The Irrationality of Unforgiveness Pastor Mark Batterson

Transcription

1 The Irrationality of Unforgiveness Pastor Mark Batterson Even though I went to church my entire life with my parents to a Baptist church, I never really understood how real He was until I met my girlfriend, and when I saw that real relationship that she had with Christ, it made me want it as well. So I started my own journey. The way NCC celebrates God and the Word of God is something that touched me and moved me in a way that nothing else has. I ve come to a point where I m ready to step up and publicly declare that Christ is the Son of the living God. (Mark) Praise God! And knowing the stories behind each one of those people, we celebrate with what the Lord has done. There are moments when the 26 letters of the alphabet don t do justice to who God is and what God has done. I m just a little overwhelmed. Praise God! Welcome to National Community Church! This weekend we kick off a new series entitled Figuratively Speaking and we are going to be talking about the parables of Jesus. I m really excited about this, but before we jump in, I want to share something with you. I wouldn t do it except it is a cool tie-in to this series on the parables. Several weeks ago, PBS and the News Hour sent a news crew to our Union Station location and they were doing a story on Twitter and the Twitter phenomenon. I am a Twitterer, so I guess I m the token religious person in the piece and I thought it might be fun to share this with you, it sort of sets up what this series is about, so let s check it out. (From Video, news announcer) You might expect Twitter in the news, but on the pews? Pastor Mark Batterson at National Community Church in Washington D.C. is another true believer sharing moments of his daily life and spiritual thoughts with friends, family and flock, and reading theirs. (Mark) Jesus would have been great on Twitter! I think you often say more by saying less, and interestingly enough, Jesus really set the standard. He could say more with fewer words than anybody. Most of the parables were less than 250 words and boy did He have some one-liners just packed with truth. (Announcer) There is some data to suggest that Twitter breeds quitters, according to Neilson, about 60% of those who give Twitter a try stop within a month. To put that in perspective, Facebook and My Space have 60% retention levels. Even a committed Twitterer like Pastor Batterson says that all this reaching out and following can yield diminishing spiritual returns. (Mark) So what I ve decided, as many people as want to can follow me, that s fine, that has no impact on me, but I only follow about 90 people. The reason why I do that is because if I follow everybody, I think I m following nobody.

2 The parables are a lot like Twitter. If you don t know what Twitter is, it is basically updates on your life in 140 characters or less, brief little updates. It is fascinating to me that Jesus was able to communicate so much by saying so little. Every parable is packed with truth. What this series is about is we are going to unpack those truths. Are you ready to jump in? Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 18, verse 21. Some truth is deduced by a left-brain logic, but other truth is induced by right-brain imagination. Scripture is really a combination of both, and this series is about that right-brain imagination. It is about allowing the truth to capture our imagination. What we are going to try to do is connect the dots between these stories and our lives; there are some powerful applications. Matthew 18:21: The parable of the unmerciful servant: Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you not seven times but seventy times seven. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then 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 as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. We have a moment where Peter comes to Jesus and he is feeling spiritual. In fact, he is pretty proud of himself. He asks how often we should forgive our brothers. He throws a number out there. Now, you know human nature. Peter is thinking I m going above and beyond with is seven times. He is feeling so forgiving in that statement, and it sounds so generous; and then Jesus counters with seventy times seven. And I know this is sort of a silly question but we might as well ask it how many sins do you think you ve committed in your lifetime? I know, that s not something we really like to think about, and it is impossible to calculate, but when you consider all the behavioral and attitude and volitional and sub-sins, it has got to be a huge number. In fact, I m looking out at some of you and I don t think we can count that high! It has to be millions! So seven is laughable but so is seventy times seven. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And we think we are doing good if we think we do it seven times. I think what I m trying to get at is that there are two very different worlds happening and I think we will see where this story takes us. So, Jesus tells the story: Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. This is a huge sum of money. Think gross national product numbers. This is a sum of money that is beyond imagination, beyond what this guy could pay off. So Jesus is very intentional here in choosing an unimaginable debt because there is a punch line coming. What you are going to see is that you didn t laugh when I read this story, but part of that is because I m not sure we get the first century context. So can I cue

