All right, brethren, let's go
back now to Matthew chapter 18. One day this week, I woke up
early in the morning, and I had the subject of forgiveness on
my mind, and it remained on my mind all day. And later that
evening, I received an email from Pastor Joe Terrell And he
had had the same subject on his mind all day. And he had written
an essay on forgiveness, and he emailed it out, and so I read
it, and it blessed my heart, and I corresponded with him,
and I told him, Lord willing, I was going to try to preach
on the subject if the Lord would give me the message. So tonight, our subject is, How
Often Should I Forgive My Brother? Verse 21, Then came Peter to
our Lord and he said, Lord, how oft or how often shall my brother
sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times. Now brethren, offenses will come. God says that or Christ says
that up the page. It's gonna come, offenses will
come from the world, offenses will come from our brethren,
and offenses will come from us. We will offend others. You will, I will, because we're
sinners and we dwell in a sinful world. This is one of those all-wise
reasons that God has been pleased to save through the foolishness
of preaching. He puts us together, cements
us in together as his church and we experience being offended
and we offend and so we experience forgiving and we experience what
it is to be forgiven and we learn that God's word is alive. It truly is living and abiding
in the hearts of his people. God's grace truly is sufficient.
We learn these things together as we offend and as we're offended
and as we forgive and as we're forgiven, as we go through life
together in his church. This is God's purpose. Now, when we look at this, you
notice here Peter said, how all shall I forgive? my brother. This is a word concerning my
brother sinning against me personally and my forgiving my brother.
This is not for me to hear it and say now what should my spouse
do or what should that brother be doing or I hope this brother
is hearing that or that brother is hearing that. This is for
me to hear. It is for me to learn what I
should do to the brother that has offended The scribes and
the Pharisees misinterpreted Amos 1 and verse 3 and Amos 2
and verse 1. It says this, Thus saith the
Lord, for three transgressions of Moab, for three and for four,
I will not turn away the punishment thereof. So they taught men to
forgive three times, but no more than that. And they qualified
forgiveness so much that they practically taught men not to
forgive. So when Peter comes here to our
Lord and he says, should I forgive seven times? I'm sure Peter thought
he was closer to the spirit of Christ. And Christ's answer shows
him here, no, you're far away, Peter. Not seven times. He says,
verse 22, Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee until seven
times, but until 70 times seven. Now that's not a specific number. He's saying, forgive without
limit. That's what he's saying. I shouldn't
put any limit on how many times I forgive a brother who sinned
against me. I should forgive as many times
as I have occasion to forgive. The Apostle Paul had the spirit
of our Lord here when he wrote over in Ephesians 4.32, forgiving
one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. How has God forgiven? How has
God forgiven? How much has God forgiven? How
often has God forgiven? I can't put a limit on how often
or how much God has forgiven me. I can't. So I'm to forgive
my brethren as often as God has forgiven me for Christ's sake. He said God for Christ's sake
has forgiven us. What did it take for God to be
able to forgive us justly? It took Christ's blood. It took
the blood of God's own son. And it's the blood of our substitute
that's our motive to forgive our brethren. So then our Lord,
he gave this parable. Now, a parable is an earthly
story to illustrate a heavenly meaning. And that's what he's
given here, is an earthly story to illustrate a heavenly meaning,
a heavenly truth. Look here, Matthew 18 to 23. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven
likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants.
