Herbert W Armstrong

   Cloe, it seems, had remained with his father right there on the home place. Hans had been away a while, but Hans had also returned prior to his father's death. And Cloe said that the property should belong to him. And Hans said no, but even though he was away for a while, he too had been close to his father since his return, and he was sure his father wanted him to have the property.

   What do you think, this was the beginning of a feud? No, in this case it wasn't. They did the right thing. They took it to the church. There was one in existence at that time, and the one that was the head of the local church organization got the advice of a respected person in the community, and along with the town crier, they handed down a decision for Hans and Cloe. And they said that Cloe shall divide the property, and Hans gets first choice. A little bit of wisdom there, wasn't it?

   And then they said the one who receives the property with the existing house must give money or labor to build a similar house on the other property. And then the account went on to explain in this ruling that the tithes of the hay and of the orchard should go to the church as had been customary in the father's time. And they continued to live peaceably.

   Several years later, there was another item about the locality there, and by that time there were 34 houses on the property. This was Hans and Cloe von Fanghaus. This was their name. And I read this recently in the opening pages in a family history of my father's mother's family. They were the Funkhauser, or originally the name was Frankhauser, and it came down from von Fanghaus. Some of the family were Anabaptists and fled to Harlem for religious freedom and later to this country.

   Well, some of you may be interested in your family tree, and you may have been looking at it. I also looked at the Simpson family tree, which was another branch of — or a branch rather of my mother's family. And I was impressed as I looked through it that it showed who married who and who the children were. But one thing that didn't show up was a lot of divorce. And really, divorce is a modern invention and a modern thing, you might say, at least in its extent that we see it today.

   There were some cases in the family history of remarriage after death. My father's mother and my father's father both had previous mates, but in both cases they were lost through sickness. And then the two of them later married after having lost their first mate.

   I noticed one man in the Simpson family, and this was back in the 1800s. He had a wife and he married. He had 13 children, and then he had twins — 14 and 15. After the first wife died, he married another, and he had 7 more children. And the first child was born when he was age 22; the last child was born when he was age 65.

   Now, you would like to have heard what went on in that family. And the history is missing, of course, except just the dates and the ages or the time when the children were born. But one thing — whatever there may have been, joys, agonies, hardships, suffering, times of happiness, times of rejoicing, whatever there may have been, there was not a divorce.

   But today, we have to deal with divorce. We talk about divorce, we hear about it. We have divorce and pending divorce, family breakup and family breakdown, and it comes from many sides. Now you've heard the statistics. You've heard them in the world. But also family difficulties is a serious problem in the church today. Problems of not being able to get along peaceably and happily with one another, and people considering divorce, people breaking away and thinking that they cannot live with this individual.

   Now maybe we don't like to talk about it here at the feast, but I think that it is good to talk about it and get in our minds some strength and fortification in order to deal with the problems whenever we return to our homes.

   You remember the account that I think Mr. McNair read, Mr. McMichael read there back in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, how it went on to show that on the first Sabbath after the feast, when all of the people were assembled together, after the feast, after the rejoicing, then they did go and they began to deal with their problems and deal with their sins, and begin to make changes. So as we leave the Feast of Tabernacles and go back, it is time for us to make changes and to follow the word of God and to follow it diligently.

   So let's look at the situation and think about it from the standpoint of what we might be able to do about it. Let's look for a solution. If there is a solution, then we can stand to look at the problem. We must believe in grace before we can admit sin. That's just the way we are. We have to believe in grace before we can admit sin. And likewise, we must have some hope of a solution before we can admit problems, before we can face them.

   In Proverbs 27, it gives us a very country, agricultural type illustration here, but of course it can be applied to many areas of life. Verse 23, Proverbs 27 (Proverbs 27:23): "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks. Give careful attention to your herds, for riches do not endure forever and the crown is not secure for all generations."

   So we need to know what condition we are in. Likewise, it is important that we are careful and that we look at the condition of our families, that we look at the conditions that we are in, and to see if there's anything undercover that needs to be looked at, that needs to be dealt with, that needs to be got out in the open and talked about and discussed, and a solution found for it. Because unless there is a maintenance program, we cannot be sure that things will continue because everything in the world has to be maintained.

