Amen. It's so good to be here. Good to see everyone. I'm going to continue on in another parable. I've been going through the parables of Christ. And so this week, I'm going to speak to you about the parable of the unforgiving servant. The unforgiving servant. It's found in Matthew 18, starting in verse 23. This is the word of God. 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 in payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I'll 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 a hundred 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, 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." Amen. Let's pray. Father, Lord, I pray that You had come, bless this time. I feel like I've prepared as best I can. And yet I acknowledge fully that I cannot reach hearts. So I ask you by the power of the spirit to apply this message to your people, to apply it as only you can do to each one right where their needs are. In the precious name of Christ, I pray. Amen. Okay, so here we are, another parable of Christ. And in past messages I've been stating how the parables of Christ are these made-up short stories that He's telling in order to effectively teach some spiritual truth, basically. That's pretty much what a parable is. And parables also, they're designed to capture you as a listener, aren't they? They capture you and they make you a participant. So you're involved in one way or another, or you could potentially be involved. And if you're not a believer or a Christian, parables have a very impactful way of destabilizing your worldview. And if you're paying attention, if you're understanding, if you're getting it, they have a way of forcing you really to call into question your most basic values. They get right down to the foundations of what you value. And so here's this parable, and we have the king of heaven telling us what the kingdom of heaven can be compared to. He knows what he's talking about, doesn't he? And this parable really underscores this because one of the main characters is a king. And the king represents God. So in this parable, we get a clear view even into how God rules. And when I started in verse 23, but that verse 23 starts with a key word, doesn't it? Therefore, or your translation might say for this reason, but he says therefore. So now we know that this parable is based upon what's just been said in the prior context and the prior verses. So these verses lead up to this little story that he's He's by the Holy Spirit is telling us. So context certainly matters here. Context always matters. So in those verses immediately in 21 and 22, it's when Peter came up to the Lord and said, Lord, how many times, 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 77 times. So here in this statement, Peter probably thought he was being a little generous, very generous in fact, because he said, how many times should I forgive? Seven times? Now, rabbinic teaching back then taught you can forgive up to three times. So Peter thought, well, seven's more than double that. So perhaps he thought, well, this is loving. I'll double the amount of time. But really, he was still thinking about it wrongly, wasn't he, at this point? His thinking was fundamentally the same, right? It was the same as before. He only added to the amount of sins he had forgiven. So the quantity of forgiveness changed for him, but not the quality of the forgiveness had changed with him. So he still had some legalistic grounding that this kind of thinking is surfacing from. So he says up to seven times and Then we also, just talking a little bit about context, because this will really add to the story, what made Peter ask that question? Well, right before that, he was talking about this whole idea of confronting your brother who's sinned against you. Church discipline even can kind of result where he says, if your brother sins against you in 15 through 17, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've 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. And 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." So we have two separate concerns regarding dealing with sin in this section here. And this, in verses 15 through 17, it's considering and what it's focusing on is the effect on the sinner. The effect on the sinner. This is about how to prevent the loss of a true member of the church. This is how you go about it. This is how you do it. You go to them and then you take some others with you, if that doesn't help. And then if you still won't repent, then you tell it to the church. Let the whole church know about what's going on with this person. This is all a very biblical effort that's being made for the sinner's restoration. It's not meant to embarrass, humiliate, all that. It's meant to restore them. So that's focus number one, is that sinner's restoration. Well, the second concern involves Peter's question. Well, how many times should I forgive them? See that? So what's being considered now is the response of the one that sinned against. and their willingness to forgive. And the Lord is greatly concerned because He knows sin can do great damage, doesn't He? Sin's ability to do damage to the whole local church. So there's this lack of forgiveness, personal animosity, ill will, bad blood, hostility, resentment. All these things need to be forgiven or it really will affect the entire community. And this really is a worldwide problem, isn't it? Think of how many major problems or human miseries could be evaded or solved or avoided if we weren't so tenacious about holding on to our rights, our rights. If people were not more forgiving, if they were more forgiving, think of how