Forgiving

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. This week, we're going to be focusing on forgiveness. Okay, forgiving, and what that means. And a lot of Jesus' words and actions were focused on that. Now, if you want to follow along with this message today, we have a Bible app that we use. Well, it's free to everyone. It's called the You Version of the Bible. And under it, if you search under it, you can go to Events. And when you hit Events, Thrive Community Church will pop up for you who are here. And if you're watching through live streaming today, you can type in 33928, our zip, and it should show up. And you'll get all the notes for this message right there. The Bible verses as well as the different quotes that might be used or the different points. So, forgiving. Now, to illustrate this, to illustrate forgiving today, we're going to look at three different stories of how Jesus actually did it in three different places, even if the word doesn't show up in all three of the stories. But they are illustrated, I would say, by these three things. The boat, the banquet, and the beach. You'd expect maybe all forgiveness is all about the church and the temple and, you know, the synagogue and all these places that Jesus was at. He actually forgave everywhere and he was really involved in people's lives where they were at, right where they were. So, it's the boat, the banquet, and the beach that we're going to look at today. First of all, we're going to be looking at the boat. Okay? Anybody a fisherman out there? Okay. I love to fish. I also hate to fish. Do you understand what I mean by that? And this is today, you know, when we've got all the technology that's available to us, from GPS to sonar to expensive boats and every technique under the sun. If it's your living, though, even today, fishing is so contingent, so dependent on if the fish are there. If you can find the fish. Can you imagine, though, at the time of Jesus, what fishing was like in a little dingy of a boat with a little sail on it and some rowing that you might be able to do and some nets and that's about it. But that's what we know life was like on the Sea of Galilee. And some of Jesus' first disciples were fishermen. In fact, it seems like Peter prided himself in being a great expert at this, making a livelihood for his family, probably bragging about his catches. But you know the odd thing about Peter in the Gospels is you never find him catch a fish without the help of Jesus. Not one. And the first story about the boat is like that. Right. The first time he meets Jesus and Jesus meets him. Peter has spent an entire night out on the Sea of Galilee with his brothers and other crew members. And they haven't caught one fish. And so they're now on the shoreline and Jesus comes up to them and they're mending their nets there on the shoreline. And Jesus asks Peter to just push off the shore just a little bit so he can use Peter's boat as a podium and the water as a natural amplifier for the crowds to be able to hear him. Have you ever been on a lake where you can speak and you can hear people right across the lake? Right. So Jesus understands that he did that. And so he's teaching probably parables. We don't know what he was teaching that day. But Peter, I have a feeling as he's mending the nets, he's listening. He might even be arguing with Jesus about what he's saying. Whatever. It doesn't matter. After Jesus finished teaching. Then it says in Luke chapter five, verses four to five. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing. But at your word, I will let down the net. So Peter. He respects the rabbi. He does what the rabbi says. They get out there and they have such a miraculous catch of fish, they can hardly keep them all in the nets. And it is at that moment that Simon Peter recognizes he is in the presence. Of much more than a rabbi. There's something about him that he is in the presence of that which is wholly totally different. Peter, who thought he was the expert, his strength was about fishing. He found out compared to this rabbi who can command the fish and they appear and they come into the net. He knows nothing. It's at his moment of strength, not his moment of weakness, that he recognizes the holy and his strength is actually his weakness. And he is shocked at all of that. And he cries out. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus knees saying, depart from me for I'm a sinful man. Oh, Lord. So here's the first thing we realize about forgiveness. OK, forgiveness. When we when you when I when we are in the presence of the holy, we feel ashamed. We feel guilty and we are afraid. We have no idea what to do with this, and maybe it's very infrequent. You have ever felt that. But when you realize yo...