Creed III - Forgiveness

Dan Osborn

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Now Playing • Sermon • Submitted 3 months ago • Presented 3 months ago

Matthew 18:21–35

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Welcome and Intro to Series

Welcome Introduce the Series

Set up the trailer

Invite people to grab candy

Band Plays for 90 seconds

Trailer

The trailer plays as people are settling back in.

Series Summary

I’m actually really excited for this series and it’s not because of the specific movies we’re doing, it’s because of the process we’re going to go through while we engage the questions that come up in these movies.

We intuitively know this, but stories are powerful, aren’t they?

The great author and philosopher, C.S. Lewis, had a great line to talk about the power of stories. He was defending his decision to put some of his best work in the form of what many considered to be “fairy-tales”; the Chronicles of Narnia.

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices…But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could."

In other words, he’s saying that it’s one thing to be given a list of propositions you ought to believe about the world, but when we are confronted with the same kind of ideas in the form of a story, those ideas often sneak past the defense mechanisms of our minds and make their way to our hearts.

This is why a good story has a way of drawing us in—making us question what we really believe, what we really find beautiful, and what we really are hope for in this world.

Now, you probably have picked up on this, but there are both good and dangerous elements to the power of stories. If they can sneak past the defenses we put up, the real question is about what value, goodness, and beauty of those ideas that seek to make a home in our hearts.

Do you remember that old greek myth of the Trojan horse? The Greeks, stuck in a years-long Trojan War, build a giant wooden horse and pretend to sail away. Inside hides their elite soldiers. The Trojans, believing it an offering, bring the horse in, celebrating victory. That night, Greeks emerge, open the gates to their comrades who'd doubled back, and conquer Troy.

Well, depending on what side you’re on in that ‘war’, that’s either a massive victory or a devastating defeat, right?

This is exactly how stories work. Each story is like a trojan horse.

Only, it’s not filled with soldiers but something far more powerful…ideas.

Our role then is then is got outside the city gates, and check out the horse…and as best we can figure out what’s inside and whether or not we’re going to “let it in”

And the reality is, we have to do this all the time! But for the next four weeks, we’re going to work at this together looking at these stories to see what’s inside the horse. And my hope is that we all walk a way with a better grasp on how to do this in our own lives.

So, now with that said, let’s take a look at the first Horse of this series!

PLAY THE TRAILER

Summary of Creed III

Now, no spoilers here. And you don’t need to have seen Creed I or II for this story to make sense. In fact, if you’ve seen Black Panther or even The Lion King, you’ve pretty much seen Creed III. They all follow the same basic plot line—and even those movies are just modernized versions of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Michael B. Jordan plays Donnie, who is a boxing champion—chronicled in the first two movies. But in Creed III he’s confronted by his best friend from childhood, Damien, who’s spent the last 18 years in prison for a crime that Donnie was actually involved in. Donnie got away, Damien went to prison.

Now he’s out and wants his shot at the title—and revenge.

Dramatic. I know.

Now, the undercurrent of the movie follows Donnie’s guilt as he tries to figure out how he can make up for what’s happened…or if he really need to make up for it at all.

It’s a story about guilt and forgiveness.

How does that actually work?

And I recognize that this is not a theoretical question. If we leave it in the theoretical realm, this is going to be pretty boring message.

But I think what makes this story a compelling one to look at is that it takes a very common experience - being guilty of something - and the recognized desire for forgiveness! And this trojan horse asks the question: what actually is forgiveness? Does it actually work? And if so, how?

Now to examine that “trojan horse”, I want to look at what I think is one of the most potent stories of Jesus in the New Testament to see what he has to say about this forgiveness. So if you have a bible with you, open up to book of Matthew. First book in the New Testament. Matthew chapter 18 and we’ll be in vv. 21-35.

I’ll read the passage.

Matthew 18:21–35 (ESV)

21 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?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

28 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.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

What is Forgiveness?

Here’s the first question for us today: what is forgiveness?

You know, I think it’s one of those rare words that actually has a pretty good shared understanding.

Think of first two characters in Jesus’ story - the king and the servant.

The servant owes the king an enormous amount of money. Or, put another way, the servant has a debt to the king.

This is something the servant ought to pay back as the money rightfully belongs to the king.

The servant is unable to pay the debt - but on the verge of being thrown in the prison, conceivably for the rest of his life, pleading, the king does what?

He forgives.

He let’s go of the debt.

This is the first pivotal moment in the story—and let’s be clear about what Jesus is talking about.

The king does not simply defer the debt to a later date, giving this man more time. More than that, he does not just move on from the debt as if it’s not really a big deal to him in the first place. In fact, one of the intriguing features about this story is the absurd size of the debt in v. 24, “ten thousand talents”. It would be somewhere in the realm of sixty-million days wages in that day - the point is that it’s an obscenely large debt that this man obviously cannot pay back. But this large number cuts both ways - it’s just that the man can’t repay. It’s also that the king cannot simply overlook this. And so the act of releasing the debt is done a great personal cost to the

And I so think as we try answer the question, ‘what is forgiveness’, two initial elements from Jesus would be that forgiveness is the “releasing” and to some extent “absorbing” of a debt someone owes you.

