“Forget Unforgiveness” – Matthew 18:21-35

Somebody tell me what the best part of 2016 was.  Now somebody tell me what the worst part was.  Are you glad it’s over?  Are you looking forward to another year?  Maybe 2016 was a bad year for you and you are looking forward to putting it behind you, hoping that 2017 will be better.  Maybe it was a good year for you.  It was for me and it has been a good year for our church.

But do you know what God would have us do, no matter if 2016 was good or bad?  Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 43:18 and 19.  You need to see this and you need to bookmark it because we are going to come back to it for several more Sundays.  Isaiah 43:18 and 19 is my absolute favorite passage of scripture in the Bible.  It means a lot to me now and it has meant a lot to me in the past.  I believe it really helps to ground me and center me and help me keep focused correctly.

Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.”

Whether your past was good or bad, it is just that – past.  God says to forget it.  Don’t dwell on it.  He is doing something new in your life and in this church and in this world and even in Heaven like we can’t even imagine.  Paul said in Philippians 3:13, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.”  Paul had lots of bad things happen to him and he had done and seen some incredible things but he is putting all that behind him for the sake of the Gospel and also for his own sake.

In Hebrews 12:1 it says to throw off everything that hinders us from running our race.  Well, if God is still marking off the boundaries of our race through the wilderness and into the wasteland we are going to have to set aside some of our baggage.  If we are going to follow God as He makes a new way we can’t be holding on to things that are going to hold us back.  So, for the next few weeks of a brand new year we are going to look at how to forget the former things; specifically things in our lives that would hinder us from being and doing what God wants.

We are going to look at what it really means to forget our anger, our regrets, our bad habits and even our worry.  But today - today is gonna be big – today we are looking at how to forget…our unforgiveness.  For this specific issue, I will ask you to turn to Matthew 18 and we are going to see a popular parable that Jesus used to illustrate unforgiveness.

Now, unless you have lived a very sheltered and dull life, you know that true forgiveness is hard, right?  I mean it’s one thing to forgive somebody that cuts you off in traffic.  That may bother you for a little while but pretty soon you get over it and don’t think about it again.  But what about when somebody makes the decision to do something that they know is going to hurt you deeply?

Sometimes people hurt us on purpose for whatever reason.  Sometimes they don’t even know they hurt us and sometimes they might not even care and don’t care if you forgive them or not.  How do you forgive people like that?  Should you forgive them?  Can you forgive them?  What if the person who has hurt you the most…is YOU?  You can be the most difficult person to forgive.  Also, if God knows us inside and out like the Bible teaches us, how could He possibly forgive us?

I told you today was going to be big.  I’ll also tell you that this subject is too big to do it justice in just the two hours that we have here today (haha) so we will just hit the highlights of the subject.  Let’s first see what Jesus said about forgiveness in Matthew 18, verses 21-35.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

²² Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

²³ “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. ²⁵ Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

²⁶ “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

²⁸ “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.   He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹ “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

³⁰ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³² “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

³⁵ “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

There are two huge hindrances to forgiveness, two huge barriers I see that we must get over before true forgiveness can take place.  The first barrier is “Why” and the second is “How”.  This is such a huge, complicated, difficult but absolutely necessary topic that we are going to break it into two parts.  Today we will see why we should forgive and next Sunday we will see how we can do it.

Jesus illustrates why we should forgive in this parable and I’ll just spell it out if you can’t see it clearly enough.  We should forgive because we have been forgiven.  It all boils down to that but if it were that simple Jesus wouldn’t have spent so much time and detail in this parable explaining it.

The Jewish rabbis taught that they were to forgive only two or three times so Peter was being pretty magnanimous when he suggested to Jesus that seven was a good number.  Of course, we all know that Jesus wasn’t limiting it to 77 times or even 70 times 7.  He is saying that we should forgive as many times as we need to. 

I remember hearing the story some time ago about a revolutionary leader who was dying.  A priest came to visit him on his deathbed and asked him if he had forgiven all of his enemies.  He said, “Oh, father, I have no enemies…” and the priest was so glad to hear that.  Then he finished the sentence, “because I shot them all!”

That may be easier to do than to forgive but Jesus says we are to forgive.  Now, the commentaries tell me that the amount that the first man owed the king was anywhere from several million to several billion in today’s dollars.  I don’t believe that the exact amount is something to be too concerned about.  The point is that he would never be able to pay the amount back.  It was a ridiculously large sum of money.

