Forgiving the Sheep

Church Discipline  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Matthew 18:23-35 gives 2 reasons why you should generously forgive others.

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Tough Forgiveness

Dale Carnegie once pointed out that the only animal a grizzly bear would ever allow eat near him was the skunk.
The huge grizzly bear can fight and beat almost any animal it encounters.
But it lets the skunk share its meal.
Carnegie said that the grizzly bear resented skunk.
They didn’t have a sharing relationship.
The bear had nothing to gain from the skunk’s presence.
And it certainly could have killed the nearly blind black and white animal with out any effort.
But he didn’t.
Because he knew the cost of getting even.
Most animals are not dumb.
They are smarter than humans in some aspects.
We allow resentment, bitterness, and anger to run through our lives and have complete power over our destiny.
Our stomachs churn throughout the day over anticipated conflict.
Then at night, we lie awake, while our souls turn black as they plot revenge.
Bitterness is the most dangerous of all pandemics.
It destroys healthy lives.
It eats healthy Christian living.
It saps away the vitality of your spiritual life.
It is a cancer of the soul, and it claims millions of lives each year.
It spreads faster than the common cold.
It threatens the survival of many churches.
Joseph was the prized son of Jacob.
Jacob loved the son of his favorite wife, Joseph.
In his brothers’ jealousy, they sold him to slave traders.
That moment set off a course of events that would change his life forever.
He would spend many of his years suffering.
Those slave traders went on to sell him to an Egyptian named Potiphar.
While working for Potiphar, his wife accused Joseph of inappropriate sexual advances.
Joseph then found himself in prison.
His father thought he was dead.
And now he was abandoned in an Egyptian prison system.
Here was a man who probably knew anger.
Alone in a prison.
Alone with his thoughts.
Stewing.
Plotting.
I’m sure you’ve been there.
“Give me 5 minutes alone with my brothers, and I’ll make them pay.”
And the longer time goes on, the more bitter the plan.
Yet, Joseph didn’t plan revenge.
In Genesis 41:51, he had his first son.
Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.”
Joseph said, “God has made me forget ...”
Why didn’t he plot and plan?
Because he forgot.
He didn’t dwell on the evil he experienced.
He forgot.
He forgave.
You know the story, years later, God raised Joseph to a position of prominence.
He developed a plan to save Egypt during a massive famine.
Years later, in the middle of the famine, his brothers came and they were reunited.
But Joseph forgot.
He forgave.
He saw the plan of God.
At the end of the book.
With his father dead.
His brothers feared for their lives.
They thought Joseph would bring revenge and make them pay.
The end of Genesis, 50:19-21 Joseph said, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.”
Like Joseph, you will be hurt by people.
How will you respond?
You might already be hurt.
Is bitterness reigning within you?
Let’s turn to the Lord’s Word.
Please open your Bibles to Matthew 18:21-22
Read Matthew 18:21-22

