Denial of Forgiveness, May it Never Happen

The Gospel Reading: The Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18

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From Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew the 18th chapter. Peter came up and said to Jesus, Lord how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?

Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times but 77 times. Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants and when he began to settle one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents and since he could not pay his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had in payment to be made.

So the servant fell on his knees imploring him have patience with me and I will pay you everything and out of pity for him the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii and seizing him he began to choke him saying pay what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him have patience with me and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt and when his fellow servants saw what had taken place they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him you wicked servant I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I have had mercy on you?

And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debts. So also my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus.

Amen. All right you're gonna note that our gospel text sure doesn't sound like gospel to me it sounds like a lot of law. Our gospel text involves a little bit of math and as I've stated publicly before I think math is wicked I think it's evil I think it is a dark art and I do think that I need to make sure that I'm not hypocritical when it comes to math and so I've decided to not soil my hands by actually doing it but instead relying upon the the artificial intelligence of my phone to help here.

But I need it to run an actual equation for me let me see if we can get this right. Hey Siri what's 10 ,000 times 20? That would be 200 ,000. 200 ,000? Wow notice I didn't soil my hands by actually doing math.

Okay 200 ,000. 200 ,000 what? You'll note that there were 10 ,000 talents that this fellow this servant lost of his master's money. 10 ,000 talents. Well one talent is equal to 20 years wages for the average blue-collar hard-working day laborer right?

In other words the debt that this fellow racked up was the equivalent of 200 ,000 years of wages. Who does that? How do you pull that off? And you're gonna note something here. Have you ever had like times in your life where you were looking at the money coming in and the required money that was supposed to go out and you were noting that the bigger number was on the number that was going out?

Have you ever had those times? I've had those times a few times in my life and you know what it creates inside of you? Anxiety right? That's when you're awake at night and you're running the scenario through your head.

You're just figuring out how much longer before they shut off the gas. How long before you're gonna be eating top ramen every night. How long before your kids are gonna go to school naked because this is how this works in the brain right?

You run the scenario and at the end of it your family, your children, everyone's dead okay? You're just barely alive and you've been shamed to become a hobo traveling the rails of the American West. You get the idea right?

And so you stay at night and you run the scenario over and over and over and over and then something amazing happens. You get a good tax return and you go I'm saved right? Something like this. We've all had times in our life.

What must this fellow have been going through to lose 200 ,000 years worth of wages? I'm sure this guy wasn't getting more than 30 minutes of sleep a night because he knew that his day of reckoning was coming.

That's kind of what's going on here in our gospel text and this is all talking about forgiveness. Now in case you haven't figured it out, the guy who owed the 200 ,000 years worth of wages, that's you.

That's me. This is to give us some perspective on our sin and the debt that we have incurred by sinning against God as you confessed in thought, in word, in deed, by what you've done, by what you've left undone.

And you'll know, I don't know how the multipliers work, at what point, how does the thing tick off more sin? Is it every second? Every minute? Is it every nanosecond? I have no idea but the debt is mind-boggling.

I cannot wrap my head around this figure. It's way too big. Way, way too big. And all of that being said, you would think that the servant who was shown mercy, legitimately shown mercy, that he would have had the greatest turnaround in his life ever, right?

Last time I preached on this text I talked about Ebenezer Scrooge, right? We all know how the ending of a Christmas carol ends with Ebenezer Scrooge opening up his pocketbook and giving money to people and wishing people a Merry Christmas and all this kind of stuff.

Why? Well, he was given a vision of his future. He was about to be ingloriously dumped in a grave and his life as he was shown from the ghost of Christmas past and present was miserable. He was an absolute miser.

He cared more about money than any other human being and he even made people suffer. And when he saw that there was legitimate human need in his presence, he didn't care at all because he didn't want to spend any money of his own to help those who were in need.

And many of the people who were in need were because he was so cheap. What a terrible boss, right? And so he sees his future coming and what does he do with the ghost of Christmas future? He begs for mercy and he's given it and he has a big turnaround.

Think about the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul. This is a guy who's murdering Christians in the name of God and he's going about rounding them up, putting them in the synagogues, beating them, scourging them, putting him in prison and he has a run-in with Jesus Christ.

And talk about a turnaround, right? The guy who hated the gospel, hated Christianity, hated Jesus, hated any of his followers, he becomes one of them and his life is exemplified in what? He becomes one of the greatest ambassadors of the gospel in the history of humanity.

In all of the scriptures. In fact, the Apostle Paul talks about a reality that is true for each and every one of us who were in Christ. And here's what he says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5. The love of Christ, it controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.

And he died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. And here we can kind of see what's going wrong in our gospel text. This fellow, he is forgiven this ginormous debt and then when somebody owes him a hundred denarii, that's like one month's wages, right?

He was just forgiven two hundred thousand years worth of wages and some poor fellow owes him a month's worth of wages. And you're going to note the guy who owes him the money absolutely acknowledges the debt.

He doesn't sit there and go, I don't know what you're talking about. Me owe you money? You must be mistaken, right? And then turn around and gaslight him and project and all this kind of weird stuff that people do.

