Kingdom Ethics: Forgiveness

We're gonna open to Matthew 18 if you have your bibles with you. You probably know, if you've been following our sermons the past few weeks, that we've been on, I guess I guess you would call it a kingdom series. This started on Easter, where we remembered Jesus being the king of a kingdom that He was establishing in His death and His resurrection. The following week, we asked the question, what is this kingdom? What does it look like?

We looked at Daniel 2, and we saw that this is an everlasting kingdom, a kingdom that would be greater than any of the empires that has gone before it and that would come after it. It is a kingdom that would spread to fill the whole earth. It is a kingdom that was not established by man. It was that stone in Daniel's vision that was cut out of the mountain, not by human hands. Then we also saw that what it means to enter into this kingdom.

Not only does this kingdom exist as a concept out there, but we, humanity, are invited to enter into that kingdom. We are brought into that kingdom or we can enter into that kingdom through a free invitation from the King Himself to that great wedding banquet. It is a great celebration, but how we enter into that celebration, how we receive and enter into that invitation is through love, faith, and trust in the King. There is no other reason for us not to be able to enter apart from not loving, not honouring the King. And then we started looking last week at the reality of an opposition to that kingdom. Okay, this kingdom is being established, this kingdom is starting to fill the whole earth, and that it will come to a fruition, that it will be made, it'll be locked in at one point in time, but that there is opposition to that growth.

And we saw Daniel again in Daniel 10, how he prayed, and we saw a behind the scenes snapshot of these princes that battled on behalf of God's people. And today, we are going to explore what it means for us to live, what it means for us to exist in this kingdom. If we have entered into the kingdom through that invitation, through faith and trust in Jesus Christ and His work on the cross, what now? How do we live? And so I wanna spend, perhaps, the next couple of weeks reflecting on what I call kingdom ethics.

The laws, the codes, the commands of what it means to be a citizen within this kingdom. And we know what it means to be a citizen in Australia, very much in this COVID season, that there are laws that we must obey. But the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Jesus also has these codes, these ethics. And so this morning we're going to look at one of those, which is on the ethic of forgiveness. It is in fact one of the themes that Jesus spoke very often about.

Among others, we'll be exploring in the coming weeks. Forgiveness of one another within this kingdom is actually an often repeated theme. And I think it's especially important for us to know that as Christians because we are often surprised that we need to forgive one another. We're often surprised at the disappointment of knowing a brother or a sister that's not perfect. And for Jesus, this is as common and as important to talk about as how to use our money. And so Jesus operates under the assumption that we all should operate under, which is we're gonna hurt one another.

But we have to do something with that. And that is what Jesus wants to talk to us about in Matthew 18. We're gonna read from verse 21, a parable that Jesus tells Peter and the disciples in response to a question that Peter asks Jesus. Matthew 18 verse 21. Then Peter came up to Jesus and said to Him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I 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 with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.

So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him, 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 went and put him in prison until he should 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 all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. So far the reading. Well, we know that a parable, as Jesus taught, is a story with a meaning. And one of the key things to remember as we read and interpret parables is often that meaning is usually just one main point. There may be lots of details in the parable.

We have different characters that are mentioned here and so on. But that parable has one overarching main thrust. So what is the main point of this parable? Would you be able to identify it if we were back at church and I asked you? You'd say forgiveness.

Right? This is about forgiveness. We see a story of one king and two servants. One of these servants owes the king a huge amount of money. The second fellow servant owes this first servant a smaller amount of money.

The story says that the king forgives one servant this huge amount of money, but then this same servant is not willing to forgive his fellow servant a much smaller debt. And what's the point? Well, there's a great irony, isn't there? One of the main points, the important things to understand in this story is not just the similarities, that you know, there are two servants here, two servants who owe debts that they can't pay back. One of the key things to remember is also the great differences in the story.

