45 18.21

INTRODUCTION

SLIDE 1 Old Joe was dying. For years he’d been at odds with Bill, formerly one of his best friends. Wanting to straighten things out, he sent word for Bill to come and see him. When Bill arrived, Joe told him that he was afraid to go into eternity with such bad feelings between them. Then, very reluctantly and with great effort, Joe apologized for things he had said and done. He also assured Bill that he forgave him for his offenses. Everything seemed fine until Bill turned to go. As he walked out of the room, Joe called out after him, “Now, just remember, if I get better, this doesn’t count.”

Forgiveness is an issue that hits home with everyone here. At some point in the past several weeks, it’s likely that someone has done something to offend you and you have failed to forgive them. Some of us are carrying around resentment and bitterness against people and have been carrying them like heavy weights for years. Why do we need to talk about forgiveness?

SLIDE 2 Reason #1: Because our spiritual health depends on it

We can never grow spiritually or enjoy God’s blessings in our lives as long as we carry resentment and refuse to forgive other people. The author of Hebrews writes: SLIDE 3

See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. (Hebrews 12:15)

Bitterness is like a small root that grows into a giant tree. Bitterness brings jealousy, dissension, and immorality. Scripture says that we are obligated to forgive others, and when we don’t, that the consequences are severe. Jesus said: SLIDE 4

14For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15)

SLIDE 5 Reason #2: Because we do not naturally know how to forgive

It’s likely that we’ve learned more about the subject of forgiveness from negative role models than from the Word of God. We’re familiar with road rage, disgruntled employee rampages – like going postal, and drive-by shootings. People all around us are wracked with guilt, anger, and depression because they haven’t done a good job at handling forgiveness.

SLIDE 6 Reason #3: Because forgiveness is the clear command of Scripture

We are told over and over that we are to forgive those who hurt and offend us. SLIDE 7

31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:31-32)

Obedience to that command is not an option. In fact, we have no option concerning this issue according to Scripture.

SLIDE 8 Reason #4: Because forgiveness is tough

If we were all honest we would admit it is easier to nurse a grudge and refuse to forgive than to offer the gift of forgiveness. Forgiveness is difficult to do.

But it’s the topic of tonight’s passage. God has forgiven us. Now he expects us to pay it forward and forgive others. I think it’s something our world is in desperate need of.

SERMON

Turn with me to Matthew 18. As I mentioned last week, in this chapter Jesus has been talking about how we get along with each other. Last week we looked at what to do when someone in the church sins. Jesus outlines steps that are to be taken in order to restore someone. The goal is always restoration. Restoration assumes forgiveness. Peter picks up on this and asks Jesus a question about forgiveness.

Our passage starts with verse 18, but since we weren’t able to watch the video for last week’s passage we are going to start watching with verse 12.

Video

SLIDE 1 We are supposed to be following Jesus and becoming more like him. Perhaps there is no more difficult area in our lives to act like Jesus than this area of forgiveness.

I think the greatest recent story of forgiveness is that of the Amish when Charles Roberts came into one of their all-girl-schools taking hostages. Roberts shot eight of the ten girls, killing five before taking his own life. The anger had to have been strong, but stronger still was the emphasis on forgiveness for the man. Literally within hours of the event family members of the slain girls were at the home of Roberts’ family to minister to them. They didn’t go to protest or take revenge, but to offer help, love, and forgiveness. One Amish man held Roberts’ sobbing father in his arms, reportedly for as long as an hour, to comfort him. The Amish have also set up a charitable fund for the family of the shooter. About thirty members of the Amish community attended Roberts’ funeral.

On the day of the shooting a grandfather of one of the slain girls was overheard warning family members not to hate the killer saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” One father noted this about Roberts: He had a mother, a wife, a soul, and now he is standing before a just God.” One man explained:

I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts.

The widow of the man who perpetrated this tragic event wrote an open letter to her Amish neighbors:

Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately needed. Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world. For this we sincerely thank you.

It didn’t take long for news of the shooting to spread out across the nation, but it wasn’t long before the headlines were replaced by the unexplainable forgiveness of the Amish community for Roberts and the love they showed his family. Many could just not understand how and why they would react in such a way. Some commentators criticized the quick and complete forgiveness with which the Amish responded, arguing that forgiveness is inappropriate when no remorse has been expressed, and that such an attitude runs the risk of denying the existence of evil. But scholars of Amish life noted that “letting go of grudges’ is a deeply rooted value in Amish culture, which remembers the forgiveness Jesus himself offered to those who crucified him. They explained that the Amish willingness to forgo vengeance does not undo the tragedy or pardon the wrong, but rather constitutes a first step toward a future that is more hopeful.

