Matthew 18:15-35 - Reconciliation, Restoration and Forgiveness

We study through books of the Bible, and uh we have extra copies if you didn't bring one with you and you would like one to uh uh to follow along in a paper copy.

We've got uh people coming up and down the aisles here, and somebody over here.

So just raise your hand if you would like a copy.

Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle, and um I'll remind you that uh last week uh we studied here in the Gospel of Matthew uh that Jesus dealt with the disciples' argument about who was the greatest in God's kingdom, um, who was uh uh who was going to enter God's kingdom.

He said he must become like a child, not be childish, but be childlike.

Big difference.

And uh we had some teaching on stumbling blocks to faith and uh the assurance of God's passion to seek and to save those who are lost.

As uh we had that amazing image of uh of the 99 and of uh the Lord Jesus uh uh going and who wouldn't go is is you know, he's he's just so he wants the community of the believers to be a redemptive community.

Who wouldn't go then after that one who's lost?

And so this leads us uh to verse 15, and today we'll be studying um, I've just titled it uh how to pursue reconciliation, restoration, and forgiveness.

Um that's because we are all sinners.

And uh because we all need to both receive forgiveness and there will come a time when you will need to show forgiveness or extend forgiveness um to someone else.

Why is this hard for us?

Both of those things are hard, aren't they?

Sometimes it's hard to receive forgiveness, even from God.

Sometimes we just don't get it.

It doesn't sink in that He's actually forgiven us.

And then when you think about your response to others who may offend you or may sin against you, uh, sometimes do you find it hard to forgive somebody?

It's immediately hard when you're on the highway and someone offends you by drifting into your lane or you know, just whatever.

Um I remember the first time my first solo drive, I went on the highway, got behind this pickup truck, and it had all these trees and branches and everything falling out of the back of it.

I'm like, I had like a turn on a windshield wipers just to be able to see where I'm going, you know, and it just made me mad.

I think that began my struggle through life on the highway to remain a Christian.

Um but what is it about us that we're so quick to take offense in our day and time, too?

I guess I'd ask that question.

I I think that's a good question for us to ask.

We live in the age of outrage.

Uh live in a culture that drinks and every day drinks from the river of rancor, is baptized in the river of rancor every single day.

And uh I think that's important for us to ask these kinds of questions.

Why do we take offense so quickly?

Why is it so difficult to navigate life without being drawn to that river?

And how can believing the New Testament gospel actually help us find a way out of these kinds of predicaments?

Well, no other person in human history has been more connected with a subject of forgiveness than Jesus Christ.

Um, what can we learn from Jesus and from his teachings on this subject?

Look with me, if you will, at Matthew 18.

I'm gonna start in verse 15 and we'll we'll finish out the uh chapter here today.

If your brother sins and your English translation may have a little one or a little note there, or you may see some words uh against you in there.

Uh raise your hand if you have against you in your Bible.

Is that there?

Raise your hand if you do not have that in your Bible.

Okay, so it's it's mixed.

And the reason is because some of our ancient manuscript copies have that in there.

Some of them don't.

Uh that sets this whole thing up a little differently if the against you is there, doesn't it?

Uh is it a personal offense, a personal sin against you, or is it if your brother sins and you're just a part of the church and you notice someone who's living recklessly, sinfully, and has fallen into a habit of sin.

So which is it?

And I would say, how about both apply in this situation?

What he's gonna say applies in both cases.

And so he goes on to say this if your brother sins and you can put against you if you want, go and reprove him in private.

If he listens to you, you have won your brother.

He didn't say you have won the argument.

If he listens to you, you have won the fight, the struggle.

No, you've won your brother.

This is beautiful.

I love this.

And by brother, the word is uh Adelphos in the Greek.

It's uh I live we lived in Philadelphia for a few years, and uh Adelphi comes from that same root word.

And that's it's been known as the city of brotherly.

That's right, yeah.

