I'm in Matthew chapter 18 verse 21, so wherever you're listening, watching, please get out a Bible because this is a crucial passage.

We're going to build a whole series on this.

Matthew 18, 21 and following.

A couple of years ago, I was on the East Coast for mission meetings, and I got a call from my father-in-law, who I respect immensely.

And he said, look, I need you to go up to Bedford, Indiana, which was about four hours from where I was supposed to be, and visit someone that's very close to the family.

She's been watching sermons online, and this is someone that I kind of knew vaguely, and she really would like some time with you.

I thought, man, that's a lot out of my way.

That's four hours there, four hours back.

But my father-in-law would never ask me unless it was important.

So I drove, and I met this young lady, and she's in her mid-40s, late 40s, and she was having anxiety attacks.

And she said, look, I really need, these are new to me.

And I talked to her and with her for a while to try to get down to the core issue.

And before the conversation ended, she said, look, I think the real problem is I've just never dealt with the fact that my father was abusive verbally, never sexually, physically, but was verbally abusive, condescending, controlling.

He was an alcoholic, always intoxicated.

And even now, he never calls me until he gets drunk.

And then when he gets drunk, he calls me and wants to talk to me.

And I just feel like he keeps wounding me and hurting me over and over and over again.

And I just...

I just don't seem to be able to get over this fact that someone who's supposed to nurture you and love you and send you out into the world with confidence violates you.

And I tell you, Pastor Jeff, you know, I'm a Christian and I think the problem simply is I really do want to forgive him because I know by harboring this bitterness, it's killing me.

I can see that.

I think the anxiety, she was almost self-diagnosing here.

I think part of it is I just can't get over this.

So her question to me was, should I forgive?

Her question to me was, I want to forgive.

I know it's right to forgive.

How do I?

Because I don't know how.

This weekend, we embark on a very difficult journey, but at the same time, it's the foundation of our faith.

It's the most difficult part of our faith, I think, but it's also foundational.

And one of my frustrations in the church that I grew up in is they always talked about how we should forgive, but no one ever told us how.

And I was extremely frustrated that no one seemed to want to deal with the real issues like questions Do I forgive someone who doesn't seek my forgiveness?

Do I forgive someone who keeps reoffending me?

Do I forgive someone who has no idea or doesn't even believe they've done anything wrong?

Do I forgive someone who does not repent and how does this is the big one?

How does forgiveness harmonize with justice?

Does forgiveness prohibit me from seeking justice?

And what about when I really want to forgive?

I mean, I really want to, but I just can't do it because the hurt is too deep.

The pain is too intense.

One of my favorite quotes from my mentor was this, my desire to do the good has very little to do with other options or emotions that stir within my heart and being.

My desire to do the good has very little to do with the other emotions and feelings that stir within my heart and being.

These are the most important questions we can ask, especially in this age.

And it's why I basically decided to do this series, because perhaps for the first time in the Western world, forgiveness is no longer a value.

The first time in the Western world, forgiveness is no longer a value.

In fact, it's often seen as a detriment to society.

And so I'm reminding myself of Desmond Tutu.

Those of you who know anything about the history of South Africa will recognize that bishop's name.

He said he saw this coming all the way back in the 80s and 90s.

Tutu grew up, Desmond Tutu grew up under the horrors of apartheid.

He had actually rejected the manner in which the Nuremberg trials operated.

He didn't like the idea of retribution.

He liked the idea of reconciliation.

And he believed without forgiveness, there could be no future of the individual or the society.

So the Reconciliation Commission was developed whereby if you confess your sins, if you confess the crimes you'd committed against the family and you repented, then you'd simply be forgiven.

The problem is that what we didn't tell you, what we were not told, is that many survivors of that kind of abuse under apartheid felt that the requirement to forgive actually minimized their pain and allowed the perpetrators to continue the abuse by saying, move on, get up, get over it, forgive.

Others saw forgiveness as a way for abusers to avoid accountability.

And so now here we are in 2024.

The modern culture has a problem with forgiveness.

The Me Too movement asks the question, doesn't forgiving perpetrators only encourage abuse?

And then we have the whole world of social media, where any misstep or wrongful post cancels a person for life.

There's no forgiveness on social media.

And every foolish word you've ever said online can be circulated in perpetuity.

Recently, not too long ago, Whoopi Goldberg apologized for offensive remarks about the Holocaust, and she was still suspended and punished.

It was actually the Jewish writer Nathan Hirsch, Jewish writer Nathan Hirsch, who found the lack of forgiveness troubling.

