Pastor
Steve Geiger Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
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Luke 17:1-10
1 Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause
people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come.
2 It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a
millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones
to sin. 3 So watch yourselves.
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he
repents, forgive him. 4 If he sins against you seven times in a day,
and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
5 The apostles said to the
Lord, “Increase our faith!”
6 He replied, “If you have faith
as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and
planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.
7 “Suppose one of you had a
servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he
comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Would
he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while
I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Would he thank
the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also,
when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy
servants; we have only done our duty.’”
“I Can’t?” You Can Luke 17:1-10
1. Our flesh does not want to
2. With the Lord we
can’t help but want to
I can’t, Mommy. I just can’t do it.
It’s amazing what children
can’t do when they really don’t want to do something.
“It’s time to wash the
dishes.” But Mom, look at my hand. I was running around at school today and we
were playing tag. Sarah--you know
Sarah, right?--well, she has the longest fingernails. She reaches to tag me and catches my hand, and I’ve got this huge
scratch, and I can’t put that hand in hot, soapy water.”
“I can’t wash dishes.” Though as your motherly hands are cleaning
forks and spoons, you see outside your window little daughter digging which all
her might in the dirty, dirty sandbox with her sensitive, so sensitive hands.
I can’t.
The disciples. Jesus hadn’t asked them to wash dishes.
Jesus had asked his
disciples to watch their own actions.
“It is impossible for sin not to happen, but woe to you if you cause
another to fall into sin.”
Jesus asked his disciples to
love those who do fall into sin. To
show love for those trapped in temptation by pointing out the sin. “If your brother misses the mark, award
blame to him. If someone is hurting
you, tell him.”
Jesus asked his disciples to
forgive. “After you tell someone who’s
been really mean to you that they’re hurting you, and they apologize, showing
that their mind is changed, send their sin away. Let it go. Even if they
do it again, and you tell them again, and the Lord changes their mind again,
forgive.”
Jesus asked his disciples to
watch their own actions. To love those
who sin against them. To forgive even
when someone sins again, and their mind is changed again.
“We can’t do that, Jesus.”
Well, not exactly. They said, “Lord, add to us confidence. Increase our trust.”
That sounds good, doesn’t it? “Make my faith stronger, God.”
It sounds good until you see
how Jesus answers them. Jesus doesn’t
say, “You’re right. I asked you to do
something that needed a little more strength than you’ve got. My mistake.
Here. Here’s the extra
confidence you needed.”
Jesus says, “If you had the
tiniest faith, you could do what I ask.”
In other words, the problem is not that I haven’t given you what you
need. The problem is that you don’t want
to do what I’ve asked.
You ask your children to
wash the dishes and as they look at the dishes this time, they see the
spaghetti sauce pan, held a little too long over the stove, crusty and hard to
scrape. “I’d love to do the dishes,
Dad, but I’d need more scouring pads than I’ve got. Sorry.” Until Dad finds
more. Bummer. “But you’re a stronger scrubber, Dad.” You can do it; it just takes more scrubs. “But Dad, my hand will get sore.” Then let the pot soak. “But Dad . . .”
“Increase my scouring
pads.” In other words, “I don’t want to
do it.”
It seems the disciples may
have been trying to get out of something: pointing out sin to those who were in
spiritual trouble; forgiving sin after someone they rebuked had a mind change.
This was not good.
It’s not good when we come
up with all kinds of excuses as to why we can’t talk to someone who has sinned,
perhaps against us. Why is that so
hard? Are we afraid of a real risk,
that they might hate us more? Or are we
frightened, more than anything else, that they just might recognize their evil
and change their mind, and then we’re going to have to forgive them? “There’s no way I am going to show love to
that person who has hurt me so badly.”
Have you ever had someone
sin against you and it hurt, but you were too scared to tell them? Have you ever had absolutely zero desire, if
their mind changed, to forgive them?
Or let’s say you did point
out a sin, and their mind was changed.
They recognized their evil and confessed their sin. You sent away their sin. Forgave them. Then they did it again.
You tell them again. They
recognize their evil and confess their sin.
You send it away again.
Forgive. They do it again.
No more. “From now on, it’s going to be a deal. You want forgiveness? You’re going to have to sit it out until I’m
good and ready to put it behind me.”
