PRACTICE FORGIVENESS | Matthew 18:21–35 | Pastor John Anderson | 6.28.26

Forgive as you have been forgiven. 

Transcript

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Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Gerlock and Pastor John Anderson. Welcome to the Resurrection Church Podcast. Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Racing, Wisconsin. So whether you're listening on a walk, driving to work, just holding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened. It's something God is still doing. Enjoy this week's message. We are in the middle of a series back to the basics. And we started with a reminder that we are called to follow Jesus. And then Pastor Ryan reminded us two weeks ago that following Jesus begins by loving God, acknowledging God, loving God. And last week we were reminded that you cannot claim to love God if you do not seek to learn how to love your neighbor. Bless you. And this week we are in Matthew 18, and we're going to talk about forgiveness. And if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Matthew 18. It is the first gospel, it's the first letter in the New Testament. And Matthew 18 is fascinating. It was really recorded at a time when Jesus was talking to the disciples. This is more of a scripture for believers than it is for non-believers. It begins with the disciples saying, Hey, who's the greatest? Not that any of us would ever think that way about anything. Who's the greatest? And then Jesus begins to talk to them about what greatness looks like. And then we hear about the sheep, and we hear about a God who leaves none but goes to save all. And then we get to today's scripture. My wife and I, we go for walks almost every day. And I cannot encourage couples enough. If you can't go for a walk, spend time with your spouse or partner every day. And you might think, well, I do every day, but sit down with them, be intentional. It's a practice we have not yet perfected in 20 years of being together. But while we were walking, she was talking to me about what I was preaching on, and I said it was forgiveness. And she said almost verbatim, that's a heavy one. That's hard. And it is, and I thought that was interesting coming from her because she has to practice forgiveness every single day. Uh, and she's almost perfected it. Um, but it is hard, but it's also foundational to the Christian life. When I was in eighth grade, I was at Lincoln Junior High School, which no longer exists in Kenosha, and I was not um as loud as I am today, or or maybe even as confident in the giftings that uh I've been given as I am today. And I was very shy and had no friends. You know, my boys, I always talk about I have twin sons and then they have a younger brother. They my twins, they were born with a best friend. Like, what a gift. I didn't have that. And there were these uh brothers in eighth grade who would pick on me quite a bit and would make fun of me and really got in my head uh and turned me upside down, and I would actually go out of my way to uh to not have to talk to them, but they were in band with me, they were in other classes with me. And I harbored that like pain and frustration and resentment all through high school, even as maybe my status or confidence changed. And I bring that up because I think all of us, all of us struggle with being hurt at some point in our lives. I have to imagine, all of us have struggled to understand how someone could treat us that way and then laugh at the idea that we're supposed to forgive them, especially if they haven't even asked for forgiveness. We know what it feels like to be hurt, that's universal, I think. And I think most of us know what it feels like to carry hurt, but I've learned that in those moments, though those heavy burdens that have that have affected me so much, done by other people, almost always I'm the one that carries it a lot heavier and a lot longer than them. The resentment and the bitterness, the rehearsed conversations. We've all been there, haven't we? If I get this person alone, I'm gonna let them know exactly how they made me feel. And I want them to feel that way. And then, maybe then, we can work towards forgiveness. Pastor Ryan once told me a number of years ago I was upside down about some member of the church, uh, a leader in the church that was making life a little difficult and had hurt me. And I would talk about it quite a bit. And and Pastor Ryan said, I'm I'm buddy, I love you. I'm I'm pretty sure you think about them way more than they think about you. And how many of us do that? And that's where we meet Peter and Jesus today in the same moment, the same question, the same wondering. And as we do so, let us pray together. Um, God, you're so good. You're so good that you give us scripture, that you give us this community to gather together, to to hopefully interpret this together. God, forgiveness is hard. Forgiveness is hard. Sometimes it's hard to even receive. But you are the ultimate example of forgiveness. Help us to learn from you today. Holy Spirit, as always, I pray the meditations of my heart and the words that come through my lips are yours, oh God. It's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen. So