And the main difference here is the vastness of the sums of money that were being owed. Ten thousand talents is owed by this first servant. And when Jesus uses this amount in the story, Jesus is literally pushing the limits of how big the King's forgiveness is. Because in Jesus' day, ten thousand talents wasn't a coin or anything like that. That was a measurement of weight.

Ten thousand talents of silver or gold or whatever was combining the largest Greek number they had at the time, ten thousand, that's the upper limit to them to their sort of mathematics at that time, with the largest measurement of currency that they had. A talent was the upper limit to the weight of wealth. One talent of silver or gold was a small fortune. Ten thousand talents was beyond the wildest dreams of any person. It was an astronomical amount.

Meanwhile, a hundred denarii is not insignificant, it's not twenty dollars. It's about three months' worth of wages. But ten thousand talents, that's about six hundred thousand times more than this hundred denarii. The point Jesus is making is that in light of God's incalculable grace to us, it is absolutely ludicrous for us to refuse forgiving others. This is the main point of the parable.

We must forgive in the kingdom if we belong in that kingdom because the King has forgiven us of a debt that can never be compared. And so that is the parable's main point. The next point is that forgiveness needs compassion. Forgiveness needs compassion. Verse 27 says that the king has pity on this first servant.

The king has compassion on him. And therefore, it says the king cancels the debt. He cancels. He doesn't extend a little bit of time in order to pay this. The king probably knows this is an amount that can never be repaid.

The king cancels the entire debt. Now, it's very easy for us to understand as Christians, as people who reflect regularly on the gospel, that God's forgiveness required Him to have compassion on us. We understand that God had to take compassion on us. We understand and we love God's mercy. But how much harder is it for us to accept when we need to forgive, that we need to show compassion just like God showed compassion?

You see, when it's our turn to forgive, we think, no, I don't wanna do that because clearly this person is guilty. It's especially hard when it just seems so black and white. They are one hundred per cent in the wrong here. I have nothing to say sorry for, and so I'm gonna hold on to this until I feel that that debt or that wrong has been paid. We say to ourselves, it would be an injustice if I was to forgive this person who has so clearly done what is wrong.

But that is precisely forgetting what forgiveness is. You see, forgiveness is understanding exactly what the cost of that forgiveness means. Forgiveness means doing it anyway. It means foregoing justice. It means mercy when no mercy is warranted.

For that reason, forgiveness can only be forgiveness when there is compassion. Tim Keller, in his really good book The Reason for God, talks about the radical nature of forgiveness. And he ends up talking obviously about God's forgiveness, but he talks about the power of it even in our interpersonal relationships. This is what he says. Someone may have robbed you in some way of happiness, of your reputation, of an opportunity, of certain aspects of your freedom that has caused you to be hurt.

No price tag can be put on these sort of things. Yet we still have a sense of violated justice that does not go away when the other person says, I'm sorry. When we have been seriously wronged, we have an indelible sense that the perpetrators have incurred a debt that must be dealt with. Once you have been wronged and you realise there is a just debt that simply can't be dismissed or ignored, Keller says there's only two things that you can do. The first is to seek ways to make the perpetrators suffer for what they've done.

And we do that in all sorts of ways. We can do that by choosing to withhold our relationship. We break our ties with that person. We can do that actively, or we can do it passively by wishing for some kind of pain in their lives equal to what you've experienced. You can choose to viciously confront them, saying things that hurt as much as you've been hurt.

You can do that more passively by going around to others to tarnish their reputation. Gossip is an example of that. The thinking is that if the perpetrator suffers, you will begin to sense a certain satisfaction, a feeling that finally now they're starting to pay off this sin debt that they have to you. There are some problems with this, however. Because even if you do this, you become harder.

You start changing. You become colder. You become more self-pitying, and therefore you also become self-absorbed. If the wrongdoer was a person of wealth or authority, you may instinctively dislike and resist that sort of person for the rest of your life. And just think about how these sort of things happen.

