Grace and Forgiveness
Matthew 18:21-35
INTRODUCTION
A. Kevin Tunell mails a dollar to a family he would like to forget.
1. Sued for $936 to be paid dollar at a time.
2. Pay each Friday for 18 years to remember the first Friday of 1982.
3. He was driving drunk and killed their daughter.
4. Served a court sentence, spent 7 years campaigning against drunk driving, six more than his sentence required.
5. Keeps forgetting to send the dollar.
6. Family has taken him to court four times.
7. Not defying the order but he is haunted by the death and tormented by sending the dollar.
8. Offered the family 2 boxes of checks to last until 2001, one year longer than required.
9. They don’t want money, they want penance.
10. Mother, “We want to receive the check every week on time. He must understand we are going to pursue this until August of the year 2000. We will go back to court every month if we have to.”
11. Yes, he is guilty and needs to be punished and the family has a right to be angry.
12. But how much is enough? Will they be at peace when the final payment is made?
B. We all will be injured in some way at some time
1. How much payment will we want to soothe our anger?
2. Unforgiveness eats more at the one who won’t forgive than the one the unforgiveness is directed at.
3. Unforgiveness affects our worship. Jesus said, “So if you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” (Matthew 5:23)
C. What about when reconciliation is not possible?
1. We make our best efforts.
2. What if the person won’t forgive?
3. Turn the matter over to God and ask him to resolve it.
4. The important thing is that we do our part.
5. But don’t wait until death occurs because that takes the situation to another level.
D. Story of the Unforgiving Debtor.
1. Told to teach about God’s grace in forgiveness and to instruct us in the same.
2. To teach the unlimited forgiveness of Jesus and that ours should be also.
3. King who decides to bring his accounts up to date with servants who owed him.
4. One owed him millions and could not pay.
5. The king demands everything he has be sold to pay but the man begs for mercy.
6. King forgave his debt.
7. Same servant finds servant who owes him far less.
8. Wouldn’t forgive but had him jailed until he could pay.
9. Other servants told the king, and he called in the servant 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?”
E. Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and loving to each other, and forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ.”
HATRED AND UNFORGIVENESS ARE COMMON
A. Everyone gets wounded.
B. Ways we can respond.
1. Silence is a popular response which says, “I’ll just ignore this person.” Ever had this happen?
2. Distance is another and proposes, “I’ll avoid them when they come around.”
3. Nagging is another and with cutting remarks we remind them of how they have hurt us.
C. We are creative at getting even instead of being forgiving.
1. Some want to get even for Sept. 11, 2001 instead of just bringing justice.
2. Don’t want others to heal if we can’t.
3. Want others to suffer just as we are suffering.
4. “Revenge is sweet.” Revenge only seems sweet, it has costs.
D. Unforgiveness and hatred are like bad addictions.
1. We nurse our hurts with anger (anger arises out of fear with fear and love being the two primary emotions we experience).
2. “You hurt me so now I’m going to hurt you.”
3. Anger numbs the hurt so we come back for more like drugs.
4. Move from anger over the situation to anger at the person.
5. Insult, shame, and ridicule energize us to react.
6. We become drugged on anger and unforgiveness.
7. Soon we hate the person and anyone like them (“You can’t trust a woman or man.” “Every preacher is a huckster.”)
8. Our hurt can turn into hate and hate becomes rage.
9. We become junkies.
E. The example of the addict.
1. Addicted to alcohol.
2. Starts as a social drinker but can’t control it.
3. One beer once gave a buzz but now it takes more and more.
4. They come back for more and more to get the same feeling.
F. Peter’s question led to Jesus’ story.
1. How many times do I have to forgive? Seven times? He assumed that was a generous amount.
2. Seventy times seven, an unlimited number.
3. This is what God does for us.
4. Think how many times we have come confessing to him.
5. What if God responded as we sometimes do when wronged?
6. Think how often we wrong God with our words and actions.
7. He doesn’t respond with anger and unforgiveness.
8. Jewish law said only to forgive three times, seven was generous.
G. Calibrating grace is not being gracious and forgiving.
1. We don’t keep a score book.
2. There is no limit on our forgiveness.
3. God doesn’t keep a score book.
4. He doesn’t have a stat book as they do in sports.
5. Forgiveness is releasing someone from a debt they owe you for a wrong they have committed against you.
6. Forgiveness must be instantaneous but this does not mean we have to trust the person immediately or even be their best friend.
