Exploring My Strange Bible - Forgiveness - Gospel of Matthew Part 26

Episode Date: October 28, 2018

We slow down on Matthew Chapter 18 and address Jesus’ aside road trip in this teaching. He is trying to give his staff and disciples an idea of what it is like to live in the upside-down value system of the kingdom in our personal conflicts and relationships. He particularly addresses forgiveness because, for Jesus, forgiveness was the quintessential feature of what it means to follow him. We explore forgiveness and reconciliation in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, in this episode, we're going to keep exploring the gospel according to Matthew. These were teachings that I gave a number of years ago when I was a pastor at Door of Hope Church in Portland.

We took a couple of years to just slowly work through the gospel according to Matthew in our Sunday gatherings. At this point, we were in Matthew chapter 18, and we just slowed down and camped out in this chapter. slowed down and camped out in this chapter. In the framework of the whole story of Jesus, this teaching is an aside on the road trip that Jesus made up from where he grew up in Galilee, northern Israel, Palestine, and then down to Jerusalem. And he's trying to give his closest followers their final step of education about life and living in the kingdom of God that he said was arriving in himself and in his mission. Specifically in Matthew 18, he's trying to guide the disciples, his followers, in what it looks like to live out the upside-down value system,

the ethical value system of the kingdom in our personal relationships and in our relational conflicts that we have with one another within the church, within the community of his followers. This is so practical, and this particular passage we're focusing on is about one of Jesus' most important and practical teachings, like out of everything he ever said, about forgiveness. For Jesus, forgiving other people when they wrong you is the hallmark feature of what it means to follow him. It's what you lead with. It's so important to him.

And so how you deal with relational conflicts and forgive other followers of Jesus when they wrong you, this was crucial. And so he dedicated a whole detailed teaching towards it. These words of Jesus have often been misunderstood and therefore abused in how they're put into practice. And so the goal, a lot of goal, what I'm doing is just trying to help us really hear what Jesus was trying to say to the best of my ability to understand that and then what it looks like to implement that, how forgiveness is different from reconciliation and how forgiveness can be something that you do, but have to continue to foster and cultivate over time. This is one of the most complicated things we do as humans is forgive each other when we wrong one another.

And so there you go. I hope this is impactful for you as it was for me. And it continues to challenge me as I just think about my own life and relationships. So there you go. Let's open our minds and hearts and dive in together. hearts and dive in together. Matthew chapter 18, verse 21.

Then Peter came to Jesus, and he asked, Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, Oh, I tell you, no, not seven times. Seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven, it's like this. It's like a king who wanted to settle up accounts with his servants. And as he began the settlement, there was a man there who owed him

10,000 bags of gold. Now, right here, bags of gold, I've got in the New International Version. Anybody else? Talent. Yeah. So, for some reason, in some of our gold, I've got in the new international version. Anybody else? Talent. Yeah. So for some reason, in some of our translations, they've just chosen not to translate that ancient Greek word for you. You're like, what's a talent? A talent is just an enormous amount of money. An enormous amount of money. So you probably have a footnote right there, or you can look in the back. Do you know about your table of weights and measures? It's in the back of every printed Bible you've ever had right there. Table of weights and measures.

You can do the conversion or read the foot. It's an enormous amount of money. So my footnote tells me that one talent was worth about 20 years of your average blue-collar worker's wages. So just do the math. We're talking, this is the point of the parable

where you laugh. You're like, oh, that's 200. It's like he said zillions or something like that, right? So think zillions. Verse 24, as he began the settlement, a man who owed him zillions of dollars was brought to him. Since he wasn't able to pay, right, the man ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debts. Very common practice in Jesus' day. At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. Please be patient with me, he begged.

I'll pay back everything. Right, right. The servant's master, however, took pity on him, or some of your translations have, I think a little bit better English, had compassion on him. He canceled the debt and let him go. Now when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servant who owed him 100 silver coins. So this is NIV. Some of your translations have 100. Exactly.

Because they just know that you know exactly what that means, right? So a couple thousand dollars dollars let's just say sorry i lost my place okay so here we go when that servant went out he found another fellow servant who owed him a hundred a couple thousand dollars he grabbed that servant he began to choke him pay back what you owe me he demanded The fellow servant also fell to his knees and begged him. He said, be patient with me. I will pay it back. But he refused.

Instead, he went off and he had that man thrown into prison until he could pay back his debt because a great way to get a job and earn money is by being thrown into prison. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged, just like you would be. And they went and told their master everything that happened. And so the master called the servant in.

