Person of Forgiveness in Culture of GrudgeHolding 4

Being a Person of Forgiveness in a Culture of Grudge-Holding

Matthew 18:21-35           Countercultural Faith Series # 4

We are coming to understand that everyone is in someone’s mold. Someone is molding all of us into something else. But the good news of that is that we can choose our mold. We can either choose to be molded by the culture around us, or we can be molded by the Word of God.

We began talking about this matter of how can we become the people that God had envisioned when He rescued us, and the idea that we need to work intentionally to be molded by God. It doesn’t happen accidentally or automatically. Unless I put energy into the process of being molded, Romans 12:1-2, I will be automatically molded by the culture around me.

The first time we talked about the issue of being a person of integrity in a culture of duplicity. In other words, being one person, Saturday night or Sunday morning, if someone is watching or if no one will ever know, being one person with my family and the same person in public. Then we talked last time about the issue of being a person of compassion in a culture of callousness. We discussed the fact that we live in a very callous culture. We have developed a language of callousness. We have an entertainment industry that is full of callousness. We are very much molded into being callous people, if we are not careful. We looked at John chapter 4 and how Jesus was extremely compassionate to a Samaritan woman, a woman with three strikes against her. He had terrific concern for her. It mattered to Jesus what happened to this woman. She was a down and outer. The disciples wouldn’t even have spoken to her. It mattered to Jesus what happened to her. And He demonstrated to her the ultimate act of compassion by explaining to her and offering to her eternal life in relationship with Him.

We ended the message with the application of saying that if we are people of compassion, if we really want to imitate Jesus Christ, that we need to work to share the Gospel message with our friends.

I want to encourage you today to think with me about the matter of being a person of forgiveness in a culture of grudge-holders. We’re looking at Matthew 18, and the message from Jesus Christ that we are called to be forgivers.

There is the story of a woman, who was the neighbor of a pastor. This woman was around 60 years old and she had been nursing a grudge for around 29 years. She came from Mexico, and she related the story of when she came from Mexico, she had started a bus company. Her bus company took tourists to see various ruins in the area of southern Mexico. This bus company was going great guns, it was doing wonderfully. She was so excited. She was hiring more drivers, she was hiring workers. And she hired her sister to be her bookkeeper. This went along for three years. The company was doing wonderfully. One morning she comes to work and her sister comes into her office and says to her, “You don’t own this company any more. I do.” Her sister, on the sly, had gotten her to sign some forms, and she didn’t know what she was signing, and she had literally, without a dime changing hands, had stolen the bus company. Then she fired her sister after she stole the bus company. This woman came to the United States, and ended up being the neighbor of a pastor. As she told him this story about her sister stealing a company from her, there was incredible bitterness in her voice. There was terrific anger and hatred in her heart. There was great energy in her story. She was extremely embittered. She had been nursing the grudge for 29 years.

I don’t know of a single person, myself included, who doesn’t have at some point in their lives, one story or twenty stories about how someone harmed them, how someone hurt them. And it is extremely easy for us to keep a grudge. Living in the world that we live in, having the nature that we have, it is very easy to hold a grudge, and very hard to forgive people.

On top of that, there is something very miserably enjoyably sick about holding a grudge. If you have ever gotten into it for a long time, you may have experienced this sort of enjoyable misery of hating someone. It can go on for a long time, and actually is addicting.

I want to ask you, given that context, to think of this issue of God’s standard for forgiveness. How do we as sinful people, living among other sinful people, learn to be forgivers? How do we give up our grudges? Even if someone has done something very bitter against us. How do we escape that?

I want to begin by talking about the various standards of forgiveness. The American standard for forgiveness is usually zero times. In other words, if you violate me once, you have used up your quota, and from here on out, I am justified in holding a grudge. It’s the idea that you have one chance, and when you have blown that chance, you are done.

