Seventy Times Seven

But and that’s of course the worst case scenario. That is not what the desire, the Lord’s desire or it should not be our desire for sure when trying to address these kinds of issues. But that is sometimes the case. But what we address starting in verse number 21 is not the case of the man who refuses to repent, but the man who does repent. The man who does acknowledge his wrong and the man who does confess his sin.

Because just because that happens, just because the person acknowledges what they’ve done and has confessed it does not mean that all of a sudden it’s going to be simple for you as a person who has been hurt to just get over it and to forgive that person. And so that’s why I say it’s natural that the question of forgiveness is addressed by the Lord. Actually, it’s brought up by our brother Peter immediately after this.

But it follows directly with the question of trespasses. So we’re going to start in verse number 21 and read down through the end of the chapter. Verse 21 says this. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.

Verse number 23. So Peter asked the Lord about how often we must forgive someone. And then he and so the Lord in response to Peter’s question, after he answers a question, he gives Peter a parable. Now note, like in many cases, the parable is directly interpreted for us in the last verse of the chapter. So you don’t have to really you don’t have to understand. You don’t have to like figure out what the purpose of the parable is because the Lord tells you in the in verse 35.

But verse 23 says this. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, he was one was brought unto him which had owed him ten thousand talents. But for as much 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.

You know, I won’t take a long time here, but there’s something to be said about the mention of not only the man, his wife, his children and his property. In other words, this man is in debt to God. And what is happening? It is affecting his whole family, right? His sin in the sight of God, because this is the picture of a man who does not who is who is not a believer, who is in great debt to God.

And God debt in the obviously in the form of sin and how that sin has so dreadfully impacted his whole family. Verse 26. The servant therefore fell down and worshiped 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 the debt. But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him in hundred pence.

And he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou o’est. 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 the debt. So when his fellow servant saw what was done, they were very sorry and came and told unto their Lord all that was done.

Then his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desirest me. Shouldest not thou also have had 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 also do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Let’s pray together. Lord, in heaven we thank you so much for your word. Lord, we thank you for the sustenance and nutrition, spiritual nutrition that your word gives us on a regular basis. Thank you for your people that have gathered here tonight. And I pray, Lord, as they are ready to hear from your word that you, Lord, would be the speaker and the teacher and that you would help us to have a clear understanding of this truth of forgiveness and how you present it in this passage.

Please guide me to help your people, Lord. Our eyes are upon you. In Jesus’ name, Amen. I want you to note the word trespass. Note the word trespass in verse number 35, the last verse of the chapter. I’m trying to connect it to what we read this morning in verses 15 to 20. Because verse 35, the Lord gives the interpretation of his parable, but he uses the word trespass and the last word of the chapter, he says, If ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

So again, that’s the same idea is a sin in the sight of God, which is affecting another. So we’re actually, whether we’re talking about forgiveness or whether we’re talking about dealing with a trespass in verse 15 to 20, we’re actually talking about the same issue. We’re actually talking about the same issue. Now in this parable, there are two debts that are in view. There’s what you might call a vertical debt, that is a debt between the servant and the king.

Verse 24 says this, And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. So that’s the vertical debt. It has to do with God, ourselves in God. And then there’s what we might call a horizontal debt. That’s just my term. Verse 28, But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him an hundred pence.

So this man also, there’s a debt here between two servants. So there’s this way and then there’s this way. Now if you notice in verse number 24, the debt between the servant and the king or Lord is ten thousand talents. And the debt between the two servants, the one servant to the other is one hundred pence. Now we won’t go into all the details about a pence, which we’ve studied it before, but the idea of a pence was you got one of those for one day’s labor, sun up to sun down.

So essentially 12 hours of work got you one pence, a British, obviously a British term. But it’s just a pence is a reference to what in history is called a denarius, which is a Roman piece of money. So I’m just going to throw out some numbers because I want us to really understand the difference and the comparison between these figures of ten thousand talents and one hundred pence.

So if you take one day’s wage, which is one denarius, one pence, and I’m going to just put forth, say you work for twenty dollars an hour, just throw in a number out there, a nice round number, and you work eight hours a day, that would be a day’s wage, one hundred sixty dollars. So you earn one hundred and sixty dollars, that’s about a day’s pay, that’s about one pence in the text here.

And in verse 28, this servant owed his fellow servant one hundred of those. So one hundred and sixty dollars times one hundred days gives you, certainly Stephen Sande, for sure know this off the top of the CPAs, it gives you sixteen thousand dollars. So one hundred days work, and I’m just throwing numbers out just to give us a ballpark understanding of what we’re looking at here. So this servant owed his fellow servant sixteen thousand dollars.

