Hey, podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org slash podcast and click the donate button or follow the link in our show notes. Now here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. Thanks to the horrific attack on Israel, I've written a brand new book called, Are We Living in the End Times?
Go to ptv.org to order your copy. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Perhaps you've been a prisoner of bitterness for months or years or even decades. Regardless of the offense or the offender, you do not need to live one more day weighed down by regret. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares three biblical principles to help you find freedom from the chains of unforgiveness. Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. When you sit down to plan a vacation, you have countless choices. But it's rare to find one that elevates your spiritual walk with God. Well, I'm hoping you'll join me this coming June 15th through 22nd on our Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska.
The views of the Inside Passage and the Alaska coastline are absolutely jaw-dropping. Along the way, we'll enjoy the Christian music of Rebecca St. James and Michael O'Brien, and we'll enjoy the laughter from comedian Dennis Swanberg. So what do you say? I'd love for you to set sail with us.
All the instructions for reserving your spot can be found by going to ptv.org. When you walk into your favorite bookstore and start looking for books that deal with regret, you'll find a bunch of them that talk about dismissing your mistakes. Live and learn, right? Well, God has a much better plan for dealing with regret. You see, He won't erase the consequences of your bad choices, but He'll certainly forgive them. In my best-selling book, Say Goodbye to Regret, I'm going to walk you through God's solution for issues such as saying goodbye to sexual regret, saying goodbye to parenting regrets, saying goodbye to career regrets, 10 in all.
When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, I'll make sure we send you a copy to your home right away. More about my book later in the program. But in today's study, I'm going to tackle one of those common regrets.
Are you ready? Drawing insight from several different Bible passages, I titled today's message Say Goodbye to Relationship Regrets. More than 25 years ago, I decided to write a book on forgiveness.
It was such a prevalent problem. And amazingly, after 25 years, it's still in print when forgiveness doesn't make sense. Not because I'm a wonderful writer, but because it's a topic that everybody wrestles with. And as I prepared to write this book, I partnered with the Barna Research Group, and we did a national survey on the subject of forgiveness among American Christians. And in our survey, we found that most Christians have an unbiblical understanding of forgiveness.
They don't understand what it is. And there are four fallacies that keep many Christians as prisoners of regrets over the hurts of others. Let me mention those four myths about forgiveness, four fallacies about forgiveness that may truly be keeping you from forgiving that person in your life who needs to be forgiven. Fallacy number one, forgiveness must be earned.
You just can't let that offender off the hook, we think. It's not right for you. It's really not right for him. He has to earn forgiveness.
But here's the problem. What could somebody pay back to you to make up for a child killed by a drunk driver? How could anybody repay you for a marriage that is torn apart by adultery?
What do you do about that? It's impossible to earn forgiveness. Secondly, and this is key, earning forgiveness really binds you to your offender.
It makes you a partner with your offender when you're waiting on them to do something before you free yourself from the prison of regrets. There's a second mistake that many people have about their thinking of forgiveness. They think that forgiveness is a one-time act.
We think that we can forgive a person once for all and never have to deal with it again. But did you know that outside of becoming a Christian, there really are no one-time decisions about anything that's important in life? I mean, somebody decides they're gonna quit smoking, but if you've ever had that experience, you know, you can make that decision.
You may be successful in it, but that decision doesn't quench your desire for nicotine. It's something you battle with for weeks, for months, perhaps for the rest of your life. And so it is with forgiveness. There's no one-time act of forgiveness. It's something you will struggle with with that same person for that same offense many times later. That doesn't mean you haven't forgiven them.
It just means you have to keep on forgiving them. Do you remember the late Corrie Ten Boom who wrote the book, The Hiding Place? She writes about having difficulty continuing to remember what a Nazi soldier had done to her in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, how he had mistreated Corrie and her sister, Betsy. And for several weeks she struggled because she couldn't forget this and she was afraid that it meant she had not forgiven the soldier. She writes, God's help came to me in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. He said, up in that church tower, and he pointed to the church tower, is a bell which is rung by a sexton pulling on the rope.
