Matthew 18:21-35 | "Endless Forgiveness"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Encourage you to take your Bible to Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Many of our fellowship are on vacation, enjoying the summer months, but we probably should maybe think that they just don't want to hear a sermon on forgiveness.

I don't know.

Maybe we'll have to forgive them for being absent.

Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Going to be looking this morning at verse 21 through the end of the chapter.

Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

You've probably heard or maybe even uttered the sentence, I'll forgive, but I won't forget, right?

You've probably uttered that, maybe even with a tinge of sharpness, a bite to it.

Forgiveness is one of those things that we know that we are to do.

Yet we find it so difficult to actually accomplish.

We say that we will forgive.

Maybe even we say, yes, I will forgive you.

But so often we are unwilling to fully relinquish the memory of the wrong.

We forgive, but the memory is retained near at hand.

It's not filed in the back of our minds, it's filed much more closely to the front for easy access if needed.

We labor at forgiving, but do we labor at forgetting?

We may claim that we have forgiven a wrong, and even that we've laid it aside.

We've moved on from it, it's not going to become an issue anymore.

But as Ivern Ball is quoted as saying, most of us can forgive and forget.

We just don't want the other person to forget that we forgave.

But you know, even Jesus' 12 disciples had some creative thoughts regarding forgiveness.

Let's let's look at them.

If you have your Bible, Matthew chapter 18, beginning in verse 21, Peter comes up to Jesus and says to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

As many as seven times?

Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.

And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had, and payment to be made.

So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.

And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debts.

But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you.

He refused, and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

Now when his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

And in his anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

Amen.

We need to remember the context here.

We're talking about little ones.

Little ones at the beginning of chapter 18, actually going back to the end of chapter 17, those little ones who are disciples in the Lord Jesus Christ.

These are not children, but ones like children.

These are little ones who have, who have characteristics, who have attitudes that mirror little children.

They are humble.

They are small.

They don't make much of themselves.

They make little of themselves.

Those little ones have a tendency in their humility to be wronged.

They can be sinned against.

So Jesus gave instructions then for the assembly of little ones as to how to deal with it if somebody sins against you.

He says, if somebody sins against you, go to your brother or your sister in Christ and tell them that they've sinned against you so that they are given a chance to repent of that sin.

If they don't listen, go to them again with another person or two people.

Give them another chance.

If they don't listen that time, then tell the church and give them yet a third chance to hear and to repent of their sin.

And if they don't hear that time, then let them be to you as tax collectors and sinners.

Put them out of the assembly.

Jesus says, listen, it's it's so important because these little ones are ones that Jesus goes after.

So it's important to take care of sin in the body of believers.

Yet we see here that these first disciples are like most of us, they struggle to forgive others.

Matthew gives us some insight into Peter's thinking, at least.

And we see that Peter is struggling with Jesus' teaching about repentant sinners.

Wait a minute, Jesus, if somebody sins against me and I go to them and tell them their sin and they repent, that's great and all, but how many times do I need to do that?

After being told with how to deal with a sinning brother or sister, Peter wonders about a particular issue.

Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

As many as 77 times?

So Peter responds here to the Lord's teaching with, well, if my brother sins against me and I go to him and he repents, just as you've instructed us to do, then how patient must I be with repeated offenses?

Now remember, Peter and the other 11 disciples have already heard other forgiveness teachings.

Back in chapter 6 and verse 14 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, If you forgive others their trespasses, then your heavenly Father will forgive you.

But if you don't forgive others their trespasses, then don't expect your Father in heaven to forgive you.

They've already heard much the same.

They know and understand what Jesus has said.

They understand that forgiveness is required.

Pardon for sin is expected.

So if James sins against Peter, Peter knows I have to forgive him.

But we see insight here into Peter's mind.

Peter thinks at this point in time that forgiving a little repentant one surely has some limits.

I mean, really.

It has to come to an end at some point, right?

Somebody sins and they they they know about it and they confess that sin and they repent of it, that just can't keep going and going and going into infinity, can it?

Surely, Lord, there has to be a place at which this stops.

Jesus can't mean that forgiveness is endless, can he?

Now Peter may be confused by his upbringing.

Judaism of the first century taught that you must forgive up to three times for the same offense.

Three times.

That was the common teaching.

But there was no requirement for the fourth time.

You could forgive, but it was not expected.

What was expected was the first time, the second time, and the third time.

So let's say that Andrew, speaking to Philip, says something negative about his brother Peter.