Now that’s not a small amount of money, it might be to some of you, but it’s not a small amount of money to me. Sixteen thousand dollars. And this debt between the servants is obviously referring to a trespass that one servant has committed against another. So say that that trespass represents sixteen thousand dollars for our purposes here. Now go to verse 24. To the king or to the Lord, the servant owes ten thousand talents.

Now it’s not listed here, but a talent was equal to, one talent was equal to six thousand denarii. Six thousand pence. Six thousand. So you do the math, this man does not owe one talent. He owes ten thousand talents. Ten thousand talents times six thousand denarii, which is a pence, gives you six million days wage. So if that’s a hundred sixty dollars for a day’s wage, round numbers, 160 times 60 million gives you nine point six billion dollars.

Nine point six billion dollars. So just on its face, what the servant owed the king was six hundred thousand times what the servant, his fellow servant owed him. These aren’t even comparable. These aren’t even comparable. These are totally, totally just on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Now I want you to see something because in this ten thousand talents in verse 24 what the Lord is trying to show us here is, now remember the Lord Jesus Christ, I mean he knew the values. He knew how much a talent was worth.

He lived in Roman Judea so he knew how much a denarius was worth. He knew how many of those were in a talent. He knew all of that. He chose ten thousand on purpose in that world, in that context. And you could just say, well he just picked a number. Well I’m sure he picked a number. He wanted to pick a very high number, but he’s picking that number to illustrate the magnitude of our sin in the sight of God.

That’s what he’s trying to illustrate with that number. And that’s probably one of the biggest, one of the cruxes of this whole parable is the magnitude of our sin in the sight of God. So what I want to do as we, I have one other point and then I have four things I want to say to you and then we’ll be done. Now in addition to the comparison of the amounts, I want you to see in verse number 26, let’s read that.

The servant therefore fell down and worshiped him, saying, Lord have patience with me and I will pay thee all. Okay, you see that. So does this first servant, this one who has a ten thousand talent debt, does he show remorse? Does he show regret? Does he confess his debt? Yes. So this would be a man who is repentant. This is a man who is acknowledging his debt to his Lord.

Then you go down to verse number 29, and his fellow servant fell down at his feet and besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all. So this second servant, this fellow servant, does he also show similar remorse and regret over the debt that he has to his fellow servant? Yes. And that’s actually reiterated in verse number 32 when the Lord confronts the first servant, he says, Then his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desirest me.

So what I want you to see from this, this principle, is that in both cases, both the vertical one with the servant and his Lord, and the one between the two servants, in both cases, both parties showed remorse and repentance over their debt. So it’s not like they’re like, I don’t owe you anything. No, they’re acknowledging it. They’re saying, I’m sorry, have mercy on me. I’m wrong. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it.

I’ll just say this, which I’ll get to this again in a minute, but you know, when someone shows true remorse and true godly sorrow and repentance, often one of the things they want to do is they have a desire to fix what they have broken. And if someone is not interested in fixing or attempting to fix what they have broken, it’s probably a good indicator they’re not really interested in repentance.

They just want to, they want a free pass, in other words, but just as a side note. All right, here’s the four things, four statements from this passage on the subject of forgiveness. Number one, our relationship with one another is always set in the context of our relationship with God. Our relationship with one another is always set in the context of our relationship with God. This is what the parable is all about. The parable has two parts.

It has the part with the servant and his lord and the part with the servant with his servant. And then it goes back to the relationship with his servant and his lord. The lord, the lord, in other words, the lord views the relationship between the servants, which is what we’re talking about here in verses 15 to 20, forgiving another of their trespass against you. That’s the subject. But the lord talks about that in the context of this man’s relationship with his God, not separate from it, but a part of it.

Kind of like if you had a fish aquarium up here and you had two little goldfish in the aquarium, those are, that’s you and that’s me, right? That’s the servants that live together and have to deal with one another. But that, all of that exists, our relationship with one another exists inside this aquarium that is our relationship to God and cannot exist outside of it. So therefore, whatever we do with one another when it comes to forgiveness and forgiveness of trespasses against one another, that is all integrated with where we are with the lord. It’s all part of the same question.

Now you look at, look at verses 21 and 2. Now think about yourself and your relationship with the lord. So, then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him, till seven times? And Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven. So what is Peter asking? Is he asking about this kind of vertical or the horizontal one? Horizontal, right?

He’s talking about forgiving his brother who has trespassed against him, okay? But I want you to think about what Jesus brings up, which is your relationship to God. How many of you have gone to God about the same sin that you have committed against him? More than five times. More than ten times, right? Probably, now I know we’re going to start losing count here pretty quick. More than a hundred times.

There’s probably, so as we think about a person sinning against us and are forgiving that person, we have to think about how many times in our relationship to God that God has repeatedly shown mercy to us when we came to him in remorse and godly sorrow and repentance. And we’ve said, God, I’m here again. I did it again. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please help me not to do it again.

