Show Me the Money

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

If you have your Bible, I want you to go to Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 18, we're going to start at verse 21, and uh we're gonna read a parable of Jesus.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

And just as a reminder, the word parable, the Greek word for that is parabole.

And then bole means to cast.

And so literally what a parable is, it is something that is cast alongside something else.

And so in the case of Jesus, Jesus tells stories that are parables, and these stories are cast alongside a truth to illustrate what the character of God is like and what the kingdom of God is like.

And so in this particular passage in Matthew 18, uh Jesus has just finished preaching an amazing discourse on reconciliation, and it seems like Peter, when he hears this, he's he's got more questions.

He's like, I I need to I need to get further clarity here.

And so here's where we pick up this text.

This is Matthew chapter 18, verse 21.

Matthew 18:21

It says, Then Peter came to him and asked, Lord, how often do I forgive someone who sins against me?

Seven times?

That's that's a very good biblical number.

Good try, Peter.

Not seven times, Jesus replied, but seventy times seven.

That's 490.

Some of your versions say 77 times.

The point here is that Jesus is saying to Peter, if you're counting, you've missed the point.

Then he goes into the parable in verse 23, it says, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him.

In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.

Some of your versions say 10,000 talents.

The idea is that it's more than this man could ever pay.

He couldn't pay, so his master ordered that he be sold along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned to pay the debt.

But the man fell down before his master and begged him, Please be patient with me, and I will pay it all.

Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

Now let's look at verse 28.

But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars.

Some versions will say a hundred denarii.

A denarius was a day's wages.

Now the idea here then is that it was such a small amount comparatively speaking.

And so it says that the man he goes to get the money, and it says he grabbed him by the throat.

Mafia style.

He grabbed the man by the throat, demanded instant payment.

His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time.

Be patient with me, I will pay it.

He pleaded, but his creditor wouldn't wait.

He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

Verse 31.

When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset.

They went to the king and told him everything that had happened.

Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, You evil servant, I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.

Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?

Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

Now listen to verse 35.

That's what my heavenly father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

Welcome to church, everyone.

Show me the money.

If you're not familiar with that phrase, it is synonymous with pay me.

Pay me.

Show me the money.

This was about 14 years ago.

I remember I climbed in the car with a man who I've known for about since I was 13 years old.

He is a mentor and like a big brother to me.

And in that season, I would take many rides with him and we would converse and catch up about different things.

And so this day I remember jumping in the car, and when I buckled my seatbelt, he started the conversation like this.

He said, Jelani, you know we've been through a lot together.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't like it when people start conversations that way.

It doesn't feel good to me.

It feels like when my girlfriend in middle school broke up with me on a tape recorder.

True story, she she gives the tape recorder to her cousin, he hands it to me, and I realized something's really bad, something really bad is going on when I hit play on the tape recorder, and she was singing the RB version of It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.

I thought, this isn't good.

This can't be good.

That's how I felt when he said what he said to me to start the conversation, and then he proceeded to tell me about some recent events that had transpired.

He told me that a man who was like a father figure to me thought that I had made some disparaging comments about him, and in response to that, he told some people some very personal, private, and painful things that I had shared with him in confidence.

And when I heard this, I was absolutely devastated.

I remember vacillating between emotions, I was angry, I was embarrassed, I was plotting revenge, and then I finally landed simply heartbroken because I felt betrayed.

Let me ask you today, how do you respond when someone hurts you?

How do you respond when someone wrongs you?

What do you do when someone sins against you?

I'll tell you what I did.

I did what any other grown man would do.

I call my mama, y'all.

When we look at this text, Jesus gives us a response.

He gives us what I would call the kingdom course of action.

He says, here's what you do when someone hurts you, wrongs you, or offends you.

You forgive them.

Now I realize that even delving into this subject, it's very sensitive.

But I believe that when Jesus begins to talk about forgiveness, he lays out the answer to three different questions.

He answers, what is forgiveness?

He answers, how do we forgive?

And he answers, why do we forgive.

And I want to talk about those three things today.

I want to start off talking about what is forgiveness?

What is forgiveness?

I feel like to begin this though, I need to go back to when I was in high school.

I don't know if you guys experienced this, but I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and so there was something we thought was cool to do in the 80s and 90s.

We would pay someone a compliment, and then at the end of the compliment, we go, not y'all, y'all remember that?

Like we would say, your shoes look so good, bro.

Not your your hair looks so nice.

Nobody said that to me in a while, but your hair looks so nice, not my wife told me that her her brother said to her one day, you look beautiful.

