Understanding and Acting on God’s Forgiveness

Lord, we do come to you today grateful that we’ve been brought together by the grace of Christ and in our relationships and our church body. We pray today that your work would be in our lives and your spirit would have free course. At the end of the morning, we’d end up at the base of the cross. Well, correctly said, the church is not brick and mortar, it’s flesh and blood. Good morning.

We have, I think, a good morning planned out for you this morning. The schedule that we have is that Rob and I will each be doing three week blocks. This is my second week. Last week, we talked about understanding and living a life of faith. Today, we’re going to talk about understanding and living a life of marked out by forgiveness.

And next week, we’re going to talk about one of the most remarkable passages in the gospels having to do with discouragement with the John the Baptist. And then when I come back in July, we’re going to spend all three weeks on the sermon, the parable of the soils. All three weeks, we’re going to be right there in Luke chapter eight. And then in August, when I come back, we’ll be back in Matthew 13 and the seven parables of Jesus, uniquely a bright spot in the book of Matthew. And the point of all this is a series we’re calling face-to-face with Jesus.

And our goal, if we meet that goal is instead of just having a bracelet that says WWJD, what would Jesus do? Our minds and our hearts ask the question in the circumstance I find myself, what would Jesus do? That’s our goal for the summer in terms of this study. So we are today in the book of Luke having to do with the subject of forgiveness. We’re in Luke chapter seven.

And forgiveness is a subject that is applicable in virtually every phase and feature of our life. Some of it has to do with with consequences that we have in life. Others, times it has to do with the kind of perspective that we have on events that are happening around us. One industrious college student realized that he was in some trouble, wrote his parents and said, hey, mom and dad, I want you to know that I’ve taken a different course than college. I dropped out of college.

I met this girl. We’re in love. She never really finished high school, but she plans on doing that someday. And I think she may be pregnant, but wanted to let you know that. And there was a gap in the email.

And he said, just kidding. He said, there’s no girlfriend. I’m still in school. I haven’t done really well in my studies, but I do need more money. What are the really, really bad news?

The lesser bad news is something that we can take pretty readily. There was a cartoon posted in the New Yorker many years ago, and it showed a father and his son, and the caption under it said, well, son, this is the fourth time we’ve killed the fatted calf. This prodigal son had come back not once or twice or three times, but he had come back for the fourth time, and of course, the father then is challenged with, what do I do? How do I handle this? You know, at its core, and I’m in a career as an attorney that doesn’t specialize in forgiveness.

We specialize, I guess, in getting even more than in forgiveness. And I hope there are some of us that do it with grace, but forgiveness is a fairly foreign concept in the legal profession. In truth, forgiveness is you giving up your right to hurt somebody because they hurt you. That’s the core of what forgiveness is. Now, life is like that.

We all go through the kinds of anomalies of life, both small and large, which have varying degrees of consequences. The lesser consequences have to do with just the irritations of the day. The way we get from point A to point B on the road, the circumstances of life, the coworkers that we’re with, the family relationships that go well or don’t go so well. And yet there are things that happen in life that are big, and that we don’t ask for, but they still confront us with the subject of, as a Christian, how do I handle it? I don’t know whether you saw the news report last week, but you remember the couple in two years ago in the summer that traveled from the east coast to the west, and the boyfriend after a period of time came back without the girlfriend.

The girlfriend’s name was Gabby Petito. And it came out in the course of the dodging and weaving of the next few months of news reports, both the boy and his parents and the boy’s attorney. It came out that there was more to that than they were pretending, and in fact, he was the consequence for the girl’s death. Two years later, last week, the news report came out, and it was a reckoning time for Gabby’s parents with his family. And she said, and I quote, I speak for myself here when I say Brian, I forgive you.

I needed to release myself from the chains of anger and bitterness, and I refused to let your despicable act define the rest of my life. Comminable. Then she said to Brian’s mother, you do not deserve forgiveness. You deserve to be forgotten. There are sometimes piercing, hard things that happen in life that just put us on our knees.