I think we can all understand just how challenging forgiveness can be. So when Peter asked if he should forgive seven times he probably thought he was being extremely generous. Rabbinical teaching of the day taught that you were only required to forgive someone up to three times if they repeated the same offense against you. Three strikes and you’re out. Peter is offering to forgive someone more than twice that.

We have a good idea about how Jesus answered Peter. I say a good idea because there is some honest debate about the interpretation of what Jesus said. Some translate what Jesus said as seventy-seven times and others translate Jesus’ words to actually mean seventy times seven – or 490 times. I don’t think it really matters because I don’t think we are to take the number literally. It’s like telling someone asking you a question that you’ve already answered them a thousand times. It’s no where near a thousand, but the thousand simply means more than enough.

I don’t think Jesus is giving us permission to stop forgiving someone when they offended us seventy-seven times or even 490 times. In order to do that we’d have to be keeping track every time we’re offended. There’s no way I’d be able to keep track of seventy-seven offenses much less 490 offenses without keeping a record of them. But if I’m keeping a record of how many times someone has offended me am I actually forgiving them? So what are we supposed to do? We are to keep offering forgiveness each time they humbly repent.

To drive this point home Jesus tells the parable of a merciful king. The king has those who owe him money brought before him. One man owes the king ten thousand talents. The new NIV translates it as ten thousand bags of gold. Let’s stick with talents. How much did the man actually owe?

A talent was an ancient unit of weight and value in Greece, Rome, and the Middle East. In the Old Testament, a talent was a unit of measurement for weighing precious metals, usually gold and silver. In the New Testament, a talent was a value of money or coin. In the Old Testament the talent was the heaviest or largest unit of measurement for weight, equal to about seventy-five pounds. Now, imagine that when we read the description of the crown David took from the Ammonite king.

David took the crown from their king’s head, and it was placed on his own head. It weighed a talent of gold, and it was set with precious stones. David took a great quantity of plunder from the city. (2 Samuel 12:30)

Can you imagine wearing a crown weighing seventy-five pounds?

In the New Testament the talent was used as a measurement for money. Some have said that if you had just five talents you would be a multi-millionaire today. While not very exact, they estimate the value of a talent at between a thousand and thirty-thousand dollars of today’s money. The man in the story owed ten thousand talents. He owed anywhere from ten million to three-hundred million. The point is there is no way he would ever be able to pay it back. If he worked the rest of his life giving the king 100% of what he made he would die still owing the king money.

Since the man was never going to be able to repay the debt he owed the king, the king ordered that the man be sold along with his wife and children in order to repay the debt. Of course that wouldn’t be any where near enough to actually pay the debt. While that wouldn’t get the king all his money, it would deter others from getting so far in debt.

This sounds like a pretty severe punishment., but it was common practice in that day. We need to be careful we don’t equate it with the slavery of the south before the Civil War. They weren’t the same. Still, it wasn’t pleasant. It meant his family would forever be separated from each other. So you can imagine the heartache he feels and he immediately begs for leniency. He promises to pay the debt back in full if the king will only give him a little more time. As I’ve already described the debt, there was no way he would ever live long enough to pay the debt back.

I’ve heard stories of the poorest of the poor in India having similar things happen. Because of their debt they are basically made slaves till they pay the money back. However, the owner of the debt structures it in such a way that not only can the person never repay the debt, but when the person dies the debt is inherited by the children who automatically become slaves because of the debt.

This father doesn’t want to see his children becomes slaves because of his financial problems. So he begs for more time to repay the debt.

Surprisingly, the king doesn’t give him more time, but forgives the debt. The king didn’t just give the man more time to repay what he owed, he canceled the debt. The man left the king owing nothing. Can you imagine the feeling? Imagine buying a house and after the first year having some problems making a payment. When the loan officer calls you in to explain why your payment is late you tell about your child who has been sick and your car that broke down. You promise to make it up with your next paycheck, but instead the loan officer just forgives your entire debt. It’s not just the late payment, but everything you still owe on the house is gone. You no longer owe the bank anything. The king did that and more for this man.

The application we need to see is that this man is us. The king is God and we are that person who owes more than we could ever repay. What is our debt? Our debt is our sin. We have all sinned more than we could ever repay. We have sinned more than we could ever undo or make amends for.

