We're talking about forgiveness today. We talked about it last week, and today we're looking at a couple practical problems concerning forgiveness. Because at its core, some of us have a difficulty in one of two ways with forgiveness. We either have a hard time offering it or we have a hard time receiving it. So we're going to look today in Luke, chapter 15. This might be familiar to you. It's quite a few verses we're going to read. It's the story of what we usually call the prodigal son. This version calls it the parable of the compassionate father. So basically the story, the title of it might change based on whose viewpoint you're standing in. Oddly enough, I think most of us find ourselves usually as not the father in this story, but one of the brothers, or perhaps just one of the bystanding servants, is here to throw a party for the son who returns. Perhaps that's the best role that we could play where we could find ourselves in this story. But I'm going to focus today. We're going to read it, and we're going to look at the two sons mainly. I could go on and on about this. I actually have on paper, made quite a long writing about it for no reason other than God was speaking to me. And I had to put it down so I wouldn't forget it. So I wrote it all down. But we're just going to focus on two aspects of it today, but I'm going to read the whole thing to you. It's a few verses, and I think it's good for us to hear this story that Jesus told again and again because we can learn so much from it about what God has for our lives. So in Luke chapter 15, starting in verse eleven, it says this. Jesus said a man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, father, give me my share of the estate that will belong to me. So he divided his assets between them. After a few days, this younger son gathered all that he had and he left on a journey to a distant country. There he squandered his wealth with a wild lifestyle. Then, after he had spent everything, a severe famine took place in that country and he began to be in need. So he went and worked for one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. While he was longing to eat the carob pods that the pigs were eating, no one gave him anything. But when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired workers have had enough food to spare? But here I am dying from hunger. I will get up and go to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired workers. So he got up and he went to his father. But while he was still a long way from home, his father saw him and his heart went out to him. He ran and hugged his son and kissed him. Then his son said to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his slaves, hurry. Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us eat and celebrate. Because this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Now, wouldn't it be great if the story had stopped right there? But Jesus continues. Now, the older son was in the field. As he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the slaves and asked what was happening. The slave replied, your brother has returned, and your father has killed the fattened calf. Because he got his son back safe and sound. But the older son became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and appealed to him. But he answered his father, look, these many years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never disobeyed your commands. Yet you never gave me even a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends. But when the son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. Then the father said to him, son, you are always with me, and everything that belongs to me is yours. It was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. So I wonder if you've ever taken something that didn't belong to you. We might call that stealing. But have you ever taken something that wasn't yours to take? Let me give you a simple example. It might even be a time where somebody gave you something freely, but it wasn't really theirs to give. I want us to take a journey mentally. I'm not going to go through the scriptures there. But perhaps you know some of this story, and perhaps you don't. We're going to take a journey mentally back to near the beginning of our scriptures, to the garden of Eden, and we're going to look at what was going on there. In this garden. Now, if we're thinking about it, just try to picture some kind of a beautiful garden. We've got bush gardens down the road or Tampa Zoo. There's all kinds of places where they have not just, you know, where you're in the woods and there seems to be, like, one or two kinds of trees. This is a place where they have selected beautiful trees and shrubs and flowers that grow in there, and it's planted in such a way that it's just pleasing to be there. I know people who have had memberships to Busch gardens, just to go there, to walk around. They don't care about any of the rides or any of this stuff. They just want to be there because it's just beautiful place to be. That kind of an environment is the garden that God created for Adam and Eve to live in, for the first humans to inhabit. And so they're living there, and he has this garden