Perspective

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So, we are in our second week of this five-week series on Unaffendable, and you might wonder, how in the world can you preach for five weeks on this subject? But I think you'll see each one has a different aspect of this whole understanding, because, as Brent Hanson kind of said in his book, of all things, of all things, Christians should be known as the most unoffendable people in the world, in any culture. And why he says that is because we should be more about grace and forgiveness, not shying away from the truth about situations, but just that we are known as those people who can understand and identify with anybody in this world, just like Jesus did. Just like Jesus. Okay? So, it's a tough series in some ways. We're going to explore today the relationship between grace, forgiveness, and being unoffendable. How forgiveness that we have received from God makes us so that we can forgive others, and how that works. And we're going to be looking at one of the most, well, we're going to look at one of the most, I would say, subversive parables that Jesus ever spoke. I don't know if you realize this. Every one of Jesus' parables is actually subversive. He's telling a different story. There's always a twist, a surprise. We might not see it because 2,000 years later, we don't realize necessarily some of that. But in this story, there's like a shock after shock throughout this parable. And that's the one we're going to look at in Matthew chapter 18. If you want to follow along, any Sunday here, you can go to the YouVersion of the Bible. It's a free app you can get through the App Store. And when you have that, you go down to the More section on the bottom of the app, when you open it up, and type event or hit event, and immediately will pop up Thrive Community Church. It'll locate it, and then you get all the notes for this sermon, including the text. You got that already, Cody? Is that what you... you got it? Cool. It's right there, huh? Isn't that cool? Yeah. So, you don't have to listen anymore. You just can read. Now, so we're going to read this. Now, this parable comes up in the context of Peter asking... Peter thinks he's being like over-the-top, amazingly gracious to others. He asks the question, how many times does he need to forgive somebody if they've offended him? And in that day and age, three was the magic number. You do it three times, fourth time, you're out. Three strikes, you're out. Kind of that rule. And so he doubles that, and then he adds one. Let's make it seven. Boy, am I gracious. He's still keeping score, it's just he's just multiplied the score a little. So, let's read this in Matthew 18. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had in payment be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will repay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had happened, had taken place, they were greatly distressed. And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all the debt, that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. So today we're going to look at what this thing is called being unoffendable, being forgiving. Under three headings, why it's crucial. B. What is it? And C. How you actually do it. Why it's crucial. It kind of goes and this is what one of the shockers about this parable. Like I said, they are subversive. The shocker is Jesus seems to tie the way I forgive you with how I am forgiven. Do you understand? But it sounds like at first glance, if I don't forgive you that if I forgive, then I get to go to heaven. If I don't forgive, I'm going to the other place. Is that wh...