I cannot fathom having to deal with somebody murdering one of my children. And yet it’s a consequence that happens in life. It’s the kind of thing that says, I don’t know how to react, but I sure as fire don’t want to forgive them for what happened. Sometimes Christians get confused about that because they think, well, if I can’t forget something, I can’t forgive it. It’s absolutely incorrect.

There are the hard, big things that happen in your life. It may have been as a child with your parents. It may have been as an adult. There are the hard, big things in life which you physically, it’s impossible to forget. Just they mark your life and you go on.

But the passage in the Psalms that says, God forgives our sins as far as the east is from the west doesn’t tell us to forget those hard things in life. It says, forgive them. So what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is something that is a barrier or a block of relationship. And our text today in Luke chapter seven is going to address Jesus’ instruction to the disciples.

So we’re in Luke chapter seven. And we’re beginning in verse 36. Now one of the Pharisees, I want to ask you, hold up your Bibles, and I do that for two reasons because I normally ask you to do that. And because we’re praying for Judy, he’d dimmery today. And she always says, John, are you going to raise my Bible today?

Judy’s in the hospital. So as a side, pray for Judy and Ed during this time. All right, Luke chapter seven. Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him. So he went to the Pharisees house and reclined at a table.

Apparently Jesus went with some of his disciples as well. So we’ll see that. Now catch that for a minute. Not only was this staggering by any kind of propriety within the Oriental culture, it was completely unexpected. This woman of ill repute.

The text is really clear. She’s a known person who has a poor reputation in the community, busted her way into this Pharisees house and then did the unthinkable. She undid her hair, which is contrary to a woman’s pattern in the Oriental culture. She approached Jesus directly, which again was not customary. As he reclined at a couch, ready to eat that meal with the Pharisees and at least Peter was there, she broke open a vial of perfume and began in her tears and her sobbing to cover Jesus’ feet with the perfume and then to wipe his feet with her hair.

Now if nothing else, that whole home was covered with the fragrance and perfume of this religious act. But as is in keeping with Jesus’ purposes in giving this story, it was not received well by the Pharisee. So in the Pharisee, verse 39, who had invited him, saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is.” She’s a sinner. Jesus answered him and in fact apparently turned to Simon and answered not only the Pharisee but gave this instruction to his disciple Simon.

He said, “If this man were, excuse me, Jesus answered, Simon, I have something to tell you, tell me teacher. Two men owed money to a certain money lender. One owed him 500 denari, and the other 50. Denari was about a day’s wage. So one man owed this money lender a day’s wage, excuse me, 50 days wages.

In other words, probably in the work commodity of the first century, two or three months wages. The other man owed 500 denari closer to two years of wages. And the money lender, neither of them had the money to pay him back. Jesus said, “You even judged correctly.” Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?

I came into your house. You do not give me any water for my feet, but they wet my feet with their tears and wipe them with her hair. You do not give me a kiss. But this woman from the time I entered has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but this woman has poured perfume on my feet.

Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much, but who has been forgiven little, loves little. And then so as to make sure that this woman understood what it was that saved her, just as the woman who pressed in and touched Jesus’ robe and was healed, Jesus turned back to the woman and said, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” Now there’ll be a similar event that happens in the last week of Jesus’ life with Mary, who Mary will also come to the feet of Jesus and anoint him, but this is a different event. This is in the second year of Jesus’ ministry.

It’s in his middle year where the Word is getting out of this man who’s traveling through the region, healing people, raising the day and dead, performing miracles, giving teaching. And in this context, this woman comes and Jesus says this becomes an illustration of forgiveness. The fuller description of this is seen in the book of Matthew, because in Matthew we have also the subject of forgiveness being talked about, and Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness, and Peter comes to Jesus, and says, “How often should I forgive my servant?” Therefore Jesus says, I tell you that Peter came to Jesus and said, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?” So that event in Matthew 18, Peter raises to Jesus the subject and says, “Okay, you want me to go the extra mile?

