I want to talk to you tonight and next Sunday
night about the issue of forgiveness. It probably doesn't come up as often as it
should in our discussions from the pulpit here because it is a very, very important
issue. What makes it an important issue in the church,
and we're talking to believers tonight, we're not so much talking about God's forgiveness
toward us as we're talking about our forgiveness toward each other. But it is a very vital and a very essential
and a very necessary component of life in the church because the church, even at its
best, is a collision of sinners. We all understand that. We are guilty of saying the wrong thing, and
behaving in wrong ways. We have all offended people. We have all caused people to stumble. We have all crossed the line of discretion
into indiscretion and the way we deal with people and treat people. We have all showed preferential treatment
at times. We have all been less than considerate to
people in need. We have failed to give to folks what they
need at the time they need it. There are many, many points at which sinners
collide in the church. And because the church is a very intimate
fellowship, only to be exceeded in its intimacy by family, we borrow that image, don't we?,
the image of a family. We are seen as God's family and the intimacy
then throws us together and we crash into each other and our weaknesses are made manifest
and so we are guilty from time to time of offending. It then becomes essential to the ongoing life
of the church, the ongoing joy of believers that we be able to deal with those offenses
with an attitude of forgiveness...of forgiveness. In the end, what finally destroys every relationship
is an inability to forgive. It isn't the offense that destroys the relationship,
it is the inability to forgive that destroys the relationship. Offenses will come. Even our Lord said that. Offenses will come. That's part of living life in a fallen world
and dealing even in the church with the people who have not yet been perfected. How we deal with those offenses is what determines
the nature of our relationship. It is that way in a marriage. It is that way in a family. It is that way among friends. It is certainly that way in the church. Not only is this matter of forgiveness essential
to the cohesiveness of the church, as it is to the family and to marriage, not only is
this the path to joy and satisfaction and fulfillment in the family and in the church,
that is collectively, but the inability to forgive not only destroys relationship, it
destroys the people who don't forgive. It is not only destructive of relationships,
it is self-destructive. And Scripture makes it very, very clear that
where there is a lack of forgiveness, there will develop bitterness and out of bitterness
come hatred and couple with hatred comes anger and the end of hatred and anger and bitterness
is the pursuit of vengeance. Retaliation is sought and retaliation is never
satisfied and vengeance is never really appeased and consequently people live with the bitterness
and it is deeper and deeper as they live with it longer. We live in a society that has made a virtue...or
tried to make a virtue out of vindictiveness. Three out of every four attorneys on the planet
live in America. They have to be here in order to take up all
the litigation that comes from angry, bitter people wanting to get every piece of flesh
they can get out of anybody who has stepped across the line, into the offense zone. Even psychologists have said that forgiveness
is not healthy. That's right. Forgiveness is not healthy. You don't need to carry around that offense. You need to get resolution and the best way
to get resolution is to be vindictive. Years ago I read a popular book called Toxic
Parents and in this book Toxic Parents the author has a chapter entitled, "You don't
have to forgive." She says that children who have been offended
by the behavior of their parents must not forgive their parents, they must heap on their
parents full blame for their present problems because their parents poisoned them by their
toxicity. And so she suggests that the new cry should
be, "I am the victim, it's not my fault, I'm not responsible, my parents did it to me." Guilt for everything is pushed off on someone
else and vengeance needs to be not only exalted but exhausted. However, the price of vengeance is extremely
high..extremely high. An unforgiving attitude, a bitterness that
runs deep, a desire for vengeance that comes out of vindictiveness or hate, or anger, will
do several things. Number one, it imprisons people in their past. This is the price of an unforgiving heart. It imprisons people in their past. As long as people will not forgive, as long
as people will not put the past in the past, but continue to seek an unfulfilled level
of vengeance, they are shackled to their past. They are shackled to that past event. The pain of that event is fed. It is not only kept alive, it is fed until
it becomes larger and larger. Another way to look at it is, if you don't
forgive things that have happened in the past, you continue to pick at an open sore, you
keep it from healing, you enlarge it, you sentence yourself to the future feeling worse
than you felt in the past when it happened. You choose to love hate and hate dominates. This unforgiveness then produces bitterness. It becomes an infection and it is malignant,
it harasses, it creates distorted memories which create a distorted view of life. Anger becomes out of control. Emotions become unchecked. People entertain ideas about revenge, every
conversation becomes a forum for slandering the people who have supposedly harmed you
