The movie City Slickers came out back in the 90s, and though I realize as an adult how vulgar it is, the message of the movie comes down to one thing. Mitch is the main character of the movie and he has lost the drive in his life. When the movie really gets going we found out that it’s his birthday and he’s turning 39. He’s not in a good place in his life. His job is monotonous, though he is constantly cracking jokes, he’s a downer with everyone around him. His buddies are not in good places either. His best friend Phil is committing adultery giving the reason that it’s because he’s in a loveless marriage, and Ed, is always trying to be a better man than his father, but has made it an impossible task that he convinces his friends to follow him into doing crazy stuff almost every year.
This year the three friends head out to New Mexico to become cowboys, these city slickers, meet up with other people from various backgrounds and encounter Curly, the tough and scary trail boss. Mitch is convinced that Curly will kill him eventually, and when Curly tells Mitch they are going to leave the group to corral some strays, Mitch figures that this is his end. But through this time, Mitch strikes a bond with Curly and Curly reveals the message of the movie. In the scene Curly holds up his index finger and tells Mitch that life about one thing.
It’s not until Mitch finds himself later in the movie at deaths door as he is being carried away in a river trying to save a cow, that he realizes the one thing.
In all my years of working with people as a pastor I would say there is one thing that is missing from a lot of people’s lives. And unlike the movie that places that one thing as something you have to discover on your own that makes you happy, in the believers life that one thing is what God does for us and what we are to do for others.
So let’s open up in Matthew chapter 18, starting in verse 15 and look at that one thing together. And as we turn to Matthew 18:15, let's look back on where we are so far.
In the last several of weeks, we have looked at how Jesus calls us to a faith that is exercised, Holy Spirit transformative, constantly seeking God, and reapplying Jesus teachings.
This led us into Jesus’ fourth sermon where the question of, who is the greatest in the kingdom of God, was raised by the disciples. The first answer is, Jesus. He is the Mighty God and the Humble Servant. But for you and I who are Jesus’ disciples, those who are the greatest do not base it on how much you know, or how many miracles you have experienced, or how many of the gifts the Holy Spirit has granted you. No it comes down to one simple thing, do you practice the kind of faith that is child-like?
Do you trust God implicitly? Do you believe God fully? Are you like a child looking towards your Father in heaven? This is what it means to be the greatest in the kingdom, to be the lowest.
It’s this type of child-like faith that Jesus is calling us to; that if we don’t submit to practice it, then we will rebel against the next thing out of Jesus’ mouth. So let’s pick up the next thing in Matthew chapter 18, starting in verse 15.
15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times 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 bags of gold 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 “At this 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 silver coins. 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 it 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 outraged 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 handed 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 or sister from your heart.”
Moving from child-like faith to forgiveness is Jesus putting rubber to road. What’s one way to reveal if we are child-like in our faith or not? Trust Jesus when he says we need to forgive.
Here we see Jesus combine our personal faith, which is to be child-like, and that of the community of believers. One of the things we must understand here is that Jesus’ words are specifically speaking to the relationships we have between believers. There is a principle here that I believe can extend further than the Church, but we must realize that Jesus is specifically speaking about a relationship that is mutual in it’s seeking after Jesus.
So in the first half the passage we read, Jesus gives us a three-fold approach to seeking reconciliation. This is an underlying theme in this sermon. The reconciliation between humanity and God, which God initiates and humanity comes to through faith alone as child-like. That takes care of a central teaching of the Scripture, love God with everything (Mark 12:29-20). The part we just read seeks the reconciliation between each other. Another central teaching of Scripture, love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31).
This three-fold approach to reconciliation between believers goes like this: If a sin is made against you by another believer, you are to go straight to them and talk with them about it.
Too often I am told about people who have hurt each other in the church. Sometimes I ask, “Have you talked with them?” But most of the time I don’t need to, because it’s obvious they haven’t. But, even though I am the pastor, I should not be the first person someone speaks to about a fellow believer that has sinned against them. Nor should anyone else.
Jesus is teaching that if someone sins against us, then we go straight to them. We don’t speak about it to other people.
And we can’t use the excuse, well I was just getting counsel on what to do. Jesus has already spoken, you are to go to the person who you feel has sinned against you and speak to them. So if someone comes to you and talks to you about someone else who has hurt them, it’s your responsibility to direct them to talk with that person and not with you.
