If you would, come with me to
Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18. I didn't really plan on it being
Easter. The greatest forgiveness, the
greatest show of love happened a couple thousand years ago on
the cross. When our Lord died on the cross
and shed his blood, the promise that had been made from all eternity
was actually carried out on that cross. And because he died and
shed his perfect, holy, righteous blood, our sins have been forgiven. Today we're gonna learn about
just how much sin we have. To give us a real good understanding,
I pray God will give us a good understanding of just how much. the story here today of an unforgiving
servant. Y'all are in Matthew 18? It would
be good if I went there. Give me a second. Look at verse 15. We'll start
here. This is the few verses here before
our text. The Lord says, the Lord's speaking
to his disciples. Moreover, if thy brother shall
trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee
and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast
gained thy brother. The Lord is giving us a, he's
setting up a procedure for us. If one of our brothers or sisters
offends us, You're not to just sit around and stew on it, because
you know that's only going to go downhill from there. If it's
bothering you, you should just forgive them. But if it's bothering
you bad enough, the Lord gives us a channel to go through. First thing you do is go and
tell him the fault between you and him alone. This is a private
matter. It doesn't have to be displayed
for the whole world to see. Verse 16, he says, but if he
will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that
in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be
established. That's the second channel. And
if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But
if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen
man and a publican. Rarely I say unto you, whatsoever
you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. whatsoever
you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And again,
I say to you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching
anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them with
my Father, which is heaven. For where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Now we
come to the parable of the unforgiving servant. Verse 21, Peter, comes
to the Lord and asks a question. Then Peter came to him and said,
Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive
him? Till seven times. The Lord had just been talking
about forgiveness. So here comes a good question.
We've all dealt with people. We've been on both sides of this
today. You're gonna see a king forgive a whole lot of debt.
And the same person's gonna go out and not forgive somebody
of a very small debt. But Peter is asking this question,
and Peter is one of God's children. So right away, I want you to
know this message is for God's sheep, his chosen, his elect. It's a warning, but it's a lesson
for us. Peter asks us how many times
do we need to forgive others? Turn with me real quick to Luke
17. Luke 17, verse three. Luke 17, verses three and four. He says, take heed to yourself.
Again, this is the Lord speaking. If thy brother trespasses against
thee, rebuke him. And if he repent, forgive him.
It's that simple. And if he trespass against thee
seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to
thee, saying, I repent, what are you supposed to do? Forgive
him. That's the Lord's words. The
Lord doesn't lie. He's telling you straight up
what you should do. That's a very hard thing to do
for such a sinner as we are, isn't it? I got this new man
in me that wants to do exactly what the Lord says. I want to
go out and forgive and love people. But I got this old man with me
that goes with me everywhere I go. And I can't even tell the
difference between the new man and the old man sometimes. I
can't tell who's driving. I can't tell which ones of those
microphones speaking for me. I'm gonna say some things that
are offensive to others that I don't even think are offensive
until somebody points them out. And that's how we are by nature.
We wanna do these things, but we can't. And the Lord's gonna
deal with us here today. Now back in our text, Matthew
18, the Lord answers him in verse 22. Jesus said unto him, I say
not unto thee until seven times, but until 70 times seven, which
is, if you do the math, 490 times. Now, the Lord is not saying you
only have to forgive someone 490 times, and on the 491st time,
you look at him and say, nope, no more. That's not what he's
saying. The Lord is referencing a man
named Lamech. Turn with me to Genesis chapter
four. We'll read about Lamech and his trouble. Genesis chapter
four. You got verse nine there. This is
after Cain had killed his brother Abel and the Lord starts dealing
with him. Verse nine, the Lord said unto
Cain, where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not, am I
my brother's keeper? And he said, what hast thou done?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.
All that blood that he spilt went on the ground. God knows
these things, he sees it, he doesn't miss a thing. And now
art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth,
to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. And he's gonna
curse him here. When thou tillest the ground,
it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive
and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. Cain said unto
the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Cain is right in the Lord's face
here. God is righteous. That means equity. That means
he's fair and impartial. Cain's telling him, this ain't
fair. He's telling that to a perfectly fair and impartial God. Cain's
not happy. He wasn't happy with his brother's
sacrifice. He wanted God to accept his.
