant, noting the contrast between a 6 billion denarii debt and a 100 denarii debt, to illustrate the severity of unforgiveness.
• Sermon Illustration [00:51:22 ▶️ 📄]
  > An analogy of a guest breaking a lamp in one's home: forgiving the guest means not forcing them to buy a new lamp, but rather absorbing the cost yourself by either buying a new one or living with less light.
• Sermon Illustration [00:53:30 ▶️ 📄]
  > A practical example of absorbing debt by reputation: when asked about a broken lamp, instead of blaming the guest ('Ask Anderson'), you simply say 'It was broken' and leave it at that, thereby protecting the guest's reputation.
• Sermon Illustration [00:50:02 ▶️ 📄]
  > An explanation of the Greek word 'splagnizomai' (deep gut-level pity/compassion), noting it is a trait demonstrated uniquely by Jesus in the Gospels, such as in Matthew 9 regarding the crowds.
• Sermon Illustration [01:01:14 ▶️ 📄]
  > An etymological illustration of the Greek word for patience ('makrothumeo'), explaining it literally means 'to be slow to boil,' and connecting it to the KJV phrase 'be long-suffering.'
• Sermon Illustration [01:05:05 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts a story from the movie Rogue One where a character tells Captain Andor, 'there's more than one sort of prison... and I sense that you carry yours wherever you go,' to illustrate how unforgiveness imprisons the self.
• Sermon Illustration [01:06:11 ▶️ 📄]
  > A historical anecdote about a young man in Mottlingen, Germany, who confessed his sins to Pastor Johann Blumhart on New Year's Eve, sparking a revival where 150 people eventually confessed, leading to stolen goods being returned, enemies reconciled, and broken marriages restored.
• Sermon Illustration [01:09:26 ▶️ 📄]
  > A closing quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky: 'at the sight of men's sins, always decide to use humble love... Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.'

• Pastoral Charge [00:23:31 ▶️ 📄]
  > The congregation is asked to stand and verbally vow to assist the parents in the Christian nurture of the child.
• Pastoral Charge [00:47:39 ▶️ 📄]
  > Identify a specific relationship or person in their life that needs forgiveness.
• Pastoral Charge [00:47:39 ▶️ 📄]
  > Identify a specific person they are struggling to forgive and hold that person in mind while listening to the sermon.
• Pastoral Charge [00:58:51 ▶️ 📄]
  > Pray to God for supernatural compassion (splagnizomai) for the person who hurt them.
• Pastoral Charge [01:00:54 ▶️ 📄]
  > Actively approach the person they naturally want to avoid.
• Pastoral Charge [01:10:22 ▶️ 📄]
  > To allow grace to sink into their hearts and develop the capacity to forgive those they currently wish to 'cancel'.
• Pastoral Charge [01:10:46 ▶️ 📄]
  > To live out the ethic of forgiveness as a church community for the benefit of themselves and the world.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:01:06] Our confession of sin this morning will be familiar to many of us, but one thing I like about it is at the end of it, we will be doing an assurance of pardon as if the entire Lord's Prayer is a confession of sin, which is certainly one line, but also a theme throughout of it. So please join with me in reciting the Lord's Prayer in bold, and then we'll receive the assurance of pardon after.
[00:06:07] Amen.
[00:06:34] Church, look up and receive your assurance of pardon taken from Jeremiah 31. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
[00:06:44] The church said, thanks be to God. At this time, we're going to collect our tithes and offerings.
[00:06:50] This is a chance for us to worship as a congregation through the giving of what the Lord has provided to us back to him. If you are a guest, please don't feel any compulsion to give.
[00:07:00] This is for our members, our regular attenders to give. But please join with us as we sing, and I call the ushers forward to receive.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[00:07:42] I fear my faith will fail.
[00:07:46] Christ will hold me fast.
[00:07:50] The tempter would pray.
[00:08:07] For he saves us.
[00:08:49] He's precious and his hope is high.
[00:09:58] He'll hold me fast.
[00:10:00] Justice has been satisfied.
[00:11:32] You can be seated.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:12:00] So I've heard it said that we're all born to be storytellers.
[00:12:18] That there's really no stronger connection between people than that of storytelling.
[00:12:23] And so good parenting is essentially making a commitment to being the primary storyteller in the life of our kids.
[00:12:32] Now, in the case of the child that we're baptizing this morning, that's a really good and advantageous position for him.
[00:12:39] His mom got her master's in creative writing.
[00:12:43] But what we're doing at the Sacrament of Baptism is we're making a commitment to telling a child the same story throughout the course of his life.
[00:12:56] And what we do with baptism is we're giving the parents confidence that their child is part of a story that is bigger than them.
[00:13:05] And this one story has shaped and changed and formed the family that have gone before them.
[00:13:15] And it's shaped and changed the people with whom this family worships.
[00:13:21] Today we get to baptize Hank Swan as a child of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
[00:13:27] Many years ago in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, let the little children come to me because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
[00:13:36] And so what we are doing right here in this very moment is we are telling the greatest story that's ever been told.
[00:13:44] And we are pronouncing that story over the life of Hank.
[00:13:49] So, all right, why do we baptize children, especially knowing that Hank is probably not going to remember what's happening today?
[00:13:56] We don't do it for sentimental reasons, even though, Hank, you look really cute.
