Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

A couple of weeks ago we talked about how God delivered the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, led them through the Red Sea and on their way to the Promised Land. But between those two places they spent 40 years in the wilderness, where they did a lot of complaining. Next weekend we’re going camping for one night. And it’s not exactly hard-core camping either; we’re going to have all of our meals prepared for us, we’ll have use of an actual bathroom, and if it rains or gets cold we can go inside the barn. This will be luxurious camping. Even though I’m sure we’ll have a really good time, I imagine that we’ll be happy to sleep in our own beds the next night. Now imagine camping for 40 straight years. Nothing had a permanent place; everything could be picked up and moved. Imagine how disorganized that would be. And these are God’s chosen people on the 40 year camping trip, the one’s he decided to make a covenant with, the one’s through whom he’ll save all the nations. And God himself was camping too. Later they would build God a temple, but for a long time God dwelt in the tabernacle, which was just a really big tent. So if you’re camping for 40 years and you’re God’s chosen people and light to the nations, you could probably use some rules to order your crazy life. And this is when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

I’m guessing that no one here is a big fan of rules. You all are at an age when rules seem especially uncool. You do have more freedom that you did as a child (you’re allowed to go the bathroom by yourself, for instance) but there are all sorts of rules that probably just seem unnecessary, if not silly. I’m sure that you all could easily tell me about rules from school that you think are stupid and how much you resent having to follow them. We don’t like being treated like children. Maybe we think it’s good to have rules for other people, but we really don’t want them to apply to us. We’re all exceptions to the rules. It’s easy to think that principals and teachers make up rules just for the sake of having rules, just to have some way of getting you in trouble, just because they don’t like you. They’re probably not as mean as that. I expect that all the rules have some purpose in mind, even if they’re not helpful in achieving what they’re intended to. A lot of rules seem arbitrary, or pointless, or perhaps even counterproductive.

I think we often feel this way about God’s rules as well. The Old Testament is full of rules that seem bizarre. Some of you are aware of the prohibition of tattoos, which might possibly make some sense to you. But here’s the verse that immediately precedes it: “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard” (Lev 19:27). What does that have to do with anything? Was God just giving the Israelites busywork? Did God think it was fun to see how many strange rules he could make up just so he could get mad when we broke them? These are, of course, silly questions, but there are many people who think that being a Christian has mostly to do with following rules, and that these rules don’t make much sense – so why be a Christian? Many people think of Christianity primarily as a religion that makes you give up stuff and tells you what you can’t do anymore. And a lot of this is stuff people don’t want to give up.

I’m sure the Israelites didn’t like a lot of the rules they were given either. But God gave them the rules for their own good. This wasn’t easy for them to realize, and it’s not easy for us to realize either. As our creator, God knows what’s better for us then we know ourselves. And God isn’t like a cruel principal or a bad parent, making silly rules just to be in control; no, God has our best interest in mind, and the rules are for our good. Without rules life would be a mess. We need direction and guidance. Many people want to be left to do what they want, but the truth is that we don’t know what’s good for us. We were made to live together in community, and life in community requires rules, So God gave us the Ten Commandments.

They begin like this: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other god before me.” God isn’t just any God, not some generic god; this God is the one who brought the people of slavery in Egypt. God created them, delivered them, and will redeem them – the only true God. God deserves to be worshipped, but it’s also true that our lives only realize their potential when we worship God. There are all sorts of gods, all sorts of things, we would worship instead of God, and this is why the second commandment forbids idols. Most people today won’t make a golden calf or anything like that, but we may make an idol out of money, or success, or celebrity, or many other such things. The thing we all worship instead of God, the idol we all make, is ourselves. We put ourselves in the place of God. We think we can save ourselves, that we don’t really need God. We have to be reminded that we’re wrong.

The third commandment prohibits taking the Lord’s name in vain. In many ways this commandment was more applicable when it was first given, but we too should not abuse God’s name but take it reverently.

The fourth commandment instructs us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. We don’t obey this commandment well. We do gather to worship on the Sabbath, and sometimes we treat it somewhat like a day of rest, but we still do work on Sundays. Perhaps you should consider never doing homework on Sunday, which will of course require you to get it done some other time. The Sabbath is for our own good. Just as God worked six days and then rested on the seventh, so should we do the same.

