That Christ May Dwell In Your Hearts

Matthew 18:21-35

Jesus, has just finished teaching on how you deal with a unrepentant trespassing brother in the church.....He gave the steps to do this......the last is to bring this brother to the church, if not he is to be as a heathen......

Peter, knowing that Jesus has talked about forgiveness and then this about the trespassing brother, he then asks Jesus how many times do we forgive a brother 7 times?

In putting the number 7 to this question, we must understand the significance of that.......

In Amos 1 we read where forgiveness is offered 3 times but not 4.....

Amos 1:6 “Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Gaza, And for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; Because they carried away captive the whole captivity, To deliver them up to Edom:”

The rabbis taught that since God forgave Israel’s enemies 3 times, it was unnecessary to forgive anymore than 3 times.

So, this was Peter’s thinking in approaching Jesus with this question, he would give a number the goes beyond what is said in Amos and what the rabbis taught, therefore he would look like a superstar!

Jesus’ answer revealed to Peter that he was not a super apostle, but that he was in need! It also revealed to us that same!

70 x 7......some disagree on the calculation of this number because of the translation in Greek, however do not get too technical here! The idea is that this is an innumerable amount......

I calculate it as 490 times.......(the others say 77 times) either way we are talking about in a days time, to offend someone 77 times during a day would be hard to do.....but I go to the bigger number, I will tell you why in a minute!

Peter thought that his 7 number was huge in comparison of with what was taught, Jesus just blowed him away with the number He gave.

We set limits, don’t we? So, we don’t feel as bad about our evil!! There is no way someone can forgive someone that has offended them over and over again! But, we can forgive them 7 times which in the earthly mind goes above and beyond!

The word is magnanimous, which means noble and greathearted.

One of the truest realities in setting these limits, we have made human beings to look noble, but in reality we are all depraved..........

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

So, what Jesus does here is bust the pride’s bubble and give an impossible number for the flesh and destroy’s any noble thoughts for humanity!

When Jesus does that here, He then gives a parable about forgiveness.....The servant of the Lord could not pay his debts, but was forgiven of them, but when that servant went home, his servant owed him a significant smaller amount, but yet it was not forgiven nor allowed time to repay.

He through his servant into prison, till he paid the debt he owed.

The others saw this and was aware of what the servant/lord was forgiven and they went to this guy’s lord and told him what had happened.

So, the first lord called this guy before him and called him a wicked servant and delivered him to tormentors till he should pay all that was due......

The last verse is key here......Matthew 18:35 “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”

The whole of the Word of God teaches forgiveness!

Let’s start with God’s proclamation of Himself to Moses.......Exodus 34:6-7 “And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”

This is the nature of God is to forgive......He calls on us, that if we want to follow His way, to do the same!

Mark 11:26 “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

James 2:13 “For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.”

There are other passages on the duty of the believer to forgive!

I now want to dig around in our lives just a minute.......How many times have you forgiven? I believe if Jesus calls for the forgiveness of a trespasser 490 times, what about 490 trespassers? I would believe it would be the same..........So, how many have we forgiven or not?

As, I started out going in the direction of teaching on forgiveness this morning I was driven to the difficulty to forgive when you have been offended greatly!

I am not going to try and force this accusations on you, other than to ask, how many times have you been offended during your lifetime?

In those times how difficult was it to forgive or have you forgave?

I have heard many circumstances throughout my life that I would say.... “how in the world can they forgive them”

Have you ever said or thought...... “I will forgive but I will not forget!”?

I believe that true forgiveness based on human love is impossible, we can say the things out loud and make ourselves look noble, but truly it is extremely difficult and most of the time that is for one offense!

To forgive the same person over and over again is humanly impossible!

Oh sure you can give it “lip-service” but never having a heart to seek out there good!

That is True Forgiveness.........God’s Forgiveness

Hebrews 8:12 “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”

Hebrews also tells us the God is a rewarder of them that seek Him diligently!

Isaiah 30:18 “And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you, And therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: For the Lord is a God of judgment: Blessed are all they that wait for him.”

God is exalted because of His long-suffering, mercy, and Grace!