The New Testament rabbis at the time of Christ used to teach that you have three chances. You violate me once, I will forgive you. Violate me a second time, I will forgive you. Violate me a third time, I will forgive you. Violate me a fourth time, Katie bar the door! You’ve got it coming!

The apostle Peter, in the passage we’ll be looking at in just a moment, Matthew 18:21, asks Jesus Christ if he should be forgiving people up to seven times. He took the rabbis standard, he doubled it and added one for good measure. He thought seven times would be an extremely magnanimous thing to do. In other words, the eighth time they violate me, Lord, would it be OK to hold a grudge? I don’t know if one of the other apostles was grating on him, or what was his problem. But he was thinking, well, seven times is pretty generous.

The Lord Jesus followed it up in verse 22 and said, No, I don’t say to you seven times, but I say to you seven times seventy. 490 times. Which means, continually. The Lord Jesus was not saying, keep a ledger book and say, OK, Bill is up to 394 on me. Probably sometime next year, he’s going to cross the boundary! No, the Lord Jesus was really saying to them, forgive continually, forgive to the uttermost. Forgiveness is not measured in number of times.

It’s like having someone come up to their pastor and say, how many times should I love my child? You can’t measure love in times. You can’t measure forgiveness in times. You can measure apples that way, maybe oranges. But forgiveness is a different commodity. And Jesus’ message to His disciples is, that’s not the way you measure forgiveness. It’s not measured in gallons or times. It’s a whole different commodity. It’s measured differently.

Matthew chapter 18, verse 21, please. I’d like us to look at this passage together and think about this question of, how does God measure forgiveness, and how would He want us to measure forgiveness?

Matthew 18:21 is a very familiar story to many of you. It goes on to verse 35. Follow, please as I read.

“Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22  Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”

Then He goes on to explain what He just said with this story, verse 23.

“Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. 24  And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. 25  But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26  The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 27  Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. 28  But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. 29  And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 30  And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. 31  So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. 32  Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: 33  Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? 34  And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. 35  So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”

The Lord Jesus Christ tells this story in order to explain to us the standard of forgiveness that God is expecting of us. In fact, He uses this graphic story about a grudge-holding slave to say, here is God’s standard for forgiveness. If you want to know how to forgive, understand this story and you will know what God is expecting of us.

I want to investigate this, first of all, looking at verses 23-27 and think about the King’s amazing forgiveness. This is incredible forgiveness, as you will see as we get into the story.

Verse 23—the king wants to settle accounts. Basically, what is happening in this story, and the disciples as they listened would understand this, here is a king, maybe over Egypt, maybe of Judea. He has a bunch of people working for him whom this story calls servants or slaves. Sometimes in that day they were called satraps, administrators or literally, they were tax collectors. These satraps would go out in their area and they would collect tax from all the peasant farmers who owed money to the king. They would be able to keep a portion of the tax as their salary, and then they would turn the rest over to the king.

The king decides that it is that time of year, I am going to settle up with all my satraps. They’ve been collecting money from the peasant farmers. It’s time to settle up and figure out who owes me what.

He comes to one of his satraps and finds out that the guy has got a severe back tax problem here. He owes him ten thousand talents of precious metals. Now, in the New Testament times, a talent generally seventy-five pounds. This man owed 750,000 pounds of some kind of precious metals. He owed an incredible amount of money to the king. Maybe he wasn’t collecting enough, maybe he was overspending, maybe he had some severe interest building up on some parking tickets, I don’t know how he got in this deep in debt. He was in tough shape. He owed a huge amount of money. In fact, in our currency, most scholars figure he owed about $6 billion. This is an incredible amount. Obviously, the Lord Jesus is escalating this to impact His story.

It would be impossible for a guy to get that far behind the king. $6 billion. That was more than all the money being circulated in Egypt at that time. A huge debt that this man owed to the king. Obviously, he had no way to repay. It was simply beyond his ability, no matter how much he was motivated.

I figured out the payments on $6 billion. If the king gave him a no-interest loan for 40 years, the payments are $12,500,000 a month. Do you think you are struggling with some payments? This is a payment that would choke Donald Trump! $12,500,000 a month!

