Let's just read this first verse
here in Matthew 18. At the same time came the disciples
unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Our subject this morning will
be humility, longsuffering, and forgiveness. Now, Matthew 18,
in this chapter, our Master teaches us true humility. He teaches
us the importance of never offending our brethren. And then he teaches
us long-suffering. He does it in teaching us the
steps that we take towards those who have offended us. And then
he teaches us forgiveness. Unlimited forgiveness. Forgiveness
is a state of the heart with a believer, just like love is.
And he teaches us all three of these things. Now, we can't cover
every verse here because it's a lot in this, but I think we
should look at these three together because they go together hand
in hand. I mean, these three go together. Humility, longsuffering, and
forgiveness. And all three of these are the
gracious fruit of the Holy Spirit. It's the spirit of grace of the
new heart, the key to a happy church family. So let's look
at this as we go along here together. All right, humility. Now, Peter
comes and asks this question, or all the disciples, who is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Now, it probably will
help you to go ahead and look at this. Look over at Mark 9,
just a few pages over, and I want you to see this. The Lord was
answering this question, and in Mark 9, 35, He said this, He sat down and He called the
twelve and He said unto them, If any man desire to be first,
the same shall be last of all and servant of all. Now you'll
have some teach that this is a sort of a punishment, as if
to say that you'll be permitted into heaven, but because you
wanted to be first, you'll be last and you'll have to serve
everybody. There won't be any punishment
in heaven. This is a question concerning
true, he was answering that question concerning what true greatness
is. If any man desired to be first, If you truly desire to
be what God regards as first, what God loves as first, then
be last of all and be servant of all. Now, that's what Christ
did for his people. Christ is God. He's God the Son. And as Paul said in Philippians
2, let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. He thought
it not robbery to be equal with God. He's God. But he made himself
of no reputation. And He came to where we are and
He took upon Him the form of a servant to serve God and to
serve to minister to many, to minister to His people, to serve
for His people, to save us from our sins. And He became obedient
even until the death of the cross. And by that death, He's completely,
thoroughly put away the sin of His people, justified us of all
our sins, reconciled us to the Father, and because of this great
this great condescension and making himself the least. Wherefore
God also has highly exalted him and given him a name which is
above every name and every knee is going to bow to that name.
So you see what it is to be truly great in God's kingdom is to
be least of all and to be servant of all. That's what Christ is
teaching us and the Lord illustrated it Well, let me say this first. Think about this as the reward
of heaven itself. You think about this. In heaven,
there'll be only true righteous humility. That's all that'll
be there. All will love to be last and
to serve all. And all loving to be last and
to serve all will all be first. That's what he means when he
says the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
There won't be any lesser or greater with our God. All in
heaven will have Christ. He's our reward. And with a total
absence of pride, completely, only desiring the other to be
first and Christ to be all. That's heaven. That's the reward
that God gives. Now the Lord illustrated it by
what humility is by setting a little child in their midst. And in
verse 3, He said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted
and become as little children, you shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble
himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom
of heaven. Now, the vain teaching that men
teach about rewards in heaven, that some are going to be greater
than others based on their works, that's vanity. That's a lie.
That's pride. It promotes pride, which God
hates. That's exactly what it is. It
teaches the exact opposite of what Christ did for His people.
It teaches the exact opposite of what Christ is teaching right
here. This is how He fulfilled the Law. The Law, the Spirit
of the Law. Now if you just try to look at
the letter of the Law, you won't know this. We won't know this
until we're born of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of the Law
is love. That's the Spirit of the Law.
Faith, believing God, we fulfilled the whole law of God. It's established
by Christ who did it for us. And faith works by love. That's
how Christ established the whole law of God for us. And in doing
so saved His people from our sins. Those that are converted
by God's grace, by the Spirit of God, from that vanity and
given a heart of humility, desire for Christ to have all the preeminence.
That's what we want. We want Christ to be high and
lifted up. We want Christ to be exalted.
We don't just say that, we preach it. We don't just say that. We
come to hear Christ exalted. We don't just put it in a statement
of faith. We declare it and rejoice in it and love it to be so. We
don't hide it away. We want Christ to be set forth
as all before all. And then we want our brethren
to be first. We want our brethren to be first.