The fifth one is tough: “Honor your father and your mother.” You all are at a point in life where this hard. You’re parents are now dumber than they were when you were children, and they will gradually become less dumb as you get older. So you just have to get through being a teenager. This commandment doesn’t imply that your parents are always right, but it does mean you always should love and respect them as the people who brought you into the world and who are mainly responsible for making you who you are. If you dishonor them, you dishonor God and yourself.

The next three are about as simple as it gets, beginning with “you shall not kill.” God gives life and God is the only one with the authority to take life. God did allow or even endorse killing in the Old Testament, but that was based on God’s specific instructions. The kind of killing we do today does not have the same kind of authorization. God is on the side of life, not death.

You shall not commit adultery prohibits any sexual relationship between two people who are not married to one another. Of all the commandments this one probably seems the most outdated and restrictive to modern people, and so most do not obey it. But again, the commandment is given for our benefit. People should only have sex within marriage – not because God will smite people if they do it outside of marriage – but because only in a married relationship can sex be what God intended for it to be. Everything else falls short of the ideal and prevents us from experiencing the fullness of what God intends.

Next: “You shall not steal.” This should require no explanation. This doesn’t just cover physical theft of objects like money or a car; it includes anything that doesn’t belong to you. Throughout history people have justified taking things from other people, but it stealing. For instance, America itself took land from the people it belonged to because they thought they were entitled to it. People steal all the time. It’s wrong.

The commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” is usually understood more broadly to mean that you shouldn’t lie. Obviously this is a tough one to keep, because we are all skilled at telling lies – and probably most of the lies we tell we tell to ourselves. God is truth, and we are to be a people of the truth. If you want to be a good person here’s the first rule to follow: never lie. This may not only sound impossible but even foolish. It does, but it is still what God asks of us, and it was Jesus did. To be Christian means telling the truth.

The final commandment is straightforward: you shouldn’t desire any of your neighbor’s possessions, or even anything about your neighbor. We shouldn’t be jealous or envious. This is hard for us to, because we all want more than we have, we all see people who have things we want. But this isn’t healthy, and gaining these things doesn’t truly make our lives better. We’ve already been told not to steal, but we shouldn’t even develop an unhealthy desire for any object. It is God who gives life, not things. And when we desire things it damages our relationships with people because see them as competitors and not as friends.

Hopefully that’s helpful. There’s obviously a lot more that could be said about each of these commandments and, if you have any questions, I encourage you to ask them – later. For now I want you to know this: God gives us the commandments because God loves us. But people can easily take commandments and turn them into something that has nothing to do with love. In fact, the whole point of the commandments is to train us to love God and our neighbor. If we follow all the commandments but do not love, we gain nothing. And when we insist that other people follow the commandments but we do not love them, then we are being untrue. The commandments really only make sense if you assume that we are meant to live together in a community gathered for the worship of God, a community called church where we love and care for one another. And we should obey the commandments, not because God will be angry if we don’t, but because it is good for our neighbor, it is good for us, and – most importantly – it glorifies God.

Philippians 2:1-13

You’re going to have a rare opportunity this week. For probably the first time in your life, you’ll be able to hear two sermons on the same passage! I’ve known for several weeks that Dr. Steve was planning to preach from Philippians 2 so I tried to avoid it, but I just couldn’t, mainly because it’s simply one of the richest passages in the Bible. If there’s any passage that demands two sermons a week, it’s this one.

Paul is writing to the church in Philippi, but what he writes to them he would say to any church, including ours. He gives us this instruction: “Be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Let’s be honest: none of us do this, at least not entirely. Neither did the folks in Philippi either. That’s why Paul had to tell them and why he has to tell us. The first thing he asks for is unity, that we be of one mind. What would it mean for us all to be of the same mind? In some way we are already; we are all here to worship God, after all, and there are great many other things about which we agree. But there are probably a lot of other things about which we disagree too. But lack of disagreement doesn’t necessarily produce unity. It might just mean that some people are quietly disagreeing, and that doesn’t mean we’re unified. We don’t achieve unity by one person telling everyone else what to do either. The goal is for everyone to have the same mind, for everyone to be thinking the same way about the same things. And this might sound impossible. But this is why we worship – this is why we pray and sing together – so that, at least for those moments, we may be one. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: both Paul and Jesus are concerned about the church, not just about a bunch of individuals. It’s about us together, not so much us apart. We should form one body, and a body needs to have just one mind. If we’re not unified then we’re schizophrenic, unable to act consistently. We need to be unified because then the body can best work to God’s glory. And not only that, but that’s when we’re happiest as individuals as well. If you’re a finger you need the rest of the hand and the arm and the torso, you need the heart pumping the blood and great many other things, and you need the mind directing it all. A single finger on its own isn’t happy. We are most ourselves, most fully individuals, when we find ourselves as part of a whole, as part of the body. So we must have one mind.