He's gossiping about his brother Peter, and Peter gets upset naturally, and Andrew then seeks forgiveness, repenting of his sin.

That's great.

And for a while, Andrew goes about life not speaking negatively about his brother.

There seems to be growth and progress and maturity in his life, but eventually he slips up again.

That's followed by confession and repentance and Peter's forgiveness.

A month or so later, it happens again for the third time.

According to the Jewish culture of the time, Peter must forgive that third time, but after that, Peter would be completely justified in not forgiving Andrew.

Now that background is important because that shows us that Peter was generous in suggesting going the extra mile to seven times.

The standard teaching of the culture was three times.

So Peter is not only going twice as much, he's going one step beyond twice as much.

Seven is generally thought to be the divine number of perfection or completion.

So maybe it made sense to Peter that he should forgive the brother or sister in Christ who sinned against him and repented of that sin seven times.

Seven times was more than twice the cultural expectation.

That sounds generous, doesn't it?

If the standard view, if the standard Jewish teaching was three times, seven seems generous and even gracious.

We could argue that this might be one of the high points of Peter's theology.

Next to his declaration of Jesus being the Christ, the Son of the Living God, this might go right up next to that, as number two.

Peter's got great theology here.

He's going beyond the expectations.

So imagine, imagine having someone over for dinner.

And at some point during your dinner, your guest steals something from you.

They pocket one of your belongings.

Later they they return to you and they repent.

They give back what was stolen, and you forgive them.

And everything's right and good.

So a month later you have them back.

And the same thing happens again.

And then it happens a third time.

Maybe after the third time, you wait a couple of months before having them back.

And you have them back, and it happens a fourth time.

And now you're beginning to wonder Do I ever do I ever have them back?

But you do.

And it's a fifth time, and then a sixth time, and then a seventh time.

And now we're over the course of a couple of years, probably.

Because you are getting less welcome.

You are not as likely to have them back.

It's going to be longer times.

And yet each time there is confession of sin, they they return what was taken, and there there seems to be genuine repentance, and you get to seven times.

It would be difficult, wouldn't it, to forgive that person who claimed to be a Christian but was sinning against you repeatedly.

So it's easy to conclude, at least from a human perspective, that Peter has a point.

But in verse 22, we find a surprising correction by the Lord Jesus.

And that correction is this if there is repentance, you must forgive.

And continue to forgive.

Without qualification of what the sin is, and without qualification as to the number of times that you've forgiven.

Jesus said, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times, or maybe your translation says 70 times seven, or something similar.

And the point here is not to come up with 77 or 490.

This is an exaggeration to prove a point.

Jesus emphasizes that forgiveness is limitless.

There's no ceiling to forgiveness.

There's no top and there's no bottom.

There is no end to our forgiveness of God's repentant little ones.

We are not to count the times that we are to forgive.

We are not to keep a record of wrongs done or wrongs forgiven.

Now, at first glance, we might think that there's an apparent contradiction with the previous section about the correction of sin in the fellowship of believers.

How is correction supposed to happen if we're always forgiving?

And if we're always forgiving, why is correction needed?

Jesus laid out very specific instructions to follow if someone sins against us.

Yet if the point of correcting sin is followed, then what is the necessity of forgiving?

If we exercise discipline in the family, doesn't that in some way cancel out forgiveness?

Well, the answer is no.

These passages do not cancel each other out because they're both needed in every single local church.

I think there are at least three thoughts that we need to consider here.

I'll lay them out just briefly.

First, the the previous section involves no repentance.

None.

But this passage on forgiveness assumes repentance.

So in verses 15 through 20, we saw several instances that all begin with the word if.

Sin occurs.

There's an addressing, a confrontation of some kind of that sin.

The person confesses and repents, and forgiveness is granted.

So the two sections deal with two different situations: one with repentance and one without repentance.

That's the first thought.

The second thought is that the previous section involves a refusal to repent.

A refusal.

No, there's no repentance.

This passage assumes repeated repentance.

In the instructions for correcting sin, Jesus repeatedly spoke of a refusal to listen, implying that there's a refusal to act repentantly.

If you go to your brother and he does not listen, then do this.

If he still does not listen, then do this.

There's no repentance.

And I'm going to arrogantly stand in my own place, asserting I've done nothing wrong.

Here, though, the assumption is that there was a softness, there was a receptivity to hearing I've done wrong, and I'm going to see that as God's hand of leading me into repentance.

So these two passages fit together then.

They fit together to deal with sin in the body of Christ.

