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Episode 784:In this episode, we focus on the powerful moment in Luke 23, where Jesus, while being crucified, prays for the forgiveness of those who are executing him. This leads us to discuss the profound implications of forgiveness, both in the context of Jesus' example and in our own lives. We share personal stories of forgiveness, including my own journey with my biological father, highlighting that forgiveness does not mean condoning wrongdoing but rather releasing the burden of resentment.
Whether you’ve been following Jesus for years or you’re just starting to ask questions, there’s a seat for you here.
Join Jeff and Chris for honest conversations about Scripture, faith, and the everyday stuff we all navigate. With humor, personal stories, and plenty of back-and-forth, The Bible Guys explore what the Bible says and how it connects to your life.
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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, everybody, happy Thursday. Happy Thursday. Sure, why not? We're so excited we can hardly stand it. Make this day the best Thursday ever? Okay? And uh and by the way, it could be the end of the day. Yeah, I think I think Thursday doesn't get very good attention, right with you. I mean, there's Monday. Everybody hates Mondays. Yeah, Wednesday's hump day. You're like, hey, we're over the hump now, we're halfway to the good part of the week. Friday or Fridays, thank god, it's Friday. Weekends are great. Weekends are amazing. So really, Tuesday and thursdayild. We just forget forgotten. So hey, it's time for us to give honor to whom honor is due. Thursday's been standing there for us, Thursday. If it weren't for Thursday, we wouldn't have anything to do between Wednesday and Friday. A little buddy Thursday. All right, all right, hey, today we are before we jump into the what is titled as the hardest. Prayer, hardist prayer, how about that. Okay, we have a segment and this is Stump the Pastor. Oh, Stump the Pastor is actually something that we actually collect questions. We enjoy them, and we encourage you to email us right now. So go to info actually send an email to info at the Bible guys dot com. It'll get to us. Or just comment on YouTube and we'll try to grab your question right there. I love questions like this. I love like just open forum Q and a kind of stuff. Do you enjoy that, yes, Well, it shows that people are thinking, yeah, and it shows that people care and they're like, hey, I have a question about the Bible and I really want to know this answer. Yeah. Several times, a couple times a year. Usually I'll meet with our high schoolers and just take an hour or two and say, hey, it's just any question you want to ask. And it's amazing how they they'll stay sometimes for hours and hours just as questions. So I'll tell them I'll stay as long as your pans will let you stay. And so then they started this as then all of a sudden, Mom and Dad are all standing around. We got the crowd of people stand around just asking Bible questions. Done it a few times with our young adults. We got one hundred and something young adults in our church, and and we do the same thing there. We gotta fly flying around us, and so do the same thing with our interns and residents will do it. I just I love it when people are using their minds. They've come across the thing, they're not sure what the answer is. And instead of just giving up, like I think a lot of people have grown up with a religious view or belief of don't ask questions. It offends God, right, Instead, I love it. The Book of Jeremiah says, come now, let's reason together. Says the Lord God wants us to use our minds. He God invented your mind. That's right, he did, right, and he knows that you have this ability to have big questions. And he's not offended when we have questions. So I love it. I love this segment. And so what's what's our questions? But by the way, did you I learned recently learned that Chad is more reluctant to let me do a public Q and A than you. Our executive pastor, executivestor. Our executive pastor is very protective, you know, why because he's because you go rogue. Well he's not. He's not afraid of my theology of the answer. He's he's afraid of my diplomacy lack of it. Right, So, so so he's like, he's like, and I'm not even I'm not even sure afraid is the word. He's just a little bit more cautious. Cautious. He's like, we don't we don't really know if Chris is going to be you would do fine. Because we all know that you're diplomatic. Well, it's definitely clear that you're way more diplomatic than. Me at times at times, Okay, I can also be a bigger jerk than you, so right at times? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So my lows are lower and my highs are higher. My lows are lower, my eyes are higher. Yeah yeah, that's pretty good. All right. Yeah, So this this question is written by Bill T. Bill Bill T. Yes, Hey, Bill Yes, not Bill T, but. Bill Bill T. Okay. So he writes this, is there a distinction in the Bible between justifiable and unjustifiable anger? Can Christians express anger in a righteous way as Jesus did in the temple, or should all anger be avoided entirely. Yeah. Well, I'm afraid to answer this question at but Bill to be mad at me. But I'm bumping. Ah, I see what you did there? Yeah, so yeah, I mean, like, so I remember a sermon. You know, some sermons you remember forever, right, I don't know if you do. I do, But I remember a sermon that Bill Heibels gave at a leadership summit back in like two thousand and six, and so we were actually at