Heart 3: Forgivene as the Lord forgave you

Bible Reading

Matthew 6:14–15 CSB

14 “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. 15 But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.

Matthew 18:21–35 CSB

21 Then Peter approached him and asked, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?” 22 “I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven. 23 “For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle accounts, one who owed ten thousand talents was brought before him. 25 Since he did not have the money to pay it back, his master commanded that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt. 26 “At this, the servant fell facedown before him and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan. 28 “That servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him, started choking him, and said, ‘Pay what you owe!’ 29 “At this, his fellow servant fell down and began begging him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30 But he wasn’t willing. Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed. 31 When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their master everything that had happened. 32 Then, after he had summoned him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.”

Introduction

John is at the pub with his friend. He rang up his friend as he was leaving his house after what seemed to be the 100th argument he had with his wife this week.

You see John and his wife have been having marriage problems for a while now. He keeps doing things that make her feel hurt, he keeps not doing the things she expects him to do. From her perspective, John just doesn’t seem to get it. And every time he does something like this, it is like another cut, another bruise yet another injury he inflicts on her, even though she knows he doesn’t intend to hurt her.

From John’s perspective he just doesn’t know where is going wrong. I mean he is just doing what he always did, and it seems to him as if his wife has changed. What used to make her happy no longer does. He doesn’t understand that his wife was merely putting up with his quirks, but of late they just irrated her more and more.

John and his wife both know that they need to work on forgiveness for their marriage to get better. They know they are in a rough spot, all marriages have them, but they are committed to each other. To do so, they will need to spend a lot of time working on forgiveness. Forgiving each other.

How do they do that? After the hurts and the slow decline in relationship, how do they forgive?

I mean how do any of us forgive? We’ve all been hurt at times, haven’t we?

We’ve all had someone break our heart by doing something very hurtful

– it may have been a girlfriend or a husband,

a friend or a colleague or a brother or sister.

Maybe it was something minor which you got over fairly quickly, or perhaps it was something major. We’ve all been there. How do we respond to such things? How should we respond? How do we forgive, with all our heart?

Because here is the thing. The danger for John and his wife, and the danger for us, is that if we do not forgive, our hurts turn to festering pussy wounds. Unforgiveness rots us from the inside. And as we will see how we approach forgiveness is a diagnostic test of our hearts. Our capacity to forgive tells us whether it is well with our soul or not.

So let’s dive in and have a look.

The first passage which we read this morning from Matthew 6 gives us Jesus’ commentary on verse 12, which is part of the Lord’s prayer.

So here we meet Jesus, he is teaching his disciples how to pray, and in the Lord’s prayer he says people are to pray “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Now he is busy explaining this request to his disciples and he says:

Matthew 6:14–15 CSB

14 “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. 15 But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.

And in the parable we read earlier, Jesus elaborates further about what it means to forgive, what true forgiveness looks like.

Now When we read these passages, we have to ask ourselves what is it that Jesus wants us to understand?

And I think there are at least two things we need to grapple with if we are going to live lives of Christian forgiveness:

The first is that we need forgiveness.

The second is that if we receive forgiveness we forgive.

We need forgiveness

For many today the Lord’s Prayer is just part of the liturgy, it is one of those things that is done as part of a service.

For some it is an empty repetition. But there are several reasons that we have to pray it, that we need to pray it, that we want to pray it.

But one of the primary reasons is, as we saw last week, we are totally depraved sinner.

You and I can’t help but to sin, because that is our nature, outside of Christ.

Romans 3:23 :

all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

And because we are sinners and because we fall short of the glory of God, we need of forgiveness. Now please hear me right, brothers and sisters: It isn’t about salvation that we’re taking here. If in God’s grace we have accepted Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, then we have been saved! We have been saved, for His sacrifice of that forsaken cross is a once-for-all sacrifice. Because of his death on the cross, believers’ sins are no longer held against them.

SO why does Jesus teach us to pray for this forgiveness daily? Does our prayers each day stack up again, and we need to do something to be “resaved”?

Well no.

We need to practice daily prayers of forgivesss, because we are slowly being changed into forgiven people.

The more we confess our sins and pray for forgiveness, the more God, throuhg his Holy Spirit shapes us into forgiven people.

You see there is an identity issue here. There is a change that happens in who we are as we are fogivenen. And this is a daily process that happens as we put ourselves before the Lord, our Abba Father each day and confess our sin, and experience afresh the deep and significant truth that we cannot exhaust his grace for us.

Friends, when you and I first believed, our sins were all forgiven. Because of Christ’s sacrifice God no longer remembers our sins. We are given a new label to hang around our neck.

But again like we saw last week, we need to grow out of our old nature. Our sanctification takes a whole lifetime. We are still “miserable sinners” as the Heidelberg Catechism calls us. This is what that greatest of evangelists Paul is talking about when he says:[3]

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.

That is why Jesus teaches us to pray for forgiveness daily, because daily we need it, need to experience it, and need to rediscover who we are as forgiven people.

That is why we teach our kids to sing the prayer:

Many sins I've done today Please, Lord take them all away Look upon me in Thy grace Make me pure before Thy face.

Even the most conscientious or authentic of Christians sins every day. Each and every one of us is still being transformed. Each and every one of us is still on the road of transformation. So when we pray for forgiveness, we recognize that we are not yet perfect and that our actions and attitudes fall far short of kingdom standards. We know, don’t we, that we need this daily forgiveness.

· For some it may be for the desires with which they struggle.

· For others it may be the thoughts that travel through their minds every day.

· For others it may be a gossiping nature.

· Perhaps for you it is the shameful words that you use when you’re with your friends.

· Or perhaps it is the hurtful things you say about others.

We are sinners, and we need forgiveness.

BUT we have the precious assurance that we can come before our Father, our Abba, and ask for that forgiveness in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Because our sins have already been fogiven.

There is this kind of feedback loop, we pray for forgiveness because we have already been forgiven. And as we are forgiven, we change, which leads us into deeper repentance and deeper forgiveness.

And this changes who we are over time.

Now how do we know if this process is really happening in our heart? How do we know that we are truly repenting and changing - well, says Jesus, look at how you forgive.

A forgiving nature

Jesus teaches us to pray for forgiveness, but He also teaches us that we are to be a forgiving people. We are to have forgiving hearts. Not just 7 times, but 70 times 7. Forgiveness is supposed to be who we are becoming, because we have been forgiven.

Listen again to those verses:

Matthew 6:14–15 CSB

14 “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. 15 But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.

What is Jesus saying here? I mean didn’t we just say that we are forgiven always when we trust in JEsus?

So then how can JEsus now say, if we don’t forgive others, the Father God will not forgive us?

To best understand this, let’s look at the parable that we read earlier – the parable of the unforgiving or unrelenting servant. The parable is Jesus’ response to Peter question about how many times a brother should be forgiven, and in it Jesus paints a picture of what a forgiving heart looks like. And this depiction of a forgiving heart is also applicable to our text today.

The first servant had a huge debt, 10,000 talents – it would have been impossible to repay from normal wages. You see, the daily wage of a labourer was one denarius, and 6000 denarii made up one talent – now multiply that by 10,000, and you get to 60 million days! So this servant owed more than 190,000 years of labour!

We’re not told how that debt accumulated, but that’s not important – the point is that this was a huge debt, impossible to repay.

Jesus is reminding us how big our sin debt is. This impossibly big account has been accumulated against God because of our sin.

So the master calls the servant to account, and as he cannot repay the debt, he throws himself at the master’s mercy. And amazingly the master aside his ginormous debt! What amazing grace is that!

But then the servant walks out, and we get to see his dark side. He’s hard and ruthless, choking a fellow servant and throwing him in jail for a debt equivalent to just about 3 month’s labour.

Hardly gracious, is it? Hardly the mercy he just experienced? And when the master hears about this, he’s rightly outraged and has the first servant thrown in jail to be tortured….. and then the parable ends with these shocking words:

Matthew 18:35 CSB

35 So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.”

Wowee. And people think Christianity is all about just being nice and decent people.

No friends, Now we can’t just sweep this under the rug can we. Pretend this isn’t in the Bible. This is Jesus himself speaking.

So what do we do with this?

You see, this parable is a picture of someone who has eagerly received God’s forgiveness but isn’t willing to forgive others. This is the same thing that Jesus was talking about in verses 14-15 of chapter 6 which we read earlier. But perhaps some of you might be asking the question: So is Jesus saying here that in order to obtain forgiveness from God, we must first forgive others? Is our forgiveness conditional upon us forgiving first? That sounds a bit like we have to work to convince God that He has to forgive us, doesn’t it? It sounds a bit like having to earn our forgiveness, doesn’t it? It sounds a bit like being forgiven depends on us, and not like a gracious act of God.

But if that were the case, the Bible would be contradicting itself. Ephesians 2 tells us that God reconciled himself to us – while we were still His enemies. He didn’t wait for us to forgive others before He forgave us – no, we were still His enemies; He reached out to us.

We see that also in Jesus’ magnificent and sublime words on the cross – Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. These were the people crucifying Him, the people taunting Him, the people denying that He was indeed God. But He still asked His Father for forgiveness for them. Even in His agony He reached out with forgiveness, yes even to those who did not ask for forgiveness.

When God’s grace comes into our hearts, when the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, we are slowly being transformed into what God wants us to be… and yes, that is a slow process, a process that will not be finished until we meet Christ in person. But in the meantime we demonstrate that we have been forgiven, by whether we forgive. Listen to what Paul tells us:[6]

forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

God’s forgiveness isn’t conditional on us first forgiving others. .

Our forgiveness of others is a consequence of being forgiven people. Being forgiving people isn’t a condition for God’s forgiveness, it is a consequence of it – it’s not a condition but a consequence.