If there is repentance, we forgive.

Simple as that.

And we must move on to the next step in Jesus' corrective process if there is no repentance.

That's the second thought.

The first one, the first one is that we have no repentance versus the assumption of repentance.

The second thought is that there is a refusal to repent versus a repeated repentance.

But there's a third thought here, and that is that this discussion about forgiveness does not negate what we might refer to as church discipline, this process of correcting sin.

It doesn't negate it.

It tempers it.

It tempers it.

Discipline of any kind can easily get off track.

Discipline of any kind can go too far.

It can be too harsh.

It can be too extensive.

As human beings, that's our problem.

We tend to have difficulty being balanced.

So Jesus then comes back with this talk about forgiveness to temper that corrective element of sin in the body of Christ.

When confession and repentance occur, forgiveness is necessary so that correction does not get out of hand.

But correction is essential so that unrepentant sin is corrected.

You see how we need both of them?

They fit together, they work together.

And if one is out of balance, then the body of believers gathering together is going to be out of balance.

Both elements are needed in the Lord's family.

And Jesus illustrates this teaching with a parable.

Verse 23 Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

He uses a story here, Jesus does, that mimics real life in the first century.

He paints a verbal picture of forgiveness and life in his kingdom.

So the story that Jesus tells is about a powerful king with many enslaved people.

That's not necessarily that unusual because everybody was a servant of the king.

Immensely wealthy, this king can sustain a kingdom and all of the enslaved people in his kingdom and still have sufficient funds on hand to loan to those who are in desperate need.

Today we would probably put him in the category of billionaire in terms of his wealth.

One day the billionaire king decides to catch up on some bookkeeping.

So he calls in his people who owe him money and demands an accounting.

So there's a person with a debt of 10,000 talents that is brought before him.

A talent was originally a weight.

It's not.

A coin.

It's not like a silver dollar or something like that, or a silver coin, or a gold coin.

It is an amount of precious metal that weighs a certain amount.

And it typically had an amount of about 75 pounds.

Sounds like a lot.

Now, money hasn't always had a specific value that we assign to cash today.

Like a$20 bill is$21 bills, right?

It doesn't have money, didn't always have a specific value like that.

Instead, its value was in how much it weighed.

So a talent weighed somewhere around 75 pounds.

Now, most likely this 10,000 talents was silver.

And that means that we're talking about a debt of 750,000 pounds of silver.

Or 375 tons of precious metal.

That helps put the debt into a little bit of perspective, doesn't it?

Maybe we should think about it a little bit differently.

A typical day's wage for an average worker was about a denarius.

And a denarius, the time of Jesus, was an actual coin.

Somewhere between the size of a quarter and a silver dollar.

So that was typically what an average worker would earn for a single day's labor.

So if we think about a single average worker earning a denarius a day, how long would it take to earn 10,000 talents to pay back this loan?

There are 6,000 denarii in one talent.

If you average 300 days of working per year, that means 20 years of work for one talent.

So it would take 200,000 years of work to earn 10,000 talents.

Roughly 3,500 lifetimes.

Depending on how many days a year you work, depending on how many years of a lifetime you are able to work, we're probably talking between 3,500 and 5,000 lifetimes today.

That's the debt that this guy has.

So Jesus could be speaking concretely here in this illustration.

He could be referring to a literal 10,000 talents, or Jesus could be using 10,000 since it's the highest number in the Greek language.

It could be hyperbole.

In other words, we might say today that this servant owed gazillions of dollars.

Trillions of dollars in our language.

Although, if we think about it yet another way, if we value this debt with the approximate value of silver by weight today, this enslaved person's debt was in the neighborhood of$240 million.

One person.

Most of us can't even conceive of$240 million.

It's even more staggering to think that an enslaved person owed this debt.

If he was a free man, he might have an infinitesimal chance at a miracle investment, but as a slave, he was doomed.

He could not pay.

And the debt was due.

And he had no funds with which to pay the debt.

So the king makes the immediate decision to sell the slave, to sell all of his family, and to sell all of his belongings to the highest bidder.

Whatever price was paid at the auction would go directly to the master, and the enslaved person and his family would be left with nothing owned by another person.

So the man and his family and all that he possessed were merely property to be disposed of at the whim of the master.

And it's an unimaginable loss for the king.

The price for an excellent slave was one talent.

The average slave sold for about a third of that amount.

So the master isn't going to get much, he's stuck.