The bell keeps on ringing even after the sexton has let go of the rope, first ding, then dong, slower and slower until there is a final dong and it finally stops. I believe the same things are true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we shouldn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while.
They're just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down. And so I discovered another secret of forgiveness. We can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts.
Isn't that great? Maybe those ding-dongs will stop in your life. Maybe they will never stop, but don't miss the point. Forgiveness is a continual decision. That's why when Peter said, Lord, how many times shall we forgive? Seven times?
Jesus said, no, 70 times seven. Forgiveness is not a one-time act. A third mistake people make in their thinking about forgiveness is that forgiveness is synonymous with forgetting. It is synonymous with forgetting. We talk about forgive and forget as if they're the same thing. People think if I haven't forgotten, then I haven't forgiven.
But the two are not the same. Remember this, forgetting is a biological function. The reason we forget more and more things where we put the keys and so forth is our brain grows older and older and things don't fire on all the cylinders like they ought to. Forgetting is a biological function. Forgiveness is a spiritual function. Some people would say, well, doesn't God forget our sins? They point to verses like Psalm 103, too.
For He has removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. Or Micah 7, 19, He cast our sins into the depths of the sea. Or Jeremiah 31, 34, I will forgive them of their iniquity and remember their sin no more. Doesn't God forget our sins?
No. God does not suddenly develop a case of heavenly Alzheimer's and forget about our transgressions. That is the Bible's way of saying God no longer holds our transgressions against us. That's what it means to forget our iniquity. It means He no longer holds our sin to our account because He's placed them on Christ's account. Christ has paid for our sins. But we shouldn't think that we've got the ability to forget. We can't forget. And sometimes when we equate forgiveness with forgetting, we think if we can just dismiss something, play like it never happened, that's the same as forgiving. It's not. In fact, trying to prematurely dismiss or forget those things done to us can actually short circuit and shortcut the forgiveness process. Let me illustrate what I mean for you by that.
How just dismissing something can actually be a hindrance in truly forgiving another person. Two years after Amy and I were married, in 1979, we decided to buy our first house out in Garland, Texas. Do you remember what interest rates were like in 1979? The interest rates were 13% on a mortgage and they would head eventually 18% in 1981.
But they were 13%. And so our real estate agent said, you know, if you've got a family member or somebody who cares about you, maybe you could get a second mortgage at a lower rate. And so I asked my grandfather if he would give us a second mortgage. And he said, yes, and I'll make you a bargain deal 9% interest.
And that was a great thing back when interest rates were 13, 9%. So we signed a note with him and we started making our payments every month and we made those payments for eight years. And one day he said, Robert, you don't need to send me any more money. I'll just forgive the note. Well, he died a few years later and Amy and I decided to sell the house.
One big problem. We found out there was not a clear title to the house. We couldn't convey it to the buyer.
Why? Because even though my grandfather had great intentions, he had in his mind forgiven the note, he didn't go through the proper procedure to have a clear title on our property. And that's why I say just simply dismissing something may cause you to short circuit the actual steps you need to go through in forgiving another person. Forgiveness is a process.
What kind of steps are you talking about? Well, first of all, you have to admit that you've been wronged. If you're going to forgive somebody, you first of all have to acknowledge that they have wronged you. Secondly, you have to acknowledge that your offender owes you for his transgression. You need to calculate what it is that somebody owes you. I tell people who are trying to forgive, don't only admit that you've been wronged, calculate the cost. Maybe that other person deserves a divorce. Maybe they deserve imprisonment.
Maybe they even deserve the death penalty. But you can't forgive a debt until you calculate what that debt is. And then thirdly, forgiveness is the decision to release your offender of his debt to you. If you don't go through this process, then you'll never reap the benefits of truly forgiving another person.
We'll see a great biblical illustration of that in just a moment. A fourth fallacy people have about forgiveness is the belief that forgiveness requires reunion. In other words, if a wife is being physically abused by her husband, but she is required to forgive him, that means she has to go back and live under the same roof as he does and subject herself to that same punishment. If you forgive a cheating mate, that means you have to just overlook any future infidelities in your relationship. If you decide to hire back an employee who has embezzled money from you, if you forgive them, that means you have to keep them employed, even if they show no restitution whatsoever.
