Episode 243: The Reason for Forgiveness: Jonathan Youssef (Reprise)

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Candid where we never settle for less than the truth.

[00:00:08] I'm your host Jonathan Yousef.

[00:00:10] Each week we'll tackle tough issues, answer your hard questions, and take a candid look

[00:00:15] at the Christian faith.

[00:00:17] Today we're going to play you a recording that I made last year for a men's group that

[00:00:23] we recorded through Zoom.

[00:00:25] And it's a talk on the issue of forgiveness.

[00:00:29] And we're looking at Matthew chapter 18, and Jesus is telling of the parable of the

[00:00:36] unmerciful servant.

[00:00:39] Thank you for inviting me to come and share with you.

[00:00:42] And the thing we're talking about this morning is forgiveness.

[00:00:46] And there's a lot to say.

[00:00:48] So let me get right into our passage.

[00:00:50] I'll be looking at Matthew chapter 18, the parable of the unmerciful servant and that

[00:00:56] starts in verse 21 of Matthew chapter 18.

[00:01:00] Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when

[00:01:04] he sins against me?

[00:01:06] Up to seven times.

[00:01:09] Jesus answered, I tell you not seven times but 77 times.

[00:01:14] Before the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.

[00:01:20] As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him since

[00:01:26] he was not able to pay.

[00:01:28] The master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold

[00:01:34] to repay the debt.

[00:01:36] The servant fell on his knees before him, be patient with me, he beg, and I will pay back

[00:01:41] everything.

[00:01:42] The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

[00:01:47] But when that servant went out he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denari.

[00:01:53] He grabbed him and began to choke him, pay back what you owe me he demanded.

[00:01:59] His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me and I will pay

[00:02:03] you back.

[00:02:05] But he refused.

[00:02:06] Instead he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.

[00:02:12] When the other servants saw that this had happened they were greatly distressed and went and told

[00:02:18] their master everything that happened.

[00:02:20] Then the master called the servant in, he said, you wicked servant.

[00:02:24] I can't sold all that debt of yours because you begged me to.

[00:02:28] Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?

[00:02:33] In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back

[00:02:39] all he owed.

[00:02:41] This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from

[00:02:46] your heart.

[00:02:48] Before I was married I lived in a house with two roommates, one was a Christian and the

[00:02:53] other was a non-Christian and I wonder if you can guess who I had more difficulty getting

[00:02:58] along with.

[00:03:01] It was my Christian roommate strangely.

[00:03:04] He was the type of guy who would go on his own way with no regard for anyone else

[00:03:09] in his path.

[00:03:10] He would just blow by and then apologize later that was his model.

[00:03:15] He and I lived together ten years previously when we were at college together and I knew

[00:03:20] his attitude towards things but I assumed that he had changed, that he had grown up, that

[00:03:26] he had gained maturity but I was wrong and he was almost worse somehow.

[00:03:35] Being rant on time became a massive ordeal if we were going to meet up somewhere that

[00:03:40] became almost an impossibility.

[00:03:43] He was never trustworthy and finally he had done something that really put us at total odds

[00:03:50] with each other.

[00:03:52] And I was going to withhold forgiveness from him because I was honestly just sick of it.

[00:04:00] I couldn't deal with it anymore even though he had apologized in his sort of smiley smug

[00:04:06] manner, I had resolved to actually not forgive him.

[00:04:12] And then as is often the case in my life, I heard a sermon on forgiveness that totally

[00:04:18] crushed me and it really convicted me and so I did forgive my friend as hard and difficult

[00:04:25] as that was.

[00:04:28] The shocking thing about this parable of the unmerciful servant is that the person that

[00:04:35] ends up being tortured for eternity is not a fender but a victim.

[00:04:43] I don't know if you noticed this, the man who was wronged ends up being tortured in the

[00:04:49] end.

[00:04:51] It's a frightening story because Jesus says this is how it will be at the end of time.