So in Jesus' story, the master determines to sell the enslaved person and everything with him for a$240 million loss.

Lowell, have you ever written that off for somebody?

No.

What does he do?

The slave's only recourse is to beg for mercy.

There's no legal system in which to file a complaint.

He has no personal rights.

And so he falls on his knees and he begs his king have mercy, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.

Yeah, right.

If he doesn't pay part of it now, what is he going to pay at all?

It's a laughable statement.

It's ludicrous.

There is no means possible to pay back that kind of debt.

It is impossible.

It is beyond impossible.

And that is Jesus' point.

You cannot pay this debt.

There's no means.

No means possible to pay this debt.

So the master is moved with pity by the slaves groveling.

King lost no matter what, so he forgives the staggering debt out of compassion.

He wipes it clean.

Erased.

It's gone.

It's done.

It's forgiven.

Now I've I've heard stories of people having their mortgages paid by a wealthy person just out of the blue.

And I think I can grasp some of the gratitude that might exist in that kind of a situation.

I can imagine how I would feel to be released from that loan.

But to be released from a loan that would take me 5,000 lifetimes to pay back.

I don't know that I can comprehend the gratitude that one would feel in that kind of situation.

So the enslaved person leaves the reckoning hall and immediately searches out a fellow slave who owes him a hundred days wages.

You see the contrast?

3,500 to 5,000 lifetimes worth of wages versus 100 days worth of wages.

It's a paltry sum compared to what he owed.

He grabs his fellow servant by the throat as if to scare the life out of him, choking him and demanding payment for his sin.

Why would he do this?

We're not told.

And that money wouldn't even make a debt in what he owed the king.

And naturally, his fellow slave falls to the ground, probably trying to catch his breath from being choked, begging, have patience with me and I will pay you.

He doesn't even say he's going to pay all of it.

He just begs for more time to pay back the debt.

But it makes sense, doesn't it, that if someone is willing to physically choke the life out of another person, he will be too cruel to extend patience and compassion if the debtor cannot pay.

So the forgiven slave sends the unforgiven to the debtor's prison, where he would remain until his family and friends could pay his debt.

See, as an enslaved person, he couldn't sell his fellow slave like his master had threatened to do with him.

But he could cause him to be incarcerated in the desert debtor's prison.

No such thing as bankruptcy in that world.

You paid no matter what, either with your own resources or with your life in prison.

But unknown to the cruel, unforgiving man, others are watching.

The other slaves were aware that the master had forgiven the monstrous debt.

How could that not get out, right?

That's going to spread like wildfire.

And everybody's going to show up at the king's door begging for mercy.

They witnessed that the same slave threw another into prison for pennies in comparison.

So they promptly go and tell the master about the cruelty.

Of course, the master summons the servant to answer for his actions.

And he says, You wicked slave, I forgave you all the debt.

Because you pleaded with me.

You begged me.

Shouldn't you extend the same kind of grace to your fellow slave just as I had mercy on you?

You see, the master rightly expected his mercy to be enthusiastically embraced so that the enslaved person would also become merciful in his actions towards others.

After all, he was still an enslaved person, so why would an enslaved person do such a thing to a fellow enslaved person, especially when he had been forgiven such an astounding debt?

3,500 lifetimes compared to 100 days of debt.

So the master reverses his decision.

The debt is now unforgiven.

The entire amount is due immediately.

In anger, the master delivers the wicked slave to the torturers until the entire debt is paid.

There's a debtor's prison, but this is something else.

This is a debtor's prison with torture.

This is where the slave will not simply be imprisoned, but will be tortured to derive any payment from him.

How does an imprisoned and tortured person pay a debt?

Friends and family who feel sorry for him.

They're going to scrounge around and try to do whatever they can to ease his suffering.

And since his debt is so insurmountable, he would be tortured for the rest of his life because he did not exercise grace, compassion, and forgiveness.

That's Jesus' illustration.

Those who have been forgiven much forgive others.

So also, here's the conclusion.

So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you.

He's talking to the disciples.

He's talking to Peter.

So my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

Remember our context.

Your brother sins against you, you go to him and you tell him his fault.

He repents, he confesses of his sin, he seeks your forgiveness, and you forgive him.

If you do not, this is what you can expect.

Jesus' little ones will have hearts intent on limitless forgiveness.

I hope we grasp the gravity of that statement.

Because it's incredibly difficult as human beings.

In that one sentence, so also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you.

