Extreme Makeover: Thick Skin
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
I was in Ethan’s room the other night after he had already fallen asleep. I looked at the outline of his body underneath the covers and it was hard to believe how far down those little legs went. I remember spending Sunday afternoons watching football with him sleeping on my chest, his little legs didn’t even reach to my waist and in such a short time, he’s grown so much that those memories of the tiny little baby are all but gone. If you have little children, you know what I mean. It’s a joy to watch them grow and there’s nothing we can do to stop the growth process in their lives. God looks down on us in the same way. For a Christian, growth should be natural and God wants to see evidence of that growth that’s taking place in us. He wants us to look different this month than we did last month and to continue to grow from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity.
So, we’ve been looking at this idea of Extreme Makeover, Life Edition. We’ve looked at those areas in our lives that need to change for growth to happen. We began with internal change. A broken heart that changes the way we view sin, calloused knees that know how to pray and develop an intimacy with God and crossed eyes, eyes that focus on the cross of Christ and in doing so, our meaning and purpose become clear. When these internal changes happen, the outside is going to begin to reflect the inside. Out of our relationship with Him is to flow our relationship with His children. Last week we looked at the first visible, outward sign of change, a pierced tongue. This is a tongue that is under the control of God. It’s a tongue that builds up and encourages, that is truthful and free from gossip and slander and cursing. It’s people being able to see that you’re different by the way that you talk. And finally, this morning, I want to look at another change that deals with our relationships. God wants us to have thick skin.
My daughter hates to wear shoes. She always takes them off as soon as she can get away with it and loves to run around barefoot. The skin on the bottom of her feet has gotten visibly thicker than the rest of her skin. It protects her feet from getting hurt by some of the things that she steps on, there are still things that will penetrate it and hurt her, but a lot of what would hurt most people, won’t even phase her, she’s developed thick skin.
God has made us all with a complex system of emotions. Some of us wear them on our sleeves, some of us hide them very well, but all of us have them and because of that, all of us have the ability to be hurt; to experience pain and sadness and disappointment and often it comes from the way that we’re treated by other people.
The Christian with thick skin is able to deal with the hurt, deal with the pain, and extend forgiveness to the person or persons who have hurt them. It doesn’t mean that they don’t hurt or that they are immune to anger or bitterness over the actions of others, but they have learned not to let it consume them. The Christian who develops thick skin is the one who understands the nature and the necessity of forgiveness. Forgiveness, this is one of the hardest things for many of us to do. We live in a day and age where we love to blame. We blame anything on anyone and then feel that we are justified to hold a grudge and to return pain for pain. The reality is that a lot of us like to hold onto those things that are done to us, we hold onto the anger, we dwell on the pain, we think of ways that we can get even, but God says to us, don’t let it penetrate, let it go, and trust me to take care of it. Learn to forgive. Why? Because God has forgiven us. For a Christian, choosing not to forgive is not an option.
Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:15 in as clear a way as possible.
But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
There is not the slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity p104-105)
Without forgiveness, there is no relationship with God, and our ability to forgive goes hand in hand with experiencing God’s forgiveness in our lives. This is a teaching that is often ignored, it’s a teaching that is often not fun to look at or talk about. All of us have been hurt, all of us are tempted to hold a grudge, but because of the price that was paid to obtain our forgiveness, God commands that we forgive freely as well. For a Christian not to forgive is the epitome of a double-standard.
Jesus addresses this sensitive issue in Matthew 18:21-35.
In this passage we get a good look at the forgiveness of God and in looking at that we can see the Truth about us and the way that we need to forgive. Peter begins by bringing the question of forgiveness to Jesus. Jesus had just finished teaching them how to deal with a brother who has sinned against you and Peter wants to know how many times he has to forgive someone before he could just write them off. READ VERSE 21. Peter is actually being very generous when he offers to forgive seven times. The Jewish Rabbinic law demanded that forgiveness be extended three times and then after that the person was to be cut off. So, Peter has more than doubled that, perhaps he’s being a bit showy in front of the other disciples here with his willingness to forgive so often.