Yes, he found Goldberg's remarks as anti-Semitic and offensive.

But he cited both Jewish and biblical traditions, saying that when a person says they're sorry, we should forgive.

Of course, he's still operating in the Judeo-Christian values, something the West no longer operates upon.

He ends up expressing concern that a culture's need to cancel people, even when the culture is willing to change or repent, does not diminish bigotry, but might even fuel it.

I remember not too long ago, actually, it seems like...

just yesterday, but it was all the way back in July 17, 2015, where a young man by the name of Dylan Roof, an anti-black racist, walked into the oldest black church in the southern United States, not too far from my hometown, Charleston, South Carolina.

He opened fire, shot and killed nine people attending the Bible study, including the pastor.

It was one of the worst crimes we had seen in the South as far as churches are concerned ever.

But what was even more astonishing, The relatives of the nine people who died publicly stated to Dylan Roof, the shooter, we forgive you.

They said, we forgive you.

That did not go down well in the media.

Stacey Patton of the Washington Post said, and I quote, black America should stop forgiving white racists.

The expectation and admiration of black people's forgiveness is about protecting whiteness.

It enables white denial about the harms that racist violence creates.

Our constant forgiveness perpetuates the cycle of attacks and abuse.

Quick forgiveness translates into the inability to hold perpetrators of injustice accountable for their behavior.

Barbara Reynolds, who actually marched in the 60s in the civil rights protest, wrote a counterpart to Stacey Patton's position in the same newspaper.

She argued that the movements that were led by Martin Luther King Jr.

and Nelson Mandela won the high moral ground and persuaded the majority because they were marked by the ethics of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and they triumphed because of the power of the spiritual approach.

And I quote part of her article.

She says, if you get angry, it is contagious, and you end up acting as bad as the perpetrators.

The current angry approach could lead to short-term gains, but in the end will only divide the country rather than unify it.

Now, that's a lot to take in in the introduction of this sermon, but here's my question.

Don't people like Stacey Patton have some kind of a point here?

Isn't it true that if we continually oppress a group of people, and those who are oppressed are expected to forgive the oppressors, isn't it possible that you might keep the system in place?

Just on a practical standpoint, as I wrote that line, I thought, you know what?

I remembered a friend of mine, Wes Moore, who now coaches basketball at NC State University.

We were in college together and we were playing just a pickup game of basketball.

And the guy that was guarding him was a little bit slower than he was.

So as my friend Wes Moore would try to go around him to the basket, the guy knew he was beaten.

So he would just stick out his arm and clothesline my friend Wes Moore.

And he did that the first time, the second time.

And every time he did it, third time, he would say, oh man, sorry.

And finally, after about the 10th time, my buddy Westmore stopped the game and said, dude, stop apologizing and repent.

In other words, stop saying you're sorry and stop doing this.

Isn't there some truth in the matter that if we continually forgive the perpetrator, that it might empower them to keep continuing to be the perpetrator?

Sabin Birdsong, who runs a very popular blog, blames the abuses of forgiveness, not just on the practice, but upon Christianity itself.

She says in an article, To Hell with Forgiveness Culture, we continue to believe that forgiveness makes a person superior, and if they can't manage something so simple as forgiveness, the fault lies with them.

And she blames the deeply ingrained hangover on Christianity, a mindset, she says, that manifests itself in edicts like forgive and forget, turn the other cheek.

And she says, and I quote, We condemn persons who won't forgive, saying they are poisoning themselves, which is tantamount to another Abrahamic culturally ingrained guilt trip.

In short, it is victim blaming.

This serves only to help abusers.

who can act with impunity because no matter the grave depths of their actions, they can rest in smug assurance that they will be forgiven.

We need to rewrite the outdated narratives of forgiveness.

Now notice how she words this, which idealizes the pseudo-spiritual fairy tale of redemption and forgiveness.

You hear what she's saying?

She says there's no real redemption and forgiveness.

That's a fairy tale over the inherent right for people not to be abused.

Now here's what this statement does and what I've tried to do.

It isolates the problem that we feel today, the apparent contradiction between forgiveness and justice.

The sense that we have to choose one over the other, and this series is going to show you that that's simply untrue.

That you can have both forgiveness and justice, but how do those things come about?

Regardless of our position on any of this, the human need for forgiveness...

is a strong present reality no matter how much we philosophize about it.

You simply can't escape it.

In 1969, one of my favorite books I've ever read actually is by writer and activist Simon Wiesenthal. He wrote a book called The Sunflower.

