Forgiving Like Jesus

Staff Appreciation

Just a reminder that October is Pastor Appreciation month and since I am new.

You are all doing me the personal favor of appreciating the pastoral staff instead of me

I know they are all appreciative so thank you so much!

Stuck in LA

If you are watching this on video that means I am stuck in Burbank airport. So I am sorry I can not be with you personally...

But lets get right into it this morning.

Intro & Verse

So we have been on a series called “Hot Mess”

The idea is that often times we have been in relationships where we are like a toddler with an ice cream cone...

Toddlers are fat and happy with that ice cream cone but their parents know that they are a sticky mess.

So we have this verse that we have been reading every week to try and memorize

1 John 4:11-12

The New International Version (Chapter 4)

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Do you want to have a deeper and closer connection with God....

Did you see how when we read it it says…If we love one another that God lives in us!

The idea is that the more you love the hot mess people of your lives, the more you will grow in spiritual stature and the more that you will become like Jesus.

Relationships get messy when we don’t start here

We are spending time on this same verse every single week because we need the reminder that the quality in which we love others actually helps them to see God.

What if in every interaction you had, in every relationship you had, the other person came out of that interacting thinking...”Man its like that person just had breakfast with Jesus”

I want to teach you my family prayer:

Its worth while, I didn’t come up with it, I stole it from Dallas Willard. But I want to share this with you just in case you want to use it for your family. Every night I pray this for my kids and every day I pray this over my family:

Father, help us to be the sort of family that makes others happy, you made this world and put us in it.

This is the prayer I pray for my kids and my family daily because it essentially says: Help us to lead others to praise God.

I am praying for my kids to love others so well that they give Glory to God.

I am praying for my family to love others so well that they praise God.

And it starts with this love that John talks about...

At the heart of every redeemed relationship, it starts with love. So Use whatever prayer you want but pray about becoming a person who loves deeply until you actually are...

Transition

So because we are human.

It doesn't matter how much love you have for someone...

There is going to be conflict.

The quality of love that you have for others will either lesson the conflict or make it greater.

When you love others with the love of Jesus everyone will give you the benefit of the doubt and will assume that you just have the best intentions.

But like death and taxes, Conflict is inevitable.

And see the disciples were learning that God’s simple love is forgiveness and they just couldn't wrap their heads around it all…They just couldn't grasp the hugeness and the totality of it all…

So flip with me to Matthew 18

The book of Matthew can be broken up into 5 sections ...

Chapter 18 is all about the kingdom community.

It starts like this:

Matthew 18:1-5

The New International Version Chapter 18

18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

When 12 people come up to you and ask. Who is the greatest? This is a recipe for conflict right?

So Jesus does something completely revolutionary.

He takes a child and says. Look, if you welcome this child you welcome me. He talks about relational posture…Taking the lowly position....

Children in this society have no status. In 1st century Israel, status came with age and the order of birth.

So Jesus radically flips the script and says hey, my community has different standards for greatness.

You have to take the position of a child

and welcome those of low positions in order to be great.

I mean imagine a great political figure. They are giving a speech at the capitol…And someone says. Hey what do we have to do to be in your administration? We want to have status and respect!

And that political figure scans the crowd and finds a homeless man in rags and says.

Go welcome that man, feed him and care for him

Then you will be great in my administration...

This is just not the way the world around us achieves greatness…Right?

But Jesus knew…if everyone is trying to achieve greatness, then conflict will happen!

So Jesus tells 2 parables

1. about causing others to sin

and the other is when people sin themselves

So Jesus tells these parables to show what great lengths the father will go to bring back his kids.

He tells these parables to reveal his great love for us.

Then jump down to verse 15 with me

Matthew 18:15-17

The New International Version (Chapter 18)

15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ d 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

The way Matthew uses the term “sin” is more than just…if someone does you wrong…or if your angry. Matthew always uses the word sin to denote separation from God.

So Matthew is here saying, when someone sins, they separate themselves from God

So it is actually an act of love and mercy to kindly and gently point this out.

So here Jesus establishes a template for us to deal with broken relationships within the community of God …And this point is key.

If you have a conflict with someone at work who is not a Christian. This system may not necessarily be valued.

If there is conflict in the church

Go to the person privately and point it out. (Matt 18:15)

Now: does the bible say, post it on facebook? Tweet about it to get advice…Ask all of your friends about it?

NO! Why. The point is to preserve the unity of the community. To avoid shaming someone else.

Privacy protects the dignity of the person whom you are confronting.

Also: Jesus told us the relationship posture: Go to the person gently and lowly.

If that doesn't work:

Take two other people people to help settle the matter. (Matt 18:16)

This small group still ensures privacy.

It allows for an outside opinion and wisdom beyond you.

Sometimes when two people go to work things out they get stuck.

But hey if you do this, those two people whom you take better be committed to privacy

They better be committed to unity!

And remember, the point of all of Matthew 18 and resolving conflict in the church is never to win. It is to reconcile. It is to be made right with one another

If that doesn’t work:

Take the matter to the church

Even here, while this is drastic…Do you see how Jesus doesn’t say. Take the person to court

Take it to the court of public opinion

Ask all of your friends what they think!