[00:14:02] We're not doing this for tradition's sake, even though you'll find this goes past all 2,000 years of church history.
[00:14:09] We're not baptizing Hank because baptism guarantees his salvation.
[00:14:14] There's nothing magical about the waters that are in that silver bowl.
[00:14:19] We do this because the Scriptures have laid the foundation for this practice, going back to the very first book of the Bible.
[00:14:28] So beginning in the book of Genesis, we see God going out of His way to give Abraham a sign that because he is putting his faith in God, it puts his children in a very special position.
[00:14:41] And so the blessing of circumcision was given not only to Abraham, but it was to be given to his children as well.
[00:14:48] 2,000 years later, God came to His people again in the person of Jesus Christ.
[00:14:54] and Jesus came to pronounce that story that was first spoken to Abraham 2,000 years before.
[00:15:03] In Galatians 3.14, we're told that Jesus redeemed us in order that that blessing that was given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles, that's us, through Christ Jesus.
[00:15:15] And so what you'll find throughout the New Testament church is that they continued with this concept that the sign of God's love, that the story of His grace was to be not only for people of faith,
[00:15:28] but it was a story that was to be told on behalf of their children.
[00:15:32] And so you see in Acts 2, 38 and 39, Peter said, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
[00:15:43] That the promise is not only for you, but also for your children.
[00:15:49] So, as I said before, baptism, it doesn't save anybody, but it is a sign that Jesus starts to work the story of his grace in our lives even before we're aware of it, in the same way that we as parents tell our kids stories and read them books
[00:16:06] before they even understand the content of those stories.
[00:16:10] You know, Jesus, he promises the power to cleanse us from our sins as we place our faith in him.
[00:16:17] and this is a promise that at this moment we are collectively believing on behalf of the child that is being baptized we do this in a worship service so that davis and elizabeth can be reminded
[00:16:30] that the gospel that they are believing on behalf of hank this is a burden that they do not feel alone but it's one that's being carried by their family their extended family and their church
[00:16:41] family, but there will come a point in Hank's life where he's going to look at all these people who've owned the story of Jesus's love, and he's got a decision to make. Is he going to make that
[00:16:53] his own story? And our hope is that this will be the first of many opportunities we have to tell him where true hope, love, and happiness is found. One of our favorite practices here at Midtown
[00:17:05] Community Church is we invite the parents to come forward and offer a blessing on behalf of the child, so Davis and Elizabeth, if you want to come forward, and Davis, I believe you're going to give

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:17:16] a blessing on behalf of Hank. Before we met you, but now we love you a thousand times more.
[00:17:37] You're named after both of your grandmother's families. We pray that you would grow to embody the faithfulness of the Hanks family, that you would be a faithful friend, a faithful son, and one day even a husband and father, a faithful member of a church community, faithful in welcoming
[00:17:52] outsiders and the marginalized, and most of all, faithful in your pursuit of God's truth through prayer and the study of his word. We pray that you embody the loyalty and generosity of the Saunders family, that you find great joy and fulfillment in giving to others, and that you
[00:18:10] choose to love the people around you even when it's difficult. In your seven months of life, you've been surrounded by people who love you. Your mom and me, your grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and dear friends. You are like family. You're happiest when
[00:18:29] you're surrounded by people. Our prayer for you is that most of all, like it says in Ephesians 3, 18 through 19, you would grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
[00:18:44] and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:18:49] fullness of God. May you always know the love of Jesus. So our church has been going through the Gospel of Matthew this year of 2026, and one of the things we've noticed is that Jesus places a
[00:19:07] ton of importance on children being a part of his kingdom. I mentioned that with the explanation of baptism earlier. What's sort of interesting, though, is that for all that Jesus says about the importance of children, we actually have incredibly little information on what Jesus is
[00:19:24] like as a child. Apart from the birth narratives, if I'm not mistaken, there's only one reference to Jesus's life as a child. It takes place when he was 12 years old. You may know the story,
[00:19:38] but it says something about what it means to parent well. So if you go to Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 41, here's the story of Jesus as a 12-year-old. It says, Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.
[00:19:55] And when he was 12 years old, they went up according to custom.
[00:20:00] When the feast ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
[00:20:07] His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group, they went a day's journey.
[00:20:13] But then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances.
[00:20:19] And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem searching for him.
[00:20:24] Now, we know the story plays out.
[00:20:26] They eventually found Jesus.
[00:20:28] He was in the temple.
[00:20:29] But here's sort of the question I want to ask to you guys.
[00:20:34] How many seconds would you go with Hank missing before you'd start looking for him?
[00:20:42] Well, in the case of Joseph and Mary, it was 86,400 seconds.
[00:20:50] which translates, as you heard from the passage, to a full day.
[00:20:54] Now, one of the questions you may ask is, why did they go a full day before realizing that Jesus wasn't with them?
[00:21:00] And here's the reason why, and I think this is what tells us a little bit about what it really means to be a good parent.
[00:21:08] They had entrusted Jesus to their caravan.
[00:21:14] This was not a parenting mistake on the part of Joseph and Mary.
[00:21:20] It actually speaks to a truth that is deeply embedded in the religious community that Jesus was born into and hopefully one that Hank is born into.
[00:21:33] There are a lot of parents in this world who don't have a caravan for their kids.