And except a sinner's been born of the Spirit of God and given
this heart, the Lord says you won't enter into the kingdom
of heaven. A man can't enter in until he's been given this
heart. Well, then he declares that our brethren are so one
with Christ. Now, He's showing us this humility
and why it's so important not to offend our brethren. True
humility seeks not to offend one another. And here's one of
the reasons He gives. Our fellow brethren are so one
with Christ because Christ dwells in His people by the Spirit of
God and His people dwell in Him. That's oneness. And we're so
one in Him that whatever we do, to Christ, to one of our brethren,
in receiving them or offending them, we do it to Christ. It's
not as if we do, it is we do it to Him. Look at verse 5. Whosoever
shall receive one such little child, he's speaking about believers,
in my name receiveth me. See, Christ, when He put away
the sin of His people, and He made us complete in Him, and
He's entered in and created us anew, He really does literally
live in His people. He abides in us, and we in Him. Now, it's impossible, absolutely
impossible, to exalt self over a brother or sister without lessening
that brother or that sister. It's impossible to do. And so,
because the Spirit of Christ dwells in our brethren, it's
absolutely impossible to exalt self over a brother or a sister
without doing it to Christ. Absolutely impossible. Now, when
we get this in our heart by the Spirit of God, that's humbling.
This is the stuff of humility right here. Do you love Christ? You're born of God. Do you desire
to please Him? Do you desire to serve Him? Do
you desire to worship Him? Knowing what Christ has done
for us. Knowing that He came here, He suffered, He lived,
He went to that cross and was made sin for us, and bore the
wrath of God for us, and now we're risen with Him. Knowing
what He's done for us. If Christ was here, what would
you do for Him? There's no end to what you'd
do for Him. Our brothers and sisters have
Christ dwelling in them, and they are our opportunity to do
what we would do to Christ if He were here. That's so. Our brethren are our opportunity
for doing what we would to Christ, for showing our love and our
gratitude to Christ. Now, we're going to skip verses
6 and 7, but Christ encourages us there that though the offenses
will come, from the world. Those who offend will receive
a just recompense from God. And then in verse 8, he reminds
us that these offenses that come from us, that any offensiveness
that's from me and you, it's of our old man. It's of the flesh. And so he says, put off the old
man. Just put him off. That's what
he tells us there. But now I want you to look down
at verse 10. He shows us how precious brethren are to God,
and then by that showing us how precious our brethren should
be to us. In verse 10 he says, take heed
that you despise not, that you contemn not, that you do not
think little of one of these little ones. And he's talking
about brethren, he's talking about believers, fellow believers.
God the Father gives His angels charge to protect them. Every
believer, God gives His angels charge to protect them. Look
at verse 10. For I say unto you that in heaven
their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is
in heaven. And then God Himself came in
human nature and served and suffered and redeemed each one. And He
seeks and finds each one. And He rejoices over each one,
just like a man does a lost sheep. And He says, verse 11, For the
Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. And so verse
14, He says, Even so, it is not the will of your Father which
is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. So this is the point, showing
us how precious every believer is. Our brethren are to Christ. He's given His angels charge
to look over them. Christ has come and redeemed them. It's
not the Father's will that one should be lost. So He's showing
us why we should be humble, why we should never offend one of
our brethren. So, be diligent not to offend
one of your brethren. Seek to cultivate a spirit of
humility. To be first is to be last and
to serve one another. Now, having taught us true humility
and having taught us to serve one another, to bear one another's
burdens, to put the other first, now knowing that we're going
to offend each other, he gives us this next instruction about
long suffering. Now, I wish that we could forget
anything that legal false religion has ever taught us about this
next passage of Scripture. Our Lord is teaching us here
the same thing He taught there in what we just looked at. He's
teaching us humility and He's teaching us long-suffering. Alright? Look here with me. Now, we're
talking about when we've been offended, when one of our brethren
have offended us. The key here is longsuffering.
He says, verse 15, moreover if thy brother shall trespass against
thee. Now as believers, we're not looking
for reasons to take offense with our brethren. We're not trying
to set up a bunch of rules and things. You set up a bunch of
rules and you will break those rules and you will find a reason
to use all those rules that you've set up. This is so simple, what
Christ gives right here. It's so simple. Invariably, at
some time or another, your children come home from school and they
got head lice. And you have to sit down and
get them down and go through their head and just meticulously
make sure you get all those nits, those eggs, out of the hair.
