All right, if you would please open in the Bible to Matthew chapter 18. You'll find it in the pew Bible, beginning on page 823. We're actually going to begin at verse 15, not verse 21. So make note of that, James, would you? It's starting at verse 15, not verse 21. Please stand. A reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18, beginning at verse 15, Jesus said, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Then Peter came up and said to Jesus, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. 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 him 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 payments 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. 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. 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. Then his 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 mercy on you? And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." The word of the Lord. Gracious Heavenly Father, we come before you as sinners. We come before you as those who have failed to live up to your call to the holiness of your Son. We pray that you would open our hearts and give us grace, Father, that we may truly hear this word from your Son. Believe it, obey it, Father, and rejoice in it for Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen. Please be seated. You'll find the passage on page 823, and you'll also find it written out in the bulletin or part of it on page 9 in the bulletin. And of course, you can look it up on your phone or whatever device you might use to read the Bible. I'm going to be referring to the Pew Bible, and that should be easy since there should be one in the Pew in front of you somewhere. It would be helpful if you have this passage open because I'm going to be making frequent reference to it as well as some parallel passages that shed light on what Jesus has to say here. As a matter of fact, I'm going to start by getting you to turn all the way back to the beginning of Jesus's ministry, all the way back to chapter 6. This is part of the Sermon on the Mount, the most famous sermon I think that was ever preached, and one of Jesus' first sermons. In fact, as it's recorded here, it is the first sermon that we know anything about. Jesus had gone around preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and here in chapters 5 following Jesus talked about what his kingdom was like and what life in his kingdom was like. And if you remember, Jesus taught his disciples early on in the sermon how to pray. Chapter 6 of Matthew's Gospel begins with a teaching by Jesus in verse 5, when you pray. He's going to tell his disciples how to pray. And if you flip all the way down to the bottom, it says, pray then like this. And then in verse 9, Jesus says, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, verse 12, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. That's verse 12. Here at the very beginning of this sermon, this powerful, famous sermon, Jesus not only makes reference to prayer, not only makes reference to forgiveness, but actually makes reference to a way of thinking about forgiveness, which is indebtedness. I was, for many years, affiliated with the Anglican Church. And in the Anglican Church, we prayed trespasses, which is an arguable translation, but inferior to the straightforward translation of debts. The Greek word actually means debts. And so Jesus here, at the very beginning of his preaching ministry, he includes in his teaching this idea of sin as an indebtedness. It's a way of thinking of sin, of our failures. It's an indebtedness that we have failed to live up to God's call in Christ. And so we accumulate an indebtedness. And Jesus teaches us to pray what is actually a very, well, it's a very sobering thing to pray. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. If you think about that in a certain sense, it's a very risky thing in a way to pray. Were it not for the relational context, it would be a very, very risky thing indeed. Fortunately, we're praying to our Father. But to say, forgive me my indebtedness to you as I forgive others' indebtedness to me. As I say, that's a very risky thing to say. And he goes on down in verse 14, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Jesus is making a real point here in his teaching on prayer to underscore the seriousness of sin and the seriousness of how we deal with others in the family of God who sin against us. So all the way back in chapter six, this is a theme Jesus is beginning to develop. So flip all the way over to chapter 18, and we'll see that Jesus is not only continuing to talk about sin, not only continuing to talk about sin as indebtedness, but talking very specifically about how we forgive other people is connected to God's forgiving us. So he's really underscoring and stressing this important fact. Chapter 18, verse 15, if your brother sins against you, Here Jesus in this concluding section, as he's making his way to the cross, begins to talk about life in this kingdom that he has come to proclaim. He's come to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. And that's been