Forgiveness - Life of Christ Part 67

Well, you know, it's a pretty unforgiving world out there, isn't it? If you don't believe that that's true, just ask Craig Stadler. Craig Stadler is a professional golfer, and at the Mercedes Championship a couple weeks ago, he was on the tee and he had a tee time of 8.02 a.m. And so there he was around the tee, waiting with his partner to hit. And usually the veteran starter, his name is Bob Fulton for the PGA, introduces the golfers and then they tee off. So Fulton was there, but he didn't introduce Stadler, he didn't introduce him, and finally Stadler said, well, I guess I ought to just go ahead and hit. So he put his ball, you know, on the tee and he hit. The problem was, when he actually struck his ball, it was 8.03 a.m. The starter noticed that he was a minute late, radioed the director of rules for the tour, and when Stadler got to the second tee, he was met by the director of rules who informed him that he was going to take a two-stroke penalty for being late teeing off. Well, Stadler went crazy. He said, hey, I was there, I was around the tee, on the tee, at the tee.

I mean, it wasn't my fault the guy didn't announce me. And he threw a big fit and the guy said, hey, I'm sorry, in fact, in Sports Illustrated the director of rules is quoted as saying it was cut and dried, he wasn't on the tee at 8.02 a.m. and that is that, period. And so he took a two-stroke penalty. Well, he finished in fourth and you'll never guess how many strokes separated him from first. How many do you think?

How did you know? Two. And you see that one minute late on the tee cost Craig Stadler $132,000. Teach you to be on time when you tee off, won't it? Now, a lack of forgiveness in the golf world is one thing, but a lack of forgiveness in this whole issue of forgiveness in our personal lives is a whole different thing, a much more serious issue because it affects the very well-being of who we are as people. And God wants to talk to us about that from this passage this morning. And I hope that God is going to take what we share and God is going to really change your life because I'm convinced there are some of us who have a divine appointment with this parable this morning.

So let's look at it and see. There's a little context to the parable, meaning a little background to it, beginning in verse 21. Then Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how many times do I have to forgive my brother when he sins against me? Seven times? I mean, and in asking this, Peter acted like he was going, I mean, this is really above and beyond the call. You know, this is like the forgiveness congressional medal of honor territory here he's talking about seven times. And Jesus responds by saying, Peter, you don't understand. There is a fundamental problem in the very question you asked me because your question implies that there's at some point, whether it's seven or 70 or 100 or whenever, after which you don't have to forgive anymore, after which it's okay for you to refuse to forgive. That's why Jesus said, I tell you, not seven times, Peter, but 70 times seven, meaning there's no limit to the willingness that you ought to have as a Christian to forgive. And then he goes on to tell the parable. So remember now, the parable is about what topic? Forgiveness, right? And it's about the issue of our obligation as Christians to forgive, to forgive, to forgive without limit. Now let's look at the story. It happens in three scenes, kind of like a little play. Here's scene one, verse 23.

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And as he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. Now remember, I told you last week, a talent was about $450,000. So 10,000 talents is approximately 5 billion. Yes, that's right, boys and girls with a B, $5 billion. You say $5 billion? That's ridiculous. Nobody could ever pay off that kind of a debt. That's right.

That's the whole point. Look, and since he was not able to pay the debt, verse 25, the master order that he and his wife and his children be sold into slavery and everything he had to be liquidated. And the servant fell on his knees before the king and said, be patient with me. He begged him, and I'll pay you back everything. He didn't even ask to have it forgiven. He just said, just give me some time.

Give me some time. Don't sell me into slavery. And verse 27, the servant's master took pity on him. I like the way the King James translates it. It says that his master was moved with compassion for him. And he canceled, the master did, the whole debt and let the guy go.

You say, you mean he wrote $5 billion off just like that? Yep, that's the way the story goes. Say, that's pretty incredible. I mean, talk about forgiveness. Well, I know. End of scene one.

Scene two. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. 100 denarii is about $7,500. That's a fair amount of money. Well, it is, but not when you're comparing it to 5 billion, huh? I mean compared to $5 billion, this is chicken feed, small potatoes. We used to say in my Jewish home bupkis, it's nothing.

It's not even worth worrying about. But it says that he said to the guy, he grabbed him around the neck, began to choke him and said, pay back what you owe me. Well, the fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me and I'll pay you back.