If it was a person of the opposite sex or of another race, you might become permanently cynical and prejudiced against a whole class of people. In addition, the perpetrator and his friends and family often feel that they now have a right to respond to your payback if they deem you to have repaid that debt sort of over the top, excessively. And so cycles of reaction and retaliation begin, and it just goes on for years. Evil has been done to you. You accept that.

But when you try to get payment through revenge, that evil does not disappear. Instead, it begins spreading. And tragically, it spreads into your character, and it starts changing your heart. But there is another option. And this is the radical thing that Jesus was teaching when He talked about what it means to live in the kingdom, when He talked again and again of the need to forgive others.

The other option is genuine, complete forgiveness. Forgiveness means refusing to make others pay for what they did. However, we also know that to refrain from lashing out at someone when you want to do so with all your might is absolute agony. That sort of white-knuckling it through it when there's so much resentment in your heart, that in itself, even though you're not doing something, is a form of suffering.

And the irony is you're not only then suffering the original loss of that happiness, of that reputation, of that opportunity, but you're now also forgoing the consolation of inflicting some revenge on them. You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself, instead of taking it on the other person. And it hurts terribly. Many people say that this is a form of death, but genuine forgiveness is a death that leads to resurrection. Even if someone, in forgiving someone else completely and refusing to harbour in their hearts resentment and bitterness, whether actively withholding actions that are gonna hurt this person or in their mind, not entertaining fantasies of revenge, someone who simply refuses to take vengeance and chooses to forgive, that anger slowly begins to subside.

It ebbs away because you're not giving any fuel to that resentment. And you're letting it burn lower and lower and lower until it dies out. The trick with forgiveness is that often it must be granted first before its effect can be felt. But I wanna tell you that that feeling, that effect that is felt does happen eventually. Forgiveness at the end of this cycle provides peace.

It does provide that resurrection even when you die to that pain or that injustice. Coming back to the parable, for the king to have forgiven his servant's debt, it meant that he understood exactly what it would cost him. He knew how much ten thousand talents was. He knew that he was foregoing justice by forgiving this man. This man admitted that that's how much he owed the king.

And we see what justice could have been. Justice could have been that this man and his wife and his children were sold into slavery, so that he could reclaim at least some of this huge amount of money. But the king chooses compassion instead. Forgiveness needs compassion, otherwise it will never be forgiveness. If it doesn't have compassion, if forgiveness does not have compassion, it becomes sentimentality.

It becomes a weak and empty platitude. And for that reason, forgiveness is hard. Forgiveness is hard. Let me not be mistaken here. Forgiveness is difficult, but even when it's hard, it is worth it.

Corrie ten Boom, I think her example of who she is maybe lost on a younger generation, but she was a Dutch Christian whose family was involved in smuggling Jews out of Holland during World War Two. Her family was eventually betrayed by an informant, and her father and sister died at the hands of the Nazis. Ten Boom struggled with the concept of forgiveness at the pain that she had experienced even as she was a captive. On the one hand, she felt as a Christian she needed to forgive her captives, but she also found herself replaying those injustices that she had experienced. So much so, at one point in her life, that she couldn't sleep.

In that time, Corrie ten Boom cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. And she writes of that moment, saying that God helped her in the form of sending a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom she says, I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. Speaking to him, he said to me, up in the church tower, nodding out the window, is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? He said, after the person lets go of the rope, that bell keeps on swinging.

First ding and then dong, but slower and slower until there's only one final noise and it stops. He said, I believe it's the same thing of true forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at those grievances for a long time, we shouldn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming back for a while. They're just the ding dongs of the old bell slowing down.

She later wrote, that's exactly how it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations after our conversation, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations. But the force had gone out of them. They came less and less often, and then at last, stopped altogether. Forgiveness takes compassion, and sometimes we don't go through that process fully because we're not sure whether we can really let go of that rope.

