Years ago, I found on the internet something called a forgiveness quiz. I can't find it anymore and I didn't root around in the Wayback Machine to see if I could discover it there. But I wrote down some of the more interesting questions in it because I think that they are specific questions that kind of raise the issue of forgiveness and cause us, challenge us to think about how we would respond in various situations. So let me share with you some of those questions and give you an opportunity to think about how you would respond if you were in a situation such as the ones proposed. These are all in the notes that are provided in the app. And so you can actually type in your responses if you choose to do that. But if not, just consider in your mind, in your heart, how you would respond to these types of situations. First, could you forgive your best friend for accidentally running over your dog? That would be a tough situation, but accidents happen. Sometimes accidents cause damage, cause personal damage that's hurtful and hard to get over. Would you find it hard to forgive someone even if what they did was unintentional? Even if it was the dog's fault for running behind the car while you were backing up? Could you forgive in that situation? Here's another. Your brother videotapes your wedding but keeps the lens cap on the whole time. Would you keep bringing it up years later? Not because it's a humorous story, but because you still have some bitterness about a mistake that he made? Sure, it's a boneheaded mistake, but who hasn't made boneheaded mistakes? How would you deal with this situation? Here's another question. A close friend has a cookout on the 4th of July. but doesn't invite you, and the implication is invited others, but not you. What would you do about that? Would you say something? Or would you bury it in your heart? Could you let it go? Or would it bother you and change your relationship with that person going forward? Here's another. Your spouse forgets your anniversary. How long would that affect your relationship with him or her? It would hurt. And the pain would change your relationship with him or her in some way or other. But let's assume your spouse acknowledged forgetting. How long would the hurt bother you? How long would it change the way that you related to your spouse? Here's a final question, and it's multiple choice. Your parents tell you you're adopted, which they have hidden from you for your entire life. Do you tell them it's okay? Arrange for counseling to repair the damage. Or go on the Jerry Springer show. And humiliate them, if that even exists anymore. I don't know. Can't say as I watch a lot of daytime TV or ever have, but you know what I mean. Find some way to humiliate them publicly for what they did to you. Some people would respond that way. Would you be one of them? Very specific questions like these help us to think a lot more specifically about the issue of forgiveness. It's easy to talk about forgiveness in the abstract, but the truth is that on a daily basis, or on a regular basis at least, we deal with situations that cause us heartache, that cause us sorrow, that cause hurt feelings, that damage relationships. We do this to other people periodically and they do it to us. And so it's helpful to think about how you respond to situations that damage your relationships with other people. Specifically when you are the one who has been hurt, by the situation. How do you respond to situations like these? Can you forgive? What does that process of forgiveness look like for you? And how long does it take to happen? Because here's a truth, a truth that we all know and that I think we all believe. We all know that we should forgive others. I've never met somebody who thinks forgiveness is a bad idea or an act of weakness. In fact, just the opposite. Anyone who's lived for a while and has experienced some hard times knows that forgiveness is not an act of weakness, that in fact, it takes immense personal strength to truly forgive someone for something that they've done that's hurt you. And so on some level, I think that we all know that we should forgive other people. And here in our passage this morning in Matthew chapter 18, Jesus has just taught a central truth about how Christians should relate with one another and how the church body should relate with or relate to problems, sins that are committed between believers in the body of Christ. Matthew 18 lays out for us the process that we call church discipline. But the part that we think of as church discipline, that's the final step. That's the step where somebody gets excluded from the congregation. The process that Jesus outlined has many steps before that, and those steps involve confrontation when someone has hurt you, when someone has sinned against you. And Jesus commands us to go to people who have sinned against us, to show them their sin, to call them to repentance. And if they don't repent, to keep escalating the situation until it reaches the church body. But in every one of those confrontations, at every stage of the process, Jesus says, if they repent, you forgive them. Forgiveness is always the goal of confrontation in the Christian life. It's always the goal of church discipline, even if it doesn't reach the ultimate stage. That's what God wants. God doesn't want us to be cutting people out of our lives. He wants