Does that sound familiar? Isn't that exactly what the first guy had just gotten through saying to the king? But look, he refused and instead he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. So here this forgiven servant goes out, but instead of showing the same kind of mercy and forgiveness to his fellow servant that the king had just shown him, no sir. Instead, he throws this guy into jail and the point is, here was a man who had received infinite mercy, infinite forgiveness, who was unwilling to show even small time forgiveness to somebody else.

End of scene 2, scene 3, verse 31. And when the other servants saw what happened, they were greatly distressed and ran and told their master everything and the master called that servant back in, the one he had forgiven, $75 billion and he said to him, you wicked servant. You wicked servant. How dare you go out there and refuse to forgive that guy $7500 after I just forgave you $5 billion?

Look what he says. He said, I canceled all the debt of yours because you begged me to. Just like that guy out there begged you? Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant? Watch, just as I had on you. And in anger, his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed and of course that meant never because how are you going to ever pay something like that back? Here's the point.

The key is in this phrase, just as I had on you. In other words, what this forgiven servant did would not have been so outrageous if he hadn't had just been forgiven $5 billion but the fact that he was forgiven $5 billion and then he went out and within an hour wouldn't even forgive somebody $7500 made the master so angry and so furious that he threw him in jail. Now let's see if we can identify the people in the story, okay? Who do you think the king is? Well, it's God, right?

Sure. And who do you think the servant is that owed the king 10,000 talents, $5 billion? Who do you think that is? Us.

Yeah. Peter who was asking the question and all of us who are Christians. We owed God a debt that we could never pay. We owed him a sin debt. The wages of sin is death. There was no way we could ever survive and pay off that debt and yet God sent Jesus Christ into the world and to the cross to die for our sin, pay for our sin and he canceled the debt altogether freely and fully. He canceled the debt that we owed him $5 billion worth. And let me just stop here and say that if you're here this morning visiting and you have never experienced that kind of forgiveness, God wants to make you the same kind of forgiven servant that he made this guy in the story.

And he will too. You say, Lon, what do I have to do? You have to do what the guy in the story did. You have to come to him and ask for mercy. This guy didn't bring any of his own resources.

He didn't have any resources. He just fell on his knees and said, have mercy on me. And he found the mercy that he was asking for. And when we come to God and say, God, I've got a debt I can't pay. It's a sin debt.

I'm not going to present you any resources, you know, good works, church attendance, singing in the choir. I'm just going to ask for mercy. Guess what? God forgives just like he did the guy in the parable. And if you've never experienced that in your life, I hope if you don't get anything out of this morning that you'll get the message that God wants to make you a forgiven servant just like he made this guy.

Well, who's the other guy in the story? The guy who owed the forgiven servant $7,500, who's that? Well, that represents everybody else in the world around you and me who do things to us to hurt us, that we have to be willing to forgive them. But would you notice that the things they do to us that need to be forgiven by us in comparison to what we did to God aren't even in the same ballpark. And the message of the parable is, as Christians, if God forgave us $5 billion, there is never any excuse for us not to be willing to forgive fellow human beings a few thousand dollars. For us as Christians, forgiveness is not optional. It's mandatory. It's expected. Now, that's the end of the parable, but it leaves us with, you know what it leaves us with, don't you? The really important question, what is it? So what?

Right. Did you read about this lady over in Easton, Maryland? This happened a couple of years ago. She and her husband, she's married and they didn't get along so good. And he was always verbally abusing her. They were always fighting and arguing. He would physically abuse her.

I mean, it was really nasty. And finally, one night, this is in the paper, after they had a violent argument where he hurt her real bad, she waited until he went outside in front of the house. And then when he had his back turned and he wasn't looking, she got in her car and she ran him over.

But now that's not all. After she ran him over, she pulled the car back in the driveway, got out, went over and got him and dragged her critically wounded husband up the steps into the front door and put him on the couch in the living room. And then for two days, she went about her normal daily routine while he lay there on the couch and she refused to get him any medical attention.

Two days later, he died. This really happened right across the Eastern Shore. And when they came and they arrested her for this and asked her, what in the world was going through your mind? She said, well, I was really just paying him back for all the hurt that he did to me for all those years and it just seemed like now we're pretty much even. Now, what lesson do we see in this? You say, well, Lon, the lesson I see is never turn your back on your wife. That's what I got out of this. But no, that's not the lesson that I want you to get. The lesson I want you to get is that when you've been hurt real bad, forgiveness is not easy. Huh?

