Issumagijoujungnainermik

Matthew 18:21 is a passage we often turn to when considering forgiveness. Despite Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness, however, we want to add our own conditions. “I’ll forgive if they ask for it.” “I’ll forgive up to a certain point.” “I’ll forgive if I feel like it.” This lesson, we’re going to look at some scriptures that govern forgiveness, and these scriptures will require us to adjust our attitudes and actions regarding forgiveness.

Gaining a Brother
In Matthew 18:21, Peter asks how often he should forgive if a brother sins against him. He uses an expression that infers a serious violation or trespass, and he places the burden of forgiveness on himself. In response, and he tells a parable of a servant in terrible debt to his master. This servant seeks forgiveness while is unwilling to forgive another in debt to him. Jesus makes a point that we are to be forgiving as we want our Father to be forgiving.

The goal, in Matthew 18:15, is to gain a brother. Prior to Peter’s question, Jesus is encouraging His followers to entreat one another when wronged. This is not regarding a disagreement or hurt feelings. This is nothing minor. This is a serious trespass, and Jesus does not instruct us to be passive. There is no waiting for our brother or sister to come to us. We approach him or her, and we engage in forgiveness.

Forgiving as God Forgives
Matthew 18:33 cites mercy as the basis of our forgiveness. We are merciful because we have been shown mercy. Verse 35 warns that God will not forgive those unwilling to forgive. Matthew 6:12 echoes this sentiment when Jesus models prayer for His disciples. Luke 6:35-37 says God is kind and merciful toward the undeserving, and Jesus encourages us to demonstrate mercy. The strict conditions we put on forgiveness will be put upon us by God. Finally, Mark 11:25 warns us to forgive others in our prayers before asking for our own forgiveness. We need to forgive so we may be forgiven.

What attitude do we hold in forgiveness? How do we act? Are we like children who are forced to apologize by our parents? Jesus is forgiving. He is compassionate. He is merciful. God granted us mercy forgiveness before we asked for it and while we are undeserving. If we are to be holy as God is holy, if we are to be sons of our Father. Think of Esau forgiving Jacob and Joseph forgiving his brothers. Think of David forgiving Saul. Are we as compassionate and merciful?

Issumagijoujungnainermik
Leviticus 19:18 is cited by Jesus as one of the great commandments, and the first part of this verse warns God’s people against grudges or seeking vengeance. Grudges come all too easy, and God takes pains to turn His people from this habit. In Mark 6:19, Herod has John beheaded because of a grudge Herodias bore. Grudges wrap us up and consume us. It takes time, work, and energy to maintain these harsh feelings, and this is time, work, and energy we should be giving to the Lord instead. We need to be able to let our grudges go and move on. They causes us to hurt, to grow angry, to grow bitter. They draw us away from God.

Issumagijoujungnainermik is a compound Eskimo word that roughly means “unable to think about it anymore.” It is a word missionaries used to describe God’s forgiveness to the Eskimos, and it is a fitting description of how we should forgive. Our forgiveness should be compassionate and merciful. Love should take the place of grudges, allowing us to be in a right relationship with our fellow Christians and with our God.

lesson by Tim Smelser

Facing Suffering As God's Child [Part 1]

We live in a word filled with tragedies and sorrow. We see innocents suffer unjustly. Our possessions, families, or lives may be taken by factors beyond our control. You can't make it through a daily news report without hearing of a new shooting, abduction, natural disaster, or fatal accident. From these events comes an understandable question: why does God allow suffering in this world? It is a question theologians have wrested with for centuries, and the answers tend to boil into one of two theories.

• If God is inherently all-loving, He would stop suffering if He could. Therefore, He is not powerful enough to end suffering.
• If God is all-powerful, then He must not love us enough to end suffering.

Rabbi Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, comes to the first conclusion. God is all-loving but not all-powerful. Job, on the other hand, faces a God that is clearly all-powerful, so does this infer God is unloving?

The Origin of Suffering
To understand suffering, we have to return to its roots. God demonstrates both power and love in the creation of all things and the paradise He provides for His creation. However, there is one provision to this paradise, and this provision is broken in chapter 3 when His love is questioned in that He forbade something from Adam and Eve. From that one sin, suffering entered the world. If God was unloving and merely wanting to just catch Adam and Eve off guard, He would have left it a secret – just waiting to be discovered. God clearly set the boundaries. He did not keep His provision a secret. Then, with the onset of sin, God sets a plan in motion to redeem His creation, but the consequences in this world remain.

