The Heart of Forgiveness

Good morning. It's a joy to be here with you all this morning at Grace Fellowship, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to share God's Word with you. As Pastor Paul mentioned, I am an elder of Trinity Church, and I want to extend a welcome and a greeting from Trinity to you all, as we are partnered not only as brothers and sisters in Christ, but also within the Redwood Empire Baptist Association.

It's a joy to partner with you as a church. Additionally, I want to extend my gratitude to you all as a representative of the North American Mission Board, which is part of the Send Network. The church planting effort here in the Bay Area is done under that masthead. Your generosity, not only to the association, but to Annie Armstrong and to the Cooperative Program, makes church planting here in the Bay Area possible, and the gospel is going forth here in the Bay Area through your generosity. So, thank you for that.

This morning we are looking at a text that is a parable of Jesus. I think it is a temptation for us as Christians, maybe people who have been Christians for some time, to grow familiar with the parables. They're stories that some of us probably started hearing in Sunday school, but parables are more than what meets the eye. Parables give us a picture of the heavenly kingdom in terms that we find every day on this earth. It's an earthly perspective on a heavenly reality.

I love parables because I'm a simple guy and I appreciate a good illustration. That's helpful to me. But I think there's also something we miss in the parables, and that is how shocking they would have been to the original hearers. These parables were intended by Jesus, in many ways, to shock and surprise. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells his disciples why he preaches in parables. He says it's to reveal the secrets of the kingdom to those who will hear. And the parables today are still revealing the kingdom of God to those who will hear.

One commentator said this about the parables, and I think it's super helpful. To those who will hear, the parables are first a picture, that illustration I talked about already. But they also become a mirror that shows us something of ourselves. It turns the story on us. And then they're also a window on heavenly realities and on the character of God himself.

With this in mind, will you turn with me to Matthew 18, starting in verse 21. We read this:

"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?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven 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 ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything." And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

"'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 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.'"

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for your Word. I thank you for the truth of Scripture. Lord, I thank you that through your Word you reveal yourself to us, that you have revealed yourself in Scripture through your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, as we have already asked this morning, show us Jesus, so that as we gaze upon him, we would be transformed and made into his image. Lord, that we would be merciful and gracious and loving as he is merciful and gracious and loving.

Lord, we thank you for your Spirit. We pray that as we hear your Word proclaimed, you would move in our hearts. Lord, that you would transform our hearts, that you would form us in your image, that you would convict us. And Lord, for some of us this morning, that your Spirit would bring newness of life in the hearts of those who are here, that we might know you truly, that we might walk with you truly, and that ultimately you would be glorified here this morning, that your name would be lifted high, not only here in Dixon, but to the ends of the earth. We pray all these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The section of Scripture we're in this morning, chapter 18 of Matthew, is, in similar form to the section you've been reading in Matthew 5, Jesus teaching. Now, Matthew 5 is part of the Sermon on the Mount. That is Jesus' preaching and teaching about the kingdom. But our text falls in what is called the church discourse, in which Jesus is preparing his people to be the church, to be part of his kingdom here on earth.

In this church discourse, he has already talked about who is the greatest. He tells his people that those who are humble will be exalted, and those who exalt themselves will be humbled. He warns against sin, just as our reading this morning did, and he points them to live a life of radical obedience. Next, we see a story we're all probably pretty familiar with, the lost sheep, where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to bring back the one. And he also talks about what we should do if someone sins against us. This is the process laid out in Matthew 18 that we might be familiar with as church discipline.

But this leads to a question that Peter picks up on, and it begins a conversation with Jesus. It's a perfectly sensible question, considering the context. Peter says, if this is how we are to interact, if this is how we are to bring people back into the community of believers when they sin against us, how many times do we do this process? And so we see in verses 21 through 23 that Peter suggests a number. He says, "As many as seven times?"

