Forgiveness: A Key to Freedom in Christ

 In Matthew 18, Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant shows that those who have received God’s overwhelming mercy are called to forgive others from the heart. This sermon explores forgiveness as a decision of the will, not forgetting or excusing, and warns that unforgiveness creates bitterness, spiritual bondage, and distance from God. True freedom in Christ includes releasing offenses by God’s grace. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The sermon text reading for today is Matthew chapter eighteen verses twenty-one through thirty-five. You can find this passage in the Sanctuary Bible on page fourteen ninety-nine. Please listen as I read God's word. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand 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 servant 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 that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. Pay back what you owe me, he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him. Be patient with me. Be patient with me. He grabbed him and half tried to choke him. Pay back what you owe me, 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 the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants 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 that 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 he owed. This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Good morning. Let's try that again. Good morning. Good. We're hoping you're awake before we start the sermon because you know what happens. Uh and as we uh come, I'm Dan Moose. I have worked for the district. I worked for the district up to about two weeks ago, the North Central District. I was overseeing church planting. Uh, we worked with Pastor Fred and a group of you a few days ago, didn't we, Mary Lou? A long time ago. We worked on the merger that brought us to where we're at today. And it's been great to see what God's done here with you all. Right now I'm working for another group. I'm working one day a week uh with uh Paul Burr, and they have second church, second chair church planting, and they come alongside, we come alongside church planters and help them. And so um a little bit, I gotta do a little bit to keep keep off the street. My wife Cheryl is down here in front row and glad to have her with us today, too. So um today I think most of us have probably heard the verse from John 8 36 that says, So the if the Son has set you free, you're free indeed. Are you really free? How many of you are b as believers are really free? I think many of us are saved. Yes, we've come to know Christ. Yes, we were new a person in Jesus. Yes, we have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Yes, we've been fully forgiven. Yes, we're free from our past and bondage, but why as followers of Jesus many times do we still struggle with things that are holding us back? What are some of the things that are holding us back? This brings to, I was raised on a dairy farm back in Pennsylvania many years ago. And one day we're out in our yard, and here comes a little big old dog with a collar dragging a chain running through the yard. Broke free from its doghouse. You older ones know what we're talking about. The dogs were always outside in a doghouse and broke free from his doghouse and traveled about a quarter of a mile. Dad said, catch that dog, because if he if we don't catch him, he may go someplace else where that chain gets tangled up and he could get killed or he'll get lost forever. How many of us are like that? Was the dog free? Yeah, he was free. Technically, he was free. Did he have a problem? Yeah, he had a 10-foot chain running behind. You know, a little big old dog with a 10-foot chain. So anything could tangle that. And I'm afraid that many times as Christians, we continue to drag that chain. To really be free, that dog needed to have that unsnapped from his collar, didn't he? But I wonder what may be holding us back as Christians to really be free to walk in the fullness of Christ and in that freedom he's promised us. Many times we have those things that are holding us back, and Jesus brings out one that many times a lot of us Christians struggle with, and that's forgiveness. And that's what we want to look at today. We want to look at Jesus' teaching on forgiveness. What a powerful passage. As we as Linus read that passage, we see here, and I love Peter. Peter's one of my favorite guys in the Bible, because you never know what's going to come out of his mouth, right? And so he's really coming to Jesus and he's trying to prove himself. See, if we're not totally free, we have to prove ourselves. He's trying to prove who that he's, you know, if I forgive my brother seven times, that's good, isn't it? What did Jesus say? 70 times seven. Oh, wow. And you start to see what Jesus is telling him there. Forgiveness is a lifestyle full of mercy and grace. Forgiveness is not just me saying, oh, and dealing with one thing. No, that becomes a lifestyle where I forgive all the time. And so Jesus then shares that parable. And in this parable, the first servant, he had what, a hundred bags in the scripture here. It said a hundred bags of gold. Uh, other ones say 10,000 talents. You know what that works out to be? About 60 million days of pay. Any of you are gonna live to 60 million? You're not even making that, Glynnis, are you? That's a long time. And you stop and realize, is there any way that he could pay that back? So when he had to pay it, all of a sudden, there's a problem. And so he, the master says, I'm gonna sell you into slavery, I'm gonna sell your kids, I'm gonna sell your wife, and you are sold. And he falls on his knees and he begs and he says, Don't give me time. There's no way he could have paid it back. But the king was willing to