CAUSES OF HATRED AND UNFORGIVENESS
A. Examples
1. The child who was abandoned by father or mother.
2. Wife who left the husband for someone new and younger.
3. Man who left his wife for a younger model.
4. Person who took my job.
5. Kid at school who loves to bully me.
B. Jesus tells the story to answer such questions as this.
1. King represents God who forgives a major debt.
2. Servant represents fellow believers who refuse to do what God does.
3. He was not extending the same grace he experienced.
4. How often we do the same? We are not channels of God’s forgiveness.
C. Our debt is greater than our ability to repay.
1. Sin debt must be paid with our lives.
2. God chose to put our sin on Christ.
3. Sin is not viewed lightly by God.
4. Does our lack of forgiveness represent our misunderstanding of our sin debt?
5. When we accept Christ, God accepts his payment in our behalf.
6. “We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.” (Romans 3:22)
7. “For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us.” (Romans 3:25)
D. Does God demand reimbursement for sin?
1. He allowed his Son to make the payment.
2. Sin does have a cost.
3. Doesn’t cut our feet off when we go the wrong places.
4. Doesn’t pluck our eyes out for looking at the wrong things.
5. Doesn’t cut our tongue out for saying the wrong things.
6. Trusting in him leaves us debt free like the servant.
E. First servant doesn’t understand his forgiveness.
1. If he did he would have forgiven but he didn’t.
2. He is ungrateful and irrational (man can’t pay the debt while in prison).
3. Decision makes no sense and neither does hatred and unforgiveness.
F. We must understand our total forgiveness.
1. If we don’t understand forgiveness, we will be selective in ours.
2. We are totally and eternally debt free.
3. He hates his fellow servant because his debt to him reminds him of his debt to the king, a debt that was already forgiven.
4. The king forgave but the servant never really accepted or appreciated the forgiveness.
5. God forgives all our sins, not just some or a select few. It only takes one unforgiven sin to send us to hell.
THE CURE FOR HATRED AND UNFORGIVENESS
A. We must embrace the grace of God.
1. He forgives all our sins at salvation.
2. We are eternally and presently debt-free.
3. Our forgiveness of others depends on our understanding of this.
4. When we embrace God’s grace, forgiveness will flourish.
B. Paul, “Be strong in the grace we have in Christ Jesus.” (II Timothy 2:2)
1. Bathe in grace so we can give grace.
2. Instead of anger, ponder the payment of the Savior.
3. React as God does to us when we fail him (with love, understanding, forgiveness, second chances).
C. Questions to consider.
1. Are you always attentive to God’s will?
2. Do you always say and do the right things?
3. Have you ever neglected God?
4. How can we refuse to forgive when we have been forgiven so much?
D. Key to forgiveness
1. Don’t focus on what others did to you.
2. Focus on what Christ did and does for you.
3. People might not deserve our grace and forgiveness but we don’t deserve God’s either.
4. If we don’t forgive we will hate and be angry.
E. The unforgiving servant ended up in prison.
1. Unforgiveness always takes us to prison.
2. Prisons of anger, guilt, depression.
3. Unforgiveness is sin, and as Charles Stanley is noted for saying, “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay.”
F. The effects of hatred and unforgiveness are gradual.
1. Rock hits a car windshield.
2. Just a nick but then becomes a crack.
3. Before long there is a spider web of cracks.
G. Unforgiveness sours our outlook and breaks our back.
1. Unforgiveness and bitterness is too heavy a load.
2. We must drop the load just as God does ours.
3. God will never ask us to give more grace than he has given us.
CONCLUSION
A. During World War I a German soldier plunges into an out of the way shell hole.
1. He encounters a wounded enemy soaked with blood and only minutes from death.
2. Offered him water and a bond was developed.
3. Dying man pointed to his shirt pocket which contained pictures of his family.
4. German held them so the man could see them one last time.
5. For a few moments they were friends.
B. Conclusions
1. We must look beyond our faults to the main fault we all have-sin.
2. We are fellow fighters longing to make it home.
3. We are to embrace life together not through unforgiveness.
