{"id":11644,"date":"2026-09-13T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leighmoorunitingchurch.org.au\/?p=11644"},"modified":"2026-09-13T14:33:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T04:33:44","slug":"freed-by-grace-formed-by-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leighmoorunitingchurch.org.au\/?p=11644","title":{"rendered":"Freed by Grace, Formed by Mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Scripture Readings: <\/strong>Exodus 14:19-31 & Matthew 18:21-35<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 1) In this movie poster, a man stands in the pouring rain, his arms stretched wide, as though he can hardly believe that he is finally free. There is a famous line on the poster of The Shawshank Redemption: \u201cFear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps that is true of more than prison walls. Fear can imprison us. So can the past, resentment, guilt, hurt, and wounds we have carried for many years. Sometimes the hardest prison to escape is the one we carry within ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Exodus brings us to a people standing before the sea, discovering that the God who brought them out of slavery will also make a way through what seems impossible. Matthew brings us to another kind of freedom that comes when mercy received becomes mercy given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together, these stories tell us that Grace sets us free. Mercy teaches us how to live free. This is the journey God invites us into today: Freed by Grace, Formed by Mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exodus 14:19-31 is a story of God making a way out of bondage. Matthew 18:21-35 is a story about the forgiveness, freedom, and transformed life of those who have received immeasurable mercy. God does not simply set us free from something; God sets us free for a new way of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 2) In Exodus 14, the angel of God and the pillar of cloud move from before Israel to behind them. God\u2019s presence does not disappear; its position changes according to what the people need. What had been guiding them now protects them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God does not abandon the people when danger approaches. God goes before them and stands behind them. Sometimes we need God to lead us forward; sometimes we need God to guard us from what is pursuing us. God is with us, guiding, protecting, and watching over us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 3) Then the impossible happens. The sea is before Israel, Pharaoh\u2019s army is behind them, and there appears to be no escape. Yet God creates a path where no path existed. The miracle is not simply that God removes an obstacle. God transforms the obstacle itself into a way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But deliverance involves both divine grace and human response. God sends the wind, divides the waters, and protects the people, but Israel still has to walk through the sea. Grace opens the road, but faith must step onto it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we trust that God may already be working in the darkness? One striking detail is that the east wind blows through the night. God is at work in the darkness before the people can fully see the path. Sometimes God\u2019s way is being formed during the night, before we know where it leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 4) What \u201csea\u201d before us seems impossible to cross? What fear is still pursuing us? And are we willing to walk through the way God opens rather than simply admire it from a distance? Israel does not remain in the middle of the sea. The dry ground is a passage, not a destination. Crossing the Red Sea is not the end of their story. God must now teach former slaves how to live as a free covenant people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verse 31 tells us that Israel feared the LORD and believed in the LORD. Their physical journey becomes a spiritual journey toward deeper trust. Liberation happens at the sea, but learning how to live as free people takes much longer. And that gives us an important connection with Matthew 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 5) Peter asks Jesus, \u201cHow often should I forgive?\u201d His question assumes that forgiveness can eventually be counted and completed. But Jesus\u2019 answer, \u201cseventy-seven times\u201d, moves forgiveness beyond calculation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forgiveness is not pretending that nothing happened. It is not calling evil good, excusing injustice, or denying the pain we have suffered. Forgiveness does not always mean immediate reconciliation, nor does it require us to return to unsafe or harmful relationships. Trust may need time to be rebuilt, and sometimes healthy boundaries are necessary. Rather, forgiveness is the grace-given decision not to allow another person\u2019s wrongdoing to continue ruling our hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 6) Jesus does not minimise the servant\u2019s debt; the debt is real and enormous. But mercy is much greater. Christian forgiveness begins not with the smallness of the wound, but with the greatness of the mercy we ourselves have received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 7) The servant remembers what another person owes him but forgets what has already been forgiven him. Perhaps we also remember the words that wounded us, the disappointment, betrayal, unfairness, and moments we wish had never happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet how easily we forget the patience of God, the mercy that has carried us, the sins that have been forgiven, the second chances we have received, and the love of Christ that has never let us go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus\u2019 parable invites us to become people with a holy memory – people who remember grace more deeply than grievance, mercy more faithfully than offence, and God\u2019s goodness more powerfully than the wounds of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And perhaps there are also things we need to forget\u2014not by erasing them from memory, but by refusing to keep giving them authority over our present. There are old conversations we no longer need to replay, old wounds we no longer need to rehearse, and old failures we no longer need to use as definitions of who we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are debts we may need to stop counting. There are names we may need to release from the courtroom of our hearts. Sometimes healing begins when we say, \u201cI will not carry this forever.\u201d Forgiveness may not change what happened, but by the grace of God, it can change what the past is allowed to do to us now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To let go does not mean the wound was unimportant. It means the wound will no longer have the final word. To move on does not mean forgetting the lessons we have learned. It means refusing to build our future around what has hurt us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Christ, we are invited to loosen our grip on bitterness, resentment, regret, and the endless desire to settle the account. We place what we cannot fix into the hands of God, trusting that God\u2019s justice is wiser than ours and God\u2019s mercy deeper than ours. Let us not rebuild the prison from which grace has set us free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where Exodus and Matthew meet. The Israelites were freed from slavery, yet they struggled to live as free people. They sometimes longed to return to the life they had known, even though it had enslaved them. In Matthew 18, the servant\u2019s greatest failure is not simply that he is harsh toward another person. It is that the mercy he received never reaches deeply enough into his heart to reshape his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why grace does more than cancel a debt. Grace forms us. We forgive not because the other person always deserves it, not because the pain was small, and not because reconciliation is always possible. We forgive because we ourselves live every day by a mercy we could never earn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So perhaps the question is not only, \u201cWhom do I need to forgive?\u201d but also, \u201cWhat am I still carrying that God is asking me to release?\u201d What old hurt, regret, anger, or story has become too heavy? There comes a time when faith invites us to open our hands to remember what God has done for us, to let go of what no longer gives life, and to move forward, not because the past did not matter, but because God\u2019s grace matters more. And this may be one of the deepest freedoms Christ gives us: not the freedom to change yesterday, but the freedom to stop living inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are not asked to forget God\u2019s mercy; we are asked to remember it. We are not asked to carry every wound forever; we are invited to place it into the hands of the One who carried our sins, sorrows, and brokenness to the cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Slide 8) Freed by grace, formed by mercy, we learn to remember what gives life, release what keeps us bound, and walk forward in the freedom Christ has already opened for us. God does not only set us free from what has bound us; God forms us into people who no longer bind others. So, what will we do with the freedom we have received?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God\u2019s mercy is meant gradually to reshape our relationships, attitudes, memories, and actions. Receiving forgiveness is not the end of Christian discipleship. We are called to become forgiving people. Grace is meant to keep moving. Grace comes to us so that grace can also flow through us. The grace of the Lord comes first. Our transformed life follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And even today, when we cannot yet see the way forward, God is still able to make a way toward healing, release, peace, and freedom. The sea may still be before us, the night may still feel long, and the path may not yet be visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the God who made a way through the sea is still at work. The God whose mercy cancels an impossible debt is still at work. And by that grace, we are set free. By that mercy, we learn how to live free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks be to God! Amen.
<\/strong>(Ref. Bible, commentaries, theological books, UCA materials, and a Vanderbilt Divinity Library Resources)Top of Form<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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