In this sermon, the preacher discusses the way in which the flesh operates in the church, specifically in the diaconate and church meetings. He emphasizes that many people in the church argue and manifest behaviors that are not in line with the fruit of the spirit. The preacher highlights the importance of repentance and forgiveness, stating that without repentance, there can be no forgiveness from God. He also emphasizes the grace of God, explaining that God's grace is revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ and that it is available to all, even those who have fallen short of their duty.

We come to the second of our great words of the gospel, and that is the wonderful word forgiveness. This mysterious miracle of grace that God forgives sin, grievous sin, in a limitless way. Will you turn to a few scriptures, there's not just one passage this morning, just three, quite short. Exodus chapter 34, never get the impression that the God of grace is only the God of the New Testament. Jehovah always was a God of grace. Indeed, that name Jehovah, which is God's first name, I say first name, I should perhaps say personal name. I'm groping around, we call it his Christian name, but we can't say that of him. You know what your Christian name is, your personal name, not your family name, your personal name, and God's personal name is Jehovah. And that's always the name of grace. And here we see him revealing his name, his character, to Moses, after he'd been praying for the people who had sinned so grievously in the mountain. Exodus 34 verse 5, And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, the character of Jehovah. And Jehovah passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, revised version, and plenteous in mercy, keeping mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. And then over in Ephesians in the New Testament, chapter 4 verse 30, Ephesians 4.30, no, 32, 4.32, And be ye kind one to another. Isn't it interesting that Christians need to be told to be kind, kind to one another. They might be told to be kind to the worldlings, but to their fellow saints, they're told to be kind, because they aren't always kind to one another. And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted. Here's something, forgiving one another. Sometimes grievous wrongs are done, you're to forgive them, forgive one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. And then over in 1 John 1 verse 9, if we confess our sins, 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Two things are promised if you confess your sin, that God will forgive you your sins, and cleanse you from all unrighteousness, and they are not the same. Very different. Normally, they're experienced together, as you confess sin, but as we shall see tomorrow, some people will know something of forgiveness, but are still going around with shame. They've not experienced cleansing. But normally, they are experienced together. They're certainly promised together, but they are not the same. Forgiveness comes first, and I believe we're a bit loose in our terminology sometimes. We talk about, I was cleansed, when you ought to say, I was forgiven. Because for myself, I find it much more humbling to have to seek forgiveness from God than cleansing. Cleansing speaks of defilement, forgiveness of guilt, and it's hard to own up. I'm guilty. And so there is the first word. We will look tomorrow at cleansing, which is different. Very different, but first, forgiveness because it comes first, and is the great miracle of grace. When Israel came out of Egypt, they had to learn three things about their God, Jehovah, who was delivering them. They had to learn three things in which he differed from every other supposed God of any other tribe or nation. They hardly knew him at all. Their experiences in the Exodus were a revelation of the God who was theirs. The first thing they had to learn, and they did learn, was that their God was sovereign, controlled everything. In a way, the gods, the fancied gods of the nations didn't. And when Moses told the story of their Exodus to Jethro, his father-in-law, Jethro says, Now I know that Jehovah is greater than all gods, for wherein they dealt proudly, he was above them all. That was a new one for Israel. They hardly realized that their Jehovah God was sovereign. The second thing they learned of him, and this is when they spent that twelve months at the foot of Mount Sinai, was that their God was not only sovereign, he was moral. As they heard the moral law pronounced from Sinai, audibly they heard the voice of God, ten commandments, ten times he spake. They realized that their God was moral. He loved righteousness, he hated iniquity. Who in the world had heard of a tribal deity who bothered about morality? This was something in which Jehovah differed from every other God. And they didn't only realize it in the distinctively moral part of the law that was given, but he came home to them very forcibly even in the ceremonial law that was given. God not only gave his moral law, but many ceremonial laws, and in those ceremonial laws he created what Dr. Basil Atkinson calls an artificial defilement. All sorts of things were said to defile them, touching a dead body, eating certain foods, artificial defilements. For which artificial defilement, there was provided artificial cleansing, such as the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, and so on. And the whole thing was designed