us to be repairing relationships through confrontation and forgiveness. Simon Peter has heard all of this teaching about church discipline, about the importance of forgiveness, and he's processed. how rife this kind of situation could be for abuse, for someone who wanted to sin against you and come constantly seeking forgiveness. And so we asked Jesus a question following that teaching about confrontation, to begin to explore the limits and the depths of forgiveness. And so look with me in our passage again, in Matthew chapter 18, beginning in verse 21. In Matthew chapter 18 verse 21, the scripture says, Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? There's the question rising from the teaching of Christ. Sure, we all believe in forgiveness, but isn't there some sort of appropriate limit? And what is that limit? How far do I go in this constant process of confrontation and forgiveness? That's what Peter is seeking to find out. And it's a question that probably all of us have at least considered. It's something we've all thought about. We all want to be forgiving people on some level, and we all know that we should forgive others. But what Peter says next, I think, reveals an important truth. And that truth is this. that we tend to overestimate our generosity when it comes to forgiving other people. We tend to overestimate our generosity with forgiveness. Look at the last statement, the last question, the last thing that's said in verse 21. Peter says in verse 21, up to seven times, Peter's not content just to raise the issue of the limits of forgiveness, he wants to put a proposal out on the table and see if Christ agrees with him. He's heard the teachings of Christ for years, and he knows how gracious the Lord is in forgiving people. And so he says, should I do it seven times? To understand what Peter is doing here, we need to understand something about the Old Testament and about the way that it was taught in Israel, where Peter and Jesus and all the disciples lived, and the environment that they grew up in, in Judaism. God's word, as you know, God's law, lays out God's commands and decrees. But many of those commands are general. The rabbis who learned those commands, who studied the scriptures, wanted to help people by giving them specifics. And so, in addition to the Law of Moses, they wrote lengthy documents trying to consider the various types of situations. and the various scenarios someone might find themselves in and lay out for them the correct and proper response and process for dealing with those specific situations. And the rabbis believed that the forgiveness that people should give to each other was up to three times. Peter had been taught, and God's people had been taught, that you should forgive someone who comes to you in repentance three times, and after the third time, you have the right to shun them. You have the right to cut them out of your life. You have the right to act as if they don't exist any longer. See, that's the other side of forgiveness. That's the opposite of forgiveness. That's the end of forgiveness, is when you stop having relationships with that person. Forgiveness is the normalization of a relationship. The issue is solved, and you treat that person as you did before. Peter wants to know, when do I have the right to stop treating them as before and just simply cut them out of my life? He had been taught that you should do it up to three times. And so when Peter says in verse 21, up to seven times, he thinks he's being really, really generous here. He more than doubles the number of times that the Jewish leaders taught him to forgive other people. And so he thinks he's a very forgiving man, a very, very gregarious in his capacity to forgive others who've sinned against him. Well, Jesus blows him right out of the water in his response to Simon Peter. And he tells us that we should forgive far more than we think. Jesus tells us, in fact, that we should forgive at an unlimited level. Look with me at verse 22 where Jesus answers the question. It says, Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times. And you may be familiar with other translations that say 70 times seven. And the truth is, by the wording, we're not sure exactly which Jesus is saying. Is he saying 77 or is he saying 70 times 7? In other words, 490 times. But the specific answer is really not that important. The point is, Jesus wanted to give an immense number of times, far more than any human being, even the most petty of us, could track. in order to show us that there shouldn't be an upper limit to the amount of forgiveness. That's what Jesus was driving at. Not that we should keep track and when you reach 490 or when you reach 77 or whatever the number is, then you get to cut them out of your life. No, Jesus is saying that his followers should show an unlimited level of forgiveness. That forgiveness should be part of our lives at all times and in all situations. If there is repentance, there should be a normalization of the relationship in response to it. And this is hard for people to deal with. It's hard for non-Christian people to deal with, and it's hard for Christians to deal with. Of the sayings of Jesus, I think this one is one of the better known, even among non-Christians, that Jesus said, you are to forgive 70 times 7, or 77, whichever it is. In fact, one politician Hillary Rodham Clinton