God’s Reconciliation > My Sins

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
Once again everybody, good morning. I was getting choked up with each and every kid there. I’m glad you guys couldn’t hear me. I was just getting all sorts of choked up with giving away bibles like that. And man, just a quick disclaimer because there is a lot of kids in here. I should probably mention that we love the sound of a noisy church and so parents in a couple of weeks we start children’s ministry during Sunday mornings and that’s going to be very exciting all the way through the month of September. But if it’s noisy in here and you feel like your kids are being a distraction, I promise you they’re not. Again, we think a sound of a growing church is, or the sound of a noisy church is a growing church. So please do not be bothered if you feel like your kids are making too much noise.

SERIES
Not only is today great bible giveaway though, but we are also coming very close. This is the second to last, the penultimate week of our series greater than where we are following along the life of a man 4,000 years ago named Jacob. And we’re discovering as he does a life greater than with a God who’s greater than. And each week we don’t really set the agenda or the topic of what we’re talking about. Whatever happens in the story, that’s what we talk about and that’s what we discuss. And as we read today’s story of Jacob and Esau, we have to talk about this issue of reconciliation because when you read the story, it starts to bring up all sorts of emotions of your own relationships where you have a strained relationship or a strained relationships and you start to wonder in your own story, well, what’s going to happen next?

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Really, that’s the question that has been lingering and hovering over Jacob his entire life. From the moment he’s born. He’s grabbing at the heel of his brother Esau, their twins. Esau was born first. He’s grabbing at his brother’s heel. It kind of foreshadows the rest of his life. He’s a scratcher, clawer, fighter, deceiver con artist, kind of a guy. And all of his life, he’s always getting ahead by taking advantage of others. And then he eventually tricks his brother out of his birthright and steals his inheritance from his father and Esau vows that he’s going to take Jacob’s life. And so Jacob flees and the whole time the rest of the story of Jacob is we’ve been going through it. We’re always wondering this lingering question of what happens next. And we feel this in our own relationships. Maybe it’s with a spouse, you had a big blow up and you don’t know like, goodness, am I going to be hurt again? Is more going to be taken from me? Are we going to be able to reconcile? Maybe it’s a sibling, maybe it’s a parent, an uncle, an aunt. A couple weeks ago we went back to St. Louis for a wedding and I saw a friend there that I’ve been friends with for decades and we used to be, man, we used to be so tight, but something happened. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I did, but it definitely changed and he won’t tell me what happened.

I sit there thinking about it like I’m mowing the lawn and I’ll just all of a sudden catch myself thinking about it, laying awake late at night trying to fall asleep. I’ll catch myself thinking about what happens next in our relationship, this strained and estranged relationship, will we ever reconcile? And you read the story of Jacob and Esau and you go, yes, that’s what I want. I want to be reunited. I want to be reconciled. I want to be back together with the people in my life that there’s something broken. But if we’re going to be reconciled like Jacob and Esau, we’ve got to look at the story again because if we look in there, we see that there are actually requirements for reconciliation. And if you just read the story on a kind of cursory level or you read it kind of on a level of like, oh, that’s a good thing.

You miss that in this story baked into the story are the requirements of reconciliation. And if you are going to reconcile with the people in your life where you have strained relationships or you are estranged, we’ve got to look at the story again and talk about how we can apply this to our own life. And it starts really with this idea of reconciliation. Reconciliation. Now in the story, they don’t reconcile right away. The story goes that Jacob is approaching his brother Esau. And what’s so interesting, if you remember last week, he was standing in the back of all of his herds and camels and his possessions and his family and they went ahead over the river towards Esau. He stood in the back to make sure they cross safely. Now in this account, he’s in front of all of them because he wants to be a buffer that if something happens to him, hopefully they can all escape and they can be spared. And so there’s Jacob standing in front of his brother and he sends all of these gifts to him, flocks and jewels and possessions to try to pacify his brother to try to say, I’m sorry. And after he does all of this, we read in verse one and maybe it’s not working because in Genesis 33 verse one, it says, “Jacob looked up and there was Esau coming with 400 men”, armed to the teeth.

 1 Jacob looked up and there was Esau, coming with his four hundred men…
Genesis 33 

And so he realized, this is my last chance. I’ve got to demonstrate something here. And this is the late stone age. This is 4,000 years ago that they couldn’t write letters to each other. They couldn’t send text messages, apologizing. He had to be demonstrative.

