6/2/2002

Let's Pray:

Father we are always indebted to you. Even though we don't always think about it, we are indebted to you for everything. You give us life, you sustain our life, you give us family, you give us friends, you give us the purpose for life, you give us Christ who died on the cross that we might have life. So, Father we are indebted to you in every way imaginable. And we thank you Father for this wonderful day you have given us. We thank you for this time we can come to honor you. Father, help us to honor you appropriately with pure hearts. You said these people are to worship you in spirit and in truth, so in our hearts you want to worship you with the words of our heart and our mouth. We want to thank you and bless you and praise you. And we thank you this day in Jesus Name, Amen.

Matthew 18. Find that if you would. Matthew 18 is about in the middle of Matthew and we are doing a study on the parables, and this one is a very familiar one. A very important one. In fact, we will be spending more than one Sunday on the concepts presented here. There is a small area for notes in your bulletin, but that might not suffice. You may want to find another piece of paper and write a couple things down. We are going to deal with five questions today. So we will give five questions and five answers. Won't be too hard to follow as we go. And I am going to talk fast so listen fast, OK? I'll try to talk slowly for some of you slower listeners.

Chapter 18 of Matthew Verse 21 says, 'Peter came and said to Him, "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 seventy times seven. For this reason the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. And when he had begun to settle them there was brought to him one who owed him ten thousand talents. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. The slave therefore falling down prostrated himself before him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.' "And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii's and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe.' "So this fellow slave fell down and began to entreat him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you.' "He was unwilling however, but went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. "So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. "Then summoning him, his lord said to him, "You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you entreated me, "Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave even as I had mercy on you?' "And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. "So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."

Well there are a number of elements here that we just need to understand in order to understand what is happening here. The tradition of the Jews was that you forgave somebody three times. Anything beyond that was more than you need to. So Peter was being kind suggesting seven times. Jesus said, 'No, just become a forgiver".. In fact, another place Jesus was asked, "What if my brother sins against me seven times a day?' And Jesus said, 'Forgive him seven times a day.' In fact, the word here for offense or sins against is actually a term that means that they have pre-meditatively set out to hurt you. It wasn't an inadvertent stepping on you toe. It was a plan to hurt you. Peter was saying "Shall I forgive that kind of sin seven times", and Jesus said, 'Seventy times seven.' 

Then he tells the parable. We just read the parable so you are familiar with that. The ten thousand talents here is equal to a ton of money. Ok. Lots of money, in fact one commentator I read who was a British commentator that at the time when he wrote this, and this commentary was written a long time ago, it was about equal to the mount in the British treasury at that time. So it was an impossible debt to repay. The fellow could not ever repay this debt. Period, there was no way. No how. Well a hundred denarii which we wouldn't forgive of his fellow slave was only about a days wage. So in comparison it was more than he could ever even imagine repaying. And compared to almost nothing. And so here was the king saying, 'I will forgive you, and release you of that debt and you should do the same for somebody who has a small debt against you. So shall my Father do, it says, to each of you.'

The torturers here in the jail scene is not uncommon since a person could actually be handed over to the jailer until the debt was paid. Which means they would sell his family, they would sell his goods, they would sell his home, kind of repossession now days. They take a car back, they auction it off, and they get almost what they need and then they charge you for the rest of it. As I understand that is how it goes. And so that is what would happen. This person would be put in prison, his wife and family could be sold as slaves, all his positions sold to repay the debt. Well, it was not a nice place to be. The torturer here was not likely because he was not in because he was such an evil person but he had debts to repay. The torture is just indicated jail as a general sense. But there is some torture of course just being in jail, just being where you didn't want to be. 

So understanding that, question number one: What is forgiveness? What is forgiveness? Well, we have a beautiful picture drawn here and a number of the concepts that are used in the Old and New Testament are exemplified here in this passage. But the words of the Old Testament are, I think, very instructful and helpful in this understanding. And also in the New Testament there are a number of different words. We have a language that uses one word, forgive. If somebody says, 'Forgive me,' and we know what that word kinda means. Well the Old and New Testaments both use a number of different words to draw pictures, kind of like Cindy does as she signs thesongs, the Old Testament Hebrews and the New Testament Greek use different word pictures the help us understand these things. So one of the Old Testament words was called salach which means to pardon a person. Abar meant to pass by or not notice, to even hide something and not even see something. There are people who are like me who do that. They can walk by all kind of things and never even notice it. Once you have gone down a certain road so many times you don't even notice that the homes are here and there, just because you are looking somewhere else. So to not notice is one word for forgive. 

