The Mount No.16 Am I really forgiven?

I will praise the Lord with harp and string. I will praise the Lord with everything. I will praise the Lord with all my heart.

And this is how I'll start. Hosanna to the living King. Hosanna to the Lord.

Hosanna all creation sing to you in one accord. I will love the Lord by loving you. I will love the Lord so you'll love him too.

I will love the Lord in all I do. For love makes all things new. I will give the Lord the things I bear.

I will give the Lord my every care. I will know his love is always there. His praises we will share.

Hosanna to the living King. Hosanna to the Lord. Hosanna all creation sing to you in one accord.

Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest. Lord, we lift up your name with hearts full of praise.

Be exalted, O Lord, thy God. Hosanna in the highest. This morning's reading is not a psalm.

It's Matthew 18 verses 21 to 35. It's the parable of the unmerciful servant. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wants to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

The servant fell on his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything. The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.

But when the servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. Pay back what you owe me, he demanded.

His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me, and I will pay you back. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.

But when the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. You wicked servant, he said.

I cancelled all that debt of yours because you had begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had on you? In anger, his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

And from him, peace on all the earth. Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise the everlasting Lord. Praise Him for His great mercy given to the Father, His safe forbearance, so good joy and spirit to bless.

Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise the everlasting Lord. He turns and there our feeble brain renews. In His hands He gently bears us, rescues us from all our foes.

Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, for by the end His hand He knows. He has set us free. Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise the everlasting Lord.

For those who are members of His kingdom, this then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. If you have the NIV, join me in the next two verses.

For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. My favorite definition which I've used before of the Christian faith is this.

Ours is the religion of the forgiven. Ours is the religion of the forgiven. So in the 17th century you've got hymn writers like Sam Davis and Henry Lythe who were causing the congregations to sing ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.

Who like me His praise should sing? And then putting up the question, who is a pardoning God like Thee? Or who has grace so rich, so free? We're dealing this morning with one of the most wonderful topics in the whole of the Christian Bible, the Christian faith doctrinally understood. It says the prophet Isaiah of our God, he will not only pardon, but rather he will abundantly pardon. And so we're looking at the whole business of you and I having the slate of our lives wiped clean.

When I was a school teacher in North London trying to civilize, not so much educate, that objective was far beyond our reach. But to try and get some semblance of order amongst the boys and girls in our classes. Although my first school was totally a boys school.

I appointed a blackboard monitor. And his task every morning was to ensure that the board was clean. And this is what God tells us through his word about your life and about mine.

It's been erased. The sins that were there, they have been taken away by the application of the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ours, are you hearing me? Ours is the religion of the forgiven, says one old Puritan.

It would tire the hands of the angel to write down all the pardons God bestows upon penitent believers. How many times has God taken his pen out and written a pardon to you? How wonderful is the forgiving heart of our God, answers another Puritan. Be careful, be careful to keep the old receipts which you have from God for the pardon of your sins.

He doesn't say gloat over your sins, of course not. Neither does he say let your sins that you've committed come back to haunt you. But imagine that you've got a bundle of receipts.

Do you remember all those gas bills that you paid last year? And the electricity bills, four per year if you're an honourable person in remitting your contributions towards the energy supply. Well once public corporations, now private. You remember how they came and the glow of satisfaction? Maybe you didn't have a glow of satisfaction having paid your bill.

You got a receipt. Now says the old Puritan, the receipts that you've got for the pardoning of your sins. Bear them in your mind as you think of the largesse of the heart of God.

He deals with you not according to the way you deserve, but out of the full dimensions of his heart of immeasurable love. Now our Lord Jesus is setting down these controlling principles, if you please, that govern membership of his kingdom. Here he is in the open air, he's got thousands of people in front of him.

And he's holding them spellbound by the majesty of what he has to say. And by the magnetism of his personality. And when our Lord repeats something, then obviously it has double power and double strength of meaning.

And when he sets up this teaching in reference to prayer, he repeats what he said in the 12th verse in the 14th and 15th. It's a little extended commentary. Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.

But if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Listen to this, this isn't a Puritan, this is just plain me.

