Finding weapons is a theme in many biblical texts. Sometimes those weapons seem strange, such as when the Israelites were told to walk around and yell at the walls of Jericho, or when David used a small rock to slay a giant. This week we are exploring an effective and yet odd weapon for anger. With this weapon we can face any wall, any giant, and find success as we battle our anger with God’s help.
Read More One day, Jesus was trying to make a point about forgiveness, so he did what he very commonly did when he taught — he told a story. Generally, telling stories was the way Jesus taught about especially important things. I had a teacher in seminary who said that if you could ever give the perfect message, the whole thing would be just one story and at the end of the story you could say to everyone, “That’s it, end of story. Everyone go home.” Jesus would do that. He was able to tell a story that would be so perfect, that would hit the truth so dead on that when He got to the end of the story, people knew exactly what decision they needed to make and how they ought to respond. So he could just say to them, “That’s it, end of story. Everyone go home.” And since I first started teaching, I’ve had the idea that one time in my life I’ll do what Jesus did. One time I’ll make the whole message a single story. This is not that time so don’t get too excited. But I’m going to come close. Today I’m going to come close. I’m going to retell a story Jesus told in the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. This is a story about the head of a large company in a software corporation. He’s the president and CEO. One day, the time for the annual meeting comes around and all the vice-presidents and department heads are called together. It’s tax time for the Roman government. Caesar’s IRS agents have been auditing the books — going through them with a fine-tooth comb because the Roman government had its own flat-tax program — you paid your taxes or the Roman government would flatten you. That’s kind of the way it worked. And it turns out that one of this guy’s upper level employees — one of the VP’s got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He had been working for the CEO for a long time, but this VP had an Achilles heel — he wanted to maintain a lifestyle he couldn’t afford, so he had been systematically embezzling from the company for years. And now he owes an astronomical sum of money. Jesus takes the largest number in their language and pluralizes it to express the size of the debt that this guy owes. It would be like saying, “gazillions of dollars” in English. There’s no possible way this guy would ever be able to pay it back. This is a story of plain, unadulterated, forget-about-tomorrow greed. And now, Jesus says, comes the day of reckoning. This guy gets a memo from the CEO. So he goes to the board room. It’s the day of the annual meeting. All the principle stock holders are there. All of his peers — the vice-presidents and department heads are there. And this crooked embezzler comes before the founder and principle owner and CEO of this company. — The guy who believed in him. The guy who gave him his first chance. The man who trusted him. And this crooked embezzler has to admit his greed. He has to admit that he has taken all of the money, that he had violated the trust of the one who had employed him. Now you can imagine, as word of this got around, the kind of tremors that went through the whole corporation. Everyone coming to the meeting knew about it ahead of time and must have thought to themselves, “This is going to be brutal.” Imagine for a moment being this embezzler. Imagine his fear and utter sense of humiliation. His head is throbbing, his pulse is pounding, his palms are sweaty because it’s over for him. No more bluffing, no more con games, no chapter eleven, no chance to reorganize. He had no assets, no rich uncle, no horse that might pay off, no lotto tickets. He was finished. He was going to be thrown in jail or he was going to be sold into slavery. And not just him, the way that it worked back then was his whole family would be sold into slavery. And not just for this generation, but for generations to come. A slave was worth maybe two thousand dollars. So the sale of his whole family into slavery would not pay for one-tenth of one percent of the debt. And that meant that what he was facing was slavery for him, for his wife, for his children and for his descendants for generations to come. So he stands now, before his peers, before the stockholders, before the CEO, and in front of them all, the sentence is read — “Sell everything he owns. Sell him into slavery. And sell his wife and sell his children and his children’s children until the unpayable debt has been paid. Case closed. Take him away. Next item of business.” Now, at this point in Jesus’ story there have been no surprises. This is just standard operating procedures right out of the policy manual. But at this point, something happens in the mind of the embezzler, of this crooked guy. The reality of what he’s done all of a sudden comes crashing down on him and the sentence registers in him, and this idea comes to him, and he says to himself, “What if I were to fall on my face and humble myself and beg for mercy?” It’s a total longshot, understand. This is a last-ditch, bolt-out-of-the-blue, million-to-one