In that one sentence is the expectation that we grasp the monstrosity of our debt forgiven through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In that one sentence is the obligation that we become like the Father in heaven who has forgiven our unpayable debt so that we might forgive those who sin against us.

And in that one sentence is the warning that an unforgiving spirit indicates unforgiven debt that will send us to eternal punishment.

See, Jesus is saying, listen, if you have been a recipient of my forgiveness, that's going to change your heart.

That's going to change your heart so that when somebody comes and confesses their sin to you in repentance, you forgive.

Without qualification of what the sin is, and without qualification of the number of times.

My friends, our sin debt is so great because we have offended the infinitely holy God.

And we have no option but to beg for mercy from the one whose blood was shed to pay that debt.

Five thousand lifetimes won't do it.

Groveling won't do it.

Saying your prayers won't do it.

Contributing to the needs of the church won't do it.

The only thing that will do it is trust in the Lord Jesus Christ who shed his blood for the forgiveness of your sins.

Oh, but never cease to be amazed at the riches of his kindness in Christ Jesus.

For the immeasurable debt is paid.

Scripture tells us that it is nailed to the cross.

The debt is canceled, paid, because the blood has been shed for those who come by faith to the Son of God.

And because your debt was forgiven, you can now forgive all who repent of their sin, even if they sinned against you.

R.C.

Sproul once wrote, It is an insult to God for us to withhold forgiveness and grace from those who ask us, while claiming to be forgiven and saved by grace ourselves.

You see, an unforgiving heart does not go with forgiveness.

But if one has been forgiven of their great sin debt, they can come and be faced with any repentant heart and say, I forgive you because my debt also was forgiven.

Your sin debt is unmeasurable.

I've tried to give some sense of measurement for 10,000 talents, to try to get us in different ways to see how that can be comprehended.

But when it comes to our sin, it is unmeasurable.

It has no bounds to it.

Our sin debt is unmeasurable, yet God the Father longs to forgive that debt for all who trust in his son.

We have no right to not repent of our sin as the king's little ones, purchased by his blood.

We have no right to stand in arrogance saying, No, I will not confess.

And when someone repents of their sin, we have no right to not forgive because our debt goes far beyond$240 million.

It's unmeasurable.

In the previous section, we saw that we are called to echo Jesus' holiness in our own lives and in our fellowship.

Therefore, it's our responsibility to love one another enough to confront sin in each other's lives.

The holiness of God demands that we follow through on correction of sin.

Yet, in much the same way, the compassion, grace, and forgiveness of our great God and Savior demand that we be like Him and forgive others when repentant hearts request it.

For each one of the Lord's little ones has been freed from a monstrous debt of sin that would otherwise require an eternity to pay.

So the moral, if you want to call it that, of this story, is this God expects forgiveness to be granted to repentant little ones.

Just as he expects repentance when his children sin.

If we as an assembly of God's little ones, if our assembly was filled with those who cast their hopes on the forgiveness of their massive and unpayable sin debt, then what God will do is He will exhibit through all of us both holy discipline of unrepentant sin as well as gracious forgiving spirits when repentance occurs.

Because those kinds of hearts changed by the power of Christ will bring him eternal glory.

See, when you forgive a sin, it doesn't say much about you.

It says everything about Jesus.

When we forgive a sin against ourselves, it doesn't say, look how gracious and kind that I am because my sin debt is so huge.

It says, No, look at what Jesus has done for me.

And Jesus can do the same for you.

So may God the Lord be gracious to us to not stand firm in our arrogance, but to have little hearts that confess our sin and receive forgiveness from our Lord.

And may we each follow the Lord Jesus and be like little ones who say, Yes, I will eagerly forgive you, because I've been forgiven myself.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, help us.

We come before you this morning asking that you would humble our hearts.

That's a hard thing and it's a painful thing.

Yet it's so important to be changed so that we might mirror your work on our behalf.

Lord, I pray that we would be aware in a new and unique way of the magnitude of our sin debt, so that we might leave this place today awed, overjoyed at our debt being wiped clean, such that you remember it no more.

May that truth, may that reality be placed deep within us and begin to mold us and make us into your image so that we, as Peter is commanded, go and forgive and forgive and forgive, so that others too might be aware of the magnitude of your grace.

Lord, maybe there's there's someone here this morning that has not yet come to receive that gracious free gift of forgiveness.

Lord, may they have eyes opened to see you for the first time, and may you through your spirit grant life and faith to believe.

What a joy it would be to celebrate new life and forgiveness here today.

So that we might magnify you above all kings.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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