forgive him. And then he goes out, and as he's going home, or we don't know what the details of that, but as he's going, he sees somebody owes him what? 100 days' wages or 100 days' work. So 100 compared to 60 million? What does he do? He grabs him and he says, You have to pay it back now, but it can't. And it says he had took him to the jailer and put him in jail until he could pay it back. Was he just? Yes. Was he moral? No. Was he merciful? No. And so we all of a sudden we start to see that what has happened here is, yes, he made things just, he did something just, but did you see what Jesus says at the well, first the let's read what the uh master said, verse 32. You wicked servant, when he was brought back to him, you forg I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger the master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. That's the rest of his life, right? Do you see the last verse? The last verse is a scary verse. So also, my heavenly father, will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. What's it look like to forgive our brothers and sisters from our heart? What's it look like that our heart is free from unforgiveness so that we can really live in that live out that life of mercy and grace? Flip Ephesians 4 23 says, Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, what? Just as God forgave you in Christ Jesus. How much did Christ forgive you? Everything. All of it. Have you really accepted that forgiveness? He's forgiven you. Have you accepted it? But then he says what? He says you're to forgive others just the same. Jesus paid it all for something we could never repay. And he's saying, now go and do that to someone else. Jesus is God is calling us to forgive everyone just as we have been forgiven. Is that an option? No. Sounds to me like it's a command. So, what's it mean to forgive from our heart? Well, forgiveness is not forgetting. A lot of people say, well, we'll just overlook it and walk away from it. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not excusing. Well, you know, he just did that. No, forgiveness is not excusing. Forgiveness is not ignoring the hurt or the grief. Forgiveness is also not reconciliation. Reconciliation is the goal of forgiveness, but there has to be forgiveness first. You can have forgiveness long before there's ever reconciliation. But you can't have reconciliation if you and I are not fully able and willing to forgive. So you have to look at that, and we need to realize that for reconciliation to happen, both parties have to be repentant and be humble and come back together. Both parties have to be willing to rebuild their trust. And also the offender has to be safe. So what is forgiveness? This is the definition I'd like to use. Forgiveness is a decision of the will to release the offense of the offender by personally suffering or paying the penalty for the offense by God's grace. Read that again. Forgiveness is a decision of the will to release the offense of the offender by personally suffering or paying the penalty of the offense by God's grace. Number one, it's a decision of my will. It's personally deciding and acting on forgiving. It's saying, I will forgive. Hey, folks, don't wait till you want to. You know why? You'll never want to. Because that just that hurt grows in us. Secondly, it's a releasing of the offense of the other person. Or, another way to put that, it's personally paying for and accepting the consequences of the penalty of the offense. In other words, if I forgive you, if I forgive you, Dave, $1,000, who lost $1,000? Who gained $1,000? And see, you have to pay that. I want to read something that Keller said. Tim Keller, there's a statement in his book in Jesus is King on page 110 that says this. True forgiveness always entails suffering. So the debt of the wrong doesn't vanish. Either they pay it or you pay it. But here's the irony. Only if you pay that price of forgiveness, only if you absorb the debt, is there any chance of righting the wrong. If you confront somebody with what they've done wrong while you've got vengeance in your heart, they probably won't even listen to you. They'll sense that you're not seeking justice but revenge, and they'll reject anything you say. You'll just perpetrate the cycle of retaliation, retaliation, retaliation. Only if you refrain from vengeance and paid the cost of forgiveness will you have any hope of getting them to listen to you, of seeing their own error. And even if they do not listen to you at first, your forgiveness breaks the cycle of further reprisal. If we know that forgiveness always entails suffering for the forgiver, and that the only hope of rectifying and righting wrongs comes by paying the cost of suffering, then it should not surprise us when God says, the only way I can forgive the sins of the human race is to suffer. Either you will have to pay the penalty for sin or I will. Sin always entails a penalty. Guilt cannot be dealt with unless someone pays. The only way God can pardon us and not judge us is to go to the cross and absorb it into Himself. I must suffer, Jesus said. Wow. Do we hear that if we're going to truly forgive, who's going to pay the price for being offended? I am. Jesus did it for us. Jesus, there's no way, there's no way that any of us could have earned our righteousness, right? There's no way that we had a right way to get back to God. So Christ, that's why Christ took it on himself. That's why Christ had to die. And if we're going to forgive, and if we're going to be forgiving people, then, and if we're going to forgive from our hearts, we have to do the same. We are the ones who come and say, What? I'll suffer. That's part of joining in Christ's suffering. I'm convinced. Because he taught us by forgiving us, by forgiving us, he paid that price. If we're going to be Christ like