Having a forgiving nature is a result of having received God’s gracious and merciful forgiveness. Forgiveness is how we display the fact that we’ve been forgiven. Forgiveness shows that we are the light of the world. If we refuse to forgive, what does that say about our faith, about our acceptance of God’s grace?

Let me be crystal clear here:

According to Jesus, if you do not forgive, you are not forgiven. Not because you need to forgive to earn his forgivenss, but because your forgiveness by God so changes your heart that your nature becomes forgiving.

So if you are not forgiving, then your nature has not been changed by God and your sins have not been forgiven.

And so according to JEsus, if you do not forgive, you are not forgiven.

Holding a grudge is by definition non-Christian. Not forgiving hurts done to you, no matter how grievous those hurts might be, is a poison that kills you spiritually. If you love Jesus, then you will forgive as God forgave you.

These are hard and difficult words, but they are words that need to be heard. These are words that need to be heard by all of us who hold a death-grip on our grudges, all of us who refuse to forgive others, all of us who keep on digging up old hurts and who just refuse to let go of the hurts of the past 5, 10, 20 or how-many-ever years.

When we hold on to that hurt, when we hold onto that grudge, Satan rejoices, because he’s got us! He loves to live where there’s bitterness and anger.

But we have the glorious assurance that we have a God who, as Hebrews 10 says, does not remember our sins – they’re gone, we have been truly forgiven, our debt has been cleared, our chains of slavery are gone. As we sing in the new version of Amazing Grace:

My chains are gone, I've been set free. My God, my Saviour has ransomed me.

And like a flood His mercy reigns. Unending love, amazing grace.

But friends, shouldn’t this spur us on, encourage us, drive us to ask ourselves how this should impact on us? If we’ve been ransomed, if we’ve been forgiven, if our chains are gone and if we’ve been set free, how can we let ourselves be made slaves again to the sin of being unforgiving?

Are our grudges our most prized possessions?

Being forgiving, truly forgiving, is an indication that we appreciate the full extent of God’s mercy towards us. It’s a picture of where we really stand with God. It’s a picture of our spiritual health.

If we remain unforgiving, if we keep on holding grudges, if we keep harping on about this or that thing that someone has done, if we are just not willing to take that step of full forgiveness, of setting aside that debt, it tells us something about where we stand with God.

It tells us that we really do not know Jesus

and have no part of Him.

Jesus said that people will know that we are His disciples if we love one another.[8] But there is no love without forgiveness.

So where does that leave us?

Maybe you need to forgive your parents or someone in your family for something they did to you? Do it right now, set it aside and let it go.

Do it now, while there is still time.

And don’t forget to lift them up with a loving heart before God, asking Him to bless them, for in their blessings you too will be blessed.

Perhaps your husband/ wife has been thoughtless in actions and has badly hurt you and you’re struggling to forgive them. Dearest brother and sister, forgive him or her right now and do it in love and from the heart! And mean it, as you pray for God’s rich streams of mercy and blessing to flow out over her.

Perhaps you’ve been unwilling to forgive that friend who lied about you and spread rumours about you. Forgive them, do it now! Let your forgiveness set you free from those chains of slavery with which Satan is trying to bind you! And truly pray for him to be blessed too.

Friends, forgiveness has to be an all-of life thing. It has to be practical and it has to be honest. It can’t be superficial, it can’t be shallow – it has to be something that comes from deep inside you, from a heart that has accepted God’s forgiveness. It has to be forgiveness from the heart.

And friends, I have to tell you that forgiveness isn’t an optional extra – it isn’t something that you can choose not to do. It’s a command, it is something you and I have to do. And it is something you and I need to do on a daily basis – forgiveness isn’t an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.

[10]It’s a lifelong commitment. Now I’m not saying this is going to be easy – it can be extremely difficult, and the more you’ve been hurt, the more difficult it is going to be. But let me tell you this too: the worse the hurt and the bigger the pain is that you’re struggling to let go, the greater the blessing will be when you do forgive, and the more God’s streams of mercy will flow out into your life.

So let me ask you:

How are you going with forgiveness? Where are you really standing with God?

Are you willing to come before God today and pray for forgiveness and pray for a forgiving heart? Are you willing right now to make that commitment, that lifetime commitment to forgive and keep forgiving?

Friends, before we pray, let me invite anyone who is struggling with forgiveness and wants to talk about it, to come and see me or any of the elders after the sermon or at any time, and we’ll be happy to work through this with you.

Let us pray.

[1]Matthew 6:12-14 [2]Deuteronomy 15 [3]Romans 7:19 [4]Tim Keller, quoted by J Piper in “You Are More Sinful Than You Know, More Loved Than You Imagine”, 2015-08-17. [5]Matthew 18:35 [6]Colossians 3:13 [7]2 Corinthians 2:10-11 [8]John 13:25 [9]Ella A. Giles, “Forgiveness” in Local and National Poets of America, (Chicago,IL: APA, 1890), p. 118 [10]Martin Luther King, as quoted on https://parade.com/252644/viannguyen/15-of-martin-luther-king-jr-s-most-inspiring-motivational-quotes/