How do we achieve this? Paul says that we should “do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” The truth is that much of what we do is selfish. It’s only natural to be concerned with yourself above all others. You don’t have to be taught this. But because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good. We have to overcome our selfishness, we have to learn humility. And we do this by learning to regard others as more important than us. This doesn’t come easily. Each of us acts like we’re the most important person in the world. We do this because we’re so consumed by our own desires, wants, and needs. Think about all the things you worry about in a day. And then think about how just about all of it probably relates directly to you. So say you’re driving – or riding – and someone pulls out in front of you making you slam the brakes. It’s easy to be upset with the person because of how you’ve been inconvenienced. How dare the person make you slow down! They should know how important you are! But maybe in those situations we should stop to consider that this person made an honest mistake, or maybe they’ve got a good reason to be in a hurry, or maybe they’re mind is elsewhere because something terrible is going in life. We should consider other people and not just ourselves. Our interest is getting where we’re going as quickly and safely as possible – but that’s their interest as well. So instead of speeding along we should be more willing to let others in. This is trivial example, but there are thousands of more important things like it.

But why should we do all these things? Why is putting the interests of others above our own a good idea? The answer is simple: that’s what Jesus did. In this passage Paul quotes an early Christian hymn that tells the story of Jesus. It begins in heaven, where the Son has lived with the Father and the Holy Spirit as one God for all eternity. This is great place to be. We look forward to joining them one day. But the Son decided not to stay there. Though he was God he took on human form and came to Earth. He left the glory of heaven for the mess of this world. We talk a lot about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, but the first sacrifice is to leave heaven and come to earth in the first place. He didn’t have to do that, but he did it for us. And he didn’t come as a king or someone powerful; he came a servant born in a manger. Jesus had everything and deserved it all, but he emptied himself of all of it that he might be one of us. He put our interests ahead of his own.

And once here Jesus lived in complete obedience to the Father’s will. He preached good news to the poor, he proclaimed release to the captives, he healed the blind and lame, and he set the oppressed free. He lived a perfect and holy life, but this made a lot of people very upset, because he challenged their authority. So they decided to kill him. And Jesus could’ve easily avoided this. He could’ve called down legions of angels to wipe out his enemies, or he could’ve caused an earthquake or tornado, or he could’ve done any number of things to avoid the cross. But if he’d done any of these things he wouldn’t have been faithful to who he was and what he was called to do. So instead, the Son of God humbled himself and was obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

But this is not where the story ends. Because Jesus was obedient and remained faithful to the end, because he did not choose an easy way out, because he suffered violence instead of fighting back, because he lived a perfect life – because of all these things – “God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” God did this for Jesus because of who he was and how he lived – and this is why we worship him, and this is why he saves us. For through him God will also exalt us.

But here’s the simple point. If the Son of God left heaven and came to earth, became poor that we might become rich, stayed faithful even when it took him to the cross – and if God gave his seal of approval on Jesus’ life by raising him from the dead – then shouldn’t we try to do the same thing. Paul’s whole point is this: be like Jesus. Of all people Jesus could’ve acted selfishly, he could’ve looked to his own interests, he could’ve demanded that people do what he wanted; he was, after all, the Son of God. But he did none of these things. In fact, he did just the opposite. And if the Son of God didn’t do these things, then why should we? How can we? Jesus showed us how to be truly human, and if we decide to act differently then not only do we dishonor him, but we also fall short of who God made us to be.

It’s very important that you not just think of Jesus as the guy who died for our sins. Jesus is also the one who left heaven and became a man in order to show us how to live. To be a Christian isn’t just to believe that Jesus died for your sins, it’s to follow in his footsteps, to be his disciple, to do what he did and say what he said. It is to make your life his life, your story his story. Our identity should be found in Christ.