set up for them. Now. It's his garden. It's God's garden. The trees are God's trees. The people are God's people with his image stamped on them. And so that kind of means, in one way, their life didn't only belong to them. Now they have free will, they're allowed to make decisions. And yet, because they have the image of God stamped on them, that means they're created for a specific purpose. We have, well, you might have coins in your pocket. If I have coins, I usually give them to my daughter, and she'll either put them in her piggy bank or in an alabaster box. And we do collect that offering at one point. But the coins have an image on them. In fact, there was a time where they told Jesus, hey, they asked him a question, hey, should we pay taxes to the government of Rome or not? He said, well, show me the coin that somebody would pay those taxes with. So they show him a coin. He says, well, whose image is stamped on that? They said, well, it's Caesar's image. He says, well, then give the things to Caesar that belong to Caesar, and give the things that belong to God to God. The implication being that coin has Caesar's image on it. It has a purpose. It's for Caesar's purposes, and one of those is paying taxes back to him. But you are a human being with the image of God stamped on you. In other words, God has his mark of ownership on you, and he has a purpose for you, and you ought to live within that purpose. And so God had initially created human beings in his image for his purposes. One of those to be, to take care of the garden in which he had placed them to live. And one of the things God says to them is, you have all of these trees to enjoy. The fruit bearing trees were theirs for food. Now, I'm not much into a whole, like, vegan diet idea. I've been doing a lot more closer to vegetarian stuff. I've had several meals this week that had no meat in them. It wasn't even, like, specifically by choice. It was just kind of like, I want to eat more vegetables. I didn't have any meat in the fridge, and I enjoyed it. It was pretty good. Now I'm not ready to go whole vegetarian lifestyle. But I'm like, hey, this isn't bad. Every now and then I can make two or three meals a week with no meat in them, you know? And I did have bacon in the fridge, and I didn't cook it on purpose. So I guess I did make some choices there, like starting to do some healthy stuff, you know? And so God gives them, though, all these trees to eat from. I suppose it's a pretty good diet, you know, just what fruit do you want to eat today? And they go and they got them all. But there's one tree where God says, not that tree, it's the tree in the middle of the garden. And what God essentially said was, that tree is for me and me alone. If you eat from it, it'll kill you. Now, I don't think God needed to go there for a snack. Okay. There's places in the scripture where God says, if I was hungry, do you think I would ask you, like, I'm not gonna ask you to feed me. That's not why you bring your offerings to my altar. That's not why I have you bring grain or wine or olive oil or sacrifice an animal on the altar. I don't have you do that because I, as God, am hungry and need you to feed me. I have you do that to have awe and reverence for who I am. And so God places this tree in the middle of the garden and says, this is my tree. This is not your tree, and it's off limits for you. Now, we think, why does it have to be there at all? Right? You weren't thinking that. Now you are. But you were probably thinking that at some point, like, maybe it'd be easier if he just didn't put the thing there, you know, at all. Like, just no tree, no temptation. Okay, maybe. But picture, like, if you're going to a restaurant with a buffet and there's all this stuff that's there, and the person that's running the restaurant says, this is all for you. Now, there's this one thing, and I put it here because it pleased me to put it there. I put it there for me. Don't worry about it. You can look at it, but you probably don't want to eat that. It'll kill you. It's got rat poison in it. I don't know why. Maybe it's for the rats, you know? But the point being, he's like, I put that tree there, and it's not food for you. It doesn't belong to you. So you leave that tree alone. It's pretty simple, right? It's pretty simple. And yet, Adam and Eve, deceived by the serpent, they ate from that tree. Anyway, they forgot two things in that moment. They forgot whose they were, and they forgot who they were. They forgot who they were, who they belonged to. And they forgot who that tree belonged to. It was God's tree, not theirs. They were God's people. They weren't solely their own. Yes, they're their own individuals. Yes, they have free will. Obviously, they were able to make that decision to eat from that tree. But what they end up doing is stealing from God what only belongs to him. They took the thing that they weren't. They didn't have the authority to take it. Wasn't that theirs to take? In our world, we see this happening constantly. I got a few bullet points here, so just let me read these. We've got, on a broad scale, we've got nations and rebel armies taking land and people and things that are not theirs to take. That