You wicked servant, he said. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just like I had mercy on you? And so, angry, the master handed him over to the jailers, or some of your translations have to torturers. There's a debate there about the meaning of the word. Until he could pay back everything that he owed. Jesus, this is how my heavenly father will deal with you,

unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. The words of Jesus. We're talking about forgiveness today. It's crystal clear what we're talking about, isn't it? It's forgiveness. And this is one of those topics where you might kind of read that and be like, wow, really glad I don't harbor anything towards anybody in my heart. And let's just see how you feel once we explore the words a little bit more.

But I, just speaking from my own personal experience, you know, I've only been in pastoral ministry for six years, but in those six years, if I were to say one of the most common conversations that I've had with people around here and at the other church in Wisconsin that I worked at before, it's this topic right here of unresolved conflicts, unresolved hurts, and pain from people who have hurt us, and the lifelong struggle to forgive people. And for Jesus, forgiveness was one of the key watchwords of his whole movement. You know, think of the daily prayer that he taught his disciples, us to pray every single day in terms of our Father in heaven. Let's just, if you

haven't said the Lord's Prayer yet today, let's just do it right now, because he asked us to pray it daily. So here we go. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. May your kingdom come. May your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And if you're the King James, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So apparently Jesus thought forgiveness was so vital to the movement of the kingdom and what he was here to do. He wanted us to remind ourselves daily in prayer that forgiveness is at the heartbeat of what it means to follow Jesus,

and that somehow God's forgiveness of me is directly tied to my ability to release forgiveness out to others as well. There's this organic connection between the two, and you can see that right here in the parable. Apparently, Jesus takes our inability to forgive or our ability to forgive like really seriously, really, really seriously. And this doesn't stand alone either. Think through the flow of where we've been. I've been calling this the road trip part of the gospel so far. So, you know, Jesus is on this road trip. He's on his way to Jerusalem. And he's trying to tell his disciples that he's going there

not to kick out the Romans or kill anybody, but actually to be killed and to die on behalf of Israel's sins and the sins of the world. And the disciples don't get it. And so they fundamentally misunderstand Jesus. They misunderstand what it means to follow him. And so remember this whole teaching, chapter 18, began. We've been here for a month.

Began with them asking, like, Jesus, what does it take to be the most important person, right, in the kingdom? And Jesus is like, oh, boy, wow, wow. So he actually doesn't even say anything. So he actually doesn't even say anything. What he does is he gets a child, right, and puts a small child right in the middle of the whole crowd, and he says, be like this. This is a very powerful visual parable.

He begins this teaching with a visual parable, and now he's ending this chapter with a spoken parable. And so first you have to reckon with that, like what does that mean about demoting myself, about humility, right, independence and trust? And then Jesus warned us. He says if we're called to become new different kinds of humans, like being born again like little children, what it means is that this is a community where we're likely going to hurt each other as we grow and try and mature as followers of Jesus so you remember he had a whole teaching about warning us about the character flaws that are in us and that we that hurt other people and so he warned us about that and then he gave us like really concrete tools of what to do when we hurt each other,

about conflict resolution and dressing each other when we hurt one another and are sinning and not following. That was what Josh was exploring last week. And so then all of that prompts the question, we are going to hurt each other. Here's tools for how to deal with conflict when we do hurt each other. And so then here we go. Peter comes up to Jesus and he's like, but Jesus, let's get practical here.

So what are you actually asking me to do? How many times, if another disciple of Jesus in the church community just straight up wrongs me, how much do I have to put up with? And it's clear, like by saying seven times, he thinks he's really being generous here. Like seven times, and we all go, whoa, wow, I would only do two, you know, or three, something.

So that's the point, is that Peter, do you see that here? Peter thinks that he's actually going to impress Jesus with this large number, right? Seven, seven times. And Jesus is like, no, not seven, Peter. At first you think, oh, Jesus will say four. Not seven, not seven, Peter. And then typical Jesus, he just flips He flips everything on its head. 77 times. 77 times. Whatever that means, and we'll talk about what it means,

for Jesus, is this a debate about math? Is this really about math and keep like, 76, here we go, finally. We're almost there to the limit. Obviously not. Obviously not. 76, here we go, finally, you know, we're almost there to the limit. Like, obviously not, obviously not. And there's a really, this is really brilliant and clever, what Jesus is doing here. This is Jewish Bible geek humor at its absolute best right here. This is actually one of my favorites in all, in all the Gospels. So the numbers 7 and 77 occur close together

in a single story in the Bible in only two places, in the entire Bible, and this is one of them. So there's only one other place in the Bible that Jesus is connecting to by the 7 and 77. Do you know it?

