We are going to read together from the
Bible, from the Gospel written by Matthew, chapter
18.
Matthew, chapter 18, at verse 21.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord,
how many times shall I forgive my brother
when he sins against me?
After seven times, Jesus answered, I tell you
not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a
man who wanted to settle accounts with his
servants.
As he began the settlement, a man who
owed him ten thousand talents was brought to
him.
Since he was not able to pay, the
master ordered that he and his wife and
his children and all that he had be
sold to repay the debt.
The servant fell on his knees before him.
Be patient with me, he begged, and I
will pay back everything.
The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled
the debt, and let him go.
But when that servant went out, he found
one of his fellow servants who owed him
a hundred denarii.
He grabbed him and began to choke him.
Pay back what you owe me, he demanded.
His fellow servant fell to his knees and
begged him.
Be patient with me, and I will pay
you back.
But he refused.
Instead, he went off and had the man
thrown into prison until he could pay the
debt.
When the other servants saw what had happened,
they were greatly distressed and went and told
their master everything that had happened.
Then the master called the servant in.
You wicked servant, he said, I cancelled all
that debt of yours because you begged me
to.
Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow
servant just as I had on you?
In anger, his master turned him over to
the jailers to be tortured until he should
pay back all he owed.
This is how my Heavenly Father will treat
each of you unless you forgive your brother
from your heart.
Well, good evening everyone and my grateful thanks
to Andrew for the very kind welcome to
this wonderful conference.
I have very happy memories of a previous
visit here a number of years ago and
it's a great joy and a privilege too
to be able to return on this occasion.
And can I say that in Christian ministries
we support and commend the stand that EMW
take in seeking to extend and glorify God
in the setting up of his kingdom here
in our needy land.
Let us pray together.
Our gracious Father, we bow before you because
we need your help as we have your
word open before us.
We thank you for it and we ask
this evening for an understanding of what you
would say to us.
Not merely that we might understand the words
that we read, but that we might hear
and understand your word as it comes to
each one of our hearts.
And for that we need the help of
your Holy Spirit.
And we thank you for the promise from
your Son that he was the one who
would lead us into the truth.
And we pray therefore this evening that you
will give to us that ability to be
able to hear and to understand.
And as we hear and understand, even that
greater grace of being able to obey your
voice.
Hear our prayer.
We offer it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You and I are much more than mere
animals.
We have been created in the image of
God.
We are unique.
And that phrase, the image of God, occurs
in the Bible.
And I believe means, amongst other things, that
you and I have been created with a
spiritual dimension.
It makes us unique in the whole of
creation.
And at least provides the potential for us
to experience and enjoy the most wonderful relationship
with a loving Creator God.
One thing has spoiled that.
And that is sin.
The significant letter in the English word sin
is the middle letter.
The word I.
I'm always grateful to my wife for this
little illustration because for many years she worked
in an office and they knew that she
was married to a vicar.
And on one occasion in the midst of
a busy office day, they said to her,
what is sin?
And she drew this word on a piece
of paper in large letters.
And then circled the middle letter.
And said, essentially, that is what sin is.
I.
The essence of sin is self-centeredness and
independence toward God that separates us from Him.
Sins, many of those things that even we
would disapprove of, are the symptoms.
Sin is the disease.
And it is impossible to enjoy that relationship
which God has planned and purposed until this
sin has been dealt with.
This is by far the most serious consequence
of sin in every individual's life.
No individual is excluded from this particular problem.
But the repercussions of sin go beyond, if
you like, our vertical relationship with God.
Sin is also the major cause of breakdowns
in personal relationships.
Our horizontal relationship with those around us.
The smallest argument to the most terrible war
is evidence of sin in our lives.
And when that sin remains unconfessed and unforgiven,
sin can also affect us in our minds
and in our bodies.
Shakespeare, in his play Macbeth, illustrates the fact
that sin that remains unforgiven can produce all
kinds of psychosomatic problems.
Lady Macbeth was greatly troubled because of the
part she had played in murdering King Duncan.
She called a doctor who told Macbeth, Not
so sick, my lord, as she is troubled
with thick coming fancies that keep her from
her rest.
Macbeth responded, Canst thou not minister to a
mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted
sorrow, Raise out the written troubles of the
brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse
the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which
weighs upon the heart.
But alas, there is no natural medicine for
the sin-sick soul.
With sin in our lives, it will be
impossible to find true peace and lasting happiness.
Sin is the greatest crisis of the human
heart, and so forgiveness of sin is the
greatest need.
In Matthew chapter 9, Matthew records the occasion
when some friends let a paralyzed man down
through the roof in order, they had planned,
that Jesus might heal that man.
In Matthew chapter 9, we find that the
very first thing that Jesus does is to
forgive the man his sins.
Now his friends, and surely all of those
who were looking on, if they had been
asked, What is this man's need?
would have replied, He needs to be healed
of his paralysis.
But it was obvious that Jesus saw a
greater need.
And so we look this evening at the
greatest need of the human heart.
Would you turn in your Bible again to
Matthew, and on this occasion to chapter 6
please.
Matthew chapter 6.
Now let me just remind you of the
context of the particular verse that I want
us to look at this evening.
The religious leaders in the day of Christ
were very proud of their religious practices, as
many are today.
But in particular they were proud of their
giving, of their praying, and of their fasting.
And you will notice even by glancing here
at Matthew chapter 6, that Jesus takes these
three activities of which they are so proud,
and he makes it clear that executed in
the way they performed them, they were totally
inadequate.
In presenting as Jesus is at this particular
time, the rules of the kingdom, Jesus told
them how they should give, how they should
pray, how they should fast.
And the middle section is that section on
prayer.
And right there in the center of everything,
Jesus presents what are now surely the most
familiar words in the whole of the Bible.
What we call the Lord's Prayer.
And in the middle of that prayer is
a petition that addresses our greatest need.
Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven
our debtors.
The Lord's Prayer is a remarkable prayer.
It was Martyn Lloyd-Jones who said that
at the end of his prayer times he
always used to recite the Lord's Prayer.
Because he felt that by doing that, if
he hadn't covered anything in his personal prayers,
he was sure to have covered it by
praying the Lord's Prayer.
And that's one of the wonders of this
prayer.
That the Lord Jesus in these few sentences
provides us with a model prayer.
And I don't believe that there is ever
a prayer that has been prayed that could
not be in some way covered by one
of these petitions.
So every part of the Lord's Prayer is
vital.
But, no petition in the Lord's Prayer is
more relevant than this one.
Of what value is it to have our
temporal needs met in the provision of our
daily bread and yet to be left with
this great need for our souls.
Sometimes when I'm in a situation where I
know that there are perhaps a majority of
people who are not believers, they're not Christians,
I may suggest that I know what their
greatest need is.
Which must sound rather surprising to them.
Because they know that I've never met them.
We've never spoken.
And yet I'm telling them that I know
what their greatest need is.
The greatest need of the human heart is
that we might have our sins forgiven.
It is a primary need because sin has
such serious repercussions.
Above all, it separates us from God in
heaven.
Now, and will do forever.
I want us to notice three things this
evening.
Firstly, what I've called an important debt.
An important debt.
The word translated debts here in Matthew's Gospel
is a noun and it implies ingratitude to
God.
Which is always the motive behind our sin.
So that when we sin, we owe God
a consequence.
A debt because His holiness has been violated.
And more than that, our transgression of God's
law and the word of God tells us
that that is what sin is.
Our transgression of God's law, by implication, also
includes a spirit of rebellion.
There is a sense in which our breaking
of any law, even a man-made law,
includes that, doesn't it?
If I drive faster than the speed limit
allows me to, that is a sign, it's
a signal, it signifies rebellion.
Far more serious when we break the law
of God.
Indeed, there's a word in the Old Testament
which is translated sin in our Bible that
pictures the shaking metaphorically of the fist in
the face of God.
It is mutiny, it is rebellion, it is
saying no to God.
Now if that were not a serious enough
problem, our problem is then compounded because we
neither have the ability or the wherewithal to
pay this debt that we've referred to.
Now we read earlier in our service from
Matthew chapter 18, the story of the unmerciful
servant, and it's a graphic illustration of this
particular problem.
For here was a servant who owed his
king today's equivalent of millions of pounds.
Now if there were any who were listening
to Jesus with half an ear at that
moment, then they would certainly have sat up
and listened at this particular moment in time.