we get to Peter in the middle of Matthew, in the middle of his ministry, he's heading towards Jerusalem, and Peter comes up to Jesus and says, Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times. And if you've never heard about Peter before, Peter is a champion in Scripture. He is one of the followers of Christ that just wants to do his very best, and it often gets him in trouble. Peter in this story is actually showing off a little bit. In rabbinical culture, they would they would encourage disciples to forgive at least three or four times, but not more. Peter is saying, Lord, I'm gonna double it. You're different than them, Jesus. I'm gonna forgive seven times, and and Jesus corrects Peter. One of many times he'll correct Peter, and he says, No, Peter, no, no, no. I know you think seven is holy and impressive, but I want you to forgive 77 times, or in some translations, seven times 70. The point here for Jesus, it's not math. It's not going around being like, I'm really, I've I've forgiven 10 people this week. So it's not that. He's teaching Peter that forgiveness is not a quota, it's a way of life. Peter, he wants a number. He wants to know what I need to do to be good enough. This has been a theme that Pastor Ryan introduced us to as we figure out what it means to follow Christ. We think that we have to turn in some report card and hopefully our grades are good enough, and that's not it. That's never been it. And if the church told you that, they lied to you. No, it's about following and stumbling and getting up and following and stumbling and having a church help you get up and following. The story is meant to be ridiculous. A servant owes a king 10,000 talents. That was an enormous sum. That was the sum of a kingdom. They would have known in the story that this extravagance was making some sort of a point. He could never pay this back. Not even with the family being imprisoned and sold, none of that. He could never pay this debt back. It's absurd. But then notice what the king does. The king responds with mercy. Not, hey, let's set up a payment plan. Well, I'll give you a low interest rate. But mercy. He cancels it, he erases it, he releases it, he forgives it. The Greek word there is afiami. And it means more than just to forgive, it means to set away from you, to let it go, to set adrift, to see it no more. And that's hard for us to do because I think sometimes we think that forgiveness and reconciliation go hand in hand, but we're gonna we're gonna talk about that today. That's not true. No, but forgiveness is what we're called to first, and it's not just a feeling. I mean, it feels good to be forgiven, right? And it might feel good to forgive someone, but it's way more than feelings. Jesus is painting a picture of the staggering grace of God because every one of us, and listen, church, every single one of us stands before God in the same position with a debt, not earning grace, but receiving it, never proving ourselves worthy, but being loved despite our unworthiness. And I wonder, I worry sometimes that we have forgotten how amazing grace is, that we take it for granted that we sing about it, that we we pray over the table and we remember the great gift of the Passover, but we forget how amazing grace is. That on my worst day God loves me and my enemy. Don't be so familiar with grace that you're not amazed by it. Don't forget what God has forgiven in you. Because just like loving God and loving others, they have to go hand in hand. You can't receive God's forgiveness but refuse to extend it to others. And one of the things I love about the gospel is that Jesus doesn't just teach us about this, Jesus embodies it, Jesus does it. In fact, I would argue that forgiveness is central to the story of the gospel. It has to be. Scripture is not about good people becoming better people, some self-help program that'll finally get you to look like a good Christian disciple. No, it's about a holy God choosing to forgive broken people who could never repay what they owed, which means our grace should increase. It should increase when it comes to how we extend it to the world. The apostle Paul knew this. Paul was someone who persecuted Christians, literally presided over their death. Yet he had a God who forgave him and didn't just forgive him, but then called him to send this message through others all around the known world. And he responded by doing so. And Paul says this he says, Christ forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness. God doesn't ignore the reality that we're not God. God doesn't ignore our inability to follow God in those moments when we choose ourselves. God doesn't pretend it isn't real. No, in fact, God took our sin, God took our brokenness seriously enough to bring it to the cross and on the cross put to death once and for all. Any sort of sin management business. I failed, so I'm not good enough. God says, no, the cross is good enough. And so in Christ, you too are redeemed and good enough. The question has never really been, do these people deserve my forgiveness? Because I think if we're honest, none of us, none of us deserve the forgiveness that we find in Christ, at least if you spend time