chance. But he reasons to himself, “What have I got to lose? I’m out of options. I’m out of hope.” So, he does it. In front of them all, this guy falls to his knees. He gets on his face. And he says, “I’m guilty. I know what I owe. I’m asking for mercy. I’ll pay it back. I just need time. I just need you to give me a grace period. I just need some grace.” Now, imagine for a moment the others in the boardroom. They avert their eyes. They don’t even want to look at this scene. They look down at their shoes. They’re thinking to themselves, “This is embarrassing. This guy sunk to a new low. I mean, he embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars and he knew the rules. He knew what would happen if he got caught. He knew he couldn’t pay it back. He got a just penalty. This is standard operating procedure. And now you ask for mercy? I mean, even if you got mercy, even if you got time to try to pay it back, in a thousand years you couldn’t pay this debt back. Give me a break. Live in reality. Hello, clue phone? It’s for you.” Now, if these guys are surprised at this plea for mercy, imagine what happens when they look at the CEO. This guy is no push over. He’s been through the wars. He didn’t get to be where he was by being an easy mark for every con man that comes along. But they look at him and he can’t speak. He’s all choked up. And they say to themselves, “He’s not going to fall for this, is he? He’s not going to get soft on us now, is he?” But as the CEO looks at this crooked embezzler and thinks about him and thinks about his family, something happens to his heart. And his eyes get filled with tears. And although no one has ever seen anything like this before, his lips tremble as he goes to speak. Jesus says, “He feels compassion.” He’s just flooded with compassion for this crooked embezzler. And so for reasons no one understands, no one, he bends down and he takes him by the arm. And he brings this embezzler to his feet. “Get up off your knees,” he says. And then, he rescinds the sentence. He says, “You’re not going to be a slave. You’re not going to lose your family. You can keep what you owe.” Only he goes beyond that in Jesus’ story. He doesn’t just rescind the sentence, he forgives the debt. The unpayable debt doesn’t have to get paid back. This guy doesn’t just get time to try to pay it back. The grace period will be extended indefinitely. He gives more grace than this embezzler had ever dreamt of asking for in his most wildest dreams. Now, it’s crucial that you understand this in order to get the story, in order to understand what Jesus is saying about God. — When the owner forgave the debt, the debt didn’t just disappear. It didn’t just vanish. Who absorbed it? Who’s going to have to take the loss? The owner. When the owner forgives this embezzler, it costs him hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s not a casual thing. He’s saying, “Alright, I will take the loss. You will be forgiven for the debt. It will come out of my pocket.” Now, imagine the embezzler. He’s saying, “I can’t believe it. I didn’t have a prayer. This was a total longshot and it paid off! I threw myself on the mercy of the court and he took the loss and I got grace. It’s all forgiven. I’m free.” And he goes home to his wife — and the two of them celebrate because they’ve gone from death to life. And now at this point, we need to step back from the story for a moment or two to reflect on it. Now, the master in this story, the CEO, he, of course, stands for God. The other main character in this story, the embezzler, the crooked guy, who’s that? It’s you. And it’s me. Jesus says you have accumulated a moral debt before a just and holy God and you’ve been adding to it for years. That’s your condition and mine, too. * Every time you were less than honest (think about it for a moment). * Every time you fudged an expense account or a tax return. * Every time you were unloving to a five-year-old. * Every time you should not have made a cutting remark, but you went ahead and made it. * Every time you should have spoken in love, but you refused. * Every time you refused to be grateful. * Every time you gossiped. * Every selfish act. * Every racist joke. * Every sexually impure thought or deed. * Every judgmental attitude. * Every time you took a little grudge and nursed it, you were adding to a mountain of moral debt. All human beings are in this same boat. We’ve accumulated a mountain of moral debt before a just and holy God. All of us have. I’m a pastor. I’ve devoted my life to helping people understand and experience spiritual growth and it took me maybe thirty seconds to come up with that whole list of things. Because I’ve done it all, or I’ve done things that were just as bad or things that are worse. And so have you, if you’re honest about it. If you will be honest — and I hope that you will — in your heart today, as you examine your life, you know the truth about you. You are a fallen person. You have sinned and you have piled up a moral debt before a just and holy God. And that’s not all, further, the writers of Scripture say — there is coming a day of reckoning. It’s appointed to human beings, the writers of Scripture say, once to die and then comes judgment. Some day, as surely as I stand here in this room, some day, we’re going to face a moral audit of our lives. You are