true all the way through the gospel of Matthew. It is a theme that Matthew develops again and again. And so he's now talking about life within that kingdom. He says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Now, it starts out with a very important concept, brother, adelphos. It's a relationship of family. It actually means more like sibling because in Greek, the idea is not limited strictly to gender. It's the idea of your sibling, whether your brother or your sister. If your siblings sinned against you, that's a reality that Jesus wanted to prepare his church for as he was getting ready to go to the cross, as he was getting ready to depart and ascend into heaven, send the Holy Spirit. launched the church in this era of waiting on his return. He wanted to speak to his disciples, to you and me as well, about this ongoing relationship, this ongoing reality within the kingdom Jesus has established. Every once in a while you'll hear about someone preaching a kind of perfectionism. And if you look back over church history, it's popped its head up from time to time. The only problem with the doctrine of some sort of perfectionism in the church is it is manifestly proven untrue very quickly. Because you will not find a church that is characterized by perfectionism. They may be characterized by teaching on it, but they won't be characterized by that over-realized eschatology. OK, that's what some theologians call it. We're not actually promised that. As a matter of fact, here, Jesus says it's going to happen. Your brother is going to sin against you. And I love you. So I'm going to tell you how to deal with that reality. Don't let it surprise you. Within the body of Christ, within the kingdom of heaven that we're a tiny part of, there will be this ongoing reality. We're all a bunch of sinners. We bump into each other. We get it wrong. Jesus says if that happens and your brother sins against you, someone in the family, in the kingdom, then he lays out a series of significant steps. I want you to know, we take these steps very seriously at Metrocrist. Again, we're not I mean, we're not claiming to be perfect at it, but we do look to this passage specifically when it comes to significant differences between members of our own church, in our own Presbytery, in our denomination. We deal with this ongoing bumping up against each other in this way. Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. That's a very significant and very practical piece of advice. None of us are mind readers, right? And half the time, I don't know I've offended someone. Half the time, I don't really fully realize what I've done. Now, sometimes I do, but sometimes we're not even fully aware of the impact of what we've done. So Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, you go and tell him his fault. Now, he doesn't say that you go and yell at him. Doesn't say you go and shake your fist and threaten them and say cruel things about them, like Paul was saying a minute ago, we need to repent of all that kind of behavior. But there is a place to be proactive. I appreciate the fact that the Lord Jesus says, if you've been sinned against, it's on you to go to that person and in a Christlike way, explain to them what they've done and The hope is if he listens to you, you've gained your brother, you've restored the relationship. So it's up to you to go and do something about it. Again, the way we do it's very important, but it is proactively on us a responsibility that we have if we've been sinned against. That's step one. It's the easiest step. It's hardest in some ways, easiest in other ways. Doesn't require any drama. You just go up to someone and say, this is what's happened. It does require great discernment, great patience and sensitivity, but it's as simple as calling someone on the phone or talking to them at coffee hour and say, can we talk about this? This is what happened and how it impacted me. And if they listen to you, by the way, it doesn't say they admit complete fault. That may be something that'll take some time to work out. But if they listen to you, you have gained your brother. You've restored that relationship. And it won't be a relationship that's askew. You can continue to work on that issue. You can resolve it. The relationship's preserved. But, verse 16, if he does not listen, if you go to him and you say to your sibling, your brother or sister, This is what you've done, and this is how it impacted me. If they will not listen, then what you do is you take one or two others with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." And here in verse 16, Jesus is showing his knowledge of the Bible. Because as a matter of fact, this is Jesus quoting from the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy. This is Jesus actually saying, what Deuteronomy chapter 19 verses 15 to 21 says. If you want to look that up, it actually uses some of the same words. It has to do with taking witnesses. You don't just take two or three random people. You take two or three people who understand or know about, observed, what the disagreement was about, someone who saw it, that