Matthew 18:21-34: “Peter Asks Jesus If He Should Forgive A
Brother Up To Seven Times, And Jesus Teaches A Parable About A King Who Forgave
A Debtor”
by
1.
INTRO
1.1.
In this last section of chapter 18 of Matthew we will
look at the who area of forgiving others as a Christian.
1.1.1. Many
Christians go through their life carrying huge bitternesses and hurts, and these
things then become a bondage to their lives until they learn to forgive others
as God has forgiven them.
1.1.2. I have
counseled many husbands and wives, and some families, and one of the things
that I find that is absolutely the key to their being able to love each other
and function as a family is learning to forgive each other.
1.1.2.1.I believe
that when a marriage quits functioning in a healthy manner is the day that the
husband and wife quit forgiving each other for wrongs.
1.1.2.2.Likewise, in
the positive sense when you have forgiveness in a marriage then you have a
marriage that will be fruitful and fulfilling and blessed by God.
1.1.3. One of the
characteristics that I believe most reflects the nature of God is His ability
to forgive, for when we really begin to tally a bit trying to add up all of the
times and ways that the Lord has forgiven us, it is incredible how greatly and
how often He forgives.
1.1.3.1.1.When a
person becomes a Christian he enters into a relationship with the Lord that can
only be compared on this earth to be most similar to the relationship in
marriage. We become married to the Lord
spiritually at salvation, and yet as we read beginning with the first book of
the Old Testament and forward we see that God’s people are always committing
spiritual adultery and going after other gods.
1.1.3.1.2.An
illustration that is from the Old Testament that perhaps most crystallizes this
in my mind is the story of Hosea. For
the Lord commanded Hosea to go and to marry a prostitute. Then, after the prostitute had left him and
gone after other men, the Lord told Hosea to go and to take his wife back to
himself just in the same way that the Lord is constantly taking us His people
back to Him after we turn away from Him and set up idols in our lives.
1.1.3.2.This story
begins by Peter asking Jesus a question about how many times we His disciples
were to forgive someone who had sinned against us, and it is obvious that Peter
must have been spurred to ask this question because of his constantly seeing
the mercy and grace of Jesus and His constant penchant for forgiving those who
had sinned.
2.
VS 18:21-22 -
“21 Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin
against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus *said to him, “I do
not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” - Peter asks Jesus how many times that he
should forgive his brother
2.1.
Seeing how that Jesus had just warned the disciples against being a
stumbling block, told them to cut off any offending parts from their lives so
that they themselves not stumble, and then gave them very strict guidelines
which were to be followed with church discipline, it must have been on the
disciples’ minds at this point just often a brother or a sister can be sinned
against, and thus Peter was considering the fact that they being God’s
representatives on earth should be willing to forgive those who sinned against
them.
2.2.
In asking this question of Jesus it is obvious that Peter is proud of his
question and thinks that he is truly acting divine because according to the
teachings of the Jewish teachers of his day a person did not have to forgive a
person more that a few times before he could enact his own form of revenge, but
Peter’s question about ‘7’ being the limit was much more generous than
that.
2.2.1. John MacArthur quotes the
following Jewish Rabbi from Peter’s day, “Rabbi Jose ben Hanina, for instance,
said, “He who begs forgiveness from his neighbor must not do so more than three
times.” Rabbi Jose ben Jehuda said, “If
a man commits an offense once, they forgive him; if he commits an offense a second time, they
forgive him; if he commits an offense a
third time, they forgive him, the fourth time they do not forgive him.”
2.3.
Peter must have personally seen Jesus’ compassion and ability to forgive
on many occasions in order for him to have come up with this question of his.
2.4.
Peter’s problem was that he really didn’t understand the ‘grace’ of God,
and being a Jew as he was the life that he knew was a life that was lived
according to law, the kind of law that was mathematical in nature and which
exacted an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, etc.
2.4.1. Grace doesn’t keep track of
wrongs committed against one’s self, for once a matter is forgiven it is
forgotten.
2.5.
Jesus’ answer to Peter of,‘seventy times seven’, was also not derived
according to mathematics, but rather His answer just expressed the fact that we
are to forgive a brother or a sister who sins against us an infinite number of
times.
3.
VS 18:23-34 -
“23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king
who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 “And when he had begun to
settle them, there was brought to him one who owed him ten thousand talents. 25
“But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be
sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be
made. 26 “The slave therefore falling down, prostrated himself before him,
saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.’ 27 “And the lord
of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. 28
“But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a
hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back
what you owe.’ 29 “So his fellow slave fell down and began to entreat him,
saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 30 “He was unwilling
however, but went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was
owed. 31 “So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply
grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. 32 “Then
summoning him, his lord *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that
debt because you entreated me. 33 ‘Should you not also have had mercy on your
fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you?’ 34 “And his lord, moved with anger,
handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.””