Anybody? It's great Bible trivia. Anyway, in Genesis chapter four, there's a story. You probably are familiar with this story. There's a story about two brothers, and one of the brothers is jealous with his brother. with his brother, jealous with, he is jealous against, jealous of, thank you, thank you, he's jealous of, yeah, that's right, that's right, he's jealous of his brother, it's early, and I'm blind from the light in the window, so, so, okay, so there's a, Genesis chapter 4, the story about two brothers, yeah, one is jealous of his brother, and do you remember what he does in response to a jealousy? So God, remember God, what's the jealous brother's name? Cain, right? And the other brother? Abel. And God addresses Cain. He's like, be careful,

right? This jealousy, this sin towards anger and violence that's growing within you, it's like an animal crouching at your door. It's going to devour you if you don't deal with it. And he doesn't deal with it. He gives in to it, and he murders his brother in the field. The story goes on from there that Cain, he's banished from the land, and then he goes and he builds a city that he names after his son, Enoch. And then that city, we're told, goes five generations in, it's growing for five generations, and like founder, like city. It becomes a place that you would never want to live, never want to live. And Genesis chapter 4 describes that by showing what life is like and what the people of Cain's city are like.

And it gives us a little vignette of a guy named Lamech. And Lamech is a poet because he sings one of the first poems in the Bible. And it's a little poem about how macho he is. He talks about how there was a young man that he ran into, and the young man tried to pick a fight with him, and he just murdered him on the spot. And he's singing a song about how proud he is of it. And he says, I didn't just give seven times the vengeance on this young man. I'm Lamech, 77 times the vengeance. I killed him right there. That's the poem. Not just seven times the revenge, but 77 times. And that's the story that Jesus

alludes to, to begin his teaching on forgiveness. Now just stop, just stop, and think about what he's doing. So whatever forgiveness is, and we'll explore that, whatever forgiveness is, it's doing something that's really counter to our nature, really. I mean, if someone, just think of a very simple situation

of like a fist fight or something. You don't even have to command your body to begin to respond in defense or retaliation with somebody like attacks you. Your body is just going to do that, right? It's the fight or flight thing. It's like it's wired into us. It's our nature. Our nature, if somebody wrongs us, you get them back. That's what we do. And so Lamech becomes, in Jewish tradition and in the Bible, he becomes like this epitome of human nature. You wrong me, I'll wrong you back, but even more.

Because you're lame, and I hate you, and I'm Lamech. You know, and like that's Lamech, right? And it's the spiral of revenge and violence and so on. And so Jesus alludes to that story. Peter asks him like, okay, Jesus, like we're supposed to be like children and we're becoming new kinds of humans. And so we address the ways that we hurt each other. And when we do hurt each other, we deal with it in a really healthy way that involves the And when we do hurt each other, we deal with it in a really healthy way that involves the community. But what's the limit, Jesus?

At what point do we go back to the way things were? And Jesus says the kingdom of God is a completely different deal. You already know what human nature does. It's Lamech and the spiral of human history that spins out of that. We don't have to explain that to anybody. We live in that world. And so Jesus is saying that somehow forgiveness is the sign of a new and different kind of humanity. And his followers are to be like Lamech, but with a different practice, something that's not our nature.

If Lamech is about unbridled revenge, Jesus' followers are to become unbridled with mercy. And unbridled with this ability to forgive. It's very powerful what Jesus is doing right here. And so it raises the question that's the topic of that conversation that I've had with so many people here at Door of Hope in just my few years of pastoral ministry. There's almost no topic that has come up more in just getting to know people and our stories around here is how do you deal with people that have hurt you? Because what if you do what Jesus said? What if you go talk to the person who hurt you? And what if they don't care?

Or what do you do if you go and talk to the person who hurt you and they do care? And they say that they're sorry, but you're not quite sure that they're sorry enough, and so it begins to eat away at you. What do you do if someone's wronged you, and you don't have the chance to go talk to them about it, because they've passed away, or because they've moved away, or because, like, time has created such a huge gap, gap it just it's going to be way too painful to bring this up again what do you do with someone who has actually apologized to you but you just

can't get over it anybody anybody have you ever had a personal conflict with any human before okay then you then there you go then jesus he's addressing you if you're his disciple, if you're one of his followers. And apparently Jesus wants his followers to live as a sign of the kingdom, as a sign of the new humanity and of a different way of being human beings, which means becoming Lamech-like in our ability to forgive and show mercy. And so here's what I'd like to do. I almost never do this kind of thing, but because I've had this conversation so many times,