 3 He himself went on ahead and bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother.
Genesis 33

And so, what does he do? He stands there as his brother comes over the horizon, the silhouette of 400 men. He stands there and does one of these and he bows down and then he stands back up and he bows down. We see it in verse, I believe it’s the next slide. Six times he bows down to his brother and sometime, and this is not demonstrative, he’s sincere. He’s saying, I am making myself vulnerable to you. I am in need of something from you. Forgive me, brother, for I have done wrong.

4 Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.
Genesis 33

And sometime between the sixth and seventh time, his brother Esau responds and starts sprinting towards him. Next verse. But “Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him. He threw his arms around his neck and kissed him and they wept.”

12 Then Esau said, “Let us be on our way. I will go with you.”
Genesis 33 (NLV)

This is Esau forgiving his brother. This is forgiveness, but it’s not yet reconciliation that comes next. And I love this. It’s so poignant. It’s concise, but it’s in verse 12. I love the way that this is written in verse 12. “Then Esau said, let us be on our way and I will go with you.” Not against you, not making your life difficult, not coexisting and just agreeing to disagree and not talking about that thing anymore at the dinner table. No, no, no, I’m with you. We’re together.

DEFINITIONS
And there it is, my friends reconciliation. But if we are going to have reconciliation like Jacob and Esau, we have to talk about this word and what this means and what is required of you in order to reconcile with estranged loved ones. First of all, this word I get geeked out on words. This word is reconcile like conciliation or you think of conciliatory remarks, it’s peaceful, it’s harmony. And this is a reconciling. We are returning to the health and the harmony and the beauty of our previous relationship as though nothing happened. We are moving on. We are restored and returned to one another, reconciliation. But in order to be reconciled, there’s two necessary ingredients. There’s two requirements to reconciliation.

FORGIVENESS
First, forgiveness. Now, I don’t know what you think of when you think of the word forgiveness. There’s a lot of definitions out there, and actually I think it’s kind of like it’s a little bit loose and fuzzy and we need to tighten up our definition of forgiveness because forgiveness means this is the definition I heard one time I never forgot. I think it’s great. Forgiveness means I don’t need anything from you. This is saying I need nothing else from you in order to move on. You owe me nothing.

I would rather have freedom than hold onto this grudge. I don’t need anything else from you. I’m moving on. So to put this in our context, right? Let’s say you’re visa, MasterCard, chase, whatever, you have a debt to your credit card. And when you pay off your debt, that’s not forgiveness, that’s not, that’s fulfillments. You have fulfilled your obligation, your indebtedness. That’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness would be visa, chase, MasterCard, American Express calling you up and saying, you don’t have to pay anything anymore. We forgive you of your debt. That’s forgiveness.

YOU CAN FORGIVE WITHOUT RECONCILIATION
Now you’re all thinking about your credit card debt. Come back, come to topic at hand here. But that’s what forgiveness is. And we throw this word around, it’s a little bit too much. There’s a lot more to say about that and someday we will. But I want to also just point out these are two different words. Reconciliation is not forgiveness, and forgiveness is not reconciliation. They’re different words. You can forgive someone without reconciling with them, but you cannot reconcile with someone without forgiving them. And I know there are people in here in this room right now, people who hear the sound of my voice, who are watching online, who are weighed down with so much guilt because you think that just because you forgave someone, you have to return to a relationship with them. You don’t let me free you of your guilt this morning. That is not true. It is entirely possible for you to forgive someone without being reconciled with them. In fact, there are scenarios where that’s wise. You shouldn’t put yourself at an ability to be hurt by that person Again, you shouldn’t make yourself vulnerable to that person again, you can forgive them, but there’s now a whole lot of new boundaries on your relationship. That’s for you to decide. But just please understand that you don’t need to reconcile with someone in order to forgive them.

CONFESSION
But if you notice, there’s another word. Reconciliation requires forgiveness and confession. This is what Jacob was doing when he sent flocks and herds as gifts to his brother. This is what Jacob was doing when he was bowing down on the ground seven times with his face in the dirt. This is what he was muttering to him over and over between sobs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Confession. And in my experience, we are far more likely to talk about and deal with forgiveness than we are to talk about and deal with this idea of confession. Here’s why. Forgiveness is putting yourself in a position of power over someone. I have the ability to forgive or not forgive. It’s my choice.