to give them the impression that their God was holy, he was moral. These things are pointed of course to real things, but it was designed to give them the impression that you could be defiled not only ceremonially, but morally with God. The third thing they learned was by far the greatest, and this constituted Israel's treasure. That treasure which no other nation shared. They discovered in their experiences at the Exodus that their God was not only sovereign, he was not only moral, but he was gracious. This happened of course when they worshipped the golden calf, and as Moses came down, God said, let me alone, that my wrath may be kindled against them, and I will make of thee a greater nation than them. But Moses didn't let God alone. I believe God said what he did, that he wanted his wrath to be kindled against them in order that Moses wouldn't let him alone, and that in order that he might reveal that greater than his wrath was his grace. And he did indeed forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin when he was under no obligation so to do. He could indeed rightly and properly have destroyed them with a stroke and made of Moses a greater nation than they. There was nothing in them to merit any handsome treatment at all, but God gave them what they didn't deserve and revealed that he was not only sovereign, moral, but gracious. Who in the world had ever heard of one of these tribal deities being gracious and willing to forgive grievous affronts against himself? They all lived in fear, but this was the revelation that was given to Israel. And in that passage in Exodus 34 is one of the foundational passages of the Old Testament at least 17 times I think it is, or I've completed the number, I've counted it up. Are there either direct quotations or definite allusions to that great revelation that God gave of himself that he was merciful and gracious, slow to anger, ready to power. And when Israel repented under the disciplines of God, they always pointed him back to that revelation he'd made of himself as the God of grace. And his grace is revealed supremely in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. So much so it is called in the New Testament the gospel of the grace of God. It's not good advice, it's good news. It's not a call to duty, it's an offer made to those who've fallen down on their duty and come short of all the high standards they profess to espouse. Good news for bad people, even when the bad people happen to be converted on the one condition that such bad people confess the true nature of their badness. And so it is that these great words of the gospel are really great words of grace. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing unto them their trespasses. He was under no obligation to do it. Had he imputed unto men their trespasses and treated them accordingly, no angel in the sky could have charged him with injustice. But he did something that surprised angelic beings. Something utterly uncalled for, undeserved, whoever heard of the offended party making the amends for the offended one. But this was something utterly of grace. And not only that, of course, our present word is a great word of grace. God is under no obligation, or was under no obligation, to forgive men the grievous affronts that they've perpetrated against him. Under no obligation at all. But he did that which was in a sense uncalled for, utterly deserved. That's the great meaning of the word grace. All grace is love, but not all love is grace. I mean, you can love somebody because there's so much that merits your love. It's only when the object of divine love has nothing, he has nothing in it to commend himself to God, that love turns into grace. The sunrise is a wonderful picture of the love of God. As it does today, bathing everything with this beneficent warmth and light. But beautiful as sunlight is, there's something more beautiful. The rainbow. And the rainbow is simply the same sun, but shining through clouds, through rain on dark clouds. And then it's split up into its component parts, and we see one of the most beautiful phenomenon of nature. And it's when the love of God is shown to failed saints and hopeless sinners. When that love does something for them that they never expected and didn't deserve. That the love of God is called the grace of God. And what God has done for Christ is utterly of grace. And one of the things is, forgiving them. We read in Ephesians 1, we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. You know, I think we take it all too much for granted. A little too good. As if, you know, it's just one of those things, you have it, so on and so on. We don't know how much of grace it is. What an extraordinary thing it is to be able to be forgiven at all. And we don't always know how hard, how costly it was and is for God to forgive men their sins. So much is it a wonder that Micah in that famous verse in chapter 7, who says, who is a God like thee, that passeth pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his people. He retaineth not his anger forever, for he did love. And on that verse is that wonderful hymn, who is a God like thee, or who has grace so rich and free. Now, there's a forgiveness that brings you initially into the family of God. It's when God, for Christ's sake, forgives you your sin, initially, be those sins what they may be, you are born into God's family. And once in that family, you remain in it. Even though your behavior