Your Bibles, I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 18, we're in the series of looking at the Lord's parables and we're in a series of parables about the kingdom of heaven back in Matthew 13. Well we've finished that little section of the parables and now we're going to be looking at different parables that Jesus will say from time to time whether it's to the multitude or to His disciples or whatever it might be. on various topics in Matthew 18 the topic has come up at the beginning of chapter 18 about who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven and so Jesus kind of puts a stop on that basically by saying you want to see who's great in the kingdom of heaven he brings a child and he holds a child before him and so in this whole idea of this kind of show and tell of this is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven a child, a child is very vulnerable, a child is very Impressionable and then he goes into a great lens to talk about the whole idea of being a child in the kingdom where you're You have the mindset not to be childish, but the mindset of Humility, I'm humbled in the kingdom of heaven. So the people I'm around I'm not trying to get one over on them I'm humbled by that and then as he goes through chapter 18, it gets into this whole idea of sinning because many times when you're you know, looked upon as least, it's because of problems in your life or whatever. And then he talks to the disciples about how to handle a brother who is sinning. And this is where we get those passages about, you go to him, you take two more, and things of this sort. And where two more gathered, I'm there with them. And then from there, Peter picks up on this whole idea of, you know, if I've got a brother sinning against me, I mean, there's got to be a limit. The rabbis say three times. And so, you know, Peter at least has learned a little bit of the lesson to stretch that out and make it seven. Should I go to him seven times? And so Jesus answers him, starting in verse 21, and says, Then Peter came and said to him, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Now, when he says this, and I'll put it on the, the screen here, in case you don't have a Bible or you didn't bring one or whatever, but I usually try to put the passage that we'll be going over on the overhead or the screen here. And he gives them this parable starting in verse 23. Let's see what he says. He says, for this reason, he says, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. This thing is always going to work wonders with me. Verse 24, and when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him one who owed him 10,000 talents. Now, for you to understand, we don't deal in the denomination of talents. You know, we deal in hundreds and thousands and fifties and things of that sort. But a talent is kind of like a bag of gold, okay? One talent could be worth a slave's 20 years of work. 20 years of your income, there's your talent. Somehow this slave amassed 10,000 talents worth of debt to his king. I mean this is off the charts. So someone's hearing this parable Jesus is teaching, it's like it's impossible for anybody to amass that kind of debt, and that's the point. so when he says this he says verse 25 but since he did not have the means to repay his Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he had in repayment to be made the slave therefore falling down prostrated himself before him saying have patience with me and I will repay you everything remember Jesus is answering Peter's seven times so I forgive and so Jesus is bringing this parable to bear upon here's this guy who has this enormous debt and basically what you're getting is not just a debt he had a debt that it was in totally impossible for this guy to repay it back okay and yet he says have patience with me and I'll repay you everything and the Lord of that slave didn't say well no there's no way you can well you better take out a bunch of loans he says felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt They talk about extraordinarily unbelievable to amass that kind of debt. What now strikes us again is who forgives close to $10 million in today's language when it comes to 10,000 talents of a debt that way and just says, felt compassion and releasing from the debt. Really? It's unbelievable. The whole state of Palestine didn't come up to 800 talents in years in paying taxes. Here's this guy, 10,000. He forgives him. Now, he brings this to bear, then he continues to store it. And it says, verse 28, but that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denarii. Now, a denarii, a single denarii, is worth a slave's day's wage or a servant's wage. You work for a whole day, 12-hour day, you'd get a denarii. Now this guy owed him a hundred. So you're thinking, what, three months salary? Something like that? And he seized him and began to choke him, saying, pay back what you owe. So his fellow slave fell down and began to entreat him, saying, have patience with me and I will repay you. Sounds a little like deja vu. We've seen this movie, haven't we? He was unwilling, however. but went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their Lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his Lord said to him, You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you entreated me. should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave even as I had mercy on you and his Lord moved with anger handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him