The sermon, 'The Danger of an Unforgiving Heart' by Scott Brown, discusses the parable of the unforgiving servant from Matthew 18:21-35. It emphasizes the importance of forgiveness as a core aspect of the Christian life, reflecting God's mercy and the significance of the cross of Jesus Christ. The speaker explores how unforgiveness can lead to spiritual bondage and bitterness, contrasting it with the liberation and peace that forgiveness brings. The sermon highlights that true disciples of Christ are marked by their ability to forgive, emulating the forgiveness they have received through Christ. It warns of the dangers of harboring unforgiveness, which can result in both earthly turmoil and eternal consequences. The message encourages believers to release offenses, practice reconciliation, and demonstrate the gospel's power by forgiving others, thus embodying the kingdom of heaven.

Good morning. If you'd open the scripture please to Matthew 18. We're going to study today 21 to 35. Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?

Jesus said to him, I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to set accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10, 000 talons. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him saying, Master, have patience with me and I will pay you all.

Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave him his debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow-servants who owed him a hundred denarily. And he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what you owe. So his fellow-servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay you all. And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt.

So when his fellow servants saw what he had done, they were grieved and came to their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you? And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father also will do to you, each of you, from his heart does not forgive this brother of his trespass.

Let's pray. Father, we are so thankful for this day. Oh, Father, we thank you for this word. And Father, we pray that we would right now have an open ear and open heart, Lord, to receive the word that is spoken. We pray a blessing upon Pastor Brown, Lord, as he comes to us today with your word.

We just pray a blessing upon the word spoken and again Lord we pray that we'd be as a sponge and just hear. Amen. As we come to Matthew 18 here this morning, we are brought to what I think is a very significant opportunity before us to consider the subject of forgiveness, how God comes to a person and redeems them and how He changes them. He actually changes them so much that the bondage of unforgiveness and bitterness and wrath that they have, the exceptions that they have, the difficulties that they have with people, many of them just disappear. And they become completely different kind of people.

They become forgiving people. And so today, through the instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ to His disciples, we now, under His own care, has provided a wonderful opportunity for us, for this church, to empty the church of all unforgiveness, to drain the accounts built up against others, to set the captives free, to become imitators of God, to demonstrate the gospel in a living way, to make it known to yourself and the world that Jesus Christ has forgiven you, because you forgive others. And the flip side is also true. The terrors, the dangers that are for those who cannot forgive as the Lord Jesus Christ makes them so clear. And so it is an opportunity to learn more about how to relish, how to experience, and how to demonstrate the very power of the gospel, which forgives sinners who have such a great debt to owe.

So here in this passage, this issue that is before us points us to what is absolutely the most powerful force in the universe, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ. Without the cross, there is no forgiveness. When people are living demonstrations of the word of the cross in word and deed, they're demonstrating what is the most fundamental aspect of the kingdom of heaven. And that is that the forgiven are forgivers. Satan trembles, as John Angel James says, at nothing but the cross.

And I would like to just pray that our lives together here are such dynamic and clear demonstrations of the cross because of the forgiveness that we have. Not just for us here, but for those who are outside, family members, and all kinds of people that go back, way back, maybe 10, 20, 30, 40, maybe for some 50 or 60 years to forgive, to be a person who demonstrates the power of the cross. John Angel James continues by saying, Satan trembles, and if we would destroy His power and extend that holy and benevolent kingdom, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, it must be by means of the Cross. So when we talk about subject of forgiveness that's before us here today. We're talking about being either living demonstrations of the cross or living demonstrations of the accuser of the brethren.

You either stand in one of the other places at any moment in your life. Forgiveness sets the captives free. It recognizes the depravity of man. It acknowledges the mercies of God. It destroys barriers between people.

It unravels the plan of the devil as the accuser. It renounces slander in the heart. It destroys backbiting and gossip. And it preserves love. Somebody once said, I don't know who it was, who said unforgiveness is the poison we drink so that others would die.

And that's what Jesus is dealing with here. A Christian with a forgiving heart is a powerful weapon against the forces of darkness at work in the world today. And it in itself explains what His kingdom is about, and it identifies those who are in that kingdom. And so in Matthew 18, our Lord Jesus is teaching us these things. Now, the context of Matthew 18 is critical to understand for how this fits.

We're now coming to the very end of Matthew 18. When we move into chapter 19, there's a change of activity. And so we're really coming to end of what is one long single section. And so Matthew 18 opens by the Lord Jesus Christ teaching his disciples what it means to be part of the kingdom. And he hasn't stopped talking about that, not to the very last verse of Matthew 18.

