About 10 years ago on a July 4th I went with the family to a minor league baseball game. We sat in the grassy area of the ballpark down the first base line and during the game a fowl ball game my way.
It was spinning pretty well and I had a tough time getting a hold of the ball. Finally, I got a hold of it… well, I thought that I did.
All of the sudden, there was another hand on the ball and suddenly it was out of my hands. A kid about 12 years old came from out of nowhere and grabbed it out of my hand and took off with it!
I was livid and I was ready to go after that kid! In fact, some of the adults around me said, ‘you should have knocked him down!’ But I did not and I did not go after him either.
It took me a while to calm down but eventually I got over it. But I was very, very angry.
Now for some people they would have shrugged and laughed and not thought any more about it. For others they would have gone after the kid and a messy confrontation probably would have taken place.
Some situations do not bother us at all but they make others very, very angry. Other situations really make us angry and others respond with a look, or a word, that says, ‘What’s your problem?’
(Slide 1) We are concluding our seven week series, ‘Stepping Stones and Stumbling Blocks to Faith.’ In the past six weeks we have looked at the following stepping stones (Slide 2) and the following stumbling blocks (Slide 3).
Today we take a brief look at a big stumbling block - anger (Slide 4) and an equally big (and very important) (Slide 4a) stepping stone forgiveness. Anger and forgiveness are very much two sides of the same coin because what makes us angry often makes forgiveness difficult. My anger at what had been done to me at the ball park 10 years ago made it difficult for me to forgive that kid… at least for a time.
(Slide 5) Our main text for this morning is Matthew 18:21-22. ‘Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” No!” Jesus replied, “seventy times seven!’
A young girl who was writing a paper for school came to her father and asked, "Dad, what is the difference between anger and exasperation?" The father replied, "It is mostly a matter of degree. Let me show you what I mean."
With that the father went to the telephone and dialed a number at random. To the man who answered the phone, he said, "Hello, is Melvin there?" The man answered, "There is no one living here named Melvin. Why don’t you learn to look up numbers before you dial?" "See," said the father to his daughter. "That man was not a bit happy with our call. He was probably very busy with something and we annoyed him.
Now watch...." The father dialed the number again. "Hello, is Melvin there?" asked the father. "Now look here!," came the heated reply. "You just called this number and I told you that there is no Melvin here! You’ve got lot of guts calling again!" The receiver slammed down hard. The father turned to his daughter and said, "You see, that was anger. Now I’ll show you what exasperation means."
He dialed the same number, and when a violent voice roared, "Hello!" The father calmly said, "Hello, this is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?"
In our text for this morning, I would suggest that anger (or at least irritation) at someone is implied in Peter’s question. But forgiveness is also on Peter’s mind. They are very much linked together.
‘How many times do I forgive?’ What was taught back then, according to one of my sources was three times. But Peter speaks of seven, the perfect number, and Jesus goes even further, much further and says seventy times seven.
But there is more to the story than Jesus’ simple answer of ‘seventy times seven.’ He goes on in verses 23 through 35 to illustrate exactly what that means. Let’s hear the story once again:
“For this reason, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so the king ordered that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt. But the man fell down before the king and begged him, ‘Oh, sir, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then the king was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and jailed until the debt could be paid in full.
“When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him what had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison until he had paid every penny.
“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters in your heart.”
I want us to notice two things about this passage. The first thing I have already eluded to, Jesus’ illustration of his answer to Peter, is made clear in verse 23 when He says, ‘for this reason the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared…’
Jesus is now going to take the audience, namely Peter, and probably some others as well, to a very deep place. When we read the phrase, ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ please be assured that what Jesus is about to say is very, very, very important.
He is going to reveal something about the Kingdom of Heaven. And the emphasis is not necessarily on heaven but on the kingdom – God’s kingdom where God rules and His way is The way!
In other words, Jesus makes clear that this issue of forgiving one another is a central, no, it is a critical and strategic value of the Kingdom of God. Forgiveness, in God’s reign and rule, is not an option it is a requirement.
What Jesus is talking about is God the Father and us. We are the two servants, God is the king. The debt is the result of our sinful choices and attitudes. Sin is about something that we cannot repay or clear. It is an overwhelming debt that has been paid by what Christ has done for us.
Mercy is involved here because that is what the king demonstrated and that is what He expects to be demonstrated by those in his kingdom. But the first servant was in bondage to anger that was rooted, I believe, in a sense of entitlement.
(Slide 6) Entitlement. It is a word that describes our culture today. We think we are entitled to this, to that, and to the other. Entitlement is another word for ‘rights.’ The rights to do this, or to do that, or to something else and when our rights are blocked… we get angry! How dare you do that to me!
Now, an argument can be made that the first servant was entitled his money. The second servant did owe the first servant some money, as the text indicates.
But what got the servants upset (and they told the king) and then got the king angry was the lack of mercy showed by one who had just received mercy. In this passage did you notice that the king ‘forgave’ the first servant’s debt?
Mercy and forgiveness are tied together. A spirit of mercy includes forgiveness and forgiveness requires mercy.
Wouldn’t you be a little more forgiving and a little more merciful if you had just had a very large debt forgiven?
A word closely to anger is rage. Have you ever seen someone in a rage? Have you ever been in a rage? I think that this first servant was in a rage.