Is that true? I mean, forgiveness makes great preaching friends, but when we take it out of the church, out of the pulpit and into the real world, this is not easy to do. This is hard. When we've been hurt and we've been hurt badly, every one of us wants to do exactly what this woman did. We want to strike back. We want justice. We want revenge.

Well, that's not what God tells us we should do. And I know that some of us here have been hurt very badly by our parents, by a husband or an ex-husband, by a wife or an ex-wife. Some of us have been stabbed in the back by a friend at work. Some of us have had a boss who we feel has let us down.

Some of us have had neighbors who we feel have betrayed us. Some of us are having trouble even forgiving ourselves for some things that we've done that we wish we hadn't have done. Well, friend, God knows forgiveness is not easy.

It's hard. But God still wants us to do it. You say, why, Lon?

Why? I mean, what business is it of God? Why is it such a big deal to God? Why didn't He just leave me alone? If I want to stew in my own bitterness and my own anger, just tell Him, leave me alone. I'm all right.

No. Well, wait a minute. The reason God wants you to deal with this is because God loves you. And I was reading there was this quote by a British psychiatrist who runs a psychiatric hospital in England.

And here's what he said. He said, and I quote, I could dismiss half of my patients tomorrow if they could be assured of forgiveness. You see, dear friends, when you and I have been hurt by somebody, the greatest need in our life is not retribution, not revenge, not even justice. The thing we really need more than anything else is to be able to forgive. Because in forgiving, there is a healing force that comes into our life.

There is a liberating force that comes into our life that is more powerful than all the psychiatric textbooks ever written. The three most powerful words in the English language to say to somebody else, to have said to you are these three, I forgive you. And the reason that God is so worked up about this and the reason that God is driving so hard about this is because God loves you.

And God wants to bring healing to your life. And He knows to do that, you got to forgive. If you can't forgive, you're in bondage.

You may not believe it, but you're in bondage. And you can't go on with the rest of your life till you forgive. You say, well, Lon, that's great preaching, buddy, but I don't want to forgive them. I'm so angry at them.

I'm so mad at them. I don't want to forgive them. Where do you suggest I get the motivation from to forgive them?

I can answer that. The Bible has an answer for that. Where are you going to get the motivation to forgive? Listen, Ephesians 4 32, forgive others just as in Christ God forgave you. Colossians 3 13, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And right here in the parable, look, it says, shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? My dear friend, if you're a Christian and you've experienced the forgiveness of God, the motivation to forgive comes from what Jesus Christ has done for you.

And He, all He asks is that you do the same for others as He's done for you. Many of you know the name Corrie Ten Boom. She was a lady that lived in Holland during the Second World War. And she and her father and mother and sister smuggled Jewish people out of Europe and away from Hitler until they were caught. When they were caught, they were all sent to concentration camp.

I don't know if you've been doing any of the reading this week or last couple of weeks about Auschwitz and Birkenbau and all of these horrible concentration camps, but if you've been doing any reading, I've been reading Time and Newsweek on it. I mean, I remember the other night I was reading the article in Time and I sat there and I felt sick. This is the 20th century. I mean, this is not 5,000 years ago, you know, when people hit each other over the head with clubs.

I mean, this is the 20th century. How can people do this to people? The stuff that was done in there was just beyond description. The fact that anybody even lived through those things is hard to believe the way they were treated. And this woman was there. Her father died in concentration camp. Her mother died in concentration camp. She lived through it. And while she was in the camp, there was one guard who mistreated her just mercilessly. He was just brutal on her and her sister. She said, I hated him so bad, I just couldn't wait to see him die.

Well, then, of course, they were liberated. She went her way, he went his way, never saw each other again. And years later, she tells the story about speaking in Germany at an evangelistic meeting.

This was decades later. And she said, after the meeting, I was standing down in the front and I was just talking to people. And I looked up the center row and here was this old man walking down the center row towards me. And she said, I looked at him, he looked vaguely familiar. And she said, the closer he got, all of a sudden I recognized this was that old guard from that concentration camp. And she said, he walked up to me there in that front row and stood right in front of me. And she said, as he started coming, I started backing up just instinctively. And finally, when I couldn't back up anymore, he got up close to me and he said, Ms. Ten Boom, he said, the reason I came here tonight was to ask you to forgive me. Quoting now from Corrie, she said, I didn't really want to forgive him. She said, but there he stood in front of me seeking my mercy and forgiveness just as I had one day stood in front of Jesus Christ begging him for his mercy and his forgiveness. And in light of what God had done for me, what else could I do but forgive him? And she threw her arms around him and the two of them hugged and they wept together there in the front of that meeting hall. That's healing.

