Come back to Matthew 18. I titled the message, The Unforgiving
Servant. The Unforgiving Servant. That doesn't even sound right,
does it? Unforgiving Servant. Years ago, there was a man named
Samuel Holmes. He was locked up in Frankfort,
Kentucky, in jail for murder. But this man had a good friend.
His name was Lucian Young. I guess they grew up together.
They were very tight, good friend. And Mr. Young went to the governor
of Kentucky, Blackburn, Mr. Blackburn. He went to the governor
to plead for his friend, and in pleading for his friend, he
reminded the governor how that the legislature had recognized
Mr. Holmes some years earlier for
saving several people from a wrecked vessel. And so the governor,
Blackburn, remembered the incident and he wrote a letter of pardon
and gave it to Mr. Young. And Mr. Young took the pardon and hurried
to the jail. Good news. And when he got to the jail, He talked to his friend for a
little bit, Mr. Holmes. He talked to him for
a little bit. And he asked him this question.
He said, I have a question. He said, if you get your freedom,
because he hadn't yet told him about the pardon. If you get
your freedom, what is the first thing you're going to do? What's
the first thing you'll do? And Mr. Holmes said, I would
go to Lancaster. and kill Judge Olseley and the
man who was a witness against me. That's the first thing he
said I'd do. And Mr. Young's heart dropped.
His heart dropped when he heard that. And shortly he turned and
walked away from the jail, and when he got outside, he took
the pardon out of his pocket, tore it into pieces, and threw
it away. Holmes lost his pardon simply
because he was not able to forgive those who put him there for murder. He was there for murder. He had
no repentance with which to meet pardon with and no godly sorrow
with which to respond to profit and mercy. I thought that story
went well with this one that we have in front of us. Now I'm
going to start back in verse 21. We said a few things about
that last week, but let me start there. Peter asked the Lord,
how often shall I forgive my brother? He said seven times. What we're going to see here
in these verses here, listen, what we're going to see is this.
Our attitude towards others reveals our relationship to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Our attitude. This is why it's
so important going through the Gospels here, going verse by
verse, because what we learn, we don't learn just doctrine,
but we learn the application of it. And here we are learning
that our attitude towards others reveals our relationship to the
Lord Jesus Christ, or lack thereof, that there is no relationship. You and I are like an open book.
People read our actions. They read us more than what we
say. They read what we do more than what we say. But I thought it's sad that Peter
should even ask such a question. How often should I forgive my
brother? But we have to remember this. They were brought up under
the law which had limits. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But the gospel operates differently. Those in the kingdom of God operate
under a different spirit, a spirit of forgiveness. The gospel teaches us to forgive
as we have been forgiven. That is so clear throughout our
Lord's teachings. Forgiving someone does not make
me a child of God. It reveals whether or not I'm
a child of God. It's evidence. Listen to these
scriptures here. First of all, in Ephesians 4.32. Be a kind one to another, tender-hearted. You ever meet somebody that's
just tender-hearted? So tender-hearted. Forgiving
one another, even, and here's the basis now, here's the basis.
Even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. On that basis,
you forgive. And then Colossians 3.13, forbearing
one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel
against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. Any quarrel
that you would have with me or that I would have with you is
totally insignificant to the quarrel God would have with me. I've offended God's law, broken
it in every way, shape, and form. And then in 1 John 2.12, he says,
I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven
you for His name's sake. That's why God's forgiven you,
for His name's sake, for Christ's sake. He's the basis of why we
forgive. What he's teaching here is that
those who are born of God, they live and they have a forgiving
spirit. And this is serious matter. This
is serious. In Matthew 6, 12 and 15, listen
to this, "...and forgive us our debts, as, and this is the Lord teaching
His disciples, this is the Lord teaching His disciples how to
pray. They said, teach us how to pray. And He said, here's
how you pray. Forgive us our debts as we forgive
our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one, for thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory forever. Amen. Then he goes on to say,
"'For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father
will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you your
trespasses.'" Now, what we have here in these
verses, we have a debt forgiven, a great debt owed, and forgiven
by the king, a servant who had nothing to pay. He had nothing
to pay. Now, the parable starts out with
this kingdom and this king, and the king here is our Lord Jesus
Christ. As it says, and I read it to
you in the Bible class in Revelations 3.15, that the kingdoms of this
world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
It all belongs to him, all of it. All serve Him. All angels serve Him, fallen,
unfallen. All men serve Him. All creation
serves Him. Everything serves the King of
glory, the Lord Jesus Christ. There's nothing that does not
serve Him. Now, the King comes and He's going to take account
of His servants. Now, this account is like accounting. It's going to add things up.
And when he does, this one servant here, and he represents all of
us, he has nothing to pay. We have nothing to pay, God.