The Case of Job
Job is a case study in suffering. He is a righteous man who loses everything. Satan seeks to find his price, and Job comes close to blaming God for his troubles in passages like Job 9:20. He feels he has been wrongly judged. In Job 19:5-7, 22; chapter 31, Job continues this idea. He even lists out evidence of his righteousness. He is a faithful person. Why would this suffering come upon him? If, like his friends argue, bad things only befall the unrighteous, Job is being unfairly judged.

God responds to Job in chapter 40. God asks if there is any who can argue with God. He asks if Job is capable of setting the universe in motion, if He is capable of balancing justice and reviewing God's judgments? Earlier, in Job 33:13, Elihu asks Job why he strives against God. We are accountable to God – it is not the other way around. This is a hard lesson to swallow, and it is natural to want to know why. However, it is not our place to condemn or try to correct God. Job receives no reason for his suffering, and we may never understand our own.

A Loving, Powerful God
Returning to the question of the reasons behind suffering, can we blame God? Do we serve a Lord either unable or unwilling to end suffering due to lack of power or love?

What hope can we have if God is not all-powerful? How do we know He will defeat the grave? How can we know that he will defeat Satan? How can we have any faith if we cannot have faith in His power? Psalm 139 records David writing of the all-powerful nature of God, able to overcome all and having power over all. Nothing is hidden from Jehovah. In John 16:33, Jesus states that he has overcome. He will suffer terrible things very soon, but His faith was in God’s power. He knows God will deliver Him from the hands of death.

If God is all-powerful, why does He not stop calamities? Does He not love His creation? We see God's love in passages like John 3:16 where God has shared His very nature and image with us to be killed in our stead. Abraham had confidence in God’s love when he prepared to offer Isaac. In Isaiah 55:6-9, God invites His people to forgiveness. Judah was extremely wicked at this time, but under even these circumstances, He would take back His people if only they turn back to Him. His love allows for infinite forgiveness and mercy.

What would we want God's role to be? When do we want God to intervene? Should He constantly be altering the forces of nature , continually disrupting the cycles that have been put in motion? Do we want God to take away our own free wills so we can neither harm ourselves or others? Do we want others to suffer consequences so we do not? What stipulations can we put on God’s actions? If God fails us in any way, we automatically will begin to question Him again.

God may intervene in ways we do not see or recognize. We do know, however, that He has a place prepared for us that is absent of all suffering. We can trust His power to be able to take us to this place, and we can trust that His love will allow sinners like us to enter into it (Romans 5:8). Our hope is not in this life but in the next.

lesson by Tim Smelser

Where Are They Now?

In Matthew 26:17, Jesus and His apostles are preparing for the Passover, an event we associate with the founding of the Lord’s Supper. This would lead quickly to the events of the cross and the empty tomb. These events conclude a ministry characterized by miracles, and He is followed by great multitudes in Matthew 4:25, 8:1, 8:18, 13:2, 19:2, and 21:9. Passage after passage speak of the thousands that press around Jesus, but when we come to the cross and His tomb, only a small handful are present. Where were those multitudes now?

Jesus knows that many saw Him as a source of wonder while others view Him as a sideshow. Some view Him as a source of inspiration while others view Him as a source for food. In this lesson, we’re going a few examples of people impacted by Jesus’ ministry. Their lives are changed by Jesus, but they are not among those numbered at the empty tomb.

Absent Before the Cross
John 9 records Jesus and His apostles passing by a blind man whom the apostles treat as a point of theological discussion. Jesus heals Him, and the Pharisees want to use Him as evidence against Jesus since the healing takes place on the Sabbath. The blind man does not cooperate and is basically excommunicated. Jesus goes to find this former blind beggar in verse 32, leading this man to worship Jesus. Where is he when Christ is crucified?

In Luke 5:17, some men lower a crippled friend to Jesus’ presence so he may be healed. Not only does Jesus heal this man, but He proclaims his sins forgiven. The formerly crippled man leaves glorifying and praising God. The crowds do likewise. Where are he and his friends when Christ is crucified and buried?

