In 'Dealing With Stumbling Blocks and Sins Pt.2,' Peter Allison explores Jesus' teachings from Luke 17:1-10, focusing on the inevitability of offenses and the Christian duty to forgive. The sermon emphasizes that stumbling blocks are unavoidable but should not lead to sin. Believers are encouraged to rebuke their brothers who sin against them and forgive upon repentance, highlighting that repentance is a change in thinking, not merely sorrow. Allison explains that forgiveness is a promise to release the debt of offense, conditional upon repentance, and not an emotional state or judgment of the offense's severity. He addresses misconceptions, such as the belief that forgiveness is unconditional or negates the need for restitution. The sermon underscores that faith, even as small as a mustard seed, is sufficient to fulfill these duties, and that fulfilling the duty of forgiveness is not meritorious but simply a servant's obligation to God. Allison concludes by urging believers to be prepared in their hearts to forgive, drawing on God's grace and mercy.

Luke 17. I'd like to read the first ten verses. Then he said to his disciples, It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves.

If your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day returns to you saying I repent you shall forgive him and the Apostles said to the Lord increase our faith so the Lord said If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea, and it would obey you. And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him, When he has come in from the field, come at once and sit down to eat. But will he not rather say to him, prepare something for my supper and gorge yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink? Does he thank the servant because he did those things which were commanded him?

I think not. So likewise when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say we are unprofitable servants, We have done what was our duty to do. May Jehovah open our eyes that we may see wondrous things from His law. Almighty Father, We come to look into your word and ask that the word that we hear might be mixed with faith, that it might result in our growing in devotion to you, in obedience. I ask that you would sanctify my lips as well and keep me from error in Jesus name amen.

Well, these two accounts here of the faith as a mustard seed and this account of a servant I think are best understood as flowing out of what Jesus had just spoken to his disciples about stumbling blocks and bringing rebukes and forgiving. And the response when these disciples heard what Jesus taught was, who can do this? Who can do this? So Jesus, I think in these sections, verses 5 to 10, is addressing some of these concerns. But to understand what he's doing here, we have to look back at what Jesus just told them.

We looked at that last week. Last week we dealt with stumbling blocks and how to respond when stumbling blocks are placed in our path or when others sin against us. And we saw that a stumbling block, a scandal on, is something that causes or attempts to lead another into sin. Though stumbling blocks are inevitable, Jesus says, a stumbling block does not have to result in the offended party sinning. Jesus faced stumbling blocks and didn't sin.

But because they are serious and inevitable, Jesus exhorted his disciples and he exhorts us to take heed to ourselves. Take heed that we don't place stumbling blocks in front of others and take heed that we don't stumble when we encounter the inevitable stumbling block. So we want to avoid placing a stumbling block in front of somebody else because whenever it's avoidable, it's not always avoidable, but whenever it is because placing a stumbling block, an avoidable one, in front of somebody else is in itself a sin. And so then Jesus went on to, if your brother sins against you, we were to rebuke them. The obligation here is on the person that had their fingers smashed or their nose bloodied.

The obligation in this passage is not on the person that sinned, because they may not even be aware that they sinned against us. They may not know, or they may be somewhat calloused to their sin. So as their brother, Jesus says we have the obligation to go because if it's our toes that are smashed or our nose that's been out of shape, then we know we are the ones who know we can feel it. So we're the ones who are to go and that can be hard to do. If we have to get over the pain of our bent nose or sore head.

We have to get the log out of our own eye. We have to recognize our own sinfulness and our own proclivity to do the same things. And then clothed with humility, We are supposed to talk to the person who hurt us. And if they repent, then Jesus says we must forgive them. All too often, we want to say, well, when they act repentant, then I'll forgive them.

Well when they sound contrite, when they look contrite, when they are sincere, then I will forgive them. But of course that's not what Jesus says here, does it? Jesus never says that we can wait until we see the fruit of repentance in order to forgive. He says, if the offender says, I repent, then we must forgive. Now what does it mean to repent?