To acquit is another word. To not blame or to set somebody free because of a crime is another word for forgiveness. Zachar means to not call to mind. Achar not to think about it again. Means to let it go in our mind so it no longer is brought up in our head. Nasah means to carry or to accept or to lift, as we see the King here it says, 'The Lord felt compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.' Well who took care of the debt? Who bore the loss of the money? The King did, didn't he. The servant took the money, he spent all the money, but the King was the one who was out the money. Because it was never the servant's money anyway. So he gained all the benefit of the embezzlement here and the King bore all the costs. So he carried, he lifted, he bore the cost of the sin. So in forgiveness we bear the cost of somebody else's sin. We carry the cost of their sin, for a time at least. Nasah means to carry or accept or lift. Rachaq means to abandon or to be distant from or to remove, means to be separated. Remember Jesus says, 'That God separates our sin from as far as the East is from the West; in the deepest part of the sea. So to separate ourselves from smething is to remove or to be distant from. Sur means to turn away from, means to turn away so we can't see what is behind us. Calesh means to pardon. 

New Testament terms, Another Old Testament term, one of the most interesting is call Kaphar it means to hide in fact, the word picture is to cover over with pitch. It means to put something down and then put pitch over it like roof tar. You have seen that. How many of you would like to uncover something that has been covered with roof tar. I don't. Back when my wife's Dad and I used to roof together, back when we were first married. We used to roof houses. I would roof houses during the day and work at Pepsi at night. And sometimes at different places you had to use some roof tar to cover over things to make sure they didn't leak. Well, you used a stick or something so that you didn't get it on your hands. If you got it on your hands it stayed there for a long time. And so to forgive means to put something down, cover it with pitch so you can't see it anymore, and you don't want to pick it back up again. You don't want to touch it again because it gets you all covered with it. And so to forgive means to set it aside never to look at it, to ignore it, not even go back there. The New testament words are very interesting. There is one primary word, aphiemi, which means to put away, to leave, to ignore, to drop it and even break it almost like dropping and breaking a pot. And the other word for forgive means is charisma, which means to treat graciously. To treat graciously somebody. So they combine the Old Testament and New Testament words to forgive. If I have forgive something means I have put it down, I cover it with pitch, I don't want to touch it to pull it back up again to look at it, I don't think about it anymore, in fact, I turn the other way and in fact I bear the cost of it. By the way, anybody figure out what this is yet? (I am carrying a backpack, which hadn' t been mentioned up to this point.) This is somebody else's problems I have been carrying around. Alright, if I don't forgive somebody I carry it around, don't I? I carry around their problem. Well, to forgive means I don't have to carry their problem around anymore. What I'll do is put it right here. I just forgave it didn't I. I put it somewhere I don't even see it again, we can walk around and look at other things we won't notice it again. Now if we want that thing again all I have to do is go pick it up, right. Why would I want to do that? It was fairly uncomfortable, it was warm under these lights, I don't actually need it today. I won't need it til next fall, and so I really don't have any use for that thing. Why would I carry it around? So, with unforgiveness, we carry around what is not ours. What good is it going to do for us to carry around mebody's else's sin. So first of all, what is forgiveness? It means that we put something down, we hide it, we walk away from it, we ignore it, we don't look at it again, we don't talk about it again. In fact, we put it out of our mind so we don't think about it anymore and then add to it the other New Testament word which is to treat graciously. Means that we treat the sinner with grace, as a forgiven person. So what is forgiveness? We put it aside out of sight, don't talk about it again, don't bring it up in our mind again, and then we treat the person as a forgiven person, with grace. 

