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[ Silence ] [MUSIC PLAYING] [ Music ] Oh how good, for men to dwell in unity.

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Oh how good, for men to dwell in unity. We've got to walk, we've got to talk, sing, we've got to pray. Oh yes, it's wonderful. Oh yes, it's beautiful.

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For men to dwell in unity. Oh, how good. For men to dwell in unity. Oh, how good, oh yes it is.

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[MUSIC] Sometimes seems we've got to pray. Oh yes, it's wonderful. Oh yes, it's beautiful.

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For men to dwell in unity. Yes it is. Oh how good and pleasant For men to dwell in unity.

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You know it's good to talk to one another. Better than the love of God, just you and me. What a fellowship, what a joy divine. How sweet to walk in the bright sunshine.

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Oh yes, it's wonderful. Oh, yes, it's beautiful for men to dwell in unity. I want to say it one more time. Oh, it's so good for men to dwell in unity.

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You know, you know, it's good to talk to one another, Spreading the love of God, just you and me. What a fellowship, what a joy divine. How sweet to walk in the bright sunshine.

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Oh yes, it's wonderful. Oh yes, so beautiful. For all men, for men to dwell in unity. So good, so good, yes it is.

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It's so good to walk together. You know it's good to sit down and talk together. You know it's good we ought to play together. You know it's good to talk together in unity, just you and me.

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It's so good, so good, so good. Oh yes it is. It's good to praise him. It's good to praise him.

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It's good to praise him in unity. You ought to praise him this morning. You ought to praise him at noonday. You ought to praise him in the evening.

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Sometime in the midnight hour. ♪ So good, so good, so good, oh yes ♪ ♪ Oh yes it is, oh yes, it's wonderful ♪ ♪ Oh yes, so beautiful for men ♪

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♪ For men today in unity, oh yes it is ♪ [applause] Amen. Our scripture is found in the gospel according to St. Matthew, the 18th chapter, verses 23 through 35.

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A sermon series based on parables of our Lord. We continue today as we consider the parable of the unforgiving servant. The kingdom of heaven should be thought of in this way. There was once a king who decided to settle accounts with the men who served him, the

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unforgiving servant. One of the burning issues of our time is what to do about priests who are child molesters. What about the punishment? What should we do about those who have corrupted the lives of the young and innocent?

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What sort of punishment should be given? Shall they be forgiven? Shall the slate be washed clean or wiped clean, as the case may be? Will this terrible act be erased and the guilty given the opportunity to begin again, to start

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all over? Forgiveness does not come easy. The more serious the crime, the more painful the act, the more difficult it is to forgive. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

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farms of this prayer the other farm is forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. When I was in seminary we had an ecumenical faculty and one of the faculty members who was an Anglican wanted to use forgive us our trespasses and the others wanted to use forgive us our debts and

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And they had a dialogue over this issue as to what form should be used It seemed The majority of them felt we ought to be able to come to some consensus about Whether to use our debts or whether to use our trespasses

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The one who was an Anglican and insisted on using Trespasses said that he was not willing to go along with our debts Forgive us our debts because that seemed to put our dealings with the Lord on too commercial a basis But Jesus uses this

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Commercial transaction if you please to illustrate the nature Forgiveness Among those who are members of the kingdom of God. A certain king planned to settle accounts with his agents. When he

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started, one was brought before him who owed, let us say, millions of dollars. And since he could not pay, his master commanded him to be sold toward the payment of the debt. The servant fell on his knees and begged for mercy. He said, "Give me more time. I will pay you every cent I owe." The Lord was moved with compassion and granted the servant's

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request. On his way out, this servant meets a fellow servant who owes him $50. He grabbed him by the throat and said, "Pay me." The fellow servant begged him, but he would not be patient with him. He had him jailed.

