The Depth of Forgiveness

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 1

Psalm 1 ESV

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Scripture Reading: Psalm 32:1-2

Psalm 32:1–2 ESV

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

Sermon

Good Morning Church! I was glad when they said to me let us go and worship in the house of the Lord!

If you remember back to last week we noted that Chapter 18 starts the fourth of the great Discourses in the book of Matthew. Here the focus is on the life and the character of those persons living within the Kingdom of heaven. The kingdom expounded in the Sermon on the mount, the kingdom proclaimed in the missions discourse and the kingdom described in the parables discourse is not given real and practical instruction on how to live in it.

Last week the focus was on the brother who sins against you. how do those followers of Christ properly handle a situation, and to remind us, there was a process, there was a way to do this, but at the heart of the call for church disciple was a desire for reconciliation and unity. But In our passage for today we will be wondering if there is a limit to this, is there a sort of max level that we can push this too. I mean, I have some brothers who have done some pretty heinous things to me, I have some people who have over and over and over again treated me poorly, who have betrayed me, who have slandered me who have sought me harm, so there has to be a limit to this, there has to be a “worst case scenario” to this. Right, I mean RIGHT Jesus?

Lets read our passage for today. Matthew 18:21-35 this morning.

READ

These are the words of the Lord for us this morning, Lets begin with a word of prayer

Our Holy and righteous, omnipotent omniscient good and gracious father who is in heaven, We praise you today for you are holy. Holy holy holy in fact. yet we know that we can come before you because you are also patient and kind abounding in steadfast love and infinite in mercy and goodness. and you have seen fit to redeem us, to save us, to call us your own and for this we are grateful. Thank you for the precious gift of Jesus Christ your son, the one who fulfilled all righteousness, who taught us, and then who offered himself as a sacrifice for us. Thank you for your holy Spirit, the comforter, the one who lives within us, who moves us, draws us unto you, teaching us and showing us what you would have from us, empowering us to live for you, thank you. We do pray that you would meet with us today, that your spirit would bring understanding as we read your words, convict our hearts, change us, make us new, wash us and empower us to live lives worthy of the calling we have recieved. It is in Jesus name we pray, AMEN

At the heart of what we read was a very vivid and shocking and important parable. But just like with larger passages we need to understand the context, so here we need to pay careful attention. For this parable is not just hanging out in space by itself, It is not like other parables that we have read before where the direct issue is left for us to discover, no here we are shown importantly the motivation FOR this parable. For THE PARABLE ANSWERS A QUESTION

The PARABLE answers a QUESTION

note verse 21 and 22 again. It is as if Pete himself is wresting with all the same things I mentioned earlier. jesus, I have some messed up brothers, so people who take advantage, who just over and over and over and over again seem to be sinning against me. So this whole, go to your brother alone thing and gain a brother, that's not like a forever and always thing right? So peter asks what seems like from his point of view and innocent and even pious question, and he completely misses the point.

As an aside, this is fairly common for Peter, he is nothing if not pious and he is willing to go out on a limb when he thinks he has it all figured out. Chapter 16. YOU ARE THE CHRIST THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD. but not the kind of Christ or messiah that has to go die. And Jesus hits him with the get behind me satan. Then at the transfiguration. Here, we have seen you in Glory, not just you Jesus but moses and Elijah too! this is incredible, see I told you that suffering stuff was crazy, lets build some tents here. Immediately a voice form heaven cuts him off, this is my son, do what he says. then here. OK Jesus, I get it, be someone who forgives, go and gain my brother, but how many times, like, seriously, like i don’t know, and you might think I am crazy for this one, but like, should i forgive him I doing know… SEVEN times. and Jesus responds

OK Peter you are looking for a number, you think seven is enough, its not, how about something like 77. But it is here that the pastoral heart of jesus kicks in I believe. he says that and then looks to peter and discerning his heart, and possibly seeing him generate his list of how many time he has already forgiven someone he stops him right there.

Forgive 77 times. Actually Peter, let me put it this way, you are looking for a number, but hearse the heart of the answer you need: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to…

So therefore, At the heart of this parable lies what peter is trying to ascertain, HOW MUCH SHOULD I FORGIVE? Just to let you know, in answering 77 Jesus is not giving a certain exact number. It is not as if you will get to heaven and Be in trouble because you only forgave this person 74 times, but this person over here is OK because He forgave the full 77 before turning and hating his brother. 77 is placed forward as the number of completeness, Culturally it would be like this story started like this: Peter asks how many times should I forgive my brother, like 10, and Jesus responds, not 10, more like 1,000. Spoken like that we would understand the hyperbole, the emphasis is ion the fact taht it is OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. seventy seven has the connotation of fullness and completion, it is twice as perfect as just 7, which is how many days it took god to create the world.

The question, how many times do i forgive, how deep is the forgiveness that I am supposed to show my brother. The parable gives us a deeper ANSWER

The ANSWER?

In understanding that this is the answer to THAT SPECIFIC question we can see the true beauty of what Jesus says here. As a note, some people try and warp and bend this Parable to say other things that Jesus in no was was intending, if you are curious about that you can come on Thursday to Grace Group, but here I want to focus directly on hat we are given as answers to How many times should I forgive my Brother.

As we will see, none of the parts of the answer that Jesus gives are actually what we would call a full answer to the Question. If Peter is looking for a number, something he can check off his todo list like forgive my brother 22 times, check, jesus is not going to give him that, instead what he gives him is much more applicable and useful. he is given theological truths and thoughts that should show his heart the very nature of forgiveness and lead him to see the true depth of forgiveness. And the first thing we see is BOUNDLESS GRACE

BOUNDLESS GRACE

I had originally thought about putting up a bit of a Math Problem up here to try and understand the weight of the debt of this servant. A talent was equivalent to 20 years wages for a laborer. So we had 20 years times the median family income in Las Cruces (which is 45 K) and multiply that by 10,000. If you are curious the answer for that is 9 billion Dollars. So a literal reading is this man owes the master 9 BILLION DOLLARS, which is bad, but I think a better reading is to understand a few details. a talent was the largest measure of Money in Ancient Rome, and 10,000 was the biggest named number they had. So this is like the biggest biggest number Jesus could say. In Modern English I would say something like he owed a gazillion dollars which is a made up number that is used to get the point across, this is not a number that really can be measured.

And certainly this number was an offence against the master, there is no one who could withstand this sort of financial hit. There was a quote going around a few years ago that became a bit of an internet meme, But it was a quote: This is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals. The president was referring to a trade deal with China, But I would argue that the masters deal he made with this servant is much worse just from a financial standpoint. Just throw out the books. your record is clean. What does the servant get, countless dollars, what does the master get, NOTHING. This is the thought of boundless grace

it is interesting to me to see the servant plead, verse 26 Matthew 18:26 “So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’” But this is NOT what happens. The nature of grace is not, OK I will give you a bit more time, good luck on earning enough. He cancelled the debt. Through no labor or work on the part of the Servant, NOT because the servant could pay it back, not because he saw a good investment strategy but because of grace.

So the lesson here is really two fold. one is to see the heart of the nature of forgiveness. It does not think of self, it does not think of what I gain in the process, or even if the other person has earned it, it is gracious. but more importantly, and more to the point I believe here, Jesus wants us to understand the forgiveness that each and every person can find in Him.

Lets be frank for a second, I don’t know If we will EVER have this sort of forgiveness. I had originally written we will not have this sort of forgiveness this side of heaven, but the other side of heaven i don’t think we will have the NEED to forgive. So truly the levels of boundless grace that we are speaking of here lie solely in God.

SINFUL Pride

CERTAIN Judgement