the world would be, even a fallen world where sin happens. So Peter asked his question up to seven times, and we see the Lord's response, no, not seven, but 77. Some translations say 70 times seven. And obviously here, Jesus is not telling us to form some checklist in our mind, is he? Calculate out exactly how many times your brother sins against you. You just kind of put a check mark or maybe keep a journal, do something. on that 78th sin he's done for, or the 491st sin. Is that what he's telling us? Is that what he's teaching us? No, not even close. That would be the opposite of what he's teaching us. He's basically speaking in the form of hyperbole, isn't he? He does that a lot. He's using an exaggeration in order to make an important point. So we want to be careful not to miss the point, don't we? So what I believe he's saying is this, if you're still keeping count, then you're not really forgiving. Forgiveness is not a temporary state of the heart. See that? Forgiveness is a permanent state of the heart. And repeated personal forgiveness is characteristic of true members of the kingdom. And what we're getting a view into here, really, in a special way, is the heart of God. Think of that. The riches of His grace is unimaginable. And His capacity to forgive is enormous. It's enormous. I mean, He just forgives, and He forgives, and He forgives. Every day, He's forgiving people. Aren't you thankful He's like that? And every moment of the day, he's forgiving. So let's look now a little closer at the parable. So he says, Jesus says, therefore, for this reason, 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. Okay, we'll just stop right there. So the term servant is used here. Some translations use the word slave. Both translations are fine. I'm not sure it really matters. In a story about a kingdom that has a sovereign king, it doesn't really matter who you are. If you're in his kingdom, you're his servant, or slave, or subject, or whatever you want to call it. Doesn't matter, you're under his sovereign rulership. If you're the governor of a region or a mayor of a town or if you're a judge or if you're, doesn't matter what your high position is, you're the king's servant. That's the way it is. So the first servant, he calls to account. Now it may be because he's the one with the highest amount of debt, I don't know. And you say, who's this guy? Let's call him in, let's call him into an account. Well, he's called in and it said he owed the king 10,000 talents. We don't use the term talents for our monetary terms today, do we? He's not saying the guy owed the king $10,000. No, no, no. It'd be way more than that. And right now, some of you are looking at your footnotes in your Bible saying, what's a talent? Well, let's paint the picture out. Talent was a term used as a measurement of weight, but then it also, it was used as a monetary term, as a form of currency, and it was the largest form of currency that there was. So to help put this into perspective, the parable also mentions the denarius, doesn't it? The denarius. Now, one denarius was what a full day's wage would be paid to a common worker. So if you worked six days a week and you made six denarii, then you'd make an average decent income, okay? Six denarii a week, pretty good, that's about average. Now let's say if someone worked all year round and never took a week off, just the Sabbath, that would be six denarii a week, multiply that out by 52 weeks in a year, it would be 312 denarii a year, and a year's work. That's the average annual income back then, 312 denarii a year. Well, one talent equals approximately 6,000 denarii. 6,000 denarii. So let's just do a little more math. Our CPA accountant isn't here today, so maybe my math will be good enough. I'm pretty sure it is. How long would it take the average worker earning one denarii a week, how long would it take him to earn one talent? Well, we'd take 6,000, divide that out by the 312, wouldn't we? And that would equal 19.2 years. 19.2 years. And that's if he saved everything he made, right? Everything he made is saved up. He didn't spend a lick of it. And the average guy probably spent just about every bit of it to make ends meet. Will it take him 19.2 years? So let's try to put that into our modern-day perspective. I looked it up and the average household income in the United States is $53,000 per year. $53,000 per year. So we'll just use that as our comparison so we can kind of relate to this. What if We take, let's say, instead of 19.2, let's round it up to 20 years. We're gonna get an idea of what a talent is. You take the 53,000, multiply that out 20, I'm sorry, not the talent yet. We're getting to this. If we made 53,000 a year, you work 20 years, that would be $1,060,000. Okay? That's roughly the idea of one talent for us. One talent. We've got a million, a little over a million dollars. Now, there's another parable. Remember where one guy's given ten talents, one five, and one, just given one poor little talent. Well, that's not so poor little guy, is it? I mean, he was given basically the equivalent of a million dollars plus 60,000. So the first servant owed 10,000 talents. 10,000 talents. And so if we take the 1,060,000 and multiply that out 10,000 times, that's pretty easy to do. You just gotta say it right when you get to it. That would be $10,600,000,000. I'm just trying to relate with American dollars. $10,600,000,000. That's what he owed the king. So a helpful question now is, how long would it take the average worker to earn $10,600,000,000? Divide the $53,000 out into that, and you would get 200,000 years. 