Not I mean it's not it's not funny, but it is kind of funny.

It is kind of funny.

I feel like when it comes to forgiveness, that there are so many things around forgiveness that I feel like I just want to start off and say, not that's that's not what forgiveness is.

Let me tell you two things that forgiveness is not.

Forgiveness is not approval.

It is not saying what was done to you is okay.

It's not condoning that, it's not saying it was right or brushing it under the rug.

That's that's not what forgiveness is, it's not approval.

Forgiveness is also not automatic reconciliation.

It's not automatic reconciliation.

Reconciliation means to restore to a previous state.

And so sometimes we think, well, when we forgive, it automatically restores that relationship.

That's not true.

Because there's actually two types of forgiveness.

There is what's called unilateral forgiveness, and then there is transactional forgiveness.

Unilateral forgiveness is forgiveness one way.

This is forgiving someone who never asked you for forgiveness, they never repented, they never acknowledged what they did, whether they didn't know or whether they've died.

But they've never asked you forgiveness, and you choose to forgive them anyway.

That's unilateral forgiveness.

That's what Jesus did in Luke chapter 23 when he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

They weren't asking, but Jesus gave.

This is forgiveness when somebody comes and and they're repentant and they ask you for forgiveness.

It's a transaction that takes place.

Amen.

I hear you back there, little baby.

They come to you and they ask for forgiveness.

And when you extend forgiveness, this now becomes the groundwork for possible reconciliation because you agree on the wrong.

Without transactional forgiveness, it's very difficult to move forward in reconciliation.

And so forgiveness is not automatic reconciliation.

So, what is forgiveness?

The Greek word that's translated forgiveness means release.

It means release or to let go.

If we go back to this story in Matthew 18, 27, the king has come to sell his accounts, but when he forgives the debt, look look at this scripture, Matthew 18, 27.

Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave the debt.

He released him.

Here's what forgiveness is forgiveness is releasing a person from a wrong committed against you.

It's releasing a person from a wrong committed against you, it's relinquishing the right to punish.

I don't know about you, when somebody wrongs me.

I know this isn't the Christian thing to say, but I want to punish them.

It's actually relinquishing the right to punish.

In other words, you're turning them over for God to handle it.

Forgiveness is also the cancellation of a debt.

It's the cancellation of a debt.

In fact, in the New Testament, most often when for the word forgiveness is used, it's in reference to canceling a debt.

Think about it.

We know this in the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, verse 12, Jesus says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Matthew 6:12

There is this sense then with forgiveness that it's almost like an accounting term.

Because when someone wrongs us, it's like they took something from our account.

And listen, we we know this.

We actually know this intuitively because when somebody wrongs us, here's what we say: they owe me an apology.

They owe something because they've withdrawn or taken something from my account.

If I've done something, I say I owe you an apology.

If if I'm vengeful and someone has wronged me, do you know what I say?

I'm gonna pay them back.

Or I'm going to get even.

Why?

Because there's a sense when someone wrongs you, it's as if they have taken something, withdrawn something from your account, and therefore, when you choose to forgive them, you choose to cancel the debt.

Forgiveness is releasing a person from the wrong committed against you.

It is relinquishing the right to punish.

It is the cancellation of a debt.

In essence, it's letting go.

It's letting go.

Now, when I think about this, I think about an experience I had with my two oldest children.

I have a seven-year-old daughter named Judah and a five-year-old son named Jaden.

And so one day we were out at the park, okay?

And my kids decide that they want to play on the monkey bars.

So, all right, so we're gonna go over to the monkey bars.

And so I pick up my daughter Judah, she grabs onto the monkey bars, and then she starts to swing through.

And I mean, she's like, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.

She looks like Tarzan.

I'm like, I'm like, you're gonna get a scholarship.

I'm so proud of you.

You're you're amazing.

You're amazing.

And then my five-year-old son, of course, he wants to be like his sister, Daddy.

I want to do the monkey bars.

Okay, so I pick him up and I put him on the monkey bars.

He he just hangs there.

Like I remember seeing his feet dangle like this, and then he says, Daddy, help.

I said, Okay, okay, son.

So I go over to him and I said, All right, if you want to go to the next bar, Jaden, you have to let go of the one you're holding, then the momentum will swing you forward and you can grab the next bar.

He goes, Okay, daddy, and so I step back.

He doesn't go anywhere.

He says, Daddy, help.

I said, Okay, okay, okay, okay.