happens around the world. A lot of times you don't hear about it because it's not as flashy as somebody just firing rockets into each other's neighborhoods. But there are countries. In fact, we have a church that's meeting here. They'll be starting in a few minutes over in the gymnasium. They visited with us in this sanctuary the last couple weeks, but they're made up largely of people that speak Swahili and English and some other language, French and other ones. And they're beginning services here. They are an existing church, but they need a building space to worship in and to invite others in. And so their services begin today. They've already been having church services, but their services here are beginning today upstairs in the gymnasium. You're always welcome to join them afterwards if you ever want to go up in there. They would be happy. I don't know how many of the words you would understand, but you're welcome to be up there with them. And they're actually looking at joining in with the church of the Nazarene. We've had a couple meetings together with our district superintendent, and they're interested in joining as a Nazarene church. But not only that congregation, the redeemed disciples of the new covenant, but they also have eleven refugee churches in three different countries in Africa that they have started. That's amazing to me. Like, we worry about the problems we have kind of keeping like, these old buildings up to date and running and operating and all that. They've got eleven churches to help oversee from the other side of the world. And that just blows my mind, what God's doing. There is some amazing things. And so they're looking at bringing all those under the kind of the umbrella of the church of the Nazarene. And so I look forward to that kind of partnership, whether they do that or not. But the reason that they initially fled their country, their home country, was because of these rebel armies that come in to take your young men and turn them into fighters and killers that might even one day turn against you if it comes time to do that. And they just follow those orders. These people have no right to take the land or the people that don't belong to them, and yet they do it anyway. We have governments, maybe right here in our own, that are taking the God given rights from citizens. They exercise tyranny over them. They don't have the right to do that. Our founding fathers understood something in our constitution. They did not give us rights. They recognized that we are endowed as human beings with rights from God himself that should not be infringed by any government. And yet they still are trying to do that in this country and in many others. We have mothers who insist on taking the lives of their not yet born children, sometimes influenced by the fathers of those children who should be standing up to protect them. We have gang bangers taking the lives of innocent people in cities all over our country for no reason, or at least, well, there's never a good reason for that. We have human traffickers taking children so that people can perform the very worst and darkest things imaginable, most degenerate things, probably more than what you could ever imagine. And that's not just somewhere out there that's very local. It happens in our communities. Happens. The I four corridor from Clearwater to Daytona is some of the worst area in the country for human trafficking. And it's happening right under our noses and right in our midst, taking their bodies, their innocence and their lives from them. Drugs and alcohol running rampant. That steals families and futures from people. We have liars in the media and in governments that steal our rights to the truth by muzzling those who would dare to speak it. The list probably goes on and on. I just stopped there. But the worst thing out of all of this, the worst theft that occurs, and you might at first say, no, pastor, that's wrong. No, it's right. I had to check myself on this. The worst theft is a theft against God. God. It wasn't just that they took his tree and he got mad about it. The thing is, we took our very selves from God in doing that as human beings. When we say, God, I know your plan, I know what you want, but I'm going to transgress that. I'm going to step over that line. I'm going to trespass that and I'm going to do what I want anyway. What we've done is we've taken ourselves from the authority and leadership of God and placed ourselves in charge. We've placed ourselves on a throne. In fact, what Satan had done when he deceived Eve in the garden and said, God knows that when you eat of that tree you will become like God's yourself. You'll be able to choose between good and evil on your own. And so the worst theft that has ever happened is when we stole ourselves from God. Rather than falling under his authority and leadership and love, we decided that we wanted to go out on our own. And God could have demanded anything up to and including death. He has the right and the ability to do that. Except he didn't. He didn't. In fact, he had told them in the day that you eat of that, you will die. And yet that didn't happen for a long time. Because of God's grace. They did not