The Cost of Unforgiveness

Hear and see God’s gracious forgiveness to you in Christ so that you will receive it and be transformed by it. Because if you don’t, there is a high cost to unforgiveness.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.

Well. As you can see, we are renting out our stage as an Airbnb for the through the week. Uh, get to pay the bills. I hope you do make plans to join us this next weekend for forgiven A Christmas Parable. I am blown away by the response, uh, to to our our show. I’m still not quite used to scaling things here at Calvary. Last year for Christmas, we raised some funds for a church that had been hit with a missile in Ukraine. Uh, and I thought we’d raise 5 to $10,000 somewhere in that range. Uh, you you gave $140,000 this year. We solved the Christmas Eve on a Sunday tension by spreading the services over the whole weekend and producing an original musical comedy, uh, as an outreach tool. Last year, we had 850 ish. So people that came to our three Christmas Eve services. So I projected that maybe, I don’t know, 1200 people might come to four shows. Uh, this church took the outreach piece of that very much to heart. And so now that we have 1867 people who will be coming this next weekend, and probably more, we had to add a fifth show on Friday night. So act fast if you need seats, because we are over 90% capacity at this point. The cast and the crew are excited. Uh, I’m a I’m a little nervous and excited. I’m sort of both at this point, uh, I feel like I’m on the ascent of a roller coaster.

You know how you feel when you’re on the ascent of a roller coaster. I could scream with delight or vomit. I’m not sure which is coming. Not sure, but the team’s been working hard. I’ve been watching the show. It looks beautiful. And most importantly, this is going to be a wonderful celebration of Jesus divine forgiveness that came into the world the night that he was born. So forgiven is a musical comedy based on a biblical warning passage. I believe we invented that genre with this. All month long we’ve been looking at the forgiveness of Christmas here on Sunday mornings, and this morning I want to teach the parable that Jesus taught that inspired forgiven. Our show does not teach Jesus parable. The show is its own parable. It’s a Christmas parable. It’s entertainment with a message. Jesus words are God’s word. Jesus words are God’s Word. And so I want us to hear God’s Word to us about forgiveness, specifically the heart of unforgiveness. Last week we heard from Jesus in Matthew six, Jesus famous sermon on the Mount, that there’s an inseparable connection between God’s forgiveness to us and our forgiveness of others. Jesus said, if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will forgive you. That forgiveness of others is an indication that God’s forgiveness has changed your heart. So divine grace has changed you.

So now you are both enabled and not just enabled, but compelled to give that grace to the people who have wronged you. And on the flip side of that, Jesus said, if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. If you if you won’t give gracious, loving, even undeserved forgiveness to people who have wronged you, well, then, you have no reason to expect that your sins before God have been covered by God’s grace, because that grace has an effect. If you have that grace, there will be an effect. Grace makes you gracious. So if you have it, it makes you gracious. And if you’re not gracious, it’s because you don’t have grace. I want you to hear and see God’s gracious forgiveness to you in Christ, so that you will receive it and not just receive it, but be transformed by it. Because if you don’t, there’s a high cost to unforgiveness that we’re going to look at this morning. Now, Jesus taught in parables because they have a dual effect. They they obscure the truth from people who have hard hearts and who don’t want to change, but they amplify and illustrate the truth for those who have the spiritual eyes and ears to see it. And I have been praying for you this week, church. I’ve been praying that you would have the eyes and the ears to see his story, to heed his warning, to receive the grace of Christ, and then to give that grace to other people.

You’ve heard the parable of the unforgiving servant read just a moment ago in Matthew 18. So if you have your Bibles, you can keep them open to Matthew 18. And I want to work through that, that story today. And it begins with a question from Peter. This is a question that you may not have ever asked God, but you have probably wondered it. Almost all of us have wondered Peter’s question at some point. How often will I, my brother, sin against me, and I forgive him? How often? How how much? How far do I got to go with this? How much do I have to forgive? If you if you have someone in your life who is perpetually sinning against you. It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Super frustrating. And we’re all likely to think, you know, at what point do I have to? Is it okay? Is it allowed for me to stop, to stop forgiving this person? When does our grace reach its limit? When is when is forgiveness no longer a requirement in the situation? Peter offers the possibility that seven times would would be the limit. Because that seems like a lot to Peter. Seven times seems like a lot to Peter now. Peter was also married, so I’m not sure why he thought seven times was a lot.

