Forgiving Your Brother

Call to Worship: Nehemiah 9:5b-6 // Prayer

Adoration: Our God: blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You are the great I AM—you alone. You alone possess life in yourself. And from your endless life, you have made the heavens to their furthest reaches, with all their trillions of stars—distances and numbers beyond our grasp, but a mere drop in the ocean of your eternal glory. You have made our earth and all that is on it; the seas, and all that is in them; and all the host of heaven worships you!

Confession: And here we are, your creatures whom you have redeemed—we come to you, knowing your mercy is as vast as your glory. And we need your mercy badly. For this week, far too often, our thoughts have been driven by pride, and our actions by selfishness. Far too often, we have loved your good gifts to us while forgetting you—making your gifts into idols and trying to find our satisfaction and glory in them. Father, forgive us, for we have sinned against you.

Thanksgiving: Oh what grace to have a Father infinite in glory, perfect in purity, and yet who so instantly cherishes the confessions of his sinful children! For we know, Father, that you have redeemed us from the curse of the law by sending your Son to become a curse for us. Cursed was he as he hung on the cross! And blessed are we now forever in him!

Supp: And so we bow before you, who has saved and adopted us and given us your name: we ask that according to the riches of your glory you would grant us to be strengthened with power through your Spirit within us, so that your Son may dwell more richly within us, that we, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know your love to us through Christ which surpasses knowledge, that we might be filled with all of your glorious fullness // and since you are able to do abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, we lift up to you not only ourselves, but also Cross Creek Bible Church; we ask for this glorious fulness in their hearts also—this deep knowledge of your love; and we ask that as our two congregations come together on Good Friday, that our hearts together would be pierced with the depth of your love as it can only be seen in Christ crucified // But what of the lost in our community? We ask that you would help us, guide us, show us how to reach them with this good news of Christ crucified; we ask that you would give us opportunities to share the gospel, and make us faithful stewards of these opportunities, as only your power can make us // and finally we bring before you Ukraine and Russia—the many lives lost, families devastated—we ask for you to mercifully bring the conflict to an end; but even more, we ask that you would make your people in those two countries shine all the brighter as a city set on a hill, and that through their imitation of your Son and their announcement of the gospel, that you would bring many sons to glory even in the midst of that darkness // and now, we especially ask that you might teach us the imitation of your mercy, and compel our hearts toward the forgiveness of others...

Announcements

New discipleship booklet + new church directory

Holy week Schedule: several events worth attending in your bulletin, but what we’re emphasizing as a church family:

Good Friday service, here @ 6:30 pm

Easter Brunch @ 9:45; Easter service at the normal time...

Speaking of which, Easter Brunch signups are in the back!

???Toddlers in the service??? Training can be a little noisy; but it’s a good thing!

As kids get used to sitting through the service, it starts to speak to their hearts—

Not just the words we sing, but the fact that all these adults think it’s worth setting aside time to praise;

Not just the message preached, but the fact that all these adults want to stop and hear the Word of God, etc.

Prayer for potluck + short congregational meeting

Benediction

May your hearts be assured of the Lord’s steadfast love, which has sprinkled you clean with the blood of Christ; may the bones which the Lord has broken rejoice; may your lips be opened to declare his praises, so that you surround each other with shouts of deliverance. Amen.

From Psalm 32 and 51

Sermon

Introduction

How can a Christian be both truthful and gracious?

It’s not a small question.

I remember speaking with a fellow officer in the Navy who seemed interested in spiritual things. But she relayed something to me: she had had an abortion. And wasn’t that the unforgivable sin, she thought? Wouldn’t that prevent her from being Christian? She had rightly identified the fact that killing her unborn child was sin; but for whatever reason, her experience of Christianity had made her think there was no grace for her. She had not been told that Christ’s blood could wash away her guilt.

But then, there’s the opposite problem. A number of churches today believe grace and truth are in a tug of war. And they recognize that, out in the world, grace is a lot easier to sell than truth. So they minimize the truth about sin until they have almost nothing left to say. All are graciously welcomed through their doors, but few who enter ever have their sins truly diagnosed. And without diagnosis, there can be no healing.

So we certainly don’t want this path of minimizing truth. But at the same time, we don’t want to ever downgrade God’s grace. So what should we do?