[00:21:41] What we are doing here today is, yes, we're reminding Hank that his hope is ultimately found in the love of Jesus, but we're also here to remind one another that just as Joseph and Mary had a caravan for their son. You do too. So lean into that caravan. That is really my
[00:22:00] charge to both of you. This is really less about what happens in a church service, and it's more about entrusting Hank to a larger caravan that's going to be a part of carrying him throughout his
[00:22:13] life. This doesn't mean that you should just go 86,400 seconds before figuring out where he is, but it means actively entrusting himself to the caravan that's right there who's come but it's also entrusting him to the caravan that's out here and this is really a charge for
[00:22:29] you as a church you are called to be a caravan for the children of this church live into that reality all right that's it for the charge i've now got three uh vows i'm going to ask you davis
[00:22:45] and Elizabeth to say, respond with the words, we do.
[00:22:49] So the first vow, you acknowledge your child's need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit.
[00:22:58] Second, you claim God's covenant promises on his behalf, and you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for his salvation as you do for your own.
[00:23:07] And then finally, do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God and promise in humble reliance upon divine grace that you'll endeavor to set before him a godly example, that you'll pray with and for him, that you'll teach him the doctrines of our
[00:23:21] holy religion, and that you'll strive by all means of God's appointment to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. All right, and now I've got a question that is for the members
[00:23:31] of Midtown Community Church, but also the family and friends who've come to support this sacrament of baptism. So if you fit in those two categories, please stand at this time, and I've got a vow for
[00:23:43] you to respond with the words we do. Do you, the family of Hank and the congregation of Midtown Community Church, undertake the responsibility of assisting these parents in the Christian nurture of this child? You may be seated. All right, Hank. How are you doing? Hank, Saunders,
[00:24:19] Swan, I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You really do love people, don't you? All right. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, you've called us to be storytellers.
[00:24:46] It's part of what it means to be human. And the task of parenting is to be the primary storyteller in the life of our kids. And I pray that this would represent one of thousands of little moments
[00:24:58] where Davis and Elizabeth, extended family and church family, can tell the story of a God who came from a very faraway place, and he came to redeem people, that they might find the love of Jesus.
[00:25:16] And I pray that as Hank hears this story over and over again throughout the course of his life, that there would come a day, very early in his life, where he would look at this story
[00:25:25] and he would believe it for himself.
[00:25:27] And until that time, we thank you for the privilege that we have with this sacrament of baptism to be reminded that we are called to believe the gospel on behalf of our kids.
[00:25:37] We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
[00:25:39] You have something to say?
[00:25:42] All right, let's give them a hand.
[00:25:54] All right, at this time, we're going to dismiss kids for Children's Church.
[00:25:59] So that is up through fifth grade.
[00:26:02] Kids, you'll come up front, find the teacher for your class.
[00:26:05] While they're being dismissed, take a moment, greet somebody new around you.

[00:28:23] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:28:23] If you'd like to find your way back to your seats, that would be awesome.
[00:28:40] Well, good morning. My name is Anderson.
[00:28:42] I'm one of the pastors here at Midtown Community Church. Thank you for joining us this morning from Charlotte and far beyond. We're really glad that y'all are here worshiping the God who gives life this morning. So grateful to see all of you this morning. I just have one announcement. If you turn
[00:28:59] to your page, turn to page 11 of your bulletin. I am not a huge fan of QR codes, but you should scan this QR code right now. If you are a member here at Midtown Community Church or a regular
[00:29:15] attender, you should scan this QR code. This is for Family Table. It is our yearly rhythm.
[00:29:22] Lindsay mentioned how the parents of the child that is being baptized gets to share a blessing to him. This is another great tradition of our community of faith, of our family. And honestly, it comes directly from scripture. Acts 2, 42 through 47, 44, starting in verse 43,
[00:29:45] and all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
[00:29:50] I'm going to keep reading. And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their
[00:30:05] homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
[00:30:18] Family table is an opportunity for us to get together as a body of believers and to celebrate the things that God has done in our family of faith, but also pray and dream and set vision
[00:30:33] for the things that we believe God is calling us to do. And so you should definitely come to hear about the amazing things, and as verse 43 said, and all came upon every soul, and many wonders and
[00:30:45] signs were being done through the apostles. That there are many beautiful and amazing things that are being done in this family of faith. And so you should come, come eat tacos with us, come celebrate.
[00:30:57] We will have child care so that you can be focused for 45 minutes to an hour on what we believe God is calling us to do. And then we get to, as a family of faith, gather around a table, break bread, break
[00:31:09] tortillas, and be able to share a meal together. This is like one of the highlights of my years, just because it's not that we're just gathering here on Sunday mornings. This is a beautiful thing
[00:31:21] that we get to do every single Sunday. But seeing one another outside of the context of Sunday morning is actually an awesome thing. And so please come. Register. We need you to register because we need to know how much food to purchase.
[00:31:36] But we would be glad to have all of you there so that we could celebrate and also dream together.
[00:31:42] There'll be a time for Q&A.
[00:31:43] There's big announcements that we want to put before you all.
[00:31:47] And we also want just to know your opinions on it.
[00:31:50] And so that is my pitch.
[00:31:51] I think that's the best pitch that I've ever done.
[00:31:53] And so you should definitely sign up via that QR code.
[00:31:58] And we are really excited to spend time together next Sunday night together. So with that, we will turn our attention to God's word. Joseph's going to come pray for us, and then we get to receive from Pastor Lindsay and his award. Let's pray

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:32:15] together. Almighty God, we're gathered here this morning to praise your glorious name.