die in that day. Now, does that mean God's a liar or he changes his mind? He's not a liar. You could say that he changes his mind, but not because he's wishy washy, but because grace wins. Because God is a God of love, mercy and grace. And he says, you'll still die. You're not going to live forever. You don't have access to that other tree in the garden, the tree of life. I'm banning your access to that where you no longer have that ability, but yet you're not going to die today. And he promised to send his own son. That promise he did fulfill. He sent his own son to die on their behalf, yours and mine as well. So having that in mind, the idea of taking what's not yours, taking yourself, you don't belong solely to yourself. Did you ever think of that? Like, it's not that you belong to me and I belong to you? I mean, in a certain way we do as brothers and sisters in Christ, as fellow christians, we do have a responsibility to each other. But I don't have ownership of you any more than you do of me. But we have that responsibility to each other. But when I'm talking about, you don't own yourself, what I mean is, we're supposed to submit our lives to God. He says, Jesus says, or the New Testament says, to submit your bodies as living sacrifices that are wholly pleasing and acceptable to God. We offer ourselves up willingly to the ownership and authority of God. So I want to go back now. We've kind of transported ourselves to that garden and to everything that was going on there. So now let's go back to the story of the prodigal son, this younger son again. Last year, I spent a lot of time working through this. This guy's a piece of work. I don't know how young he is. I think he's 17. That's just the number I get in my mind. Like, he's a 17 year old. You know how 17 year olds are, right? Like, they think they've learned a lot. High school is not teaching them anything else anymore because they've kind of already learned everything that they had by about 8th or 9th grade. The rest of it's just fluff that gets you ready for college, I guess. I don't know. And so the 17 year olds, they can drive. They can kind of do what they want. They maybe bought a fake id and went out and partied a couple times. You know, they got all this stuff, and they're like, I'm ready to go out and experience life on my own terms. I need money, right? Like, they still don't have their own ability to really get money. And the ones that do, like, without having a w two, you know, like a job, those are the ones you worry about. Like, where'd you get money? You know, like, what did you steal or sell or take? Like, you shouldn't have money. Okay. You're still asking dad for. Well, it used to be $10 for the gas tank. Now it's like $50, you know, but, ah, man, I remember my first truck. I was 17 or so, and I bought this truck. I found out it got 8 miles to the gallon. And I also found out that when dad loaned me the money to buy, like, the part I didn't have saved up, he wanted me to pay all of that back before I bought registration for the truck and put gas in the tank. So I would take it up and down the dirt roads around our house just for a mile or two here and there. Now, I remember when I had picked it up, I had $16 left in my pocket, and I had put all that in the gas tank, and gas was well under $2 a gallon back then. It was a dollar something a gallon. And so that gives you an idea how many gallons were in it. 1012 gallons, probably. I don't know how many miles I drove it up and down those dirt roads until I had paid it off and got it registered. All I remember is, I got it registered, and my brother and I were going to go for a drive, probably stop and get some pizza somewhere. And we're taking off. It's got loud, dual exhaust. It's noisy, and it's powerful. And I'm just driving this truck I'm having. It's everything that I hate about all these kids driving trucks today. You know, I've got that old man, like, oh, that's so loud. You know, they're annoying. I'm sorry. I need to go back and apologize to my neighbors. I tore up the roads. It was not good, but, well, it was fun when those tires would throw gravel, you know, it was really fun. So, anyway, we get about 2 miles, and the truck stalls. I'm like, what's going on? My truck, it's not running. Turns out I'd run it out of gas. Those gallons of gas did not go very far. When you're tearing up the roads and making noise, that truck burned gas so quickly, I could hardly get to a gas station in time before it ran out. After that. Oh, my goodness. But 17 year olds, man. I picture this younger son. He's 17 years old, and he's like, you know, here's my solution. The life I want to live needs money. Dad has money. Dad's been doing pretty well. I don't want to wait until dad's dead to get the inheritance now, so let me just ask for it right now. Hey, dad, I've been thinking. I want my money now. You don't have any money. I think of bill Cosby telling this joke on the Cosby show. I know you're not supposed to talk about bill Cosby anymore, but this was great. Back on the Cosby show, his son, theo. He says, dad, hey, you know, I just wondered. I forget the setup. He wanted to either drop him a block away from school or something. He didn't