Jesus used that amount to make us realize the debt we owe to God.  There is absolutely no way we can ever pay God back or work hard enough or be good enough.  Our sin debt – for even the best of us – is so huge it is a crushing force that has ruined all of us.  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and what we deserve for that sin is eternity in Hell (Romans 6:23).

By our sin we have put ourselves into debt to God in a hole so deep we could never get out.  Our sin is a rejection of God and His rules.  We have broken His laws.  We have committed a felony against the King of kings and, as such, have lost our right to enter Heaven where only the sinless can live.  That’s bad news, right?

On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford issued the former president Richard Nixon a “full, free and absolute” pardon for any crimes he committed while in office.  Did that mean that Nixon was innocent?  No.  It just meant that he didn’t have to pay for the crime.  He didn’t have to suffer any consequences.  Now, whether you think that was a good decision or not; whether you think that was fair or not doesn’t matter.  Ford had the power to do that because he was president.

God’s nature will not allow Him to just overlook sin.  Sin carries with it a penalty that must be paid.  The author of Hebrews sums it up this way: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”  (Heb. 9:22)  God doesn’t just pardon us, saying “No big deal.  It’s okay.  No problem.”  Sin is a very big deal, a deal so big that his own Son had to die for it.

Romans 5:18 says, “Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.”  It says one trespass – one sin – results in condemnation.  That’s bad news, right?  You’re either perfect or you’re not perfect and nothing imperfect makes it to Heaven.

But because Jesus paid the price and took the condemnation and suffered the consequences, our faith and trust in Jesus allows us to be forgiven and considered perfect and righteous and clean.  That’s the good news!  Colossians 2 puts it this way: “When you were dead in your sins God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴ having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Now, here is even some more good news, especially for those of us who have a hard time understanding how God can forgive us and for those of us that find it hard to forgive ourselves.  Notice that nowhere in any of this or anywhere in all of scripture does it ever talk about our forgiveness being based on the quantity or severity of our sins.

The idea that you have done something so horrible it is unforgivable or that you have done too much is a lie from Satan.  One sin is too many to God so that is why He sent Jesus to be born, to live a sinless life, to be sacrificed on the cross and to rise again three days later.  When you accept God’s forgiveness based on what Jesus did, then forgiven is forgiven.  Paid is paid.  Free is free.

When we begin to really understand what Jesus did for us then we start to understand that we have no right not to forgive people who have hurt us.  It’s like in the story we owe God billions of dollars and He has forgiven that debt and paid it Himself.  Now, no matter how much somebody else has hurt you, it starts to look like that twenty bucks that the one servant owed the other in comparison.

Are you going to carry around that weight of unforgiveness knowing that it is a sin?  It’s not just a sin but it’s a cancer that will most certainly eat you up while the other person may never even realize it.  I talked to a lady just this week who told me about her friend who had hurt her deeply and the friend didn’t even realize it.  She then told me she didn’t think she could ever forgive her for what she did.  I said, “Well, that’ll teach her.”  Right?  That’ll show her.

She said that the other woman didn’t deserve to be forgiven.  I told her, though, that it wasn’t about the other person.  It was about her.  Forgiveness is rarely about the other person for us.  It’s about us.  It’s about letting it go; forgetting the former things so that we can see the new things God has in store for us.  But if you let the sin of unforgiveness get in the way of what God wants to do then just expect to have the same hang-ups, the same frustrations and the same broken relationships with God and with other people – and who’s fault is that?

I know what that other person did to you was wrong.  It wasn’t fair.  It was mean.  It was on purpose and it messed up your life, your dreams and your plans and they don’t deserve to be forgiven.  The thing is that forgiveness doesn’t have anything to do with any of that.  If you wait until the person deserves it or even asks for it, you will be long eaten up by the poison that is unforgiveness.  That’s one reason God commands forgiveness.

Why should we forgive other people?  Number one is because it is a command.  It is a sin to live in unforgiveness and sin breaks the close relationship you have with the Lord.  Don’t expect God’s wisdom and for Him to answer prayers like you ask if there is any sin in your life, including unforgiveness.

But unforgiveness also hurts your family just like it did in the parable Jesus told.  It hurts your friends and it sure hurts your church.  It is a cancer that grows and grows and will affect not only you, sometimes even physically, but then it metastasizes to every one you come in contact with until your whole life will be defined and ruled by it. 

Or…you can choose to forget the former things and not dwell on the past, forgive like you have been forgiven and see the way in the wilderness and the streams in the wasteland that God wants to provide for you.

Forgiveness is a choice.  It’s rarely easy but it is a choice and you will make that choice if you want to continue to grow spiritually and you want to be known as a follower of Jesus.  Who do you need to forgive today?