We have nothing to pay. But in verse 24, one was brought
that owed 10,000 talents. Someone said that's equal to
about $10 million. I don't know, but that's what I've read. But
I do know this. It's impossible to pay, even
with no interest. It's impossible to pay. You can
take the interest off of it, it doesn't matter. You can go
to the bank and they're gonna loan you a million dollars interest
free. And you got a $30,000 a year job. What does it matter if it's
interest free? You still can't pay it. You still
can't pay it. But what it is here, this servant
is bankrupt. And this is how we are spiritually. We have no way of paying God
for all that we owe. We have no way of paying God
the sin debt we owe. We have no way of honoring God's
law. We owe honor to God's law. We
owe love to God. To love God with all your heart,
your soul, your mind, we're to love God. And we can't do it. We can't even scratch the surface
of it. We owe them a debt of obedience,
a debt of worship. This morning, we will, I pray
that we are worshiping God, but we will not worship God this
morning as God ought to be worshiped. If you take Jesus Christ out
of it, we'll all end up in hell for this. It's that bad. It would be that bad, apart from
Jesus Christ. It would be. If you notice here, the servant
is brought to the king and his debt revealed. And this is what
the law does. It says over in Galatians 3.24
that the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. He's brought before the king
and all his debts, all that he owes is revealed. And this servant,
it says, had nothing to pay. He couldn't even reach into his
pocket a 10 cent payment. That's broke. That's broke. And this is how spiritually broke
we are. He had nothing to pay. How can
we pay off something if we keep adding to it faster than we pay
it off? That's called compound interest. That's the way our
sins are. They're like compound interest.
You can't pay it off. Then the king commanded that
his servant and family, all his possessions, be sold for payment.
The king owns all of them. We saw that this morning in the
Bible class. Joseph ended up owning it all.
The land, the money, the people, the cattle, it all. And the king
here, it's his kingdom. There's one thing we have to
understand. The king is sovereign and the kingdom is his. And he comes and he has a day
of reckoning. And he says that, he calls this
the servant. And this servant is brought and
he has nothing to pay. And the king says to sell all
that he has and his family too, everything, lock, stock and barrel.
And it's to be sold for a, listen, a payment. A payment. All that he owed couldn't be
paid. The debt couldn't be paid. That guy didn't own enough to
pay off the debt. All the suffering, I thought about this, I thought
all the suffering in hell is just a payment. That's why hell's
eternal. Those there can't pay off the
debt. Jesus Christ paid the debt. He's the only person who was
able to pay off the sin debt. He's the only person who gave
obedience, perfect obedience to God's law. He's the only person
who honored the law, who magnified the law, and He honored it. He's
the only person who has ever loved God with all his heart,
mind, soul, and strength. Only person. And those in Christ, that belongs
to them too. I love God with all my heart,
soul, and strength in Jesus Christ, in my substitute. Jesus Christ is the only person who can pay it all off. You know,
he said here, cast him into prison till he pays off the debt. You
can't pay a debt off when you're in prison. Think about it. If you get locked up, how you
gonna pay it off? What he's saying here, you're gonna die in prison. That's what's gonna happen. If
the Lord doesn't save us, we're gonna perish. That's what's gonna
happen. And this servant, and he must
have knew something about this king, being a benevolent king.
He said, have patience with me. He fell down and he worshiped
him. He said, have patience with me
and I'll pay thee all. I'll pay you all of it. If he was not able to make a
payment before, why would he think he can now? You see the
ignorance, spiritual ignorance here? He's never been able to
pay it. We are so spiritually ignorant
of our sin debt by nature, we think, Lord, if you give me,
if you just give me one more chance, I'll pay it off. I'll
take care of it. No, you won't. No, you won't. Like that young man, he said,
I kept all these from my youth up. He said, we'll go sell all
you have, give it to the poor, come follow me. And he couldn't
do it because of covetousness. He couldn't let go of what he
had because what he had had a hold of him. It owned him, he didn't
own it. That's one thing I learned about
business. I had a business for 25 years
and I learned the business owned me. There was a point where I
realized, it owns me, I don't own it. It owns me. And I had 40 customers at one
time and I thought, I don't have one boss, I got 40 of them. And
I look back, I remember I read an article one time, it said,
let me see if I can think of it. There was a plaque I saw
one time. The two greatest mistakes in this country that people make,
most overrated, the two most overrated things in this country
is mom's apple pie and owning your own business. That's the
two most overrated. Anyway, that's always stuck with
me. Have patience with me and I'll
pay you all of it. And the grace of the King is
revealed here in verse 27. He was moved with compassion.