And in The Sunflower, the whole book is a story and then responses to the story of how during the Holocaust, Wiesenthal was called into a makeshift German hospital.

And he was Jewish, of course, and there was a German soldier who had been wounded and was probably going to die on his hospital bed.

And he had requested that someone send him a Jew, any Jew.

And the reason he wanted to speak with a Jew, he wanted a Jew to forgive him of all of his atrocities on behalf of all the Jewish people.

And when Wiesenthal was escorted to the hospital bed, the German soldier told him how he had locked inside a church building Men, women, and children locked the doors and then set it on fire and listened to the screams of the people as they died from burning alive, which is basically one of the most horrible ways to die.

And of course, smoke inhalation.

But the key to the book was that when the German soldier asked Wiesenthal to forgive him, Wiesenthal said, no.

I can, who am I to forgive you on behalf of the other people that you've wounded?

The other half of the book called again, the sunflower is people all around the world, philosophers, social theorists, priests, pastors.

They were asked, do you think Wiesenthal did the right thing?

It's interesting.

50% said that he should have forgiven the German soldier.

And the other 50% said he did the right thing in withholding forgiveness.

The book is a masterclass in what forgiveness is, what justice is, and how to harmonize the two.

All of these issues are deep and meaningful questions that society is now asking, I think that humanity has always asked.

The answers to these questions, do I forgive someone who doesn't seek my forgiveness?

Do I forgive someone who keeps reoffending?

Do I forgive someone who thinks they've done nothing wrong?

Is there a limit to forgiveness?

Do I forgive someone who doesn't repent?

How do I harmonize forgiveness and human justice?

All of those questions are deep and meaningful because they determine not only the future of a culture and society, but the spiritual health of an individual.

And yet, here's the thing.

You cannot even begin to approach these issues unless there is some kind of objective truth associated with them.

If you try to approach these strictly on emotion, Typically, the human experience is to always default to what's going to protect them or serve them well.

And then at that point, you move away from the collective group of culture into the life of the individual, where every man and woman does what is right in their own eyes.

And that's when culture self-destructs.

Now, I think all of these questions...

are in Peter's mind.

I really do.

When he asked Jesus for clarity in this issue of forgiveness.

And so the passage I told you to turn to, Matthew 18, verse 21, Peter came to him, that is Jesus, and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

Up to seven times.

Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven.

Now, I think the reason Peter, well, there's a good indication the reason Peter asked this question is because he's still grappling with something Jesus said back in Matthew 6, 14 and 15, when Jesus said, 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 sin.

And I can guarantee you that the disciples were absolutely stunned by Jesus'claim that forgiveness by God and our ability or willingness to forgive others.

are interdependent.

So Peter suggests the limit.

He suggests, how about seven times?

And he would have thought that would have been generous because the Talmud says only three.

But Jesus says 490 times, which you know as well as I do.

He doesn't mean literally 490 times, but I wonder if Peter thought just for a moment he did.

Could you imagine?

490 times.

So somebody's offended you and you say, dude, that's the 489th time.

One more time and that's it.

Jesus is saying there is no limit at all.

And then he tells the story to illustrate it.

Verse 23, for this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him.

But since he did not have the means to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he had and repayment be made.

Now let's take a good look at this passage.

Let's unpack it.

10,000 talents.

One talent is a vast sum of money and the average salary for one year's work.

One.

So in other words, we're talking about 10,000 years of salary to the average person in the days of Jesus.

In today's terms, the average working class job that we're told pays somewhere around the average of 50,000.

So that would make the debt comparatively around $400 million.

And that's more than the gross national product of 80% of the countries in the world.

So what is Jesus doing here?

What Jesus does, he takes the highest number in Greek, and he makes it plural so that he's really saying it's insurmountable.

It's like when you and I say a gazillion.

We're saying that there is an infinite, immeasurable amount that cannot literally be described.

So Jesus is speaking of an infinitely immeasurable debt.

that is literally impossible to pay back.

Now, a few questions emerge.

Number one, how is it that a slave could come into possession of 10,000 talents?

And there's only one answer, and the audience knew it.

This king is a king of lavish provision.

Lavish provision.

The king whose forte is generosity.

You need to borrow something, it's here.

You need something, I'm going to give it.

And he pours it out, running over into your lap.

It's a king of staggering generosity, mercy, compassion, empathy, provision.

However, when Jesus tells the parable, not only is this a king of incredible provision, it's also a king of settled accounts.