Jesus does what He has been doing throughout his ministry, He begins to teach another way, not the way of the law, but the way of love. The Kingdom that he came to establish, God’s kingdom, was not one that was ruled by man’s laws, instead it was characterized by God’s love and in that kingdom, the standard that was being set was forgiveness. Not a limited forgiveness, but a complete one, extended to everyone, as often as need be. READ VERSE 22. He tells Peter, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. The Greek there can also be translated seventy times seven. The exact number is not the issue, Jesus is saying that we are to forgive, over and over again, without limit. And to the answer the puzzled looks on his disciples faces, those men who still didn’t quite get who this was or what He had come to do, he tells a story. So, he begins by saying, the kingdom of heaven is like this…there was this king.
Read 23-35 In this King we see God’s forgiveness illustrated. The first truth that we see in that it is:
1) Is Costly.
We’re told that the servant owed the king a sum of ten thousand talents. In those days, a talent was equal to about 15 years wages. 15 years wages!!! If you go with a conservative number today and figure 20,000 a year then 10,000 talents is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 billion dollars, give or take. I don’t care how rich this King was, this is an extremely large amount of money. I think that Jesus’ aim here was to show beyond any misunderstanding the fact that this was a debt that could not possibly have been paid back. What was owed and what the servant had the means to pay would never be equal. The king knew this and yet chose to forgive the debt. He chose to wipe it clean and give this servant the chance to live in freedom, out from under the weight of this impossible debt. To the servant it was a chance at life, to the King it was a decision that came at a great personal cost.
In using this story, Jesus is pointing out the position that all of us find ourselves in. It’s the nature of who we are, sinners in the presence of a Holy God.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
This God is a just God, and because He is just, a penalty had to be paid for the sins committed against Him. As we bow before the King, our debt had already secured our punishment, death and separation from the God we long to know. Yet, in his great love for us, God chose to forgive. And this decision carried with it a great cost, the life of His Son Jesus upon the cross.
Romans 3:24 Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. 25 For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. 26 And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus.
So, God is that King, He has forgiven us our impossible debt, but it came at great cost, the sacrifice of His Son. Jesus Christ, the perfect, sinless lamb who would satisfy the penalty for our sins.
The second truth that this story points out about the forgiveness of God is that it:
2) Is Undeserved.
My father was and is an imposing man. He was the main source of discipline in our house. When he spanked you it was an experience that you didn’t forget any time soon and it was enough to make you think long and hard before you messed up. Despite that, my brother and I often needed that gentle nudge toward holy living that only the paddle could deliver. My brother and I had gotten in trouble for something, it was most likely his fault and I had just been dragged into it and we had been sent to our rooms for the afternoon. Well, my father was taking a nap and my mother went to the store and we decided we could probably play outside without getting caught. Things went great until my father walked out and caught us. We were dead in the water. We had blatantly disobeyed and now we faced the penalty for our disobedience. As we went inside and my father got the paddle, my brother and I both began to cry and when my father came back, we apologized through our tears and begged him to forgive us. He lowered the paddle, sent us both back to our rooms and there was no spanking that day. That was the last thing we expected or deserved! We were guilty, we were caught red handed, we deserved to pay and yet my father decided to forgive and withhold that penalty. It was totally undeserved.
We see this played out on a much larger scale here, the servant of the King was in no position to ask for or to receive forgiveness of his debt. The king had every right to make the man pay, to sell him and his family as slaves and to sell all of the man’s possessions and even if he had done all of that, the debt would have been far from satisfied. So, the servant did what any of us would do if faced with a hopeless situation like this, he begged to be delivered, and as he fell to his knees and begged for mercy, the last thing that he probably expected was for that mercy to actually be given to him, but it was.
Each of us owes that debt that we talked about, an un-payable debt and yet God has provided a way for that debt to be paid and it was completely undeserved. God could have wiped his hands of us and said if that’s how they want to act, if that’s the thanks I get, well I want nothing to do with them. Instead, when man sinned and turned from Him, he put into motion a plan to provide us with a relationship with Him again, as He originally intended even though it went completely against the penalty we deserved.