No, he owns his debt. Give me time, I'll pay him back. And you know what? I believe him, right? When our gospel text fellow, that's you, begs for mercy, he begins by saying, give me some time, I'll pay the debt.

Uh-huh, right. You're not capable of paying this kind of debt, none of us are. But then he finds this fellow who owes him a month's worth of wages and what does he do? He rips into this guy, chokes him, responds in violence, hatred, and just, pay me what you owe me.

You know, I'll pay you, give me some patience, right? And he doesn't do it. And you'll note the Apostle Paul says, because we are forgiven that Christ has died for all, we are no longer to live for ourselves.

And that's kind of the point, is that when you refuse to forgive somebody, not only is your perspective way off, you've forgotten the gospel altogether. And who's the person you're thinking about? Me, myself, and I, right?

You've become like Gollum, nursing a grudge in the darkness, my precious, right? You're just ridiculous. The only thing you care about is yourself, but according to God, according to the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul, who had this big change, he says, we are not to live for ourselves, but for him who died for their sake and was raised.

If you ever heard the statement, God may have forgiven you, but I will never forgive you. You ever heard anyone talk this way? Maybe it was you, maybe you felt this way. Yeah, I know God forgave him, right?

Beware, okay? At the risk of sounding like Greta Thunberg, how dare you, right? How dare you? Do you not understand that when you do such a thing, you have exalted yourself above God? You have taken the mercy and forgiveness that is in Christ, and you have said, not for you, my neighbor.

You owe me, you have sinned against me, and so I refuse to even acknowledge that Christ has died for your sins because God may forgive you, but I don't. You think about Joseph in this account, in this way of thinking here.

Remember Joseph, he was sold into slavery by his brothers, and that was horrible. Then he gets to his first assignment as a slave, and the boss's wife has the hots for him, and is constantly trying to pick him up and get him into bed, and he refuses, so she flips it completely around and accuses him of coming on to her, and he ends up going to prison for 13 years, all because his boss's wife lied about him, and all because his brothers sold him into slavery, and as the Klingons would say, revenge is a dish best served cold, right?

But was there any revenge in Joseph? None whatsoever. None. When he finally revealed himself to his brothers, he comforted them and said, listen, it wasn't you who sent me here, it was God, and he sent me here to save life, and then at the end of his father's life, his father's name was Jacob, otherwise known as Israel, his brothers freaked out, thinking, oh my goodness, now that Joseph, now that dad is dead, Joseph is finally going to get his revenge on us.

So they came up with a ruse, you know, kind of dad told us something that he didn't tell you and we need to share it with you kind of thing. It's a lie, but it's really fascinating. In Genesis chapter 50, it says when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, it may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.

So they sent a messenger to Joseph saying, your father gave this command before he died, say to Joseph, please forgive the transgressions of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you, and now please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.

And you'll note, Joseph had forgiven them long ago, forgave them even before they showed up in Egypt to buy grain, but please forgive your servants. So Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came, they fell down before him and said, behold, we are your servants.

But Joseph said to them, do not fear, for am I in the place of God? And there it is, when you do not forgive, you have taken the place of God. Remember, Christ has bled and died for your sins and mine.

He has taken our iniquity upon himself. He has paid our sin debt to the full. Not one sin is left unaccounted for by the death of Christ on the cross, and his death not only atoned for your sins, but for the sins of the whole world.

When you deny forgiveness to another human being, you are denying them the forgiveness of Christ, the very forgiveness that you are called to be an ambassador for. So Joseph continues, am I in the place of God?

As for you, what you meant for evil against me, God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. In fact, the very crucifixion of Christ, what we meant for evil, killing our God, our God shows up, tabernacles among us in human flesh, and what do we do to him?

We murder him. But the very murder of the Son of God is the very thing that God then uses to forgive you of all of your sins. What we meant for evil, God has flipped and has worked for our good. So are we then in the place of God?

We are not. So brothers and sisters, hear more from the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul who had this ginormous 180. He went, he was going this way, heading to hell, and now he's heading to the new kingdom, the new earth.

And he says to us, therefore, we then should regard no one according to the flesh. And believe me, your sinful flesh is the reason why you struggle to forgive people, because your sinful flesh is all about me, myself, and I.

That's right, I have one too. And I remember, it was just last week, I was asking my catechumens about, you know, the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

One of the comments, the questions that they needed to answer, is it easy for you to forgive people when they sin against you? Answer, depends. Some of them gave some pretty openly honest answers. Depends who it is and what they've done.

But if it's somebody close to them and they've really done something terrible to them, many of them said it was, it's difficult to forgive. I always remind people that when Peter so, so gloriously offers to forgive people up to seven times, what a great guy that guy is, right?

And Jesus looks at him and goes, no, no, 77 times, 77. And that's like in just one day. That is what it's like to be married, okay? That's the whole point of being married, is that your husband, your wife, is constantly, daily, sinning against you.

Sometimes by what they do and say, sometimes by what they don't do and say. Honey, does this dress make me look fat? Don't answer that question. It's a trap, okay? And you're going to need lots of forgiveness after you give your answer.