So this is not a case of sloppy bookkeeping, not a lackadaisical approach to money.

The king is a king of lavish provision, but he's also a king of settling the counts, of justice, of judgment.

There is a day of accountability.

Staggering generosity, yes, but also accountability.

There's no chapter 7 or chapter 11.

You will be held accountable.

Now, the economy of debt, as we've said before, in the times of Jesus was simple.

If you owe, you pay.

It's not like we are today, totally different today.

But back in the days of Jesus, if you owe, you pay.

And if you don't pay, your family will be sold into slavery until the debt is paid.

And if the debt is so vast, then it's not only this generation that will be sold.

but generation after generation after generation will be sold into slavery until the debt is paid.

So you realize what's going on here.

This young slave has been so irresponsible that he's put his family and his children and his grandchildren and probably his great-grandchildren and so on into slavery, people he's not even met.

Now, at this point, it just gets a little bit out of control.

Verse 26, so the slave fell to the ground, prostrated himself.

before him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you everything.

Now, what are the odds of an unemployed slave paying back the gross national product size debt?

Well, it's impossible.

There's no way, making the kind of money that he makes, he's ever going to be able to pay back this debt.

You know, in sports, we call this the Hail Mary, or some people call it the Doug Flutie.

That's a famous football game that happened back in 1984 at the Orange Bowl.

Hail Mary is when a quarterback goes back, and there's almost no time on the clock, and they're down.

So the only way they can win this with the clock ticking is to score a touchdown.

So the quarterback takes the ball and heaves it about 50, 60 yards down the field.

in hopes that somehow it bounces around and falls into one of his players'arms, and they run it into the end zone for a touchdown.

And it's actually happened a few times.

Not very often, but it has happened.

This is what the slave is doing.

He's trying to buy this time.

He knows he can't pay it back, but he's just trying to get out of the presence of the king in the day of accountability by saying, just give me time.

He's throwing the Hail Mary.

Give me time, and I'll pay it back.

Now, the audience...

would have been completely stunned at the next part of the story in verse 27, and the Lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave the debt.

The original text says he does two things in precise order.

He first releases the man.

What that means is he's saying to the man, you're not going to prison, your family's not going to prison, and none of your generations to come are going to be sold into slavery.

I'm releasing you.

And then second, he doesn't release him so he can go and pay back the debt.

He can't pay back the debt.

He releases them and then he forgives the debt.

He says, just forget about it.

We're clean, we're square.

Folks, that's a huge sum of money.

It's not like it doesn't matter because somebody has to pay.

Somebody has to take that loss.

Somebody has to take the hit.

Actually, when the servant asked for patience, he uses the Greek word makrothumeo, which means slow to boil or melt.

In the old English translation, it's called long suffering.

Patience is the ability to bear suffering rather than give it into it.

And that word right there hints a little bit at the cost of forgiveness.

Now, just think for a moment.

To forgive somebody's debt, the debt doesn't just vanish into thin air.

Somebody has to pay the debt.

And so if you've got a friend and the friend has to borrow your car, and through great irresponsibility, your friend totals the car, And he has no ability to pay because that's why he's borrowing your car in the first place.

You might say to him, that's okay, I forgive you.

But the price of the wrongdoing does not evaporate into thin air.

There's still a cost.

You either have to go out and work double hours so that you can get more money to buy the car and replace it.

Or you have to live without it.

You have to Uber everywhere you go.

But there's a cost to be paid somewhere by someone.

So that the cost of wrongdoing moves from the perpetrator when you're forgiving to you.

You forgive, you're saying you're going to bear the cost.

So that forgiveness becomes a form of voluntary suffering.

In choosing to forgive, you're going to bear the cost.

You're going to do the suffering.

Now stay with me.

We'll develop all of these over the course of the series.

Then comes the next scene.

The second man.

owes the forgiving servant who's been released and forgiven the equivalent of just a few dollars in his pocket.

This is chump change as we call it.

But notice what happens in verse 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, he demanded.

His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me and I will pay it back.

but he refused instead he went off and had that man thrown into prison until he could pay back the debt now i want you to notice something the second servant responds in exactly the same way as the forgiven servant had responded to the king when the king claimed his debt but when the second servant cannot pay the debt what does the forgiven servant do He refuses to forgive the much smaller debt.

I mean, we're talking about a gazillion and chump change.

When the other servants, verse 31, saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

Then the master called the servant in.

You wicked servant, he said.

I canceled all the debt of yours because you begged me to.

Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?