If being forgiven does not make you forgiving, you should forget your claim to be a Christian. I repeat that because I believe it's the summary of our Lord's teaching here and elsewhere. If being forgiven does not make you forgiving, you must forget your claims to be a Christian.

Three things to say in opening up my passage of scripture. The fact, God does forgive. The fallacy, God's forgiveness is not just one way.

The focal points, the point of receiving mercy and the point of giving testimony. That will make sense to you in a moment or two as I open it up. But there are my headings for those of you who jot down notes.

The fact, God does forgive. With you, says the Psalmist in Psalm 130 and verse 4, with you there is forgiveness. And when the Apostle Paul takes up the theme in Ephesians 1, he locates the characteristic of forgiveness both in the heart of the Father and also in the disposition of the Lord Jesus.

To the praise of his glorious riches, says Paul, speaking of the Father, which he has freely given us in the one he loves, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished upon us. Alexander Pope says, to err is human. What is to forgive? Divine.

And he's right, to err is human, it is divine to forgive. God is quick to forgive. The Father rushes down the hill and embraces the pig-smelling son.

And before the son can get halfway through his apology to his father, he hears the words, this my son was lost and is found, he was dead, he's alive again. There is a grand disclosure of the Father heart of God. With you, there is forgiveness.

There are many ways in which the word forgiveness is worked through in the Hebrew and in the Greek. And unfortunately, in English, we're rather anemic in our vocabulary. We just basically have one word.

So let me give you certain facets of the character of our Lord as he forgives. In the book of Genesis, you discover Joseph's brothers. They come to Joseph in the final chapter of the book.

Their father is dead. And they give to Joseph a message that their father has actually left with them. And they say, when your father died, he said, will you continue to forgive us for the sins that we committed against you? And that word forgiveness means to lift up.

Will you lift us up out of the sins that we committed? There's another sense in which this word is used. It's in 2 Chronicles chapter 6 and verse 21, where Solomon, praying on behalf of the children of Israel, anticipating the fact that from time to time they would indeed sin, he prays to the Lord and requests the Lord in his goodness and his grace that when they do this and they repent, will the Lord forgive them? Hear the supplications of your servant and of your people, Israel, when they pray towards this place. Hear from heaven your dwelling place.

And when you hear, forgive. And that means send away. So as far as God's forgiveness goes, he lifts you out of your sin.

He sends your sin away from you. In the Gospel of Luke, going to the Greek vocabulary and the 6th chapter, you discover another word which is often translated in older versions of the Bible with the term forgive. Here is our Lord Jesus, Luke chapter 6 and verse 37.

And this is what he says. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven. And that means loose. Loose the man from the sins that bind him.

Set him free. So forgiveness has the idea of being lifted up. Sins being sent away.

Loosening a post from some concrete that's holding it so you're loosened from your sins. And what's more, there is the thought of God being gracious. Chapter 7 and verse 43, still with Luke's Gospel, Simon replies to the Lord Jesus, Simon being taken to task by the Master because of his lack of understanding of the character of God and the nature of the Gospel.

Jesus puts up a little question to him in terms of the way that he's been received by a woman and not been received with equal enthusiasm and tenderness by Simon. Jesus says to Simon, Who has loved the most in sketching out his parable? And Simon replies, I suppose the one who has the bigger debt cancelled. You have judged correctly, Jesus said.

The idea there is of God being gracious to the person who is a sinner. And here in the verses that we're looking at in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 6 and the 12th and 14th verse, you've got another word used for forgiveness which means actually to let off, to send away. So you see, I've taken that little excursion into Scripture because it's good for us to realize that there are many facets of meaning for you to grasp hold of in terms of the way that God forgives you for your sins, for the sins that you have committed.

And what about the person who has been so privileged? What condition does he find himself in? Does she find herself in? Well, that's almost bringing up a question that hardly needs an answer. But let's answer it because Scripture makes it so very wonderful in the way that it evaluates the condition of people who have known what it is for their sins to be freed, sent away from them, lifted out of them. It says, Paul quoting the Old Testament in Romans 4 and verse 7, Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. And if you want it in language that's got the same clarity, but you want further emphasis, then here is the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 19. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

How isn't that wonderful? You see, I've taken the risk of being a little pedantic in moving you to the Old Testament and into the New Testament because I want you to understand the many, many facets of this word forgiveness. Happy is the man whose sins are no longer on the computers of heaven. Happy is the man who's got the bundle of receipts and no one can come along and say, Pay what you owe.

