Dr. Roger Parrott, Belhaven University

Peter came to Jesus and asked, lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me?

Seven times?

No, not seven, Jesus replied, but 70 times seven.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him.

In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.

He couldn't pay, so his master ordered that he be sold, along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned to pay the debt.

But the man fell down before his master and begged him, please be patient with me and I will pay it all.

Then his master was filled with pity for him and he released him and forgave his debt.

But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars.

He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.

His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time.

Be patient with me and I will pay it, he pleaded.

But his creditor wouldn't wait.

He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset.

They went to the king and told him everything that had happened.

Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, you evil servant, I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.

Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?

Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

That's what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

Jesus told stories.

Jesus told stories to help us understand how different the kingdom of God is from the world we live in and the world we know.

Not to see the world through sin's distorted eyes, which is what we're trained to do, but instead see it through the eyes of God.

How God designed us to live and to relate and to flourish and to love.

So Jesus told stories that mostly began with the phrase, the kingdom of heaven is like or the kingdom of God is like.

He used them interchangeably to try to explain this world of the kingdom, which is completely upside down from the world we live in and the world we understand.

Not just a little different, like the difference between turmoil and peace.

A vast turmoil, total difference, upside down from what we think the world is about.

And it's a process to get there.

And that's what we're working on this year is this process of understanding These parables that open the kingdom of God's understanding to us.

And so it's a day by day thing, day by day to see him more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly.

And I pray that that's what God's doing in your life during these messages and during this time of the chapel.

Well, today we're going to look at a parable called the Unforgiving Servant.

It's a parable about freedom of forgiveness.

Jesus knew we would struggle with forgiveness.

He knew that would be a really, really hard thing for us to deal with because forgiveness is hard to do.

We feel justified.

First of all, somebody hurts us and you've been hurt, and your initial response is to lash back and to give them back what they gave you, because that's what our sin nature tells us to do.

They hurt me and they deserve to be hurt.

And they deserve to be hurt just as much as they hurt me.

And we can feel real justified in that.

And it's also the world's standards.

The world applauds people who fight back, don't they?

Those are the people we lift up.

He's a fighter.

He's not going to take that from anybody.

He's going to stand up for his rights.

Well, the kingdom of God is so different, so completely different from, from that, that Jesus knew we would struggle with forgiveness.

Because the kingdom of God is to develop the fruits of the Spirit in our life.

And in Galatians, we have those fruits of the Spirit.

You probably know them.

Love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control.

That's how you know you're living in the spirit of God's kingdom, is when those fruits grow in your life.

Well, without forgiveness, those fruits can never take root, ever.

Forgiveness is the beginning of the planting of those fruits in our lives.

So Jesus knew we'd have trouble with forgiveness.

Jesus knew we would struggle with it and it would be difficult for us, and that's why he told this story.

So you had it read to you this morning beautifully about a king who had to settle up his accounts with his servants.

Now, in those days, it was common to keep a tab.

People didn't walk around with money all the time.

They sure didn't have credit cards.

They didn't pay as they went.

They would keep a tab where with the people they owed.

And so it would have been a very common story that this servant owed the king a certain amount of money.

This amount of money that Jesus said, we don't understand it in their dollars, but in today's dollars it was about $2 million.

A servant who was a very low paid person had very little owed $2 million.

And the king said, well, sell all you have, sell your kids, sell your wife, sell whatever you have to because you owe me this debt.

And the story that Jesus told said that the servant got down on his knees and he begged for patience.

He begged for time.

He begged for somehow over some period of time, we will you let me pay this off?

And the story says in the king's compassion, he forgave the entire debt 100%.

Didn't say pay part of it, didn't put him on a payment plan, just said, it's all forgiven, it's all gone, it's zero.

Well the servant of course was thrilled.

And the servant left there and went out and found somebody else who owed him money.

And in today's dollars it was probably a few thousand dollars.

Well the guy said, I can't pay it.

I'm sorry, I can't pay it.

And the servant who had just been forgiven grabbed him by the throat and shook him and demanded he get the money and said, if you can't pay, I'm going to throw you into debtors prison and you can stay there until the debt's paid in full.

So that's the context Jesus told.

It goes like this.

When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset.

They went to the king and told him everything that happened.

And the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, you evil servant, how I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.

Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?

Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

That is what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

In the kingdom of God, there are consequences for not forgiving.

Not forgiving.

If you refuse to forgive others, you will not be forgiven.

Jesus is very clear about that.

We must learn how to forgive.

And Jesus doubled down the stakes here.

He didn't say just forgive, he said forgive from your heart.

That means you got to believe it.

You got to not just say the words.

