I guess you’ve heard the story about the little boy who was about eleven years of age talking to his younger sister, who was about age ten, how he was so mad at one of his little playmates, Henry, because Henry did something against him that he couldn’t forgive him? The conversation goes something like this. “Sister, I’m so mad at Henry that the next time I see him I’m going to whop him right on top of his head!” “Now, Bobby” said his sister, “you heard the preacher Sunday, he said that Jesus taught that you are to forgive someone seven times seven if they offend you.” Bobby, being in the sixth grade, was pretty smart in math and quickly multiplied that out, “All right, that’s forty-nine times. I’ll forgive him forty nine times just like Jesus said, but after that, Pow, right in the kisser!” That’s a funny story all right, but have you ever thought of something like that?
In Matthew 5:23-24, in His sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught, “So if you are offering your gift on the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar and first go and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Then in the gospel of Mark, Mark 11:25, Mark records Jesus as saying, “Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.” Then in Matthew 6:14, the Lord said, “For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive people, your Father will not forgive you of your wrongdoing.” And in Matthew 18:35 He says something about forgiveness being from the heart, “So My heavenly Father will also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart.” In one place He says “if your brother has something against you”, and in another place He says, “if you have something against anyone,” you are to offer forgiveness. The first has someone against you, the second has you against someone. In either case, forgiveness is the solution.
But forgiveness is sometimes a hard thing to do. I had someone in my own family that I was having a hard time forgiving for all that he did against me. He was the kind of person I could love better “afar off” instead of up close and personal. But then something happened in our recent history that changed my way of thinking, that is, in my history and in yours, the one reading this devotion. It was the assination of Charlie Kirk. Charlie was a young man who went to colleges and universities all over our Country speaking to and openly and publicly debating young college students who had no desire to follow Jesus or even to acknowledge God! But when he was assassinated, something “clicked inside, within my soul”. His death made me realize that “things” are no more than “things”. They are just objects, with no heart and no soul, and if something happens to the things in your life, even if they are sentimental, they are still just “things”. It’s not “things” that are important or that need forgiveness and love, it’s people! Only people can be forgiven and saved to God’s glorious salvation. If you think that someone doesn’t deserve forgiveness and salvation, just look at yourself. Do you deserve forgiveness and salvation? The answer to that is “no”.
