Standing in the middle of about 850 men and at least 16 blue kiddie pools full of enough shrimp, potatoes, corn and sausage to capsize a fishing boat, Jeff Iorg dove into Scripture with a message on the “power of forgiveness” — the kind we joyfully receive through Jesus Christ and the difficult kind we struggle to give to those who hurt us deeply.
Iorg, president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, was the keynote speaker at the third annual Men’s Shrimp Boil Thursday evening (July 31) at First Baptist Church Hendersonville, Tennessee.
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Iorg pulled his message from Matthew 18, which covered the story of a man who was forgiven a huge debt by his king, but then was later punished for refusing to forgive a fellow servant who owed him much less. Because of the unforgiveness in the man’s heart, he was then forced to spend the rest of his life paying off his debt.
Breaking his message down into “two simple points,” Iorg said everyone needs forgiveness from God — but they also need to forgive others.
The easy part
“Brothers, this is a picture of us in relationship with God,” he said. “Our sin is significant. We have done things that are evil, vile, despicable, and most of us know we have done a lot of those kinds of things over a lifetime.”
God’s willingness to forgive us through Christ’s sacrifice, he noted, gives us a freedom we can celebrate.
The ‘not-so-fun’ part
But Iorg told the men to “buckle up.” He noted, “the next part is not so fun… we must forgive others.”
It’s not the easy things, he added, like being cut off in traffic or someone “messed up your burger order.”
“I’m talking about you forgiving your ex-wife, who walked out on you and took the kids and left you with the bills,” Iorg said. “I’m talking about your uncle or cousin or down-the-street neighbor who touched you in a way a boy should have never been touched. I’m talking tonight about forgiving things that have cut us to our soul, left a scar deep on our hearts.”
The Bible says “just as you have been forgiven, you have a responsibility to forgive others. The Bible tells us in this story that you have a responsibility to forgive the same way God has forgiven you. That’s hard to do. … you forgive your offender when they don’t even deserve it.”
He added, “Did you deserve for God to forgive you? I don’t think so. But God did it anyway, so we forgive people who don’t deserve it.”
This means forgiving them completely and lavishly.
True freedom
True forgiveness brings freedom, Iorg said, that allows us to let go and move on with our lives. He noted forgiveness does not remove the consequences of someone’s actions, but we must leave that part to God in His own timing.
He added, “When you forgive, it ends the control the other person has over you. … The only way to cut that off is to grant forgiveness.”
“God is much more able to make things right than you will ever be. Just leave it to Him, let Him take care of it.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Shawn Hendricks and originally published by The Baptist Paper.
