Learning to Forgive, Part 3
Matthew 18:28-35
Let's open our Bibles again this morning to Matthew Chapter 18. And this is our continuing study of Matthew's gospel and particularly the 18th Chapter, which we've entitled the Childlikeness of the Believer. The Childlikeness of the Believer, and one thing that we've learned about in this Chapter is that believers need to be forgiven like children. One of the great elements of teaching in this passage is the teaching on forgiveness. You remember that we've seen that we enter the kingdom like children. We are to be cared for like children. We are to protected like children. We are to be disciplined like children. And then the passage concludes with a great lesson on the fact that we are to be forgiven like children.
And so the Lord is instructing us the matter of forgiveness. Now there is a key verses that you perhaps ought to write in the margin of your Bible right at the point of Matthew 18, verses 21 and following. And that verse is Ephesians 4:32, because that one verse sums up the intent of this passage. It says, "And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." A great injunction to forgiveness since God has forgiven us so much.
That is the intent of the teaching of the passage we'll be looking at this morning. But before we look at the passage, I want to just give you a couple of illustrations to set your thinking along the lines of forgiveness. This week I got a hold of a letter that was sent to Dr. James Dobson recently from a little girl. This is what the letter said. "Dear Dr. Dobson, I am ten years old. I have a problem. There is a man who is trying to split the church. He happens to be my best friend's dad. Now because of him, my mom won't let me talk to Faith. I've talked to Faith about it. She and I are puzzled why we can't get together. We're upset. Why are they fighting? Their answers aren't good enough. Just because they're fighting doesn't mean we have to or does it? I'm totally confused. All I know is Faith and I are friends and our parents aren't. Please find an answer. Love, Karen."
Christians who can't forgive each other and are devastating the lives of their little children. Sometime back the Los Angeles Times ran an interesting article with a headline that said Couple Meet, Forgive Slayer of Daughter. The article says, "We love this special person from the bottom of our heart said Mrs. Bristol of the man who murdered her daughter. The tiny housewife from Dearborn, Michigan confessed to a little nervousness as she spoke to a group of inmates in the prison chapel of the California Men's Colony. She and her husband Bob and driven 2,000 miles to see this special person, Michael Keys, who was convicted of murdering their daughter, Diane. The body of Diane, then 20, was found in San Diego's North Park area. She had been selling encyclopedias door to door when she was kidnapped and strangled.
The Bristols said God led them on a mission of forgiveness which prompted their friends and loved ones to shake their heads because they couldn't understand. We harbor no hatred and no revenge, Mrs. Bristol told the 60 prisoners Saturday night. We know God can make something good out of this pain. Mrs. Bristol said that when she and her husband received the devastating news that our daughter had been raped and brutally murdered, it was like a knife into the depths of our souls. We have the normal human reaction of grief and anguish.
Keys, who had first admitted to the Bristols, that he didn't quite understand their act told his fellow convicts that people like Bristols give meaning to the word forgiveness. Then choked by emotional tears, Keys turned to the Bristols and said, God Bless You folks and threw his arms around them both. What would make us happiest, Mrs. Bristol said, is when he accepts Jesus Christ. The San Diego judge who sentenced Keys to life imprisonment, said Keys was cunning, calculating, and callous, the most vicious killer I have encountered in my career. Mrs. Bristol said, we view this man as one of value and worth. We are interested in him as a person not for what he did, but for what he can become."
Quite a story of forgiveness, isn't it? And why is that there are such extremes of the capability of forgiveness. On the one hand, a mother forgiving a godless criminal for the rape and murder of her daughter. On the other hand, two Christians in a church unable to forgive each other petty differences. Forgiveness sometimes comes so hard for us if we live in the flesh. Now our Lord in this passage is going to help us to understand the importance of forgiveness. It shouldn't split churches.
All of us ought to be like Mrs. Bristol. There should never be the kind of unforgiveness in a church that shatters relationships and families and church unity. And we're going to find out the instruction of our Lord in that regard as we look again at this important passage. Let me review very quickly that the inquiry about forgiveness appeared in verse 21. This introduced the subject. Peter says, "How often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him." That's the inquiry. The extent of forgiveness comes in verse 22. And the Lord says 490 times and by that means, unlimited amounts, endlessly, continuously.
