AMAZING GRACE 6 – GIVING GRACE IN A GRACELESS WORLD
Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Introduction:
One of the amazing things about the grace of God is that it was never intended by God to be a river flowing to us; he intended it to be a river flowing through us. You see we tend to think of grace as something that comes to us, but we never stop to think that God never intended it to stop there. His ultimate goal was for us to be sharing that grace with those around us.
After being saved by His grace, we are overwhelmed by the realization that there is nothing we can do to earn or deserve the grace of God manifested by the death of His one and only son on the cruel cross. Then we reach the point where, once we have realized that, we are just so impressed with our spiritual growth. We’ve realized that not only have we received the grace of God but he expects us to use that as motivation to serve him with all of our ability.
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. That not of your own selves but as a gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before the foundation of the earth, that we should walk in them.
We come to that point where we realize, “Wow I’ve grown; I am just not saved to sit. I’m saved to serve.” However, there’s still one more step we need to take. Yes, we are saved to serve but do we realize that included in the good works God expects from us is one of the best of all of the gifts of grace? That is - extending grace to others. Giving grace in a graceless world, that’s what I want to talk to you about today.
We do live in a graceless world. You know that. All you have to do is look around you. It’s dog-eat-dog every man for himself. Philip Yancey wrote, “If you ask a bomb-throwing teenager in Northern Ireland or a machete-wielding soldier in Rwanda or a sniper in the former Yugoslavia why they are killing, they may not even know why. Ireland is still seeking revenge for atrocities Oliver Cromwell committed in the seventeenth century; Rwanda and Burundi are carrying on tribal feuds that have existed long past anybody’s memory of why; Yugoslavia is avenging memories of World War II and trying to prevent a replay of event that happened six centuries ago.” (What’s So Amazing About Grace?)
When I think about these words,I wonder how many of the school yard atrocities we have seen as – teenagers walk into school cafeterias and begin killing the people around them either at random or by pre-design – how many of these students or snipers we see that are ambushing police as they’re doing about their duty keeping the peace? How many of these people are doing these things because in their own minds they have been injured, they’ve been bullied or the government has been unfair to them and they’re going to get even. They’re going to mete out justice. We live in a graceless world and God expects you and me to be conduits for the rivers of grace that flow to us and through us.
My question to you today is – are you giving grace in a graceless world? If you think I’m asking, is your neighbor giving grace in a graceless world, you’ve missed the point. Is your wife giving grace or is your husband giving grace or your children – no it’s are you giving grace in a graceless world. C.S. Lewis said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you (Yancey p.64). Think about that statement. Somehow in our minds as we look at others we say to ourselves, “I’m such a terrible sinner, I’m just overwhelmed by God’s grace.” Then we look at the people around us and think, “oh gross. How could God expect me to forgive such a terrible sinner?” What do you mean how could God expect you to forgive? You nailed His son to a cross and you think what this person has done to you is worse then what you’ve done by sending his son to a cross? No, C.S Lewis is right - ‘To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.’
Consider the parable of ‘The Prodigal Son’.
Margaret was devout Christian who refused to forgive her son because of the things that he had done in his teen age years back in the sixty’s. The preacher who was dealing with her (Philip Yancey) said,
“I spoke to her about the parable of the Prodigal Son. ‘What do you do with that parable?’ I asked. ‘Do you hear the message of forgiveness in it?’ She had obviously thought about the matter, for without hesitation she replied that the parable appears in Luke 15 as the third in a series of three: lost coin, lost sheep, lost son . She said the whole point of the Prodigal Son is to demonstrate how human beings differ from inanimate objects (coins) and from animals (sheep). “People have free will,” she said. “They have to be morally responsible. That boy had to come crawling back on his knees”. Boy you talk about someone that just didn’t have a clue what it was all about. Margaret had complexly missed the point. The central focus of the story is the father’s outrageous love. Remember what the story says? But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. When the son tries to repent, the father interrupts him in order to get the celebration under way. (Yancey pp. 79-80
We look at that story and hopefully all of us have reached a point in our lives where we realize; I’m the prodigal and if I come back God will forgive me. Hopefully at some point we realize that God expects us to show the same kind of forgiveness. What was the context of this story? If you go back and look at the context of this story the three parables were given as a result of the attitude of the scribes and the Pharisees
Luke 15:1-3
1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable
Now we have the three parables about the lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son. The reason Jesus was giving these parables, He had to be standing in amazement. You people think you’ve received God’s grace but you refuse to extend it to the people around you? You think the publicans and the sinners are less deserving than you? When in reality we’ve all taken him to the cross. It’s about the people around us we think are not worthy of God’s grace.