The Forgiveness Question

We’ve been going through Matthew 18, and looking at church discipline.
Last week we looked at approaching a fellow believer who is in sin.
We looked at the four steps of church discipline.
In our nonconfrontive and passive culture, we are afraid of confronting people.
Afraid of offending them.
Afraid of hurting their feelings.
Afraid of driving them away.
Many churches don’t practice church discipline because of those reasons.
They think that if we did it, if we spoke to people, then people would leave the church.
If that is your fear, then this passage should encourage you.
Because as we finish Matthew 18, a chapter on church discipline, it concludes on a positive note.
It concludes with the expectation that there will be restoration.
It assumes that after confronting a person there will be repentance.
Now the question is what do we do with a person who does repent.
What do we do with the Christian who has sinned, sinned big, and comes looking to be reunited with His brothers.
That’s what this is dealing with.
And I know you have to deal with it.
We are in relationships.
Relationships are hard.
Forgiveness is hard.
Many of you are grizzly bears.
And you put up with the skunks in life.
But you are just looking for that moment when you can get a good swipe at them.
And you hold onto anger tenaciously.
As we enter this text, remember some of the moments of this chapter.
It all began with the disciples approaching Jesus and asking who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And what did Jesus do?
He put a child in front of them, and said to be like a child.
To humble yourself and be like a child.
Not only are you to be humble like a child, but we are to receive one another like a child.
You know who are easy to forgive?
Children.
It’s easy to forgive a child, because you know they are in the process of maturity.
And this is the attitude that we adopt to each other.
To live with an attitude of compassion.
I Peter 4:8 says that “Love covers a multitude of sins.”
As we begin, Peter asks a question.
I love Peter’s question.
I love Peter.
He’s often laughed at because of his impulsiveness.
But his honest questions result in Jesus giving incredible instruction.
Because he asks what we all want to ask.
“How many times do I forgive someone?”
There’s got to be a limit right?
A rabbi once said, “If a man commits an offence once, they forgive him; if he commits an offense a second time, they forgive him; if he commits an offense a third time, they forgive him; the fourth time they do not forgive him.”
The tradition of the day was you forgive someone only 3 times.
After that, they’re out of luck.
But Peter doesn’t ask, “Do you forgive someone only three times?”
Peter is generous.
“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
Should we forgive 7 times, as if that’s gracious!
You’d think Jesus would give Peter a cookie, or pat him on the back, and say, “There you go, now you’re listening. You’re getting this grace thing.”
In typical Christ fashion, Jesus goes above and beyond what anyone expects.
Jesus says not 7 times, but7 times 70.
Don’t think of this like a math problem.
Some of you hear, 7 times 70, and you’re pulling out your calculators.
It’s 490.
Someone might be creating a spreadsheet, and putting everyone’s names on it, with 490 empty boxes next to those names.
You’re tallying up each time you forgive them.
That’s now what this is about.
It’s not the number that matters.
It’s an exaggeration.
In Luke’s Gospel, there’s a similar conversation.
Jesus says that if someone sins against you 7 times in a single day, then you are to forgive him 7 times.
That can be a whole lot more than 7 times 70.
The point here is you forgive.
And you forgive extravagantly.
As we consider church discipline, we need to be optimists.
If we follow the Lord’s model in church discipline, there will be conviction of sin, and people will repent.
And when they repent … you forgive them.
Perhaps this is all overwhelming to you.
It seems too much.
You’ve been hurt.
Jesus then tells a parable to explain this.
And in this parable we learn 5 reasons to forgive.
Read Matthew 18:23-35

Forgive because you know the cost of Your sin.

Jesus speaks of a kingdom.
In this kingdom, there is a king with servants.
These servants would have been managers for the king.
Handling his finances and accounts.
He calls a certain servant in, and it’s revealed that he owes the king 10,000 talents.
What’s the significance of 10,000 talents?
The word is myrios.
It’s innumerable.
It’s countless.
There’s no number higher than that.
It’s an uncountable number.
It’s like when you say, “I love you times infinity.”
It’s just too high to count.
This servant has a debt that can’t even be counted, and he’s supposed to pay it off?
Notice the king’s solution.
You, your wife, and your children all will be sold into slavery.
The debt is so high, that it’ll take more than himself to pay it off.
It will take others.
His wife and children.
As we consider forgiving others, we must begin with yourself, and what you have been forgiven of.
Someone has hurt you.
Someone has hurt you bad.
Consider your debt against God.
You have sinned against a holy God.
And here’s the thing, you don’t have the capital to pay this debt.
You have sinned.
But you can’t pay it off.
It’s myrios.
It’s unnumerable.
It’s uncountable.
Your sin will cost you everything, and you will still never pay it off.
Remember this servant.
He would be sold into slavery.
His wife would be sold into slavery.
His children would be sold into slavery.
And there would still be a debt.
The cost of sin is incalculable.
Since there is no end to the value of your sin, it warrants an infinite payment.
An unending payment.
If myrios, the number for ten thousand, is an uncountable number, your sins against God, have a value of myrios.
It’s infinite.
Consider the penalty.
Revelation 20:10 says that Hell, is a place of torment forever and ever.
It’s unending.
You could spend a million years in that lake of fire, and still be unable to pay off the debt of your sin.
A million years in Hell, and the debt is the same; never making any progress.
Because it’s infinite.
It’s myrios.
This is the condition of each and every person on the face of the earth.
While we run around worried about restaurants or movie theaters opening, every human life is moving towards the day when he will stand before a holy God and be judged for his sins, and face an infinite death.
Every person has a debt that they can’t pay.
Think of Toplady’s song, “Rock of Ages.
Not the labors of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
These for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone:
In my hand no price I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.
As you approach others, you may think that their sin puts them massively in debt to you.
But consider your sin before God.
You’ve sinned against God, far more than your brother has against you.

Next you forgive because you’ve been forgiven much.