You got to go through the motions and still hold the grudge.

No, you've really got to believe it from the heart.

The parable is very clear.

The king is God who's totally forgiven us.

We are the servants who've been forgiven.

Our sins have been taken away because of Christ's.

What Christ did for us.

And we must forgive others because we have been forgiven.

Well, there are three reasons why forgiveness is vital.

The first is this.

Forgiveness is God's priority.

It's God's priority.

The gospel or the good news, or the way of salvation, however you want to describe it, is this.

That there is a holy God, absolutely pure, completely sinless, never a bad thought, never a bad action, never a bad anything in his being.

He is pure in every single way of righteousness.

And here we are, people of sin, people who do sin, people who have corrupted God's plan because of sin in our lives.

And we can't be put together with a pure holy God without contaminating God.

Think of it this way.

If I had a big jug of pure water, and this was a jug, she could see through it, okay, pure water, half full.

And I take another jug over here of water from the Pearl River.

Pretty brown.

I wouldn't swim in it.

Some people do.

Half full.

If I take this jug and pour it into this jug, you can't drink that jug.

If I take this jug and pour it into this jug, you still can't drink that jug.

You see, a pure God cannot be in the presence of sin.

And so God had a solution.

He sent his son, his only son, to die on a cross as a sacrifice for our sins so that justice could be paid for the sins.

And then through Christ's work, we could be redeemed.

And you see, that's how important forgiveness is to God.

It's that important to God that we be forgiven.

That he would send his only son to die for our sins.

Because forgiveness is vital and essential.

It's a priority of God's.

When God forgives, he forgives completely.

Completely.

There's no deficiency in his forgiveness.

It's not.

He forgives everything except that one thing you did, or he forgives most of it.

But there's a little bit he doesn't forgive.

No, he forgives it completely.

I think a lot of Christians think it's kind of an 80, 20 deal.

Okay, God forgives me 80%, but 20%?

I've got to work my way back to God's presence from that.

I've got to prove myself back to him.

No, it doesn't work that way.

God forgives completely.

And so the obedience that comes as we grow in Christ is not out of trying to earn his forgiveness.

The obedience comes out of love.

Because we love him.

We want to live and follow his way to Live.

And obedience comes out of living how he designed us to live.

Because when we live in ways that run counter to how he designed us, life just doesn't work and you get messed up and bad stuff happens.

But when you live in the way that he wants, because we love him, then obedience becomes a central part of our life.

Not so we will be forgiven.

But to forgive others is part of that obedience.

The only way we can forgive others is to learn to forgive ourselves.

It's not that God forgives most and not a little bit.

No, for God forgives all.

And so when we sin, we also need to forgive ourselves.

And that's not easy to do.

And sometimes we don't forgive others because we can't forgive ourselves for our own sins.

But with God, forgiveness is his priority and that's why it's essential.

Secondly, forgiveness is required.

It's a requirement that Jesus says, if you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven.

It's as simple as that, you know, because it's this way.

If we don't forgive, we're saying, well, God, let's say somebody hurt me, okay?

And I don't want to forgive them.

That's saying, God, I don't need you in that part of my life.

I'll take care of this.

I'll take care of the justice.

I'll take care of handling this.

God, you don't need to be in any part of it.

You just don't watch.

It's going to be bad, but I'm going to get them even.

We are operating in a way that excludes God from our sections of our lives when we do not forgive.

Beyond that, forgiveness is a requirement of our happiness and fulfillment.

If we don't forgive, we live with turmoil and resentment and we start to wall off parts of the world because we're shell shocked from being hurt and we don't trust and we become bitter and we become really, really, really selfish.

We miss the best of what God has for us.

We miss the purpose for which he created us.

We miss when we don't forgive.

It's absolutely that vital.

And Jesus knew that.

And that's why he said forgiveness is not optional.

It is absolutely required.

Third reason forgiveness is vital is forgiveness brings freedom.

It frees us from the hurt the that somebody brought into our lives.

It frees us from the pain.

It frees us from the anger that can absolutely consume us.

It frees us from holding grudges and building resentment.

There are people who walk around all the time resentful of others, and they're consumed by.

Frees us from that.

It frees us from revenge.

It frees us from fear.

It frees us from our lack of focus and our purpose.

When you can't forgive somebody and you're torn up with all this stuff, you're not focused on what God's called you to do.

You're focused on that not forgiving will suffocate you.

It will suffocate you.

It may take some time, but it will.

Forgiveness brings freedom from that.

But forgiveness is not easy.

And there really kind of stages forgiveness, okay, it's not like somebody hurt me.

Say somebody did something horrible to me.

