Matthew 18:21-35 | The Math of Forgiveness

If you were with us last week, we talked at length about the sometimes unfair responsibility we have as believers to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are meant to be our brother’s keeper, which means that if they sin against us or we see them failing in certain ways then it’s our responsibility to loving care-front them about it. And Matthew 18:15-20 gave us the model for how that is supposed to work.

I won’t rehash that for us now, but that’s what we discussed. If we want to cultivate a community that fosters maturity in our fellow believers then we will all take up the sometimes unfair responsibility to expose one another’s faults in love to protect and restore.

What we learned last week is what the disciples learned from Jesus when they were with him. And presumably right after Jesus teaches them about this, Peter, the patron saint of those who do not have a filter in between their head and their mouth, speaks up!

Now, you’ll remember as we were talking about our responsibility to be our brother’s keeper, how unfair that can feel sometimes? To carefront someone who hurt us, who should have known better can make us feel more than a little resentment, can’t it?

When someone sins against us or offends us and we’re presented with the opportunity and responsibility to talk with them about it, that internal dialogue we all have starts to run wild. We think things like, What if they hurt more all the more for confronting them on this issue? Or worse, what if they seek my forgiveness and I have to continue being friends with them! Am I really just supposed to stay friends with them so they can hurt me again!

Doesn’t seem fair does it!

Well, friend, you’re not alone in those feelings. Peter speaks up for you and asks Jesus something just along these lines! And Peter, he knows he’s had a habit of inserting his foot into his mouth, so when he frames his question, he (I think) sort of looks around proud and with a bit of an inflated chest asks Jesus what we’re about to read from Matthew 18:21-22. Look at it with me.

Matthew 18:21–22 (NIV)

21 Then Peter (after hearing this business about being his brother’s keeper) came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

And I want you to envision Peter right with a smug look on his face. He knows Jesus’ number is going to be high, so Peter suggests a number that’s not once, not twice, not even three times. He gives what he thinks is the teacher’s pet answer! Jesus how many times to I have to take back someone who’s wronged me and offended me and sinned against me? How many times do I have to confront someone and forgive someone before I can write them off and be done with them!

Seven times, he asks?

Which, think about that for a second apart from your Sunday School best. Think about someone that’s wronged you in your life. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been sinned against.

Alright, think about that sin that was committed against you.

Think about the person that committed that sin. Think about your relationship with that person. Think how what they did made you feel, think about how you feel about that person.

Now with that context, Peter’s suggested number of forgiving that person, of moving towards that person, of restoring friendship with that person, Peter’s number of 7 gets framed a bit differently doesn’t it.

Right, you know the saying fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! Or as George Busch so eloquently put it… fool me once.... fool me… you don’t get fooled again!

Seriously though, the world says you get one maybe 2 chances but 3rd strike and you’re for sure out! And Peter here suggests 7 times! 7 times of putting yourself back out there after you’ve been wronged and sinned against. To use the illustration from last week, 7 times of putting your foot out only to have it run over by a semi-truck once again!

7 times Jesus, Should we forgive someone 7 times? That’s a radical number from a human perspective!

Well, Church, Jesus wasn’t just a human now was He, He happened to be otherworldly as well. Jesus was and is God.

Now hear the heart of the Father towards those who sin against Him.

22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

And already, some of you like the disciples are starting to do the math! Right, you got your fingers and toes out and you’re counting… 77… that’s a lot!

Because Jesus knew this would be our reaction, we would take his clear hyperbole, that’s an exaggeration for effect. He knew we would want to take this literally and would start keeping records of wrong, not remembering that 1 Cor. 13 teaches us that love does not keep a record of wrong. Because Jesus knows you and He knows me. To drive his point home, he tells a story, a story that illustrates the math of forgiveness. And in the math of forgiveness you only need 1 finger to count with… because 1 wrong is expected to be forgiven and reset the relationship back to where it was prior to the wrong, and once the forgiveness is extended, then record of wrongs resets and the slate is wiped clean. You can only go from 1 to 0 and maybe, hopefully not, back to 1 and then again, back to 0 again in the math of forgiveness! Because love keeps no record of wrong and the truly forgiven continually and repeated forgive those who sin against them.

And that’s the big idea for today, forgiveness continually and repeatedly flows from the truly forgiven.

Listen to the story Jesus gives us that illustrates for us the math of forgiveness and how his people respond to those who are His.

Matthew 18:21–35 (NIV)

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Church we talk a lot about freedom around here at Crossroads. We exist to help the lost get found and the found live free. I can’t over state this, forgiveness is God’s master key to freedom! As Peter Horobin says in his books, God’s Master Key and his other book How to Forgive when It seems Impossible “Forgiveness of sin is the greatest possible blessing that God makes available to His children. But if we are not willing to forgive others, we will miss out on God’s best for our lives.”

