What is needed TODAY to begin 2021....a blog from Wade Burleson

 

I've got three seconds to pique your interest to read this article. Some of you have already scanned it and said, "I'm not reading it; it's too long." Here's the reason why you should.

You may be the woman whose husband left you for a younger, prettier version of yourself. 

You may be the adult who endured trauma during your childhood at the hands of one who should have loved you but instead abused you.

You may be someone who has been falsely accused by others in an intentional attempt to ruin your reputation and career.

You may be the church member who experienced spiritual abuse by authoritarian church leaders who seemed more interested in protecting their institution than offering loving support to members of said institution.

In other words,  you may be a person in need of an understanding of biblical forgiveness.

Let's begin:

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." 

 

These words are from Jesus on the cross. In his Concise Commentary on the Scripture, Matthew Henry writes, "As soon as Christ was fastened to the cross, he prayed for those who crucified him."

 

A couple of things need to be said about those for whom He prayed:

 

(1). They were intentional. They were intentional in their shouts, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" They were intentional in their desires that Jesus is killed. They were intentional in everything they did.

(2). They brought injury.  It's self-evident that crucifixion brought injury to Jesus. Yet, not many consider the injury that came to His mother who watched Him die. Nor do any of us fully understand the injury of those who had followed Him every step of the way for the previous three years.

(3). They possessed ignorance. According to biblical scholar John Gill, "they did not know that Jesus was the Messiah, nor the prophecies concerning him, nor the evil they were committing." Paul said they would not have crucified the LORD (Acts 3:27). This ignorance is simply descriptive of the persons crucifying Jesus. Ignorance is not the basis for their forgiveness. Remember, they were intentionally injurious; the ignorance was concerning "Whom" they were crucifying.

Had not this forgiving spirit been in the Son and His request to forgive been made, the Father very well may have struck all the crucifiers down immediately and catastrophically in righteous judgment.

 

These ten words of Jesus, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," comprise the first of seven last statements of Jesus from the cross. They also fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12; "He made intercession for the transgressors." 


This spirit toward intentional, injurious, and ignorant sinners is a peculiar character quality of God's people. Nobody else in the world has this spirit.

A Difference Between the Spirit and the Act of Forgiveness

Much of the confusion over"forgiveness" can be resolved when one understands the difference between the spirit of forgiveness and the act of forgiveness.  Only God can ultimately forgive sin. ("Father, forgive them...") for in the end, all sin is ultimately against God.

Though our God alone is ultimately the One who forgives, we are called to maintain a spirit of forgiveness toward all people, just as Christ had this spirit of forgiveness on the cross.

Albert Barnes put it like this: 

"No other religion "teaches" people to pray for the forgiveness of enemies; no other "disposes" them to do it. Men of the world seek for "revenge;" the Christian bears reproaches and persecutions with patience, and prays that God would pardon those who injure them, and save them from their sins."

We must actively maintain a spirit of forgiveness toward the injurious, intentional and often ignorant persons who are in the act of harming us. Jesus language on the cross was in the present, active tense, "Father, forgive them for what they are doing..." 

Here's another hard truth about the spirit of forgiveness. When the injurious, intentional and often ignorant person says "I repent," we are to forgive. Forgiveness is not granted until there is repentance, but I've found that as long as there is always a willingness (spirit) to forgive, the act of forgiveness is relatively easy. It's a little bit like "We love Him because He FIRST loved us." 

In a spirit and climate where people are known to be willing to forgive by evidencing a spirit of forgiveness, repentance from sinners grows like flowers in a well-water garden.

Someone has said, "Forgiveness without forgetting is like loving without liking." I tend to agree. That's why it is impossible for people to judicially forgive and why we should remember that ultimately only God forgives sin. Still, we should all possess His Son's spirit of forgiveness. 

We should want the intentional, injurious, and ignorant sinners who cause harm others to come to the place of repentance, find peace with God, and change their injurious behavior. Until they do, we will always maintain a spirit of forgiveness, forgiving them when they say, "I repent." 

Also, until injurious sinners come to repentance, we will, in love, continue to point out sin when it occurs. Further, we will even forgive the intentional, injurious, and ignorant sinners for the same sin, again-and again-and-again - even if they sin repetitively (seven times in one day) or infinitely (seventy times seven) because this is precisely what Jesus commanded us to do.

Two Key Questions

1. So, how do we know that we have the spirit of forgiveness? 

Answer: We don't question the motives of the intentional, injurious, and ignorant people who cause us harm when they say they repent. 

