Thank you for having me. I'm going to tilt this up a little bit. Drove up from Pleasant Hills. Who here knows where Pleasant Hills is? Anybody? There you go. Go down 51. There's a lot of PCA churches in Monroeville and this area. So my wife and I joke that all roads lead to Monroeville, or in this case, the Penn Hills. But I really appreciate the chance to preach. I've had an opportunity to preach and worship at a bunch of our churches, actually. and every time it's been good. I'm gonna share some things with you tonight that we have been looking at in the core group of our church plan. So we're starting a new church. We hope to launch it mid next year. And we've been looking at the themes of mercy and justice just the past week or two. Mercy is absolutely huge. There's no salvation without mercy. And we really can't be Christians without mercy. That's what we're gonna see tonight. And so if you have a Bible, you can open it up to Matthew chapter 18. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read and preach kind of in pieces. So I'm gonna read a few verses and then preach for a little bit, read a little, preach a little. And let me just get, There we go. Jesus is about to give a very challenging story that ties mercy to debt. And debt resonates with about every one of us. I carry debt. I have a mortgage on my home. Some of you may have student loan. You might have credit card. You might have home equity. Most Americans carry debt. And the reality is it constrains us, right? I mean, if you're paying debt, you can't do other things. And if you woke up one morning and you learned that you had no more debt, you were debt-free, suddenly, miraculously, someone had paid it on your behalf. I'm guessing one of, imagine this, you find it out, you wake up, you're having a now very relaxed, joyful breakfast with your spouse, and probably your conversation would start to move like this. Well, now we can afford to... Do something. The constraints of debt are lifted. Hey, we can afford to go to Florida. Or we always wanted to go to Paris. Or now we can afford to be more generous. Hopefully you don't go, now we can afford to take on more debt. But we do end up there too as Americans. But what happens is when you're debt free, you can afford to do things that you otherwise can't. And the whole thrust of what Jesus says tonight is that you, if you have God's mercies, if you are a Christian, you are debt free. And what you can afford to do is forgive people really close to you who keep hurting you and then keep seeking your forgiveness. That's what Jesus says, because you have God's mercies and you're debt free, you can afford to be the most forgiving people on the planet. I mean, Christians should be the most merciful people in the whole country, right? I mean, we have God's mercies in ways no one else does. We know things about ourselves and about our forgiveness that if you're outside of Christ, you simply don't know. And so tonight we're going to look into that theme of what does it mean to be debt free, to be forgiven, and how on earth does that give us the resources, the spiritual resources to turn around and forgive someone over and over and over again. Maybe a spouse. Maybe someone close to you in the church. Someone near. That's the thrust of Peter's question now. Let's look at the question that Peter asks that prompts the story. This is verse 21. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? as many as seven times. And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. So if we had read up earlier, Matthew, you would have seen that Jesus had just finished telling his disciples, I want you to confront people who offend you so that you can forgive them. That was his whole point. I want you to approach them, let them know they've hurt you, they've sinned against you, so that they can respond in sorrow, and you can turn around and forgive them. And so Peter wants a little closure on that topic. And he says, well, how many times do we go through this cycle? You might wonder essentially the same thing. Is there a point where forgiveness is just enabling? That's how we would sort of use modern American talk. Is it time for tough love, Jesus? And so Jesus first does what he often doesn't do. He gives him a really straight answer. He just says, essentially, there is no limit. Peter might have been wondering, is it one and done? I could get behind forgiving someone once, obviously. Or he offers a number of seven. We don't exactly know why, but it's a Bible number. It's a number that kind of suggests completeness. Peter might think, well, maybe it's seven times. There is actually, if you dig through some of the old tradition, there were rabbinic teachings that said three times. It was like three strikes and you're out. You do three times for the same sin for the same person, they do it the fourth time, no, you withhold. So Peter's in a tradition where there's questions around that topic. Every time, right? Every time? That's really hard to do. In Luke's version of this, it says, if a brother sins against you seven times, this is Jesus talking, in the day, and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him. And do you know what the apostles said to that? They said, increase our faith. And I don't know if that was, or disciples, I don't know if that meant like, you gotta be kidding? Or if it was truly an urgent plea to, we need more faith that God knows best about forgiveness. My goal tonight is that what I say to you increases your faith. Because every single one of us deal with pain from people who have hurt us multiple times who are close to us. That's just part of being a Christian and part of being in a family. Jesus teaches us how we can continue to live and afford to keep forgiven. And so let's take a look here at the story. Verse 23. So this is Jesus explaining not just what to do, but now he gets into why. Why it is every time. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. This is part one of the parable. Jeff Bezos is the CEO of Amazon. Jeff Bezos has a pretty high net worth, $95.5 billion to be exact. You can't get your head around how much money that is. Let me give you an example. If Jeff decided I'm done making money, I want to spend it all. But I'm just going to spend $1 million each day. Do you know how many years it would take for him to spend all that money? Are you ready for this number? 261 years. Spending a million dollars every single day. That's about 10,000 talents. You can't really get your head around how big the number is. It just doesn't quite comprehend. And that is the debt. They must have had really bad underwriting back then. I don't know how this guy got the loan, but that's not the point, right? The point is, he has an enormous, impossible to grasp debt. That's the fate of the servant. And since he could not pay, verse 25 said, his master ordered him to be sold into slavery. with his wife, children, and all that he had, and payment to be made." This is what happened back then. This isn't like a weird thing Jesus makes up. If you had debt you couldn't pay, and there's passages in the Bible that treat this actually. You were sold with your family into slavery. You didn't just lose your home and your property. The king says, I'm going to get as much money back as I can. You're worth something. She's worth something. Those little dudes are worth something. Sell them all. Sell the property, and I'll get a tiny portion of my 10,000 talents back. Right? And then the guy offers this ridiculous bargain back. Have patience with me, and I'll pay you everything. I'll pay you back $95 billion. Just give me a few years to make. You can't make that money. Right? He can't get that money. He can't get it. It's ridiculous. But right here is where the mercy of God just shines so brightly. Take out your bulletin for a second. Take it out. Go ahead. Jump over to the left. We have been looking, I got to pick the passages and the hymns this week. Call to worship. Your section said, according, right? 1 Peter 3. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. The mercy of God shines through and it makes salvation happen. It is the compassion of God on wretched people like us. It says right there, according to his great mercy. Jump over to the Exodus reading, your passage again. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God. What's the very first attribute there? Merciful, right? The very first attribute is merciful and gracious, slow to anger. The mercy of God just shines out. And according to him, you know, the debt, that we owe has been paid through Jesus Christ, right? That's not new information to most of you here. The new part, and the part we always struggle to get is the enormity of the debt. We just don't believe it's that big. You do not believe it's as big as it is, or very few of you do. Some of you may. Some of you really may get a sense of how deep it was, and you struggle with the flip side. Is it really all forgiven? Could it really all be gone? Could it all be paid? I want you to hear this passage from Micah chapter 7. This is toward the end. This is the very end of the book of Micah, one of the prophets of the Old Testament. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. Listen to this part. He will tread our iniquities, that means sins, underfoot. And listen to the very last verse. Micah just sort of looks up at this point, he switches to the second person. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. God, you're just going to take all of the sins and you're casting them away. Right? That's prophetic language. You're taking the whole debt and you're throwing it, you're trampling it underfoot. And how does God do that? He does it by paying the debt himself. Right? That's the whole gospel. John writes, the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. That's 1 John 1, 7, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us. It just cleanses, it washes, it purifies us, not just from the sins when you were, you know, zero to 20 or before you became a Christian or all sins, every sin, the whole debt, the last penny of it is washed clean because God took the debt and he laid it on his son. The king in the story has moved to pity and compassion. He forgives the whole enormous amount. And you know, even as Jesus is telling the parable, he knows, he knows this. Real debts don't vanish. Real debts get paid. They don't disappear. It's not magic. They get paid. That's what happens with real debts. And Christ knows that's where he's going. He tells the story to Peter. He tells it to you and I, to teach us to be merciful, even as he's on the road to taking your debt. In Exodus, it said, God, right when we read it, he by no means clears the guilty. The beauty of the gospel is God becomes the guilty. He takes it. He who knew no sin became sin. The debt must be paid. That is what divine justice says. The debt, it doesn't just get wiped away. It gets moved from one column to another column. There's no fuzzy accounting here. It doesn't just disappear in the air of God's mercy, it gets moved from you to Christ. And it's dealt with on the cross once and for all. And you are debt free. You are debt free. It's gone. The stain of your sin has been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ. Because of the mercies of God. And again, if you're sitting here, some of you are thinking, I did too much. It's not that easy. I don't know you guys at all. In my last church in Kennett Square, we had some folks there. One of them had murdered someone. A few of them had dealt drugs. Some of them were probably, at least one was probably a former prostitute. It wasn't a playground for nice people, right? It was a hospital for really sinful people. Some of them hid it well. Adulterers, angry husbands. The church is just sinners being saved, right? That's normal stuff. I've