said this, in the Bible it says, they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive and he said, 70 times seven. She's reading the King James Bible, okay. Then Hillary said this, well I want you all to know that I'm keeping a chart. Now I think she was kidding. I see you don't find it all that funny, but I think she was joking, I think. But the truth of the matter is, We can relate to what she's saying. Now we fear being stepped all over by people who are rude or non-considerate or just abusive in their way that they approach other people. And so we want some kind of limit. John F. Kennedy said this, forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. That's not forgiveness, okay? That's not forgiveness. If you keep track in some way in your heart or mind, either with a chart, or with their names, you haven't really digested what Christ is teaching us about the nature of forgiveness. Forgiveness is something that we all know and that we all believe should happen. But the level at which Jesus taught forgiveness, an unlimited amount of forgiveness, is hard for us to accept and it's really hard for us to put into practice. And so Jesus helped us out by giving us a parable. What follows in this passage, and most of this passage, contains a parable of Jesus Christ in which he demonstrates for us why we should show unlimited forgiveness to others when they repent. And so what follows this dialogue between Christ and Simon Peter is a description of forgiveness. And in fact, it tells us that God's mercy is what enables us to show this unlimited forgiveness. And as we work through this parable together, I hope you'll see why it's important for us to practice the kind of unlimited forgiveness that Christ commands in this passage of Scripture. The first thing we're going to see as we look in this parable together is this, that the parable shows us the unequal nature of forgiveness. The truth of the matter is that there is a massive inequality in the topic of forgiveness. And if we're going to show unlimited forgiveness to others, we need to understand this inequality and we need to understand it on a deep spiritual level. And so let's dig into the parable and see what Christ taught us about forgiveness in this passage of scripture. Look with me again in our text and begin at verse 23 where Jesus began to explain the parable following his command to show unlimited forgiveness in verse 22. Verse 23 says, Now notice that Jesus says this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. And you understand, I'm sure, from your own reading of the Gospels, that the Kingdom of Heaven was the major topic of Christ's teaching. Christ taught that there would come a day when God sets up His Kingdom on earth, and in which His Son, in which the Messiah, would rule and reign as the King. As Jesus teaches this parable about forgiveness, he's telling us this is how it should work among the people of God. We're not in the kingdom of God yet in its fullest sense. But Jesus is laying down the ethics by which his people should treat one another. If we belong to that kingdom, if we're citizens of that kingdom, if we're waiting for that kingdom, this is how it should work. Jesus begins with something that doesn't happen until right before the kingdom comes. But it's an important part of understanding what kingdom life is all about. Notice what he says again in verse 23. He says, And you'll remember from our discussion in James chapter 2 last Sunday, I talked about the fact that there's a day in which every person Whoever lives will stand and have an audience alone with God. And in that audience, God will review everything we've done and said in this life, and we will give an account to a holy God for the way we've lived on this earth. Well, Jesus begins talking about that day in this parable. He talks about a king who wants to settle accounts. And so he begins this day of judgment. And verse 24 says, as he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him. 10,000 bags of gold sounds like a lot, and that's the point. That's why the NIV translators chose this description of the passage, because you and I don't deal in gold and we don't deal in talents, and so it's hard for us to understand the biblical weights and measures and measures of exchange that were used in the passage. But if you have a footnote in your Bible, It probably says something like mine, which is that one talent was worth 20 years of a day laborer's wages. One talent was worth 20 years of the average day laborer's wages. This guy owes him 10,000 bags of gold or 10,000 talents. I'll go ahead and let you do the math because math is not my thing, as I've told you many times. But the point of the matter is, this is a lot of money. This is an astronomical amount of money. This is such a ridiculous amount of money that you can't imagine somebody lending this amount of money. This is the kind of amount of money that would cost in the millions or perhaps billions of dollars in today's inflated dollars. And it's the kind of money you would only borrow if you're gonna like build a skyscraper or something. You would borrow this kind of money if you expected to build some kind of business that would cash flow its way, not only to paying back the money, but making you a massive profit in response. And so this guy has borrowed way more money than he could ever earn out on