so profoundly. Every conversation becomes an opportunity
for defamation, exaggeration and outright lies. On the other hand, forgiveness frees a person
from both of these categories of tragedy. Forgiveness frees you to enjoy all relationships
and to live with peace and tranquility in your own heart. Forgiveness is a very freeing reality. Now Scripture exalts forgiveness for these
reasons and for the one greater reason and that is forgiveness honors God. And I'll get to that in a moment. But as far as I can tell, in the Bible there
are at least 75 word pictures of forgiveness. Relax, I'm not giving you all 75 of them. But there are at least 75 figures of speech,
or analogies that are used in Scripture as word pictures of forgiveness. Here are a few. To forgive is to turn the key, open the cell
door and let the prisoner free. To forgive is to write in large letters across
a debt, "Nothing Owed." To forgive is to pound the gavel in a courtroom
and declare the person, "Not Guilty." To forgive is to shoot an arrow so high and
so far that it can never be retrieved. To forgive is to take out the garbage and
dispose of it, leaving the house fresh and clean. To forgive is to loose the anchor and set
the ship free to sail. Again, a few more biblical pictures. To forgive is to grant a full pardon to a
condemned and sentenced criminal. To forgive is to loosen a stranglehold on
a wrestling opponent. To forgive is to sandblast a wall of graffiti
leaving it brand new. To forgive is to smash a clay pot into a thousand
pieces so it can never be put together again. These are biblical pictures of forgiveness,
very instructive. Forgiveness is a marvelous, virtuous, liberating,
loving attitude and act. It makes sense to forgive. It is healthy. It is wholesome. It is sensible. It is freeing. It brings peace. It engenders love. That is why Proverbs 19:11 says, "A man's
foolishness is not to forgive. It is folly." One person has analyzed forgiveness in an
interesting sort of prosaic way. He writes this, "Only the brave know how to
forgive. It is the most refined and generous element
of human virtue. Cowards have done good deeds and performed
kind acts. Cowards have even fought and conquered. But cowards never forgive. It's not in their nature, their hearts. The power to forgive flows only from a strength
and a greatness of soul, conscious of its own humility and security and able to rise
above all the little temptations of resenting every fruitless attempt to steal its happiness,"
end quote. That's good human wisdom. There is certainly truth in that philosophical
viewpoint. But we're compelled to a deeper discussion
than that. It's wonderful that somebody in the world
recognizes that forgiveness is the noblest of all virtues. Forgiveness may be in the world, isolated
to a very few, it may be a rare commodity. It may even be so bold and so brave that it
only belongs to those who would be deemed as emotional heroes because it is so rare. But it must not be rare among believers. It is the most normal of all our behaviors
as Christians because it is absolutely necessary in a collision of sinners that marks and defines
the life of the church and the home. So I want us to look at some compelling, biblical,
theological, spiritual reasons why we are to forgive, for the sheer spiritual nobility
of it and because it is a direct command from God to us. Now I'm going to give you some of these reasons
tonight and next Sunday night. We'll see if we can work our way through them
in two nights, if not, we'll add a third after Easter and a week later, or so. But I want to start where you have to start. Forgiveness is required of a believer because
forgiveness is the most godlike act a Christian can do. It is the most godlike act a Christian can
do. No act is more divine than forgiveness. Never are we more like God than when we forgive. What do we mean by forgiveness? Forgiveness is a verbally declared, personally
given promise, a statement of undeserved, unearned love that affirms that though I have
been offended, there is no anger, no hatred, no desire for vengeance, no bitterness, no
retaliation. Why? Because there is no guilt, no blame held. That's forgiveness. This is a characteristic that belongs to God. He is a God of forgiveness. Obviously we could spend a lot of time talking
about that particular attribute of God, His forgiveness. But let me just give you a few representations
of it in Scripture. In the thirty-fourth chapter of Exodus, God
discloses Himself to Moses. Verse 5, He descends in the cloud and the
Lord passed by, in verse 6, in front of Moses and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate
and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Now there are some attributes of God, compassion,
grace, slowness to anger, loving kindness, truth, who keeps lovingkindness for thousands,
who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin...who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin." When God introduces Himself to Moses and makes
this appearance to Moses, He defines Himself as a God who forgives by every definition
of violation...iniquity, transgression and sin. In Psalm 32, the Psalm begins, "How blessed
is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, how blessed is the man to
whom the Lord does not impute iniquity." This is a blessing from God that He forgives,
that He does not hold against us our sins. In Psalm 85 the Psalmist begins, "O Lord,
You showed favor to Your land, You restored the captivity of Jacob, You forgave the iniquity
of Your people. You covered all their sin. You withdrew all Your fury. You turned away from Your burning anger." And again in the Psalms, and there are other