Now I want you to notice a few things in Jesus’ story.

Forgiveness is about a debt owed. That’s the image Jesus gives us to think about when someone sins against us or against God. A debt is incurred and God or you are owed something!

The unforgiving servant is said to have owed the master “ten thousand bags of gold.” By my math if those bags weigh 20lbs each… which I think is probably low… this dude owes his master 6.1 billion. That’s billion with a B. That’s a large debt. If you took out a loan of 6.1 Billion dollars, @ 7% interest, you’d own 427 million dollars just in interest for the first year of that loan.

That’s a big debt.

And the Master erases that debt. Now think about that, erasing a debt like that isn’t just as easy as deleting a line on a spreadsheet. I mean yea it is that easy, but think about the cost! There is a huge cost to forgiveness that we assume or that God assumes when He resets the record to 0!

But this is our God, church, a radically generous and giving God! There is no cost too high that He won’t pay to extend forgiveness to you and to me!

This is the gospel!

I know you don’t feel it. I don’t feel it either, but our sinfulness before God makes us in detbed to God to this ridiculous degree! I realize in our eyes most of us aren’t that bad! Right, most of us are fairly moral people, most of us in our eyes are fairly “good” people by the world’s standard. Most of us are not on par with Hitler in our sinfulness. We aren’t as bad as we could be. But in comparison to the perfect and holy God, even the best of us is like this man in the story. The debt we owe to God, when compared to his perfection, we are in the red on the ledger sheet at least to the tune of 6.1 billion dollars!

Now that is crushing news! How in the world would anyone ever climb out of such a debt. They wouldn’t, but God so love you and me, but God so loved the world that He paid off your debt by sending His Son to the cross! While Jesus was on that Cross, He cried out, Father forgiven them, forgive the murders, forgive the rapists, forgive those who drove the nails into my hands, forgive the mockers in this crowd, forgive the homosexuals, forgive the divorced, forgive the lazy, forgive the liars, forgive the indifferent, forgive those who fudge their taxes forgive the prejudiced, forgive gossipers, forgive those who have one beer too many, forgive those who go too far with their girlfriends, forgive those who fantasize about going too far with their boyfriend, forgive them for the do not know what they are doing!

Now this forgiveness is not automatic, you have to ask for it like the guy does here in Jesus’ story, but if you do, the Master, that’s God, He’ll wipe your slate clean!

And do you know why He does this? Why would God extend such mercy? Why would He do such a ridiculously gracious and loving thing to someone that does not deserve it? He does it to win us and transform us by love! He does so to win our loyalty and affection! So that we would live out of a place of not indebtedness where we’re striving to pay him back. NO! There is no longer a debt to pay! It’s been paid! He doesn’t forgive to put us deeper into debt so we try to pay Him back! There’s no more debt! He wipes it clean so that we live from a place of gratitude, love, and freedom!

Which is the point of this story!

The problem you and I all see is how this great act of love and mercy does not seem to affect this man at all! Is this not the most offensive thing you’ve ever read! I mean don’t just gloss over it. Think about what’s happening here! This dude had 6 billion dollars of debt forgiven and now he is going hard after those who owe him what mounts to $20 in comparison! Are you serious?!

There is something seriously wrong with this picture! We all see it! You can’t not see it!

And this Church is the progression of unforgiveness!

A debt is owed! And rather than responding in kind like our good and gracious Father in Heaven responds to us in Jesus, when someone sins against us rather than offering to wipe their slate clean, we seek to get back what they owe us! And this’s attitude, this attitude of unforgiveness that says you owe me! Look at how quickly it turns violent!

Matthew 18:28 “28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.”

And because this man who had been forgiven so much, chooses to harden his heart and withhold forgiveness from one of his fellow man, he winds up in a torture chamber!

This is what the sin of unforgiveness will do to you!

Unforgiveness is like a poison we take hoping someone else will drop dead and left unconfessed, it binds us in a prison of our own making much like the unforgiving servant here in Jesus’ story! Unforgiveness binds us in a prison where the feelings of hurt and anger become the prison bars we hold on to and the lies associated with the experience of being hurt become the lock on the prison door. This prison then blocks us off from being able to receive God’s love and blessing because God’s spiritual laws prohibit Him from blessing sin. He cannot bless sin. It is not in His nature and so we wind up in a torture chamber of our own making when we choose to withhold forgiveness from someone who’s sinned against us!