In 18.1 through 5, if you could look with me there, the disciples come to Jesus and they ask, who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? And so this is about the Kingdom of Heaven. It's about what life is like in the kingdom of heaven. What are the people like that are there? What does the kingdom actually do to you?

How does it change you? Of course, when we get down to the end, we realize that it changes you. It relieves the poison from your soul against other people. It's so powerful. And if it hasn't, it actually means that you'll be thrown into outer darkness, because you were a false disciple.

But In the first five verses, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And we learn there that it's a kingdom of childlike humility. And then in verses 6 through 10, we learn that in the kingdom of heaven, one must be very careful not to be one of those who causes these little ones who believe in me to sin. It's a kingdom of turning from your sin for the sake of your brother. And then in verses 11 through 14, It's a kingdom where the members of that kingdom go and seek out those who have fallen into sin.

Even if one, even if one departs, you go out and you get them. That's what this kingdom is about. It goes and gets the one who has fallen. It has mercy on the one who has fallen. And he says the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.

And if a man has a hundred sheep, don't you think he would go after one? Of course, in God's kingdom, that's how it works. And then in verses 15 through 20, how does the kingdom work when your brother sins against you? And it's a kingdom where people don't just brush sin under the carpet, but if they cannot forgive their brother, if they cannot let it go, or if it would be bad for them to let it go, you go to your brother. And you bring the sin before him for the purpose of reconciliation.

That's what His Kingdom is like. It's not a place where brothers and sisters don't go to one another. They do when they need to and when it's beneficial to that person. Not that they have to go to every person who commits every sin, as we spoke about it last week. And then finally, in verse 21, we come into the whole subject of forgiveness of sins that are repeated against you.

What do the sons of the kingdom do? How do you live out the power of the gospel? What does the cross of Jesus Christ have to do with when someone sins against you? And what we learn from this passage is that God even glorifies himself when someone stands against you. Because when they do, He's glorified in the way that you respond to it.

So in this question that Peter asks, then Peter came and said, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times now. Peter's always asking questions and it's a wonderful geth that many people have. Peter absolutely had it. And when people ask questions, all ships rise.

Good questions are so helpful. This is a good question. And then notice that this whole context is about the kingdom of heaven. What happens in the kingdom among those members who are the kingdom and it's triggered by Jesus instruction in verse 15. This question is connected to Peter's question in verse 15, or the question in verse 15, and that is moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he hears you, you've gained your brother. So the whole context is about when people sin against each other. And so another way to look at Matthew 18 is just to see these two sections. The first section has to do with this first question about who's the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, and then this second question. Lord, how often shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?

And in the first section, in verse 15, what Jesus is teaching his disciples is what do you do publicly when someone sins against you privately? And so that's, but now, and you go to your brother, that's what you do, you go to your brother. But, but what do you do after you've gone to your brother? What do you do in the privacy of your own heart? And I, I think that applies whether you went to your brother or whether you did not go to your brother.

What is happening in your heart? In the context, it seems like perhaps you've already gone to your brother and you've told him his sin. But now, are you sinning against him after you have gone to him about his sin? Because that often happens. So this is a very personal aspect of all those who deal with sin.

Perhaps you have responded in a godly manner and you went to your brother, but Now that you've gone to your brother, how do you feel about him? Is he still dangling on your hook now that you've gone to him? Or have you set the matter aside? What is your self-talk about Him now, now that you've gone to Him? You've seen His sin, and maybe it's gone all the way and been made public, and He was excommunicated, maybe He's come back, or whatever the situation might be.

But what do you think of him now? Are you still persecuting him on the hook of your meditations? And are you now sinning against your brother because of the way that he sinned? Sin can be sin. Have you now become his slanderer in your heart?

Do you still have a problem with him? Have you written him off? In real life, The one who is sinned against often becomes the greater sinner. Has that ever happened to you? So in the previous section, there's this scenario when someone sins and you go to gain his brother.

And now you have this completely different kind of situation. Now, Peter is posing here as super spiritual. He's saying, how many times do I have to forgive my brother? Seven times. Peter is actually one-upping the Pharisees in this whole equation.

His math is different than the Pharisees. The Pharisees were saying, well, only three times. So Peter is not one-upping him. I mean, Peter is going way beyond the Pharisees. I think Peter's thinking he's pretty spiritual here.

He's actually suggesting that he would forgive his brother seven times, which is just an enormous difference from the Pharisees, who had a more pinched view of how many times it was right or reasonable to forgive your brother. So Peter is like all of us. We like to think that we are so magnanimous, we think that we are so spiritual, we think so highly of ourselves. And so We do think that we are far more forgiving than the other person, these other bad people who don't forgive. And Peter is kind of like that.