And, well, okay, you did that all good.

You're forgiven.

It's like it never happened.

Let's go on.

It doesn't work that way.

I wish it could.

It doesn't work that way.

Forgiveness is stages of process that we need to learn to develop in our lives.

First step is forgiveness as obedience.

Forgiveness as obedience.

I don't want to forgive that person who hurt me so badly, but I do forgive them because I love God, and God wants me to forgive them.

And so I'll do it.

It's kind of like two kids.

Imagine you got a couple of kids, they come home from school.

One got a big cake that they won in a contest, okay.

And the other child, sitting there looking at the brother's cake.

And mom says, you need to share that with your brother.

I don't want to.

I want it.

It's mine.

You need to share it with your brother.

And it begins to melt.

And why does he share?

Not because he wants to.

He shares because he loves his mother, and his mother asked him to.

Because we love God, we forgive even whom we don't want to forgive.

And we don't feel like forgiving.

We do it out of obedience because we love him.

And that's the beginning point of forgiveness.

Next kind of step in forgiveness or phase of forgiveness is.

Is forgiveness is release.

Release of letting go.

It's not about denying the hurt.

No, the hurt is there.

It's not about denying that, but it's about refusing to seek payback.

Some people carry their whole lives, this weight of a desire for payback from everybody who's ever hurt them.

They just build up the backpack of weight on weight on weight because they've been hurt, and they just want to hit back.

Forgiveness releases the weight, drops it dead, put it down, give the burden to God, hand it over to him, and that can be hard to do when you've been hurt and emotionally, it's hard and it's really painful, and maybe there are lots of consequences in your life because of it.

It's really hard to let it go.

And sometimes in my life, when I've had something I really can't let go, and I pray and I ask God to do it, I physically do this.

I say, lord, I can't hold it any longer.

I put it in your hands, and I physically turn my hands over and let it go.

I might have to do that several times before I really let it go.

But you got to let it go.

Romans 12 says, Never take revenge.

Never take revenge.

But then it goes on to quote Deuteronomy, where God says, I, I will take revenge.

I will pay them back, and God will bring justice.

He is a God of justice.

And people who hurt you, unless they are forgiven, will pay the price eventually, in God's time, release and let it go.

Forgiveness is also healing.

It's a stage of healing.

When we get to this point of forgiveness where forgiveness moves from the head to the heart, I can intellectually decide I'm going to forgive.

But that's different from really feeling it, really absorbing it into who I am and letting it go.

And the only way you can do that is not through your own power and your own strength, but the Holy Spirit working in you and to let it go.

And maybe your prayer is, lord, I am willing.

I'm willing, but I don't want to forgive them.

I don't want to, but I'm willing.

You know, there's nothing wrong with that prayer, because that's a starting point, and that's okay.

You have to be willing.

Because until you are willing, the healing won't begin.

And it doesn't come from the heart.

It only comes from the head.

Kind of the fourth stage of forgiveness that I see is reconciliation.

Reconciliation with God.

God, I am forgiving that person who hurt me so badly because I love you that much.

Reconciliation.

And I'm not going to wall that off and do it on my own.

Reconciliation with others.

And often you can get reconciliation with people who've hurt you.

Not always, but sometimes.

A lot of times.

I don't know if any of you know my brother or my sister.

My brother writes a lot of books on marriage and family, and his wife, Leslie Les, and Leslie Parrott, his wife, writes with.

In fact, yesterday, Justin Bieber put in his Twitter feed something about one of Les books, and the sales went boom like that overnight.

It's kind of interesting, but Leslie says her favorite verse and I love this is from Romans.

It says, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live with peace with everyone.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Reconciliation takes two people.

You can't reconcile if somebody else doesn't want to reconcile.

And it may not be possible, but if it's possible, reconciliation does bring healing and forgiveness, but it may not be possible.

And if it's not, that's okay.

Well, the fifth stage of forgiveness is forgiveness is Christlike love.

This is the highest stage of forgiveness.

I would call it Christ level love, not just Christlike Christ level love.

Jesus said, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.

You and I can't do that.

We cannot.

Only through the power of God can we pray for those people and love the people who hurt us the most.

It's the ultimate letting go to bless your enemies.

Some people call it a radical act of grace.

And it is.

As we move through these levels of forgiveness, we find freedom.

At whatever level you start with and how far you can go, you find forgiveness brings freedom.

Forgiveness is releasing someone from the debt they owe you because God released you from the debt you owe him.

Forgiveness is not pretending it didn't happen.

No, it did happen, and it was wrong and it wasn't justified.

Forgiveness is not excusing the wrong saying, well, they didn't really mean it, you know, kind of justify it and put it away like they've probably done.