Sometimes we think of repentance as sorrow. Sorrow. But while sorrow, godly sorrow, that is, does accompany repentance, We shouldn't equate sorrow with repentance. Sorrow is really regret. Sorrow is a feeling, a feeling of regret, of remorse.

And it's possible to have regret without any repentance. Esau had sorrow, but no repentance. He had regret, but no repentance. He regretted. He was sorry, but he didn't repent.

It's also possible, I think, to have a true repentance that has yet to lead to a godly sorrow. So repentance is not sorrow per se, it's not feeling bad. Really repentance is to change direction. It's a change or alteration in our thinking, which leads to changes in our living. Isaiah says in Isaiah 55, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

It's a change in our thinking. Let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy on Him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon." You see repentance is forsaking our own sinful thoughts and ways and beginning to think according to the truth. It means forsaking the thinking that our sinful behavior can bring us happiness and contentment or fulfillment. It means changing our thinking that we can continue to live in ways that break our relationship with God and with others. Repentance requires an alteration of our feudal way of thinking as Paul puts it in Ephesians 4 it means to no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind Now confession is inextricably linked with repentance because it is the outward expression of that inward change in thinking.

Confession really means to say with someone. It's to say the same thing. So in confessing, an offender is saying, I agree with you and with God that I have wronged you. I agree with you and God that what I have done is wrong and I am asking for your forgiveness." And that is also easily confused today with an apology. An apology is not repentance.

It's not repentance at all. An apology is saying I am sorry And it is expressing really how we feel again. Remember repentance is not a feeling, it's a change in our thinking. It's a change in what We believe to be true. Jay Adams uses, I think, a very helpful analogy to explain the difference between these two.

He says, an apology is like someone coming to you with a basketball in their hand and saying I'm sorry I hurt you and while they continue to hold the ball. They told you how they felt. What are you supposed to do with that? Feel bad that they feel bad? They haven't asked anything of the person they offended.

They never asked for their debt to be released. They never acknowledged that they have a debt that needs to be paid. They simply said they feel bad about what happened. Repentance would be when that person with the ball comes up to you and says, I've sinned against you. Please forgive me.

Or will you forgive me? See, now they throw the ball to you. Now you have the ball. Now you've been asked to do something. You've been asked to not pay the penalty, to not collect on this debt that they owe you.

You've been asked to forgive it. Now you can do something. You can say, yes, I release that debt that you owe. It's forever canceled. Or you can not release the debt that they owe.

But either way, you have the ball. The ball is in, as we say, your court to act. Will you forgive me? Sometimes that's a lot harder to say. I've sinned, will you forgive me?

Then I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sometimes we can lead our children into misunderstanding and repentance when we just tell them, well, say you're sorry. We're not teaching them what repentance is, acknowledgement of their sin. They might not be ready for that.

They need to be brought to see their sinfulness. So when somebody repents, they are then asking for our forgiveness. We said last week that forgiveness is not a feeling. It's not a feeling of being warm and cozy about somebody, especially when they've bloodied our nose or smashed our toes. It's not pretending that what they did was no big deal, and that maybe we weren't really hurt by it.

It's not any of those things. It's not how we feel. We might feel very hurt and angry at them. Fundamentally forgiveness is a promise. It's a promise not to bring the punishment that is due to the guilt, to the guilty.

So guilt is a liability to punishment, and that liability to punishment is removed by the promise not to bring that punishment. That's forgiveness. A promise not to bring punishment. In that sense, forgiveness, to say I forgive you is performative language. It does What it is?

Saying it's not asking for something. It's not wishing something were true it's not a blessing in that sense where where it is performative language I shouldn't say it's not a blessing it's it's not asking for something good to happen to them it is performative language. It does the removal of the debt. When we say we forgive somebody, that debt is forgiven, it's removed, can never be reinstated. When God forgives us, He promises that He will not remember our sins.

And we talked last week about that's not the same as forgetting. It's not the same as forgetting. We can't forget something, but we cannot remember it. And oftentimes when we don't remember things, then we do forget them. Not remembering is not bringing something up that someone has done against us to either ourselves internally in our thoughts, to that person or to anyone else that may know about it or not know about it.

