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Matthew 18:21–35
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We're continuing in the book of Matthew, chapter 18. We've been in Matthew for about a year and a half and we're almost finished. Just to recap where we've been: we started with Jesus asking the disciples who is the greatest, and he brings a child into the middle and says, be like this one.
You see children are free—they don't calculate everything. Jesus was saying that to be high in the kingdom, we need to be dependent on Christ. And when we're fully dependent on Christ, that is when we are at our greatest.
But when you are truly acting like a Christian, you become very exploitable. So Jesus put a warning in there: "If any of you cause these little ones to stumble... it's peak." He told us to protect the vulnerable and don't be the reason they fall.
Then we looked at how our own sin causes others to stumble. The message was: if you see something in you that's going to cause others to stumble, cut it off.
Next, we explored the parable of the 100—the 99 who let their sin cause them to stumble, and the one who's been caused to stumble. God cares about both. He will leave the 99 and go after the one.
Then we discussed the procedure for dealing with sin in the church. When there's sin, first pull the brother aside one-on-one. If that doesn't work, bring in somebody else. If that doesn't work, bring in the church. The intention is always restoration, not to get it off your chest.
But here's where we land today: even when you follow the correct procedure, you can still feel something in your heart. And that's what we're going to address—how to deal with that feeling when you've done everything right but your heart still hasn't caught up.
Let's pick it up in verse 21. Peter comes to Jesus and says, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?"
He's following the correct procedure. When someone offends him, he's dealing with it properly. But the question is: how many times am I going to let this go?
In Jewish culture, the norm was to allow three times. So Peter thought, you know what? I'm going to go above and beyond. I'm going to double that and add a cherry on top. I'm going to forgive seven times. Is that enough? He really thinks he's raised the ceiling.
But Jesus answers him in verse 22: "I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times—or some translations say 70 times 7." This is a lot of times.
Now, in Genesis 4:24, it says, "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech 70 and sevenfold." The Jews on their bar mitzvah would know the Old Testament. So those he was speaking to would have caught this reference. They would have realized: that level of anger is the level of forgiveness I need to have. And it's a lot of times.
But here's the thing—he wasn't actually measuring it. We're not going to start keeping score: "That's the sixth one, you're on your last strike. That's the 76th, you're done." What Jesus was really saying is that the amount of times you should forgive is immeasurable.
Jesus doesn't just raise the ceiling. He actually removes it. And if we think back to when we started in the Beatitudes in chapter 5, Jesus kept saying to them, "You have heard X, but I say to you..."
For example: "You have heard that you should not kill." That's easy, right? Most of us don't struggle with that. But he said, "I'm going to raise you one. It's no longer 'thou shalt not kill.' Actually, if you're angry towards your brother, it's as if you've killed them."
This is how Jesus always taught. He said, forget the ceiling that you've come up with. To us, it's like, "Yeah, I was vexed, but I didn't actually hit him. Yeah, I did well, man. I held myself back." But Jesus said, forget that ceiling that you've created in your mind. I'm going to remove it.
Has anybody ever been angry? No? So he's already told us that in his mind, all of us are falling short of this standard. And the same is true here with forgiveness. He's saying: forget where you think the level is acceptable. The level that I'm giving you is unlimited.
And then Jesus, being a good teacher, teaches in parables. He says: "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."
Now, a talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii. And one denarius was a day's wage. So a talent is 6,000 days' worth of wages—basically 20 years' worth of wages.
So when the guy had five talents, that was 100 years' worth. It was big, big money that he was asking them to invest.
But this guy owes 10,000 talents. One talent is 20 years' wages. He owes 10,000 of them. I'm not going to get into the exact math because it will blow our minds, but he owed bare money. My study Bible tells me that this single debt was more than the entire region's tax revenue over a 10-year period. We're talking big, big, big money.