[00:04:59] And it shows us one of the most powerful evangelistic tools in the world.

[00:05:06] Now let me give you some context for this passage, this Matthew chapter 18.

[00:05:11] Jesus is setting the tone for life in his church where the smallest are honored and protected.

[00:05:20] Sinners are treated as lost sheep to be found and as brothers to be reclaimed.

[00:05:28] And finally forgiveness flows freely and constantly to those who repent.

[00:05:35] This is a picture of Christ's church.

[00:05:39] Verse 21, we have a question, verse 22, we have an answer then a long parable that drives

[00:05:44] home the answer.

[00:05:47] The proceeding verse is deal with what happens when a Christian sins and persistently

[00:05:55] will not repent despite many appeals and many pleas.

[00:06:00] But the problem that begins this passage is what happens when they do repent?

[00:06:06] And in some ways, that is even harder.

[00:06:10] What happens if I hurt you?

[00:06:11] I wrong you in some way and you see me and tell me face to face and I do repent.

[00:06:20] And I say, I'm sorry and I ask forgiveness and I do what I can to put things right.

[00:06:25] And you forgive me and then I do it again.

[00:06:29] And I am repentant.

[00:06:31] And again.

[00:06:32] And I am repentant.

[00:06:34] And again.

[00:06:35] And I prove myself to be a really difficult member of any sort of Christian fellowship or

[00:06:42] for that matter, a Christian marriage because I persistently fail and hurt others.

[00:06:50] And I am tactless and I am insensitive and I am selfish but I am so repentant.

[00:06:57] Each time I fall, I am sorry.

[00:06:59] I am sorry in my heart and I turn from my sin and I ask for your forgiveness, what then?

[00:07:06] That's Peter's question in verse 21.

[00:07:08] Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?

[00:07:13] Now there's a parallel passage in Luke chapter 17 verses 3 and 4 where Jesus says,

[00:07:19] if your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents, forgive him.

[00:07:25] And if he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times comes back to you and

[00:07:30] says to you, I repent, forgive him.

[00:07:34] But what are the limits to offered forgiveness assuming there is repentance?

[00:07:41] In some ways this is harder than if he doesn't.

[00:07:45] There is something satisfactory about pushing through the process of verses 15 to 17.

[00:07:52] If I have been sinned against, there is some sense of when that door is finally shut

[00:07:57] and the offender is thrown out.

[00:08:00] There is some sense that he had it coming to him, didn't he?

[00:08:04] We don't want to admit that we feel like that, do we?

[00:08:08] But that's exactly all I felt when my friend who had hurt me.

[00:08:13] There is something in us that wants to say, well at least now everyone can see that I

[00:08:19] was in the right.

[00:08:21] He was in the wrong.

[00:08:22] He got what was coming to him.

[00:08:25] But if he repents, well of course I must forgive him the first time and maybe a second

[00:08:30] time and I suppose to make the point a third.

[00:08:35] But after that you have to believe that his repentance isn't genuine no matter what he says,

[00:08:42] right?

[00:08:43] Isn't that right?

[00:08:44] I cannot go on forgiving over and over and over.

[00:08:49] Peter says, how about seven times he may have heard Jesus teach that in Luke chapter 17.

[00:08:55] And seven is a good number.

[00:08:58] It's the biblical sign for completeness.

[00:09:00] It doesn't seem a bad suggestion and Jesus says to him verse 22, I do not say seven times

[00:09:05] to you but seventy seven times.

[00:09:09] I don't mean seven as an exact number but rather a number that means on and on and on.

[00:09:17] Is he seventy seven is how revenge works?

[00:09:22] In Genesis chapter four where Cain kills Abel because of the perceived wrong done to him

[00:09:29] and later in the chapter one of Cain's descendants, a man called Lamek.

[00:09:34] He boasts to his wives in Genesis four, verse 24.

