The Characteristics of a Forgiving Person Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on The Characteristics of a Forgiving Person Part 2. He will be reading out of Philemon 1:1-7.

True faith expresses itself in love, and not just in my love for God, but remember that Jesus taught us that the second commandment is like unto it, that you would love your neighbor as yourself. Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and we’re excited to share God’s Word with you today all the way from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. This is Hope Worth Having.

Thank you for tuning in. We’re continuing our study on the characteristics of a forgiving person. We’re in the book of Philemon.

This is the New Testament, a very small letter that the apostle wrote, but a powerful message. So join me as we study together. Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment. How do I know that my faith is real? You’re going to truly want to love God. You can’t get enough of Jesus, that your love for Him is not only intense, but it is passionate, and you long to please Him.

You long to spend time with Him. You understand that God is calling you to love. When you read 1 John, when people come to me and they say, I’m not sure that I’m a believer, I’m not sure that I truly have the assurance of my salvation, I encourage them to take time to read through 1 John.

And why would I tell them that? Because 1 John is really summed up like this, in that God is constantly challenging us to love Him and not to love the world. We’re commanded many times to not love the world, not love the things of the world. And you see the direction of your heart is a reflection of your heart.

It’s not that you’re perfect. It’s not that you’ve got everything figured out. And it’s not that you even have all the answers.

But the question you have to ask yourself, what is the direction of my heart? Is it a heart that loves God? Is it a heart that desires to please God and to serve God? This is the manifestation that you are a true disciple of God. Now, I also want you to see the second characteristic of a forgiving person. It is not only that they have a passion to please the Lord, but they have a passion to be patient with God’s people.

I know some of you are saying, check, I got the first one, pastor. But this second one, I’m going to really struggle with. Hey, I want you to know I’m right there.

Remember that, you know, I have to go through all this, putting this together. It’s torturous sometimes, putting a sermon together because God is, you know, attacking me. He’s working on Mike.

Long before I come before you and have to present these wonderful truths that are in the Word of God, I’ve been wrestling with them. Some people say, what’s wrong with the pastor? Well, it may be that he’s under the heavy weight of conviction of the Word of God. It’s not that I don’t like you.

It’s just that God has been working on my own heart. And I got to be ready and I got to be prepared personally to stand before you. But here is this second point that I want to bring to your attention about Philemon, is that he was a person who was patient with God’s people.

The apostle brings this to our attention. And I want you to see up on the screen how I asked them to put it up there, because remember the apostle said, I’m hearing of your love. And it wasn’t just his love for God, but it was a love towards all the saints, not just the ones that are nice to him, not just the ones that work with him, not just the ones that cooperate with him, that Philemon is a leader in the church and he had a love.

It was well known that he had a love towards all the saints and that the sharing of your faith may become effectively by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. Wow. That’s a lot to think about.

But let’s break this down. In order for me to be patient with God’s people, I first, just like my relationship with God, I have to have a love for people. True faith expresses itself in love and not just in my love for God, which rightly so.

And we are called to love God and this is where it begins. But remember that Jesus taught us that the second commandment is like unto it, that you would love your neighbor as yourself. Now some people like to run around and say, I’m in love with myself.

It’s very obvious to us that you love yourself, but that’s not what Jesus was teaching. He was not saying that you should be in love with who you are and how great you are and how wonderful you are and what an amazing person you are. And I know your grandparents have been telling you ever since you came into this world, how wonderful and amazing you are.

But friends, Jesus wants us to understand that when we love someone like ourself, that what he is saying that just as we care for ourself, as we make sure that our hair is combed, well at least most of us do, or we make sure that we’re clean or we make sure that we’re clothed, we’re making sure that we’re fed the basics and necessities of life, that the way you love your neighbor is to help care for them. That the way you care for yourself is how you care for others. That you might say to yourself, well, I mean, my neighbor’s doing better than me, Mike.

And again, Jesus was asked the question, who is my neighbor? As if we did not know. But Jesus clarified that our neighbor is not the person who in America lives in the next lot next to us, but our neighbor is whoever is in need. Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan and how there was this great need and this Good Samaritan was attacked by thieves and robbers and he was left there for dead and that it was the responsibility of us to take care of each other.

And so whoever is in need is your neighbor, is the one you are to show love to. And so that’s how we define it and that’s how we understand it. And within the family of God, we are to love one another.

And this shows that our faith is real. First John 3.14, remember, all throughout first John, John is bringing up our love and our hate. He’s telling us that we are to love God, hate the world in the sense of its system and the things that are destructive to our life.