Rachel will forgive me seven times over a long weekend, right? He probably suggests seven times, because there was an early rabbinic tradition that said that you had to forgive people three times, but on the fourth time the person was not to be forgiven. And so seven by that, by that standard, seven seems very gracious. How about seven times Jesus? Surely, surely seven times would cover it, right? Since Peter’s been following Jesus. Of course, he’s learned a lot about forgiveness. He’s watched Jesus forgive people in their hearts. He’s been he’s been while he heals him. He said, you are forgiven your sins. While he heals him. He’s seen Jesus hang out with sinful people that the religious leaders wouldn’t hang out with, because those religious leaders, they held those sins from those people against them. They wouldn’t forgive. You can’t be around Jesus long without realizing that that forgiving people and making peace and living in harmony is the goal of relationships. That’s how they should work. But. But even though he is much more gracious now than when he met Jesus, Peter still sees grace and forgiveness with limits. Okay, so he’s getting grace. He’s understanding forgiveness, but he still sees it with limits, more gracious limits, but limits. And this is a pretty common way of understanding forgiveness even among Christians in the church today. We know that because God’s forgiven us that we need to forgive others.

We even know that by His Holy Spirit, God is working in us, is empowering us to graciously forgive other people, but we will subtly limit the amount that we’re willing to forgive. And usually it’s by type of sin. So the kind of sin that we’re dealing with or by the number of sins. And here the focus is on the number of sins. And if there’s someone who is perpetually doing or saying things that hurt you, it is exhausting, isn’t it? It is exhausting to have someone perpetually sinning against you. So even Christians start to think, you know what? I’m done, I’m done. I’m done trying to find forgiveness in my heart. God. God can forgive, but I’m not. God will think right. I mean, God forgives, but boy, he’s so much more gracious than I am. I’m weak, I’m limited. And isn’t that all God expects of me anyway? That’s what Peter is proposing here. He’s offering a very generous cap to the number of times that a follower of Jesus has to find forgiveness in their hearts. So what does Jesus think of that? What is what does Jesus think of Peter’s proposal? Does that seem like a reasonable amount of times to forgive someone? Well, Jesus says, Peter, you’ve got this all wrong. It’s not seven times, it’s 77 times. Or some translations will say it could be read either way 70 times seven, so 490 times.

But the rhetorical point isn’t the bigger number, it’s that it is limitless. Forgiveness for a Christian isn’t an amount. It’s a way of life. Back in February, I ran out of shampoo and my wife said that she would get me some shampoo. A 12 ounce bottle of shampoo will last me one year. Rachel found a good deal on Amazon and bought me four 22 ounce bottles of shampoo. My wife bought me eight years worth of shampoo. This will outlast my hair. I’ll be rubbing this on my bald head. You’re to bury this stuff with me. Like Pharaoh was standing around at my funeral. Did he get through the shampoo? I don’t know. Jesus answers like this Jesus answers this. Okay, this is his answer. Yes. Technically it’s a finite number, technically speaking, but it’s so far beyond what’s expected that the idea is that you will never run out of it. And the point is, this is a full lifetime of forgiveness. It’s a whole lifetime of forgiveness. It’s not. It’s not just a little bit. It’s not a finite amount. It’s a whole lifetime. Jesus says, if you follow me, you don’t. You don’t have a generous amount of forgiveness. You you don’t have. You become. You become a bottomless well. Of forgiveness. When you follow Jesus, you’re not. You’re not just a more generous version of your old self. You’re transformed by the Holy Spirit into a new man or woman in the mold of Christ.

And therefore your forgiveness in is in the mold and in the design of God’s forgiveness to you. And if and if for some reason you’re unable or you’re unwilling, more likely. To to forgive in this limitless way. Well, that’s an indication that you don’t actually have God’s forgiveness at all, even if you think you do. Here’s where Jesus begins the parable of the servant. Jesus. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven, which is here now with the reign of Christ, can be compared to a king and his servant. So the king decides that he’s going to settle the accounts of the outstanding debts of his servants. They all owe him, and so he gathers them together to settle their debts. And one servant comes, who owes the king 10,000 talents. Now a talent is a unit of money that is the equivalent to 20 years of labor. Okay, 20 years labor. So if a typical person works for 40 years of their life, think of 10,000 talents like 5000 working lifetimes, 5000 working lifetimes, or about 88oz of shampoo. Okay, it’s an unreasonable amount. It’s way more. It’s unreasonable. It’s an amount that can never be paid off. That’s the point. It can never be paid off. And since the servant can’t pay this debt, the king orders that that he and his entire family be sold just to get something from him.