I want to pretend that we're having a cup of coffee, and that way I can have about 350 cups of coffee right here in one setting. And because what does it mean to forgive 77 times? What does that even mean? And I have found personally, and then just whatever in pastoral ministry, that this, Jesus' teachings on forgiveness are actually, they're really easy to misunderstand. They're often misapplied, and they're sometimes even abused in a way that hurts people even more than they already are. And so I just want to do two things,

is to clarify what Jesus does not mean by forgiveness so that we can become crystal clear on what Jesus does mean by this unlimited capacity to forgive that we're supposed to show if we're following Jesus. And what I usually never do is put up lists, but I'm going to put up a list just simply because I want to make this as crystal clear as possible. Here's what I want to do. We hear this teaching about like not seven times, 77 times, unlimited, really, unlimited forgiveness. And so we hear that, and I think one of the most basic misunderstandings that people have of Jesus' words here is I call it the doormat misunderstanding of Jesus' teachings

on forgiveness, which is basically, well, if I forgive somebody, Jesus is basically asking me to just lay down and keep taking it, and take it again, take the wrong again, whatever, doesn't matter, forgive and forget, just take it, and hope that Jesus will bring justice one day. And you don't need to know a lick of Greek, you don't need to know a lick of Greek. You don't need to know a bit of ancient history. You just need to know how to read English, and in the next 10 minutes, you'll see how absolutely wrong that is. Forgiveness does mean something, but it doesn't mean laying down and becoming someone else's doormat to stomp all over you. Are you with me? Last week, Josh talked about this passage, right? Look up in Matthew chapter 18.

Just the words right before this one, right? Look up in verse 15. Do you remember what Jesus said to do if within the community of disciples another brother or sister is sinning, and here we would be talking about a case where they sin against you. Do you remember what Jesus said to do? It's the first thing you do. You go talk to them, right? You

don't have a prayer meeting about them, and you don't just move into denial and just say, well, I'm supposed to forgive, and so just let it go, and you don't do anything about it. No, you go talk to them out of love for them, out of love for them and do anything. No, you go talk to them out of love for them, out of love for them and love for the community. You go talk to them, and if they don't listen to you and don't care and won't own what they did, what do you do then? You get somebody else.

You get someone else in the community who knows them and also loves and cares about them, and then you go talk to that person. And then what do you do if they still won't own up to what they've done to you? You go back with even more people, right? Do you see this here? You go back, you bring it to the broader church community, whatever is the network of relationships and support around those persons, and then you have another. Do you see? So whatever, here's, and so Jesus just told us to do this when we hurt each other, but then somehow we go to the next paragraph, and we think, forgive 77 times, I guess I'm just

supposed to take it and just suffer in silence. Just, either Jesus is talking out two sides of his mouth, or we're not good readers of English, right? We need to learn how to put these two teachings together. And when you do, Jesus' teachings on forgiveness don't become less intense. I think they actually become more powerful and realistic and more personal. So, the list. I never preach from lists because I'm already bored

by the time I'm halfway through the list. But again, just for clarity, I have found that working through this is a helpful exercise. So pretend we're out having 350 cups of coffee right now. So for Jesus, whatever forgiveness means, can it mean that when somebody wrongs you, you simply ignore it and you overlook it? Can Jesus mean that when somebody wrongs you, you simply ignore it and you overlook it? Can Jesus mean that? Well, apparently not, because what's the first thing you're supposed to do when somebody wrongs you in the church community?

What do you do? You go talk to them. How many of you have heard the phrase, forgive and forget? you have heard the phrase forgive and forget, or the idea that love will simply overlook people when they wrong you. Love will cover someone's wrong against you when you go through the process of forgiveness, but love does not overlook. Whatever Jesus means, it's exactly the opposite of ignoring or forgetting and it is certainly not condoning.

Many people think that forgiveness means I'm actually treating what they did to me as if it's not a big deal and like it doesn't matter. No, it's a huge deal and of course it matters. That's why you go talk to them, right? Because out of love for them

and like, man, if they don't realize that this is how they're treating people, and out of love for the community, like if they treat me this way, then odds are they're going to be treating lots of other people this way. And maybe like I'm off my rocker. Maybe I'm just taking this too personally. So it actually helps to get another person involved, like Jesus says here, so that by the testimony of more than one witness, because maybe I'm the one that's wrong. I need someone to point that out to me because my thinking's too clouded here. But whatever we're doing, we're not doing any of those first four things right there. We're not ignoring or forgetting. We're not condoning or excusing.

You guys with me here? It's a very simple observation, but it took someone else to point it out to me before I realized what forgiveness was and what it was not. Forgiveness, whatever forgiveness means, it also does not mean tolerating or allowing further wrongdoing or abuse. And I actually think this is one of the most common misunderstandings and abuses of Jesus' teaching here. How many times am I supposed to forgive? Seven? No, no, no, no.

Seventy-seven times. Just take it. Just take it. Stop. Read the paragraph before. If someone has wronged you, and they've seriously wronged you, what's the first thing you do? This is pedantic, but this is what I would do in our cup of coffee.