None of those things is true. You can forgive somebody without being reunited with them. In fact, one reason some of you right now are having a hard time forgiving somebody is because you're confusing forgiveness with reunion. You think you're going to be forced to go back in a relationship with them. There's a difference between forgiveness and reunion. This is worth the price of the sermon.
Write these things down. Lewis Meades, who's written so much on forgiveness, says it takes one person to forgive, it takes two to be reunited. We can forgive a person who never says he's sorry, but we can't be reunited with somebody until they say I'm sorry. Forgiveness depends upon me, me and me alone. Reunion depends upon us. Forgiveness has no strings attached to it. Reunion has a number of strings attached to it.
You see the difference? You can forgive, you can let go, you can let God deal with that person who has wronged you. You can do that regardless if the other person repents or not, but you can never reunite with somebody who's not willing to say I'm sorry and make steps to change the nature of that relationship. You know, a great biblical illustration of that is the prodigal son. Remember the younger son came to his dad, wanted his share of the estate so he could get out of the house? That crushed the father, but he gave him his share of the estate, he let him go, the father immediately forgave his son.
You know how I know that? Because Jesus pictures the father standing on the front steps every day, scanning the horizon, looking for some sign of his son coming back home. He forgave his son. He wanted to be reunited with his son. There was forgiveness, but there could be no reunion until the son made the decision to come home.
And so it is with us and our relationships with other people. I believe these four fallacies about forgiveness keep many people from forgiving. You know who illustrates probably better than anyone in the Old Testament?
Those principles of forgiveness. It's that character Joseph. Now, we did a long study on Joseph. I'm not going to rehash the story.
Just remember the basics. He was one of the 12 sons of Jacob. He was the favorite son. Because of that, his brothers were jealous. They threw him into a pit to have him sold as a slave.
They left him for being dead. But God used that great betrayal to put Joseph exactly where God wanted him to be, in Egypt, as Pharaoh's right-hand man. And because of Joseph's prominence, he was able to devise that plan to save not just Egypt but the entire world from the famine by setting aside part of the grain for the time of famine. And it was a famine that would cause Joseph's brothers, who had forgotten about him, to have to come to Egypt to buy the grain. Little did they know they would be making their appeal to the very brother whom they thought they had killed.
And we've got this remarkable scene in Genesis 50. The brothers were there. Joseph reveals himself to his brothers.
They're scared to death. Joseph said to them, do not be afraid, for am I not in God's place? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to preserve many people alive. So therefore, do not be afraid.
I will provide for you and your little ones. Notice the three steps of genuine forgiveness that Joseph illustrates. First of all, genuine forgiveness admits you have been wronged. Joseph didn't say to his brothers, oh brothers, let's just forget what happened to you and what you did to me.
You must have just been having a bad day. We'll forgive and forget. No, he was very honest with them. He said, you meant it for evil.
What you did was wrong. Remember this, you cannot forgive people you're not willing to blame. You have to blame people before you can forgive them.
You don't have to sugarcoat anything. Joseph said, you meant it for evil. Genuine forgiveness admits you have been wronged. Secondly, genuine forgiveness acknowledges a debt is owed. When Joseph said, do not be afraid, he was basically saying you have every right to be afraid. I'm the big cheese now here in Egypt. I could have you executed if I wanted to.
You have every right to be afraid. Genuine forgiveness acknowledges a debt is owed. Again, you have to calculate what that other person deserves before you release them of those consequences. And thirdly, genuine forgiveness releases your offender of their debt. It releases them of your debt.
When Joseph said, you don't need to be afraid, I'm not going to kill you, but instead I'm going to give you what you don't deserve, the choicest land of Egypt, the land of Goshen. He was demonstrated that he had released them of their debt. Now, when you forgive somebody, you release them of your right to hurt them for hurting you. It doesn't mean you give up your desire for justice.
God, the government, somebody else may want to deal with them, but you're surrendering your right to seek vengeance against them. You know, this is such a remarkable story. I've often wondered, how did Joseph conjure up that forgiveness? He had never read when forgiveness doesn't make sense. How did he know how to do that?
