Extravagant Grace

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Focus: Forgiveness

Function: To help people see the weight of our own forgiveness so that they give it to others.

Form: GOK

Intro: From last week's message about dealing with conflict. The same context of these verses proves again that the passage was about sinning against you. That is why the teaching goes on to a question and answer about forgiveness.

The first verse, “how often, up until 7 times?” is interesting. The Pharisees taught three times. Peter thought he was expanding their idea in an effort of further piety. But Jesus contradicts that and says 70 times 7, or 490 times.

Jesus is using hyperbole in His statement. In effect, He is saying “Don't even count.”

And He goes on to explain the concept in the parable of the man who owed 10,000 talents of gold, to the king.

A talent is 76 pounds. 10,000 talents is 76,000 pounds. Wednesday at 11:00 AM, it was $1248.8 per ounce, or $19,980.80 per pound. That equals $15,185,408,000.00!

That is a lot of money.

Jesus is the king of the universe. And symbolically, the amount owed is a king's ransom.

The 100 pieces of silver is a lot of money also.

The 100 pieces of silver were worth about $2,000 in Jesus day. The common laborer earned about $.17 (17 cents) a day. So, that would be about 32 years worth of income.

In 2010, the average US worker earned $31,600 in real dollars. So, the debt owed was $1,018,533 in US dollars.

Is anybody here prepared to pay back a debt in excess of 15 billion dollars?

Is anybody here prepared to pay back a debt in excess of 1 million dollars? Maybe, some could if it were to deliver them from jail.

The first debt that Jesus mentions is an obscene amount of money to be owed by one individual to one person.

I am convinced that this amount relates to the precious price of His salvation.

My dad pastored a small church near Albion.

There was a lady who sang like a cat screaming.

She screeched this hymn based on 1 Peter 1:18-19: “Nor silver or gold hath bought our redemption...”

That song, and the meaning of the price Jesus paid to save us is forever implanted in my brain.

15+ Billion dollars, what I call the King's ransom, is unimaginable for any of us.

But let us focus on the second amount.

Compared to the 15+ billion, a little over a million is nothing.

But a million dollars is a lot of money by anyone's standards.

And the point is this.

Jesus didn't compare 15+ billion with one or two hundred dollars, or 10 or 20 dollars.

The second amount owed is still a lot.

And isn't that just what happens when we consider some of the offenses against us?

This isn't a petty offense.

This is like a life changing, life changing for the bad, for evil, debt owed toward us.

We deal with this in prison.

I see the consequences of unforgiveness.

Tell the story of A***

This prisoner was small and had tried to commit suicide 6 different times.

He hated himself and his life.

He was in the group that they called the lowest of the low.

He was a sex offender, and in the other prisoners eyes he was a sex offender “of the worse sort.”

In the eyes of his fellow inmates and in the guards, he was less than human, lower than dirt and no one seemed appalled at the way he was treated by the other inmates.

His crime? His sin? Child molestation.

He came to me to confess and ask if God would forgive him.

Now remember, the whole concept of the Kairos weekend is “extravagant grace.”

The 60,000 cookies that each team uses each weekend are a metaphor for the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14, and the feeding of the 4,000 in Matthew 15.

The grace of God is an unlimited supply that can never be exhausted.

There is no sin that is beyond the grace of God's forgiveness.

None.

Jesus' resurrection from the dead proves His absolute authority over our common enemy which is sin and death.

Every one of us faces that enemy and all of its power has been taken away by the cross. And the proof of it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That is why we are going to celebrate communion one last time together. Because Jesus is waiting to celebrate it with us in heaven.

We practice together as a reminder that in heaven, we will never be separated by who goes to which or what or who pastors which or what church. We will be together forever.

So this prisoner, A**** wants to know if God can ever forgive him.

Now think about it for a moment.

There were 4 10-12 year old girls who will never ever have a normal sense of female wholeness in the wonderful creation of intimacy between an husband and a wife because of what this man did to them.

