| Andrew Lim
17 August 2008 - Matt 18:21-35
When I was young I came across this book by Billy Graham
called "Peace With God" / And it puzzled me for some time
to figure out what those three words meant
Finally on my own / I worked out
- that if I needed to be at peace with God
I must have been at war with him
- that if there was a God out there / I was His enemy
- that I must have been fighting Him / resisting Him
And I came to understand / what my real problem was
I came to understand that because I was a sinner
I was guilty before God / for failing to keep His laws
I was condemned / before God's tribunal
I became separated from God / cut off from Him
the source of light / and truth / and life
I was indeed at war with God
But I also came to understand that Jesus came
to deal with all those 3 problems
One / he acquitted me of my guilt
Two / he removed the condemnation that hung over my head
Three / he mended the separation between Him and me
Result / Peace With God / as the title of the book has it
I am no longer at enmity with God / I am at peace with God
God has forgiven me
But is such a thing possible
Everybody knows / that there is no free lunch
Of course it may be totally free to you / if somebody shouts you
but it remains the case / that somebody footed the bill
Forgiveness is free / but Jesus footed the bill
The grace of God offered the forgiveness
but at the cross / Jesus paid the price
What was the cost ? / His life / Hebrews 9 says:
"Without the shedding of blood there is no pardon"
Our English word pardon / comes from a French compound word
meaning “to give up completely”
When we come to God / broken over our sins
God lays down the sword
He releases you from punishment
He let your offence pass without punishment
No matter how badly you're tripped up / when you confess your sins
God says: “I will let it go / forgive you / restore you
And the story of my life is like the matchless story of Jesus
who said to the woman caught in an adulterous affair
"Neither do I condemn you / Go and sin no more"
And God uses a rich variety of metaphors to assure us
that when we truly repent / He forgives
He says:
"I will put your sins away as far as the east is from the west" / Ps 103:4
"I will cast them all behind my back" (Is 38:17)
"I will blot them out as with a cloud" (Is 44:22)
"I will remember them no more" (Jer 31:34)
We all stand in need of forgiveness
Never a day passes without us failing God / others or ourselves
It is not a shameful thing to openly admit that we need forgiveness
Tragically there are people who will go to their graves
resolutely refusing to accept the forgiveness of God
George B Shaw proudly said:
"Forgiveness is a beggar's refuge / I shall have none of that"
And he went to his grave with all his own pain and darkness
- never experiencing the joy of God's forgiveness
On the other hand / some great saints have openly asked for forgiveness
David: “Have mercy upon me O God / Wash me thoroughly
from my iniquity / and cleanse me from my sin”
Peter said: “Depart from me / for I am a sinful man”
Paul said: “I am the chief of sinners”
John says: “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves”
The prodigal son: "I have sinned against heaven and against thee"
These people were not condemned / they were forgiven
The story we read this morning represents God as a most forgiving God
God’s capacity to forgive surpasses anything we can imagine
Ten thousand talents worth / Mat 18:24
If one talent is worth approximately 15 years of wages
this is worth 150,000 years of paychecks
And if a person makes 65,000 a year
that would mean a cancelled debt of 9,750,000,000
This figure is simply stunning
It is a way of telling us that God’s graciousness runs very deep
In the light of this its easy for us to say
“Let’s leave this whole business of forgiveness in the hands of God
He can do our forgiving for us / He can forgive what we owe”
We’re not good at forgetting when people hurt us
We’re not good and letting go of our anger when we’ve been hurt
We’re not wired that way
we’re wired to remember / to stew over our hurt
we’re wired with the desire to get even
So why not let’s just leave God to do the forgiving for us?
Well/ Really we can’t
Because we have this nagging statement in the Creed
“I believe in the forgiveness of sins”
So some people like to think that that line about forgiveness of sins
must be in the wrong place in the creed
Shouldn’t it have been more correctly placed
in first couple of articles at the beginning
when it talks about God and His Son Jesus
Shouldn’t they be the ones we should leave the forgiving to?
Aren’t they the competent ones to handle this business of forgiving?