Now, this is an illustration of the kingdom of heaven. Christ
is the king. of his kingdom, likened to this
Lord here, and all who he saves, all who he calls to faith in
him are his servants. And it says, And when he had
begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand
talents. God will bring us to give account
to him. We have to give account to our
Lord. And so this one now who's brought, who gives account, he
owes the Lord 10,000 talents. 10,000 talents. That is a huge
sum of money. In our, today, in our dollars,
this would be billions or trillions of dollars is how much this would
be. A huge sum of money. that couldn't be paid back. And
it pictures our sin debt. Every man's sin debt to God is
what's pictured here. It says, but for as much as he
had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and
children and all that he had in payment to be made. We have
nothing with which to pay God. You and I have nothing with which
to pay God what we owe. We owe eternal death, and we
owe perfect obedience and we can't pay that. We just can't
pay that. So the servant, verse 26, fell
down and worshipped him. It means he fell down at his
feet and he's saying, Lord, have patience with me and I'll pay
thee all. Then the Lord of that servant
was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the
debt. And God, for Christ's sake, by
the blood of Christ, had compassion or has compassion on every sinner
that comes to Him begging mercy. Every sinner that comes to Christ
begging mercy, God has compassion on him. And God looses him. And
God forgives him of all his debt. Of all his debt. every bit of
it. He frees him and he robes him
in the righteousness of Christ. But now look at verse 28. But
the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants
which owed him a hundred pence. Now this is a very small amount. Very, very small amount. This would be like one to one
million in comparison to the debt that that man owed. in comparison
to the debt that this fellow servant owed him, like one to
one million, like one dollar to one million dollars in comparison. And he laid hands on him and
took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his
fellow servant fell down at his feet and besought him, saying,
Have patience with me, and I'll pay thee all. Same thing he asked
his Lord, and he would not. He would not. But he went and
cast him into prison until he should pay the debt. His Lord
had just shown him forgiveness of a far greater debt. And yet
for this little minuscule debt, he would not give this man any
mercy. Took him by the throat and demanded
payment and threw him in prison. That's an unmerciful, unregenerate,
hard heart is what our Lord's picturing here. Verse 31, so
when his fellow servants saw what was done, these are servants
standing by, they saw this, and they were very sorry. Who do
you think they were sorry for? They were sorry for the man,
the fellow servant that was thrown in prison, that owed the small
debt and was taken by the throat. That's who they felt sorry for.
And they came and they told their Lord all that was done. And then
his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked
servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst
me. Shouldest not thou also have
had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on
thee? Paul said, Forgive one another
even as God. for Christ's sake has forgiven
you. Our Lord said, this Lord said, should you not have forgiven
and had compassion even as I had pity on thee? And his Lord was
wroth and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay
all that was due unto him. Now here's our Lord's lesson.
Verse 35, So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto
you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their
trespasses. Now, how often should I forgive? That's the question. How often
should I forgive? The true child of God has been
forgiven so great a debt by God for Christ's sake. that we should
from our hearts forgive everyone his brother their trespasses
without limit. We've been forgiven such a great
debt through the blood of Christ that we ought to forgive everyone
our brother his trespasses and do it without limit. I want to
show you three motives for forgiveness from this parable. Three motives
for forgiveness. Number one is the greatness of
God's mercy. Number two is the smallness of
our brother's sin. And number three is reverence
for God. First of all, those that have
been born again of God, those that have been created anew by
God are motivated to forgive by the greatness of God's forgiveness
toward us. This is what motivates us to
forgive our brethren is the greatness of God's forgiveness to us, the
greatness of his mercy toward us. The servant owed his Lord,
verse 24 says, 10,000 talents. That is a large sum. It's meant to be,
it's a parable, so it's meant to be an amount that this man
could never possibly pay back. He would have to work like ten
lifetimes to pay back this amount. And it's meant to show he would
never be able to pay this debt. Because it pictures the debt
you and I owe to God. We can't pay the debt we owe
to God. Now, we personally, talking about
me personally, you personally, We have not given God the glory
due to His name. We have not given Him the glory
due to His name. We owe God perfect righteous
obedience. Perfect obedience. And since
we haven't done that, since we've broken the whole law of God,
I have and you have, every sinner on the face of this earth has
sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3 says there's
none righteous, no not one. Not one. Let me show you that.
Go to Romans 3 real quick. I want you to see this. Romans chapter 3. This is God's teaching you and me what we are
as we come into this world. Verse 10, as it's written, there
is none righteous, no not one. To be righteous is to do right. There's none righteous, no not
one. There's none that understandeth,
none that understands God, not until God teaches you. There's
none that seeks after God. Well, it looks like the world's
religious. It looks like everybody's seeking
God. They're not seeking the true and living God of this Bible.
Men will seek the God of their imagination, but only when God
gives you a new heart will you seek the God of this Bible. There's
none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good.
No, not one. Not one. That's me and you. So
because we have sinned against God, we owe eternal death. The wages of sin, that which
is earned by the sinner, is death. Our Lord Jesus said, The soul
that sinneth, it shall surely die. Go read Ezekiel 18 and see
what he means by that. He means you're not going to
die for the sin of your father. Yes, in Adam we sin. In our father
Adam we sin. Our father Adam made it so we're
guilty. He made it so that we're born
with a nature that's polluted in sin. But God says it's not
going to be for Adam's sin that we're going to be damned if we
meet God outside of Christ. It's going to be for our own
sin. The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die. And so we can't,
and the eternal death he's talking about is not just when you die
physically, it's the death that comes after that. It is eternal
judgment. An eternity of suffering. Forever. That's what he's talking about.