“A missionary on one occasion told this story of the prodigal son, shared it with a group of people in Lebanon who have never heard it before. Because of their Muslim background they had never read the Bible before this was all new to them. The unique thing about giving the story to them was they lived in this kind of culture still. See in Lebanon this same culture that existed in the first century still exists. Their response when they were asked by the missionary, “What do you notice?” he asked. Two details of the story stood out to them. First, by claiming his inheritance early, the son was saying to his father, “I wish you were dead!” Did you know that? The villagers could not imagine a patriarch taking such an insult or agreeing to the son’s demand. Second, they noticed that the father ran to greet his long-lost son. In the Middle East, a man of stature walks with slow and stately dignity; he never runs. The whole point of the thing was Jesus was saying to the scribes and the Pharisees. If God ran to save you and to forgive you shouldn’t you be looking for opportunities to forgive the tax collectors and the sinners like he forgave you?” (Yancey p. 80)
Consider the parable of ‘The Unforgiving Servant’.
Mathew 18:21
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Here in this passage Peter is really looking for a pat on the back or a “You go guy” from the savior because the savior taught about forgiving a brother that’s sinned against you. The rabbis taught three times then drop the hammer on the fourth time it’s all over but the shouting. He takes that three times doubles it then adds another one probably thinking Jesus is going to say you’re getting the point here. I mean you’ve outdone the Pharisees and the scribes, plus one. Instead He said oh no…no…no not seven times, four hundred and ninety times; which is really a figure of speech, for however many times it takes. Jesus, once again, teaches a parable to make the point
23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle [probably a governor of an outlaying province] one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.
A talent is seventy five pounds of gold. This governor owed him seventy five times ten thousand. It’s a lot of gold. Now gold sells for about thirteen hundred dollars an ounce and this guy is ten thousand times seventy five pounds of gold.
25 And since he could not pay…
How could you repay a debt like that? That’s the whole point about out sin. To a perfect God, our sin debt is greater than we could repay.
…his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made
If he and his family, as they did in those days, is sold into debtors prison; he’ll never be able to pay it back and get out. Not only could he have never paid it back, to begin with, now he’ll never be able to pay it.
26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ [He can’t] 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him his debt.
Forgive him his debt? You mean you don’t have to repay it? When it comes to God forgiving us we can’t repay it we can’t undo the sin we’ve done we can’t un-ring that bell
28 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, [3 months wages] and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will repay you.
There’s no way anyone could repay ten thousand times seventy five pounds of gold but it’s conceivable a person could pay back three months wages.
30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’
Should you not have been a conduit of grace instead of a grace cul-de-sac?
34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt [which means he ain’t getting out]. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
That’s the hard part isn’t it? It’s got to be from the heart. You remember, as children growing up you woujld get in a tussle with your brothers and sisters. Your dad stands up and says all right this is enough of this. You tell him you’re sorry. You say, I’m sorry. What does your dad say next? You didn’t say it like you meant it; say it like you mean it. It’s, forgive them from the heart. What an incredible example.
Consider the example of the Apostle Paul.
Acts 22:4
4 I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women,
1 Corinthians 15:9-10
9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that worked in me.
His conversion moved him to extend grace to others. Did you now the word grace appears no later than the second verse in every letter Paul wrote? He understood that he was to be a conduit of grace. “Grace and peace to you from God our Father; and the Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” Statements of that nature come over and over again. They are found in the introduction to every one of Paul’s letters. The challenge to you and me. What is it that Jesus said about in the Lord’s Prayer he told us to pray “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” I have to admit sometimes that’s really hard to do. Just about everybody in this room has been hurt by someone else so badly. Maybe it was a drunken parent; maybe it was a rebellious child; maybe it’s a brother or a sister who abused you growing up or maybe it an uncle who did horrible things when you were small. Whatever the situation is, almost every person in this room knows what it’s like to be hurt so badly that you just want to bury the hatchet in the person instead of in the past. It’s a challenge, one of the greatest challenges we as Christians face is to have that forgiving spirit toward the least graceful people around about us.
(extended illustration from Yancey)
“In 1898 Daisy was born into a working-class Chicago family, she was the eighth of ten children. .The father barely earned enough money to feed them. Eventually in frustration he turned to drink and he became a mean drunk; he became scarier and scarier. Daisy now, buy the way, is closing in on her one hundredth birthday. She shudders when she talks about those days as a little child as the father would come as she watched him kick her brother and sister across the linoleum floor. She hated him with everything in her heart. One day the father declared that he wanted his wife to leave by noon. The ten children huddled together clinging to one another crying as they were clutching mommy’s skirt “Mommy please don’t go, please don’t go!” But she had no choice this mean drunk had cast her out. As they clutched one another they watched their mother with two suitcases of everything she owned get smaller and smaller until she vanished from sight.
All the children eventually scattered, some of them went to family relatives and she was the one who was left tending to her father in those years. It fell to Daisy to stay with her father. She grew up with a hard knot of bitterness inside her, a tumor of hatred that calcified as it grew. All of the kids dropped out of school in order to go to work to feed themselves or to go into the Army; find a career.