Only to do the very same thing again and again and again and again and again and again. So the seventy times seven is not primarily, first and foremost, about us, but it’s seen in our relationship to the Lord. We have come to God so many times with the same mess, the same sin that we vowed we would not do again, and we do it again and again and again and again and again and again.

And yet the Lord practices what he preaches and he forgives us when we come to him in repentance and confession. He always does that. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You see, our tendency as a person is to say, well, you already said you were sorry about that and here you are doing it again. And that’s true. We ought to feel shame for that.

But we want to withhold forgiveness on those grounds, but the Lord doesn’t. The Lord doesn’t. And so when we’re thinking about a person who repeatedly sins against us, you think about your family. How many times in a family situation do these kinds of things happen? Just dozens, hundreds of times within a home over the period of your life, almost daily. Little slights, big issues, all the time, all the time.

So if there’s any place that this 70 times 7 thing must be applied, it is in your relationship with your family members. And the Lord says, I forgive you all these times. And that’s the basis for our forgiveness of others. So we see ourselves and our relationship to the Lord in this parable. We see how we repeat the cycle of committing a sin, repenting of it, seeking God’s forgiveness, only to commit the same sin over and over again.

Listen to these verses. And I know you know these. You can note these. But I want you to see this truth, which is the statement. Our relationship with one another is always set in the context of our relationship to God. Ephesians 4.32, You see that? Forgiveness of another is set in the context of, and done by the example of Christ’s forgiveness of us. Colossians 3.13, It’s the same principle here, just applied later on in the New Testament.

So let me ask you a question. If we are to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us, how has Christ forgiven us? He forgave you when you repented and you confessed the sin that you had committed. He forgave you freely and fully. Right? He continues to forgive you and me repeatedly for the same wrong that we do. And He forgave you such that the relationship that you have with Him was completely, completely restored.

When God forgives, He forgives fully and He forgives freely. And that relationship by forgiveness is totally set aright. Not half right, not three-quarters right, but fully right. Right. Because if that wasn’t the case when we came to Him for forgiveness when we trusted in Christ, we would never really, really, really, really be saved, really be a Christian. No, He forgives us fully. And that’s true after we believe as well.

Number two. Forgiveness is given freely, keyword freely, in answer to confession and repentance. Now we’ve already seen in these verses, verse 26, verse 27, verse 32, that the King freely forgave all at once the whole of the debt of the servant. Now look at verse 26 and 7 once again. Let me ask you a question. What is the chance that this servant would be able to pay back all of a $9.6 billion debt?

What is the chance? It’s not going to happen. But this servant says, he says to his Lord, have patience and I will pay thee all, but the chance of that is zero. He’s not going to be able to do it. He’s not going to be able to do it. Then in verse 27, look what it says, then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the debt.

Let me ask you, did this servant pay his Lord anything back? No. This is what I mean by freely forgave. He didn’t earn by paying back the debt. He was not forgiven the debt because he paid it back. He was forgiven the debt though he had not paid it back. And we know that when we come to God for forgiveness, he does not forgive us on the basis of our restitution.

He forgives us on the basis of what Christ did for us on the cross period. We don’t pay anything back to God. We can’t pay anything back to God. No more than I or you could pay back a $9.6 billion debt. It’s impossible. So the Lord, what does he do? He frankly forgives it all. He frankly forgives it all. All at once, the whole incalculable debt of the servant.

He forgives it all when he is asked. Now the man, as we saw already, the man offered to pay it all back, but the king did not receive that. He did not take him up on that offer. He frankly forgave it all without him having to pay a penalty, having to pay a penny rather. Now notice this. We’ve already seen in this case, in this parable, that both servants come to their respective parties in repentance and confession.

Did you know that is a biblical prerequisite for forgiveness? Did you know that? It is a biblical prerequisite for forgiveness that the offending party confess and repent. You say, well, just take as an example the Lord Jesus, how he forgives us. What does the Bible say? 1 John 1-9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

But you see the if we confess our sins. Now there is a, it seems like in our society there is a misunderstanding that forgiveness is only to be offered in all circumstances regardless of the repentance of the offender. And that’s not true. That’s not a biblical concept. You see it over and over in the parable you see it. You see it. You can say, well, but God has forgiven you, so why can’t, yeah, does God forgive people who do not repent and confess?

No. That’s what 1 John 1-7 says. Look at one more, the parallel passage to this. Hold your place here. Go to Luke chapter 17. Luke 17. Luke 17 verse number three.

This is going to sound familiar to you. Take heed to yourselves. If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. That’s familiar. And if he repent, what does it say? Forgive him. Forgiveness is contingent upon the man’s repentance. Now that’s not mentioned in Matthew, the if he repent part, but the parallel passage includes it. Go on to the next verse, verse number four.