He's thinking that seven times is significant. Perhaps he's thinking that his Lord will now praise him. And instead of saying, get behind me, Satan, he's now going to say, oh, wisdom from heaven, out of the mouth of babes. But that isn't exactly what he says. Now the issue here is that we like to keep a count of things.

We like to count in fractions. We keep score. And then we let them build up. You know, it's one thing to count them. But here's the other question.

When does the jar get so full that finally the lid blows off? Everyone has some way of counting. And then they say, I can't take it anymore. And bam, then the relationship is over. Or there's some terrible outbursts of anger or wrath or something like that that really doesn't help at all.

But it's because there is a count that we keep and there's a moment where it just becomes intolerable. We have our limits. We have our quota. And Peter is talking about his quota was seven. What's your quota?

I mean, we know that love suffers long and is kind, as Paul says to the Corinthians, that it is not provoked, that it bears all things and believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love, N-E-V-E-R, fails. That's a lot of times. So it's not seven exactly. And so then this kind of love that Jesus is presenting here is the kind of love that makes Satan tremble because it is the kind of love that the cross of Jesus Christ creates for his people.

Those who have been forgiven much, love much, and they forgive much. And so then the Lord Jesus explains how often we should forgive in verse 22. Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. So the Lord is just giving a general understanding of how merciful we ought to be toward those people who sin against us. And he's really saying You need to take your limits off of your forgiveness.

And stop counting that way. Keeping a count is really inappropriate. Counting sins is not part of the kingdom of heaven in that sense. Jesus says in Luke 17, he says that if your brother sins against you And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times returns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.

So is this like seven times in a lifetime? Or is it seven times per quarter? Well, Jesus says seven times, not even seven times a day, more than seven times a day. You should forgive him. So with this now, the Lord has given us the doctrine, okay?

He stated the principle as he often does with some very didactic precision about how many times. And he answers the question very directly about that. And so after giving the doctrine, he now comes and he tells a story to illustrate the doctrine. And that picks us up in verse 23. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants." So, Peter's question is about accounting for sin, and the Lord Jesus' response is about the kingdom of heaven.

What accounting looks like in the kingdom of heaven. And again, there are many times in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus has said, the kingdom of heaven is, or the kingdom of heaven is like. So that he's talking about this category of what it means to be a true child in the King's kingdom because he's spoken all along in the gospel of Matthew there are true children and there are false children. And he's doing the very same thing here in this passage. And he's saying that there's something that happens to a person in the true kingdom that is so profound that it makes him a different kind of a person.

So he says the kingdom of heaven is. Now, there are a few things that characterize the kingdom. There's a king, and there are servants, and there is a settling of the accounts. There's a king, and there are servants, different kinds, and there's a settling of accounts. The kingdom of heaven always involves the settling of accounts, one way or another.

Every sin will come to justice, every single sin, one way or another. Either under the cross of Christ or under the fires of hell, either way. Every single sin. You don't have to worry about judgment. He said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord of hosts.

So there are these two ways of settling accounts. And here there are these three elements in the story and the accounts are settled in verse 24. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10, 000 talons. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded him that he be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had and that payment be made. So the whole idea here is that he was not able to pay.

And the illustration bears it out. There was a debt that was impossible to pay. Who knows how much it really was? You can do the math in a number of different ways. Well, the word for 10, 000 is the word merius, which is the largest numerical term in the Greek language.

So it's big, big, bigger than big. Or the Talbot was the largest denomination in the Roman Empire. And it would take 10 million days to earn that amount if you were a day laborer. Now, let's say you made twice as much that. It would only take you 5 million days.

So it was a lot. The most accurate English word to use for this is gazillions, a gazillion gazillions. The idea is that the debt is just so overwhelming that you can't get to it. You who trade silver and gold can run the math. It's actually quite a lot.

And That's really the issue. And that is that there is a forgiveness that's necessary, that's beyond calculation. In the King's kingdom, the servants have a debt that is so enormous that they cannot pay it by their deeds. It's impossible. In the King's kingdom, There are people who have admitted that there are such great sinners that they can provide nothing in order to pay the debt except the blood of Jesus Christ.

That's the only way anyone is ever saved. There's so many things on the outside of your cup that you can shine up and fix up and make yourself look like a Christian, but none of those things matter. Not in this accounting system. So the master decides to cut his losses and he begins the process of putting this man out, putting him into servitude. So in verse 25, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, that payment might be made.