They can’t pay the debt, but they will pay the fullest price they can with their lives. Which sounds terribly ungracious, but remember, this is a story. And the story is not yet over. Not every detail, by the way of a parable, is something that teaches us about God. Uh, not. It doesn’t always have a corresponding reality. Parables are designed to teach only a few main points, and the the point here is that this is showing us that if if the debt stands between the servant and the king, then the two cannot have a relationship together. They can’t be in the same kingdom if that debt stands. And since the debt is too much for the servant to do anything about it, well then there’s no way for the servant to remain in the kingdom, is there? Unless. Unless the King does something about it. The servant throws himself at the mercy of the king. He asks for patience to be able to pay off the debt. He thinks if he has enough time, he’d be able to do it. He promises that he will pay it back, which, of course, he can’t. It’s not possible. 5000 working lifetimes. It’s not possible. That’s the plea of a desperate man. I can do it. I can pay it back. I can make up for it. I can do this. But the king knows better. He sees a man crying out for the mercy of time, but he understands that time is not going to cut it.

The servant is not going to be able to pay. So the king pays. You see that? The king pays. If you were here a few weeks ago, you heard me say that debt never goes away. Debts do not disappear. Debts have to be paid. Someone has to pay it. Someone always pays a debt. In this case, the king says that he will absorb the debt himself. It says the the king released him and forgave him. And both of those words, by the way, are very, very important. The forgiveness is the absorbing of the debt itself. So the king becomes the pair of the debt. That is forgiveness. The releasing part is setting the servant free of the consequences of the debt. So when you’re released, you are set free. So this is not two people sharing the debt load. This is when you’re released. You are free. The king didn’t put this on his sermon. His servant on a on a payment plan. He didn’t say, we’re going to work this off over time or I’m going to give you some some pay some of it, you’re going to pay part of it. We’re going to work on it together. This is a full pardon of the debt without any qualification, so that the servant has no more load to bear.

He doesn’t owe anything. Now if you can grab hold of that picture, if you can grab hold of what had just taken place in that parable, you will understand grace. That’s grace. Our sin is a debt load that is totally unpayable. We don’t have the means to make up for it, even if we think we do. Even if we think we do this, this, this plea from the servant is for more time is actually pretty, pretty close to pretty accurate to how a lot of folks misunderstand the sin debt that we have with God. See, a lot of people think they can, with time, make amends by balancing out their sin with good works. So we say, uh, next week, God, I will be better next week. Next week. God I’m done. I’m moving on. Next week I’m going to be I’m going to get away from this sin. From now on, I will not send any more against you. And that, by the way, that’s a fine declaration. That’s a that’s that is a fine way to live. That pursuit of God honoring righteousness is absolutely the goal of a spirit led life. But haven’t you been around yourself long enough now to know at this point that counting on your sinlessness next week is futile? Haven’t you been around yourself long enough to see that that’s not going to work, so you’ll be taken out fresh loans next week? If you think you are paying off the other ones.

Right. It’s just going to continue to build. Pursue righteousness, but don’t rest in it. Pursue your righteous life. Don’t rest in it. Rest in grace. And resting in grace will empower you to pursue a righteous life. We don’t need more time. We need full release and forgiveness from the Lord. That’s that’s what we need. And that’s what the servant here in the story gets. But does he? Jesus says, that same servant goes right out and finds one of his fellow servants who owes him 100 denarii. Now, a couple of things to note here. First, this servant finds a fellow servant. So we’re talking about two people who are socially equals. This is not a subordinate or servant master situation like it was with the king. And that’s important for understanding what it means to forgive another person. We are not granting our forgiveness from a position of superiority. We’re co-laborers. We’re co-travelers in life with everyone that we’re called to forgive. That’s the first thing to note about our forgiveness. And the second thing is, is that a hundred denarii is a much smaller sum of money. It’s about 100 days worth of wages. Now, that is still a lot of money, but it’s not 5000 lifetimes worth of money. And that’s important for scale, because the truth is what what we often think, the sin that we often think that the sins people commit against us are far greater than the sins that we commit against God, don’t we? We think the sins people do to us are huge and impactful and important, and we must address them.

And there’s can’t go further until we get our justice. And then we look at our sins before God. We’re like, yeah, yeah, we’re not perfect. No one’s perfect. Kind of explain it away. We think that sins against us are so much weightier, and when in fact it’s the other way around. Every God dishonoring thought and word, every selfish impulse, every lustful inclination, every secret sin is part of the massive debt of sin that has been forgiven us in Christ. It’s a huge, massive debt of sin. And when you measure that against the sin someone has done to you, it makes that sin small by comparison. Now, it doesn’t mean that’s nothing. Okay? I’m not saying that. It’s. It’s nothing. It’s still a debt. It’s still wrong. It’s done to you. It hurts. It has to be dealt with. But the implication of the parable is that if you’ve been forgiven and you’ve been released from an incalculable debt of your own sin against the Lord, then you would draw from that endless well of grace to forgive the much smaller debts of other people. But that’s not what this servant does. This servant goes full Darth Vader and chokes this guy.

Do you see that? You don’t see that too much in the Bible. This guy chokes the other guy, demanding him to pay what he owes, and his fellow servant falls down before him and pleads, just like our servant did before the king, right? He falls down before him and pleads, have patience with me. Same exact words. Have patience with me, and I will pay you again that same impulse with some time. With some time I can make up for this. And in this case he probably could. Three months wages is a big loan, but it’s not not an insurmountable loan. You should be able to pay it off with some time. But. But what does the servant do? What does he do? Well, he actually does two things here that are that are surprising for this story. Not only does he not forgive by absorbing the debt himself like the King did for him, but notice he also refuses to even have patience and allow the other servant to pay off the debt. He won’t even grant that to him. Why? Well, it’s because he wants immediate justice. He wants justice, and when he doesn’t get it, he throws his fellow servant into jail until he can pay off the debt. Which is odd, because what does he want? Does he want the money back? Or does he want that servant in jail where he couldn’t possibly get the money back? How can this guy pay back three months of wages with no means of earning it? The answer, of course, is that he can’t.

And that shows the true motivation of the unforgiving servant which which comes out of his heart. Now, before you say too quickly to to to yourself or to anybody else, you know what? I’ve never thrown anybody into jail. So I guess this really doesn’t apply to me. Well, let me say two things to that. First of all, good, uh, good on you for not putting other people into actual jail. Could you imagine if we could do that? Oh my goodness. Spouse would be thrown each other in jail all the time. Kids would never get out, right? So that’s not that’s good, right. I’m glad you’re not doing that. But the second thing we have to say here is we do, in fact, put people in jail all the time. All the time. Not physical jails, of course, but emotional and relational jail. Remember, this is a story to illustrate what unforgiveness looks like. And here it is. It’s looking squarely at the other person who has wronged you and saying, pay what you owe. Pay what you owe. You owe me. You’ve wronged me. I am a victim. And what I demand from you is repayment. And until you pay me back everything that you owe me, you will sit in my emotional jail.

You will be cordoned off. You will be isolated off from me. And you might have a long list of people who you’ve put in emotional jail. Until they pay you what they owe you. I mean, what do you think cutting people out of your life is? You hear that? I got to get rid of these toxic people and cut these people out of my. What do you think that is? What do you think cutting people out is? It’s emotional jail. It’s bad. It’s simultaneously demanding that they pay you what they owe you, while also throwing them into an isolated prison where they can’t possibly pay you because you don’t have relationship with them. Cutting people out of your life is a little bit of popular, so-called wisdom that’s not only destroying relationships, it’s creating bitter judges who just repeat the cycle of unforgiveness and bitterness everywhere they go with everyone in their lives. Unforgiveness is a cycle that leads to a trap. See, unforgiveness demands repayment while at the same time making repayment impossible. Unforgiveness puts the other person in an impossible situation. And this this heart of unforgiveness is a symptom. It’s an indication. It’s a it’s a of a dire spiritual reality. The one who doesn’t forgive hasn’t been forgiven. This man’s peers, see what he’s done to this other servant. And they run, and they tell the king, and the king summons him.

