Forgiven | Ps. Keith Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

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Celebration Orlando, what's going on, church family?

It is so good to be gathered today together.

Even though we're not in our normal space, I love that we have the opportunity to gather in our homes or in our offices or in our cars or wherever it is that you may be joining us.

I'm so glad that we are here and I'm excited about the season that we're in.

And no matter where you find yourself, I believe that God has a word for us and our community today.

Today we're going to be going to Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

But before we get there, I want to do something a little bit different than what we typically do when we have our church at home experiences.

Ordinarily, there will be a message and we'll have some moments of prayer and we're going to continue in that thread.

But I actually wanted to approach this a little bit more like a devotional.

And what I mean by that is typically for me, whenever I'm engaging God's word, there's a couple of mindsets that I bring when I'm approaching the text.

If I'm approaching it in sermon preparation, there's a lot of deep research and theological things that I'm doing.

But sometimes I'm reading it just to absorb the word of God, and other times I'm reading it with a devotional mindset.

And a devotional mindset is a little bit different for me.

And I'm hopeful that as I explain this to you, it'll be helpful for you, and maybe it's something that you can integrate into your life.

There's an old adage that I've heard many years ago that maybe some of us are familiar with, but it's called soap.

Literally, the word soap, it cleanses us, right?

But it typically stands for S scripture, O for observation, A application, and then P a moment of prayer.

And that's pretty much what I want to do with us today is just look at some scripture, share some observations from the text, talk about some applications, and then we're going to pray, and then we're going to go and see what God has for us in our communities.

So before I jump into our reading text, I want to make sure that I give us some context.

That's one of the first things that I often think about when I engage the word of God, is I'm always thinking of what's the context of this passage because context determines meanings.

When we have the proper context, we can understand proper application and we can understand the nuances that are attached to said passage.

So for the passage we're about to read, there's a very unique context.

The context is that Jesus is teaching his disciples, specifically in the passage before the one we're going to read, about what does it look like to have healthy correction in the church.

Now that's a topic that we could go on forever discussing, but ultimately Jesus talks about the way to approach offense, the way that you have the conversation, what happens if there's resistance, all these other components that are connected to how do we have a conversation that hopefully will bring some clarity, correction, but ultimately the idea is to bring us to a place of restoration.

All correction in the mind of Christ was connected to restoring someone, not condemning them.

So with this context in mind, we find ourselves at this unique place where Jesus is saying that we're not called to be spiritual policemen that's examining what's going on in people's lives, but when things come up, it is our responsibility to respond to said things, but we do it with humility, we do it with honesty, and we do it with honor.

So with this framework, that's a little bit different than the context that Peter and the other disciples would have been familiar with.

So Peter, ever being the spokesman of the disciples, he comes to Jesus with a question.

And it's off of the context of what we just shared.

So looking at Matthew chapter 18, verses 21 through 35, let's read this discourse that takes place.

Matthew 18:21–35

Here's what the word of God says.

Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and how and how and forgive him?

As many as seven times, Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy seven times.

Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.

And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, and his wife and children, and for them to be held, and for payments to be made.

So their servant fell to his knees, imploring him, said, Have patience on me, and I will pay you everything.

And out of pity for him, the master of the servant released him and forgave him of the debt.

But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred denarii, and seizing him he began to choke him and saying, Pay what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you.

But he refused, and he put him in a prison until he could pay the debt.

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.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you for all the debt that you pleaded with me, and you should not have shown mercy to this fellow servant the same way that I've shown mercy to you.

And the anger of his master rose up, and he delivered him to the jailers until he could pay all of the debt.

So also our heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

Man.

I I don't know about you, but when I more and more I read scripture, I'm always challenged with the words of Christ.

Because I think so often we we can gravitate to those gracious and kind words, but but we see here once again Jesus is confronting us and saying, Listen, the same grace that I've extended to you, it will be withdrawn if you don't extend that grace to your brothers who've also offended you.

That's a that's a heavy topic when Jesus talks about the importance of forgiving from our hearts.