moral of the story Jesus puts it right here in verse 35 so shall my heavenly father also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart That's how many times, Peter? Seven times? Seven times 70? Let me give you a parable, he says. And he goes through and he shows three basic things about this guy you can't miss. First of all, and it's not hard, it's not rocket science here, this guy had a debt too big to pay. The second point is that he had a credit too small to collect. So he's in two roles. He's in a debtor role, And he's in a creditor role. You know what a creditor is, right? You're in a role where somebody owes you something. And he's a creditor to a fellow slave over here who owes him some money. But he's also a debtor to a bigger creditor who he owes money to. But then lastly, he's not just a debtor over here, right? Or he has a debt that's too big to pay or a credit that's too little to collect. He had a sin to grieve is to ignore. And that's the point of verse 35. Jesus slams it home, saying, like he says in the Beatitudes, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Now this whole idea of forgiveness, we wanna kinda go a little bit, kinda drill down a little bit on this whole idea of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive? What is forgiveness? Because we're told in, let's see if I can pull this up, in Ephesians, Chapter 4, 31 and 32, let all bitterness and wrath and clamor and anger and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. The Lord's Prayer has a specific spot in here, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. In fact, he goes a little bit farther down in that prayer in Matthew chapter 6, and what does he say? He talks about forgiveness again. He says, "'For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.'" Now here's the point you want to take home. God forgives forgivers. If you're going to get forgiveness of sins, I'm going to tell you right up front, you're going to be put in the position of a creditor, and somebody's going to owe you something. And what's on display is whether you've been forgiven 10,000 talents. That's what's on display. We're going to find out whether you're the real deal about how you handle yourself, not as a debtor, but as a creditor. when somebody owes you something because they, as we saw Wednesday night, have violated your rights. So you have certain rights according to the Ten Commandments. You have a right to your life. Thou shalt not murder. That's a right you have. I need to respect that. You have a right to your property. Thou shalt not steal. You have a right to your reputation. Thou shalt not bear false witness. See, all these things. You have a right to my honesty, and it says don't even covet these things. so that people around you, you don't have to worry about an envious eye from somebody. You have a right to those things. And then somebody tramples one of those rights, or maybe all of them. So forgiveness is a legal term. Forgiveness has to do with debt. Forgive us our debtors. So you're gonna be in this relationship with somebody, and you're gonna get there. If you're a spouse, you've been there. maybe with a parent if you're a child or if you're a parent your children did it to you or whatever but they took away something that is owed to you that is due you that's legitimately yours in the sight of God and they came and trampled upon it destroyed it maybe took it for themselves had no regard for your right now you have every right to demand that the scales be evened up. And they should be. Somebody should let this person know who's done this wrongful deed and trampled upon someone's rights that they need to be told that's what you did. You practiced an injustice. So forgiveness in its very definition assumes an injustice. You can't have forgiveness if there's no injustices in the world. There's nothing to forgive. There's no outstanding debt for a creditor to go and collect. Forgiveness means you, though, you, the one whose rights have been trampled upon, absorbs the debt. You take it and you say, I'm going to pay the debt. I'm going to absorb the loss. Now, let me tell you something. As a Christian, I'm going to tell you the hardest thing you'll ever have to do is this right here. God's going to put you in spots to absorb a loss. and you're going to find out very, very quick you don't have the resources of that king to forgive 10,000 talents. You're going to feel like that guy that can't even forgive a denarii. Somebody's going to tweak your little nose about your reputation and you're going to hold a grudge. And I've got to tell you something, if you're holding a grudge today, you're in sin. And not just any sin, a, so shall my Heavenly Father also do to you if you continue in that grudge. It could be, I don't know, it could morph into resentment, whatever it might be. But if I said, I want you to sit down, I want you to write, and this is between you and God, ten things you don't like about your spouse, you don't like about your kids, you don't like about your parents, you don't like about the church, you don't like about me, whatever it might be, you could probably find something to write. It's not like, well, you know, I just, you know, we just have different personalities kind of thing. And we kind of want to schmooze it over. Forgiveness doesn't schmooze anything. And the reason why you don't forgive is because you don't really call it a debt. And it really is a debt. They've actually really have done something