P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

FORGETTING YOU LIVE IN GRACELAND

It’s a great, great morning, your first day in heaven, as you stroll down the golden avenue. And then, all of a sudden, you see Fred. Fred?! That idiot! Back down on earth his dog ran through your rosebushes. Forgetting that you are now living in HEAVEN, you begin screaming at him.

I have an anonymous radio question for all of you married people out there in radio-land. Have you ever had a midnight dream where you forgot that you were married? And in this dream you were out there in the social jungle again, trying to find a date for Saturday night? Then all at once, it came flooding back: “Wait a minute! I’m already married! What in the world kind of foolish dream is this?”

Well, let’s not analyze too deeply the Freudian implications of this, what do you say? David Smith, our producer, tells me an interesting story on himself, going back to the very beginnings of his relationship with Lisa, his wife now for 21-plus years. He was 24 when they first met, and it was a head-over-heels, foggy-night-full-moon experience. I mean, within five weeks of when he first laid eyes on her in church, they were engaged. Six months to the day, they got married, and they’re well into their third decade of happy Christian life together.

About a week-and-a-half after they began dating, he drove up – alone – to his folks’ place in Northern California to spend the Thanksgiving break. And already, he and Lisa were a serious item. She was The One. A picture in the wallet, love letters in the glove compartment of the car, a box of cookies on the back seat. Phone calls every night. This was serious stuff, and even now the marriage altar was looming on the horizon. He got to St. Helena and told his folks: “I’ve met her. The hunt is over; she’s the one.”

Well, two days later after church, as they were all heading out to the parking lot, he happened to bump into an old female friend. Nothing serious had ever transpired between them, but — what do you know? — there was old Cindy again! And you know, OUT OF FORCE OF HABIT, as David now confesses the experience, he said to her: “Well, hey, Cindy. Nice to see you. Why don’t we get together tonight, let me buy you supper?” “Okay,” she said. “It’s a date.”

An hour later, over Sabbath dinner, he mentioned to his mom that he was going out. And she got very perplexed. “What are you talking about?” she wanted to know. “I thought Lisa was The One. Are you nuts?” Not those exact words, maybe, but she was genuinely confused. And David confesses that he himself was baffled. “Oh, yeah,” he said, smacking his own forehead with an I-coulda-had-a-V8 ferocity. “What was I thinking?” And you know, it was simply force of habit. For years he’d been on the prowl. Any girl who came along, he’d fished for a phone number, almost like the fictional Sam Malone, the bartender at Cheers, who was eternally looking for a girlfriend. It had been second nature for so long that he essentially forgot he’d now become a citizen, so to speak, of a new and better kingdom.

Well, to make a long story short, he called up Cindy and awkwardly explained the best he could. He extricated himself from the date, and the rest is happy history. But you know, friend, as we studied together yesterday the spiritual reality that forgiveness and grace are a brand new kingdom we as believers must move to, I think it’s true that often we just plain forget that we’ve gone there. We forget that we’ve moved into a house in Graceland. Even though we’re “married” to this loving, forgiving Friend, we keep forgetting . . . and dialing up our old girlfriends back in the land of legalism and unforgiveness.

It’s interesting that sometimes when the disciples asked Jesus a question, He would almost give a divine sigh. “Oh, come on, you guys,” He would say. “Are you serious?” As if to say: “Are you still clear down THERE? We don’t live there anymore!” He doesn’t do that in this story, but He must have been tempted to when Peter asked Him: “Uh, Jesus, how many times should we forgive each other? Seven would be way enough. Right?” For Jesus to hear a question like that must have been like the man who went on a cruise ship, didn’t understand that all the food was free, and packed along a whole stash of peanut butter sandwiches. It wasn’t until the last day where a steward found this starving vagabond and said: “Are you serious? It’s all free! It’s all included! All these feasts, these banquets, these buffets! It’s all included in the ticket price which was already paid!”