Many people would tell you that this is a bad idea, if not crazy. Our world tells us that we should put our needs ahead of everyone else’s. Our world tells us that we shouldn’t be obedient to anything but our own desires. Our world tells us that we should exalt ourselves. So why would anyone be like Jesus? How is following him the best way to live? I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you again: we follow Jesus – even to the cross – because God raised him from the dead. Without that, we have no good reason to be like him or do what he says. But when God exalted Jesus and declared his name the name above all names, God also said to us loud and clear, “This is how I want you to be.” And we have the promise that if we live as Christ, if we live in Christ, that we will also be raised like Christ, in Christ. Although following Jesus sometimes seems like it might not be such a good idea, we know that if we follow him we will end up where he did – and that’s a good thing. So we can be selfless, we can be humble, we can regard others as better than ourselves, we can place the interests of others ahead of our own, because this is what Jesus did. And it’s never a bad idea to be like Jesus.

Exodus 16:2-15

Before we can look at this passage from Exodus 16 we need to remember the events that happened earlier in the story. A few weeks ago we talked about Joseph and how he became very powerful in Egypt, despite being a Hebrew. Eventually his whole family came to live in Egypt as well and they multiplied. Then came a new pharaoh who did not remember Joseph and all that he had done but who only saw the Israelites as a nuisance or even a threat. So he enslaved them and made them work under increasingly difficult conditions. The Israelites cried out to God for deliverance and God heard them, appointing Moses to be their leader. Moses asked pharaoh to let his people go, but he refused, so God sent ten plagues upon the land and, after much suffering, pharaoh agreed to let the people go. But not long after the Israelites have left for the Promised Land pharaoh changed his mind and pursued them into the desert. The people became frightened when they saw the Egyptians coming, because they were at the Red Sea with nowhere to go. But God provided a pillar of fire to protect them from the Egyptians and then God parted the Red Sea so that they could cross to the other side. They make it safely through the parted sea but when the Egyptians follow the sea swallows them up. God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt as they asked God to do. But there’s still a ways to go before they reach the Promised Land. And that’s roughly where this passage takes up.

And when we meet the Israelites in this passage what are they doing? They’re complaining. I’m guessing that most of you know something about complaining. This is something that comes fairly naturally to us. While in the wilderness, the Israelites became especially good at complaining. One way to read the book of Exodus is as God responding to one complaint after another. This time they’re complaining about not having anything to eat. Wandering in the wilderness without food is not a happy place to be. We can’t blame the Israelites for wanting to feed themselves. There may have been solutions to the problem available, but instead they just complained. They even said this to Moses: “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” They claim that it would’ve been better if they were still slaves in Egypt where at least they had food. They think it would’ve been better had God not delivered them. They think they’re going to die in the wilderness. They long for their former enslavement, not for the Promised Land.

You have to remember that the Israelites really haven’t known God very long. When God told Moses that he would lead the people, Moses had to ask what God’s name was so he could tell the people who this God was. They’re obviously not convinced that God is worth following. Apparently they’ve forgotten the ten plagues, the pillar of fire, and the parting of the Red Sea. You’d think those things would be impressive. But despite all that God has already done for them, the Israelites think they’d be better as slaves in Egypt.

It’s easy to tell ourselves that the Israelites were especially foolish, that if we had been there then we would’ve acted differently. But their story is our story. For we too have been delivered out of slavery and have been lead on our way to the Promised Land, and we too often wonder where we are going and if maybe we might’ve been better off remaining slaves to sin. The truth is that we too walk in the wilderness of this world. God has delivered from sin but we have not yet made it to the Promised Land. We live our lives as Christians in the wilderness, and it’s often a hard place to be. It’s usually dry and barren, there is little to eat, and it’s hard to remember where you’re going. On the journey through the wilderness we can find ourselves thinking that we might’ve been better off if we’d just stayed where we were. The old life can sometimes look better than the new life. God leads us to places we don’t want to be, where we wonder if it’s worth going, and we long to return to the place we used to live. We prefer the known to the unknown, even if what we knew before was not very good. The Church is just like Israel. We walk in the wilderness sometimes questioning if this God we follow has a clue. Israel’s story is our story.

And like Israel, we can do a lot of complaining. They had legitimate problem: they needed to eat. So they went to Moses and complained. They didn’t offer any suggestions or work toward any solution – they just complained. Another option would’ve been to ask God for food. After all, this is the God who can turn water into blood and dust into gnats, who can make swarms of locusts and frogs appear, who can provide a pillar of fire reaching into the sky, who can part the sea so that the people could cross on dry land. You’d think that maybe it would be worth asking God for some food. But instead they just complained.