   It may be true that marriages are made in heaven, but their maintenance occurs in a very earthly sphere. And it has to be done on a faithful basis by the individuals in the marriage if they're going to maintain and secure and be sure that they have a secure and happy marriage.

   The law of God certainly is a pathway. It certainly gives us a way to walk. Back in the Psalms, the word of God is the light unto our feet, a lamp unto our path. It shines to show us where to go, and it points out the right way to go.

   And in Hebrews 4:12, we find that the law of God searches the thoughts and the intents of the heart. The word of God is living and acting. It is applicable to every situation. It is not something that was written years ago, then forgot about and doesn't apply today, but it is living, it is active, it applies to every situation that we live in today. And it is sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart — judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. And that's where we get down to is the attitude that you have in your relationships with one another, with your mates and with others as well.

   In Psalm 139, it is perhaps even a little more pointed here of how we need to examine ourselves, to examine our thoughts and our attitudes, to make sure they are pleasing to God. They are beneficial and upbuilding. Psalm 139:23: "Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

   So we need to examine ourselves and have ourselves examined by God's word to see if there is any offensive way in me, and to see if we are offending anyone or if we are offending God. And if there is any offensive way in us, and then lead us in the way everlasting. Because if we are led, if we are changed, and then the whatever is wrong with us is searched out and changed, then we'll be in the way everlasting.

   Psalm 26:2: "Test me, O Lord, and try me. Examine my heart and my mind. Test me, try me, examine my heart and my mind, for your love is ever before me and I walk continually in your truth."

   So the request is that we be examined and we look at things. God is a God who through his word cuts and lays bare and washes, as I said in the previous message. God is not a cover-up God. Rather, God is a God of expose, reveal, confess, and then obliterate. And then cover it up, obliterate it, annihilate it, so it cannot harm or hurt or harm you in any way after that.

   If we really look at the word of God, if we're devoted to God's word, if we face it squarely, we find that the word of God is not a tranquilizer. It is not something that lets us forget what we are and just assume that everything is fine. But on the other hand, the word of God is a great sensitizer. It makes us alert, it makes us aware of the things that other people might see in us that we don't see in ourselves, the things that God's word lays bare, the things that we need to change. So it is a great sensitizer to the things of God.

   And I will read in Ephesians 4:17. Come back to that a little later, but just a couple of verses here where the Gentiles had lost their sensitivity in this New International Version that uses this word. "So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts."

   So, all kinds of ignorance, due to the hardening of their hearts, and it says, "Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more."

   But we must be sensitive to what is going on in our lives and what has gone on in the past to cause us problems, to cause us to miss the mark, to cause us to sin and come short of the glory of God and the word of God.

   Mr. Herbert Armstrong has long expounded the principle of cause and effect, and how he has recounted how people only deal with the effect. They deal with some symptoms and they try to cover that up and salve it over, but they don't go back and look for the real cause. He talks about the give way and the get way — the way that leads to peace on the one hand and the way that brings war on the other hand. He talks about the love way and the way that wants to get.

   For everything to work in the kingdom of God, God is going to have us prepared so that God is without any doubt in our minds number one. We are not looking for anything else to compare the things, the kingdom of God to, and also love is going to be expressed continually because God is love. He expresses love. We must learn love and we must express it.

   You may think this is a repeat of the message last week, but you know I'm sort of like the young fellow that went to the local church and he gave the same sermon the second Sabbath, and everybody thought that strange and they began to talk a little bit about it. He gave the same sermon the third Sabbath, and somebody finally got enough courage to ask him. He said, "What's going on here? Didn't they teach you anything else out there?" And he said, "Well, yes they did. But whenever I'm sure that you understand the first message and are living by it, then I'll give you the second one."

   So maybe I think this is still important and I'm going to repeat a certain amount of it. So don't worry about it. Repetition is throughout the Bible and God believes in repetition and he believes that we really learn things well. And Mr. Armstrong has repeated things over the years, so I've got a great example in him, as you know.

