6. Divine Forgiveness
Matthew 18:33
I’ve got something to talk to you guys about, today. Title of the message today, “Divine Forgiveness.” This is the sixth message in the “Give Up” series.
(And before this series you may have been saying, “What do you mean, ‘Give up?’ That’s not very Christian of you. Can’t I do all things, can’t I succeed, and can’t I have everything I want in the name of Jesus?” No, no! Hear the truth. You can have eternal life and you can have everything that is in the good will of God for you, but no you can’t have all your fleshly desires and your egotistical desires to succeed, in everything. What you’ve got to do is give up. Give up, man. Give up. Because it’s the control of things you demand to have in your life that’s destroying you.)
We started in the first message by explaining how, in the Christian life we must Give Up, Give In and Give Over. And then we dealt with two messages each, on Give Up Your Pride. Then two messages on Giving In to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And now we are going to begin two messages (maybe three) on Giving Over what we can’t control in our lives.
I want to talk to you in this message about giving over stuff that you can’t fix. I want to talk to you about giving over stuff you can’t handle. And I want to talk to you about giving over stuff you can’t control. Because your demand to control that stuff is eating you alive, like cancer in your heart. How many of you know that we like to hold on to things that God tells you to release to him? We hold on to it with a “Vulcan” grip, don’t we? “No, that’s mine! I can’t give up that! I can’t give over that! My anger over that issue is all I have! My resentment over that thing is what drives me! Don’t you know that’s what keeps me going?” God says, No. That’s what’s destroying your life.
So often the things we hold on to not only negatively affect us, but will ultimately destroy us, bring destruction into our lives and the lives of people around us. There are plenty of things that we demand to hold on to that God says to release. Plenty of things. I could have picked any of them. I picked what I believe at least, to be one of the “biggies.” One of the top three – Holding on to the sin of unforgiveness.
Do you know that the sin of unforgiveness, births? You know, it’s like if I don’t stay up on the swimming pool and the mustard algae starts. You’ve got soup in about a week if you don’t stay up on it. Because unforgiveness births, like mustard algae in my pool. Unforgiveness births anger. It births wrath. It births malice, which is intent to do harm. It births slander. It births evil speaking. It births jealously, and envy, and rage. Unforgiveness births so many sins in our lives and yet we demand to hold on to it, and say “No, Lord! That one’s mine! Not giving that up! I deserve to NOT forgive them!”
God has a way to save you. God has a way to save you from your destruction of unforgiveness. He wants to replace your destructive unforgiveness with his divine forgiveness. That’s what this message is about.
Do you know that many of the great lessons in the Bible are taught by illustration? I don’t tell a lot of stories. And you know, that’s funny, because I love telling stories, but I always have to take them out because my notes are too full of Bible references. But, God uses stories. He makes sure he has room for stories. Jesus used stories. His greatest teachings are in parables. Stories are a great way for God to teach.
One, of the best illustrations that we see in the Old Testament, and there’s a lot, is found in that little book called Hosea. Would you turn there? (It’s after Daniel and is the first of the Minor Prophets. What makes a minor prophet and a major prophet? The answer is the length of the book.)
Hosea was God’s prophet primarily to the northern Kingdom of Israel in the days of the divided kingdom. Hosea was God’s prophet to Israel. Israel had so badly turned their backs on God. They had so aggressively gone after the things of the world. And the prophet Hosea spoke on God’s behalf just prior to the fall of the northern Kingdom, which was prior to the fall of the southern Kingdom, which was prior to the Babylonian captivity, (so you can get your history right.)
So, Hosea was right before the fall and Israel was in bad shape. They had turned their backs on God; they were living for the gods of this world or for themselves. Israel had blatantly humiliated God. Israel had blatantly disgraced God. Israel was living in open defiance of their God. And God wanted his people to see the extent of his love and the extent of his forgiveness toward them. In their worst condition God wanted them to know to what great extent forgiveness was still available to them and so on the scene comes Hosea as a living illustration.
Hosea is the prophet of God. Listen. He not only speaks on God’s behalf, but he is also like the representation of God in human form – not like Jesus of course in the New Testament. But God’s representative.
Hosea 1:2 (NLT)
2 When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution . . .
Now that doesn’t seem quite right for God’s representative to his people, does it? So God explains why in the second half of the verse.
2 . . . This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.”
Israel had turned their backs on God, again. They had rejected him and rebelled against him, again. And God wanted Israel to know that he was fully aware of their sin against him and that his “offer of forgiveness” had not changed.
We are those same people. We are those same people of God. We have sinned against God. We have turned away from God. We have been lovers of this world and self instead of God. And God wants us, you and I, to know the full extent of his willingness to completely forgive us. So, he has a prophet of God marry a prostitute to be a living illustration to each of us.
