"Forgive one another"

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to 7 times, Jesus answered, I tell you, not 7 times, but 77 times. Therefore, the kingdom of kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants as he began the settlement man who owed him 10000 bags of gold was brought to him. 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. At this, the 7 fell on fell on his knees before him.

Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go. But when the servant went out, he found 1 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. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged.

Be patient with me and I will pay it back, but he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servant 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 debts of yours because you begged me too. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I'd had on you? In anger, his master, handed him over to the jailers to be tortured. Until he should pay back all he owed.

This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. Heavenly father, we, thank you again for your word. We pray, please, that you would teach us. May your word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths, help us further. Now as we think about forgiving 1 another, help us to understand how we can do this, and what steps to take to forgive others.

Teach as we pray this morning. Oh, man. As an been said, we are in a sermon series. We're in the last of a sermon series on, the 1 anothers in the Bible. And we've been doing this as we've been starting up our gospel communities.

That's our small groups, our weekly, small groups that that get together, because we want the small groups to be places where the relationships are shaped by the gospel. Because that's what the gospel does. If you're a Christian, you've not been saved just to be in an individual relationship with god, you've been saved to come into a community of believers, the church. God doesn't savor so that we can be like polar bears going off and just being on our own, but rather we're more like bees, more like bees than bears that we are born into a community relating to 1 another, and it is the Goss that shapes that community. God's word is to shape what that community is like.

And as god's word, as the gospel shapes that community, so the Christian community is gonna be different from any other community, we will be different from the way the world relates to 1 another. It'll be different. And that is especially true of the 1 another we are looking at this morning. Forget 1 another. We're commanded several times in, the Bible to forgive 1 another, in Ephesians.

We are told be kind and compassionate to 1 another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, god forgave you. Just as god forgave you, forgive 1 another or colossians. Paul says bear with each other and give 1 another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the lord forgave you. And there are many other examples in the new testament where we are commanded to forgive 1 another.

Now the fact that the new testament says that we're to forgive 1 another means that the new testament is very realistic about what church life is gonna be like. We're gonna need to forgive 1 another. There are gonna be times where we let 1 another down. Where we hurt 1 another, offend 1 another, not deliberately, maybe, but nevertheless, we're gonna need to be a forgiving community. And community shaped by the gospel is not gonna be perfect, but it is gonna be forgiving.

And as I say, that means we will stand out from our culture because the culture around us while claiming to be very tolerant is, as we know, very unforgiving. You can think of celebrities who've made mistakes. And even if they say sorry, even if they say they've changed their views, their still not allowed to come back. The apology or the supposed change is viewed with suspicion. Now our culture says, if there is forgiveness, there should be limits on it.

Across this boundary and that it. And it's interesting that Peter comes to Jesus with something similar saying, is there a limit on forgiveness? Should there be a limit? So he says at the beginning of the passage that was read, if you're back on page 980 85, Peter went to Jesus and asked, lord how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister to who sins against me. Up to 7 times.

Well, now that's quite generous. I think, you know, someone offends you. 7 times sins against you. Does something against you. 7 times.

Peter's being quite generous there, I think. But Jesus says not 7 times, but 77 times. Which is another way of saying, unlimited amount. It's an unlimited forgiveness. That's what Jesus commands.

But of course, Jesus in this passage that we have read doesn't just say try as hard as you can to forgive or, you know, I suggest that you forgive. He's saying forgiveness, unlimited forgiveness is is essential for us. At the end of the passage, Jesus says that the servant who was unforgiving, verse 37, The pass the servant who was unforgiving, I don't mean, at verse 34, is thrown in prison. In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he could pay back all that was owed. And Jesus says, this is how the heavenly father, my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

So Jesus is saying forgiveness is is essential. Now doesn't that disturb you? It should disturb us. Jesus is saying whatever people do to you, However, frequently they do it. You must forgive.

That's the kind of community that we're to be. And we think But that's impossible supple, isn't it? How am I to do that? How are we to do that? Are we a bit more like Peter 7 times?

Yeah. That seems reasonable, but I'm limited dated? How can any of us do that? And maybe your past experience makes you feel this is impossible for you. Well, let's see what Jesus set.

How did he teach Peter? And we're gonna see 2 things. We're gonna see the power to forgive, and then we're gonna think about the steps in forgiving. So the power to forgive, how is it we're able to forgive? And then how do we go about doing it?

What are the steps in forgiveness? All from this passage? So first, the power. Jesus tells a story and it's a story of incredible forgiveness. So let's enter into this story.