So he's put out, whether this is kind of a picture of discipline or excommunication, I don't know, even though because it follows what we've just already experienced in Matthew 18. But the big issue here is that there is such a great inability to pay the debt. And then the servant begs for mercy in verse 26 and you have to ask you know how genuine was this was this prayer was this repentance you know in Scripture you find lots of places where there's fake repentance here's one right here right in front of your eyes the servant fell down before him saying master have patience with me and I will pay you all. So he was verbally repenting. He had all the right words, I will pay you all.

And it actually says he fell down. The word is worship. It was that intense. It was that demonstrative. And he was posturing himself.

In times of pressure and collapse and in times of being caught in sin, you often fall down and you beg for mercy. He had a costume of a Christian. He said all the right things. But we find out later that all the right things were, while they were on his lips, they were not in his heart and that's the difference between certain kinds of people in the visible church. And then the master is moved with compassion, in verse 27.

Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave the debt. And then, in verse 28, the servant responds sinfully, not consistent at all with the mercy that He's been given. And it's really astonishing what He does. He goes out to settle His own accounts. He has accounts too, just like every Christian can or cannot have accounts.

And as I said at the beginning, we're here to drain our accounts here, so that we would be found like a forgiving servant. And he's so merciless, he's actually, the one that he grabs the neck of, he's asking one six hundred thousandth of what he's been forgiven. And he throws him in prison, actually, he's now taking his master's servant and throwing him in prison. That's how much he loves his master. He's taking away this other resource and going through a process of having thrown into prison.

His ruthlessness is just legendary. And he's just giving us a picture of the ruthlessness of unforgiveness, of those who have been forgiven so much, but yet cannot forgive those who have such a little debt in comparison. And so we hear, we observe the unmerciful servant's response. Now this is a theme in Scripture. You can find this kind of scenario all throughout Scripture.

There are pictures of this in many places. You could look at Jacob and Esau after theft and deception between brothers. We could go to Joseph and his brothers and a boy being despised by his brothers. And then a brother, the brother is saying in mercy that God meant it for good. You could go to the slander between a brother and a sister with Moses and Miriam in Numbers chapter 12.

You could go to the overt hatred between a father-in-law and his son-in-law with David and Saul in the cave in 1 Samuel 24. You could go to betrayal between friends, David and Shimei in 2 Samuel 19. You could speak about the adultery between a husband and a wife and the mercies that Hosea has for his wife Gomer. You could go to the physical abuse and death between an evangelist and his killers when Stephen says, let it not be held to their account. So this is a theme in Scripture where You have someone doing something wrong to another, and there are various ways in scripture that we see people responding.

You see the apostle Paul, after so much harm being done to him in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 16, he says, Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works. You must also be aware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words. At my first defense, no one stood with me, but all foursuck me, may it not be charged against them." You can be forsaken and you can say, let it not be charged against them. You can look to Jesus after all the false accusations and slanders and his arrest and his assault and battery and his crucifixion and you hear him saying the cross father forgive them for they know not what they do.

So this is a theme in Scripture that has various nuances. You'd have to unpack various principles from each one of these stories of forgiveness and unforgiveness. But the truth is that Jesus makes His disciples ministers of reconciliation. They have been reconciled. They bring a ministry of reconciliation to the world and they say, they say, repent and be reconciled to God.

And then they have that same heart of reconciliation toward their brothers by granting forgiveness to them. That's this kingdom that God has established. That's why Jesus said, if you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift there before the altar. Go to your brother and be reconciled to him.

And then come and offer your gift. That's how it works in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what the sons of such a merciful King do to each other. And then what we find, now this whole kind of display of the mercy of God, Satan trembles at this work of the cross that goes on in the world. And then what we find is that the fellow servants are grieved by what happened in verse 31.

So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved. And they came and told their master all that had been done. So the fellow servants are discouraged. They're amazed at the hypocrisy that they're seeing in this man. And the community sees the sin, and it's well known.

And there are witnesses of this unforgiveness. The fellow servants in the church are witness unforgiveness from time to time. And they stand as witnesses against that person and before God that this actually has happened. And this whole matter just indicates that we live our lives in community. And it should be agreed to the church when there's unforgiveness.

I'm thankful for people in this church who, on a number of occasions, have spoken to someone, recognized that they were bitter, and said, you have got to go to your brother. It's happened, they've told many people to come to me, and I'm so grateful. Sometimes they don't come. Sometimes they're appealed to come, but they still see that their anger, and they will not come and tell the truth. That happens.