Today's equivalent of millions of pounds.
He couldn't pay it.
Well, that's hardly surprising.
We could almost commend him because he asks
for time to pay.
Well, at the rate of pay for that
time, he'd need many, many lifetimes in order
to repay the debt.
Of course, it was not only an important
debt, it was an impossible debt.
And Jesus deliberately tells the story in that
way.
And he does that to illustrate that my
debt to God, your debt to God, is
not only an important debt, it is an
impossible debt.
God demands righteousness.
Now that's a word that we use.
We're familiar, many of us, with that word.
We use it in our churches.
We may even use it in our conversation.
We certainly sing about it in our hymn
book.
What are we talking about?
We're talking about obedience to God's laws.
A right standing before God.
And our sinful nature makes it impossible for
us to carry out those demands that God
places upon us.
That is, in terms of righteousness, by nature,
you and I are bankrupt.
The Apostle Paul puts it in this way.
There is no one who is righteous.
Well, I realize that he's quoting from elsewhere
in the Scripture, but he could actually have
stopped there, couldn't he?
To say, there is no one who is
righteous, surely, says it all.
I almost wonder whether it's there, because there
may just be someone who would say, except
me.
So, for that very person, the Scripture says
there is no one who is righteous, not
even one.
The Scripture says, all our righteous acts are
like filthy rags.
The kind of currency that we possess can
never satisfy God's demands.
If you're playing a game of Monopoly, and
you have a wad of Monopoly money, you
may feel very wealthy.
For that moment in time.
But you try going down to Tesco the
following morning, and using that to pay for
your groceries.
It's the wrong kind of currency.
And this is one of the problems that
we have by nature.
That there are those, who without an understanding
of the Gospel, feel that they do have
something that they can offer God, that will
provide some merit as far as He is
concerned.
And what I'm trying to make clear this
evening is this.
Any kind of currency that we feel we
may have can never satisfy God's demands.
And I suppose if it were only one
sin, we might excuse it or put it
into perspective.
But it's plural.
Forgive us our debts.
And you and I cannot begin to measure
how much we owed God.
But without God in our lives, we are
continually failing to reach His glorious standards.
That's what Paul means when he says, all
have sinned and fall short of the glory
of God.
So that in our sinful state, our sins
are multiplying all the time.
That if for one moment we do not
reflect the holiness of God in all that
we do, if we just once omit to
do what God's will desires us to do,
then we sin.
Again, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah speaks for
God when he writes, can the Ethiopian change
his skin or the leopard his spots?
Listen, neither can you do good who are
accustomed to doing evil.
So we cannot pay.
Nor can we shift this debt that we
owe God to a friend.
We cannot even be freed from this debt
at death, as would be the case in
other circumstances.
We cannot escape from our creditor by leaving
the country and living in a country where
the long arm of the law cannot reach
us.
We can try, and many do, to evade
God now.
But He's told us that every one of
us must give account to Him one day.
I love the story of the little boy
who upset his mother.
And knowing that he was much younger than
her and that he could outrun her, she
chased him around the kitchen table, down the
hall, but he got ahead of her, out
through the front door and across to the
other side of the road.
And there he waited.
Mother came to the front door and simply
stood at the front door and said, You
have to come home one day.
Men and women may flatter themselves that they
appear to be escaping God's judgment because in
His patience, God is waiting for repentance.
But let me tell you this evening, God's
forbearance, for that's what it is, is no
substitute for His forgiveness.
And if those sins are not forgiven, then
you and I are without excuse.
The whole world, the Scripture tells us, is
accountable to God.
There is no excuse and there is no
escape that we personally can engineer.
It is an important debt.
I owed a debt of obedience to my
Maker and I failed to keep it and
disobedience has incurred a debt that will result
in what the Bible tells us is the
ultimate punishment.
The wages of sin is death.
We have chosen to live this life without
God and God underscores that choice for the
whole of eternity.
An important debt.
But then secondly, notice an incomparable deliverance.
An incomparable deliverance.
I said earlier, if sin is the problem,
then forgiveness is the only solution.
You remember the story?
The servant was forgiven his debt.
Huge, unbelievably huge though it was.