going to face the fact that you owe an unpayable debt to a just and holy God. And further, you don’t have the resources to pay it back. You cannot earn your way into God’s good graces — not by going to church, not by giving lots of money, not by doing good deeds — it’s an unpayable debt. People often get confused about this. They think, “Maybe if I could just be a good enough person or maybe if I go to church or maybe if I’m respectable, maybe that would be enough to pay off the debt.” The writers of Scripture are clear that it doesn’t work that way. But the writers of Scripture say there is another way — you can throw yourself on the mercy of the court. The writers of Scripture say God looked at you, he looked at me, and was moved with compassion. And so God sent His son, Jesus, to this earth to teach us how to live. And then to die on a cross the death that, by all rights, I should have died because of my sinfulness. The death that you should have died. The death that we deserved to die, He died instead on the cross. The writers of Scripture say that on the cross Jesus paid our debt. On the cross He absorbed the loss so that you could be set utterly free. God really does forgive, recklessly, extravagantly, with abandon, without regard to cost. And the place that ultimately expresses God’s forgiveness is the cross. Now this is absolutely essential to the story. You may be seeking God. And you may be under the impression that the way to God is by trying to be good, trying to repay the debt yourself. And the writers of Scripture say, just give it up. Just give up the whole moralistic pursuit. You just receive forgiveness as a gift. This is at the absolute heart of the Christian faith. God, by grace, has forgiven you through the cross of Jesus Christ. And you simply receive it by faith. I know a guy who wants his children to understand this concept of grace. So every once in a while, they do something wrong and they should be punished, but he doesn’t punish them because he wants them to remember that when they grow up someday, when they’re seeing their therapist someday, he wants them to remember that it’s not all their dad’s fault. So every once in a while he’ll do this. He’ll say, “I’m not going to punish you. You know why I’m not going to?” And they’ll say “Why?” And he’ll say, “Because of grace. You know why I’m showing you grace?” “No, Dad, why?” “No reason at all. There’s never any reason for grace. If there was, it wouldn’t be grace.” There’s never any reason for grace. His oldest son acted up one time. He went way beyond the bounds, just transgressed in a serious way. And his dad was furious. He was ready to let him have it with a punishment that would be severe. And right at the moment as he was about to apply punishment, his son looked him in the eyes and said, “Dad, can you cut me some grace?” But he wasn’t ready for that, so he asked his son a question. Parents often do this. They ask a question when they’re mad. They’re not really looking for an answer. They’ll say something like, “What were you thinking when you did this?” And of course, they don’t want to know what the child was thinking. There is no answer the child could give that would cause the parent to say, “Oh, well now I understand your thought processes. Okay, it’s all right.” Parents just do this kind of stuff, just stupidity. Well, he asked his son this question — “Can you give me one good reason why I should cut you some grace?” And his son said, “Dad, there’s never any reason for grace.” What are you going to do with a kid like that? His dad cut him some grace. God has decided, because He’s God, that’s the kind of God he is — in his heart of hearts what he longs to do most is just cut you some grace for no reason. Not because you’re good enough, not because you go to church often enough, not because you’re respectable enough, not because you give enough money away — because there’s never a reason for grace except just the gracious heart of God. That’s why Jesus went to the cross and died and was raised again. But now you must decide what you’re going to do. You must receive it. You must make a decision. * Maybe you haven’t done that before. * Maybe you now understand well enough that you know what’s at stake. * Maybe today is your day. It’s the most important day of your life. This is your chance to say “Yes” to God’s offer of life and forgiveness. And all you do is to say, “God, I confess the fact that I’m a sinner — that I have a mountain of moral debt that I can’t pay off on my own. And I now understand and receive your free gift of forgiveness through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross when He died in my place. And God, I want to sign on with you. I want Jesus, from this moment on, to be my Teacher, to be my Savior, to be my Lord, to be my Guide, to be my Friend.” That’s what it means to be a Christian and you can do it right now. Maybe for you, this is your day. Now, this crooked embezzler has received grace, but that’s not the end of the story. This is a two-part story that Jesus tells. The embezzler is off the hook. He owes his life, his freedom, his family, his possessions, everything to the grace of his master. He doesn’t have to repay a cent. So everyone listening to this story wants to know, how is this guy going to respond? What will his life look like in the second chapter? And