And so we saw the inquiry about forgiveness and we saw the extent of forgiveness and then we also discussed the effect of forgiveness. And we looked at Matthew Chapter 6, verses 12-15 where the Lord says, that if you don't forgive each other, He won't forgive you. So we saw the inquiry about forgiveness, the extent of forgiveness, the effect of forgiveness. And then we came to the example of forgiveness, beginning in verse 23. And the example of forgiveness is a parable, and a masterful parable loaded with great truth. It is spoken to the disciples. And it warns them and us of the sin of unforgiveness.
Look at verse 23 and let me remind you of how the parable begins. "Therefore as the kingdom of heaven liken unto a certain king who would take account of his servants." The kingdom of heaven, the sphere of God's rule, the kingdom of grace. In the kingdom of grace where God is the ruler, he calls men to account. He calls men to show Him where they stand with the privileges that they have been given by Him. And we saw that this king is God. And this servant is a man who has been given privilege. He would be in the terms of the time of our Lord, a satrap, a preventual governor. And he was given a whole territory of responsibility in which he collected taxes which then were to be given to the king for the operation of the kingdom.
And periodically the king takes an accounting of those who have been given this responsibility and he is illustrative of every man who has been given divine privilege. Who has from God life and breath. Who has from God all of his faculties. Who has from God truth in his heart and truth around him. Every man in a sense then is a steward of what God has bestowed upon him. And every man will be drawn at a time and times before God to give an account of that stewardship. And we pointed out that this is a time of conviction. It's not the time of the great white throne judgment or something. It's the time when God calls men to give an account of their life.
It would be very much parallel to Romans 7:7-13 as Paul was brought face to face with the reality of the law of God and convicted of his falling short and drawn then to the Savior. It is the time of conviction. It is the time of John 16 when the Spirit convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. And so God, the king, then calls men into account. He brings them before him by conviction through the preaching of the word, the reading of the Bible, the testimony of Christians or a combination of any or all of those. Men are brought to face the reality of the fact that they have debt they owe to God. They are brought to conviction.
Now verse 24 tells us about one particular individual. "And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought to him who owed him myriad talents." And the term here is to speak of an uncountable sum. And unpayable amount. We've talked about that amount last time. And I won't go back into it again. Suffice it to say it is a myriad and that is the highest term in the Greek language to speak of numeration. I suggested at the time we studied that verse that it would be like saying a zillion talents. It's an unlimited amount. Beyond expression, beyond paying. Here is a man brought before God, convicted of a debt. And by the way the debt is sin and it is unpayable, uncountable. And verse 25 says, "For as much as he had nothing with which to pay." That is man before God. Facing his sin and knowing he has no resource to pay it.
It is an unpayable sum to begin with and he has got anything to even begin to pay. And so it says that the king said he was to be sold, his wife sold, his children sold, all they possessed sold and payment to be made. The total sum could never be paid. It was far too much. The man had no resources for paying the full amount, but all that could be paid would be paid and this was a pagan custom. Selling everybody in the family into slavery and selling everything they had so that whatever could be realized from that sell could be set to offset the debt.
Now the principle is clear then. Men are brought before a holy God. And they must give an account for the stewardship of life and breath and truth that they have been given. And they will be convicted at that point of a sin debt that could never be paid. Too much to be paid and they have no resource to pay it. And frankly, God has the power to deliver them over to judgment in hell. And although men cannot pay the full amount, they will spend forever in hell paying what they can pay. And I pointed out to you that men will not be able to pay off the debt hell. That's why hell is forever, but they'll stay there forever paying all they could pay.
And so it is a terrible, but righteous sentence for the debt is real and the man has defrauded the king. And then the man follows the only course left to him. Notice verse 26, "The servant, therefore, fell down." Now here is a prostrate man. Here is a humbled man. Here is a broken man. Here is a man who knows he's on the edge of judgment. And he worships and he says, "Lord," and he affirms the sovereignty of the king over him, "have patience with me and I will pay thee all." He recognizes the debt. He recognizes it's a legitimately incurred debt in the sense that he really does owe it. He recognizes the justice of his sentence. He does not argue for justice. He does not say its unfair. He simply says please be patience and I will pay thee all.
Now, I believe this is pre-salvation conviction. And just as a note, we pointed this out last time, the reason the man says I'll pay all is because he really doesn't understand the enormity of his sin. And I don't think any many really does. It is not uncommon for people who are brought to moments of great conviction about their sin, who are brought face to face with God and the fact that they have come short of His glory, to want to say, God, just be patient. Just let me get over this thing and I'll promise I'll be better. I'll do better. I'll go to church. I'll give you my life. I'll do whatever I can. That's a very common kind of reaction.