Jesus in telling the story said, the Master
took pity on him, cancelled his debt and
let him go.
Here is a wonderful picture of God forgiving
however great the sin.
And God does not only forgive the greatest
of sinners, He forgives all of their sins.
He doesn't leave any to settle up later.
David in the Old Testament was aware of
that.
Oh, there was one particular sin that brought
everything to a head.
But when David confessed his sin, it was
confessing his transgressions.
And when he blesses God for what he
has done for his soul, he says we
are to praise God because he forgives all
our sins.
These trespasses are debts that we cannot repay
and only the creditor can cancel the debt.
Now there are some that you would meet
today who maybe will make the ridiculous situation
that it is possible to use an intermediary
that someone other than God can forgive you
your sin.
That is nonsense.
You imagine someone having offended you in some
way, taken some of your property and then
coming back to you a little later on
and saying, Oh, by the way, concerning that
particular issue between us, I want to tell
you that the situation is resolved.
A third party has forgiven me for stealing
that from you, for offending you in that
way.
We would look at him and wonder whether
he had lost his mind.
Just a moment, just a moment.
I'm the one you offended.
What were you doing going to a third
party to seek forgiveness for what you had
done to me?
If that is true in regard to offenses
committed against you and me, how much more
is that the case when God is the
offended party?
In that story that occurs in Matthew chapter
9, which we referred to earlier on, and
particularly in Mark chapter 2, which is the
parallel passage, the story of the paralyzed man,
even the narrow-minded religious leaders got it
right when they said, Who can forgive sin
except God alone?
Of course, their complaint was that they didn't
believe that Jesus was God.
Therefore, he didn't have the right to do
so.
But in fact, their statement was right.
Who can forgive sin except God alone?
Sin is the transgression of God's law.
God is the one against whom we have
sinned.
God is the one to whom we confess
and ask for forgiveness.
And when God forgives us, it is of
His grace.
Which means that it is entirely undeserved.
Of course, all of the benefits that we
receive from God are undeserved.
But nothing more so than the forgiveness of
sins.
And you may ask, Well, how can God
do that?
How is it possible that God can forgive
my sins in that way?
Surely a debt has to be paid in
some way.
Well, this is the wonderful good news of
the Christian gospel.
What God has done is simply this.
God has stopped the execution of justice on
you and me personally having already executed punishment
in His only and dearly loved Son.
Wounded for me.
There on the cross, He was wounded for
me.
Gone my transgressions.
And now I am free.
All because Jesus was wounded for me.
There is the ground or the basis for
our forgiveness.
It required nothing less than the death of
one whose life was of infinite value to
deal comprehensively with my guilt.
Some years ago when my mother-in-law
was alive, I used to pop in there
a few times a week just to make
sure that she was alright.
And on one occasion I went in and
saw that she had a plague of wasps
in her garden shed.
We could see them swarming around and it
was left to me to dispose of them.
So I went to the supermarket and I
bought one of these large aerosol cans of
horrible white foam that fortunately you can fire
from some distance.
And I returned to her home and just
opened the garden shed door a little, saw
the nest in the corner and fired the
entire canister in that direction.
Shut the door very quickly and went home.
I went back the next day.
There were no wasps swarming around outside the
shed.
And when I looked inside there was not
one wasp, at least most of them were
on their backs, but there was not one
wasp that was flying.
Now, I didn't have a visit a day
or two later from the law enforcement officers
who said, We understand that you have murdered
hundreds of wasps at 93 St. Peter's Rise.
And this may sound rather foolish, but what
I'm really saying is this, you see, I
could kill hundreds of wasps and not commit
a crime.
But I'm not able to kill one human
being without breaking the law.
And that means one thing in particular.
It means that the value of one human
life is far, far greater than all of
those wasps put together.
That's why I can't do it.
Therefore, what is the value of the life
of the Son of God laid down for
you and me?
The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity,
sin, of us all.
Or that marvelous verse from Paul's letter to
the Corinthians, God made Him who had no
sin to be sin for us.
Jesus was never a sinner.
Not even when He hung on that cross
was Jesus a sinner.
Though the Scripture is very accurate, it says
He was made sin.
My sin was taken and laid on Him.
And He was punished in my place.
And the moment I trusted in Christ, His
righteousness was placed on me.