And we can't pay that. We can't pay the perfect obedience,
and we can't pay the eternal death. So we're like this servant,
verse 25, he had not to pay. He could not pay, and you and
I cannot pay. We come forth with no ability
whatsoever to satisfy the justice of God. Now let me be clear,
justice has got to be satisfied. God's holy. In our nation, we
have judges. Some are just, some are not just.
Well, God is just. And so for every sin, there will
be a just recompense. God will, he will, the soul that
sinneth must die. So we're either gonna die in
ourselves, meeting God, without a refuge, and pay for our own
sins, which means we'll be cast out forever and die so that God's
holy justice is satisfied, or Christ comes, the Son of God,
and laid down His life in our place and paid that debt in full
so that we don't owe God anything. And what happens is, when God
regenerates you, and gives you life, and He draws you to Christ,
and you come like this servant, you come seeing what you owe,
you come seeing that you owe this great debt, and you come
to Christ begging for mercy. You don't come with your chest
poked out and demanding your rights, you come bowed down to
His feet like this servant came, begging mercy from the Lord Jesus. And when you do, You find out
what this servant in this parable found. God had compassion on
him and loosed him from the bondage of the law and forgave him all
his debt. All that debt that we could not
pay to God, all that debt that we would forever be suffering
under, Christ paid it in full for His people. He paid it in
full. And so now, Scripture says, 1
John 1-9 says, if we confess our sins, if we come like this
servant confessing we can't pay our debt, we can't pay it, Scripture
says He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. He's faithful
to do it and He's just to do it. And to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. And listen to me now, that's
not just one time. That's all our life. That's every hour of our life. We sin every hour. because we
have a sin nature that's nothing but sin. We sin every hour continually. We need to be forgiven every
hour continually. Why do you, when we pray, why
do you think we pray and say, Father, forgive us our sins?
Hadn't he already forgiven you your sin? Yeah, at the cross,
Christ put away the sins of his people. Christ purged us of our
sins forever. God blotted them out, they're
gone. But we sin every single day. We sin every hour. So every time we pray, we ask,
Father, forgive us our sins. And if we confess our sins, he's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness, to turn us from our sin, to turn
us from our vain way and keep us looking only to Christ. Not
only that, I want you to consider this. That's the greatness of
God's mercy, his forgiveness to us. But there's more to it
than that. Consider this. When a brother offends us and
they've come and they've asked for forgiveness and we've forgiven
them. This is one of the main things I was thinking about this
week when I was walking around thinking about forgiveness. Your brother sinned against you
and he's come and he's asked you for forgiveness. There's
no point in forgiving somebody where there hasn't been repentance.
God doesn't forgive us until we've repented and asked for
forgiveness. So that's what he's talking about here. He's come,
he's asked for forgiveness, and you've forgiven him. But you
know, we still expect that brother who offended us, we still expect
them to show us love and to love us so that this relationship's
restored to what it was. We expect some love from them
because they're the one that offended us. But you see, this
is how great God is and how great his forgiveness and his mercy
is. We're the one who did the offending. Christ, God's son, he not only
sent his son, his son not only laid down his life for his people,
God our Father not only forgives us for Christ's sake, but the
Holy Spirit comes and shows us, the offender, how great God loves
us. And He loves us, the offender,
into reconciliation with God, who is the offended. Isn't that
great? Isn't that... Isn't that great
mercy? That He would come and love us
into reconciliation like this. And not only that, God not only
forgives our sin, God forgets it. He forgets it. He said in
Hebrews 8, 12, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and
their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. He said in Isaiah 43, 25, I,
even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own
sake and will not remember thy sins. So our motive to forgive is the
greatness of God's forgiveness of our sins. Therefore, it's
not a matter of calculating. It's not a matter of limiting
forgiveness because we can't calculate God's forgiveness of
us. Let me give you an illustration.
Suppose I ask, how often must I admire God's beautiful creation? Or how often must I love my spouse
and my children? How often must I sympathize with
a poor man who's being treated unjustly and being oppressed?