There are times when we have legitimate concerns and needs, when things in life are going poorly, when we wonder just where we are going. And in these situations, we often want to complain to whomever we think is in charge, or maybe just whoever will listen. We want someone to solve our problems without realizing that almighty God stands ready and able to do so, if only we would ask. I don’t want to make it sound as if the reason that things haven’t gone well in your life or that you haven’t had your needs met is because you haven’t asked God to help you. God works in mysterious ways; it’s not as if every time you ask God for something you receive it. There are also lots of people who get everything they want and more without ever asking or thanking God. God is not a genie. The point is that we should always take our cares to God because God alone is our provider. Every good and perfect gift comes from God. God is God – but we often want something else to be god for us. It’s certainly not wrong to expect other people or things to help us out, but the question is where our hope is? Our hope alone is in God. God raised Israel out of Egypt, God raised Jesus from the dead, and God will raise us as well.

The good news for the Israelites is that God heard their complaints and answered them. God did not wait for them to ask God, as they should have, because God is gracious and compassionate, even upon ungrateful, complaining people like the Israelites, like us. The Israelites needed something to eat, so God provided. In the evening the camp was covered with quails and in the morning they received manna, the curious bread from heaven. It may not sound like much, but to starving people any kind of meat and bread would taste good. Of course, eventually the Israelites complained about the lack of variety in their diet. We don’t stay happy very long.

Just as God gave the Israelites bread from heaven as they wandered in the wilderness, so too does God give us bread from heaven as we walk in our own wilderness. Jesus first demonstrated that he was like Moses when he miraculously fed the hungry crowds by multiplying the loaves and fish. But Jesus does one better than Moses. For the manna had to be gathered and eaten day by day and those who ate the loaves and fish hungered again. So Jesus offers us bread from heaven that does not spoil, that can feed the people for eternity. Jesus is himself like manna from heaven, only way better. He said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will not thirst” (John 6:35). Jesus offers us himself as spiritual food. We have the promise that one day we will feast at the heavenly banquet, but until then we walk in the wilderness of this life – and often our souls can get very hungry. We don’t have enough strength to make it on our own. We need to be fed. We can’t follow Jesus alone. That’s why we come together as a church, to carry one another and be something together than we could never be apart. And one of the things we do as a church is to come to the table together to be fed. God is everywhere, but there are certain places God promises to be especially present, where God will always meet us. One of those places is at this table. God isn’t in the bread or in the juice; God is in the meal itself. And so just as God fed the stomachs of the Israelites in the wilderness so too does God feed our souls as we walk in the wilderness. God gives us strength for the journey. We are all hungry; we all complain; come to this table expecting to be fed.

Matthew 18:21-35

This week’s passage from Matthew takes up immediately from where last week’s ended. Jesus has just told the disciples how to deal with sin in the church, which, you may recall, involves confronting sin directly by bringing it to the offender’s attention. Jesus gives this command because, unfortunately - as we know – there will always be sin in the church. Peter, like us, is trying to figure out how this works. Apparently he thinks that it might not be so effective and that people are going to keep sinning repeatedly. Surely, he’s thinking, there must be limits to how long this can go on. So he asks Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?” This is reasonable question, but Peter couldn’t stop there; he had to provide his own possible answer: “as many as seven times?” Obviously Peter thinks that seven times would be a lot of times to forgive someone, and he’s probably expecting Jesus to say something like, “Yep Peter, seven would be about right.” But this is not what Jesus says. He shows Peter that we should be much more willing to forgive than we are. It’s not clear whether Jesus says we should be willing to forgive 77 times, or seventy times seven. Either way the point is that there really is no limit to the number. Even if you did forgive someone 77 times, you should forgive them the 78th time as well.

Then Jesus told a parable about forgiveness in the kingdom of heaven. There was a king who had a servant who owed him a massive debt – so large that he was unable to pay it. For most of human history being in debt was a very serious offense, one which could lead to slavery or imprisonment. (In our day debt is encouraged.) The king threatens to sell the servant along with his wife and children as well as all their possessions in order to make payment on the debt. The servant goes to his master and begs for forgiveness, and the master has pity upon him and cancels the debt. Then, on the way home, the servant who had just been forgiven runs into a fellow servant who owed him some money, but he refuses to have mercy and instead has his fellow servant thrown in prison. The other servants who saw this were upset by what happened and went and told their master. Then the master calls the servant whose debt he had forgiven and tells him that he received mercy and should’ve been willing to also give mercy to his fellow servant. But he did not. And so the master changed his mind and had the servant thrown into prison until he could pay the whole debt.