And this wonderful transfer took place.
My sin had been given to Him.
His righteousness had been given to me.
And because He has paid my debt, God
is satisfied to look on Him and to
pardon me.
Micah, the Old Testament prophet, cries out in
wonder, Who is a God like you who
pardons sin and forgives transgression?
You do not stay angry forever, but delight
to show mercy.
And the 18th century hymn writer Samuel Davis
picks up that thought and writes these words,
Such vile offenses to forgive.
Such guilty, reckless souls to spare.
This is your grand prerogative.
And in the honor, none shall share.
In wonder lost, with trembling joy, we take
the pardon of our God.
A pardon granted from on high.
A pardon sealed with Jesus' blood.
Who is a pardoning God like you?
With grace so free, so rich, so true.
But there's more.
So comprehensively does God forgive that He not
only pardons, but in addition, He promises not
to remember our sins.
He blots them out.
He wipes the record clean.
He says, I will forgive their wickedness and
will remember their sins no more.
It's like that C button on a calculator.
You know, after you've done all of your
calculations, you press the C button and everything
disappears.
I can't understand how God is able to
do that, but there's the promise.
But an important word.
And I want you to understand this evening
that these wonderful blessings that come from the
grace of God come to us only as
we repent of those sins.
Now I guess that when this prayer, what
we call the Lord's Prayer, is recited week
by week, I guess that it's not always
offered with a spirit of repentance.
It may include some sorrow because of the
repercussions that have followed from our sins.
But you see, sorrow isn't sufficient.
That's not true repentance.
Let me put it like this.
In the right spirit of repentance, we will
be full of remorse for our sin even
if there were no punishment attached to it.
Can I say that again?
In a spirit of true repentance, you and
I will be full of remorse for our
sin even if there were no punishment attached
to it.
In a true spirit of repentance, we recognize
sin as dishonoring to God.
That's the remorse that we have and we
resolve to forsake it.
In repentance, therefore, there is not only the
forgiveness of sin, but there is a turning
from sin and there is a turning to
God.
Isaiah, another Old Testament prophet, put it so
clearly.
Let the wicked forsake his way.
Let him turn to the Lord and he
will have mercy on him and to our
God for he will freely pardon.
And I underline that this evening.
Sin cannot and will not be forgiven unless
and until we repent of it.
Now this petition in the Lord's Prayer and
the one to whom we pray reminds us
that this is the family prayer.
And I think it's important to mention that.
Indeed, I believe that the Lord's Prayer is
a prayer that every Christian should pray.
But I do believe it's a prayer for
Christians.
Because I believe as you read some of
the petitions, it is impossible for someone who
is outside of Christ to pray those prayers
because they have no intention that they should
be true even within their own hearts.
So this one already is our Father in
Heaven as we pray this prayer.
And this petition therefore is primarily the kind
of forgiveness that restores the intimacy of our
relationship with our Heavenly Father.
Oh yes, all that I've said about sin,
all that I've said about forgiveness of sin,
is applicable to every person here in this
great hall this evening.
But I do want to say that in
the context in which these words appear here
in the Lord's Prayer, it is a prayer
that is offered in order that the intimacy
of our relationship with our Heavenly Father might
be restored.
David had sinned grievously against God.
David had committed adultery and murder.
He was distraught as Nathan the prophet reveals
his sin to him.
And David when he later confesses his sin
in Psalm 51 says, Have mercy on me,
O God.
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me
from my sins.
I know my transgressions and my sin is
ever before me.
Against you, you only have I sinned and
done what is evil in your sight.
And in the narrative of the story, the
prophet Nathan was able to say to David,
The Lord has taken away your sin, you're
forgiven, and you're not going to die.
So that not only the guilt, but also
the punishment of sin had been dealt with.
David's greatest need had been met.
And so he cries out, Restore to me
the joy of your salvation.
David had not lost his salvation.
He had lost the joy of fellowship with
God.
And confession of sin restores that intimacy.
And then again in John chapter 13, you
remember when the Lord Jesus washes the disciples
feet.
One of the most intimate moments that Jesus
shared with these often wayward and sinful men.
Peter objects to what the Lord is intending
to do.
But then he relents.
Not just my feet, but my hands and
my head as well.
