Grace and peace are yours through Jesus Christ, our forgiving Savior. Amen.

Matthew 18:21 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?" ²² Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. ²³ "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. ²⁵ 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. ²⁶ "The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' ²⁷ The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. ²⁸ "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. ²⁹ "His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' ³⁰ "But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. ³² "Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' ³⁴ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. ³⁵ "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Lord Jesus, you not only taught us how to forgive, you demonstrated how to forgive. You have taught us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. This is a fairly easy concept, but very difficult to put into practice. Help us to appreciate or forgiveness. Only then will we be willing and eager to forgive. Help us to realize so we may rejoice in your forgiveness and in the forgiveness extended to others. In your gracious name we pray. Amen.

It is so hard to forgive after someone has hurt you, isn’t it? Many of you will remember the violence of May 13, 1981. That was when Pope John Paul II was shot. While holding his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope was shot twice by Mehmet Ali Agca, an escaped Turkish convict. Two years after the incident, the Pope visited his would-be assassin in prison. When he emerged from the prison, the Pope explained, "I spoke to a brother whom I have pardoned." Many around the world were wondering, "why forgive?" TIME magazine had a letter to the editor that was just a short sentence. It said, "It is the Pope’s business to forgive."

John Paul forgave not because he was the Pope but because he was a Christian. As Christians, we are all in the business of forgiving. If we are serious about calling ourselves Christians, then it is our business to forgive others.

Many times when people sin against us and hurt us, we want to hold onto our righteous anger and our resentment. It ends up eating us up inside. Our anger turns to poison. Our resentment turns to venom. We ask ourselves, "Forgive? Who me?" Yes, you. As a Christian, you need to forgive other people. But you can forgive only if you remember the way God has already forgiven you. Then you can respond by forgiving others. That means forgiving family members, church members, co-workers, classmates, would-be assassins, or even terrorists.

It’s one thing to forgive an act of sin, it’s another thing to forgive the one who sins against you time after time after time. No one wants to be the carpet that everyone walks over.

Maybe Peter knew this dilemma all too well so he came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Peter understands that Jesus wants us to forgive those who have wronged us, but he presumes there is a limit to forgiveness. At that time the Jewish rabbis had said three times was enough to forgive someone. So Peter thinks he is being very generous by forgiving up to seven times.

But Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Now wait a minute, doesn’t that seems a little excessive? Seventy seven times! We might as well never stop forgiving. Right! You’ve got it. Hey, hold on now! Where is the accountability? When does a person suffer the consequences for their behavior? When do I get to get back at the person who hurt me?

Christ already suffered the consequences for your friend’s sinful behavior. God held Jesus accountable for your family member’s sin. God punished Jesus for the person’s wrongs. You have no right to get back at him and hurt him.

That doesn’t seem very fair, does it? It’s not. But then, God forgiving us isn’t very fair, either. Jesus gives us a picture of God’s forgiveness with the story he told Peter. A king wanted to settle his accounts with those who owed him money. He was like a banker calling in his loans. The absurdity begins with a servant who owes ten thousand talents or about 10 million dollars in our day. This is an incredible amount of money. The servant begs for mercy and the king offers to forgive his debt. You have to wonder what king in his right mind would write off a debt this large. What business person in his or her right mind would cancel a debt worth that much? Who would allow him or herself to be cheated out of that amount?

As absurd as all that sounds, it is a wonderful picture of the absurdity of the kingdom of God. We are in debt to God more than we could ever know or even imagine. Yet God forgives us. He cancels our debt. In the world’s economy, that is absurd. But in the economy of God, that is the normal way of doing business. In the economy of God, his kingdom is built on mercy and not retribution. In the economy of God, forgiveness becomes the norm and not the exception. It’s not about keeping score. It is about forgiving without limits.

I don’t know about you, but I really appreciate a God who goes out of the way to forgive me. I really appreciate a God who doesn’t get tired of forgiving me. I am really glad that God’s mercy extends beyond all reasonable expectations because I need it. I realize just how great a sinner I am.

If we each took the time to catalogue our sins, we would find that they are numerous. Short-tempered with the kids. Forgetting about our spouse’s needs. Not always listening to others like we should. Lazy. Self-centered. Greedy. Gluttonous. Arrogant. Rude. And those are probably our good points! Those are just our "little" sins.

Our "big" sins are even more numerous than that. We don’t really pay close enough attention to God. We neglect to learn more about God in Bible studies, even though there are plenty to choose from. We tend to blame God instead of thanking him for blessings. We claim Jesus Christ as Lord, but then turn around and forget about him. We give our life to Jesus, but then want to take pieces of it back. We are ready to sacrifice for Christ, as long as we are not terribly inconvenienced.

