Today I want to look at a scripture that's in the gospel of Luke, chapter 23. One of the criminals who was hanging there railed at him, saying, aren't you the christ save yourself and us? But the other criminal rebuked him, saying, don't you fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we are rightly so, for we are getting what we deserve for what we have done. But this man has done nothing wrong.

Then he said to Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. But think about this thief. There's Jesus. He's here.

He's on this cross. Contrary to what all the movies show about, they're about 13ft high. They crucified people naked at eye level. It's not a pretty picture. But here would be these men being crucified, bleeding and naked at eye level.

And there they are. And when Jesus is speaking to people, he can look them in the eye, not looking down at them, but looking out at them. But even in the act of how they ordered the people that were crucified that day, you have a man on his left and a man on his right, and a sign over the top of Jesus nailed to his cross that says, the king of the Jews. Good kings have somebody to their left and to their right sitting on thrones that have responsibilities in their kingdom. And so even for Jesus, they were mocking him even throughout his death.

So this man here, even the position of where he is, even his position, even though it wasn't up to him, it is a mockery of Jesus Christ. But it matched that man's life very well. He had led a life of mockery, a life of mocking those in authority over him, those he didn't like. Whatever it was, he railed against it. And he started that out.

He started that out being here to the side of the king of the Jews. And he's mocking Jesus. At first, he just came naturally to him.

He'd probably even himself off a long time ago. His life was such a mockery. He probably just figured that his destination ends up here. You see that reflected in the words that he eventually says to the other guy, perhaps one of his compatriots in a revolution of some sort that failed, where he says, you and I were getting what we deserve. But this man, he is holy and righteous, and he doesn't have this coming.

He probably didn't see, up until that point, any redemptive value in his life. Have you ever figured that there's people that fit that description? You look at them and you say, I don't see anything worth redeeming in them. I don't see anything in that person that's really worth anybody giving them a second thought. Perhaps it's a nameless person.

Perhaps you don't know them other than by sight, or perhaps by some sentence that's been given on them for a crime in which they committed against another person. And we think there's absolutely no reason for them to be redeemed or forgiven. They need to be locked away or perhaps executed by the state. And yet somehow, here's this man dying next to Jesus. His death is going to be preceded by Jesus by just a few hours.

And he hears Jesus say, father, forgive them. All of a sudden, a new possibility begins to open up, where perhaps Jesus might fling open the gates of heaven to open even for this man. As he hears Jesus speak these words, he thinks, can it be about me as well? Now, usually we have this type of message on a good Friday service somewhere around Easter time, and we talk about the agony that was death on a roman cross, the torture that it was. It wasn't just capital punishment.

It was a death that was meant to be both a political sign of domination. We can do this, and you can't stop us. Sometimes people are executed on a cross just because. Just because the rulers wanted to prove that they could do it to anyone at any time, no matter what. And while going through all of that, this guy engages in that thing that came all too natural to him, just starts mocking and insulting and trying to cut him down.

It was also natural to him. And think about this man at this point in his life, probably everyone had abandoned him. Crucifixions weren't a spectator event. The only thing was people coming in and jeering at them and insulting them and shaking their heads at them and walking along. And yet, at the same time, here we have this man beginning to do that, and then all of a sudden, he decides there's something different about this guy that he's insulting.

And he realizes that Jesus has something even for him. Perhaps at this point, he's been contemplating his whole life and thinking about every decision he's made, good or bad, every decision that he made that led him to this point. And he's thinking about all that, and he realizes that there's no reason for Jesus to be here. I don't even know if at this point the word or the thought of forgiveness has entered his mind for sure. The nation of Rome won't forgive him.

Most of the people he knew wouldn't forgive him, but yet he probably didn't think, maybe Jesus will forgive me. And yet something within him prompts him to say, Jesus, will you remember me? He didn't say, will you forgive me? I don't know if he was able to think that. Last week we talked about this story that Jesus told of a couple sons and their father.