You'd say, well, 70 times 7, that's without limit. That's
just natural to admire God's beautiful creation. That's natural
to love your spouse and love your children. It's natural to
sympathize with the underdog that's being oppressed and treated
unjustly. Well, brethren, in the heart
that God's created anew. Scripture says in that new man,
there is no God. The Spirit of God has come and
created a new heart in his people. That's the only way we know God.
It's the only way 1 Corinthians 2 says, the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to
him. Neither can he know them because they're spiritually discerned.
But we've been given the Spirit of God that we might know the
things that are freely given to us of God. And in that new
man where Christ abides, This is a fruit of the Spirit, forgiveness,
mercy, long-suffering, love. This is all a fruit of the Spirit. It's all what makes up that new
man. So that this is as natural, forgiving
is as natural to the new man as loving your spouse and your
children is to you. It just needs to be, we just
need to be moved by the Spirit of God. It's just like The Lord,
this Lord saw this man and was moved and had compassion on him.
The spirit of God moves us by showing us the greatness of God's
forgiveness to us. And he shows us our poor, needy
brother who needs forgiveness. I'm of one spirit with my brethren. I've been forgiven like they've
been forgiven by Christ. I've been washed in the blood
of Christ like they have. I want to forgive my brethren.
And it's the spirit that stirs us up and it's a natural thing.
And so we don't calculate how often to do it. It would be like
saying, how often do I have to love my children? You wouldn't
put a limit on that. We don't put a limit on forgiveness.
It's a natural thing in that new heart. Now secondly, true
believers are motivated to forgive by the smallness of my brother's
sin against me. The servants, this man's fellow
servant only owed him, verse 28 says, 100 pence. Somebody said 10,000 talents
was like 20 trillion dollars and 100 pence would be like 20
dollars. Whatever my brother does to me,
whatever my brother does to me in comparison to my sin against
God is 20 dollars compared to 20 trillion dollars. I don't
care what it is. Next time you're greatly offended
by a brother, greatly offended by a brother, just know that's
$20 in comparison to $20 trillion. Just know that. That's how badly
we've sinned against God. My brother offended me in one
thing. In one thing. When we're offended,
it's usually just one thing that's Our offenses to God are one continuous
flow of sin that never stops because that's all our sin nature
is. If all you own was just a few acres of land, that's all you
own, just a few acres of land, and your neighbor is building
a fence and there for a little stretch, say about 10 or 20 feet,
they got over on your property about two feet with their fence.
But you don't know but one or two acre on but one or two acres.
So you're going to probably go out there and say, Hey, the property
lines right here, you need to move that fence on over the property
lines right here. If you own 3000 acres, And for about a 10 or 20 foot
stretch, he comes over on your property there about a foot or
so, you're probably not going to say anything. It's really
not that big a deal. Look how much land I own. When
God brings you to see that you are the heir of an incorruptible
inheritance, that God's blessed you with the unsearchable riches
of Christ, that he's forgiven you so great a sin Whatever your
brother does, it's just a little insignificant thing in comparison
to what God's done for you. What you did to God and what
God's done to you. And so you forgive. You forgive
him. This is why the more we see God's
greatness and the greatness of his forgiveness of our sin and
our sin being so great, the more we see that, the smaller our
brother's offenses become. and the more willing we are to
forgive them. That's why Paul said, set your affection on things
above. Set your affection on the word
of this book. Learn about this book. Learn
what Christ has done. Learn how great a sinner you
are. And learn how great a Savior
Christ is. And then the offenses of our
brethren will become smaller and smaller and smaller. All
right. Thirdly, the child of God is
motivated to forgive because we reverence God, who says we
should forgive as God has forgiven us. Look at verse 32. Then his
Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked
servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst
me. Shouldest not thou also have
had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on
thee? And his Lord was wroth, and delivered
him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto
him. Christ says, So likewise shall
my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive
not every one his brother their trespasses. Now let me tell you
something that Brother Henry used to always say. A parable
or a picture or a type can't stand on four legs. All right? It doesn't stand on four legs.
