Yesterday at Thousand Hills I confessed that Monopoly is pretty much the only board game I like, that is: Monopoly by my set of rules. In my version of the game, anything goes as long as you can pay for it or as long as people trust you enough to loan you money to keep going in the game. The value of real estate usually becomes way higher than the officially sanctioned prices. It’s been a long time since I have played the game, probably because nobody wants to play with me anymore…
The biggest frustration for any Monopoly player is jail. You’ll have to stay there a couple of rounds, can’t collect the 200 guilders (yes, the Monopoly game I had was a Dutch one from the 1950s or so), and just wait until your free again.
But then there is this great invention called the Get Out Of Jail Free card. There are two of them, one in the Chance set of cards and one in the Community Chest of cards. Imagine the value of this card in my version of the game!
Jesus our Get Out Of Jail Free card?
I think Jesus Christ is our Get Out Of Jail Free card. Why? Let me take you back a little over 2000 years ago to Israel. A man named Joseph was engaged to be married to a girl called Mary. But he found out that Mary was pregnant and he hadn’t been in the mix himself. So he wanted to quietly separate from her, but then an angel appeared to him in a dream. The angel told him that Mary was pregnant, not because she had slept with another man, but because the baby in her womb was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit.
And the angel told Joseph to name the baby boy Jesus. Jesus is the English version of a Hebrew name Yeshua, which means “Yahweh (=God) saves.” The angel explained that the boy would “save his people from their sins” (Matt.1:21 NLT). Even before Jesus was born God had planned that Jesus would die on the cross to bring forgiveness to people who did not deserve forgiveness, to offer peace with God to people who were enemies with God.
God forgives AND forgets!
Did you know that when you embrace the forgiveness that Christ has to offer, God doesn’t only forgive your sins, but he also forgets them? Many centuries before Jesus was born, Ezekiel prophesied: “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins” (Jer.31:34 NLT). Wow, what a promise! God allows us to make a fresh start with him, to have a clean slate!
And God throws our sins into the depths of the ocean: “You will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean” (Micah 7:19 NLT). A mental image comes to my mind of nuclear waste stored (hopefully) securely on the bottom of the ocean.
No fishing allowed!
Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch lady who survived a Nazi concentration camp, took a hold of that promise and started traveling through post-war Germany. She shared this promise with a people that was defeated and bombed out, a nation that was struggling to forgive itself. In her book Tramp for the Lord, she wrote: “When we confess our sins, God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. Then God places a sign out there that says: ‘No fishing allowed.’”
Corrie was able to forgive the people who had hurt her and her family so much, and she encouraged them to forgive themselves and embrace the forgiveness that Christ had for them. Don’t fish for the things that God has cast into the deepest ocean!
God’s forgiveness for us has come at a high price. He gave his only begotten Son to die on the cross for us so that we could receive that forgiveness. Because it is so precious to him, he wants us to pay it forward to the next person, to people who have hurt us: “Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others” (Col.3:13 NLT).
Receiving forgiveness and extending forgiveness are two things that are closely related. Remember that Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us” (Matt. 6:12 NLT).
Did you know that when we fail to forgive others, we end up in a self-made jail? We’re hurting ourselves more than the other person we don’t want to forgive. I stumbled upon this great quote: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and then to discover that the prisoner was you.” You have the keys for your own prison!
What can we do to embrace and extend forgiveness?
So Jesus is our Get Out Of Jail Free card. He forgives our sins and helps us to forgive others. So what are some practical things we can learn from that pre-Christmas story in Matthew chapter 1?
1) You can’t give to others what you truly haven’t embraced yourself
Embrace God’s forgiveness that you can receive in Christ only! Drink from that fountain of forgiveness! It is hard to bitter when you drink from that sweet fountain of forgiveness that is called Jesus. So: surrender your life to him. Build an intimate relationship with him!
2) Forgotten grace breeds unforgiving living
When Jesus was no longer a baby boy, he told some stories to highlight some profound truths. One of the stories was about a man who had a huge debt, in today’s money close to 100 million Euros or dollars. His creditor, a king, was planning on selling all this guy’s possessions and even sell him and his family as slaves to repay the debt. The debtor pleaded for mercy, and the king cancelled the whole debt.
The next thing the debtor does is find a few people who owed him some petty cash, and force them to repay. When the king finds out, he has his former debtor thrown in prison to be tortured and cancelled the cancellation of the debt. He said: “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” (Matt.18:32-33 NLT).
The debtor had forgiven how much his creditor had forgiven him, so was unwilling to forgive the debts that others owed him. Forgotten grace breeds unforgiving living! Never forget the grace that Jesus has given to you!
3) God’s grace is a costly thing
In the story in Matthew 18 the debt our anti-hero owed the king was millions and millions of Euros or dollars. I think the parallel is clear: when God forgives us our sins, it costs him a fortune. His own beloved Son had to die for our sins on the cross. But he thought you would be worth it! I would be worth it!
But still, God’s grace is a costly thing! You know what I think is the bottom-line of forgiveness? Wrongs done to us by another person can never be compared with our sins before and against our heavenly Father. Until we get this, we will always struggle with forgiving other people. You and I owe God a multimillion debt. Others owe us maybe a few thousand.
There is nobody that has wronged me as much as I have hurt the Lord and sinned against him. I have been a Christ-follower for 16 years and for 16 years God has extended grace to me. I don’t want to put anyone in jail, neither do I want to be in jail. I want to embrace the gift of forgiveness and I want to extend the gift of forgiveness.
Let me ask you this, will you embrace God’s forgiveness during this Christmas season, maybe for the first time in your life? Will you extend forgiveness to others who have hurt you? Wouldn’t it be amazing if broken relationships in your family or with former friends would be restored during this Christmas season? Jesus not only tells us to forgive those who have sinned against us, his Holy Spirit also gives us the strength to do so!
Embrace forgiveness! Extend forgiveness! And as you do, see God work in ways beyond imagination!
The above blog post is a summary of my message yesterday at Thousand Hills International Church. Be sure to leave some comments here. And if you want to learn more about forgiveness, be sure to watch the sermon video!