Sometimes I look at myself and think, you know, I owe a little bit on the credit card. I feel like it's pressure. But 10,000 times 20 years' wages? Imagine that on your head. The weight that this guy was carrying. And he had absolutely no way to repay it.
And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold—with his wife and children and all that he had—for payment to be made.
But then the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything." He was an optimist. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave the debt.
Now, I want to explore this really carefully. In verse 27, it says, "And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave the debt."
So the first word—"released"—is apoluó (ἀπολύω). This is the standard word used when you free a prisoner or release something from bondage.
Think about it: if you've ever been in debt, that feeling you feel towards the person you owe money to—you can't go on holiday. You can't snap because he can't see that you've done something good because you're in bondage. And on the flip side, when someone owes you money and they're out spending on drinks, you're thinking, "Bro, that money—you can run it back to me." That feeling of bondage—apoluó is when you are released from that feeling.
If you've ever got to a point where you paid off your debts, that feeling of relief is apoluó—the being released.
And then the second word—"forgave"—is aphíēmi (ἀφίημι), which means sent away. That is the debt itself.
So the scripture here is not saying that you should forgive the person. It's saying you should forgive the debt. You should release the person.
And it's the same word that is used in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our debts." When you're praying, "Forgive us our trespasses," it's the debts that are being forgiven. We are released from that.
Now, what's really important to see here: forgiveness is not the act of forgetting.
God does not go through what we go through. God does not have moments where he forgets things. But we see that God's forgiveness in Isaiah 1 says, "I will make your sins—though they be as scarlet—white as snow." It's not that your sins are actually white, but in his mind when he looks at it, he sees it white.
In Micah 7:19, it says, "I will cast it into the depths of the sea." Your sins—you're not picking them up and putting them in the sea physically. But there are places in the sea so deep that there are fishes down there that we've never seen. We can't go down there. So he's saying, "I'm going to take what you've done wrong and I'm going to put it so deep that nobody could ever find it."
In Jeremiah 31:34, it says, "I will remember their sin no more." He's not forgotten, like we forget. But he is choosing an active position of not holding that thing against you anymore.
And in 1 Corinthians 13:5, it says, "Love keeps no record of wrongs." This is a marriage lesson, right? You remember when we all go through it—you want to get at me, but I remember on December the 6th, you did this. Then on December the 7th, you did that. And you've got the record of wrongs. But then you go through marriage and you learn that actually I've got to stop keeping these records.
It's not that the thing didn't happen. But I'm going to stop keeping the record of it. I'm going to release you from that.
I remember when I was younger, I was very spiteful. I don't know when I got released from it, but you see me when I was younger—if you did me something, I'm holding that thing. I'm not the type that's going to come up to you and tell you that you've done me something. But I'm going to hold it. You notice what you do to me, I'll do to you. And I'm waiting for that moment to get back at you. And when you have your moment, I will be there, and you'll say, "Help." No, no, no. You know Lion King where Scar looks to Simba on the mountain and says, "Yeah, I'll help you"? That was me when I was younger.
This is the opposite of forgiveness. This is the opposite of release. The release is that although you did me wrong, I'm going to help you up the mountain. That doesn't mean that you didn't hurt me. It doesn't mean that I've forgotten what you did to me. But I have released you from that. I no longer hold the right to get my get back.
But we see in this story that we are taught—through this illustration—that forgiveness is giving up your right to get the get back. It's not forgetting. It's just giving up the right. I can no longer hold this against you.
And here's what I find really important—and probably one of our key application points. The king is still down the 10,000 talents. The moment that he released that debt, he didn't get repaid. It wasn't some bounce-back loan scheme where they said borrow the money and the government will guarantee it if they don't repay it. There's no repayment.
So when he checks his account tomorrow, the money is still not there.
This is the difficulty I think that comes with this idea of forgiveness. Although I'm going to release you and I'm going to forgive the debt, I get nothing back. In fact, I'm probably going to hurt even more because before I thought it's coming back to me at some point. But now I know it's never coming back to me.