Second question, Who can forgive? Two people, God and me. God doesn't have to forgive. I do. God doesn't have to forgive because a persons sins are not forgiven until they confess their sin and repent of them. See, if a person never confesses their sin and ask God's forgiveness, they are not forgiven. In fact I believe, if a person confesses their sin and then supposedly repents and never turns from their sin I am not sure if they are forgiven yet. Because they never really confessed them. To confess and not change means there is no true confession. Next week we will talk about baptism on Sunday evening at baptism we'll talk a little more about it. But when John was baptizing people, we call him John the Baptist; he was actually John the Baptizer, because there were no denominational names in those days. But he was John the Baptist, he was baptizing people and some people came, wanting to be baptized and he said, 'No, I am baptizing for the forgiveness of sins on the basis of repentance. You go back and make some changes in your life, you show the fruit of repentance and I'll baptize you.' Just because you want to be baptized doesn't mean anything, you need to show the change in your life. So confession that does not bring about change is not true confession. And so Jesus needs to hear us say, 'Yes, I have sinned, and I don't ever plan to do that one again.' Sometimes we do anyway against our best wishes and desires but true confession means we also repent. It means a change of heart, a change of life. In fact, if you look in the Book of 2 Corinthians you will find a man Paul talks about in the Corinthian Church who had sinned greatly and had not repented or confessed. The church had done nothing in response. Paul said, "people I know what you need to do. You need to get this man out of your church because he is destroying your witnesses. You are not doing anything about it." In 2 Corinthians he addresses the same man and says, 'Now bring this same man back into the congregation because he has repented.' His repentance has come about, he is changed so bring him back in and treat him as a forgiven person, with grace. And so God forgives on the basis of our repentance and our confession and the change of our life. So He is willing to forgive. God also forgives something else. He forgives the sin. Remember King David when he sinned against God by being adulteress with Bathsheba and then having her husband killed named Uriah? You can read this back in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. Read the story about David and Bathsheba. He sinned by taking another man's wife and then having him killed in the battle, and so he was guilty of adultery, murder, lying, and cheating, but when he came to his senses he confessed and said, 'God against you, you only have I sinned.' What does he mean, you only? Didn't he sin against Uriah, didn't he sin against Bathsheba, didn't he sin against other people, how can he say only sinned against God? Well, separate them out. Our sin in truly against God. The offense is against another person. In my mind at least I separate them that way. If I steal from you, I have offended God's character. I have done what he would not do. I am supposed to be holy as God is holy. He said, 'Thou shalt not steal'. So if I steal from you, I have offended God by sinning. So there is the first offense, that is sin. The second offense is against you because I took what is yours. So not only did I offend God by stealing but I also didn't love my neighbor as myself. I didn't honor you as I would honor myself and so therefore I have offended you by stealing from you. So the sin is against God, the offense is against you. So the person who sins needs to go to God and say, 'God, I failed you. I sinned against you'. And we will also need to go to the person that we sinned against and say, 'Person, whatever your name might be, in this way I have sinned against you. I have harmed you, will you please forgive me'. So we forgive the offense that another person has made against us, but they still have to go to God. So if we forgive them. they are off our hook but they are still on God's hook unless they go to God and ask for forgiveness from Him. So there are two levels of forgiveness. One, that we forgive the offense or the hurt, and God forgives the sin upon their repentance.

Question # 3, do we have to forgive? Yes, we do, yes we do. Ok, Jesus says at the very end, 'This is what happens to you if you do not forgive, you get handed back to the torturers'. So forgiveness really protects me. You are handed back to the torturers, let me tell you what I believe this means. When the first servant who was forgiven refused to forgive the second servant, Jesus says he was sent back to the torturers until his debt was paid. By the way, was his debt going to be repaid? That huge amount? No it never was. So he was going to be in jail for a long time. He was going to suffer because of his own unforgiveness. Ok, I don't think we are talking about here eternal forgiveness and unforgiveness. I believe he is talking about this life. The torture is that our past sin comes back and gets us. Let me describe how it works. At least how I believe it works. If forgiveness means... by the way anyone been thinking about that backpack for awhile? No, it's gone isn't it, we don't think about it. Let's talk about it for a minute. Ok let's go look at it, in fact, and see if it has left. (Nope, it's still there.) Ok, here is what happens, God has forgiven me because I have ask him, right. Suppose I did something horrendous against you and I have ask God's forgiveness and I have asked your forgiveness, and then somebody offends me and I refuse to forgive them. I begin to talk about that person, saying "do you know what that person 
did to me, do you know what a bum they are, do you know how rotten they are, do you know what they did to me, they said this and they hurt my reputation, they took something from me, they did something really despicable to me." 

Do you know what the other person is going to say? They are going to say, 'Hmmmm don't you remember awhile ago what you did? So, why are you talking about them so much, seems like I remember you are kind of a sinner yourself." So if forgiveness means that we put things away so they can't be seen again, that is what God does with ours. When we say God will you forgive me, he puts our sins in the deepest part of the sea it says. They are not to be brought back up again. But just like this first servant, that is what he did. It says, 'The Lord of the slave gave full compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. He released him from the consequences, his person consequences at least, and he forgave the debt. When that servant would not forgive the next servant, his debt was brought back out wasn't it? If I don't forgive my neighbor and I start talking about their sin, I believe that God allows mine to resurface. The things we thought were hidden, somebody is going to remember. Somebody is going to say, 'Wait a minute here, How come you keep talking about this person's sin when I remember you were kind of a rotten sinner too.' And the things we thought were covered over with pitch kind of resurface, they get resurrected and we don't really like that, and so our sins that we thought were gone, come back and bite us. 