doesn't always match up to that of a child of God. There's a forgiveness that brings you into that family. But then there is a forgiveness that you need after you're in that family, to maintain you in happy relationship with the head of that family, your Heavenly Father. That boy is in your family, he's part of your family, and even misbehavior won't make him other than your son. And you're not likely to kick him out, because he's done something wrong. But there's a strain in the family, until the wrong has been on one person's side confessed, and on the other person's side forgiven. And I need this other forgiveness all the time. Many times, that my relationship with my Heavenly Father may be happy, and without strain, and able to enjoy his fellowship. In the Lord's Prayer, we have the petition, Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us. And the proximity of those two petitions seem to suggest, that whereas we need, quite obviously, daily bread, we also need daily forgiveness. Daily bread, daily forgiveness. And so it is that this word, forgiveness, is not only the word of the Gospel for those that are without, but it's the word of revival for those that are within. Because, alas and alas, all too often the saints are not receiving daily forgiveness. Because there's not daily confession. Perhaps this question of daily isn't quite the word, because it sounds like a formula. You're not asked to do it as a formula. You're to confess when God says you're to confess. And you'll be forgiven when you do. And that may well be, something or other, each day. They're not a necessity. The Holy Ghost will show you. It might be several times in one day. But all too often the saints are not in receipt of this continual forgiveness. Because they're not continually, as God shows them, seeing sin and confessing it. The result is that a whole heap of things that have piled up in our lives, for which God has been unable to forgive us within the family, which have come between us and him and strained our relationship, which have made our hearts cold and robbed us of his power and his presence, and we're left very largely with an empty shell of a Christian life. And our churches and our personal Christian lives have become, as we were hearing last night, little more than a valley full of dry bones. But when God forgives sin, he also restores all that our sin has deprived us of. And when sin that's caused the slaughter in the valley is forgiven, he breathes upon those slain, and they stand up a mighty great army, and that is revival. A picture of it. Take the great revival text that is sort of, well everybody has a go at it. Every preacher does. Every magazine has, but I don't know that it always reaches my heart. Maybe my messages on it don't reach other people's hearts. But listen to it. 2 Chronicles 7, 13, and 14. You needn't look it up, just make a note of it in your notebook. But here it is, all look it up. If I shut up heaven, we read, that there be no rain. Or, secondly, if I command the locusts to devour the little fruit that was in the land. Or, thirdly, if I lay my hand not only on the weather, not only on the crops, but on the people themselves. If I send pestilence among my people. There were terrible epidemics in Israel, in which thousands died. Because they were under the discipline of God for things that had gone wrong. Then, against that background you have verse 14. If, however, in that situation, my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will do two things. I will hear from him. That's a blessing. He hasn't heard you for quite a time. You've prayed and nothing much has happened. What a wonderful thing it is to know I'm heard. And when you're in the sinner's place, you are heard from heaven in a way when you aren't in the self-confessed sinner's place. And secondly, what will I do? Oh, send revival. Cause the valley to be revived. Heal the land. Oh no, not that. I will forgive their sin. He says, forget about the land being healed. Forget about the deadness in the church. What that church needs is, first of all, forgiveness. That church or that individual in that powerless state needs, first of all, to be forgiven. I tell you the church needs to be forgiven her sins. The way in which the flesh operates in the church, the way in which the flesh operates in the diaconate, the way in which the flesh operates in the church meeting or in the PCC, and people get up and say their bit and argue and manifest anything but the fruit of the Spirit. And no man repents. And therefore no man is forgiven. Little wonder then that God shuts up heaven. That there be no rain upon that church. And what that church or that individual needs is, first of all, to be forgiven. And when that is received and gratefully enjoyed, then God proceeds to heal the land. To make the valley stand up a mighty great army. To send revival. Then love is restored when hate has been confessed and forgiven. And we may know something of the experience of being knee-deep in love. Now it could be said that God takes man's misdeeds too seriously. A dear one of mine said, almost said as much. You know, he said, you know parents, and I was a parent and well he was my son. He said, you know I think parents take the misdeeds of their youngsters much too seriously. Because he's a grown man and he can think of the things he did and laugh at them, and really at this distance they didn't seem very much. But it may not only be parents who