Didn't like it, killed his brother. God's dealing with him. Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment
is greater than I could bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out
this day from the face of the earth, and from thy face shall
I be hid. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond
in the earth, and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth
me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, therefore,
whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold,
and that means for seven generations, God's gonna punish Seven generations
of Cain, the one who kills it. And the Lord set a mark upon
Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from
the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod on the
east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she
conceived a bear, Enoch. And he built a city, and called
the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. And unto
Enoch was born Erad, Erad begat Nahuyahel, And Mehuel begat Methuselah,
and Methuselah begat Lamech. Now, Lamech took unto him two
wives. First of all, if you notice there,
I'll go ahead and do the math for you. Lamech was Cain's great,
great, great grandson. And Lamech took unto him two
wives, the name of the one, Adah, that's the name of the other,
Zillah. Adah bare Jabal, he was the father's son Now, before we get to these next
two verses, the Jewish writers, it's not written in our Bibles, So it's just to give you some
understanding here. The Jewish writers tell us that
Lamech is the one who killed Cain. They said that Cain was
old and blind at the time. And he went out and he sat down
under a tree and some brush to cool from the heat of the day.
And Lamech was with his son Tubal-Cain. Lamech was also old and blind
at this time. and they were hunting. And Tubal
came, saw Cain sitting in the brush, but didn't realize it
was a human. He thought it was an animal.
So he tells Lamech, shoot over here. Now there's some discrepancy
on whether he shot an arrow or threw a rock, but he did kill
Cain. And he did not know that he was
aiming for Cain. When they get up there, he realized
he had killed Cain. He knew the curse. It was passed
down from generation. He knew what the curse was going
to be. So, out of anger, when he found out that he had accidentally
killed Cain, he turned to Tubal Cain and killed him, because
he's the one that told him to point there. Now, with all that
said, let's go back to verse 23. And Lamech said unto his
wives, he comes home after this, to Ada and Zillah, hear my voice,
ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech, for I have slain a
man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall
be avenged sevenfold, truly, Lamech, 70 and seven, 70 and
sevenfold. The amount here is what I wanna
focus on. He had been charged with a great
amount of sin because he had not only killed Cain to be punished
sevenfold, he also killed another man that was innocent. Surely,
my sins are so great, the punishment is gonna be so great, there won't
be enough to forgive me. Back in our text, the Lord says,
until not seven times, but 70 times seven. Go back in our text
there, Matthew 18. 70 times seven. The Lord used
Lamech's words to show how much somebody needed forgiveness,
okay? This man was in need of great
forgiveness, was he not? The Lord's telling us 10 times in one day, forget him
every time. That's what the Lord's saying here. He's comparing someone
who had a great debt, who needed a lot of forgiveness. Forgive,
that's the whole goal of the message he's teaching here. And the Lord says, he goes into
a parable here in verse 23. Therefore, as the kingdom of
heaven likened unto a certain king, which will take account
of his servants, And when he had begun to reckon, one was
brought unto him which owed him 10,000 talents. Now, the kingdom of heaven likened
unto a certain king. The certain king is God. Okay,
God the Father. And he's gonna take account of
his servants. When he does this, this is our
Lord coming to each and every one of his chosen people, at
some point he comes to us and he deals with our sin. He makes
us aware of our sin and the great debt that we owe. And this debt,
you're about to find out, is astronomical. Down here in verse
24, when he had began to reckon, one was brought unto him which
owed him 10,000 talents. Now, I want to explain this 10,000
talents. And we'll go into some detail. Bear with me. The talent was
a measurement of weight. This was a measurement of weight
for precious metals, such as silver, gold. And this came from
the Babylonians. That's where it originated, the
name of the talent. And a talent in the Old Testament
It weighed 129 pounds. So one talent of gold would weigh,
or silver would weigh 129 pounds. Already you can tell that's a
lot. I checked the prices of gold and silver today. Gold right
now, $22,234 an ounce. Silver, $25 an ounce. So here
he is with 10,000 talents. But we don't value this money,
this talent, the way they valued it. There's no way for me to
put a price tag on it. I can, and I'm going to try to,
but just for us to get some understanding. But they did it like this. In
the Roman Empire, they determined that a man's wages was one denarii
a day. It would take 6,000 denarii.
to make one talent. You would have to work 6,000
days to have one talent, okay? This man owed 10,000 talents. That's 60 million denarii or
60 million days that this man would have to work to make 10,000
talents. So, Now you kind of see how great
this debt was. Humongous amount. This represents our obligations
to God. We've sinned, we've got this
great sin that we committed against our God, and he comes to reckon
with us, and he reveals to you just how much you owe. Now, this man is going to start asking
for forgiveness. And he's going to make an offer
that's impossible. He's going to try to offer to
pay this debt back. Now look here at verse 25. 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 and payment to be made. Now this is our father. selling your children into bondage
to pay the debt. A man could sell himself into
bondage to pay a debt off back in this time. And it wasn't typical
to ever, I don't know that I've ever seen anybody selling a wife
to pay a debt, but it was typical to take a child to pay a debt. And this is his, This is what this man's presented
with. He owes this money. He can't pay. So he's told, sell
him. Sell him. Sell him into bondage.