[00:09:38] If Cain is avenged seven times then Lamek seventy seven times meaning you think Cain's

[00:09:43] revenge for his wrong was bad wait until you see what I do when I am wronged.

[00:09:51] I would hate to be Lamek's enemy or possibly his wife.

[00:09:57] That seventy seven is how revenge works.

[00:10:00] It always had when Julia Caesar was captured by pirates and they demanded a ransom he swore

[00:10:06] that he would hunt them down and have them killed.

[00:10:09] And soon after his release from their captivity he did just that, he hunted them down.

[00:10:15] And that's how it has been right?

[00:10:18] That's how the world works.

[00:10:19] You offend me I find a way to hurt you worse.

[00:10:23] If you have ever seen the Godfather you see how this plays out when they ask where have

[00:10:28] all the young men in this Italian village gone and the answer comes, all the vendettas

[00:10:35] have taken the lives of all the young men.

[00:10:37] The more might the more out of proportion my response is, the more I can boast with Lamek

[00:10:44] that I am a man to be reckoned with.

[00:10:48] Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.

[00:10:53] Every kid in the playground at school knows that system.

[00:10:57] As long as kids are allowed to play in the playground which doesn't seem to be case anymore.

[00:11:02] But professing Christians can get sucked into the same cycle of retaliation.

[00:11:09] I can tell you those thoughts have run through my mind at time or two.

[00:11:13] And Jesus picks up that seventy seven word, that idea and he says, I want the church to

[00:11:19] be the place where the world's disproportionate retaliation is turned upside down and becomes

[00:11:26] crazy, disproportionate forgiveness.

[00:11:31] And at the end of the parable that we are about to look at, Jesus says at the end verse 35,

[00:11:38] this is not just a nice ideal.

[00:11:42] It's not an optional extra credit for good disciples.

[00:11:45] Jesus says, unless this characterizes your life, my Heavenly Father won't forgive you.

[00:11:53] You won't even enter the kingdom of heaven.

[00:11:57] These are the words that shook me to my core when I thought I could withhold forgiveness

[00:12:01] from my roommate.

[00:12:03] So we should listen to this.

[00:12:05] Okay, so what's happening here?

[00:12:07] What dynamic is that work to make this unbelievable forgiveness possible and necessary?

[00:12:14] What is the point of the parable?

[00:12:18] It is a ridiculous parable in a way as parables sometimes are to make a point.

[00:12:24] Verses 23 to 27 and Jesus says, let me tell you what the kingdom of heaven is like in my

[00:12:29] Father's kingdom.

[00:12:31] There's a king who calls in his servant, maybe someone who has started a small business,

[00:12:38] someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, and they borrowed money from the king to start

[00:12:43] their company.

[00:12:44] And now it's time to pay.

[00:12:45] How much does he owe?

[00:12:47] 10,000 talents.

[00:12:48] Now this is important for perspective because we read Old Testament language, New Testament

[00:12:54] language and currencies and we have no idea what they mean.

[00:12:59] Someone worked it out that 10,000 talents is equivalent to $6.5 billion today in U.S.

[00:13:05] currency or about 200,000 years of labor.

[00:13:11] So again, it's ridiculous.

[00:13:12] It is an absolutely astronomical, impossible, enormous debt.

[00:13:17] But we need to understand that part of this parable.

[00:13:21] Okay?

[00:13:22] Pay your debt.

[00:13:23] I'm sorry but I can't pay you right now.

[00:13:26] Well, you and your family will have to be sold into slavery.

[00:13:30] And so the servant falls on his knees, be patient with me, I'll pay you everything even

[00:13:35] though that was not possible.

[00:13:37] He cannot pay this debt back.

[00:13:40] And surprisingly, in verse 27 the master takes pity and forgives his ridiculously astronomical

[00:13:48] enormous debt.

[00:13:50] Not having to pay any of it.

[00:13:54] Forgiven, he's released.