That's healing for both of them. And dear friends, every time we need motivation to forgive, I'll tell you where you find it. You find it by looking at the cross. Because on the cross, an all holy God whom our sin had offended and hurt more than we'll ever realize, he forgave all that sin, even though there isn't one good reason in the world why he should have, except that he loves us and he wiped it out. Now, after he did that for you and me as Christians, for us to refuse to forgive anybody of anything is not one of the above selections.

As Jesus said, freely you have received, now you have to freely give. You say, well, Lon, I got one more question. I hear what you're saying. And maybe I could bring myself to the point of getting motivated to do this. But Lon, I don't think I can. I don't have the resources. I don't have the power. I don't have the ability. You don't understand how bad I've been hurt. You don't understand how deep I've been wounded. I don't think I can.

No matter how hard I might want to, I don't think I can. What do you say about that? What I say is that one of the reasons it's so great to be a Christian is that we have access to resources that go beyond just the resources we have. We have access to the supernatural resources of God.

And what I say to that is that God will give you the power and ability to forgive if you want it. You say, how, Lon? How does it work? How does God do this? The answer is, I'm not sure. I don't know exactly how he does it. But I don't know exactly how penicillin works either.

And yet I know if I take it long enough, my sore throat goes away. And in the same way, I know that when we ask God long enough to soften our heart and give us the power to forgive another person who's wounded us deeply, something happens on the inside and healing occurs. You say, well, Lon, is what you're saying is that God just comes along and says, oh, okay, so it didn't really happen. Oh, okay, so it's not really that important. Oh, okay, so what they did to me doesn't matter that much. Let's just pretend like it wasn't all that important.

Let's just kind of take it on the screen and we'll move it over to trash and then we'll just erase it. Is that what you're saying? No, no, no. Remember the definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness says it wasn't okay then what you did to me, but it's okay now. It wasn't okay then. You hurt me. You scarred me. You mistreated me. There was no excuse for what you did to me.

It was not okay then. But it's okay now. God's done something in my life. God's cleaned out the wound.

He's taken the poison out. The gangrene is gone. The healing has happened. It wasn't okay then, but because God's done something in my soul, it's okay now. And I can forgive. My dear friend, that is healing at a level where a doctor scalpel can never get to. It's supernatural healing from God, and God can and will do that for you if you'll let Him. I'm convinced for some of us here the greatest need in our life today is not more money, not a bigger house, not another car, not more clothes, not more power or prestige.

The biggest need in our life is to let God heal a wound that we're still carrying so that we can forgive, so that we can drop the burden and get on with the rest of our life. I was raised by a Jewish mother. Now that might not mean much to you, but if you were raised by a Jewish mother, that would mean a lot. My mother was the consummate Jewish mother. She was controlling, overbearing, smothering. She wouldn't let me have a life. She was a control freak. And what's worse, she was emotionally distant. She went and played marjong and canasta and ran around with all of her buddies all day long, never emotionally connected with me, never emotionally was involved in my life.

That's the worst of all possible combinations, emotionally distant but wanting to control you at the same time. And I grew up hating my mother. I despised her. I couldn't stand being around her, couldn't wait to get out of the house and away from her. And even once I was gone, even years later, we'd go back over holidays, Brenda and I would, and I could take about one day of my mother and I would just be like climbing the walls and saying, I got to get out of here. I can't take this woman.

When I came to McLean Bible Church as a young pastor, there was an elderly man of God here and he and I started having some lunches and things together. And someday, I don't even remember how, the subject of my mother came up. And he said, how do you feel about your mother? And I said, I hate her. He went, oh, okay, well, all right, let's talk some more about this.

I said, I can't stand my mother. And he said, well, tell me about it. And I told him a little bit about it and we talked about it a little bit. And he said, Lon, I want to tell you something. He said, God is never going to be able to do with you what he wants to until you can forgive your mother. And I said, I don't want to forgive my mother.