PS 103:10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
PS 103:11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
We deserve death and punishment, instead he offers us life and the opportunity to be His children and share in the inheritance that is ours in Christ and that none of us deserve.
Finally, the third truth that we see here about God’s forgiveness is that it:
3) Is Complete.
The king did not simply give him more time or reduce the debt that was owed; he wiped it away completely and forgave it in its entirety. He forgave it in a way that made the servant no longer responsible to account for what was owed. It was gone.
Praise God that’s how He deals with our sins. When we ask for forgiveness, when we repent and ask that God remove our sins, that’s what he does.
PS 103:12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Not only does he forgive, but he removes our sin. He removes the guilt, the shame, and the condemnation that accompany our sin and he remembers them no more.
PS 130:3-4 If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
His forgiveness is complete; he removes the debt and remembers it no more.
That is the forgiveness of our Lord. It came at a great cost to God, it is undeserved by us, and it is perfect in its completeness. As Christ continues the parable, you see that the man who was forgiven a tremendous debt was unwilling in his life to forgive even a small one for someone else. He just didn’t get it. So, to avoid the same mistake, when we look at the issue of forgiveness in our lives, the forgiveness that we show to others, we have to have an understanding of God’s forgiveness first. This puts ours in the proper perspective. When we accept this perfect forgiveness and all of the benefits that accompany it, we are also accepting the responsibility to forgive others in the same way that we are forgiven.
We have to understand that forgiveness in our life:
1) Will Cost Us
C.S. Lewis: “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Forgiveness is hard!
There are some who have been hurt badly. They’ve been wronged by family or friends, betrayed, abused, neglected, berated, cheated, scorned, mocked, mistreated in every way imaginable and yet God says that in light of the forgiveness that we receive, we must also forgive in every situation.
You may say, Pastor, You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what was said about me, you don’t know what was done to me. I can’t possibly forgive. That may be true, I may not know what has been done to you but I know that God commands that we forgive though it will cost us.
The servant was owed around 10,000 dollars by his fellow servant. That’s a lot of money, it would have been a sacrifice to forgive that debt, but held up to the debt that the king forgave, that amount was nothing. Because of what it cost God to forgive us, forgiving others, in any circumstance, is a command, not a suggestion. We need to understand that we have been forgiven more than we will ever be asked to forgive in our lives.
When we forgive, it will cost us our:
A. Right to be a Victim
There are times that we enjoy being the victim and the sympathy that often comes with that. Many people use their circumstances, what’s been done to them to justify all sorts of sin and rebellion in their lives. When we forgive, we move from being the victim to being the victor and we stand up and say that the sins of another will not dictate the way we act or respond. We respond according to who we are in Christ, not who we’ve been told that we are by others.
B. Right to Revenge
A mother ran into the bedroom when she heard her seven-year-old son scream. She found his two-year-old sister pulling his hair. She gently released the little girl’s grip and said comfortingly to the boy, "There, there. She didn’t mean it. She doesn’t know that hurts." He nodded his acknowledgement, and she left the room. As she started down the hall the little girl screamed. Rushing back in, she asked, "What happened?"The little boy replied, "She knows now."
Our nature is to get even. You’ve heard the saying, I don’t get mad, I get even! When we forgive, we give up our right to repay pain for pain and we trust that God is responsible to judge that person for what they’ve done and we leave the punishment to Him.
Romans 12:18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."
RO 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Forgiveness forfeits our right to revenge and it shows a love that will point others to the love that Christ has for us. This doesn’t mean that we surrender the right to restitution or justice where that is appropriate, our forgiveness does not mean that all things should go unpunished, it just means that we’re not taking it upon ourselves to be the instrument of that punishment or justice. We’re not embracing a “you did this to me so now I do this to you” attitude. We’re trusting that God will provide justice.