But in reality / “forgiveness of sins” comes near the end of the Creed
where it talks about the Holy Spirit’s work
in the communion of the saints
Like it or not / forgiveness of sins
is the trademark of the community of saints
It is not only that line in the creed / which makes us uncomfortable
we have the teachings of Jesus on this matter
that makes us even more uncomfortable
Jesus treats God’s forgiveness of us
and our forgiveness of other people / as inextricably intertwined
Its as if God’s forgiveness of us
is contingent upon our forgiveness of others
God not only forgives us of our sins
In turn / He demands that we forgive other people who sin against us
The Bible is quite insistent that just as we have been forgiven
we need to forgive others
On one occasion / Jesus said "When you stand there praying
forgive others / so that your Father may forgive you too"
And on another occasion He said it straight out
“If you do not forgive men their sin
neither will your father forgive your sins” / Matt 6:14,15
General Oglethorp in a conversation once told John Wesley:
“I never forgive”
Wesley immediately turned to him and said:
“Then I hope sir / that you never sin”
The English poet George Herbert once said
He that cannot forgive others / destroys the very bridge
over which he himself must pass if he is ever to reach Heaven
In the Lord’s prayer / Jesus taught us to pray this way:
“Forgive us our sins / as we forgive those who sin against us”
On the cross / He prays to God / “Father / forgive them
for they do not know what they do”
In this parable we see that when the forgiven servant
does not show mercy to his fellow-servants
the king comes to take back the forgiveness he’s already given
God / returning / and taking back the forgiveness He’s given !
Is there anything else
that will strike a greater fear in our hearts than this prospect
And yet / here it is!! / Clear as daylight
And yet we all know it is hard to forgive
Over the many years in my ministry we’ve had various people come to us
because they’ve found that they could not forgive someone
who’ve grieved them deeply
One middle-aged man told me that until he dies
he will never forgive his doctor / and he was dead sure of that
he just will never ever forgive him
Many people understand forgiveness to mean
that we have to forget / to get go of all feelings of anger
to forget the injustice that was done to them
But no human person is wired to forgive in this way / by this definition
We have been wired to remember
And often / we do remember / with exact precision
the place / and the actual words spoken that cut us up
And we’ve been wired / to get real angry over injustice done to us
and to want to see justice carried out
Forgiveness is God’s invention
God invented forgiveness to help us come to terms with a world
in which despite their best intentions people hurt us
God invented forgiveness / because He knows
that if we are not to die a slow agonizing death / we need to forgive
He began by forgiving us / and he invites us all to forgive each other
There is no alternative to forgiving / if you want to live?
Do you want some injustice done on you
to freeze you up for all the rest of your life
Do you want some words spoken of you
to suffocate you / debilitate you / for the rest of your life
Do you really want that?
Suppose you don’t want to be frozen up like that
but neither do you want to forgive
If that’s where you are / the only other alternative left / is revenge
Revenge is a passion to get even
But the trouble with revenge
is that it never evens the score / fairness never comes
Every act of revenge sets off a chain reaction
that inevitably careens out of control
It escalates to where you never intended it to go
and the escalator never stops / no one ever gets off
This is why family feuds go on and on until finally everyone is dead
- or gets too old to fight / or simply too tired to fight
- impotent to retaliate / and powerless to forgive
The fact of the matter is simple
No two people / ever weigh pain on the same scale
The pain somebody inflicts upon me always feels heavier to me
than it feels to the person who caused it
The pain I inflict upon you / always feel worse / to you
than it seems to me
Pain given and pain received / never balance out
If you hurt me and I hit back / I may think
that I've given you only what you deserve / no more
- but you will feel that I've hit back harder than I needed to
- and to get even you hit back at me / harder this time
- and then it will be my turn / and it never stops
This is partly why the Chinese have a proverb:
“If you go out to seek revenge / dig two graves”
The only way out is forgiveness
Forgiveness / has the creative power
to move us away / from a past moment of pain
to stop us from being sucked into an endless chain of relations
Forgiveness has the strange power / to create a new situation
in which both the victim and the perpetrator
can begin walking on a new path
Forgiveness offers an opportunity
for life together instead of death together
You may suspect that releasing forgiveness is not fair
because the people who hurt you are not getting their due
But in reality forgiveness is the only way to be fair to yourself
Getting even is a loser's game
I don't want to pretend that it is easy to forgive
Sometimes it would seem impossible to forgive
It seems so unfair to be asked / and to be expected
to forgive people who have done us grave injury
Why should people cut and thrust their way through our lives
leaving us bleeding / and then expect us to forgive
and act as if nothing went wrong
People who tell us to forgive must get it through their head
that what they're asking us to do
is to forget about being fair / and that’s outrageous
Maybe the story of Jane Schambach
will help us understand the agony of having to forgive
Jane and her husband Ralph have sacrificed 25 years
bringing up their three children
Now they’ve all grown up and left the home
and Jane was finally going to have a life of her own
- She can't wait to get back on her own track
and make something of herself / on the last lap of her life
But a family tragedy stopped her on her tracks
Ralph’s younger brother and his wife were killed in a car crash
and left three children ages 8 / 10 / 12 all by themselves
And Ralph had this strong sense of responsibility
And he knew without question / that it was his sacred duty
to take his brother's orphaned children in & care for them
Jane was too compassionate / perhaps too tired to fight against it
she never really know which /but she and Ralph took the children in
Now as for Ralph / he was gone a lot
- a travelling man / seldom home / making deals for the Co.