But confession humbles you. Humility is humiliation. You put yourself at the mercy of another and you ask, plead or beg for their forgiveness. And we look with a little bit of pity at people who grovel before us beg for their, that’s like shameful. We treat that with a little bit of disdain and it’s extremely hard for us to admit that we’ve done wrong. And a confession, by the way, I’m not talking about some foe confession that you hear political leaders make where they’re like, I’m sorry if that offended you. I am sorry if you were hurt by that translation. You have thin skin and what I did really wasn’t that bad. No, I’m just talking about an honest to goodness. Full stop confession. I’m sorry I was wrong. I need your forgiveness. That’s a confession. And I know I remember a couple years ago I was talking to, I was counseling a couple and in this counseling session they were just going back and forth.

Well, she does this and he says this, and she did this. Well, yeah, but he did this back and forth like a tennis match, just angry tennis match. And I stopped them after about 30 minutes of this because I was trying to understand what was going on. And I was like, guys, guys, guys, I was going to admit that I haven’t heard either of you acknowledge what you’ve done wrong. So let’s stop all of this, what they did, what they did, what they did, how have you contributed to the problem where you guys are experiencing right now?

And then, I mean, it was like they were choking on their words. It’s so hard to admit you’ve done wrong. And then to not respond to what the other person said, to just admit it. And I got to be honest. In so many relationships, I see forgiveness going on. But there is a profound lack of confession going on in our relationships. And I’m begging you and pleading with you and your relationships that are important with you. Get over yourself. Don’t be too proud. Admit what you’ve done wrong because when you do, then you can have reconciliation.

RECONCILIATION REQUIRES CONFESSION AND FORGIVENESS
Reconciliation requires confession and forgiveness. You can’t have one without the other. Reconciliation requires confession and forgiveness. To say it in the negative. There is no reconciliation without confession and forgiveness.

RECONCILIATION WITH GOD
And that’s what I want for you in your relationships with your loved ones. And I know that’s plenty for us to think about today. That’s plenty for us to think about and to process on the way home and later on at lunch or whatever. But we’re not done yet in this topic of reconciliation and confession and forgiveness. We have to look a little bit further in the story past this book of Genesis. Flip a few pages to the gospels, the biographies of Jesus, because scripture ultimately is a story of how mankind has hurt God. We have wronged him.

And so, God, out of love for us came down, was made man. He took on flesh and died on a cross to pay our penalty for our sins. He fulfilled the debt and then he rises from the dead and lives again that he might be reconciled with us. This is what the Apostle Paul wrote and what he was talking about in two Corinthians five, verse 20. And he writes, we urge you on Christ’s behalf because of what Jesus has done on the cross, because of the perfect life he lived for us and the perfect death. He died for us. “We plead with you on behalf of Jesus, be reconciled to God” and your strained relationships should point you forward to a greater strained relationship between you and God. And he came to be reconciled with you to be as Esau said with you, but there is no reconciliation without confession and forgiveness. And so I’d like to end today with where we absolutely have to end on any kind of a conversation in a church about reconciliation. And I’d like to give you an opportunity to confess, to confess that Jesus Christ died for your sins. To confess that he rose from the grave and lives for your reconciliation and to confess that you have sinned against him, that you might be reconciled with God.

And maybe you’ve prayed this prayer a hundred times. I pray this prayer every day confessing who he is, confessing what I have done, that I might be reconciled with him. And maybe you’ve prayed it a hundred times or maybe you’ve never prayed it, but today can be a day where you walk out of here knowing that you are right in your relationship with your Heavenly Father. So let’s pray.

PRAYER
Heavenly Father, first of all, we confess how we have done so many things to hurt our relationships with others. We’ve wronged them, we’ve cheated them, we’ve deceived them. And we’re sorry. Help us swallow our pride and admit where we have done wrong. Even if the other person hasn’t taken that first step, help us to take that first step, to go in front and to just take the lead on this and say, we are sorry. Help us to confess to those we love where we have wronged them. Be quick to apologize. And heavenly Father, I pray for all of the relationships in this room that are, we’ve kind of stirred up something. And I pray that you would heal any wounds in the hearts of the people of this room right now with to those relationships. And I pray that you would heal their relationships, that there would be confession and forgiveness, that there might be full and complete reconciliation.

But God, all of these relationships point us and draw our attention towards you. Heavenly Father, we confess that we have sinned against you by what we think, what we say, what we do, and what we have failed to do. And we need your forgiveness. We are sorry and we confess that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. We confess that he rose from the grave and we confess that his name is the name above all names. And your word tells us, Lord, that when we believe in our hearts and confess with our lips that he is Lord and risen from the dead, we will be saved and reconciled with you. So God, I pray this day for every person who hears the sound of my voice, that you would show them and remind them that they are reconciled with you upon this, the confession of their sins. And I invite all who believe this, who have prayed this to join me in saying amen.

Response: Amen.