with it. The better question is, has the grace of God changed me enough, changed you enough that you can begin to release the debt that maybe somebody owes you the way that Christ released yours. And that's what Jesus is asking Peter, and Peter struggles with it. But here's what I've learned forgiven people, people that understand forgiveness, they're much better at forgiving. Not perfectly, by the way, and not instantly. I've shared before the journey my dad and I had, but there was a holiness in that moment when I was able to forgive him. And I didn't expect anything in return. And it was way more about me than it was about him. I think some of us carry this invisible chain. It's draped around our shoulders. Think of think of uh the Christmas carol when the ghost appears covered in chains. I think so many of us we think we're wrapping chains around others in the way that we think so negatively about their terrible actions to us, and we deserve better from them. And we think that we're tying them up, but the reality is we are just we're heaping chains of resentment upon our hearts and in our soul, chains of frustration. And then we carry those chains into our relationships, into our marriages, into our parenting, into the church, into our prayer. Everywhere we go, the weight comes with us, and we begin to think that we don't deserve forgiveness. How could we possibly deserve forgiveness? We we don't even know how to share forgiveness. And I'm convinced, and I'm convinced because I've experienced it, I've I'm convinced because Scripture promises it that we have a Savior who stands before us with his arms spread wide, not in condemnation, but in love, pleading with us to simply let it go. Drop the chains. Take that difficult step into forgiveness. And not because what happened didn't matter, not because justice doesn't matter, but but because God did not create you to live chained to yesterday. But so many of us in this room, right now, we are. We're chained to a conversation that happened a year ago, chained to a fight we got into with a family member two years ago. We are we are stuck there. And we profess in this moment that we trust God, but we don't really trust God, not with all of it. God couldn't understand, God understands, and God is pleading with you. Forgiveness is a holy response to a God who forgives, but just remember that forgiveness and reconciliation are different. As I near the end, I don't want you to miss that. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you you can just say, oh, it wasn't that big of a deal. No, nonsense, of course it was. I think about Joseph. Remember the story of Joseph in Genesis? If you don't know, go to Genesis and near the end of Genesis, we read about Joseph. His brothers were jealous of him, so they threw him in a pit. Then they sold him into slavery, then he was put into prison. They wanted him dead. Eventually, Joseph rose to an incredible place of authority in Egypt. One day, his brothers came to Egypt looking for some help, not knowing that Joseph was even alive, and they encountered Joseph. And if you are reading the story, and we've all been there like watching the movie where the good guy's finally gonna get like redemption, like the bad guys are gonna get it. His brothers they they come into this court. Joseph has all the power, all the authority. They could be dead like that. What does Joseph say? Here's what Joseph says brothers, have no fear. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. I forgive you. Notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, look, it's fine, it wasn't a big deal. He doesn't say, hey, it wasn't that bad, man. He doesn't say, let's just pretend it never happened. No, he's honest. Joseph names the evil and the hurt for what it is. You intended to harm me. He tells the truth. So many of us are afraid to tell the truth. But then he does something that we we all could learn from. He releases the debt owed to him. Joseph understood something that the servant in the story didn't understand. His wound was real, but Joseph refused, refused to let his wound define his identity. And we we do this. When you forgive, you don't deny the hurt. It's not telling the person that your behavior was fine, I'm past it. No. It's that we say, I release this, I no longer carry this, so that reconciliation can begin. You know, the tragedy at the end of the story is this servant gets this great gift from the king and then goes out. And you know the story that Jennifer just read. He he encounters someone who owes him a small debt. And you would think after the extravagant, lavish grace that has just been poured upon him, he would embrace this person and say, Your debt to me is washed away. But he doesn't. He grabs him by the neck, he throws him in prison, he demands payment and he shows no mercy. The tragedy is that he forgot. I think so many of us have been following Christ for so long that I think we've forgotten the great gift and grace that our Savior gives us in forgiveness, but also equips us by the Holy Spirit to be a people of forgiveness. You can't claim to be forgiven and refuse to extend it. When we say forgive us our sins, yes. And at the first service we