So I just want to talk about this for a couple of minutes, but let's go into a moment of prayer and let's see what God wants to speak to us today.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you for this opportunity to engage your word.

I just pray over the next few moments that you give us open eyes to see you, open ears to hear you, open hearts to receive everything that you have for us.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.

I I want to give us this example that I think can really resonate with us when we consider what does it really mean to forgive someone.

Mostly all of us, if we can be honest, we're here in America, and those who are joining us from overseas, welcome.

Um, but most of us are familiar with the concept of being in debt.

Um, we can see statistics on the burden that debt has on many families and the struggle and the pressure that is often connected with debt.

It weighs us down and it can sometimes limit our vision for the future.

There's so many things that are connected to debt, but ultimately what debt is is when something is extended to us that we have to then pay back.

And occasionally what happens with people is that they find themselves overstretched.

The payments that they're making connected to the interest, it's not moving the needle.

It can seem like you're in an endless cycle where you're working just enough to have enough or sometimes not have enough.

And then we find ourselves at this place of getting bill collectors calling our homes or eviction notices put onto the door or lights being cut off.

It's because we don't have what it takes to pay the amount that is owed to us.

So I want us to imagine a scenario where there's a person who is in crippling debt, credit card debt, student loan debt, mortgage debt, all the expenses are beginning to pile up.

And they're getting to a point where they're just overextended.

And then one day a benefactor, a generous person, shows up and says, Hey, I want to look at your account, not to criticize, not to condemn, but I want to pay off every single one of your expenses with no strings attached.

The only string, if we want to call it that, is I want you to wear this uniform.

In fact, what it is, it's me sponsoring you.

And all I need you to do is wear my uniform, not for the sake of bringing attention to yourself, but letting people know that I'm willing to pay the debt of anyone who is willing to come and receive this free gift.

Now, most of us, we would be a little bit skeptical, let's be honest, we're we're here.

But but the truth of the matter is if this was something that was made available to us that all of our debts could be wiped clean and the and we are able to move forward and we could wear this uniform and inviting other people to walk in this financial freedom, that would be such a liberating, life-giving thing.

But imagine for a moment, that benefactor, after he leaves your home, all of your debts are wiped clean, this major weight is lifted off your shoulder, and then you go outside and then you bump into your cousin who owes you$200.

And instead of being filled with this joy and allowing the overflow of the generosity that was extended to you to be extended to them, you then begin to ridicule them and say, hey, if you don't give me my$200, I'm gonna post a passive aggressive statement on social media.

I'm gonna tell all of our family in the group chat and remove you from it, and I'm gonna shape the way that people see you as a result of what it is that you owe to me.

When you put those things into contrast, it actually sounds quite ridiculous.

But that's exactly what Jesus is doing in this passage.

He's helping us to understand the abundance of grace and forgiveness that has been extended to us and how that joy should overflow in the way that we interact with other people.

See, when Jesus is talking about the concept of forgiveness, what it is in Scripture, it's literally wiping away the debt.

It's wiping away what is owed.

It's it's wiping the slate clean, so to speak.

Ultimately, what forgiveness is, it allows us to walk in freedom, no longer allowing the past to hold us back.

But I believe there's some important things that we need to put into place to have healthy biblical forgiveness while also operating and moving forward with wisdom.

Here's where the observations of the passage come in for me.

When I look at some of the things that Jesus says to Peter, he talks about the contrast of the amount that was forgiven.

The first thing that Jesus mentions is that there was 10,000 talents.

Now, that may not mean much to us, but in the context that in which it was spoken into, many scholars believe that would have been translated into about a million dollars in our current um in our current economy.

A million dollars.

So the fact that this servant got put into a million dollars of debt is insurmountable and inconceivable in its first place.

But that's the amount of money that he owed the master, and the master wiped away that debt.

But then we translate it over to the 100 denarii that his fellow servant owed him.

What that translates to being about three months' wages.

Now, let's be honest, three months of wages, we feel that.