come to conclude in what should be a church where people come from darkness into light. Some of you have come from really dark places. And you need to just know it's all paid. It's all paid. You don't have to go back and relive in fear of the sin you've done, no matter how stark it is. If you're in Christ, it is paid. And others of you, if you're here on a Sunday night in a Presbyterian service, I do think have to deal with the fact that you probably think it wasn't that big. It was a talent. It wasn't 10,000 talents. It was a million dollars. It wasn't $95 billion, right? And it's just, guys, we are sin-stained people. We really are. We just are. We want to be good, and we can't. We want to be happy, so we make decisions that make us happy. But then they end up being not very good. And we decide, well, today, right now, I guess I'll do the right thing, but I'm saving up so tomorrow I can do the bad thing. Maybe it'll balance out somehow. Then I'll ask for forgiveness on Sunday, and we can start cleaning it on Monday. We're proud. I'm not saying anything about you. I'm not saying about me. We're angry. We're lustful. We pray, and we don't really believe it's going to be heard. We worship, and we're kind of distracted. I know, my wife's leading a Christianity Explored class, which is a gospel of Mark class, and there's a question that says, how would you feel if there was a room and in it was listed everything you ever did wrong, on display, would you let anyone go into that room to just see it all? No, I wouldn't let you in that room, keep it locked, my shotgun at the door. And Jesus says, I've come to pay all the debt. And that is just a place of enormous joy as a believer. But only if you actually receive the reality in humility. The debt was paid for the servant. Now he can afford to be merciful. Let's keep reading, verse 28. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. And when his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. It's really easy to get high and mighty when we look at this. We're like, what's wrong with that servant? He just was paid his debt. Why can't he let the other guy go? What kind of jerk is this guy, right? You know, like we come into this and we sort of like project all this spiritual pride on top of it. And what we need to know is, remember the question that prompted the whole thing. Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Now, Peter says brother. Right? And it's not totally clear if he means the fellow disciples I'm walking around with, or maybe it's sort of my fellow Jewish compatriots, whether they're currently following Jesus or not, or whether it's more specific. It's probably not just his family. But here's what I think. He's talking about people close to him he's in essentially long-term relationships with. Okay, his brother. Who is that for you? I would say it's probably two sets of people at least. It's your blood family, those people you have to see at Thanksgiving, right? The aunt's party you gotta go to. You know, the crazy people, our family. And then it's your church family. Unless you're just someone who moves around every two to three years, in which case, you really should stop doing that and be part of a church family. Most of us, if we're Christians, we have two families. We have our blood family and we have our church family. And either one of those, I think, fit the brother category. And so what prompted this question, right, is Peter is saying, Jesus, when the people closest to me continue to sin against me, and then they ask for my forgiveness, and I forgive them, how often do I have to keep doing that? Why does he pick that person? Because we expect our enemies to sin against us, right? That's not a surprise. What hurts the most? It's when the people we feel we should trust The people that we love, the people we've opened up our lives to, when they come crashing in with their sin, and they mess it all up, and they hurt us. I'm hurting. And then they come and they feel sorry. You know, the spouse, the husband comes to the wife, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that, and she forgives him, and she's like thinking to herself, great, that'll never happen again, right? Yeah. And then three months later, bam, it happens again, and now she's hurt a little more though, and the trust is ripped a little bit further apart. And he says, would you please forgive me? You know what happens in church? If you were to ask this question, you might say, Jesus, how often will my spouse curse me in their anger and I'll forgive them? Or Jesus, how often will a leader in the church ignore me when I'm hurting and criticize me when I make a mistake and I still will forgive them? Right, Jesus, how often will that person hurt me who's supposed to love me and care for me and I still have to forgive them? Because every time they do, they take. They take something from me. That's the effect of sin. If you grew up and you were abused as a child, someone took your innocence. and they can't give it back. If you're in a hard marriage, you might feel like, this spouse has just taken years out of my life. You know, you took this from me, and that's exactly what the servant says to the other one. He grabs him around the neck, and trust me, we've all been there, haven't we? Where you just want to grab someone by the neck and shake them, and you want to say, give me back what you took. Pay it back to me. You ruined my life. You ruined this moment. You spoiled this thing. You're doing it again, and you're doing it again, and I'm tired of it. And that is where we come in, and it just is the hardest thing in the world to keep forgiving at that point, right? And you might have people in your heart, and this is my prayer for you tonight, is that tonight you would get real with Jesus Christ if you've got someone that you've locked away in debtor's prison. because that's exactly what that servant did. He put