What's the first thing you do? You go talk to them. What if they don't own up to what they've done to you? Don't think it's wrong. Think that you're stupid and being too sensitive, and they don't apologize. What do you do? You get someone else. What if they don't listen? You get someone else. So just stop and think about what Jesus is doing here. What it means, especially if this is an unsafe situation, does Jesus envision that you ever are alone with that person again?

Just stop and ask, are you ever alone with that person again? No. Apparently Jesus thinks within the community, creating safe boundaries of increasing distance between you and the offender is what we need to be doing for each other here in the community of disciples. Whatever 77 times means, it doesn't mean putting yourself back in the arena so that you get hurt all over again. Are you with me here? I mean, the moment you see that, I just want to be so crystal clear.

And this is a big room. And what do the statistics tell us? Statistics tell us that right now in this room, there's a large number of people who are in a relationship, in a marriage, or in a family where they're being physically abused, they're being beaten, where they're being verbally and emotionally abused, yelled at and shamed, where they're being sexually abused.

In this room right now. And I want you to hear crystal clear. Jesus does call you to forgive the person who's wronged you. We'll talk about that. But if you're in one of those scenarios, your first priority is not to forgive them. It's to get safe and to talk to someone else and to get yourself in a situation where you can regain stability,

where there's distance, and where there's safety, so that you can actually begin the hard work of forgiveness that has to come if you're a follower of Jesus. Are you with me here? And somehow that message doesn't get communicated in church communities. And some of you know firsthand the abuses of the suffer in silence, become the doormat, I'm just going to take it for Jesus. Jesus is not asking you to do that. He is asking you to forgive.

He's not asking you to keep yourself in a dangerous or abusive situation. And so just to pause, because I know this is important, and, you know, even has to do with people's safety. Two names of pastors here at Door of Hope, Bree and Tom, if you are in one of those situations of abuse that I named, and you don't have anyone to talk to because you don't have someone that's safe. Here's two safe people in your church community that would love to talk with you

and to connect you to people who actually can really help you and are qualified to help you. Are you guys with me here? This is serious, and we need to take this seriously as a church community because there's so many church communities that have gotten this wrong. And people's lives are destroyed because they think they're being faithful to Jesus, but actually they're just being unwise. Are you with me? Back to the list. Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation or restoration, and it doesn't mean that things

return to the way they were. Go back to the paragraph before, Matthew chapter 18, verse 15. If the person who's wronged you is going to reconcile with you, what does that require? If somebody wrongs you, I mean, they really hurt you, and they meant to, right? What is it going to take on their part to come to a place where you two can truly reconcile? What does it mean for them? Well, it means they're going to have to, like, recognize what they did. They're going to have to own it. They're going to have to find a way to see that it was wrong, and that they need to apologize. That's really an enormous amount of work. I mean, I just really think, you know, you can paint this from the perspective of being wronged by somebody,

because that's what Peter says. But I mean, how many of you have actually had someone come up to you and be like, hey, you made me feel like this when you did this to me? That's just not a fun conversation to have, you know? And so you immediately get put on the defensive, right? And you're like, oh, and those are, what it requires is a real deep change on the part of someone who's offended or wronged another person to come to actually own it. It's a lot of change and humility required by that person. So the question is, what if they don't?

Like, what if they don't want to, like, own it? And what if they don't do the hard work? Can I forgive them? And one of the most common misunderstandings is that what Jesus is asking us to do is not just forgive, but also make sure that reconciliation happens. But can you control reconciliation? Can you control whether or not someone apologizes to you? You have no control over that, right? You can't make someone, like, realize what they did was wrong. You can try. You can use every verbal trick in the book, right? You can make sure, but for a deep humility and repentance to happen in the other person, you have no control. And there are times where reconciliation becomes impossible.

It becomes impossible because the person that wronged you has passed away. They're not alive anymore. the person that wronged you has passed away. They're not alive anymore. It becomes the relationship is so dangerous or it's so destructive that you actually, like, you can't be around them. Jesus wouldn't want you to be around them, and you can't talk to them anymore. What do you do? And forgiveness is different than reconciliation. Forgiveness is like this two-way street where both people come, they humble themselves, I'm forgiving, I'm owning up to what I've done, it takes time to rebuild trust in the relationship,

and so on. It takes two. Forgiveness does not take two, apparently. And this is significant. Look at the last line of Jesus' parable in Matthew chapter 18. Look at the last line of Jesus' parable in Matthew chapter 18. Look at verse 35. Where does Jesus say forgiveness takes place?