Nine years went by - a real grind for Jane
Finally two of the kids are gone / the only one still home is 17
So in a few more years / Jane and Ralph would be home free
But not quite / Jane’s body had gotten a little bit lumpy by this time
and perhaps not quite as attractive as she used to be
while Ralph’s secretary Susan / was a dazzler / luminous
Besides / Susan really understood his large male needs
How could Ralph help not falling in love
He and Susan knew that their love was
too real to be denied / too powerful to be resisted
And so cruel as it may be / Ralph divorced Jane and married Susan
And they were very happy together
And people around them seem to approve what they did
The church they go to somehow affirm them as a happy couple
But Ralph could not be fully be happy
he needed one more person to accept him
- to accept that what he did was right
So one evening / he called Jane / to ask her to forgive him
and be glad with him / that he was finally a happy man
“I want you to bless me” he asked Jane
And quick as a flash Jane said: “I want you to go to hell”
and hung up
Now how can you and I tell someone like Jane / to forgive
You see / the strength of her hatred / the energy of her fury
was the only power she had left
that could help hold herself together
It may sound strange / but
- her contempt was her power
- her fury was her dignity / and her anger was her self-esteem
and we’re all asking her to throw that away!
- what will she have left!
You see when people urge us to forgive they’re asking us to suffer twice
First we suffer the pain of another person's injustice
- we’ve been ripped off / betrayed / left out in the cold
Now we must suffer a second time
- by swallowing our sense of fairness
and bless the person / who hurt us
And yet / no matter how you turn the matter around
you will find / that forgiving the only alternative you’ll ever have
There is no other way!
All right / if forgiveness is our only way out
- just how mat we forgive?
We being by facing the fact that we have been badly shaken
that we hurt / that we’re in deep pain
Whatever we do /
we cannot pretend that we’re OK / when we’re all cut up inside us
- we need to admit that we vulnerable / that we are in pain
Then we face the fact / that we hate this person
How many times have we been told
that we’re supposed to hate the sin but not the sinner
I find that I have no power to do this
neither the power of God within me to do this
I can’t separate the pain I feel from the person who caused me that pain
- It sticks to him / the way his skin sticks to his body
- I can’t tear them apart
I can’t just hate the wrong he did / I hate him for doing me wrong
I can’t hate cruelty / I hate the person who was cruel to me
I can’t hate racism / I hate the man in the mall
who threw that racial slur at my face
I can’t hate sexual immorality / or sexual aberrations
I hate the man who raped that old grandmother next-door
If Tommy betrays me / I hate him
My mind cannot separate his action from his person
Let’s all face up to something none of us like to face up to / We do hate
- it makes us look mean / unforgiving / and malicious
but the plain fact / is that we do hate some people
And as long as we deny that we hate
- we skirt around the circle of forgiveness
- we never enter into the circle / and begin to forgive
We may put on a happy face on the outside
but the fact is this / Hatred that is denied / kills us in the inside
Sometimes / it only nibbles / at the edges of your heart
But often / it burns out the lining of your soul
But whether it nibbles at you / or eats you up
hatred that’s been lodged too long in our soul
turns into a passion that’s very hard to dislodge
There comes a point / when you can’t live without our hatred
You have become your hatred
Your hatred do not belong to you / you belong to your hatred
It has become something that’s keyed into your whole being
And when that happens
it does not even have the decency to die
when the person we hate is dead and gone
But / like a parasite / it sucks your blood / not theirs
The point is this
Hatred that is denied / eats us in the inside like a carcinoma
But hatred that is admitted / forces us to make a decision
whether we should go on hating
or move forward to the miracle of forgiving and healing
It is only when you admit that you hurt / and that you hate
that you’re ready / to see the wrongdoer in a new light
- to see him in a way / your hatred has blinded you from seeing
- and you’ll come to see
that he hurt you / because he was weak and needy and fallible
