Matthew 18:21-35 God's immeasurable forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35

  Psalm 103:1-14

God’s Immeasurable Forgiveness

Well, here we have a parable of Jesus which is easy for us to understand, but perhaps really, really hard to apply.

This is not a parable that we have to think too deeply of what Jesus is trying to teach us, but like many teachings of Jesus, it is really, really hard for us to apply.

In fact what Jesus teaches us today, we can only apply through His Holy Spirit.

If we are truly to forgive others, we need divine help!

Today, as we delve into the topic of forgiveness, I know for many, it is a topic that can be heavy, because we all, had at one time, wrong done to us.

We have all had, at some time the choice to forgive or not,

We have all at some point had the opportunity to receive forgiveness or not.

And often when that wrong is done to us by a family member or someone we really trusted, it cuts deep, really deep, the wounds just don’t seem to heal.

Now, Jesus told this parable about forgiveness, in response to the apostle Peter’s question….actually it was not only a response to Peter’s question, but also a response to Peter’s own pious answer.

Just look at verse 21 with me:

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”

Now in the previous verses of this same chapter, which we didn’t read today, Jesus had just taught his disciples, that is us also, what we should do when one of our brothers or sisters sins against us.

And so when Peter asked this question of how many times he should forgive his brother, we can safely assume he was talking particularly about a fellow believer, not a non-believer. He was talking about one of his brothers and sisters in Christ, someone who he would expect more of. Someone where, perhaps, forgiveness is even harder to give, since they should know better.

Jesus taught us in verses 15-20, that there is a three step process if your brother or sister in Christ sins against you.

And crucially this 3 step process, is all done in love, it all done with the aim of reconciling with your brother or sister who has wronged you. This process is not done to name and shame and be-little your brother or sister who has sinned against you, but to restore them to God and to yourself.

And let us be honest, as we go through these three steps, many of us may miss step number one completely…..and because we miss step number one, we cause many more people unnecessary pain, and there is little chance of reconciliation.

The issue, whatever that issue may be, escalates and often becomes bigger than it actually is, all because we miss step number one.

Well, what is step number one?

You will find it in verse 15,

Step number one is this: if your brother or sister does you wrong: go to your brother or sister who sinned against you, one to one.

Talk it out one to one!

Explain to your brother or sister, that they have sinned against you and you feel hurt……they may not even be aware of what they have done or the hurt they have caused you……they may!....... they may not!....... you won’t know until you approach them one to one- and talk it through.

Step 1 is not to go to your pastor and letting him know what “so and so” said about you, but step one is to go to the person who did you wrong.

Step 1 is not to go to your posse of friends who you know will agree with you, and let them know what “so and so” said about you, but step one is to go to the person, who did you wrong.

And why do you go to your brother and sister who sinned against you?

So that, as it says in Matthew 18:15, so that you have gained your brother.

Gained them as a brother and sister in Christ.

As you approach your brother or sister, who have done you wrong, you must ask God to give you a heart of being open to a restoration of relationship.

You are not approaching your brother or sister to shoot them down in flames, but with the aim of a restored relationship- with God and with yourself.

God forgives us, so we can be reconciled with him.

In fact this is the end goal of the gospel, the end goal of forgiveness, so that we can be with God.

It would be a sad shame if we received God’s forgiveness, but never get to spend eternity with Him.

If you go to your brother or sister, one to one, you can restore that relationship without the problem spreading to the rest of the church.

And let’s face it, often problems can be resolved one on one because there was simply a lack of communication in the first place. Something was taken the wrong way, something was said the wrong way and so on.

Now, if you follow step one, but there is still no resolution, for example, the person may still not acknowledgethey have sinned against you, when they clearly have, or worse still, they know they have sinned against you, but they refuse to repent…………then and only then do you go to step 2.

Step 2 is this (and you find it in verse 16)

Take one or two others with you, and approach the person again.

Take someone who you know is mature in the faith.

Take an elder with you.

Then the matter is discussed with the offended, the offender and a couple of mature believers.

Why?

In the hope that restoration of relationship can be worked out.

Now, If you follow step 1 and step 2 and the person who has sinned against you, still refuses to acknowledge their sin and repent of it, then and only then do we go to step 3, we take the matter to the whole church.

Sadly, if we ever get to step 3, the whole church is affected, and sadly if the person still refuses to repent and continues to wilfully sin, we are to treat them as non-believers, since this is how they are living.

So, there is the context in which Peter asked this question in verse 21….How often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?

Perhaps Peter was thinking about that person in his church who just kept lying.

Perhaps he was thinking of the person who made up a lie about him, I don’t know, say he lied and told people that Peter wasn’t one of Jesus disciples, and perhaps, Peter had gone through the process, the person finally repented, but then this same person made another lie about Peter…..would Peter have to go through the whole process again?…..

How many times should he keep forgiving this person who continued to make lies about him?

Now Peter probably knew that Jesus’ fault position was forgiveness and so Peter provided an answer that he thought was safe.

He came up with seven.

Peter asked should I forgive him seven times?

The Rabbi’s, the Jewish teachers capped forgiveness at 3, and so Peter was going more than twice as many as the rabbi’s – seven- surely seven would be enough?