200,000 years, it would take the average worker to make that much money. And that's, again, without interest, without taxes, without spending any of it. 200,000 years. Now, at this point, we might wonder, well, how can anyone end up with so much debt to a king? Is this even practical? And I don't know if it is or not, I'll just say that. But some servants back then, they held pretty high positions. They weren't just like the American slave in the 1800s, 1700s, that's just not even correlating with what a servant or even a slave that the scriptures use that context. They were given a lot of freedoms and a lot of responsibilities a lot sometimes. Take a chief tax collector for example. They had to collect taxes for whole regions and they would be responsible for a lot of money. I still think this is a little bit that we're moving into fantasy in a sense with this kind of money. For example, The total taxable income in that whole region of Galilee and Perea in the year 4 BC, the annual taxable income in that whole region per year was 200 talents. 200 talents a year. So if he was somehow a tax collector withholding from this king, he's withholding 50 years worth of taxable income that he's not given. And just to give you another idea, I know I'm kind of elaborating on this, but in 1 Chronicles 29, talking about Solomon's temple being decorated with gold and silver and all these things, added up all together, the talents of gold was 8,000 talents. and the talents of silver was 17,000 and 18,000 talents of bronze. This was the most lavish extravagant spending era of the kingdom ever in its history. And it would just equate to astronomical figures for us. It's unbelievable figures. So in a way, you know, when you hear a parable, the Lord Jesus will do that. He'll kind of go beyond the limits sometimes. He'll go beyond the limits of real life in order to make it more effective. And it does. You remember from chapter 7 on the Sermon on the Mount when he said, you know, there's one guy that's got a log in his eye. No one walks around with logs in their eyes, do they? Really? He's making a point, or this big wooden board plank. No one does that. where no one tells a tree, really, to be planted in the bottom of the sea, or by faith, a mountain, a real mountain, to be thrown into the sea. See, these larger sums, these enormous sums, it causes the audience to be astounded, and it gets their attention. You know, like one good commentator even said, this amount of money, it just doesn't even really add up like I've just done. But it's just like saying he owed trillions or zillions of dollars, which may be right. But this kind of a parable, you can do that. You've got the freedom. You made it the story. You can do that to make your point. And it draws the people in and it makes for compelling and interesting listening, doesn't it? But at the same time, the point gets sharpened, and then it gets hammered home. Well, what's the Lord Jesus really telling us here? What God has forgiven is absolutely astronomical. It is basically beyond human calculation what we owe Him. See that? We also see that someday, someday, God's going to call every single one of us to account. There will come a day when He will demand that we settle up. And I heard a preacher say one time, it may seem like a dream right now, it may seem like some faraway distant thing that may never happen, but it won't seem like a dream then. It will be as real as it gets. And we imagine, we pretend, don't we? We pretend that our sins don't really add up to that much. We haven't really incurred that much debt to God. Maybe a little. They're private things. They're really not hurting anyone. They don't really cause that much of an impact. You see, we pretend. We're in denial. We think they don't really matter that much. You know, my sins don't really add up to all that much. They couldn't. Well, that is dangerous, willful blindness on our part. It's not the truth of the matter. Not one sin, not one little sin, not one big sin goes unnoticed or undocumented by God. There is a ledger up there. I don't know how else to say it. Now, some of you may be thinking the other way around, like, I know I'm a sinner, I know, I've racked up a lot of debt. Well, the truth is, your debt's probably a whole lot worse than you think it is. And that's why we need a Savior, don't we? And then he goes on and says, 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. And we see right off that this man did not, his sin did not just affect him alone, did it? Now his wife and children are involved, much less everything he's got, everything he owns, his property and everything. They're all impacted. And now they have to face consequences. And so many times a person's sins directly impact and hurt their closest loved ones, don't they? And back then, this was a legal process. Someone who is an owner of a slave, he could sell off the slave and his family, divide them out, wherever you got the best buyer. And you better believe a sovereign king could do the same. Now, if someone ever goes to hell, this is the way it'll be. You will be forever separated from your closest loved ones. Well, what'd the servant do? The only thing he could do He fell on his knees imploring him, have patience with me and I'll pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. The man fell on his knees and he pleaded for patience. That's all he could do. He knew he was guilty. He didn't start offering these excuses and arguments. He knew he was guilty. And he knew it was that bad when he faced the king. After we talked about the 10,000 talents, what that really amounted to, we know Him paying that back is ridiculous, isn't it? There's no way He could