the leadership summit and he actually talked about righteous indignation, and he talked about how Jesus had righteous indignation and how he flipped over the money changer's temple or money changers tables at the temple. So and by the way, because made a whip. Yeah, because that's correct he did. Because that's been mentioned twice. We might as well at least explain that way. Sure. So Jesus actually in the Bible got angry, and he got angry at the fact that he actually said, you have made my house into a den of thieves, right, And he was referring to people who were abusing what it was like selling sacrifices and making a profit, unreasonable profit. Oh yeah, it was exorbitant. They had kind of a monopoly on the If you were traveling hundreds and hundreds of miles to the temple, normally you wouldn't bring your sacrifice. You would take that perfect sacrificial animal. You would sell it, bring the money to Jerusalem and buy another animal that you could do rather try to bring it the whole way. Well, what was happening was the money changers and then the people running businesses at the temple. They were you know, five, six, ten, twenty times more expensive than what you could have gotten or village for the same animal. And it's because they had a monopoly on it. They were abusing people just to make money. And it really made Jesus man. So he makes a whip, he clips over the tables and sets all the animals free and spills all their money everywhere and really chews them out. Yeah, well, I mean Jesus with a whip is not a common painting. Yeah. Usually it's usually it's like a sad Jesus with long hair and blue eyes looking up into the Caucasian Yeah. Yeah, the stars, and he's holding the lamb and hugging a child. Right. I don't usually think of Jesus with his sleeves rolled up, whipping people, flipping tables. And none of that. But like he was a strong man. Yeah, he is a carpenter, right, and so he was a specimen. I mean we know that just from the physical uh you know, brutality of even you know what he endured and he endured it, right, So yeah, so I mean this the picture would be a strong muscular man, angry with a whip, flipping over tables. And so I almost wonder because again, everything to me is Hollywood, not for the sake of Hollywood, by the way, for the sake of reality. Right, So Hollywood, meaning when I say Hollywood, I mean like I can picture the whole entire scene right now, That's what I mean. But I don't mean Hollywood fake or Hollywood dramatization. I don't mean any of those terms. When I say Hollywood. What I mean you see a movie. I could see this being played out. And so oftentimes when I Hollywood, I as a narrative, I will I will try to suppose or wonder and think to myself, like, did somebody try to oppose him? Like? It doesn't say so, right, It does not say that somebody came up to him, and he pushed them out of the way. Or three men were thinking about charging him, and then he held up the whip and looked at them, and they knew he was serious, and so they backed off. Right. But I'm sure those things happen, right, because guess what, You don't come into a place and destroy people's profitability in their livelihood without opposition, You just don't, Right. I'm sure they caught him by surprise, and I'm sure that everybody knew who Jesus was. I mean, they certainly knew who he was, so there might have been a fear of like, I don't know what to do right. Now, Yeah, just get out of here, Like I. Don't know, I'm a nobody. I'm a guy who's making a profit off animal sacrifices. And here's that's and I know who that is. That's Jesus, and so I don't know what to do right now. But those are the kind of things when I say, Hollywood is things I think to myself, like, how did that play out? Yeah, because certainly people had to have a reaction to Jesus anyway. Well. In Ephesians four twenty six is it twenty six? Ephesians four something, let me find it. Ephesians four four. I know, Ephesians four thirty two. I know if He'sans four. Twenty oh, yeah, there you go for twenty six. And don't let sin, and don't sin by letting anger control you. Right, don't let the sun go down while you're still angry. For angry anger gives a foothold to the devil. Another translation says, be angry and sin not and then don't let the sun go down, right, and so, so anger isn't the same, right right. Anger is just an emotion. Where it becomes sinful is when it's self centered. I'm angry at you because you offended me. If you just if you just let that fester. This why I says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. You let that fester, it's going to turn into bitterness. This bitterness gives a foothold to the devil. So, uh, you talked about righteous indignation. Man, If somebody was coming through the door to hurt my wife and my daughter in the middle of the night, that's correct. Believe me, they're going to get the full force of Jeff right. And it's the anger then is driven by the threat to what I love so dearly. So first of all, I have to I have to really make sure I love the right things. It's not just me, it's not just my happiness and my comfort. But I love my wife, I love my daughter, I love my freedom, I love right. There's a lot of those things, and so because of that major threats to those things. It's not a sinful thing to have that anger feeling, that that rush come into you saying I need to defend this. The Bible talks multiple times that it's responsibility the strong to protect the weak, to speak up for those who don't have a voice, to protect those who can't protect themselves. Right. So the Jesus talks about at one point, you