This morning I want to look at a parable that we all need to hear. We have to be open to what God wants to teach us this morning. I am going to talk about forgiveness. Forgiveness is vital in how we treat each other. Some people have actually written that forgiveness is as important as your belief in Christ.
Matthew 18:1-20
The disciples have seen Jesus pick up a child and He has shown them that they have to become like a child to enter the Kingdom of God. He has talked to them about His heart of compassion for the one who has gone astray. He then talked, in verse 15, about the situation where someone has hurt you in some way. He showed them that there is a procedure when this happens.
Matthew 18:21
Peter was worried about this whole relationship of brother with brother in God. He wanted to know how many times he had to forgive his brother. He had a problem with this particular point because of his character. Peter knew that in the Jewish law it was written that you should forgive your brother three times. So, he doubled it and added one, thinking that that would be sufficient.
Matthew 18:22
The effect on Peter’s face due to this reply was such that Jesus recounted this parable:
Matthew 18:23-24
In modern equivalent ten thousand talents is about £72,000,000. In this parable, for money, read sin. So here’s someone who owes £70,000,000.
Matthew 18:25-28
In a parallel sense, all of us here when we are first born are born in sin and have clocked up a life of rebellion against God. The amount of sin that you have been forgiven in coming to God is colossal; we have broken the law in every part. When Jesus went to the cross it was to forgive you and me all our sin. He completely changed our nature so that we then have the choice not to sin and the power to go the other way; before that the default is that we can’t help but sin. The amount of sin that each one of us brings to the cross is inevitability a life-full of cross. When Jesus hung on that cross, make no mistake, it was you and me banging those nails in. But, yet He still hung on that cross because of His love for us, even when were His enemies. £72,000,000 of sin was written off because of His death; He paid a debt we could not.
Matthew 18:28-31
Here we have then a person who has been totally forgiven all that amount of money in the context of the story. In the parallel, we have been forgiven all our sin by our Redeemer who paid the penalty of our sin. In monetary terms we have had £72,000,000 of sin written off. And then, I come over to this person here has £120 of debt towards me, and I take him by the throat and command him to pay back the debt. Even though this man had been forgiven so much, he threw his debtor into prison, despite his pleadings.
Matthew 18:30-36
We have to forgive our brother from our hearts. There is a duty and command of God that we forgive one another. As we will see in a moment, unless we do that, we can pray as much as we like but our hearts will be a million miles from where God wants us to be. This is a quotation from a Puritan:
“We need not climb up into heaven to see whether our sins are forgiven, let us look into our hearts and see if we can forgive others. ”
That is the bottom line because the enemy of our souls wants us to get at each other’s throats. We cherish anger when we think of the people who have wronged us, but yet all that time, my Redeemer lives and I can see His glory. If there is a source of bitterness against someone inside you, it makes no difference how much you praise God, because it is impossible to praise God whilst harbouring bitterness against others. You must leave the person who has wronged you to God, so that He can sort them out.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.
If we do hang on to a slight the net result will be sourness in our spirit, bitterness of heart, and God will not bless us. Now I don’t mean you should make a list of all the people you must forgive. You know in your heart whether you have forgiven someone, or whether you have held on to your bitterness against him.
Matthew 6:14-15
That is pretty clear.
James 2:12-14
In other words, we can trust God to sort things out, in the sense that, we commit everything unto Him. If we harbour bitterness against someone else it will eat into us like a cancer.
Ephesians 4:31-32
This is a direct command.
Colossians 3:13
Jesus is our example. When He was on the cross He cried out: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. ”When Stephen was being stoned He prayed: “Lay not this sin to their charge. ”
Mark 11:24-27
This attitude can develop into a whole realm of bitterness. This is obviously important because this the way Jesus has told us to live. I know that there are some who will not let go the throttling of the £120 debtor because they did what they did. This morning it is time to let it go.
Here we are amongst the children of Israel who have just gone through the Red Sea today.
Exodus 15:23-26
The waters were bitter. What had to happen was that the tree had to be cut down and thrown into the waters, only then did they become sweet. That is a picture of us allowing God’s Holy Spirit cleansing us of any malice we have against anyone. We must do this because it will cause us to view things from a bitter and wrong viewpoint. God has showed us all a tree: Calvary’s Cross, which means that the bitterness inside us can be cleansed and made sweet.
Some of you may be thinking that you don’t need to forgive anyone. Let me be clear, God is faithful, and if there is anything that anyone of you is harbouring inside, God will have already put His finger on it. We are not to dust off that thinking process which we know if we get involved with will only end in us boiling with antipathy against an individual.
Romans 12:19
So God is sorting things out in the overall sense and we can commit everything to Him. This means I’m not going to resurrect something that someone did to me in the past.
Therefore, what are we supposed to do?
Romans 12:20-22
That is the bottom line: ‘be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good’. God has brought this to our attention this morning because He wants us to live clean and right. In your heart are you asking God who He wants you to reach todayIt is the glorious Gospel we are involved in that enables us to reach those who are lost. We are servants of the living God; that’s who we’re involved in. But we can’t harbour stuff inside. I’m convinced, more than ever, that God by His Holy Spirit wants to work through each one of us, so that He can reach others who are in desperate need. The only way that the enemy can stop us is if we allow bitterness and hatred to dwell in us against others.
Actually, Peter asked the wrong question. We should not really stop forgiving our brother when we’ve fulfilled the correct number; that is not the heart of a Christian. To anybody who wants to come into this hall: you are welcome. I’m not going to harbour stuff against anyone. This place will grow because we are going to lift up the name of Jesus, and when His name is lifted up, He draws people to Himself.
The heavenly meaning of this parable is a direct input into the way you live your life each day. It’s an attitude of heart and of mind. God in His faithfulness, mercy and love has brought it to our attention because He wants to work through us for His glory in our lives, in reaching out to others. We forgive from our hearts, we forgive fully and we forgive often.
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