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Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Please go ahead and have a seat. You know, it was interesting watching this morning as everyone came in and uh we're trying to figure out where do I sit? Um I had a a couple of offers actually of payment for reserved seating. So we're gonna, you know, just stay tuned for that. We'll figure that out. But no, um, you know, we we human beings, we love to have options, don't we? Um we love to have different options. And I think it was it was Burger King, right? Who kind of first back in 1974 launched their iconic marketing slogan. What was it? Have it your way. Yeah, it's still there. It's uh it's had some staying power. Um, that sentiment has been a mainstay of our culture for a long, long time. Um, in fact, back in 1989, some of you will remember this. If you were alive back then, um, Boris Yeltsin, remember him? He was the the premier of the Soviet Union, the supreme Soviet. And he visited the United States. And during his visit, he had this kind of unplanned, unexpected stop at an American grocery store in the Houston area. And he was amazed at the abundance of food that we had, all the different options that we had between different brands of cereal and peanut butter and ice cream bars and things like that. When in the Soviet Union, you would have kind of one thing, if that. And it's actually pretty well known that this changed Boris Yeltsin's politics quite significantly. One of his aides said that following this experience in that grocery store in America, the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed inside of him. And we are more spoiled for choice now than ever. Please don't do this, but if you happen to get bored during the sermon today, you could pull out your phone and order a car. And you could choose all of the options on your smartphone from the tow package, the front wheel, or all-wheel drive. You could choose what color seats you want, what color paint you want. We love having options, don't we? But there are spiritual downsides to this way of thinking and living. And one of them becomes immediately apparent to us as we get into week two of our series on popular myths about forgiveness. Last week we we sought to debunk the myth that forgiveness starts with us. We saw that forgiveness is not something we generate or produce or muster up ourselves. It is a gift of God. He is the one who initiates, he's the one who creates, he's the one who graciously gives to us and then forgives us. And so today we're going to address the myth that forgiveness is optional. You see, many Christians treat forgiveness like it's an optional add-on, like a pizza topping, or the drinks package on your cruise, or the lightning lane at Disneyland. We we think it's an optional thing, but it's not absolutely necessary. But today, Jesus confronts that way of thinking entirely and leaves us really no room for debate. And he does so with this scathing parable that Lisa just read for us. Jesus tells us the story of this king. And this king has a servant who owes him 10,000 talents. Now, scholars disagree on exactly what the conversion rate should be between that and modern currency, but I think we can effectively say that basically this guy owes the king about a million bazillion dollars. Um, the leading New Testament Greek lexicon estimates that it would take 60 million days of work to pay off the debt, and that even at the highest rate of pay possible, that it would take the person a thousand years to get out of prison. So it's obviously this is just a truly impossible debt to repay that Jesus is talking about. And so the king orders the guy to be sold along with his wife and his kids to help make up some of the debt. And the servant falls on his knees and begs, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. He's desperate, he's hopeless, and this is a thoroughly empty promise. He has no way of fulfilling it. And yet, out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave the debt. All of it. Unbelievable generosity and mercy. And that that's kind of where we feel maybe the parable ought to end, right, with this beautiful picture of the extravagant love and mercy of God's forgiveness toward us. And we ought to take it to heart. But the problem is this servant doesn't take it to heart. And Jesus' story continues. Going out from there, this servant encounters another servant, a fellow servant, who owes him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. And this second poor servant does what the first servant had literally just done. He begs for mercy, for patience for him to pay his debt, falls down on his knees and asks for time to pay back the 100 denarii, which amounts to about four months' worth of wages. It's not nothing, but it is nothing compared to what the first servant had owed the king. Obviously, this forgiven servant is going to pay it forward. It's the very least he could do, right? But we know what happens. He refuses. And he has the guy thrown in prison. And word immediately reaches the king, and the king says to him, You wicked servant, 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 then the king has him thrown in jail. And the parable ends with this chilling lesson from Jesus. So also, my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Wow. That is incredibly heavy stuff, and it is meant to be like that, like that bag that Caleb was talking about in the children's message. Now, this brings up a really vital question that I think we ought to address first, one that I know is already on the minds of several of us as we've begun this series. Is God's forgiveness conditional? The words of Jesus here can certainly be taken that way, understood that way. If you do not forgive your brother from your heart, so also my heavenly Father will do to you. So if we don't forgive, do we lose our forgiveness? Is God forgiving us contingent upon us forgiving others? Do we earn God's forgiveness when we forgive other people? Well, no. And we don't even need to go outside of this parable to see this. Why was the sir why was that servant forgiven in the first place? Did he deserve it? Did he earn it? No way. He couldn't literally in a thousand years. It wasn't even because of his begging, because that was just an empty promise. No, why was he forgiven? Completely, wholly, fully because of the mercy of the king. We are forgiven because of the mercy of the king. 100%. So why does the servant end up in prison by the end of the parable? Because his actions demonstrate that he has rejected the king's forgiveness. The unforgiving servant doesn't lose forgiveness arbitrarily. He reveals that he never truly lived in it in the first place. This is the lesson of the parable. Refusal to forgive others reveals a deadly disconnect with the forgiveness that we have received. It lays bare a heart that is resisting or even rejecting the forgiveness of God. And I thought maybe an organizational flow chart might be helpful for you to illustrate this. Consider the flow of forgiveness in this parable. It starts with the king. Remember from last week, forgiveness doesn't start with us. Then forgiveness flows from the king to that first servant who owes 10,000 talents. And where should it go next? From the first servant to the second servant. But the servant refuses. He stops the flow of forgiveness. And in doing so, he ends up cutting off the supply