Hosea 1:3 (NLT)
3 So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son.
Now, you know this girl is going to have a rough life the minute her parents named her Gomer. Gomer was also an Israelite and most probably worked at one of the pagan shrines (places of worship) Because Israel had fully embraced one of the pagan world’s favorite worship practices. That was to go to a house of “worship” (for a pagan god) where you would make a “donation” to that god then “consummate” your worship with a shrine Priestess. So it was prostitution in the name of worship and suddenly all the men in Israel were very interested in worshipping the pagan gods.
And so Gomer was a pagan shrine prostitute. And the prophet of God walks in and asks this prostitute named Gomer to marry him. And he rescues her from that lifestyle as a picture of God’s desire to rescue his people from their spiritual adultery.
So, after Hosea rescued Gomer from her life of prostitution, what did Gomer do? Well, she went back to being a prostitute. Just like God’s people so often go back to their spiritual adultery with the world. So, so what? Well, now we see the illustration of the depth of God’s divine forgiveness. In Chapter 2 there are consequences for Gomer’s sin.
But then we see in Hosea 3,
Hosea 3:1-2 (NLT)
1 Then the Lord said to me (Hosea), “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.”
2 So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine.
Hosea didn’t just allow Gomer to come back to him, he bought her back. And bought her back out of the sin she had returned to – after he had already bought her out of that sin, once. This is a picture, a real-life illustration of the extent of God’s forgiveness toward us. We have turned our back on God and committed spiritual adultery and God has bought us back, some of us many times. Though we never deserved it he has forgiven us and he restored us completely.
That is a picture of God’s divine forgiveness.
And God wants to bring that divine forgiveness into your life:
1) Because it is one of the most visible signs of God’s life – taking over your life.
2) Because unforgiveness is destroying your life.
Unforgiveness and the sins that come from it destroy you from the inside out and it is one of the enemy’s “most used” tools to bring bondage and destruction into a Christian’s life. But God loves you so much that he has given you a way to break the bondage and destruction of unforgiveness.
Now, let me say (before we continue) I know that some have had very serious and very traumatic events in their lives. And I am not saying this is easy or happens instantaneously. But I am saying God desires to free you from the bondage and destruction of unforgiveness in your life.
And so, I’d like you to ask God right now to show you that person you have not forgiven, or that situation you have not forgiven. And as we go on, please allow the Holy Spirit to continue to bring up that person or situation in your mind.
Today I want to give you three supernatural steps to experiencing divine forgiveness in your life. And can I just say again, these are supernatural steps? Divine forgiveness is the life of Jesus Christ in you doing what you could never do in yourself.
Three Supernatural Steps To Divine Forgiveness
1) We must make the comparison.
2) We must receive God’s mercy.
3) We must give out God’s grace.
These are the supernatural transforming steps to experiencing God’s divine forgiveness. And if you will commit to continually embracing them God will save you from the destruction that unforgiveness is currently causing in your life.
#1) We must make the comparison
Turn to Matthew 18. Jesus has just finished the section on how to “correctly” correct another believer. And then in verse 21 Peter as Jesus the question: “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
Jesus replies in verse 22, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven!”
And many of us have heard that but still, we refuse to do it. And so Jesus tells us an incredible parable to help us desire to bring God’s divine forgiveness into our lives. We must first desire it. We must truly want to experience God’s divine forgiveness in our life and that is what this parable is about. We call it, “Making the Comparison.”
I’ll use the New Living Translation and just read through it, commenting as I go.
Matthew 18:23–35 (NLT)
23 “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him.
24 In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.
An unpayable debt that in the original would be over 300 tons of silver.
25 He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt. (normal debt collection procedure)
26 “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’
27 Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
The master here is God and you are the servant with the unpayable debt. And if you are saved today, it is because God had compassion on you. He released you and he forgave your unpayable debt.
Now we move to a picture of you and the person who has wronged you.
28 “But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars . . .
It was pocket-change compared to what he had been forgiven.
28 . . . He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.
29 “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded.
30 But his creditor (the one who’d just been forgiven) wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.
31 “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened.
32 Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.
33 (our key verse) Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’
Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as (in the same way as) I had mercy on you?’
Shouldn’t we have mercy on others in the same way that God has had mercy on us? We must make this comparison because here is God’s response if we don’t. To the servant who would not forgive as he had been forgiven, verse 34 says:
Matthew 18:34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.
What do you mean, to be tortured? That’s pretty radical. Even more radical is the final verse.
35 “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”
Very often unforgiveness becomes mental and emotional torture in our lives. We want to control our “right” to not forgive, but our unforgiveness always ends up controlling us.
But God says, I’ve made a way and I’ve given you myself as the power to be freed from that torture. But you must choose to walk in it (live in it.)