   The lack of love then in our past life has often produced emotional scars. And those emotional scars are triggering and dictating what our emotional responses will be today. Now we get into cause and effect. We have an effect of a lot of emotional responses that are not according to God's word, that are not what the Bible says. And you respond to something or somebody and you think about it later, if you're willing to think about it, they admit it and you realize why did I do that? I know better than that. And you did know better and God's word told you better, but you responded with an emotional response. That emotional response was dictated by your past, by what happened to you, by the way you were.

   Let me give you some principles to let you understand what I'm talking about. And you can apply it to your marriage, that is the number one point that I want you to apply it to, but of course all of the rest of you and the younger people who haven't married, those of you who are single, those of you who might be older and be widows or widowers, I want you to understand too and apply it in other areas of your life.

   The general principle is that we tend to treat others as we have been treated. Or at least we treat others as we perceive we have been treated. And you know the mind is a great computer so to speak, and whenever you are in a situation, the mind immediately begins to search through all of the labyrinths and the corridors of the past, can do it instantaneously and it says, "Aha, here's a situation like the one that occurred 20 years ago, and this is the way my father responded or my mother responded or this is the way somebody responded. This must be the normal response," and therefore it gives you the normal response. And it's almost a subconscious emotional thing that you respond that way.

   And another way is to say this is the way we have been treated and our perception of ourselves and what we stand for and our value and our worth governs how we treat others. How our parents have treated us also regulates our perception of God. I mentioned that the other day, and that is true, that's been discovered in surveys and talking with people. And whenever you, especially with women, you tend to judge God by the way that your father treated you, and if you've had a fine relationship with your father, it makes your relationship with God a lot easier. But some have had difficulty and troubles because their father did not treat them properly, did not treat them with respect, did not treat them with love, and they've even had difficulty even praying to God and even coming to a term in a relationship that they could pray to him with a sincere love and a belief that he would really listen to them and consider them.

   A lack of love freely expressed — freely expressed between parents and to the children causes great problems. Causes great problems. We are certainly happy, we are certainly pleased and tremendously overjoyed at what we see forthcoming regarding the Y.E.S. program and all of the materials that will be available to help parents in their homes as well as in the Sabbath schools to teach their children. But all of that can be harmed and greatly hindered unless we who are parents can develop the right relationship with one another, unless we can express this love and this concern and this talking about God's word and the principles of God's way of life to each other and also to our children. So it is important that we have this too, as a program that we begin to work diligently on in this coming year.

   You may have heard about the little boy that was left whenever his parents went to Mexico and he was left behind and the babysitter wanted to carry on a conversation with him. He was taking care of him. And so she started to say, "Well, have you heard from your mom and dad?" And he sort of grunted out like he didn't want to talk about it too much. And she said, "Well, what are they doing in Mexico? Are they going to go see a bullfight?" He said, "No, they don't have to. They have them at home."

   Out of the mouth of babes sometimes we find out how we really live at home, and we need to change that. So if we have an unconditional love for our children, a love because we are there, and if we have a love that is unconditional, a lifelong commitment to our mates, then that is going to be reflected and should be reflected in what we do. Sure, there has to be blessings for obedience, and there has to be some explanation and with the children of course some discipline whenever there is disobedience. But with the parents, there has to be communication. There has to be some understanding and some discussion back and forth about their present situation. And with the mates, there has to be a recognition that their past lives, their upbringing, and what has happened to them in the past may be hindering and may be harming their marriage relationship.

   So if you are in a condition where some of these things may have happened to you, I want to give you some ideas about how to think about it. I want you to give the courage, give you the courage to think about it, to begin to discuss it with your mate and with your minister, and begin to look at it and to think about it and to really deal with it properly.

   One situation that might have occurred would be a young girl who was rejected at a very early age by her mother. She was told by her mother that "I don't want you. I don't want you, I don't like you. You came along and I didn't want you and I wish you had never been born." And the mother told her this day after day. Then finally, of course, she was sent off to live with some aunts and some uncles and kicked around from pillar to post. She was so scarred emotionally by the treatment of her mother that she backed away from a couple of marriages because she just couldn't respond properly and she was fearful of responding to her husband. And finally she did get married, but still even then she hadn't dealt with this childhood scar, with this childhood emotional trauma that she went through. And not having dealt with it, it makes it extremely difficult to have the proper relationship with the present husband. But if she is able to go back, if she is able to think about it, to admit it and realize that God loved her through all of that, and that God was looking out for her and carrying her, then she can make some progress.