But it's worth remembering that even small steps in forgiveness are worth starting. Even when that forgiveness is in fits and starts, forgiving one day and then the next day taking up that bitterness again, and then a week later saying, I need to forgive again. That's all progress on this road to forgiveness. And at the end of the day, we need to understand, remember, and work with the fact that forgiveness needs mercy. Forgiveness needs compassion.

And compassion isn't always easy. Not only for the person that has harmed you, but also compassion for yourself. Being patient with yourself in that process is also being compassionate. But at the heart of forgiveness lies compassion. And then I wanna move on to the second and the final point for us today.

There's also a very significant part in forgiveness which makes the process that much more powerful, and I think ultimately a process that will lead to reconciliation and peace. And that is the second point: forgiveness needs confession. In Jesus' parable, we see that in both cases, the servants realised their need for forgiveness for debts that they couldn't pay. Both of them are threatened with severe punishment.

One of these servants is threatened with being sold into slavery, the other is threatened with going to debtors' jail until the debt is paid. We also see in the story the similarities that both confess that they are guilty, that they can't pay back this debt, and they ask for more patience. But here we see Jesus' underlying assumption that forgiveness is only offered, can only really be offered, when there is a confession of wrongdoing. An admission that you are wrong, that they were wrong, and with a genuine request to be forgiven, they could be forgiven. Now, talking about forgiveness, in my experience as a pastor, it's this point, confession, which is particularly difficult for us.

This is the area that we need most help in. We don't confess very well. We don't admit our mistakes very well. We won't go through that effort of picking up the phone, making that coffee appointment, setting aside time. But in order for genuine forgiveness and reconciliation to happen, the Bible is saying confession is essential.

It takes a big man to forgive. But I think sometimes it takes a bigger man to accept that he's made a mistake. Sometimes people can make the mistake of thinking that silently admitting to yourself that you weren't good enough, that you did the wrong thing, that that is okay, that that is confession. To verbally and openly confess to the person we might have wounded, that is the powerful moment of forgiveness, however. And of all people, Jesus is saying in this parable, Christians, citizens in the kingdom should be the best at understanding the dynamics of forgiveness.

You see, forgiveness doesn't work very well when only the offended party is needing to forgive, while the offender feels like they are able to ignore the problem. That is not the dynamic of forgiveness being portrayed in this parable. Genuine forgiveness only comes when there is acknowledgement of actions, and a serious weighing up of confession of wrongdoing, and then that request for forgiveness. And of all people, Christians should be willing to do this. The apostle James writes in James 5:16, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another that you may be healed. Let's dig into that for a bit. First, the apostle James says confession needs to happen with someone else involved. It's not an admission to myself, to my own heart.

Yeah. I kind of did do the wrong thing there. I won't do that again. Within the context here, I'm not sure whether James is saying that this confession is to the person that you've wronged or just confession generally to another person of sin generally. But in a sense, it doesn't matter.

What James is saying is that confession to a brother or sister is bringing that sin to light. Often we don't realise just how foolish or deadly our sin was until we hear an explanation of it coming out of our own mouth. And we're sort of scrambling to understand why we would do such a thing, and we realise, man, that was crazy. We realise just how foolish and how shortsighted we were. The Bible warns us that sin is always strongest when it's in secret.

The temptations of sin, of a secret sin, will always pull harder. The feeling of hopelessness of a secret sin always feels deeper. But here's the secret. Sin withers in the light. And confession is bringing sin into the light.

Have you ever laid awake in the middle of the night, early in the morning perhaps, and felt absolutely overwhelmed with a problem? In the middle of that night, nothing seems clear and everything feels hopeless. But isn't it amazing how that sunrise, as it comes up, changes everything? Problems that seemed overwhelming seem so much smaller now in the light of day. It's the same here with confessing our sin and asking for forgiveness.

Sometimes we don't want to ask for forgiveness because we're afraid what it might mean if we admit our mistake. We might think we're gonna ruin a person's life by verbally saying that we've done this to them. We feel that we might ruin our relationship even more. And if I was just to keep quiet about this, it'll just blow over. Selfishly, we can think that it will keep my life more peaceful by not really dealing with it.