that's wrong toward you. Maybe it's just simple disrespect, it could be. You see when you call it that and you call it a sin on their part, then it comes back to you now. It comes full circle and what are you going to do with that? How are you going to collect on that? I mean they owed you that. Well they need to confess to their sin. Sure, they sure do. They need to quit that. They need to stop that. They've sinned against God. Yeah. Somebody needs to tell them. I don't mind telling them. Yeah, I bet you don't mind telling them. And maybe you've told them a few times already. Use some choice words. Make sure they got the point. But see, the point of the story isn't just that. It isn't just, yeah, I gotta tell them that they did something wrong. And okay, yeah, I'll forgive them. And sometimes, like it says in Proverbs 19, verse 11, it's a man's glory to overlook a transgression. Love covers a multitude of sins. Doesn't sweep it under the rug. There's a difference in the word cover there. It means the word for atone. It means I absorb the debt. I recognize it for what it is. And if you've been married for a while, those are going to be starting soon. You kind of learn to live with your wife with, you know, one eye closed and one ear stopped up, because you realize that's not a hill worth dying for, you know. I'll just let it go. Now, that's the glory. But if that thing trickles down into your heart and you kind of let it go and let it go until you're gnashing your teeth, you're not letting it go. You're building up a grudge. to such an extent that all of a sudden, you know, they start paying in the installment plan where they get the cold shoulder, then you don't talk to them, and things of that sort. See, they're paying you back. You're not, you haven't forgiven them. Forgiving means you absorb the debt. And when you absorb the debt, what does that absorption of a debt look like? Well, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you, how has He forgiven you? You think he's holding something over your head? Well, I can forgive, but I can't forget. Well, then that's how he's treating you. How about all those sins you've committed against God? He's forgiving you, but let me tell you something. He's tapping his foot, and he's, you know, I remember him, buddy. Yeah, you forgot about that sin five years ago over there. Oh, I hadn't forgot about it. He's forgiving, but, you know. See, we don't have a God like that. We confess our sins, 1 John 1, 9. He does what? He's faithful and just. See, just, it's a legal term. To do what? Forgive us our sins. Now, remember, according to this passage here, you're gonna have to forgive, what? Those who owe you. But you're gonna have to forgive, and here's the hard part. You're gonna have to forgive as He forgives. And who can do that? Now, let me tell you how God forgives. I mean, it's not hard to figure out. You look at... For example, what is it in Isaiah 43, 25, he says, I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Uh-oh. That means when you confess your sins, He forgives you, takes them off the books. There's nothing legal hanging over your head, and he takes them out of his memory. Now, this is the great God of all the universe who is omniscient, who knows all things. So in one sense, we understand that nothing can get out of the memory of God in an omniscient way. It just means that he doesn't treat me as if they're on the books. He's not gonna remember them. So the first thing you need to understand about true forgiveness is you will not do well on this incident. I'm just talking about people who are gonna forgive. I'm talking about people who are Christians. I'm talking about somebody, in verse 35, that you want your heavenly Father to forgive you, and you wanna forgive somebody like he does? First thing you need to understand about true forgiveness is you're absorbing this debt. And when you absorb this debt that this person has incurred against you, and you say, Lord, help me, I wanna forgive this person, whoever it might be. Now look, there's some things out there, some horrendous crimes they get committed against people. I don't know how they're gonna forgive those people. Murders that take place was this woman that came flew into Utah and someone picked her up a uber Uber driver or something and killed her and all this I mean if you're a parent you have to go through something like that And many times I got to tell you I'll just see on the news somebody something like this will happen the parents will come out I mean like five minutes later say well we forgive him and I'm thinking bro. It just doesn't happen that quick and that easy I That's a debt nobody, nobody, that guy can never pay it back. How can you pay it back? You gotta raise her up from the dead to pay her back. If you wanna even the scales, that guy can never be evened. You realize that? Even the parents saying, I forgive you has gone down a wormhole of a journey to say, I'm going to seek to the best of my ability to do the things that God does with us when he forgives us. And only by your grace, Lord, am I able to be able to do these things with this person. This is no short order. This is a tall order, and it's an impossible one to fulfill. And it humbles us, it breaks us. We realize, I don't have the capacity, I don't have the resources to forgive like God forgives me. But Lord, by your grace and by your mercies and help, I will do that. We've heard this illustration before, and I can't improve on it, but it's the story of Corrie ten Boom after the war, and what had taken place in her life when she was, I think it was in a church in Munich, Germany. Let's see if I can pull it up here real quick, because I want her own words to be how she describes it. She goes, it was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947, and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. I'm the spokesperson for that. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture." And here it was. She says, "'Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander's mind," they live right there on the coast, "'I like to think that that's where forgiven sins were thrown.'" And so she spoke on that at the meeting. "'When we confess our sins,' I said, God cast them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, and silence collected their wraps, and silence left the room. And that's when I saw him working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, the next the blue uniform and the visor cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush, the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor. The shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsy, how thin you were. Betsy and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland. This man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out. A fine message, Fräulein. How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea. And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course. How could he remember one prisoner among all those thousands of women But I remembered him, and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face-to-face with one of my captors, and my blood seemed to freeze. You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk. He was saying, I was a guard there. No, he did not remember me. But since that time, I've become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear from your lips as well, for again the hand came out. Will you forgive me?" And I stood there, I, whose sins had every day to be forgiven, and I could not. Betsy had died in that rat hole. Could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do. For I had to do it. I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition, that we forgive those who have injured us. If you do not forgive men their trespasses, Jesus said, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. I knew it was not only a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war, I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that. And still, I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion. I knew that too, forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. Jesus, help me, I prayed silently. I can lift my hand, I can do that much, but you must supply the forgiveness, the feeling. And so, woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me, and as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joint hands, and then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. I forgive you, brother, I cried with all my heart. For a long moment, we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then. Corrie ten Boom, 1947, Munich, Germany. Now yours might not be as drastic as hers, okay? But if you're going to forgive as God forgave, the first thing you need to understand, it's just like he says in Isaiah 43, 25, is that you cannot remember the incident. Now when it comes up, it doesn't mean that, hey, I got amnesia, completely forgot, because it's going to come up. But you're going to have to have a conscience effort when it comes up. that it's going to be your reminder to pray for the person, not your reminder to go dig up the dirt on the person. First thing, you've got to take control of your thought life when someone has hurt you. And look, a lot of people have gone through many traumatic things as children, adults, and things of this sort. And you are being called upon by King Jesus here to forgive them. Why? Because you're a debtor. You have been forgiven 10,000 talents, which is off the charts. And you have got to drop the role of a collector. A creditor that collects. And so when the thoughts come up of what they've done wrong to you, that's God's string around the finger to say, remember, I want that person prayed for. Not, let them have it in your thoughts. Why the nerve of that person? Boy, if I could just get my hands around his neck. You can't think that. You nurse that and you start nursing that grudge, it'll grow and grow and grow. Kind of like you keep sucking on a lemon, yeah, wow. You're going to lose your taste buds eventually. It's going to wear them out. But the second thing is, I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you. Oh, now that's a big one. See, now we move from the thoughts now to the words. So in other words, someone hurts you. Maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a child, maybe it's a parent or whatever. Let me tell you what you quit playing. You quit playing the always and never game. You ever play that game? Oh yeah, you've played that game. Parents play it all the time. You always do this. You never clean your room. Never, always, never, always. Universal negative, universal positive. You think they're kind of bringing up the past a little bit? That's why the always and nevers come up. They remember. That's why they keep telling you about it. They're reminding you. No, you can't do that. You've got to drop that lingo, drop that language. And if you keep bringing it up, whether it's the individual incident