So when we bring something up that's past, and that's so easy to do in our marriage, isn't it? We can bring up something that our spouse did to us yesterday or years ago, or has a habit of doing, right? So often we bring that up. If we've forgiven it, then we've broken our promise. Or when we want people to suffer by taking away our presence and our good favor or we want them to be Jealous of us so that they suffer we are in essence trying to get them to pay on this debt that they owe us And that's really the opposite of forgiveness as well Another way we can fake forgiveness is to simply say, well it's not a big deal.

It's not a big deal. It's nothing. That's not forgiveness. That's judgment. If somebody comes to us and asks us to remove a debt that they owe us, and we say, oh, it's no big deal, we've rendered a judgment about that debt.

That's not what they asked us to do. They asked us to remove it, not render a judgment about it. If somebody asked for us to remove a debt, we should do that, Jesus says, and not judge the debt they're asking us to remove. Now notice the little if in front of that. If he repents.

If he repents. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day return saying I repent you shall forgive him Forgiveness is conditional It's conditional upon the person repenting We see this more fully laid out in Matthew 18. It's fleshed out, but it's right there.

If they repent, we forgive. In Matthew 18, Jesus says in more depth, Moreover, if your brother sinned against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you will have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established and if he refuses to hear you then tell it to the church but if he refuses to hear even the church let him be to you a heathen and a tax collector assuredly I say to you whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if any two of you agree on earth concerning anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them." The point of this process of rebuking those who sin against us is to bring repentance and to bring a full restoration of the relationship. And yes, this process that Jesus described, it stops as soon as there is repentance. But not before, not a moment before repentance. If there's not repentance, it continues to go. It continues to move forward to a wider and wider circle.

It doesn't stop because God wants brothers to be reconciled. And that can't happen without repentance on the part of the offender and forgiveness on the part of the offending. See, if we extend forgiveness before repentance, that we've extended a promise not to remember. Then we can't fulfill the command given in Matthew 18, which is that we continue to confront and continue to remember what's been done. The Matthew 18 passage requires that we keep bringing the offense up.

It requires us to bring it up privately. If there's no repentance, it requires us to bring it up with two or three witnesses. If they don't hear them, it then requires us to bring it up to the church. And if they want to come back into our fellowship, it requires we continue to bring it up until they repent. And so if forgiveness were to be granted before repentance, then we are making a promise to act contrary to what God commands us to do in this passage.

See, if the mere removal of the threat of punishment was all that God wanted or intended, then this whole process in Matthew 18 would be completely unnecessary. The offended could work out forgiveness within himself and simply move on. But you see, Matthew 18 makes it clear that this process of forgiveness and repentance is a process that happens between two people, the offended and the offender. It can't be handled on one side alone. Chris Braun in his book unpacking forgiveness, biblical answers for complex questions and deep wounds, says, forgiveness is a figurative handshake.

You cannot shake hands alone. For Forgiveness to happen, you need to seek out the offending party, extend your hand, and pray that the other party will offer his or hers to you. Forgiveness does not require the fruits of repentance. It doesn't require us to see changes, but it does require repentance. There are a lot of excuses that we hear today and I know I've thought some of them myself.

We might say, we might think, well I don't need to go to rebuke someone because it's not a big deal. Yet if it is a sin, if it is a clear sin, sin brings separation and that separation doesn't just go away because we ignore it. We might compare it to others and think, well, that's not that serious. Well, Paul said it's very unwise to compare ourselves with ourselves and measure ourselves among ourselves. We might think, well, it's not my responsibility.

I'm not the elder in the church. I'm not their, I'm not responsible for them. But Jesus says It is our responsibility. If we are brothers and sisters, especially covenanted together as we are in one body, it is our responsibility, Jesus says, to go and confront. Might say, it's so time consuming.

We don't have time for it. Well, Jesus says we must, we must have time for it. We might think that our skin is thick and we can handle it. And this is actually such a significant one that we're gonna look at that one by itself a little bit later because it's a very common one. I know I've thought that, well, I can handle that.