You don't pay again, do you? Your gas bill or your electricity bill of last year? If they demand it, you go to the receipts that you've got in your little bureau or desk or wherever you keep your personal documents. Now you and I are just in that sort of position. If anyone, if any evil thought should come into our minds, if any devil who would try to make us introspective and shake us from the security that is ours and say, You're a vile sinner.

We can say, Well, yes, that was the case. We have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But look at the receipts, man.

Check them through. We are now pardoned. God has no record of those things that you are accusing us of.

So you see why the saintly Bishop Ambrose said so many years ago, I will not glory because I am redeemed, nor because I am clear of sin, but because my sins are forgiven. The fact, God does forgive and says one cynical French philosopher, It is his business to forgive. But you see that cynical philosopher was wrong in the implication that receiving forgiveness from God was a one-way thing.

That's why I bring to your attention my second heading. The fallacy. God's forgiveness is not one way.

If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will never forgive your sins. Back in my school, we had a chemistry master.

And he had an even greater problem trying to get our kids interested in chemistry. I had an advantage over him. The gospel stories and the Old Testament stories, I could get the kids quiet and listening with bated breath some of the wonderful challenging things.

I've always been against the educational system of this country. Any move to take the Bible away from the centrality of scriptural essence because it's such an exciting book. Well in the chemistry lesson this poor old fellow was trying to get something of chemistry into the minds of our lads from Tottenham who didn't want to know.

And occasionally he would try to tell them what you did with a piece of litmus paper. Now some of you remember. An alkali and an acid.

If you want to discover whether one's alkali or the other's acid you get your litmus paper and depending on whether it turns red or blue you've discovered what solution you've got. Alright. Here is the litmus paper of scripture.

You say you're forgiven. Are you sure your forgiveness is genuine? Are you sure that your claims are not really in one very terrible sense misunderstood by you? Is it all fanciful? Well I say here's the litmus test. Are you forgiving others in the way that the Father has forgiven you? And if hand over your heart you say yes then you're alright.

It's turned red. You have indeed been forgiven by the precious blood of Jesus but forgiveness is two way. You can't sponge on the grace of God.

You see there's no such thing as cheap grace. It's free. But if you come before the cross of our Lord Jesus and you confess the enormity of your sin then the test as to whether you've really appreciated what He has done for you will be discovered in the way that you then behave.

You see my point? If being forgiven does not make you forgiving you should forget your claims to be a Christian. Now we're very grateful to the Apostle Peter that sometimes he asks the daftest questions because we too are dull and I admire Peter and I wish I had half of his faith and even when sometimes he says things that seem to be a little bit insensitive I know where he's coming from. I see Peter so often in myself.

And we're so grateful to Peter when he comes to the Lord Jesus and he puts a question to Him which causes the Saviour to give an even greater exposition of this business of forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer. You remember how in the 18th chapter the passage read to you by Alan Ford a little while ago Peter comes along to Jesus verse 21 of Matthew 18 you may like to turn to it and he says, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? That's a fair enough question, isn't it? How many times must I tolerate my neighbour? How many times must I put up with that person who gets under my skin? How many times must I turn the other cheek? Now, the Jewish rabbis had a good teaching on this. They said three times.

The reason why they said three times is because in the book of Amos in the first chapter and in the second chapter you get a little bit of a formula that's repetitive speaking on behalf of God. For two transgressions and for three I will not turn my wrath against Gentile nations. So the Jewish rabbis with their logical minds they came along and said two transgressions, three transgressions.

Alright, three times is enough to say it's alright and on the fourth you can hit him. So you see when Peter comes along and says seven at least he's moved, hasn't he? I mean he's begun to realise that the kingdom that Jesus is setting up an entry to the kingdom is completely different from any concept that Jewish theologians had. The only problem with Peter is that he wasn't radical enough.

So our Lord responds. And he has at the back of his mind in Genesis 4 a man by the name of Lakech who on one occasion spoke about if Cain has been avenged seven times I will be avenged seventy times seven. A vindictive man.