might be thought to take the misdeeds of their youngsters too seriously. But it might be thought that God does too. That really he's making much too fuss. Too much fuss about man's petty misdeeds. Does it really matter to him all that? If a lie is told or something is stolen. Or something of that order. Do you know Job felt that? Job in chapter 7 verse 20. You have a very interesting verse there. You need to read it. I don't read the Revised Standard Version. I've really got all I want in my present Bible. It's a two version Bible. The authorized version in the text and the 1881 revised in the margin. And I find of course that the Revised Standard Version is very much based on that revised version. And this is how I got in my Bible. I don't know how the Revised Standard Version has it. But verse 20 says, If I have sinned, what do I unto thee? O thou watcher of men! Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee? So that I am a burden to myself. If I have sinned, what does it matter to thee? O thou watcher of men! And as I say, it could be thought so. But of course we don't understand the true nature of sin if we think that. Sin, dear ones, is a personal wrong against God in which he is the loser and for which he has a claim for reparation. If you take something that doesn't belong to a person, if you steal, he's got a claim against you. A claim for reparation. Now sin is like that with regard to God. He's the loser. He's been robbed. And he therefore has a claim against the sinner for reparation. That is the reason why sin is so often talked of as a debt, an undischarged debt for which God has a right and proper claim for reparation. Forgive us our debts, in the Lord's Prayer, as we forgive our debtors. O the debt! O the whole vast array of things for which a holy God has a claim for reparation in which he's been the loser. He's lost you for one thing. The shepherd lost one out of a hundred. The woman lost one out of ten. The shepherd had a 1% loss. The woman had a 10% loss. But the father had a 50% loss. He only had two sons and he lost one. And when men go away from him, God himself is the loser. And when I ask God to forgive me, do you know what I'm doing? I am really asking him to forego his claim on me. But if he does that, I'm asking him to be the loser by my sin. He has a claim against us for reparation, but with nothing to pay. And I ask him to forego his claim on me. That's a big, deep thing I'm asking. It's interesting the word forgive and forego are similar and I think they're linked. When I forgive a man something, I personally forego something. If a man owes you 50 pounds, has difficulty in paying, I don't know, can't he either write or would he? Feel free to say, please, will you forgive me my 50 pounds? Will you forego your claim against me? Will you please just be 50 quid the loser? And that thing you intended to spend with that money, will you please not spend it? It's a big thing. It isn't often done. A man might volunteer to forego it, but the other would hardly ask it. There's a parable that makes this clear. It's the parable of the unforgiving servant. And the first part of this parable is all that I want to think about for a moment. When this man owed, what was it, 10,000 talents to his master, his king, how in the world he'd accumulated this debt, we're not told. It's a ludicrous figure because the margin of my Bible says that a talent was worth 187 pounds. Well, that was way back when this was printed. What's 187 pounds worth 50 years after that was put down? And you multiply that by 10,000, you're in the millions. How in the world did this man accumulate this debt? And he had no means with it to pay it. And in such a case, the normal thing was to sell the man and his children as slaves and recover a little something of the debt. But it would be only such a small percentage. And then the servant said, oh, well, have mercy on me, and I'll pay you so much a week back. How long would he have to live to pay that vast debt back? And the lord, the king, had compassion on him and released him. He forgave him. And that's forgiveness. It's being released of this awful set of unfulfilled debts and obligations which I haven't met and have little chance of ever meeting. But it meant that the king's exchequer was that amount short. The servant didn't dare ask the king, would you please mind foregoing 2 million pounds? It was a marvel that the king, touched with compassion, volunteered to do it. And when God forgives sin, he suffers the loss of that sin himself in order to forgive. If he forgives a man's insults to himself, independence of himself, flaunting of his laws, he can only forgive that man's sins if he's prepared and willing to suffer the loss of those things himself, to be willing to be insulted, to be outraged. It's a big thing for God. It's a humbling thing for me to expect him to forego his claims. And it's a big thing, a marvelous thing. He's decided that's exactly what he's going to do. He's prepared to suffer the loss himself, to release sinners, really release them. And in order that he might actually suffer the loss, and be seen to suffer it, he sent his beloved son. And that was what happened on the cross. God in Christ was suffering the loss, and consenting to be so treating, putting it down to his own account, that you might be forgiven. And that thing, you've got to see it in that light. And in the cross of our Lord Jesus, he's declared his readiness to forgive