I don't need, I'm not, I can get over that. I can forget about it. We might think we're taking the high road in that. We might think that while we're not some sort of policeman or Gestapo, we might think that graciousness is letting sin go. Or that if we go to confront, that would be an unforgiving spirit.

That our goal is peace. And confront would lead to conflict. Might even think that, well, that's law, and we believe in the gospel. And all these things are really attempts to evade what Jesus clearly says is our duty. It's our duty.

And that sins are covered, sins are truly covered only where there is repentance and forgiveness. Without that, there is no covering for sin. Sins don't just go away. They don't just disappear. Another one I think is a big one is, Well, if I deal with this sin in their life, then I would have to deal with the sin in my life.

And it's easier not to deal with the sin in my life. Now, that's probably the only honest answer among all these different excuses. And even if we don't admit it consciously to ourselves, I think this is often behind our failures in this area. We realize. We'd be hypocritical if we go and confront somebody about their sin when we're guilty of it too.

But Jesus says that we have a duty. We have a duty. If your brother sins, rebuke him. That's a duty. That's a command.

It's something that we have to do. It's not an option. If that means that we have to deal with our own sin because God commands us to deal with that before we deal with somebody else's, then that's what we need to do. Now another misconception is that that Jesus forgave unconditionally and that he commands us to do. Because on the cross Jesus prayed, Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

And so people say well we need, Stephen had the same prayer as he was being stoned. But I think we need to point out in both of these cases, Jesus, these are prayers. Jesus' prayer on the cross was not forgiveness, but it was a prayer for forgiveness. It wasn't spoken to the people, it was spoken to his Father in heaven. That's a prayer.

If Jesus forgave those people, as he did to many, many people, then he wouldn't have needed to pray to the Father to forgive them. Now God always hears Jesus' prayers, God always heeds them. And indeed this prayer was answered as well. It was answered through the very means that God has ordained. It wasn't some way around those ordinary means.

It was answered through the preaching of the Gospel, bringing the conviction of sin, leading people to repentance and to being forgiven by God. God answered it through the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Peter proclaimed that day, Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, A man attested by God to you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst as you also know him, you crucified. You by wicked hands, you crucified. And he went on to preach to them, and when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they said to Peter, men and brethren, what shall we do?

And what did Peter say to them? Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." There was repentance. Only through confrontation, only through the rebuke of Peter proclaiming the gospel to them. Now another place that is pointed to is Mark 11, 25, where we read that Jesus said, Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him that your Father in Heaven may also forgive you your trespass but if you do not forgive neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses." Well we've seen that forgiveness is performative language And it is spoken to the person who is being forgiven. If it's not spoken to that person, it's not forgiveness.

You can't tell your wife that you love her by telling that to somebody else. It only counts when you tell it to her. And so in this passage, Jesus is addressing the heart of the person praying If he's unwilling To forgive his neighbor then he Jesus saying you can't expect the father to forgive you if You have unforgiveness and unwillingness to release this debt if you were asked. If you're not ready to freely release that, then you can't expect your father to forgive you. You see, the granting of this forgiveness must come from the heart.

It must come from a heart that is willing and ready to forgive. And the attitude of The heart is a necessary preparatory work to actually forgiving someone. So that the promise is made in sincerity. Even if it's made contrary to our feelings. You can Make a promise that's contrary to your feelings that you believe and you will do.

Maybe somebody's called you up at 2 AM in the morning and asked for help. They're in trouble, whatever that might be. I know We've called people up like that, and I think I've gotten calls like that myself. So in the middle of the night, you maybe got them out of bed. Do they want to?

Do you want in that moment to get up and go render help? Well, no, You don't feel like getting up. But what do you say? Yes, I'll be right there, right? You've just made a promise that's totally contrary to your feelings, but it is a true promise.

You intend to keep it, and you do keep it. That's what forgiveness is like. We may not want to do it, we may not feel like doing it, but when we promise to forgive, if it is made in sincerity, then it is a promise that we intend to keep, and that is a promise that comes from a heart that was ready to forgive. And this is what Jesus is referring to in Matthew 18, a little later on in the passage that we read, where He says in reference to the unforgiving servant who was thrown into prison until he could pay all his debts. He said, so my Heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you from His heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses from his heart.