[00:32:24] As we sang earlier, everything with life and breath praises you, alongside the mightiest mountains, peaceful plains, snowfall, fire, thundering ocean waves, and our voices are but a part of the chorus that rises to you, but we thank you that we can be a part of it, not just
[00:32:41] in our singing, but our whole lives today and throughout the week. We confess, however, our voices in our lives aren't always the beautiful notes they should be. Our selfishness and pride too often create a dissonance with nature's praise around us. Our misaligned desires for money,
[00:32:57] comfort, recognition hinder our lives of praise, even at times we're unaware of it. God, we too often put our faith and trust in a weak image of self-sufficiency or unobtained goal rather than you, the one who created all things and loves us deeply enough to forgive. As we continue to reflect
[00:33:15] on this forgiveness, Father, thank you for not leaving us in these failings. We thank you for all the pointers you've left in your creation to remind us of your power and love. We thank you for
[00:33:25] your Son who's delivered us out of our shortcomings and put us into a right relationship with you.
[00:33:29] and we thank you for your word delivered to us that we can learn of these truths and how to properly worship you as we were created to do.
[00:33:37] We also thank you for the blessings that surround us every day.
[00:33:41] As the spring days get longer and the weather gets generally warmer, we thank you for the increase in activity around us.
[00:33:47] Though our schedules get busy as the end of the school year draws near and we start to plan out summer projects, we thank you for these blessings of family and community.
[00:33:56] We ask this morning first and foremost that you would help us to remember the extent of our forgiveness. Let us not live as we are under condemnation, but instead live as adopted sons and daughters, loved by our Heavenly Father, who have been given every good
[00:34:10] thing. From this place of confidence and security, we also ask you to provide for us here. We pray for physical provision for the unemployed and underemployed in the congregation that they would find fulfilling and rewarding places to work their hands and their minds. We pray for continued rain
[00:34:25] on our city. We thank you for the rain this morning, but we pray that you bring an end to the drought, and you'd restore the life in the gardens and farms throughout our region that we
[00:34:33] all rely on. We pray for the restoration of our relationships with family and friends that are not as they should be. We recognize these relationships are hard, both because of the struggle we all feel on this side of heaven to live and operate in this fallen world, but also
[00:34:48] because of our own sin, both seen and unseen. Help us to see our own sin and work for the reconciliation of those around us. Work in our hearts to give us the resolve and perspective
[00:34:58] to be agents of peace in this world.
[00:35:01] We also lift up those in our congregation dealing with illness, both routine and serious.
[00:35:06] Heal our bodies as only you, our great physician, can.
[00:35:10] Do miraculous works in us as only you can to bring healing to our broken bodies and minds.
[00:35:16] As we turn now to your word, bless our worship this morning, the reading and preaching of your word, and the fellowship we have with one another.
[00:35:22] It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

[00:35:40] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:35:40] Good morning.
[00:35:41] Okay, our scripture reading comes from Matthew 18, verses 21 through 35.
[00:35:50] Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times,
[00:36:05] but 77 times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. And when he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him
[00:36:17] 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had in payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees,
[00:36:31] imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him,
[00:36:49] he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have mercy with me, and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he
[00:37:01] should pay the debts. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed. And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all the debt because you pleaded
[00:37:19] with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?
[00:37:26] And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.
[00:37:32] So also, my Heavenly Father, would do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
[00:37:39] This is the word of the Lord.

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:37:49] So Vox Magazine is an American news and opinion website.
[00:37:54] And back in 2022, they wrote a series of articles on what they called America's struggle for forgiveness.
[00:38:03] And it was based on this idea that forgiveness has never been more popular in our society than at this very moment.
[00:38:13] And you'll see this in a number of ways.
[00:38:15] Like we can find ourselves getting angry when people find forgiveness, at least certain people.
[00:38:23] You know, we live in an age where politics teaches us to hate people who disagree with us.
[00:38:31] Social media platforms, they deliberately use algorithms that amplify angry content.
[00:38:40] And the reason why is because anger drives user engagement more than any other emotion.
[00:38:49] Cancel culture has made us more punitive in our treatment of others.
[00:38:53] And honestly, it's much easier to demonize people because most of our communication happens over smartphones rather than coffee cups.
[00:39:06] Elizabeth Brunig, she's a writer for The Atlantic, and she put it this way, and I think this quote's on the front of your bulletin.
[00:39:12] She said, as a society, we have absolutely no coherent story for how a person who's done wrong can atone, make amends, and retain some continuity between their life before and after a mistake.
[00:39:29] In other words, everyone wants forgiveness, but no one is being forgiven.
[00:39:38] And no one knows how to negotiate forgiveness at a cultural level.
[00:39:45] I mentioned this earlier, but this year we're studying the Gospel of Matthew.
[00:39:49] And at the beginning of chapter 18, Jesus, as the master storyteller, He begins telling stories that suggests that he holds the key to the very coherent story that Elizabeth Brunig says that we lack.
[00:40:09] As we come to this passage, the disciples, they're hearing this calling to forgiveness.
[00:40:17] And they're trying to figure out, all right, Jesus, how serious are you about this whole forgiveness thing?
[00:40:26] And so Peter comes to Jesus with a clarifying question.