2. If we 'forgive,' does that mean we don't remember their sin in the future?

Answer: No. We are human. Only God can judicially forget. The child predator's actions must be remembered, and standards of accountability implemented. The unfaithful spouse's actions must be remembered, and the consequences of the infidelity felt (i.e., "divorce, annulment, etc...). The action of an oppressive church leadership government that places a covenant above a congregant must be remembered, and steps are taken to stop the spiritual abuse, if not completely abandon, of the abusive church.

But the entire time we stand for truth, we must always display a spirit that is willing, hopeful, and desirous of God to forgive and bring to repentance.

Though Jesus was willing to forgive those who crucified Him, they were not forgiven until they acknowledged their wrong and repented of it (Luke 23:34; Acts 2:36-39). When one refuses to repent, he is regarded as a "heathen and a tax collector to you" (Matt. 18:15-17). That means we consider the person without grace. We love sinners without grace like Jesus loved them, but we don't pretend they know Christ when there is no evidence of repentance.

Here's the difficulty for us all. "How do we know someone has 'truly repented?'" Answer: We don't. All we can do is maintain a spirit of forgiveness, speaking truth where we see sin, and granting forgiveness when a brother or sister in Christ says, "I repent." 

So here's the formula: Speak the truth in love. Be a person full of grace and truth. Be willing to forgive when repentance comes, and don't be a judge of whether or not repentance is real by questioning the motive of someone's statement of repentance. Forgive and forget as much as humanly possible, but never be afraid to speak out against sin, and never neglect the protection of the helpless.

Maintaining a spirit of forgiveness means we must make a separation between the injurious person's actions and our acceptance of that injurious person. 

(1). In having a forgiving spirit I will want those who injure to ultimately be blessed by God in the same manner that I am blessed by Him - "Father, forgive them..."

(2). I am not dependent on the behavior of others for my personal happiness; I look to God for my inner satisfaction and happiness. To the extent I am able to trust God with my past, present and future is the measure of my ability to pray- "Father, forgive them...".

(3). I will never confuse actual forgiveness with a spirit of forgiveness. Ultimately God will cast sin and its consequences into the sea of forgetfulness, but until then, I will continue to point out injustice, I will continue to protect the helpless, and I will continue to encourage the broken -- all the while praying for the intentional, injurious and ignorant persons who harm the innocent.  

This spirit is unique among Christians. It's a spirit evidenced in the One we follow. 

The Story of Bertha Smith

In 1887 the famous missionary Lottie Moon was struggling on the mission field in China.  She knew that the harvest was great and she was doing her best to reap the harvest. But she also knew that more workers were needed.  In that year Moon wrote a letter requesting funds for help on the field.  That Christmas an offering was taken that eventually bore her name and continues to make a lasting impact on the work of Southern Baptists around that world.

But that wasn’t the only big event in world missions that year. Across the world in the small town of Cowpens, SC a baby girl was born to John and Frances Smith.  Olive Bertha Smith was born the same year of Lottie Moon’s letter and would go on to make her own impact on the people of China and world missions.

Bertha grew up in a busy house, the fifth of eight children.  Her family was in church often and she was saved at the age of 16 after struggling with the call of God for some time.  She came to understand that she must go to the cross to be saved, and came forward at a public invitation.

“I was on the front seat, having gone forward at the first verse. I knew that I would go; there was no use to wait. It was but a step to where the pastor stood. I took it, gave him my hand to signify that I trusted in Christ’s death to save me. By the time I took the second step, which was back to my seat, my years of burden of sin had rolled away, and the joy of the Lord filled my soul.”

She attended college to become a teacher and worked as teacher for one year before feeling the call to missions. She enrolled in the Woman’s Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, graduating in 1916.

On July 3 19, 1917 she was appointed by the Foreign Mission Board of the SBC as a missionary to China, and arrived in the Shantung Province on September 4th the same year. She had been in China less than a year when tragedy struck her family at home when her father died in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Bertha had been content to be single and never have children but the sight of other missionary families pushed her devotion to the limit.  In desperation she called to God for help.

“After leaving the last mission home before reaching my station, I traveled for two days along a lonely road. Realizing what I was going back to, and that this was for life, I wept most of the first day. By the next day I knew that something had to be done…. Calling upon a nearby peak to be my witness, I made a covenant with the Lord: Lord, I want to enter into an agreement with you today. You called me to China and You gave me grace to follow in coming. I am here to win souls for You. The only thing that will take the place of my own children will be spiritual children. If You will take from my heart this pain, I will be willing to go through with just as much inconvenience, self-denial, and pain to see children born into the family of God, as is necessary for a mother to endure for children to be born in the flesh!

In desperation I was calling upon the mighty God for help in facing the difficulties and accepting the compensations of His service, and I was not disappointed.