them, what are we going to do? We're going to be willing to pay the price. Just as he did for us. So really paying that price, we then, it's an act of living out who we are. It's an act of living out of being a believer. I think it's an act of gratitude as well of obedience. A decision of your will. It's a lifestyle forgiveness. Some of you are saying, Well, Moose, I don't have anything. I don't have anybody that's offended me that I've not dealt with. I thought that too until about a year and a half ago. God started to show me one that I'd held on to for how old am I? 70. So 72 years. Well, I'll go 65. What I'm saying, it didn't happen until I was a little older. But I had something. My mother offended me. I had something in my heart that I held against my mother. And I so wished I would have talked to her 13 years ago before she died. I wonder what it would have made. How it would have affected my mother if she would have known it. I forgave her from my heart. I wonder if any of you have something like that. You have somebody that's we're talking. And here's some diagnostic questions. The first diagnostic question to know if I'm struggling with unforgiveness is do you find yourself dwelling on a past hurt or offense and having strong negative reactions? Do you find yourself negatively reacting whenever you hear the name, title, or accomplishment of a certain person? Why does that bother you? There's probably an offense there. Do you find yourself having a past offense or hurt that hinders your personal walk with Jesus? Do you find yourself bitter toward a person who hurts someone close to you and you took on their hurt? A lot of that happens at triangulation. We can talk about that another time. Do you find yourself holding on to the hurt from the past because you want to get your justice? Do you find yourself unable to pray for God's greatest blessing on a person? Is there something going through your mind right now and you're saying, man, you know, I can't. The change in my life, my mom told me at age 12, 13 I could call her Mary as long as I didn't respect. What did I call her when we were talking here earlier? Why? I forgave her. Wow. What happens as a result of unforgiveness in our lives? Well, number one, it gives Satan a foothold in your life. Look at Ephesians 4, 26. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry, and do not give Satan a foothold. Unforgiveness gives Satan a foothold. How many of you need to give Satan a foothold? None of us. He has enough, right? I had a very dear brother in the Lord who struggled with pornography for many years. And one day we were working together and I talked, we were talking, and I says, Is there somebody you need to forgive? And he looked back, and if he all of a sudden just a blank look on his face, he says, Yeah. And he could immediately see in his face the hurt from somebody that hurt him about 25 or 30 years ago. Guess what he got victory over that day when he forgave that person? Pornography. Wow. So we have to realize that we're giving Satan a foothold if we're not forgiving. Secondly, the Bible says that we're going to have bitterness. If we don't forgive, bitterness is going to grow. Hebrews 12, 15. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter roots grow up to cause trouble and defile many. What is bitterness? Bitterness is fermented unforgiveness or hurt. The longer you hold on to one's past hurt, the more one becomes drunk on the pain and is robbed of their joy and grace of God. Bitterness affects those around us because of our slander and our malice. We can't praise that person. We got to tear them down. Bitterness turns me inward and self-centered because I'm focused on whose hurt? Mine. Bitterness caused by hurt is caused by hurt and unforgiveness. And bitterness makes our sense of the hurt and injustice grow. Bitterness is drinking the poison that we hoped our offender will drink and die. Bitterness is what we want them to have. And it also keeps us from enjoying our full forgiveness and freedom in Christ. It's like that dog. If you're struggling with unforgiveness, what are you doing? You're dragging a chain. It may be a little chain, or it may be a big chain. Who's on the end of the chain? Who's on the end of the other chain you're dragging? The person who hurt you. The person you're bitter at. And you're dragging that through life, and you're wondering, why can't I get free? Well, it needs to be unsnapped. Do you know one other thing? Forgiveness of others is incompatible for a truly forgiven person. Isn't that what we saw in the parable? Unforgiveness shows that we don't grasp how great our debt to God that God has forgiven us for personally. Unforgiveness shows that we want to be the judge and the jury. I still want to hold that person accountable. I still want to get my justice. No, forgiveness releases a person. Unforgiveness breaks our fellowship with our Heavenly Father. Unforgiveness hinders our prayer life. It causes us to be slow to hear the Spirit's leading. It causes us not to thrive in our relationship with our Father because we're still dragging that change. Our willingness to forgive others as we have been forgiven shows the work of the Holy Spirit in us, and that our forgiveness is full and true. One of the best illustrations of forgiveness is a person that I worked with. I'm going to call her Sally. That's not her name. But she came to us and was talking about how bitter she was towards her stepdad. In fact, at age 12, she became an alcoholic so that she her stepdad would leave her alone. And I remember the day that she came to another gal and I said, Would you help me work through forgiveness of him? And she walked through that and she forgave her stepdad for everything he'd done since she was six till the age she was now. And the other gal and I were both kind of, you