[00:40:30] Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
[00:40:34] As many as seven times?
[00:40:36] Now, based on what we've learned about the disciples so far, Peter has more or less become the spokesman for the disciples.
[00:40:48] So this question is less Peter's question.
[00:40:52] It's more so the question of all the disciples.
[00:40:56] And maybe it's our question too.
[00:40:59] Jesus' response to this question represents the most sustained treatment on the topic of forgiveness that you'll find in the entire New Testament.
[00:41:12] And it's interesting because this response takes the form not only of a story, but of a tragic story.
[00:41:21] And I think there's a reason for that because it says if he's trying to suggest that Americans actually did not invent cancel culture, right?
[00:41:31] The struggle for forgiveness, it permeates every society, including the one into which Jesus was born.
[00:41:41] Now, Jesus' immediate answer to Peter's question, it's found in verse 22, where Jesus says to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times.
[00:41:56] So a little bit of historical context.
[00:41:58] within the existing Jewish religious community, the view of rabbis who are the religious leaders of the day, their view is that you need to forgive somebody three times.
[00:42:10] That is your calling.
[00:42:13] Peter, right, being the overachiever, comes to Jesus with the number seven, right?
[00:42:18] That's more than double what the religious leaders have told us.
[00:42:25] But Jesus says, no.
[00:42:26] I say to you, 77 times. Now, it's interesting that the number 77, it actually occurs in another passage in the Bible, almost at the very beginning of the Bible. If you go to Genesis chapter 4, this number shows up. It involves a man named Lamech who was struck by another man,
[00:42:52] and in response to being struck, he decides to kill that guy.
[00:42:57] And then he went on to give a warning to anyone who would attempt to avenge him for killing this guy who had struck him.
[00:43:07] And here's what he said.
[00:43:08] If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is 77-fold.
[00:43:17] You know, you could make an argument that Lamech was the first person who tried to institute cancel culture.
[00:43:24] And so when Jesus tells Peter that forgiveness should happen 77 times, it's his way of saying, I have come to replace a culture of excessive vengeance with excessive grace.
[00:43:42] In the same way that there is seemingly no limit to Lamech's anger, there is no limit to my mercy for an individual.
[00:43:51] One of the debates among scholars is whether Jesus, right here, when he says 77, is he saying 70 plus 7, or is he saying 70 times 7?
[00:44:09] But here's the point.
[00:44:11] If you get caught up in the number of whether it's 77 times or 490 times, you're missing Jesus' point.
[00:44:20] He is intentionally using hyperbole and not calculation.
[00:44:28] To put it another way, Jesus is saying, if you are counting, then you aren't forgiving.
[00:44:36] And then he goes on to say, therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.
[00:44:45] Now, the story is actually a pretty simple parable.
[00:44:50] There is a servant, right, who owes a king what is an astronomical amount of money.
[00:44:56] So, all right, 10,000 talents would translate in today's terms to $6 billion.
[00:45:05] A talent was the highest unit of currency available in the Roman Empire.
[00:45:13] 10,000 represents the highest number in the Greek language for which there is a specific word.
[00:45:24] So Jesus uses this number to represent an incalculable debt that no one could possibly pay back.
[00:45:36] But upon having this debt forgiven by the king, the same servant then goes out and he confronts another servant who owes him 100 denarii.
[00:45:48] 100 denarii would translate in today's terms to about $12,000.
[00:45:52] Not a small amount, but certainly not $6 billion.
[00:45:59] He throws this servant in prison after having choked him.
[00:46:04] The king finds out about this unmerciful servant and proceeds to throw him in jail.
[00:46:10] And then Jesus ends the parable with these words, So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
[00:46:22] This is pretty simple.
[00:46:23] to be a follower of Jesus means that you are radically committed to living a life of perpetual forgiveness.
[00:46:35] To put it another way, the church is the one institution for which forgiveness is not the plan B when plan A works.
[00:46:46] It is our plan A.
[00:46:48] It is our primary purpose as an institution.
[00:46:51] Right? It's not a bug in the program of the church, but it is a feature. If we stop forgiving people at any point in time before Jesus comes back, we aren't being the church of Jesus.
[00:47:09] So here's what I want to do in our remaining time together is I want to give us sort of a framework for pursuing forgiveness. More so than most sermons, this is hopefully going to be intensely
[00:47:22] practical for all of us. And so I think that outlines on page nine of your bulletin, but we're going to consider the principle of forgiveness, the practice of forgiveness, and then we'll close with the power of forgiveness. And here's what I'm going to
[00:47:39] recommend you doing. Think of one relationship in your life right now, one person for whom you were struggling to forgive. You have that person. I want you to carry that relationship into each of these three points. So here we go. First, the principle of forgiveness. So what exactly is
[00:48:09] forgiveness? And we've got to ask this question because I think there's a number of really bad definitions for forgiveness, right? Forgiveness is not downplaying someone's sin against you with statements like, you know what, that really wasn't a big deal, when actually it was. Forgiveness
[00:48:29] isn't having the capacity to say those three words, I forgive you, as if it's some sort of magic wand that you sprinkle over a situation. So in this parable, there's four elements of forgiveness. First element, you name the debt. This happens in verse 24, where it says
[00:48:52] that the servant was brought to him, the king.
[00:48:57] So forgiveness begins with exposing the problem.