the farm or whatever he did for a living. The master calls him in and wants his money back. And notice the response of the man. The scripture goes on and says this. Verse 25, since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The master wants him to fork over the money, cut a check, however you want to put it. He wants his bags of gold back. And the man knows he can't scrape two talents of gold together to save his life. And so he honestly, and I mean, what else could he do, admits that he doesn't have the money. And so in their system, in their situation, if you can't pay your debts, You become the possession, the property of the person who lent you the money, and that person has the right to sell you into slavery, and everything you own, and all your people, all your family members, in order to recoup and recover some, at least in this situation, of what is owed. Now, we don't work that way. We don't do slavery anymore. I'm very thankful for that. But understand that the man borrowed the money knowing that this was the potential result. He knew that this was what would happen to him if he was not able to pay back the money. And so both people entered into the contract with their eyes open, and both of them should have been aware of the consequences. This man, understanding now how his life is about to take a massive negative turn, comes to the master seeking help, seeking mercy. Remember, mercy we talked about last Sunday means the withholding of punishment from someone who deserves it. This man deserves the punishment that was about to be given to him, the selling into slavery. But he begs for mercy. Verse 26 says this, at this the servant fell to his knees before him. A humiliating thing to do in any culture, but especially in the Jewish culture. He fell to his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything. Everyone in the room should have known how preposterous that statement was. This man had no means by which to try to earn back the money. If he didn't already have it, or at least a lot of it to pay back, there was no way that more time was going to help him. And the master is aware of that, and so notice his response in verse 27. It says, the master took pity on him. The terrible situation this man was in aroused a feeling in the heart of the master, a feeling of compassion for the man. He took pity on him and, verse 27 says, canceled the debt. and let him go. This isn't a reduction in the amount that's owed. This isn't a payment plan whereby the master hoped to recoup his money, or at least some of it, over time. This is full and complete forgiveness. This is a normalization of the relationship, which is what forgiveness is. This man went from being a massive debtor to being someone who could not be sold into slavery once the transaction, the forgiveness, was finalized. And so here's someone who has received a massive amount of forgiveness. But the passage goes on, it's not over, there's more to discuss. And so we see going forward then, the response of the man who was forgiven. In verse 30, sorry, in verse 28, it says, but that's when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 silver coins. To try to put this into amounts that we can relate to, you might have a footnote that says 100 denarii is the meaning of this and the silver coins. And a denarius was the usual daily wage of a day laborer. So here's someone who owes about 100 days worth of money. That's still a pretty significant amount of money. but it's not an astronomical amount of money. It's an amount of money that someone on a payment plan could reasonably expect to repay. And this man, just as this second servant, just like the first servant, begs for forgiveness. Verse 29, his fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him. Very similar language here. Be patient with me and I will pay it back. The same thing. that the man demanding the debt just received. Verse 30 says, but he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. And so this man who received forgiveness is unwilling to show the same kind of forgiveness to someone who owes him much less. And then we see the response in verse 31. What happened in this situation was witnessed by others. And verse 31 says, when the other servants saw what happened, they were outraged. These servants had witnessed the forgiveness, the massive forgiveness, that the first servant had received from the king, from the master. They saw it. And they were amazed at the kindness and generosity of the king. toward this massively indebted servant. And then they also witnessed his refusal to show forgiveness to his other servant, to the one who owed him money, much less money than he had just been forgiven. And instead of showing the same mercy, the same withholding of punishment to someone who owed it, the servant who was just forgiven, meted out judgment, meted out justice to the man who owed him a fair amount of money, but not an immense amount of money. The servants witness all this. They tell the king. The king has a response. And we see that response. beginning in verse 32. Then the master called the servant in. You wicked servant, he said, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy, there's the key word, on your fellow servant, just as I had on you? There's the point that Christ wants us to understand. How is it possible for God's people to show unlimited