I know when I think about three months of salary, I feel that.

That's not something that's insignificant.

That's not a penny, but that's that's three months' worth of salary.

So again, we're not minimizing the amount that's owed.

But when we consider the discrepancy, I believe what Jesus is showing us is the perspective that we need to have, the perspective of understanding the abundance in which we were forgiven.

So we need to allow that to overflow into our lives in some other ways.

But then also there's a cultural context to it.

When Peter comes to Jesus and he asks him about, hey, should I forgive seven times?

He was pulling from Jewish traditions.

Back in Jewish traditions, their mindset had begun to evolve to a place where they would forgive somebody around three times.

So I can imagine that when Peter came up to Jesus, he was thinking, like, hey, I'm gonna say seven times because I'm doing even better than our traditions would have said.

He probably thought he was doing something.

He probably thought he was gonna get a gold star.

Like, look, the standard is three, but I'm gonna do better than that.

But then Jesus responds with a phrase where he says 77 or 7 times 7 in some translations.

But that was more of a Jewish idiom, which meant basically endless, endless forgiveness, endless moving forward.

And that's something that's really hard to conceive.

But but another observation that I see from the text as we move a little bit further, Jesus is not talking about lip service forgiveness.

He's not talking about, yeah, I forgive you, but I'm actually going to still hold resentment towards you.

He says forgiveness from the heart.

That that means that we have been so transformed by the forgiveness that we've received that it it reshapes the way that we see people who are indeed indebted to us.

So as we look at some of these observations, how do we put these things into practice when the reality of it is there are people that owe us, there are people who've offended us, there are pains and things that we've experienced.

So, how do we navigate a world that gives people healthy accountability, but at the same time allows us to walk free from the debt and the burden that's connected to it?

I have three simple principles, three applications that I think can hopefully help us as we are moving towards what it means to be free in this.

Here's the first thing that I want you to write down.

Remember how much you've been forgiven.

I think we can sometimes forget how much we have been forgiven.

Here's what I mean by that.

For most of us, maybe there's times where we reflect on our lives.

We reflect on our journeys.

I know that I do this from time to time, and if I can be quite honest with you, there have been seasons of my life when I examined my past.

If I can be real, I wasn't like a terrible person.

Now, granted, I wasn't walking in fellowship with God.

I was raised in a Christian household, but but I wasn't walking in fellowship with God, but but I wasn't like a criminal.

I wasn't, I was a citizen, I was doing the right things, but I wasn't walking in fellowship with God.

And what can happen is we can allow that to lull us into a great sense of I was a good person, which means that I didn't need as much grace.

We could sometimes find ourselves saying that I was still a little bit better than those people over there because I wasn't doing those types of things.

But scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death.

That no matter how good or no matter how bad the contrast may be between me and my neighbor, in the eyes of God there was a broken fellowship, that my sin went before me and it it separated me from the infinite presence of God.

But Jesus came in, who stood in my place, who allowed me to be covered in his blood, and when now when God sees me, he sees me through the righteousness of Christ and my fellowship has been restored.

I think sometimes we can forget that without Christ, we wouldn't have fellowship with God.

Without Christ, that we would not be in right standing with God.

And no matter what our lives may have looked like before that, maybe we were raised in Christian households, and all we knew up until the point of that we live now is that we've been in love with Jesus.

But there's a moment when we were not in fellowship with God, and so when we can remember how much we've been forgiven, it can allow us to extend that same forgiveness to someone else.

I remember reading a story about a lady who had breast cancer, and and the breast cancer had ravaged her body, but miraculously she was healed.

It took a significant toll on her.

And now that she was in remission, and now that she was on this path of recovery, she would now utilize and volunteer her time to go to varying cancer treatments in order to help to bring comfort to people who were walking through the very same thing she was walking through.

Now, this wasn't 20 years removed.

She was still on her journey, but she still continued to be a smiling face, to be a shoulder to cry on.

And I remember when she was having a conversation with someone, they asked her, like, why do you do this?