Uh when we first moved there, we thought it was the city of brotherly shove.

Because you'd say hi to somebody on the street, they go, what do you mean by that?

You know, just a little grumpy up there, a little, maybe blood sugar's low or something.

I don't know.

They got tasty cakes.

Their blood sugar should be way high.

You know, I'm I I don't know why that's the case, but but the idea is that here among the community of faith, that's to be a redemptive community, occasionally what happens is that somebody falls into sin, and perhaps you take umbrage or take offense, and maybe somebody actually sins against you, and it's not just you taking offense.

Uh maybe somebody actually lied about, maybe somebody actually in some way uh sinned against you harshly.

Go and reprove him in private.

If he listens to you, you have won your brother.

But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

In some of your translations, that'll be all capitalized because it's it's a quote from Deuteronomy 19.

It's a it's it's Jesus reaching back into the Old Testament law and see, see how this makes sense timelessly.

Um and so he he he reiterates, he he uh quotes from the Old Testament, shows his respect for the scriptures.

Jesus' view of the Old Testament was that these are the words of God to us, right?

If he refuses, this person to listen to them, you and your witnesses, tell it to the church.

In other words, the entire gathering of God's people.

If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax gatherer.

And that's uh let's let's not soften that.

That's Jesus saying there's going to be some separation here.

If they refuse the consensus of the entire church and its leaders on what is sin and what isn't sin, and you've done this properly, with the goal of restoration, with the goal of reconciliation and forgiveness, and they still refuse all of that, then they're to be treated as an outsider, uh non-believer, uh, someone for a first century Jew would have heard Gentile and a tax gatherer, that's the way they would have heard it.

Truly I say to you, and this is interesting because all of the you's and the yours in verses 15 to 17 have been in the singular.

So if you if you kind of do a little parsing of the original language, you see, if your brother sins, and that's that's in the singular, you, there's a very personal thing involved here.

Okay.

Um, truly I say to you, is in the you is in the plural.

Whatever, and so this is perhaps to all of the church and all of the church leaders who might be involved in this conversation.

Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

Again I say to you that if two of you, plural, agree on earth about anything, that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.

For where two or three have been gathered together in my name, there I am in their midst.

He is with us today.

Uh He is with you who have gathered with us online.

He's with us today.

There are more than two or three here.

Um we listening, uh He's moving.

Are we open to learning from Him, to being encouraged by Him, to being corrected by Him, to being instructed by Him, to being in some way exhorted by Him?

Are we open to that?

He is willing to speak to us.

Verse 18, sometimes people in our modern day time think that this is about the devil and that you know, BANG the devil.

You know, you'll hear some, but Jesus is not being the first televangelist to speak with some kind of an emphasis like that.

That's not what he's talking about.

I actually think it's a there's a real strong case that this is not so much about yelling at the devil at all or about the devil at all, but it's about setting standards and norms for the community of faith.

That is, you find this to be binding, like we see in Acts chapter 15, when the church leaders in Jerusalem write a little encyclical that's going to go out to the church around the Mediterranean as it begins to gather and get established, and they basically say, We want to charge you to not uh eat food that has been offered to idols, to abstain from sexual immorality.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And uh so what they do is they together, collectively, the leaders, kind of say, here are what the norms for believers would be.

We're binding you as people who publicly claim to be believers, to be Christians.

This is the way Christians should behave in the world in which we live.

Now, there, to be sure, are some occasions where some stream of the church will see something as out of bounds, and another stream of the church won't see it the same way.

Understand that.

That can happen.

But I think Jesus is actually setting us up good really well here because he's saying, you, plural, you church leaders, you, consensus of the community of the redemptive community, come up with what is binding for the belief and behavior of the people.

If the scripture doesn't speak about it, in other words, you do the hard work of deciding and discerning what God's will is.

Because he says right here, in my name, where two or three of you gathered in my name.

That's a qualifier.

That is, we want to see things the way he sees things.