How many miles do I go?” And Jesus said, in answering him, I tell you, not seven times, but 70, seven times. What’s Jesus saying? He’s saying, “If you forgive, you’re not counting.” And that’s where it catches all of us.

It’s in that, “Yeah, but.” Okay. They haven’t really acknowledged that they hurt me. All right, I’ll forgive her. But then you find out they’re not thankful for that.

And so you regret having forgiven them. It’s kind of like being generous. If you’re not thankful, I don’t want to be generous. If you’re not thankful, I don’t want to forgive. Yeah, but Lord, this person hurt me.

He took advantage of me. And if I forgive him, I’m open to being hurt again. And Jesus said, “You’re counting, Peter. You can’t count.” on the subject of forgiveness.

It’s a reservoir from the grace of God and the heart of us, of those of us who are followers of Jesus that never runs out. So at the end of Matthew 18, Jesus says, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” Now, there’s been a story again of two debtors. In this case, a debtor who owed 10,000 in Denari, which is an unbelievable, Denari’s about a year’s wages. So it’s an unforgivable amount of money.

And the other owed the lender less, and Jesus forgave them. And the one who was forgiven then went out and had someone who owed less money to him, not forgiven. The man came and said, “I owe you an unbelievable amount of money.” And the money lender said, “You’re forgiven.” I know you said you’ll pay me back, but I’m going to forgive you that debt, cancel the debt.

And then that servant went out to a lesser amount. And when somebody said the same thing, I’ll pay you back. It just gave me some time. He choked him and threw him in prison. And again, that story in Matthew 18, like Luke 7, shows that the measure of forgiveness is to be taken based on how we understand we’re forgiven by God.

And there’s a warning at the end of that chapter. And it says, “If you don’t forgive one another, your heavenly Father will treat you pay back in the way that you paid back your debtor.” So we’re getting into a section of the Scripture with the discipleship subject that’s going to have warnings to it as well. And as Christians, we read right past that. The warnings in the Bible because we’re so steeped correctly in the fact that when we’re believing Christ, we come into an eternal relationship with him and with the spirit of God that cannot be undone.

But with that, we discount the warnings that come as a Christian. And in the context of forgiveness, this becomes a warning which says, “Forgive your brother, even as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven you.” We go to Colossians chapter 3 verses 13 and 14, and the epistles bring that all as well. Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

So the measure that we have as Christians is something that we are to be forgiven even as God has forgiven us. So the issue isn’t the yabbats. If I forgive them, I’m going up being vulnerable. If I forgive them, I won’t be able to pay them back the way I want to pay them back. And our measure goes to what God has done to us, for us, through Jesus.

This is also seen in Ephesians 4 32, where Paul wrote again, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God has forgiven you.” So where does that leave us in terms of understanding the subject of forgiveness? It really comes down to what God is doing in our life. It’s not something that you need to take legal recourse to get even. It’s not something that you need to calculate and plot for a time when you can recover what you were lost, what you lost by being hurt.

It comes in looking back at the cross and saying, “Because of what God has done for me in Christ, because of his forgiveness of me, whether or not someone understands it or appreciates it, I’m going to turn that loose in terms of my grievance to them.” It happens in small areas. It happens in large areas. But it’s the sort of thing that fractures relationships to not forgive. There’s a notable story about a church that was going through similar things that we’re going through.

And the leadership got into a dispute. The dispute over things like who was entitled to be first served at a church dinner. And the whole church split over that. I’ve been in another church personally where it had a great reputation as a church for many years as on Gleason Street, right above Multnomah, and it fractured and divided over theological issues over the subject of election. And to this day, the body remains divided because of that fracture.