may be able to calm everybody down if it's something that people are worked up about. Maybe the presence of two or three other calm brothers or sisters in Christ can help with the conversation. But you go and you take some people with you, two or three it says. So there has to be, according to Deuteronomy, there's supposed to be witnesses. So for it to escalate, for it to go to the next step, the important thing is for there to be some witnesses, someone to say, I saw that, I observed that, I understand that, I know about that. If, verse 17, he refuses to listen to them, well, then it escalates further. Take it, tell it to the church. That probably means the elders. Take it to the leaders of the church, those who have been put in responsibility over the church, to help, to pastor, to shepherd, to teach, to help the congregation to grow and grow in Christ. If you've done everything you can do and nothing else has worked, then you go to the elders and you say, this is what's happened. Tell it to the church. A lot of people don't think of the church in that way. I've been told, you know, the church is abundant. They should stay out of it. What does the church have to do with the disagreement I have with this individual? Well, as Jesus understands it, the church has a great deal to do with it. The church is responsible for helping everybody in the church to continue to grow in Jesus, to be united. You noticed in our vows that we talked about a second ago with our new members, we talked about studying the purity and the peace of the church. They're connected. doctrinal purity, the faithful teaching of God's Word, and then the peace, the unity that we share in Jesus. The leaders of the church, the church itself, has a responsibility in that area. And so as Jesus describes it, if the individual conversation doesn't help, if the help with the conversation with the two or three witnesses doesn't help, then you take it to the church and the church gets involved. And I'll tell you, at Metrocrist, we take that very seriously. We've had issues of discipline where we get involved. It's all voluntary. We don't have a police force, we don't have an army or navy, but we do have people who are committed to one another, people who are committed to the gospel, people who are committed to Jesus. And on the basis of those commitments, the vows that were made a moment ago, for instance, on the basis of those commitments to Christ, first of all, and then to his church, we work together to resolve, to help find unity and peace in Christ. It's a very, very important thing to understand about the Christian life. Well, Jesus says that if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, verse 17. Now, some people take that to mean you treat him really bad. You treat that person like a lowlife scum. That is not what a tax collector meant when he wrote those words. Remember, he was a tax collector. That's who Matthew was. Matthew is saying, if they won't listen to the church, what you do is you treat them like a non-Christian. How do we treat non-Christians? Do we throw sticks and stones at them? Do we call them dogs? Do we look down on them? No. No, there's a change in the relationship. But, as Jesus always tells us, it's motivated by love. It's motivated by an aim towards reconciliation. So actually, it might mean discipline. It might mean changing the relationship in a very significant way. Jesus believes in tough love, and there are examples of that. There is such a thing as tough love in the Christian life, in the kingdom of Jesus. But what he's emphasizing here is not the rejection. We're not slamming the door in their faces. We're not shunning them, rejecting them, judging them and hating them. No, as a matter of fact, we're to treat them like a non-believer, that is to seek to share the gospel with them, to seek to show the love of Jesus to them. as best we're able within the confines of the reality that is being worked through. But we're to treat them like that. That's the way Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors, and nobody knew that better than Matthew. Jesus had come up to Matthew while he was a tax collector collecting taxes. Jesus came up to him and reached out to him and showed his love to him. So Jesus says in verse 18, truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Now, every once in a while these verses are taken out of context and they're turned into sort of a heading over prayer. You ask for anything and Jesus is here guaranteeing to give it to you. If you ask, agree on earth that anything, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. Sometimes that's the way this verse in this section is taken. They take the last couple of verses of this paragraph and turn it into some promise that whatever you ask Jesus to do, he's promising here to do it exactly as we want him to do it. There are a couple of other places where Jesus' words are cherry-picked that way and yanked out of the essential context and turned into some blanket promise that Jesus is not actually making. You see, what Jesus is talking about here is forgiveness and healing and