Forgiveness in our lives:
2) Must be Shown even if Undeserved
There is a story that Corrie Ten Boom liked to tell:
Years after her concentration camp experiences in Nazi Germany, Corrie ten Boom met face to face one of the most cruel and heartless German guards that she had ever contacted. He had humiliated and degraded her and her sister. He had jeered and taunted, leering at them as they stood in the delousing shower.
Now he stood before her with hand outstretched and said, "Will you forgive me?" She writes: "I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I prayed, Jesus, help me!
“Woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms and sprang into our clutched hands.
“Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ’I forgive you, brother,’ I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in that moment!" To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.
There is nothing in this life that that man could have done to repay the wrong that had been committed. He could not have made things up to this lady if he had a thousand lifetimes to do it in. Truth be told, no one would have blamed her if she had slapped him in the face and ran away. But she looked at forgiveness through the filter of God’s forgiveness first and knew what she had to do. There are those who hurt us that do not deserve our love and forgiveness, but we are called to extend it to them nonetheless. The true beneficiary of forgiveness is the one who forgives. When we nurse a grudge, it has the potential to consume us. While the other person has most likely moved on, we are stuck replaying the situation over and over and letting that person and what they did to us consume us! Forgiveness may be hard, the one forgiven may not deserve it, but there is tremendous freedom to be found in forgiving as God has forgiven us.
Finally, our forgiveness:
3) Must be as Complete as Humanly Possible
God can forgive and remove the sin from us. He can forgive and truly forget. We can’t. But we’re called to forgive in as complete a way as humanly possible, our actions and our words should back up the forgiveness that we extend. Have you ever been in a situation where someone claims to forgive you but their body language and their attitude says otherwise? Or you know that they are still talking about what you did to them when they’re with others. This is not genuine forgiveness.
Now, genuine forgiveness does not mean that we are to be naïve and put ourselves right back in a situation where we can be taken advantage of.
If I gave Woody $100 and sent him to get pizza for a youth group event and he spent the money on lottery tickets instead, I would not hesitate to forgive him, but the next time I need pizza picked up, I would definitely send someone else until he had earned the right to be trusted again. We should learn our lessons well and use our common sense.
When we forgive, it doesn’t mean that trust is immediately restored, but it does mean that we won’t constantly drag that sin out and wave it in their face as a reminder of what was done. It does mean that we aren’t complaining about what happened to everyone that we meet. It does mean that we are praying for and lifting up the person with the hope that restoration can take place.
Our forgiveness will never be complete like God’s but we are to give it anyways and it needs to be done with sincerity, and to the best of our ability. Verse 35 says that it is to be from our heart. It will always be a process, and the deeper the hurt is, the longer the process, but when we choose to forgive we are showing the world a living example of God’s love and forgiveness and we are freeing ourselves from the bondage of our circumstances and trusting that God will provide for our healing and growth.
For us to forgive:
We need to ASK God for the STRENGTH to do it.
We need to UNDERSTAND the COMMAND to do it.
We need to TRUST God to WORK OUT the Details.
Why is this so important? Because the parable ends with the servant being given his original sentence as a result of his refusal to forgive as he was forgiven.
Most of us have been hurt at one point. Many in this room have been hurt badly. From many things that have been said I believe that there is still pain and un-forgiveness in many hearts from some of the things that took place in this ministry. An unforgiving heart cannot draw near to God. An unforgiving heart cannot experience the beauty of God’s forgiveness that He freely offers to us. Who is it in your life that you can’t forgive. Jesus says that if we know that we have something between us and another, we should go and take care of it first and then we can care for our relationship with God.
As we enter into a time of communion, I want you to ask God for the strength you need to make your relationships with those who have hurt you right. The stakes are high, we are forgiven only in the measure that we forgive others. God says the standard of His kingdom is forgiveness and those who don’t forgive will not be a part of this kingdom. God may be asking you to forgive someone who has hurt you beyond words. But if He reveals an unforgiving spirit to you this morning, commit to doing your part to forgive, trusting God to work out the details. Deal with it now, go from here and make it right. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. LET’S PRAY
