Many of you are familiar with the story of Corrie ten Boom. Corrie ten Boom was a godly Christian woman who was Holocaust survivor. After the Germans invaded her home country of Holland, she hid Jews in her house to keep them from being sent to the concentration camps. After risking her life doing that for a couple of years, an informant finally turned her in to the Germans. They arrested her and eventually sent her and her sister Betsie to the horribly brutal Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. You know the horror stories of the German concentration camps. Both Corrie and Betsie were brutalized. To the point that Betsie physically couldn’t handle it any more. She died in that horrible camp at the hands of her brutal captives. Before she died, Betsie told Corrie, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” Corrie was eventually released on Christmas Day of 1944. She spent the rest of her life writing books and travelling the world speaking on God’s love and grace and mercy and forgiveness. But then there came a time in her life where God pressed her words about forgiveness into action. Listen to what she wrote about that day: “It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, a former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face. He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” He said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. ” Is there a more difficult thing that Jesus tells us to do? Is there a more difficult thing to do than forgive those who have wronged us? That’s why Jesus tells us to pray about it. We’ve been looking at the Lord’s Prayer over the past several weeks. And now we get to a part that most of us just want to skip over. The part where we praise God for who He is—we’re OK with that. The part where we recognize that Jesus is in charge and we pray for His will—that’s OK too. We really like the part where we get to ask for stuff. The part where we get to ask for our daily bread. But this part… can’t we just skip over this part? I mean it would be great if it just stopped with the first part of verse 12. It would be great if it just stopped with us asking God to forgive our sins. As a matter of fact, that’s where we stop most of the time, isn’t it? “Lord, here are all the areas that I have failed you today.” “Forgive me for those things.” Let’s just stop there. But we can’t. Because Jesus said, “after this manner therefore pray ye.” “Pray like this.” “This is the way you’re supposed to pray—forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This is one of the difficult statements of Jesus. It’s difficult for us to hear and it was difficult for His disciples to hear. That’s why Jesus has to go on to unpack it in a couple of places. The first place was immediately in verse 14-15. Look there with me:
MATTHEW 6:14-15
Did you notice something? This subject of forgiveness is the only part of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus gives a commentary on when He finished. Do you suppose that means something? Do you suppose that means it’s important? All the other parts of the prayer are important too. But do you suppose it points out how much of a struggle we will always have with forgiveness? Do you suppose it points out how much we will always want to skip the second part? How much we want to get God’s forgiveness, but how much we are unwilling to give it out? Jesus knows our tendency. He knows our weakness. He knows we are but dust. So He tells us in no uncertain terms how important forgiveness is. He draws a parallel between the way we forgive other people and the way God forgives us. If you forgive others—God will forgive you. If you don’t forgive others—God will not forgive you. Wow—that’s tough. Does that mean that if someone has done me a terrible wrong and I don’t forgive them… does that mean I’m lost? Here’s the scary part—it just might mean that. Do you remember when we studied the book of James last year? James, the half-brother of Jesus, copied Jesus’ style of teaching when he wrote his letter. When James said, “Faith without works is dead” he was using this same teaching style. James laid out a series of tests throughout his letter. And he said that if you are consistently failing those tests, you need to check your salvation. Because if your works don’t show it, your so-called faith is worthless. It’s not real. Jesus is saying the same thing concerning forgiveness. If you refuse to live with an attitude of forgiveness toward others… you need to check your salvation. It doesn’t matter what kind of warm fuzzy experience you’ve had. If you continually live in bitterness and unforgiveness toward other people, you haven’t experienced forgiveness yourself. Because if you have truly experienced the cleansing forgiveness of Jesus, you will be convicted when you harbor unforgiveness toward others. But here’s the thing with the tests of James. As Christians we fail those tests all the time. Just like we fail Jesus’ test of forgiveness all the time. So does that automatically mean that when we fail, we’re not saved? No—it means we need to check our salvation. It means that we need to understand that an attitude of unforgiveness is completely incompatible with being a Christian. It’s just like when you get sick. When you get