[00:49:02] Not minimizing it, not explaining it away, but honestly naming it.
[00:49:08] And I'll say this first element, this can actually be hard for a number of people here because it's hard to really be honest about those moments when we've been hurt.
[00:49:19] And part of it is we have this sort of logic in our heads that if we're honest about it, then we're giving them power.
[00:49:25] But it's actually the opposite.
[00:49:29] All right.
[00:49:30] Second, you have to identify with the debtor, the one who committed sin against you.
[00:49:38] You see this in verse 27 where the text says, it says, out of pity for him.
[00:49:44] So this means having a capacity to identify with the sinner.
[00:49:50] It's being able to see them as a person, even if that person hurts you.
[00:49:56] So in the original Greek, this word pity, it's a very unique Greek word.
[00:50:02] The Greek word is actually a lot longer than the English word pity.
[00:50:07] So the word is splagnizomai.
[00:50:11] That's a mouthful, splagnizomai.
[00:50:13] It literally means to be moved so deeply that you feel it in your gut.
[00:50:20] And what's interesting about this word, splagnizomai, is that in the gospel accounts, there's only one person in all the gospels who ever demonstrated splagnizomai, pity, compassion, and it was Jesus.
[00:50:37] You know, another example of when Jesus expressed splagnizomai is when he was looking upon the crowds, and he saw a ton of people who were hurting.
[00:50:48] And in Matthew 9, we're told that he had compassion for them.
[00:50:53] He had sphagnizomai for them because they were sheep without a shepherd.
[00:51:00] The third movement of forgiveness is that you absorb the debt.
[00:51:06] And this is what gets to the actual hidden cost of true forgiveness.
[00:51:11] And in my opinion, it's this third movement, which is why we actually struggle to forgive others.
[00:51:19] So, all right, let me give you a story or a metaphor.
[00:51:22] Imagine someone comes to your home and they break your lamp.
[00:51:26] To forgive that person is to not make them buy you a new lamp, right?
[00:51:32] That would be akin to what the king did, not making the servant pay back his debt.
[00:51:38] But here's what people don't realize.
[00:51:41] If you forgive that person, you are having to absorb the cost of the lost lamp.
[00:51:49] yourself, right? And it either takes the form of you're going to go purchase a new lamp or you learn to live with less light in your house. Either way, true forgiveness means that you rather than the person bears the cost of their debt. And in fact, here would be my point.
[00:52:16] if you do not bear the cost for someone's sin against you, you have actually not forgiven them.
[00:52:26] If you do not bear any sort of cost, you have not forgiven them.
[00:52:32] Now, you may ask, well, in that scenario, how do I bear the cost of forgiving someone when that sin can't be monetized like a lamp?
[00:52:43] Great question.
[00:52:44] Most of the examples where forgiveness is needed are examples that cannot be monetized.
[00:52:51] So how does that work out?
[00:52:55] It looks like choosing not to get even with them with your words.
[00:53:02] One of the reasons we talk bad about people when they've hurt us is it actually feels good.
[00:53:09] It makes us feel better.
[00:53:13] And so when you forgive somebody, you are choosing to pay their debt in the form of robbing yourself from some manner of satisfaction in trying to hurt their reputation.
[00:53:27] So if you use the example of the lamp, right?
[00:53:30] If someone comes over to your house and they ask, hey, what happened to that beautiful lamp that you had?
[00:53:36] Instead of responding, well, ask Anderson.
[00:53:39] He's the one that broke it.
[00:53:41] You just say, you know what?
[00:53:43] It was broken.
[00:53:45] And you leave it at that, right?
[00:53:46] In those moments, what you're doing is you're absorbing the debt of that person.
[00:53:52] You're choosing not to exact payment from them by hurting their reputation.
[00:53:58] The fourth movement of forgiveness is that you release them.
[00:54:02] This is what happens in verse 27.
[00:54:04] The text literally says that the master of the servant released them, right?
[00:54:08] You allow that person to return to their status.
[00:54:12] The servant became a servant again.
[00:54:16] So one of the debates that therapists, pastors have is, do you need to say the words, I forgive you, to a person?
[00:54:27] I know some who say you don't need to use the words.
[00:54:30] In our family with our kids, we practice this idea of say I'm sorry and you need to say the words, I forgive you.
[00:54:38] But the whole point of everything I've just discussed with us right now is that the three words is not where forgiveness happens.
[00:54:48] It's everything that happens in terms of your actions towards that person.
[00:54:52] That is where real forgiveness happens in our lives, not with these three magic words.
[00:54:59] All right, here's what I want to do now.
[00:55:01] Let's consider what does it look like for a people, a community to practice a culture of forgiveness.
[00:55:10] First of all, it starts with a habitual pattern of confessing your sins to God and then doing the same with others so that you can receive forgiveness yourself.
[00:55:21] So this parable, it ends with this declaration from Jesus, right?
[00:55:27] And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers.
[00:55:32] But here's what's so crazy about this.
[00:55:35] this guy goes to the jailers and he had had a six billion dollar debt canceled he didn't go to the jailers because of the six billion dollars the problem is that he didn't continue to live into
[00:55:55] the forgiveness and grace that was already given to him right the grace that was given to him he didn't allow it to sink into his own heart. The people who have the largest hearts in this world,
[00:56:10] the people who love the most radically, are the people who spend time leaning into the love of their large-hearted Heavenly Father. They're the ones who have actually had the courage to allow themselves to be loved radically by their Heavenly Father because they've confessed their
[00:56:33] sins. Summary statement, a culture of forgiveness will only go as far as we've lived into a culture of confession. All right, second, praying for people. Praying for the people who've hurt you.