And it's just like Adam when he fell. What happened? We were
sold into bondage. Sin, our sin, sold us into bondage
to pay a debt that we cannot pay. He gonna sell himself? The king's
gonna sell this man, his wife, his children, and all that he
had to pay this debt. The punishment is the payment. This guy could never, ever work
off this debt. Because as he went along working,
he's accumulating more debt. He's never gonna get out of debt
like that. He's never gonna pay for the sins that he's committed
against God. You understand that? Maybe verse
26, therefore, the sermon therefore fell down and worshiped him saying,
Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. Now, this
is typical of mankind, us, this is for us, this is for us. We
don't realize what we owe. We don't realize the value of
sin and just how bad it is. We think, that we can work this
debt off. Well, there's a lot of problems
with that. What's he gonna do? Obedience? Is he gonna try to keep the law
to pay off this debt? The law, obedience to God, obeying
God is something we should be doing anyway. That's our duty
to obey God. That's never gonna pay off a
debt. You understand? We should be doing that anyway.
So he's asking for patience, and he's gonna pay off this debt,
something that is impossible for him to do. He knows it, and
so does this king. And look at verse 28, oh, sorry,
verse 27. The king, the lord of that servant
was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the
debt The man did not ask for forgiveness, he asked for time.
He made a promise. He was trying to make an offer
to work an offer. That king knew there was no way
he could pay off his debt. No way he could pay off his debt. But the king was moved with compassion. God was moved with compassion
towards those who sinned against him. And he forgave our debt. this great debt that we owe that
we could never pay off. He forgave it all. It was out
of his goodness and mercy that he forgave this debt. This man
didn't ask for forgiveness, but yet he got it. That's the way
it is for each and every one of us. We were not looking for
him when we found him. He came to us. He came to us
to reckon with the debt that we owed. And here he is telling
his man, you're forgiven. I forgive your debt. You're loosed,
you're free to go. It's as if you didn't ever take
a penny and you don't owe me anything. You're free. And the
only way we get that forgiveness is on the blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, this great debt been forgiven. Now let's think about this. If the king wants to be patient
with him, he still wouldn't be able to pay. He'd still be running
a larger debt. So there's no patience. God's
patient because God's patient. He's long-suffering because he's
long-suffering. He's not doing that because we
asked for it. We don't need patience. We need
forgiveness. And that's what he gave. need
when we're asking for it. Lord, give me patience. Son,
you don't need patience, you need forgiveness. That's what
we need. Now, at this point, I wanted
you to understand just how big a debt that we owe. Peter asks,
how many times do we forgive someone? The Lord answers and
tells him basically every time that they ask and say that they
are sorry, you're to forgive them. forgiving you of so much. We know what the Lord Jesus started.
He had to die to pay for our sins, to pay this debt that we
could not pay. So, verse 28, things start to
change here a little bit. Here's a man that received grace
from this king, forgiveness of his debt. But, verse 28, the
same servant went out, found one of his fellow servants, which
owed him 100 pence. 100 pence was equal to 100 denarii. That's a Roman coin. This guy
had 60 million denarii forgiven. And he owes to somebody that
owed him 100 denarii. And look what he did. He laid
hands on him, took him by the throat, saying, pay me that thou
ow'st. Now if you consider what the
Lord had told the disciples in the previous verses, remember
he gave an order. When someone offends you, how
to handle it. You go to them and talk to them
alone. Second option, after that doesn't work, you take some people
with you. And if that don't work, Then
you take him to the church and let the church deal with it.
This man skipped the first two. Before he said one word to this
man, we read he already had his hands around his throat, didn't
he? This is typical of God's children in a church who can't
get along. At some point, we've seen it
here, I've seen it here several times over the years, one guy's
offended, Man or woman, it doesn't matter. Somebody gets offended
over usually it's something so small that you really just need
someone to walk up to you and slap you and say, come on. Get over this. Get over yourself.
