The Challenge of Forgiving and Forgoing

Fr. Geoff delivers a powerful sermon on the importance of living the gospel through forgiveness and self-denial. He shares profound insights and stories that illustrate the challenges and rewards of true Christian living.

Transcript

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today I want to talk about living the gospel. I've just put away something which I wanted to bring with me. But you know, in morning prayers, we talk about, we ask God to help us to do his will—not just to learn about it or think about it or study it, but to do it. And so that's why I've picked this title today, living the gospel. It comes from the epistle and the gospel.

I've got two titles really. The first one is "forgive," and the second one is "forgo." So here we go. Forgive. Had a wonderful story in the gospel this morning about the man who owed so much money that his boss was going to throw him into jail. And we think, well, how big was the money? Well, it was impossible to repay. Think of the debt of the United States at the moment. I heard that it's over a hundred trillion dollars. I mean, it's unimaginable. How on earth are they going to get out of that mess? And there's going to be a bump before we get out of it, I think. But it's that kind of a debt that God forgave this or the steward forgave his servant. And then he goes off to one of his friends, and his friend owes him, I don't know $10, $20, whatever. And he wouldn't forgive him.

And so the father was the judge, the employer was furious with him and threw him into jail with his wife and his family and everything until he paid all these debts. And this is a picture really of God. When we won't forgive somebody else, this story should come to mind in the Lord's prayer: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." So if we're saying we're not going to forgive that person, then we're saying to God, don't forgive me, Lord. That's what we're saying. So this is part of living the gospel. We have to forgive; that's what's different between Christians and non-Christians. We forgive; others don't. We have to forgive. If we don't forgive, then we're not forgiven, and we're not really following Christ. This is a challenge. This is a big challenge because sometimes it's very hard. I had a girl come to me once who'd been raped, and I couldn't say to her just forgive him. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous to say that. But she had to come to the point eventually where she did forgive him. But it was a long process. It takes time. You have to start by saying, I don't want to forgive him. I need your help, Lord. Because this is not natural. This is supernatural.

So, we need God's help to do this, and this is why we can do it because we are God's people. And I'm going to go back now to saying this is living the gospel. This is part of it. But what is the gospel? Somebody asked me recently, "What's the gospel?" And I gave them an answer, but I realized afterwards I really all I'd done was given them the creed basically because it contains all the good news and everything. But the gospel is more than that. The gospel is the good news that God has intervened in this world through Jesus Christ and through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. But that's not just all there is. He has also made it possible for us to partake in his divine energies. And this is all part of the good news. It's not just that God did all that; it's that God did it for us and that he's made his energies accessible to us to help us do things which are impossible without him. And one of them is forgiving.

It's a supernatural thing, but he hasn't said, "Go off and forgive everybody." He says, "I'll help you do it." And he does. All right. All right. So that's an amazing story we put into the weekly email this week. I hope you'll read it about the family in New South Wales where a drunk driver, three times over the limit, driving at 100ks an hour drove into seven children and killed three of them and badly injured three others. I mean, a terrible situation. And yet the family are Melkites, I think, so Eastern Orthodox Catholics. And they've forgiven and they've publicly forgiven that man. And he still visits. He visits the man who killed his children in prison. I mean, how does he do that? That's because he has Christ working in him and through him. And we can do that too with God's help. We can do it with God's help, but not without. So that's the first thing, living the gospel. The second thing I wanted to say is we've had forgive, now forgo. And I got this from the epistle today with St. Paul here talking, and I made a list of all the things that he forewent, if you like.

He forewent receiving material support from the churches. He said that he didn't have a believing wife accompanying him. He didn't; he gave up the right to refrain from manual labor. In other words, he had to keep tent making while he was ministering. And he gave up all the privileges that come with apostleship. He emphasizes that he did not use his right as an apostle so as not to hinder the gospel of Christ. And sometimes we have to forego things if we're going to not hinder the gospel of Christ.

Jesus said in Luke 9:23, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." That's pretty challenging. JB Phillips, who was an English Greek scholar, and he was translating the Bible at that stage when he was translating it was all in the King James English, and he was in London trying to work with the poor people there, and they didn't really understand King James English. And so he translated it into very modern English. And he translated it, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him give up all rights to himself."