forgiveness, a crazy amount of forgiveness, to other people, other people who are constantly sinning against us, constantly wounding us with their words or their actions? How is it possible for us to forgive the same person, the same sinner, 70 times seven, an unlimited amount? Jesus says, you can only do this if you understand the unequal nature of forgiveness. And the unequal nature of forgiveness is that God has been unequally merciful to you and me compared to any mercy we'll ever show to anyone else. If we really understand how much God has forgiven us in Christ, if we're in Christ, It'll change the way we think about the sins of others against us. And see, this is where we lose perspective on forgiveness. When you and I sin against God, as James told us in James chapter 2, one sin, one violation of the law of God shatters the entirety of it. Remember, it's like a windshield. It breaks in one place, the whole thing has to be replaced. It's been broken. The Bible says your sin and my sin is like that astronomical debt racked up by the first servant. When you look at the ways in which you and I have broken the laws of God in the things that we've said and done, if you look at the ways in which we have sinned against God in our lives, it is very much like racking up a debt far beyond what we would ever be able to repay because one sin is an eternal offense against a holy God. And yet the core of our message as Christians is, when Jesus came to this earth and died on the cross for our sins, he paid the penalty for sin so that God could show that unlimited forgiveness to us. So no matter how much you have sinned against God, no matter how many of the commandments you've broken, no matter how many times you've broken them, forgiveness is available in Christ because he has absorbed all of the penalties. for breaking the law of God. And so every Christian, anyone who has claimed the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ has been forgiven a massive amount, far more than you and I can even conceptualize because we are not holy. When it comes to Christ's command then for us to show unlimited forgiveness to others, it's this unequal nature that we need to understand. See, we think it's hard to forgive other sinners. because we forget how offensive our sin is to God and how much God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ. If we get our perspective right on how gracious and merciful God has been to us in Christ, if we're saved, then it should give us a better perspective and enable us to show mercy to others who sin against us when they repent. And so the parable is designed to show us the unequal nature of forgiveness. And that means the parable then recalls on us to reflect on what unlimited forgiveness means. It calls on us to reflect on what unlimited forgiveness means. The king in this story, of course, represents God. And the debt represents the sins that you and I have committed against Him and the punishment that we deserve for our sins. The forgiveness that is offered represents the salvation that God grants to those in Christ who claim it by faith and faith alone. But the part of the parable that applies to us and the part where we need to reflect on unlimited forgiveness is that God expects his people to reflect that mercy to others. God has been merciful to us, now we must be merciful to others. And the point of the parable is this, if you and I can't forgive other people, if we refuse or fail to show any kind of forgiveness, an unlimited amount of forgiveness toward others, It means there's something defective about our claim to faith in Jesus Christ. Look at the end of the parable, which says this. Verse 32, then the master called the servant in. You wicked servant, he said, I cancel all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? And then it says this, in anger, his masters handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed. What happens? This man who had received mercy and grace now falls back under judgment once again. And then Jesus concludes with this. If you've read this passage and the gravity of what Jesus says in this last verse doesn't hit you, then please reconsider because what Jesus says is extremely serious here. Verse 35, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. When Jesus says, this is how my heavenly father will treat you, what does he mean? He means he will judge you. He means, just like the man in verse 34, in anger, the master handed him over to be punished. What Christ is saying here is, if you don't show forgiveness and mercy toward others, it shows that you are still under the wrath of God. And this is exactly what James was talking about in our passage from last week. I don't know if James had this parable in mind when he wrote James chapter two, but I couldn't get it out of my mind last week when I was preparing the message and when I was preaching the message to you. I could not stop thinking about this parable. Because James draws on so many of the truths in this passage. Let me just read to you again what we looked at last Sunday in James chapter 2. At the end of James' discussion about favoritism, he begins to invoke the mercy of God and he says in James chapter 2 verse 12, Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. That's precisely what Jesus says in this passage, too. James says judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Jesus