As Jesus is teaching in John 8, a prostitute is brought before Jesus, and the Scribes and Pharisees demand Jesus proclaim judgment upon her. Jesus ignores them for a while, then asks them to stone her if they indeed feel blameless and justified in doing so. He spares her life. He forgives her sins. He shows concern for her well-being and her soul. Where is she when Jesus is on the cross and in the tomb?

We learn of Jairus and his daughter in Mark 5:35. His daughter is sick, and she is dead by the time Jesus arrives at Jairus’ house. Jesus says she is merely sleeping and raises her up. She immediately gets up and walks. Many had been there to mourn her, and he brings them joy. Where was this family when Jesus was on the cross?

What Will You Do with Jesus?
Each of us are blind, crippled, guilty, and spiritually dead because of sin. Still, Jesus loves us as he did those individuals he healed and saved. We see countless examples of people touched by Jesus, but we never see many of them in scripture again. Christ’s joyous message comes with His death. The cross and the empty tomb are inseparable. When we realize what Christ has done for us, where will we be? Will we be like the multitudes who glorified His miracles but turned away from His death?

Our relationship with Jesus should cause me to have more than feelings. It should impel us to action. John 8:11 , John 13:34, and Matthew 16:24 are calls to actions. Deny self; sin no more; love one another; take up your cross. The question is not what we feel about Jesus. Instead, what will we do with Jesus? When things are difficult, when our lives are lonely, when we are faced with the bloodstained cross, where will we be?

lesson by Tim Smelser

Regarding the Collection of the Saints

John 4:21 records Jesus answering a Samaritan woman regarding worship. She is inquiring about proper location, but he turns her attention away from the secular setting and toward the concept of worshiping in spirit and truth. It is the manner of worship that matters. Acts 2:42 records that, when Jesus’ spiritual kingdom of the church was growing, the saints would come together. One part of that worship was giving, and that’s the topic of this lesson.

Contribution As Worship
The question of contribution is not one of amount. It is one of attitude. Do we treat our offering to God as something we rush through? Do we see this part of worship as less important than other parts? We sometimes sing about Christ, “I gave, I gave my life for thee. What hast thou given for me?” Our contribution is an offering to our God who gave all for us. Are we as sacrificial as He?

In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira lie when they bring their money to the apostles’ feet. They look for praise from man rather than God. Our offering is directed toward God, and there is no room for personal glory involved. Our personal benevolence and our contributions to God’s church are to God’s glory. As when we sing and when we pray, it is to and for God.

I Corinthians 16 provides a context for participating in this worship when we come together on the first day of the week. In this scenario, the collection is used for saints in need. Need is established, and they fulfill it. Examples like the famine coming in Acts 11 as well as several occasions in Paul’s journeys, the church fulfills those needs they see.

Offerings and the Old Testament
Romans 15:45 discusses the example set for us in the Old Testament, and the earliest offering we read of is by Cain and Abel. Abel’s sacrifice is of spirit and truth, and God respects his sacrifice. He gives unto God as God would have him give. This is prior than even than the law of Moses. When Abraham returns form battle in Genesis 14, he makes offering to God. Jacob offers God a tithe when fleeing from his brother Esau. These sacrifices are centered around worshiping God.

In the case of animal offerings, God expected the best from His people. The finest and healthiest of the livestock went to God. This was a valuable and costly resource to those making the offerings. These animals were an investment in the future of their families and businesses in a largely agricultural society. By the time we reach the writings of the prophets, people ceased giving as they should, leading to corruption in the priesthood’s work and teachings. Like the offering supported those serving God then, Paul writes about our contribution supporting our elders and preachers.

Exodus 35:4 and II Chronicles 24:8 both record offerings from the people in building and restoring the place of worship. In James 2:2, the word translated assembly is the same that is translated as synagogue in other places. It is a meeting place, set apart for the purpose of worship. Again, like the contributions of the Old Testament helped maintain the places of worship, so do ours today. Even the widow with nothing but two mites was giving for the support of the temple.

Application to Our Offerings
We are to give as we have been prospered, and II Corinthians 8:2-12 says our offering should be liberal, loving, and willing. The very next chapter tells us we should be cheerful in giving, and that we should determine our offering ahead of time. It is purposed in our hearts. Galatians 6:7-8 warns us that God is not mocked, reminding us to sow spiritual blessings. When we give to God, our priority is on God rather than ourselves. We are supporting His work and His workers. It is worship to Him, sacrificing for Him as He sacrifices for us.

lesson by Herbert Smelser, Jr.