Elevate - Christmas Playlist - You're A Mean One Mister Grinch

The main idea of this information is that no amount of church attendance, good behavior, or charitable donations can pay the debt we owe, but God gave us Jesus to pay it for us. The speaker discusses the beloved character of the Grinch and how bitterness can creep into our lives, but forgiveness is the antidote. Jesus teaches about forgiveness in the Bible and tells a parable about a servant who owed a large debt but was forgiven by his master. The main message is that there should be no limit to our willingness to forgive others. No amount of church attendance, no amount of good behavior, no amount of charitable donations or worship or dedication to ministry or sacrifice could ever pay the debt that you owe. But, in His great mercy, God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay that debt for us. We weren't supposed to die. Jesus died on our backs. Welcome to Elevate, from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama, with Pastor John DiQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life of God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message, and welcome to Elevate. We are in our Christmas playlist series, and have you been enjoying our series? Yeah, I've been for sure. And each week, we've been listening to a different popular Christmas song and using it to illustrate a truth of Christmas, to show us the hope that Christ brings in this season. And so, if you remember, our first song was Santa Baby, and then we moved on to It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And last week, Pastor Neil did a fantastic job with the Grown Up Christmas list. And so, today, we're going to move on, and we'll see what our next song will be for our Christmas playlist. And I love Christmas music, as I'm sure that you do as well, and I think that this one will be familiar to you. You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. You really are a heel. You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch. You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel. You're a monster, Mr. Grinch. Your heart's an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders, you've got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch. I wouldn't touch you with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole. I just absolutely love Christmas and everything about it, and as kids, we all love Christmas. And so, the introduction of a character who tries to steal Christmas, that hates Christmas, and hates everything that Christmas represents, that becomes a caricature in our young minds of the absolute worst kind of person. A joyless, hateful, lonely, miserable person who cannot derive joy from anything in life. But here's the weird thing. The Grinch is an absolutely beloved character. We all love the Grinch. We love to watch it. We love the original cartoon. We love the crazy Jim Carrey version. Even the latest animated version that came out recently. We love the Grinch, and it has captivated the world in such a way that we just can't seem to get enough of the Grinch at Christmas time. I mean, you look at all the lights in people's neighborhoods, and invariably there's going to be a Grinch on the roof, sneaking down the chimney, right? But why do you think we love the Grinch at Christmas time so much? I think maybe as we get older, we understand the Grinch a little bit. Maybe, just maybe, the Grinch strikes a chord within many of us that causes us to actually kind of identify with him a little bit. Maybe he reminds us of ourselves. And so we have to ask this question, right? How did the Grinch become the Grinch? I mean, nobody comes out of the womb spiteful and hateful and joyless. That amount of emotional baggage comes from somewhere, right? Well, we could go a number of ways here, right? We could talk about childhood trauma or launch an anti-bullying campaign. We could talk about a whole bunch of stuff here, but I think this fictional interpretation of the Grinch story illustrates that terrible things happen to people, and oftentimes they can put a seed of bitterness into us. And how we deal with that is what will determine how much we will allow it to impact our lives. You see, stuff happens. Bad stuff happens. And it's usually at the hands of other people. I've lived on this earth now for 48 years. And I've endured relentless bullying as a child. I've had my heart broken. I've been unemployed and broke. I've had people misuse me, abuse me, take advantage of me, lie to me, and betray me in ways that I never could have imagined. As a pastor, I've had wildly untrue rumors and gossips spread about me. And I've had people utter the words, I love you, while simultaneously slipping a knife right into my back. So as I stand up here today, I can say that I understand a little bit about life. I understand betrayal. I understand mistrust. I understand how hurtful that people can be sometimes. I also understand how bitterness can creep in and leave a person lonely and out in the cold as we see that happened to the Grinch. The Bible warns us about allowing bitterness to take hold in our lives. Hebrews 12, 15 tells us