All right, son.

If you want to move forward, you have to let go of what you're holding on.

I got it, daddy.

Okay, so I back up.

Cool, show time.

Five-year-old son?

Daddy, help, help.

So finally, I go back a third time and I'm like, okay, Jaden, if you want to get to the end of this, you're going to have to let go of what you're holding on to.

I wonder today, in some very honest moments, if there are some of us in this room, the truth is the hurt is so deep, the pain is so deep, the situation was so tumultuous that you find yourself, even in this moment today, hanging on the monkey bars of life.

And your desire is to move forward and to progress and to get to the end of this.

And you've been calling out, Father, why don't you help me?

Help me, Dad.

Help me, Heavenly Father.

And I wonder if God is right there with you saying, I want to help you.

But you know what I want to help you do?

I want to help you let go of what you're holding on to.

Because the only way that you can move forward is if you let go.

Forgiveness is letting go.

So then the next question becomes well, how do we let go?

How do we forgive?

The first thing that we have to do for going to forgive is we have to count the loss.

We have to count the loss.

Now, before I get into this, I need to confess to you, uh, I am not a mathematical genius like Pastor Robert, okay?

You know, he talks about how he can basically do algorithms for math in his head, and that stresses me out.

That's that's not me.

In fact, uh, the first math class I took in college was math 099.

That's that's remedial math, if you don't know.

That's because apparently I didn't do so great on the ACT, okay?

Not that I'm bitter about Math 099.

Which, by the way, how many of you here and those of you online, you're really great with numbers?

Would you put your hand up just so I can know who I don't like at church, who I don't like at church?

When it comes to forgiveness, the first thing we have to do is count the loss.

And let me explain this to you.

When we go back to Matthew, verse 8, or chapter 18, verse 24, the king goes to settle accounts.

And it says, in the process, one of his debtors brought in someone who owed him a million dollars.

Now, here's what we have to understand about this king.

When he brings the servant in, he knows how much the servant owes him.

He he knows how much was borrowed, he he knows what the loss is.

So when he goes forward to forgive, he's not forgiving in general.

He's forgiving specifically.

He's counted the loss.

Now, here's why I say that.

Often what we do is we forgive in general.

Somebody hurts us and we go, oh, oh, we forgive them.

The problem with forgiving in general and not in detail is we miss out on the depth of healing that God wants to bring.

See, the reality is that when someone wrongs us, when they sin against us, they've taken something from us.

And so here's what we do if we want to count the loss.

We actually acknowledge the pain.

We assess the damage.

We say, here's what they did to me, here's how that made me feel, here's what they took from me.

You you you look at the impact of their decisions on your life, and you count the loss, and when you count the loss, you now know what you're actually forgiving.

So you you count the loss, number one.

Here's number two.

You choose to let it go.

You choose to let it go.

We go back to the text, and we notice that it says in verse 27, then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

The master made a choice.

Now I want to acknowledge something.

This is one of the few times that you actually see feelings around forgiveness.

He says he had pity on him or compassion for him.

So there's feelings around this.

The other times that you see forgiveness, you don't hear anything about feelings.

Why?

Because forgiveness is not a feeling, it's a choice.

We choose to cancel the debt.

Look at this verse.

This is in Colossians chapter three.

You'll hear nothing about feelings here.

This is what Paul says.

He says, make allowance for each other's faults and forgive anyone who offends you.

Forgive anyone who forgives you.

He doesn't say if you feel like it, he just said forgive them.

Forgiveness is not a feeling, it's a choice.

And so if we're going to practically forgive people, we count the loss and we choose to let it go.

Now I'm going to share a very personal story here and a very sensitive story.

And if statistics are correct, many of you have actually experienced what I'm about to share.

When I was just a kid, six, seven, eight years old, I was abused.

I want to be very sensitive because I know that many of us have worked through this, but I was abused.

And to be honest with you, I didn't deal with that until I came to Gateway.

And I noticed I was struggling with some things that I just couldn't get by.

And so I decided to meet with one of the pastors on staff who has a counseling background and just to sit down and talk about what I was struggling with.

And so we sit down and we begin to converse, and I'm telling her my life story.

And I just mentioned, hey, you know, I was abused when I was a kid, and then I just moved on.

And then and then she stopped me, she's like, Excuse me?

Wait a minute.

Like, you can't just skip by this.

Let's talk about the abuse.

And I said, Well, okay, we can talk about it.

And I shared a little bit more.

And then I said, But I forgave them.

Like, that's the Christian thing to do.