But in the community of faith, we should be grieved when there's unrepentance, I mean when there's unforgiveness. And when we see it, we should say to our brother, go to your brother to be reconciled. And we should also pray for him because once he goes to his brother, he may become a greater sinner than his brother was in sinning against him. That's why the Apostle Paul said to the Colossian church members, he said, therefore as the elect of God in Colossians 312, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, neatness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

That's why the Lord Jesus said, happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. No one is saved for their mercy, but your mercy demonstrates that you're saved. No one ever had enough mercy in his heart to receive the forgiveness of God, and never ever will. But a mark of a son of the kingdom is that he will forgive. And he might struggle with it.

The people in the Colossian church were struggling with it. You're going to forgive someone and you're going to struggle, maybe. But what do you do with that? Do you come back and have mercy even seven times in one day? Maybe maybe your heart is gonna hate your brother seven times in one day.

What are you gonna do? Return return and repentance wreckage named named that for what it is. It's a work of the slander, the devil himself. And renounce and throw off the offense. Drain the account.

Let that man become debt-free in your eyes. Drain his account. And so then in verse 32, the Master speaks. Then his Master, after he called and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you.

And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should repay, she should pay all that was due him. So my heavenly father also will do to to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses." So in the illustration of the doctrine, the unforgiving is actually unforgiven. And he's handed over to the torturers. And the term that Jesus uses here indicates someone who's in prison. And the torturers in prison are counting the silver, they're counting in order to calculate the amount of condemnation and how much torture you should get.

That's sort of the idea here. As there will be an accounting, remember? All sin will be brought to account. It will either be brought to account by the accountants who will torture you for all eternity, Or the blood of Jesus Christ who paid for all of your sins, who drained the debt that was in your account, who drained it dry. Satan trembles.

Satan trembles at a person who will drain the account of debt of his brother. Because it's such a picture of the cross, it's such a picture of his mercy, when his children without rancor, with happiness in their heart, look at their brother with kindness and joy and receive Him, and they have drained His account in the same way that their account was drained, that debt was paid by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. This kind of torture, I think there are two kinds of torture really for the unforgiving. There really is an earthly torture that a root of bitterness brings upon a person. And while the tortured experience here in this text is eternal damnation.

But there is also a torture here on this earth that I think is a foretaste, very, very small foretaste of what is to come. The dissatisfaction that you cannot escape, the constantly feeling bad about people, the knot in your stomach, the unhappiness that you have, you cannot rejoice at the sound of their voices or in their presence, you are unhappy with them, you're gnashing your teeth at them when their name comes up, you just are beset again with this low grade, this low grade grinding bitterness. It may not overcome you, but it's there. This is a forecase of hell. And so when that is in your soul, you should understand that there are enormous, grievous tortures for those who cannot forgive.

The broken relationships, the broken marriages, the churches split, the friendships dissolved, the relational nomadism, the ecclesiological nomadism that people have where they just cannot somehow live at peace. They have to go somewhere else. That's part of the torture. You know, you just move from person to person instead of in eternal fellowship with brothers and sisters and with your Savior. So while I do believe there's earthly punishment and torture that the unforgiving experience, and it is a form of torture.

That's not the meaning of this kind of torture. This passage is about the torture that comes from eternity in hell for all those who have not been forgiven and therefore they cannot forgive. That's why the Lord Jesus said it the same way in the Lord's Prayer. You have to forgive. So the servant here represents the unforgiving person.

And this classification of unforgiving person is a false disciple. And the Kingdom of Heaven is a place of wheat and tares, it's like a dragnet, there are all kinds of fish, And by appearances, there are some who are professing. But in reality, there are the true and the false disciples. There are those who claim to be brothers and those who are not. There are those who say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, done many wonders in your name?

And then He will say, depart from me. I never knew you. You who practice lawlessness. This is a habitual practicing of the lawlessness of unforgiveness. In this passage you find the perfect balance of law and grace.

You have enormous grace from a master who completely drains your account of all infractions and none of your works can save you. On the other hand, you have a person who does not bear fruit in keeping with his repentance. All repentance is not the same. Some repentance is so true that the account of offenses is drained. And when a person is tempted to be unforgiving, they repent again, and they continue to let people off the hook.

That's a mark of the son of the kingdom. Christians will struggle with unforgiveness. Absolutely they will, because people are going to sin against them. And God has so kindly given many ways. He's given us words in the forms of commands.

He helps us by giving us a church where people will speak to one another in love, where they will go to one another, and once they've gone to one another, they'll forgive one another even seven times in a day, even a gazillion, jubillion times in a lifetime. You see this perfect balance between law and grace all over the Scriptures, and you see it here. You see it in the book of Galatians as well. Turn with me to Galatians chapter 5. You see the exact same pattern in Galatians where the law-grace tension is presented in perfect balance.