3 you where you are supposed to laugh? Here we go. Verse 25, since he was not able to pay the debt, there it is, come on. See, this is hyperbole, like, not able to pay it, like this is a joke! Of course he is not able to pay it, he can t even come close to paying it. Then it gets even funnier, Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, (here it is, get ready) 'and I will pay back everything. See, this is funny because it is preposterous! There is no way he could possibly pay back this debt. Now here is the climax of this story - The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. I don t see anybody crying but there is a strong emotion here at work. I don t watch it all the time but every once in a while, I ll watch Extreme Home Makeover. Anybody else? I kid you not, my goal every time we turn on that show is for me not to cry, to see if I can possibly get through the show and I don t know that I ve been successful to date! There is something about that show, ya know, where the team comes in and people that are just down on their luck, doing something good but living in terrible conditions, and the team comes in and builds them a new house, and you have that moment, Move that bus! Then they start crying when they see their new home and I start crying and what s happening there is it s an overwhelming emotion because someone has done something for you that you can t do for yourself, and it is powerful! And it doesn t happen to me and I m crying! Can you imagine being forgiven this kind of debt? Can you imagine that moment? The feeling of relief, I don t know if you ve ever had a debt paid off, even a small debt, it s a relief. And the joy of someone paying for it! This is such an amazing story; if only it ended here, but it doesn t. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded. You know one of my favorite philosophers, Jack Handey, who has written a wonderful book entitled Deep Thoughts. One of my favorites is: I can t stand cheap people. It makes me mad when someone says something like, hey when are you going to pay me that hundred dollars you owe me? or do you have that fifty dollars you borrowed? Man, quit being so cheap. What a cheapskate! Are you kidding me? You ve just been forgiven 10 thousands talents and you are not going to forgive your fellow servants 100 denarii? Now, just for the record, 1 talents is worth 6,000 denarii, so really to put it into perspective, the first servant owed the king 600,000 denarii if you do the translation and his fellow servant owed him 100 denarii and he had just been forgiven a debt 60,000 times larger, and he is unforgiving. This is where, on the emotional thing, if you ve already laughed and cried, give me a big intake of breath. Thank you, you guys are so into this. How can you not forgive someone this miniscule debt when you have been forgiven so much? His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' Let s stop here for a second because this should have sounded vaguely familiar. This is the exact language that was used by this servant in pleading for forgiveness from his master. It should have triggered something in the auditory cortex, but he doesn t remember. What I want to do is I think this parable really gets at two problems, challenges, struggles that we have spiritually, and if we can get a handle on this, I think it can get us a long way down the road on this spiritual journey. The first one is this we have this tendency to forget what we should remember. The flip side is that we tend to remember what we should forget too. But in this instance, we forget so quickly. This week was an intense week for me. If you follow me on Twitter, then you would know that this week I was finishing up the final edits for my next book. Early mornings, late nights, and my brain was so physically exhausted, that at the end of some days I was seeing spots. I don t know if you can have brain cramps, literally. So, I had lunch this week, it was embarrassing, it was with a couple of church planters that were on staff here that we sent out to Richmond. They came up and we had lunch together and I had to apologize to them like seven times because I had no short-term memory. We would be talking and the sentence would stop and if there were more than a 3-second gap, I would totally forget what I had just said. They were really kind and patient with me. I had to keep asking what I had just said, because I didn t have a memory component.

