Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from Jesus Christ, our Lord:

There are times where if you don’t start in the right place, it can get really complicated.  You can’t really see the whole picture unless you know the beginning and how you got there or can see the start of things to really understand where you are and how you got there.  An example, even though we maybe don’t run into it as much, when my wife and I and our family are on vacation and you turn on cable TV and there is a movie on.  Since my wife and I are a couple years apart, there are a lot of movies that I grew up with that I love and I want her to catch up and watch, but we’ll be on vacation and that movie will come up but it’s not at the beginning of it.  It’s kind of in the middle and it’s one where I say “You have got to watch this movie!”  But you can’t start in the middle because you have to start at the beginning to get the full impact of the movie and understand who everyone is and get the whole idea of that movie.  You have to start at the beginning to understand it all.  

Maybe a simpler thing for kids and people in school might be a math problem.  If you are struggling, you show that to someone to ask the question of what is wrong and you can’t really just look where you’re at.  You kind of have to start at the beginning to show the whole work and say “How did you get to this?  Where did you start?”  If you started at the wrong place or your beginning is good, then you can see where it went off.  You can’t just jump in the middle and get the full answer.  You have to start at the beginning to understand everything.  

This is what we see in our lesson today about finding forgiveness.  As Peter is going to ask a question about forgiveness and Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness, we are going to see why it’s important to start at the right place.  And if we don’t start at the right place, especially with forgiveness, everything gets off, or is forgiveness really even possible if we don’t start with the right thing.  

In our lesson from Matthew 18, Peter asks Jesus a question about forgiveness.  “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?  Up to seven times?”  You might say “That’s pretty good, forgiving seven times.”  In Jewish culture, this would have been above and beyond.  The religious teachers and people said “You forgive someone three times.  If they’ve done that thing several times, you forgive them three times, but that fourth time, then they’re not sincere and you really don’t have to forgive them after four times.”  It was even said that sometimes the religious scholars were saying “This is what God does.”  So when Peter says seven times, is that good?  That’s how many times?  He’s going above and beyond what the culture and people said was right in forgiving, but we see Jesus’ answer.  “You think seven times is great or enough, but I’m going to blow that out of the water.”  Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  More than you can count.  If you were to keep track of that, you’d lose track after a few times.  He’s saying we need to forgive.  

In order to explain this idea of forgiveness, Jesus tells a parable.  He explains about a king and a servant.  This king is settling his debt.  “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, canceled the debt and let him go.”  We see Jesus tells this parable and the question that Peter asked is “How many times should I forgive someone?”  But where does Jesus start?  He starts with understanding the king forgiving a servant.  He starts with understanding God’s forgiveness.  Our forgiveness needs to start with God’s forgiveness.  When we ask a question about how many times I should forgive, it shouldn’t be focused first on my forgiving but on how much God has forgiven us.  

When you look out into the world and see people try to understand forgiveness and struggle with revenge or guilt, when they don’t understand God’s forgiveness through Jesus, that God has loved them so much and forgiven them, then everything is thrown off.  Again, I said I like watching movies and if you are a fan of movies, you see how revenge and the inability to forgive are at the core of so many movies where it drives people to do horrible things or to tear apart their lives because they don’t understand God’s forgiveness.  They’re not starting in the right place.  They’re trying to forgive themselves or forgive others, but their foundation, their start is completely off.  

So then when we look at this parable, it’s always good to think about who we are in a parable.  Where do we find ourselves?  In this parable we first find ourselves as the servant.  We are all the servant, but first because we have all been forgiven an impossible debt.  Understanding God’s forgiveness for us, but how much that is.  When it talks about that debt the servant owed the king, it says the man owed him ten thousand bags of gold.  The number of how much this is, people say this is kind of silly for Jesus to use because it was such a large amount of money, millions, billions of dollars, the amount of money some said that the Roman empire would take in in a year, something crazy, a crazy amount that this man would never be able to pay off.  Notice he says the master was going to sell his wife and him and his children off to repay part of the debt, trying to pay some of the debt, and the servant bowed down and he thinks he can pay it off, but the master knows he could never do that.  

This is our debt to God because it’s very easy to see our debt and how our sins pile up just by simply looking at those Ten Commandments.  We can see we put so many things above God.  We love and worship things in our lives in front of God, if it’s our reputation or our family or money, our time and making everything about ourselves instead of trusting in God most of all.  We misuse and don’t desire to serve Him.  We don’t worship and take His Word to heart and spend enough time on that.  There are so many ways daily that we fall short of serving and loving God the way He wants us to.  That’s just our relationship with God.  But think about our relationship with others and how our debt to God piles up as we fail to serve others, as we don’t honor our parents, as we hate others, as we have sinful sexual sins of desire or hurt people in so many ways, by stealing, not giving what we should or hurting their reputation.  Those sins just don’t stack up over a little while.  They build up so fast.  So our debt to God is truly an impossible debt.