Not in a very good place either. Because we thought they were gone but when I keep uncovering somebody else's sin, mine resurfaces also. So forgiveness protects me from being handed over to the torturer. That is why Jesus says, 'If you do not do this, this is what will happen to you. So shall my heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart.' So there is no forgiveness for your brother who owes you a little bit, the things God has forgiven will start popping up again. And they are going to hurt you. Torturing hurts, by the way. I have never been tortured but I would guess that is why it is called torture, it hurts. And so the things that I thought were hidden are going to come back up and they are going to hurt me. The things that you thought were hidden are going to pop back up and they are going to hurt you, if we don't forgive the person who hurt us a little bit when we have hurt God deeply. 

That is why Jesus also says in Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, when he gives us the Lord's prayer he says, 'For if you for give men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men your heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions.' It is the principle all through scripture. If I don't forgive and forget about theirs, the ones that I thought were gone, of my own, will begin to resurface. I believe that is what he is talking about because forgiveness means to cover over and not look at. To not forgive means to uncover and look at. And so if means my sins will resurface if I can't forgive yours.

Your sins will resurface if you can't forgive somebody else. So forgiveness, do I want to forgive? Sure I do because it protects me. It also protects me from carrying their sin. Why would I want to carry around a backpack I have no use for? Why would I want to carry around somebody else's problem with God? It protects me to forgive them, to be done wth it. 

Let me give you an example. There is a young lady that I knew years and years, and years ago, in fact before I knew any of you folks except a few of you that I had known since childhood. A young lady who had been really, really, had been I should say, really, really slim, attractive lady, now she was attractive but much heavier and she had put on weight on purpose. Because she had gone to a place where she shouldn't have gone. She 
had gone to a party that her parents had told her not to go to, at that party she had been attacked, so she was going to make sure that nobody would ever be attracted to her again by being as ugly as she could. And so she did everything she, kind of let herself go. And on purpose put on weight, dressed in sloppy clothes, things like that because she was not going to let that kind of thing happen again. Oddly enough, I said the thing you need to do is forgive that person. Which brings up the next question.