For example, life goes on seemingly without incident and then a very, very severe issue happens in the family. Maybe one of the children takes on a terminal illness or is killed in an accident or whatever or maybe a spouse dies or gets terminal cancer or heart disease or perhaps a job is lost or perhaps a terrible accident has incurred. Or maybe a person is in a place of great distress in a war or in a dangerous situation lost in the woods or whatever. And in the midst of that extremity of circumstance, people see the bankruptcy of their own life. They are brought face to face with conviction. God may allow the gospel to come into their mind. There may be a confrontation with God's law or God's truth from memory bringing it up from in the past.
And at that moment it is not uncommon for people to say if you'll just get me through this, if you'll just help me, I'll do anything you want God. And they're really saying just be patient and I'll pay it all. And they really don't yet understand either the enormity of their sin or it's inability to paid by them. But there's true contrition and there's true sorrow and there's genuine brokenness. And I see that in this man. And the reason I see it is because of verse 27. And that is the key to the entire parable. "Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the debt. Now that is the key to interpreting the parable. The man was loosed. What does that mean? He had no responsibility to pay that debt. None. He would never have to pay that debt. He was loosed from that debt. Now that means the man would never go to hell to work off whatever could be worked off in eternity. The man was loosed from the obligation.
And then secondly, he was forgiven. He was freed from having to do anything and then the king did everything. He just forgave him. Now, I believe that has to describe the saving grace of God. The man is loosed from any obligation. And he is utterly forgiven. Whatever other things in the parable may be unclear that appears to me to be very clear. I cannot see how you can interpret that any other way than to say the man was freed from the debt and forgiven. And that's the essence of salvation.
The king himself absorbs the loss and that is exactly as it was on the cross of Christ. Because it was on the cross of Christ that Jesus in His own flesh absorbed the loss. He Himself paid the price for your sin and mine. And so God absorbs the loss. God suffers the consequence. God pays the price himself that could never be paid. And so I see in this man then the stuff of real repentance and genuine contrition and even though he doesn't understand the enormity of his sin and he really doesn't understand how it's all completely by grace God sees in his brokenness, legitimate repentance and gives him what he so desperately needs. He frees him from any responsibility to pay the debt on his own and forgives him of his sin.
Now you may be, as I said, confused about other parts of the parable, but you don't need to be confused about that and once you set that in motion, you've got the rest of the parable interpreted. So if you want to take your pencil or pen and just circle the word forgave. This is the essence of what the Lord is teaching is here. Now we saw all of that as the initial understanding of the parable and now we move to verse 28 and the main message. That was all just foundation.
Watch verse 28, "But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying pay me what thou owest." That's incredible. That's absolutely absurd. You say to yourself, how soon did this guy forget? What he had been forgiven, how soon did he forget his lord's compassion? The same servant, and it emphasizes "the same servant who had just been," what, "forgiven." The same one. The forgiven one. Went out and found, in other words, the idea is that he was looking for somebody. This was not an incident that he didn't expect. He didn't inadvertently run into the guy. He was out there searching for this fellow. And who was it? Notice, one of his fellow servants. And here we're introduced to a word that I think has meaning the parable, sundoulos, fellow servant. And I think this identifies this one as another who has been forgiven. Another in the family.
And so the lord then takes the parable into the family of those who are fellows in Christ who are in the fellowship. It describes I believe in the parable a Christian brother. It is used consistently that way in the rest of the parable in the four times that it appears. So he finds another fellow servant. Not just another servant somewhere in the world, but one who serves the same king. One who is a fellow servant. And I think that can be seen as term to identify believers in this parable.
Now this other servant was not necessarily the same rank. He perhaps worked under this first servant. It may have been that he was a preventual governor and this guy was one of his local tax collectors. But they both served the same king. And what happens is really absurd. It is just beyond belief. He goes, finds the guy, lays his hands on him, takes him by the throat, literally the Greek says he went about choking him, and saying pay me what you owe me. Now let me just give you a little interpretive thought here for a moment. If the man is not a true Christian as some would have us believe in this parable, if the man is not a true Christian, then the whole parable in its context breaks down.
Because the impact of the entire parable is that here was a man who was fully forgiven, right? And when out and wouldn't forgive. Now if you remove the initial forgiveness and it wasn't really legitimate and he wasn't really forgiven, then the whole parable makes no sense. It loses entirely its significance. We don't expect him to forgive if he wasn't forgiven. We don't expect him to act like God acts if he doesn't have God in his heart. We don't expect him to do what God did if he doesn't know God did that. Or if God didn't do that.