or just broadside them with a generality, somewhere in the back that's feeling that is a grudge. You haven't forgiven them as you should. And when you do, you should be praying kind of like with Corrie ten Boom. I mean, you're gonna get to spots where you're gonna see this come up. And when that happens, you're gonna need to ask them for forgiveness. I'm sorry I told you I made a covenant with you when I forgave you. that I would never bring this up again or to the best of my ability. So if I bring it up against you, egg on my face, you didn't earn that. You didn't deserve it because I absorbed the debt and for me bringing it up in my words to, you know, hang your laundry out is wrong on my part. I'm bringing up a bill to collect on something that's already been paid in full and I'm sorry. King Jesus doesn't do it to you, right? So we don't do it to others. Wasn't that what he says? I think it's in, was it Colossians 3? So as those have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving each other. See, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, just as the Lord forgave you. See, there's a pro quo. It's of the same kind of genre of forgiveness. You want to know how to forgive, you look at King Jesus. And there he is on the cross, and what's the final words he says? Father, forgive them. They know not what they did. So the first thing, I will not dwell on this incident. And let me tell you something, the more severe the sin, the more difficulty you're going to have not to dwell on the incident. I get that. You don't need to go to some psychotherapy to get rid of it. You just need to follow what we're talking about here. You forgive them as Christ says to forgive. I remember one guy talked to me, he's a psychiatrist, he says that these people, messenger, menagerie clinic or whatever, he said something to the effect, he said, you know, if these people could understand what it means to be forgiven and to forgive, I'd empty this place of 75% of the inhabitants. They just don't understand those things. And you see the ramifications of holding grudges and living accordingly. But that's just the practical aspect. The theological aspect is that you will not be forgiven. So since I know that going in, and I know God's going to, in my Christian walks, going to put people in my path, that's going to become a debtor to me. I'm on the hook at that point. While it looks like they're the ones on the hook, I'm the one that's on the hook. Am I going to think about this? Am I going to meditate on that? Am I going to keep thinking every time I see that person, yeah, that was that person that said that, or that was that person that did this, or that was that person that took this from me, or whatever it might be, instead of, stop, I've got to pray for them. Lord, thank you that in your providence and your sovereignty and your goodness and kindness, you put that person in my life and in the middle of that great injustice, you did a work. You did a work in me and you're doing it right now. I wanna pray for that person and help me to be able to love them and forgive them. That's what you do with those thoughts. If you don't do that and you don't take them captive, it's just gonna go down into your soul and make you bitter. The second thing we talked about is this whole idea of you will not bring up the incident again to that person. You gonna bring up that incident? You bring it up to King Jesus in prayer and you ask him. for the grace and the mercy to be able to love this person. See, you never thought about this, but that person has now invaded your life, and God has now made that person a part of your spiritual walk, whether you wanted it or not, because you're now going to be praying for them on a consistent basis, because they're going to be invading your thoughts an awful lot. You might have people around you want to egg you on to talk about it. Now, I can't believe that person did that and said that to you. Can you believe that? See, there is a temptation. Here they are, they're a Christian brother or sister. They're fighting for justice for you, and you're sitting there going, stop it. You're not helping me. Get thee behind me, Satan. You're hindering me. I'm not going to join in and pile on in the verbal assault on this person. I've forgiven them, and you're wanting me to take it back and go after justice or something. Justice has been paid. I've paid it through King Jesus's grace and mercy that he's given me. That's a different angle altogether. The third one is, I will not talk to others about this incident, which is what we're talking about now. You will not. You cannot gossip about it. You can't slander the person. And other people are going to want to slander that person for you and in defense of you. You got to stop them. Stop. I'm going to pray for them right now. Let's pray for them right now. Pray for them. I was on a roll. No, you need to pray for them. And if you can't pray for them, we've got a problem. If that other person don't want to pray for them, then divest yourself from that person. They're not helping you any. And then lastly, I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship. I can't. This is how God forgives us. Now, this begs a question, okay? And it's a very common one that we get. And it's the kind that Peter is really kind of jumping from here. And of course, Jesus is centering on this whole idea of you need to quit trying to count times that people have sinned against you. And you need to recognize