He said, well, it doesn't matter whether you want to, God is telling you, you have to. And I said, well, even if I said I was willing to, I said, you don't understand. You weren't raised in that home. You don't appreciate what I'm trying to say to you. You don't know how deeply this woman damaged me.

I don't think I can forgive this woman. And he said, well, that's why you got God, isn't it? He said, you're a pastor, you ought to know that.

I said, I don't think job descriptions really matter right now. You know what I'm saying? He said, all right, well, you're a Christian.

You ought to know that. He said, will you pray and ask God to give you the power to forgive your mother? And I thought about it and said, all right, I'll do that. He said, Lon, did you approach this with great confidence that it was going to work?

Absolutely not. I didn't think it was going to work. But I said, well, I'll try it. And I began praying, God, I know that's wrong for me to feel this way about my mother. I can't forgive her. But if you'll give me the grace, and I don't even know what you're going to do, if you'll help me, I know I need to. And for about a year, I prayed that. See, forgiveness is not like a light switch. Sometimes it takes time. And all I can tell you is at about the end of a year, something had happened on the inside of me.

You say, Lon, diagram it, put it on the screen, parse it for us, decline it. I can't. But all I can tell you is something happened on the inside. And my whole view of my mother began to change. And I began to realize that this woman was a victim herself. Somebody had raised her the way she raised me. And she didn't mean to damage me, that she had been damaged. And all she did is pass it on. And instead of feeling anger for her, I started to feel pity for her and compassion for her. Not too long after that, a few months later, I was down in Atlanta where she was living. And we were cleaning up after a party one night. And she said, growing up, you always hated me, didn't you?

And I thought, whoa, where is this from? And I felt God saying, it's from me, answer the question. So I said, yes, I did. I always hated you growing up. I said, Mom, I hated you because you smothered me. You violated my personhood. And I said, and yeah, I did hate you. And it wasn't okay what you did to me then. But I want to tell you, Jesus Christ has done something in my life. And I can't explain it to you. But all I can tell you is, it's okay now.

It's okay now. Friends, that was the greatest day in my relationship with my mother in our whole lives. We hugged each other. It was the first hug that was genuine to my mother in my whole life. And I'm convinced that opened up my mom eventually coming to Christ before she died. More importantly than that in terms of me, it released me from a bondage and a prison that I'd been in my whole life.

It meant I didn't have to self-destruct over this anymore. And I'm telling you that if you're carrying a Jewish mother around with you, or if you're carrying a prison guard around with you, the person who's getting hurt the worst is you. You're the one who's suffering. That's why God wants you to forgive because you're the one who's being hurt the most. God wants to release you. And He can and He will if you'll give Him a chance.

I can't explain it, but that doesn't mean it's not real. And if we know Christ, there are resources there to forgive that go beyond what you have. And God will give them to you if you want them. Let's bow together in prayer. Well, our heads bowed and our eyes closed and I'm going to ask you, no looking around, please. If you're here and you can identify with what I'm saying, there's a Jewish mom in your life, a prison guard in your life, and maybe the Jewish mom's you yourself.

I don't know. But if this morning God has spoken to you and you're able to say, God, I hear what you're saying and Lon's right, I don't know if I can, but I'm willing to give you a chance to heal me so that I'm able. If that's you and you'd like to make that commitment and ask God to do that for you, then without anybody looking around, if you'd raise your hand, I'd like to pray for you. God bless you. Thanks. Anybody else? Thanks.

Anybody else? Thank you. Dear Heavenly Father, I want to pray for these folks who raised their hand and maybe for some others who made that same commitment but they didn't raise their hand. And Father, you know behind each one of these commitments is a big, deep wound that's still open, that's still oozing pus, that needs to be cleaned out, stitched up, and healed. And Father, my prayer is that you would do that for each of these folks by your divine power. You don't have to explain to us how, God, just do it. And bring each of these folks to the place where they can honestly say, it wasn't okay then, but because Jesus Christ has healed my life, it's okay now.

I can forgive. And now I'm free to go on with the rest of my life. Do that, Lord, I pray for your glory and for the benefit of these, your children. And use the healing in our lives to have an impact on even the people who hurt us, that they might come to know you as well. Thank you that you're a God who loves us so deeply, that you don't want us to self-destruct. Thank you that the Bible teaches us how not to do that. And thank you that your power is available to help us live that way. Change our lives, I pray, God, by what we've heard here today. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.