And the judgment that came to the guy at the end of the parable should have come in verse 27. Because there was nothing more to say to him. If his forgiveness was genuine, the rest of the parable means nothing. It is not a parable about genuine salvation. It is a parable about forgiveness and the validity of forgiveness and one believer forgiving another. And what makes parable so powerful, so dramatic is that the guy was really forgiven. He was really saved. And he gets his hands on this guy and starts to choke him. Roman writers, secular writers often speak about men going to their debtors and wrenching their neck until blood ran out of their nose and mouth. That's the old collection agency approach. Just find some big strong-arm guy to strangle them to death if he doesn't pay. And he says, "pay me what you owe me."
Now I see the context here as a Christian going to another one in the family and demanding payment. This one has been offended. Maybe the debt is real. Maybe this really was a sin against this person. Maybe he really was defrauded in some manner. And he won't forgive. You say well, this can't be a Christian. Oh? You mean to tell me you don't think Christians have problems forgiving each other? I think they do. I'm one. I've experienced that.
Christians struggle with this. The flesh works its way into the picture doesn't it in our redeemed lives. Do you have anybody that owes you money? Do you think of them? Hmmm, can you think of them. And how many times have you choked them in your mind? We have problems with that even sometimes in the church of Jesus Christ. You know, somebody says something you don't like and for the rest of the time in the church you avoid that person. Every time you see that person, the anger comes up in your heart, you hold bitterness, you hold a grudge. It throws...it throws back all the garbage of what happened years and years ago, because you just can't let go of that. You, as a Christian, are not immune from that problem. So the people who get nervous because this guy is so unforgiving and say how could a Christian be like this? Maybe you haven't really thought about what Christians can be like, because they can sure be like that.
There are people in this church right now who are unforgiving toward each other and causing all kinds of anxiety, pain, and friction here, and they're Christians. But they can't forgive, because they won't forgive. The flesh rises to seek its vengeance. And that's what you have here. It's a perfect illustration of that. It's just like 1 Corinthians 6 where the Christians were suing each other. Listen, Christians can really get it on when it comes to warfare with each other. They can really hold grudges, retain bitternesses. And that's what you have, I believe, here.
And so he says "pay me what you owe me." We shouldn't be startled that this is a Christian. Somewhat common. And look at the response in verse 29. "And his fellow servant fell down at his feet and besought him saying, have patience with me and I'll pay thee all." Does that sound familiar? That's the same speech in verse 26. The guy got the same speech back that he gave the lord, just as if that might jog his mind a little. Didn't those words sound familiar? Isn't that the same thing you were pleading when you were pleading your case for an insurmountable, unpayable sum? And you were begging the king to let you off the hook and now a guy owes you 18 bucks and you're strangling him?
Even the familiar words echoing in his ears can't find a response from his heart. And the guy is begging. He besought him. He's begging. This isn't worship. He doesn't say he fell down and worshiped him. This is no sovereign. This is a servant to a servant. And he says look, just be patient and I'll pay you all and he could have paid. There was possibility in that. But the application is obvious. Compared with our sins against God, our sins against each other, our trifles, our debt is unpayable. The other debts we incur with people are easily payable. But the point is when we have received forgiveness so vast, so far reaching, so comprehensive, how can we be so small as not to forgive another.
And frankly folks, we ought to get used to forgiving. We're going to need it, right? And we may want it from the very person we won't give it to. It's unimaginable that Christians do this. It's the reason churches split. It's the reason there's friction. You get people in a church, you know, maybe somebody does something they don't like in their class and instead of being able to give it to the Lord and forgive and embrace that person in love, they just get bitter and that bitterness just becomes divisive and projected on out. That's what splits churches. That's what devastates God's family.
It's unimaginable, but it's more common than we like to admit. And it may well be that the disciples were in the midst of doing it themselves. They were, you know, fighting to see who would be the greatest in the kingdom and in order to sort of keep their supremacy, they may have cultivated in their hearts certain attitudes towards the others, which in their mind demeaned the others, put them down lower than they were so they could feel good about their self by exaltation.
And they may well have been holding grudges. Well, look at the response in verse 30. The guy says, "have patience with me and I'll pay thee all." And he would not. He would not, but went and cast him into prison until he should pay the debt. It's unimaginable. They have no compassion. This is an impossible reaction. Himself pitied, he should have pitied. Himself forgiven, he should have forgiven. Himself loved, he should have loved. Himself having received mercy, he should have dispensed it.