We must choose to give over to God:
What we cannot FIX,
What we cannot HANDLE,
What we cannot CONTROL.
God has made a supernatural way to heal you and to free you from the torture of unforgiveness. The first step is to truly and earnestly desire it.
Let me give you just one cross-reference for motivation. Forgiveness is such a huge deal to God that he has put serious warnings in scripture about it. When Jesus finished what we call the Lord’s Prayer, of all the truths he could’ve gone back and commented on, Jesus only commented on one truth from that prayer. That commentary can be found in Matthew 6.
Matthew 6:14–15 (NLT)
14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
What? Does that mean if I haven’t forgiven somebody that I am not saved? No. This is not referring to “positional” forgiveness. This is referring to “relational” forgiveness. It means that the sin of unforgiveness keeps you from a right relationship with God. Just write Isaiah 59:1-2 down and read it later. The sin of unforgiveness separates you from a right relationship with God.
So the first step is to “Make the Comparison” and truly desire to experience divine forgiveness in your life.
#2) We must receive God’s mercy
When I say receive, I don’t mean (so much) receive it for our own benefit. I mean receive it as in receiving the nature of God to take over your sin nature allowing God’s mercy to “take over” our unforgiveness. As Christians, we must allow God’s nature to begin to take over our nature. To experience divine forgiveness you must allow the mercy of God to take over your unforgiveness.
The definition of mercy is “not giving someone what they deserve.” That is exactly what God has done for you and that is exactly what God calls you to do to someone else. The word means literally, to tear up the note (the debt.) And again back in Matthew 18:33, Jesus said, Shouldn’t YOU show Mercy to that person because I have shown Mercy to you?
Again, Jesus turns it around as both a blessing and a warning in the Beatitudes.
Matthew 5:7 (ESV)
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
And so what about when we do not show mercy, then what do we receive? Guys, God calls us to forgive in the same way as he has forgiven us.
Colossians 3:13 says We must forgive one another JUST AS the Lord has Forgiven US (“Just As” means in the same WAY)
Because (listen closely)
It is God doing the forgiving inside us.
It is God showing mercy inside us.
It is God giving grace inside us.
This is not something we do. This is something God does, in us. And once we truly recognize our need to experience divine forgiveness in our life, the next step is to allow God’s supernatural mercy to take over the pain of our unforgiveness.
How, Dave, how?
How do we allow the mercy of God to take over our unforgiveness?
We do it by Giving Up. By giving up, giving in, and giving over?
We do it by giving over
The things we can’t fix
The things we can’t handle
The things we can’t control
Releasing those things to God and trusting him to replace them with his mercy, and not just asking once this must become a lifestyle of asking, seeking, and knocking.
And just like Jesus said in Luke 11:9-10
Ask and Keep on Asking
Seek and Keep on Seeking
Knock and Keep on Knocking
(verse 10) For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened (Luke 11:9-10)
God wants to transform you into forgiving as Christ forgave you. (2 Corinthians 3:18) But you must surrender full control to him. You must give over your unforgiveness to God and receive his mercy toward others.
And finally, after we’ve made the comparison and after we begin to allow God to replace our unforgiveness with his mercy, we come to step three.
#3) We must give out God’s grace
Not our grace, God’s grace that he plants in us. We’re talking about the life of Jesus Christ in you, truly transforming your heart and your actions. And when that begins to truly happen, you will begin to see God’s grace truly showing in your life.
Grace is giving someone what they don’t deserve.
Mercy is not giving someone what they do deserve.
Grace is giving someone what they don’t deserve.
Grace is giving someone what they don’t deserve, and grace changes everything. But his grace, the grace of God, you don’t have it in yourself. This grace must be poured into your life.
Romans 5:5 (ESV)
5 . . . God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
You can’t work this up. God’s love and grace must be poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit who has been given to you. When you truly give up and begin to receive God’s mercy and his love, God will begin to transform your heart into his heart. You will begin to give out his grace.
It requires a transformed life to truly live the character traits of God, especially divine forgiveness. It requires full surrender of all that we hold on to.
Ephesians 4:31–32 (NLT)
31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.
32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
Just as in the same way that God has forgiven you, so you are called to forgive. But what God does not say is, you have to work this up or you have to figure this out. What God says is you have to earnestly desire it and wholeheartedly receive it. And if you will truly begin to do that, God will begin to pour his mercy and his grace into your heart. And it will change you at, and at some point, you will experience in your life – divine forgiveness.
God wants to free you from the bondage and destruction of your unforgiveness. He wants you to surrender it; he wants you to give up. He wants you to earnestly seek him to create in you a new heart, a clean heart – his heart.
Listen carefully to three verses from Psalm 51.
Psalm 51:10–12 (NLT)
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.
11 Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.