So in verse 26, the slave humbles himself before the king and then makes a ridiculous request. Verse 26, “The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.” Now, he started out all right—he fell down and worshipped him—he’s in a position of requesting mercy. But then he blows it. Just be patient with me for 40 years, give me a no interest loan, and I, an administrator for the government, will somehow cough up $12,500,000 a month. And I’ll fix it. It’s a stupid request, a ridiculous request.

But despite the incredible nature of his request, the king has mercy on him. It says that he felt compassion for him. He looked at this guy laying on his face and thinks to himself, what a ridiculous request. And yet, I feel bad for this guy. He said something extremely stupid. So he has compassion on him. He forgives him the entire debt.

And what the Lord Jesus really means to do with this story, I think, is to shock us with the enormity of the forgiveness. To shock us with the incredible amount that this king is just willing to just write off and say, Oh, forget it. $6 billion. What’s that among friends. Just forget it.

He forgives him an incredible debt. I think there are some parallels in this story between the flabbergasting financial forgiveness, and the flabbergasting spiritual forgiveness that God extends to us. The parallels are, number one, this man has an unpayable, astronomical financial debt. We are people with an unpayable, astronomical spiritual debt with God.

Second parallel. This man threw himself on the king’s mercy. We have the opportunity to throw ourselves on God’s mercy. To fall down on our faces before God and say, I can’t pay this! Please do something for me. Please help me.

The third parallel is that this man received full forgiveness, not based on any personal merit, but based solely on the compassion of the king.

And in the same way, we are people who can receive full forgiveness for our sins, not based on personal merit. I’ve got nothing to offer God. I can’t pay $12,500,000 a month! I’ve got nothing to offer God. But based on God’s compassion, I can experience that same kind of generous forgiveness.

Up to this point, it’s been a pretty remarkable story! Somehow a satrap got $6 billion behind on his payments. That’s astonishing. And now it takes an even more bizarre twist in verses 28-30, because, aside from the king’s amazing forgiveness, this story also has a slave’s amazing hardness.

Despite this remarkable forgiveness, this slave went out and if you read the text it says he went out and found a fellow slave who owed him about 100 days wages, and before he even spoke to him, he grabbed him by the neck. He started choking him before he even spoke to him.

Let me tell you a secret about interpersonal relationships. If you are walking down the street and you encounter a friend and they begin to choke you before they speak to you… something has gone wrong in that relationship! Just a subtle little clue that something is wrong.

He began to choke him before he spoke to him, and he demanded that he pay back everything he owed. I did the math on this, and this fellow slave owed him one-six-hundred-thousandth of what he had just been forgiven. He had just been forgiven 600,000 times as much as this man owed him. And he went out and found him and choked him. He said, Pay me back everything that you owe. And his fellow slave makes an appeal that is almost identical. The first appeal said, have patience with me and I will pay you back everything. In other words, I will pay every penny back to you. This appeal says, Have patience with me, I will repay the debt. It’s a reasonable request. He could get a hundred days’ wages. It would take him some time, but he could do it. But the man said, I am not willing to do that. So he throws him into prison, throws him into debtor’s prison until he can repay everything that he owed.

He is given an incredible forgiveness, 750,000 pounds of forgiveness, but he has not one ounce of compassion. He will not extend one ounce of forgiveness.

The third issue in this story, verses 31-34, are the terrible consequences of grudge-holding. I want to read those again, please. Verse 31. “So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. 32  Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: 33  Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? 34  And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.”

The basic message of that chunk of this story is, there are terrible consequences for grudge-holding. There are ugly consequences in many people’s lives for grudge-holding. He said in verse 33, should you not have had compassion on your fellow servant? Which means, isn’t it now your obligation, having received this incredible forgiveness, to forgive? Or in the vernacular, what are you thinking, man? How could you do this? This is unbelievable! The king cannot believe what has happened.