You see, this forgiveness begins in our heart with a willingness, a readiness to make that promise to release that debt when we are asked. And so, Mark 11 here is addressing a person who is in prayer to God. This is not a person who is granting forgiveness to God. It must be then understood as expressing a willingness to forgive others. Now this willingness to forgive others is not a substitute for actually doing it, but where there is no repentance that may be all the farther that we can go.

But there has to be there. It has to be there. Otherwise our Heavenly Father will not forgive us. Now another misconception about forgiveness is that forgiveness removes the need for restitution. And this is to confuse repentance with the fruit of repentance and what forgiveness is.

Forgiveness does not remove the need for restitution. If somebody steals something from us and they say, I've stolen this, please forgive me. And you say, I forgive you. That doesn't mean that they don't need to make restitution. Restitution is not about punishment, it's about restoration.

We can see this from God Himself. Remember when David sinned against Bathsheba. God sent Nathan the prophet to rebuke David and David repented and Nathan told David, God has forgiven your sin. You will not die. You are no longer separated from God.

Your sin is not separating you from God. But then God went on to give the consequences of that sin. That child that was conceived would die. The sword would not depart from David's house. Those were the consequences of sin.

Repentance does not remove the consequences of sin. If somebody who has stolen from you fails and repents and you forgive them and then they fail to make restitution, that's another sin. That's a failure to do what the law of God requires. And there are many passages that speak about the need for restitution. And forgiveness does not remove the consequences.

It removes the payment, the punishment, the punishment. But also another big misconception that I postponed is that confrontation and the need to confront is about addressing our hurt. This duty to rebuke is not primarily about addressing our hurt. It does address it, but that can't be the reason why we go, the primary reason. That should not be our primary reason.

It should be out of our love for our brother and sister in the Lord. Sin separates us from God and sin separates us from one another. That's what death is, separation. Fundamentally, it's separation. Physical death is separation of the body and soul.

Spiritual death is separation eternally from God. And if we love our brother or sister in Christ, we care about their sanctification. And we care about God's glory. It's really not about at all how thick our skin is and whether we can handle it. It's not about saying, well, I can handle this or I can't handle this.

It's about thinking I want my brothers, I love my brother and sister. I want them to grow in Christ. I want them to be more holy than I am. That's what has to motivate us when we confront. If bringing a rebuke is primarily about addressing our hurt, it will often fail.

Because our goal is wrong. Our goal is to get our hurts assaged. And often our approach will be wrong too, because we're gonna come and spill out our hurt. But this rebuke, as Jesus addresses it here, is not about our hurt. It's about out of our love for one another, a desire to see restoration, a desire to see them restored to a right relationship with us and with God.

And that's why it takes a lot of humility. That's why it's hard to confront. There's another false dichotomy that arises from the passages like 1 Peter 4, 8 where Peter says, and above all things have fervent love for one another for love will cover a multitude of sins. The Proverbs says something very similar. We don't have time to unpack all of this.

I realize this can be a very difficult question. But I will say this two things. This means two things. Simply this morning. One, it means to cover it in love and to cover in love means that sin is dealt with biblically.

Confession and repentance and then buried. That's one application of that. To cover in love means to deal with it biblically. David speaks about the one who's blessed is he whose sins are covered, that is forgiven. And forgiveness comes with repentance and confession.

But then there is also the other aspect, that love assumes no evil. Many times There are situations or actions that are open to interpretation. And we, actions that require us to assume what's in somebody's heart in order for it to be a sin. And so to cover in love these situations means not assuming the worst possible meaning about what happened or about what someone said, but assuming the best possible meaning. And so if we assume the best, there may not be any need.

If we assume the best, we realize there was no sin really there. There may have been something that happened that they weren't aware of, something they didn't intend to do or had no idea that they did. And so we can assume the best in that and recognize maybe there was no intent to sin. Well, this is a tall command. And the disciples are rightfully overwhelmed at this.