And he says in first John 3.14, we know that we have passed from death to life, meaning spiritual life. We know we’ve passed from spiritual death to spiritual life because we have what church or who he who does not love his brother abides in death. Now don’t be mad at the pastor because I’m just quoting the Bible, hard to process.

And that’s why when we think about being patient with God’s people, we’re called to show that patience by loving them where they’re at. I’ll put it to you like this. My wife says to me sometimes, Mike, I love you, but I don’t always like you.

Isn’t it hard to believe somebody wouldn’t like me? I’m just teasing. Pull yourself together, church. But what I want you to know that as we’re being patient with one another, there are times we may not like what they do or say, and we may not like their place in space that they’re at in their life.

We may not always agree with them, and we certainly may not always affirm what they’re doing or not doing. But we always have an unconditional love, and we are patient with them. Are you with me, church? I know some of you might be struggling, but I want you to know in order to be patient with God’s people, you have to have this kind of a love for people.

And I promise you, as I was stating earlier, I don’t even know if I finished the thought, but yes, we’re all going to offend each other. Yes, we’re all going to disappoint each other. Yes, we’re humans, and we fail each other.

It’s part of life. Sometimes my children, when they were little, would say, that’s not fair, and I would just say, welcome to life. Let me give you a hug.

Welcome to life. There’s a lot of injustices in this world. And yes, you may come to church, and somebody might say to you, I don’t like your haircut.

And you say, no one would ever say that. Yeah, they say it to me often. And I just tell them, look, I’m just trying to hang on with what I got, amen? But what am I going to do? Am I going to have a meltdown? Am I going to cry? Am I going to kick and scream because somebody doesn’t like Pastor Mike’s hair? Hey, I don’t like Pastor Mike’s hair, amen? You know what I’m saying? I didn’t want to come in here and all plugged up on my head with new crops of hair.

And you say, what happened to the pastor? It just keeps falling out. I want to tell you a story that’s funny, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with this sermon, but it just popped in my head. But I remember when my daughter was a senior at CVCS, and she was getting ready to head off to Davis College.

I announced to my family I was going to shave my head. And my daughter said, Dad, please don’t do it till I get out of town and go to college. So I just remembered that.

But anyways, isn’t that funny? So if we’re going to be patient, we got to love. But here’s another one. We got to share.

Did you see that in the text there? Did you note what the apostle said in verse 6? Now, this is that very popular Greek word that we often have learned about, koinonia, which means to fellowship. It means to share. It means to partner with.

The King James translates this as communicate. You know, that’s what it meant back in the old English. But now it means to share, to partner, to fellowship.

And what I’m trying to teach you this morning is that we have to recognize that in the family of God, we’re called to share in this faith, share in this love, share in this common life as believers, this spiritual life, that we are mutual partners in the family of faith, and that we recognize in the family of God, there are people at different spaces. And maturity, and they are at different levels of their faith. Now think about this in your own family.

There may have been times that you had a child that was elementary child, and you had another child that was in diapers. There are some of you that you have children that are teenagers, and then, rut-row, you got a new baby coming. And your expectations of the teenager were certainly different than your expectation of the little baby in diapers.

And sometimes that could have caused friction in the church because they felt like you’re giving too much attention to the family, and you felt they were giving too much attention, not enough attention to the teenager. These things happen because we’re just trying to do life, and we’re just trying to keep our head above water. Can God’s people say amen? It happens in the church.

Some of you, like one lady told me this week, she said, Pastor, I’m independent. She said, I really don’t need you. And she meant it in a positive way.

She’s just independent. She’s not going to call me every second. And then I got some members in my church that call all the time.

I remember when I first came to the Open Door Church, I won’t tell you the name or anything like that, but this person was calling me every day, talking to me, and it just would never be quiet. And every time I tried to interrupt them, they just talked right over my interruption. And one day they called me, and I was playing a video game with my boys, and we were playing, and I was losing, and this was important, and I had to beat my boys because this was the last threshold of what I had that I could actually beat them in.

My very fatherhood and manhood was on the line. And this person called, and I tried to get them to, hey, let’s work on this later, and you know, and all that, and they wouldn’t stop talking. So I just put the phone down, finished the video game, won the game, picked it back up, and they were still going a mile a minute.

It was awesome. Now, we got to learn to be patient with people, church. Some members are at different spaces.

They have more needs. They’re maybe still working on some things in their life. Others of you, man, you’ve been walking with Jesus forever.

You got it. You don’t have to always call the pastor. You don’t always have to have someone help you with this or that.

When I first got saved, I feel bad because I was always calling my pastor, and I’d read the Bible, and I’d say, what does that mean? And I’d pick up the phone, and I’d call my pastor. Some of you don’t need that. Some of you do.

