Well, let's turn in our Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 18. Matthew Chapter 18. I just want to remind you of something that our Confession of Faith states in Chapter 22. When it talks about the elements of worship, it says, the reading of the scriptures. preaching, and hearing the Word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord. As also the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper are all parts of religious worship of God, to be performed in obedience to Him, and then in what way ought we to come to the reading and the proclamation of God's Word? With understanding. Why do we do this? We need to understand why we do this, because God commands it and He wants us instructed in His word. We are to come with faith, believing that what God says is indeed true. We are to come with reverence and esteem for the word that God has given to His church, and godly fear, which is the very beginning of wisdom. So as we read from Matthew chapter 18, Let's come with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear, beginning with verse 21. We'll read to the end of the chapter. Matthew chapter 18, beginning at verse 21. Then Peter came to him and said, 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. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him saying, Master, have patience with me and I will pay you all. And the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. But that 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 you owe. So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you all. And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked servants, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servants, just as I had pity on you? and his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly father also will do to you if each one of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Thus ends the reading of God's holy word. Let us pray that he would bless it to our hearing. Pray with me. Father, we ask that today you would help us not only to be hearers of your word, but to be those who do it, who put into practice the very instruction that Christ has given to us in this text as the prophet and teacher of the church. We pray that you would make Grace Baptist Church a place where forgiveness never runs dry. where love for one another and mercy towards each other is limitless in its extent. An imitation of your great mercy to us and your blessing upon us for the salvation you have given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray this in his name, amen. A great privilege of being one of your pastors in having the opportunity to frequently instruct you in God's word, is being able to highlight the source from which your forgiveness springs. The source of the forgiveness that you have received as saints of God is the merciful and compassionate disposition of your God and Father who provided the mediator Jesus to satisfy once and for all God's justice against your sin. In the Old Testament, God made a promise to his people that in future days he would establish a covenant. And he said that this covenant would not be like the covenant that was ratified at the base of Mount Sinai. God promised a new covenant. And this is what he said in Jeremiah 31, I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more." So at some future point in the latter days, Messiah would come and God would establish this covenant of forgiveness in time and space. When did that happen? Well, from hindsight and living after the ministry of Christ, we know that it was God's eternal plan to sacrifice his beloved son some 2,000 years ago on our behalf. It was God's will that his righteous son would die in the place of sinful men, women, and children. And before his passion, Christ took up a cup and he stated exactly how the new covenant was going to be ratified in history. It would be through what he was about to do, what he was about to suffer. And Jesus took the cup, it says in Matthew 26, he gave thanks, he gave it to his disciples and he said, drink from it all of you, why? For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. At the institution of the Lord's Supper, Jesus revealed how the Jeremiah 31 promise given long ago would be fulfilled in space and time. It would be on a cross outside of Jerusalem. where Jesus, the suffering servant of the Lord, would undergo the penalty for your sin and for mine. The cross of Christ is where sinful debts are remitted once and for all. It's the great answer to the how question of how sinners can be forgiven by a God who is so holy, so righteous, and so faithful to his own justice. The source of our forgiveness is the merciful and compassionate disposition of our covenant God, and the historical accomplishment and proof of that compassion and love is the gift of Christ's crucifixion. God the Father, through His Son's bloody sacrifice, cancels the debt that stood against us with all of its legal demands. And through faith, we receive the benefits of Jesus' sacrifice and hear the Father's assuring pardon. Son, daughter, your sins are forgiven. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, Paul says in 1 Timothy, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, to rescue sinners, to deliver sinners from the penalty and the power of sin, and to assure them of forgiveness through his precious blood. John writes in Revelation, to him who loves us and has washed us from our sins in his own blood. This is Christianity 101, isn't it? And the understanding of the extravagant grace of God in Christ for us, melts the heart of a true disciple. It melts the heart so much, in fact, that those to whom God has shown mercy become those who show mercy themselves. Or we could put it like this, mercy receivers become mercy dispensers. This has been a focal point of Jesus' teaching in Matthew's gospel. In Matthew 5-7, Jesus pronounced a beatitude on the merciful. He said, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. In other words, God will show mercy to his people in the future and God's people are known by their merciful disposition. But how did they have, how did they come to have that disposition? Is it just a natural effect of their personality that they received from their birth? No, the merciful disposition of a saint