Now, in our culture, it's all about rights, isn't it? My right to do this, my right, my right, human rights. And Jesus says, you must give up all rights if you want to follow me. And that's pretty challenging sometimes to give up things which we think are right. But if we're going to not prevent the gospel from going out, sometimes we have to do this. We have to give up things. You'll hear later on in the Sinextarians about Hayata Uticius. He starved. He had to give up food. He was tortured. He lost his freedom. He was cast into the with the lions. And then in the end, he lost his head when he was executed. So they gave up these things for the sake of the gospel. And also Hyram Cosmos, he had to give up the church. So he was out preaching in the fields and in the city squares and things. It's an interesting one for us. Hopefully, we don't have to give up our church. He had to forgo that right. So often to enable the gospel to go out, we have to forgo certain things, and St. Paul certainly gives us the example there. Here in Australia, there's a young doctor who was talking about what he believed about abortion and transgender and gender theology and COVID policy and all that sort of stuff. Have you heard about him? If you've read my email this week, you will have heard about him because they went after him and they took away his medical registration because he was really trying to project the Christian view out into the world. He might have said some things a bit harshly, a bit, you know, I think he's recognized that, but they've stripped him of his ability to provide for his family because of his Christian views. He's had to forgo that privilege of being a doctor, and that's a big challenge for him. He's doing well. Dr. Jerus, if you haven't read the email, read it and sign the petition because there's a petition there for him. Here it is. It's in the newspaper here. "Christian doctor censored for online posts on abortion, gender, and vaccines." So this is the culture we live in at the moment. We're kind of getting back into the pre-Christian culture that St. Paul was talking about and living in and St. Uticius and St. Cosmos. It's the same culture again coming around in circles. So we have to be willing to forgo certain things sometimes. And may God help us to follow St. Paul’s example there. But there is something else which I wanted to talk about this morning, and that is some of you, have you heard about the tithe? The tithe, you know, giving a tenth of our income to the church, forgoing a tenth of everything that we own, everything that is our right. Have we actually thought about that? Some people think that, well, it's only in the Old Testament.

Well, it is mainly in the Old Testament, and Jesus talks about it in the New Testament when he criticizes the Pharisees because they were tithing but they weren't loving. And so you can argue that tithing's gone now. But if you go back further to Genesis, you find that Abraham gave a tithe to MelkiseDC and MelkiseDC represents Christ. So that was before the law. So tithing was there before the law, and then it was imposed by the law. But now it's different. Now it's different. Now when we come to Christ, what did I say? Jesus said, give up all rights to yourself. All rights. So when we become Christians, everything belongs to God. Everything. That's right. It's all his. Not just a tenth, everything. But and he's the steward. He's the chief steward. And he says to me, Jeffrey, thank you for that. Thank you for everything. I can manage with just 9/10. I can manage with just one tenth. So you can have the nine-tenths back. You live on that, and I'll keep the one-tenth. Because when we forgo that tenth, what we're saying to God is, I trust you. I know I could probably have a better holiday if I kept this, or I could have a better car if I kept this. Or will I be able to manage when I retire and all that sort of thing. But we're saying when we give God a tenth, when we forgo that privilege of taking all our pay for ourselves, we're saying, "God, I trust you."

So St. Paul trusted, St. Uticius trusted, St. Cosmos trusted, and God, we still remember them. Now, I'm going to ask you to forgo one more thing today before you leave, and that is to sign the petition about the assisted dying for Senator Evan Mel Holland, who's asked us to sign this. As I mentioned last week briefly, the government, the Victorian government, is trying to make it easier to get assisted dying. When they brought it in, they said it was the safest in the world. And so that's the tactic. It's the safest in the world, but now they're easing back and making it unsafe for us. I've been thinking about this since I heard about it because I didn't know about it. And I thought about Jesus, the good shepherd. Do you know what he said when he came? He said, "I have come that they may have life. The thief comes to steal and to kill." And what I've realized is that what we're dealing with, and I've been trying to deal with the Victorian Parliament for many years with all sorts of things, trying to calm them down with all this legislation they're pushing through, but what I've realized is that we're not dealing with politicians. I'm reminded of Ephesians 6 where St. Paul said, "You don't wrestle with flesh and blood. You're wrestling with supernatural powers." Basically, we are wrestling with the devil. We are wrestling with Satan. He is driving some of these agendas in the parliament. No question. It's only just hit me. This is what's happening. Unfortunately, the abortion—I put in lots of things about that. Do you know 80% of the petitions that went in about abortion because they asked for what do people think? 80% said they shouldn't do it, and they still did it because they said 80% were all one vote because they were all Christians. So, they had to go with the minority. And now they're going to try and change the death laws, the assisted dying laws. So, I want to ask you today to forego a couple of minutes to sign this petition on the way out, please.

So this is living the gospel. We have to forgive even when it's hard. It's hard. It's impossible without God. But thank God for the gospel. He came into this world, and he's given us the ability to do it if we ask for his help. So we have to forgive if we're going to be living the gospel, and we have to forgo some things. And God will help us if we are willing. May God help us to forgive and to forgo so the gospel may be preached throughout this wonderful country of Australia. Now to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit be ascribed. Almighty majesty, dominion, and praise, now and forever, to the ages of ages. Amen.