[00:13:57] Later that day our forgiven servant while walking down the street, he sees a fellow servant

[00:14:02] who owes him 100 denari.

[00:14:04] Now I think we need to be clear this is not just pennies.

[00:14:08] Things worked it out once again and the figure is about, it'd be equivalent to about 10,000

[00:14:12] U.S.

[00:14:13] dollars today.

[00:14:14] Except that the debt that he has just been forgiven is about 60 to 100 million denari

[00:14:22] by comparison it's more than half a million times less.

[00:14:26] But he sees him and he grabs him and he chokes him, pay me back.

[00:14:31] I need the money.

[00:14:33] This servant wanted to prove to the king that he could still pay his debt.

[00:14:40] His fellow servant falls on his knees just as he had done with the king, almost identical

[00:14:45] situation to his.

[00:14:46] In fact the same words be patient with me, I'll pay you.

[00:14:51] But this time it's actually more realistic that he would pay him back and yet he refuses

[00:14:55] to listen.

[00:14:57] And he has this servant hauled off to prison.

[00:15:00] After all he is the victim.

[00:15:03] He is the one that's owed this first servant.

[00:15:07] And the other is the offender who owes him and won't or can't pay him back.

[00:15:13] The other servants see this and are greatly distressed and so they tell the king and the

[00:15:17] king summons the first servant and again you wicked servant I canceled all that debt

[00:15:21] of yours because you begged me shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just

[00:15:26] as I had on you.

[00:15:29] And the king hands him over to the jailers.

[00:15:31] And the word really means torturers.

[00:15:34] Their job was to make a debtor's life miserable until he paid the debt which of course will

[00:15:40] essentially never happen in this man's case.

[00:15:43] And then Jesus concludes in verse 35, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of

[00:15:47] you unless you forgive your brother from the heart.

[00:15:50] Well we would expect Jesus to say well that was a very terrible and extreme story and you

[00:15:55] must understand that my father is not really like that.

[00:16:00] But instead of distancing God from the king in this story, Jesus identifies him with

[00:16:06] the king.

[00:16:08] And he says that the same heavenly father who in verse 10 cares for the most insignificant

[00:16:13] believer and in verse 14 that it's not his will that one of these little ones should

[00:16:17] be lost, that same heavenly father will deliver the unforgiving man or woman to the torturers

[00:16:24] forever.

[00:16:25] It's a crazy parable is it not?

[00:16:31] In a way we shouldn't be shocked by the conclusion because the man's behavior was obviously outrageous.

[00:16:36] We're reading this and we're thinking of course he deserved to be punished based on his

[00:16:42] actions.

[00:16:43] Okay, so how does this apply to us?

[00:16:46] This is our so what?

[00:16:49] The wrong way to take this is for us to say to one another, you and I must must must

[00:16:58] forgive.

[00:16:59] To sit with a brother or sister who has been wronged maybe seriously, maybe even painfully

[00:17:06] and to exhort him or her that they must forgive or they will not be forgiven.

[00:17:12] It's not the point of the parable and that doesn't really help because if the offense

[00:17:18] is remotely serious then the response will be I know I should forgive, I know I must

[00:17:25] forgive but you have to see I can't.

[00:17:29] Isn't that right?

[00:17:32] I can't forgive this person not after what they have done.

[00:17:37] I am so numbed and scarred by this hurt that I cannot forgive and that will be the end

[00:17:46] of the story and there will be some that we know who have been deeply hurt, deeply wounded

[00:17:56] possibly by a fellow Christian, possibly in a marriage with all of these deep hidden

[00:18:04] buried pains maybe with relationships with a parent or a child scars from childhood and

[00:18:14] we cannot and will not forgive those wounds.

[00:18:18] It is not the offense that breaks the fellowship but the forgiveness that is withheld.

[00:18:29] So often this is true in a marriage that one spouse in a marriage will commit some

[00:18:35] offense.