Sometimes Christians see this difficulty and say, “We need to balance grace and truth.” And I sympathize with them. I think I know what they’re trying to say. But it’s not quite right. Because, again, that makes it sound like grace and truth are in a tug of war. And that simply isn’t the case in Scripture.

“Now hold on,” someone might say. “If I tell somebody the truth about his sins, it will certainly feel ungracious to him.” Yes, that’s true. And to some extent, that’s pride. We all have inflated opinions of ourselves—it’s part of our fallen nature. And so we really hate it when someone points out darkness in our hearts.

But there’s another reason people don’t like to have their sins pointed out: they are defending themselves against a real threat.

What do people normally do when they point out a sin, or a flaw, or a weakness in you? Don’t they normally use it to put you down, or to look down on you self-righteously? Or as some kind of leverage against you? It’s a real problem.

Now, think about this: we just learned last Sunday that we all have a responsibility to confront sin in each other’s lives. Jesus gave us that command. Jesus, the king of all grace, gave us that command to confront sin with truth. But how in the world can we follow through with that and not become a bunch of judgmental legalists? Not become a harsh and legalistic congregation?

Again, can we really be genuinely truthful and fully gracious at the same time? Can these two things be held together?

Yes. And the key is wonderfully simple: the cross of Christ.

The cross is where the king of the kingdom died to pay the massive debt of guilt of every one of his subjects.

And so, if each citizen of the kingdom has been forgiven so much, how could any citizen even think of not forgiving one of his brothers?

Do you see that? The king died to ransom us, and that defines the whole shape of his kingdom. It is a kingdom that runs on forgiveness. The very fact that you have been forgiven a mountain of guilt should compel your heart to quickly forgive whatever your brother has done against you. And when Christians take this to heart, it makes the church a safe place for sin to be confronted, because those who remember the king’s cross can only confront sin with an attitude of humble grace, ready to forgive, since they themselves have received so much mercy. This is the key.

And the thing that drives this is not so much that this is some rule for those who are super spiritual, or something like that. Rather, this is a basic part of the Christian life—this is a necessary component of being a healthy church. Why? Because receiving boundless forgiveness from Christ requires you to give boundless forgiveness to others.

A Kingdom of Boundless Forgiveness

Now, in this morning’s text, Peter seems to have some sense of this need for the church to be a community with a lot of forgiveness. He’s just heard Jesus’ instructions on church discipline, and so he comes up and asks a question in verse 21:

Matthew 18:21 ESV

“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”

Notice, Peter is thinking of a generous amount of forgiveness: he’s going to forgive a fellow disciple time after time—as many as seven times.

And he’s probably expecting a positive answer from Jesus here. “Yes, your forgiveness should be generous.”

But how does Jesus reply?

Matthew 18:22 ESV

“I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

So Jesus says that Peter’s standard for forgiveness is wrong. But what does he mean by saying, “Not 7, but 77 times”?

Well, it’s not really a comparison of literal numbers. Peter’s number, 7, was meant to symbolize a generous amount of forgiveness. But Jesus’, number, 77, is meant to symbolize a boundless amount of forgiveness—a forgiveness where no one’s really counting, you might say. And actually, there’s more going on here.

Let me read, for you, the first recorded act of unforgiveness in Scripture. You all may remember the first murder, committed by Cain. Well, his great, great, great grandson, Lamech, also committed murder. Only Lamech wrote a poem about it. He said:

Genesis 4:23–24 ESV

“I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”

A seventy-seven fold revenge.

Lamech’s whole way of looking at life was this: ‘hurt me, and I’ll hurt you more. Hurt me, and I’ll make you pay. I’ll kill you.’ It’s the attitude of revenge taken to an extreme: hurt me, and I’ll retaliate 77 times as much. Sin against me, and I’ll get you back without measure.

And the point, here, isn’t that Lamech was a uniquely evil person, but that humanity has sunk to this level. Has someone else ever wounded you, and you thought, “I’ll get him back more?” Or maybe, have you ever been on the receiving end of that?

You can see it in marriages where husbands or wives take revenge on each other through a sharp words, a cold silence, a past sin brought up. And similar things can be found in friendships or relationships with coworkers, and so on.

Famously, cultures defined by clans or tribes tend to have this pattern of escalating violence fueled by this same logic. One tribe sins against another, and the other must get it back, and then some. You can see this in the clan warfare of Appalachia a century ago (McCoys and Hatfields), or in gang violence today.