You got to examine them extra careful. That's not what this
is. This is not nitpicking. We're
not nitpicking. We're not looking at just every
little offense. That's not what it is. We offend
all, James, in many things we offend all. Me and you, all of
us do. We're sinners still. We got an
old man with us, an old man of flesh, and he's what he has always
been, and he is what he will always be until the day that
Christ delivers us from him. So remember that about one another. And our brethren are sinners
still. So we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities
of the weak and not to please ourselves, but do it for his
good to his edification. Paul said to the Colossians,
forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any have a quarrel
against any, Even as Christ forgave you, so also do you. So we're
not talking about every little thing here. We're talking about
truly serious offenses. Now, what truly is offensive
to a believer? If I'm truly been born of God
and have a spirit of humility so that I want Christ to have
all preeminence and my brethren to be first, then number one,
What is offensive to me is anything that diminishes the glory and
honor of God my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's number one. And number two is anything that
hurts one of our brethren. Those are the two things that
offend a believer. You can do a lot of things to
me, and I'll overlook it, but when it comes to diminishing
the glory of Christ or hurting one of those brethren for whom
Christ died, That's a different story altogether. Now, whatever
hurts them hurts us. Whatever draws their attention
from Christ and their focus off of Christ takes our focus off
of Christ. Whatever it is that divides brethren
disrupts the unity of God's church. Now, there's four types of offenses
that are worthy to be addressed, which are given in scriptures.
These are four types of offenses. One of them is offenses between
brethren who are in business together. That's one that's addressed
in 1 Corinthians 6. Another thing in the same sort
of category, Paul said, gave a word on those unwilling to
work, you know, you remember, and to support their family.
A second category is offenses causing division among brethren,
backbiting, malicious words. If you want your son or your
daughter to hear the gospel, and you let your son or your
daughter hear you and your spouse talk about me, it'll undermine
the whole gospel. They won't hear a word I say.
And likewise, if I want my son and my daughter to, if you have
an opportunity to speak the truth to them, and I want them to pay
attention to you, if they hear me talking about you, you'd be
spinning your wheels to try to talk to them. So this is, you
see what we're saying here? And just backbiting, just talking
malicious words about one another. The third is a confirmed public-known
moral offense, like the incestuous man. That's a public-known moral
offense. I tell the young people that
the Lord has called by His grace, we're not We're not living for this world.
We're not living for this flesh. We're living for Christ. We're
following after Him. So it's not that I don't stand
up and preach morality to you. I preach Christ to you. But anytime
there's anything that's a moral problem like this, a problem
with morality, it will disrupt the unity of the brethren. It's
taking our focus off Christ and putting it on another person.
And then there's heretical doctrinal offenses. Now this is the most
important, a denial of limited atonement, a denial of Christ's
particular redemption of his people. It's a denial of the
gospel. Now you can candy coat it any
way you want to, but that's denying what Christ accomplished, is
denying God, denying Christ. There's no two ways about it.
If blasphemy of free will, works, religion, and doctrines of men,
if it exalts man, if it puts any aspect of salvation in the
hands of a man, it diminishes the fact that salvation is of
the Lord. That's exactly what it does.
And it's salvations by God, by grace, through faith, apart from
works of righteousness that we've done. Now those are just four
categories. So the Lord gives us steps to
take in serious matters. Alright? Here's the first step.
Verse 15. Now don't forget our first lesson
we learned is about humility. Humility. Doing nothing to offend
our brethren. Alright? So, now, here's what
he says, verse 15, Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass
against you, go and tell him his fault between thee and him
alone. And if he shall hear thee, thou
hast gained thy brother. True love is going to seek to
correct the one it loves. If it's in harm, if it's in harm's
way, or it's going to jeopardize the good of the whole church,
true love will seek to help, lovingly help another. Our Father,
God our Father, the scripture says, whom the Lord loveth, he
chasteneth. He's not chastening this whole
world. He's not chastening all men without exception. Whom the
Lord loveth, he chasteneth. Well, that's the same with us
when we correct our children. How many times have you said
I'm doing this because I love you If I didn't love you, I just
let you let you go But I love you. So I'm turning you from
that. It's going to hurt you It's going to end up getting
worse and worse when a straight line goes off course right here
by the time it gets On down there five or ten years. It's way off
course They're trying to help them, trying to turn them. Well,
it's the same with brethren. Leviticus says, thou shalt not
hate thy brother in thine heart. And this is what it is, what
he's talking about. Thou shalt not in any wise, thou shalt in
any wise rebuke your neighbor and not suffer sin upon him.