I am convinced Church, that the sin of unforgiveness is the number 1 sin that keeps Christians bound up in pain and unfruitful, more than any other sin, unforgiveness I believe is what has imprisoned the most Christians today!

The reality is forgiveness flows continually and repeatedly from those who have truly been forgiven! If it doesn’t, you have serious reason to question whether or not you’ve accepted and received what God is offering to you in Jesus Christ!

Don’t be like the guy in this story!

I know it’s not fair! I know some of the things that have been done to you are just insanely bad and wrong and evil! I know. But friend, if Jesus has forgiven you, you cannot, you don’t want to be like the guy in this story, it will not accomplish in you or for you what you desire!

And to help you a little bit I want you all to understand what forgiveness is!

It’s not exactly just forgiving a debt.

I could see where if you thought forgiveness meant that you just pretend like nothing happened that it would be a hard thing for you to, but that’s not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not just pretending like there was no debt that was incurred!

The beauty of the gospel and the offer of God is that He is inviting us to bring out debts and the the debts of others to Him!

When we choose unforgiveness, you and I are assuming the role of the bank and the debt collection agency in our lives! Right, unforgiveness says, you owe me and if I have to choke it out of you to get what you owe me I will!

And that attitude and response is not the attitude or response of some who’s been radically forgiven ourselves.

But the reverse of that isn’t just to grin and bear it and pretend like their is no debt at all! Evil demands justice and God is a God of justice so He doesn’t say just pretend like everything is fine and move on. No.

But what He does do is invite us to bring the debts to Him. Extending forgiveness to others means you take the debt that is owed to you and you give it to God! You let God assume the role of bank and debt collector! Forgiveness says to God, Lord, I know you’ve taking my debt and I can’t ever thank you enough for that. Now you’ve seen what’s been done and said to me. You’ve seen the hurt and abuse done to me by this person and it’s messed me up! I’m so wounded. I’m so hurt. I’m angry, but I’m not going to seek revenge! I’m not going to get bitter, no, I’m going to entrust this person to you! I forgive them and by doing so I’m releasing the debt they owe me to you! And I pray that you make sure it gets paid for either by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ or in the final judgement. I’m entrusting this person to you. You seek justice on my behalf for the wrongs done either on the cross or in the judgement. I’m not going to seek to get even or get what they owe me. This debt is now you’re responsibility. This person is now you’re responsibility! I want to be free of them and their sins and offenses!

Forgiveness continually and repeatedly flows from the truly forgiven.

If you’re the kind of person that needs steps to work through, I’ve put together a little half sheet on how to forgive that you can pick up after service. I also highly recommend Peter Horobin’s books.

Suffice it to say, if you’ve been forgiven by God, you will forgive others because this is what a heart that’s been changed by the gospel does. And if you don’t, you do so at your own peril!

If you need some help in forgiving someone from your heart, I invite you to fill out an intake form to go through a freedom prayer session with our freedom team! We’ve seen several people experience some break through and healing by forgiving folks in their past from the heart and we have some prayers and exercises that we will walk you through to help you do just that!

Now we’re going to turn our attention to a time of celebrating the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ by participating in communion.

I couldn’t think of a better way to wrap up this morning! After all, communion is a tangible way remember the debt we all owed to God! The price He paid to extend us freedom was the body and blood of His one and only son! What love this displays to us!

Now I’m going to read from John 6, and as I do, I want you to think of the servant and his insane debt! I want you to think about how he came to the Master seeking to have the debt forgiven and how the Master responded with Mercy. As we read the words of Jesus telling us that the work God requires of us is to trust and believe in Him, hear and receive the forgiveness and mercy in these words and as you come to the table this morning to symbolically consume Christ receive forgiveness and be forever changed! As you take in the forgiveness of Christ invite the Spirit to reveal where you might be withholding forgiveness in your life and release that person and the debt they owe you to God this morning! As you take communion, remember forgiveness flows continually and repeatedly from those who’ve truly been forgiven!

In John 6 starting in verse 27 Jesus said to the crowds that were seeking Him out… 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” 28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” 29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Believe in Jesus Church, trust Jesus enough to hand over the debt you are owed by others to Him! Trust Jesus, the God who forgives you, trust Him to empower you to forgive others!

30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?

In our context today, what will you do Jesus to convince us that we should forgive those who have sinned against us!

31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” 35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

Christ’s body broken for you and His blood poured out for you, that is the sign Jesus gave us that will empower us to forgiven and love our enemies if we truly trust and take Him in!

Do so this morning as you consume the bread and the cup. Remember Jesus’ forgiveness and trust Him enough to give over to him those you’ve wronged you and sinned against you. Forgive them Church, for they don’t know what they are doing!