Many years later to everyone’s surprise the father resurfaced. He had guttered out. One night drunk and cold he wandered into the Salvation Army just to get warm. Required if he was to eat a meal to sit through a service, he sat through that service. An amazing transformation took place that night as they were called forward he had no idea what was going on. All the other drunks were going forward he went forward to. That night the demons inside him quieted down; he sobered up. He began studying his Bible and to pray on a regular basis. For the first time in his life he felt loved and felt accepted and he felt clean.
And now, he told his children, he was looking them up one by one to ask for their forgiveness. They all forgave him; they were initially skeptical. They couldn’t help but believe that sooner or later he’d fall off the wagon; sooner or later he’d be hitting them up for money but he never did. They all forgave him except Daisy. She lived just eight doors down from him because a couple of years later his liver began to go. Unable to take care of himself he moved in Daisy’s sister who lived just eight doors down. Every day Daisy would walk past that house refusing to go in because as a child she had vowed to never speak to her father again. Eventually she allowed her children to go visit him. One day just shortly before he died Daisy’s daughter went to visit. As she came through the door and her father cried “Oh, Daisy, Daisy, you’ve come to me at last,” he gathering her in his arms and he wept over her. None of the adults had the heart to tell him that’s not Daisy that’s her child. In his final hallucinations they considered a hallucination of grace.
All of her life Daisy was determined to be unlike her father. She never touched a drop of alcohol but she ruled with a rod of iron. She would lie on the couch with ice packs on her head crying “Why did I ever have you children? Why did I ever have you stupid kids anyway, you’ve ruined my life.” Then the Great Depression hit her. Heart of steel, Daisy never apologized for anything and never forgave anything. Her daughter Margaret remembers the catch-22 she was constantly in. One day Margaret came in and apologized for something she had done and Daisy responded “You can’t possibly be sorry! If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
But Margaret had her own problems; one of her sons, by the name of Michael, as he grew up became rebellious against the harsh rule of Margret. Eventually he went out and got into some trouble; she caught him smoking pot on one occasion and threw him out of the house. He moved into a hippie commune. She reported him to the judge, she wrote him out of her will. Years later that Margret was the one Phillip Yancey asked “What do you do with the parable of The Prodigal Son?” This woman knew her Bible so well for memory she was able to tell him well that’s the first three about the lost coin the lost sheep and the lost son and what it’s all about is the son had to come crawling back. Wow, how do you think Michael’s doing?
Un-grace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven. A mother who once carried a child in her own body does not speak to that child for half its life. The toxin steals on, from generation to generation; an unforgiving spirit. That boy had to come back crawling on his knees.”
Hebrews 12:14-15
14 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see God. 15 See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;
One generation after another, bitterness…bitterness…bitterness. As those who have received grace we as Christians should be that light in a world darkened by sin. We should be the ones who forgive the unforgivable because God has forgiven the unforgivable in us.
You nailed his son to across how much worse could someone else’s’ sin against you be than that?
I’ve read thousands of illustrations over the last 44 years. There’s no way I could remember them all but one that always sticks in my mind is the one of a preacher who told of a nightmare he had on one occasion. He said he was asleep the night before his sermon, on the cross. That night he had a horrible nightmare that just wouldn't stop. In it, he had been thinking so much about the crucifixion that he was standing there in the crowd watching the big burly Roman executioner bring the lash down across Jesus’ back of Jesus. He stood in the crowd crying STOP IT…STOP IT…STOP IT!
Eventually he could contain himself no more. He abandoned concern for his own safety, ran forth, grabbed the executioner’s arm and spun him around. “I said stop it,” he yelled. as he stared into the executioners face, he realized that he was staring directly into his own face.
Isaiah 53:5-6
...with his striped we were healed.
6 …the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.
One of the biggest challenges as a Christian you will ever have is to forgive when you've been very badly hurt. Someone has got to stop the cycle of bitterness and un-grace. I know un-grace is not a word but I always say I’m a preacher I can invent words. My challenge to you is, before the day is out before you lay your head on the pillow tonight take the time to sit down and ask yourself. Is there someone for whom I am nurturing the root of bitterness.
Notice what he called it a ‘root of bitterness’? What is the idea of root of bitterness? What does a root do? It grows. The only way to stop it is to pull it out by the root. You can reach down and grab that thistle with a leather glove. It doesn't matter how you pull, at the last minute you’ll hear ‘pop’ and you know what happened. The root is still in the ground and you’re going to see again. You have to dig up the root. That’s why he said forgive them from the heart.
Are you a Christian today? Maybe you’re thinking well God could never forgive me. Oh yes God’s grace is greater than your sin I can guarantee you that. I don’t know if I can forgive others? Maybe you can’t but with God’s help you can. It may not happen overnight but you keep praying and you keep with it and God will help transform you. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. God’s not in the business of teaching old dogs he’s in the business of creating born again brand new creations. If you’re tired of the old person you can be a new person today by responding to the Gospel.