said, this is how my heavenly Father will treat you if you don't forgive others from the heart. Now, here's the point. The point is not you get saved and you lose it. The Bible says that doesn't happen. But the Bible says there are many people who think they are saved, many people who have made a claim to faith in Christ, many people who have probably truly understood the gospel of Christ. They've never been changed on the inside. They've never been regenerated. They've never been saved in the fullest sense, in the real sense of the word, the fully biblical sense of the word. When you are saved by the mercy of God, it changes your relationships with other people. It turns you into a forgiving person. Why? Because the inequality of forgiveness dawns on you. You realize how much God has shown mercy to you. And so if I've been the recipient of massive mercy in my life, how hard is it for me to reflect God's mercy through forgiveness to other people? And the point that Jesus is making in this passage, the same one that James makes, is if you find it hard to forgive people, when they repent, when someone comes and tells you their sin, or you go and confront them with their sin, and they repent, if you find it hard to normalize the relationship again, no matter how many times they've sinned against you, if your tendency is just to cut them out of your life, because you can't be bothered, or you cannot even. Then Jesus is saying, and James is saying, and many passages of scripture would say, you haven't really received the mercy of God, because if you had, you would want to reflect his mercy and forgiveness to other people. And so when I say here, this parable calls on us to reflect on what unlimited forgiveness means. That's what I want you to do in this message. I want you to reflect on unlimited forgiveness. And so the takeaway from this passage, the big idea is very simple, that you and I should be merciful and forgive others because God has mercifully forgiven you and me. And I don't know what kind of relationship damage has been happening in your life. Maybe as I've been speaking this message, the Lord, probably the Holy Spirit has been reminding you of someone maybe that you've sinned against and you haven't repented and sought forgiveness. Or perhaps the Lord has brought people in mind who've sinned against you. And you haven't had the conversation with them. You haven't shown them their sin as Jesus commanded us to do in Matthew 18. You haven't called them to repentance. The reason why this is so important is because the church is supposed to be a forgiven and forgiving place. And if there isn't this constant cycle of confrontation, repentance, and normalization of relationships, that means we as a church are going to have fragmented, broken relationships in our church. We're going to have families that are shattered because someone won't repent, or someone did repent and someone else won't forgive. We're gonna have families that are separated from one another in the church, people who should be brothers and sisters in Christ, who can't get along with one another because someone hasn't repented or someone has repented, but someone can't forgive. And one of the reasons why churches run into problems, one of the reasons why people leave churches and leave in bitterness, One of the reasons why conflicts abound in the church family when they shouldn't is because we haven't really digested and put into practice the kind of merciful forgiveness that should be central to our faith because it's what God showed to us when he forgave us in Jesus Christ. And one of the reasons why that happens is the church has unregenerated people in it who don't realize that they've never really received the forgiveness of Christ. And so, when I say you and I need to reflect on this, I mean it in a very profound and deep way. If you know the Lord, then you know how to forgive, because Christ set the example. God showed us what mercy means, and we should be merciful toward others. And to come back to the book of James, James talks about mercy in an unusual way. The poor person he talks about doesn't owe us or the people in the church anything. So it's not a withholding of punishment in that way, but it is a demonstration of kindness to someone who can't lay claim to it, someone who can't insist that we show it to them. The point of all of this is that God wants us as a church, God wants us as the people of God to be people who are saturated with this kind of merciful forgiveness, people who are repeated and quick about granting the normalization of relationships to others around us when there is repentance. And so as you think about your life, as you think about people who have sinned against you and that relationship remains broken, Where would God want you to go next with this? Have you really gone to that person and showed them their sin, called them to repent? If you have broken relationships because someone has accused you of sinning against them and you haven't walked through the process with them in order to get forgiveness and normalize the relationship, then that's probably the direction where you need to go. But one way or another, The Word of God is clear that God expects us, He calls us, He commands us to be merciful to others. So be merciful and forgive others because God has mercifully forgiven you.