that, look, God is constantly forgiving me. I'm constantly racking up debt in the sight of God that God is not holding me accountable to. And when I ask Him for forgiveness, I mean, 1 John 1, 9, you know, the most amazing thing about 1 John 1, 9, I mean, you sure have that passage committed to memory. You know, if we confess our sins, what does He say? He is faithful and just, and what else does he say? See, to me, the most amazing thing about that passage, he says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's the last phrase. See, when I'm confessing my sins, it's a miracle, yet it says he'll forgive me. If I confess my sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins. Wow. I confess, he forgives. But then he goes the extra mile and cleanses me from all unrighteousness. Those are the ones I didn't confess. Really? I mean, that's the stuff that's under, that's the part of the iceberg that nobody sees. That's the major part of the iceberg under the water. And it just cleanses the rest. Wow, I'm confessing things that I know is in my mind that I know this. God doesn't want me to think in that or sing in that or acting this way. Lord, would you forgive me? Yeah. And there's 50 other sins I committed that went along with it that I can't even remember. And he says, I'm gonna forgive him of all those things too. And he didn't even talk to me about them. Now that's how God forgives. And that's how we forgive. But you can't forgive that way. We need that strength and power from God. But the kicker in all of this, in the back of our minds, and you're gonna think and I'm gonna think it is, I get that, that's what we should do, amen. But what happens if they keep on doing it? I mean, you know, I don't want to kind of aid in a bet in a crime. I mean, some way, shape, form. Somebody's got to pull the plug on this guy, right? I mean, he keeps on sinning, he keeps on sinning. I mean, think about it. God is forgiving you today for your sins, and yet tomorrow you're going to sin against Him. I mean, why don't you just pull back today and just say, you know, this, how many times have I told you not to do this? How many times you know this is wrong? And you still, and you still do those things that you know are wrong. You still have this attitude, or you still have this problem, or you still have this lust, or this anger, or this laziness, or this pride, or whatever else it might be. And you confess it to me, and I forgive you of it. Of course, in his omniscience, he knows three days from now you're going to commit it again, but yet he's forgiving you on a Monday knowing you're going to commit it on a Wednesday. Why would he do something like that? You know, maybe he's not really forgiving me on that Monday. He's going to kind of just kind of pile them up toward the end. He doesn't do that. He forgives you on the Monday. You have fellowship with him on Monday, and you're going to sin on Wednesday. How does that work? How does God do that? Would you do that? See, you'd say, hey, no way. I mean, I'm not gonna be taken advantage of like that. Knowing I'm gonna forgive somebody and restore a relationship, and then two days later, they're gonna throw me under the bus? Why would I do something like that? See, you don't, but you're not God. You don't have those resources. And we get that, and we understand that. The point, though, when he says in, like, I think it's Luke 17, how often should I forgive my brother? He sins seven times a day, you forgive him. He repents, you forgive seven times a day. What happens if he doesn't repent? Well, yeah, you need to talk to him about repentance. He needs to come to the bar of justice and realize this is sin. This is an iniquity. Yeah, you sinned against me. How are we going to solve this debt that you've created? I know how. I'll absorb it. That's what forgiveness is. But the problem comes in is they're going to do that more than once. Uh-oh, now what? See, now your weakness is getting shown up. I might be able to do that a few times, and when you get married, that's what gets shown up, because your spouse is gonna show up your weakness to forgive. Just like they're gonna show you their weakness in how they sin, but that's all part of relationships. Two black holes in space trying to live happily ever after. That's gonna be great. Constantly wanting to suck in everything in the universe being and everything. And God says, no, you got to trust me. You got to stretch out, even if it's wooden and mechanic, that hand and shake that guard's hand. He's a Christian. God has to do that. And your greatest testimony is going to come when you can love and show mercy when the other person doesn't deserve it. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Close with this illustration. There was a There's a guy who, let's see if I can find this thing. I thought it was, I didn't even know this thing existed like this. Here it is. It says, there's a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. They had parted ways and things. The son ran away and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a desperate last-ditch effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read, Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father. On Saturday, 800 Paco showed up in front of the newspaper. Looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers. He didn't specify. I mean, what a thought. That, wow, you're Paco? Yeah, my name's Paco. I'm looking for my dad to forgive me. Your heavenly father, think about it. God