So we really have in front of us a challenge to be people who are marked out by our commitment to forgiving one another. Not because it’s the safe thing to do. Not because you’re going to recover what you’ve lost in a previous harm or relationship. Relationship. It’s because of what Jesus has done for us.

Ultimately, James chapter 2 speaks to this as well. And in James 2, James wrote, having been instructed by Jesus himself, James wrote, “Speak and act as those who are going to judge by the law that gives freedom because judgment without mercy shall be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.” “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” Abraham Lincoln was approached toward the end of the Civil War. And it was apparent that the South was going to be defeated.

And he was asked, “Mr. President, what are you going to do when the South comes back to join our union when we receive them back as one United States of America?” And Lincoln said, “I’m going to treat them as if they never had been away.” That’s the mark and commitment of forgiveness. It’s putting that barrier between us away and saying, “I’m not going to carry it.

I’m not going to cudgel it in my heart. I’m not going to get bitter about it. I’m going to recognize that I’m marked out by being a forgiven one of God, and that’s the way I want to live my life.” There was an old poem that was written many years ago that had to do with the subject of how God renews us in the midst of our commitment to be people of forgiveness. And it says, it’s entitled “Beginning a New.”

He came to my desk with quivering lip. The lesson was done, “Have you a new leaf for me, dear teacher?” I have spoiled this one. I took his leaf, all soiled and blotted, and gave him a new one, all unspotted. Then to end his tired heart, I smiled, “Do better now, my child.”

I went to the throne with trembling heart. The day was done. “Have you a new day for me now?” “My master?” I’ve spoiled this one.

He took my day, all soiled and blotted. And gave me a new one, all unspotted. Then into my tired heart, he smiled, “Do better now, my child.” Every day is fresh and new, and you can start those days unencumbered by the harm that’s happened in the past. If you commit yourself to a pattern of forgiving as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven us.

It was true of Lincoln. Lincoln has been true of other believers as well. So when we come to the hard things of life, like the death of a child, the damage that’s been caused in family relationships, the careless word or actions of a believer toward another believer which has caused a fracture in relationships, you take that and leave it at the cross. Because of him who knew no sin, who became sin on our behalf. The measure of true Christian forgiveness ultimately comes down to this.

You say, “I know I should forgive, but I was raised by a parent who was hard. I never had it modeled. I never had one encourage me and show me how to be a man or woman or forgiveness.” And Peter wrote, “Your attitude should be the same as of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing.” Say, “Yeah, John, but you don’t understand.

Take this commitment to being a woman or a man that doesn’t hold grudges. I’m going to end up being hurt again. Guarantee that that weakness will be seen by some who take advantage of it.” And Paul wrote, “Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance, as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. The one who’s gone in front of you and gone in front of me is our example.

For him who knew no sin to take upon himself the sins of mankind and to humble himself to the point of death becomes our motivation, our incentive to really unshackle our hearts and minds from the kind of guard-hood-dark conduct that keeps barriers up around me and keeps fractured relationships in front of me.” Say, “Yeah, John, but if I do this guaranteed, I’m going to end up with losses. I’m going to, if I trust God in this situation, I can guarantee you that I’ll be taken advantage of.” And Paul wrote, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that’s above every name, that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Lord of God the Father.”

It is true. It is taken to the bank true. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Love covers a multitude of sins. And the opportunity to be a follower of Jesus marked out by a commitment to forgiveness is available to you and me on a daily basis because of the grace of God that’s been applied in our lives.

Let’s pray. Lord, we come to you today understanding that in fact the human spirit in us wants to somehow pay back for the harm that’s come to us. We want to hurt others for hurting us. And while that’s a human condition and it’s a consequence that happens in every family, and every life, we’re willing by faith to believe that your word is true, that we can mark ourselves out as new people, people who are living with forgiveness, who have enjoyed it and who are willing and ready and able to dispense it to those around us because of the grace of God in our lives. And so we commit that to you in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 3,862 words.