21 Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" 22 Jesus *said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
23 "For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. 26 So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ 27 And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 30 But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. 31 So
when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved
and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. 32 Then summoning him, his lord *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ 34 And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. 35 My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."
We welcome you to worship in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is such a tremendous honor and privilege to come together with you today for the study God's Word. God has been great in continuing to bless your efforts in reaching the lost and the deceived. We are reaching people and places as never before imagined, bringing more people to Christ. I thank God for those of you who have been so moved by His Spirit to support us in the ministry, whether by sharing the ministry website, and social media platforms with your family and friends, or financially. I ask you will continue to join us in praying, asking God to continue to bless this ministry in reaching the lost, the broken and the hopeless. May He continue to bless our growth together as faithful followers, as we lead others to Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.
God has shown us an immeasurable amount of grace when He forgave us of our sins in Jesus. How inconsistent it would be for us as Christians, not to also extend forgiveness to others? Yet, so many professing Christians do not! They continue to hold on to bitterness, resentment, anger and unforgiveness. I pray this does not include any of you who here today. We all need to learn to forgive because we all need to be forgiven. Forgiveness is the expression of love, that's why God forgives us. Before we can ever be cast into the depths God’s mercy, before we can be forgiven for a debt we could never pay, we must acknowledge the enormous mountain of sin from which we are being forgiven, otherwise forgiveness doesn't really mean anything to us. Only that we have escaped eternal hell.
As we reach the end of Matthew 18, this is not the end of Jesus’ teaching for us. Before we begin, let us pray.
Heavenly Father,
Father, as always, we thank You for Your Word, and for the forgiveness of the enormity of our sin. A gift of which we are so unworthy. Thank You for bringing us all together again, and for what You’re going to do in our hearts. Lord, make us a forgiving people, who exhaust the heart of forgiveness. We pray for those who have never come to Christ, have never experienced Your forgiveness, may today be that day. All for Your glory and for Christ's sake.
In His name we ask and pray
Amen
Today's Message: Finding Freedom In Forgiveness - Part 2
Open your Bibles to the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 18:21-35. I invite you to follow along with me as I read them to you.
Let us open our hearts and see what the Spirit of God has to say to each of
us. I pray that the Spirit of God would help us to hear and apply what He's saying to each of us today. Matthew 18:21-35. Allow me to read the full text, to refresh our hearts and our minds, then we'll pick up where we left off. "
Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus *said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. "For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So
when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved
and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."
Notice how Jesus transitions into the matter of forgiveness, beginning in verse 21, with Peter's inquiry about forgiveness. All of this follows the discussion of discipline and how we are to confront the sinner, and rebuke the sinner, restore the sinner. Peter, in knowing himself, could anticipate the inability of mankind to turn their life around and sin no more. If you’ve been offended or hurt by someone, the truth that Jesus reveals in
Matthew 18, makes it clear that you must seek reconciliation and you must seek forgiveness.
Let's look at verse 28, the slaves response to the kings forgiveness. "But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’" Quite frankly, this is unfathomable! Jesus is giving us a clear and vivid picture of the Christian who has been sinned against by a family member, by a fellow Christian, though himself forgiven, will not forgive. We gladly take all that we can get from God, in most cases, more than 490 times a day, yet will not forgive somebody offends us, instead we hold a grudge, which is outrageous.
In l880, James Garfield was elected president of the United States,
but after only six months in office, he was shot in the back with a
revolver. He never lost consciousness. At the hospital, the doctor
probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet. He couldn’t
find it, so he tried a silver-tipped probe. Still he couldn’t locate the
bullet.
They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. Despite the
summer heat, they tried to keep him comfortable. He was growing very
weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound
over and over. In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell, who was
working on a little device called the telephone, to see if he could
locate the metal inside the president’s body. He came, he sought, and he
too failed. The president hung on through July, through August, but in
September he finally died-not from the wound, but from infection. The
repeated probing, which the physicians thought would help the man,
eventually killed him.
So it is with people who dwell too long on their wound and refuse to release it to God.
Verses 29-30, "So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. "
His fellow servant owed the man a hundred denarii, which by the way, was
a much smaller debt than what he owed the king, and he could pay back a hundred denarii. But, rather than to
forgive the debt,
or to have patience with his fellow servant,
he went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. I believe you would agree, this is not right
, but evil
selfishness. Few would dispute our right to get even, however,
demanding that the other person "pay" for what they have done to us, is
selfish and self-centered, unforgiveness result of being in bondage to
bitterness. Unforgiveness demands revenge, which in reality, it is doing
more harm to us instead.
Not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and then expecting the other person to die. While forgiveness may indeed be risky, it is the only road to reconciliation and freedom. Within the family of God, the lack of forgiveness is no less of an outrage, having accepted the full forgiveness of God, we should be eager to forgive others. There’s a penalty for unforgiveness. Just as we have to choose to love, there comes a time when we have to choose to forgive, even when we "feel" they do not deserve it. We do not deserve the forgiveness a God! If God, who is most holy, is so offended by every sin and is willing to forgive us, how can we not forgive others?
Verses 31-33, "So
when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved
and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’" I believe that Jesus is making it clear, we must forgive others, even when we don’t feel like it. By the way, genuine forgiveness means that being around the person does not cause me to conjure up past feelings of the offense in my mind any longer. I know some who claim to forgive others, who will remind the person that they have forgiven them for the offense, stating the circumstances surrounding it. That is not true forgiveness. I hasten to add, that you’re going to be in trouble with God if you don’t forgive.
Look at verse 34, "And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him." I do not believe that it requires much from us to discover the lesson Jesus is teaching us here!
That brings us to verse 35, " My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."
Forgiveness isn’t easy, but it is possible. To forgive "from the heart" means that you that you can live with the
fact that nobody would ever need to find out what the other person has
done, as though they never did anything wrong. If you don’t forgive, God
is going to hand you over to some kind of spiritual discipline and
extract out of you everything He can. I don’t know about you, but I
desire to live on the right-side of God, on the side of blessing. I do
not want Him calling out the tormentors and coming after me. Especially,
knowing I do not have the right to receive His forgiveness, yet,
through Christ, He freely chose to forgive me, a wretched sinner. I
believe we can understand what Jesus is saying here, there’s absolutely
no place in God's kingdom for unforgiveness!
In Closing..
I'm not implying that every little minor annoyance needs to be forgiven, things that need forgiving are inherently and morally evil. The point I'm making here is that we are only truly changed by Jesus when we’re truly changed by Jesus, and that certainly includes forgiving others. God’s forgiveness of our sins is conditioned upon the fact that we truly turn ourselves over to Him. If we are unable to forgive others, have we truly allowed Him to change us? I believe we all know the answer to that. Unforgiveness demonstrates that our hearts have not really been changed by God. That reality alone, should drive us to our knees before God, desperately asking Him to change our hearts.
R. C. Sproul said it well when he said, "An unforgiving heart is an unforgiven heart."
Listen, the only way any of us are going to make it heaven, is to do things God's way, by following Jesus’ model of rebuking someone who is in sin, then, if we say that we’ve asked for forgiveness before God, we must also forgive the offenses committed toward us.
May it be so..
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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