Well no….look at Jesus’ answer.

Look at verse 22 with me:

Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy seven times”

Peter may have thought he was being pious by giving an answer of seven, but he was actually way, way off. If we were to take this number literally as 77, Peter was 11 times off.

Clearly, as we are going to see from the parable that Jesus told to explain forgiveness, we cannot and we should not take this number literally.

In fact one of the clear lessons we learn from this story, is this: the moment we start measuring forgiveness, it is not forgiveness.

As soon as we start measuring forgiveness, it is not forgiveness.

As soon as we start keeping score- it is not forgiveness.

And so if you take Jesus’ words literally here and start counting off how many times you have forgiven someone before you stop forgiving them, it is not true forgiveness- one, two, three, four, five, sixty, seven –seventy-seven, stop-done…..

No, 77 just represents the number of perfection, 7, and the number of perfection again- 7, it is symbolic for…..you just keep forgiving, don’t keep count, don’t keep score:

just keep forgiving.

To emphasise this point, that we continue to forgive, Jesus told a story that had three main characters.

The King.

Servant number 1- Let us call him Paul

Servant number 2- Let us call her Kari

Paul owed the king, a huge, huge, huge amount of money, ten thousand talents, which today is equivalent to billions and billions of dollars.

Paul couldn’t pay the king back and so he asked the king for a bit more time to pay before the king threw him into prison. Paul begged for mercy.

The king heard Paul’s plea and took pity on him. And the king did so much more than give him more time to pay: The king cancelled his debt, billions and billions of dollars of debt just wiped clean. Paul was free to go.

But then, Paul who just had all his debts cleared by the generous king, found Kari, who owed him a “hundred denarii” , about $12,000 and told her to pay up her dues or else.

Kari pleaded with Paul for mercy and begged for a little more time to pay her debts.

Paul ignored Kari’s plea and threw Kari into prison.

Paul, who just had billions of dollars of debt cancelled by his kind and generous king, threw Kari into prison who owed him $12,000, because she couldn’t pay him back. Even though Kari pleaded with Paul for more time to pay, Paul didn’t give her more time, he didn’t cancel her debt, he threw her into prison.

When the king, who cancelled all of Paul’s debt, found out what Paul had done to Kari, He threw Paul into prison.

Clearly, the first point that Jesus draws us to from this story, is this:

We can never measure the forgiveness of God towards us.

God’s forgiveness towards us, is so vast, so deep, we just simply cannot measure it. If we were to try and measure God’s forgiveness towards us, it would be like trying to count all the stars in the universe, we simply can’t count the stars in the universe, we would be dead before we stop counting, there are just too many.

Just as the debt that the king cancelled was in many ways immeasurable, i.e, it would have been thousands of life times of wages, we should not even try to measure God’s forgiveness towards us.- It is immeasurable.

Now perhaps, why we don’t grasp God’s immeasurable forgiveness towards us- (now there is an oxymoron, “grasp the immeasurable”), is because we probably haven’t quite grasped the depth of our sin.

Just like forgiveness, we probably have a tendency to measure our sin.

We perhaps rank our sins, mark them out of 10, lying, 3/10, murder- 10/10 and so on, and so we do the sin calculation in our head and come up with a number for the amount of forgiveness we need.

Friends, it is sin that separates us from God- sin, all sin, any sin, any amount of sin creates such as huge chasm between us and God that we are incapable of crossing over that chasm.

Our sin, all sin, any sin, any amount of sin, created such a chasm that it took nothing less than the sacrifice of God himself to close that gap, it took nothing less than the blood of Jesus to bridge that gap.

Just like Paul- servant 1, who simply could not pay the debt he owed the king, we can never pay God back for what we owe him……never……but praise be to God, Jesus paid the debt for us at the cross, and he paid it in full.

Tim Keller put it like this…..

“The gospel is this:

We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

Friends, if by God’s Holy Spirit, we grasp the gospel and when I say grasp, I mean grasp our immeasurable sinfulness and God’s immeasurable forgiveness to us, if we know God’s immeasurable forgiveness to us, we will show that same forgiveness to others….in fact, if we don’t show that same forgiveness to others, we haven’t grasped God’s forgiveness to us.

This is Jesus’ application to us, from his parable, look at verse 35 with me:

So also your heavenly father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart

Friends, today is perhaps the day where you need to forgive someone.

Ask God to help you to forgive.

Ask God to help you grasp his immeasurable forgiveness to you, so that you may be able to forgive others.

This is what a sister in Christ, Corrie Ten Boon did, she asked God to help her forgive someone who had done her family great harm- and by God’s grace: she did.

Corrie Ten Boom worked against the Nazis in World War Two, hiding Jews in her home. When she was caught, she was sent to a concentration camp where she was stripped of her dignity, saw her father and her sister (Betsie) die, and suffered more at the hands of other people than we could possibly imagine.

God gave her the ability to forgive those men who had caused her so much harm.

Years later she met one of the guards of the concentration camp at a church service.

Just listen to these words from her book “The hiding place”

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower door in the processing centre at Ravensbruck.

He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.’ He said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. 

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. 

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. 

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on HIS. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” 

Let us pray