Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Forgiveness is not earned, but freely given. Our God offers it freely, but it was not free. Our sin requires an accounting, a payment. That payment was exacted from the Son of God, who gave himself up for us. And for those who repent and entrust themselves to the Lord Jesus, that deep and costly forgiveness changes everything. Let's take a deeper dive into the forgiveness of God from Isaiah 52. You're listening to the third part of a message that was first preached on June 23, 2013 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. To hear the whole sermon, visit us at www.delightingrace.com. When the Son repented and He came back to the Father ready and willing just simply to be a slave, the Father did what?
Ran to Him and embraced Him and welcomed Him back and threw a party and put on Him the robe of sonship. Because our God is a forgiving God. As Jesus was telling that, I'm sure He was thinking of the words in Zechariah's prophecy, Zechariah chapter 3 verse 4. Take away the filthy garments from Him and to Him He said, see I have removed your iniquity from you and I will clothe you with rich robes. Listen to me folks, every one of you, your God says this to you. Do you recognize His forgiveness in Jesus Christ? Are you willing to take that forgiveness?
Are you willing to take those rich robes of His that will replace the filthy garments of our sin? Our God is a forgiving God. One of our problems as human beings is this, deep-seated in our limited human understanding is the unbelievably that we can be freely forgiven. The unbelievably that we can be freely forgiven. And this attitude is manifested in our need to earn His favor.
And that's a very human way of thinking, isn't it? We sense we have the need to earn God's favor and therefore we think we have to be doing this and doing that. And if I'm going to be a good Christian or a good moral person or a religious person, I need to read the Bible and find out what the Bible tells me I need to be doing. And I need to be doing those things in order for God to show favor to me.
That's not how God reveals Himself. You see, God is a forgiving God and we do not need to earn His favor. His favor is upon us in Jesus Christ. And when you surrender in faith to Jesus Christ, His favor of Jesus Christ becomes ours.
You see, the unbelievably that we can be freely forgiven is manifested in our continual sense of need to earn His favor. Follow the rules. And if I follow the rules, He will smile upon me.
But if I don't follow the rules, then zap! God is going to do something to me. How many people today live with that notion of God? And it is so wrong.
It is so false. Our God is a forgiving God. Secondly, the unbelievably that we can be freely forgiven, that attitude is manifested in our unforgiveness of others. Not only in our need to earn His favor, but in our unforgiveness of others. Timothy Lane says this in the little book that we studied a while ago. Failure to forgive reveals an unforgiving heart and an unforgiven heart. This is a Selah moment.
Selah means meditate upon this. You see, my sociology reflects my theology. Let me paraphrase that for you. What I think of God is manifested in how I treat those around me.
If I do not understand that God is a forgiving God, then I will not be a forgiving person. Ravi Zacharias had an opportunity to meet with the founder of Hamas. We all know what Hamas is. If we watch any news at all, all the stuff that comes out of the Middle East is about hatred and destruction and war and violence. Grudges, violence, retaliation, all of that. Ravi says, do you know why the Middle East is in the cauldron of hate?
Because it is living with the logic of unforgiveness. He says, I was talking to one of the founders of Hamas, Sheikh Talal. I was part of a group of people who had gone to the Middle East to try and bring the people together to a peace table. Sheikh Talal gave us a great meal, told us of 18 years he had served in prison and how some of his children had been lost in suicide bombings. When my term came to ask a question, I said, Sheikh, forgive me if I'm asking you the wrong question.
Please tell me, what do you think of suicide bombing and sending your children out like that? After he finished his answer, I said, Sheikh, you and I may never see each other again, so I want you to hear me. A little distance from here, a mountain upon which Abraham went 5000 years ago to offer his son. And as the axe was about to fall, God said, stop. I said, do you know what God said after that? He shook his head. I said, God said, I myself will provide. He nodded his head and said, very close.
And I said, very close to where you and I are sitting, Sheikh, is a hill. 2000 years ago, God kept that promise and brought his own son. And the axe did not stop this time. He sacrificed his own son. He just stared at me. The room was full of smoke with all of his security people. I said, I may never see you again, Sheikh, but I want to leave this with you.
Until you and I receive the son that God has provided, we will be offering our sons and daughters on the battlefields of this world for land and power and pride. I could just see the man's lips beginning to quiver. He was sitting right next to me. Nobody said anything after that.
As we were walking out, Sheikh Talal went quickly and shook hands with everyone. And then he came over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, kissed me on both sides of the face, patted my face, and he said, you are a good man. I hope to see you again someday. Do we know God as the forgiving God that he is? Do I understand that God freely forgives or do I find that too far away for me to believe? And is that manifested in my attempts to earn his favor or my unforgiveness of those around me? What does he say? What does he say in Isaiah 52? He said, look what he says in verse two.
Shake yourself from the dust. Arise. Sit down, O Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. Speaking to a prisoner, God breaks the chains of such unforgiveness. But listen, though God breaks the chains, something that you and I could never do, we still have to take the chains off of us.
Break the chains. They are your bondage. They are not jewelry that adorns you. The earning God's favor, the unforgiveness of mankind toward each other, that does not adorn man. That is not jewelry.
That is bondage. But God freely forgives us. And as he says in Ephesians chapter four, verse 32, be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven you. You see, our God is a forgiving God.
He freely forgives us as the prodigal son's father forgave him. And then as we come down to verse seven, this verse that we know well and that we sing and we sang it this morning, verse seven, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. Proclaim the good news of peace. And what is this peace? It is the peace that we have with the God who freely forgives. Because he freely forgives us, we are at peace with God.
At peace with him. But that forgiveness is only found in his son, Jesus Christ. J.C. Ryle, theologian, pastor of past centuries, said this, without justification, it is impossible to have real peace. Conscience forbids it. Sin is a mountain between a man and God and must be taken away. The sense of guilt lies heavy on the heart and must be removed. Unpardoned sin will murder peace.
The true Christian knows all this well. His peace arises from a consciousness that his sins being forgiven and his guilt being put away. He has peace with God because he is justified. Proclaim peace. Proclaim the peace that is found in Jesus Christ. Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor on television, Marganita Lasky, an avowed atheist and one of our best-known secular humanists and a novelist, said this, what I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness.
I have nobody to forgive me. Our God is a forgiving God and in him, in his son, Jesus Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