[00:56:52] So in our passage, the word debt, D-E-B-T, right, this is the dominant word for describing the sin that has been committed sort of horizontally, relationally. Interestingly, there's only one other passage in the entire Gospel of Matthew
[00:57:10] where this word debt appears.
[00:57:14] You know where it is?
[00:57:16] We just recited it earlier.
[00:57:19] The Lord's Prayer.
[00:57:23] Here's what's interesting about the Lord's Prayer and its use of the word debt.
[00:57:28] If you were asked what one line in the Lord's Prayer would you feel the greatest need to explain to another person if you were to explain the Lord's Prayer, what one line would you want to explain?
[00:57:45] You're trying to explain the Lord's Prayer to your child, a neighbor.
[00:57:48] What one line would you say, this is the one line that I would choose to give further explanation?
[00:57:55] I'll tell you Jesus' answer.
[00:57:57] Very end of the prayer, Jesus then says this, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
[00:58:09] But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
[00:58:17] So if you were paying attention earlier, I mentioned this really big Greek word, splagnizomai, this compassion that you feel sort of deep in your gut.
[00:58:26] One of the questions that people often have when we talk about this idea of having compassion for others is how do I create that splagnizomai if it doesn't exist in me towards that other person?
[00:58:40] What do I do about that disconnect?
[00:58:43] That's where prayer comes in.
[00:58:45] Jesus provides the answer in the Lord's Prayer.
[00:58:49] You ask God to help you.
[00:58:51] God, would you supernaturally intervene and give me the very sphagnizomai that only Jesus can give?
[00:58:59] You begin the work of forgiveness in your conversations with your Heavenly Father.
[00:59:04] All right, the third practice of forgiveness.
[00:59:10] You practice it before you feel it.
[00:59:16] So sometimes people will say, well, I shouldn't forgive someone until I'm ready to do it from the heart.
[00:59:24] One of the underlying assumptions is that forgiveness is primarily an emotion, but the Bible doesn't actually bear that out.
[00:59:34] Forgiveness is primarily an act of the will, right?
[00:59:39] You move towards forgiveness before you feel it.
[00:59:43] And I'll just say this from personal experience.
[00:59:45] If you wait until you feel it before you grant it, the chances are really high that you'll never grant it. Forgiveness, like many of the other spiritual disciplines, is a command. It is something that we're called to be obedient to. Mark 11.25 says this, and whenever you stand
[01:00:07] praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone. Forgive. Forgiveness is an act of the will. It's a practice before it's a feeling. One of the ways that you practice forgiveness, I mentioned this earlier, but it's speaking well of the other person, right? It's praying for them
[01:00:32] towards God, not praying that, you know what, that they suddenly get IBS or something or anything like that. We actually pray for something good to happen to them.
[01:00:45] If our default feeling is to avoid them, you choose to go in the opposite direction and you go towards them.
[01:00:54] All right, fourth, be long-suffering.
[01:01:00] So going back to the parable, when that servant was first brought before the king, did you catch what the servant said when he fell to his knees?
[01:01:13] He gave this phrase.
[01:01:14] He said, have patience with me.
[01:01:18] have patience with me the original greek word for patience you know what it literally means it literally means to be slow to boil you're going to boil but it's going to be slow this again i think it hints at the hidden cost of forgiveness but but i think it also helps to
[01:01:43] explain what real patience looks like so that the older english words if you have like a king james version of the Bible, I believe right here in this passage, instead of have patience with me,
[01:01:57] it says something else. It says, be long-suffering with me. Long-suffering is a word that I'd love for us to reintroduce into our everyday vernacular. I think it's a beautiful word because it represents one of the hallmarks of the Christian life
[01:02:18] because it tells us that patience is voluntary suffering.
[01:02:26] You are not growing in patience if you're not learning to experience pain and increase your pain tolerance.
[01:02:37] And here's where I would just maybe a little bit more frank.
[01:02:42] Our generation is more deficient and this character trait of long-suffering than any prior generation in U.S. history.
[01:02:51] We do not know how to do this.
[01:02:55] And part of the problem is that we are more mobile than any previous generation.
[01:03:02] So when you experience something that you don't like, what do we do?
[01:03:06] We cancel them, right?
[01:03:09] We bolt.
[01:03:10] We move somewhere else.
[01:03:12] We are afforded greater opportunity to avoid ever-developing long-suffering than any previous generation, and it is cutting us off at our knees.
[01:03:24] Our culture caters to our desire to avoid being long-suffering and patient with other people.
[01:03:33] And it's single-handedly destroying what could be the very gift, what has been historically the great gift of Christianity, right?
[01:03:40] We will not move from cancel culture to forgiveness culture without learning how to be long-suffering.
[01:03:48] All right, finally, I just want to close our time talking about the power of forgiveness.
[01:03:54] And honestly, I would spend, if we had the time, an entire sermon telling stories about the power of forgiveness exhibited in the Christian church over the past 2,000 years.
[01:04:09] There's some phenomenal stories out there.
[01:04:11] But I want to start with this.