And their response is, Lord, increase our faith. But Jesus corrects a little bit of their misunderstanding because it's not how much faith we have because faith is not a power. If faith was a power then yes we would need a whole lot of faith to ever obey these commands. We know that whatever is not a faith is sin. But faith is not a power.

Faith is a channel through which grace is received. Faith is the channel through which God's power comes to us. And so Jesus says you don't need a lot of faith, you just need faith. If you just have a little bit of faith, you can say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and cast into the sea and it will happen. But there's also the other tendency to think that when we have forgiven somebody, well then wow!

We are holy and we've really done an outstanding deed and we should get some credit because we've forgiven this big debt that somebody's owes us So Jesus goes on he goes right on to address that problem as well and Which of you having a servant plowing or tending sheep? Will say to him when he has come in from the field come in and sit down to eat no he's gonna say, continue to do your duty. Now, Jesus is saying we have a duty to forgive. We are God's servants, and forgiveness is a duty that we owe. And while we might be tempted to think that we have done something really outstanding and really meritorious and really worthy of recognition and praise, Jesus is saying, no, servants are supposed to do their duty.

Now we don't have people who serve us in the same way today, and so this passage may sound a little bit odd, right? Because our culture looks down on people serving other people, but we have people serving other people all the time today. We do really have the same expectations of those people that we've engaged to serve us. If you hire somebody to mow your lawn or fix your car, you expect them to do the work for which you've hired them. And when that lawn service comes and mows your lawn and you've paid them, you don't expect to say, well, come on in and have a feast here and have some snacks and take a break.

That's not expected. We wouldn't expect that if we're mowing the lawn, that they would then invite us in and sit us down and feed us and give us a good time. We've asked that they've done their duty. It's nothing meritorious or great. And in the same way, we are God's servants.

We have a duty of service because God created us. He owns us by right of creation. That's why people rebel against the doctrine of creation. Anything to evade the fact that we are God's creatures. He is the potter, we are the clay, we are His servants, we are obligated, we have a duty to do what He's commanded us to do.

And when we've done that duty, we haven't done anything meritorious. We haven't done anything that obligates God to us in any way. We've simply done the duty that we had. We have a duty of service because God has redeemed us as well. He's purchased our freedom.

He's delivered us from bondage to sin and to Satan. And out of gratitude, we have, and He calls us His servants, and we have a duty. We have a duty to obey that we really can never fully repay. You see, there's no merit in our works, and by that, the biblical understanding of merit is an obligation to payment When we've obeyed God when we've done good deeds. There's no God is not obligated to pay us.

We've simply done what is our duty. There is no merit. That's what we mean by there is no merit in our works. If God is pleased to judge and to render rewards according to our works, but not because the works themselves merit anything. Our works merit nothing from God.

The only obligations God has toward us are those to which he has obligated himself. And God does obligate himself. He has obligated Himself to forgive us our sins for Christ's sake. But that's not because we've earned anything. It's not because we've been so good and obedient.

It's because Christ has merited that. And God in His grace has obligated Himself. There is of course no such thing whatsoever as super-arrogation. You know that some people have an excess of good works that they, that go over and above our duty to obey. That's a myth.

That is a myth. And certainly no person has done works whose merit can be extended to other people. When we have done our duty, when we have done what God has commanded us to do in granting forgiveness, we have just done what is our duty. And we have to say we are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.

We can thank the Lord Jesus Christ that He has done what He wasn't obligated to do in forgiving us, and in delivering us, removing from us the promise of punishment, removing the punishment from us, and granting us life. Praise the Lord for so great a salvation. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a just God and that you do take vengeance with a flaming fire on all those who do not obey your gospel. But we praise you that you are a God of mercy, that your loving kindness and tender mercies are from of old. We praise you Lord for your obedience for we have no hope without it and we praise you this morning for your death and your sacrifice.

For we have no hope without that either. For we owed a debt that we could never repay. And you have forgiven it. We ask Lord for Your grace to be able to extend that forgiveness to others and to, in our heart, always be ready to release those debts of others against us, because you have forgiven us such a far greater debt. Lord, we do love you, and we do thank you for the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ.

We bless your name with all that is in us through Christ. Amen.