But you and I have to remember that that is where sin flourishes. Sin is like that mould that likes to be in the dark, in the damp place, that never gets the sunlight, that grows and metamorphosises, multiplies. In that secret, undealt with state, sin finds a lovely spot to grow in. And the reality is you won't find peace there. You won't find peace in that silence.

That relationship is not gonna sort itself out by avoiding a confession. It remains damaged and it will probably get worse. Your personal peace gets ruined. But confessing your sin and mistake to the other person brings light into the situation, and you will see the power of sin wither before your eyes. It is amazing to see.

And this is the light that is being brought in by the second part of James' instruction that we are not only to confess our sin to one another, but to pray for one another. This is how sin dies in the light. This is a very practical and biblical strategy to remember when we are dealing with interpersonal issues. When you talk with that person and ask them, please forgive me, also ask, can you pray for me? Why ask them to pray for you even in that very moment?

Maybe there's even a lot of pain and emotion there. Because the healing process begins almost immediately when that person is able to pray for you. And if they aren't in a position emotionally to pray for you then and there, that's okay. Perhaps they need more time. But if they can pray for you then, the process of compassion and forgiveness begins almost immediately.

Because when I take what you've done against me to God, then we are bringing God into this equation of our relationship where we may have just thought that it's only between you and me. And I take this to God and I place it at the throne of God, I realise that this is God's burden to bear as well. And my heart feels lighter. But then also immediately, God's light is invited to shine on the situation as well. We read this morning in 1 John 1 that God is light.

In Him, there is no darkness at all. So the question is, who better to bring that mistake, that sin to? And so, in closing, this is a wonderful teaching from Jesus about the power and the need for forgiveness. But we also realise that if Jesus was to say simply, forgive because you must, the power of that forgiveness, it would end with us. It would begin with us.

And we know that that is not a very good motivator at all. Our hearts want to cling to vengeance, to revenge. We want to side with that injustice. We want to harbour bitterness. Our only power is realising also in this parable, the amazing debt, the unpayable debt that Jesus the King has forgiven us.

That is the entire motivating power of this parable. If we understand just how great our debt was, how can we not forgive the other person? So in closing, if there are things that you know you need to sort out with a friend, with a family member, with a church member, I wanna encourage you to do that. But don't do it because I'm telling you, don't do it because of some sort of pop psychology, do it because you are the redeemed, rescued, forgiven servant of the King.

With ten thousand talents of debt owed to Him. I wanna ask that you weigh that up, but that you also rejoice that you are that forgiven servant, that you have been forgiven, and that there is life for you in the kingdom because of that debt forgiven. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this straightforward, hard-hitting parable. Our Lord, we read it and we just instantly know what you are saying to us. We understand the enormity of the disparity between a few thousand dollars and billions.

And Lord, we thank you again for the great compassion and mercy that was needed for you to forgive us. We understand that you could only forgive us because you first had mercy. And so Lord, we ask that in our hearts, there may be found mercy and compassion to forgive. Perhaps for hurts, suffering, bitterness that we have harboured for years. Help us, Lord, to finally and fully overcome those things in our lives.

Help us to rightly understand that sin is sin, that injustices have taken place, but Lord, that mercy is greater. It takes a big man to forgive, and it takes a bigger man to admit that mistake. And so we also ask, Lord, that you will convict us of the areas that we need to go and admit our mistakes, say sorry to our brothers and our sisters, and ask for their forgiveness and their prayer. Lord, may we be found to be doing that at Open House. For those of us who are far wider than our church community, Lord, I pray that in their context as well, you'll be working forgiveness so that we as individuals will be known as compassionate, merciful people, ultimately empowered by the knowledge of just how much we have been forgiven.

And so Lord, help us to find freedom of forgiveness. Help us to neutralise that poison that might be in our hearts. Father, help us to finally run with great joy in this race that you have marked out for us in the kingdom of God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.