And all of this traces its roots back to Adam’s own turn away from God. It’s the disease of pride, that says, “Hurt me, I’ll hurt you.” And it’s deeply rooted in the human heart.

But here, Jesus turned it all on its head: not ‘revenge seventy-seven fold’, but forgiveness seventy-seven fold—boundless forgiveness.

Boundless forgiveness is at the heart of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The King’s Boundless Forgiveness of His Servants

But this is a shocking idea—offensive, even—especially if you are the one who’s been hurt. ‘Boundless forgiveness? Really? Do you know what’s been done to me? And you’re saying I have to forgive?’ Yes. ‘But why?’

And so next, Jesus tells a parable to help us see why this must be so:

Matthew 18:23–24 ESV

“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.

So it’s important to know what we’re looking at here. It’s a parable. That means that its not an exact description of the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather a story about an earthly king to make a point about how things work for the heavenly king and his kingdom.

And in this case, it’s a king who has decided to balance the books in his kingdom. He wants to make sure he’s received payment for any debts from servants who have borrowed money from him. And when the books are opened, one servant is found to owe him ten thousand talents.

Now, this debt of 10,000 talents represents our sin-debt to God—our guilt in the sight of his holy judgement. So why did Jesus pick the amount of 10,000 talents in this story? What is he saying?

Well, in some sense, the figure 10,000 talents is just meant to say, “an shockingly huge debt.” This servant had a shockingly huge debt to the king.

But let’s have a little fun with this. 1 talent was equal to 6,000 denarii, and a denarii was a day’s wages for an ordinary worker. So this servant owed about 60,000,000 days of ordinary work to pay off his debt—about 10,000,000,000 (10 billion) dollars in modern American currency.

But that may actually not be quite right. Because 10 billion dollars was about a third of the GDP of the ancient Roman Empire. A third of the national GDP for us would be closer to 10 trillion dollars.

To say that’s a crushing debt would be a gross understatement. It’s an utterly bleak and hopeless debt. It’s a debt beyond measure, and it’s about to destroy the life of this servant.

And this is an exact parallel to our debt of sin before God. It doesn’t matter who you are. Is your worst sin gossip or pride? Or is it murder or adultery? Or is it a spiritually cold heart toward God? It doesn’t matter. This is you without Christ: your debt is beyond measurement, and you are hopeless and doomed.

And that’s what we see next. Jesus continues the parable:

Matthew 18:25 ESV

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 this servant would be sold, along with his whole family, that at least a tiny fraction of the debt to the king might be payed. And the parallel from that to us is that our entire lives are doomed and ruined because of our debt before God. We are destined for endless hell.

But then, something happens:

Matthew 18:26–27 ESV

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.

What did this servant do to deserve forgiveness? Nothing. He simply pleaded with his king, and the king mercifully wiped out his debt. A debt that would have taken countless lifetimes to repay, suddenly gone.

Brothers and sisters, this is the generosity of the gospel.

That you and I had utterly immeasurable debts with God—we can never even know the true extent of our guilt, the true ugliness of our sins, the true horror of our selfish hearts and prideful thoughts.

But if you’re a believer, at some point, you caught a glimpse of it. You saw the ugly, monstrous cloud of guilt standing above you, and the judgement of God against you, ready to crush you, and you cried out for mercy.

And in the moment of your cry, the debt disappeared. Why? Because the Son of God—the king himself—took that horrifying debt upon himself as he hung crucified for the salvation of his people. He carried our sins in his body on the cross.

Because of this, when anyone turns to him and cries out for mercy, it is given instantly. And from that moment forward, the debt is gone. Boundless forgiveness.

And it is in this way, and no other way, that anyone becomes a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. And that means that the whole character of the Kingdom of Heaven is defined by this divine forgiveness. The whole kingdom is defined by the cross-shaped mercy of God… and it is beautiful.

Boundless forgiveness is at the heart of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Horror of Unforgiveness

But this is where the parable takes a twist: look at what happens in vss. 28-30:

Matthew 18:28–30 ESV

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.