In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured.

until he should pay back all that he owed.

This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

Now let's do a little bit of hard work here.

The meaning of the parable that Jesus tells is not difficult to discern.

First, the king is God himself.

The 10,000 talents is the infinite debt you and I owe to God.

God created us, sustains us.

Our lives every second are dependent upon him, and yet we give him no or little glory.

One of our staff members here, Greg Lindsey, loves to fish.

And when we had a staff retreat up in Mammoth, which is not too far from here, beautiful mountain town, he took us all out fishing.

Well, he did the fishing.

We kind of watched.

But I was impressed with his knowledge of how to catch fish and primarily of his passion and love for fishing.

I watched him.

And I thought, man, he is really enjoying himself, probably as much as I do on the golf course.

But if you think about it, does Greg really deserve to fish?

I mean, has he done something good that earned him the right to be able to enjoy nature like this?

And then to whom does the lake really belong?

I mean, who does the lake belong?

Who's in control by really?

Who made the fish?

Who gave Greg his skills?

And it goes on and on.

The point is there's so much good in this world, and every good and perfect gift comes from God.

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, Psalm 24, in him we live and move and have our being, Acts 17.

That means you and I owe God supreme love, gratitude, dependence, obedience, but that is not what we give him.

In fact, we're told in the scriptures that deep down, although we would never want to admit it, there is an anger toward God because we know we're dependent on him, and we somehow resent that fact.

We want to be in charge.

And many people, most people on the planet live as though they are.

And yet, does that change God's mind?

He still sends down his reign on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The point is, there's not a person in this world who does not receive the mercy of God in some way.

And yet, the way we treat each other fails infinitely.

The way we treat other human beings Falls infinitely short of the generous mercy with which God treats us now.

What does all this mean?

Well, here's what it means number one forgiveness is difficult for us to receive the debt We owe to God is so large.

We can never pay it back.

It cannot be paid only forgiven folks Stay with this is the gospel.

We're starting with the gospel Otherwise, we can't deal with these difficult questions the servants pathetic offer to pay the king back is as Unrealistic as any of your effort or my effort to earn our way to heaven through good works So when a person says, I will earn favor with God and merit my way into his good favor, you're actually saying something like that of the servant.

You're saying, I will pay back the $4 billion I owe by sending in $5 a month.

Well, how long would you have to live in order to be able to do that?

The servant says, be patient.

I can pay you back.

No, you can't.

None of us can.

The debt is insurmountable.

That is the first part.

Forgiveness is difficult for us to receive.

We pastors meet people like this all the time.

I'll meet somebody who says, you know, I've done a lot of bad things in my life, so I'm going to spend the rest of my life helping people, and that will put me in good favor with God so that when I die, I'll go to heaven.

But if you think about this, it's still all about you, because you're trying to work off the debt in order that you can merit God's favor.

You're not actually helping people and serving them because you care about them.

You care about yourself.

So you're still at odds with God.

Or some people will say, you know, I know I'm a very bad person, so I will loathe and abase myself and grovel, then I'll be worthy of forgiveness.

As if somehow confessing that you're a miserable sinner makes you righteous.

No amount of self-flagellation can undo the damage we've done.

No amount of good works can make up for the deeds of the past, yours nor mine.

Our only hope is the astounding free grace and forgiveness from God himself.

Forgiveness is difficult for us to receive.

We have to admit something about ourselves too.

Forgiveness is not merely difficult for us, and I want to be careful how I say this here, but it's difficult for God.

The parable points to something you're going to find in the rest of the Bible, that God himself faces obstacles to forgiveness.

Jesus deliberately chooses an unthinkable, mind-numbing-sized debt that he knew that even a great king would feel impossible to forgive without destabilizing his kingdom.

So there are risks and adjustments.

The cost of forgiveness to God was great, free to us, priceless to him, the giving up of his own son.

So forgiveness is difficult for us to receive.

Forgiveness is not merely difficult for us, it's difficult for God.

Three, forgiveness is also difficult for us to grant, to give to other people.

The most shocking part of this story, folks, is the forgiven servant's callousness for others in need of mercy.

How could he fail to be softened and transformed by the king's mercy.

Remember what we said, the original text says that the king did two things in this precise order.

He releases the man, which means he saves his entire family for generations to come.

He takes a person who has absolutely no hope in the future and gives him a hope in the future.

Then the forgiven servant goes out and how does he respond to the person who wronged him?

By robbing him of his hope and future.