And what it means by that is, is that no parable, no type is
gonna be perfect in every place. We know that no sinner that's
been forgiven by God will ever be cast out into hell. We know
that. We know that. So the end of this
unmerciful servant here declares that mercy uncommunicated, mercy
that was not communicated by him or mercy that's uncommunicated
to others is mercy that has not truly been given from God in
the first place. You know what I'm saying? If
a man can be hard-hearted and he can take his brother by the
throat and make him and demand he pay such a small debt, then he really doesn't know anything
about mercy. He really hadn't been tasted
of God's mercy in the first place. And so when we see here God,
the parable, in one area the Lord's forgiven this servant,
then in another he's casting him out or casting him to the
tormentors, somebody will say, well, I thought when God's forgiven
you that he would never cast you out. He doesn't. He doesn't. A parable's not gonna stand on
four legs, all right? You gotta take it for what he's
teaching here. And what he's teaching us here
is when God has truly created a new heart, and called you to
behold how great your sin is and how great forgiveness is
in Christ, then he gives you a reverence in your heart for
God so that you want to obey God. And it makes you merciful. Listen to this. Blessed are the
merciful for they shall obtain mercy. But absence of love proves
that a man has never been the object of God's mercy. If I don't
love my brethren, remember what we saw in 1 John 3, 14, by this
we know that we, the proof of life, we know we've been born
of God and we love our brethren. But if I don't have love and
I don't have mercy and I don't have forgiveness in my heart
for my brother, if I'm hard-hearted, I haven't been born of God. Either
God can create mercy in the heart like He says He can. And God
can create love in the heart like He says He can. If He does
that, as He says He does, it's going to be in the heart of His
people. And it is. It is in the heart. If this servant
had been created anew within, in regeneration, he would have
had the Spirit of Christ within him, which is merciful and forgiving. God makes... God's mercy makes
sinners merciful. It does. and knowing that God
never casts out one for whom Christ died because Christ satisfied
justice for everybody for whom he died. Scripture says, Hebrews
10 says, He perfected forever them that are sanctified. That
means God won't punish him and turn around and punish his people
again. They've been punished once already
in Christ. And so God never casts out one
of his people for whom Christ died, so we have to conclude
that anybody who refuses to forgive from the heart has made a false
profession of Christ. They never were saved in the
beginning. Christ said, if you do not forgive, neither will
your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. And
that can only be said of somebody who made a false profession of
faith, somebody who God had never truly called because they're
the only ones who will hold grudges and not forgive. God's children
are made willing by Christ's power, by God's all-sufficient
grace to forgive our brethren because we reverence God, because
we have a fear of God. And that, it is forgiveness that
gives us that. Listen to this. Psalm 130 verse
4. Psalm 130 verse 4 says this. There is forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared. And that word is reverence. respected. There's forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared. When we reverence God, we want
to obey God. When a child reverences his father,
he wants to obey his father. And when we reverence God, we
want to obey him. And God says, shouldest, verse
33 of our text, shouldest not thou also have had compassion
on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? I don't want
to dishonor God by not forgiving my brethren when they sin against
me. That would dishonor God. I don't want to do that. Why? Because of reverence for God.
So you want to. My motive is respect and reverence
for God. God graciously makes his children
receivers that we may be givers. He makes us receive his grace
so that we might be gracious to others. that you from your
hearts forgive everyone his brother there trespasses. He doesn't
free my hand so I can go out and grab my brother by the throat
with it. He frees my hand so I can extend mercy to my brother
and be gracious to my brother. He creates a new forgiving heart
so that we forgive from the heart. The Holy Spirit makes us merciful
like our master. And he does all this. He says
the wisdom that is from above Where does it come from? It's
from above. It's first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy
to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits. Full of mercy,
full of forgiveness, without partiality, without hypocrisy,
and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that
make peace. Go to Philippians 1.11. Who gets
the glory for this, for giving us this reverence in our heart
to make us forgive and show mercy and creates all this fruit? Who
gets the glory for it? 1 Corinthians 11. Being filled with the fruits
of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ. He does it. And who gets the glory? Unto
the glory and praise of God. You see, that's why we want to
forgive one another. Number one, the greatness of
God's forgiveness of our sin. Number two, the smallness of
our brethren's sin against us. And number three, reverence for
God. We want to honor God. Amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we thank you for this word. We ask you now to make
it effectual in our heart. Make us truly forgive. Teach
us that. Teach us what it is. Make us
show love to the one that's offended us. Make us forgive them. Make us forget. Make us show
love to them, Lord. For your sake, for your honor,
we thank you for your great forgiveness. And Lord, keep us ever mindful
that the sins of our brethren is just small. We thank you,
Lord, in Christ's name, amen.