To which Jesus replies, A person who has
had a bath needs only to wash his
feet.
His whole body is clean.
In other words, the person who has bathed
in the morning only requires the means to
wash the dust from his feet.
There in that eastern society.
And the spiritual application that Jesus was applying
to his disciples was that these disciples did
not need the entire bath again.
They had had, if you like, their spiritual
bath.
They needed daily cleansing in order to retain
the fullness of their relationship with Christ.
And so I say that because if tonight
we were coming to Christ for the first
time for the forgiveness of sins, or if
we were coming to Christ for the fiftieth
time, God doesn't tire of hearing our confession.
You are a forgiving God, said Nehemiah.
Gracious and compassionate.
Slow to anger and abounding in love.
You delight to show mercy, says the prophet
Micah.
What an incomparable deliverance this is.
Devils are beyond hope.
Sinful men and women only have to ask
and the pardon is there.
An incomparable deliverance.
And lastly, an implicit duty.
Because this petition in the Lord's Prayer closes
with a challenge to those who believe they
are already within the family.
Jesus said, when you pray, say, forgive us
our debts as we also have forgiven our
debtors.
This is no optional extra.
It's part of the petition.
And that second part of the prayer is
as important as the first part of the
prayer.
And it is most interesting that Jesus, as
we have it in verses 14 and 15,
amplifies that petition.
Something that he doesn't do on any of
the others.
If you forgive men when they sin against
you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their
sins, your Father will not forgive.
And the first question that prompts me to
ask is, is that the way I want
God to forgive me?
Do I want God to forgive me as
I forgive others?
Literally in proportion to.
That's what I'm praying.
And here again, the parable of the unmerciful
servant reveals the truth behind the prayer.
The first servant delivered that huge debt of,
well, today's equivalent of millions of pounds, finds
another servant who owes him the equivalent of
a few pounds and insists on being repaid.
And is judged by his master for not
showing similar mercy as was shown to him.
Jesus is not suggesting that our forgiveness of
others is so meritorious that because of that
fact God will forgive us our sins.
We're not saved because of any good work
including our forgiveness of others.
And incidentally, nor are they saved because of
our forgiveness of them.
They still need the greater forgiveness of God
since ultimately, as we saw, it is against
Him they have offended.
What our forgiveness of others does is to
remove any barrier to our experiencing God's forgiveness.
The natural man is so inclined to revenge.
People almost regard it, don't they, as a
right.
That the ordinary man is surprised when someone
doesn't want revenge.
But here is the uniqueness of the faith
that as a Christian, you and I are
able to forgive whatever grievances you may have
against another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Says Paul.
How is that possible?
Let me make three suggestions as we close.
The first is this.
If we are able to do that, it
is evidence of God's grace in our lives.
Christians are to be characterized as those who
forgive.
In the previous chapter in Matthew, Matthew chapter
5, Jesus said, as part of his Sermon
on the Mount, you have heard that it
was said, love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.
Well, that's what the world says.
Jesus said, but I tell you, love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you
that you may be sons of your Father
in Heaven.
It is evidence of grace in the life.
I was asked only last week by some
friends from Northern Ireland about the forgiveness of
those, particularly in their context there, who are
not prepared even to acknowledge their sin.
How do you forgive those who are not
even prepared to acknowledge that they have sinned
against you?
Well, isn't this verse that I've just read
a clue, an answer to that?
To love your enemies and to pray for
them is the equivalent of forgiving them and
demonstrates that you and I are sons of
God.
Paul says we're to be kind and compassionate
to one another, forgiving each other, just as
in Christ God forgave you.
But not only is it evidence of grace
in our lives, secondly, an unforgiving spirit will
exclude us from Heaven for this reason, because
our forgiving others is a sign that God
has forgiven us.
If we cannot illustrate that in our lives,
if we continue, to put it bluntly and
in today's language, if we continue to hold
a grudge, then there has to be a
question mark over our own forgiveness.
Get this into perspective.
However much we feel it costs us to
forgive someone who has offended us, our forgiveness
of others will never be as costly as
God's forgiveness of us.
Thomas Watson in his lovely commentary on the
Lord's Prayer says, No man can do so
much wrong to us all our life as
we do to God in one day.
