Heaven's Point of View

Impossible

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Frank Fournier

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Series Code: HPOV

Program Code: HPOV000021B


00:01 We've been studying the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
00:03 We're looking at the elder brother.
00:05 You know, I've a hard time accounting
00:07 for why he treated his younger brother the way he did?
00:10 But we do need to understand
00:12 that the family had been embarrassed.
00:14 The family had been put to shame,
00:16 they had been insulted and perhaps
00:18 in the community they were a laugh,
00:20 maybe they were a laughing stuff I don't know.
00:22 And in any case when the younger brother
00:24 came home and his father forgave,
00:26 the one thing that was happening
00:28 in the elder brother's heart was that he could not forgive.
00:34 He was trying to--
00:37 Have you ever come to the place
00:39 where someone has hurt you
00:41 and you wonder how you can make them
00:42 suffer that which they have made you suffer?
00:45 Is there no way to make him feel
00:48 what he has made us feel?
00:49 And so the younger,
00:50 the elder brother is not able to forgive
00:52 and I can feel a huge frustration in his heart.
00:56 Have you ever been brought to the position in your life
00:59 where there is someone who has done you wrong
01:02 and you don't know how to forgive?
01:06 Turn with me to Matthew Chapter 6
01:08 and we're gonna look at verses 14 and 15.
01:11 "For if ye forgive men their trespasses,
01:13 your heavenly Father will forgive you.
01:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses,
01:17 neither will your Father forgive their trespasses."
01:20 Friends, this sounds very legalistic to me.
01:23 It sounds like our forgiveness
01:24 is based on what we do and not what Jesus said,
01:28 but this is not what Jesus was trying to say.
01:30 Jesus was trying to say
01:32 is that we cannot give what we do not have.
01:35 If we do not forgive us
01:36 because we've never received forgiveness
01:39 and so this is what this is trying to say here.
01:42 The elder brother had never received the help
01:45 that he needed from heaven, from his father,
01:47 therefore when his younger brother came by
01:50 he had nothing to offer
01:53 but he was ruled by his carnal nature,
01:56 he was governed but by what was in his heart
01:59 and out of the abundance of his heart came words
02:03 that were cutting, filled with anger,
02:05 filled with fear
02:07 and the elder brother himself was loosing his way.


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Revised 2014-12-17