he comes upon another guy, another employee in the corporation who owes HIM something. But this time, it’s a small debt. It’s like twenty dollars. It’s like pocket change to him. But this other guy doesn’t have the money. He’s a desperately poor man. So he says to the ex-embezzler, “Just wait until the end of the month. I’m not going to stiff you. As soon as I get my paycheck, I’ll repay you what I owe you. Just give me some grace.” He asks for grace. In fact, this is part of Jesus’ amazing mastery of storytelling — in this story, the poor guy uses exactly the same words with the embezzler that the embezzler used to beg the CEO for grace. Jesus said, he fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me and I will pay you what I owe.” Same words. The great difference of course is that this time it’s doable. This is just a small debt. It’s repayable. It’s finite. And everyone waits to see how this guy’s going to respond. And this former embezzler, this cheat who was forgiven everything, thinks to himself, “I’m not going to make the same mistake the CEO made with me. I’m not going to get stuck with it. I’m going to make him pay.” And he says to the guy on his knees before him, with dry eyes, no tremble in his lips, no compassion in his heart, he says, “Don’t think I’m going to fall for that. Don’t make me laugh. What kind of a sucker do you think I am?” And he takes this poor man and grabs him by the throat and begins to choke him and has him thrown into prison where, of course, he cannot hope to repay the debt because this forgiven embezzler refuses to pay the price. He will not forgive the debt. He says in his heart, “I’m going to make you pay.” You see, here’s the truth about forgiveness — authentic forgiveness is never cheap. When you get hurt and the hurt is deep and the hurt is unfair, you want the other person to get hurt back. You want them to know the pain that they’ve inflicted on you. You want them to pay. And I know what that feels like. You do, too. Especially if you’ve been hurt in unjust, deeply unfair ways. We just want the other person to pay. It’s human nature. L.A. Times had a story a while ago about a guy named Dave Hackler who, among other things, was a part-time umpire in a recreational baseball league. He tells a story about how he was driving too fast in the snow in Boulder, Colorado and a policeman pulled him over and gave him a speeding ticket. He tried to talk him out of it. He begged for mercy. Have you ever done that with a police officer — the equivalent of falling on your knees and begging for mercy? He told him about how he was worried about his insurance, how he was normally a safe driver and why he was in a hurry. The police officer told him that if he didn’t like the ticket, he could go to court. Fast forward to the first game of the next baseball season. Dave is umpiring behind home plate. Guess who the first batter up is? It’s the police officer who gave him the ticket. They recognize each other. The police officer said, “So, how did the thing with the ticket go?” Dave told him, “You better swing at everything.” That’s human nature, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that sometime? It’s like a dream scenario. If you get hurt by someone, wouldn’t you love to be able to end up in their world one day as the umpire over their life? You would be able to say, “You better swing at everything. See how you like it. See how it feels to be the victim of injustice.” * Maybe you’ve been royally used and abused. * Maybe you’ve been cheated or betrayed or deeply wounded. * Maybe you’ve been in a financial situation where someone has raked you over the coals and they did it deliberately and they did it with malice, and you know it. * Maybe you’ve been in a situation at work where you’ve been the recipient of grossly unfair treatment. * Maybe you’ve been in a relationship where you gave your trust to someone and they betrayed you. You’ve been hurt and the hurt is deep and it’s personal and it’s unfair and it’s caused resentment to build in you. Someone has run up a moral debt with you and you know it to the penny. And you’re saying right now, as you sit there listening to this, “Yeah, but if I forgive him, I know what that means. It means I’m going to have swallow the debt. I’ll have to pay the cost. And the cost is not making them hurt back, not getting even, letting it go.” And you’re right. If you forgive someone, you pay a high cost. In fact, there’s only one thing in the world that I know of that costs more than forgiving someone. You know what it is? It’s not forgiving someone. Because non-forgiveness costs you your heart — and you may know that. You’ve got to forgive. * It doesn’t mean you condone what someone did that was wrong. Forgiving is not condoning. * It doesn’t meant you excuse what someone did. Forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing someone. * It doesn’t mean you decide you will tolerate injustice. Forgiveness does not mean tolerating injustice. Injustice needs to be fought. * Forgiving does not even mean that you always reconcile with another person. Sometimes you cannot reconcile. If the other person is not willing to acknowledge their part, if their not willing to confess and repent when they’ve wronged you, then you can’t reconcile. You can’t build a relationship safely unless it’s built on