[00:18:37] What finally breaks the marriage often it is when that person repents and the other will

[00:18:45] not accept their repentance, that's what does it in and that's it and there will be no

[00:18:54] forgiveness and I have seen it happen.

[00:18:58] We can exhort all day long, there will be no forgiveness in human society for serious

[00:19:05] deaths unless and until we grasp the point of this parable.

[00:19:11] The point of this parable is that if we are to forgive, we need to have brought home to our own

[00:19:18] hearts by the Holy Spirit, the fact that no matter how deeply you and I may be the victim

[00:19:28] in the sight of God, we are the offender a thousand times more and that no one can offend us

[00:19:38] or hurt us as much as we have offended God. No one can inflict on us anything approaching the

[00:19:47] pain that we have inflicted on God. That is the point of this parable and our problem is not that

[00:19:54] we cannot conjure within our spirits forgiveness for a hundred denari. Our problem is that we do not

[00:20:00] really believe that we have been forgiven ten thousand talents. It's only when we begin to

[00:20:07] understand that with the gates of forgiveness be unlocked from us to others and so this morning

[00:20:16] I want to preach to you and to myself the enormity of our debt to the king of the universe. I want

[00:20:25] us to understand it, I want us to feel it and it could be that some of you here are saying,

[00:20:32] mate, you don't understand I am the victim, I have been hurt, I have been offended against

[00:20:38] and it's very hard to forgive and it may be that your mind is filled with those thoughts,

[00:20:46] how painfully you have been wronged and what I want to say may come across as hard or cruel

[00:20:55] but in reality is actually the love strategy of Jesus. I want to show you that you are much bigger

[00:21:03] offender than you could ever be a victim. You are a Christian, God has forgiven you in Christ,

[00:21:11] you have heard it said that at the cross Jesus paid a debt, he did not owe that you and I might

[00:21:17] be freed from a debt that we could not pay. I want us to think about the debt we could not pay.

[00:21:25] The God who made this world has given you has given us everything. I wonder if we fully understand

[00:21:33] that if we actually spend time and think about that. Every breath you breathe is a gift,

[00:21:40] every beat of your heart is a gift, what you eat, what you drink is his gift, the clothes you wear

[00:21:47] are his gift, the talents you have are his gift, the roof over your head is his gift. Every human being

[00:21:54] who has ever loved or cared for you is his gift. Every moment of pleasure or comfort or joy

[00:22:00] is his gift but in your nature you throw these gifts in his face. Let me ask you,

[00:22:07] do you by nature respond with thanks and praise for his goodness? Is your natural response to sing

[00:22:16] endlessly of the wonders of his love, to seek his face, to want to walk in his ways every moment

[00:22:24] every day, to love him with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength? Is it? Do you do that?

[00:22:32] And is your instinct, your nature, to take the good things he gives you, your money, your time,

[00:22:38] your energy and to use them for the benefit of your neighbor, your fellow human being without end.

[00:22:47] Do you love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself?

[00:22:50] Is this an impossible standard? You might say, well, you know, I'm a pretty good person.

[00:22:59] I live a respectable life. I'm not perfect. I know that but then neither is anyone else.

[00:23:07] The point is this, it is an outrage that I who owe my everything to the goodness of God do not

[00:23:14] in every moment of my existence with every ounce of my strength love him. And for his sake,

[00:23:22] love my neighbor as myself. It is an outrage and God has forgiven me that outrage in Christ.

[00:23:32] And if you are a Christian then you have fallen on your knees before this king and pleaded for mercy

[00:23:37] and pleaded for patience, for grace just as the servant did. And he has forgiven us this whole

[00:23:45] astronomical, unpayable, enormous, unpayable debt because Jesus paid it all at the cross.

[00:23:53] And what I need to understand that no matter how big the debt my brother or sister owes me,

[00:23:59] however deep the wounds may be, the debt I have been forgiven is many times greater.