We continue in this parable.
The servant was summoned before the king.
He was told the consequence of his debt.
He and his family sold into slavery.
And note the response of the servant.
Verse 26, “So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.”
He saw the cost of his debt, and he begged for patience.
And the king was gracious to him, forgiving the debt.
Like the servant in this story, a day of reckoning is coming.
A day is coming when the debt will need to be paid.
When what is owed will come due.
Hebrews 9:27 says, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,”
The day will come when you will die.
Your account will be reviewed.
The servant had his case reviewed, and he cried out for mercy.
Once you see the cost and the extent of your sin, you see the response that God desires.
Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
You must come to a point of complete helplessness where you are overwhelmed by your own lostness.
In Matthew 5, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit.”
It’s this position of spiritual bankruptcy that the Lord is looking for from His servants.
The king’s mercy mirrors the Father’s mercy towards us.
The servant was asking for just a little more time.
Which we all know was impossible.
It was an uncountable debt.
The king didn’t reduce the debt, or give the servant a discount.
It says he forgave the debt.
It was gone.
It was completely removed from his account, because there was no way he could have ever paid it off.
And the same goes for you.
You had a debt that was impossible for you to pay.
The only way for your debt to be removed is if the Lord paid for it Himself.
When God forgives, He forgives.
He doesn’t hold on to a grudge.
He completely removes what was owed.
The account is wiped clean.
This is the concept of propitiation.
The debt is satisfied.
You live in the kingdom of a generous king.
His grace surpasses all expectation.
As you look to others that you forgive, realize that you have been forgiven much.

You forgive because we are fellow servants.

The servant happily leaves the presence of the king, free, without any debt, and he comes across a fellow servant.
This isn’t a stranger.
It’s not someone different.
It’s a fellow servant.
A worker just like him.
This servant owes him 100 denarii.
Unlike the other servants uncountable debt, which was myrios, this one is very countable.
It’s only about 100 days wages.
You could earn it in about 3 months.
After receiving so much grace, what does he do?
He violently came upon his fellow servant.
He starts choking him, saying, “Pay what you owe!”
And unlike the kind king who spared the servant, this servant, threw the other servant in jail.
This whole passage is about restoration.
It’s about forgiveness.
If this is a parable of us and forgiveness, who do we forgive?
Fellow servants.
In life we have different roles.
Some are up front.
Some work behind the scenes.
Some are leaders.
Some are followers.
But compared to God … we are all fellow servants.
We are equal.
We are all on the same level.
We are all created.
We are clay, with borrowed breath.
And we live in service of a King.
The person who fails to forgive … becomes like this unforgiving servant.
He becomes a demonstration of pride.
What you have done, is you have returned one sin with another sin.
Failure to forgive fails to appreciate what you’ve been given.
And it fails to appreciate the mercy you’ve received.
What are our sins to each other?
They might seem huge to us.
We are capable of some pretty awful stuff.
I know some of the sins that you have been victims of.
Those wounds still hurt.
Allow me to be blunt.
As awful as these crimes against are … they are like 100 denarii that was owed.
Manageable.
They are small when compared to our crimes against God.
They are forgivable.
Because we are fellow servants.
Forgiveness brings unity in the church.
When the servant left the presence of the king, he found a fellow servant.
Beat him up, and threw him in jail.
Look at verse 31, “When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.”
Who was dismayed?
The other servants.
They knew what had happened, they knew about the mercy that he had received.
It grieved them.
There are no perfect churches.
There will be sins.
People will mess up.
This is something Jesus says will happen.
This whole chapter banks on that.
In His kindness He provides a method of reconciliation.
So that sinful people, would be restored.
But if you fail to forgive, according to verse 31, it distresses the saints.
Unforgiving spirits, bring grief into the church.
The goal is for restoration.
For there to be a spirit of unity.
But to hold onto a grudge does the very opposite of what Christ desires, which is restoration among His saints.
Forgiveness and restoration become one of the most practical ways to bring the gospel into our relationships.
We are always looking for ways to have meaningful relationships aren’t we?
To have conversations of substance.
To have relationships that matter.
When you seek restoration and forgive others, you bring Christ into your relationship.
We play out the gospel in the sense that just as Christ has forgiven us so much, we now forgive others.
Think of what has happened between you and God.
Once you were at enmity with Him.
You were a rebel of God.
And through the blood of Christ, you call Him Abba Father.
That should now motivate us in our relationships to each other.
Now we call each other brother and sister.
Coheirs with Christ.
Why do you forgive so much?
Because Christ has forgiven you so much!

You forgive because it is the will of God.

We see the will of God displayed at the end of the text.
If God has forgiven you much.
Then you are expected to forgive others just as generously.
It is the will of God for you to forgive others.
This is His purpose for you.
This chapter is about church discipline, but really it’s about church restoration.
God likes it when that lost sheep is brought back into the fold.
This is His will.
Everyone always wants to know, “What is God’s will for my life?”
And here you have it.
Restoration.
Reconciliation.
Forgiveness.
In the parable, the servant who was forgiven much, failed to forgive another servant of a lesser amount.
The result was that the king, ordered the man thrown into jail, to pay the debt of the other servant.
If you fail to forgive, it puts you at odds with the will and desires of God.
You fall into a place of disobedience.

Lastly, you forgive from the heart.

Forgive from the heart
Not just lip service
Not like the world around us.
A husband says that he will stop off and get milk on the way home from work.
On his way home, he drives right by the grocery store.
He gets home, and his wife asks where the milk is.
Oh, he realizes he’s done it, he forgot to get the milk.
This has happened before.
He’s apologized in the past, and found that he has to leave notes for himself or he forgets.
She’s forgiven him and they move on.
This time it’s the last straw.
His wife unloads on him.
She screams, “You said you were sorry last time. You always do this!”
Then she pulls out her phone.
She’s got a note on her phone where she’s been keeping a running record of every time he’s messed up.
There’s probably a lot that we can unravel here, but what we see with this wife, is that she didn’t forgive from the heart.
She say that she previously forgave him, but clearly she didn’t, as evidenced by the note of every sin of his going back to when he was born.
This passage sets an example for what our forgiveness looks like.
It mirrors the forgiveness that God has given us.
It’s not a partial forgiveness or a limited forgiveness.
God doesn’t forgive some sin.
It’s a complete forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not reduction.
It’s the removal of sin.
It’s as if it never happened.
So what does this mean when it comes to one another?
What does it look like to forgive from the heart?
I Corinthians 13:5 says of love, “It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;”
That word for resentful is what we are talking about.
Resentful, means to keep a record of wrong.
You know what it is to resent a person.
It’s to forget all the good memories, fun, fellowship, joy that you’ve had.
Resentment throws all that out the window, and looks only at failure.
We do this in our marriages, when we say “You never appreciate me.”
We do this with our friends when we say, “You never follow through.”
A resentful heart manifests itself in words like, “Always” and “Never”
These black and white, absolute statements, which aren’t true.
Forgiving from the heart is not resentful.
It deletes that note on your phone with the running tab of crimes.
It means, the next time someone comes to you and apologizes, for a sin, and you say you forgive that person, it’s gone.
I Corinthians 13:7 - “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Nowadays, much of our communication comes in the form of text messages.
I text you.
You text me.
It’s what we do.
And there are times, we text, and in that text there’s a sin.
Could be gossip.
Could be a sinful remark.
How many of you save your text messages, just so you can use it against someone in the future?
Love keeps no record of wrong.
It is not resentful.
Forgiveness means deleting the text message.
It’s gone.
It can’t be used against the person anymore, because you’ve deleted it.
Once it’s deleted, you can’t get it back.
Forgiveness doesn’t keep a secret list of sins, so that you can use it as ammo in the future if the person messes up again.
Forgiveness erases that list; it destroys that list.
As you consider forgiveness, what is your motivation?
You’ve been forgiven so much.
You argue back - “But that person has done something really bad.”
Haven’t you sinned worse?
Your friend sinned against you … a sinner.
You’ve sinned against a perfect God.
Who’s definition is holy and good.
This is who you sinned against.
And yet, you’ve been forgiven.

This type of forgiveness is special.

We live in a world that longs for peace.
It’s being torn apart.
God gives a solution … Jesus Christ.
Prior to his conversion, Paul violently dragged people out of their homes and sentenced them to death.
It’s safe to say, that the church had a grudge against Paul.
Especially, when he was responsible for the deaths of Christians.
Yet, as it says in I Peter 4:8, love covers a multitude of sins.
Paul repented, of his sins, and was welcomed into the church, becoming the apostle to the Gentiles.
This kind of forgiveness only comes from understanding how you’ve sinned, the cost of your sin, and how you’ve been forgiven.
This then becomes the most practical of sermons.
In order to be reconciled to others … you must first be reconciled to Christ.
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