[01:04:13] I don't want to overstate or understate the power that unforgiveness has on people.
[01:04:25] So in our parable, the inability of the servant to forgive a much smaller debt than he was forgiven, where does it land him?
[01:04:37] In jail.
[01:04:39] And in my experience, when we fail to step towards forgiveness, What we don't realize is that our lack of forgiveness, we think that it imprisons the other person who's sinned against us, but it does the opposite.
[01:04:54] It imprisons ourselves.
[01:04:57] It lands us in jail, not the other person.
[01:05:02] This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.
[01:05:05] I've mentioned this before from my favorite Star Wars movie, the little-known Rogue One.
[01:05:09] But there's this one moment where these two guys are in a jail cell.
[01:05:14] One of them is this guy, Captain Andor, who's sort of one of the main characters in the story.
[01:05:19] And this guy sees Andor complaining about being in this physical jail.
[01:05:24] And he says this to him, and I think it's profound.
[01:05:27] He says, there's more than one sort of prison, Captain, and I sense that you carry yours wherever you go.
[01:05:34] On the flip side, the power of forgiveness, especially as it's been exhibited in the context of the Christian church for the past 2,000 years.
[01:05:51] I think this represents some of the greatest gifts that Christianity has ever offered to this world.
[01:05:59] It started with this one man who said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
[01:06:04] But when people start to embody that, it has a profound impact.
[01:06:09] I'll just give you one story to close.
[01:06:11] There's this one story based in the mid-1900s about a young man who was living in a town called Mottlingen, Germany.
[01:06:24] Mottlingen, Germany.
[01:06:25] And he came to a Lutheran church on New Year's Eve.
[01:06:30] And it was pastored by this guy named Johann Blumhart.
[01:06:33] And this young man decided that he was going to unburden himself and confess a number of sins and misdeeds.
[01:06:42] Some were minor, but some were pretty major.
[01:06:46] And it transformed this young man.
[01:06:49] Well, word of this man's transformation began to spread.
[01:06:54] By the end of January, 30 days later, there were now 35 people who decided to confess their sins to the same pastor, Pastor Blumhart.
[01:07:06] They asked for forgiveness.
[01:07:08] Thirty days after that, by the beginning of February or end of February, that number 35 went to 150 people who did the same thing.
[01:07:18] It turned into a complete revival in this one town of Mottlingen, Germany.
[01:07:28] Stolen goods were returned, enemies were reconciled, infidelities were confessed, broken marriages were restored, crimes were solved, alcoholics found sobriety.
[01:07:41] So if you go back to today, one of the concerns that people have with creating a culture of forgiveness, this is the major critique about forgiveness culture. If we lean into a forgiveness this culture, it will actually undercut our pursuit of justice. But what this one town
[01:08:02] experienced is the exact opposite. Forgiveness does not get in the way of justice. It's actually the only sustainable precondition for systematic justice. Sustainable justice in this world is a product of grace.
[01:08:23] Cancel culture will not work.
[01:08:27] But the hallmark of Christianity is that an ethic of forgiveness actually produces social justice in a way that no other movement could.
[01:08:38] And it all starts with an individual.
[01:08:42] You become a collection of individuals.
[01:08:44] You start to walk this path of forgiveness.
[01:08:50] And when it lights a fire, watch out.
[01:08:52] And this is really, like, this is my dream for Midtown Community Church, that if we decide to make our greatest aim that we are going to create a forgiveness culture starting with the relationships in here,
[01:09:07] this is the kind of dynamic that could transform the city of Raleigh and every city around it.
[01:09:14] Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, and I'll close with this quote, He says, at the sight of men's sins, always decide to use humble love.
[01:09:26] If you resolve to do that once and for all, you can subdue the whole world.
[01:09:31] Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
[01:09:39] Let's pray.
[01:09:41] Heavenly Father, I would assume that there are people that we want to cancel.
[01:09:53] May we come here this morning, and we know that we've made mistakes, and we've done things, and we know that we've felt canceled by others.
[01:10:03] Your gospel is radical, Jesus.
[01:10:07] You've told us through this story in Matthew 18 that you are so committed to making the story of our lives being a story of mercy and grace and forgiveness.
[01:10:22] And so I pray, first and foremost, help us to live into that story.
[01:10:26] to know that grace is available for us.
[01:10:30] And I pray that unlike the unmerciful servant, that we would let your grace sink deep into our hearts, that we might have a capacity to forgive the very people that we might want to cancel.
[01:10:46] Jesus, help us to be a church and a community who lives this out for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of a world that needs grace just as much as we do in your name.
[01:10:57] Amen.

[01:10:58] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[01:10:58] Matt, let's stand and sing our final song.

[01:11:02] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[01:11:02] I'm forgiven because you were forsaken.
[01:11:26] I'm accepted, you were condemned.
[01:11:31] I'm alive and well, the Spirit is within me.
[01:11:40] Because you died and rose again.
[01:11:44] Let's do that again, I'm forgiven.
[01:11:46] Because you were forsaken.
[01:11:56] The Spirit is within.
[01:12:07] I'm joined because you were forsaken.
[01:12:58] Amen.

[01:14:43] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[01:14:43] For your benediction, go with these words.
[01:14:46] Hebrews 12.15.
[01:14:48] Hebrews 12.15 says this.
[01:14:51] See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.
[01:14:57] Amen.
[01:14:58] Go in peace.