It's not that.

It's not necessarily trusting.

Again, if you've been hurt by somebody, you.

You don't have to go back and have the same level of trust.

Trust has to be earned, and trust takes time.

Forgiveness is not removing the consequences.

You know, there are always consequences to sin.

If you sin, there are consequences.

If somebody sins against you, there are consequences.

So forgiveness is not that.

Forgiveness is the transformation that happens in us when we forgive.

Now, I want to talk about a really hard question before we finish up.

I'm not talking to everybody in the room on this one.

Okay?

I'm not talking to everybody in the room.

I want to talk to people who've been victims of abuse, and I want to talk to the people in the room who've been victims of sexual assault.

And I want to answer six questions for you that probably are in your mind first.

Do I have to forgive my abuser right now?

No, you don't.

It's a process.

God knows your heart.

If your desire is to want to honor him you may get there at some point, but you don't have to forgive him right now.

And don't beat yourself up over it.

Second question.

Do I have to forgive what happened to me?

Absolutely not.

Abuse lasts forever to the victim, doesn't last forever to the one who was the abuser.

In fact, they probably went on to other acts of that.

But to the one who is abused, it lasts forever.

It impacts your life.

Unless you do a lot of hard work to get through it and deal with that trauma, it hangs over you.

See, you don't have to forget what happened.

Do I have to be reconciled with him?

No, you don't have to be reconciled with your abuser.

Unforgiving does hurt you, but whether or not you forgive them, it's not going to change anything for them.

I can guarantee you they've probably forgotten it.

If you're a victim of sexual assault, they've forgotten it.

If you're a victim of abuse, there are others, they've forgotten it, but you haven't.

You live with it every day.

So do you have to be reconciled with them?

No, you don't.

You do not have to be reconciled with them.

Fourth, Do I have to confront them?

No, you don't have to confront them.

Trust the Holy Spirit to confront them.

God is at work in the world, and God's spirit is at work and will confront them either now or in eternity when they do pay favor.

In fact, I would say it's probably safest not to confront them.

Because they manipulated you once.

They probably think they can do it again, and they're going to try and turn around and tell you it's your fault again.

And it's not your fault.

Absolutely not your fault.

So you don't have to confront them.

Question 5.

Do you deserve to get justice?

Absolutely.

Absolutely, you deserve to get justice.

But you gotta say, God's got this.

It's not my job to bring justice to them.

God's got this.

He will seek revenge.

He says in his scripture, you gotta trust God to do it.

You don't have to be the one to do it.

And last question.

Do you want them to admit it?

Do you want them to change?

Do you want them to get help?

Yes, absolutely you do.

But you can only change you.

You can't change them.

But they are as accountable to God as you're accountable to God.

And I'm accountable to God.

And they can't escape.

And there will be a judgment at the right time.

If you've been hurt and a victim of abuse, sexual assault, I Cry for you.

I am sorry.

It's wrong at every level.

It's evil.

But may God bring healing.

As you do deal with a level of forgiveness that's appropriate even in the worst of the worst, which I think abuse and sexual assault is.

Well, there's freedom and forgiveness.

The parable was told to answer a question Peter asked about forgiveness.

Question comes at the beginning of the parable.

Peter asked this question and Jesus told the parable in answer to it.

Peter asked this.

He said, Peter came to Jesus and said, and asked, lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me?

Seven times?

No, not seven times, Jesus replied, but 70 times seven.

Now, the law of Moses taught you were to forgive somebody four, maybe three times.

And that was really generous to forgive them that many times.

So Peter, when he came to Jesus, I think he thought he was being really noble, or maybe he was just trying to impress Jesus.

Hey, I'll do it seven times.

What do you think about that, Lord?

That's a big deal.

Come on.

Bring on the praise.

Jesus said, no, not seven times.

70 Times seven.

Before you get out your calculator, that's about 500 times.

That is for you, not for the person you hurt.

That is for you.

Because when you forgive that much, only over and over and over and over.

And it may take that for some of the deepest wounds of life to forgive them.

Multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple times that you can't even count how many times you've forgiven.

That's when forgiveness moves from the head to the heart and it changes how you see the world.

That's when forgiveness moves from hurt to.

To healing and life becomes whole again.

That's when forgiveness moves from fighting to forgetting.

Forgiveness is the most amazing miracle that God ever did.

Jesus did a lot of amazing miracles.

Nothing compares to forgiveness.

May we be people who learn to forgive.

Let's pray together.

Our benediction.

No eye is seen.

No ear is heard.

No mind is conceived.

What God has prepared for those who love him.

God bless.