want people to see him with his parents. He says, what's the problem? He says, well, I don't want the other kids knowing that I'm rich. And Bill Cosby just goes. He says, oh, let me clear that up for you right now, son. Your mother and I are rich. You have nothing. And it was just great. It's like, that's a good position to remember, like, when you're 17. I don't care how much money your parents have. You have nothing. You have what we allow you to have. And yet this father, how ridiculous is this? He goes ahead and gives him that which, technically, he had the right to give, but it wasn't really, at that point, his to give. According to the way things worked, you don't split up the estate, the livelihood, the living. You don't split that up until after you're gone. Then the older brother gets the double portion, and whoever's left gets their single portions. In this case, there's two brothers. So he gets two thirds, and he gets one third. Except it says that the father went ahead and divided his living between them. This boy, he decided that he wanted his share now. And his father goes ahead and divides it between them, passes it out to the two of them. Now, the young kid runs off. He runs off. He runs away, and he does whatever his heart desires. Have you heard anybody say recently, like, oh, just follow your heart? No, don't follow your heart. Yes, your heart is, the scriptures say, the wellspring of life. Yes, good things do flow out of your heart. But also we learn that our heart can also lead us astray. Our heart can lead us to do things that sound good, and yet, at the same time, those are the things that will lead us to death. My heart says I need to eat from that tree in the middle of the garden. No, that's not your tree. That tree belongs to God. And so we've got all this going on with this young man. He goes off, he follows his heart. He does what he wants. It doesn't say what he spends it on. Just riotous living. It's always a party at his house until the money's gone. And then he has no more friends, no food, nothing left. I picture this young man still, though, he's got some real nice threads. I don't know where he bought them from. I don't know what, like, the stores were like back then, I don't know what the hip, trendy. I still don't know what they are today. This says wrangler on it. I got it at Walmart. You know, like, I don't know about fashion, but what. What I do know, and people have said, like, oh, I like those shoes. Yeah, they were $20 at Ross. You know, like, that's why I got them. I'm not trying to make a fashion statement about how beautiful these are. I guess they're great. They were $20, and that's what drew me to these shoes. That's my level of, like, fancy, you know, is can I afford it? And so this young guy, he though I picture, he went out and spent some money on some threads. He went out and got some top notch clothes to wear. And now he's probably, at this point, sold off everything or gotten rid of everything. He's got one good outfit left, and he finds himself slopping pigs. That outfit was pretty nasty. Isn't it amazing that something that costs a lot and can look real fancy can get trashed so easily? And there he is, literally insane. Maybe not, like, a problem that he was born with in his head, but he has driven himself to insanity at this point. How insane is it to have had, literally had the world by its tail for so long? But really, what was happening was you were just training yourself to be feeding pigs. And there he is in a moment of clarity, just one little. One little snippet, one little ray of sunlight shines through, and he says, oh, my goodness. There are slaves that my father has now. When we think slaves, like, yeah, we're messed up a little bit with the horrible thing that happened in our country's history. It was probably not great, but, like, literally half, actually, I think it was like two thirds of the roman world were considered what they called slaves. It was really a position. It might not be of honor or greatness. Like, you might not have your whole freedom, but you had a master who was supposed to take care of you and love you. It wasn't just, like, a mean, domineering. In fact, Jesus talks about good masters and bad masters, and if there's a good master, you know, the servants actually want to serve him. It's an honoring thing to do that. And so maybe. Maybe it's not perfect, but it was the world they lived in. And this young man finally says, I could go be a slave of my father and have it better than I've got it here. Those guys have more than enough food. They're not out here starving, I'm wanting to eat some of the scraps the pigs are eating, and they won't even let me have that. I can at least go home and be a slave in my father's household, and that would be better than what I've got going on. So he makes the decision to go back. You know, it's interesting. If he becomes a slave, he 100% signs over control of his life to his father. The thing that got him in the wrong spot in the first place, thinking that he owned himself all the way and that he wanted to do whatever he felt like. So he goes and he says he has this speech worked out. And he's like, I'm just going to tell my dad, you