In verse 18, he says, but if you're led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against these there's no law. What the Apostle Paul is saying here is that those who are habitually trafficking in these sins unrepented of will not inherit the kingdom of God in verse 21.

But God has given us His Spirit to produce fruit, so that there is a progressive production of fruit in the midst of the challenges to unforgiveness and all these other things that are here. Will a Christian ever envy? Yes. Will a Christian ever have selfish ambition? Yes.

But is the Spirit of God working in his heart to devour that and replace it with the fruits of the Kingdom of Heaven? And So the servant represents the unforgiving person, the false disciple. And he tells us that the followers of Christ drain the accounts of those who have sinned against them. And they bring forth fruit. They cry out to God for help to forgive.

And if they're tempted again to unforgiveness, they cry out again, and they cry out again. And in this upward call of God, this progressive sanctification, God begins to relieve the poisons in his heart. And he actually sends, God sends people against you to sin against you for his own glory so that you demonstrate the gospel so that the poison of unforgiveness would be identified again. Every sin against you is a blessing from heaven, because it teaches you the great mercies that God has had toward you, and that He will give you the ability to demonstrate the power of the cross of Jesus Christ in forgiving your brother who sinned against you. Paul said in St.

Corinthians 13, he delights in the revilings, because they give him an opportunity to declare the glory of the mercies of Jesus Christ. So this scene shows a real life person who was a false repenter. And at the same time, he shows us many things about ourselves and how we deal with unforgiveness in our own hearts, so that we would be shown to be children of light. You were rejected. There was a broken promise.

There was a betrayed confidence. There was a lie that was told about you. There was an unkind word that someone said you were just completely brushed off and ignored. You were slandered. You were stolen from.

You were not paid for the work that you did. And these sins cry out for justice. And Jesus Christ says, vengeance is mine. You drain that account of debt. You may need to go to your brother and speak to him, but you got to drain that account because his account is not against you.

Vengeance is his. Someone in a Bible study said, you know, don't mock God by pleading for your trespasses to be forgiven and then not forgive others. You know, Jesus has already talked about this a number of times in Matthew. In Matthew 6, 15, He said in the Lord's Prayer, Forgive us our debts. He uses the same language, the same language, as we forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses." Again, no one is saved by becoming a forgiving person.

But if you are saved, You will become a forgiving person. That's what Jesus is saying in the Lord's Prayer and in this passage here Problems with money are often at the heart of so many broken relationships and hatings in the heart and Whenever that happens you have to recognize that you too are a debtor. That you are on somebody's account sheet on the negative side. And then he speaks of the genuineness that God has for His children, that from His heart, from His heart does not forgive his brother, his trespasses. So you have the person who from his heart forgives trespasses, and you have somebody else who only forgives with his mouth, but but not with his heart.

So if you are really in your heart ready to forgive those who have sinned against you. It is a sign that you have been forgiven from the heart of God. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Now, one last thing in the exposition and then we're going to move to some applications. Jesus has just instructed, He's instructed His disciples on how to deal with their sin in their brothers. They go to their brother, they take the log out of their own eye, and then He expands it in giving them an understanding of their secret sins.

This is a secret sin. Unforgiveness is a secret sin. Nobody knows it. It doesn't matter how you dress. It doesn't matter what words you use.

You can be such a great theologian. You can be an elder. You can be a deacon. You can be anyone. And you can look just like everyone else, but harboring in your heart is a poison that will kill you.

So it's a secret sin. I can't tell. I might be able to see it in your eyes when you talk to me about your brother. And I can see that you're enraged, and then I'll have to say, go to your brother. I might even hear it in my own voice, and my wife might say to me, do you hear yourself?

Oh Lord, have mercy on me. A true disciple is faithful to the command that the Apostle Paul gave to the Ephesians and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. So now let's go to some applications. Let's talk about common offenses. I just want to have us scan our souls on a number of levels here.

The first is common offenses. What about money? One of the ways that people commonly have offenses has to do with money. It might be your boss and your pay. It might be your contractor.

It might be your customer. It might be your neighbor. Any time you're paying or getting paid, the hinges of the door of sin are greased, and that door is swinging wide open to lure you in and devour you. You just have to know that. Words.

If money weren't enough, something as cheap as words can be used for this, an unthoughtful word, an unkind word, downright ridiculous words that people say. You know what? Here's my experience. Pretty much everyone I've known has had an unthoughtful, unkind, or downright ridiculous word sometime. You know, one of Jonathan Edwards' resolutions was, God, help me not to say any vain or ridiculous words on the Sabbath.

