Forgiveness
PSALM 119:9
9 ¶ BETH. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.
Series on Forgiveness..
This seems a strange scripture to read on the subject of forgiveness!
But if we look a little deeper, we realise that according to the scripture, our own cleansing is based on our forgiveness of others, and that requires the spirit of Christ by the word that you keep in your heart.
MATTHEW 6:9-15
9 ¶ After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. (When we pray, we should always begin by acknowledging God for who he is, and approaching him in worship)
10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread. (This is not just natural bread, but the bread of the word of life - the word of God)
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
(The way you forgive others is the way that you will be forgiven by God)
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
If you are not fully forgiven by God, then you are not fully clean.
PSALM 119:9-11
9 ¶ BETH. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. (Cleansing is not just for young men but for all ages, but if you learn to cleanse your ways when you are young, then you will take that habit and skill with you when you are older)
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.
Heed = Hebrew word - shamar {shaw-mar'} - to keep, preserve, protect, to be on one's guard, take heed, take care, beware, have charge of, guard, keep watch and ward, protect, observe, retain, treasure up (in memory), to keep (within bounds)
10 ¶ With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. (The same problem that King David had is a common problem of man – there seems to be a natural tendency for man to wander away from God and his ways and commandments because of the temporal desires of the flesh and mind. The flesh is not interested in eternal things because its end is to rot in the grave)
11 ¶ Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Sin is to disbelieve the word of God. All the attributes of sin (steeling, lying, committing adultery), all these things are the side effects of sin; it is what is produced because of unbelief of the word.
So the more word that is in your heart (that you have received by faith), then this is what deals with the attributes of sin – it is not trying to stop the sin in your life, it is the word of God that you keep in your heart that cleanses you.
II CORINTHIANS 5:17
17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
All things have become new is not referring to your natural body, the body change takes place at the last trump. Remember that the body is not born again by the word until it is changed from mortal to immortality – the new birth by the seed of the word takes place in your spirit nature, where once you were at enmity with God, now your desire is for him, and that makes everything new.
MARK 11:22-26
22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
See how these two are associated together – faith for the creative spoken word power and forgiveness, because both require the character of Christ.
Brother Branham picks this up in this message…
PERFECT.FAITH_ JEFF.IN V-6 N-11 SUNDAY_ 63-0825E
He has just finished reading this same scripture of Mark11:22-26 that we have just read…
19 Now, faith is based on forgiveness, then. And then, as we said this morning, trying to get the church into the place to where we could really see apostolic times moving among us, that's what we all hunger (in other words – we must first come to a place where we can forgive every person to have the level of faith that is required to see apostolic times moving among us in a greater way). And it's just laying right at the door. We see it, but we want to see more of it. We want it such a flow that it'll--it'll be a help to us, us flow out to others.
20 Remember, Jesus (as we had in the lesson this morning), He never used His power for Himself, He used it for others. That's what it was sent for. And you think sometime, "Why would a Man that was so full of power, like Him, would have ever be sick?" Yes, sir. I've read in some book, somewhere, where when He raised up that boy, the widow's son from Nain (I believe, The Prince of the House of David), that He set on a rock and groaned with a headache. See? He bore our infirmity. Bear means "to pack them." See, He bore. And He had all things in... like we have. He had sickness, he had temptations, He had trouble, He had flusteration just as we have, because He had to be the right kind of a Mediator; so He had to be partaker, the Husbandman of the fruit, before He would know.
In the Old Testament – you could sometimes get the impression that God is different from Jesus because it seems like God the Father was stricter and less forgiving then God the son.
EXODUS 32:9-14
9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
When the children of Israel complained against Moses and God in the wilderness, God would have killed them all and started again with Moses, but Moses stood in the gap for the people. Brother Branham said that that was Christ in Moses, but we know that Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New Testament (the same person), so why does it seem like there is a difference in character, the difference was between sympathy in the Old Testament and empathy in the New Testament.
There was an attribute of God to be expressed in Christ that was at a deeper level than what was expressed in the Old Testament.
Sympathy is to feel sorry and to have pity for someone else’s misfortune,
Empathy is to feel what that person is feeling because you have been through it yourself.
JOHN 4:24
24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
God is a spirit God, and God cannot learn anything because he knows the end from the beginning, so He could intellectually understand weakness and tiredness and helplessness in every possible detail because he was God and He knows all things, but he had never experienced those things because as the great God of all eternity (in his spirit form) he had never actually felt tied or weak because he was in his spirit form. But when he became a man and put on a body in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ, then that intellectual knowing went on to a deeper level into experience, because experience is knowledge in an advanced form.
ISAIAH 53:3
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
In the Old Testament God could sympathise with man’s weakness, but it was not until he became a man himself that he could truly feel what man felt, that he could fully empathise.
That is why God in spirit form did not qualify to be our high priest to intercede on our behalf for seven church ages.
HEBREWS 5:1-2
1 ¶ For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant (for seven church ages until the opening of the word, Jesus our high priest had compassion on the ignorance of the people in relation to His word), and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.
World English Bible translation for HEBREWS 5:2
The high priest can deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, because he himself is also surrounded with weakness.
God as a spirit could not experience weakness, but as a man he could, and that is what qualified him.