Now, you can probably sense how ugly this is. The man was just forgiven an inexpressibly huge debt. And the very next thing he does is go out, find a fellow servant who owes 100 denarii—maybe about 15k dollars—and physically chokes him, demanding to be payed. His own debt had been 600,000 times as large! How could he do this?? It’s morally grotesque. He went straight from being forgiven to choking a fellow servant, demanding payment!

And we can see how bad it is when Jesus puts it so bluntly. But here’s the point: that’s how horrific it is to receive mercy from God and not be willing to give it out to others.

And the rest of the King’s servants get it. They see all this go down and their souls are greatly distressed by it. And so they go and report it to the king, and he calls this merciless servant back.

And this is where the punchline of the whole parable comes to us. In verse 32 the king says to him:

Matthew 18:32–33 ESV

‘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?’

This is the twistedness of unforgiveness. The twistedness of a bitter attitude. The Servant’s debt to the king was 600,000 times the size of his fellow servant’s debt to him.

It is the same for you. Your debt before your king was beyond the greatest human mind to measure. Oh the grotesque wickedness of pride! The rotting horror of lust! And what did he do? He stood before God’s wrath and took it in our place that he might hit the delete key on our guilt… and our guilt is gone! Utterly gone!

How then can any of us turn to a fellow servant and hold his sin against him? Hold it over his head? Keep a grudge in our hearts?

But we do, don’t we? We must repent, and give these things up. And we must do so because Cross of Christ with all of its bountifully overflowing mercy toward us demands that we do so.

But there’s one more step here, that we cannot ignore. Because actually, Jesus’ emphasis in this parable is not about how you must behave in the Kingdom, but rather, whether or not you enter the kingdom in the first place.

And this is where, once again, it’s helpful to remember that this is a parable. And as with any parable, the point is not to press every detail of the story to mean something.

Let me give you an example here from earlier in the parable: these servants are all already servants of this king before he calls them on their debt. This one servant had been a servant of this king for a long time, during which he accrued the debt. That’s what the parable implies.

But that doesn’t mean that, at some point in the Christian life, you have a bunch of debt and God calls you on it, and you have to plead for mercy as though you were unforgiven. Rather, while you are still his enemy, you see your debt and appeal for mercy and then become his servant, totally forgiven forever.

So the details of a parable are often there just to drive the parable’s story, and then somewhere toward the end Jesus gives you a punch line or an explanation which tells you what to do with it. That’s how parables normally work.

So we’ve already seen the punchline, which is just how twisted it would be to refuse to forgive a fellow Christian after you’ve been forgiven so much through the cross.

But now comes the explanation of the main point in vs. 34-35:

Matthew 18:34–35 ESV

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.”

That’s heavy, isn’t it? And just to make the meaning plain: there is no hope of repaying the debt yourself. That’s an eternal sentence. That’s judgement, condemnation, and hell.

So is Jesus saying, then, that you can loose your faith if you refuse to forgive your brother? No, not quite. That would be pushing the details of the parable too far. But it is still saying that a refusal to forgive is connected to an eternity of judgement. How so?

Jesus’ earlier words in Matthew 6 clarify this. He said:

Matthew 6:14–15 ESV

...if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So, if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. Or, you could say, “If you do not repent of the sin of unforgiveness, neither will your sins be forgiven.” And someone might be tempted to say, “But why is Jesus singling out this one sin in that way?”

Well, he’s really not. So, he died to provide forgiveness to sinners. But how do you obtain that forgiveness? By turning from sin to Christ, and casting yourself on his mercy. Or to put it simply, by repenting from sin and trusting in Christ to redeem you.

And, as it turns out, unforgiveness is a sin. So you can’t come to Jesus and say, “Look Jesus, I’m repenting from sin and trusting you. In fact I’m repenting from every sin. Except, I do have one favorite sin that I’m not ready to give up—you see, this other person really hurt me when I was a child, or that other person betrayed be at work. And I’ve been nursing a grudge against him for a while. And so, I’m giving my life to you, Jesus… except that one part. You can’t have that part. I don’t feel like forgiving.”

That’s not genuine repentance. You cannot look to the crucified savior and embrace him and all that he is and at the same time say, “But I will not forgive.” It’s one or the other.

Receiving boundless forgiveness from Christ requires you to give boundless forgiveness to others.

Conclusion

Now, does that mean that, if you’ve professed faith in Christ, but are aware of bitterness or unforgiveness in your heart, that your faith is false? In a word, no—not necessarily.