reconciliation. That's really what he's here talking about. It's part of the same train of thought. He's going to go on to elaborate on that in verse 21. So Jesus is actually saying, you take any relationship that appears to be utterly shattered, where there is no hope for reconciliation, any human relationship, you take that. And in the flesh, we think there is no hope. But Jesus is saying, that's when you start praying. Hopefully you've been praying all along, but here's where you pray with renewed emphasis, with renewed commitment. Your prayer goes up two or three notches. I think this is a very, very timely word for us today. We live in a country that is so divided. We are so divided. What is the hope for reconciliation? Well, brothers and sisters, on our own, there isn't any hope. It's just going to get worse. That's why the role of the church is so important. We are witnessing to the reconciliation that only comes through Jesus. Jesus is all about the reconciliation business. Jesus came to reconcile Jews and Gentiles. Jesus came to reconcile sinners and the religious authorities, the religious people of the community. Jesus came to bring reconciliation. Jesus came to bring reconciliation between sinners and a holy God. You think we've got division in our country? How more divided can you be than a sinner Separated from a holy God. In the flesh, there is no way to bring about that reconciliation. You think the war going on in Israel between the Palestinians and the Israelis and the Jewish people, you think that's a war that's been going on and what hope is there, Lord? That's when we channel our prayers. You know what the great hope for Israel is? It is not more arms and weapons and guns. All those things, I'm just going to have to entrust all that to the Lord. But the true solution is the gospel. It's always been the gospel. It's the love of Jesus, which brings reconciliation between people who are irreconcilable. And Jesus actually, this is his promise. If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. We're gonna have a prayer meeting this afternoon at four o'clock on Zoom. I'm not the hugest fan of Zoom in the world, but I'm grateful it makes it possible for us to unite in prayer. Two or three of us will be together. And you know what we're gonna be praying for? The unity of our country. reconciliation among people who see important issues very differently. In some of these issues, there is a right and a wrong answer. So we're going to be praying for the Lord to give us wisdom and discernment and patience with each other, that he'll give us confidence, that he will give us articulateness. One of my favorite poets is John Milton. We've got a man named Milton. One of the things I loved about Milton when he walked in the door was his first name. John Milton's one of my great heroes. Milton wrote a famous book called The Area Pagetica, in which he argued for the freedom of speech. And one of the things Milton said very wisely was, the solution to bad speech is not to reduce speech, but to cause more speech, to give people freedom to speak, to speak truth, and that truth will prevail. As we speak truth persuasively and patiently over a period of time, There's no end to what God can do when we speak truth. So that's how Jesus describes reconciliation in the church. It's all based on our speaking truth to one another. It's all about maintaining communication, listening. Notice that's what he kept talking about, listening. He doesn't say you have to immediately agree. That's going to take time. But if you keep listening, That's what Jesus was saying. If they won't listen, that's the problem. But if they will listen, if we can discuss these things under Christ, there is every reason to be confident that we could be reconciled. And I believe that with all my heart. Keep listening to one another. Keep listening to one another. Pray for one another. Trust in God's work among us. trust in Jesus, and over and over again, Jesus will bring us to himself. The Holy Spirit will open the word to us as we're gathered around the Bible, as we do every Sunday, as we do in every adult class, as we do in every Sunday school, as we do every youth group meeting. As we gather around the Bible, the Holy Spirit will apply it to our hearts, And over time, as we continue to listen to one another, God will change us all. He will give us renewed patience and renewed love for each other, and he will maintain that purity and peace which we just promised to work for. So that's something about the forgiving kingdom. That's the first heading, first of two headings, the forgiving kingdom. Jesus describes it in verses 15 through 20. The forgiving kingdom. This is what we will do. This is the attitude we will show. This is this is how we will pursue that peace. Verse 21, continuing this theme of the forgiving kingdom, Peter, I love Peter. Peter always asked the questions that I would ask if if I had thought to ask, if I found the courage to ask. Peter came up and said to Jesus. Lord. How often will my brother sin against me And I forgive him as many as seven times." Apparently Peter thought seven times was