No Jesus says take it to the church, because it is better that everyone in the church know about the situation and pray about it than for the witness of these people to be ruined in public.

If that doesn’t work:

Treat them as a someone who is outside Jesus’ community

Now this is one of the most impotrant things I will ask you today

How did Jesus teach that we treat people who wander off?

He just taught 2 parables about it!

Jesus leaves the 99 to go after the 1

Jesus actually said, treat them like tax collectors and sinners..

How did Jesus treat tax collectors and sinners?

He ate with them, he loved them and he always invited them to follow him in his community…While inviting them to leave behind their life of sin.

See I am a little worried that people get to this part of Matthew 18 they think. Awesome…We get to shun people!

Jesus just gave me permission to tell people where to go!

So Peter is here listening to Jesus and he’s got questions about all of this

lets keep reading

Matthew 18:21

21 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?”

Now lets pause right here for a minute

So Peter asks here is this for someone who is in the family of God...>How many times should we forgive each other…for our purpose we can simply say our families…our kids… our spouse, our parents…. our siblings…

Ho many times do we forgive each other?

So Peter says….”Do we forgive 7 times”…now catch what Peter is doing here because its brilliant…Jewish rabbis taught that you should only forgive someone 3 times…

So 7 times is double plus one….Peter must have thought this was a radical solution…

But check this out…there is another way of looking at this…There was a retribution system of how much you can claim to get back from someone and that was 7x

So Peter is thinking that he is being really radical…Do we amend these old systems of forgiveness and make a better system system?

But look at verse 22…Jesus just blows Peter out of the water with something significant…something hard and something radical….

Matthew 18:22

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

This is a difficult math problem…

First of all this is one of those verse in the bible that the greek to English translators can not agree on…About half say the verse says 77 time and the other half says it means 70 X 7….But either way, the meaning is the same… It’s easy to keep a record with three times that you’ve forgiven someone…its even easy to remember 7 times…

But how do you keep a record of 77 times? Or 490times?

Plus it doesn't sound cool right…when someone wrongs you its sounds a lot cooler to say…Ok, that’s one! Ok, that’s 2 don't get to three

Now what do you say…Alright buddy…That was the 64th time….don’t get it to 76! You’re not going to want to find out if we have to go to 78

No the point is precisely that its such a large number that you just wouldn't keep track…In fact…you should never keep track of how many time you are forgiving someone…because Jesus tells this story….Literally in the same breath…because he knew that Peter and everyone else would have questions….

Look at verse 23

This story is so radical that most of us dismiss it, but it is the very essence of the simple love of Jesus

Matthew 18:23-27

23 “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.

Lets pause here:

So in every parable that Jesus teaches we have to find ourselves in it…The King is God and the person who owes the king 10,000 bags of gold is us…

So what should we be thinking in this story

That I have a debt to God…Its just a metaphor

But we have a moral debt to God and t in the Jewish mind, the number 10,000 is like saying infinity today…It was sort of code for being just a ridiculous amount...

It was incalculable

But if you want to get technical in this story and setting, 10,000 bags of Gold would have been the amount of taxes you might pay to a king over several years and providences

Think of all the money the government brings in on April 15 th and then multiply it by 10…

The idea is that this is a debt so huge that you could never repay it…

It’s like asking you or me to pay our national debt…Even if you sold your house your car, and cashed in all your retirement and worked the rest of your life, you could never afford it, it would be like throwing pennies at our national debt

So we all get the illustration right…

You owe so much to the king, that you’re never going to be able to pay it back…This is the way it is with all of us…That we owe so much to God that we will never be able to re-pay

You get that right? We’ve all sinned

So this guy finds himself on his knees begging...If you will just be patient with me, then I’ll pay you back

And its ridiculous because he will never be able to do it…But many of us fall on our knees too and say God if you just forgive me for that junk, I will make it up to you…

And let me just explain this to you: your collective good works couldn't touch what Jesus did for you on the cross….

But catch what the king did, it matters

The King leads with forgiveness

I wonder if Peter was thinking…why is this important?…I want to know how many times I should forgive others…that was the only question I asked

But Jesus leads with God’s nature…

Jesus leads with how much we have been forgiven…its like the ultimate setup…

See the truth of the matter is that we all need forgiveness…

Psalm 130 says

Psalm 130:3-4

If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? 4 But with you there is forgiveness,

And we go to part two…of the story, right back to

Remember, the King…AKA…The father in heaven, let it go…He forgave the debt, but what happens next..

Matthew 18:28-35

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. (my note: About 100 days of work a very tangible amount for his day) 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.”

So Jesus is talking to his disciples then, and to us now…

You have to learn the cost of being forgiven and practice offering mercy to others.

You have to learn to let it go

Because

Jesus knows that we want forgiveness with God but Justice with others

Let that sink in for a minute…

lets say you come to church and say, Jesus! I have messed up all week…I was terrible to my wife and kids...

I haven’t honored you…And the reality is that Jesus on the cross says you don’t have to pay it back…You were bought at a price, I have already paid for your sin...