Where's the root act of forgiveness? Look at the last sentence of Matthew chapter 18. Where do you do forgiveness? In your heart. Can you control the thoughts and the emotions and the will of another human being? No, you can't. And so forgiveness is a different thing than reconciliation. There are moments where reconciliation might not be possible. You're still called to forgive. And you're called to forgive regardless of how that person responds to you. It's just a different

act altogether, which means that things may never be the same. It doesn't mean that person responds to you. It's just a different act altogether, which means that things may never be the same. It doesn't mean that you have to be best friends again. It doesn't mean that you'll even be able to like be around each other, right, and have any kind of healthy relationship. It's just different. It's a different act altogether. You guys with me? Here. Last of all, it doesn't necessarily mean that the offender escapes consequences. Think whatever forgiveness means. It doesn't exclude going to them yourself, going to them with another person, going to them with even more people, and if they won't own up to it, they won't see that what they've done to you violates the teachings of Jesus. And so what

does Jesus say you do with someone who says theyates the teachings of Jesus. And so what does Jesus say you do with someone who says they're a follower of Jesus, but all their behavior and choices and they're hurting people and they don't care and they don't think it's wrong? What does Jesus say? What's the consequence? He says, treat them as you would a pagan or tax collector. Now, Josh talked about this. How many of you were here last week? So Josh talked about this. How did Jesus treat tax collectors? Did he like paint large T's on their foreheads? And like, no, of course.

How did Jesus treat tax collectors? He moved towards them. He had dinner with them and celebrations of the kingdom. But what did he do? He called them to follow him. You don't cut the person off. You recognize like, oh, they're actually not a follower of Jesus. So like, why would I expect them to follow Jesus' teachings if they're not a follower of Jesus? I should shift the conversation. I've been wronged by this person, but actually like the most important conversation that somebody else needs to have with them

because I'm not going to be in the same room with them anymore is that they need to like reckon with their own sin and selfishness and whether or not they're going to follow. That's the conversation right now. And if that's truly where their heart and their mind is at then God's grace will begin to do the work in them

to realize we need to make this. That's how this works here. And those are real consequences. Apparently, in Jesus' mind, forgiveness doesn't mean that there's no consequences. And this is very tricky. And this is really tricky. Because there may be some moments where Jesus is calling you to release someone from the consequences of their behavior. There might be situations where releasing someone from the consequences of their behavior is actually the most socially irresponsible thing that you could do, right? Especially in situations of violence or abuse, right?

For a person who's consistently violent or abusive of other people, for you to release all consequences whatsoever, what are you doing? You're just releasing that out so that this person can go be violent and abuse other people. That's irresponsible. Are you with me here? I'm saying that too much this morning, but are you with me? But I'm just trying to generate clear understanding.

Whatever Jesus means, I think for this case specifically, it requires wisdom and discernment to know what this means, because it always means some release of consequences. But to what degree? Odds are you're not going to be able to figure that out by yourself, which is why you need another person, why you need two other people to help you work out this situation. So those are just simple observations from Matthew 18 itself about what forgiveness does not mean. So if forgiveness does not mean that, what does it mean? And here Jesus is brilliant because he doesn't put a list on the screen

and bore people to death. He tells a parable. He tells a story. And I just want to highlight a few things from this brilliant, brilliant parable. And they're insights that I gained from one of the most practical, helpful books on Christian forgiveness that I've ever read in my life, and if I had a thousand of

them, I'd give them out like candy, by Lewis Smedes called The Art of Forgiving, How to Forgive When You Don't Know How. And he has a whole chapter on this parable right here, and he brings out a number of things that once you see them, it's just like, yes. That's exactly what Jesus is saying here. Where, again, so let's start at the end. Where does Jesus locate the act of forgiveness? Where do you do it? In your heart.

Now, of course, that's a metaphor, right? Your heart beats blood. That's what your heart does, right? It's the muscle contracts. Remember science class? That's the whole thing. So in the Bible, the heart's a metaphor. And it's actually different than in the West,

the way we think of heart. We think of heart, when we say heart, what kind of human activities are we thinking of in your heart? What do we do with our heart in America? You love, you feel, you feel things, right? It's the center of emotions. And in the Bible, it's different. The Bible has no word for brain. Did you know that? There's no brain in the Bible. There's just, who knows what they thought it was, gray matter to them or whatever. So in the the bible your heart

Does what we have separated between our brain and our hearts we think feeling and will and logic and choice But in the bible the use of the word just goes read through the whole bible and circle All the times that heart occurs. It's a lot of work, but it's really interesting You'll learn a lot in the process and what you'll learn is that in the Bible, heart is about choice and feeling. It's about the center of your emotions and your will, which means for Jesus, forgiveness, it's a choice. It's a choice that you make and that you begin to feel as you make the choice. and that you begin to feel as you make the choice.