know, the kingdom he's putting violent men will have to seize it, right, And he's not talking about like violence like you and I think of blood and gore, but by men, men that just stand up in their strength and grab a hold of this thing. So I'm always cautious when people start to ask is it sometimes okay for me to be angry? Because on occasion I'm not saying in bill Ty is this guy, But on occasion it's people who have trouble with their anger and they're trying to justify it and win an argument with their spouse later, right, or. If they're an angry person in general, they may be generally concerned about their demeanor. If you are having trustworthy people, spouses, children, friends, saying, boy, you seem like you're pretty angry lately, then maybe you're starting to cross the line between being angry and sinning. Not right, you need to get back to that. Don't sin. So let your anger drive you to do something good. Right So, right now, for instance, one of the ministries you're really focusing a lot on lately has been child trafficking, right right, So how does that make you feel? You drive through those neighborhoods, and you know what's happening in Dominican Republic. Their parents are selling their own children. I'll actually make a statement. When I went on a tour and I actually saw I saw it with my eyes. I saw it, I saw the child, I saw what was happening and the men protecting it, and I saw a person go up and inquire about it. I have never felt more anger in my entire life, in my whole life, and I've gotten angry about a lot of things I've never felt more anger than that. So God is not calling you to be Batman becomes some vigilante, right, come swooping in, kick the doors down, necessarily, But that anger has driven you to start helping build a system to rescue those kids, raise the money through transform one, and actively begin working towards a good solution. And that may not be repaying evil with evil, right, it's repaying evil with good. And so how do you how do you go solve that? So which which, by the way, since you already mentioned it, I wasn't going to say it, but by the time this goes on the air, we will be two weeks out from our five k. And if you want to make a small. Donation or a big donation or a big donation, we don't we don't want to limit your donation. I would you like to make a donation? I would. I would love it if if somebody who normally isn't a part of heritage, because you know, a lot of people who listen to this are part of our community anyway, and they're like, I have already heard about this, Yes, but there has to be. Thousand, thousands of people who don't know what you don't know. What we're talking about. Would you do me a favorite? Go to Heritage Church dot com slash five k. Everything's on there, so if to donate or watch the video find out more about it herdichurch dot com slash five k making donation, that'd be awesome. Yeah. So if you're asking the question because you've had people tell you you seem really angry lately, then let that be God's way of saying, hey, you're starting to cross the line. Yeah, right, don't use Bible versus to justify your anger. But if you're feeling a holy anger or a righteous indignation towards some kind of wrong thing in society, and you're wondering at my sinning, well no, you're not sinning necessarily, as long as you direct that in a way that causes you to then address this issue in a healthy, godly way. Right. So people are not your enemy. Satan is our enemy, and so we don't fight people. We fight the actions of Satan in society and we did so. Yeah, it's great, it's great. Hey, thanks, good question, Bill, that's great. All of those answers are people, you know, people wonder about those, so that's why they're called stump the pastors because because and sometimes stump the pastors are I don't know right right because depending on the question. But this is something I've heard so many times, So thanks Bill for asking. I've thought several times it would be fun to do Stump the pastor week. Oh if we could get enough people to write in questions, if we could get like one hundred questions, we could do three or four day let's let's let's. Let's announce it right now after the Dangerous Prayers series. Yeah, let's do a five day stint where we do a stump the pastor, you know. Not make the whole episode. I was going to say, the one question may not carry us the whole episode. Yeah, but if we get if we get a hundred questions, we could just filter through them and find the ones that would fill up the twenty five minutes every day. I think it'd be fun. Yeah, it'd be fun. Okay, So there it is. There's your assignon. People. If you want to see this series come into fruition, then comment on YouTube right now, or comment online or email us at info at the Bobble Guys dot com and we would love to get your stuff to past their questions. Cool, well that's neat. Well there you go. All right, Well I get permission from des right, right, because we only have we only have the appearance of being in control of this podcast, but we know who the real puppet master is. Yes, yep, you know. Even no matter how angry we get, we are still commanded to forgive Ooh, you're right. And that leads us to this next segment, or this next passage where Jesus forgives Yeah. Well, good transition. That was actually a good transition. That was not a bad transition. No, that was a very good one. So we're going to pick up on at Luke chapter twenty three, verse thirty two. It says to others, both criminals were led out to be executed with him talking about Jesus right, and when they came to a place called the Skull or Galgatha, they nailed him to the cross, and the criminals were also crucified, one on his right and one on his left. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing, and the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice. The crowd watched and the leader scoffed he saved others, They said, let him save himself, as if he really is God's Messiah, the chosen One. The soldiers mocked him too by offering him a drink of sour wine. They called out to him, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. A sign was fashioned above him with these words, this is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, So you're the Messiah? Are you prove it by saving yourself and us two while you're at it? But the other criminal protested, don't you fear God even when you've been sentenced to die. We deserve to die for our crimes. But this man hasn't done anything wrong. And then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus replied, I assure you today you'll be with me in Paradise. And by this time it was about noon, and darkness fell across the whole land, until three o'clock the light from the sun was gone, as suddenly the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn down the middle. Then Jesus shouted, Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands and with those words, he breathed his last. Wow, there's a lot in there. Yes, well, I think the big, the dangerous prayers Father forgive them. Yeah, that is definitely the focus of the topic. Uh. And we can go on forever about everything else that's in there. Uh. But I don't know why. I just got super emotional thinking about the criminal. You know. He you know, here's this criminal who doesn't have a name, just known as the criminal. Yeah, and one day we're criminal one and criminal two. Right, We're gonna get to heaven. And I'm you know, there's a lot of questions. I think that God will indulge us with these questions. I do, I do. I think I think we'll have time, obviously sure to explore every question that we have and uh that we have now on this earth. And I think that, uh, I I would love to talk to this criminal. The the idea that that one of them, you know, is scoffing and then the other is completely recognizing that in belief that he's the son of God and saying, don't you fear God? He's saying, how dare you talk to God this way? I mean, he is he is a believer, you know, keep in mind that. It did say that there were so many people there at that what am I What am I trying to say? Pass Over week, Yes, pass over fester. The city was just it was bursting at the seams at this point. And it said that, It said many were there because they had heard that he had raised Lazarus from the dead. So his popularity had grown to such a degree to where, you know, people had heard his claims to be the Messiah at this time. You know, he held nothing back and so he had done nothing wrong. Everybody knew it. This is even a testament of the public, you know. You know sometimes when when something happens and there's a patsy, it's like you can't sort of I just watched it yesterday. I watched the movie where everybody knew that what was happening was unjust and this person who was the patsy didn't deserve to get fired from his job. But everybody knew it. Everybody knew it, but nobody wanted to talk about it because everybody was afraid of the authorities. That happened just last night, and so here it is. This man makes a statement that represents like everybody here knows that this man is in a sense everybody here knows he's done nothing wrong, and this man recognizes Jesus. Anyway, that's not the focus of the dangerous prayer. I want to point out one interesting thing to me. This guy on the cross, maybe in this specific moment in history, had the most faith of maybe everybody else on the planet, because Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God, and when you're naked and nailed to the cross, the kingdom seems like it should be over. Everybody lost hope, all the disciples lost. Hope, and only the guy on the cross next to him said, I still believe in your kingdom. Is that an original thought right now? Isn't that neat? Because that's incredible. Yeah, that's incredible. Peter Peter lied and denied. James and the Mary's they're they're standing back in the crowd fear. Yeah, and uh and uh. Everybody can't believe or understand. Yeah. And it says that they didn't understand, they didn't remember his words, they didn't know what was happening. And it says only after he was resurrected then they remembered the promise he told them, right, So they had lost all hope, they were out of they were motivated, out of fear. They all ran, they were all in hiding. Wow. And then and this guy, this one guy said, Jesus, remember me when you show. Up in Paradise before the veil rents in two before the earthquake. Is the Roman soldier? Yeah, made a statement and the thing he had heard Jesus say was his father forgive them. They don't know what they've done. And he had no hope for forgiveness except that. Wow. Right, and then he what a thought? Yeah, whats so thought? Anyways, Jesus says, I really want. To meet this guy. You really want to meet this guy. I'm going to find this guy. So yeah, hey, maybe you guys have been neighbors in heaven. Maybe yes, maybe so maybe God will honor that. So so the so the prayer Father forgive them for they don't know what they are doing. Charlie Kirk's wife prayed that. Yeah. Just just we saw it all over social media and uh, what an unbelievable thing. So the nation right now reacted and are marveling at the fact, like, how