Listen to him. Describe the servant. 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 had mercy on you? Do you see what happened? Do you see what happened? The mercy from the king didn’t become the mercy of the servant. At the King’s mercy. Didn’t didn’t sink down. Didn’t sink down into his heart. Didn’t take. The intention of the forgiveness was that the man would be set free to be a person who would be forgiving to others that would be able to turn around and give that grace to others. But the forgiveness of the king made no change in the servant’s heart. Without that change, the final judgment of the king is to hand him over to the jailers. And they put him in prison until he should pay all his debts. So the very thing that the unforgiving servant did to the debtor is done to him by his master, to whom he owed a debt. If you were here last week with us, you’ll remember we looked at the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus instructs us to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Those those two operations of forgiveness always go together. They always go together. You cannot have God’s forgiveness of your enormous sin debt and not give that forgiveness to other people who wrong you.

Our forgiveness flows from God’s forgiveness. And if we don’t have forgiveness in our heart toward others, if we’re holding on to the bitterness, if we’re cutting people out of our lives, if we’re throwing them into emotional jail, it is legitimate to ask whether we actually have God’s forgiveness at all. That’s a legitimate question to ask yourself. That’s why the parable ends this way. In the final judgment, the servant is wicked. He doesn’t have the master’s forgiveness. He received judgment, he’ll be sent away to pay his debt. In the story, which correlates to the rest of Scripture’s teaching on hell. Hell is the prison where God’s justice is enacted? Because God is just and right and fair and righteous. All sin receives justice. If Jesus fulfills the legal demands of your sin, then justice has been served and you’ve been set free. If he hasn’t, you will meet the legal demands of sin yourself, which is an eternity separated from the Lord. Paying the price yourself. Jesus warns us that’s the father’s justice right at the end, doesn’t he? He says that’s what the father does. That’s the father’s justice. This is the direction you are headed. If you don’t forgive your brother from your heart. See, this is all about the heart church. This whole story is about what’s going on right here. If suddenly you’re worried that this is how our Christmas musical ends, I can assure you that it doesn’t.

It’s not how it ends. Our musical is the application of this warning. If you’ve eyes to see it. If you’ll see the application here. Do you see the grave warning? That’s what I want to ask you this morning. Do you see it? And do you see the source? Do you see the source of true forgiveness? I think because we live in the United States, which is a heavily Christian influenced yet post-Christian culture, we have the remnants of Christian forgiveness in our culture. So we have the remnants around us, but we don’t have the power and we don’t have the cost. What I mean is, ask the average person on the street whether forgiveness is a good thing. You will probably hear, yes. Hey, is forgiveness a good idea? Sure. Sounds great. Yeah, forgiveness is fine. They’ll say there’s a general sense that forgiveness is a virtue. I mentioned a few weeks ago that it wasn’t in ancient cultures, but it is now in ours, in places where Christianity has come and gone, people have a higher view of forgiveness. And I think most people value forgiveness in some way, especially if they’ve ever needed it from someone else. That’s where we really tout forgiveness, right? We know that it’s helpful for peace. That’s why parents will tell their children to go say you’re sorry, right? By the way, that is neither forgiveness nor sorrow.

But we understand that it’s an indication of that. We think that confession and repentance and forgiveness are useful. There’s remnants of it. That’s a remnant of true biblical wisdom that’s been detached from its source of power. So this morning, church, let me reattach it. Let’s reattach it. There is powerful forgiveness, not just words that we say, not just making nice with people. There is powerful forgiveness. There is life redeeming, relational healing, forgiveness. There is a deep, well and endless well of grace that will rectify any relationship you have. You will not be able to come and tell me about a relationship that is beyond the ability of the grace of God to transform it. It does not exist. If it did exist, it would have to be between a holy God and a sinful people. And that was rectified in Christ. And so your relationship will be to. There is powerful forgiveness. It will set you heart free from bitterness. It will replace coldness with warmth. It will turn enemies into friends. And it is found in the forgiveness of our Heavenly Father who sent Jesus to take our sin away. That’s where the power of true forgiveness is found. I want to pray for you this morning. That that you would know the forgiveness of Christ. And I want to pray for the hundreds of guests that we will have this weekend, that God would break their stony hearts and heal them with the gospel. Let’s pray.