say trespasses. We're actually we're actually not using the correct translation. The the correct translation there is debts. Ufiami. It means releasing those things that that are owed to us. And don't think of it as money, but those experiences and those moments that we thought would be peaceful that were turned upside down by your action. Forgive us our debts. The king released him. And he forgot. And then the end of that scripture, by the way, is sometimes confusing when it talks about the torture, and and the king surely will do the same. I think many of us probably think of uh Dante, if you've read Dante and those images of the inferno and tortures, pain, and fire. In fact, in the original language, that's not what Jesus is teaching them. He's teaching them the very things that we've all experienced, and some of you are experiencing right now. That if you refuse forgiveness, if you refuse to even entertain the idea that you could forgive someone, you will be tortured and weighed down by those feelings of anger and bitterness and resentment. You will think about it all the day. It will occupy a small space in your brain, and God forgive you see that person, or you hear something nice said about that person because you want to you want to jump in and say, if only you knew. But isn't the same true about you? Matthew wants us to hear these passages together. Every week we pray, forgive us our debts. And every week we're reminded that we are the servants standing before the king with this impossible balance sheet, but we have a savior who calls us into relationship, a savior who teaches us that reconciliation is possible, and that's the hard work. Forgiveness is the beginning. It's not approval, it's not saying I trust you again, it's never saying that what happened was okay. It's a call to reconciliation, though, which will require honesty and humility, healing and the rebuilding of trust. And we learn this through all these stories. I'm gonna invite the band forward. We're gonna sing a song, uh, Lord, I need you. And you know, even as a pastor, even as someone who literally is paid to be in my Bible every day, I struggle with these things. I bet many of us struggle with forgiveness, with people that we should never struggle with forgiveness for, people we've made commitments to, people that we've been entrusted to raise. Many, many years later, decades later, these same brothers that had picked on me, and I shared this in a class recently, I I was uh a speaker at a nonprofit event in Kenosha, and they just happened to be at the head table with my wife and I. And I remember like going in there, when I first saw them, I felt like that eighth grade boy again, even though I was the the the speaker at this event. I felt like that eighth grade boy again. And and I had like all I'm like, oh, I can't wait to show off my wife because she's so much prettier than me. Like she's smarter than me. I'm gonna do all the things to make them feel just like like they didn't age as well as I did. Like I did all these terrible things, and then I had a bathroom prayer. You ever have a bathroom prayer? No? You've had a bathroom prayer, maybe. I had a moment where the Holy Spirit threw some conviction at me as I was about to enter scripture with this group of people, and I just released them. And I realized that I'd been carrying this a lot longer than they had. And then I went out there and I was able to share the gospel. I was able to sit and break bread with them and hear about their lives, to receive, by the way, compliments from them. And that's not always how this is gonna end, by the way. Sometimes forgiveness is the best you can muster up and reconciliation isn't possible. But we have a God who in our worst moments still sees us as lovable and redeemable, which means that we are called to somehow see others the same way. And it is hard work, church. But I promise you it is life-giving. And when you release debts, when you practice forgiveness, when you understand what the cross offers us and the world, you will change lives and your life will be changed. And so, with that, let us pray. Let us pray to a God who forgives us, a God who calls us to faith and repentance so that we can trust the one who is all things. Let us pray. God, it is hard when we are hurt to even ponder forgiveness for a moment. Yet so often I choose my own way, God. Each day I turn from you and have to be humbled back into your presence. We all struggle, God. We struggle with wanting things done our way. We struggle with the idea that an eye for an eye is still how we're supposed to operate. But you say no, there's a different way to live, God. And so I pray for this assembly. If someone is in here today, God, and they have chains that need to be released, if they have debts that need to be given away, God, that you would do a work in their heart. Holy Spirit, that you would lead and help us to forgive so that someday, hopefully, reconciliation might be a possibility. Thank you for reconciling us in Christ. Thank you for loving us when we're unlovable. Thank you for forgiving us when we fail to forgive. We need you, oh God, and we love you. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.