Stay away, run, don't make eye contact, right? But the reality is this, is that we are forgiven so much that even those closest to us who hurt us the most grievously, when our anger fires off, and it does, oftentimes that anger is not righteous.

It bleeds off into sin. And when your neighbor or your spouse says to you, I'm sorry, you're right, please forgive me. I know the feeling is, I don't want to forgive you and you say I forgive you through gritted teeth.

I get it, but still we absolve, right? So therefore, we should regard no one according to the flesh. Even though once we regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old is passed away, the new has come. And all of this is from God, who through Christ, reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. The Christ died for his enemies. He didn't die for his friends.

Instead, he reconciled his enemies to himself and then became their friends in so doing. So we then have been given the ministry of reconciliation. That's our job. We are ambassadors for the kingdom of God.

And you're going to know, when we represent God, what kind of God do we represent? Do we represent Allah, that we go out and we with the sword kill the infidel and blow them up? No. We represent the one true God who humbled himself and was found in the form of a human being and found within the form of a servant and humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross, so that you and I can be forgiven.

The God that we serve, the God that is, is loving and kind, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and pardoning iniquity. That is the God that we serve. And we do not represent him well when we let our old sinful nature bear a grudge against another human being and we wish to do them violence or we do them violence or we refuse to forgive them.

This is completely out of step with the gospel. There's no place for it in the kingdom at all. So we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself by not counting their trespasses against them.

And God has entrusted to us this message of reconciliation. Therefore, our actions dare not contradict this message of reconciliation. The gospel is the power of God into salvation. So our lives need to smell of the aroma of the mercy and the grace of God.

Therefore, Paul says, we are all ambassadors for Christ and God is making his appeal through us that we implore all on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. For our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

But the world we live in is full of rancor. The world we live in is full of people that treat us terribly. Sometimes it's somebody close to us. Sometimes it's a co-worker. Sometimes it's a relative. Sometimes it's just an ornery neighbor.

Always cracks me up when I'm scrolling through TikTok when I have insomnia and I find an account where somebody is ratting on their neighbor who's a Karen and talking about the conflict that they have with their neighbor.

These accounts are real and the conflicts they have are ridiculous. But we as Christians are not called to that. So what happens if you have a Karen in your neighborhood who's constantly calling the police on you when your dog barks?

Or you have somebody at work who has it out for you because they're jealous of the skills that you have and so they're trying to undercut you so they can get rid of you, take your dead carcass career-wise, cast it out so that they can have your job, and then get the corner office?

What do you do with people like this? You are forgiven and you were reconciled to God when you were still enemies of God. What do you think the gospel calls us to do in this circumstance? Scripture is very clear.

Repay no one evil for evil, Paul writes in Romans 12. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. But you don't understand how awful that person is. No, really I do.

Really, really, I get it. Don't you dare tell me I don't understand. I do. We've all lived this. So if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves.

Never. But leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. So to the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. And I know a thing or two about those burning coals. We feel those burning coals when we look at our lives in light of the Ten Commandments. And we look at just how far short we have come when it comes to the glory of God.

When we look at that 200 ,000 year debt that we have racked up because of our sin, it really undoes us. And God, rather than giving us what we deserve, says, I love you. I forgive you. For the sake of Christ, I have provided the atoning sacrifice so that you would never have to pay for your sins.

They are paid for in full. And does that not undo us? Does that not warm our hearts? Does it not give us comfort? Does it not lift the burden and the anxiety? Remember, here's this guy. He knows his day of reckoning is coming and he's not even able to sleep because we all know how this works.

And who of us can say that we have not lost sleep considering the fact that we are all going to die someday and stand before God? This is the kind of thought that creates anxiety. At least the law does generate that kind of anxiety.

But the gospel says, no, you are forgiven. And even when you were still sinners and my enemy, Christ has died for you. So therefore, you are now free. Love and forgiveness is freedom. Hatred and vengeance is slavery.

That's how it works. You are now free to love and to forgive your neighbor and to do good to them when they are treating you horribly. And by doing so, you will keep burning coals on their head because now you are acting as an ambassador for the gospel.

In other words, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So brothers and sisters, hear then the words of our Lord to that servant who refused to forgive the one who owed him such a small trifling amount of money.

He says to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all of that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I have had mercy on you? And the answer is yes.

And in anger then his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all of his debts. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

And so we are reminded then that this is what we are called to, to forgive everyone from the heart regardless of the small trifling debts that they rack up by sinning against us. It's nothing compared to the forgiveness that we have in Christ.

And I know it's hard. I know it's not easy. And yet we all have the Holy Spirit within us. So let us again confess that we struggle to forgive as we are forgiven. And let us cry out to God to forgive us of even our unforgiveness and ask that he would again soften our hearts towards our neighbor and make us even more free than we are so that we can then freely love and forgive and be at peace with all and be good ambassadors of the good news that Christ has died for the sins of the world not only in the message that we preach but exemplified in the life of kindness and mercy that we also bring in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Forgiveness as the Ministry of Reconciliation

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