And I think this is probably the most difficult thing. Our first application point is: when you forgive someone, there's no guarantee that you'll be repaid of that thing. Forgiveness will not erase the loss.
The feelings that you feel towards the person that did you something, the anger that you were feeling, the situation that you went through—none of these are going to go anywhere. But God is calling us through this passage to still release that person, to forgive the debt, and to say, "I no longer hold the right to expect something back from you."
Now that doesn't mean that God is not going to deal with them maybe in the heavenlies or maybe through the legal system. But it means that I have given up my rights to demand something back from you because of this.
But then we get to verse 28. Let's see what the servant did in response to all this. If my people owe me money and call me and say it's gone, I'm feeling good. Let's see what he did.
Verse 28 says, "But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii (100 days' wages), and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.'"
There wasn't even a gap. He said, "I'm good. Cool. You owe me money, though." Straight on the way out, he found someone in the exact same situation he was in 10 seconds ago, a smaller version—and he said, "Nah, bro. Give me my money."
When you look at the comparison of how much they owed: 600,000 to one. He was forgiven 600,000 times what was owed to him. But still he couldn't see, "Oh, maybe I should pass that along. My debts have been released." He said, "Bro, I'm hungry. I got things to pay for. Give me my cash."
And on top of that, it's not even like he just confronted him. He seized him. He choked him. And then he imprisoned him. So he actually went from "you owe me money" to "I'm going to sin to get my money back."
And I think this ratio here is really important. Because somebody owing you 100 days' wages is still a lot of money. And I think it's very important when we're talking about forgiveness for us to recognize that things that have been done to us are not insignificant.
I think it's so hard for somebody to stand before you and say, "Oh, you're meant to forgive." And you're thinking, "You don't know what I've been through." But the text here uses a substantial monetary amount to explain it—to recognize that God knows that what you went through is big. It's a lot. It's significant to you.
There's not many people that could say, "Oh, just don't pay me for the next 3 or 4 months. I'll be okay." No, it's big. It's significant. But what's proportionate is that we need to remember what was forgiven of us.
Verse 29: his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, "Have patience with me and I will pay you." Almost word for word what he said. But he refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.
Verse 31 says, "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."
Sometimes some of us go through a genuine situation, but our response is so disproportionate that even our brothers are like, "Nah, that's too much, bro. You're doing a lot." We don't want to be in a situation where because we've been wronged, our response has the church, it has our family saying to us that this is unjust. The response is not proportionate.
And that's just on earth. And then you get to heaven and the king says to you, "Bro, should you not have had mercy the way I had mercy on you?"
Is there anybody that wants to stand before God and hear such a sentence? Oh, it's a lot.
I think it's so easy for us to live in what people have done to us because we feel it. It takes an active decision to live in what God has forgiven us from or what he has done or what he would have been feeling as we're doing wrong to him.
I think when you become a parent, it really opens you up to this relationship that we have with God. When your kids do stuff and you start thinking—oh, is this what I'm making God feel? You're looking at your child thinking, "I know what you should do here. It's so easy. Just say sorry." And you realize, "Wait, that's me with God."
But we don't want to stand before God and hear him say, "Should you have not had mercy as I had mercy on you?"
And in verse 34, it says, "He was delivered to the jailers until he should pay all of his debt." Now, we looked at the beginning. This debt is not even payable. So he's basically saying, "He's gone for good." And this is a situation that we're being warned against. Let's not get into a situation where our unforgiveness leads us to a place where we can't come back.
Remember, unforgiveness is not pretending it didn't happen. It's not pretending there's no hurt. But it is getting rid of your ability to claim upon that thing.
And then we get to verse 35. Jesus's application says, "So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."
And I love that it ends on this: from your heart—because you know, we can get into situations where we pretend like we've forgiven someone. I was with some guys this week and they were talking about their old circle. Even if you're beefing someone, you invite the person to your birthday. You pretend there's no issue. This is not what God's calling us to.