Now, Peter has put his foot in his mouth enough in the course of Jesus' ministry, and he's learned a lot about who Jesus is. He says, you know what, Jesus is generous, and Jesus often surprises me, so I'm going to be proactive in this. The scribes of the day would say you forgive somebody three times. It was a three-strikes-and-you're-out kind of policy. This was the rule of thumb of the religious leaders of the day. And so Peter, knowing Jesus' mercy and how magnanimous he is, says, I'm going to more than double this. I'm going to suggest seven. This is going to be really wowing Jesus. He's really going to think I'm starting to pick up on what he's laying down.

But Jesus, again, is full of surprises. He surprises Peter with this number, seventy-seven, or, as some texts say, seventy times seven. I think there is a reference here to Genesis 4:24, juxtaposing the mercy of God with the vengeance we see in that text in Lamech. But regardless, Jesus is not simply settling on a number. He's telling them there is an unlimited amount of forgiveness available to those who sin against us.

Just as surprising as that might have been to Peter, the turn of the century was also very surprising for the people of Westfield, Massachusetts. You might not be familiar with Westfield, Massachusetts. I was not familiar with it before hearing about this. But Westfield, Massachusetts used to be called Whip City, USA. Now, that's a very weird nickname, but at the turn of the twentieth century, Westfield was the outfitter for everybody who rode a horse. At the turn of the century, 99 percent of horse whips and saddles and other accessories were produced in Westfield, Massachusetts. The world was fueled and run on horseback, and Westfield was supporting that industry.

But something happened at the turn of the last century. In 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model T. I'm sure the people of Westfield thought this upstart automobile was a trend or a fashion just for the wealthy. But in 1913, Ford developed the assembly line, and soon everybody was driving a car. By 1895, the city of Westfield, Massachusetts, had thirty-seven different whip companies headquartered there. But by 1926, there were only thirty-seven people in the whip industry in Westfield, Massachusetts.

This is what we know, especially here in the Bay Area: change can be disruptive if we aren't prepared for it. Jesus is preparing them for change like what the people of Westfield may have experienced, or what people in Detroit, Michigan, have experienced over the last couple of years with the outsourcing of the automobile, or what people in the Bay Area are experiencing with the internet and AI. Because of the disruptive power of a big change, Jesus does not just give them this outrageous number and let them go. He gives them a reason why he's giving them this number, and he does it in the way of a parable.

He says in verse 23, "For this reason, the kingdom of God may be compared to..." What I think is better put is "has become like." Jesus is preparing them for the kingdom of God, which has already come and has been inaugurated in Christ's coming. Something has changed by Christ simply entering into our world. He's not giving them a new law. A law is going to be written on their hearts, not on tablets of stone. Instead of a new law, Jesus teaches his disciples this, and this is the big idea of the text and of the sermon this morning: forgiveness must come from the heart.

We'll see in the text why forgiveness must come from the heart. The first way we see it is in verse 24, and this is my first point if you're taking notes: forgiveness must come from the heart because forgiveness originates from the heart of the king. In verse 24, we see that the king is settling accounts with his servants. These weren't servants as we would think of them today. Maybe they were executive-level servants. I say that because it would have been impossible to accrue this kind of debt. Ten thousand talents. One talent was twenty years' wages. The text doesn't give clarity on whether these were gold talents or silver talents. Gold talents would have been 26 billion dollars in our money today. Silver would have been 600 million in our money today.

This could have been the result of a poor investment. Imagine an investment banker at one of the big investment banks making a bad investment, but instead of being fired and the company taking the loss, he's thrown in jail and he owes it back. The value of the sale of this man and his family would not have come even close to covering the debt. He could not have hoped to repay it in a million lifetimes. It just wasn't going to happen. But he responds with desperation: "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything."