She says, Because I remember when I was in their shoes.

I remember when I first got my diagnosis.

I remember how lonely I felt.

I remember when the treatment didn't take the first round.

She remembered where she came from, and her response to that remembrance was an overwhelming sense of compassion and love.

I believe that that illustration is exactly how it should be for us when we're in fellowship with Christ.

The reality of it is we should have an overwhelming sense of compassion and love towards people when we are recognizing the reality of I know how much I have been forgiven, and I want to be a person who can extend that forgiveness to others.

But I also know that there's another caveat to it, and here's my second point that I want to share with us.

Release the debt, but practice wise boundaries.

This is the fun one.

Release the debt, but practice wise boundaries.

Now I know that some of us we may hear practice wise boundaries and may begin to roll our eyes.

And if I can be honest with you, there are times when I hear the word boundaries and it makes me have a nervous twitch because there's moments in our culture where we seem to gravitate to certain words and concepts, and then somehow those words and concepts, which should be good in principle, can become weaponized.

Boundaries is one of those words for me.

I've I've heard it so much over the years that sometimes we can lose the potency of what we mean when we're talking about having healthy boundaries.

Because where I've seen it weaponized is that sometimes we can use boundaries as justification for isolation, justification for being selfish.

I'm just practicing my boundaries, and now it allows us to not participate in community, and that's not what we're talking about.

But biblical boundaries means recognizing where the pain was of the past and having a path of health that allows us to move forward.

I believe that for every Christian, we have to recognize this distinction.

Forgiveness means I'm letting go of the past, but it does not mean that that equates to you having equal access to me in the present.

I want you to hear that.

Forgiveness is I'm forgetting the debt of the past, I'm moving past that, but it doesn't mean that you will have equal access to me in the present.

What boundaries allows us to do is it allows us to protect the community from ongoing hurt and pain.

Let me illustrate it this way.

Imagine for a moment you have a relative that you loaned some money to.

And after you gave them the money, they said, Hey, I'm I'm gonna pay you back next week.

And then next week comes and they're like, hey, I don't have it.

I'm gonna pay you back the week after that.

And then that same relative comes to you and says, Hey, I'm actually waiting for a big check that's gonna be coming in another two weeks.

So can I borrow a little bit more money?

But you know, I got this other check coming and it's gonna come and I'll pay back all of the debt.

And you, out of love and compassion, okay, sure, I'll give you uh another, I'll give you another loan.

And then once again, that oh, my check didn't come.

And then this goes on and on and on and on.

At some point, you will get to a place where you recognize that the money that is owed is affecting the relationship, it's affecting the dynamics of the family.

So you come to the conclusion, hey, I'm gonna forgive um the debt that you owe me.

I'm not even gonna say that you owe me that.

I don't want us to continue to have to tiptoe around each other.

So here's what I'm gonna do.

You don't have to pay me back.

But here's what I also know if that same relative comes back to you again and says, Hey, um, now that this late's been clean, can I get another$100 from you?

There's a strong possibility that you will be a little bit more cautious on how you choose to engage it.

Now, if you're led to do it, that's perfectly fine.

But there's gonna certainly be a measure of boundaries in the way that you choose to engage it.

That's what we're talking about with forgiveness.

Forgiveness is I'm letting go of the debt of the past.

I'm not asking you to pay me back for what was done, but I will put healthy boundaries in place.

I'm gonna use wisdom and discernment on what that means for us going forward.

For some people, that may mean forgiving people of a past transgression, but maybe minimizing um the interaction going into the future.

There are moments that God brings us to necessary endings, and it's okay for us to lean into these moments.

Here's my third and final point that I want to share with us.

Forgiveness liberates the forgiver.

Hear my heart, friends.

Forgiveness liberates the forgiver.

It's not for the person who's who's issued the offense.

It's not that they earned it, it's not that they deserve it, but forgiveness is for us.

It liberates us from the prison of holding things against people in the way that it can impact us and affect us.