In other words, don't just let it go. Talk to him about it. Talk to him about it. So remember
now, if your brother comes to you, you've done something offensive,
and he comes to you and he's talking to you, remember that
he loves you. So hear him. So listen to him.
And then if you're the one going, To talk to a brother, remember
first of all, the humility we talked about first. And then
secondly, remember that the motive is God's glory and true, unfeigned
love. It's not going to put somebody
in their place. It's not to punish them and not
to reproach them and not to drive them away. It's to win your brother. It's to restore your brother.
And he says here, between thee and him alone. Christ has come
and God sent forth His Son to put away our sin and to cover
us, to robe us in His righteousness. And so He teaches us to seek
to cover the faults of our brethren. Those who love to preach works
and preach law and all that, they love, absolutely are thrilled
to find out somebody's done something wrong so they can uncover the
thing. Believers want to cover one another's sins. You know
the two sons, Noah's two sons. The two of them turned their
backs to him, and they walked backwards, and they covered up
his nakedness. And the other one stood there
and pointed and said, look, daddy's drunk. Look, look, he's drunk
and naked. And God cursed him. God cursed him. So we're trying
to cover, so go to him alone. Don't broadcast it. Don't broadcast
it. And if he'll hear you, you've
gained your brother. James said, he which converteth the sinner
from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall
hide a multitude of sin. And then here's the second step.
If he will not hear you, take with you one or two more, that
in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established."
Now, you see, this is a serious matter. This is not something
just somebody looked at you wrong. I mean, you're going through
some steps here. You're taking two or three more
with you to talk to them about this thing. And you see how this
is long-suffering? This would take time. This takes
time. He's teaching us long-suffering,
is what he's doing. He's teaching us how to be careful
with one another, is what he's doing. And he's not telling us
to take these other witnesses with us to build a case against
him. He's telling us to take them
who are witnesses of Christ, who can speak as witnesses of
Christ, the great thing Christ has done, and talk to them from
a standpoint of the importance being Christ and Christ alone. And then thirdly, he says, verse
17, if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it to the church.
But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee
as a heathen man and a publican. Now, it doesn't mean that we
bring a man up here before the church like he's in a courtroom
and we're all standing here before him like the judge and the jury,
or we bring him before an assembly of disciplinary committee. That's
a bunch of dung is what that is. That's a bunch of men trying
to lord over God's heritage is what that is, exactly. It doesn't
mean that at all. It means you let, now let some
other brethren know about it. other brethren in the church,
in hopes that as everyone one-on-one can talk to him and encourage
him, and he hears that everybody in the church is telling him
the same exact thing, all in agreement that, you know, The more important thing is,
lay this thing aside, it's not important. We need Christ and
Him alone and we need the unity of the congregation. As He hears
everybody, hopefully, hopefully, it'll wake Him up and the Lord
will bless it and He'll come to His senses in the matter.
But He says, but if He will not hear, let Him be unto thee as
a heathen man and a publican. Just like somebody, an unbeliever,
a heathen man. But now this is sad. It's sad
for him, anybody who can depart the gospel. And that's all it
is. It's self-exalting for anybody to think he's right and think
the whole church is wrong. That's self-exalting, hard-hearted
self-worship is what that is. And it's sad. It's very sad.
But God gives us here a word of encouragement and comfort,
consolation concerning it. Look at verse 18. Verily I say
unto you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound
in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven." Now this doesn't mean that whatsoever the church
decides on earth in the matter, God will then do in heaven. It
doesn't mean that. Let me give you a translation
that will help me to understand it better. Whatsoever you shall
bind on earth shall have already been bound in heaven. and whatsoever
you shall loose on earth shall have already been loosed in heaven."
So when the church follows Christ in these steps, the outcome is
the church conforming to that which God has already done in
heaven. You see that? You understand
that? He's the first cause. He's doing His will. And He gives
us the same comfort and assurance again in verse 19. Again I say
unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything
that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father
which is in heaven. Now the prayer of our prayer
in matters of discipline or in all matters is, Father, Thy will
be done. That's what we're asking God.