ever pay that back, ever. And it's the same with God. With the right amount of time and even with His patience, you will never be able to pay back what you owe. It's impossible. The cost is astronomical. But the king here is, this is amazing, he is moved with pity for the servant. See that out of pity. He's moved with pity and completely forgives the debt and lets him go. You're forgiven and you're free and go. So as though he said, Mr. Secretary, take the ledger, mark off the debt, put it to my account, let him go. Now this is, beloved, this is an unheard of kind of debt, and the King's generosity is an unheard of kind of generosity. God's not generous like we are. He's unheard of generous. He's far more generous than we can imagine. That's how He is. This is the God we preach. You know, He's the God of all grace and mercy. He's the God of patience. He's the God of hope. He's the God of forgiveness. But now, The parable takes a sad turn, doesn't it? It says, when that same servant, okay, he left, he left and he went out and 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 this fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I'll pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. Now, you would think, you would think, wouldn't you, he would have left the king's presence singing and rejoicing and leaping for joy. Now that he's free of this enormous debt, this enormous burden that's been on him for who knows how long, it's all of a sudden lifted and it's gone. You'd think he'd be full of love and gratitude for the king and for the king's people, right? But he wasn't. He hunted down a fellow servant, who is the king's servant, by the way. He hunted down a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii, it says, and started choking him and demanding immediate payment now. Now. I want it now. And this, you know, the fellow servant did exactly what he did to the king, didn't he? He pleaded with him for time, and I'll pay you, just give me time, this pleading. And the exact same way, but he wouldn't hear it, and he threw him into a debtor's prison. And you think of the golden rule right here, just has to jump out at you, do to others as you'd have them do to you. Think of that. He just did the opposite of that. He didn't even consider that. And that was one of the greatest commandments of Christ, isn't it? Well, his fellow servant owed him 100 denarii, and yet he behaved this way. Now, remember, one denarius was a full day's wage. So he owed him basically 100 days' worth of wages, which would have been a little over three months, right? Now, if you take our average American income of the 53,000, You know, 100 days of that comes out to about $16,000, minus taxes. $16,000. That's not insignificant, is it? That's quite a bit. It is to me. That's a lot. It's not insignificant pocket change, but it's still baffling his response, isn't it? We read this and we come away, what? Well, we have a man, we have a man, think of this, who owed a king $10,600,000,000. And he's now choking his fellow servant who owed him $16,000. That's quite a contrast, isn't it? We have a man who's been forgiven over 2,000 lifetimes of wages, and he won't forgive a guy who owes him a little more than three months of wages. Well, what's the Lord showing us here? What's He showing us? We don't want to miss this. I think one thing is plainly this. All the sins that others have committed against you cannot compare to the amount of debt that you owe to God. It's not even close. Not even close. It doesn't matter what they've done to you or how they've sinned against you. And I know there are some hard things out there. There are hard things to forgive, but still, it does not compare to what you owe to God and what God's forgiven. Now, this is where we need to be careful, too, not to judge too quickly, because we think, what? I would have forgiven the guy. You know, you kind of read it that way. We want to be careful, very careful. You see, we kind of think these parables are about them. These parables are about other people. And we don't want to stop and see that these parables are really about me. Remember when King David heard that parable from Nathan about the little ewe lamb? And after he heard that, he was like, that man deserves to die. And what did Nathan do? You're the man. No, if you're hearing this parable, then it's about you. It's about you. Or it has the potential to become about you really fast. See that? To guard against. And we come away shocked that he choked this guy, demanding payment like that, when he was shown so much mercy from the king, the greatest sovereign. And we read this and say, well, how could he do that? Well, that's the question we need to ask ourselves every time we refuse to forgive someone. How could you not? Do you put others in a stranglehold, metaphorically speaking, when they've done something wrong? We've been shown so much mercy, so much grace, so much patience and compassion and forgiveness from God. How could we even think of being unkind, even? to others, much less unmerciful or unforgiving. It really is unthinkable. And how easily we forget the grace of God in our lives, don't we? How quickly. So let's lay hold of this truth in a fresh way. Let's lay hold of it. Because when something goes wrong, and something always goes wrong. When something goes wrong, let it be. Let it be a golden opportunity for you to show the love of Christ to them that's been shown to you. Let that be an opportunity to return it to someone else. So when this fellow servant, his fellow servants noticed this, didn't they? There were people watching. Parents, kids are watching. They're