The greatest sins that a man commits against a man are nothing. They're change, pocket change compared to the sins committed against God. And God forgives them all. And who is man not to forgive lesser. The whole point of the verse is that he wouldn't forgive. And what gives the parable its power is that he was forgiven. That's the strength of the argument. That how can those truly forgiven not forgive. When God has forgiven an infinitely greater debt, how easily we forget.
In Titus I'm drawn to the 3rd Chapter, listen to what Paul says. "Speak evil of no man, be no brawlers," don't get into fights, "but gentle showing all meekness unto men, unto all men." In other words, you're to be forgiving. "For we ourselves were once foolish disobedient, deceiving." Or rather "deceived serving various lusts and pleasures living in malice and envy, hatred, hating one another." I mean we used to be like that, "but after the kindness and love God our Savior toward men appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior."
In other words, he says, don't treat people like you used to. Look at what Christ has done for you. It's the same idea. And so sadly the church has been riddled all its lifelong by the tragic sin of unforgiveness and the consequent bitterness and hostility and discord and I really believe that this is to go against your new nature, because I believe that if you're in the kingdom, you're a merciful person. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. I think we're marked as merciful people. That's our newness. And it's only the flesh that rises and makes us merciless.
So consider the source. If you're not forgiving the new you, that's your sin, your flesh, vaulting itself into prominence. And when you do that, you will cut yourself off from that relational forgiveness with God that makes the communion sweet. And if you looked at your life and you see a lack of power and you see a lack of depth in your spiritual life, you see a lack of hunger for God's word, a lack of love for the private place of prayer and communion, if you have not seen what you would like to see in your life of the richness of your relationship with God, it may be that you'll never have that because there's a blockage there and the Lord isn't giving you that forgiveness that brings a sweet relationship with Him, because you've got it blocked somewhere else with somebody else.
And until you forgive that other one, the Lord isn't going to open up the flow of communion with Him. So verse 31, look what happens. "So when his fellow servants," there's that term again, and here's a group of Christians, believers, who saw what was done. They saw the whole thing. Now at the risk of sorting reading into the parable a little bit, let me suggest to you that, if this parable were a true story, these fellow servants would have no doubt followed the sequence of Matthew Chapter 18, verses 15-20.
They would have seen this unforgiving servant, they would have gone to him. Then they would have taken two or three with them, then they would have told it to the whole assembly and then they would have put him out if he didn't respond. Let's assume that if we put the whole chapter in the context and this were a real story that these fellow servants would have done all they could to get the guy to do what was right and forgive the debt. Whether or not the fellow paid it back.
But apparently they have exhausted that capacity. And this servant who is determined to get his due out of this guy is resistant to all their efforts. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, apparently, they've seen it firsthand. They're witnesses to it. They've been involved in the process. They did the only thing they had left. They were very sorry. I love that. There's two things in here that stand out and I just would mention them to you. One, there was one servant who was unforgiving and there were servants who were sorry about that.
May I suggest to you that these people are acting in accord with the new creation? This is the majority kind of attitude of those who have been forgiven. They are forgivers. The other is sort of an isolated case from here to there, but the normality, the commonness of God's forgiven people is that they are concerned to be forgivers. And so here you have the rest of the believing people who are sorry about this because they know what they have been forgiven. And they know the standard God has established and they know how God longs for forgiveness. And they understand the holiness of His law. And they understand the unity of His family and they understand the richness of fellowship and so they are sorry.
It's a strong word for sorry. Spodra means excessively grieved, violently grieved. They are very distressed and this is a beautiful thing when Christians become concerned about another Christian's sin. They are violently, excessively grieved about this, because there's a lack of response to the law of God and the will of God and the way of God that's disrupting the fellowship. And what do they do? "This group in their sorrow came and told unto their lord all that was done."
What do you do when you've done all the steps of discipline and the person hasn't responded? Then where do you go? You go to the Lord don't you? I see this as these people coming before God with a broken heart. It's a beautiful picture. If believers would be this concerned about each other's sinfulness, oh what a healing thing there would be in the fellowship. They go to the presence of the king. It assumes in my mind they've already been to the servant and been unsuccessful in getting him to respond. And it says "That they came and told their lord." And the word there is a strong word for told. They gave him a careful detailed outline of everything. They must have gone through the whole process. It's not just a simple word for told, but a complex one.
They told him everything that had gone on. No doubt they recited the whole process to the king. And said we've tried everything we can to settle this thing and we just