Well it's because we do that. Expectations. Money, words, expectations. I want to have us Just scan our souls and all this here. Expectations, hoping for a relationship that was not what you hoped it would be.

Recognize the common soil of unforgiveness. It often happens when You're impressed with someone. You think highly of them. Maybe you like the way that they talk on Facebook and they just seem like such fantastic people And they have such a fantastic life. And you say, oh, I wish that my life could be like that.

And then you actually get to know them. And you find out that it is Facebook, not the real book of their life. And so you become less impressed and you have opportunities for unforgiveness. You might get a new job and you have a new boss or you have a new friend or you come to a new church or it might, you know, you might have come here, you know, to this church because you were impressed with something or there's something like that and you, it will not take long for you to find a crack somewhere and a flaw. And then one crack is dismissable and then you see another and then you see the old, the first crack you saw repeated a couple more times.

And then now, now you start to count, and you're like Peter, you're not a seven yet, you're like a three, three or four, but then you get to five and six and you're just like Peter and you blow because you saw a flaw and maybe you didn't handle it rightly. Maybe you went to your brother about his flaw And it seemed okay for a while, but then you just couldn't get rid of it. And sometimes you never recover. And you just keep your nomadic lifestyle and you go from place to place claiming some other reason. But the truth is, the real reason was something that was in your heart that nobody else could see And your words were a gloss for it.

We just have these new interns here with us today. It will be a challenge for interns as well, as they see the cracks and flaws of the people that they live with every day. They'll be challenged with it. They'll go over to some of your houses and they'll see some things that just seem not exactly as they ought to be. They will see things that aren't exactly as they ought to be.

And what are they going to do with that? Proverbs 19 and 11 says, it's the glory of a man to overlook a matter. Jonathan Edwards, resolution number eight, resolved to act in all respects, while speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins or had the same infirmities or failings as others, and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God." In other words, when you see someone's sin, let that remind you of your own sin, rather than counting one by one, filling the jar. Christians have challenges, which is why also Jonathan Edwards said in Resolution 66, resolve never to give over, nor at least to flacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be. There's a difference between fighting the corruption and having it run unimpeded and having no ability to declare the glory of the cross of Jesus Christ through your behavior and through your hard attitude toward your brother.

Okay, so the first application is what are some of the common offenses. Here's another one. What does it mean to forgive? I think Webster has it. To release, to pardon, to remit an offense or a debt, to overlook an offense, to treat the offender as not guilty, to forgive the offense, to send it away, to reject it.

That is, not to impute it to the offender. So it's to pardon the offender and treating him as not guilty. So to forgive someone means to release him from his liability. Somebody said, To return evil for good is devilish, to return good for good is human, to return good for evil is divine. So, how do you know?

How do you know if you have forgiven someone? That's a good question. I'll give you three ways to think about it. My behavior. Do I slander my neighbor?

Number two, my thoughts. Do I have hatred in my heart? Is there vengeance in my heart when the thought of him comes? There's a difference between hatred and caution. There's a difference between recognizing that someone has a frailty and a weakness and hating them for it.

One can say when someone's name comes up in their heart, this is something that they struggle with. It's another thing to hate them for it. Thirdly, your conscience, is it clear? Are you persecuting in your heart? Number three, Third application.

What does forgetting have to do with forgiveness? Like, what if you can't forget it? I'm just going to give you the words of Steve Braggie. He preached on this a little while ago. I'm just going to read you what he told this congregation.

I like it. He said this, when you forgive someone, you absorb the cost of the offense committed against you. You cancel the debt and make a three-fold promise. Number one, I promise not to bring up this offense or use it against you. Number two, I will not bring it up to others in gossip, malign you because of it.

Number three, I will not bring it up to myself or dwell on its offenses. I will not play the videotape of your sin in my mind so that I can savor the excruciating details over and over again. And then what should you do? What should you do if you have unrepentance in your heart? Well, in Matthew 18, all throughout, sin is designed to activate a certain response.

And when you have it in your heart, pay what you owe. Recognize that what the writer of Hebrews called a root of bitterness can grow. And recognize that a Christian can have a root of bitterness growing in him that needs to be killed. So he says, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord, looking carefully. Lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled." One has to recognize how dangerous unforgiveness in the heart is.