He doesn't want us to pretend to be civil with one another but secretly be hating. And you know, sometimes you can recognize it because you pretend you've forgiven the person, or you might even think you've forgiven the person. But then someone mentions their name in a bad light and you're quick to jump in—because me, I've got ammo for that person.
But you can only have ammo if the debt is still outstanding. Because if I've canceled the debt, I no longer have a right to call upon that thing.
Can you imagine Barclays? They've released me of my debt. I'm living life. And then they see my Instagram and they say, "No, no, the debt is back." Well, that's not how it works.
Forgiveness is: I no longer have a right to call upon this thing and hold judgment over you because of it.
And so Jesus calls us to learn to forgive from our heart. This is not a procedure. This is actually a heart posture.
We see this throughout all of scripture. God doesn't want us to just do certain things. You know, I feel good, right? I went to prayer meeting. I went to this. I've done all of these procedural things. And God looks at you and says, "I see your heart."
And so with forgiveness—such a difficult topic—as we're exploring it, we're not looking for you to pretend. We're looking for us to get to positions where we genuinely say, "You know what? I hand this over to God. How God will deal with this, I believe he's just. But as for me, there's nothing that you owe to me."
Now, I want us to explore really quickly what this does not mean. Because often times people will make a sermon out of what you didn't say.
There will be people in this room—and let's just be frank—there will be people that are saying, "So, you want me to forgive the person that did this to me?" There will be people that have suffered abuse. There will be people that have gone through horrific situations. You say, "I should forgive that person."
Let's look at three words really quickly and the difference between them.
The first word is forgiveness. This is the word that we're talking about today. This is what scripture is talking about today. Forgiveness is releasing the debt and releasing your personal vengeance. You're refusing to let bitterness own you and you are handing the matter over to God.
Forgiveness as an act is unilateral. What that means is I can do it on my own. Someone in a life group once said that some people you need to forgive have already passed. There's no way for them to be involved in that procedure. It's just you releasing it. It's a unilateral thing—and this is commanded of us. We can't avoid that.
Forgiveness does not require the other person's repentance, their presence, or even them to be alive to know that it happened.
The second word is reconciliation. This is a restored relationship where you rebuild trust. Now that one is bilateral. We need both parties involved. Reconciliation will require repentance on the part of the other person.
You know, there's going to be situations where you need to forgive a person and they don't even think they've done wrong. But you don't have to reconcile with them. Reconciliation comes when we both acknowledge the wrongdoing and now it's safe for us to reconcile. Where it's not safe, that's not commanded of you. But where it is safe, that is the intended outcome.
But that is not commanded. Do you get the separation? Forgiveness: commanded. Reconciliation: ideal outcome. But God is not asking people to go back into abusive situations and say, "Oh, because I'm a Christian now, I've come."
No. God is saying that if you're coming from a situation like that, I command of you to forgive, to release that debt. But I don't command you to reconcile.
The third word is consequences. You know, you can forgive someone and you can still call the police. You can forgive someone and you can still go through legal procedures. You can still not want to be in the same church as them.
There are consequences of certain things, and forgiveness is not aligned with that. Forgiveness is me deciding I'm going to release you. That doesn't mean the law has to release you. If something has gone wrong, the law will try you and you might have to deal with the punishment or the consequences of that action.
And I think it's very important that we frame these three words separately because otherwise we walk away and go, "Oh, the church told me to go back to my abuser. The church told me that I shouldn't call the police." None of these things were said today.
But God does tell us to forgive. Now that opens up the question: does God want us to reconcile? And I think this is a very difficult question to explore. Next week we're actually on the topic of divorce, which again is a similar situation. Does God want us to reconcile in situations that are bad?
The answer is he would like us to. Reconciliation is God's stated ideal. If there is a situation where you can possibly conceive it in your heart to reconcile, God would prefer that.