Remember verse 29 tells us when he bowed down to the ground and begged him, we're told that he refused and he went off and had the man thrown into prison.

Well, if you throw him into prison, how is he going to be able to pay what he owes?

So while God gives us a hope and a future, even though the debt is insurmountable, our working with each other is to rob them of a hope and a future and to throw them in some kind of prison until we think they've paid enough of the debt to be released.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

How is it that we who live by the mercy of God every second of our lives could ever fail to be kind, merciful, generous, gracious, and forgiving every single day?

that the arrow is pointed directly at our hearts okay now we move into this last phase and it's a big one what do we mean by forgiveness and this is crucial because false understandings of repentance and forgiveness are spiritually and socially fatal we're going to move on into this series about the relationship between forgiveness and justice that is important to do and i know that because i know you're going to have a lot of questions But for now, I want you to realize the story helps us understand the core definition of forgiveness.

Because God, as the king, did four things.

Number one, the king had the man brought to him and named the debt.

Forgiveness starts with truth-telling and exposure rather than cover-up of half-truths.

The offense must be named and admitted to if forgiveness is ever to take place.

And churches, you know, historically who try to cover up the sexual sins of pastors, circumvent true forgiveness and end up abusing the victim all over again.

So it's got to be named.

Second, the king, God, took pity on him.

So we take pity.

We name the debt, but we have pity.

What does pity mean?

Pity means that when you're dealing with someone who's offended you, you deliberately do the internal work of understanding the perpetrator's situation.

You try for a moment to walk a mile in their shoes.

You consider the history of the perpetrator and the perpetrator's vulnerability.

That doesn't mean that justice and judgment must be absent.

It simply means that if you are going to name the debt and there's going to be a confrontation, you do so with mercy and pity as your governing emotion.

And that means, and by the way, this is not natural because most of us, we want that person to pay as much as possible for what they've done to us.

But God thinks as the perpetrator, not just as a villain, but as a human being with their own fears and griefs, and you're instructed to do the same.

So the king brings the man, confronts the man, names the debt, takes pity on him during the conversation of the debt.

Third, the king cancels the debt.

When the king forgave the debt, it meant that he absorbed the cost.

Let me say that again.

If you borrow from a creditor and you can't pay, and he forgives you, the debt doesn't just disappear into thin air.

The creditor suffers the loss.

Now you say, well, how does that work when we're not talking about money?

Simple.

Forgiveness means then that when you want to make them suffer, instead, you do the suffering.

You refuse to make them suffer, and you take the debt and everything associated with it on yourself.

And folks, I've got to tell you, that is hard.

It is difficult and costly because you are about to absorb the debt yourself.

And that's what it means to forgive.

And finally, what did the king do in verse 27?

He simply let him go.

That means the relationship between the king and the servant was restored.

Not because of what the servant did, but because of what the king did.

So quickly, here's what forgiveness is.

Name the trespass.

Identify with the perpetrator.

Forgive the debt, which is going to cost you greatly.

And reconcile.

If you omit any of these, you're not engaging in real forgiveness.

Now, let me give you the whole point of this wonderful story and then give you a challenge.

And I know this is a lot to absorb day one, but if I'm going to stay on time in this series, I got to just take one piece of the puzzle at a time.

Do you realize what God is offering you and me?

Forget about, just for a moment, you forgiving others.

Let's talk about God and what He's done for you.

Do you realize what He's doing?

In the old system of debt in the world, you owe, you pay.

And then suddenly Jesus comes around and offers a whole new economy.

It's called the economy of grace, and it says, you owe, but I'm going to pay.

Who does that?

The audience, when they heard this parable, would have sat in stunned silence.

And Jesus tells this outrageous parable.

And he says, look, God is the king and we are the servant.

And you and I are racking up a mountain of moral debt every day of our lives.

Whether you admit it or not, and most of us will not.

Every time you're less than honest, tell half-truths.

Every time you hold grudges.

Every time you make cutting remarks or slander or gossip.

Every time you commit...

selfish acts that wound somebody else, every time that you entertain sexually impure thoughts, or speech, or actions, when you harbor judgmental attitudes, when you mistreat your spouse, when you gossip, slander, live self-aggrandizing lives, when you live with ingratitude, entitlement, when you become a narcissist, all of those things.

When because you are insecure, you move out into your world and step on others so that you can climb over them.

All of that is just racking up a mountain of moral debt every single day of your life.

Have you ever told a lie?

What does that make you?

A liar.

Have you ever stolen anything?

That makes you a thief.

Have you ever lusted after another woman?