You see, the younger son, the prodigal son, as we call him, couldn't understand to even ask or seek forgiveness. This older one, he couldn't even understand to offer it or to give it. Both of them had an issue with forgiveness. The only one that truly understood it was the father. And then, don't forget, there's some other characters in the story.

There's all these other servants that are in the father's household, and they're just happy that the father is happy. It's our job to celebrate whenever somebody who's been away from God comes back to him. Amen. And what is the goal of forgiveness anyway? That's what we're looking at today.

Today, the purpose of forgiveness, like, this is our week on this series, and the purpose of forgiveness is restoration. Now, I love to use the example of an old car or an old house, either one, whichever works for you. We've all owned cars. We've all owned houses or lived in them. And so the idea of taking one that's old and broken apart, and maybe if it's a home, it's been leaking and things have gotten rotten and out of control and there's maybe some critters that live in the walls that shouldn't.

There's a lot of work to be done. Old cars can be the same way. I know someone who. Their wiring harness on their truck was chewed by squirrels. Did you know your home or your.

Your homeowners insurance covered that because it was parked in the garage. It was weird. I don't know. But it worked. They got that claim handled, you know, but to take a car that's fallen into some sort of damage or disrepair or a home and to not only fix it up where it's usable and livable.

See, some of us stop there in our walk with God, by the way. We say, God, you know what? I've got some messes in my life. I've got some anger. I've got some bitterness.

Could you just kind of fix that? And he's like, yeah, but what about the lust that you have? What about the anger that you have? What about the self importance that you have? And the list goes on and on and on.

We're comfortable to just kind of polish up a few things and kind of shine them up and let God do that in our lives. But we don't want to go all the way to full restoration. You see, a full restoration of a car might include actually taking the body off of the frame, the chassis of the car, and sanding it down and repainting it, and replacing every component that has any kind of wear and tear on it, replacing all the belts and hoses and everything, not just the things that are broken, but actually renewing every bit of it. And then you take everything off the body of the car. Every panel gets stripped down to just plain metal with nothing attached to it.

And it's sanded down to virgin metal, and it's primed and it's painted, and it's clear coated, and it's put all back together and it's put back on the car and everything's reassembled, sometimes better than new. Some of these guys that are building classic cars, the paint quality that they put on them is far and above anything that they ever dreamed of 50, 60, 70 years ago. Some of them, they'll take, and they'll take maybe the original style engine, but they'll put fuel injection and a modern type of electronics in it, so that the engine gets its spark and its fuel in a more efficient way, so you don't have to sit there, prime the, pull the choke, prime the pump, accelerator, and then crank, and crank, and crank, and hope you did it right where it'll actually start. Now let's just put a computer on it and fuel inject it, and you just hit the key and it goes, no matter what time of year it is. I don't like when people restore cars that way.

I want it to be, if you want an old car, have the problems that they had when they build it, you know what I'm saying? That's how I want it. But that's not how God restores us. He restores us better than we ever were. You see, God's plan and purpose for us is more than what we've ever imagined.

What God wants for us is better than even how we were born, because we were still born with this problem in the world. We still have this desire towards evil, towards mocking God, just like the thief on the cross next to him. No, you might not ever say that with your words, but so many times in the way we live, it's a mockery. Against God, we act as if he's really not here and he's really not present and he's really not powerful. But to truly understand who God is, we say, God, Jesus, remember me?

I need help. That guy knew it was too late to come down off that cross. Although Jesus could have made it happen if he wanted to. I'm sure he knew that that part of his life was too far gone, but yet something in him knew that there was something that Jesus could do for him. The life to come.

The purpose of forgiveness, both from person to person and from us to God. The purpose of that forgiveness is so that we can be restored in our relationships. Personally, we have that issue. Sometimes. Personally, we have those times where we've done something to another person and we need their forgiveness.