4 Maybe that, for some strange reason, really made me appreciate memory. Do you often at the end of the day thank the Lord for your memory? When was the last time you thanked God for memory? If you didn t have memory, you would have to relearn everything every day. So thank God for memory. But memory, like everything else, has to be sanctified. What I m getting at, like my short-term memory issue, we so quickly forget what God has done for us. This is so simple but this is the heart of the story and it is the solution to a lot of our problems. You want to know why we mistreat the people around us? Because we forgot what God did for us. That s exactly what is happening here. The reason why this guy mistreated his fellow servant is because a few moments earlier, he totally forgot what God did for him. This is huge. This is why the word remember is repeated around 250 times in the Bible and why, when we celebrate communion, Do this in remembrance of me and all these things you ve got to remember. So often we are so quick to forget. In the 19 th century, a German philosopher named Herman Ebbinghaus did studies on memory and memory retention and what he discovered is that forgetting is exponential in nature and this is intuitive, but memory retention declines with time and it is called the Ebbinghaus curve or the forgetting curve. If you study memory at all, you know there are a few factors that are critical in remembering something. Again, these are intuitive. We tend to remember that which is emotional because emotions stamp the memory and it s more deeply embedded. We tend to remember things that are unusual. We forget routine stuff, you probably don t remember where you ate three weeks ago but you tend to remember those unusual things. And we tend to remember what is meaningful. If something is really meaningful to you, you are going to remember that. So what is fascinating to me is that this story fits all three of those criteria. It is emotional, he had just been forgiven this huge debt and the emotions that come with that. And it is unusual. It s not everyday that someone forgives a 10,000 talents debt! And it is meaningful because this guy was going to throw his wife and kids in jail. So it fits all that criteria and yet he forgets. What is wrong with that guy? Don t people like that drive you crazy? But can that even begin to compare with what Jesus Christ has done for each one of us. The debt that He has forgiven and the act of love and the sacrifice that He made to pay for our sins so that we can be forgiven, you can t even put those two things in the same category. Yet, we forget, don t we? And because we forget, it affects the way we treat other people. I think there is something here that is very difficult to communicate but if we could drill down, I think this is hugely important. Let me come at it from one more angle. I think there is a tendency in us to want to minimize our sin. We want to minimize the debt that we might owe God or kind of soft sell it a little bit because we don t want to feel too bad about it. But let me tell you what happens when we minimize the effects of sin we minimize the grace of God. It is only by taking responsibility and understanding the depravity of the human soul and our capability for sin and what we have done that has been forgiven, we begin to even touch how amazing his grace really is. See, it s the people who really understand the debt that s been paid that really can treat the people around them with the grace that they have received from God. I hope that does more than make sense. I hope that maybe we spend some time this weekend thanking the Lord for his forgiveness and his grace. He paid a debt He did not owe, we owed the debt we could not pay. Thank God for that. So this guy forgets, and we forget so quickly, and here s what happens. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then 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 as I had on you?'

5 What the master is trying to communicate is are you out of your mind? The debt that I just cancelled and you turn around, what could you possibly be thinking? I think I want to talk for a moment about the irrationality of unforgiveness because I think a lot of us feel justified in not forgiving people that have hurt us, like it is our prerogative. And that in fact it would really be a righteous act to forgive them. And what I m saying is that that is just the baseline, because we don t comprehend how much we have been forgiven. It is irrational not to forgive the people who have hurt us. I read a study this week that was fun. Loan offers were sent to men and the study wanted to see their reaction. Some of them had a picture of a smiling man on it, the other ones had a picture of a smiling woman. Anybody want to guess which letter was more effective in securing those loans? According to the study, the magnitude of the smiling woman was the equivalent of dropping the interest rate 4.5 percentage points! I think there are a few morals to this story! First of all, men are idiots. Second of all, ladies you need to quit smiling cause you re messing us up! But here s my point, the fellow servant should have sent his wife and told her to smile! That s not really my point, my point is a smiling women, 4.5 percentage points, you re losing all of your rationality. I love this book, Predictably Irrational, I have a lot of books like that on my shelf that accentuate the irrationality of the logical human mind. We are very irrational people. I want to have a little bit of fun with that, I hope we can laugh at ourselves a little bit. The detriment to our spiritual health when we allow that irrationality into the equation of our lives spiritually. See, that is what s happening here, you have been forgiven a 10,000 talent debt, irrational that you wouldn t turn around and forgive that 100 denarii debt; yet, that is what we do. In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. This is pretty heavy stuff, because what you have here is a contingency clause, and this is where I want to teach the nuance of theological truth in a way that I m not responsible for anything being miscommunicated. What this passage is saying is that God s forgiveness of us is contingent upon our forgiveness of others. There s part of us that doesn t want to go there, because that is tough to hear, but if we could only hear it and act on it, the freedom that we would find, I ll talk about that in a moment, but this is huge. Your spiritual health is contingent upon what I am talking about right now. In fact, there are people at each one of our locations, podcasts and webcasts, listen to me, the reason why you re not doing good spiritually is because there is unforgiveness in your life. You don t know that that is your problem but that s your problem, and it is the very thing that is sucking the life out of you spiritually, because that channel of forgiveness from God has not been freed up in your life because there is unforgiveness in your heart toward someone else and it is a spiritual blockage and you need to identify what that is and you need the courage to make it right. Let me put this parable in cultural context because I think it might help. In the Jewish calendar, there were ten days that separated the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement. That ten-day period was designed for seeking forgiveness between individuals. A person wasn t prepared to seek divine forgiveness on the Day of Atonement, which, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go in and make a sacrifice and it would cover the sin of the entire nation of Israel and it would make that vertical relationship right, but a person wasn t ready to do it if they hadn t sought reconciliation from their neighbor. So we don t know the exact timing of this parable. There is a little part of me that wonders if Jesus is telling this story during that ten-day period, but that doesn t really matter, the principle is true either way. We have got to seek our reconciliation in those horizontal relationships if we are going to find forgiveness in our vertical relationship with God. In fact, we pray this but we don t think about it. Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and then there is a little line, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. See, we are praying it but we are not thinking about it. What we are praying, God, I pray that you would forgive my debt, but in proportion to me forgiving the debts of the people around me. There is something powerful here. And Jesus set the example.