His offense was a life-changing event in the lives of those 4 girls.

He agonizes over that very thought.

He takes the abuse given to him by other prisoners because he knows, in his mind, that he deserves it.

He believes that he is worse than scum.

And most of us do not care, culture even jokes about the way he is treated.

But let me tell you, what A**** deserves is grace.

Remember, the debt owed to the man who was forgiven a kings ransom is a life changing debt for every one of us.

The pain and misery that this man A**** caused was a life changing event for those 4 girls.

A part of us wants him to suffer forever for what he did.

And he didn't even do it to our daughters. His victims are strangers to all of us.

But we are offended at what he did.

And, he is getting his punishment.

As A**** and I were praying through his forgiveness, he did not offer an excuse for his behavior. He didn't offer blame for anyone for his behavior. He owned it as his own failure.

His confession was sincere.

But during that time I discovered that at the age of 12 himself, he too was the victim of a sexual predator.

He was acting out what happened to him.

He had a man who abused him who also owed him a life-changing debt.

And A**** forgives his oppressor.

And here he is, in front of me, wondering if God can ever forgive him.

Now, for a moment, I am going to get real personal here.

Because I, at the age of 11, was abducted by a stranger and terrible things happened to me.

And I am talking to this young man and I am feeling torn.

I am very torn.

Because it happened to me, I can identify with his victims.

Because it happened to me, I cannot understand how he could react to it by continuing the pattern of abuse himself.

I didn't.

I was tempted to hate him.

But I got to thinking how that event, as it happened to me was a life changing event.

It is and was the singularly worse event of my life and it changed me forever.

But I wasn't driven to continue the abuse.

But here is the thing.

I have been forgiven a kings ransom.

There is nothing that any person can give in exchange for their own soul.

15+ billion dollars could never purchase a persons salvation. It cannot be done.

The price of our salvation is more precious than any amount of money.

The price of our salvation was the life of the Son of God.

On the cross, God showed extravagant grace to us.

A**** needed forgiveness.

And in that moment, I loved him.

I have met hundreds of prisoners in my several years of prison ministry. But only 3 are regularly brought back to my mind to pray for them.

And A**** is on the top of the list.

It has been almost 3 years since that weekend.

And I still find myself weeping in agony for his ability to accept God's forgiveness of him.

God looks down at A**** and loves him just as much as He loves you and me.

A received a king's ransom in exchange for forgiving a life-changing debt.

So why do we forgive? Because we have been forgiven. And the metaphor in this parable is that we have been forgiven a king's ransom, so we should forgive always, even for life-changing tragedies.

Are we going to do as well at this as Jesus did?

Probably not.

Most likely, no.

Only Jesus is Jesus.

Only Jesus could offer perfect forgiveness from the cross when He asked the Father to forgive the men who had just murdered Him.

But forgiveness is a process.

It has been a process for me.

But the beauty of forgiveness is the freedom that it brings us.

I still remember the phrase, “unforgiveness, or bitterness, is like swallowing poison and hoping the other person will die.”

The phrase “I will never forgive” is an invitation to personal bondage.

I am surprised no one called me out last week on me leaving out the rest of the passage, the passage right before the one we have today.

In it we read, “whatever you loose, will be loosed, whatever you bind will be bound, whatever two or three of you agree on shall be done.” Matthew 18:18-20

I believe it fits better with this section of the same teaching on conflict and forgiveness.

When we loose forgiveness on others, we set ourselves free. We also set them free. When refuse to forgive, we bind ourselves up.

In Matthew 16:19, the same exact words, “what you bind... ...what you loose will be done for you.” And the rest of the verse is “you have the keys to the kingdom of heaven.”

This is genuine spiritual authority and power. And you possess it.

Use it well and be like Christ. Offer the same extravagant grace to others. Use this power well to extend the size and scope of God's family.