Let's see the story that Jesus tells. It is the story of a king and his servant. That's how it begins. You've got a king who wants to settle his accounts with his servants, and there's 1 of the servants who owes him a lot of money. I quite like this translation, only for the comedy value, verse 24, as he began settling the account, a man who owed him 10000 bags of gold.

That makes it sound like the translators were pirates. Bags of gold. That's not the original. And the original, it talents, 10000 talents, and we need to know that that is a huge debt. I mean, that isn't just a big debt.

That is as astronomically big. Jesus has given this servant a debt, which is vast. It says at the bottom of the page. I only just spotted this today. It says at the bottom of the page, A talent was worth 20 years of a labor's wages.

Others have suggested that you could earn 1 talent in 1 year. This person owes 10000 them. Tim Keller in his book forgive, which is a really good book, really helpful. He does some maths on this, and he says, it is it would be the equivalent debt of about, today of about 400000000000 dollars. Which is, he says more than the gross national product of 80 percent of the world's countries.

Do you see the point Jesus has made? This is an enormous debt. And it is such a vast debt, and yet the master says, well, it's time to pay back, which is under standable. And he does says what should happen is what would have happened in Jesus' day, that since the guy can't pay the money back, he and his wife and his children, and all he has would be sold to repay the debt. That's first 25.

First 26. At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything. Now that is ridiculous. He is never gonna be to pay it back.

First 27, the servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go. And that is incredible forgiveness within the story. And people have rightly pointed out that what's going on there in the story is when the mask to cancels the debt. What he is really saying is, out of compassion for you, I will absorb the debt myself. I will take the hit.

Because when there's a debt, someone has to take the hit. Either the person who owes the debt has to pay it back or the person who is owed has to take the hit. Someone has to, and the master is saying, I will take it. It is an enormous debt, a vast amount, and I will take it for you. Now, of course, what Jesus is saying is, Peter, this is like you before the lord got, and actually he's saying this is true of all of us before the lord.

In other words, our debt before him is vast. It is far, far greater than we can possibly imagine. It is an infinitely large debt. And Jesus is saying, we need to recognize the greatness of our debt. We stand before god like this servant, our sin before god creates a size of debt we could not possibly pay back.

And has that sunk in for you? That that is your standing before god. Maybe this is news to you. Our tendency is to think, and it's very common for people to think, no, not everyone does. But very common for people to think, I'm not that bad.

I may have done 1 or 2 bad things. A few bad things, but I'm not that bad. I'm basically okay. I may not be perfect, but the Bible tells us that is not the case. Your debt before god is vast.

And the Bible gets this across to us in several ways. It talks about sin, which is what we're talking about, our debt before god, our offenses before god. It talks about our sin in lots of different ways using lots of different images to get across to us, the seriousness of it, the vastness of it, and that it is far more than just breaking a few rules, although that is true. 1 of the images that the Bible uses is that of treason. So in Romans chapter 1, for instance, it uses that kind of imagery of saying that the world all belongs to god.

He made it, and you belong to god. And everything that you have is from god. You owe him, in that sense, everything. But we don't treat god as god. Rather, we don't thank him, and we don't glorify him.

In our lives, we take what he can give. We enjoy them, but we don't respect him as god. We don't worship him, but we replace him. And we put other things in charge of our life, normally ourselves. And we live for things not god, but we live for things in this world.

The pleasures, the career, the family. We we live for those things and put them as number 1 in place of god. So we commit cosmic treason, taking god off the throne of the universe and putting ourselves in his place. And therefore our debt is vast. And there are other images that the Bible uses to describe sin.

Sometimes it describes it as adultery or, as being like a father and a son with the son wanting what the fathers got, but rejecting the father. The Bible is getting across to us that our sin, our debt before god is vast objectively, but also subjectively, relationally, it is disastrous that we have rejected god. And if you're not sure how vast your debt is before god, see what it took for him to absorb that debt. Because incredibly, the Bible says God's heart goes out to us as the master's heart went out to his servant. And he takes our debt for us.

And what did that cost him? It cost him his son. Jesus, dying on the cross in agony, bearing the weight of god's anger. That was god absorbing our debt for us. That's what it took, and that is your debt.

And we mustn't dare go to god and say, oh, but surely. Surely, you could have done it with less, because I'm not that bad. Surely, surely, you could have done it with a bit less than Jesus having to go to those great lengths. But then you think if could have paid our debt with less he would have done. If all it would have taken would have been Jesus' humiliation.