In fact, as with any sin, if you’re a genuine Christian, you turned away from it in Christ… an yet you may still have to battle it in this life.

So, practically speaking, that’s the real question. If you struggle with unforgiveness, are you taking it to the Lord? Are you seeing it for the hideous sin that it is? Are you repenting from it? Or are you maintaining a victim’s attitude: “Since I’ve been hurt, I will not forgive.” If you will not repent from unforgiveness, at some point, it starts to call your profession of faith into question.

What should you do if that’s you? Look to the cross. See the blood of Christ, shed for you. Trust in his mercy for the forgiveness of your enormous debt—even the debt you’ve incurred by practicing unforgiveness. Then, let the beauty of his mercy compel your heart to forgive others.

If you’re discipling someone: you can’t leave this alone, if you see it in his or her heart. There will be little growth in the Christian life when someone’s stubbornly holding on to a grudge, and little glory to God.

As believers, we have a duty to give to others the mercy we’ve received from God. And that forgiveness might look different when the person who’s hurt you has not repented yet, versus when he already has seen his guilt and begged your forgiveness. But in either case, it’s not holding the sin against that person—not nursing that inward bitterness that dwells on and accuses the other person. Love keeps no record of wrongs, Paul wrote.

And it’s not that we ever equal God’s mercy. We must imitate his mercy, but we will never equal it. As Chrysostom said:

“...though you forgive seventy times seven, though you continually pardon your neighbor for absolutely all his sins, as a drop of water to an endless sea, so much, or rather more, does your love to man come short in comparison of the boundless goodness of God, of which you stand in need, since you are are to be judged, and give an account.”

If you are a believer, then you have received that divine mercy, which will carry you through judgement into glory. And so, you must show that mercy to others:

Children to parents, parents to children: you must forgive. Husbands to wives, wives to husbands.

Kids: your brother or sister might be really mean to you. Or a kid at school or practice: you must forgive.

Adults: folks at work will hurt you sometimes. Even betray you or slander you. Folks on social media will bite and snap. We must be different, and forgive, if we want to portray the reality of the gospel to the watching world.

So is there someone you haven’t forgiven? Aren’t ready to forgive? Look to the cross.

And now we come full circle. How can we be a people of truth and a people of grace at the same time? Forgiveness.

Forgiveness from God wipes out both your debt and the debt of your brothers and sisters. And once you see that, you can only confront the sin of another in total humility. Now, imagine a church defined by that. When you need to confront someone’s sin, you have the humility and the love necessary to do it. And when someone lovingly points out your sin to you, you know you don’t have to defend yourself because when you repent, you will have the forgiveness of both God and your brother.

Brothers and sisters: that is the kind of church we must strive to be. For we are all only humble receivers of God’s mercy—all only sinners saved by God’s endless ocean of redeeming love. How can we act any other way? Since we’ve received boundless forgiveness from Christ, let us give boundless forgiveness to others.

[prayer]

Lord’s Table

The boundless forgiveness that we have in Christ is symbolized in the Lord’s Supper. Here we have the bread, which symbolizes his body, broken for us, and the cup, which symbolizes his blood, poured out for us for the forgiveness of our sins. And so, in these symbols, by the Spirit’s power, we behold the very beauty of the mercy of God to us.

And since the forgiveness of God in Christ has created a kingdom defined by forgiveness to one another, this bread and this cup don’t just symbolize our reconciliation to God, but also to each other. They symbolize our bond of love with one another, that we have in Christ.

Now, this means that if you are not a believer yet, or if you are a believer who hasn’t yet symbolized your faith by baptism, [we are so glad you are here] but you shouldn’t yet partake in the bread and the cup. Instead, you should watch, and consider that Jesus gave himself up to death, so that if you come to him, you also will find forgiveness with God.

‌But if you are a baptized believer, and are in good standing with your congregation [whether you’re part of Scholls, or part of a different gospel-preaching church] you should join us with joy, as we participate spiritually in Christ in this Supper.

‌[invite congregation to come forward]

‌‌‌[Passing out the bread + Cup]

‌‌‌‌‌1 Corinthians 11:23-24 “…the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.””

‌‌1 Corinthians 11:25 “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.””

‌‌‌1 Corinthians 11:26 “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

‌‌[prayer]