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The fellow servant saw what had been done, these other fellow servants did, and they were angry and they came and told the king what occurred. The king reprimanded him and delivered him to the tormentors to be scourged

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until he paid all he owed. And Jesus says, "This is how the heavenly Father "will deal with us, "if in our hearts we do not forgive our brothers."

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Oh, you've heard it said as I have many times, "I'll never forgive you, I'll never forgive you." We take good care of our grudges. We nurse them and nurture them so that they will remain healthy.

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If such a thing is possible. Take good care of our grudges. I was a man who had a neighbor with whom he had a disagreement and this grudge had lasted over the years and he came to the point of death.

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The doctors had told the family that his days were not long in this world. was nearing the point of death. And so he sent for this man and he said to him, "John, you know this little matter that has been between us all these years?" He said, "Now if I pass, it's all forgiven. But if I don't pass tonight, it's just like it

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was. So we hold on to our grudges. We want to get even. We want our revenge. We want the punishment to fit the crime. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life. Two strikes and you're out. You may do it once but you'll never get the chance to do it again. Now Peter is quick on the trigger so to speak. He's quick in

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his reaction to the challenge to forgive and he said Lord how many times must one forgive. Jesus answers 70 times 7. 7 times 70. Many times is necessary. In other words he said there's no limit on forgiveness. No limit. We like to put limits on our forgiveness. In other words you go this far and I forgive you but

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you go beyond that you're in serious trouble. We want to place limits on our forgiveness. But forgiveness, real honest to goodness forgiveness is an act of God. It's an act of God. God acts. Forgiveness is an act of God. So that since it is God's action,

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we cannot forgive, truly forgive, unless the Spirit of God is in us and with us and guiding us, directing us in the way that we should go. If we are unwilling to forgive one another, we will not receive God's forgiveness.

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Notice this, in the beginning, the king forgives the servant, huge debt, millions of dollars. He's forgiven, but the servant, on his way out,

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meets another servant that owes him $50 and has him cast into prison. And then this servant's action is reported to the king and the king reacts.

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The king who is forgiven has this man cast into prison. So our, secondarily, our forgiveness, God's forgiveness is based on our forgiveness. They are interrelated.

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You don't forgive your brother, God does not forgive us. The two are related. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debt. as we forgive our debtors.

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There's a story of a man who was having trouble with his debts, his creditors. He couldn't get them in order. And he had one of the creditors who was complaining.

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He was raising cane about the fact that he hadn't paid the bill. He said, "Well, I treat you just like I treat the others. "What do you mean?"

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I said, "Well, I have a hat, and I place the amount, the name of all of my bills in this hat, and I shake it up, I draw it until I get the amount of money of what I have."

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He said, "Now, I just haven't drawn your name. But if you keep on fooling with me, I won't even put you in the hat." So, forgiveness has to do with arranging our lives

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our loans, paying our debts. I think it was Shakespeare who said, "Neither a lender, a borrower be." The way to get in trouble with some people is to lend them something, not to borrow something. To be neither one. The servant whose loan the king forgives is unforgiving himself. Other servants observe his action and

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they report to the king. They report to the king. And I'd like to think of this This is being sort of an exercise in prayer. A lot of people have mistreated every one of us. In some way we've felt mistreated.

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What do you do about it? You don't go home and get your gun and go out and kill the person. Not if you're in the kingdom of God.

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You report to the king. You report to the king. These servants saw how they had mistreated this man had been mistreated and how God's grace had been so abundant that his debt was forgiven but yet he doesn't forgive the debt that owed him and

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the others who observed it reported it to the king. Oh so much wrongdoing occurs in the world. So many people are underpaid and underemployed and so many injustices all around us that we cannot control but we can report to the King. The guilt that we would often encounter in this life, the burden that weighs so

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heavily upon us report to the king in other words the king says vengeance is mine don't you try to handle it I will repay so report to the king for the time will come when the king acts forgiveness is the act of God the time will come when the king acts and the servant who refuses to forgive is cast into prison to

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remain there until he shall pay all his debt. Notice his debt of millions is based on how he treats the debt of $50. Forgive us, oh Lord, our debts are to be forgiven according to how we forgive our debtors. I remember a family years ago that lived in the town where I was living.