The first week we talked about this, we mentioned that sometimes the people that have hurt us the most are those who are geographically or relationally closest to us. Somebody around the world has never hurt me to the best of my knowledge. You could probably draw some ties to where, like, you know, terrorist activities. Yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, you could probably say, like, well, there's somebody that developed a virus around the world and it went all over and hit us. Yeah, yeah, you can make that connection. But somewhere in here we've got to understand that the people that hurt us the most are those who are closest to us. And when we want to be restored, when we want to have that relationship restored, we have to remove that thing that's blocking it. We have to remove that thing that's kind of getting in the way in our relationships.

Forgiveness is the first step with that. And remember, the scriptures tell us that when we were still sinners, Christ died for us. In other words, before we ever knew that we had a need for salvation, God was sending his son to die for us. Sometimes you have to offer forgiveness to someone before they've ever asked for it, before they've ever mentioned to you. Hopefully it never comes to that.

Hopefully, you're so in tune with yourself and what God's guiding you through as you're growing in Christ that you would realize and that his holy spirit would show you that there's something in your life that needs to change and that is causing a barrier between you and other people. And when that's happening, you need to be able to go to them and to seek that restoration. If it's something that's been ongoing, if it's something that you've been doing over and over, you need to be aware of that and say, okay, God, I'm sorry for this, or, okay, to this person, I'm sorry for this. And to seek that wall to be torn down, that's been a dividing wall. Ultimately, when God looks at us and when we look at others, it needs to reflect how God sees us.

And it's this way. God sees in us something that is worthy of redemption, something that's worthy of redeeming, and something that's worthy of restoring. We all need to realize our own sin and guilt along the way, but we also need to recognize not only the power of Jesus to forgive us, but the desire of God for us to be forgiven and restored. There's a story. There's probably a whole bunch of places we could talk in the scripture, but there's one that I don't want to miss.

During this three week series that we've been in, there's a story that Jesus tells about a guy, and I think I talked about it a little bit, but I really want to hone in on something here. This guy owed, like, millions of dollars, and he goes to the guy that. That he owes it to, and he says, I can't pay it back. The guy says, well, the judgment then, the way our courts are set up, the way this justice system is set up, is that you have to go to jail until that debt's paid, which is kind of funny to me because I can't really earn any money in jail unless it's, like, through illegal means, like the mafia did and everything, you know, like, some of you guys that are from New York are like, oh, the mafia goes to jail and runs things from there. You know, they've been doing that for decades, but it doesn't make much sense to me to be thrown in jail to pay off the debt.

And yet that was the way the courts demanded it. And so this man, he's ordered into jail to pay off his debt. That was an unpayable debt. Hear me. Jesus is speaking beyond money here.

Jesus talks a lot about money to us. Sometimes people are like, oh, pastors always talk about money in church. Not always. Every now and then, have you ever gone to a doctor and they put that blood pressure cuff on you? You know, check your blood pressure, put a thermometer in there, check that they're looking for little symptoms or signs of where you're.

What's going on inside your body. And the same thing when. When we talk about these things, it's like, okay, you know, money has to do with what's going on in our heart. Well, so what Jesus is talking about is talking about a debt, of course, of money that was owed here. But what he's really talking about is this man owed something he couldn't repay.

He owed something he could never come up with enough to repay it. Chances are he had a business venture. He went and got some capital from the money lender. He went, he invested it. It didn't work.

The business venture failed, and the man lost everything. The man lost it all. And now he's saying, I can never repay this debt I owe you. Jesus isn't just speaking about money. He's talking about our lives.

And he's saying that when we have worked against God, when we have sinned against him, what we have effectively done is worked up a debt that we can never repay. Now, God's not sitting there saying, okay, but until you pay up, I don't care about you. I don't love you. No. Remember, while we were still sinners, in other words, while we were still in debt to God, he provided a way for that debt to be absolved to be paid.

What did Jesus say on the cross? The last words, it is finished. It is completed. It is paid up in full. And so, as he is doing that, Jesus is telling us this story, knowing that he will one day soon pay that debt that we could never repay, thus forgiving us of our sin and the debt that we have against God.