It's likely not going to be ever something that you want to do or that you feel like you want to do, but it is something that he wants his followers to do. It's a choice that becomes a feeling. And what's that journey? What is that journey? And it's brilliant. So you have this parable about the guy who owns zillions of dollars to a king, right? You're supposed to laugh.

And then he's like, I can pay it back. Really? Really? You're like, idiot. Why would you even use that tactic, right? And so what does the king say he's going to do? What is justice for this guy who owns a zillion dollars? What would be just?

And again, it's loaded with cultural difference. Justice and what happened in their culture was you are sold into debt service or debt slavery, which means you and your family, you go live on this person's estate that you owe this money until however many years go by, and you work it off. That's just how things work in their debt. But this guy's released of his entire debt. He goes out, and he finds somebody who owes him a few thousand dollars, and what does he do? What's his response to the guy who owes him minuscule amounts? And Jesus is really careful to paint the picture slowly. Here, what does he do to him first? He chokes him. He's choking him. Pay back what you owe me. The guy says to him exactly the same words that he said to the king that he owns zillions of dollars too, but he refuses to release the guy from his debt and instead has him thrown where? Into prison. Now this is, if you didn't notice a contradiction there, I pointed it

out, but really think of what Jesus is painting right here. If you throw someone in prison, what can they not do if they're going to repay you a few thousand dollars? They can't work. They can't work. So Jesus, he's talking about, here's what unforgiveness does to us. It makes us irrational. It puts us in a state of vengeful frenzy where we don't even see that it stopped being about justice a long time ago. And it's actually not about this person even being able to say they're sorry or pay us back. You don't want them to be able to apologize to you. Now, you might think, yeah, that definitely doesn't describe me.

And maybe it doesn't describe you all of the time. But really be honest with yourself that you haven't at least wanted to go there once with the person who wronged you. It's lame-ac. It's human nature. It's what we do. It's the spiral of human history. Look at human history and tell me that we're not totally irresponsible when it comes to justice and recompense. We don't just want justice. We want to feel the satisfaction of at least a short chokehold before someone pulls us off, right? And we actually want to put this person in an impossible situation so that they can know what they did to me.

Really. And it may not be how you feel all of the time, but you can't deny that you've at least felt that some of the time. And Jesus knows that. And so, this isn't just about this guy having amnesia for what he was forgiven. We'll talk about that. It's about forgiveness is first and foremost a decision to give up what is by nature and even a certain right to retaliate and get this person back. It doesn't mean there's no consequences. Remember the paragraph right before this one. But it does mean some kind of release of something that you could do, but that you choose not to do.

That's the first step in the act of forgiveness, according to Jesus in this parable. It means refusing to put this person in a scenario where it will be impossible for them to ever make up for what they did to you. Refusing that. That story has been written seven billion times over on this planet already. And Jesus says the kingdom of God is here, and it's becoming born again like a new kind of human. And in the kingdom, we do conflict differently. We do it differently. We give up our right to retaliate. And we do this heart, we choose to change our heart attitude.

And in the parable, I think this involves a few things right here. You choose and allow your decision to create room for your feelings into this decision to forgive, which first of all, as a Christian, means to remember God's forgiveness for me. And that's clearly what's all over this parable, right? Is that this guy has, I mean, it's ridiculous how quickly he's forgotten the huge debt he's been forgiven, and then he's willing to retaliate and put this other person in an impossible situation because of the little thing that they've done to him. Now, you may not feel like the thing, you may not feel like the thousand dollars that someone owes you is only a thousand dollars. You might feel like

that's the zillion dollars, And you might feel like you've only offended the king $1,000 or so. Are you with me? You got it? So, in which case, I just, man, let's just go back to 101. Let's go back to Christianity 101. You and I are broken in more ways than we can possibly realize and the blind spots in our character and it's actually not just about our own individual failures it's about the fact that you and I are knit together in a social web called the human race where my decisions are actually totally affected by your decisions

and people in New York and LA andA. and Hong Kong and China. And then our decisions affect the people in China and then the things in Thailand. Like it's all connected. And the ways that I'm hurt and sinned against and the ways you're hurt and sinned against as a little child by your parents and then the grandparents and the post-war generation. It's such a complex web that it's never just about me and my debt before God. It's about me and our debt before God. Look what we've done to his world. Look what we do to each other. I mean, I just, I won't even cite the newspaper headlines. Like, look, we live in Cain's city. We live in the city that Cain built. And the lamex of our world and the little lamex inside of all of us, like we just, this is,

we've created this mess. And we owe zillions of dollars to the creator of our good and beautiful world who made human beings to reflect his image and look what we've done to the place and look what we've done to each other. And the moment that I forget that, and the moment that I forget what the king has done in response to what we've done to his world, and it's just Christianity 101, it's that God is so committed to his good world, then rather than enact revenge and just roast the place, he comes among us in the person of Jesus and he personally absorbs and takes into himself the ruin, the sin, the evil, and the death that we all have created in his good world as an act of love.