   Another situation that did occur — and of course I'm not saying where or how, mentioning any names — but a young girl who had an alcoholic and irresponsible father, and he walked away from home in her early teens and left her to be provided for by her mother. And that was a great emotional scar in her life. And it so hurt that young girl that she displaced and transferred that feeling and that emotion to a very loving, handsome and very fine young man that she married. But she began to fear, and she began to believe that this fine young man was going to leave her, and she had this in the back of her mind and it affected everything that she did. She believed it and feared it so strongly that she began to treat him very viciously. And she began to treat him as if he were the father, as if he were the guilty one, as if he were the one that was going to leave her. And it was sort of a subconscious action to fulfill her own prophecy of fear, of trauma, of things that she feared were going to happen to her.

   And that seems to be a common phenomenon to displace feelings of hurt from a parent, feelings of hurt from our childhood to a parent of the opposite sex. Parent of the opposite sex then you of course apply it to your spouse because obviously your spouse is going to be the opposite sex, at least we hope it is. We are not talking about the other situation right now.

   So therefore, if the relationship — if you're a boy, the relationship with your mother hasn't been proper, then sometimes you will transfer that over to your wife and it affects your relationship with her. And likewise if you're a girl and the relationship with the father hasn't been proper, you transfer that over to your husband. And in this case, of course, there was a lot of resentment and a lot of hostility, a lot of imagination, and a lot of actions and reactions towards the spouse.

   Fortunately, these people, this particular couple were able to see their situation. They admitted they needed help, needed help, they sought help, they got help, they responded beautifully and I certainly hope they will continue to respond. And she was able to deal with that situation, see it for what it was. And the husband had the patience and the tolerance and the kindness to help her through it and also realized that he was coming across a certain way and there were some things that he needed to change as well. So it can be done, people can change.

   As I mentioned in the other sermon last week also, there is a tentative conclusion that a lack of love from a parent of the same sex is the dominant factor in homosexuality. And that does seem to make sense because if you have the lack of a strong, loving and expressive father as a young man, sometimes you're still looking for that and you're attracted to a male of the opposite sex. Likewise, a young girl, if she has the failure of a mother in childhood to show her love in an expressive way, the desire for a mother's arms around her to comfort her gets mixed up in teenage with her sex drive, and she becomes easy prey to becoming a lesbian.

   But it is possible to have a non-erotic love and to embrace and to have that type of love for each other. I am occasionally, you know, give a little hug to some of the other wives of the ministers, and there's nothing erotic about that, but it is a love and a friendship that I want to express and that I feel, and I'm sure that we feel for each other. And likewise, we need to do it to our children. We need to do that to our children, and we need to give them that physical love, that physical embracing and hugging, and it will produce in the child a security. So don't feel you can't do that, for fear you'll turn them into a homosexual, because if you fail to do it, then there's more danger that you would do what you fear might happen.

   If we have that type of love to our children, then we're going to see that things begin to happen much better in the future, and they're going to be on a far better basis for establishing a loving relationship. If we do have counsel and help and assistance and respond to it, we can change. I want to give you that hope and that security and that assurance that it will come because you have to believe that, you have to think about it, consider it, look at God's word, I know, and somebody has to begin to show you that before you will respond. But you know Paul said, "Be you enlarged, unlock your emotions, unlock your feelings." And be able to give and to share and to express yourself with somebody. Begin to develop a relationship with your minister and with others in the church, so that you can know that they will consider and they will help, and they will try to be a help to you.