watching. Your co-workers are watching. Your students, fellow students, people are watching. Well, his fellow servants noticed what had taken place and they were greatly distressed, it says. They went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Now, the ESV uses the word reported. Well, this is a stronger verb, really, than that. It means explained in detail. Explained in detail. The only other time this verb is used is in Matthew 13, when he just told this parable and the disciples said, explain that to us. then and right here is the only place where that's mentioned. So the other servants who saw this great mistreatment, they went to the king and explained in detail everything that had happened. And that's how it is in real life, isn't it? Think of that. If you mistreat other people, then those who see you and how you're living will be greatly distressed and grieved, especially if you're a professing Christian. And ultimately, they'll bear witness to the fact of your wickedness. Now really, the first servant, he was acting within his legal rights. That guy really owed him the 16,000 or the 100 denarii. He really did owe him that. So it was within his rights to put him into this debtor's prison. That's one thing, but what really upset the servants wasn't necessarily that, was it? It was his neglect to show even a little bit, a little bit of the generosity that he had been shown. He didn't even show him a little of the generosity. He didn't walk away rejoicing and think, wow, I know this one guy who owes me a lot of money, but I'm just not even going to mention that to him again. If he pays me fine, if not, I'm not going to bring it up. If He did that, we'd have a different parable, wouldn't we? But He didn't even show a little of the generosity. And so this caused the servants to go report this. They knew this isn't right. And so they reported it to the king, and now it says the master, the king, summoned him and said, listen to what he said, 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." Now we need to realize right away that unmercifulness is great wickedness in the sight of God. Unmercifulness is great wickedness. And this is quite an amazing thing to lay hold of too. Think about this. The king was willing to forgive the debts of a servant who couldn't pay in 200,000 years if he tried. He's willing to forgive all that, an ocean of debt. He was going to wipe it, it's all forgiven. Go on, be free, live your life. He is willing to forgive all that, but he was not willing to forgive his servant's unmercifulness. That's amazing to me. He would not tolerate the first servant's refusal of an act of generosity which was within his power. It's like all that, 10,000 talents forgiven. You pleaded, you've asked for, so I'll forgive it. But then he won't forgive this. He would not let this go. And he had him cast into, says, the jailers. Now, this time, the consequences are worse, too. Instead of being sold, he's to be tortured. Now, I'm not quite sure, I mean, the ESV and most translations use the word jailers, but maybe Matthew's audience knew what that meant when they heard about this prison and whatever. But the Greek word really is torturers. It's torturers or tormentors. as the King James says. So his destiny is not just prison, but it's also painful punishment. Painful punishment. In other parables, the Lord Jesus, He speaks a lot about hell, doesn't He? He taught on the subject of hell more than any other person in the Bible. And He knows what He's talking about. And He keeps bringing it up. See? We've already heard this in other parables. He's talked about the place of outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. He spoke of the fiery furnace. Philip talked a little bit about a furnace today. It's not a good place you want to be. Not even close to it, much less in it. He's talked about the fiery furnace. He's talked about the fiery hell. And now we're hearing it again. Being handed over to the torturers would represent hell. And the statement, until he should pay, until he should pay all his debt, this in no way, in no way implies some kind of purgatory or temporal aspect to it. John Calvin said, the papists, or the Catholics, they're very ridiculous in endeavoring to light the fire of purgatory by the word until. For it is certain that Christ here points out, not temporal death by which the judgment of God may be satisfied, but eternal death. It is the most awful and dreadful place that there is. I mean, we can kind of, I know we've been in here a while, but we can kind of seem like, oh, I've heard it before. But hell is real, beloved. It is real. It is absolutely real, or Jesus would not keep bringing it up over and over and over. And think of what the Apostle James wrote. He said, for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. And then there we go, right there. That's what happened to the first servant. Hell is a place where there is no more mercy whatsoever. And then we have this powerful closing statement to the parable and the application really by the Lord Jesus himself. He says, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Now keep in mind, Jesus is talking to disciples here. The beginning of chapter 18, he's talking to disciples. They started asking, who's the greatest in the kingdom? And that's when he brought the child unless you become like a child, you won't enter. And then, woe to the one who hurts these children. And then he moves on through the parable. And then we got to where Peter's asking his question. So this context, this parable is addressing those within professing Christianity. It's within professing Christianity. And