The unforgiving servant was imprisoned until his debt
was paid, which would mean he was there
forever.
And Jesus concludes the story with the warning,
This is how my Heavenly Father will treat
each of you unless you forgive from your
heart.
That's what the believer is able to do
because of the change of heart that has
occurred there by the miracle of God's grace.
And then thirdly, forgiving others also reflects the
example of Christ.
Jesus wept over his enemies.
Men beat him, spat on him, abused him,
forced a crown of thorns onto his head.
And yet whatever men did, the response was,
Father, forgive them.
And when we forgive others, we reflect the
example of Christ.
An unforgiving spirit is a sinful spirit that
will bring the Lord's discipline on us.
How could you and I ask for and
expect mercy and forgiveness from God when we're
not prepared to give it ourselves?
Now this parable that we've been looking at
arose from Peter asking how many times should
he forgive a brother?
I say, well done Peter for knowing that
forgiveness was the right thing to do.
Peter had learned that and we commend him
for that.
And Peter now thinks he's being generous by
suggesting seven times because the Pharisees only taught
three times.
So he's going over the top.
Seven times Lord?
Jesus said no, 77 times or maybe alternatively
70 times 7.
And what Jesus meant by that figure was
that we are to forgive with time without
number.
Why?
We are to forgive because in Christ God
forgave you.
And how much will He forgive us?
77 times?
No, an infinite number of times.
Our Father, forgive us our debts as we
also have forgiven our debtors.
Forgive me for putting it in this way.
The Lord's Prayer is not a shopping list.
Every petition, every petition is there to exalt
and to honor God so that you and
I hallow God's name.
You and I advance God's kingdom.
You and I do God's will as we
forgive those who are our debtors and enjoy
the forgiveness of our own debts.
And perhaps that's something that we need to
put right tonight.
Certainly with God and with a brother or
a sister.
Might mean a telephone call to someone this
evening.
There's an unusual epitaph on a large headstone
in a cemetery outside New York City.
It's unusual because there is no name on
the grave.
There is no mention of the person's age.
There is nothing that says anything about the
person lying there being a beloved mother, father,
wife, husband, brother, sister, son, daughter.
There's only one word on the headstone.
It's the word forgiven.
Someone wanted to show others that he died
in peace because he was forgiven.
Do you know that assurance tonight?
Have you ever known that assurance?
Could that word be written across your life
tonight?
Forgiven.
If you have a doubt, if you're not
sure, let me tell you this.
You can know that tonight.
You can experience the forgiveness of God.
As firstly, you acknowledge your sin.
And secondly, you repent of your sin.
Acknowledging and forsaking.
And then thirdly, putting your trust and faith
in Jesus Christ alone.
The Savior of sinners.
He's the only one that can meet the
heart's greatest need.
You can know tonight that you're forgiven.
John Stocker of the 18th century, thrilled to
the mercy of God in his life.
And he wrote these words.
Your mercy, my God, is the theme of
my song.
The joy of my heart and the boast
of my tongue.
Your free grace alone from the first to
the last has won my affections and bound
my soul fast.
Your mercy in Jesus has freed me from
hell.
Its glories I'll sing and its wonders I'll
tell.
This Jesus, my friend, when he hung on
the tree, there opened the channel of mercy
for me.
Great Father of mercies, your goodness I own.
And the covenant love of your crucified Son.
All praise to the Spirit whose whisper divine
seals mercy and pardon and righteousness.
Our Father, forgive us our debts.
Let's pray together.
Our gracious God, we thank you for your
word.
And we ask again that by your Spirit
you will apply that word to our lives
this evening.
We confess that we have been participants so
often in causing pain to others because of
a lack of forgiveness.
And we pray that you will teach us
these great truths this evening.
And remind us of the greatness of your
mercy toward us.
The forgiveness that we have experienced for a
debt that we could not possibly repay.
We thank you for your grace and for
your mercy.
And pray that you will help us to
reflect that in our relationship with others and
especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.
And we pray particularly for any here this
evening who are just unsure whether they are
right with you, whether they truly have been
forgiven.
By your Spirit, we pray, deal graciously with
them, grant to them the gift of faith
and enable them to rejoice in a wonderful
Savior.
Hear our prayer and accept our praise in
His name.
Amen.