comes through experiencing personally the mercy of God revealed in the good news of Christ in salvation. And this is the consistent scriptural implication of those who have tasted God's forgiving love. Ephesians 4.32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted forgiving one another. Why? Even as God in Christ forgave you. You see, that's always the way that it works. It begins with God's divine forgiveness, his divine mercy received through the gospel of Christ. And it works itself out practically in disciple to disciple forgiveness. In Colossians 3.13, Paul writes, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Note that. Paul does not say forgive if you feel like it. But as Christ forgave you, you also must forgive. It is a necessity. So if you take nothing else away from the sermon today, take that. Horizontal forgiveness from disciple to disciple is the reflex of one's grasp of God's lavish mercy granted to us individually in Christ. Horizontal forgiveness and vertical forgiveness are inseparably connected to each other. And that is what this text is all about. If you look down at verse 21, you can see that our passage begins with a question from Peter, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Peter's question deals with the limitations of forgiveness. It also deals with the limitations of forgiveness among disciples. And that's an important thing to remember. Because in Matthew 18, Jesus is teaching about how his little ones, his disciples, are to relate to each other in community within the local church. In the first part of the chapter, Jesus taught that his community is not to be characterized by ambition, for high position, But instead, he taught that his people are to think humbly of themselves. We're spiritual beggars. And we are to welcome one another gratefully. Jesus has also warned against the penalty of causing one of his disciples to stumble into sin. He has warned against despising a straying sheep by not going after them and seeking their restoration to the fold. And Peter's question that begins our text seems to be connected with the topic that we covered last week from verses 15 through 20. Jesus said in verse 15, moreover, if your brother sins against you, And Peter is now asking a clarifying question about that, namely, what limits should I place on that forgiveness? Peter probably thought that he was being generous when he said up to seven times. I mean, it was the Jewish rabbis who said you should forgive someone up to three times. Peter does four better than the rabbis. But what Jesus does here is he blows up Peter's conception of forgiving generosity and says in verse 22, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Now, some of your Bibles might say up to 77 times, and there's some question about exactly how to translate this phrase, but I tell you, there is no question about what Jesus means when he says this. Jesus is saying to Peter, not only seven times, but limitless, unending forgiveness is what I require of my disciples. Now, Jesus is probably alluding here to a text found in the book of Genesis. If you turn with me in your Bibles back to Genesis chapter four, You'll recall that Cain lodged a complaint against the punishment that God placed against him. And so God, in his mercy, declared that if someone avenged Cain, they would be avenged sevenfold. And in Genesis chapter four, verses 23 and 24, we hear a sinful, proud, and blasphemous man speaking to his wives. He's the man Lamech, the first one to take two wives. And it says in verse 23, then Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, wives of Lamech, listen to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me, even a young man for hurting me. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech 77 folds. And in the Greek, that's the same formation of phrase. that we find here in our text. Here, Lamech is blasphemously stating that he, not God, he will take much greater vengeance than God ever promised to Cain, even boasting about killing a young man who simply wounded him. And this is what one commentator wrote. Jesus' response to Peter consciously counters the Lamech principle of measureless blood vengeance. Under Lamech, there was no limit to hatred and revenge. Under Jesus, there is no limit to love, forgiveness, and mercy. Isn't that beautiful? In Jesus' community of disciples, the church, Limitless vengeance is turned into limitless forgiveness. Now, why is Jesus' community of disciples to be a place where forgiveness never ends? Well, that's why Jesus tells this parable, and it has everything to do with the vertical forgiveness that a disciple of Christ receives from God. Jesus says in verse 23, the kingdom of heaven is like This is the way that God's saving intervention and rule functions in the present age. It functions as a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants and he is ready to discharge incredible amounts of monetary debt. Verse 24, and when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. Now we do not feel the impact of just how astronomical this debt was. A talent was the largest monetary unit in that day. It was about 6,000 denarii. And then Jesus multiplies that by 10,000 or a myriad, which was the highest numerical designation in that day. So if a myriad is 10,000 and you multiply that by a talent, I'm no math whiz, but 6,000 denarii, and a denarius is a day's wage, what you would work for and receive at the end of the day, that would be 60 million denarii in debt. But here's the thing. Jesus is trying to underscore the point that this debt is so astronomical. It's so incalculable. that it will simply never be paid off. The people who call into Dave Ramsey, tell him how much they're in debt and they have nothing on this guy. Some commentators translate this colloquially by saying this guy owed zillions of dollars, or as the kids would say, bajillions of dollars. And then you realize what Jesus is doing with this figure. He's actually saying, this is equivalent to your moral debt before God. What kind of debt does a sinner have before the God of heaven? It is a debt of transgression and iniquity that could never be paid. People don't think like this today, do they? People think I'm not that bad. I'm generally a good person. My works at the end might outweigh the bad ones if I try hard. Well, how in debt, morally speaking, does Jesus say sinners are in? How bad are we really? I couldn't pay this off. Mark Hogan deserved to go to the debtor's prison. which is a picture of hell. Mark Hogan deserved to face unending torments because of the mountain of sinful debt he owed to God. And yet through faith in Christ, what happens to that debt of sin? It is wiped clean. Verse 25. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. His life is effectively over. He will never pay this off and get out of debtor's prison until he dies. And so what does the servant do? The servant fell on his face and he begged the king for clemency. And the king did better than the man could have ever asked or imagined. The man said, Master, have patience with me and I will pay you all. But what did the king do in response? Verse 27, then the master of the servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. Billions and billions of dollars owed gone in a moment. The high mountain of debt that threatened to ruin this man was canceled. in a second. His life was spared, his family saved, his future turned from doom to hope. Now let's go find that servant with the hundred dinar I owe to me. You see? Here's the tragedy of the parable. Here's the incongruity of a man who being forgiven much, refuses to forgive so little. Here's the second scene in verse 28, and there's mirroring with the first scene. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants. Notice that. He leaves the king's presence, and what does he do? He goes searching for the one who owes him, and he's gonna get what belongs to him. He's gonna get his pound of flesh, right? He found one of his servants who owed him 100 denarii." Now, that's not an insubstantial amount. It would be equivalent to something like $25,000 today. But here's the thing. He was just forgiven billions of dollars, and now he's going to throw a man into prison over $25,000? Look at how he treats his fellow servant. And he laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe. Jesus is making the point that to not forgive a brother or sister who seeks your forgiveness is to treat them with violence after being so mercifully treated by the king. And there's a parallel in this story. The man who has just been forgiven an astronomical amount of debt is given an opportunity to dispense the kind of mercy that he has just received from the king. Verse 29, so his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you all. That sounds familiar. Sounds like verse 26. And $25,000 was not an insuperable amount of money to pay back. He could have been paid back, unlike the first servant when he stood before the king who didn't have a hope to do so. But what did the man do? Verse 30, but he would not. He would not show forgiveness. He would not be patient. but went and threw him in prison till he should pay the debt. Jesus is showing us the incongruity of the action. He's showing us the inappropriateness of the action. And his fellow servants saw what happened and were fittingly deeply grieved and went and told the king and the king called the original servant back into his presence and he rendered a verdict and said, you wicked servants. I forgave you all that debt because you begged me." And here's the moral of the story. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you? There it is, the vertical aspect of one's forgiveness before a holy God. is meant to transform the horizontal forgiveness from disciple to disciple. There is a suitability, a propriety, a fittingness to treating our brothers and sisters in Christ the way that God has treated us in his son, not by holding our sins against us, but pardoning our sins when we have confessed them to him. Vertical forgiveness gives the foundation, the underpinning, the power to horizontal forgiveness. And the point Jesus making is this, the way God has shown mercy to us in his son, Jesus, must impact the way we show mercy to others. The point is this, as God has done for you, forgiving your mountainous pile of debt, providing you the riches of grace in Christ, now you go and do likewise when you have opportunity. Imitate the merciful disposition and gracious compassion of the God who has treated you so kindly. Always remembering that when you forgive another person, This pales in comparison with what God has done for you through His Son. Can't you see? A mountain of debt, billions of dollars versus three months wages. There is no comparison. How would our grasp of our own record of debt removal by God transform our relationships How would our grasp of our record of debt removal by God transform our marriages to be marriages of forgiving love? How would it transform churches which are far too often less forgiving than God himself? Brethren, this ought not to be the case. In fact, Jesus gives a warning at the end of this passage. First, within the parable he gives a warning, and he states in effect that those who show no mercy are destined for unimaginable torments in hell. That's verse 34. And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. Those who show no mercy and indeed refuse to show mercy cannot expect to receive mercy when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead. And then propositionally, Jesus says the same thing in verse 35. So my heavenly father also will do to each if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Now, is Jesus saying that a disciple can lose their salvation by not showing mercy? I don't think so. I don't think that's the point that Jesus is making here. And we have to remember the many places in scripture where Jesus plainly says that no sheep of his will be lost. So what is his point? Here it is. The elect of God, brought into saving relationship with God through Christ, who have been shown mercy by God, show mercy to others. A disciple of Jesus never says, I'm saved by grace, so it doesn't matter if I show grace to you or not. Now Jesus' point here is, if you deeply and truly grasp God's compassion towards you in removing your mountain of sinful debt, if you have actually tasted God's goodness in not consigning you to the debtor's prison of hell, if you have experienced His compassion in providing you with a Messiah who took the cup of God's wrath and drank it down