   If we give love and security to our children, it helps them avoid peer pressure. Because they are secure, not only in your love, they are secure in your standards. They know what you stand for, and they know if you have lived by it, it gives them a great security. If you live by what you stand for, if you set the right example in front of your children and they are secure that you love them, then that reduces the effect of the temptation. That reduces the temptation to take drugs, because they know they don't have to do that. They don't have to do that to find security or to find a way out of their miserable existence because they have love and they know that their parents look to them with kindness.

   And of course, if a young girl feels very secure in the mother's love and the mother's teaching, the father's love and the father's teaching, she's not going to be susceptible to the line of the young man. She doesn't need to jump into his arms in order to feel secure and loved and wanted because she knows she's loved and wanted and secure at home. And you know if you ask her to go up and see the water bed, she can say no, "I might get seasick." Or if you ask her to get in the back seat, she can smile sweetly and say, "No, I'd much rather stay up here with you." She will have the right answer for the occasion and is not tempted in any way.

   So if we have, and those of us who are older, those of us who are married and who might not be having the best marriages in the world, if we have grown up in a world that is not God's way, but is Satan's way, let's be sure we never blame our parents. Do not blame your parents, anybody, because certainly that is not love, and if they grew up in Satan's misguided world, if they grew up not being able to express love freely, not being able to learn and to understand the principles of God's law, then they're not responsible for it. Of course those of us who are parents are responsible to change as we hear, but what I'm saying is don't blame your parents for any mistake they might have made.

   Don't judge God and God's way by Satan's deceived and confused world. Just forget about the past and know what God's word tells you to do. But there are layers of emotional scars. One man said man is like an onion. When you peel away the layers of emotional scars, you go down and find out what the man is really like. That may be true. And with certain, certainly sometimes it seems to be. There are layers of emotional scars. And even though we have a desire, even though we are praying, we are studying, we are seemingly spirit-filled and exemplary people, if we have had scars in the past that kept us from loving relationships and created problems, it seems necessary to deal with those. It seems necessary to face them, admit them, and then strip them away in order for the Holy Spirit to freely work and to produce fruit in our life. In order to freely work and give us the fruit of love, joy, and peace.

   Jesus recognized that offenses would occur. He said they would. And he talked about being like a little child in Matthew 18, and he talked about offenses, and he talked about forgiveness. I think this is a great chapter in God's word. I think its full understanding and application is greatly needed today in the Church of God.

   "At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' He called a little child and had him stand among them, and he said, 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'"

   So he said, become like a little child. If you humble yourself like a little child, then you are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name, welcomes me.

   And then he goes on to talk about those who cause a little child to sin. Those who cause an offense to a little child. "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

   So he said that is a terrible thing to offend the child and to scar him emotionally and to affect his emotional responses toward his great loving spiritual father, Almighty God. Because if we can have the right emotional responses, those of the little child, that of faith, out of love, of sincerity, we're going to enter the kingdom. But if we have been scarred, then we need to deal with those scars, and we need to be extremely careful about ever scarring anyone else.

   So he shows that something that ought to be cut up, cut out, it ought to be rooted out if it's harming us. "If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the fire of hell."

   So anything that is in your nature that might cause you to stumble or fall or that might offend or cause anybody else to needs to be torn away. It may hurt to tear it out. It really gets down to the basic emotional response that you have and it's going to hurt. Because a lot of times we've hidden these things, we've covered them up, we've repressed them, but still they may be affecting our responses to each other today. And if they are, they need to be torn out and gotten rid of and dealt with and replaced with God's Holy Spirit and with the law of God.

   He talks about how he is interested in one who wanders away in the next portion of this chapter. And then he talks about how you must deal with your brother who sins against you. "Go and show him his fault just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over." It is imperative, it is important that you go to your brother so that you can deal with him. If you go to somebody else besides your brother, even though your brother changes, but if your brother knows you went to somebody else, that hurts. That hurts his trust of you. That hurts the development of a future relationship with you.

   You know a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city or than a castle or something like that. One of the proverbs says. It's extremely hard to win back a brother if you offend him. And if you go to somebody else instead of your brother, you do offend him. And Christ says, be careful about offenses. He said, go to your brother. And if he listens to you, you won your brother over.