It was Old Testament character lamech. But Jesus says not seven times but seventy times seven. In other words our Lord Jesus is talking about you being able to forgive again and again and again and again.

Your forgiving capacity never runs out. And he sets up a tale. A story as our Lord often will to nail his point.

And the story is really fairly quickly understood by even the dullest of people. He talks about a man who is incalculably in debt. In fact he uses a word to express an amount of currency which really is at the limits of the estimation of people at that time.

He talks about someone with talents. Gold bars. And he takes the biggest number that there is in the Aramaic and Greek language ten thousand.

So here is a man with a colossal debt that is computed at ten thousand talents. And he goes before his master and he says when the master is calling an account when the king is calling an account that he is not able to pay. Verse 25.

Since he was not able to pay the master order that he and his wife and his children all that he had be sold to repay the debt. It's an oriental setting, the story. It's not a Jewish story that Jesus is referring to but he'll get his audience understanding because of course the Middle East and the Orient are very close together in terms of culture and so forth.

This man had nothing to pay. Now don't you see those very words they throb with theological meaning. Nothing to pay.

Here I am a wretched sinner. I'm aware of my sin. I hate my sin.

Do you often hate yourself? Sometimes I tell you honestly the most difficult person I have to cope with is myself. I've nothing to pay. Nothing in my hand I bring.

Simply to thy cross I cling. You see it's impossible for this man to repay such an enormous debt. Jesus has gone beyond the powers of human comprehension to state the indebtedness of this fellow to the king.

Nothing to pay. And even any sort of ever acquiring sufficient to balance the books is a nonsense. One of the terrible things about sinners is they don't recognize the enormity of their debt.

Be patient with me. He begged, verse 26, I will pay back everything. An utter impossibility.

As impossible as when the prodigal returns and in his prepared speech which he never gets through he talks to the father about make me as one of your hired servants and sooner or later I'll repay what I owe. You see, the king has dealt so sternly with this man in this story because he wants to show the grace that there is in his heart. God's severity is his love in disguise.

Did you hear that? God's severity is his love in disguise. Here is Joseph who anticipates our Lord Jesus. Here are the brothers.

They don't know he's Joseph. They feel he's the Egyptian prime minister and he's a bit of a tyrant. He deals with them in such a gruff fashion.

Now why the gruffness? Why the sternness? Because here is, if you like, our Lord Jesus projected prophetically. Here is the character of God. His sternness hides his grace and when his sternness brings you to a realisation of guilt then you'll discover as you lift up the mantle of his sternness the grace of God.

I am Joseph. Don't you realise? I am Jesus. I am the God and Father of the universe.

How wonderful the sternness of God if it brings you to a point of repentance. That's what happened to this man. No, it wasn't.

He was there in the presence of the King and then he went out. As some of us go out from the tab and we're not changed one fig. It's not made a hapeth of difference.

If you go out and you behave in the same way as you did when you came in then what's the point of coming in the first instance? That's the problem with this man. He went out and a fellow came along who owed him a fraction. One six hundred thousandth of what he'd just been forgiven.

And this fellow who'd been shipwrecked in the docks and who realised just a few moments ago how grave was his shipwreck when he's dealing with another one in the same docks and with the same shipwreck with the same experience. He doesn't transfer grace, you see. He's been and fetched grace for himself but he will not give that grace to another.

Now the Bible says this the measure in which you meet this is Luke 7 the measure in which you meet the measure with which you react the way in which you repay other people which is your choice is the way that God will repay you. Don't you see the choice is yours? You can come to God and ask for grace and God will say yes here is my grace but the proof that you have received the genuine article will be the way in which you show grace to other people. The man wanted to be measured by God in one measure while he measured his fellow in another.

If you receive grace you are to give grace if you receive love you are to give love. The apostle James makes it so very clear, doesn't he? As in the second chapter and the thirteenth verse of his epistle he says this, I'll read from the twelfth Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful mercy triumphs over judgment. So this man he goes out from the court of the king and he submits to the judgment of God finishes up gaining justice without mercy ever paying but never paying off.

