RR: Wonderful book. A brand-new book, The Fear of the Lord. Discover the key to intimately knowing God and fear in terms of reverence.
J: Reverential fear.
LR: John wants me to have that book.
RR: And then, of course, Lisa’s books. Lindsay has endorsed one of these books, Out of Control and Loving It. And this is the Christian Bookseller’s 1996 book of the year, is that right?
L: It was one of the CBA ones.
RR: One of the CBA books of the year.
J: It’s number five in the nation this month.
RR: It is? As well as a brand-new book, The True Measure of a Woman. And we’re going to share about how you can get a copy of these books. But, John, one of the things that you deal with in your book on The Bait of Satan is offenses and how to deal with unforgiveness, how to deal with bitterness. And Jesus said if you have ought against your brother, you know, when you come to pray, go and make it right. If you don’t forgive, then God won’t forgive you. How does a person, how does a Christian who has offenses, they’ve been hurt, they’ve been stabbed in some way and they don’t know how to get over it and then it turns into unforgiveness, it turns into bitterness, it turns into anger, it turns into hatred, it just gets worse and worse and worse, how does a person deal with that?
J: Well, you’ve got to deal with it. The first way a person can deal with it is to realize what they’ve been forgiven of. A person, a Christian, let’s deal with a Christian tonight, a Christian that cannot forgive is a Christian that’s forgotten what they’ve been forgiven of. Jesus tells us a parable in Matthew, because Peter came and said, “My brother sins against me seven times and I forgive him, is that enough?” And Peter thought he was being magnanimous.
RR: Maybe he wanted to hit him on the eighth time.
J: Yeah, that’s what he was saying, because they lived under eye- for-eye, tooth-for-tooth. You hit me, I hit you. And he though Jesus was going to say, “Oh, Peter, you got it. Blessed you are.” But Jesus looks at him and says, “Not seven times seven, seventy times seven.” And in Luke’s gospel He said, “In a day.” Now that’s 490 times in one day. Now if I was to sin against you 490 times in one day, I’d have to do it once every three minutes,provided you and I don’t go to sleep. That’s heavy duty. And Jesus said, “Look, let me tell you a parable, Peter. Make sure you get this. You have a servant that owes this king $4.5 billion.” I’m going to shorten this. That’s an unpayable debt. What we owed God was an unpayable debt. Jesus chose to forgive us before we ever said, “I am sorry.” Now this is what Christians don’t understand. I’ve heard so many believers say to me, “I’ll forgive them when they say I’m sorry.” Well, if Jesus were to have done that with us, He never would have forgiven us from the cross. He hung from the cross and said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” And He was not only speaking to them, but He was speaking to us in generations down passed.
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