We want to want what he wants.

We want to abstain from what he would have us abstain from.

We are no longer our own.

We just said it up here, didn't we?

We belong to him.

We don't belong to ourselves.

We don't belong to the culture flow.

We belong to him, and there's great freedom, there's great security in knowing that we belong to him.

Peter came then to the Lord, and he's often the guy that steps forward to say something, right?

Uh Peter came to the Lord and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him up to seven times?

Now Peter feels really good at this point to even say that because most of the rabbis taught that you had to forgive him up to three times.

So Peter goes, I'm going better than two times more.

I'm gonna say seven.

You know, look at me.

Let me shine up my little humility badge and my little holy badge.

And look at me, I'm gonna forgive seven times, you know.

How many?

How many, Lord?

And Jesus' response is so awesome.

I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven math majors.

How many is that?

490.

Okay, good.

Somebody's out there awake and took math.

I think that's right.

Um, for this reason, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king, and now he's gonna give us an interesting parable here.

A certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

The word is do loss, it's the same word that the apostle Paul used to describe himself when he opens his letters.

I, Paul, the doolos, the servant, the slave of Jesus Christ, of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

Um we are all serving somebody.

Um several decades ago, Bob Dylan had that song, you gotta serve somebody.

And uh it's true, we all do.

We all serve somebody.

There's some king in your life.

Might be you, might be your job, might be your spouse, might be your kids, might be any number of different things that you're serving that you've set up as the ultimate validator in your life.

And sometimes good things can become idols to us.

But we're studying the Gospel of Matthew, and we're calling the study of the Gospel of Matthew the king and his kingdom.

And so we draw the distinction and we we we listen to Jesus, and when he says this, the kingdom of heaven, maybe we compare it to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves to balance the books.

He, when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him one slave who owned, who owed him 10,000 talents.

But since he did not have the means to repay, his Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children, and all that he had in repayment to be made.

The slave, therefore, falling down, prostrated himself before him, saying, Have patience with me.

I will repay you everything.

And the Lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.

But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii.

And he seized him and began to choke him, saying, Pay back what you owe.

So his fellow slave fell down and began to entreat him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will repay you.

Exact same thing he had said to his master.

He was unwilling, however, but went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what he owed.

So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved, and they came and reported to their Lord, that's the original man, all that had happened.

Summoning him, his Lord said to him, You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt, because you entreated me, should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you.

And his Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers, until he should repay all that was owed him.

So shall my heavenly father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.

And we'll stop with our reading there, but I do want you to look at something.

Back at verse 24, it's interesting.

This king of this fictional kingdom wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

This slave that was brought before him owed him 10,000 talents.

Now the average day wages would be a denarius.

So the number of days wage it would take to equal ten thousand talents is actually two hundred thousand years of days' wages.

Do you understand?

How enormous this gift of forgiveness that this person it'd be like me moving from my resources to the resources of Elon Musk or Bill Gates or something like that, just in an instant like that.

Um to have debt like that just completely wiped out, 200,000 years, guy couldn't have lived long enough to pay it back.

And that's, you know, you might say, well, why is Jesus even saying that then?

Well, because he's trying to show you by contrast the sheer amount of grace that has been shown to this first person and the stinginess that that person then has as it relates to the next person who just owed, as I read it right here in verse 28, a hundred denaria.

That's 100 days, not a hundred years, not a hundred thousand years, just one hundred days wages.

That's how vast, how massively different the two amounts were.

And yet this guy would not even show the kind of forgiveness, grace, and mercy to the fellow slave that was brought to him that owed him some.

And that's that that kind of shocking uh contrast is what really helps us to understand uh the parable at all.

Um let's see what we can find here.

There are several things I want to point out.

Um, the Bible talks about, as I said, uh forgiveness quite a bit, and Jesus is the one who I think we we find out a lot about forgiveness when we look at Jesus.

He's he's certainly the one who might be symbolic or might personify that act itself.