But you know, God is a loving God and he's not forcing you to go into a situation where there's danger. He's saying to you: if it's safe to do so, we should try and find a way. And do you know why? Because we go back to the debt that we owed onto him. And not only did he forgive us, but he reconciled us unto him. He even did the work for the reconciliation. We owed him, but he did the work to make us reconcile. This is his ideal. And this is what Jesus modeled for us.
But to make it very clear: God does not command reconciliation. He commands forgiveness. His ideal is reconciliation.
Verse 35 is a very interesting theological verse. It says, "So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."
And this raises the question, right? So are you saying that if I die and there's a person I've not forgiven, I will go to hell? That's how it could read, right? I'm going to be in heaven until I can pay the debt.
I think there's two ways you can look at this.
The first one: If you don't forgive, you will lose or you will forfeit heaven. In that idea, forgiveness is a mechanism that opens the door of heaven. And I think subconsciously a lot of us have this belief that we get to heaven and there's a big gate and there's a lot of locks. This one is repentance. This one's baptism. This one's forgiveness. And we've got to go through and unlock all of them to get in.
But that's not consistent with what scripture says. Scripture tells us that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. And if that is the case, it can't be that if I don't forgive, I will not make heaven.
So how does this verse make sense?
The second way we can look at this is that forgiveness is a diagnostic—it is a way of analyzing where do I stand with the Lord.
You see, the work of forgiveness is often a work of the Holy Spirit. And the Bible tells us that when we are saved, we are given the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. And so where we find ourselves in positions where we can't forgive, it's not that we should think, "Oh, I'm not going to make it to heaven." But we start thinking: actually, am I walking in accordance with the spirit?
Because there's two things that could be happening here. If there's nothing in me that wants to forgive, either:
Or:
And isn't God good that in both situations he uses that as a thing to pull you? He even makes you realize: actually I don't know you. Come and get to know me. Or he makes you realize: actually I'm being disobedient in my walk. And he calls you onto obedience.
So that's where I would land with this—forgiveness is actually a diagnostic.
And I can tell you for free: when you get to the gates of heaven, there's only one lock. The lock of faith. Because Jesus dealt with everything. And he told us that he has paid the price in full.
And I think we all know this intellectually. But we see through our feelings about everything else that we subtly believe there's other locks for us to do. No, those other locks are works of sanctification—that we ask the Holy Spirit to build these things in us.
Teach me to forgive. In certain movies, you see them cursing the person that's done them wrong. Actually, our prayer point is: Lord, deal with me so that I can forgive. Lord, I'm struggling with forgiving this person. I know that you said it's paid in full and I should forgive, but I'm struggling.
Can we be real? This is what we do when we go before our father and we say, "Actually, father, I need your help."
I listened to an incredible sermon once by Voddie Baucham, and he was preaching on a topic and I don't even remember what it was. I just remember where he landed and he was convicting me that I need to do more. I need to do more. And he got to the end and he said, "And if you're sitting there thinking I need to do more, you've missed the whole case."
I said, "No." And these American preachers, they preach long. This is like an hour and a half. You're telling me I missed the whole thing?
And he said, "Yes. When you realize I need to do more, it's actually I need to go to the cross, not I need to do more." Because in our strength, we can't do anything.
So if you're sitting here and you're thinking, "Oh, I need to forgive," no. If you're struggling with forgiveness, you need to go to the cross and you lay the thing down before Jesus and you say, "Lord, you've told me to forgive. I'm struggling. Can you help me in this area?"
Going back to our first sermon, right? Everything is about dependency. We're not trying to build a church of people that know how to do "Christian."
No, we're trying to build a church of children who are dependent on the Lord for everything.
As I'm landing, I want to do the "so whats." And I've kind of said these throughout, but I just want to reiterate them. What do we do with this text?