From that moment forward there were no more tears, for the Lord met my every heart need. I became content with my lot and began to study the Bible and books on soul-winning with a new interest. Prayer became more definite  for individuals, and every opportunity to speak for the Lord was seized. The transaction has lasted until this day, and many, many times I have praised the Lord for the privilege of being a single woman with the other person’s soul need having first place in my heart.”

After two years of language study she took over the local girls boarding school teaching Bible and English.  Her home was always open to the students for Bible studies.

After returning from furlough in in 1925 she witnessed the roots of the Shantung Revival through the work of many missionaries in the region, including her baptist colleague CL Culpepper and his wife.  Thousands of Chinese were converted to Christ during this revival and the effects are still felt in the region today. The Shantung Revival was compared to the Welsh Revivial  and others through history by EM Dodd, former SBC President. The revival began with the healing of Ola Culpepper after prayer from Marie Monsen a Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran missionary with the China Inland Mission.  The revival had a focus on being filled with the spirit and prayer that shaped the rest of Bertha Smith’s ministry in China and even the rest of her life.

Reports began to come that SBC missionaries were giving in to “pentecostal excess.” In 1935, the Executive Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board, Charles E.Maddry, visited North China Mission to see for himself the work God was doing there. His report spoke of the great work God was doing in China.

  “A glorious revival is sweeping Northern and Interior China, such as we have not seen in America in a hundred years. We have seen it and felt its power. It is a revival of fire and burning. Sin is being burned out of broken lives and men and women are being absolutely made over. The power of Christ has come to grips with the power of Satan and it is a fearful conflict. Satan has held sway and dominion over China for unnumbered and weary centuries. His kingdom is suddenly being challenged and broken by the power of a risen and enthroned Christ.”

In 1937 Japan invaded China and many missionaries were hampered in their work.  Upon her return from furlough in 1940 Bertha was held in prison for 6 months by the Japanese.  She recounted that during this time she regularly sent half of her missionary salary back to her mother and sister to help them as they struggled in the Great Depression.

Through all the difficulties she faced she continually kept her focus on God and trusted Him through every hard work in her life.  When asked by Chinese co-workers why the God they trusted permitted bombs to fall on the mission grounds she responded by pointing them to God.

“Why did God, in whom we were trusting, permit those bombs to drop here on our mission grounds?” I had known the Lord since before they were born and could answer, “We never ask ‘Why’ about anything that God permits. He knew that we were here and He knew that we were trusting Him. We may not understand in this life, but this is not evil. The Lord permitted this for some purpose. He, the mighty God, does not have to explain Himself to human beings – at least not now.”

After being expelled from China by the communists Bertha Smith became the first FMB appointed missionary to Taiwan, where she remained for a decade until she became 70 years old.

At that time the FMB automatically retired missionaries at 70 years of age, and by that time Bertha had been on the field for almost 42 years.  She recounts that she was still working 15 hour days and “felt that I was just then qualified from experience for missionary work.”

Even though she retired her work was far from over as she spent her retirement traveling across the world spreading the good news of Jesus. She spoke extensively at churches across America and visited Australia, Burma, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Philippines, South America, and Zimbabwe. She also authored several books recounting her time on the field. In 1973 she dedicated the Peniel Prayer Center in her hometown, a prayer retreat for Christians from across the world.

When she retired from the FMB the number of believers in China was estimated to be 5 million, but by her death that number had grown to over 50 million.  After her retirement she continued to serve in active work for another 29 years, always laboring to serve the Lord wherever she went.

Bertha Smith passed away on June 12, 1988 at the age of 99 years old.   She was a woman of prayer and one of Southern Baptist’s most influential missionaries.   

Listen to her share her experiences and teach (preach?) at Sermon Index. 

Further Reading

Danny Akin: Bertha Smith, A Soul Winning Missionary

Lewis Drummond: Bertha Smith, Woman of Revival

Bertha Smith: Go Home and Tell

From the Shepherd's Heart...Wednesday, December 2, 2020

 

The Book of Job raises for us some questions that we cannot ignore if we are going to be responsible students of the Word of God.  

* What is the connection of sin to suffering?

* Is there a formula with God?  Do good and you will be well and prosperous?  Do evil and you will have sickness and be poor?

* Does God want everyone to be healed?

* Is healing for today?  If so, does individuals carry the gift of healing?  If so, why don't they go into every hospital healing everyone?

* What is the role of faith in healing?  If you are not healed, is it a lack of faith on your part?

Tonight, we will begin addressing "The Present Day Ministry of Healing."  For the last few weeks, we looked at the healing ministry of Jesus which is the base for the teachings beginning tonight.  

Join us tonight in person at 6:10 at Rainsville First Baptist Church or online at rfbc.sermon.net or on Facebook at Rainsville First.