   Of course, if he doesn't listen, you take along somebody else so that there is no doubt that that's really the way it is, and you've got other witnesses to show that that's the way you look at it, other witnesses look at that way and he's at fault. If he listens, of course that'll be fine, but if he refuses to listen, tell it to the church. And if the church makes a judgment and he still doesn't listen, then of course he is no longer part of the fellowship because he has refused to change.

   But the world is only so big. And the universe is only so big, and the kingdom of God is the kingdom of love. And we're all in it together, and it is important that we not offend, and it's important that we remove anything from our nature that might be causing us to offend. And of course the family relationship, the home relationship is where we see each other more often, and that's where we respond more often, so that's where the spotlight is upon our emotional responses that are not according to God's word.

   So he says, unless we change and become like a little child, with a warm, loving, trusting response, then we can't really be in God's kingdom, he says. So we've got to change, we've got to look at it.

   Then, in the next portion of this chapter, it tells us a very important principle of how we can get along with each other. "Peter came to Jesus and asked, 'Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me, up to 7 times?' Jesus answered, 'I tell you not 7 times, but 77 times' or '7 times 7, 70 times 7,' I guess it is in the King James Version."

   So really he said it doesn't matter. As long as your brother hurts you, you are still to forgive him, even though he offends you, even though he harms you. You are to forgive those who hurt you. Likewise, you are to forgive yourself for your sins. Talk about that a little bit more later. Just store that on the shelf for a moment.

   Jesus Christ spoke of unlimited forgiveness. Is unlimited forgiveness for the benefit of your brother? Or is it for your benefit? Primarily it is for your benefit. I mean, you'll get the most good out of it or you'll get the most harm if you do not forgive your brothers. Because Christ is very explicit, very strong, gives a very strong parable, a very strong statements about forgiving one another. And it is the word of God. It is sharp. We need to look at it. Because the process of emotional and spiritual healing of the past emotional scars can come about most effectively through the process of absolute total forgiveness. With no claim whatsoever and no justification for your actions based on what somebody else did. And no blaming of anybody else for your own actions.

   Jesus, he was aware of human beings. He was aware of what goes on in their minds. He was fully aware of the conditions and the interplay, the emotional responses, and he gave us some insight into the importance of forgiving. His teachings contain some of the most penetrating insights into human relationships and how we can respond correctly and how we can respond as he himself would. So let's look now at this parable. Because this is an important parable.

   "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt."

   So this is the way it might be. If he came and he had this great debt, then he's got to be sold to pay for it. But then, of course this is picturing God, this is picturing the debt of sin that you and I have before him, and how much he has forgiven us. "Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he be sold. The servant fell on his knees before him."

   Now did the servant fall on his knees and ask for mercy? Did the servant fall on his knees and ask forgiveness? Did he? He only asks for patience. He said, "Be patient with me." He begged, "and I will pay back everything. I will pay back everything."

   That too often is our attitude. That too often is our misunderstanding of what Jesus Christ did for us. Of what God wants to do for us by letting that sacrifice of Jesus Christ apply to us. We misunderstand because we grew up in Satan's world, because we grew up with a lot of emotional responses that are based on the get principle, that are based on the self-reliant principle, the independent principle. The principle that I can take care of myself and I don't want to be indebted to anybody. Some of those principles also are confused and mixed up and aren't seen and interpreted clearly. And sometimes we get some false responses from those principles.

   "But the servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go," just like Jesus Christ paid for my sins. Just like he paid for your sins. Everything you ever did wrong, he paid for it, and he let us go. But you and I too often go out like this servant. And we have a perception of truth. We have a perception of God's way. But it is not with complete understanding. We have a perception then that we ought to go and begin to pay back. And we ought to pay back what we owe God. We don't understand that Jesus Christ paid for it.

   So we go out and here is what happened. "When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii." This is approximately — oh, I don't know exactly, $20 maybe, something like that for the sake of comparison, we'll call it about $20. But the amount that this servant owes was — what was it? 100 denarii. Now that, that's not the first one. The other one was 10,000 talents up here — a million dollars. That shows the enormity of our debt. And that shows the enormity of the sacrifice that Christ paid for us.