John said, whoever hates his brother is in darkness and walks around in darkness. He does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded him. So the dangers of unforgiveness are so enormous. If you have unforgiveness in your heart, there just should be a warning horn going off in your soul to repent and turn to God, to do whatever you have to do, to let your brother off the hook that you have Him hanging on, and let Him off the hook, and let Him go. So the appearance of sin is a call to action for you and for Him.

You go to Him and you forgive Him and you remove your own sin so that you do not cause others to stumble or be found as someone who cannot declare the glory of the cross of Jesus Christ. And instead of terrifying Satan, you pet him and embrace him and make him your friend. The slanderer, your friend. It's a very dangerous business to take unforgiveness lightly. Jesus is teaching his disciples not to take unforgiveness lightly.

Also you have to recognize the difficulty of unforgiveness. The difficulty is stated very clearly in Proverbs 18-19. A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, And contentions are like the bars of a castle. That means that it's hard. That means that you might have to work at it.

That means that you might have to go back to the well over and over again. Your brother might sin against you seven times in a day. And you will have to forgive him seven times in a day, and it's hard. But think of how hard it was for God to forgive you of your offenses. So hard that he crucified his son on a cross for your sins.

It was that hard for a father to kill his son as a sacrifice for your sins. It's hard. Forgiveness can be hard. And if you're struggling with it, cry out to God. Here's a seventh.

How do I make this work in my family? Now, One of the things that has just occurred to me this week, and I've been so grateful to meditate upon it, and that is, I grew up in a household where there was no rancor. I grew up in a household where there was no slander, no evil talking against anyone, where there were no... My father and mother are forgiving people. They forgive everyone.

Everyone. So I never went home for dinner and had upset parents, had other people. I never did, it just never happened as far as I was aware of. I'm really grateful for that. You know, it really matters, it really matters how you are as parents, that you're forgiving people, that your dinner tables are not surrounded with unforgiveness?

What's the culture of your family like? It really, really, you have so many, there are so many young children in this church. And what, how fathers and mothers deal with unforgiveness matters. Does a husband forgive his wife? Does a wife forgive her husband seven times in one day?

How about that? Do the children see these demonstrations of the cross of Christ every day working in their home? Their mercy. One of the signs of an unbeliever is that they cannot have mercy. Every time I run into somebody who just simply cannot have mercy toward their wife or their husband or their friend or their boss or their contractor or their supplier or whoever, if they cannot have mercy, I'm afraid for them.

I'm afraid for their souls. But anyway, I grew up in a house where no one was dangling on the hook, and I am so for it. I wish I were as sweet as they are in that area. And then, what are the blessings of being sinned against? I want us just to be reminded of how the glory of the cross of Christ is demonstrated.

Maybe you have an unrelenting boss that you would really kind of like to hate. You actually have ten reasons to hate Him right now. And you have been put in there to declare the glory of the cross, to show this person how much of your debts have been forgiven. And that He can have the same thing. But let your revulsion and your anger teach you to exalt the cross of Jesus Christ and to remember His sacrifice for you.

It's a blessing when a brother sins against you. It causes you to demonstrate the Gospel in real life. You get to reenact what God has done for you. So let me wrap it up like this. Something happens to those who've been forgiven.

They forgive. The Kingdom of Heaven is a Kingdom of forgiven forgivers. Well, forgiveness is not a requirement for justification. It is a fruit of it. And it is a visible outward expression of sanctification.

And it is something that should grow. When one is first saved, my expectation is that their struggle with forgiveness will be greater than the person that's been saved for 30 or 50 years. It should be that way. Because they've continually gone back to the well of salvation and drunk of the waters of life and have remembered that Jesus Christ gave them living water when they had such a debt of offenses they didn't deserve a single drop of water. And it's an aspect of humbling yourself and becoming like children.

It's a mark of the kingdom, that forgiven saints are forgiven. Who is like you, O God, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage. He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities and will cast all your sins into the depths of the sea." The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that God forgives sinners who have a debt that's greater than they could ever pay. And He pays their debt.

He drains their account. And then He sets them free in the world to go about draining the accounts of those who have offenses against them, to be sons of His Kingdom, to be agents of light, to be those who would forgive those who have sinned against them. So I pray God will give us ability in that and that he would help us to understand what great changes he has for his people in his kingdom. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, I thank you for your wisdom that goes to the heart, for your wisdom that sets free, For the way that you would relieve us of the rancor and the bondage, the terrible feelings against others, the slandering tongue, the wrenched stomach, you would relieve us of that, Lord.

What a kind Savior you are to cancel the debt that we owe to you, so that our stomachs would not churn, and so that we would not hold those who sin against us in judgment, but that we would recognize vengeance is yours. You will repay. Amen.