I know I already forgave them.

And so I just want to move forward.

And then she said this, and I and I had never even thought about this.

She said, Did you ever grieve over that?

Did you ever grieve over that?

She said, Because Jelani, grieving is part of the healing process.

And I said, Well, well, no, it happened when I was a kid.

I didn't really think about it.

She said, Well, here's what we're gonna do we're gonna take a moment right now.

And I

You to go back there.

And I want you to think about what they did to you, what they took from you, the impact of their decision on your life.

I want you to think about all those things.

And in response to that, I'm like, no, no, I I actually, why don't we talk about you?

We're here to talk about you today.

Okay, I don't want to talk about me.

So I said, okay, I'll go back there.

And she said, I want you to go back and I want you to think about those things, and then I want you to say out loud what you really want to say.

And so I start to think about the abuse and the impact that had on my life and how it made me feel and what they took for me.

I start counting the loss.

And all of a sudden, out of my mouth, I just say, You jacked up my life.

And then I burst into tears.

I just start weeping because for the very first time I had actually assessed the damage.

I had actually looked at the impact of those decisions on my life.

I counted the loss.

And then when I moved to forgive this person, I forgave them from a different place because I understood what I was forgiving and how much I was forgiving.

And when I chose to forgive them, the Lord brought a new depth of healing.

If you're gonna forgive, you got to count the loss.

And then you choose to let it go.

Here's the third question that Jesus answers.

And that is, why do we forgive?

Why do we forgive?

Well, reason number one, it's because we have been forgiven.

How many of you are thankful that we are forgiven through Jesus Christ?

Amen?

It's because we've been forgiven.

You see this again in Matthew 18, 32.

Says, then the king, after he, after this king finds out that the servant didn't forgive the other man, he calls him and he says, Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, You evil servant, I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.

Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?

This king says to him, You should have forgiven because I forgave you.

You should have had mercy because I have had mercy on you.

Again, if we go back to Colossians chapter 3, verse 13, I only read the first part of that verse.

Colossians 3:13

But remember, here's what it says: make allowance for each other's faults and forgive anyone who offends you.

And here's why.

Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Wow.

We forgive because we've been forgiven.

Now, when I when I think about this, I can't help but but think about an experience I had with my wife.

This was before we were married, we had just started dating, but we knew it was pretty serious.

We were headed the direction towards marriage.

And here's what you have to know about my wife.

My wife, she's she's there on the front row.

Hey, babe.

Uh but but she was like Mother Teresa growing up.

Like she just really, I mean, she wasn't perfect, but basically perfect.

You know what I'm saying?

Basically perfect.

She just didn't do a whole lot wrong.

Well, that wasn't my story.

I I had made some very poor choices when it came to purity and morality.

In fact, even after I received salvation, I still struggled.

I was saved, but I wasn't free.

And because of that, this is just a side note, because of that, I really struggled with self-forgiveness.

I struggled with forgiving myself, but let me tell you something that I learned about forgiving myself.

First of all, refusing to forgive myself was essentially holding me hostage and demanding payment.

And guess what?

I can't pay me.

It's the second thing I understand about not forgiving myself.

So when I choose not to forgive myself, I choose to determine my own consequences, which is my effort to be God.

And guess what?

I'm not.

So I learned these things about self-forgiveness, but I was wrestling with sharing with her just because I knew her past and I knew my past, but I felt like, listen, we're we're head of the direction of marriage, and so I need to tell her about the decisions I've made.

And so we're sitting in the car one day, we're at Sonic, and we're parked.

Don't somebody laughed at Sonic?

What kind of so we're sitting there at Sonic, and she's sitting in the drive in the passenger side, I'm sitting in the driver's side.

Now remember, there is the armrest console in between us.

And so I work up the courage to tell her about my past, and I'll never forget she literally burst into tears.

Like burst into tears, and she starts going, why?

Why?

Now I can just tell you that was the climax of encouragement for me.

I never felt better in my life than in that moment.

I'm just kidding, literally, I wanted to get out the car and let another car hit me.

It was rough.

And so we continue to converse, and finally, she did something I'll never forget.

We're sitting there in the car, she takes her left hand and she reaches it across the console, and she grabs my hand and she says, I forgive you, and I'm not going anywhere.

Let me tell you what God did through the cross of Jesus Christ, because the Bible says that we were all separated by sin.

And here's what God did through the cross of Jesus Christ.