of forgiveness that gives him life. Not because the forgiveness isn't there or because it's not freely offered or something like that, but because his heart refuses to embrace it. Trinity family, we are not forgiven because we forgive. We forgive because we are forgiven. We do not forgive. We forgive because we are forgiven. It has to go in that direction. And so with that foundation firmly in place, we can move on to the full weight of what Jesus wants us to hear today. Having fully and freely forgiven our sins, God doesn't suggest we forgive others, He commands it. The full, uncompromising, full grace of God doesn't lead us to collapse into a gospel reductionism that ignores God's clear command and will for us. Forgiveness is not optional for those who claim the name of Christ. It's not at our discretion. It's not up to us. When Jesus teaches us to forgive others, it's not advice. It's not a suggestion. It is the clear command and will of our Lord. And it's not just that Jesus says this in a couple of isolated comments. This is the full thrust of what forgiveness is all about. Remember our definition from last week? Let's get that up there. And would you say this with me again? Forgiveness is God's gracious release of sin, won by Christ, given to us freely, and entrusted to us to extend to others. That last part there, it's entrusted to us to extend to others. And everywhere the scriptures speak, they say the same thing univocally. Those who have been forgiven by Christ must forgive as we have been forgiven. We heard Paul say it in Ephesians today: be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Paul speaks even more pointedly in Colossians in a verse that we're going to hear again next week, where he says, As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Must. Forgiveness is commanded. Forgiveness is patterned after God's forgiveness that we have received. And then that forgiveness is really non-negotiable. Why? A couple of reasons come to mind for me. First, whenever God issues a command, it is always, always for our own good. God commands us to forgive as we have been forgiven, on the one hand, because he knows that unforgiveness is dangerous. It leads us away from the freedom that we have received when God forgave our sins, and it leads us away from our brothers and sisters into isolation and darkness. You know, I've had too many conversations with people who have allowed unforgiveness to break them off from the body of Christ. I've seen firsthand how immensely and how intensely damaging unforgiveness can be. And I bet you have too. But those who live in Christ's forgiveness cannot finally refuse to forgive, because doing so is a rejection of Christ's forgiveness in the first place. And rejecting Christ's forgiveness leaves us imprisoned, buried under an unpayable debt forever without hope. The book of James says judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. But mercy triumphs over judgment. It's a powerful word. God's will is that we will not refuse his mercy, which defeats our judgment. Second of all, unforgiveness is withholding God's gift. Forgiveness is God's gracious release of sin won by Christ, given to us freely and entrusted to us to extend to others. When we refuse to forgive, we are refusing to pass on what God has given to us for the express purpose of us giving it to others. When the unforgiving servant left the presence of the king, he didn't let his debt remain on his mind. So far, so good. But in doing so, he also completely let go of the grace he had received when he didn't extend it to his fellow servant. Remember that flow of forgiveness? This is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. To be a vessel through whom flows his love and his mercy and his grace for others. Don't stop it up. Because in a very real way, this is who you are. This is what God's forgiveness has created within you. This is the new creation that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians that is compelled by the love of Christ. God's command to forgive doesn't hang over us as a condition to be met, to be in his good graces. It's your identity. It flows straight from the forgiveness you have already received, a forgiveness that transforms us. You see, in this world, redeemed by Christ, the forgiven become forgivers. It doesn't start with us. It's what the love of God produces within us. Christ is the vine, we are the branches. Apart from him, we can do nothing, but with him, we can forgive like him. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. And how did God in Christ forgive you sacrificially at great cost to himself when he went to the cross to bear your sin? Fully, leaving no sin behind, removing them from you as far as the east is from the west, no vestige of unholiness still staining your heart. And freely, at no cost to you, no obligation, no copay. It's not a loan to be repaid, it's a gift. It's a gift entrusted to us to give to others. And one of the key ways to do that is to recognize the vast, immeasurable difference between what we owed God and what we are owed ourselves. 10,000 talents compared to a hundred denarii, a million bazillion dollars compared to a few months' wages. Now we need to recognize others' sins against us are real and they're costly and they hurt. And we're going to be wrestling a lot with that in the next few weeks. They're not nothing, not at all. But they are nothing when compared with our sin against God. We stood in hopeless debt to our Creator, infinitely beyond our ability to repay even the slightest fraction, and he forgave not some of it, or most of it, but all of it. Now, this realization, when we truly let it sink down into the deepest recesses of our hearts, leads us to a disposition of increasing love and mercy and grace toward other people. Forgiveness. Look at Stephen as he's being stoned to death, pouring out love and mercy on his murderers. He was a man marked in every single way by Jesus Christ. This is what the transformational grace of God does for us. It leads us to recognize and celebrate that forgiveness is our privilege, forgiveness is our joy, forgiveness is our calling. And it allows us to see those who sin against us for what they truly are. Fellow debtors, fellow servants of the King, all indebted to God, all graciously forgiven and released from our sins. God has entrusted his gracious release of sin to you. So graciously release the sins of others. Of course, as our message wraps up today, it might feel a little bit like a song that doesn't quite resolve, that leaves us hanging on the third or the fifth. You know, like, sure, Pastor, I know we're supposed to forgive. The forgiven become forgivers. So why is it so hard? Why am I having so much trouble doing that? If this is who we are, why do we still see so much evidence of unforgiveness in our hearts? Why do our hearts sometimes feel so far away from the tender-heartedness to which God calls us? Those are really good questions. Next week, we're going to address all of this as we take on myth number three: that forgiveness is easy. We'll talk about how struggling to forgive and refusing to forgive are two very different things, and how God in his mercy gently guides us through it all. Until then, Trinity, forgive as you have been forgiven. In Jesus' name. Amen. May the peace of God, which transcends our understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord, now and forever. Amen.