In his book (that I highly recommend) Faces of Rage, David Damico links unresolved loss (and its associated grief) with rage and anger. He identifies eight significant losses that he believes can and does hold people back from experiencing life and freedom that the Lord has for each of us. Here they are:
(Slide 7) Safety, Purpose, Significance
Eligibility, Hope, Dignity, Power
Each of these losses, if left unresolved, says Damico, can lead people to a deep inner rage, sometimes expressed in deep and angry outbursts or also through a deep and profound battle with depression, shame, and self-pity. Some of these losses are rooted in unresolved childhood experiences that we have buried under layers of denial. Other losses have come as teens and as adults.
Some have been in the workplace and some in the classroom. Other losses have been the result of relational damage, including at home.
How do we resolve them? How do we resolve the grief, the rage, and the anger that has been left by them?
Forgiveness… This is the second thing that I want us to notice in this passage… forgiveness was given and withheld.
An issue of Reader’s Digest several years ago contained an article entitled "How Letting Go of Grudges Can Improve Your Health." It stated that forgiveness is indeed divine, but not necessarily easy.
It also indicated that forgiveness is also very beneficial to physical and mental health. It quoting Frederic Luskin, author of Forgive for Good (HarperCollins, 2002), as saying "People who forgive show less depression, anger and stress and [show] more hopefulness."
It would have been nice for the first servant to have know this, wouldn’t it?
Jesus’ final statement in the story underscores the importance of forgiveness. “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters in your heart.” What did the King do, he imprisoned the unforgiving servant!
This is something that Jesus repeatedly says throughout the gospel accounts. In Mark 11:25 we read, ‘But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.’
The thought is much, much stronger in Matthew 6:14 and 15, ‘If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.’
Unforgiving is a hindrance of God’s work in our lives. Forgiving is evidence of God’s work in our lives.
Forgiveness, as hard as it is to do at times, frees us and allows us to be open to God’s work within us. It is like the opening up of a wound to clean it out and allow the body’s natural healing work to take place.
It is freedom from anger, rage, hate, and spite. It is the giving up of the right to stay angry, give vent to rage, be hateful and speak with spite. It is the letting go of both irritating wrongs and deep injustices.
It is to wish someone, who has done something wrong to you I once read or heard, to be well…
When I started this sermon series 7 weeks ago, we had just come out of Lent and Easter. During that time period we were challenged to think about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our salvation and forgiveness. It was a costly sacrifice.
I think that ending this series with a look at anger and forgiveness is very appropriate and even very providential. Anger figures prominently in the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The leaders who wanted Jesus arrested were angry with Him. In fact, as we read in Mark 15:10 Pilate realized that the ‘leading priests had arrested Jesus out of envy.’ Anger and envy are closely related to one another.
But what was Jesus’ response? One of forgiveness as we read from Luke 23:34 (Slide 8) “Jesus said, “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing.”
(Slide 9) I also want to remind us of what I said a few weeks ago and that is that these are the sins for which Christ died and rose again for us. These are stumbling blocks in our path. They trip us up and cause us to stumble and fall. For some of us, one or two of them are major challenges.
But Christ died for these sins, these flaws, these defects of character. He wants to free us from them! He wants us to overcome them!
This past week, at a meeting I attended at our sister congregation in Rochester, Dr. Guy Brewer a professor at the School of Theology at Anderson University came to speak to us pastors about taking care of ourselves. During his presentation he reminded us of a question that needs to be asked from time to time in our lives and our preaching… SO WHAT?
It is a good question to ask from time to time. So what does all of this have to do with the issues and decisions I have to deal with and make this week?
Everything…. Everything…
In that presentation Dr Brewer gave us a very good big picture of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a disciple, a Christian. It is an answer to the question, ‘So what?’ Here it is…
(Slide 10)
So often in ministry and the church we think in terms of ‘decisions.’ (Have you made a ‘decision for Christ?’) And decisions are important things to make. We need to make the decision to follow Jesus. Our ministry as a church is to help others make their own decision to follow Jesus as well. But there is more to following Christ and being a disciple than just a decision.
We need to incorporate with the Holy Spirit’s help important habits or practices or disciplines like Bible Study, prayer, church attendance, fellowship, and service to help us sustain and deepen our decision to follow the Lord. Good intentions are not enough.
Together making the decision and incorporating the disciplines strengths our relationship with God. But it also does something else that is very, very important.
It allows God to begin to change us at a very deep and profound level. We have to move beyond the level of decisions and practices in our faith. We have to be deeply and profoundly changed by God deep within us. In other words, our dispositions have to change.
(Slide 11) This is where the stepping stones come into play. They are foundational building blocks of a maturing and new nature and drive within us.
The Bible speaks to this issue in places such as 2 Corinthians 5:17 which say, ‘those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!’
(Slide 12) The result is that as our disposition changes, we give glory to God in how we live and act.
These stumbling blocks have been called over the centuries the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ because they are deadly to our souls. And the stepping stones have been called the ‘Seven Cardinal Virtues.’
This series has been a series aimed at our dispositions or our character because the Bible speaks clearly and often to the issue of character in our lives. Why? Because it is our character that is the clearest evidence of whether or not God’s grace is operating in our lives.
This brings me to our graduates this morning.
Please hear me carefully this morning, grads… God is not interested in your success. He is interested in your character and your faithfulness to Him. Success to Him is measured by your faithfulness to Him.
Your character matters more to Him than your income. Your soul matters more to Him than the height that you may rise to in your profession.
Continue to learn and develop the skills and abilities that God has given you, that is being a good disciple. But allow God to work deeply within you and change you into the person that He wants you to be.
We do celebrate with you and thank God for you! Congrads on your important achievement! Now let us honor you this morning.