this, See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled. Leave that scripture up just for a moment. You see, this passage gives us four warnings. It tells us not to allow a root of bitterness to spring up. It tells us that bitterness will cause trouble in your life. It tells us that bitterness will ultimately defile you, and that ultimately, bitterness will leave you outside of God's grace in that area of your life that has been tainted by this bitter root. This is serious stuff, allowing bitterness into our life. And the word bitterness here brings some very clear connotations in the original Greek language in which it was written. You see, the root word of bitterness is this word, pikros. It literally means poisonous. Bitterness is poison in your life. Bitterness is poisonous to you. Now poison, right, if given in small doses, will make you sick and even kill you over time. We've all seen those true crime documentaries where a wife will slowly poison her husband. Don't get any ideas. Over time, he just gets sicker and sicker. A little bit of poison today, a little bit tomorrow, a little bit the next day, doesn't hit you all at once, but eventually you begin to feel the debilitating effects and the sickness of that poison. And when things happen in our lives, and for all of us, they will, when we're mistreated, when we're betrayed by somebody, when we are hurt by people that we love or that we thought loved us, when we are taken advantage of, we have to make a decision in those moments whether or not we will allow the poison of bitterness to take root in our lives. So the question is, will we dwell on what happened? Are we going to dwell on it today? Are we going to lose sleep over it tomorrow? Are we going to rehearse it? With anyone who will listen and hear us vent and tell our story, are we going to rehearse it in our minds over and over? Are we going to then blame what somebody else did to us and use that as an excuse for all of our failures and bad decisions in our lives? Will we allow that thing that hurt us so bad to actually define us and tell us who we are? Will we take it into our lives a little bit every single day until the poison of bitterness makes us sick and debilitated and lonely? See, it's a choice. There's really only one antidote for the poison of bitterness. Only one surefire cure that will cut off the root of bitterness in your life and prevent it from leaving you out in the cold and missing out on God's grace in your life. Are you ready for the antidote? Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Because if you want to sabotage your life and isolate yourself and paralyze your purpose and become like the Grinch, walking in unforgiveness toward the people who have wronged you is the most surefire way to do that. But forgiveness is the cure. So let's look a little bit about what Jesus has to say and has to teach us about forgiveness. We're going to look in Matthew chapter 18. Beginning in verse 21 it says, Then Peter came up and said to Him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. Now rabbis taught to forgive three times. That was the general teaching in that day that rabbis would teach their pupils, that you must forgive somebody three times. So Peter was probably feeling quite generous when he said, should I forgive seven times? And maybe your translation says seventy times seven, right? This one says seventy-seven times. Maybe yours says seventy times seven. The point isn't the particular number. We're not actually calculating how many times we actually have to forgive somebody. The point is there should be no limit to our willingness to forgive others. That's why Jesus said this. Not seven. Seventy-seven or seventy times seven. But Peter's question prompts Jesus to teach an even more powerful lesson, and so He begins to tell a parable. And He says this, beginning in verse 23, He says, Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. Now the denomination of currency in this story is of talents. A talent was a lot of money. And ten thousand at the time was the largest number for which a Greek numeral existed. And a talent was the largest sum of money at that time. So to say ten thousand talents was like us saying that this servant owed the king a billion dollars. Unpayable. No way that this debt could be repaid. Moving on, verse 25, And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, and his wife and children and all that he had in payment to be made. To be sold. To be sold where? To who? Well, he was to be sold into slavery. That's how it worked. You owe me a debt, I'm going to sell you into slavery. You're going to work that debt off? It was a life sentence for him and his family. Moving on, verse 26, So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. Now I hope you see the parallel here in our lives, right? God is the king. He has all. He is all. He owns everything. He has no needs. And yet we owe him a huge debt. One that cannot be repaid. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. That's the only payment. That's the only acceptable payment for your sin to God is death. Not just physical death, but spiritual death. There's no getting out of that. It's a really light-hearted Christmas message, isn't it? Now we can live in denial of this debt and pretend that we don't owe God. Or maybe we can accept that we owe Him a great debt and try to pay it off. The problem is we can't. We can't pay our debt off. It's impossible. It's like owing a billion dollars. No amount of church attendance. No amount of good behavior. Serving the poor. Rescuing the homeless. No matter how many church boards you've sat on. No amount of charitable donations or worship or dedication to ministry or sacrifice could ever pay the debt that you owe. You might try, but you'll never be able to do it. But, in His great mercy, God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay that debt for us. We were supposed to die. Jesus died on our behalf. We've been forgiven our sin. And so we no longer owe that debt. It has been paid for us. Now the story that Jesus is telling has a happy ending, right? The man owed a crazy amount of money. The gracious King forgave it. Amen. Let's go home. But it continues in verse 28. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. But denarius is about a day's pay in those days. So a hundred denarii was a good amount of money. It was about two and a half, three months worth of pay. That's pretty decent debt that was owed. But nothing, nothing compared to the ten thousand talents, the zillion dollars that was forgiven, this man. Now here's a question. Did the King have the right to make the man pay back the debt that was owed to him? Yeah. Did the servant then have a right to demand payment for the hundred denarii? He had a right. Of course he did. Let me tell you something. Sometimes you're right. Sometimes people really do hurt you. They've done something absolutely wrong or evil. And in this situation, you are right. You've been offended. And now they owe you something. You're rightfully upset. You are rightfully owed an apology or some sort of recompense that maybe they would fix the situation. They would walk back the things they said about you or delete the posts they made about you on social media. No one would dispute that in this particular parable, the man had every right to collect on a debt that was owed to him. Go on in verse 29. He says, So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. But he refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debts. Man, it's the same story. Just moments before, this servant was the one on his knees, pleading for mercy, for more time to pay for a debt that he really could never repay. The difference though between the king and this man is that the servant was unmoving, refusing to offer even a smidge of grace in light of the grace that he had just received. We can all guess how this story ends now. In verse 31 it says, When his fellow servant saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed. And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. This man who was forgiven an unpayable debt was unwilling to be gracious in the debt that was owed to him. And we see the master, seeing how ungrateful and how wicked this man was, evokes his debt forgiveness and has him pay up with his life. Now we may hear this parable and think, well I'm saved, I'm forgiven, that's it, I'm done, the debt is paid, I owe nothing. Can I tell you this? Just because you have been forgiven doesn't mean that you don't go on sinning. God knows all of your sins, even the ones that you think you're hiding. Your teacher may not know that you plagiarized, but God does. Your wife may not know that you're flirting at work, but God does. You may have deleted your internet browsing history, but God knows what sites you've been on. Your spouse may not know about your secret addiction, but God does. Just know this, your debt of sin continues to rack up. Which is why salvation is not a once and done thing, it's why we stay in relationship with Jesus. It's why we continually confess our sins and we receive His forgiveness. It's why we continually place our faith in Jesus for righteousness. It's why the Bible instructs us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. You've been forgiven a great debt, but the reason you keep going on sinning at times is because even though your debt has been paid, the cause of the debt has not been remedied. And it won't be on this side of eternity. You need His grace and mercy every day. Every single day. This morning when I got in the car, I just wasn't even thinking about the message per se, but I just felt like, God I need you. Put on that song, Lord I need you, oh I need you. We need Him every single day. His grace, His mercy. Understand that your debt of sin is unpayable and understand the greatness of God's grace to you every single day. Even you that have been in Christ for years and years and years and you don't drink and you don't smoke and you don't cuss and you don't watch rated R movies and you don't frown and you never get a zit or have a bad hair day. Still you, your sin is an unpayable debt that you owe God. Thank you Jesus for the blood that washes all of that away and makes us righteous before the Father. You see we can't really understand the parable that Jesus is telling until we understand the absolute magnitude of our debt that we owe. So with that said, what