As Pastor Paul mentioned, I have three daughters, and it's not uncommon for us to find ourselves out at a store, especially with my four-year-old. She's always seeing something and saying, "I want that. I want that. I want that." We're in that kind of phase of life. And often, before they introduce the item they want, they start greasing the skids. They'll say, "Hey, remember that I did my chore without you asking me to the other day? Or remember that my teacher gave you a good report about something I did? Or I helped Mom the other day?" There's always a "because" to the ask.

But my kids don't really understand that that's not the biggest sway on my heart when it comes to buying them something. My heart is predisposed, as their father, to want to bless them. Sometimes so much so that I will forget a bad attitude that happened just before, and my wife will remind me, "Hey, this kid's been terrible all morning. What are you doing?" My heart, in spite of even that, is predisposed to bless them, because I love them, because they're my children.

This is the heart we see of the king in our text this morning. The king is not swayed by the promise of repayment. He responds to the desperation of this man. The ESV says "pity," but the NASB translates this word as "compassion." It's something from the depths of the heart. It's a deep compassion that comes forth from the king, not because he thinks this man is going to pay him back, but because he has compassion on the desperation of this man's situation. He's not swayed by the offer of payment. He's not doing the math on the back of an envelope and thinking, "Yeah, maybe we could sort out this payment situation." He's not being swayed by a logical argument. He erases this debt.

So we've already got a debt that is ridiculous. That's shocking point number one. Then we have the forgiveness of a debt that is overwhelming and unimaginable. Jesus here, as we're starting to see, is showing us a picture of the heart of his Father for sinners who are overwhelmed by the weight of their sin, overwhelmed by the debt they have accrued before a holy God. God is just. God must punish sin. It cannot be erased by good works. It cannot be done away with by a payment plan of good behavior. Sin is a debt we could never hope to repay, just like the debt we read about in the text.

Colossians 2:13-14 says this: "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."

This is why Christ died. First Peter 3:18 says, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." Christ died. He erased a debt we could never pay. He came to live a life we could never live. He came to die to erase our debt so that we might be reconciled to God, that we might be his children. He died for our sins, and he said, "It is finished."

Jesus and God the Father are not putting together your payment plan. They're not saying, "Hey, listen, just pay what you can when you can." That's not what we get in Christ. That's not the disposition of God the Father toward his children. His disposition is this: it's gone. We not only have an erased debt, but we also have the righteousness of Christ. We don't have anything to build on, or any need to build on anything.

This plan of redemption is not something new, because we've seen it throughout the Old Testament. Psalm 103:1-14 says this: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

If you're here this morning and you haven't come to know the grace of God in Christ, is this picture of the king what you think of when you think about God? I think even sometimes, for me as a Christian, I wonder if this is who I think about when I think about who God is. Or do we think about an old man in a white robe with his arms crossed and a furrowed brow, who at best is perhaps disappointed? This is not the picture Jesus paints of the Father. The Father is moved from the depths of his heart with compassion for you. If you don't know his grace, he holds that out to you. He has held nothing back. He has sent his Son that you might come to him. Do not delay. This is good news.

This is what the gospel is. This is what all of this is about. This is what everybody's excited about. This is why we sing. This is why Christians sing. It's why we can sing joyous songs from the heart this morning, and it's why we will sing together with other Christians from every nation and tongue for eternity. It is our response to God's initiation of his goodness and his compassion in Christ. That's not only the reason we sing and say, "Bless the Lord, O my soul." It's also the reason we share the gospel with our neighbors. It's the reason we plant churches. It's the reason we send missionaries. This is good news.

But it doesn't end here. The parable doesn't stop. There's more to see, so we will continue on.

Next, we see that forgiveness must come from the heart because forgiveness comes from a heart that has received mercy. That's my second point. In verse 28, we see that there is no expression of gratitude from the servant as he leaves the king's presence. There is no great display of thanksgiving from the servant to the master. He seems to leave and, in that same moment, go looking for the guy who owes him some money.

