Church Sermon - September 11, 2005

LIVE STRONG IN FORGIVENESS!

Rev. Mark F. Bartels

Epistle Lesson; Romans 14:5-9
Old Testament Lesson; Genesis 50:15-21
Sermon Text; Matthew 18:21-35

Let’s suppose that you are out on the playground, and it is the first day of school. Some student comes up to you and starts to mock you, make fun of you, and tease you. And, in front of all the other students, he really hurts your feelings. But, you know as a Christian, you should forgive. And so, in your heart you forgive him.

Now, let’s say the next day he comes up to you, again. And, he does the same thing, again. He makes fun of you. He teases you. He mocks you. He hurts you in front of your friends.

You tell him, "That hurts my feelings."

He looks at you and says, "I am sorry."

You, in your heart, forgive him.

The next day he comes up to you and does the same thing, again. He makes fun of you, mocks, and teases you. In your heart you forgive him, again.

Then he comes up to you the next day, and he mocks, teases, and makes fun of you, again! Here is my question. How long do you let that go on? How long do you continue to forgive him, no matter what he does to you, and how he treats you? At what point do you stop and say, "That’s it! That’s it! Now it is time for me to have bitterness and resentment in my heart. I resent the way you are treating me. I am bitter towards the way you are treating me. Now, I am going to get even. I am going to get my revenge. Now, we’ll see what I can do."

At what point does a Christian do that?

Let’s say tomorrow at work, your boss belittles you and steps all over you, in front of the other employees. You, in your heart, know, "I should forgive him." And so you do.

The next day he does the same thing. You talk to him and he says, "I am sorry."

And you forgive him.

But, he continues to do that, day, after day, after day. At what point, as a Christian, do you stop and say, "That’s it! I have had enough! Now, I have the right to have bitterness arise in my heart, and I have the right to go out and take my vengeance. I am going to start telling the other people what a terrible boss we have." At what point do you have the right to do that?

Or, what if your little sister goes in your room, (even though she has been strictly told by you not to do it), and takes your favorite CD? When you find out, she says she is sorry. At what point do you have the right to start ‘beating her up,’ if she doesn’t listen to you?

That is what Peter was asking Jesus in today’s scripture reading. He asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?"

Peter thought he was being generous, when he asked, "Up to seven times?"

Rabbinical law in Jesus’ day said you gave somebody three chances and after that, you didn’t forgive them, anymore. Peter, being a follower of Jesus, thought he would be very generous. What about seven times? Would that be enough?

So, how many times do we forgive those who sin against us?

Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." (We are not sure if the word ‘seventy-seven’ in Greek actually should be seventy-seven times, or seventy times seven, which would be 490 times.)

In order to understand Jesus’ answer, Jesus tells a parable. When He tells this parable, He gets us to focus on something totally different than what somebody has done against me. You can’t understand how many times you should forgive somebody else, until you understand something totally different. So, I want to use a little object lesson this morning, referring to the large brick wall at the front of our church. Let’s imagine that each little brick up here on the front wall represents one sin that you have committed against God. If my calculations are right, (and I don’t want you to check it, during today’s service because you won’t pay attention to what I am saying), but if my calculations are right, I believe there are about seven thousand bricks in that wall. Now, let’s be very optimistic and assume that you sin just once a day, one time a day. That means that after 20 years, sinning one time a day, your pile of sin against God would be as big as that large wall! And, if you have lived for 80 years, it would be four times that big. That’s a lot of sin. That’s a lot of trespassing against God. Jesus, as He tells today’s parable, wants us to grasp the enormity, the immensity of our sin against God.

Now, let me ask you this question. Is it really true that we only sin once a day against God? I can tell you emphatically, the answer to that is, "Absolutely not!" We can’t even number how many times a day we sin. In fact, let me ask the reverse question. How many times a day, are you perfect? How many times a day are you holy? How many times a day are you sinless? That means how many times a day do you love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and you are pouring all your thoughts, all your energy, all your heart into loving God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself? That means you are just as concerned about your wife, your children, your husband, the guy down the street, the people hurt by the hurricane, and the people half way around the world, as you are about yourself.

And, we all have to answer, "There is not a time during the day, not a time, when there isn’t some kind of selfishness in my heart, when I am not thinking about something that I should not be thinking about, or saying something wrong, or doing something wrong, or lacking in doing something good that I should be doing for somebody else. And, I am not always thinking about God with all of my heart, and soul, and mind."

The point is this.

We don’t just sin once a day.

We don’t even know,

we can’t even count

how many times we sin a day.

And, that wall doesn’t represent twenty years of sin against God. It may represent one day. It may represent only several hours of my life - all the sins that I commit against God! In fact, in order to show the enormity, the immensity of our sin, Jesus told this parable. He said that there was a king who had a servant who owed him ten thousand talents. (I looked at a couple commentators, and by today’s standards, that would be around a billion dollars. A billion dollars! Do you know how many a billion bricks are? If this brick wall, at the front of our church were to remain this height, the brick wall would go all the way across the United States, twice!)

Jesus is using that parable to show us the huge enormity of debt that we owe against God – our sin.