The first one: We need to learn to release debts without requiring an apology. Apology is a bilateral thing—it's going two ways. They apologize, then I forgive. The text is teaching us that you need to forgive whether they say sorry or not.
And for a lot of people coming from a particular background, there's a certain area of the world in which older people will never apologize to you. And you can't get to God and say, "Lord, I didn't forgive that person because they never apologized." God is going to say, "I didn't tell you to wait upon apology. I told you I commanded you to forgive."
So the first takeaway for us is we're going to learn to forgive and release the debt without apology. And to reiterate again: that doesn't mean you stop feeling away. It means you realize I am not going to demand your repayment. God will deal with that. As for me, I release you.
The second one: A genuinely released debt will show up in how fast we release others. When we recognize actually God has released me from so much—who am I to hold things against you?
You know, when you start to live in that, it's freeing. Actually, I've been forgiven so much. You done me wrong. I release you. It's not that I don't feel away. It's not that we're going to reconcile. We ain't besties, but I release you. I don't demand anything from you.
The third one: Releasing the debt will not erase the loss. We need to stop thinking that pain and forgiveness are on the same axis. They're not. They're completely separate.
You can have no pain and forgiveness. You can have pain and forgiveness and all the other ways. They're not related to one another. So let's not attach the two.
Or "I still feel away. I can't forgive." No. Or "I don't feel away. I don't need to forgive." No. They're not related.
Do I genuinely feel that you owe me nothing? That is when I've forgiven.
And the final application: if you could stand with me as we close.
I think when we talk on the subject of forgiveness, it's so easy for us to think about those who have wronged us and need our forgiveness. But did you know before we were ever called to forgive, we were forgiven?
John 8:36 says, "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." And just as the servant was released from the bondage of an unpayable debt, we've been released from a debt we can never repay.
I love when you have a sermon and it lands so cleanly on the gospel. Each and every one of us born into sin, shaped in iniquity—we've all lied. We've all been angry. Matthew told us that because we've been angry, God sees us as someone who murders.
And yet standing before God, he sees me as white as snow. Or he sees my sins as white as snow because of forgiveness. He wanted so badly to forgive me that he sent his Son to pay the cost for my sins. Can somebody praise God?
I think when we get into the flow of Christianity, we start learning about doctrines and this and that and we get carried away and we forget that the core principles that Jesus bled and died on a cross for us.
This was not a simple act. And I always say please watch The Passion of the Christ because this wasn't as quick as it happened when you're reading it. This was torturous. Things that he went through—not because he ever done wrong, but because I owed money and he wanted to pay it off.
And when we really, really understand that actually primarily I'm the forgiven, we learn to forgive others. Not to not feel away, but to say, "You know what, God will deal with that. It's not in my hands."
Who am I? I'm not the judge, the jury, and the executioner. My focus is actually going to be on walking with the Lord and working on my heart.
As we close, I just want to open the altar for two groups of people.
The first one is those who have never been forgiven by God. The Bible tells us that if we come to him and we repent of our sins, he will forgive us. But some of us have never had that moment. Some of us because of pride. Some of us because we've just never recognized that actually I've done wrong to a holy and righteous God.
But I want to open up the floor for those who have either never done that or maybe you've done it in an earlier life and you've drifted away and you feel that actually I just need to make right with God. I just need to stand before him and seek forgiveness.
The second group of people is those who are struggling to forgive someone specific. I love the ARC because we're a real church. You can come and say, "Actually, that word, it was difficult for me." And someone will pray with you. They're not here to say, "Oh, you're a bad person." No, we're here to pray with you and to work that thing through with you.
So I want to open up the altar now. If either of those two things are you—either you want to seek forgiveness for yourself from God, or if you're struggling to forgive somebody and you just need someone to pray with you—the altar is now open. The intercessors will pray with you. The elders will pray with you.
But let's not leave here the same as we came. Let us realize that actually God is calling us to release.