a lot. As many as seven times, Lord? Jesus, verse 22, said to him, Peter, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. And by the way, those numbers are not simply, you know, you write out a list 77 and when you reach 78, Forget it, you're out of here. 77, the Jews used numbers not only to count things, but to symbolize things. And seven was a number of perfection. There were seven creation days. Seven's a significant number in the Jewish mindset. And 77 is perfection of perfection, complete of complete. In other words, Jesus is saying, you forgive and you forgive and you forgive and you go on forgiving. You don't stop at 77 or 78, you certainly don't stop at seven. There's a place for listening and reconciling and trusting. And Jesus is saying to Peter and to his disciples and to us here at Metrocrest, forgive and forgive and forgive. My kingdom is a forgiving kingdom. There's a place for tough love, but my kingdom is a forgiving kingdom. I'm so grateful that the kingdom that Jesus has brought us into is a kingdom of forgiveness. It is a holy kingdom, but it's a kingdom of holy forgiveness. We're called to forgive each other. Now, if Jesus stopped there, it would be a very powerful lesson, but he doesn't stop there. Because he turns from talking about the forgiving kingdom in verses 15 to 22 to talking about the forgiving king. This is verses 23 to 25. So Jesus turns from Peter, his wayward, constantly off-base student, who all through this section is both doing a great job and making a mess of it. says this in verse 23. Jesus begins talking about the king. And he does it using a very familiar tool. We've talked about this multiple times. He does it talking about a parable. He's teaching using a tool, a literary didactic tool called a parable. Now the important thing to get straight about a parable is it's not an allegory. It's not where every single thing in the story lines up in a perfect way with the experience we have that the parable might be based on. So Jesus is not giving us the allegory of a forgiving king. He's giving us a parable. So what a parable is, is a common sense truth that demonstrates a spiritual truth. It's something very simple that we can understand. And that parable helps us to understand invisible spiritual reality, things that are maybe more difficult for us to understand. So that's what Jesus is doing here. He's teaching a parable. He says, the kingdom of heaven may be compared. That's language that lets us know what he's doing as a parable. It may be compared. Doesn't say it's exactly the same. It could be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. That's the setting. A king who wants to settle up. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. My brother James shed some very hopeful light on this 10,000 talents. I don't know about you, but that doesn't, Leap off the page at me, 10,000 talents, but look at the footnote. Look down at the very bottom of the page. Look at the footnote number two, the bottom of the ESV text. A talent was a monetary unit worth about 20 years wages for a labor. One talent equals 20 years labor. And this man owed 10,000 talents. That's meant to get our, it's a little bit like saying bajillion. There's some math. James pointed out some math that a talent was the largest currency unit in the ancient world. A denarius was roughly a day's wage for a laborer. We're going to see denarius in a moment. Therefore, one talent would be equal to about 20 years of labor and 10,000 talents would be thus equal to about 200,000 years of wages. In modern U.S. dollars, if we use a conservative estimate, of $50,000 per year as an average annual wage, $200,000 times $50,000 equals $10 billion. $10 billion. And $10 billion would be a whole lot to us today. In the ancient world, it was unfathomable. It was sovereign debt. It was national debt. It was a level of indebtedness. Well, it's hard to even imagine that today, to be that much in debt. And that's what we're meant to understand. This servant was deeply, deeply, deeply in debt. So the king, who's wishing to settle, goes to the man. And since the man could not pay, it doesn't say what the king said to him at the first point, but the man could not pay. His master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had in payments be made. Remember, this is not an allegory. It's a parable. The master in the story of an ordinary man of great power. Since he couldn't pay, he was to be sold with his whole family and out of whatever they could get, payments would be made. So the servant, verse 26, fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything, verse 27. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. Can you imagine? 20, 200,000 years of indebtedness. And the master, the king just wrote, forgiven. Set the servant on his way. What did the servant do? says, when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. Remember, denarii is a significant amount of money. It's a day's labor. It's a significant amount of money. It'd be big money to me. It'd matter to all of us. But it was just a small indebtedness, 100 denarii, a significant but relatively insignificant amount compared to 200,000 years of indebtedness. This man had a modest debt to to the first servant. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe, verse 29. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. In fact, he used essentially the same words. that the first servant had used to the king. I'll pay you, verse 30. He refused and went and put him into prison until he should pay the debt. Wow. The parable is making a point. How unbelievably wrong this is for someone whose entire enormous, unfathomable debt has been forgiven by the king. should turn around and hold some relatively minor thing and actually be unkind and cruel to someone who owed this relatively minor amount. It's obviously wrong. Obviously the man had not understood the mercy of the king in the first place. It says his fellow servants, verse 31, saw what had taken place. They were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his 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 mercy on you? Remember, this is not an allegory. It's a parable. But the king underscores how wrong this wicked servant had been. Verse 34, in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. Verse 35, Jesus says, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Please understand that Jesus is here giving us a parable. It's a teaching tool. It's not an allegory. We can't break it down. and this equals that other thing. We cannot use this to develop some step-by-step process by which God forgives our sins. That is not the way God does it. But Jesus is using this teaching tool to understand the logic of forgiving others who are indebted to us. What is it teaching us? How does God and Jesus fit into this parable? Well, while it's not an allegory, it is crystal clear that the king represents the sovereign monarch of the universe who wants to settle up. And how does he do it? He forgives the indebtedness of those who call out to him. That's what the Christian life is all about. It's turning to Jesus, acknowledging we need Jesus. Jesus finds us in all kinds of ways from Matthew 5 onwards. Jesus is interacting with sinners. And over and over again, it's the sinner who looks to Jesus and calls out to Jesus. who follows Jesus, who in whatever foolishness he has done, turns and seeks to follow Jesus and will continue to sin and get it wrong and have awful days and awful years, will get it wrong, who will stumble over and over again. But the king has written forgiven on our sins. He said, I forgive you. That's the promise of the kingdom. That's the kingdom that you and I are a part of. We're a part of a kingdom where our unfathomable indebtedness is forgiven. That's what Jesus is on his way to do. He is literally on his way to pay the debt that Matthew and the other apostles and that all the Christians through all the millennia right down today, all of our sin, Jesus was carrying on his shoulders as he made his way to the cross. The meal we're going to celebrate in just a second is our remembering that Jesus went to the cross for us. to cleanse us, to wash away, to bring forgiveness and healing and new life. That's what he is on his way to do. And as he makes his way, he's teaching his disciples tirelessly. He is teaching them as he makes his way to the cross what the kingdom is meant to be like. And the kingdom is a kingdom of forgiveness. where the King has, through the mercies of Christ, by the work of the Holy Spirit, applied Jesus's obedience to you and me. He paid our debts. He could write forgiven because he paid our debt on the cross. And now, Jesus says, live your life in relationship with all these sinners you're here with today, and this week, live your life in light of what Jesus has done for you. What he's done for you. And if you really take on board what Jesus has done for you and me and all of us, what Jesus has done for his people, Christians should be characterized by an attitude of love and mercy and forgiveness. There is tough love, okay? There is tough love, but it's got to be love. And you and I are called to live that out. That's what the life in the kingdom of forgiveness is like. We live it consciously in relationship to the king who died to give us forgiveness. And it therefore makes totally illogical, totally inexcusable attitudes of refusing to forgive among his people. It makes it ridiculous for me to be so upset about some small or relatively small thing. I'm not going to forgive that person ever. No, no, that makes no sense. It makes no sense. It calls to mind the kind of situation Jesus says, that doesn't compute in the kingdom of forgiveness. We cannot allow that to be characteristic of our life together. Well, we can't do that by ourselves. Jesus knows that. That's why he gives us his word. That's why this passage is here. And I pray the Holy Spirit will apply it to my heart, and to your heart, and our heart together, and to the PCA, and to all Jesus's people around the world, that we would be those people who are characterized who are characterized by loving, grateful mercy towards others, turning to the Bible, trusting the Bible, applying the Bible in love.