know, how you take on someone else's hurt because it was so dirty and so hurtful as a kid being abused and misused and all that. And as she did that forgiving, she said, God, I forgive. Called him by name. And I really trust him to your care. And could you bless him? Guess what happens three weeks later? Three weeks later, she calls me, she says, Hey, Pastor, I need you to go see my stepdad. She said, He's in an apartment and he's dying. He can't take care of himself. He won't take care of himself. And I said, I called, said, called her by name and said, Sally, why do you even care? She says, I forgave him. I don't want him to go to hell. I want him to know Jesus. Long story short, I went to his house and I was working, I uh talked to him and he I said, Would you go to the doctors? And she said, only if you'll take me or go with me. I says, Well, I can't take you because he he's sitting there. He's been in a just he's a really run-down state. And we I said, if the ambulance takes you and I follow, he says, Yeah. I had to dress him. I had to sit at his feet and put his shoes on him. I had to put his pants on him and all that. And we got to the hospital and they took him in the ER, and he just stunk. I mean, the house stunk. It hadn't been cleaned in months, and living and all that stuff. And uh we got in there and the the ER started to stink, and the nurse came in and says, Can I take your clothes off? And she says, You can't touch me. She pointed to me, she says, Only he can do that. And God did that so I could love him too. God made me have to serve him so I could forgive him the hurt he did to Sally. Next three years we worked with him. The week before he died, he came to know Christ. He called Sally and said, Sally. Oh, I'm supposed to stay back here. He called Sally and said, Sally, yes, I know I did this, this, this, and this to you. Would you forgive me? Died a week later. Sally was responsible for the funeral, and we had a great funeral service. Why? Because someone was willing to forgive him from her heart and care. So we see that really by that, the forgiveness, that is a decision of the will. Sally took on the offense and says, Yes, dad hurt me, but I forgive you, Dad. And in forgiveness, she paid the price. But because she paid the price, the grace of God flowed through her. So that what? He could come to know Christ. We need to remember unforgiveness of another person will break your relationship with our Father God and will hinder your prayer life and will keep you in spiritual bondage. If you have somebody you have not forgiven today, you're dragging that chain. And who's at the other end? They are. And really, if you stop and look at in unforgiveness, that other person is controlling your life. So as we close today, do you have anyone you need to forgive from your heart in the power of the Holy Spirit? Because God forgave us so that we can do what? Forgive them. As we close, here's the thoughts to ponder. First of all, have you experienced, excuse me, have you experienced our Father God's forgiveness through Jesus Christ? If you haven't received that forgiveness, then how can you pass it on? That forgiveness is so overwhelming. That forgiveness is so full, full. And if you haven't received that today, you can because Jesus took all your sins to the cross and he died for you. He rose from the dead to show that he's victorious and he's at the right hand of the Father today, interceding for you, and he is coming again to take us to himself. So if you haven't received Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord today, talk to someone here. There's a lot of people who would love to talk to you about that. Secondly, is there anyone you need to forgive from your heart, just as Christ Jesus, our Father God, forgave you? Like I said earlier, I wished I would have gone to mom before and talked to her about that. And I'm praying that you don't struggle with that. So there's anybody. And again, some of you may say, well, but Moose, I don't know where they're at. I can't go talk to them. I'm not talking about you going talk to them. We're talking today about you deciding in your heart to say, Yes, I forgive so-and-so for doing this, which hurt me in this way today. And then you can look back, and when you start to feel that little bitterness of hurt, you say, Oh, June 6th, I mean June 21st, 26th, I forgave that person. And then you're to a place where you can start seeing the reconciliation, as Sally did with her dad. Here's a third question. Are you quick to forgive others? How quick is Jesus to forgive you? We all only have to repent and ask him, right? And he does what? When someone has sins against you, do you quickly say, Father, I forgive them? That's what Jesus said in the cross to those who had not asked for forgiveness yet. And then finally, to what degree are you living out your full freedom in Jesus? In other words, are you sure you've unhooked that chain? You're not dragging anything, you're not struggling with any bitterness, you're not struggling with any unforgiveness. That's one thing that's going to drag you back. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much that you have forgiven us so freely, that you've poured out your love upon us, that you have shown us, Father, through Jesus Christ, his willingness to take all of our sins upon himself. And we ask, Lord, today, that you would help us to be living a lifestyle of mercy and grace, quick to forgive. I pray, Father, if there's anyone here who's struggling with forgiving somebody, somebody from the past, a name that's come up while we're talking, Lord, give them through the power of your spirit the willingness to forgive today and say, I forgive you because Christ has forgiven me. Lead us now, Lord, and for what you do, we'll be sure to give you the praise.

unknown 33:28

Amen.