He took his hand and he reached it over the chasm console of sin and he grabbed your hand and he grabbed my hand and he grabbed our hands and he said, I forgive you, and I'm not going anywhere.

And because we've been forgiven, we forgive.

Here's the second reason why we forgive.

We forgive because forgiveness frees us.

Forgiveness frees us.

If we go back to Matthew 18, and now at the end of this, verse 34 and 35, it says, Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

So this man is imprisoned and he's being tortured.

That's what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

Now, I don't know how you look at this, but but this seems pretty severe to me.

It seems pretty severe.

Like if you think about this, whether you say God is doing this himself, or if you say, Well, really, you've opened the door to demonic oppression because you agree with unforgiveness, however you look at it, this seems pretty severe.

Like, God, really?

Torture and imprisonment?

But I want to I want to communicate something to you.

I believe that this is actually a beautiful act of love.

Here's what I mean by that.

All of us know that there are different consequences for different actions, depending on the impact of that action.

For example, if we go back to my seven-year-old daughter Judah, if she decides that she is going to call her little brother a name, a negative name, there are consequences to that.

We don't do that in our family.

We encourage one another, and so we address that.

But let's just say that my seven-year-old daughter decides she wants to steal the car keys, get in my little Honda hybrid, and drive down the street.

Can I tell you there are different sets of consequences for that?

Here's why.

First of all, I understand that if she gets behind the wheel of the car, she's essentially hit the self-destruction button on her life.

Not only that, she potentially may harm many other people in the wake.

And so because I love her and I care about her and I don't want to see her harmed or for her to harm other people, I make those consequences severe.

What if God, who understands the impact of unforgiveness in our lives, loves you and he loves me so much that he says, I'm going to make these consequences so severe because I understand that if you carry unforgiveness, you essentially hit the self-destruction button on your life and potentially harm many others in the wake.

So it's actually his goodness and his love that says you can't carry unforgiveness.

Now let me crystallize this for you, and this will be my last illustration.

I brought with me a piggy bank today.

And I brought this piggy bank because this piggy bank represents unforgiveness.

See, I told you earlier that there's this sense with when somebody wrongs us that they have taken something from our account.

They have withdrawn something from our account.

And so here's what happens when we carry unforgiveness.

We pick up a piggy bank.

And when we see the person who's wronged us, when we think about the person who's wronged us, when we hear about the person who's wronged us, we we we we essentially say from our hearts, show me the bunny.

Not the bunny, the money.

Sorry, that came out weird, wrong.

Show me the money.

When I think about you, I know you owe me, so pay me.

Give me what you owe me.

Show me the money.

The problem is this, and actually, there's several problems.

The problems, though, are number one, you end up carrying this piggy bank everywhere you go.

So it doesn't just impact the relationship with the person that hurt you.

No, you carry this into your marriage, and you carry this into conversations with your kids, and you carry this on your job, and it starts to manifest itself according to Ephesians 4 in bitterness and harsh words and hatred.

And it's because you're carrying unforgiveness.

And not only that, though, this this is an extra weight that we were never meant to carry, and so we're carrying an extra weight now everywhere that we go, and guess what?

It begins to weigh us down.

In fact, it can impact us physically with stress and anxiety.

Why?

Because we're carrying unforgiveness.

But not only that, we all know this, pigs stink.

And so imagine carrying this pig in every relationship, every place, and every moment.

You find yourself imprisoned and saturated with the stench of a pig.

That's torture.

And here's what God does in his goodness for us today.

He says, I know when you think about that person or those people that you're yelling out from your heart, show me the money.

But I I came today to say this to you: show me the money.

Give me the pain, give me the hurt, give me the debt, give me how they wronged you.

And if you would show me the money, I will show you the freedom.

Because forgiveness frees us.

I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes.

And I want to ask you the question that Pastor Robert asks us every weekend.

And that is, what is the Holy Spirit saying to me in this message?

For some of us today, it's clear he's speaking to us about forgiving someone.

Someone who hurt us, someone who wronged us.

Maybe he's even speaking to you about forgiving yourself.

For some of us today, he's speaking to us about receiving forgiveness, the forgiveness that was paid for through Christ, about giving your life to him, making the decision to follow him.

For all of us, so I believe he's speaking to us about how much he loves us and how much he wants to see us walk in freedom.

So, in a moment, I'm going to pray over you corporately.

But then Pastor Nathan is going to come up and he's going to give you an opportunity to respond personally.

And so, Father, I just pray over every person under the sound of my voice.

I pray that you'd give them the grace to forgive so that they can be free.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.