sin, because the loss of every conceivable sin, not only in your past, but right on into your future, has been anticipated and suffered by God in Jesus Christ. So the forgiveness is now absolutely potential. He has already suffered the loss. He's not imputing unto men their trespasses. He sees their sin, but because of Calvary doesn't hold it against them. And what they've got to do, is not even ask to be forgiven. That verse says, if we confess our sin, Calvary has made forgiveness available. But I think the solemn thing is, that we take it too cheaply, we don't realise what it cost. Oh, teach me what it meaneth, that cross uplifted high, where one, the man of sorrows, was condemned to bleed and die. And my confession of sin, has got to reflect my understanding of it. I've got to understand what my sin is. Do you understand that? You can get around it, if you say, please forgive me. God says, I don't want you to ask me to forgive you. That's going to be yours, if you will confess. And I believe we've got to do it verbally. You say, do I need to? God knows already. I know He knows, but He says, I want you, as it says in Hosea, take with you words. Take time. That hate, that attitude, that resentment, but whatever went wrong, take with you words, and turn to the Lord your God. And sometimes He may nudge you, you haven't gone deep enough. You haven't gone deep enough. An American Christian psychiatrist, I haven't got, oh yes, I've got some coins. He gave me an illustration. I've got some keys in my pocket. No, I've got a coin. And he showed me his handful of coins. He says, confess the obvious. Where do I begin? I know I'm not revived, where do I begin? Begin with the obvious. You say, that's not very much. You begin with that. Was it right? No. Then you need to be forgiven. And to forgive you, God had to make that, pay that huge cost. You've got to confess it. So you confess the obvious. There's another one underneath. Huh, you didn't see that. Come on, just fine. Go on to that. When that's removed, there's another one. Oh, that was the tip of the iceberg. The tip of the iceberg. And if you and I want to be forgiven, and have restored to us, all that sin has taken away from us, we've got to confess sin. The price has been paid, the loss has been sustained by God, but ours it is to confess sin. All right? There's that. Oh, they're deeper. Oh, the real things. The real things are very often at the bottom. And you never get to the real things, you start on the obvious things. There's another. Oh, is this the thing? There it is. You were jealous. That's why you were angry. That's why you were critical. So on and so on and so on. And some people say, oh, I keep on sinning and sinning. Wait a minute. Did God get down to the basic attitude? If forgiveness is there, God's prepared, has already paid the price. And so it is. If we confess our sins, he is faithful, very faithful. He'll deal faithfully with you. And just. He'll be so just. He won't let you down, but he won't let you off. I don't want him to let me off. I'd like to know. I want the best. To forgive us our sins. Now, just we go to another part of the subject. Not only God's forgiveness of us, but there is involved obviously our forgiveness of one another. And forgiveness has the same elements about it when it's one man forgiving another as when it is God forgiving us. Ephesians 4.30 or 4.32 says, Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another. Now that's a wonderful picture of what you might call fellowship. If you like, revival fellowship. It's not a fellowship of people who've grown wings, who never have any problems, nothing to get right with God about, nothing ever going wrong between them. It's a fellowship of mutual forgiveness. One day, asking a brother to forgive me. The other day, forgiving one who's wronged me. As a progression, it goes on all the time. Forgiving and being forgiven. Forgiving and being forgiven. Sometimes, you're the offended party. If any man has ought against another, he must forgive him. And other times, you're the offending one in which case you must confess and ask that brother to forgive you. And that's fellowship. We haven't got to glory yet. We've got the old Adam in us, but we may still have revival fellowship. And it's nothing more than a fellowship of mutual forgiveness. A happy home is happy because there is this lovely mutual forgiveness. Sometimes one side, sometimes the other. Sometimes being forgiven, sometimes forgiving. Now, to forgive a wrong is as costly, no, not quite as costly to us as to God, but it involves basically the same thing. I cannot forgive that person the wrong he's done against me while I'm not willing to have that wrong done against me. He shouldn't do it. It's not right. It's not fair. After all I've done for him or her. You can't forgive them. Why shouldn't you be treated like that? Who are you anyway? We stand up for our rights. By rights, we all ought to be in hell as sinners. Grace has dealt with us more than we deserve. And I cannot forgive another unless I'm willing to be thus treated. Willing to be slighted. Willing to be left out. Willing to be taken advantage of. Willing to be falsely accused. And a wife, even willing to be betrayed. Oh, what a hard thing. But if she doesn't forgive that grievous wrong, all she's going to succeed in doing is tearing herself apart. And I know some who have done just that. Because it's not right. It isn't right. But God was prepared to