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THE FLICKERING FLAME OF FORGIVENESS

Every day of our lives, you and I forgive somebody, and then, half an hour later, we take it back. A day later, that trespass, that hurt, is still pounding in our brain and, hopefully, we forgive again. Does God do that? On again off again on again off again?

There’s a grim little story which tucks itself nicely into this parable by Jesus about people forgiving each other. Arizona Republic had it, and then we picked it up out of Leadership, which is published by Christianity Today. A man named Terry Mikel was pulled over one bright sunny day by a highway patrolman who had a meaningful dialogue with him about the spiritual topic of velocity. How fast the man’s car was going relative to the posted speed limits for that freeway. But the one-way conversation ended up in a Matthew chapter 18 kind of way; the Arizona policeman said to the naughty driver, “I’m going to let you off the hook. I am taking pity on you and canceling your debt.”

Wow! Wonderful! Thank you very much!

“Well, that’s all right,” the officer said. “Now, listen, you slow down and drive safe.” And, closing away his ticket book, putting his sunglasses back on and adjusting the brim of his hat, the lawman began to walk back to his car.

Now get this. The speeder, the guy who’s just been forgiven, Mr. Mikel, clears his throat and says to the cop: “Excuse me, officer, but you should say: ‘Slow down and drive safely.’ You said, ‘Slow down and drive safe,’ but ‘safely’ is really correct.” “Safely” being the adverb form, modifying the verb “drive” and so forth and so on.

Well, guess what happened next? Without a break in stride, the policeman turned around, came back to the car, wrote out a $72 speeding ticket, handed it to Terry, and then drove off, flashing his red light authoritativeLY – speaking of adverbs. And that is a true story! You can just file that little gem away under the category of “Stupid Stupid Stupid.” Sometimes you just keep your big trap shut, and only correct the grammar of people who don’t wear badges, carry guns, and wield ticket books.

And here in our radio series for this week, which we have titled THE LADY WHO WON A MILLION BUCKS FROM REGIS PHILBIN, THEN SQUABBLED WITH THE VALET OVER $20 OUT IN ABC’S PARKING LOT, we find the same thing happening again. A man is forgiven a huge debt: not one million dollars, but more like $6,221,880. So he drives down the highway rejoicing over his good fortune. “Thank God I am free!” he sings along with the car radio.

Well, exactly seven verses later we find that this same Mr. Lucky has had his own forgiveness taken away. It’s gone! The debt is back on! The loan sharks are on his case again! And gentle Jesus, meek and mild, leans into us and says very firmly — this is verses 34 and 35, from The Message paraphrase:
“The king was furious and put the screws to the man until he paid back his entire debt. And that’s exactly what my Father in heaven is going to do to each one of you who doesn’t forgive unconditionally anyone who asks for mercy.”

Now, what’s going on here? We generally like to preach here on the Voice of Prophecy that when a person is forgiven by heaven . . . that’s permanent! That’s irrevocable! God never changes His mind! Or does He? Can we be happy if we’re living with salvation that on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, like that faulty dome light in your car?

First of all, let’s find out what this forgiven man did to lose his forgiveness. Remember from yesterday that a servant of the king, who owed His Majesty ten thousand talents — essentially the largest monetary figure Jesus could come up with — has been forgiven the entire debt. It’s wiped out! But what happens exactly 17 seconds later in the story? We pick it up in verse 28:

“But when that servant went out, he found one of HIS fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.”

The NIV text notes say: “A few dollars.” Actually, it was a sizable amount — quite a few days’ pay for a common laborer — but a mere pittance in comparison to the six million he’d just had erased on HIM. And what does he do to this nickel-and-dime friend of his?

“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.’”

That’s word for word, by the way, the speech this same guy had just used on the king. But he doesn’t see it that way NOW. The former charity is completely forgotten. Digging his thumbs into the other man’s throat he demands his money. Verse 30 tells how he responds to the man’s plea for mercy:

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.”

And now we see the cop getting his ticket book back out and saying to himself, “On second thought . . .” In terms of divine mercy and forgiveness, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Here’s the end of the story:

“When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master [the king] 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 mercy on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”

You know, on a human level, this story makes all the sense in the world. That’s what scares us. A lot of Jesus’ parables are filled with heaven’s mercy and what we sometimes call “the upside-down math of the Kingdom,” but not this story. This story teaches fairness; we believe in fairness. It has a ring of “do unto others” — and we nod our heads to that too. All it doesn’t seem to have is the Christian gospel: forgiveness being an unconditional free gift. Because here’s a huge condition. “FORGIVE, and you will be forgiven.” Ephesians has it:

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, JUST AS in Christ God forgave you.”

We’re reminded of the fact that this little rejoinder is right in the Lord’s Prayer, too. Matt. 6:12:

“Forgive us our debts, AS we also have forgiven our debtors.” Then Jesus adds a bit more tit-for-tat theology: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will NOT forgive your sins.”

Well, friend, how does this story fits into grace and Calvary? That’s going to slip over into tomorrow; I can guarantee you. For right now let’s just notice that the man who was forgiven the large amount obviously hasn’t grasped the enormity of what was given him. He was let off to the tune of SIX MILLION BUCKS! How is it possible that he’s choking his own underling, trying to get $11.31 from HIM? One Bible scholar calculates the proportion between these two debts: ten thousand talents versus one hundred pence:

“Any limitation on the forgiveness [this servant] shows to his brother is unthinkable.” Now get this: “The fact that the second servant’s debt is ONE SIX-HUNDRED-THOUSANDTH of the first emphasizes the ludicrous impropriety of the forgiven sinner’s standing on his own ‘rights.’”

If you were with us Monday, we had a lot of fun letting Connie Jeffery pretend she had been a big winner on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I mean, in our (unfortunately) fictional story, she goes on the show and wins a cool million bucks. And wins the money, by the way, with the help of some out-and-out charity, forgiveness, from Regis Philbin. Then, five minutes later in the parking lot, she’s shaking the parking attendant by the throat and screaming: “Give me that twenty bucks you owe me!” Again I say, totally unadulterated fiction . . . and if you could meet Connie, you would instantly know it. But someone who gets out of that hot seat with a check for one million dollars, and then is worrying about a twenty-dollar bill in the parking lot . . . has a problem. Either they’re the most stingy person in America, or it hasn’t really sunk in that they ARE now a millionaire. Am I right?

Friend, we CANNOT be unforgiving if we truly grasp what God has done for US. It makes a mockery of Calvary if we go around trying to get twenty dollars out of each other — spiritually speaking — all the time. In fact, that mindset almost reveals that we’re still trying to pay off the original debt. In the book Christ’s Object Lessons, the author makes that very suggestion:

“When the debtor pleaded with his lord for mercy,” she writes, “he had no true sense of the greatness of his debt. He did not realize his situation. He hoped to deliver himself. ‘Have patience with me,’ he said, ‘and I will pay thee all.’ So there are many who hope by their own works to merit God’s favor. They do not realize their helplessness. They do not accept the grace of God as a free gift, but are trying to build themselves up in self-righteousness.” And what’s the result of this delusion? Notice: “Their own hearts are not broken and humbled on account of sin, and they are exacting and unforgiving toward others. Their own sins against God, compared with their brother’s sins against them, are as ten thousand talents to one hundred pence — nearly one million to one; yet they dare to be unforgiving.”

The question remains: can Regis Philbin take back the million bucks you just won?