sick, your body gets a virus. That virus is completely incompatible with your body. Your body immediately recognizes that something isn’t right. And it immediately begins to war against the invader. That’s how you know you’re alive. When you’re dead, the body decomposes and nothing fights against it. When you’re alive, your body wars against the things that try to destroy it. In the same way, when you’re alive in Christ, your life is completely incompatible with sin. It doesn’t mean you won’t sin any more than it doesn’t mean that your physical body won’t get a cold. What it does mean is that when you do sin, your new life in Christ will war against that sin. If that war against sin isn’t happening in your life, it might mean that you aren’t alive. It might mean that you have never experienced a new life in Christ. It might mean that the reason you can’t forgive is because you haven’t been forgiven. A complete and total lack of forgiveness in your life shows that you are lost and in need of a savior. If you find yourself in that condition tonight, you don’t have to stay that way. Jesus has paid the price so that you can be forgiven. If you are living in a perpetual state of bitterness and unforgiveness… ask Jesus to save you right now. Don’t wait until the end of the sermon. Don’t wait till the invitation. Make it public during the invitation, but ask Jesus to save you now. Tell Him that you are a sinner and you need His forgiveness. He will save you now. But the fact is that most of us in here tonight have been saved. Most of us have been forgiven. So if that’s the case, then why is it so hard for us to forgive other people? Could it be that we really don’t understand the extent of our forgiveness? Could it be that we still think that we somehow deserved to be forgiven? At least we deserved it a whole lot more than that other person does. I want you to turn with me to what Jesus had to say in Matthew 18:21-35. Unlike many of the discourses of Jesus, this one is specifically to His disciples. These are the men who had been with Jesus from the beginning. And they still don’t get it. So Peter spoke up and asked a question.
MATTHEW 18:21-35
We’re going to come back to Peter’s question in a little bit, but I want you to notice the answer that Jesus gave him. I want you to think about that parable that Jesus gave. The story is a simple one. It’s unbelievable, but it’s simple. There was a king. The king had some slaves. One of his slaves owed him a lot of money. The king brought the slaves in to check their accounts. When the slave who owed him a lot of money saw that it was payment time, he begged the king for mercy. He said, “give me some more time and I’ll repay you.” The king knew he couldn’t repay, so he completely forgave the debt. Then later on, the slave wouldn’t extend the same forgiveness to a fellow slave who owed him money. Can you imagine? What a selfish, self-centered person that slave was. Just like I am when I refuse to forgive someone who has wronged me. Think about the king’s forgiveness for a minute. The king was the king. He owned everything. How in the world was a slave in debt to the king? Either the king loaned it to him or he stole it. But when you look at the amount of money involved here, there is no way that the king would have loaned him that much. The banks that the government is bailing out wouldn’t even have been that stupid. So he must have stolen it. How much money are we talking? The Bible says the slave owed the king 10,000 talents. In those days, ONE talent was worth 6,000 days’ work. That means it would have taken him 13 years straight to earn just one talent—if he didn’t spend a dime along the way. He owed 10,000 talents. If you add it all up, he would have had to live 130,000 years and put every cent he ever earned to pay off his debt. Now, when the king called him on the carpet, what was his response? Well, king, just give me a little more time and I’ll pay it off. A little more time? He could have lived 2000 lifetimes and never paid it off. What an offense to even suggest such a thing to the king. The king was the only one who could have had that much money in the first place. The slave obviously stole the money. And now he says, “I’m good for it. I’ll repay you.” How ridiculous! How offensive! What a blasphemous slap in the king’s face! But what did the king do? Out of his grace and mercy, he forgave the debt. You and I owed a debt that we could never repay. Even one sin is such an immeasurable offense against a holy and righteous God that we could spend the rest of our lives doing good works and never repay it. But we didn’t just commit one sin. We commit sin after sin after sin. We take all the goodness that God gives us and take credit for it ourselves. We live in a state of unthankfulness. We live in a state of self-centeredness. It would take an eternity to repay what we have stolen from God. Or it would take the sacrifice of an eternal being. The only way an eternal debt can be paid is with a life of eternal value. And that was the life of God’s only begotten Son. He gave His life to pay your sin debt and mine. And because of that, if you have trusted Him, you are forgiven. You owe nothing. The debit column on your balance sheet reads zero. Just like the slave in this parable. He