Don’t forget what God has forgotten

As I’m fine tuning my second sermon today, God gave me this nugget:  Don’t forget what God has forgotten.  The sermon is about how we can easily believe we are ‘gatekeepers’ at the door of our churches deciding who gets in and who doesn’t.  I believe there are two reasons we can think we have the authority to decide who’s in and who’s out.  First, maybe we’re not really saved or forgiven.  The Lord’s Prayer says forgive us as we forgive others.  If we can’t forgive others, perhaps it’s because we don’t know forgiveness.  And secondly, I believe we too easily forget what it was that God had to forgive in us.  When we look at others’ sin as worse than our own, we have forgotten what it was that God forgave in us.  We forget that our own sin was so bad that God had to send His Son to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven.  It took the death of Jesus to allow you to be forgiven.  That’s some pretty serious sin.  Nothing anyone else has ever done or could ever do is going to cost any more or any less than what your sin cost.  It would be beneficial to remember that the next time we start to decide on what and who should and should not receive God’s mercy and forgiveness.