Thank God that we have a forgiving King who cancels all our debts and forgets our transgressions. If God forgave the way we are willing to forgive, we would be in serious trouble. We say we forgive and forget, while in reality we remember and reuse hurt and sin. Whereas God says, "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31:34) We want revenge. We want blood. God says he received his vengeance through Christ’s blood, "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." (Ephesians 2:13)

If you are like me, and I assume you are, you are glad to accept God’s forgiveness. You realize that without the grace of God, you would have no hope. You understand that your only chance to see the gates of heaven is to cling to the mercy of God.

With this part of the parable, Jesus is saying we are so indebted to God with our sins that we cannot ever repay. There is no way we could ever work off our debt of sin. That is why God forgives our debt by having Jesus pay the price of our sins on the cross of Calvary. He pays so we don’t need to. Forgive? Who me? Only if I remember the way Jesus forgives me.

Two Christians, Bob and John, lived next door to each other in the suburbs. One day, Bob sawed down a tree that bordered their two properties. The tree fell and smashed John’s tool shed. John stormed out of his house and yelled at Bob. Bob yelled at John. Soon they had each other by the clothes, and finally John threw Bob to the ground. Bob got up and brushed himself off. "Now look here, John," he said, "it’s high time one of us acted like a Christian!" He paused for a moment, then glared at his neighbor, and said, "So, why don’t you turn your left cheek and let me punch you!?"

The devil wants us to imagine that we can derive a certain satisfaction from holding a grudge or even trying to get revenge. But such an unforgiving spirit is spiritual poison. When we refuse to forgive others, we endanger our own faith and salvation.

When we are unable to forgive we will become an imprisoned soul. We may assume that we are hurting the other person, but in reality, we are only hurting ourselves. The moment you start to resent a person you become their slave. They ruin your spirituality and nullify your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without them going along! There is no way to escape the person you resent. They are with you when you are awake. And they invade your privacy when you sleep.

So if you want to be a slave, go ahead and harbor your resentments. But if you want to be free, then God says we must forgive. As Corrie Ten Boom once wrote, "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that this prisoner was you." So we are to forgive because God has first forgiven us. And if necessary we are to forgive again and again and again. This is talking about the "little sins" – the minor slights or inconveniences we suffer. It is also talking about the "really big sins" like murder, rape, or terrorism.

Jesus continues the parable by saying: Now that same servant is on his way home to tell his wife the great news when he meets someone and remembers this guy owes him a day’s wage. He doesn’t talk mildly to this guy, he grabs him by the throat, tells him to fork over the twenty dollars or he’ll go to jail. The guy cannot pay, so he lands in jail.

The king learns about this and reads the first guy the riot act. He reminds him what was done for him, that a debt worth numerous generations of work was forgiven, but he couldn’t forgive a debt that could be worked off in a day. The furious king throws the man into jail until he could pay his debt.

The exaggerated point Jesus is making is this: If God can forgive our lifetime of sins and wrongs, then we can forgive one who slight us or hurt us. No matter how bad it may appear to us, no matter how hurt we are by what someone has done to us, in comparison to what God has forgiven us, it is like comparing $20 to $10 million of debt.

What Jesus is saying here is this: Our experience of forgiveness should change us into forgiving people. As the king said to this servant, "You wicked servant! Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" God expects us to forgive, again and again - it’s a commitment to forgive every day of our lives. It is not a single action, feeling or thought. Forgiveness is a way of life!

The way I see it is that you have three options 1) You can hold onto your anger and let the sin eat you up inside. 2) You can confront the person with the sin and then work on repentance on their part and forgiveness on your part. 3) Or you can ignore the slight and just forgive. Those who appreciate God’s gift of forgiveness will be more than ready to turn around and forgive those who sin against them. But there is a negative lesson as well. If a forgiven sinner has an unwillingness to forgive, a desire to withhold mercy from others, or a need to seek revenge, it can only mean that God’s forgiveness means little to him. In wanting to exact punishment from others, he places himself under the judgment and justice of a holy God.

In February 1998, the State of Texas prepared to execute Karla Faye Tucker, for her participation in the murder of Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton with a pickaxe in 1983. What brought this story to the national attention was Karla’s request for a stay from execution. She claimed to have become a born-again Christian while in prison. She wasn’t asking for freedom, simply mercy from the State of Texas in order to spend the rest of her life in prison working her special ministry to inmates. People from Pope John Paul to Rev. Pat Roberts on also asked for mercy. Un-persuaded by her conversion the prison authorities put Ms. Tucker to death on Feb. 3, 1998 by means of lethal injection.

When they laid Karla Faye to rest on February 5, 1998, about 40 relatives and friends attended the service. Those in attendance included her husband Dana Brown, the prison chaplain she married while in prison, Ronald Carlson, the brother of murder victim Deborah Thornton, and J.C. Mosier, the detective who helped crack the case 15 years before. They were there because they knew the need to forgive. Was it easy, No! Jesus never said it would be easy. But it is vital, both for the offender and the offended. Because you see, we forgive because God has forgiven us. Amen.

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Amen.