Um James the apostle writes, my brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this.

Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

What's our responsibility to one another?

Whether we're the one who has been offended or whether we just see somebody straying in the community of faith, and do we have any kind of responsibility or accountability to one another?

I believe I may have told uh some of you this before, but uh um some time ago I had a dream in which I was standing right here uh behind the pulpit here.

It was a beautiful Sunday, the sun was flooding in here, the worship team was, your singing was beautiful, the worship team was great, it was awesome.

And I got up and I said, we study through books of the Bible, as I always do.

And uh I began to uh speak and I was uh actually confessing sins right at the top.

Only they weren't my sins, they were your sins.

And some of you have actually confided in me with you know to me with some of the things that you struggle with.

And this is the worst thing that a pastor can imagine is the betraying of trust that has been given to you.

And all of a sudden I'm sitting here going, yeah, and you know, there's so-and-so over there, and he's really struggling with greed.

There's so-and-so over there, he's just power hungry, there's so-and-so over there, there's lust all over.

That person is just being ruled by that, and it's just here's this person, just arrogant, blah, blah, blah, on and on and on.

And it was just a nightmare for me.

Um but it it reminded me of the sort of the responsibility and the the indispensable gift of accountability in the community of redemptive community of faith.

How important that is.

You know, for me, um voice of the Holy Spirit so important, voice of scripture so important.

The next, you know, the the person with, you know, the human being with skin on that is the loudest voice of the Holy Spirit in my life is not me, it's my wife.

And the next, it's the servant leadership council, to whom I'm accountable.

And if they uh call me in and talk to me and want to raise a red flag or whatever, I will listen to them.

I submit myself to them.

And then on to our godly staff, our wonderful, beautiful uh partners in the gospel.

Uh and on and on the list goes.

Many, many of you that I know personally, that if you spoke to me, I would take very seriously what you say.

Now, that doesn't mean there aren't people that come up to me and go, I'm offended at the way you do X, Y, Z.

And and uh, you know, a long time ago, I mean it's it it but a long time ago, it was it was something small like we're I'm offended at the way we do communion here.

Why don't we use unleavened bread, you know?

I said, well, it's not about the bread.

That's why we don't use unleavened bread.

It's about Jesus.

It's about what he's done.

It's about the symbol of his body being broken for us, his blood being shed for us.

But there are people that, you know, occasionally will come and say, You offended me when you said this this way.

And humor can sometimes be one of those triggers that happens.

But we also, I would also like to say, I mean, you look at, look with, turn to the right in your Bibles with me at 1 Corinthians 13, which, you know, a lot of us know, we've heard it read at weddings, and um it's a it's an important passage because it's called the love chapter for some reason, right?

Um, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and just look at verses 4 through 7 with me.

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

Love is patient, love is kind, is not jealous, love does not brag and is not arrogant.

So, in other words, love is not on Twitter.

Okay?

You're probably not gonna find, if you're looking for the definition of love, you're probably you may not even find it in pop music anymore.

You might, I mean, there might be some songs that are that do display it, but but love is patient, love is kind, um, love, in other words, love doesn't say get out the way.

Love isn't mean-spirited.

I could say it that way too.

Love is not jealous.

That is, love is resting peacefully, harmoniously, uh, with the with the you know, with the relationship.

Love does not brag, it's not arrogant.

And I love the uh verse five, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own.

Well, that's so contrary to what our culture tells us to do.

You grab for everything you can get.

Um, love is not provoked.

Hmm, interesting.

There are people trying to provoke me every day, but I can still be somebody that is not provoked.

Right?

Love does not, how do I do that?

Well, the next one.

Love does not take into account a wrong suffered.

Now, have you ever been in the mood, I have been, I confess this to you, where I look back on it now and I go, you know what, that afternoon, that day, that night, whatever it was, that encounter with that person, I was I was pretty vulnerable and just I had a real thin skin, and I I just interpreted everything that was said, everything that was done in the wrong kind of way.