   So this servant goes out and thinks that by collecting a few pennies or a few dollars from people that owe him, if you give him enough time, he can pay back his debt. "So he went out, he grabbed him, he began to choke him, and he said, 'Pay back what you owe me,' he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me and I will pay you back.'"

   So likewise he asked for patience. But he wouldn't even give this servant what he himself had asked for, much less give the servant what he really received. "He refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed. They told the master everything that had happened. The master called the servant in and he said, 'You wicked servant. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.'"

   He really begged for mercy. You know, he didn't beg for mercy. He really begged for patience, but the father knew that was what he really wanted. And he wanted to go out and then demand payment from everybody that owed him. "In anger his master turned him over to the jailers" — the King James has the tormentors — "until he should pay back all he owed."

   So he said, if you want it that way. If you don't want to believe in forgiveness, if you and I do not want to turn around to forgive everybody for everything, especially forgive those that we live intimately with, to forgive our mates, to forgive members of our family, he said if you don't want to live that way, you're going to live in torment. You're going to live in bondage. You're going to live in emotional bondage, unless you really believe that I forgave you completely and you turn around and forgive everybody else completely.

   But haven't you heard the expression that he or she owes me an apology? And that is in direct violation of the command of God, as explained in this parable here. No, he or she do not owe you anything. Because you were forgiven by Christ and you must forgive them. This servant didn't hear that he was forgiven. He had a blind spot there. He couldn't understand that he really was forgiven. And not believing that he began to demand of others. He began to keep accounts of who owes what. And he did not forgive from the heart, as he was told to do.

   Verse 35: "This is how my heavenly Father" — in case you think I'm misapplying the parable, it says — "this is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." From the heart, from the deep emotional responses, there has to be forgiveness. And if we don't have this, we can't break out. We can't express love. If we feel that we are unforgiven and we are unforgiving to us, God becomes a stern debt collector. One who collects debts. And we carry the emotional responses of childhood right on over if we're not careful, because we didn't get rid of them, we weren't forgiving completely what had happened to us, and letting Christ wash them away.

   I Corinthians 13:11. We find the apostle Paul here in the love chapter talking about putting away the things of a child. He talks that love never fails. "Where there are prophecies they will cease, where there are tongues, they will be still, where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

   The Greek word there is catargeo, something of that effect. You know, I'm not a Greek student. I'm like the fellow that knew a little Greek and a little Hebrew, and of course one ran the restaurant and the other the clothing store. But at least this catargeo here is used to in other places to destroy or to render powerless. So I think a better translation would be that the apostle Paul realized that when he grew up, he rendered powerless the things of a child. They didn't no longer have any — they had they did no longer have any power over him. He rendered them powerless. The emotional responses of a child of his childhood were rendered powerless and replaced by the love of God and by an understanding of the past.

   So if we have our emotional responses cleaned up and purified, we're going to function beautifully in the family relationship, in the church relationship. Because we do function beautifully when we believe in grace. And when we extend grace, and when we extend forgiveness. Because then we become free to live in the pathway of God's law. And if we have no hostility to someone, we can talk to them out of love. They'll know that we love them, they'll listen to us, we can explain the standards that we live by, we can explain the veracity and the truth of God's law. There can be no compromise with it. And we must live by it. But if you have gotten rid of the wrong emotional response, they're going to listen to the right one. And they're going to pay a lot more attention and you're going to make more progress with them.

   But if you are unforgiving, you're going to be plagued by guilt and resentment that we need grace. In his pride and in his stupidity, the servant thought he could repay. And he made life unbearable and life miserable for everybody around him, because he was trying to repay a debt or because he was acting according to a childhood emotional response. And it's important that you and I believe completely in forgiveness.

   As I said before, forgive yourself. I suspect that the reason some people are not healed is because they haven't truly forgiven themselves. They may still be collecting debts, in a sense against themselves. And they may be thinking that God is punishing them. And I'm talking to you, and I want you to think seriously about it. Because the greatest joy would occur if somebody were to say yes, that's right. I thought about it. And I really recognized that I hadn't really forgiven myself. I didn't realize that God really had the capacity to say to me whenever I begin to think about all the things I had done and use that as a reason for my lack of healing. That God has the capacity whenever you bring that up to him of saying to you that I distinctly remember forgetting every last one of your sins. And I hold absolutely nothing against you, and I'm not punishing you. And I would like you to believe that I forgave you completely. I would like you to believe that you can step out on faith, that you can trust me. That I have forgiven you and that I will heal you.