I remember reading once how NBA players, who are all multimillionaires flying around first-class and staying on the concierge level of five-star hotels, are tempted to take the extra bars of soap home with them. According to the gossip, Kurt Rambis, a very colorful player formerly with the Lakers, didn’t just take the soap from his own room, but would mooch from next door, taking Magic Johnson’s soap and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s soap too. Because he forgot he was a millionaire. He forgot he was a Laker, living in the Laker kingdom of championship banners and generous seven-figure paychecks. Somebody once observed, “That’s like a Rockefeller clipping coupons.” And friend, anytime we develop a hardened, unforgiving attitude toward those around us who are in the same ocean of God’s grace as we are, we’re just plain and simple forgetting that we are IN that ocean. God is telling us in these verses: “You can’t be in My swimming pool of forgiveness all by yourself. It’s not just your pool; it’s everybody’s pool.” And like David did on that Sabbath afternoon, when he realized that he already had a lady to love, a permanent date, we have to blush and say: “Oh, yes. I forgot. I forgot about grace. Please forgive me, Jesus, for forgetting.”

And of course you know that we have an enemy who wants us to forget, who wants to help us forget. Satan is always screaming in your ear: “You’re poor! You’re broke! You’re destitute! You’re not forgiven! Grab! Grab! Grab! Choke your neighbor over the five bucks he owes you! Devote your life to getting revenge!” Listen, every single day we’ve got to just immerse ourselves in the ocean of grace, of forgiveness, and remind ourselves that this is US. This is where we live. “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” Or, even better put: “Forgive because you ARE forgiven.”

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey does a little bit of his own bean-counting, or coupon-collecting, or soap-stealing for our consideration.
“Hindu scholars,” he writes, “have calculated with mathematical precision how long it may take for one person’s justice to work itself out [according to karma]: for punishment to balance out all my wrongs in this life and future lives, 6,800,000 incarnations should suffice.”

How about that for math? Friend, would you rather struggle through 6,800,000 cold, sterile lives of self-improvement and revenge and bean-counting, or simply bask in God’s generous ocean of grace freely given AND received AND passed along to others? Yancey goes on with a cute metaphor:

“Marriage gives a glimpse of the karma process at work,” he suggests. “Two stubborn people live together, get on each other’s nerves, and perpetuate the power struggle through an emotional tug-of-war. ‘I can’t believe you forgot your own mother’s birthday,’ says one. ‘Wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to be in charge of the calendar?’ ‘Don’t try to pass the blame to me — she’s your mother.’ ‘Yes, but I told you just last week to remind me. Why didn’t you?’ ‘You’re crazy — it’s your own mother. Can’t you keep track of your own mother’s birthday?’ ‘Why should I? It’s your job to remind me.’” Then Yancey concludes: “The inane dialogue bleats on and on through, say, 6,800,000 cycles until at last one of the partners says, ‘Stop! I’ll break the chain.’ And the only way to do so is forgiveness: I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

That brings it right down to the kitchen debate, doesn’t it? Right close to home, where you’re so angry with that spouse, that teenager, that co-worker, that boss. Despite these stories of Jesus, it’s so HARD to forgive, and so sweet to hold a grudge. But friend, it’s a temporary sweetness, and we all know it. We’ve all proved it. Long-term, an unforgiving spirit is going to destroy you. And besides, are our neighbor’s trespasses really so different from our own? C. S. Lewis once advised:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

By the way, let’s close with this. Do you know where Jesus got His famous number of “77” here in this story? Back in Genesis chapter 4, a great-great-great grandson of Cain named Lamech was locked in bitterness. A young man had injured him, and he swore to get his revenge. But not just revenge: he was going to get even, he said, 77 times over. “If Cain is avenged seven times” — you remember that God promised vengeance “seven times over” to anyone who harmed this rebellious vagabond — “I’m going for 77.”

And here in Matthew chapter 18, Jesus quietly tells us a better way. It’s a classic point-counterpoint spanning three thousand years. “No,” He says. “Instead, FORGIVE 77 times.” Which was His way of saying: “Don’t count. Don’t keep track. Get rid of your pathetic little pencil and your scorecard. Don’t live down there. Move up here to My Father’s kingdom instead, to this gentle ocean of grace and forgiveness. My lost, rebellious, red-in-the-face friend . . . please. Come on home.”