suffer infinite more loss to forgive us. And you and I must be willing for that. In other words, this failure to forgive another is really pride. It's really pride. And at the basis of the forgiving spirit is a broken and a contract one. This is the battle. Maybe it's just resentment. It's the same thing as vengeance. Resentment. I'm not willing. But go to the cross and see again what Jesus was willing to lose. His reputation. His everything for you. Are you better than him? Do you deserve better treatment? Do I better than he did? This is my battle. Don't think I'm through. I don't find it very difficult. But if I get through, I get through this way. And then I'm happy and glad to extend forgiveness. Now the problem is it's comparatively easy, easier. Not very easy, but it's certainly easier to forgive a person's wrong against ourselves when that person repents and acknowledges their wrong. But what if they don't? You still got to forgive. We have got basically to settle the thing. I've been wrong. I confess it's wrong to hold on to my pride. I give that up. And forgiveness is there for that person. As far as my attitude is concerned, he's forgiven. His potential, the relationship isn't likely to be greatly restored until there's some response. But as far as you're concerned, he's forgiven. Now I remember hearing, I can't remember the details of a pathetic situation in East Africa amongst, in the case of a brother who was really saved and going on with the Lord and his wife left him to live with another man. And I think he had to go past the house almost every day to work where his wife was living with another man. God began to work in that woman eventually. She was broken. She wept her way back to God. And she came back to her first husband, said, Can you ever forgive me? Will you please forgive me? He said, There's nothing to forgive. You were forgiven the moment you went away. I tell you, that's a work of grace. He settled it with God. He bowed his head at the cross. But when she came back and confessed that, then the relationship was healed. But his forgiveness of her wasn't dependent on her confession. He forgave her already. Therefore he had peace. And though he was alone in his home, he was at peace with the Lord, sharing his testimony with the brethren, surrounded by their love. He wasn't eating his heart out. He wasn't tearing himself apart. This is how it must be with us. And as I say, it's not possible without many a new sight of that wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died for us, when he paid that far greater, suffered that far greater loss to forgive us, that we ever suffer at another person's hands, unless we see the many matters in which grace has reached us, and our sins are committed against Deity. And if Deity can forgo his rights and release me, I can release that other person. I'm going to suggest to you that probably you're thinking of somebody who's wronged you, whose attitude toward you isn't right, and you do impute their trespasses unto them. God reminded me of a thing only the other day that happened. I needn't mention it. It's largely irrelevant. It wasn't a big thing, and it wasn't a very big, hard thing in my heart, but just something, in which something got damaged, and the person never realized, or never even admitted it had been damaged. And as I say, it hasn't been a very big thing, and it really hasn't really impeded my fellowship with that person. I realized I hadn't been willing to have it damaged, and in my mind, release that brother. It's amazing how sometimes God brings back something where you haven't released that brother, and we won't be in fellowship with God unless we do. Maybe the brother does this, that, and the other. He may not even know he does it. I may not have to run around and tell him I've released him, because the thing's done perhaps unconsciously on his part. Sometimes God might tell you to do it, sometimes no. But before God, I have to release him. Let it go, brother. Let it go, sister. Jesus lets far more go for us than you're asked to. And there's wonderful fellowship. Fellowship of mutual forgiveness. I've been forgiven by my brethren for so many things, and I ought to be forgiving my brethren, and even the world for so many things too. And so here's this great word of the gospel, this great word of revival too. Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? And this makes all the difference in our loving relationships, in our forgiving, forbearing relationships, one with another. Amen. Let us bow our heads in prayer. Lord, we want to say to thee, who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? Thank you for being this sort of lovable, gracious, forgiving God. We want to thank thee for those countless acts of pardoning grace that thou hast shown towards us. And grant that we shall show them, reflect them, to that other person. May some of us, even this morning, decide to release that person. And if it means suffering loss and consenting to have certain things done to us, help us to be willing, Lord. So shalt thou restore our souls. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we're just going to sing those lines of those who know that great hymn, Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? No. Amen. I'll sing. We'll sing it. It's a little chorus. Great. Oh dear me. Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? Once again. Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? Amen.