know what? I've sinned against heaven. Which means, like, the place where God lives. So it's talking about God. I've sinned against God. I've sinned against you. I'm not worthy. Have you ever felt that phrase? I'm unworthy. I'm unworthy of the love of my child. I'm unworthy of. If you got a dog, the dog coming up, and no matter what you've done or how long you've been gone and how hungry that dog is, because you were gone, like, all day or something, and that dog's just like, I'm happy you're home. You know, you're not worthy of that. You know, that dog is more loyal to you than you are to it most of the time, at least in my experience. That's how I am with pets. I'm like, oh, shoot, I forgot you were even here. You know, I should probably feed you. Oh, your water bowl is dry. I'm so sorry. Like, you know, we're not worthy so many times. At least we feel that way so often. It's sad when we feel that way about God. And maybe we're not worthy of the love of God. That doesn't mean he doesn't give it to us. This young man couldn't even envision receiving. He couldn't even envision asking for forgiveness. That was nowhere in his speech, that was nowhere in his mind, was coming up to his dad and saying, I've sinned against heaven and against you. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? He didn't even think to ask that. All he wanted was the smallest scrap his father could give him, and that's to be a slave in his household. I'll work for it. I'll earn it. I'll do whatever it takes. I just want to make sure I have a meal. You can put me outside behind the woodshed if you want to sleep out there. I don't care. I just. I just need food. I'm hungry. I'll work for food. I'll work for whatever scraps you can give me. But eventually, he makes it home, probably still smelling like the pig pen, wearing those dirty clothes that were once shiny and fancy. And he shows up, and he has a beautiful reunion with his father. And his dad says, get him some new clothes. Get him a ring, which is like the signet ring, the business ring, the ring that says you can stamp the wax seal on a document for the father's business. You have the authority of the father now and then he tells some of the other servants, there's a fattened calf. That's the one that you've been preparing for a special day. And you don't maybe know when that day is coming, but you'll know it when it's there. And he says, today's that day. Go kill that fattened calf. We're going to have a party. So they start preparing that it takes a few hours. Meanwhile, the older brother's out in the field working. Nobody goes and gets him and says, hey, come on. Work's done for the day. You know, like, come out of the fields. Come in, enjoy the happiness of your father. It doesn't happen. In fact, he shows up and he hears the party. He sees something going on. He probably smelled the barbecue of this yummy cow. And he's like, what's happening? I didn't remember seeing this on the calendar. You know, like, I don't get it. What's going? He didn't have a watch with a calendar on it. These things tell you everything these days. Isn't it great? I was walking the other day, and it's like, are you working out? I'm like, am I breathing heavy? I'm just walking. You know what? Anyway, no. He's like, it's not on the calendar today. What's the party? And so he calls one of the other servants. He's like, hey, what's going on? He says, your brother showed up. He's like, thought I was done with that guy. But you know what? He'd never been done with him. This whole time, every day, that brother's living rent free in his head, living there, just eating away at him, and he's thinking of what he's going to do if that punk ever has the nerve to show up again. And he's ready to do that. And he believed. This whole time, he believed that he had to earn everything. But did you remember? Did you catch what the father said to him? The older brother says, dad, this whole time I've been working for you, I've been. I've been living as a slave for you, dad. I haven't elevated myself beyond that of your other servants. I've been living as if I'm one of them. And even if I had wanted to have a young goat, I never even got that. And his dad's like, are you kidding me? Look around. Everything you see has been yours. Remember, he had divided his living between them. Literally everything that was left belonged to that brother the whole time. He had the whole estate. And he's living as if he can't even take the smallest of their flock and cook it up one day just to have a little celebration on a weekend with his buddies. He's like, I've been living as a slave. And yet he owned the whole kingdom, so to speak, because he believed that he had to earn everything. That also meant that he couldn't fathom the idea of offering forgiveness. Oh, okay. Some people. Some people either can't or won't accept forgiveness because we don't think that we did something that bad. In other words, you think, well, I've been pretty good. I haven't done, like, all those bad things that you talked about at the beginning, you know, I haven't done all those things. And so maybe, just maybe, you, you know, I don't need to ask for forgiveness, or I don't need to accept