We are in a new series here at Manly Life: Parables of the Kingdom!
- So far we have looked at the Hidden Treasure, the parable of the Sower and the parable of the talents…
- The kingdom is valuable, the kingdom grows in good soil, the kingdom expects us to use the gifts and resources God entrusts us with…
- And last week, the story of the Good Samaritan and the Kingdom is one of radical mercy.
- I wonder did anyone get an opportunity to go and do likewise as Jesus suggested?
And we have been saying, the Kingdom of Heaven was Jesus main message.
- Jesus, as the Son of God… came to inaugurate the long promised reign of God on earth…
- Where God as King comes to restore and redeem his people…
- And so we understand his miracles and teaching and compassion all as signs of the Kingdom of Heaven breaking into earth.
- And in that context the parables act as these memorable stories told by Jesus to explain what the Kingdom of Heaven is like!
- And what citizens of the Kingdom of heaven do…
- And so today, what does it mean to receive and give forgiveness?
So I am going to read Matt 18:21-35
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
I had an English teacher who had quite a big impact on me…
- I get the feeling he watch Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society and then decided to get into teaching…
- But I remember him asking us snotty nosed, pimply teenagers what was the key to a good story?
- We said things like romance… a good car chase… having Sylvester Stallone as the lead role…
- But his answer actually was conflict!
- It is conflict that is at the heart of all good stories….
Think Romeo and Juliet… the prologue starts by telling us that;
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
So the whole story about these warring families goes back to ancient grudges that continue on into new mutiny!
- Right, they can’t even remember who started what or who did what to whom… but the cycle of antagonism and fighting roll on…
- There is no forgiveness, there is no mercy…
- And indeed so many global conflicts go back hundreds of years of tit for tat…
And then on a personal level… our stories are often ones marred by relationship breakdowns.
- I know there are people in my life who I once did life with closely who I now have strained relationships with.
- And you know how it goes…
- You end up nursing wounds… replaying real or perceived grievances over in your head.
- I wonder in your own story where are there unresolved conflicts and broken relationships?
The Clinical Psychologist Everett Worthington who has spent his career looking at forgiveness… says this…
- “Unforgiveness is slow-cooked through vengeful rumination into resentment, hatred, hostility, anger, fear stress and bitterness. It is cacophony”
- That sounds exhausting… yet it is a common human state.
- He points to the fact that the repetitive negative spiral of rumination and resentment keeps our hearts constrained and resistant to God’s grace.
- If 1 Corinthians 13 says “love keeps no record of wrong”… then many of us are not very good at love.
- We carry long lists of wrongs that only get longer as we get older…
Of course what is needed in Romeo and Juliet….
- What is needed in major conflicts around the world
- What is needed in our own lives and relationships
- Is the circuit breaker of grace… of mercy… of forgiveness…
- In order to stop the downward spiral that many of us find ourselves in, we need something new introduced that can help us reset and renew what is broken…
- And in the story that we are going to look at, of course that is God’s mercy and grace.
But like a lot of virtues in life… forgiveness is easier to admire than to put into practice
- CS Lewis said “Everyone says forgiveness is a great idea until they have something to forgive.”
- And I think that is why when true stories of forgiveness emerge, they are a scandal of grace that makes the world sit up and notice
- Think Nelson Mandela forgiving his jailors…
- Think Danny and Leila Abdallah forgiving the driver who ran over and killed their children.
- Think Jesus on the cross “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”
So in today’s parable Jesus tells a striking story in response to Peter’s question about how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Seven times?
- Verse 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
- From there, Jesus explains how this should operate in the Kingdom of Heaven…
- Verse 23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like…
- Well the story doesn’t need a huge amount of explaining… the point becomes very self evident… the challenge like CS Lewis said, is putting it into action…
So the King who represent God in our story comes to settle his debts with his servants…
- The amount is ten thousand bags of gold… the idea is simple… it represent in our world millions of dollars…
- An unthinkably large debt that could probably never be repaid…
- This must be a very senior servant of the King who has made a mess of the wealth entrusted to him!
- So the King orders the man’s wife and children to be sold to meet the debt into slavery…
- This was a common experience, not so much in Israel, as it was in surrounding nations, but it was often debt that led people into slavery.
The man in the story on hearing the reasonable verdict falls down before the King and pleads for time to repay his debt…
- But the Kings response is extraordinary. It says; “his heart went out to” the man…
- And he does not just give the man extra time, he forgives the debt… at great cost to the King.
- The parable of course portrays the undeserved and immense love of God
- One of the most common refrains in the Old Testament is; “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.”
- You find that refrain in Exodus, Numbers, The Psalms, Nehemiah and Joel to name a few.
- This is our God.
And Jesus who knows himself to be God in the flesh, dwelling amongst us show us God’s character all through the gospels…
- In one scene, before healing a man, he first forgives his sins… firstly pointing to his authority to forgive sins which the religious leaders know to be God’s right alone…
- And secondly to the fact that even before healing, our greatest need is God’s forgiveness and a clean soul.
At the last supper Jesus tells them that what is about to happen on the cross is about winning a great victory for the forgiveness of sins.
- He says of the wine we are to remember him by “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
- In Acts 13 Paul preaches this saying “Therefore my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.”
- In Ephesians 2:4 Paul says God is rich in mercy…
- So Jesus, like the Master in this story is forgiving and merciful.
Church, that is the starting and ending point of our faith.
- There is lots to work out in between… but at the heart of Christian faith is the scandal of God’s grace.
- It is the Father who runs to the Prodigal son…
- It is the thief on the cross who trusts Jesus for salvation and heaven.
- It is you and I finding that under the weight of our sin we meet a saviour in Jesus who lays down his life on the cross, paying the penalty of our sin, so that we may be forgiven.