That makes you an adulterer, or fornicator at least.

Have you ever sinned?

What does that make you?

A debtor.

A trespasser.

What if God made you pay...

For what you have done, then you would die because the wages of sin is death.

Now, some of you who are listening to this, you know, you're stunned a little bit, but at the same time, your heart's leaping because you remember the day when the light came on.

You remember the day when you got it, when Jesus said, wait a minute, you owe, but I'll pay.

And you know, that changed everything, man, everything.

Your eyes were open.

You knew that the books must be justified.

that your debt is great the accounts must be settled but you had no idea that the good news of the gospel is you owe jesus said but don't worry i'll pay don't you see folks the major religions in the world all but one have these things in common pray in this direction pay this money do these acts of of penance take this journey give these alms offer these sacrifices do these deeds don't do these deeds and maybe we're told maybe just maybe God will forgive you.

In other words, it's still the economy of debt.

You owe, you spend your lifetime paying, and maybe you'll cancel the debt.

Only one faith system moves you away from the economy of debt into the economy of grace.

Jesus says, you owe and I'll pay.

And had he not risen from the dead, we would have never believed him.

Jesus teaches that you and I are on the receiving end.

of the largest grace operation in the history of mankind.

We are the slave.

God is the master.

Our debt to him is huge, is measurable.

But God in Christ offers a new system of debt.

You owe, I'll pay.

And all who call on his name shall be saved.

The debt is great.

The cost to him is great.

His love for you is even greater.

But you must call on his name.

And when you repent, And when you say you're sorry, and when you verbalize your trust, and you plunge your past in baptism, we are told that at that moment, you enter into this economy, the economy of grace, we owe, Jesus pays.

You know, the way that you and I have to look at this parable or story in Matthew 18 that we're going to dissect three more weeks, don't miss.

is you've got to look at it kind of the way we look at 2 Samuel 12, when David had sinned with Bathsheba, and the prophet Nathan comes to confront him and tells him the little story about the little ewe lamb, and tells David about a story where this rich man owned all kinds of herds and flocks, and yet when a visitor came to town and he wanted to entertain, rather than going and getting one of his stockpile of flocks and herds, he goes to his poor servant and takes the one little ewe lamb that he has that serves as kind of a pet, someone or something that the servant loved more possibly than anything else.

And the rich man takes that ewe lamb, sacrifices it and feeds the guests.

And as soon as David hears that as the king, he says, that man shall surely die.

And Nathan looked at him and said, you are that man.

You and I, when we look at this, we should be looking at ourselves.

That's how each of us should listen to the parable.

Matthew 18 is ultimately about the kind of radically changed relationships that Christians should have.

They should be marked by humility and service toward others rather than pride, by patience and understanding regarding people's flaws.

and by a readiness to reconcile and heal broken relationships.

And if you're not that, if that's not you, I'm simply wondering, did you ever really get the gospel in the first place?

Because my experience as a pastor, most people who profess to have asked for God's forgiveness have not been transformed by it.

This parable is about forgiveness failure, because it is typical.

of the human story.

The movement from divine forgiveness to human forgiveness is constantly frustrated by sin in our lives.

We have the thirst of retribution and revenge and justice and judgment.

We like the economy of debt.

You owe, you're going to pay until it's between us and God.

And then we like, I owe, you pay.

As I look around, are Christian churches famous for their love and graciousness to the unbeliever?

I just don't think so.

Are you and I known by our friends and neighbors for being unusually loving and generous and gracious and forgiving?

God's mercy must and will, when it's truly taken in and understood, make us merciful.

And if we have not become merciful, and we have not become people who forgive, I didn't say it was going to be easy, and we'll get to that in later stages.

Well, in the words of Tim Keller, in his book on forgiveness, if you believe the gospel, that you are saved by sheer grace, and the free forgiveness of God, and you still hold a grudge, at the very least it shows that you are blocking the actual effect of the gospel in your life, or you're kidding yourself, and perhaps you don't believe the gospel at all.

How on earth can we ever forgive?

How do we, since it's so difficult, and it is for all of us, how is it that we can grow the wings of forgiveness?

It's not by trying harder.

It won't work.

Because every time you think that you've forgiven a person and you're doing it by trying harder, something happens that triggers you and you're right back into the hate and retribution.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

For some of you, you think if I try harder to forget, let me tell you, let me be honest, you're never gonna forget.

I wish there were some liquid that you could rub on the hurts and the wounds of the past and they would disappear, not gonna happen.