Get over this little tiny matter. You're comparing 100 days work
to 60 million days work. That's not even comparable, is
it? Can't we just get over that? But this is typical. of someone
who has a problem. One brother or sister has a problem
with another brother or sister, and they don't go through the
proper channels. They don't go, you know firsthand, don't you? Should talk to you in private.
You don't go do this in front of everybody first. You go to
them in private alone, and you talk to them. You don't have
to scream and yell. You don't have to let that old
man show how what an idiot he is. Calm and collected. If you go into it trying to forgive,
wanting to forgive, you're in a lot better place there. But, here we are, a man's got this
great debt, forgive him, and he can't forgive this guy who
owes him such a debt. taking light hands on him and
this is a picture of people bringing someone in front of the church
they cannot wait long enough to get vengeance they gotta have
vengeance now so they start saying things and they start telling
people what a horrible person this one is or that because they that we don't ever act like that
here again. But this forgiveness is just more than just debt,
money, debt. It's anything. We're all gonna
be offended at some point or other. But verse 29, his fellow servant
fell down on his feet and besought him saying, have patience with
me and I will pay thee all. He used his own words against
him here. The Lord pointed out, this man
said the same thing to him that he had just said to the king.
And from what I could read and study, this man went right out,
right after he was forgiven of all that debt, he went right
to this guy and said, pay me. offended, best thing to do is
just go home and calm down. Think about it. Pray. Ask God
to show you. Am I wrong to feel the way I
do? And I'm probably gonna tell you,
yeah, you're gonna find that out. Yes, you are wrong to feel
that way. We should be forgiving one another. But this guy asked
for patience just like he did. Verse 30 says, and he would not,
he would not give him patience. But he went and cast him into
prison till he should pay the debt. What a hypocrite. Here he is. You don't just go
cast someone into prison. You've got to take him. At this
time, you would have took him before. Judges that were there
in the street, they would just say, hey, this is what's going
on. You'd have a few guys say, okay, yes, we agree. Right to
prison he goes. Until he should pay the debt,
but this is the thing. You don't make money when you're
in prison. How are you gonna pay it? Your
punishment of being put in prison is the payment. You're never
going to pay that debt off. You understand that? It's not
possible. But yet, we have many people,
today especially, false preachers all around the world telling
people how they can work off their debt. Works religion. God will accept your works. He
saved you. Now you have to keep the law.
No, you don't. You can't. You can't pay that
debt. Even if you were to work and
work and work and he was to be so patient with you and long-suffering,
give you all the time you needed to pay this debt, you can't pay
him. It's that great. This guy had so much forgiven
and would not forgive so little. What a hard heart. What a hard
heart we have inside of us, that old man. just can't get along
with anybody, so hateful, so unpleasant to be around. That's
why Paul says there's a war inside of him. We got the new man and
the old man, and all they do is butt heads. But verse 32,
then, oh, I'm sorry, verse 31. So when his fellow servants saw
what was done, they were very sorry. and came and told them
to their Lord all that was done. People went and told the Lord.
You see, when one of us comes and publicly criticizes or tries to do what
this guy in front of the church, the fellow servants or the rest
of us that weren't involved, we see this injustice. And we
start praying to God, Lord, remove this from our church. Take care,
this is what's going on here, Father. Have mercy on our church,
have mercy on these people, forgive us. So they go and they tell the
king. Verse 32, Lord, after that he had called and said unto him,
O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because you
desired me. Shouldest not thou have also
had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on
thee? Yes, he should have. Here he's being dealt with what
he did. This is a believer. This man
is typical of every believer. We want to say that We don't forgive others. We take
things so hard. They hurt us so bad. We've been forgiven so much,
but we can't forgive so little. You hear this guy, he's dealing
with it now. And his Lord, verse 34, his Lord was wroth and delivered
him to the tormentors. till he should pay all that was
due to him. Now, notice the king pardoned
this guy. He forgave all of his debt. And
when he found out that this man wouldn't forgive someone else,
did the king go back on his word? No. When God forgives your sins,
his past, present, and all future sins that he's forgiven. The
king did not go back and punish him like he was going to the
first time. Sell him and the bondage, his wife, the kids,
everything he had, and make pay. He didn't go back to that, did
he? He kept his word. He pardoned his sins. He forgave
his debt, and he did not change his mind. But he left them over
to the tormentors. Oh, the Lord comes. explains
to this guy how much he owed and how much he forgave. And
when this guy can't do it, he brings him back in and says,
here's what you got. I forgave all this. You can't
forgive anything. We're going to deal with that
right now. I'm not going to go back and punish you because that
would make God a liar. That would make God change his
word. Oh no, God's holy. guilty consciences. That's how
he deals with us. He's revealed this guy's sin
to himself, okay? And now, he's not gonna punish
him by selling him. He's not gonna change his mind.
