Evening Service for 11/22/2009
Matthew 18:21-35
HoHum:
A. I read a psychologist who said that Christians were very much like porcupines on a cold winter’s night. The cold drives them to huddle together to keep warm, but as soon as they get close to another they start jabbing each other with their spines and that forces them to move apart; thus they are forever coming together and moving apart in a kind of slow dance.
B. To dwell above with saints we love, Oh that will be glory. But to dwell below with saints we know, well, that’s another story.
WBTU:
No where else in the gospels do we have this formula for dealing with faults, conflicts, Matthew 18:15-17. Don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, dealt with this during the Sermon on the Mount.
Peter asks a question related to this topic in vs. 21, Repeated in many of the gospels.
We are like a little boy who was saying his prayers. As he went down the list of his family, asking God to bless them, he omitted his brother’s name. His mother said to him, “Why didn’t you pray for Cliff?” He said, “I’m not going to ask God to bless Cliff because he hit me.” And his mother said, “Don’t you remember Jesus said to forgive your enemies?” The little boy said, “That’s just the trouble. He’s not my enemy; he’s my brother!”
Jesus goes on in Matthew to illustrate this with the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, only found here in this gospel. Description of parable:
B. We see here the principle of humor used by Jesus- hyperbole. Imagine a slave who owes the king some money. Make that a lot of money. Ten thousand talents, even. We may not get the joke, but Jesus’ listeners would have: That’s more money than the
Roman Government had! It’s as if your freshman daughter had called up to say she’d run a little money up on the credit card you gave her. How much? The national debt.
C. Better yet, when the man is called to pay, he says, “Give me a little more time and I will pay all” (18:26). This is like the girl telling her father that she “plans to get a job at Christmas” to pay off that maxed-out credit card. What’s a king to do? Instead of laughing the slave out of his court (or into prison), he simply forgives the debt. She calls the credit card company and whines a little, so they let her off the hook. Just like that.
A. What would you do to celebrate if all of your debts were suddenly canceled?
D. The slave leaves and finds someone who owes him a hundred denarii—a few months’ wages. Not only does he demand the money, he chokes the poor guy. That goes beyond merely uncharitable; it’s downright cruel. One might even say comically so. In the end, the unjust slave gets his due. He is tossed in jail until he can pay in full, which he never can.
E. Here, Jesus lays one exaggeration on top of another until the audience can’t help but see how utterly ridiculous it is to hold a ten-dollar grudge against a neighbor when God, the gracious king, has wiped clean a fortune’s worth of sin.
F. The only way to break through the resentment barrier that separates us from each other is to forgive. Forgiveness is the virtue we most enjoy (through Jesus Christ), and least employ (to others). We all love to be forgiven- we expect it, and want it. But we find it a struggle to forgive; we resist it, and sometimes refuse to do it.
Thesis: Our Lord reveals two reasons why Christians must forgive.
For instances:
1. Anything less is hypocritical
A. Vs. 33
B. (Eph 4:31 NIV) Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. (Eph 4:32 NIV) Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
C. Vs. 25- The fact that the debt could never be paid is a good indication that this punishment is a reference to hell. Where else are men sent to pay for their sin, the unpayable debt they owe to God? People may go to hell to pay for their sins, but one thing you need to know is all eternity in hell will still not pay for their sins. They just go there to pay whatever is possible to be paid. The parable teaches that the debt of sin is so vast that it could never be repaid. You could never recover the glory stolen from God. And the sad fact is that men who have spent eternity in hell will be no better for their payment than they were when they began--they’ll be no more fit for heaven at the end of that time, were there an end, than they would be in its beginning.
D. Vs. 26- He is not able to pay back everything. No amount of good works can repay. One writer put it this way: “Our pockets are empty while our debt is millions. We don’t need a salary; we need a gift! We don’t need swimming lessons; we need a lifeguard! We don’t need a place to work; we need someone to work in our place! AND THAT SOMEONE IS JESUS CHRIST!”
E. One rainy afternoon a woman was driving along one of the main streets of town. Suddenly, my son Matthew spoke up from his relaxed position in the front seat. “Mom, I’m thinking of something.” This kind of announcement usually meant he had been pondering some fact for a while and was now ready to expound all that his seven-year-old mind had discovered. She was eager to hear. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“The rain,” he began, “is like sin and the windshield wipers are like God, wiping our sins away.” After the chill bumps finished racing up her arms, she was able to respond. “That’s really good, Matthew.” Then, her curiosity kicked in and she began to wonder how far this little boy would take his revelation. So, she asked, “do you notice how the rain keeps on coming? What does that tell you?” Matthew, without hesitating, answered, “We keep on sinning, and God just keeps on forgiving us.”
2. Because of the torment that an unforgiving spirit brings upon us
A. Vs. 34- Jailers to be tortured
B. (Mat 6:15 NIV) But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
B. General Oglethorpe once said to John Wesley, "I never forgive and I never forget." To which Wesley responded, "Then Sir, I hope you never sin."
B. Aside from the danger to our salvation, what is the connection between forgiveness, health and wholeness?
C. Ray Stedman- A woman in her 80’s told me that, fifty years before, her aunt had said something insulting to her, and this woman had never forgiven her. 50 years later she could recount the event to the precise detail, and she felt all the same bitterness, anger, and resentment welling up within her as when it originally occurred. It was no wonder that, by this time, she had become a bitter, crotchety, quarrelsome, unhappy woman who could find no happiness in life whatsoever. She was still in the hands of torturers fifty years later.
D. William Arnot wrote this: "A traveler in Burma, after fording a certain river, found his body covered all over by a swarm of small leeches, busily sucking his blood. His first impulse was to tear them from his flesh: but his servant warned him that to pull them off because he might expose his life to danger. They must not be torn off, lest portions remain in the wounds and become a poison; they must drop off spontaneously, and so they will be harmless. The native prepared an herbal bath for his master and directed him to lie down in it. As soon as he had bathed in the herbs the leeches dropped off. We must bathe our whole being in God’s pardoning love--that’s the whole parable. We must realize how much we have been forgiven.
F. Once there was a millionaire who owned a lot in an exclusive residential area of a large city. This lot presented an unusual problem. It was only 2 yards wide but nearly 100 feet long. There was nothing that he could do but sell it to one of the neighbors on either side. He went to the neighbor on one side of his lot and asks if he would be interested in buying the lot. The neighbor said, “Well only as a favor.” Then named a ridiculously low price. The millionaire exploded. “Why that’s not even one-tenth of what it is worth!” He stormed out and went next store. To his dismay the other neighbor offered less. “Look,” said the neighbor smugly, “I’ve got you over a barrel. You can’t sell that lot to anyone else and you can’t build on it. So there’s my offer take it or leave it.” The millionaire was beside himself with rage. Within a few days, he hired an architect and a contractor to build one of the strangest houses ever conceived. Only five feet wide running the length of his property, his house was little more than a row of tiny rooms, each barely able to accommodate a stick of furniture. The neighbors complained, but the city officials could find no codes or violations to stop the construction. When it was finished, the millionaire moved into the uncomfortable house. There he stayed until his death. The house, which became known as “Spite House,” still stands as a monument to one man’s problem of hate and unforgiveness. There are a lot of Christians living in Spite House today.
G. (Heb 12:15 NIV) See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
H. (Gal 5:1 NIV) It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