This servant fell down at His feet. He was begging, begging
for mercy, begging not to go to the prison, begging that the
Lord wouldn't take everything, His family and all, and put them
in the debtor's prison. And he was moved with compassion
and he recognized the poverty of his servant and he loosed
him. He loosed him, he says. Loosed him and forgave him the
debt. This material debt that he had,
he forgave him. Now remember here, the lesson
is all about forgiveness here. And this reveals a whole lot
about our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, whether it's
real or not, whether it's pretense or not. And I want the Lord to
make this known to me. I don't want to be fooled. I
don't want to go through this life thinking that everything's
all right when everything's all wrong. And the biggest gauge
of that is my attitude. my attitude towards you, because
it reveals my understanding of the Lord's attitude toward me
in forgiveness. The complete debt was forgiven. Now comes the acid test of forgiveness
received properly. If this was real, if this was
really from the heart, this man really, really understood what
happened, if he really knew what happened, or if he just like,
wow, got by this one. What I mean by this is that,
did it truly affect the debtor's heart? A person comes in here and hears
the gospel. They hear how the Lord Jesus Christ died for sinners.
And they say, I believe that. They make a profession. And then
they go right out of here. And those that have offended
them, they can't get over it. They can't get over it. They
demand out of them what they asked the Lord to forgive them
of. But they demand it out of others. That person has never been saved.
That person has never been saved by the grace of God. Listen to verses 28 through 35
here. Let me kind of summarize it. This servant was forgiven of
a great debt, I mean a monumental debt, unbelievable
debt. He's forgiven it. But he has
a servant, a fellow, a fellow, one of his equal. See, the king
forgave him. He's not the king's equal. He's
the king's servant. But here he is, a servant, and
he has a servant, his fellow servant, one that worked along
with him, served along with him, and he probably said, Joe, could
you loan me some money this week? I'm broke. Could you loan me
a penny to buy some bread? And so Joe gives him a penny
to buy some bread. And then a little time goes by,
probably a couple days with him, but some time goes by and he
says, Joe, you got that penny I loaned you? A penny now, I
remind you. You got that penny? And he says,
no, I don't have it. And he grabs him by the throat.
He's gonna kill him. He's gonna choke him. and he
grabs him by the throat and he demands payment for that penny,
when the king just forgave him millions. If you'll notice the servant
here that begged for the mercy, let me get over here and read
it. He said the same thing to his
friend there that the first servant said to the king. In verse 29,
and his fellow servant fell down at his feet, the same thing that
the other servant did when he fell down at the king's feet.
And beside him saying, have patience with me and I'll pay thee all.
The exact same request, word for word, word for word. And he would not. He would not. Actions, listen, actions speak
louder than words, don't they? They always do. People see what
we do more than what we say. Look in verse 31. So when his
fellow servants saw what was done, they watched this. And
they were upset, they were very sorry. And they told the king,
they told their lord what was done, what this man did. They
knew what the king did for him, because I'm sure he went out
and he probably bragged about it. He probably boasted about
it. You can't believe this, the king
forgave me all that? I don't owe that no more. And then he go
get his fellow servant and he says, I gave you a penny, now
give me that penny back. And they watched and seen what
he did. And it upset him. Henry said this in the preaching
from this portion of scripture. Men may not know why Jesus Christ was nailed to
the cross, but they know why you nailed him. Men may not know why Christ was
spit on, but they know why you spit on them. Actions speak louder than words.
I'm telling you the truth, our actions speak who we are. If grace is there, grace will
come out. It's not that showing mercy,
it's not that forgiveness recommends me to God, it's the evidence
that God is at work in me. The work has been done. The work
is going on. Our actions do prove who we are.
The life of the Lord Jesus Christ in the soul is revealed by faith
in Christ, it's revealed by forgiveness, a forgiving spirit, it's revealed
by a giving spirit, it's revealed by kindness. When these things
are absent, Jesus Christ is absent. He's absent. And here's the question now,
the king, verse 33, he says, "...should you not forgive your
fellow servant as I have forgiven you?" Should you not have forgiven
him just like I did you? He said, I forgave you because
you asked me. Should you not have done the
same thing? Should you not have done the
same? And His Lord, it says in verse
34, was angry and He delivered Him to the tormentors, so He
should pay all that was due unto Him. Well, He's going to die
in prison because He can't pay it. He can't pay it. And what
He's saying, showing us here in verse 34, men will be dealt
with as they deal with others. If God has saved me, if God has
saved you, we will. We will deal with one another
kindly, graciously. That's not saying we never offend
one another. I'm not saying that. But we don't harbor it. I'm telling
you, I don't believe that a person born of God can harbor grudges. I don't believe you can. I just
don't. Greater is He that is in you
than he that's in the world. He won't let it happen. He won't
let that take root and grow. He'll nip it in the bud. Now
if He has to bring you into the dirt again, He'll do it. But
if you're His child, He'll do it. But this servant here is
a servant who's done nothing but made a profession of forgiveness
and mercy, and he's gone out, and it's evident that the work
of grace has never happened in the heart of that man. That's
what's going on here. Here's the point of the parable.