Now, in juxtaposition to the ten thousand talents, we have a hundred denarii. A denarius was a day's labor. Again, a talent was twenty years, and a denarius is one day. The juxtaposition is here, and we see it. There's a great debt that's unpayable, and there's a significant debt that's much, much, much smaller. The fellow servant responds in the same way that the first servant responded when his debt was called in by the king. But the servant does not respond the way the king did. This would have been shocking again, not only for the servants who see this and report back to the king, but for the disciples. It seems to make sense that one who receives mercy would extend it.

The king is shocked as well. The servants observe and report back to him, and the king, who was once moved with a heart of compassion, is now moved with righteous anger toward the servant. He asks the servant a rhetorical question: "Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" I think we can see the implication of the king's question. The heart that has received mercy, shouldn't that heart also flow with the same mercy it has received?

This guy didn't thank the king because his mindset was set on recouping this money so that he could start his own personal payment plan. He was given mercy by the king, but I don't think he truly accepted the mercy the king extended to him. He's trying to earn it. The gospel doesn't clear our slate so that we can build our own testimony of righteousness. It clears the slate, and we receive Christ as our righteousness. Our obedience is not so that we might have something to show God and earn back his acceptance. Our obedience is the natural outpouring of a heart that has received mercy from God. It's a heart that responds in love and thanksgiving to God.

The temptation for all of us is to try to earn our acceptance from God. And when we try to earn our acceptance from God, it is also our temptation to hold other people to the same standard. This is why we get angry when they sin against us, because they not only need to earn God's acceptance, but also our acceptance. They don't just need to be forgiven by God. They need to receive our forgiveness as well.

This can be very convicting. I know it convicts me just talking about it. As Christians, are we slow to forgive? Where God is quick to extend forgiveness when repentance comes, are we slow to extend forgiveness when repentance comes? I feel it especially with the people who are most likely to sin against us. The people most likely to sin against us are the people we interact with most daily. Even as Christians, our tendency is still to sin. We still have a sin nature. And so the people we most frequently interact with are often the people we most frequently sin against: our wife, our children, our family, our friends.

Especially when it's the hundredth time in the same way, are we slow to forgive when our spouse sins against us for the hundredth time in the same way, or our children sin against us for the hundredth time in the same way? Have we forgotten the mercy of God in Christ? We must remember the goodness of God in Christ, because it is daily our temptation to forget it. If God has moved in someone's heart to recognize sin and to come to you seeking forgiveness, should we not be as quick as he is to forgive those he has already forgiven?

And here's the truth. We have sinned against a holy God. They have sinned against a fellow sinner. Our debt is far greater than theirs. We receive mercy. We should extend mercy. Mercy begets more mercy. And if we don't receive the mercy of God in Christ, if we don't extend that mercy to others, there is an eternal consequence that we must be aware of, and that this parable brings to us. This brings us to our third point, which is that forgiveness is at the heart of the gospel.

We see this in verses 34 and 35. Seeing that this servant had scorned his mercy, the master responds in anger. He not only revokes the forgiveness of his debt, but he has him turned over to the jailers. In the original language, this term "jailer" had more to it. It wasn't just a jailer. It was someone who administered the torture of prisoners. And so we see that he's turned over to this jailer until he can pay off the debt, which we've already established is never. This is the king's condemnation of the servant to eternal torture, which is also shocking.

Jesus ends this story with a warning. We read it in verse 35: "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." Here's the warning for us this morning: if you have a hard and unforgiving heart, you might not have the true gospel.

Galatians 5:1-6 says this: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love."

Paul is telling the Galatians that if you decide to build on a platform of your own righteousness, through circumcision, through obeying the law, Christ is not available to you. If you choose to live under the law after grace has been proclaimed and Christ has done what he has done so that you might not have to be under the punishment or the chains of the law, then grace is available to you, but you will not receive it, because you have chosen the consequences of the law, and the law always brings death. We cannot bear up under the weight of the law. That's why Christ came to free us from the law.