Have you ever gotten
frustrated at someone sinning again and again against you?
Now it’s true, if someone
doesn’t have that mind change, we can’t at the time assure him that he’s been
forgiven.
Yet Jesus says, “If he does
change his mind, send his sin away.”
With the disciples do we say, “I can’t do that,” because deep inside we
simply don’t want to?
That we can look at one
sinning against us and say, “Sorry, buddy, I’m not going to forgive you. You have no right to expect me to love you
after what you’ve done. Because I would
never do what you’ve done.” Pride. “I’d never sin that many times, and then
expect someone to forgive me.”
Arrogance. “I’d never sin that
many times in a row, period.” A lie.
What if God were to treat us
as we treat others?
How many times have you
needed to go to the Lord this past week guilty? And we have the boldness to act toward those sinning against us
as if they’ve reached their limit?
What if God used my standard
on me? At what point would I have reached
my limit? At what point should God have
abandoned me, no longer pointing out my sins to me? How many years ago? So
that all I’ve done since will hang on me to death. I will meet my master with a pile so huge, unforgiven.
We have two standards, don’t
we. One, for God toward us. Another, for us toward others. It seems so right. What a lie of our flesh.
Through it the devil desires to bring you eternal destruction.
Is there hope, or are we all
lost?
Listen to the Lord’s
way: “If your brother sins, rebuke him,
and if he repents, forgive him. If he
sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and
says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him” (Luke 17:3-4).
We have sinned seven times
in a day. In a moment. In our lifetimes, far more. We cannot undo our actions. We cannot reverse the hurt we have
caused. We cannot suck back a lie or
walk back in time and not do what we did.
What do you do? There is nothing we can do. But the important question is, “What has the
Lord done?
So many times we have
sinned. So many times--yes, again
today--he says, “I have sent away your sin.”
How can he do that? We don’t deserve it. That’s the miracle. He does not base forgiveness on whether we
deserve it. Thank the Lord.
There is no one who is
righteous. There is no one who does
good, not even one. Yet he does not
treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities (Psalm
103:10). The thief on the cross: “We are punished justly, for we are getting
what our deeds deserve” (Luke 23:41).
To him Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke
23:43). The Apostle Paul: “I am the
least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because
I persecuted the church of God. But by
the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).
The Lord did not use our
sinful standard when it came to forgiveness.
The Lord looked at sinners, and he gave up his life for them all. “Consequently, just as the result of one
trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of
righteousness was justification that brings life for all men” (Romans 5:18).
We deserve that God use our
standard on us. In fact, Jesus took on
his shoulders the evil standard we have used on our fellow human beings and suffered
hell for it. Condemnation, the result
of our sin. Justification, the guilty
declared innocent, the result of Jesus’ act of righteousness. His perfect living as me. His brutal death for me. You are innocent, whether you can believe it
or not. Believe it!
Jesus says, “I tell you the
truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and
will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24).
What joy. Do you want to share that with others? We talk often about evangelism. Sharing the good news with those who don’t
know it, who need to hear it. We think
about knocking on doors, speaking to strangers, or inviting neighbors to our
house to show them love, to share with them Jesus.
Did you ever consider that
every person who sins against you is an opportunity to share good news? I know it’s hard when someone’s being cruel
to you to point out their sin. Your
flesh is scared about what they might say to you. Your flesh hates even the possibility of forgiving them.
Jesus says, “If someone sins
against you, rebuke him.” Is my flesh
scared about what they might say? You
bet. But I hate my flesh. The flesh is not my master. It wishes my destruction and the destruction
of the friend who sinned against me. I
love the Lord. He is my master. I need gently to tell someone if they are
sinning against me.
With the prayer that God
will give them a mind change. That he
will give them repentance. So I can
say, “I forgive you.”
And if, in the very same day,
they hurt me again, I can’t wait gently to rebuke them, with the prayer that
God give them a mind change. So that I
can say, “I forgive you.”
And if, on the very same day
. . . oh, Lord, surely you aren’t asking . . . are you tempted to say, “I can’t?”
Even three times, seven
times, 3.7 million times, should someone come to you acknowledging their sin,
you can’t wait to say, “I forgive you.”
So amazed are we, that God
has done that for us.
Now I can’t do that for others? With the Lord I can’t help but do it. Amen.