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The man, they'd lived together for a number of years and the man decided to leave home. And he ran away with a younger woman. He stayed for about 10 years.

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And one day, this lady came home from work and found him sitting on the front porch. She took him in, and they lived the rest of their lives together.

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That's forgiveness. That's forgiveness. That's forgiveness. Some don't find it easy,

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because it's not easy. Forgiveness is not easy to come by. It's hard. I talk, as I do every year, about making your will. And some hear the word and they don't make a will.

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In this particular case the man did not make a will. He and his wife talked about making a will and they went down to the attorney's office and and he said to her you go in and I'll come along later. She went in she made her portion of the will and he did not make the will. He didn't make his will. So he died.

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So when he died, the wife had all kinds of problems about whether she could even stay in the house. But she was so grief-stricken when he died that she couldn't go to his funeral. But when she found out later how he had treated her, she said that she wished she could go out to the graveyard

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and dig him up and kick him you know where. She had a hard time, she still had a hard time trying to forgive that brother. Forgiveness does not come easy. In fact, it is so hard that even it's difficult on the heart of God.

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Forgiveness doesn't come easy. The one who makes it possible for us to forgive died on a skull-shaped hill called Calvary. They pierced him in the side. They drove nails through his hands.

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And he cried out, I hear, I hear his voice ascending the vaulted skies, saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He went down to the grave.

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He stayed there and he rose again on the third day. And he walked the streets of Palestine one more time. once more. Forgiveness does not come easy. Father, forgive them. There is a fountain, however. There's a fountain of forgiveness. You know, you know, I've done some things,

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and I'm sure you've done some things, and you look back across the years. You wish you could go back and say to the person, "Forgive me." But that person has gone on. You'll never see them again possibly in this life. But there is a place, oh yes there is a place where we can go, that fountain of forgiveness and there is one who stands at the centerpiece of history. There is one

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who stands right there that separates the past, the present, and the future and we can go to him. there is a place, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners can plunge beneath that blood, lose all their guilt in it. Thanks be to God that there is a fountain of forgiveness for every sinner.

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There is a place where we are set free from our burden of guilt and we are privileged to live our life anew in Jesus Christ. So as we sing the hymn of invitation we extend the privilege of the church. You may come to this fountain, you may come on profession of faith, you may come by letter of Christian

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experience, you may come to the fountain of grace, fountain of forgiveness. We invite you to come. Unite with the people of God, the family of God here at [ Music ] If I had moved in his home today, dear Lord, I know I would not go astray.

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If I have broken my own will, O may the Lord forgive me. If I have minded my own worth, ♪ For may He rise ♪

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♪ And turn the sun from warmth ♪ ♪ For may His love ♪ ♪ Open some others to the strength ♪ ♪ Dear Lord, for me ♪

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♪ Dear God, help me, first of all, a dove ♪ ♪ Dear God, have love for shelter in the foe ♪ ♪ Dear God, that's given peace of mind to all below ♪ ♪ I'm told to all, dear Lord, forgive me ♪

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♪ Forgive the sins I have commenced to do ♪ ♪ Forgive the sacred sins I do not see ♪ ♪ The Lord is King ♪ ♪ O I, me, no, me, and my King are here ♪

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♪ In the open ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ [music] Gracious God our Father, send us forth as agents of your grace, agents of your forgiveness,

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agents of your love. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace.

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Now and forevermore. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. ♪ And give you peace ♪

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♪ And let his grace ♪ ♪ Shine upon you ♪ ♪ And be gracious ♪ ♪ And be gracious ♪

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♪ The Lord be gracious ♪ ♪ And be gracious ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪

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♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ( seeing expedition through CPA Exam functions )

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♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ( construction awes a напр - )

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