If we choose to live by the law and hold other people accountable to the law, and we withhold forgiveness, we will be held to the consequences for not upholding the law. God's eternal judgment is the consequence for the law. There's no way around it. It's clear. It's in the text. It's confronting.

This is precisely why hell is so severe. Hell is not for random people selected by God at random. Hell is ultimately for people who have chosen to scorn God's mercy in Christ, to reject God's mercy and choose their own form of the law to follow and to receive some type of righteousness in their own mind. Ultimately, when you choose the law, you choose death. When you choose grace through Christ, you choose life. If we choose to live by the law, we reject God's mercy in Christ, and it's of no advantage to us.

It's possible for us to know the gospel but believe in our own righteousness. It's possible for us to sit and hear the gospel almost the way this man heard, "Your debt is forgiven," and not accept it as our own and have it transform our lives. It's almost like this. If I were to tell you this morning that it is going to rain, that when we walk out this door it's going to start raining, and as I walked out the door I didn't find something to cover my head or grab an umbrella or put on a coat, I would not be believing what I said was going to happen. My actions wouldn't reflect what I said was going to happen. Maybe I don't really believe it at all.

If we believe something, it transforms the way we live our lives. It's the same with the gospel. If we believe the gospel, we live the gospel. If we believe that the grace of God has come in Christ, we live in the grace of God in Christ. It transforms the way we live our lives. It gives us mercy that we receive from Christ and deliver to other people.

Don't let your hearts be hardened. Don't scorn God's forgiveness and mercy in Christ. It's the good news of the gospel. We rejoice in it. That's why we sing. That's what we've talked about already. We must remember it daily. We must celebrate it daily, because it's often easy for us somehow to forget, as sinful people still under the burden of the curse.

Christians, this is the warning. Don't let your heart get hardened. Remember Jesus Christ. Don't put your confidence in your own obedience. It can't hold up under the weight of the judgment of God. It is possible, again, like I said, to sit in Sunday school, to come up through growing up in church and hearing the gospel repeatedly, and to have never actually received it.

If you're not a Christian, this judgment sounds pretty severe. It sounds like the old man with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. But again, as I said, this is not an arbitrary judgment from an arbitrary God. It is the judgment that comes from scorning the goodness of mercy in Christ. God has sent his Son. God has given up everything. He has spared no expense to bring you to himself. To reject that is to reject God's mercy and to receive God's judgment.

That's not what I want for you this morning. That's not what anybody here wants for you this morning. That's not what God wants for you this morning. God wants you to receive the goodness and the mercy and the grace of life in Christ, so that not only are you saved from his justice, but you're brought into his family. That you are his children. That you can come to him. That he loves you. He's not just a king far off. He's a father who draws near to you. This is the good news of the gospel.

As Jesus alluded to in verse 23, this parable is pointing us to something new, a kingdom reality. Again, as I said, in Jesus' coming something changed dramatically. It's more disruptive than the automobile or the internet or artificial intelligence. The kingdom of God is inaugurated. The kingdom of God has come in Jesus' coming. Not only has it come, but it is coming. This is the process that was kicked off when Christ entered the world. We have a new covenant, a new heart that is compelled by love and not by obligation to the law. This new heart is available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent at Pentecost.

Looking forward to this, Ezekiel wrote about this new heart and this new covenant to a people who were still under the law. He said this: "I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you."

This is the promise of the gospel. This was the reason Christ came, because under the law we were hopeless, but in Christ we have a great hope in his grace and mercy and love that we receive in Christ.

True forgiveness cannot come from a new law. That's why Jesus didn't give Peter a real solid number. He said unlimited forgiveness. We cannot get a new law. Jesus isn't inaugurating a new law. He's inaugurating a new heart. True forgiveness can only come from a heart of mercy, because true forgiveness can only come from a heart that has been transformed by the Holy Spirit through the grace of God that we receive in Christ. A heart like the Father's heart. A heart that has received mercy, and a heart that has received Christ.

Let's pray.