- Have you received that forgiveness and salvation? Today could be the day…
So that is the Master, what about the servants… that is you and I in Jesus story? What then is expected of us…
- So in the story the servant who had been forgiven so much, meets a fellow servant who owes him just a few weeks wages – an amount that could be easily repaid
- His treatment is brutal… he grabs him, holds him in a stranglehold and demands his money back…
- The man falls to his knees and asks for time to pay his money back
- We’ve heard this request twice in the story, but the servant gives a very different answer.
- He has his debtor thrown into prison until he repays… thus facing an awful future until family or friends can come up with the money.
It is striking to us and the implications are obvious…
- How could someone who has been forgiven much, who has been shown mercy much!
- Then turn around and be so unmerciful…
This story is really the flesh and bones to so much of Jesus teaching on the ethics of the Kingdom.
- Or as we have been saying, what it means to inherit eternal life… the life of the age to come… which is an age of mercy!
- And so in Luke 6:36 Jesus says “be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.”
- When Jesus teaches us to pray it includes “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
- And possibly some of the harder teaching of Jesus to understand and action…
- Matt 6:14 “for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
As CS Lewis brilliantly put it…
- “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
- And there is a sense that you have not fully grasped God’s mercy if you can find no mercy as a result in your heart!
- What this second part of the story is emphasizing, is what it looks like to be forgiven and yet to have no mercy or forgiveness in our own hearts.
- It is parabolic… you have been forgiven the equivalent of thousands of bags of gold by God…
- And yet who then are you, to not forgive a hundred silver coins from your brother or sister.
Well, this shocking turn of events though is not allowed to stand…
- The King is informed and his compassion is now replaced with anger…
- The unforgiving servant is now arrested and handed over to torturers until he pays off his debt… an impossible task.
- The Kings comment to the man sums up the story…
- Verse 33 “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”
- There is a sense that God will bring his judgement on those who cannot respond to his mercy with mercy towards others.
And we know from the weight of scripture that we don’t loose our salvation through works or continued sinfulness…
- But the warning remains… don’t forgive in light of the immense forgiveness you have received from God and there is a danger that we lose the Kingdom…
- I know we are on fire with CS Lewis quotes today, but I do love this one…
- In God in the Dock he says ““If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity”
- Right? Jesus is very loving… but he is also very demanding!
- Discipleship is a hard journey…finding forgiveness for others is a hard journey
- And it is not one that does not come without cost.
- But it is a liberating journey as we shall see…
But I wonder… this is speculation… but I wonder if failing to forgive leads to our missing out on the enjoyment and participation in the Kingdom of Heaven right now?
- Being unmerciful is a form of prison and torture that we imprison ourselves in.
- Remember we have been saying that the Kingdom is an experience of the life of the age to come where things are all put right… in the here and now.
- And so to not partake in mercy, is to not partake in the Kingdom of Heaven.
- There is a famous quote, “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
- Right… unforgiveness can hurt us more than the one who has hurt us…
So the parable brilliantly weaves together several key strands of Jesus ethical teaching…
- Remember we have been saying that Jesus was about inaugurating the Kingdom of Heaven on earth….
- All that he says and does and initiates is about demonstrating the new life in the age to come… eternal life… the Kingdom of Heaven… in the here and now…
- The first of course being the immense, undeserved love and forgivingness of God
- The second, and only proper response to that love being the spreading of diving love and forgiveness.
- We are to treat our neighbours in the way we have been treated by God.
- That is how the divine revolution or the Kingdom of Heaven is to spread.
And really, that is how the Kingdom of Heaven is to spread and come here on earth…
- By people like you and I who get swept up in the Kingdom of Heaven as citizen of mercy…
- The Kingdom spreads not with divine decrees over nations, but by humble servants initiating the Kingdom right where they are…
- And we see this pattern in so many areas of following Jesus…
- Think Jesus saying to his disciples in John 15:12 “love each other as I have loved you.”
- Think Jesus washing his disciples feet and then telling them to go and do likewise…
- Think Jesus who embodies the Good Samaritan telling us to go and do likewise….
So as we bring this into land… how do we do this practically…
- I am reminded again of CS Lewis saying “”Everyone says forgiveness is a great idea until they have something to forgive.”
- Because let’s face it, there is no use talking as if forgiveness were easy.
- Some things that people experience are unspeakable…
So 4 quick things to help us…
- Acknowledge there is a difference between forgiveness and trust…
- The Pastor Rick Warren says that many people are reluctant to show mercy because they don’t understand the difference between trust and forgiveness.
- According to Jesus, forgiving others must be offered, whether or not a person asks for it.
- Trust, on the other hand, has to do with future behaviour and it will likely take time to build or rebuild.
- Warren explains, “If someone hurts you repeatedly, you are commanded by God to forgive them, but you are not expected to trust them immediately, and you are not expected to continue allowing them to hurt you.”
- Forgiveness is a divine act, so ask God for help…
- In our own strength, forgiving others in the way we have received God’s forgiveness is impossible,
- But with God, nothing is impossible, and with His Spirit inside us we can go through a process that leads to true forgiveness.
- Allow God’s mercy to shape our own… (in other words, remember the lesson of this parable)
- As you go to forgive someone, remember God’s immense forgiveness
- Reminding ourselves of the debt that God forgave us in Christ when we certainly didn’t deserve it, can help us forgive others.
- And then knowing we have been forgiven so much, allow that mercy to shape what we offer to others.
- 4. Forgive – Say it and maybe write it down…
- Feelings will come back but you can remember you have acted as God wants you too.
- You can point to the fact that you have done it.
Time of communion