That's what we want to be done. Father, Thy will be done. And
so, if that's the soul of our prayer, then we have the assurance
that the final outcome is the Father doing His will. Do you
understand that? Get that? He's comforting us
in this thing. And again, He gives us a great
reason for carefulness, for long-suffering, and consolation in the outcome. He says here, the one who's the
final authority and the one who's governing the whole matter in
the midst of His church is Christ Himself. Look at verse 20. For
where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am
I in the midst of everything. These are those matters that,
quote, salvation, that we work out together as a church family
in our midst, which Paul referred to when he said, work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling because it's God which worketh
in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. You see
that? He's in our midst, truly in our midst. So knowing Christ
is in our midst, knowing Christ is in our brethren, how it humbles
us to not offend them, and then when we're offended, to be long-suffering
with them, and try to be as tenderly, as loving as we can to take these
steps to help them. Do you see that? No, and it's
Christ in them, and it's Christ working in His people. We err
and we need correction, but you do the correcting, you who do
the correcting. Remember this, who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect is God to justify. It's
Christ that died, that's risen again, let's make an intercession
for him. So, and if we're the offending party, we need to remember
this is Christ's instruction. He said, this is how you do this.
And we need to remember that this is love being shown to you
by your brethren. And so James says, wherefore
my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to
speak, slow to wrath, for wrath doesn't work the righteousness
of God. And he says, and lay apart all filthiness and all
the excess, sinful excess, and receive with meekness the engrafted
word. But don't only be hearers of
it, be doers of it. That's what he's telling us.
All right, now here's the third thing. Forgiveness, and I have
to be brief here. Now, having taught the importance
of this childlike humility, and then having shown us this long-suffering,
we dare not offend our brethren. This is the key here. So, then
he teaches us this long-suffering towards one that has offended. Now Peter comes and asks this
question, verse 21. Then came Peter to him and said,
Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive
him? Until seven times? And Jesus said unto him, I say
not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven. It means unlimited. Put no limit
on forgiveness. No limit on forgiveness. Brethren
love one another because he that's begotten of God loves them that's
begotten of God. And forgiveness toward our brethren
is the same state of the heart just like love is. We're not
looking to cast one another out and divide from another. We want
to forgive one another. That's the heart of believers.
A believer delights, a forgiver delights to return good for evil.
Forgiveness doesn't dwell on wrongs done to us, but forgets
them. Remember what Christ has done
for us, what He's accomplished for us? Their sin and iniquities
will I remember no more. And there's no more offering.
Where remission of our sins are, there's no more offering for
them. So don't make a fellow believer keep bringing it up,
or bringing it up to others, or keep dwelling on it. Forget
it. Just forget it. I paraphrase
this from somebody else, but I want to give this to you. We
know that this 70 times 7 means unlimited, but this is a good,
I thought, good point. The sum 70 times 7 equals 490.
Now the proper definition of an offense is that which is done
without any provocation. If we examine ourselves, we will
not find during the whole course of our life that we've received
490 offenses in which we didn't provoke at least half of them.
Isn't that right? Alright, now, let's read out
this rest of this, because this is the best motive right here.
Verse 23, Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a certain
king, which would take account of his servants. And when he
had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him that owed him
ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not to
pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and his
children, and all that he had in payment to be made. The servant
therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience
with me, and I'll pay thee. Then the Lord of that servant
was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the
debt. But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow
servants, which owed him a hundred pens. 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. And he would not. but went, cast him into prison
till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw
what was done, they were very sorry and came and told unto
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 desirest me. Shouldest not
thou also have 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. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if you
from your heart forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses.
Now do we continue to offend Christ? We can't count them all
and we don't even know the half of it. And yet he continues to
be the advocate of his people with the Father. So what we ought
to do is pray for our offending brethren. And then he not only
does that, but Christ continues to be our righteousness with
the Father. So we ought to, when this offending
brother has sorrowed over his offense, forget it and rejoice
with him over what Christ has done in making himself the righteousness
of us both. Now, those who are abundantly
forgiven by Christ, bearing abundantly the stroke of justice for us,
should be most abundant in forgiveness toward one another. All right,
so let's review it. First of all, seek a humble spirit.
To be first in the kingdom of heaven is to be last and to serve
all. That's Christ. He made himself
the least, served us, served us, his elect, and presents us
to God spotless and without fault. Secondly, when we're offended,
be long-suffering. We got to make sure we don't
offend those that have offended us when we go talk to them. Be
long-suffering, prayerful, and careful. And thirdly, forgive
without limit. forgive without limit. Humility,
long suffering, forgiveness is the spirit of grace and it's
the key to a happy church family. Amen.