He's gonna leave us here to think about what we've done. The Lord
said when he prayed to God, uh, Troy's father one time, he said,
I pray not that you take him out of this world, but that you
leave him here and you keep him from eating. Right? We're here
for a reason. He leaves us here for a reason.
He didn't kill this man. He left him here for a reason.
To learn about what he had been forgiven from. To let this sin
dead wail in his mind and sit and think about it. You ever
have a I've heard my parents tell me this before. I don't
know if I've done it to my kids or not, but if you do something
wrong, dad says, you just go in your room and you just sit
down there and think about what you did. Now that's a very bad
example compared to what God does, but that's what he's doing.
Think about what you did. You hypocrite. You were forgiven
so much, right? He leads us over to the tormentors.
guilt. Satan. Satan comes and he just
fills your mind full of doubt. He tells you there's no way you
could be one of God's elect. Look at what a sinner you are.
These things torment us. The law. Have you looked at the
law and not felt horrible? God says, that's it, not kill. Anybody in here ever kill anyone?
I don't think so. But he also says that if you
hate your brother, you've already committed murder in your heart.
We don't realize what sin is. We just don't understand what
all we do. You know, in the Old Testament,
the Jews would have to bring sacrifice for sins that they
didn't know about. We don't know about all of our
sin, but he does. He knows every penny you owe
him. Knows every penny. He's gonna
leave us over to our tormentors. So likewise, verse 35, so likewise
shall my heavenly Father do also unto you. their trespasses. God's gonna
leave us over to the tormentors. This isn't so much a warning
as it is an explanation of why you're tormented, right? He's
not saying if you do this, we've already, he's already done this.
God did not take us out of this world when he dealt with our
sin. He couldn't have. But he left us here. Think about Do you realize the enormous amount
of sin that you have against God? He has every reason to disintegrate
us from our being. But He's a merciful God. He's a forgiving God. The message
The question was, Lord, how many times should we forgive? The
Lord basically tells him every single time. And then he goes
and tells us why. He deals with us with our own
sin. And he says, look, look at what
I forgave. And when God forgives sin, sin that you've ever committed
and that you ever will commit was laid on our Lord Jesus Christ. God forgave that sin. He gave
us a surety. The Lord Jesus Christ. He's not
going to fail the mission. His mission was to procure salvation
for his elect and he did it. We're here on Easter Sunday. All that points to is the death
of Christ. Christmas is wonderful. There's
no salvation in Christmas. It's a miracle, a wonderful miracle,
and it was a promise that God fulfilled when he said, the virgin
shall conceive. All these things he foretold
us, it came to pass. And this man's whole purpose
was to die on that cross for every one of our sins. You have
60 million days worth of sin. You have 60 million days. We
all have so much. You realize how much it'd take
you to work 60 million days. That's 163,000, I think it was
387 years. If, hypothetically speaking,
if God, if Adam would have went to God and said, have patience
with me, I'll repay you, all right? 6,000 years ago, Adam
walked this earth. If, hypothetically, if God would
have gave him the deal that this man was asking for, he would
still have another 158,000 years to work off that debt, all the
while adding more sin to the debt. It's a conundrum, right? You
can't get out of this. The only way out is to fall.
down at the feet of our Lord, our God, and say, forgive me. You know, he loves to forgive.
He loves to be merciful. He delights to show mercy. Salvation
is his free gift to his children. All of grace. We don't deserve
any of it. So likewise shall my heavenly
Father do also unto you, if you from your hearts Forgive not
everyone, his brother, their trespasses. Now, our Lord tells
us to love one another. That includes your worst enemy. We read that in Luke 6. You forgive your enemies. Forgive
one another. Today, of all days, we think
of the forgiveness that we got from our Lord. Let that lay on
your hearts. Somebody offended you. If you
offended somebody, we could be on both sides of this. It's not
fun. It's not fun being on either
side of this. But here we are. God, forgive
us of our sins. Have mercy on us, Lord. Help
us to forgive others. All right. Brother David, would
you lead us in prayer?