forgiveness, because I haven't really. I haven't really trespassed that much. I haven't done anything where I really need forgiveness. And then on the other side, you've got some people that think that the thing they did was so bad that there's no possible way that anyone, especially God, would ever forgive them. And they look at that and they say, you know, there's this thing that I did. You don't know me. You don't know what I've been through. You don't know what I've done. No one could forgive me. No one could love me. No one could accept me. And you know what? To me, the saddest part about that is that the people that feel that way, that second group that feels like there's no way they could ever be forgiven. They're not even here to hear it today. They didn't even come to church today. I don't just mean in this building, but I mean, in any church, because for so long, for so long, people in church, you and I, have taught this image or this idea that this is where clean people are. All those dirty people are out there. All those sinners are just going out doing their thing in the world and that they don't belong here. I heard that just this week. Somebody that said, well, I couldn't go to church. I'm not clean enough for that. Are you kidding me? That's exactly who should be in here. Maybe most of us should be gone, and that's who should be in here. I'm not telling you to leave and never come back. Don't hear that. What I'm saying is, perhaps they're the ones that need this the most. Perhaps we've heard that message, and if it's resonated in your heart, you're like, okay, who can I share that with? Maybe if they won't come into church, maybe we just need to sit with them on a Sunday morning and say, hey, I love you and God loves you. We're at the ice cream shop downtown. Yesterday, I think it came from here, from our end of school bash. One of these little tiny Jesus figurines where we were giving them out because everybody needs a little Jesus. Get the joke? And they had it sitting there, and there's a little sticky note, and it just had an arrow pointing to the little Jesus, and it says, he really loves you. It was great. I don't know if that came from our little giveaways. I think it would be great if it did. That's so cool. Sometimes you never know what impact you're having. Some of these folks that need to be here most to hear this, they believe that the church has an attitude that this is not the place for sinners, and so they think church is not for them, and there's no way they could ever fit in. So I want to go through a couple things. At one point in time, it was kind of. The idea was put out there to people that if you had ever been divorced, that church wasn't the place for you. Some of you maybe have had that experience. It was kind of made clear to you, like, well, you messed up, and God said, that's a sin, so you can't be here. If you belonged here, you would have known better than to go through that. Then we kind of got beyond that. We fixed that. We kind of said, okay, you know what? We got that wrong. We're sorry about that. Come on in. You're welcome back in. Oh, okay, good. So then at another place in time, though, people were told, well, if you had a child outside of wedlock, clearly you missed the rule book on that one. You shouldn't have been here. If you had been here, you would have known not to do that, and church was not the place for them. So then at another point in time, if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, like an addiction to that and you like to go out and party, or you have a problem with drinking too much and has gotten a hold of you, then church must not be for you. Or if you're covered with tattoos or you've been out partying or you have a hangover, still, you probably didn't belong in church. It's not really for you. And then just when we finally think, you know what, though? By this era, by this time, we've finally arrived at this place where we've gotten rid of all those prejudices, where we've said, you know what, you are welcome here. We got it wrong in the past. You know, those decades are long gone. We've gotten over that. We kind of put the rule book on a lower shelf where we didn't look at it as quickly and easily and we think we're doing so much better. But then all over the place, you turn on a radio. Maybe it's some christian radio show with a talking guy, or maybe it's somebody on X which used to be known as Twitter or Facebook or who knows what. And somebody gets this idea that they, as this commentator, get to tell churches and pastors what we should be saying. Some of you might listen to some of these programs, you might read some of what they say and they'll say, you know what the problem is? We've got these things going on in the world. It's pride month, and this has gone too far. There's all these, you know, there's all this agenda that's being pushed and the churches need to speak up. I'll tell you what, if somebody's struggling with homosexuality and wondering if this is the life for them, if somebody's going through something like some type of gender dysphoria, and I know the terms keep changing, but I'll just go ahead and call it that. They don't know. They're trying to