we're to forgive others from the heart, or we will not be forgiven. Now, I believe the true Christian heart will forgive those who seek forgiveness. It's now part of their nature. In a way, they won't be able to help not forgiving someone who really comes and seeks forgiveness. They will. They will forgive. On the other hand, if you profess to be a Christian and you're someone who hates forgiving people, you just can't let things go. Mercy is something that just doesn't come easy to you. In fact, that's just not very characteristic of who you are. Then there's a good indication right there that you have never experienced the forgiveness of God yourself. That's what that's implying. And one of Jesus's central points is that forgiven people forgive. Now this is central to the Lord's teaching too, isn't it? And the apostles. They all taught this kind of thing. It says, remember, blessed are the merciful. For what? They shall receive mercy. Remember the Lord's prayer? Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are our debtors. That's a prayer. In Luke 6, remember when he said, lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great. This guy's reward would have been great. if he would have just not expected the hundred denarii. Isn't that amazing? Expect nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Ephesians 4, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. That's consistent teaching throughout the scriptures. So, let me read this one quote by J.C. Rall. This just had to get into the sermon. J.C. Rall's got to come from heaven and preach to us one more time. Just listen to this. J.C. Rall said, there will be no forgiveness in that day for unforgiving people. Such people would be unfit for heaven. They would not be able to value a dwelling place to which mercy is the only title, and in which mercy is the eternal subject of song. Surely, if we mean to stand at the right hand when Jesus sits on the throne of His glory, we must learn while we are on earth to forgive." Yes, amen. Okay, I have two closing thoughts. Two closing thoughts here. Maybe the Holy Spirit has had many other closing thoughts for you. He's good at what he does, isn't he? Well, for me, number one is that forgiveness and mercy are at the heart of Christianity. Christians are merciful forgivers. That's what we are. And we love it. Don't you love forgiving someone? When they come to you and they admit or they just say, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? It's like I almost want to cry when they do that. I'm like, yes, I forgive, of course. Well, number two, do you need a fresh measure of assurance, of Christian assurance? Then you need to check to see if you're truly a forgiving person or not, or if there's someone out there you know you've not forgiven. You've not let it go. You've not made it, you know, you've not been merciful to them and you know it. That could be a real roadblock to your assurance if you're a real Christian. And if you hold on to unforgiveness, you may think you're getting back at someone or you may think, you know, you're putting them in their place in the stranglehold thing. You may think you're getting back at them, putting them in their place, but what's really happening is you're destroying yourself. And you're destroying your relationship with God, too. Personal forgiveness is a key. It is a key to a right relationship with God and a good relationship to others. No forgiveness, no relationship. Children, you're going to need to forgive your parents. They're not going to do everything perfectly. Husbands and wives, you know you're going to be forgiving and asking and offering forgiveness a lot, right? Well, now you may be thinking, like as I was closing out the sermon, I'm thinking, let's bring the gospel into this. Give me some gospel. Give me some, this is kind of heavy. Let's bring in the good news. So that's where I'll close. When we hear about this 10,000 talents, what that added up to may have been zillions. It was just incalculable. When we hear about this and this great forgiveness of God towards us, do we not get just a little better, a little bit better of an idea of the great cost that was paid by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross? He paid a whole lot more than 10,000 talents. on that cross and paid it for your redemption. And if you're a Christian, your record of debt, that record of debt has been nailed to the cross. It's been nailed to the cross of Christ. It's gone. It's paid for. It's over. It's completely paid. Jesus paid it all. You're forgiven of the debt of your sins and you're released from the penalty of your sins. Forgiven and released. You're free. if you're believing in Christ and holding to Him. And if you're not a Christian, this is one more opportunity for you to look to this cross that the gospel message proclaims. One more opportunity right here to look to the cross and see the Son of God who hung there with nails in His hands and in His feet and His blood dripping out of His body. for your redemption. He paid the price for all who will believe in Him. He paid it for all who will believe in Him. He died the death that you deserve. And God raised Him from the dead on the third day, and now He lives and offers you the forgiveness that you could never earn. He offers it to you freely. Well, how? How do I receive it? By faith. faith alone. By putting your faith in Him, you will receive the pardon. You will be completely forgiven of all your sins and receive His righteousness. You need only to look to Him and bow the knee to Him. Ask Him for mercy and commit your soul into His hands and you'll be saved. Amen.