places, I'm only giving you illustrations. Psalm 130 is a similar testimony to God's
forgiveness. "Out of the depths I have cried to You, O
Lord. Lord, hear me, let Your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplication. If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord,
who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You." Perhaps one of the most beautiful statements
regarding the forgiveness of God is in the first chapter of Isaiah, that wonderful statement
in verse 18, "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet,
they will be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they will
be like wool." This is God's forgiveness. And the sins were serious. If you read the rest of the chapter, he paints
a vivid portrait of just how sick and just how sinful Israel was, and yet how ready His
forgiveness is. In 43 of Isaiah, and verse 25, "I, even I,"
God giving testimony to His own nature, "I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions
for My own sake and I will not remember your sins." Wow! Wiping them out, obliterating them from the
record and even from His own memory. Listen to Isaiah 55:6, "Seek the Lord while
He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous
man his thoughts and let him return to the Lord and He will have compassion on him and
to our God for He will abundantly pardon." His testimony is part of the instruction of
God that came to the prophets as they pronounced judgment at the same time they announced that
where there was repentance, there was forgiveness. Jeremiah 33:8, "I will cleanse them from all
their iniquity by which they have sinned against Me. I will pardon all their iniquities by which
they have sinned against Me and by which they have transgressed against Me. It will be to Me a name of joy, praise and
glory before all the nations of the earth which will hear of all the good that I do
for them. They will fear and tremble because of all
the good and all the peace that I make for it." This is the heart of God, the New Covenant,
a couple chapters earlier than that, namely in chapter 31, celebrates the forgiveness
of God with familiar words. "This is the Covenant...verse 33...that I
will make with the house of Israel after those days. I'll put My law within them and on their heart
I will write it, I'll be their God, they will be My people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor,
each man his brother saying, 'Know the Lord.' They will all know Me from the least of them
to the greatest of them, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their
sin. I will remember no more." This is the testimony of the Lord who gives
the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light at night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar, the Lord of hosts is His name. The God of order. The God who controls the universe is the God
who forgives. When you come, of course, in to the New Testament,
then the forgiveness of God becomes manifestly visible in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The message of Christ is that God will forgive
your sins. The cross is where that forgiveness is purchased. The rest of the New Testament then features
the message of the gospel of forgiveness, preached through the book of Acts, defined
through the epistles and consummated in the book of Revelation. One of the great standout evidences of the
forgiveness of God is in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, a very familiar chapter to us, we've
gone through Luke, the story of the prodigal who sins greatly, picturing the sinner who
sins greatly against God, who upon returning is embraced in love and full forgiveness and
this gives us a picture of the lavishness of God's forgiveness...the lavishness of it. This wretched, sinful, young man comes back,
cannot do anything to purchase restitution or restoration, or reconciliation, but comes
and can only ask for mercy. He receives everything. He receives the robe, the ring, the sandals,
full sonship. This is the nature of God. We see it in our Lord as He dies and says,
"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." And that very day, one of them was forgiven,
who had mocked Him, a thief hanging beside Him. Another one was forgiven who had overseen
the crucifixion, the Centurion. Forgiveness extended further so that early
in the book of Acts, there were some of the priests who were so set against Him who were
forgiven their sins, became a part of His Kingdom. This is godlike, to forgive. You are never more like God than when you
forgive. That, of course, becomes a very evident message
in the New Testament. Matthew 5:44, "But I say to you, love your
enemies." And love your enemies means you are forgiving
them. "Pray for those who persecute you, so that
you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven. You're never more evidently like your Father
than when you forgive." It's a call to be godlike. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians, in that wonderful
fourth chapter of Ephesians, and that familiar 32 nd verse says, "Be kind to one another,
tender hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you." There again, you forgive because God forgives. And you are to be...verse 1 of chapter 5...imitators
of God. Let me go over that again. Be forgiving each other, just as God in Christ
also has forgiven you, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Same thing that Jesus said in Matthew 5:44
and 45, "Be like your Father, be forgiving. Walk in love just as Christ loved you." You, of course, display Godlike mercy when
you forgive. Colossians 3:13 repeats the same thing, "Forgiving
