The Unforgiving Servant - Part 1

Back in February, I spoke at the Women's Rock on Matthew 18:21-35. You can listen to that message here.

I have been reading through Matthew and read through that passage again the other day. The passage is titled "The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant". And every time I get to the last verse (v35) I shudder. It says, "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." What is it that the Father will do to you? The previous verse says that the master delivered the unforgiving servant over to the tortures since he would not forgive his fellow servant.

A lot of the time I can read through that passage and not even connect with the gravity of what's being said there. I can think, "oh, that doesn't apply to me, I have Jesus." But it does apply. If I don't forgive from my heart I am in danger of the fires of hell. Why? Because if I don't forgive my sister when she sins against me then I am demonstrating that I do not know the forgiveness of Christ. Because if I truly have been forgiven all my sin, then I would recognize the ten thousand talents (about 4 billion dollars) that I no longer owe and would be so humbled that I would not demand the measly hundred denarii (about 9 thousand dollars) that my fellow servant owes me. But if I think that by some chance I deserved to be forgiven ten thousand talents and that this fellow servant does not deserve to be forgiven a hundred denarii, I am essentially spitting on the mercy of God and claiming self-righteousness. And self-righteous people don't go to heaven. Only those that recognize their great need for a savior, even in the mist of being sinned against, truly experience the mercy of that Father.

But how do I deal with sin that is really hard to forgive? I'm going to talk about that in the next post.

"The Will of My Father"

The other day I was reading in Matthew and I read this passage:

Matthew 7:21-23
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

This passage frightened me. Jesus says that only the one who does the "will of my Father" will enter the kingdom of heaven. Then he says that there will be people that come to him saying that they prophesied, cast out demons, and did mighty works in his name and he will tell them that he never knew them. Which means that prophesying, casting out demons, and doing mighty works in the name on Jesus is not the "will of my Father" (at least not solely) even to the point where Jesus calls them "workers of lawlessness". And that scares me because I can think of people close to me that might say something like that that to Jesus when they see him face-to-face. It seems utterly critical to figure out what the will of the Father is.

So what is the will of the Father? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

My Beautiful Grandmother

I was out of town this last weekend for my Grandmother's (my mom's mom) funeral. She died a couple weeks ago after a two year battle with a variety of cancers. And it was such a strange experience for me to be at my grandparents house in Ohio and her not be there.

As a child I would spend my summers in Ohio visiting my dad and I would always spend a little time with my grandparents going swimming in Lake Erie, watching videos from the library, going to Indians games and making raspberry pies with the raspberries that grew in my grandpa's garden; I have so many good memories from my grandparents house. And as I spent this last weekend there they all came flooding back and I half expected my grandma to come walking out of the kitchen and ask me to go to the garden and tell my grandpa that dinner was ready or to hear her from her bedroom saying that I needed to get ready for church. But she she wasn't there. And the more I looked at pictures of her the more I wished she was still here to play dominoes, or go skiing, or take me to visit the wild life center she volunteered at.

I can remember waking up some mornings as a child and she would be sitting in the sun room, drinking her tea, faithfully reading her Bible (with her pet bird sitting on her shoulder). And I can still hear her voice imploring me to find deeper truths in some of the TV shows that I watched as a kid (like Family Matters or Full House). And every time I saw my grandparents holding hands or cuddling on the couch, I was always in awe of the love they had for one another (if you get a chance, please pray for my grandpa, I know he will miss her dearly).

There is no doubt in my mind that my grandmother was an amazing woman; the kind of woman that I would like to be.

Here are some good pictures of my beautiful grandma (a lot of them are with my grandpa).

I love you, Grandma! I'll see you in a little while.