Religion is the effort of people to make the god they worship happy. They offer sacrifices and fulfill ritual obligations all in an effort to make their god happy and make up for the wrong things they’ve done. But the truth is we can never make up for all our sins. Even if we never committed another sin till the day we died we still wouldn’t be able to make up for the sins we’ve already committed. So we are a lot like the man in the parable Jesus told. We owe much more than we can ever repay. And what is God’s response? God showed us when he sent his only Son. Jesus died for us that we might have complete and total forgiveness from all of our sins.

So the king forgives the debt the man owed him and what does the man do? He rejoices. He rejoices until he runs into someone who owes him money. The man who has just been forgiven an unimaginable debt runs into a guy who owes him a few dollars. Actually, the hundred silver coins is more than just a few dollars, but compared to the ten thousand talents he owed the king it was hardly worth mentioning. But the man did mention it. In fact, he did just what he’d begged the king not to do. He threw the guy into prison because of the debt.

If the man owed the king that much money, how did he have money to loan it to the guy in the first place? Did it not actually belong to the king in the first place? Any money the guy paid on his debt would belong to the king since the man owed the king. Therefore, in reality the money the guy owed to the man he owed to the king. But the man didn’t see it that way. He was just forgiven, but he was unwilling to forgive.

When the king heard about it he was furious. Instead of selling the man into slavery as he had originally planned, the king had him thrown in prison to be tortured until his debt was repaid – when meant till he died. And he received this punishment simply because he refused to forgive the small debt that was owed to him. He had been forgiven a debt so large he could never repay it and then refused to forgive a debt that could easily have been repaid in less than a year.

That’s where we are as well. That’s where the Amish families were. It is unfathomable to think of the heartache Charles Roberts caused those Amish families. They sent their daughters to school like any other ordinary day, but it wasn’t an ordinary day. Roberts saw to that. They would never see their daughters alive again. As hurt as they were, they understood God had already forgiven them much more than they would have to forgive Roberts. And because of the forgiveness they had received from God there was nothing they could do but show grace and forgiveness to Roberts’ family.

Jesus applied the parable with these ominous words:

This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. (Matthew 18:35)

Unforgiveness has been compared to drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. It does more harm to us than it will ever do to the person who harmed us. Forgiveness does not mean we pretend we’ve not been hurt or that it’s insignificant, or that it doesn’t matter. Forgiveness is just letting go of our desire for revenge because of all that we have received from God.

Of course sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. We have this ability to wallow in our guilt long after God has forgiven our sin. The Bible tells us that if we are in Christ we are a new creation and the old things have passed away. So why do we hang out in the cemetery with old life? If you are in Christ you are a new creation. When God put you in Christ he knew that even in Christ you would continue to sin. So if God has forgiven you, who are you to remember those sins any more?

Todd says his Susan was driving down the road one rainy day when their son made this comment, “Mom, I’m thinking of something.” This kind of announcement usually meant he had been pondering some fact for a while and was now ready to expound all that his seven-year-old mind had discovered. She was eager to hear. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “The rain,” he began, “is like sin and the windshield wipers are like God, wiping our sins away.” After the chill bumps finished racing up Susan’s arms she was able to respond. “That’s really good, Matthew.” Then, her curiosity kicked in and she began to wonder how far this little boy would take his revelation. So, she asked, “do you notice how the rain keeps on coming? What does that tell you?” Matthew, without hesitating, answered, “We keep on sinning, and God just keeps on forgiving us.”

Trust and hold on to God’s forgiveness. In the same way, hold on to the forgiveness that you extend to others.

For some today is a day to forgive yourself because if you can’t forgive yourself you don’t understand God’s forgiveness. For others, it’s a day to forgive those who have hurt you even as God has forgiven you.

Tom describes forgiveness this way. Tom says he and his wife Becky sit out on their back deck in the summer every morning with our coffee. They enjoy watching all the birds and animals in our yard. There are two particular birds that migrate past their house every year. One is a hummingbird and one is a vulture. The vulture finds the rotting meat because that is what it is looking for. They thrive on that diet. Hummingbirds ignore the smelly dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of plants. The vulture lives on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with the dead and gone. Hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for.

We must decide if we want to live in the pits or if we want fresh and new. If you ask God to forgive you, accept his forgiveness. What others do is not your responsibility. Don’t let them hold you in bondage. Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross said “I choose to move on.” Why don’t you do the same? The only person worse than a quitter is one that never begins. God will help us do what we cannot do in ourselves. The same God that empowered Peter can empower you.