It’s okay. We’re patient with one another. Sometimes we handle things great, and sometimes we don’t handle things great.

But because we love one another and because we’re sharing in the fellowship with one another and because we’re sharing in the partnership and in the belonging to one another, we are patient with one another. Not only does Paul teach us that we should love and share, but we should have knowledge. Look again at the text.

He says, by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. These things were true in the life of Philemon. He was a man who had the knowledge of God’s will.

He had the knowledge of God’s word. He had the knowledge of God’s truth. We know that Philemon was a leader in the church of Colossae.

Certainly, he could probably recall the words of the apostle in Colossians 1-9 when he said, for this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. God wants us to be maturing. He wants us to grow in the knowledge of who God is and the knowledge of his word and the knowledge of his will.

When I first began pastoring, there were things that upset me and bothered me that today I’m like it’s no big deal. How does that happen? You grow, you learn, you experience, you understand, you learn not to make every molehill into a mountain. You learn how to handle things.

You understand that sometimes people have different personalities and some people say things one way and other people might say it a different way. But you learn in this knowledge, this knowledge of God’s will, his word, his truth, his way, this knowledge that is imparted unto you as you are maturing in your faith. And so church, I want you to recognize in order for me and you to be patient with each other, you got to have a knowledge of the word of God.

You got to have a knowledge of each other. You got to understand. I know how some of you are.

I know as soon as I walk up to you, how you’re going to respond. I know how you’re going to handle things. I already know some of you are very excitable that as soon as there is a little ant crawling next to you in your pew, you are going to get very excitable and you’re going to start screaming and yelling, there’s a bug, there’s a bug, somebody get the bug.

And I know others of you are just going to reach over and you’re going to step on it with your foot. And nobody’s ever going to know that that poor ant met its demise at the open door church. Everybody is different.

They’re different. But we have this knowledge that helps us to be patient, that is effectively working in us as we are maturing and growing in the Lord. So we said, if we’re going to be forgiving people, we have to have the characteristic of making sure that we have a passion for pleasing the Lord and a passion to be patient with God’s people.

But thirdly, a passion to provide for God’s people. We come down to verse seven and very quickly we’ll walk through this and we’ll see here some things that are true about Philemon. For we have great joy and consolation in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother.

So this is what he’s saying, is that Philemon being a leader in the church, he wanted to minister to the people. They may be at different levels of their maturity. They may be at different places in their walk with God, but he still had a passion to provide for them.

Let me give you three things that people need. Three things that people need, and I don’t want you to ever forget this, this is not only true in your home, but it’s true in your relationships at the church. First of all, people need appreciation.

They need appreciation. We go back and we see that the Apostle Paul in verse four, he said, I thank my God, mentioning of you always in my prayers. The Apostle Paul was a man who appreciated Philemon, but he also recognized that Philemon was a person who was astute to the needs of the people of God.

That you and I are called to develop an attitude of gratitude for every person in this church family. If you wake up every day and you want to identify all of our weaknesses, my friends, the list is long, and let me give you a couple more that you forgot. It’s easy for a spouse to find fault with their other spouse.

It’s easy for parents to rag on their children. It’s easy for us to come here as members and find fault with everything in this ministry. It’s true, my friends, I agree with you.

Somebody forgot to put toilet paper in the bathroom. Well, that happened to me when I first came to the open door church, a lady came up to me and she was frantic. And she said, Pastor Mike, there is no toilet paper in the church bathroom.

What are we going to do? Now, friends, I just got here, honestly. I didn’t even know who ordered the toilet paper. I didn’t know if anybody had been discipled to be designated to be the toilet paper provider.

I didn’t know. And I looked at her and I said, what would you do at home? And she said, I would go get toilet paper. And I said, there’s the answer.

Go get some toilet paper. You know what I’m saying? But what I’m trying to tell you is, yes, you can find fault with all of us. You’ll find fault with this sermon.

I could tell you story after story, but I’m not going to take time to do that. But what I want you to know is this, if you want to provide for God’s people, be the kind of member who appreciates each other, even where we’re weak, even appreciating our differences. I mean, it’s been tough for me, but I’ve tried to appreciate that some of you actually are Pittsburgh Steelers fans and Philadelphia Eagles fans.

But I still appreciate you, enjoy every time those teams lose, but I appreciate you. But you know, friends, if we’re going to be effective in this ministry, we got to understand that God wants to use our attitude of gratitude. Remember the Apostle Paul, he’s saying, I’m thanking God.

I’m mentioning you in my prayers. I’m always praising God for the things that are true in your life. There are some good things.