But then you leave here and run into someone who wronged you…and you just let them have it

I wish I could tell you that I practice mercy with everyone…but sometimes when your wronged in life you just want justice and mercy becomes the furthest thing from your mind

But I am no different…I want forgiveness with God but justice with others too…

Let me tell you a story:

A couple of years ago I went to the skate park on a Saturday and my brother was there, his son and Emma were there…We were just having a good time…

When my brother was skating in the bowl that was there and some other guy who was careless just dropped in right in front of him…When the guy realized what he had done he jumped off his board and his board flew into my brothers…

My brother flew off his board and fell and snapped a tendon in his wrist…

So I happen to know the guy who made my brother fall, He is careless all the time…So what does Pastor Dave do?

Well I jumped into the bowl and started yelling at this guy for being careless…

He apologized he said it was a mistake…and even though my blood was boiling, because he always skates that way, he is unsafe…I say to myself….Just let it go..

So a minute later I am just talking to my brother seeing how his wrist is feeling when this guy skates by me and now I am in his way…He throws an elbow at me…

So my blood starts boiling again…but I tell myself all the right stuff…you have your daughter and nephew here…You’re pastor Dave…Be a good example

And this guy skates by me again and throw an elbow so hard that it knocks me around a little…

Do you think I lead with forgiveness or with Justice?

You better believe I went after justice in that moment…I started shouting at him and I just let him have it…I really think that in my anger I did not sin, I told him he needs to leave, he’s unsafe he’s this and that…

And I just kept shouting at him…GET OUT OF HERE

I just thought, I wonder who would be willing to preach for me tomorrow if I am in jail…

My blood was boiling on the way home and I don't think it stopped boiling for a couple more days

How do you think the ride home was with my daughter was?

Who do you think was the voice of reason?

Who do you think reminded me that the christian life is one that you are beat up but not bitter?

It was my child...

This is all easy stuff to talk about, but when you’ve been wronged, its so hard!

Practical

Lets talk about this in the context of family for a second…

This happens all the time in marriage…You get your jabs in to each other and then you want justice!

1 Peter 4:8

8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Your marriage and family should be marked by love because it covers a multitude of sins

3 things to learn in marriage, these are not in your notes but you may want to write them down…These are ways that love can cover a multitude of sins

· Learn to laugh: I mean come-on…Laughing helps you to let it go

· Learn to: Let go of the little stuff before you’ve been heard

Quit making mountains out of molehills

Learn to forgive each other before you even talk about it

Why, because love covers a multitude of sins

· Learn to: let go after you've been heard on the bug stuff

Sometime you have to be heard

Sometimes whatever has been done has just been too much and you have to be heard…Learn to say what you need to say and let it go…

These three things are really important in families and especially in marriage…because if you allow the bitterness to grow it will eventually blow up

We have to learn to not keep a record of the wrongs in your marriage and in our other relationships because the way God has forgiven you, you are supposed to forgive others…so if your keeping score…Then your in trouble

See a healthy marriage is not one that is free from hurt or damage…

Its one that has learned to live beat-up without bitterness

Healthy marriages lead with forgiveness because God leads with it.

And guess what, this applies with everything

Challenge

Maybe you’re here today and there is a relationship that needs forgiveness.

But the reality is that you have been hanging onto the idea of getting justice for so long that forgiveness seems impossible

Remember what Jesus constantly taught his disciples...

Leave your gift at the alter....

BEFORE YOU ASK JESUS TO FORGIVE YOU, GO MAKE IT RIGHT WITH OTHERS

Maybe there is someone in your life…where the relationship is a hot mess...

Either you need forgiveness

Or you need to forgive them...

I want to invite you to leave your sense of justice at the alter today

and lead with forgiveness

Because that is what Jesus did for you

Many times I have been hurt by people in the church…and I know some of you have as well

Because if you have been in church for any period of time someone has said something to you, sinned against you, wounded you or something

And I have just had to learn over the years to say,

If God can forgive me, then I can forgive them

God if you can forgive me, I can forgive them

If God can forgive me 10,000 bags of Gold…If I need forgiveness…If I need mercy…

Then mercy is what I have to give

If I am going to receive mercy, then I am going to have to give it…

Have you ever been hurt by a church?

Ok, forgive

After all, haven’t you hurt the church? I mean come on…you’ve disappointed the church before haven’t you

You signed up for an event, everyone was there serving to get ready and you never showed up…

Let people serve you and you don't serve

Maybe contribute to judgmentalism

Gossip

Divisiveness

Sure we’ve all been hurt by the church but we have probably all hurt it too….

See even times in the church, we need to learn to live beat-up without becoming bitter

We don't need a perfect church…even if you found a perfect church you couldn't go to it, you’d mess it up!

What we need is a church that leads with forgiveness….What we need is a church that is ok with getting beat-up a little

Because what we need, what God needs this community of people showering this world with love and it looks a lot like forgiveness…

Do you need forgiveness?

Because that is what this what we are here for…

During this next song I want to invite you to take a little inventory of your life…

Are you leading the beat up and bitter life? Because there is only one remedy for that bitterness…And that is to let it go and forgive from your heart….Because God has already done the very same for you…

As the band comes forward, lets pray