That's called repression, but it will reappear.

You can't grow the wings of forgiveness by having a counselor tell you.

that you will be emotionally more stable if you can forgive.

You can't grow the wings of forgiveness just because you think if you do forgive, somehow it's going to benefit you.

I mean, that's true.

It will.

But I just don't think it's going to help you forgive over the long haul.

It's still self-serving.

Here's how you grow the wings of forgiveness.

And this is where we're going to go in this series.

When you meet the living God through repentance and faith.

And you receive not just an abstract pardon from Christ, but you receive Him into your life as your new identity.

And you truly recognize that you've been accepted, justified, adopted, and unconditionally loved as a child of God.

When that really dawns on you.

And by the way, here's one of the ways you know that you've really met Him.

There are going to be times in your life when you do mess up.

And the devil's going to seize an opportunity to come in and remind you of how worthless you are and how God can't use you because there's so much sin in your life and how you're just a loser.

When you get to the point in your life when you can turn and say, you can't touch this.

I am saved by the blood of Jesus once and for all.

And you resist the devil like that, he will flee.

And the guilt and the shame will leave and be replaced by confidence in the grace and mercy of God.

and you will be a person of thanksgiving and gratitude.

When you truly meet the living God, and I think that's the real problem for a lot of us, when you truly meet Him and you begin to commune with Him through word, prayer, and worship, guess what's going to happen?

These objective realities of forgiveness will shape you.

They will become subjectively real in your heart, and you will find the power to go with the desire.

to forgive folks when i'm communing with god i'm better at everything if i if my communion with god is sporadic my ability forget to forgive will be sporadic if my communion with god is consistent and deep so will my ability to forgive it's the reason that edith taylor a story that came out of reader's digest years ago was able to raise the children of her husband's mistress It's the reason Corrie ten Boom could shake the hand of the guard responsible for so much suffering in the concentration camp and the one who abused their own sister.

That's what enables us to forgive, is that when we have true access to God through the grace and mercy of Jesus on the cross, you will only start the process, and this is only the beginning, you will only begin the process of forgiving those who have significantly wound you.

when you truly understand the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

So can I just challenge you?

Do you know that you're saved for all of eternity?

Not because of your goodness, but because of what Christ has done for you.

Do you know you have a one-way ticket to heaven because of the cross?

Do you know that you're going to live in heaven with God for millions of years?

Well, more than that, but that's the best way I can describe it.

It's for eternity.

Do you know the day is going to come when you won't be able to remember all the pain of this world and all those who offended you because you're going to be so overwhelmed by the joy and ecstasy of the world that is to come that you're now in?

The cross means all of these things are possible through grace, unmerited favor.

That's what God has given to you.

Do you understand that really?

And when that really resonates with you, that you are good to go with God and that he forgives.

past, present, and future sins through the grace of Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.

When that really resonates with you, I want to tell you right now, you're going to learn to grow wings of forgiveness.

Don't fall for the lie.

Don't ever fall for the lie that there's some sin in your life.

where there is a limit to God's forgiveness.

Your salvation has nothing to do with you and everything to do with God.

And when it really resonates, it'll change you from the inside out.

I'm simply saying that the meaning of the parable, before we even get started, is that the servant did not really get or understand.

what the king had just done for him if he had he would have forgiven the servant that's the that's the deep-rooted meaning of the parable if he really got it if he really understood it he would have been transformed by it and would it would have changed the way he acted and responded to those who offended him you're saved by grace through faith nothing can change that father thank you for your goodness and mercy i pray in christ's name somehow through all of this, that those of us who have been deeply wounded will at least commit to begin this journey of forgiveness over these next three weeks.

And by the time we finish, we'll have a better understanding, not only of the grace and mercy that we've received, but also of the justice that God brings into not only the world that is to come, but the world present.

And that that would give us peace and comfort to live our lives.

in the posture of forgiveness, just as God forgives us every day.

In Christ's name we pray, amen.

We hope you enjoyed today's message.

If you decided to follow Jesus or just want a little more information about this walk with Jesus, I want to encourage you to go to oneandall.church.com and so that way we can help you along this journey.

We have a couple resources for you for your walk with Christ and one of them is the daily podcast and you can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts whether it be spotify or apple music and it's just a two to three minute daily devotional so you can have time with jesus and reflect upon your day the second one is is our conversations podcast this is where we get to sit down with our speakers authors theologians and just get to dive deeper into christianity you can watch those on our youtube channel and we'll end as we always do with one hope one life in Christ.