to its dregs, that you might be set free. If these things really and truly mean something to you, you will never not forgive your brother. And if you actually don't forgive, if you don't make the choice, even though it's an emotionally difficult one, I understand that. If you do not make the choice to release someone from their moral debt and offense against you when they plead with you for mercy, what does that say about you? It speaks volumes. And I have no doubt that based on Jesus teaching here, there will be professing Christians who are false converts. There will be professing Christians to whom Jesus will say at the end, depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of lawlessness. And he will say this to them based upon their merciless attitude, their compassionless disposition, which will have proved that they were in fact no disciples of his. Jesus said in no uncertain terms, blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Mercy is the disposition of a citizen of God's kingdom. But we cannot and should not water down the fact that Jesus is issuing a threat at the end of this parable. It's a threat to Peter and the other disciples in verse 35. And true faith as it approaches each text of God's word responds in kind. We heard about that in the prayer this morning. Our confession says, faith acts differently upon that which each particular passage contains, yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatening. When Jesus says, forgive your brother as many times as he asks you for your forgiveness, true faith says, as it looks to God's magnanimous mercy toward itself, Brother, sister, I will indeed forgive you. When I pray to God and ask him to forgive me, he always pardons my sins. And so I will do that for you too. Real Christians hear and they heed Jesus' teachings. They listen to the threatening of Christ in this text and they tremble at it because this is weighty stuff, isn't it? We cannot gut Christ's teaching and make it less forceful than it is. The way we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ who are seeking our forgiveness matters. And true believers recognize that Christ is requiring something different than a cold, calculating observance or rigid sort of forgiveness. Yeah, I forgive you, but I want nothing else to do with you. He is demanding forgiveness from the heart And the reality is His only hearts, melted by the mercy of God, can actually begin to extend forgiving love to those who ask it, simply because they alone know how much grace and mercy they have received from God. But when the kindness and the mercy of God our Savior appeared, He saved us. And so as we close this sermon, let me ask you, is there someone that you have not forgiven from the heart that you need to forgive today? That's possible for believers, and the scriptures call us to repentance. Has someone come to you seeking reconciliation, truly sorry for their sin and pleading your clemency, only to have you express reticence to pardon them? If that's you, you need to repent. You need to be transformed by Christ's teaching in this parable and to consider again the discrepancy of the two types of debt, the debt that we owe to God and the debt of forgiving one another. Billions of dollars versus $25,000. Brothers, sisters, do not wait long to grant forgiveness when it is requested of you. Release the debt. If you have waited to grant forgiveness, then repent of that and then do the next right thing, which is to forgive. And if your sinful human thinking gets in the way and you want to say, but you don't know what they did to me. You don't know how they treated me. You don't know what they said to me. You don't know how they dragged my name through the mud. I would bid you to always remember what you did to God. Your debt was much larger than anything that a brother or sister could ever do against you. And Christ willingly came to satisfy your debts and to release you from the laws of curse. So think of the joy of being able to imitate the God of whom the scriptures say, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. We cannot say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But then when someone comes to us asking for forgiveness, say no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't work that way. He will not always strive with us. nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. If God has so pitied us, then let us then do the good work of pitying others who ask for mercy. and never stop loving mercy." Micah 6, 8. We're walking humbly with our God. And may Grace Baptist Church be a place where forgiveness never runs dry and where the prayer that Christ taught us is ever on our lips. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your clemency towards our mountain of sinful debt that we could never pay back. When we consider the cost of our sin, what it meant for Christ to go to the cross, to extinguish your wrath against our sin, to take away the penalty of the law's demands that stood against us, Father, when we think with those spiritual eyes, how could we ever have a brother or sister come to us asking forgiveness and not forgive? When have we come to you and confessed our sins and you not forgiven us? Father, we pray that you would help us therefore to imitate you. in your mercy. As we come to the Lord's table, we would see the obligation placed upon us that those who are forgiven much ought to be forgiving. Father, if we need to repent of a bitter or begrudging heart, pray that you would help us to do that today. and in the future to amend our ways, to be corrected by Christ's teaching that we might not hold such a small debt against one of our brothers or sisters in Christ when you have forgiven us the astronomical amount of billions and billions of dollars of moral debt that we owe to you. Help us to never be like this wicked servant who rightly deserved the judgment that he got. We pray that you would give us forgiving hearts. We pray that you would help us to be melted by the mercies that you have shown to us in Christ. And for your regenerating grace in our lives and the Holy Spirit who enables us to show mercy towards our debtors. Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have a debt against us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.