You see, the reason why that repentance and confession is a requirement for forgiveness is because of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not you releasing the anger and bitterness that you might have towards someone over what they’ve done to you. That’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness is the total and complete restoration of the relationship. And that’s only possible if there is repentance. Now just because a person does not repent and confess what they’ve done to harm you doesn’t mean that you can carry around bitterness and anger because that will destroy you.

What about people who have been hurt and sinned against by people who have passed away? Who have so long since died? See, the forgiveness is not possible in that case because repentance is not possible. But that doesn’t mean we have to carry the bitterness and anger forever. That’s something we can deal with between our Lord and ourselves even though the person is not even here. Forgiveness though is out of the question because that relationship cannot be restored.

That’s what we have to understand about forgiveness is that forgiveness is a very high bar. It’s the complete restoration. So I’ll give you a perfect example. Say someone comes to your house and steals from you. And you find out, are you going to invite them back to your house? But you’re supposed to forgive them. Are you going to forgive someone and completely restore that relationship and invite them back into your house when they haven’t confessed their theft?

No. You see, that’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness is when they come to you and say, I stole something from you. Here it is back. I’ll repay whatever. I did it. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Now you have grounds for restoration. That is the bar of forgiveness. So really bitterness and anger and forgiveness are not really the same thing scripturally. In this case, forgiveness is contingent upon repentance. That’s how the Lord deals with us. That’s how we see it in Matthew 18 as well.

So number two again, forgiveness is given freely in answer to confession and repentance. Number three, our willingness to forgive another stems directly from our underestimating, I’m sorry, our unwillingness to forgive another stems directly from our underestimating the magnitude of our debt to God. You see this man in verse 24, rather he owed 10,000 pounds, $9.6 billion by our calculation. And yet he walks out and as it were the same day finds another servant as if he was forgiven nothing, as if that debt was nothing.

He immediately forgot it all. You know what that tells us? That he looked lightly upon the debt he owed to his Lord. Now I want to be honest with you. This is probably the most difficult part of this passage. I feel like, I honestly feel like that I did, I personally as an individual do not have a real appreciation for my debt to God, even though God tells me and I know he tells me.

A lot of times I don’t feel it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I don’t feel the magnitude of my sin. Psalm 40 verse 12 says this, for innumerable evils have compassed me about. Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up there more than the hairs of mine head. Therefore my heart faileth me. Ezra 9 6. Ezra says this, Oh my God I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee my God.

For our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespasses is grown up unto the heavens. Now we all know that we have sinned against God. We know that. But are you, am I truly moved really by the reality of our debt? By the reality of the number and seriousness of our sin in God’s sight. Because our sins are both numerous and very serious. But see if we do not have a right estimation of that, we also will have a wrong estimation of God’s forgiveness and that will directly affect our own forgiveness of others.

That’s why this guy went out and that’s why the king was so angry at him. Because the king forgave him an enormous incalculable debt and yet he treated that like nothing. Number 3, our unwillingness to forgive another stems directly from our underestimating the magnitude of our debt to God. Number 4, last one, our refusal to forgive a repentant brother will directly and negatively affect our relationship with our Lord.

One more time, our refusal to forgive a repentant brother will directly and negatively affect our relationship with our Lord. Now you know these verses but I’m going to read them because we’ve covered them and I don’t want to spend too much time here. Matthew 6, 14 and 15 say this, Mark 11, 25 and 6 say this, So this is plain. If we refuse to forgive a repentant brother, God refuses to forgive us.

Now if God refuses to forgive us on those grounds, what effect does that have upon our relationship to God? What that means is because I have refused to forgive a repentant brother, now there is a breach between me and my God. So we thought that this was an issue horizontally between me and another brother or sister or whatever but it’s not. It’s no longer that. Now it’s a problem with the Lord. Now there’s a breach between God and me and it’s my fault because I have refused to forgive my brother and God has held me to that.

Therefore our relationship with God is breached because our relationship with another and our refusal to make that relationship right by forgiveness. Notice verse number 34. Now I’m not going to attempt to fully understand what the meaning of this part of the parable is because it’s a little hard to follow but just read it and you’ll understand. And his Lord was Roth and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him.

I don’t know what the tormentors refer to. I don’t know that but we can look at the parable and we can say this. So originally this man was forgiven by his Lord. He did not remember that when he had a problem with his fellow servant. And so his Lord called him back. And whereas before he was good with his Lord, that relationship was made right by the Lord’s free forgiveness.

Now that relationship is broken again because of the unforgiveness, the refusal to forgive by this servant. So now this man is in prison. Now this man is in hot water with his God. Now this problem is now probably worse than the original problem which was servant to servant. Now it’s servant to the Lord again. And so we come back to our first point which was our relationship with one another is always in the context of our relationship with God.

And this is why unforgiveness toward a repentant brother will hurt our relationship to God. Let’s pray.