And this story would be really neat if that man that Jesus is telling us about gets forgiven and goes out and lives a happy and fulfilling life. Except his heart was stubborn and hard. And he goes out and he finds somebody that owes him money. He borrowed a big sum of money, but he loaned a small sum of money to another guy, and he does the same thing. He's like, pay up.

And the guy says, I can't. It was out of his means to do this. And so this guy, Jesus tells us, starts, like, choking him. And now, have you ever wanted to just kind of choke somebody just for a second, like, just shake him just a little? You know, sometimes I think maybe a good shake or just a light slap in the face would really stop somebody in their tracks and make them consider where they're at for a second, you know?

And I don't suggest that, especially to a spouse. Don't slap your spouse's all that stuff. That's not cool. But sometimes, though, that part of your brain that kind of lights up every now and then, you're like, I could slap them. Maybe a slap would work.

It probably doesn't. I've also been told as a man, not to ever say to a woman, especially your wife, hey, calm down. That doesn't usually make the situation better, you know? And to be fair, I mean, the same thing for guys. That's not usually gonna calm a guy down.

I think a slap might, or it might start a fight. I'm not sure which. I've never done it, so I don't have any research on this. But this guy, he starts choking the guy. He's like, pay up, pay up, pay up.

And he's like, I literally can't. I can't even talk right now. You're choking me, you know? And so he says, I can't pay you. And he says, throw him in jail.

Don't let him out. Make sure he pays everything. And there's these other servants that are saying, like, are you kidding me? We know you just got forgiven, and now you won't forgive this guy. Jesus is teaching us something here about this.

Jesus is teaching us that we must forgive others. If we don't forgive others, we don't understand how to receive forgiveness from God. God can't be limited by us. But he has said that if we don't forgive somebody who wrongs us or sins against us, God can't forgive us. It's not because it's impossible for God to do.

Clearly, he can move heaven and earth to bring forgiveness to us. Just like that guy on the cross who sees that there's something in him worth being restored. He sees in himself that the only way he could see this is because Jesus died for him right there. He's got this front row seat seeing the death of Jesus Christ. And somehow that made him realize that even he had something in him worth redeeming.

That thing is that we were created in God's image. We were created to reflect part of the nature of God. We don't do that very well sometimes. Sometimes we've really messed that up, and we don't look like God at all. And yet God created us to be a reflection of him.

And if we have his image stamped on our bodies, on our lives, on our souls, then what is worth redeeming in us is because of that image of God. And so, so many times we think, but you don't know what I've done, or you don't know what they did to me. Folks, the longer you hold on to unforgiveness to another person, the longer it'll be before you can understand that God's forgiveness is for you as well. If we all look back. There's probably someone or some point in our lives that we're just saying, I can forgive just about anything or just about anyone.

But that one thing that that one person did is beyond any forgiveness. I have. I got to tell you, until you do that, you're just going to be sitting there like this car, taken apart on the rack in the shop, ready to be restored, ready to be fixed and ready to be out on the road like it's supposed to be. And it'll just keep sitting there because there's that one part that's missing, that one part that won't work, that one part that needs restoration. But until you get that part off and changed, you can't be restored.

Our lives can be that way. If we won't forgive others, we can't be restored ourselves. You've got to see that value in yourself of the restoration that God offers. You've got to see within yourself that there's something to be restored, something to be redeemed. And I want to tell you, you are worth that.

You're worth that because you're created in God's image and he loves you. And God wants to make you whole. He wants to turn you into everything you were designed to be and created to be. But you know, the toughest thing is to love somebody who has done something mean to you, especially when that somebody has been yourself. Have you ever done anything mean to yourself?

Well, it's very important to look inside yourself and find that loving part of you. That's the part that you must take good care of and never be mean to, because that's the part of you that allows you to love your neighbor.