70 TIMES 7

Now, one of the hard teachings of the Bible is that we are not just to forgive someone up to 7 times, but 70 times 7. People say, "Whoa!" Well, you know, it can be pretty hard to forgive somebody just once. Twice, they do the same thing over again. Mm, that is really rough. In fact, it says in Luke 17:3-4, “Watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. Even if he sins against you 7 times in a day and 7 times returns to say, 'I repent,' you must forgive him.” Now notice that it says, 'If the brother sins, rebuke him, but if he repents, forgive him.' We were in a situation many, many years ago, before we were in leadership, and the person we were under was very insecure and very partial, and they kept on doing things to deeply offend us. And, you know, we forgave them - we forgave them repeatedly. I remember the elder of the church who had charge agreed to meet with us, and we said, 'We really have a problem here. We're willing to forgive, but the person won't change. Can we please go to another group so that we don't have to abide with that?” They are forgiven. We're not holding anything against them, but it just doesn't seem like a good idea to keep putting ourselves in that situation. And he talked to some of the other brothers, and they gave us permission to join another group. And as soon as we moved, God just exploded the effectiveness of how the Lord wanted to use us. I'm telling you, you don't have to necessarily stay in a bad situation, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Perhaps it's a family member - you just can't abandon your family, can you? 

God put this in perspective for me, because if we sin seven times a day but repent, He forgives us 7 times that day. The earliest sin I remember in my life was when I was 4 years old, so that was well over 70 years ago. So, doing some simple math, since that first sin that I remember - and I probably sinned before that, but that's the earliest one I remember, and my parents aren't around to fact-check anymore- over 27,000 days have come and gone since that time. 27,000 days. So 70 times 7, which the Lord said in another passage, answering, “How many times should I forgive?” He said up to 70 times 7, and that's 490. Now, I don't know anybody who's forgiven anybody that many times. That is, except the Lord. I'm saying to myself, I don't know if I've sinned every single day, but some days I've sinned more than once. So if I just average it out at one a day, that means the Lord's already forgiven me over 50 times as often as He's asking me to forgive others. That is only 2%. All of a sudden, 490 times doesn't seem such an unreasonable request, does it? What if the Lord counted up to 490 and then stopped and said, "Oh, I'm not going to forgive John anymore." Well, I'd be in a bad situation because that would have expired decades ago, right? But God forgives me to this very day. He's forgiven everything I've ever done. He's cast it into the deepest sea. I think sometimes Jesus looks at the Father and says, “Again?”  Yet the Father nods His head, and we are forgiven.

 

The Lord's mercies are everlasting. They're beyond measure. They're mightily incredible, beyond anything we can ask or think. So when God says that, “If you don't forgive others, I won't forgive you,” that's not a simple supposition. That's a statement. He's simply saying, "Hey, look, if you're not willing to forgive, my Father is not going to forgive you either." If you ever had to face God and you pled with Him and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry," and you begged and everything else. And He says, sorry, you didn't forgive, so I'm not going to forgive you either. Really, that'd be a tragic end, wouldn't it? I mean, how hard is it to forgive? You know, it often means more to you than it does to the other person. The other person may be so used to doing stuff, and people forgive them. Some people miss the rest of the passage and keep forgiving people without exhorting them, or calling them out on what they're doing wrong. We can certainly say, “Hey, look, I forgive you, but please, for your own sake, you know, don't do this to anybody else, and let's get right with the Lord.”

Ask him or her, “Can we pray together, and let's have change come. Let's not just have to go through this cycle again and again.” We also need to do that with the Lord. When we sin, we can't just say, "Oh Lord, forgive me," and then just go on our merry way and then end up doing the same sin again, even 7 times a day. No, we have to say, "Lord, I don't want to sin." The Bible says that Jesus Christ was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Many of His followers were women. They were probably very beautiful women. Some of them were very wealthy women. It says, "In every way He was tempted, but yet without sin." So if you have a temptation that you're having a hard time overcoming and you keep going to the Lord and you keep getting forgiven, remember that the Bible says, "Shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid!" No, He wants us to stop sinning and be totally free. And I'm telling you, that is available through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I’d love to hear your take on this crucial topic!