Forgiveness 7 X 70

1. OPENING ILLUSTRATION:

Discussion about the movie “Warrior” about two revenge driven brothers competing in a mixed martial arts tournament. Central Theme of movie – Unforgiveness

Sermon focus – Discipline Forgiveness

2. BACKGROUND

A) Jesus teaching disciples about handling conflict importance of forgiveness

B) Peter follows up with a question…”How many times must I forgive my brother…..?”

C) Jesus answers…”77 times.”

D) Forgiveness should be unlimited

E) Jesus tells a Kingdom parable that supports this radical idea about the man who was forgiven a great sum of money, yet tries to get money from the person who owes him little. Both men end up in prison.

F) Point: we have been forgiven a great debt (our sins) and so we should forgive others and it begins within the church community.

3. APPLICATION

G) There challenges and conflicts within a church community

H) We can use it as an opportunity for personal growth

i) Discussion about various lens we view conflict

J) Forgiveness allows God’s grace to continue to flow through the church

k) We need to learn to overlook an offense

4. CONCLUSION

L) Failure to forgive leaves both people in prison (the unforgiven, and the one who won’t forgive.

M) Closing scene from the movie Warrior – Two brothers forgiving each other, a modern day parable

How many of you have seen the movie “Warrior”? A few of you. “Warrior” was a movie that came out in 2011 starring Nick Nolte and a couple lesser named people. I think the guys name was Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton. Here is a picture of the movie poster. The movie “Warrior” was actually filmed in Pittsburgh. If you were to watch the movie you would see locations such as Don’s Diner in the North Side off McClure Avenue. You would see North Hills High School and you would even see the Twin Drive-In Theatre out there in Robinson. It is a great movie. It has a really basic plot. The central theme of this movie is un-forgiveness. It is the story about two brothers who really don’t like each other. In fact, they hate each other. They are able to actually take out that revenge at a mixed martial arts tournament in Atlantic City. Some of you might not know what mixed martial arts are. I really didn’t know much about it. But apparently mixed martial arts involves a little bit of boxing, a little bit of kick boxing, and a little bit of wrestling. That is why I don’t engage in that sort of activity because I’m just not that type of guy. It is a really intense movie, and it is about these two brothers who are trying to take out their revenge for each other because of the hatred they have for each other. That revenge began actually several years earlier while they were still in high school. They were living under the roof of a dysfunctional home. The father was an abusive alcoholic. It was very dangerous for the children and for the mother. One of the brothers, Tommy, decides he is going to take the mother and take her out to Seattle or somewhere in the northwest to protect her from the abuse of the father. The other son stays behind because he has a girlfriend and he decides he is going to stay back in Pittsburgh. The brother who is out in Seattle, he is left to care for his mother, to protect his mother, and his mother gets very sick. I think she gets cancer or something like that. Because they don’t have the means to pay for health insurance, the mother gets very sick. She can’t get her medication, and she ends up dying. So the brother, Tommy, on the left ends up being very upset and becomes very bitter not only at the dad but at the older brother because the older brother didn’t come out and help at all. The brother that stayed in Pittsburgh becomes embittered toward the dad and also Tommy because Tommy didn’t let him know that the mother was that sick. What you do is you have a three-way hatred for each other. Both the sons hating the father and the sons hating each other. Really what you have here, though, is kind of a parable. It is kind of a parable like today’s story out of the Book of Matthew. It is a parable about forgiveness and specifically what happens when that forgiveness is withheld.

If you have your Bibles, please open up to Matthew 18:15-35. As you know, we have been going through the four core values of worship, discipleship, outreach, and community. We are back around to the value of discipleship. Discipleship simply means that we are trying to be like Jesus. We are disciples of Jesus, so we are trying to be like Jesus, to follow his example. In order to follow his example, we have to practice what is known as the spiritual disciplines, which are things that he practiced. Things like prayer, meditation, fasting, bible study and those types of things. Last month we looked at the discipline called solitude. I was very pleased but very surprised that a number of people in the congregation actually practice solitude and actually had some good results from it. Today, as we consider these spiritual disciplines, the one discipline we don’t think about as really a spiritual discipline is the discipline of forgiveness. When we think about forgiveness, it doesn’t sound like something that is a discipline. A discipline is though, by definition, something that you practice on a regular basis. As we see in today’s story, Jesus is not saying you need to practice forgiveness one time or occasionally or two times or three times. No, he is saying that the discipline of forgiveness needs to be a lifestyle. That it is important. In order to keep that generous grace of God flowing down to us, we have to continue to practice the forgiveness to each other. That is what we are going to look at today. We are going to begin reading from Matthew 18:21 and reading down all the way to verse 35. (Scripture read here.)