truth. Forgiving someone does not mean condoning them. It doesn’t mean excusing them. It doesn’t mean tolerating injustice. It doesn’t even always mean reconciling. But you can always forgive because forgiving someone means you let go of your right to hurt them back. You let go of your desire to see them hurt. You let it go. And this takes time. It’s a process. Sometimes you have to do it over and over and over, but eventually your heart will begin to heal. And God will begin to give you new eyes, and you will come to see that this person who hurt you is not just a monster, but is a fallible, fallen human being. Eventually, you’ll be able to wish them well, to hope good things happen to them. And then you will know that you are well on your way to forgiving them. It costs a lot to forgive, but to not forgive costs you your heart. * Don’t forgive and you will become filled with anger and resentment. * Don’t forgive and bit by bit all the joy will get choked out of you. * Don’t forgive and bit by bit you will be unable to trust anybody ever again. * Don’t forgive and the bitterness will crowd the compassion out of your heart, slowly, utterly, forever. And you will be just one, long complaint. * Don’t forgive and that little grudge that you nurse will grow larger and stronger. And although you think that you can hide it from everyone you know, in time it will become a monster of hostility. And one day it will kill you. And all that will be left out of once that was a person, will be bitterness and anger. And from the story Jesus told, what we learn is — the only power to forgive lies in the experience of being forgiven. The only thing that gives fallen, fallible human beings the power, the strength to extend grace to someone who doesn’t deserve it is the experience of being released from a mountain of moral debt in the eyes of a just and holy God. And if you live in that kind of forgiveness, then how can you refuse to extend it to someone else? The only power to forgive lies in the experience of being forgiven and therefore today, at the end of this series, I can offer you nothing but the cross of Christ. No clever principles are clever enough. No simple steps are simple enough, just the cross. For the cross is the place where we see the ultimate expression of the heart of God. The cross is God’s ultimate weapon against the anger and hostility, hurt and hate and sin that would otherwise destroy the human race, just the cross, only the cross. I offer you nothing today but the cross of Christ. And now, there’s one more part to the story. And to be real honest with you, I kind of wish there wasn’t because this part has very frightening implications. But you know, it’s not my story. So, I can’t leave it out. This embezzler has done the unthinkable. He claimed forgiveness from God for an infinite mountain of moral debt, but he refuses to extend forgiveness and grace to another person who’s a fallen sinner just like him. He claims to receive this huge forgiveness of his debt, but refuses to extend it to just a little one. And the tale of this second encounter spreads through the whole corporation. Everyone’s buzzing about it. And eventually, word gets back to the CEO. And by this time in the story, it ought to be pretty clear to you that this CEO does not miss much. He’s a pretty sharp guy. And so, the ex-embezzler is brought into the boardroom a second time for one more exchange. But it’s a different story this time around. In this interview, there are no tears, no pleadings, no falling to the ground, no begging for mercy, no bargains. This time, the CEO looks at this embezzler and says, “You didn’t get it at all, did you? It didn’t penetrate. You have gravely misunderstood me, my friend. You thought that grace meant that I was some incompetent leader who would let you get away with whatever you wanted and abuse whomever you wanted. You thought because you had gotten in with me you could be the same hurtful, self-centered, arrogant, unforgiving, ungracious person that you were before. You were badly mistaken. I was willing to take the loss for you. I would be still, but you don’t want what I offer. You were shown forgiveness, but you wouldn’t give it. You were offered grace, but you won’t extend it. You were showered with love, but you refuse to live in it. I offered you the miracle of forgiveness, the chance to live in a world of grace instead of this ‘you-hurt-me-I’ll-hurt-you-back-I’ll-make-you-pay kind of world.’ But you can’t receive it for yourself and deny it to others. It’s a package deal. You have rejected what I have to give. I have nothing left to offer.” And then this CEO turns and addresses the officers — “Take him away. Throw him into prison. Leave him there until he shall pay back the unpayable debt. End of interview. Beginning of sentence.” And then Jesus says these very sobering words, “And this is how my Heavenly Father will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. Unless you forgive him from your heart.” And now you must choose. No more explaining, now you’ve got to choose. * Vengeance or mercy. * Prison or freedom. * Hatred or grace. * Life or death. Now it’s up to you. So please, please, choose to forgive. For God’s sake, forgive before it kills you. Let it go. Choose life. End of story, that’s it. You can go home. Let me pray for you. Blue Oaks Church Pleasatnon, CA