And I I felt like those people hated me or that person was mean to me, or whatever it is.

And this can happen to all of us.

And what happens for me is I look at and I read this and I go, oh, in other words, there might actually be a wrong done to me, but I'm actually supposed, if I love the person, I'm actually supposed to, like Jesus, not take offense to that wrong that is done to me.

Wow, that's I don't know about you, but that's convicting to me.

Love never fails, verse eight, and and I'll just I'll stop right there.

That's that's just so powerful.

Verse 7, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

It's really, really beautiful at a wedding, isn't it?

But it's really, really hard in relationships, isn't it?

Now, somebody out there must agree with me on this, please.

Okay.

I mean, I cue up all of the kids that we do the their and and and the adults that we do wedding ceremonies for all the time, with just saying, remember, you're marrying a sinner.

There's no other choice.

And so are they.

There's no other choice.

Um you're marrying also way over your head.

Why?

Because you're marrying somebody who's a part of the redemptive community.

A truly Christian community is a thoroughly redemptive community where grace, mercy, and forgiveness flow freely.

They are visible, those things, the grace, the mercy, the forgiveness, visible to others, and they bring glory to King Jesus.

Is this hard?

Yeah, it's hard.

But that doesn't mean we're not called to it.

Lewis says, everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have somebody to forgive.

I mean, I we all laugh, right, because we know this.

That's why we laugh.

And uh and it's been difficult for us to forgive others along the way.

So, how do we pursue reconciliation, restoration, and forgiveness?

I'll just give you a few highlights, uh, four things that I think we can pull out of this chapter.

There must be the context of a loving relationship, a Delphos, brother.

When your brother sins, when somebody that you have a relationship with.

That means I don't walk in this room and I'm I've got my scanner going, and I'm just looking for anybody that I think is sinning.

Also, if if it's not against you, if if the other variant ancient manuscript copies are right, and it's just uh if they just sin in general, um uh, you know, I might know something about somebody that isn't really my brother.

Close relationship.

There's a very familial, friendly, loving relationship that needs to be there before we approach anybody.

So we're I'm not it's this isn't just wholesale.

You just come in and start cleaning out everybody that you think is in sin, because guess what?

We're all wrestling and struggling with something.

So we'd all just have to go home.

And and uh and you guys that are watching online wouldn't be allowed to watch online either.

So um so this is this is important, I think, that we begin with that in mind, the context of a loving relationship.

If you're going to approach somebody, at least have the right to speak into their life because you're in relationship with them.

Before you take on the job of reproving or correcting somebody, make sure you have earned their trust and that they know you have their highest good in mind.

The idea is that for the body of Christ to be spiritually healthy, the members of the body need to be in right relationship with one another.

And since the heart of man is deceitful, that is, since we often fool ourselves into thinking we're better than we really are, we need the objectivity of the others to see when we're heading in the wrong direction.

So we need that accountability, but make sure you're in relationship with this person.

None of us are above the need for admonishment and encouragement.

No Bible study teacher, no home group leader, no pastor, no servant leadership council member, no believer of any kind gets to the point where they no longer need the accountability, the indispensable gift of accountability.

We all need this too.

Uh there must be clarity regarding sin.

If your brother sins, whether that's against you or just if your brother sins, he's not declaring open season on anyone who's merely offended me by seeing or doing things differently than I would, by interpreting social trends a different way than I do.

Or even by, dare I say it in this season, they voted the other way.

So if your brother or sister offend you by sinning against you, but this doesn't mean they vote, you know, this doesn't include the idea they sent the other way.

Who defines this brings up a question though, who defines sin?

Okay?

Who defines sin?

Is the definition of sin up for grabs?

Is it up to the individual?

Is it is it all up to what you or I think, what uh what I prefer, what serves my purposes and is convenient for me.

Is the definition of sin uh up to the discretion of some uh board of social media monitors?