God’s forgiveness is true forgiveness, we might define ours differently or just say we are forgiving like God does....but do we truly?

I saw a post on FB one time, this church had their sign destroyed by someone and the poster went of tyrant about how whoever done that will get what’s coming to them and then at the end they said they were praying for whoever done that!

We say the dumbest things sometimes! They might not be dumb to us, be most definitely to God!

How Godly are we, when we look into our self and see how we forgive?

This all got me to thinking, if we only understood how much we have been forgiven, then maybe forgiveness would be important to us!

I do not like self-help teaching, I find only repentance seems to bring me to the place of healing or help!

I cannot teach how to forgive like God does, other than to deny yourself and follow after Jesus!

So, I guess we must know how much we have been forgiving........the unforgiving servant didn’t understand how much he had been forgiven.......

Or maybe he was just glad to be out from under the debt and went back to living for himself and felt embolden and lorded over everyone that was indebted to him!

I think that might be the case, we get forgiven and get proud and live proudly!

The only way we can even get close to the heart of forgiveness is to understand how much we have been forgiven....Ephesians 2:1-9.......

I know you know this chapter.......but it reveals to me the weight of my sin toward God and how much grace was shown to me!!!!

It was definitely more than 490 times!!!!! Oh, that brings to the most weighty thoughts of how much I have been forgiven!

I would say how much I have sinned, which is true, but it is not about me, it is about God and Christ that has forgiven me so greatly!

Romans 5 speaks this right out.....Romans 5:7-11 “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.”

Jesus died for wretches, enemies, wicked, perverse, sinners!

Think on how much you have been forgiven, and think of the offenses to God you have and all of those have been forgotten because of the Son of God taking the wrath of God that you are rightly!

The penalty still needs to be paid, so Jesus paid it and in-turn forgave us!

There is so much weight there, does that affect you?

You might say I don’t want to live my life like that all the time? You might even say that God does want you too either......but I go back to Isaiah 30:18…that God is exalted in His Graciousness toward us only God can do that!!!

TRUE.....only God can forgive like that, I see it in how much I have been forgiven!!!! I am truly overwhelmed by His forgiveness!

Back now, to us forgiving in our lives........This what Scripture tells us....

Ephesians 4:32 “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

Colossians 3:13 “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”

The teaching is Christ, He is Who we follow........

The teaching on forgiveness and understanding how much you have been forgiven!

If you don’t forgive someone else as a Christian, you cannot know the forgiveness of God in terms of communion, fellowship, joy, all that ought to be there between you and the Lord.

That leads us to a prayer that Paul gives for the church at Ephesus and it is great for us too.........Ephesians 3:14-21.....

Here’s Paul’s prayer. This is what Paul wants “ - What is Paul’s prayer? It is that the Spirit would lead you to a full understanding of the love of Christ. It always points to Christ. Here the charismatic movement fails the test of exalting Christ above all by exalting that false image of the Holy Spirit that they have created. Show me a person obsessed with the Holy Spirit, and I’ll show you a person not filled with the Holy Spirit. Show me a person obsessed with the Lord Jesus Christ, never tiring of learning and loving Him, entranced by His magnificent glory, and seeking to obey Him and be like Him, and I’ll show you a Spirit-filled person. That’s what a Spirit-filled person looks like.

It always points to Christ.....that Christ may dwell in our hearts, that overriding Power of God will take over our selfish fleshly desires and point to the love of Christ, in which cannot be understood naturally, it is Spiritual!

What always gets my goat is the things people want to attribute to the Holy Spirit, all the powerful things that they see, but truly the Holy Spirit points us to Christ and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge!

That is supernatural! That is the fulness of God!

The exceedingly above all we can think or ask, is the Love of God.......what is exceedingly above all I can think or ask, is how God, the purest, perfect, holy Being ever known would want me to have life everlasting with Him!

And to allow us access to His power......which is His Love, the Love that He is!

If you want to forgive someone 490 times, get know Christ and His Love, that is our prayer!

If you do not want to forgive someone 490 times, you need to repent and turn from yourself and get to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge!