A279 1 Forgiveness

This is Gospel chapter 18, and we begin to read from verse 23, one of the Lord's parables, Matthew 18, 23. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven like unto a certain king who would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents.

But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him that debt.

But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants which owed him a hundred pence, and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what thou owest. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison till he should pay that debt.

So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and they came and told their lord all that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said to him, O thou weakest servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desirest me. Shouldest not thou also have compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

So likewise shall my heavenly father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses. You may care to have your Bibles open at Matthew's Gospel in the sixth chapter, words which though not read, we have already repeated this morning. For herein is contained that superb pattern prayer, the one which our Saviour laid down as a sort of skeleton outline, around which all our intercessions are to be weaved.

Verse nine, Matthew six, after this manner, therefore pray ye our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, who like we his praise should sing? That was the first verse of the hymn that we have just been singing, and it re-echoes the sentiments felt not only here in this congregation, but around the world amongst the redeemed community, as a man or a woman takes measure of the fact that they belong to God through Jesus Christ. They've been ransomed, they've been healed, they've been forgiven. And it's that last term which I want to take up and placard before you this morning, the word forgiven or forgiveness.

It's a good word, it's rooted well in the Old Testament, and you'll find it amongst the leaves of the New Testament pages also. The heart of the gospel can be distilled in its essence to this one word, forgiveness. This is the revelation of God to the Old Testament people.

It's the revelation of God to the New Testament saints. The psalmist says of the Lord in Psalm 103 and verse 1, He it is who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all our diseases. And when the preacher in Acts chapter 5 makes reference to the work of our Lord Jesus Christ and the reason for God sending Him onto this earth, he says the God of our fathers raised up Jesus.

Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness, a word which has its roots in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Very often the English language is impoverished compared with that of the Hebrew and the Greek, and those ancient languages have three or four verbs which are employed by the various writers of this holy book, and yet they're all translated with that one word forgiveness in the King James Version of the Bible.

In the Old Testament, you could use the word as a synonymous for cover up, for that is what God does. He covers up our sinfulness. There's also the thought of God lifting up our sins and sending them away.

In the New Testament, the idea is of God loosing us from our sins. God's gracious deliverance is also indicated by that word forgiven. He lets off the sinner from the consequences of his rebellion because of certain things which Jesus has done.

And I say that all this teaching is distilled, is focused in this one text which is found in the heart of the Lord's Prayer, where day by day, and certainly Sunday by Sunday, we are compelled to say, Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And I want to focus on that verse. I want to close up upon it this morning, and let's just examine it.

The statement seems to be a simple enough one. Therefore, all of us should be able to grasp something of its importance. But I find so often in preaching and in my own Bible study that it's the simple things that one bypasses, feeling that you have grasped all the teaching that is there, whereas very often within the simplicity of the statement of Scripture, there are fathomless debts which are to be investigated and plumbed at least to some extent.

Here is an injunction followed by a qualification, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. A lot of evangelicals know what biblical forgiveness is without realizing what biblical forgiveness entails. Now, that's a very important thing.

Let me repeat it. Many people there are who know what biblical forgiveness is without being fully aware of what biblical forgiveness entails. And unless you know the latter, you invalidate the former.

Here then, in the Lord's Prayer, we make a plea, and that plea is followed by a consequence. The plea is, forgive us our debts, and the consequence is as we forgive our debtors. And if you miss out the latter, then I say you make the former cheap and valueless.

Let's take the first for a moment or so, and then we'll come to the latter part of this injunction. Here is a cry, forgive us our debts. To whom is this addressed? I put up three or four questions.

Is the cry in vain? How does the Lord do it? And why should we make such a cry? But first of all, who is addressed? Forgive us our debts. Well, the answer is obvious. The Father, God.

Nehemiah chapter 9 refers to God in terms, and it's a lovely description, in terms of the God of all pardons. And in Deuteronomy we read, to the Lord our God belongs forgiveness and mercies. And back in the book of Exodus chapter 34, we read in the sixth verse, the Lord pass by before him, that is Moses, and proclaim the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering 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.

It's God who we are addressing, not some impersonal being in the sky, not some first cause who is devoid of emotions, but rather the Lord Jesus is at the beginning of this prayer. You are addressing your heavenly Father, our Father, which art in heaven, the God of all pardons. He is the one who's listening to your cry, forgive us our debts.

But why the cry? Well, because the sinner is distressed. In the parallel gospel record of the Lord's Prayer, the word is used, which we often employ when we recite the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our trespasses. Here it's forgive us our debts.

So by pure logic, you can say that debt equals trespass. Sin is a debt. We are in debt to the Lord because we have broken his holy law.

We are under obligation to the Lord our God, and there is no way in which we can redeem ourselves from the disastrous situation in which we discover ourselves to be. Everyone is in debt to God. Forgive us our debts because we're all sinners.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Forgive us our debts, and notice it's a plural, and the psalmist in Psalm 40 talks about innumerable evils which have swept over his soul. When a person comes before this great God and Father, and utters this particular piece of intercession, he does so from the depths of his heart, and he cries in a state of soul turmoil, forgive us, forgive me, my debt, my transgression.

But, and this is my third question which I put up to this initial cry, is it in vain? No, my dear friends, it is not. Many people have been in real trouble as far as their sins are concerned, and they have cried to the Lord, and he has answered. The Old Testament writer makes reference to, all thy billows have gone over me.

Jonah called to God from the depths of the Mediterranean. Samson called to God when he was in the pagan temple of Dagon. The psalmist was at Whitson's Corner, and he said this man cried unto the Lord, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his affliction.

The cry is not in vain. When you take this particular injunction, this plea, and you put it upon your lips, and you match it to your intellect, and you marry it with your emotion, and you say, Lord forgive me my debt, then I say, your cry does not fall on deaf ears. But how? How does he do it? We must concede that there is no answer given, not within this particular verse of scripture, but it's there by implication in the whole prayer.

After all, who is the man who's the teacher? Who is this tutor who's giving lessons in the art of holy intercession? It is none other than Jesus. And what is the job description of Jesus? Or if you want it more academically, what does the name Jesus Iesus mean? Savior. And for this reason he came into the world, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

It's the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who in Luke's gospel in chapter 5 is revealed as giving absolution to a man who desperately needs the pardon of God. You remember the story. A paralytic has been placed in the presence of Jesus.

A housetop has been opened up, and he's been let through down into the place where Jesus has been teaching. And when Jesus sees this man in his physical affliction, he first of all addresses his spiritual need. And verse 20 of Luke 5 records Jesus saying, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.

The scribes and the Pharisees, they react, they argue, they cannot tolerate this sort of implication. Who is this which speak of blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone? Full marks to the Pharisees and the scribes. There's nothing wrong with their theology.

There's a great deal wrong with their sensitivity and their discernment as to the person of Jesus. But they're dead right. Only God can forgive sins.

Only God can make it possible for the debt under whose burden, under which burden, I cringe to be lifted. And this, I argue, is why the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world. That's why he died on yonder cross.

In whom, says Paul writing to the Ephesians, speaking of Jesus, we have forgiveness of sins. He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free.

His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me. Here's the cry, forgive me my debt.

A cry that's offered to God. A cry that is not offered in vain. A cry that comes from the depths of distress.

A cry to which the heavenly Father responds in the name of Jesus Christ. Now have you made that your own cry? I must stop for a moment and if I had my way, if I did not feel the impelling of the Spirit to go on further, I would just pause here and just apply this particular part of the text to the congregation for I'm concerned. Concerned for people who come along on a Sunday morning, never in on a Sunday evening.

I'm not criticizing you for that. I'm just making an objective statement of fact. And I ask you, do you know anything about this forgiveness? Have you stood in front of the cross of Jesus? Have you said to the heavenly Father because of the death of that man, your son, I want my sins forgiven.

I repent of my iniquity. I come and I believe that he can satisfy the debt that I owe you. So I make myself over to him.

I tell you, this is the sweetest thought in all the world. This is the string on which I would constantly play if there were only one doctrine to be to be brought before a congregation. But we are not through there.

Not at this point. For the verse goes on, after the cry there is a consequence. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Now it's in that area that a lot of evangelical Christians are defective in their understanding of the gospel. Strong language, but I'm prepared to argue it out at length. The Word of God does not say here, because we forgive our debtors.

You see, if it said that, then it would suggest that you could earn your salvation. Here am I in debt to God. But there are people who've sinned against me.

All I forgive them. Now because I have forgiven them, therefore I claim salvation. That would not be salvation by faith.

That would be salvation by works. But that's not what this injunction says. It's not what this verse is teaching.

Here is not a condition. Here is a consequence. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Let me make a statement and then try to amplify what I mean. Biblical forgiveness always has an overflow. Biblical forgiveness always has an overflow.

When God does anything, he always does it generously. So here is his son at Cana of Galilee, and there's a domestic crisis. They've run out of wine, and Jesus more than meets that particular problem.

They have sufficient wine that he has made from water to satisfy the guests, and it becomes a wedding bounty for the two who have been married. God always more than supplies our needs. Now in this whole area of forgiveness, I argue the same is true.

The love of God is shed abroad in the heart and the life of the believer. That means it overflows. You folks who are hooked on making cups of tea, as most English people are, you know what it's like to have a cup that's overflowing.

It runs into your saucer. If you're in India, they drink it from the saucer, but because we're so sophisticated in England, we only have it from the cup, and we throw what's locked into the saucer away. But that's overflowing.

Here is the forgiveness of God directed towards me. How do I know that it's real forgiveness? I know it because there's an overflow. Towards whom? Towards my fellow men and women who have sinned against me.

There must be an overflow, and that forgiveness must be extended to them. It's the consequence of receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And what's more, I say that the second part of the verse is carried through into our own experience by contrast.

Not only by overflow, but by contrast. You say, what do you mean? Well, I refer to the parable which our brother Joseph read a little while ago. Here was this man who'd been forgiven such a great debt.

You remember the story? In present day commercial terms, he was obligated for thousands and thousands of pounds, tens of thousands. His debt was hideous. He in no way could repay it, but he's forgiven.

And then he meets some unfortunate colleague down the road who owes him just a little, and he refuses to cancel that debt. And the man in the story who has been so generously disposed towards this offender, when he hears, he's angry, and he goes back on his word, and the offender is put into jail. Now, why did Jesus tell that homely story? Well, so that you and I might be able to, if you like, be provoked towards forgiveness.

Here I am indebted to God. You cannot measure that debt. It's incalculable.

I've broken God's law. The whole of humanity itself has taken so many blessings of God and brought them down to the level of the gutter. So many gifts that he has given us.

So many ways in which we've polluted our environment. We've polluted our own bodies. We're in debt.

The debt is incalculable. But Jesus comes along and he pays the debt. And he says, for that man, for that woman, for that husband, for that wife, for that mother, for that father, I'll stand in their place.

I'll make the righteousness of my life and its benefits over to them. Now, how do we know that we fully understood this? Well, by our action in consequence. As we have been forgiven, so we forgive.

The latter part of this verse, you see, it's carried through into experience by what I call a divine overflow. It's provoked by a contrast. It's underlined by a command, because in Colossians 3 we are told, as Jesus has forgiven us, so we are to forgive one another.

The whole question of human relationships is one which bedevils us in the 20th century. And never, I say, has there been so much need for an emphasis upon this biblical message of forgiveness as there is today. When God forgives, he forgives properly.

In Micah, we read that God has cast all our sins into the bottomless depths of the sea. Jeremiah 31 verse 34, I will remember their sin no more. Psalm 103 verse 12, as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

And all these verses we love, and rightly so. But you see, in that measure that God has forgiven us, and with that same methodology, so we are to forgive other people, and that's where the rub comes. I could tell you of case after case after case of people who have been to me here in Worthing, and in North London, who've had problems in this area of forgiveness.

One party has been so offended, and indeed they have deeply hurt. And sometimes the comment comes through, you know, I can forgive, but I can't forget. Thank God he doesn't adopt that philosophy towards our sin.

You know, I can forgive him, I can forgive her, but I've no longer any respect for them. But I read that when Jesus forgave the woman who was taken in the act of adultery, by implication the gospeler John works out that he gave this woman back her self-respect. God not only forgives, he forgets.

We tend to forgive and still remember. I remember, I recall a Sunday school teacher of mine. I mean, I was in his class.

He could have only been a young man at the time. The years went by, and I left the north of England, and I remember the sorry tale of how alas he gave up on the gospel, or so it would seem. If he was generally converted, I don't believe that he could have given up completely.

But he backslid in a terrible way. He went from one woman to another woman, and contracted syphilis, and then he impregnated his wife with that disease. How a woman in that state could forgive a man who had done that to her on the human level, I do not know.

But on the divine, I do. And I remember our dear brother, and we bless God for his memory, Len Mull, standing in this pulpit some four or five years ago, rehearsing almost an exactly the same incident of another lady who had been so afflicted. And she had forgiven her husband, but she hadn't forgotten.

And as a result of the disease which had been in her body, there had been some problem in her shoulder, problem with movement. The day came in the communion service when God really spoke to this woman, not just to forgive her husband, but to forget what he had done. And as she took the bread, and she took the wine, so by the grace of God, she was able to forget.

And then Mull's told us, if you remember, how healing came to her body. All the spite, all the grief, all the venom was lost as she came around the Lord's table. It is possible to forgive and to forget.

I can think of no more apposite illustration than that found in the book of Hosea, where you recall the prophet was directed by God to marry a woman whose reputation, even at the point of marriage, was somewhat suspect. And he went ahead, and unfortunately she became promiscuous for the permissive society, is not a child of the 20th century, it's been with man since his infancy. And she went from one woman, from one man to another man, and she spiraled downwards until she hit rock bottom, the gutter of society.

And you recall how in the third chapter of Hosea's prophecy, God speaks to the prophet and he says, go again, love a woman. Beloved, I find it impossible on the human level to understand how God could, how Hosea could respond to the action of God and fulfill his commandment. But you see, such is the nature of the love of God that He can pour into our own hearts and lives, that in the tragic situations I've outlound two contemporary and one from the Old Testament, it is obvious that it is possible for us to forgive with the same degree as the Lord Jesus Christ has wrought forgiveness in our own hearts and lives.

Let me tidy the whole of our address up this morning and send you on your way so that you're clear on this principle. Forgive us our debts is a cry which God responds to, but the consequence is the test for the genuineness of our own forgiveness is that we forgive our debtors in the same way, not harboring a grudge, not allowing a relationship in the present to be bedeviled because of infidelity or a breach of contract in the past, and I'm not only speaking on the marital front. We live one day at a time and we stand before God every day and each day we plead for forgiveness for any misdoings on the spiritual level and we must and we can forgive those who have transgressed against us.

This is the biblical doctrine of forgiveness and it cannot be neutralized, it cannot be diluted. God forgives us our debts and the genuineness of our conversion and of our salvation experience is indicated in the way that we forgive our debtors no matter how grievously they may have sinned against us. May God enable us to follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest forgiver of all time, and having received his forgiveness in like fashion to forgive others who have sinned against us.

Amen. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Father, your word to us this morning is a salutary reminder of all the implications of the gospel. Help us to square up not only to the fact that Jesus died for us but to the consequence as to how we are to live our lives, the reactions that we are to make in the area of forgiveness should occasion arise. Now Lord, we just offer ourselves again to you.

We thank you for this morning of worship. We ask that you'll continue with us throughout this day and bless us as we come together for our evening service later on. Now we pray for your protection, the blessing of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and always.

Amen.