Is that what defines sin in this world these days?

You know?

Whether it's the old regime at Twitter or the new regime of Twitter, you know.

Looking at the moral landscape around us at present, I'd say there is little consensus on right and wrong and much chaos on right and wrong.

So where do we go?

Where do we turn?

The people of God, the redemptive community of faith, here it is, and that's why we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We think the right to define sin belongs to God alone.

And he has revealed his thoughts, ideas, the way he sees things in his word.

That's why we study through books of the Bible.

The Bible presents sin as at least in in at least two different ways.

One, it's a condition of heart, and then secondly, there are acts, individual acts of sin that flow that flow out of that condition of heart called sin.

And so when we read about it in the Bible, we'll we'll see both of those there.

So this passage is not about uh going to somebody and accusing them of being late all the time, of not wearing a tie to church.

Oh my.

Um, of having bad breath or not taking a shower.

That's not it.

If the person is just doing something that annoys us or offends us personally, that thing, uh, if it's not a clear violation of God's law, is not what this passage is about.

We're misapplying this text if we think that's what it's about.

There must be the context of relationship and there must be some clarity regarding sin.

Third, there must be a personal approach.

That's what I see right here.

Go and reprove.

Don't just text them.

Worse, don't post something on Facebook or Twitter.

Don't send an email or an anonymous letter.

All of those things can be so easily misinterpreted.

Raise your hand if somebody has misinterpreted an email you sent ever.

Okay, or a text, yeah.

That's it's most all of us, yeah.

And I have done the same.

I've misinterpreted ones that have been sent to me.

I've taken offense, I've taken umbrage with them.

I thought somebody was, you know, accusing me of things I wasn't uh guilty of.

So we need to show some love, respect, and compassion and do what Jesus says to do here.

Go.

Go to them.

Personal approach.

And I noticed there are three stages to this approach that he lays out.

You know, you go, and if you don't get heard, then you take along with you in the second phase two witnesses, just like the Old Testament had prescribed two or three witnesses.

If that does work, then you go to the whole church.

And again, this is about something that's clearly sinful, not just annoying, not just uh irritating.

The redemptive community, as emissaries of Jesus, then can come to a conclusion and bind whatever needs to be bound.

Come up with a consensus for the way the people of God will behave in this community of faith.

Okay, that's order.

That's the kind of order we need in a world that is recklessly out of control and morally bankrupt in so many ways.

For when it comes to reconciliation, restoration, forgiveness, Christ is both our means and our model.

In other words, I freely admit to you that I don't have it in my heart to forgive some people.

I'd ask you to raise your hand if you uh if you identify with me on that.

But I don't people are gonna go ahead and do it anyway.

I was gonna let you off the hook.

Okay, let's do it.

You freely admit that there's some people that just, it's been hard to forgive.

Yeah.

But Christ is our means and our model, and this is what's beautiful about the Christian faith.

He doesn't ever ask me to do anything where he's unwilling to empower me to do it.

See, um, the Holy Spirit living inside of you, the Holy Spirit living inside of me, spreads, scatters, showers abroad in my heart the love of God.

And that love is the kind of love that forgives its enemies, its offenders.

And that's why the community of faith can be such a beautiful, miraculous, brilliant, luminous display of the glory of God at work in a dark world.

Let's do that.

Let's be that kind of redemptive community.

The primary goal is not casting condemnation and judgment on someone.

It's not about acquiring power or tightening control.

And it's never, ever about seeking revenge.

Some of you may be clinging to the possibility of seeking revenge.

I know sometimes in my mind recently, uh I don't want to give all the details, but something happened to just Kim and I, where somebody took something of ours and um and we found out about it.

And it was, it it ate at me.

I we don't even know the person personally, but it ate at me so bad.

It kept me awake at night.

I'm I'm working out narratives where I can take some of my skills and nail this person, you know.

I'm really burning some energy on this, you know.