Verse 35, so likewise shall my heavenly father, he doesn't say
your heavenly father now, he says mine, do also unto you. If you, listen, from your hearts,
that's where real forgiveness comes from, from your heart,
you wanna do it. You're glad to do it. Now there's sin we have to overcome,
indwelling sin, but we wanna do it, we desire to do it. If
you from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their
trespasses, Real forgiveness comes from a regenerated heart.
It comes from a new heart. That's where it comes from. It
comes from a new heart. If we cannot forgive, it's because
we've not had a new heart given. We don't have it. That's just
that simple. You know, we believe the doctrines
of what we call the doctrines of grace. We believe God chose
a people, Christ died for them. We believe these things. But the evidence of grace, the
evidence of it, it's our daily life. It's our
daily life. That's the evidence of it. God, For Christ's sake, as I
read to you at the beginning, God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven
us. And where that forgiveness is
experienced now, where it is experienced, you know it, it's
real, it's genuine. And where it is experienced,
it will be shown to others. It will be shown to others. But where it's not experienced,
it won't be shown. It won't be shown. Where there is a forgiving heart,
you can be sure of this, the Lord Jesus Christ is in that
heart. He's in that heart. Look over in Luke chapter 6,
and I'll wind this down. Luke in verse 31, I'm going to
read down to 38. In verse 31, And as you would
that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For
if you love them which love you, what thing have you? And I'll
tell you another good translation for that. If you love them which
love you, what grace have you? You can write that in there.
What grace have you? For sinners also love those that
love them. You haven't done anything differently
than before. There's been no change. If you
do good to them which do good to you, what thank or what grace
have you? For sinners do the same things.
Those who know not God do the same things. And if you lend
to them of whom you hope to receive, what thank or grace have you?
For sinners, they lend to sinners to receive as much again or to
get some interest. When they give to you, they expect
it back. He says here, but love your enemies.
Do good and lend. Lend, hoping for nothing in return. I tell you, the Scripture tells
us to give as unto the Lord. And the Lord gives. He gives
us what we have. I mean, we are rich. We are. And your reward shall be great,
and you shall be the children of the highest." That's your
reward. You're the children of the highest. I'm not looking
for a mansion. I'm not looking for a big house. I'll tell you what I'm looking
for, to be with the Lord forever. He's my reward. It's what God
said to Abraham, I'm your exceeding great reward, Abraham. If you're
looking for more than Him, you've missed it. And I missed it. If
I'm looking for more than Jesus Christ, you know, more stars
in my crown, I don't even like wearing a hat. Why do I want
more stars than a crown? I'm not wearing a crown. The
crown the scripture speaks of is like the crown of life, the
crown of righteousness. It's not something you wear on
your head. It's something that's you. Listen, let me go back and read
this. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend hope, and
for nothing again. And your reward shall be great,
and you shall be called the children of the highest. For he is kind
unto the unthankful, and to the evil. Do you remember when he
was kind to you, when you were unthankful and evil? Huh? You know, I had a nice place
to live before I believed, and I had a nice place to believe
after I believed. God was kind to me when I was unthankful and
evil, and kind to me after He saved me. Be ye therefore merciful,
as your Father also is merciful. Be like your Father. You ever
hear someone say, boy, he's just like his daddy? He's just like
his daddy. Honored as his daddy. When you
come speaking about us. But with our Father, be like
your Father, which is merciful. So you be merciful. You know,
in Genesis, in creation there, remember, like beget like. That
which is born of the Spirit of Spirit, like beget like. When God begets someone, they're
like Him. Judge not, and you shall not
be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive,
and you shall be forgiven. Give, and it shall be given unto
you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,
shall mean given to your bosom. For with the same measure that
you meet with all, it shall be measured to you again." No, salvation is not because
I do this or do that. Salvation is Jesus Christ alone.
He redeemed me. He purchased me. He provided
righteousness for me. But the evidence that I am a
child of God, is a forgiving spirit, a forgiving, kind, loving
spirit. Not just to my own. Do not sinners the same, those
who don't believe. James said this, and this is
a tough scripture, James 2.13, that God will have judgment without
mercy to those who show No mercy. You go read that James, when
you have time, James 2.13. He'll have judgment without mercy on
those who show no mercy. They were never His. But where there is a forgiving
heart, the Lord Jesus Christ is in that heart. He's in that
heart.