each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, forgive it, just as the Lord forgave
you, so also should you. And, by the way, Paul wrote both Colossians
and Philippians from a jail where he was unjustly and hatefully imprisoned. He was practicing the very virtue that he
was calling on believers to enact. So, the first reason to forgive is that you
are never more like God than when you forgive. We'll come back to that point at a later point,
and you will see how incongruous it is to accept consistent, constant forgiveness from
God and withhold it from other people. But let me give you a second reason for forgiveness. First of all, you're never more like God than
when you forgive. And number two, it is not murder only which
is forbidden by the sixth commandment...it is not murder only which is forbidden by the
sixth commandment. The sixth commandment says, "Do not murder,"
right? Back in Exodus chapter 20. Is that all it means, "don't murder," or does
it mean something more than that? Let's go back again to the Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew chapter 5...Matthew chapter 5. There are two verses here that I want you
to look at, verses 21 and 22. Now in this particular section of this sermon,
our Lord is attacking the limited, superficial interpretation of His commands that had developed
in Judaism. And that's what He is referring to here. "You have heard that the ancients were told..." In other words, you've been taught a certain
thing by ancient rabbis, the rabbis and scribes of old. You have heard what they have taught. You see the same thing sequentially, verse
27, "You have heard that it was said about adultery..." Verse 31, "It was said...and so-and-so...about
divorce." Verse 33, "You have heard that the ancients
were told about vows..." "You have heard...verse 38...about this matter
of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Or verse 43, "You have heard that it was said
you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." This is what you have heard. You have been taught certain things about
these issues. In this case, you were told that the ancients
were told, "You shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be liable to
the court." Now the Jews had long been well-informed and
very serious about the matter of murder...unless, of course, the victim was a prophet. They were sadly eager to murder the prophets. But apart from that, they understood the prevalence
of crimes being a dishonor to God and one of those crimes was murder. They would even go so far as to affirm that
if somebody commits a murder, they are liable to the court and they understood the Old Testament
rendered capital punishment as the appropriate verdict to be pronounced on the head of a
murderer. That's what you've heard...that's what you've
heard. I want to take it further. There's more than just that. There is more intended by the sixth commandment
than just murder. "I say to you," and this is typical, "but
I say to you," verse 21, "But I say to you..." verse 28. Verse 32, "But I say to you..." Verse 34, "But I say to you..." Verse 39, "But I say to you..." Verse 44, "But I say to you..." In each of these cases, He starts out with
what they had heard and He tells them there's a lot more there than you have heard. "But I say to you that everyone who is angry
with his brother shall be guilty before the court and whoever says to his brother, 'You
good for northing,'" that's one way to translate that, "shall be guilty before the Supreme
Court. And whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty
enough to go into the fiery hell." Jesus is saying, "Look, if you have hate in
your heart, you're a murderer in your heart and you're guilty before God for the murder
though you never actually commit it. Listen to 1 John 3:15, the Apostle John got
the message. He wrote, "Everyone who hates his brother
is a murderer. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer." Unforgiveness is a hate attitude. It is a representation of hatred. He sweeps away all their self-righteousness
and unmasks their murderous attitudes. If you say, as the original says, to someone,
"Raca," that's a transliteration of the word, it is simply introducing to us an attitude
that is vicious. It's a common epithet that really has no English
equivalent. It's sort of transliterated "Raca" this new
NAS says, "You good for nothing." I'm afraid that is a pretty mild interpretation
of what that word meant. It's a term of abuse, a term of derision,
a term of contempt, a term of hatred, vicious term. And so is "you fool." A fool was synonymous with being godless because
the fool said in his heart there is no God. You stupid fool, it's like pronouncing a curse
on someone. If you have that kind of attitude toward people,
attitudes of abuse and derision, and contempt, you are guilty enough to go to fiery hell. You have to see that you need to forgive in
the heart, as well as withhold the instrument of murder. You need to love and forgive or you're in
sin. If you're a Christian, you have the responsibility
to forgive, to let loose all hate, all sense of vengeance. You need to release all of that attitude of
abuse and derision and contempt and scorn and hatred toward another person. If that person is a Christian, then that person
is literally Christ to you. How you treat that person is how you treat
Christ. If that person is a non-Christian, he still
bears the natural image of God and you do no good to your relationship to either a Christian
or a non-Christian by that kind of non-forgiving hate and you certainly do no good to yourself
by that attitude. The death penalty is not just for murderers,