I know it’s hard to find it, but keep looking. But there are some good things. Everybody needs appreciation.

If you want to be used of God, there is one way you can do that, and that is appreciate and affirm everybody. Show gratitude when you come to this place and let people know through notes, text messages, emails, and letters, and even verbally, let them know how much you appreciate what they do, what they’re sacrificing for the church, and just the love that they show and their faithfulness and obedience to God. Find ways to do that.

The second thing people need is inspiration. The Apostle Paul’s life was an inspiration. It was no mistake that Paul started out his letter and said that he was a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

Usually, the apostle would start his letters out and say that he was an apostle, that he was called of God, that he was always making the case for his apostleship to the church. But here, he starts out this letter to Philemon, I’m a prisoner, meaning that he possibly was under house arrest or some kind of confinement, whatever it might have been, that he was a prisoner. But Paul never saw himself as a prisoner of the government.

He saw himself as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. He recognized that he was under the sovereign hand of God and that God was providentially working in his life. And if God had him in prison, if God had him under confinement, if God had him in house arrest, it was all part of the plan and purpose of God.

And despite this imprisonment, the apostle was always showing mercy to others. He was showing kindness to others. He was showing good cheer to others.

He was always concerned about others, and this is what he wanted to see in Philemon, and this is what God wants you to see in the church. I know some of you are walking through deep waters, and I know some of you have many challenges in your life, but I don’t want you to come here negative, and I don’t want you to come here beaten down on everybody. I want you to come and be inspirational, inspiring us to love God more and to love people more and to continue unto good works for the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is how we should come. And then we need to be refreshing. I know you had hoped I’d hurry up and get there.

This was so true of Philemon. This word refreshed is a military term that described an army at rest from a march. What the church needs are people who are refreshing.

There are certain people you and I avoid because they drain us. We see them out in the community, and we hide behind the bush. We jump in between the clothes at the store because we don’t want them to see us because we know what they’re going to do.

They’re going to sap us of all energy for God. They’re draining, but there’s some people, as soon as we see them, we’re excited because they’re refreshers. They give us great rest.

They’re renewing to us. They energize us for the Lord. We feel so connected to Christ in our conversations with them.

The Bible teaches us that Philemon was a brother in Christ who refreshed others. Christian friendships are important in the church. Christian friendships are a gift from God.

I want to encourage you to be the kind of friend who doesn’t dump on people, who doesn’t belittle people, who doesn’t always find fault with people, that even if we’re not all we should be, that our desire is to refresh one another when we gather as God’s people. Whether that’s one-on-one or whether that’s in a small group, a class, a Bible study, or whether it’s in a large group, that we are always striving to refresh one another. Why? Because people, whether it’s in the home, the work, or the church, people cannot grow in an environment where only their failures and weaknesses are seen and remembered.

Some of you, you’re just too hard on your kids. You’re beating down on them so much they can’t wait to get out. You need to remember to be the kind of parent who is refreshing.

Every time you see your brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t point out what they did wrong, but be like the Apostle Paul and point out what they did right. And be the kind of encourager that is refreshing. You say, well, somebody’s got to confront them.

Well, first of all, all confrontation should be done privately. And if it reaches to that level, you should do it. And that’s fine, but in a way to restore our brothers, right, and our sisters.

But you and I are called to encourage and refresh one another. And when people see you, what comes to their mind? There’s an encourager. There’s someone I want to talk to.

There’s someone I want to give a hug to. There’s someone I want to shake their hand. Or do you see that people try to avoid you? Church, for a Christian to be unwilling to forgive is really unthinkable.

And if we go on this journey learning about forgiveness through the book of Philemon, we have to ask ourselves the question, do we have the character that forgives others? Do we have the traits that are within us that will help us as we learn by the grace of God to be forgiving? Are these things true in our life? Would you pray with me? You cannot give what you have not received. And if you have not received the forgiveness of Christ, how could you give forgiveness to others? Real forgiveness. And so we encourage you to first be under the fountain of the grace of Jesus Christ and receive his forgiveness in your life.

Even as a believer, we have the responsibility to confess our sins to God and to let his forgiveness cleanse us. The Bible says he will forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. And so we encourage you to first receive and thus you can give forgiveness to others.

And so we hope that that’s a part of your message and your characteristics. If you’d like to learn more about forgiveness, check us out at HopeWorthHaving.com. We also have a YouTube channel entitled Hope Worth Having. And there you can see our live programming as well as archives of different sermons.

There’s playlists of different topics, different books in the Bible. Take advantage of this YouTube channel for an opportunity to grow in your faith. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.