can anybody forgive the shooter of your of your of your husband. Yeah, and uh, and we've heard stories like this. I mean, it doesn't even have to be Charlie Kirk's wife, which is in recent news, but it could be you know, like, uh, I'm sure you've heard this. Have you? Have you read or seen YouTube or even documentaries where uh, the the victim's wife forgives the criminal. I've actually seen it documentary where they became best friends and she led him to christ and he was on death row and she mentored him and walked him through and he was there for a couple of years, and eventually she was a part of the appeal to get him off of death row. Yeah. I mean, like, which is an honest it's hard to wrap your head around that kind of thing. So forgiveness. And I've told my story many times, coming from a life of abuse and those kinds of things early on, my biological father was a very bad man before he became a Christian and my dad adopted me and my life changed, right, so everything was different between my biological father and my dad. And my dad just went to heaven here recently, so I missed him. I just ran across some photos of him in my desk yesterday. Thought about him for a while, but my biological father was violent towards my mother and I, very very abusive for a very long time. For thirty something years, I never heard anything from him at all after he gave him. After he gave me up for adoption, one day he reached out. He sent me an email said that he'd seen all my messages online, seen what God was doing in my life, and he said, I hope that you believe in redemption because God's changed me over the last several years. He got sober and gave his life to Christ, and his life had changed, and he said, I hope you can forgive me. So then when I met him, met him one time, he confessed how he treated me and my mom and that it was wrong, and that he said, you know, I don't think you could have been who you grew up to be if you'd stayed in my life. You know, I would have destroyed that. But God had to take you away from me, and that was the best thing. But I hope you can forgive me. And I told him the words, I do forgive you, But I don't know that I felt like I forgave him until I found out after that conversation, maybe thirty minutes later he told me that he was dying of cancer and asked me to do his funeral. And then I was faced with that when he did die of cancer, I was faced with that whether or not I was going to do his funeral. And I realized forgiveness, like Charlie Kirk's wife just did or whatever, publicly is not saying what you did is okay, correct, it's not. It's not saying ah, no, big eie. It was a big deal. It was a devastatingly big deal. This is the most devastating thing. You nearly ruined my life, right kind of thing, and then your mom. But what I realized was in Romans chapter twelve, he says, don't repay evil with evil, repay evil with good. And then he says, because Vengeance's mind says the Lord, I will repay. What I realized is forgiveness really is just me giving up my right to prosecute you and judge you and execute you. And I'll give that over to God. God, you do what you need to do with him. He you know what he did. He did die, and he did have to go stand before his maker, and he did have to give an account, right, and that released me on that day when I realized I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying it's God's business, not mine anymore. I'm giving them. And dude, I got set free from the bitterness and the resentment that i'd had in all that time prior when I finally realized, Okay, I'm not God. I'm going to give him over to God. And God's going to do what God's going to do for justice, not me, right, And that's what says free. And so when Jesus says, Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing, Jesus is actually leading on behalf of those who deserve judgment. And that's a whole other level. Man. Right, personal forgiveness is I don't have to judge you. But this is he's advocating for them now, and that's next level. Yeah, that's definitely next level. And really there's so much in that statement because he's saying they don't understand, almost implying like if they understood, it would be a whole different thing. Yeah. Right, So Father forgive them because they're acting at ignorance. It was the alcohol in him that was doing it. He wasn't that way when he was sober. He was just that way when he was drunk. Here's just the problem was he's drunk all the time, right, And Jesus is understanding, we're drunk on our sin. We are are consumed by the evil that is in us, to the point we don't even really know the depths of our hearts really, right, We're not very self aware. And Jesus is just like, they have no idea what they're doing, so forgive them. He looked at us, He looked at his his the soldiers, his killers. He looked at them with a compassion that I hope we can find in our own hearts. That they're like children. They're just stumbling along, stumbling around, consumed by evil. They have no idea how this is ruining them and everything around them. And if we can start to have that kind of compassion towards the evils we see in society, maybe we can come with far more power. Because it was right after that prayer that this criminal goes Jesus, I want what you have, yeah, right, and the world will want what we have when we step up and we're able to say, God, you fix it. Yeah. What a great podcast. I rate this top notch. All right, that's a good one. Yeah, it's a good conversation, good conversation. All right. Well, hey, hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bibble guys,