Forgiveness Flows From A Forgiven Heart - 9/17 Sermon

Forgiveness flows from a forgiven heart

Matthew 18:21-35

- Peter asked the wrong question. “How many times just I forgive.”

- At that time, the Rabbis said “3” was the number of times you forgive. If you got punched in the face on the fourth time, give it back. Peter thought he was being generous. Twice the normal amount! Good!

- Peter asked the wrong question. “How many times must I forgive.”

- Jesus, in his typical way, told Peter was the ‘right’ question was. But he told a story first.

Read/tell the story, Matthew 18:21-35. There are a couple of interesting aspects of this story.

- A denarius is a day’s wage. A talent is 6000 denarii. 10,000 talents is 60,000,000 days work. At $200 a day, that’s about $12 billion.

- The master forgave this debt. My bank will give me 20 days before they send the police to evict me for not paying my mortgage. Imagine if I missed a payment and they gave me the house.

- How good of a mood would we be in? How generous? Yet this evil servant beat up a man for a couple $1,000 in debt, a handful compared to what he owed. It is clearly wrong, right?

- His end was horrible. Torture and prison for the rest of his life. 

- Peter asked the wrong question. It’s not ‘how many times should I forgive,’ but simply ‘how’ should I forgive.

- This was Jesus point in the parable. How should I forgive? We forgive from the heart. Forgive as someone forgiven a $12 billion debt.

- How could that wicked servant, forgiven of $12 billion, not forgive the other? Forgiveness did not flow his forgiven heart.

- People ask the wrong question today, too. “What’s the most important attitude?” Love or compassion? That’s vague. Based on what?

- We love because he first loved us. We forgive because he forgave us. Our love is based on Jesus Christ.

- This was Jesus’ point. “It was necessary that we forgive, because we have been forgiven.” Forgiveness flows from our forgiven heart.

- The problem is that we can be like that wicked servant. We believe in Jesus! We hear forgiveness every Sunday in C&A. We know the cross.

- But what do people owe me? They owe me respect, honor, or something. If they don’t give that to me, I get angry.

- Our children or grandchildren don’t listen, or our siblings disregard us and just aren’t nice. They owe me more than that. We’re angry.

- Our bosses don’t understand what it’s like, they’re greedy, selfish, lazy. They owe me more than that. We’re angry.

- Our neighbors are always causing problems, not tidy, loud. They owe me more than that. We’re angry.

- We spend so much of our life angry, mad because people don’t give us what we want or treat us the way we think we deserve.

- $12 billion dollars. That’s how much that wicked servant was forgiven. It’s hard to even comprehend that amount, isn’t it?

- That’s our debt to God. All our anger, our impatience, our mean words, all the times we never forgave, form this impossibly high debt.

- It’s a debt well over $12 billion, an eternal debt against an eternal God that brings eternal hell.

- But what did the master of the house do with that debt?

- The servant pleaded for more time, pleaded for patience.

- The master simply said, “The debt is gone. You are forgiven.”

- That debt we owe to God, that sin, is gone. With three simple words of Jesus on the cross, “it is finished,” that debt is simply erased.

- With blood more precious than gold or silver, with the blood of God himself, Jesus paid our debt and took away our sin.

- Like a wave of water that washes away dirt and mud, the blood of Jesus has washed away every last speck of sin. We’re clean, holy.  

- Our hearts are forgiven. The master, God himself, looks down on us and says, “You don’t owe anything. You are free.”

- The more we are aware of our sin, of the massive debt we owe God, the more our joy increases. That debt, the $12 billion debt, is gone?

- God forgives our hearts, and with forgiven hearts we can stand before God holy, perfect.

- With forgiven hearts, God now gives you an inheritance. This also is worth far more than $12 billion. Eternal paradise in heaven. 

- There are four applications I want to make on this point.

1. Forgiveness is part of being a Christian.

- A spring gives fresh water. You don’t pump water into the ground to make a spring; you find a spring. Water flows from a spring.

- Our hearts are forgiven. That’s the power. Jesus forgives our hearts; he washes away our sin.

- Forgiveness flows from a forgiven heart, like water from a spring. It’s a daily battle! It’s a struggle! We fail! But that’s what Christians do.

2. We have peace with everyone through forgiveness.

- Look at joseph in our OT reading. His brothers sold him as a slave! Yet he forgave them. He was at peace with them through forgiveness.

- Life can be horrible. I heard about someone’s brother who abused his daughter. Wow. Relationships change; forgiveness helps us find peace.

- Your boss is bad? Our neighbors aren’t nice. Family is frustrating. There is a better way; forgiveness, peace through the power of Jesus.

3. Forgiveness gives power for love.

- I’ve heard it a lot. We all should love, have more compassion. Love is vague. It’s easy to love at a distance. It’s hard to love someone once you get closer, once they actually do bad to us.

- Try this instead: Forgiveness through Jesus, let that motivate us to love. People will harm us. Every single person we know will, because we all are sinful. Through Jesus, we can forgive, let go, move on.

4 Forgiveness helps us be self-aware.

- If the basis of how we think and what we do is forgiveness, that means I need forgiveness.

- Every day we stumble. We get angry at people for the smallest things, for big things.

- Let’s think, more and more, every day, of our forgiveness, our $12 billion debt forgiven, and then forgive others.

What a massive debt. $12 billion dollars. I wonder how fast it would take someone to wrack up $12 billion dollars in debt. How much does $12 billion $1 bills weigh? Our debt of sin to God is even bigger than that. Jesus has forgiven our debt, taken it away, erased it. What love. Let’s show this same forgiveness to every single person in our life. Amen.