Grudge-holding has negative impact in at least three ways. Number one, grudge-holding has a negative impact on the people who are near the grudge-holder. In verse 31, these other fellow slaves were not even involved in the problem. They were just close to him, and they were battered by the grudge-holding. The reality is that I can hold a grudge against someone else and that grudge is battering the people who know me. I am discouraging my loved ones and friends by holding a grudge.

Secondly, the people who are hurt by a grudge are the people involved in the actual struggle that happens. The people where the grudge is happening. It is impossible to nurture a relationship when there is a grudge in that relationship. Grudge-holding is a relational parasite. It saps all the energy and all the health and all the strength out of a relationship.

The third person who is harmed by a grudge is the grudge-holder. Probably the most harm in this situation comes to the person who is actually holding the grudge against another person. The most miserable person you will ever know is the person who is a grudge-holder of the first order, a veteran grudge-holder. That is a miserable person. The person’s general life situation may be OK. There may be other aspects of the person’s life that appear OK. But that person is deeply miserable because they are a grudge-holder. That person is wearing himself or herself out hating people.

Grudge-holding has incredible negative impact for us.

Verse 33, the Lord says in this story, you were forgiven this incredible debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have forgiven this debt as well?

Again, there are great spiritual parallels. The idea that as Christians we had a spiritual debt. It can only be paid for by pleading with God for His mercy. It is paid for because God gave us mercy, not because we deserve something. But the key issue He is driving home here is, if you have experienced the remarkable forgiveness of God, your only choice is to be a forgiver.

If you and I have experienced the incredible $6 billion forgiveness, our only choice is to be a person who is handing over forgiveness to those around us, who is willing to forgive the way we are forgiven.

Verse 35 is a very sobering lesson about grudge-holding. Verse 35 He said, “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, [that is, hand you over to the torturers] if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”

When you first read that, it really could look like the Lord Jesus is saying, You could lose your salvation. If you are nursing a grudge against someone, you could lose your salvation. I do not believe that is what He is saying at all. I don’t think the Bible teaches in any place that once God has extended forgiveness to me that I could lose my salvation.

I believe what He is really saying is that as verse 35 says, if you are a grudge-holder, if you are a first order grudge-holder, if you are nursing a long grudge, there is some question about whether you understand the very forgiveness of God. There is some question about whether you have ever really come face to face with the full realization of your own terrible sin, of our own unpayable debt, of your own inability to help yourself, of your incredible need for God’s mercy, and of the joy that we experience when we trust Christ and that burden of debt is lifted off of us.

I believe what the Lord Jesus is saying in verse 35 is, it’s really unthinkable that someone could know the joy of the spiritual forgiveness of God and not themselves be a forgiver.

One writer said, when we give proof that we are peace with God, washed in Christ’s Blood, born of the Spirit, made God’s children by adoption in grace, like our Father in Heaven, let us be forgiving.

Once I know the incredible forgiveness of God, I myself will become a forgiver. Rejoice in the joy of a $6 billion spiritual debt wiped clean, and the rest of this stuff becomes trivial to you.

The other aspect of verse 35 is that if you do not forgive, if you continue to nurse a grudge, you are going to be turned over to tormentors by your Heavenly Father. Your life is going to be miserable beyond belief.

The application in this is quite obvious, but I am going to speak about the obvious anyway. The application is that we as Christians have no choice but to be forgivers, whether someone asks us for it, whether someone deserves forgiveness, whether I want to forgive them, whether I feel like forgiving them. If someone has violated me, I have no choice but to come to terms with that and be a forgiver.

I am not saying, sweep things under the table and ignore hurts. I am not saying don’t address things that need to be addressed in relationships. In fact, the previous section deals with this issue of addressing problems in relationships. Be honest with it. Be up front about it. Go ahead and own what is yours and deal with it.

But God’s message is, whatever happens in the approaching of the person and in dealing with it, we are called to be a forgiver.