Where did that come from? I think part of it's telling in what Joseph said in his first conversation with his brothers in Genesis 45. He said, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth and to keep you alive by a great deliverance. Now, for it was not you who sent me here, but God.
Hear that over and over again. You did this, but God, but God, but God. It was not you who sent me here, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all of his household and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Joseph was able to see the hand of God in these offenses. Joseph believed in a God who was bigger than the ones who had hurt him. And ladies and gentlemen, you will never be able to forgive, truly forgive, until you come to the conclusion that God is bigger than your offender. God can take the worst things that have happened to you and use them for his good and his glory. That's the key to forgiveness. I think part of that was Joseph was able to see how God was able to work through those injustices. Little did he know how that would ultimately play out. I mean, we're still feeling the reverberations of his decision to forgive.
I mean, think about it. If he hadn't forgiven his brothers and said, no, you can't have any grain, what would have happened? The brothers would have starved to death. If the brothers had starved to death, they were the nucleus of the nation of Israel. If there had been no grain, there would have been no brothers. If there had been no brothers, there would have been no Israel. If there were no Israel, there would be no Messiah. If there was no Messiah who had to come from Israel, there would have been no salvation.
And you and I today would be dead in our trespasses and sins. We are saved today when you think about it because of one man's choice to forgive. I think that was his main motivation, but I think there's another secret to it.
It's found in Genesis 45, 2. When he first saw the brothers, the Bible said, he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard of it as well. Joseph knew what it was like to be a prisoner. He had been unfairly in prison for the rape of Potiphar's wife. He knew the exhilaration that came from being freed finally from that prison, but he was still a prisoner of hurt.
I think of bitterness as the years unfolded, as he thought about his brothers and what they had done to him. And tired of that bitterness, tired of those regrets, he made that decision to forgive. Are you ready to be freed from that prison of regrets? Are you tired of being shackled to that person who hurt you maybe many years ago? Forgiveness is the key that will set you free to live the life God has planned for you. Lewis Smead says it best when he says, When we forgive, we set the prisoner free, and the prisoner we set free is us. So let's allow that question to linger in our minds. Are you ready to be freed from the prison of regrets?
I certainly hope so. And as a practical next step, I want you to read the book I've written for you. It's called Say Goodbye to Regret. The subtitle is, Living Beyond the Would-Haves, Could-Haves, and Should-Haves. In my book, more than 200 pages in length, I tackle 10 topics. Things like the one we addressed today, saying goodbye to relationship regrets.
Some of the others in the series are saying goodbye to sexual regrets and saying goodbye to financial regrets. Please, while there's still time, be sure to get in touch with us today and request your copy. It's yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Well, in December, we closed the books on another ministry year together, and we're grateful for the outpouring of support that arrived before the deadline on December 31st.
And now we're embarking on a brand new year together, a fresh start. As you consider the value of these daily Bible studies, would you be willing to become one of our valued Pathway partners? Perhaps we don't talk about this arrangement as much as we should, but those who participate in monthly automated giving have a huge ministry of their own, because monthly givers are becoming the financial backbone of Pathway to Victory. Pathway partners empower me to teach the Bible with boldness. You make it possible for us to pierce the darkness with God's Word. So, as God prompts you to link arms with us, just follow the simple instructions that David will give to you right now.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. You can become a Pathway partner by following the easy steps online at ptv.org. Now this month, we're aiming to sign up 1,200 Pathway partners, and we need your help to reach that goal. When you give your first monthly gift, or when you give a generous one-time gift in support of Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request the bestselling book Say Goodbye to Regret by Dr. Robert Jeffress.
And when you give $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete collection of audio and video discs for this month's teaching series, Say Goodbye to Regret. Call 866-999-2965, one more time, 866-999-2965, or go to ptv.org. You could write to us, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins. It's easy to become distracted by the demands of daily living, so how can we refocus on eternal things that really matter?
Learn how to say goodbye to spiritual regrets. That's Tuesday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in his word. To become a Pathway partner, go to ptv.org slash podcast and click on the donate button or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