Studies have shown that people who hold on to grudges, people who hold on to resentment, it literally affects their quality of life.

It literally affects the the standard of their life.

It really weighs down on them.

So forgiveness, it liberates you from expecting payback and having a filter of resentment.

You know, I I remember one of the biggest journeys of forgiveness that I've ever gone through, and it's connected to my biological father.

I still remember vividly when my biological father left my home when I was about four or five years old and and and never ultimately came back.

He interacted with us a little bit and then at some point he was just gone.

And as I got older and I began to really wrap my mind around the abandonment, I was filled with such deep resentment.

As years went on, at some point he began to try to initiate contact, and I was not even remotely interested.

But at one point he became very, very sick.

And once again, I had no emotional connection.

I was so angry, I was so bitter, I had no interest in going to see him.

But then my stepfather, the man who raised me, the man that I consider to be my dad, he came to me and he looked me in the eye and said, It would mean the world to me if you can go and be reconciled.

I don't want you to continue to carry this.

So I remember walking reluctantly into the hospital room and sitting next to my dad and having a conversation.

And as I had the conversation, I was able to share some of the things that were on my heart, but I concluded that conversation with saying, But you know what, dad, I forgive you.

I wasn't even a deep Christian at the time when I said those words, but I literally remember the weight of that coming off of me.

That's the best way I can put it.

It was like this thing that had been weighing me down, and I feel like the world had gotten significantly lighter as a result of me saying, From my heart, I forgive.

You, I didn't realize that I was carrying such anger and resentment that it began that began to become a part of my personality.

But the moment that I began to forgive, it freed me up.

It allowed me to function with freedom and move forward from the resentment that had been holding me back.

I truly believe that for all of us, there are moments in our lives where we are struggling to move forward because we're holding on to the pains of the past.

And God is simply saying, I forgave you.

So through that, I want you to forgive others.

Exercise wisdom on what that looks like moving forward, but at the same time recognize I want to ultimately bring you to a place of freedom.

So I have a couple of questions that I want to pose to us.

And these are questions that are meant to be a bit of a reflection that are connected to some of the points that we were talking about earlier.

Here's the first question that I want you to ponder.

And these are going to come up on the screen, but here's the first question.

Where in my life have I forgotten how much grace I've received and how I can remember that grace to soften my heart towards the people who have hurt me?

Where can I remember in my life the grace that God has extended to me and how I can allow that to soften my heart and how I relate to others?

Here's the second question, and it's connected to our second thought.

What relationship or situation in my life requires me to both forgive yet exercise wisdom with exercising healthy boundaries?

What's the situation in my life that I need to forgive, but I also need to establish some healthy boundaries in my life?

And here's the third and final question that I want to pose that we can spend some time reflecting in our family and in our community.

What could change in my life, physically, emotionally, or even spiritually, if I choose to let go of the bitterness and fully forgive someone today?

What would change in my life?

Because some of us, when we think about the unforgiveness, we haven't seen family members in years.

We haven't gone to visit our our cousins in years because of our anger towards an aunt.

If we were to genuinely forgive, what would change in our lives?

And more often than not, the forgiveness is absolutely worth it.

Church family, I believe that God is bringing us on a journey to experiencing freedom.

And one of the biggest things that holds us back is when we continue to live in a state of us being unforgiven towards others and not receiving the forgiveness that God has extended towards us.

So let this message and this time together serve as a reminder that we have been forgiven of so much and allow that to be the overflow that allows us to forgive others.

Have some time and discussion with your family and friends.

And I can't wait to see you guys at church next week.

Be sure to bring family, bring friends, come expect it as we celebrate Palm Sunday together and lead us into this Easter season.

Let me pray for us as we go.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you for our community.

And we just ask that as we lean into what does it mean to be people who operate in forgiveness, that we can be reminded of the forgiveness that has been extended to us.

Allow that to fill us and flow out of us so that we can begin to transform the people that we are connected to.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

God bless you guys.

We'll see you next week.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at celebrationorl or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.