is quick to forgive, slow to anger. And in his forgiveness, he's so rich, he delights in saving sinners. He delights in forgiveness of sins. Really? See, you'd think he does it begrudgingly. He doesn't. He delights in it. Why? Because, see, it shows off something about God that nobody has, that he's very, very rich, a king that can just dismiss 10,000 talents. Okay, you entreated, you asked me to forgive $10 million. Okay. I mean, what does that say about the king? Whoa, who does that? Who's got that kind of wealth that can say, okay, Really? That kind of debt? Yeah. That's what it means to be a Christian. If you could see the enormity of your sins, it would kill you. But then if you could see God with a wave of a hand saying, okay, done, and he hears you confessing two or three, and then there's 10 million, he also says, okay, all of them gone. Come boldly into my throne. Come boldly before me. Boldly, see, not thinking about your sins. I'm not thinking about them anymore. As far as the East is from the West, I've separated myself from them. I'm not thinking about them anymore. I'm not talking about them anymore. I'm not acting as if they're in play anymore. Thoughts, words, and deeds. Why are you acting as if they're in play anymore? You have to let them go, forgetting what lies behind. And whatever you've done in your life, To this point, God is beckoning you to go to Him and ask Him for forgiveness. And He will run to forgive you. Whoa. Not like us who hold grudges and it takes weeks and this and that and whatever else. No. He says, no, I'll forgive you. Think about it. Wipe clean. Forgiven. And see, when that Invades you you realize I'm totally clean before God He doesn't remember. I remember those bad things. I hate myself. I'm on the ledge I'm gonna throw myself off the ledge because life's not worth living because I'm a bad person stop Don't let yourself be the identifying starting point of yourself Let God be the identifying starting point of yourself, and he forgives you and if he forgives you he says I will define you you are mine You're a son You're not a sinner in my sight. You're not somebody who owes a debt in my sight." And that freedom, that light-as-a-feather feeling, he says, now turn around and forgive the guy next to you who owes you this. See, how would you not do that? It says, when the first missionaries came to Alberta, Canada, it says, they were savagely opposed by a young chief of the Cree Indians named Mascapatoon. But he responded to the gospel and accepted Christ. Shortly afterward, a member of the Blackfoot tribe killed his father. Mascapatoon rode into the village where the murderer lived and demanded that he be brought before him. Confronting the guilty man, he said, you have killed my father. So now you must be my father. You shall ride my best horse and wear my best clothes." In utter amazement and remorse, his enemy exclaimed, my son, you have now killed me. He meant, of course, that the hate in his own heart had been completely erased by the forgiveness and kindness of the Indian chief. And that's how God slays his enemies. He forgives them. I mean, if you forgive, there's no enemy to fight. They've been forgiven, the debt's been absorbed. Have your sins been forgiven? Forgiven? You're a Christian? Yeah, God has forgiven me of my sins. Then you, you, out of all people on the planet, us as Christians, we should know how to forgive people. We should know how to absorb a debt, a debt that we don't have the resources to pay, but we have King Jesus. who's forgiven me of my debt, who will work through me to extend my hand to the Robinson Wood guards of the world, and you're gonna have some in your life. And when that happens, and you find, think about it, you find any kind of marital problems you have, it's gonna be somebody's not forgiving somebody. Well, you understand, he does this or she does that. Mm-hmm, you're right, that's sin. You're right, you need to tell him that. I did, mm-hmm, but I need to tell you, you need to absorb it and forgive him. Now, at that point, They're exposed. I don't have the tools. I don't have the resources, all I know. And we wouldn't be having this conversation. So that's where we need to pray. We need to pray that God gives you those resources to forgive them, and to accept them, and to show forth the fruits of forgiveness. I'm not gonna think about these things, and if I do, I'm praying for them. I'm not gonna speak about these things. If I do, I'm praying for them. Or I'm telling others that God has given me this, and he's given me this to pray for them. I'm not going to hang around people who want to slam them and make me part of that vigilante mob. I'm not going to do it. and that relationship I have with Him, like Christ, He restores that fellowship, and He calls us sons. He doesn't call us sinners that have a debt to pay, and we're not. What a great king and glory that we have in Christ, who's our great forgiver. You need to forgive. God forgives forgivers. He's the only person He forgives. Oh no, that means my salvation is dependent on whether I forgive someone. No, your salvation is dependent on Christ. But if you're a Christian, you'll persevere to the end, right? It's not dependent on your perseverance, but perseverance is an evidence of it. Well, same thing with forgiveness. It's not dependent on forgiveness, but forgiveness is an evidence that you really are the real deal. Really want to know if your sins have been forgiven? You will forgive other people. Let's pray.