It doesn’t take a scholar to realize that the master in this story is analogous to God and that we are like the servants. So we owe all owe God a debt that cannot be paid, and God could rightfully make us suffer the consequences. However, if we ask God for mercy, God will forgive us our debts. This part of the deal sounds good. But, of course, the other lesson of the story is that if we refuse to have mercy on others then God will not have mercy on us. And so the passage concludes: “So my heavenly Father will also to do you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” The moral of the story is clear: God will only forgive us if we forgive our neighbors.

I’m guessing that for some of you this may sound surprising. We’re used to hearing that all we have to is ask for forgiveness and we will receive it. We are forgiven only because of God’s grace and not because we deserve it or because of anything we’ve done. But this parable seems to challenge that understanding. It puts conditions on forgiveness. There is something we have to in order to receive it. We have to forgive our neighbors in order for God to forgive us. I expect that this idea may trouble many of us. Our minds might be jumping to those people who we have not forgiven in fear that then perhaps God has not or will not forgive us. Shouldn’t God be more gracious to us than we can be to our neighbors? Isn’t that holding us to too high a standard? Or perhaps to others of us this seems only fair. Why should God forgive us a lot if we can’t forgive others even a little? However this idea strikes you, it’s pretty clear what Jesus means.

Earlier, in chapter 6, Jesus’ disciples asked him how they ought to pray, and he taught them what we call The Lord’s Prayer. And it contains that part that goes: “forgive us our debts (trespasses) as we forgive our debtors (those who trespass against us).” And then the first thing Jesus says after teaching this prayer is this: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you; but if you do not forgive your others, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.” If someone asked you, “what does Jesus say about forgiveness?” perhaps the surest answer you can give is, “you can only be forgiven by God if you forgive others.” This is about as unmistakable as it gets. So why does it work this way?

A verse from 1 John helps us to understand: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” This is a strong statement. If you don’t love other people then you don’t love God. Similarly, if you do not forgive other people then you can’t possibly believe in the God who forgives us. Or, to put it positively, if you really believe that God has forgiven you then you will naturally also forgive others. To Jesus it doesn’t make any sense to expect God to forgive you when you can’t forgive others, because the failure to forgive others is a denial of the God who forgives. We believe in a God of forgiveness, a God of love. That is who God is; that is what God does. If we believe in that God, we will forgive, we will love. We won’t do it perfectly, or all the time, but we will be forgiving, loving people. But if we can’t or won’t forgive, we cannot believe in the God who forgives and loves us.

So what’s the moral of the story? Forgive people, even seventy times seven times. In the parable, the one man should’ve forgiven his neighbor because he had already been forgiven by their master. We too should forgive because we’ve already been forgiven. How can we insist that others pay their small debts when we’ve been forgiven of our large debts? God forgives us so we should forgive others. It is really that simple.

It may be that simple, but it isn’t that easy. We find it difficult to forgive people for all kinds of reasons. Maybe they’ve done something truly terrible and we don’t think they deserve forgiveness. But God has already forgiven our sins that deserved death. We may think that by not forgiving we can condemn a person, but that is not for us to decide. We are not God. We may find it hard to let go of our anger and instead keep it burning inside. But this is not good for us or our neighbor. And maybe you find it difficult to forgive because you find it hard to believe that God has forgiven you, or even that there is a God who can forgive you. But this points to what may be the most important idea of all.

If Jesus says we can’t really believe in God if we can’t forgive, then it’s probably the case that we have to practice forgiveness in order to believe in God. When we forgive we come to have faith in the God who forgives. God forgives, so we come to understand God when we do what God does. So again, we should forgive people, even if we don’t feel like it, even if we don’t understand why, because that’s what God does. We come to have faith by taking a step of faith. So if you already know and love God and have deep sense that you have been forgiven, then you should forgive people. And if you don’t feel forgiven and don’t think you have much – or any – faith in God, then you should forgive people. Whoever you are, forgive people.