went from being over 2000 lifetimes in debt to forgiven. Completely debt free because of the gracious word of the king. And look at what he did with the grace and mercy he was shown. He immediately went out and told the world what a great king he served, right? He immediately went out and brought others to the king so they could be forgiven, right? He immediately pulled out his own measly account book and wiped it clean, right? Wrong. Oh, he did pull out his account book. He pulled it out and saw that another slave owed him a little bit of money. The KJV says that he owed him a hundred pence—literally a hundred denarii. Do you know how much that was? About three months’ wages. He had been forgiven over 2000 lifetimes of debt and now he was worried about three months’ wages? Do you see how insane that is? If we can see how utterly ridiculous that is, then why can we not see how ridiculous it is for us not to forgive others? Why can I not forgive someone for saying bad things about me? That is a mere pittance compared to what I owed God. Why can I not forgive someone for hurting my pride? How petty is that compared to how I have damaged the glory of the eternal God? But Jim, you just don’t understand how I’ve been wronged. Have you been beaten? Have you been abused? Have you been raped or mugged or had a loved one murdered? Have you been left emotionally desolate and had your self-worth destroyed? Have you suffered daily verbal and physical abuse? Those are huge things that will affect you emotionally for the rest of your life. To put it in the words of our parable, those people might owe you more than a hundred pence. They might even owe you a talent or two. They could owe you an entire lifetime of debt that they could never possibly repay. But if Jesus is your savior, He’s forgiven you of infinitely more than that. And He will give you the strength to forgive even those things. The question is—how? Well, that takes us back to where we started. It takes us back to the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
First, you have to recognize how much you’ve been forgiven. You need to remember 1 Corinthians 6:9-11: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God…” It’s easy to remember that part. Remembering that part is what allows us to not forgive. That’s why the Bible includes this: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Remember what Jesus has saved you from. Remember how much you have offended Him. Remember how there is nothing in you that would commend you to Him. Remember how there is nothing you could have ever done to repay the debt you owe. And remember that in spite of all that, Christ died for you. Remember Ephesians 2:1-9: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Do you think you can earn your salvation? Do you think you deserve it? Then why do you only want to forgive someone else if they somehow deserve it? Why do you only want to forgive someone else if they somehow earn it? The only way you will be able to forgive others, is if you first remember how much you’ve been forgiven. And pray it that way. Just like Jesus told you to. “Lord, I need to forgive this person. And I can’t do it on my own. But out of your love and grace and mercy, you forgave me of a debt that I could never repay. The way that they have offended me is far less than how I’ve offended you. Please give me the grace to forgive them as you’ve forgiven me.” Now, I wish that I could tell you that if you pray that prayer, it’ll all be better. But Jesus doesn’t give us a magic wand to make it all go away. So there is another step. After you truly realize how much you’ve been forgiven, then you need to look at the one you need to forgive. If you remember how the parable we read was introduced, you remember that Peter asked Jesus a question. He asked Jesus how many times we’re supposed to forgive someone who has wronged us. I have always taken that to mean, how many times do we forgive someone who sins repeatedly against us. That’s true, but I think it means something else too. When Jesus answered Peter and said that we are to forgive 70 times 7—basically unlimited… it can mean for repeated sins. But it also means for the same sin. Go back to the Lord’s Prayer. What does verse 12 follow? It follows verse 11 where we are told to ask for our daily bread. And notice that the two verses are connected with AND. That means that forgiving is an ongoing, continual, daily process. If somebody offends me in a small way. I can forgive them and move on. But if somebody murders my child that’s a different story. If somebody rapes my wife, that’s a different story. That’s not something you get over. It’s not something you forget. It’s something you live with every day for the rest of your life. And it’s something that requires you to forgive them daily. Because why? Because your offense to God is greater than their offense to you. God has forgiven you, so you must daily forgive them. It’s not easy. But what God went through to forgive you wasn’t easy either. He gave His Son. He was separated from His Son in a way we can’t even imagine. He watched His Son be spit on, beaten, abused. And He watched His Son die. And His love for you and desire to forgive you was so great that Isaiah 53:10 says that it pleased Him to do it.