So in talking about forgiveness, Jesus starts to say that we should understand we are like this servant who owes this king an impossible debt and God says “You are forgiven.  I am going to pay that debt.”  It’s not like it’s just written off, but someone paid it.  Like a mortgage that isn’t just erased but someone comes and gives that money.  Jesus pays that debt for you and me.  He took the sins of the world upon Him.  This is where we have to found all of our thoughts and understanding of forgiveness in His love for us.  

Then we understand the next point of wearing the other hat, not just understanding that I’m forgiven and struggling when I don’t think I’m worthy to see that I’m so loved.  But then we wear the other hat in needing to forgive others.  And what does the servant do?  “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, 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 we see how much the other servant owed him, in comparison, it’s not very much.  There were ten thousand bags of gold compared to just a hundred silver coins.  But a silver coin still was maybe about a day’s wage.  That’s still a hundred days’ wages that he owed.  So what do we see?  This servant still struggled because that debt was great.  We are also that servant because we struggle to forgive because the sins committed against us, the pains that we have, it’s not like they are small.  They’re true sins that hurt us and pain us and carry weight.  So is it true that we struggle to forgive like this servant?  If you say “Well, no, it’s so easy for me to forgive,” I don’t think you’re being honest.  We struggle all the time because the pain and the sins aren’t like they happen one day and they’re gone, or just like Peter’s question, that sin happens over and over again and I say “How can I forgive that person?  Are they really sorry for it?  They’ve done it again and again.”  They’re so close, so you say “They should know better.”  And that pain is so deep.  So we are like the servant because we struggle to forgive others.  Even though we have this huge debt forgiven, we’re like, “But they hurt me.  It’s not fair.”  Notice that Jesus encourages them that they need to forgive.  

As they learn about what the servant has done, they tell the master.  “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.”  What Jesus is saying is that never should we say “I will not forgive someone.  I will never forgive that person.”  I think He understands we struggle to forgive but there is a difference between refusing to forgive and struggling to forgive.

What are words that should never exit out of the mouth of a Christian?  “I will never forgive you.”  “I will never forgive that person.”  Those words do not belong in a Christian’s vocabulary.  This is what He is saying.  If we say “I’ll never forgive them,” we don’t understand grace and we are spitting in the face of God and Jesus and saying “I don’t care about your forgiveness.  It’s not great.  It’s not good enough for me to forgive others.  I don’t have anything to give out to others and it’s not fair.”  

So how do we forgive?  How can we forgive and how does this matter about starting in the right place?  If I’m only focused on what they’ve done and my power to forgive, then surely I’m not going to be able to forgive.  I’m going to refuse to forgive and deal with others as the world does.  But when I look at God and see how He has forgiven every one of my sins, how you can recount, you can think of your worst day, your worst sin and know that Jesus paid for it.  And as much as you hold onto it and might feel guilty, God says it’s as far as the east is from the west.  He forgives even though we don’t forget.  He says He forgives them.  So God empowers us to forgive.  He changes us.  He changes our hearts to understand we can do the things that humans normally can’t do or that we say is not 
 
within our power because it’s true.  This takes God.  This takes a spiritual understanding and a spiritual truth to understand that God has forgiven us so much so that we can forgive others.  

I think one thing we have to understand when it comes to this parable is that many people will take this last sentence, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart” and they will say this:  You’re forgiven when you forgive others or you’re forgiven because you are forgiving of others.  Is that true?  The truth is you are forgiven, not because you are forgiving but we are empowered and we can forgive because you are forgiven.  Because you are forgiven, you will be forgiving.  This is what Jesus is trying to say.  When you start at the beginning and you understand how much God loves you, then that forgiveness flows out of you.  

Maybe a good picture of that is the sun and the moon.  We often use that to talk about God’s love and how we radiate that and reflect it.  It’s not the love that is in us.  The moon doesn’t have any light, but it shines the light of the sun.  Think about how the moon shines the sun’s light.  Do we struggle sometimes to forgive?  Sometimes it’s very easy.  It’s a full moon shining bright.  Other times it’s a struggle.  It’s a sliver or even that new moon that is hard to see but there is still some light from that.  God never says our forgiving is easy but when we have the Son of God, the Light of the world shining on us and forgiving us, we can radiate that forgiveness to others.  We can say the same words that Joseph said.  “Are we in the place of God?”  If God has forgiven me, I can forgive those in my life, even the hardest of debts.

When we see God and His love, we truly can find forgiveness.  We can find forgiveness for ourselves, to wear that hat and to know I truly am forgiven.  If you are struggling to say that your sins are forgiven, know they are.  The worst sin, the worst day, God has forgiven you.  Find that forgiveness.

So maybe if you’re struggling to forgive others, you are forgetting that forgiveness.  You’re not starting at the right place.  When you find that forgiveness that God has forgiven every one of your debts, you can find forgiveness for those who have hurt you as well.  You are forgiven, not because you are forgiving but because you are forgiven, you will be forgiving.  Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7) Amen.