What if they don't ask forgiveness, do I still have to forgive them? If they don't ask forgiveness do I still have to forgive them? Ok, Yes. Because forgiveness protects me. We think that forgiveness releases them from consequences of their own sin. It doesn't, it just protects me from carrying around their sin. It protects me from carrying around the problems that they have caused. They have caused me problems, sure. But why do I want to keep carrying it around. If protects me, by the way, in this lady's case, the guy had planned to hurt her. I didn't care, he was from the Middle East, he actually had a harem. He treated her as one of his harem, just as a piece of property, and took her physically, and went back to where he lived. And never thought of her again, probably. He was actually a prince, Shiek or Shak? He was a noble men of some sort in that part of the world and so he had many women and had many wives and treated them like possessioins. So he didn't care if she was hurt by this. He didn't care of it ruined her life, he was never going to ask forgiveness, he probably forgot about it. Does that mean she didn't have to forgive? No, because she is carrying around something now that is destroying her life. I said, you need to forgive this man no matter what. No matter if he ever thought of you again because he might have done it on purpose. In fact Peter says, 'Shall I forgive my brother who offends me, which means to plan to hurt me and does hurt me. Yes, that is the kind of offense we are talking about.' This person might have planned to hurt you. They might have thought about how best to hurt you. They might have forgotten about it. They might not even care if you are hurt, they might even hate you and that is why they did it. Do we still forgive them? Yes, because it protects us from their sin. It protects us from carrying it around. Pretty soon if you don't you step into the room where they are then your dislike for them, your bitterness against them, your hate for them overshadows everything, you can't enjoy life anymore. Pretty soon you only see that person and you just have to avoid that person because you hate them so much, or you have to do something about it, or you just can't stand life because of them. No, forgiveness protects me from them, from their sin. And I still treat them graciously. Which brings up the last question. If I have forgiven them and they never ask forgiveness how do I trust them? Is forgiveness the same as trust? This time say, NO. Ok, forgiveness is not the same as trust. Anybody every been bit by a dog? I never have been, nipped once in a while, you get little yippy dogs will snip at you when you are going into somebody's house or something but I have never been actually bitten where it drew blood or poked a hole in my skin. Many people have been. Well, the bite may heal up but you don't go out near the dog again do ya? Just because healing means you don't show the scars, you may show some scars but you are healed up from the problem. It doesn't mean you go back and put yourself in the same situation. If the person has never come to you and said, 'I realize what I have done to you and I realize that I have hurt you, will you please forgive me, thereby putting the weight of the offense on them, not on you, in a sense. At least if they ask forgiveness, you have an opportunity to yes I forgive you and verbalize it. At that point when they have said, 'I understand what I have done and please forgive me and I won't do that again, we can say, 'Ok." I'll forgive you and I will now come near you again. I'll allow nearness again that was there before and was broken because of the pain. But if they didn't care, they don't care, they never come back, and even if you mention it they say, 'What are you talking about?', don't trust them. Mostly likely they will do it again. To treat somebody graciously doesn't mean you have to put yourself in harms way, in the military terms. You don't have to put yourself in harms way and put yourself in a place where you can be hurt by them more, and more and more, and more. That would be just silly, wouldn't it? We still treat a person graciously even if they are an enemy. We pray for them, we ask God to work on their behalf. Even if they are our enemy we still treat them graciously. If a person is never asked forgiveness, we forgive them yet, but we don't treat them with the same kind of a trust. Because they are not trustworthy. rustworthiness means they accept the responsibility and don 't plan to do it again. Then we give them a measure of trust and they prove that trust, we feel freer to give more later on, more and more of it. But if they have never come to that place, then we are wise not to trust them; to be careful around them. There are people that I grew up, there was a guy in my same grade as I was back in high school and every time that you would be around him, he could make jokes about anything. I mean he was one of the funniest guys I ever been around. I haven't seen him for years, but he was so funny that he would start talking about people and he would make you laugh like crazy and then you would realize he making fun of them. He is ridiculing them, but he is doing it in such a way that it seemed really funny at the moment. Then you think, "I hope he doesn't start talking about me, because he could start ridiculing me as somebody else" And so I began to realize that I don't want to be around this guy. Why would I want to be around this guy when he flatters you for a minute and then he kinda cuts of legs out from under you and you realize that you have been made fun of. Flattery is a cruel form of hatred according to Proverbs. And so this guy would flatter you and lift you up, then "pow" just like that he would make fun of you. Since I can't trust this guy, I think I'll just be with somebody else. And if there are people like that in your life that hurt you, then you may have to treat them graciously and have to forgive them for your own protection. It doesn't mean that you should continue to put yourself in their place so they can keep on hurting. Forgiveness means to put down the load, put it somewhere where you can't see it, I am not going to cover my backpack with pitch because I will use it later on someday. But put it so you can't look at it, and don't think about it anymore. It means to accept the responsibility, not the responsibility for the sin, but the load of pain that was yours as a result of somebody else's sin. The King is the one who took the loss. The slave spent all the money. He got all the benefit. And so it seems like when we forgive we let the other person off scott free and nothing happens to him then. That is not true. In Proverbs and also Romans it saids, 'God says, "Do not repay evil for evil, vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. I will repay. I will repay." He says instead, if your enemy is hungry, feed them; if he is thirsty give him a drink for in so doing it will keep burning coals upon their head. Which we talked about last week, and we won't explain that one again today. But forgiveness puts it aside, puts it out of sight, makes it so I don't think about it again. If it comes up in my mind again I say, 'No I am not thinking about that again, and I am not going to put that thing back on my back again and carry around somebody else's sin. I am going to protect myself from their sin, by forgiving them. And I am not going to look at it again, in fact, it is covered over with pitch, I am not going to lift it up again cause I get all dirty again. Plus, I am going to forgive somebody else when they offend me because it protects me from my sins that I thought were covered, and are covered, until I display unforgiveness. Jesus said, 'If you can't forgive, I can't.' Which means that if I don't forgive, the things I thought were covered over, get uncovered. And I wouldn't want that and you wouldn't want that. So forgive. 

Let's pray.

Father we thank you this day for the example of Christ that he came on the cross and said ,'It is finished.' He paid the price for forgiveness, he accepted the cost of all of our sin. All of us are like sheep, we go are own way but it says, 'You laid upon him the inequity of us all.' We are free of sin because you paid the price for it. But Father help us when we accept that great gift of forgiveness that we extend it to others; to our neighbor, to our sister, to our brother, our father, our mother, our husband, our wife, our child, whoever it might be that has offended us, that we extend that same favor to them. And give them forgiveness, setting aside that sin so we don't see if again. And protecting ourselves from their sins, the consequences that go along with their sin. Father give us that strength that is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. But help us to do it. In Jesus Name we ask it.
Amen.

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