This says the Lord Jesus is how my heavenly father will treat you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. So we've discovered the fact God does forgive the fallacy God's forgiveness is not just one way. Now finally and very quickly the focal point where am I now? Where are you in terms of receiving the forgiveness of God? Well there is a sense in which your forgiveness is yet future and there is a sense in which your forgiveness is past.

Look at Colossians chapter 4 and verse 13 for example Colossians chapter 4 and verse 13 where the apostle talking to the Christians in Colossae makes it plain that if they have been forgiven they too are to forgive. I've got the wrong verse there I'm sorry and I've run out of time for me to be able to discover it but the apostle Paul refers to us who have been forgiven as we have been forgiven as we have received mercy so we are to give mercy. Now drop back to Matthew 5 and verse 3 will you because here we have got a promise from the Lord Matthew 5 and verse 7 blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

Paul makes it plain in Ephesians and in Colossians the verse that I muffed in quoting that there is a sense in which we have already had mercy. The Lord makes it plain that there is a sense in which we will still receive mercy. So we are at this midpoint if you please in our experience.

One commentator has put it like this whilst the Christian must ever look back on a mercy received as the source and motive for the mercy he should show he looks forward to the mercy he needs and which he is assured the merciful shall obtain. We have mercy but we continue to need mercy because there is a sense in which we are all continuing to sin. Now we receive that mercy and we will receive mercy in the measure that we are showing mercy to other people the focal point where I am now I have received I will still receive of God's mercy I must direct mercy to others and then the point of evangelism in showing mercy and forgiveness to others the evangelistic spin-off you see the world cannot take this can it? If you forgive men when they sin against you your heavenly father will also forgive you but if you do not forgive men your sins your father will not forgive your sins this is not the ethic of the world but I'll tell you something it's a very powerful ethic for those who have been made sensitive by the Holy Spirit the questions will come how is it that these people can forgive? and they start to inquire and they start to ask says some commentator in days gone by there is no point in burying the hatchet if you are going to put a marker on the site Christian people don't do that they forgive and there is an evangelistic spin-off in their forgiveness I remember in Korea the story in the 1950s of a Korean pastor whose two sons were diabolically done to death when the communists pulled out of that area the man who was responsible for the death was brought to trial by the Korean court and the pastor who had lost his two sons wrote to the judge and asked that the man who had murdered his sons might be handed over to him so that he could counsel him the judge would not agree and so he appealed to president Sin-Man-Ri as the president was then and as a result this man who had killed his sons was discharged into the pastoral care of the minister the minister went to see the parents of the boy who had killed his lads and they said why are you dealing in this way and he said well my two sons were ready to forgive my two sons were ready for heaven your son is not and as a result of this astonishing forgiving attitude he led both those people to the Lord they brought up his daughter sponsored her in a college and he took the murderer and put him through a Presbyterian seminary in Korea and there was a play that was written in the early 1950s called The Love Atom Bomb which depicted all that this man had been able to do as a result of the forgiveness in his heart you see evangelism is one of the spin-offs of those who forgive others as they have been forgiven our Lord Jesus dear Lord I need to leave you with any other example than this one on the cross of Calvary looking down from that vantage point he speaks to the world he speaks of the men who are guilty of pinning him to the cross and he says Father forgive them for they know not what they do and there's one cruel Roman soldier whose heart is touched and he says in response surely this was the Son of God evangelism is one of the spin-offs of the forgiving attitude the fact of forgiveness God does forgive the fallacy God's forgiveness is not one way the focal points of forgiveness where I am now I've received His mercy but I still need to receive it therefore I should still be dispensing it where I am now as I dispense forgiveness to others I can be used evangelistically for the saving of souls so you see our Lord's statement is so wonderfully practical if you forgive men when they sin against you your Heavenly Father will also forgive you but if you do not forgive men their sins your Father will not forgive your sins let's go to an old-fashioned hymn on the cross on a hill far away stood an old rugged cross let's stand let's go to an old-fashioned hymn on the cross stood an old rugged cross let's stand let's go to an old-fashioned hymn on the cross stood an old rugged cross let's stand let's go to an old-fashioned hymn on the cross stood an old rugged cross let's stand