The Problem with Forgiveness

And when we have those three elements, “releasing,” “absorbing” of something “owed” to you, I think we’ll start to recognize why forgiveness is an incredibly challenging practice. More than that, we’ll start to understand why the world around has an increasing intolerance for forgiveness.

And it’s because for you to forgive someone, you are willing to step in front and say “the thing you owe me…” I’m not just going to release you from the debt, I’m going to absorb the blow myself.

I was stuck by one author who said:

Forgiveness, then, is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.

And it’s one thing to “forgive” someone who says something behind your back…or who looses their temper with you.

But where this gets really complicated is when we’re talking about some of the most painful things that have happened to you or through you.

When your spouse—whom you’ve always been able to trust—betrays you. When a close friend—for whom you’ve cared deeply—stabs you in the back. When a family member—the one who should have taken care of you—takes advantage of you.

What is forgiveness supposed to look like then? Should that even be part of the equation? More than that, what if you’re not the one was hurt but the one who hurt?

What if it’s your debt?

PAUSE

See I think the question we actually wrestle with is this: does forgiveness apply to me and my situation? Can I extend it? Can I receive it?

This is the messy side of forgiveness. And one of the things that I think we struggle with in talking about it is that we feel like forgiveness cheapens what’s actually happened.

Interestingly, there is growing push back against the idea of forgiveness for this very reason. For more and more people, forgiveness feels like we’re excusing real evils and injustices in the world around us—that forgiveness removes accountability and let’s people continue doing what they’re doing under the assumption they’ll just be forgiven again.

For many people today, forgiveness is not just weak, it’s immoral. And all the more when those who have been hurt are encouraged (or coerced) to forgive those who have hurt them.

I think the problem of Forgiveness is perfectly articulated in the central tension of the movie: how is Donnie Creed able to deal with the guilt over the fact that his actions led to the 18 year imprisonment of his childhood best friend. The story is dripping with guilt and begging for forgiveness, and as one New York Times columnist said,

There’s just something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement, but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness.

Like I said, this whole topic is messy. It’s not the “vanilla” topic we might originally it is because as soon as we start trying to figure how it actually works, we get tangled up in a web of competing voices and values all telling us what makes sense and how it works.

PAUSE

But what if the way forward is not figure out why forgiveness actually makes sense…but to first acknowledge that it is, fundamentally, backwards?

PAUSE

You see, I think the story Jesus tells in Matthew 18 shows us there is something upside down about the practice of forgiveness. It is not intuitive. It is not what comes natural. It’s not something we can merely must up the emotional energy for.

Gospel of Forgiveness

If we look back to the story again, we notice that the King is willing to release a debt from this man that will inevitably harm him. The King takes the hit. The king willing steps into the broken aftermath. But not because he won’t really feel it but in spite of the fact that he actually will!

See, the startling thing about forgiveness is not that it may be costly but that it certainly will be! Some of you know what it’s like to be confronted by that cost—certainly more than others of us have. In a room like this, there are bound to be some of us that have spent years wrestling an impulse to forgive and a deep reluctance to give in to that impulse.

And we tell ourselves that time will work it out - that it will heal.

But does it?

We tell ourselves - eventually we’ll get over it — but do we?

No.

See, I think what’s becoming clear is that to talk about forgiveness is not simply to say let something go but, along with the king, to willing step in to harms way, not fully sure of how the other person will respond.

And friends, when we think about this this way, we start to see why forgiveness is at the very heart of the story of Gospel. That you and I, in a spiritual sense, all find ourselves in the position of the servant — with an enormous debt. And we may having varying degrees of awareness of that debt, but it’s there! In our failure to live the way God has created us…as a part of what it means to be human, we have all fallen short of the way God has called us to live. And before an infinite King, we have an enormous debt that we cannot pay off our selves. The human story is that there is no amount of work we can do to pay off the debt.

And yet, like the King in the story, God is one who feels deeply and responds with a profound compassion! In his grace, we gives us what we don’t deserve and takes the debt.

But just like the King deals with the debt by absorbing the blow, so our King feels by stepping down into Human history in the person of Jesus, God in the flesh, who lives the life we should have lived and yet lovingly/willingly choose to take on the debt we incurred. And in our place, Jesus takes on our death, in our place for our sin, for our Debt!

You see, what marks Christianity as unique among the world religions and worldviews is that its only in Christianity that God steps down in the place of humanity, he condescends to our position!

This is forgiveness! It is the upside down / backwards way of Jesus that does not conform to our own set of cultural values, it confront, it challenges and pushes back on everything that feels natural

Jesus releases our debt and takes the blow.

And the result is we are in a brand new state…with a brand new condition. We are forgiven. By faith in Jesus, we are forgiven.

Full stop. By faith in Jesus you receive full, unmitigated, forgiveness. By faith, your debt is paid in full.

This is why I say Forgiveness in unnatural! And until we see that, it will remain in this realm of maybe a nice idea but something that ultimately asks more than we’re willing to give.

Application of Forgiveness

Now, as w finish up I want to close with some very very practical thoughts on Forgiveness…

And none of these are offered as the definitive answers, but really as the start of a conversation that you need to have. [EXPAND]

The state of forgiven empowers the practice of forgiveness.

Finish the story.

Forgiveness is a process.

There is an unseen but powerful felt toll to chronic un-forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not remove consequence.

Forgiveness does not mean reconciliation.

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