Well, that would have been may maybe enough. Maybe God, that should be enough, but that's not what Jesus had to do. Maybe the flogging would have been enough, but that's not what was enough. What needed to happen was Jesus going to the cross, dying in agony, bearing the weight of god's anger. That is what your debt required.

And god in his love absorbed our debt an incredible forgiveness of a vast debt. And that is not where the story ends. It starts with an extravagant outrageous forgiveness. And we do just need to pause there and say, look, if you're not yet a Christian, you do need to realize the vastness of your debt, but see the incredible forgiveness that god offers to you. That if you come to him.

He will wipe out that debt at the cost of his son. Will you come to him? Incredible forgiveness. But also incredible unforgiveness. That's where the story goes next.

So the servant who had the enormous debt written off, it says he went and found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred silver coins, it says. Now that is a significant amount. It's not as big as 10000 talents, but it's still a significant amount. You see at the bottom of the page again, it tells us a denarius with the usual daily wage of a day laborer. So it's 1 day's wage.

A hundred days wages, which is a hundred silver coins, that's quite a lot of money, today's money. You think that that's about a third of a year's wages. That's not in significant, is it? And that is what he's owed. And so he finds this servant and starts to choke him.

Now the last inevitably back to him, but he's doing it to his fellow servant. And he demands his money back. The fellow servant pleads with him in exactly the same way the first servant did before the master. First 29. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him.

Be patient with me, and I will pay it back. It's exactly the same words. And yet, there is no forgiveness, first 30, but he refused Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. Now if there was no first part to the story, we might think the servant was, well, quite justified in what he did. He's owed quite a lot of money.

And this is why, we can't really expect the people in the world around us to be forgiving people because they don't know of a forgiveness. Like god has given to us. They don't know of it. So, of course, people around us are going to be unforgiving, but Christians do know god's forgiveness. The first part of the story changes everything.

How could he do such a thing having been forgiven so much? So now, Jesus says, we must forgive 1 another. Here is the power to forgive. It is in knowing the first part of the story in having experienced a vast debt written off. And if you have experienced that, and Christians have experienced that, then we can forgive.

If you know god's forgiveness, we must forgive those who sin against us. Now I'm not saying that's easy, and neither is Jesus, but he is saying it's essential. And it's only possible if you've known that deeper forgiveness, that vast debt written off. That's where the power comes from. So what do we learn about how to forgive the steps to forgiving.

What are the steps in forgiveness? There are 4 of them, and I'm gonna go through them fairly quickly. But there's so much more to be said about forgiveness. And if you want to talk about afterwards, I'm very happy to do so. First step, recognize the debt.

Agknowledge what is owed to you. If someone sins against you, offends you, does something against you. You need to recognize recognize the debt, acknowledge what is owed to you. The master knew how much was owed to him, the servant knew how much was owed to him. First thing you need to do is recognize and acknowledge what is owed because when someone sins against you, there is always a debt.

It may be financial, but it may be emotional. It may be that you've lost reputation or that there's damage the damage may be psychological, it may be emotional, it may be physical. There is always a debt, and you need to recognize what that debt is. Forgiveness is not approving of what someone did against you. It is not excusing what someone did against you.

It is not justifying what they did against you. It is not denying what they did against you, nor is it not taking it seriously? We need to be honest about the debt that is owed to us, recognize the debt. Second, this is hard. Let your heart go out to them.

Now I know we may have in mind here very different levels of offense. So may have bigger things in mind, others smaller. And it may be very hard to do this. But as the master took pity on the man, so we need to let our our hearts go out to the offender. Miroslav Volth, who was a theologian, said this about forgiveness, quote on the screen there.

Forgiveness flounders, because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans, and I exclude myself from the community of sinners. I think that's very helpful because that is what we tend to do. If someone tends us. There's something against us. Our tendency is to exclude them from the community of humans.

In other words, we dehumanize people. Sometimes we will say if someone, oh, they're just a bully. They're just lie. They're just a whatever. And if we do that, we're making them out to be no longer a person.

They have become their offense in our eyes. So our hearts need to go out to them remembering that they are humans made in god's image, and I myself and in the community of sinners. Recognise the debts let your heart go out to them. Third. And this is the heart of forgiveness.

Cancel the debt. And this is hard. And here we need to have in mind the greater debts that would that has been canceled for us. Otherwise, we won't have the capacity to cancel the real and significant debt before us. 1 of the mistakes that we make is to switch the debts round.

We think our debt to god is significant, but not vast, but the debt others have towards me is vast. And if we do that, we won't be able to forgive because effectively we're saying the world, god even owes me. Now we need to see the vastness of our debt, what it cost god to cancel it before us, and then we can cancel the debt of others. Now this is painful because it means saying I will absorb the debt myself. I won't demand repayment.