figure out what they feel and what they look like and how that mixes together and the world's telling them a whole bunch of stuff, and all they tend to hear from the church is, well, you go figure that out on your own, but don't bring that agenda in here. Now, by all means, don't come in waving a flag, anything other than the flag of Jesus Christ. I'm a patriot and I like our country, or at least like what our country is supposed to be and what most of us have in our hearts for our country. I like what our soldiers have fought for in the past. I believe in those things. We don't fly an american flag in this place. The only flag will fly is the christian flag. That's not an anti patriotic statement. That's not an against America statement. I don't like it when you fly other flags in our country, in places like the halls of Congress, when they fly foreign flags on the floor there. I don't believe that that is anything that we should be doing. I can be quite patriotic in the right context. I can thank a vet when they're wearing the hat for what war they served in and thank them for their service. I don't mind doing those things. But when we're in here, we fly one flag, and that's the flag of Jesus Christ. That's his banner. Over us is love, and that's what we fly under. And so if somebody comes in with an agenda and wants to fly that flag, yes, I've got an issue with that. But if you're truly seeking answers to the problems or the scenarios you find yourself in, this is the place for you to be. And if any of us have an issue or a problem with that, then we are the ones that need to come back to Christ and say, I don't even know if I'm worthy to be called your child. Because, God, I've read your word, and I know what you're about. That you're about bringing the family back in together. And until we understand that we're standing on the outside like the older brother and saying, I'm not ready to go into that party. We think we stand on a high ground when we fight against whatever the popular moral issue of the day is. Of course, all the while, in many of our hearts, bitterness is festering, gossip is running rampant, barely even behind the scenes, barely even under the radar. We have lives of prayerlessness that are only matched by the high levels of pride that won't allow us to get down on our knees before God. And God forbid somebody might be in the lobby and utter a cuss word or show up late for service or have a hangover, but they still came because they're looking for hope. And nothing else has worked. We all struggle with forgiveness. Either we can't understand how to receive it or we don't know how to offer it. And somewhere in this story, each of us can resonate with one or the other of that. And it all stems from us not knowing to whom we belong. If we struggle with forgiveness, it's because we missed out on the idea that we belong to God, that everything we are and everything we have belongs to him. You see, if you receive new life from Jesus, you're a son or a daughter of the king. In fact, I've told you before, I listen to different churches, different pastors throughout the week, and it's amazing how many times, one out of four or five, that I'll rotate between the service that they had the Sunday before, I'll hear something that just clicks with what I'm prepared to bring before you today. I was listening to one this morning, a guy named Joby Martin. He has a church up in Jacksonville. It's called 1122. And he said in the scriptures, a lot of times some of our newer translations will change where it says a son of God, and they'll say a son or daughter of God to make us understand that that's how it is. He was talking to all of us, and yet he said, in their world, the sons were the ones that received an inheritance. The sons were the ones that had those rights. And when the scriptures say you become a son of God, it's not sexist or chauvinistic or whatever, it's actually elevating all of us to that position of being able to receive the kingdom of God. So whether you're a man or a woman today, if you've received Christ, you're a son of God, you've received everything that God has for you. The only question is, are you going to be like the brother that stands out and won't come into the party because you can't understand how to offer grace and forgiveness and acceptance to those who the father is welcoming in with open arms. Or are you that other son who just could not even comprehend how. How after everything you've done, you even you are able to come in and say, you mean, I own this? I squandered it all away. How can it be restored to me? That's what we're going to look at next week. The idea that the ultimate point or purpose of forgiveness is restoration. Because of the standing that we have before God, not of our own merits, but because of Jesus Christ, we have been adopted as sons and daughters of the king of the universe. And because of that, he has forgiven us and given us the full rights as children of the king. If you haven't been walking in that freedom, if you haven't been receiving that grace from him, today is the day to say, God, I need to learn about forgiveness. I need to learn how to offer it, and I need to learn how to receive it.