are we doing? What are we doing holding on to that little offense against our friend that made plans without us? Why are we gossiping about that church member who forgot to call us when we were sick? Why are we refusing to go to so-and-so's small group because we don't like them because they said something mean to me once? You see when we act foolish like this, we're no better than the servant who was forgiven a lifetime of debt but refused to forgive just three months worth of debt. So we've all been hurt. Family, bosses, churches, ex-spouses. And in most of these cases the person, not all, but in most, the person didn't even realize that they were hurting us. They didn't mean it. Yet we judge the content of their hearts and we slander them before others and we try to tear them down. But the reality is that we all have done the same to others. We've all hurt people unintentionally. We've all said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Sometimes reality got in the way of our intentions that prevented us from keeping our word to somebody. Sometimes you forgot something important. Maybe your personality, somebody just didn't like it. Whatever it is that we've done, we've all experienced the slander that somebody has made against us because of things that we never intended. And we all want and expect and feel as though we deserve mercy from others. Right? I didn't mean it. Please forgive me. I was wrong. I didn't mean it. Yet we withhold that same mercy when others need it from us. Right? Everybody else is the idiot on the road. But forgive me when I cut across three lanes of traffic because I forgot where I was going. Don't honk at me, don't you know? We all want and expect that forgiveness and that mercy and that grace, but it's very hard for us to give it to others. Because forgiveness is not easy. It wasn't easy for Jesus. Jesus was actively forgiving the people that were murdering Him. That was not easy. And forgiveness will not be easy for us. People will do vile, evil, hurtful and spiteful things. We've all had that moment of complete injustice in our lives. Just coming face to face with evil and being on the losing end of it. You see, not all areas of unforgiveness as the petty things that I described earlier. Some of you have been genuinely, gravely and horribly hurt. Maybe an abusing parent or a spouse. Maybe an injustice that was done to your child or to a beloved family member. Perhaps someone misused you, cheated on you, stole from you or manipulated you for their own selfish gain. These are hard things. And your life may never be the same after experiencing what you went through. That's true. But hear me today. Reach out to God and ask Him for the wisdom and the strength to forgive. He'll help you. He will help you walk in forgiveness. Because leaving that unforgiveness and bitterness inside of you will eat away at your life. R.T. Kendall puts it this way, We delude ourselves into thinking that those who hurt us are more likely to be punished as long as we are set on revenge. We're afraid to let go of those feelings. After all, if we don't make plans to see that justice is done, then how will justice be done? We make ourselves believe that it is up to us to keep the offense alive. This is a lie. The devil's lie. 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. That's Romans 12, 19. We only hurt ourselves when we dwell on what has happened to us and fantasize about what it will be like when they get punished. You see, when we walk in unforgiveness, we blame others for where we are and we have no vision for our future because we are now captive to the past. We become perpetual victims. And there's some level of comfort in pointing the finger at someone who hurt us and casting blame on them. It takes the responsibility out of our hands. But don't expect to walk into the future while looking in the rearview mirror. Philippians 3, beginning in verse 13, says this, Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Your ability to forgive brings freedom to you in ways that you could never imagine. Some of you today really need to ask the Lord to help you walk in forgiveness towards people who have hurt you. Maybe you've tried. Maybe you've even had a little bit of success, but then the enemy reminds you of the injustice and it begins to rear its ugly head once again. Here's the deal, God has a unique ability, an ability that we don't have. Hebrews 8.12 says, For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. You see, it says that He doesn't even remember the sins that He has forgiven. That's where the term forgive and forget comes from, right? This scripture. It's Christmas time and I can't think of a better way to honor the sacrifice of God's Son, Jesus, than first to just accept His forgiveness in our lives. And then offer that same forgiveness to those that have debts that they can never repay to us. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website authenticlife.tv for more information about Authentic Life Church. To find out what we have going on or to make a donation, you can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DiQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening and God bless you.