[00:24:08] The wounds inflicted on Jesus are infinitely deeper. This is why the key to forgiveness in human

[00:24:16] society is the preaching of sin and grace. It's why the most loving thing we can do in our churches

[00:24:25] is to preach sin and grace and the cross because it is only as these truths are pressed home often

[00:24:33] and to my heart will I be able to forgive you and you to forgive me.

[00:24:40] C.S. Lewis once wrote, to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven

[00:24:46] the inexcusable in you. So as church fellowship we are called to be communities of grace.

[00:24:54] The only reason a man or woman would be excused from the fellowship is if they reject grace.

[00:25:00] The man who is excommunicated in verses 15 to 20, he's not excommunicated because of his moral failure.

[00:25:07] He's not put out of the fellowship because he's done something wrong.

[00:25:11] He's put out of the fellowship because he refuses repeatedly offered forgiveness.

[00:25:15] Now when an outsider comes into a church where the gospel is preached,

[00:25:21] he or she will be amazed not by our self righteousness,

[00:25:26] not even by our good morality. They will be amazed by our grace and forgiveness

[00:25:33] and they will recognize when they come into a church fellowship that they have come in from the

[00:25:38] world of lamic with his 77 times retaliation to the world of Jesus which is 77 times forgiveness.

[00:25:50] And when that happens and they see that, they will recognize that they have entered a completely

[00:25:58] different environment because that is not how the world operates.

[00:26:04] My prayer is that this would be true of our church, that people would not come into our church

[00:26:10] fellowship thinking here are a bunch of stuck up closed off people. This is exactly what I was looking

[00:26:16] for but rather that they will see in us a character of forgiveness that the world cannot match.

[00:26:23] They'll see the way Christians relate to one another, that we have been forgiven and unpayable

[00:26:29] debt. Then the floodgates of grace begin to be opened through us to others.

[00:26:36] That describes the church of Christ what better way to be recognized, forgiven and forgiving.

[00:26:43] I'm going to close with two illustrations. The first took place in June of 2015 where

[00:26:51] a crazy racist 21-year-old walked into a black church in Charleston, South Carolina and sat

[00:26:58] down for what was Bible study and prayer and he shot nine of the participants of that Bible study

[00:27:08] prayer time. And I watched as member after member of family stood up in this young man's court

[00:27:17] trial and pled with him to ask Christ into his heart and told him that they forgave him.

[00:27:25] They recognized that he was blinded to truth and that he was being used as an enemy of Satan

[00:27:33] and they pled with him to receive Christ. That is forgiveness, an unpayable debt.

[00:27:41] Now let me finish with the flip side of this. There's a story a friend of mine tells when he was

[00:27:46] visiting Scotland in the 90s, visiting St Andrews. He came to an old church. It was John Knox's

[00:27:53] old church where Knox used to preach and as my friend walked in he asked his colleague how many

[00:27:58] people worshipped in that building and his colleague smiled and sadly told him why don't you guess?

[00:28:06] 500. It was a large church by Scottish standards. I'll try again. 200. If you come here at 11 a.m.

[00:28:16] next Sunday, you will find six people in the pews. Six elderly ladies and then he proceeded to tell

[00:28:24] the story behind it. 20 years ago, the minister and the organist had a huge fight. Both held grudges

[00:28:32] against the other. Both held forgiveness back and since that time neither one had spoken a word

[00:28:38] to the other. On Sunday morning, the minister arrives early. He places a list of hymns on the organ.

[00:28:44] The organist plays them and then he leaves out a different door and in 20 years nobody knew his

[00:28:52] join the church and slowly the existing congregation has died off. What an utter disaster

[00:29:01] prays God that we have been forgiven 10,000 talents in Christ that we may be able to forgive one

[00:29:09] another. Candid is a podcast from leading the way with Dr. Michael Yusef. Don't forget to connect

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