Jesus says if the person responds positively then the relationship has been restored. But if they don’t then you go to step two: Bring with you a person, or two, so that you have both a witness to the situation, and a mediator. This means that it can’t be someone who will take your side. If we’re wrong, we need someone who will tell us, so that we can seek reconciliation. But it’s really easy at this point to get someone who we know will take our side, but we need someone who is respected by both the other person and us. And we should take their counsel seriously. That means we need to be prepared for being wrong. We can avoid that by taking and applying Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:1-5, where Jesus instructs us to self-examine ourselves before we speak to someone in the first place.
Again, if the person responds positively the relationship is restored. But if not, then the situation is to be take in front of the Church itself.
The reason for this is because there’s a rebelliousness here that is going to cause division. Sides are going to be taken and the issue needs to be resolved in front of the community of believers so that division can be stopped. But this is where the bucking starts. I have found that up until this point, most people are in agreement with what Jesus says in these last two chapters. People tend to agree that, yes, we should go to the person in private to resolve the issue; yes we should have unbiased mediators to help resolve the problem. But it’s at this point where I have seen people start getting sour faces, and rebellious attitudes towards what Jesus says here.
In fact, the first time I taught this passage to teens was around fourteen years ago. One Sunday morning I was teaching on how to mend broken relationships and I walked the teens through this passage just as I have today. When I got to this point, one girl stood up and said, “what gives you the right to make a decision in my life?”
The seething resentment of having a “jury” as it were over her, as she claimed to be a believer, was dripping from her words. And the focus of that seething rebellion was against me the pastor. I told her, from God and his Word and that it was the Church not just the pastor who Jesus was speaking about. What’s interesting is that there happen to be a time in the future where I had to speak into this particular teen’s life, and do you know what the response was? Rejection. In fact, both her parents and grandparents, who attended our congregation at the time, chastised me, for speaking God’s Word into this young girl’s life and the family left the church.
Here Jesus gives the Church, not a just a single pastor, but the gathered believers the responsibility and authority to speak into each other’s lives when conflict between believers cannot be settled through one-on-one and witness counsel.
It is this responsibility that the New Testament Corinthian Church was not taking seriously, and was rebuked by Paul in his first letter. It is a responsibility that the modern western church shrinks away from because who gives us the right to make such decisions.
But the whole issue here stems from pride and self-centeredness. We should always seek reconciliation. The purpose of treating a person who will not recognize their sin as a pagan and tax collector, is to recognize that the person is in rebellion to God. So what should a believer do? Pray for the person. Speak the truth in love to the person. Never give up on the person, but continue to seek reconciliation between them and God and them and us. Because it’s reconciliation that is at the heart of God.
But then Matthew, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, connects this teaching to a question by Peter. We’re switched from a person who is in rebellion to our role in this whole thing. It’s easy to think that we can write such a rebellious person off, but no, what are we to do? Forgive. We are to forgive that brother, or that sister for their sin. We’re to forgive that father, or mother, or neighbor, or co-worker, or spouse, or that random driver on the road, for their sin against us.
And not just for one infraction, but for the infinite amount of infractions that are against us. This is why Jesus says, seventy times seven. Why? Because that’s what God does for us. Jesus shares the parable of the Unmerciful Servant. God is the merciful master and we have a choice to respond like our master with forgiveness, or to misuse the forgiveness extended to us by not extending it to others.
Here, Jesus uses strong language once again. Jesus connects the master’s words in verses 32 and 33 with God in verse 35, “‘You wicked servant…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?’”, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Reconciliation is God’s heart, and his people should be of the same heart. Forgiveness is a by-product of a child-like faith. This is because a child tends to forgive quickly for trespasses against them, that most of us would harbor for years. But Jesus’ disciples are to be quick forgivers. And not just once, but over and over and over and over again. This is the one thing that a lot of believers miss and desperately need.
This is why I think Romans 5:8 is such a pivotal verse for us as Christian to memorize, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God has done so much for us. He is the master who has forgiven our great and insurmountable debt. Yet, too often we turn around on others, and do not extend that same debt canceling service.
God is calling all of us to a forgiveness lifestyle. Where we forgive quicker then we can hold on to hatred. A faith that seeks to live reconciled relationships, not harboring anger or unforgiveness towards others, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.
My challenge for you this week can be both simple and excruciatingly hard. Are you harboring unforgiveness towards someone? A mother, father, uncle, aunt, cousin, sibling, spouse, child, neighbor, or anyone else? This week I want you to walk through the passage we read today and seek God to work in you by the Holy Spirit to seek reconciliation with that person. Do not let another week go by where unforgiveness holds you in its grip. Because it’s a seed of destruction that is taking root and effecting all other aspects of your life. And when I say all others, I mean all others. Spiritually, physically, emotionally, all the allys.
Let us be a people who are known to be like our Master, forgiving, good, and abounding in love (Psalm 86:5). Amen.
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