The other thing that we have to understand is the magnitude of each one of those sins. If we look at each one of those sins, what is the magnitude of the debt that we owe God? God does not keep track and say, "Well, how many sins have you committed? That is going to effect the magnitude of what you owe me."

Adam and Eve committed one sin and what was the magnitude that they owed God? When they committed that one sin, death came. Condemnation came onto this world, as a result of one, single sin. That is one sin.

As Jesus tells today’s parable, He wants us to see the enormity and the vastness of the debt that we owe to God, because of our sin. Jesus talked about the man who couldn’t pay back the debt he owed his master. "The master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt." There is a price to pay.

What is the price to pay for sin against God? Scripture paints a terrifying picture of Hell. It is a place of utter darkness, where the fire never goes out, where the worm is never quenched, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, in the presence of the devil and all his angels, for all eternity. It never ceases. That is the enormity of our sin, the enormity of the magnitude of the debt that we owe to God. That is huge.

But, in today’s scripture reading Jesus also wants us to see the enormity and the magnitude of God’s forgiveness. It is easy to hear the words that this master simply forgave the debt, the billion-dollar debt that this servant had. He simply took a pencil and crossed it out, and said, "Debt is canceled. You don’t owe me."

When God forgives our sins, those sins have to be paid for. Somebody had to pay. And if it wasn’t you and it wasn’t me, somebody had to pay. Do you know who paid for each one of those sins? The One who paid for each one of those sins is God, Himself, who has taken on human flesh, and became one of our brothers - Jesus, our Savior.

And there is not one sin, on that whole wall (for however long that would continue your life), on that immense wall of sins, there is not one of your sins that Jesus has not picked up and made His own. Scripture tells us Jesus died for all sin, for all sin.

That means, no matter how massive that boulder of sin on that wall might be, Jesus made it His own.

Scripture tells us all of our sins were laid on Christ. Our Savior, Jesus, paid the debt we owe to God for every single sin that we have committed. And, we cannot even begin to comprehend the debt that Jesus paid. We can’t even begin to comprehend it.

So then, scripture tells us that in Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The word there for forgiveness in Ephesians is cancellation.

God looks at what our Savior Jesus did for us. God does not hold one single sin, not one single sin, no matter how big that wall is, against you. He says, as He puts the sign of the cross over all your sins, "Paid in full. You don’t owe me anything. The price was paid, not with gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Jesus. You are forgiven. I will never hold your sins against you. In fact, I will never treat you the way you deserve. You deserve my vengeance. You deserve my anger. But that is all cancelled. Now I will treat you the way you don’t deserve. I will love you. I will daily forgive you. I will take you to my home in Heaven. I will bless you on this earth. I will answer your prayers, for my Son’s sake. I will work out everything for your good, for my Son’s sake." What an awesome, awesome God we have!

Now it is fair for us to ask, how many times should I forgive my brother, seven times? Seven times? Count seven bricks up here. Count seven and then compare that to the vastness of your sin against God and the vastness, the even greater vastness of God’s forgiveness to you.

In today’s parable Jesus says that there was this man who had been forgiven this billion-dollar debt. Then, that same man went out and found one of his servants who owed him a hundred denarii, which is a couple dollars, by today’s standards. A couple dollars! He demanded his fellow servant to pay him back. He grabbed him and began to chock him, "Pay back what you owe me!"

"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’"

But that man, who had been forgiven that huge debt, would not forgive him, would not cancel the debt, and had him thrown into prison.

Well, when the king found out, when the king found out, he called that servant in. He said, "You wicked servant. You wicked servant. I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?"

By that Jesus shows us this. If we are unwilling to forgive those who sin against us, (And it is hard to forgive, isn’t it? It is hard.) If we are unwilling to forgive those who sin against us,

On the other hand, the positive side of this parable is this. When we truly understand the immensity of our sin and debt that we owe to God, and when we truly understand the immensity of the price that was paid, and the full and free forgiveness that we have in Jesus Christ, that motivates us to go forward and say, "For Christ’s sake, I want to be forgiving of others. Look at what my Savior has done for me!"

Now we are not going to be perfect at forgiveness, are we? Every one of us, here in this room, has that sinful nature. When someone has done wrong to me, my sinful nature bubbles up with resentment, bitterness, and a desire to get even. But, as Christians, who have that New Man living within us, we understand what our Savior has done for us. Our New Man of faith says, "Look at what that brother of mine did against me, and my Savior has cancelled that debt. It has cost Him a great price. He cancelled their debt. Oh how gladly, I also, cancel their debt against me. I tell them they are forgiven. I will not treat them the way they deserve to be treated, because my Father does not treat me the way I deserve to be treated, nor does He treat them the way that they deserve to be treated."

It is awesome to know what our Savior has done for us, and the debt that we have has been cancelled. And, it is awesome to be able to go forward, knowing that our sins are all forgiven, even our failure to forgive perfectly. Even that is forgiven! Let’s go forward and let’s live strong in the forgiveness that God has given us, confident, blessed, happy, joyful, willing people. Let’s live strong in forgiveness, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Amen.

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