Sermon Tone Analysis

We are spending four weeks talking about the GREATER than or less than equation.

And here’s the premise for these four weeks:

My Savior, God, to Thee

Grace is greater than whatever.

How great thou art

How great thou art

That’s what Paul says in in a couple of different places: The glorious grace of God is greater.

It’s greater than ________?

I don’t know what you would put in this blank.

Last week we talked about how grace is greater than our brokenness.

I want you to take a moment to fill in this blank in your head.

I don’t know what you might write.

I don’t know the sins you’ve committed or the mistakes you’ve made.

I don’t know the failures you carry.

I don’t know the regrets that keep you awake at night.

I don’t know the secrets that you keep.

But what I know is this equation: that grace is greater than anything you might write in that blank.

On the one hand, I love talking about the incredible grace of God.

On the other hand, it’s really frustrating to try to explain something that can’t be explained!

With grace, I can explain it; you can read about it; you can hear about it.

But again until you experience it, you don’t really get it.

Until you experience it, you really won’t know what I’m talking about.

But you can see the way people worship.

And You can see the difference grace makes in their worship.

We see it in , where this woman who is forgiven much loves much.

It changes the way she worships.

Grace impacts us at the core of who we are.

If you’re a Christian, grace makes all the difference.

And so we celebrate it as a church, as a community, on a really regular basis.

Because if you’ve experienced God’s grace then you know that it’s like we’ve all been sentenced to life in prison, and we find out we’ve been set free.

It’s like we’ve all been diagnosed with this terminal illness, and we find out there’s a cure.

It’s like we’ve all racked up this huge debt and there’s no way we could pay it, and we find out the debt is forgiven.

Well, of course we’re going to celebrate that!

Of course we’re going to be joyful.

And so we celebrate God’s grace in our life.

But here’s what we’re going to do today:

We’re going to flip the grace coin over, and we’re going to talk about messy grace.

Because when you’re on the receiving end of grace, it’s all good, right?

Everyone likes that, and we love to talk about it.

But when you’re talking about giving grace, it gets a little bit messy.

It gets a little bit hard.

We all agree that grace is a lovely concept … as long as we’re not talking about the father who berated you or the spouse who cheated on you, as long as we’re not talking about the boss who fired you, the coworker who stabbed you in the back, the relative who abused you.

Grace is a fine idea as long as you’re on the receiving end, but it’s a lot messier when we are called to give it.

The Bible says in

that “every heart knows its own bitterness,” meaning that all of us have been hurt.

that “every heart knows its own bitterness,” meaning that all of us have been hurt.

We all carry burdens, even from years ago.

All these sins that have been committed against us, and we remember them.

Maybe you were betrayed, or you were abandoned, or you were abused, or you were victimized, or you were ignored, or you were rejected, or you were embarrassed, or you were bullied — grace suddenly gets a little bit messier.

Here’s what we’re going to do.

If you have your Bibles, turn to .

We’re going to study together a parable called “The Unmerciful Servant,” and here’s what we’re going to learn:

Grace is only grace if it goes both ways.

Biblical grace, grace that comes from God — the only way that it’s grace from God is if it goes both ways.

If all you do is receive but you never give, then you’ve stopped short of what grace really is.

What I really want to make clear is that the extent to which we are willing to give reveals the extent to which we have received grace.

It reveals how much we really have received from God and how much we’re just faking it.

It all becomes real when we’re called to give it.

Let me put it to you this way, though this will make some people uncomfortable.

The litmus test for the reality of the Gospel in your life is the extent to which you give grace and forgiveness to the person who’s hurt you the most … and deserves it the least.

In that moment you find out that God’s grace in your life is real.

Look at .

Peter comes to Jesus with a question.

Like a lot of Peter’s questions this one was loaded.

It’s a general question, but I feel certain there’s a specific story that motivates it.

Verse 21 says, “THEN PETER CAME TO JESUS AND ASKED, ‘LORD, HOW MANY TIMES SHALL I FORGIVE MY BROTHER OR SISTER WHO SINS AGAINST ME? UP TO SEVEN TIMES?’”

This is a math problem.

It’s an equation.

Peter throws a number out there.

Is seven times greater than grace?

Now if you know Peter then you know Peter probably thinks he’s being pretty gracious.

In fact, Jewish rabbis taught that you would forgive someone three times, but on the fourth time you didn’t have to forgive them.

So when Peter throws out the number seven he’s very confidently saying, “Would you say seven times, Jesus?

Or is that just what I would say?”

He’s feeling very sure that he’s going to get a compliment, that Jesus is going to turn to him and say, “Peter!

Seven times?

That’s so generous!

Why can’t all the disciples be like you?”

He thinks that’s what’s going to happen.

He’s throwing out this number that seems really gracious, but don’t you think that Peter had someone in mind when he asks this question?

There’s someone in life who hurt him

— not once, not twice, but my guess is exactly seven times — and he’s ready to be done.

Maybe for you it’s not a certain amount, but it is “the degree of offense.”

It’s not that you’ve been hurt seven times.

It was just one time, but the intensity of the hurt is so great that it feel like you’ve been hurt seven times all at once.

Who was Peter talking about?

I think it’s safe to assume that it’s probably someone he knew quite well.

Sure, sometimes people only come into your life just long enough to bring about destruction and devastation.

But most of the time the people who hurt us the most are the people that we love, right?

Because we give those people our hearts, and when we give them our hearts we also give them power over us.

And that power can cause a lot of damage.

Now there are some of you who learned early on not to do that.

Your heart isn’t safe if it goes to someone else.

So you’ve worked really hard most of your life to make sure that no one has that power over you.

You don’t give your heart to anybody.

You’ve carefully built up walls around your heart, and no one gets through that.

Because you’ve been hurt and you’re not going to be hurt again.

Because someone you loved and someone you trusted … they let you down, they hurt you, they betrayed you.

And so you don’t give anyone that power, because if you give your heart away then it’s only a matter of time before you’re hurt again.

I don’t know who it was for Peter.