There may be people here today who may need to forgive a husband or a wife. There may be some of you struggling with issues concerning a former mate that violated you in some way. There may be people whose child has hurt them. Whose parents have hurt them. Whose friend, whose boss, co-worker, teacher, pastor. There may be people here who need to forgive me. When I violate someone, I do my level best to speak to them and make it right. But if I don’t know about it, obviously, that will not happen. Every one of us need forgiveness.

You may have a neighbor who needs forgiveness, someone leading you who needs forgiveness. You may have a total stranger, a person whose name you do not know, a person who you will never see again who needs your forgiveness. It might be as trivial as cutting you off in traffic. It might be as profound as having personally physically violated you at some point. It doesn’t matter how trivial or how profound. It doesn’t matter if you know their name or if you will ever see them again. The message of this story is, if I have received God’s forgiveness, I must be a forgiver. I have no choice. I must be a person who is willing to lay down the grudges that I have been carrying against people.

I don’t want to suggest that the pains you have experienced are in any way trivial. I am sure there are people sitting in this room who have experience pain that is so profound that I could not even imagine it. I am not suggesting it’s trivial. I am saying that Jesus Christ, when He told us this story, didn’t sort out the difficulty of the violation. He didn’t say, if it’s above so many decibels of pain, why, yes, go ahead and hold a grudge. He made a flat, blanket statement that says, If you know the grace of God, you yourself must become a forgiver.

The problem is, if I am nursing these things, I am harming the person, I am harming the people around me, and I am harming myself. I am wearing myself out in the process of hating other people. Verse 35, “forgive your brother from your heart.” I believe that’s a very pointed statement that says, I need to forgive other believers. There may be a Christian who has violated me and I am extremely angry about that, because I am thinking, they should have resources from God. They should know better. They shouldn’t do that stuff. God says, forgive your brothers and your sisters.

Romans 12:21, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Do not be a grudge-holder who is seeking to overcome someone with evil. Overcome evil with good.

In the early 1800’s there was an Anglican bishop who died. And one of his fellow bishops was commenting on him after his death and he said, and I quote this, “It was a fine feature of Archbishop Cramner’s character that if you did him an injury, he was sure to be your friend.”

He was a person who said, I cannot afford to be a grudge-holder. I don’t have the time or the energy for it. I’ve known $6 billion forgiveness from God. I don’t have time for grudge-holding. It’s unthinkable. If you had done him an injury, he was sure to be your friend.

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Luke 23:34, experiencing horrible pain on the Cross, crucified. The Father turned His back on Him. The load of sin was weighing on Him. He was dying of suffocation as His lungs filled up with fluid. And He said, “Father, get these guys!” No! Aren’t you glad! He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Incredible pain. The most severe injustice the world has ever known, bar none. And He said, “Father, forgive them.” They don’t even know what in the world they are doing.

As Christians who have received full, incredible forgiveness from God, we are called to be forgivers.

Here is my challenge and my encouragement. Go home today. Get alone. Get a piece of blank paper. Write their names on that paper. And own just exactly the full weight of what they have done to you and how it hurts. And then say, Father, I’m giving it up today. From here on out, I will not be a grudge-holder. From here on out, I forgive them, completely and fully. Clean slate. No doghouse time. It’s all over. Even if it’s a total stranger. I’m done with it today.

God is calling us to be people who forgive as we are forgiven.

I read a story about General Robert E. Lee, after the Civil War was over. He was visiting a woman in Kentucky, a woman who had obviously been a southerner. And while he was visiting her, this woman took Lee out into the front yard and showed him this massive tree that she had there, that had been destroyed by northern artillery fire. This tree was battered incredibly. She was very embittered about it. She showed the tree to Lee. She looked at General Lee, looking for some word of condemnation for the north, looking for some word of comfort. And General Lee said to her, “Cut it down, my dear madam, and forget it.”

And Jesus Christ is saying to us, Cut it down, my dear child, and forgive it. Today. Pray with me please.

—PRAYER—