And it's just eaten me alive.

And I don't know if you're that way, but that can happen to us, can't it?

He who seeks revenge, says the old Chinese proverb, digs two graves.

I want to kill him.

Meanwhile, I'm dropping down into the grave myself because unforgiveness is just ruling in my heart like crazy.

We have to rely on Christ.

He's our means and our model.

Um, the apostle Paul would write to that same church at Corinth, and he gives instruction for them, by the way, in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, at the end of that chapter, he gives them instruction about what to do about the brothers or the sisters that are in open sin and rebellion against God and how they, as a community of faith, a redemptive community of faith, are to deal with those kinds of people.

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

But he also says, uh, right here, and some of you are familiar with this passage, if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creature.

This is from 2 Corinthians.

The old things have passed away.

Behold, new things have come.

Now, all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

He has committed to us the word of reconciliation, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.

We beg you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

So take all of our offenses, all of our sinful acts and deeds and thoughts and words, and take this all to the cross, and it changes everything.

Christ is the means and the model for us.

He's the model because he went to the cross, not for his sins, but for mine and for yours, whether or not you even admit that you're a sinner.

That's why he went to the cross.

The devil didn't win one over on him, the religious leaders didn't somehow or another manipulate this whole thing.

No, this was God's plan, God's idea, and Christ would come, lay down his life for his enemies.

Me.

Yeah.

We sinners.

And that's that's that's the mind, see that that contrast of it's kind of a uh 1.25 million to one contrast when you talk about, you know, um uh the 10 talents of that the one uh the 10,000 talents that one had owed and the other one only owed uh 100 denarii.

It's like a 1.25 million to one contrast.

And that's how generous God is with forgiveness.

May I, may you, may we become generous in that same way.

Uh Alistair McGrath, one of my favorite living theologians, uh, says God wants and intends the restoration of lost world to himself, to its true nature and destiny, by breaking down whatever barriers are placed between it and him, and in Jesus, he actually makes this possible.

Jesus is the means, Jesus is the model.

Both, when it comes to you and I trying to navigate through some kind of reconciliation, forgiveness, restoration with somebody else.

And I've said this before: forgiveness takes one person, reconciliation takes two.

You may or may not get the other person to want to be reconciled to you, but you can forgive when you start to think about how much you have been forgiven yourself.

And that's the perspective through which we can see this when we look at what Jesus has done.

We aren't, why aren't we eager to forgive?

I think there are several reasons.

Sometimes it's about our pain.

Some of you may be in pain over something that has been something that's been perpetrated against you.

Uh why why don't we forgive?

Why aren't we eager to forgive?

Sometimes it's about our pride.

We just can't seem to get there.

We're stewing like like I've been over this issue.

Sometimes it makes us feel powerful to not forgive.

So whether it's about your pain, whether it's about your pride, or whether it's about some power grab on your part, get on your knees and repent before God.

You know that every single sin is an offense against God.

Some sins are an offense against another person, but every sin is a sin against God, including the sin of withholding forgiveness.

We say it right there every Sunday, don't we?

The only conditional statement in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And what we're actually saying to God is, God, in like manner, the same way I'm forgiving to others, would you forgive me?

And yet, if I'm down here withholding forgiveness, digging two graves, essentially, and I'm saying, God, only forgive me the way I forgive others, I pray that prayer to my own peril, don't I?

Yeah, that's not good.

How about you?

Is it is it pain, pride, is it some power grab?

Maybe you're just grumpy and you were in a mean-spirited moment.

That's happened to me before.

Um even just offends you, do you have a problem with being vindictive like I do?

The God of the Bible offers forgiveness to those who don't deserve it and who can do nothing to earn it.

We said that earlier, didn't we?

What is grace?

Can I earn grace?

And I love that last slide, Pastor Matt.

It's it began, the ACNA thing, it began with just one word sentence.

No.

There are so few no that happen in this world right now.