And in the resurrection, he offers us his life. He offers us release from the consequences of what we have done here, which is to live in the hell that we have created here on into hereafter. And he releases us by his love. And the moment that I forget that is the moment that I actually begin to think

I have some higher ground than some other human being. And that somehow their wronging of me is actually more significant than the way that I and we have wronged God. And so I just a little choke hold, just a little bit. It'll just feel great. And I'm due it.

It's my due. I deserve it because they wronged me. And in Jesus' mind, to somehow create that bit of high ground is the moment that I've completely forgotten what it even means to be a Christian in the first place, which is that,

and so this is what God's forgiveness, when I recognize God's forgiveness of me, this is the immediate outcome. Because all of a sudden I rediscover the humanity of the person who wronged me. Because yes, like, is the way that someone hurt you and wronged you, was that a selfish, sinful thing to do? Yes. But here's what we do. What we do is, when we're hurt, and it's a natural response, but you have to stop yourself and think about it.

What we do is we, here's a complex human being, they've had a long life history, right, and they have all kinds of motivations for why they do what they do, and they hurt me. But what we do is we take their complex humanity and we boil this person down to the thing that they did to me. So they lied to me. And then all of a sudden in our minds, it's not just that they did to me. So they lied to me. And then all of a sudden in our minds, it's not just

that they lied to me, it's that they were born with a forked tongue, you know? They are a liar. They didn't just cheat me, they are a cheater. So we do this. And all of it, this is how we demonize other human beings. And then once we do this, like for a whole culture of people to do this to another culture of people, it's over. It's war. Because there's no attempt to humble ourselves and to recognize like,

yes, you are bad, but actually so am I. Like you're selfish, but I'm selfish too. I might be selfish in different ways than you are that cause me to hurt other people in different ways than you hurt me, but we're both, let's just,

we're both a mix of good and evil. No one's completely bad and no one's completely evil. We're all a mixed bag. And recognizing God's forgiveness of me and of us empowers you and humbles you before the cross to be able to see some glimmer of humanity and goodness in the other person and to recognize they're a same level of compromise as I am. And then once you get there, it's a decision that you make. It's a decision that's summarized right here in verse 33, what the master said to the servant.

Shouldn't you have had mercy the same way that I had mercy on you? Instead of embracing hatred, and instead of putting this person in prison, and putting them in a possible situation that they'll never actually be able to pay you back, even if you wanted them to, to have mercy. I'm going to choose to treat this person and think of this person with compassion instead of hatred. How you guys doing? Is forgiveness, according to Jesus, have we like robbed it of its power by reading Matthew 18 in context

and seeing what he does not mean and what he does mean? I mean, just imagine if we actually lived like this. Just imagine if we actually went to each other when we wronged each other. Don't gossip, don't hold sacred prayer, gossip sessions, you know, like imagine if we wrong each other. Don't gossip. Don't hold sacred prayer gossip sessions. You know, like imagine if we actually did this. Imagine.

I mean, I think it would transform our relationships. It would transform the kind of community that we could become. Last week when, you know, Twitter and Facebook and the news channels all came alive because of the shooting at Unkpa Community College down in Roseburg, right? I mean, these are, we're so tired of this, aren't we? And what is the response of followers of Jesus to this repeated kind of senseless violence?

Well, it's a whole lot of things. It's a whole lot of things. But one of them has to be forgiveness, which apparently doesn't mean ignoring it, which apparently doesn't mean toler it, which apparently doesn't mean tolerating it and allowing it to continue, but it does mean dealing with compassion and not hatred to the people that murder others. On June 17th, the last tragic mass shooting, it was atmanuel Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. We're just

barely three months past it. And so Dylan Roof, he walks into the Wednesday night prayer meeting Bible study. He waits till it's over. It's an hour and a half long gathering, and then he just unleashes, and nine people die. Two days later, the daughter of one of the women, Ethel Collier, she was 71 and murdered in the chapel, her daughter had the opportunity, along with all of the other nine families of the victims who died in that shooting. You can go watch it on YouTube, where the family members get up in front of a microphone and speak to the person who murdered their families.

And this is what Nadine Collier had to say. I forgive you, addressing Dylan. I want everybody to know that. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again. I'll never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. But if God forgives you, I forgive you. Thank you guys for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible. We will keep exploring the Gospel according to Matthew next time. So we'll see you then.