- Jesus tells His disciples the story of
a king who forgave one of his servants
3.1.
This story told by Jesus really provides God’s perspective upon the whole
business of our forgiving one another when we have been wronged.
3.2.
In this story the ‘king’ symbolizes God, and the slave symbolizes each of
us, God’s children.
3.3.
The king in this story is extremely gracious for he forgives this slave
of a huge debt, a debt that no one in their right mind would have imagined he
would or should forgive. Yet he does so
only because he has such a large gracious nature, not because the slave
deserved to be forgiven in this way.
3.3.1. For us as Christians, we see
from the scriptures that God chooses those who will come to salvation, and He
does so with His foreknowledge and foreordination, yet His choice of us is not
based upon whether we deserve Him to choose us and not really having anything
to do with there being anything special about us. It is just because He chooses to pour out His
grace into our lives.
3.3.1.1.He does this in spite of our
being completely ‘unworthy’.
3.4.
This king also had a tremendous ability to experience compassion for
those who were unfortunate, and thus he is moved to forgive this man’s debt
when he is entreated by the man.
3.5.
The slave who is in debt doesn’t even think that this king would consider
forgiving him the debt, and thus he for himself doesn’t even go so far as to
ask the king to forgive his debt. He
merely asks the king to give him some more time in order to pay it back.
3.5.1. This is the same way that it
is for us as people for when we first hear of the grace of God it is something
that we have a very hard time grasping because it just seems to impossible to
be true, too good and loving for God to express to us.
3.5.1.1.Someone remarked to a
preacher that if when you teach and talk about the grace of God if people do
not think that perhaps you have gone too far in expressing what God has done
for us in His grace, then you really haven’t gone far enough in explaining it.
3.5.2. The debt that we as
Christians have been forgiven by the Lord is huge and there is no way that we in
and of ourselves could ever afford to repay the Lord for what He has done in
forgiving us of the huge debt of sin that we have been forgiven.
3.6.
This slave who had been forgiven such a huge debt was wicked however, for
he having been forgiven such a huge debt by the king found a fellow slave who
owed him a pittance compared to the debt he had been forgiven, yet he did not
remember the kindness and generosity that had been shown to him, but instead
went and began to choke and threaten that man that owed him money, and then
eventually threw him into prison until he could pay the full amount he owed to
him.
3.6.1. This is a picture Jesus
creates for us as Christians when we become unwilling to forgive someone who
has wronged us in some way. God has
forgiven us a huge debt of sin, one that is too high for anyone but the Lord
even to count, however when someone wrongs us by doing something to us and then
we refuse to remember the astronomically huge debt that Christ has forgiven us
and instead hold a grudge against that person that has wronged us, we are now
just as wrong and evil as that wicked servant who had been forgiven the huge
debt by the king.
3.7.
Unfortunately for that slave that had been forgiven a huge amount there
were some fellow slaves who had observed how he had dealt with the man who owed
him a very small debt, and thus they were grieved about his actions and came to
the king and reported what had happened.
3.7.1. The result was that the king
was enraged that the slave had not thought about the huge gift of mercy that he
had received and thus forgiven others in the same way in which he had been
forgiven, so the king had that man captured and sent to ‘the torturers’ until
he could be able to the huge debt he had been forgiven.
3.7.1.1.Jesus taught that if we are
not willing to forgive those who sin against us that the Lord will not be
willing to forgive us, therefore one of the tests we can give of whether a
person has eternal life and is headed to heaven or not is whether or not they
are willing to forgive others when they are wronged. We saw Jesus say this already when we studied
Matt. 6:14-15, “14 “For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive men, then your
Father will not forgive your transgressions.””
3.7.1.1.1.Forgiving others is often
not an easy thing to do, but with Christ’s strength we can do all that He has
commanded us to do.
3.7.1.1.2.Not only do we need to
forgive others, but we need to always try to forgive others in the same way in
which God forgives us, namely we need to ‘forgive and forget’, and try not to
ever again act upon that wrong that a person has done to us.
4.
CONCLUSION:
4.1.
First, I think that every Christian will probably
struggle from time to time throughout his life with feelings of bitterness and
anger towards others, and thus with forgiving others, however those
bitternesses which we let into our life are really killing us, sucking the very
life out of us, and it is really time that we give those things over to the
Lord and be free from their bondage.
4.2.
Second, the next time that you find yourself having a
hard time trying to forgive someone, I want you to think about the huge debt
that Jesus Christ has forgiven you, and then ask yourself whether or not you
should be willing to forgive that person the way that Jesus has forgiven you?