that he needed your help /support /comfort before he hurt you
and needed your help /support /comfort after he'd hurt you
When you see your enemy in this new light
it gives you a new feeling towards him
Of course you cannot pry the wrongdoer loose from the wrong
But in your mind and heart / you can release him from the wrong
And finally / you will know that forgiveness has begun
when you feel that within you / you have the power to wish him well
Myra Broger is a beautiful woman / an actress
She was almost killed by a hit-and-run driver some yrs. ago
She was left crippled / but still gorgeous & attractive
Her husband / a TV star stayed with her
only until she recovered from the accident
- then coldly and quickly he took off / left her
When Myra was asked if she was able to forgive him / she said “Yes”
When asked what made her think / she had been able to forgive
she replied: “I find myself wishing him well”
Then the counsellor probed further / asking:
“Supposed you found out that he married a young starlet
could you pray that he would be happy with her?”
She responded quite casually: “Yes / I could and I would
Steve needs love very much and I want him to have it”
The counsellor was first naturally sceptical
but he finally came to know that Myra’s forgiveness was genuine
Her painful memory has been healed / the hate is gone
You know you have begun on the road to forgiving
when you can bless the one who did you wrong
And from then on / you too can move on to living a new life
There is just no other way to be healed / than in forgiving
I want to close with a story by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson tells a story of two maiden sisters
only a few years apart in age / who lived in Edinburgh
They lived comfortably in a rather large one-room apartment
But they gradually grew apart
there were frequent violent quarrels and misunderstandings
Often very cutting words were exchanged
and the pain sliced deep into both of them
As time passed / their impatience and anger grew
and the day came / when they stopped completely
from speaking to each other
But instead of resolving their dispute or one of them moving out
they both stubbornly stayed on
in that little / narrow / confined one-room apartment
all the while refusing to speak to one another
A chalk line was drawn upon the wooden flooring
separating the two living area
bisected the doorway and the fireplace
so that each could go in and out and do her own cooking
without violating the territory of the other
And Stevenson wrote these haunting words:
“For years they coexisted in that hateful silence
And in the dark silent watches of the night
each sister could hear / the breathing of her enemy
Never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle”
And to the last day / they each died / as enemies
harbouring the hatred / within their hearts
and each taking it / to their grave
Animosity corrodes the soul
O! the horror of unforgiving hatred
O! the pride of not yielding to the other person
The Lord forbid that we should go to our graves
bearing within our frail breasts
the heavy spirit of unforgiveness
But the greatest forgiveness / is God forgiving you of your sins
And today / you can be forgiven by God / right here / now
Some of you here this morning have never been forgiven by God
you have never made peace with God
You’re still at war with Him
You need to make peace with God
Because one day you shall have to stand before Him
And on that day / believe me / you don't want to be His enemy
The Word of God says: “Repent / be baptised in the name of Christ
for the forgiveness of sins
and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”
And if you hear God speaking to you now / stop resisting Him
be sorry for your sins / renounce them / turn to God
ask Him to forgive you / and you will be saved
Let us pray:
Father / to look into your word is to look into a mirror
and we see our own faces / with all the smudges
We have not forgiven some people in our lives / who hurt us badly
We harbour a bitter hostility / a deep resentment
We have allowed bitterness to cripple us / stifle us
- we have not forgiven as you have told us to
- we have gone on hating
And there is no health in us
Lord / have mercy upon us
Grant us to understand how we may forgive
Release from the trap we have put ourselves in
when we have been unable to forgive
Give us strength to love those who have hurt us
that we may walk forward into new life
Amen
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