   And if we can have the emotional response of a little child that says, here it is. The child will reach out and take it. And if we can have that response, I think a lot more of us will be healed. We're certainly grateful for those that we have heard about. Tremendously thankful for that and let's continue in that vein.

   We can be free of the past. And we can let God heal us. And likewise, we can be free of the past hurts and fears and angers and resentments in our marriage, and we can let God help us begin to build.

   We're told to let not the sun go down on our wrath. The reason for that is unless our hurts, our fears, and our frustrations that so often occur in marriage and in our human relationships are dealt with quickly, they begin to progress into something else. Hurt, fear, and frustration will progress into anger. And Jesus Christ said, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. The reason was because the way we are made, the way our minds work. If anger stays with us overnight, we begin to replay in our mind the situation. You've all done it, you've felt your face get red. You've replayed it, you've justified yourself, you've condemned the other person. You've built that up in your mind over and over again, and pretty soon it turns into resentment and it turns into bitterness. And then the thing you remember is the fact that you have resentment to somebody and you have bitterness toward them and you cannot have the right relationship, as long as you have that resentment and that feeling of bitterness.

   I'd like to read you from a little book here on the subject of resentment, I think very well written. "Of all the destructive things other than guilt we can do to ourselves, I know of none so damaging as resentment. We carefully accumulate it. Feelings of anger are stored in the accumulated layer upon layer, so to speak. We like to think that anger and hate have evaporated when we're not consciously aware of them, but not so they are repressed. And it is these repressed feelings that cause these emotional responses that hurt us, that hurt our marriages and our relationships. There are a few problems which all people have. But this is one of them. We all are energetic collectors of resentment, endlessly storing it with us for the time when it will erupt with the regularity of Old Faithful and the violence of Vesuvius."

   He says, "I suspect the resentment is very much like an iceberg. The largest part is submerged and unseen. But some of it comes to visible expression. The similarity ends there, however, because icebergs are not known to attack ships. But resentful people do go around attacking each other, and they have spontaneous responses that attack each other, that hurt each other."

   And he said you might find some popular, you know, psychological concepts of thinking that you ought to discharge resentment a little bit at a time. But he said the view of Christ is not to collect it in the first place. And that's absolutely true. Don't ever collect it in the first place, but if you have collected it, then I'm telling you also to deal with it, to get it out in the open, to think about it, to counsel with it, counsel with your minister about it, and make sure you have forgiven the person completely, whoever it might have been, so that you no longer have emotional responses that affect your present relationships based on suppressed hurt, and you have resentment that is undercover and isn't really there.

   So let there be no more resentment, but let there be absolute and complete forgiveness in God's church.

   Ephesians 4:17: "I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking." I've read that, we've gone over that before, so let's jump down to verse 25. "Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold."

   Because lack of forgiveness gives the devil a foothold. Unless you can respond correctly with complete forgiveness, you're giving the devil a chance. Lack of forgiveness produces emotional responses of hostility, of gossip, of talking about people, rather than talking to people, rather than settling your differences, as Matthew 18 tells us to do.

   So God tells us then to go ahead and to help each other. I read Ephesians 5:27 before. I'll just call it back to your mind again and tell you that you who are husbands need to help your wives so that they can be cleaned up. You who are wives need to respond without any emotional response from the past, but as a child, with a loving, kind response, giving love, attention to your husband and respecting him highly. And if you do this, if you communicate with each other, if you seek help, if you're finding wrong emotional responses to each other, you can have a happy marriage.

   There are laws of cause and effect, and Almighty God didn't leave us without a way to change the past, to change the wrong emotional responses, and to respond in a beautiful manner toward each other and have happy marriages. So let's work on it during the coming year and make sure we can make great progress in this area.