him away in debtor's prison. He locked him out of his life and he said, all right, now repay me. You can't. Are there people you've locked away because they hurt you and they should have loved you and you won't let them come back in? That's a hard thing, isn't it? Because they might do it again. You can't keep them there. You can't. Not if you're a Christian. You say, but Pastor, Peter, what if they do it again? Well, that's what Peter asked, didn't he? What if they do it again? And Jesus says, well, if they come and they're repentant, then you forgive them again. How can I do that, Jesus? Well, he says, you're debt-free. You can afford to keep giving it away, because you have the riches of grace. And I will tell you guys, I know it is hard to forgive certain people. You just, you're not allowed to lock them out of your life. You're not. You might need someone to sit down with you after tonight. And I'm serious, like Jesus says, don't just be hearers, you be doers of my words. You know, if the Spirit's pricking your conscience tonight, you know what? You might have had an abusive dad, and he's so sorrowful now, and you said, no, I'm done with you. You weren't at the wedding, you're not here, you missed this, you missed that. But you know your dad's in a place of repentance. Are you ready to forgive him? You know, it could have been someone else in your life. And you just know, you know they're in that category of being locked out. And what Christ says right now is you, you have no debt. You don't need to rely on, I love Paul Tripp calls it the dark benefits of unforgiveness. Because what do you get when you don't forgive someone? You get to feel superior to them, right? You get to keep them under your thumb. Because you can always bring up that moment. Yeah, well, you did this. You cheated on me with this. You called me this name. Right? And we hold on to those things, and that's power. That's relationship power. The whole reason that we hold on to those is it gives us power. It gives us power to keep someone out, it makes us feel better about ourselves, and it keeps them always under our thumb. What Jesus says to us is we don't need that power. We don't need that, if you will, that dirty money, because we have no debt. We are, of all people, we should be the most merciful. We've been forgiven every sin. Every sin of sin is gone. We don't need the dirty money of unforgiveness. You have, I love how Paul just says it. He says it in, it's in Ephesians 1, 7 and 8. It says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Here's the line, ready? According to the riches of His grace lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. God has lavished His grace on you. You got overflow. Spend it. We come to the last part. You can afford to be a forgiving person But it ends kind of on a dark note, doesn't it? Because Jesus also says you can't afford not to be. He says you can't afford not to be. Last few sentences on verse 32. Then the master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. He was locked out, right? So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Jesus moves beyond the metaphor of money to the reality of our hearts. And he says to you and I, do you claim God's mercies? Jesus says to those around him then, to those of us now, do you follow me? Do you call me Lord? Do you call him Lord? He says, then you'll be merciful. You just will, because you're following me, and that's what I do. He says, you'll forgive those closest to you as they keep on repenting. And you'll do that to one another as a church, as a group, as First Reform Presbyterian Church, right? Every church I know, there's some little mini schisms and chasms within it, offenses that happened maybe recently, maybe years ago, maybe decades ago. I would urge the leaders of this church, don't let it just sit there forever. implored forgiveness in the flock, restoration. Let's face it, we're not all gonna be best friends, are we? No, that's okay. What God does call us to, though, is peace and restored fellowship together, right? That's part of being a light in a dark world. a different kind of community where actually forgiveness really happens, not just brushed under the rug, but now I don't talk to them anymore, you know, because they're locked out. Jesus is kind of picked up by John who says the same thing. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. You know, refuse the dark benefits of unforgiveness and just remember the mercies of God. Those are your two places where you go from here. You refuse those dark benefits, you remember God's mercies, and you move out in forgiveness. And do the spiritual work. I'll just leave you with that. Who do you need to repent to? Maybe you're on the opposite side. Let it happen. Let it happen this week. Repent. Seek forgiveness. Who do you need to forgive? Call them up. If you know they want to repent, they feel sorrowful, give them a chance. Follow Christ in these ways. And just pray that God's grace lavished on you would soften your heart and that you really would be the most merciful people on the planet for the glory of God, not for any pride. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, your word is so powerful. Your mercies are so lavish. Lord, help us to grow in mercy. Father, I pray for the unity and the purity, the love and the forgiveness of this church, Lord, right here. Lord, I know really nothing of it, yet I know that any time a group of Christians come together and commit to being a church, eventually we do sin against each other. Lord, break down the walls. Father, I pray if there's men and women or kids here tonight who refuse to forgive someone who they know is sorrowful, Lord, I pray that you would turn them around. Lord, may the grace, the forgiveness flow, Lord, from you to them and from them to others. Lord Jesus, we pray that your will would be done in our hearts and lives. And in your name we pray. Amen.