6 If you want to talk about someone who has been the victim of injustice, it is the Son of God, the righteous Son of God crucified at the hands of sinners. There is no act of injustice that even begins to compare with that injustice, and Jesus was the victim. What did He do? We read it but we don t think about it. He says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. He is forgiving the very people who have nailed his hands to that cross, those who are mocking Him and spitting on Him, He says, Forgive them, and in doing so, He sets the example for us to follow. The question is this is there someone that you need to forgive? Is there a debt that needs to be cancelled? I pray that you would have the courage to do it. Let me move toward the close with this. Several weeks ago, our family was on vacation in [?] Beach. We went to Cape [?], that s our hangout, we go to the beach there and sometimes we hike, and so we did an off-trail hike through the woods. It was our family of five but we came home about 11 or 12 of us because we brought some ticks home with us. The first one showed up on Josiah and he went nuts. We tried to get it off and the skin goes up and it didn t come off and he was practically hyperventilating while I was trying to perform surgery for which I m not qualified. We are trying to get this tick out because, you see, ticks are dangerous because they carry a bacteria that if it gets in your bloodstream can cause lime disease and if it is not detected and not treated, it can be incredibly debilitating, not just causing fatigue, but in some rare instances, death. So we removed the ticks and then we kept finding ticks on everybody in the family. Then it was Summer s turn and she actually had to go to the hospital because the surgeon, a.k.a Dad, did not do it effectively and part of it was left in there. Then two days later, I start finding ticks on me but they are smaller than freckles, and it s the craziest thing in the world, so I do surgery on myself and I remove them and they still itch. I think I got them all, I m going to be ok, but the bottom line is this unforgiveness is a blood-sucking tick. It is a bacteria that gets into your bloodstream and it will eat you alive. I think we sometimes feel like, if we hang onto unforgiveness and it is my way of punishing you. No! Trust me, you are punishing yourself and what will happen is, you will end up exactly like the man in this story. Where does he end up? In prison. This is such a kaleidoscopic story but I think this is the place to wrap it up. Unforgiveness leads to one place, and that is an emotional, spiritual, relational prison. I think we all know that, it s just, do we have the courage to do something about it? Can I tell you something? Jesus is right, and this is true, and what we need to do is simply this you ve heard that we are created in the image of God, but there is a second half to that, imitate God. So often we think, we are created in God s image, isn t that wonderful, we celebrate that. But at the end of the day, we are created in the image of God so that we can mirror the image of God. So what I want to say to those of you who would say, I can t do it, you don t know my circumstances, you don t know the situation I ve been in, I want to say, no, you can t, there are some things that are not humanly possible, but if you let the grace of God get a hold of your life, you can do it. You can do anything, and that s what you need to do. Do not leave this weekend without receiving that gift that Jesus Christ wants to offer to each one of us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Please don t walk out owing a debt this weekend. It is as simple as confessing our sins and receiving the gift that He has given to us. You can t earn your way into heaven, that s not how it works. There is only one kind of person who gets into heaven and that is a forgiven person. It has nothing to do with how much you ve done right and how much you ve done wrong. It has everything to do with simply receiving the free gift of grace that He has offered to you. That, my friends, is the good news of the gospel. You can t do it, you don t have to do it, because He did it for you. Let s pray. Father, thank You, thank You. O God, may we be overwhelmed by the measure of grace that You ve shown to us, and may that measure of grace that you ve shown to us allow us to be graceful people to those around us. Thank You. Right now, we receive your grace and your mercy. Lord, I believe that right now, some people, for the first time want to receive that gift that You have offered. Lord, thank You that it is just a prayer away, and we receive it in Jesus name, Amen.