I won't demand the other person's punishment, their humiliation or ridicule. I write off the debt. Tim Keller, again, says Forgiveness then is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost. Now we need to be clear.

That doesn't mean you don't confront the person with what they've done. If you were to look back, we won't don't have time to look back at it now, but if you look back earlier in chapter 18, the chapter has a lot about, how to deal with sin within the church community. And part of that is that you must confront someone when they sin against you. So clearly confronting someone and forgiving are not mutually exclusive. We can forgive and still confront.

But we must do the 2 together. Because if we don't forgive, then when we confront someone, we will be doing so with anger, wanting them to pay, and wanting vengeance on them. So we need to forgive and confer run. And it doesn't mean you don't pursue justice. Tim Keller, again, in his book forgive.

Again, I would highly recommend it. It is he says it is sadly true that sometimes by teaching about forgiveness, churches have covered up sin and abuse within their communities because they're saying, well, yes, but you must forgive. And church leaders have abused their positions. When actually, he quite rightly says in his book that you should pursue justice as well as forgive. So he says, another quote for you, slightly longer 1 from Tim Keller.

Knowing Jesus' sacrifice, he says, makes it possible for us to forgive the perpetrator and then go to speak to him or her, seeking justice and reconciliation if possible. Now, however, we do not do it for our sake, but for justice sake, for god's sake, for the perpetrator's sake, and for future victim's sake. The motivation is radically changed. So forgiveness. The writing off of the debt doesn't mean that we don't confront.

It mean we don't pursue justice. It is a decision of the will to cancel the debt. We are to forgive whether someone asks for forgiveness or not, we are to forgive. And the last step, aim for reconciliation. The master releases the servant from the debt.

Let's TimGo having restored the relationship. Now it isn't always possible to be reconciled. If the other person doesn't want to be, there's nothing you can do about it, and you, as sometimes, yeah, they just don't want to be reconciled. Sometimes the person who who has offended you, they may not be alive. You may not be able to be reconciled with them.

And it doesn't necessarily mean reconciliation doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship goes back to how it was before the offense. A church treasurer who has embezzled the funds of the church, asked for forgiveness. It's forgiven. Doesn't necessarily mean they get back to being the church treasurer. That may be a very unwise move.

So the relation, it's not that you already go back to exactly how things were before, but nevertheless reconciliation is what we're aiming for. Which will mean? Since the debt has been written off, since we're aiming for reconciliation, that you're not then bringing the effect continually, bringing the offense up before the other person or before others or even before yourself. It's not a constant going back to those old things to bring them up before others. I quite like Frank Skinner, the comedian, you might have seen the clip of him saying, when he and his girlfriend have big rows Frank Skinner is saying, when he and his girlfriend have big rows, he says it's like watching a band in a con So they start with new material, and then they move on to the greatest hits.

And often that's what we will do when speaking to someone. You might start with new new problems against them, but then we go back to the old things. And Jesus is saying don't do that. We don't bring it up again. We don't keep bringing up old defenses.

Reconciliation is in view. So those are the 4 steps. How do we do it? What's the power to do it? It comes from knowing a greater debt that has been written off our offense against god.

That empowers us then to take these steps to forgive 1 another. And yet it's so often, common in church is that they are marked by unforgiveness. Sadly, it is so often the case. People who don't speak to 1 another, or distance themselves from others. Unforgiveness wrecked churches.

And we need to hear again Jesus' warning at the end. This is how he ends. This is how we're gonna end. That he warns them. He says verse 35 about the servant who is thrown in prison, he says because they were unforgiving.

He says, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. There is the warning. Being those who won't forgive shows we don't God's forgiveness. And Jesus is warning us with love, saying the father will treat you like that if you don't forgive. And if you're convicted on this, the place to go is back to the cross.

What a great time to have communion together, to go back to the cross, to Jesus's death for you, ask for forgiveness, see Jesus pay the price for you, know your debt counts assault and then forgive others as you have been forgiven. This maybe has raised issues for you that you'd like to talk about. I'm very happy to do so if you want to fix the time to meet up or do talk with 1 of the other elders as well. We'd be very happy to talk about this. I'm going to finish for us with a press.

Heavenly father, we praise you for the great debt that has been canceled that at the cross Jesus bore our sin, paid our debt, bore your wrath for us. Father would that sink more deeply into our hearts. And then would you help us to be a forgiving community knowing your forgiveness and then forgiving others as you have forgiven us. Ah, man.