Simple answer: can you earn grace?

Everybody, yeah, you can't, but you can receive it as a gift.

And you know what?

You can give it away as a gift, too.

You can extend it, you can reflect it, if you want to put it that way.

Image bearers of God are little mirrors whose hearts reflect the heart of Jesus.

Frederick Biegner.

When somebody you've wronged forgives you, you're spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience.

When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you're spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.

For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other's presence.

You know this.

You know, I've been married 44 years.

We know this, don't we, honey?

We know that moment where it's just almost impossible to look the other in the eye because you're withholding forgiveness or you're angry.

You know this with people you work with, with people in your community, with people in your family that you visited last Thanksgiving, and you're dreading the next couple weeks what might happen, you know?

What if we all decided to be part of a redemptive community?

There was a woman I'll call Nancy.

She's blonde-haired, middle class, middle-aged, uh, lived up in Montana.

She wasn't wasn't this sort of person you'd expect to find speaking for a crowd of prisoners at Montana State Penitentiary.

But these prisoners and volunteer workers were straining to hear her whisper soft voice as she explained her reasons for being there that day.

Up until several months before, Nancy scarcely even knew about the Montana State prisoner.

What she did know, no doubt, wasn't the sort of thing that would prompt her to spend long hours talking and counseling with the inmates in that facility.

She started thinking about the institution the day a young man named Gary, we'll call him, was sentenced to serve time for the brutal, premeditated murder of a soft-spoken, gentle giant of another young man named Jack, we'll call him.

She, Nancy, could have been bitter, as many people were, but she hurt for this scared young man, Gary.

She somehow knew the guilty was feeling and the shame and the hurt that his crimes had brought upon him.

Even more than that, Jesus Christ had changed Nancy's life and heart, and she knew that she had been called to offer the same kind of love and forgiveness that God had offered to her through Jesus.

So that day, in the courtroom, when Gary was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison, she began to feel drawn to this young man and to others like him who needed to know God's forgiveness.

It wasn't easy, though.

Forgiveness isn't always easy, especially in her case.

You see, Nancy was in the courtroom that day because the young man, brutally and senselessly murdered by Gary, was her, Nancy's 23-year-old son named Jack.

It's amazing how her soft voice can speak so loudly, even as I tell the story, whenever she speaks about forgiveness.

She echoes the voice of the father, whose only son was killed, not because of something he had done, but because of something that she, Nancy, and you and I have done.

Sin.

The father's voice is so full and overflowing of his deep love for you and for me.

And it really is filling this room even as we study through a passage like this.

The call is for us to be members of the kingdom whose king is eager to forgive, to redeem, to restore, to reconcile.

Will you be one of his subjects in his kingdom?

Is there someone that you need to forgive, to be reconciled, or at least to attempt to reconcile with?

I'll close with a stout quote.

Nothing moves us to forgive.

Like the wondering knowledge, filled with wonder, that we ourselves have been forgiven.

Nothing proves more clearly that we have been forgiven than our own readiness to forgive.

Lord, thank you for your grace, your mercy, and your beautiful forgiveness on offer to us in this room.

Somebody here today, somebody maybe listening by internet, hasn't received your mercy and forgiveness.

Maybe they've been struggling with thinking whether you could even do that.

Help us to believe in you as you reveal yourself to us that you are the one who came for sinners because they are sinners.

Not because they got their act together, but because they are enemies of God.

And you came for us.

That's just so amazing.

You are indeed the means and the model of how we might be able to be a redemptive community.

And so I pray, Jesus, that you would live large in our hearts and that you, Holy Spirit, would speak to each and every person within the sound of my voice about the kind of redemption, the kind of reconciliation, the kind of mercy and forgiveness that you might want to work in some of our relationships.

We're open to you, Lord.

We bow before you, grateful for your amazing grace, and pray that you would reflect that off of your people into this world in which we live.

In Jesus' name, amen.