it is for haters. You don't mind honoring the image of God in
yourself, how proud are you that you cannot see the image of God in someone else? You don't mind recognizing the Christ that
is in you. How terrible it is within the family of God
that you don't recognize the Christ that is in someone else. You are angry at someone else's sins. Are you equally angry at your own? Are you so proud that you cannot see your
own sins, but only the sins of others? Hatred toward someone, an unwillingness to
forgive someone, is to hold a murderous attitude in the heart. Any lack of forgiveness is selfish. You need to deal with the pride in your own
heart. This is seriousness enough to say that that's
sin enough if unforgiven to catapult a person into the fires of hell. No offense against you, no matter what it
is, no offense against you is worth hatred and unforgiveness. Sometimes people want to debate that. "Well, are you supposed to forgive everybody
if they don't ask?" Yes...yes. You forgive immediately, you forgive instantaneously,
you forgive totally, you forgive completely. Whether or not you will ever have reconciliation
and what that relationship will be in the future is a matter of that person desiring
that relationship to be what it should be. But forgiveness, that comes immediately. Let me give you a third reason why it is so
important to forgive, because whoever has offended you has offended God more. Whoever has offended you has offended God
more. Ask yourself a question. You say, "I was seriously offended, that person
seriously offended me, they deeply offended me, they scarred me for life because of the
way I was treated. Maybe it was my mother, my father, maybe it
was somebody that dumped me, maybe it was a former spouse, whatever they offended me
so profoundly, they have scarred me so deeply, the wounds are hard to get over. Listen, if God who was far more offended by
their sin than you and who is infinitely more holy than you forgives, don't tell me you
can't forgive. Are you saying that to offend you is more
serious than to offend God? Is that the point? "Oh I know God can forgive, but I can't." Oh really, are you a higher court? Are you a more holy person? Well obviously not. If God who is the most holy can forgive the
greatest offense, can you the least holy forgive the least offense? Any wrong ever done is, first of all, against
God. Look at Psalm 51...Psalm 51. This Psalm is tied to David's sin with Bathsheba
committing adultery and murder, and he is just devastated with guilt, condemnation. It's tearing him up. A parallel Psalm is Psalm 32. He says it's effecting his physical body. His body is becoming weak...that's what sin
will do and guilt will do, it effects you physiologically. His life juices are drying up. It's effecting the fluid that runs in his
nervous system, it's effecting his blood flow, it's effecting his saliva. And he looks at this sin that he's committed
against Bathsheba, this sin that he's committed against Uriah, her husband, the sin that he's
committed against his own family, his own children, his own nation, but he looks past
all of that and in verse 4 he says this, "Against You, O God," mentioned in verse 1, "Against
You, You only I have sinned." All sin must be seen primarily as an offense
against God, against the most holy, against You I have sinned and done what is evil in
Your sight. All sin is against God. The fact that it's against you or me is incidental. It's incidental. It's a minor detail. It's immaterial, don't take it personally,
don't let it ruin your life, don't let it destroy your relationship, don't let it wound
the church. That's ridiculous. If God forgives, who is the most holy, and
is supremely offended, cannot we who are the least holy and only minimally offended forgive? We who are so unholy as to be in constant
need of forgiveness from others and from God, will we withhold that forgiveness that we
so desperately need? So we forgive and we forgive because God forbids
anger, hatred, attitudes of vengeance. And we forgive because He has forgiven who
is most holy and most offended. And we forgive because never are we more like
the God we proclaim than when we forgive. And if you call yourself a Christian, you
are a child of God. And if you are a child of God, then you understand
that it is critically important that you manifest godlikeness. I'll give you one more and it's tied to the
one I just gave you. It is only reasonable that those who are forgiven
the greater sins, forgive the lesser sins. It is only reasonable that those who have
been forgiven on a greater scale be willing to render forgiveness on a lesser scale. And what I mean by that is take a look at
what you've been forgiven. What has God forgiven you? What? All your sin, all your iniquity, all your
transgression from the moment you arrived in this world till the moment you exit, if
you're His child, all is fully, completely forgiven, all the past, all the present, all
the future. The grandness of this forgiveness is stunning. Turn to Matthew 18 and let's see an illustration
that will lead us to the secondary point that if God can forgive us the greater, cannot
we forgive the lesser? This is really an unforgettable story in Matthew
18. Peter is trying to find out how you're supposed
to forgive people because he's living in this collision of believers, he's understanding
that it's so easy to offend. They're wrangling about all kinds of things
anyway, they must have irritated each other on a daily basis. They were together 24/7. They were not very sanctified. They were weak in faith and they all wanted
to sit on the right hand of Jesus in the Kingdom. So they were hassling for sure. Peter comes, this is life, "Lord, how many
times shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Peter patting himself on the back as best
he could by bending his arm around there, because the rabbis said three times to forgive,
and that's it. You forgive the first time, you forgive the
second time, you forgive the third time, after that you don't give forgiveness. Peter wanting to trump the rabbis and look
like a hero doubled it and added one. "Lord, shall we forgive seven times?" Thinking he would probably get some kind of
commendation. Jesus said to him, "I don't say to you up
to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." Just took his number and multiplied it into
infinity. And one of the other gospels says, "Seventy
times a day." You just keep forgiving. There's no end to it. You forgive as many times as there's an offense. That's how God forgives, isn't it? I would venture to say that certainly the
Lord has forgiven me seventy times seven, seventy times a day, day after day, week after
week, month after month after month of my life, your life. And then he tells the story that makes the
point. The Kingdom of heaven may be compared to a
king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. This would be a king who had allotted segments
of his kingdom to certain underlings, these are slaves at a very high level and their
responsibility is to collect the taxes and collect the income for the king from these
various areas. He brings these in to settle the accounts
and when he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought
to him. That's an unpayable amount. One person figured out that that would be...that
would be equal to the entire gross national product for Israel in a year. Now this is just a massive amount of money. This guy shows up and he has to give an account
for this vast wealth which would have meant that whatever his responsibility was, it was
a grand responsibility and this kind of money would only be accumulated over a long period
of time. It's now time to settle the account. Verse 25 says he didn't have the money to
repay. Well what did you do with it? That's a massive amount of money, squandered
and wasted. His lord commanded him to be sold, I'll get
what I can out of him, along with his wife and children and all that he had and repayment
to be made. All he could do was get what he could get. So it's like a...it's like a bankruptcy in
which the guy has nothing and you get only what you can get. And what could they get? Well you could only get the slave price of
these people and whatever possessions they had, I'll get what I can...that's all I can
do. That would have been merciful. Well the slave fell to the ground in verse
26 and prostrated himself before him and said, "Have patience with me and I'll repay you
everything." Huh, how is that going to happen? That's not possible. "The lord of the slave felt compassion, released
him, forgave him the debt." Wow! How wonderful, amazing. Verse 28, "The slave went out, found one of
his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii," about three months wages, meager amount compared
to what this guy had had. He found somebody who owed him a hundred denarii,
he seized him and began to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe.' So his fellow slave fell to the ground, began
to plead with him," same exact words, "'Have patience with me and I'll repay you.' He was unwilling, went and threw him in prison
till he should pay back what was owed." Debtor's prison where you go and you work
for pennies for years. That's a very offensive behavior, isn't it
to you? I mean, that's about as ugly as you can get. You've just been forgiven something equal
to an unpayable fortune and you go strangle a guy for three months wages. That's repulsive. Do you get the picture here? This is what you do when you don't forgive
someone. So you don't mind receiving full forgiveness
of an unpayable debt by a gracious God and you're going to go choke somebody until you
get the pound of flesh out of them, throw them in a debtor's prison? The model for forgiveness is the forgiveness
that God has forgiven to us. There are other points in that story and we'll
pick that story up next Sunday night and go from there. That's enough for tonight. We deserve condemnation. We fall down before God and we receive complete
forgiveness. Then what do we so? Go out and act in an unforgiving, ungracious,
merciless, compassionless way toward other people when we have received what we have
received? God has mercifully forgiven you, aren't you
going to be able to forgive others? He's forgiven you the vast unpayable debt,
are you going to demand more out of someone who offends you than God asked from you? No judgment comes to you, why would you render
vengeance on someone else? Strong language and a strong call to forgiveness. Well, that's enough for tonight. Father, thank You for the time we've been
able to share in talking about this. We want to be known as those who eagerly,
graciously, mercifully, compassionately and lovingly forgive. That's our desire. We want to be like You. We want to be beloved children, imitators
of God. We want to be as merciful and gracious as
You are to us. We want to obey the commands not only on the
surface, on the behavioral level but underneath in the attitudinal level. May our lives, our marriages, our families
and our church be a place where forgiveness flows and we enjoy the freedom and the power
of that forgiveness and the blessing that comes from Your hand to a forgiving soul. Continue, Lord, to draw us into the place
of obedience that we might know the fullness of joy, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.