What God wants is a surrendered and willing heart and if you have a surrendered and willing heart and if you will earnestly seek it… God will bring the miracle of divine forgiveness into your life.
Mark 11:25 (ESV)
25 And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
(And before this series you may have been saying, “What do you mean, ‘Give up?’ That’s not very Christian of you. Can’t I do all things, can’t I succeed, and can’t I have everything I want in the name of Jesus?” No, no! Hear the truth. You can have eternal life and you can have everything that is in the good will of God for you, but no you can’t have all your fleshly desires and your egotistical desires to succeed, in everything. What you’ve got to do is give up. Give up, man. Give up. Because it’s the control of things you demand to have in your life that’s destroying you.)
We started in the first message by explaining how, in the Christian life we must Give Up, Give In and Give Over. And then we dealt with two messages each, on Give Up Your Pride. Then two messages on Giving In to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And now we are going to begin two messages (maybe three) on Giving Over what we can’t control in our lives.
I want to talk to you in this message about giving over stuff that you can’t fix. I want to talk to you about giving over stuff you can’t handle. And I want to talk to you about giving over stuff you can’t control. Because your demand to control that stuff is eating you alive, like cancer in your heart. How many of you know that we like to hold on to things that God tells you to release to him? We hold on to it with a “Vulcan” grip, don’t we? “No, that’s mine! I can’t give up that! I can’t give over that! My anger over that issue is all I have! My resentment over that thing is what drives me! Don’t you know that’s what keeps me going?” God says, No. That’s what’s destroying your life.
So often the things we hold on to not only negatively affect us, but will ultimately destroy us, bring destruction into our lives and the lives of people around us. There are plenty of things that we demand to hold on to that God says to release. Plenty of things. I could have picked any of them. I picked what I believe at least, to be one of the “biggies.” One of the top three – Holding on to the sin of unforgiveness.
Do you know that the sin of unforgiveness, births? You know, it’s like if I don’t stay up on the swimming pool and the mustard algae starts. You’ve got soup in about a week if you don’t stay up on it. Because unforgiveness births, like mustard algae in my pool. Unforgiveness births anger. It births wrath. It births malice, which is intent to do harm. It births slander. It births evil speaking. It births jealously, and envy, and rage. Unforgiveness births so many sins in our lives and yet we demand to hold on to it, and say “No, Lord! That one’s mine! Not giving that up! I deserve to NOT forgive them!”
God has a way to save you. God has a way to save you from your destruction of unforgiveness. He wants to replace your destructive unforgiveness with his divine forgiveness. That’s what this message is about.
Do you know that many of the great lessons in the Bible are taught by illustration? I don’t tell a lot of stories. And you know, that’s funny, because I love telling stories, but I always have to take them out because my notes are too full of Bible references. But, God uses stories. He makes sure he has room for stories. Jesus used stories. His greatest teachings are in parables. Stories are a great way for God to teach.
One, of the best illustrations that we see in the Old Testament, and there’s a lot, is found in that little book called Hosea. Would you turn there? (It’s after Daniel and is the first of the Minor Prophets. What makes a minor prophet and a major prophet? The answer is the length of the book.)
Hosea was God’s prophet primarily to the northern Kingdom of Israel in the days of the divided kingdom. Hosea was God’s prophet to Israel. Israel had so badly turned their backs on God. They had so aggressively gone after the things of the world. And the prophet Hosea spoke on God’s behalf just prior to the fall of the northern Kingdom, which was prior to the fall of the southern Kingdom, which was prior to the Babylonian captivity, (so you can get your history right.)
So, Hosea was right before the fall and Israel was in bad shape. They had turned their backs on God; they were living for the gods of this world or for themselves. Israel had blatantly humiliated God. Israel had blatantly disgraced God. Israel was living in open defiance of their God. And God wanted his people to see the extent of his love and the extent of his forgiveness toward them. In their worst condition God wanted them to know to what great extent forgiveness was still available to them and so on the scene comes Hosea as a living illustration.
Hosea is the prophet of God. Listen. He not only speaks on God’s behalf, but he is also like the representation of God in human form – not like Jesus of course in the New Testament. But God’s representative.
Hosea 1:2 (NLT)
2 When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution . . .
Now that doesn’t seem quite right for God’s representative to his people, does it? So God explains why in the second half of the verse.
2 . . . This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.”
Israel had turned their backs on God, again. They had rejected him and rebelled against him, again. And God wanted Israel to know that he was fully aware of their sin against him and that his “offer of forgiveness” had not changed.
We are those same people. We are those same people of God. We have sinned against God. We have turned away from God. We have been lovers of this world and self instead of God. And God wants us, you and I, to know the full extent of his willingness to completely forgive us. So, he has a prophet of God marry a prostitute to be a living illustration to each of us.
Hosea 1:3 (NLT)
3 So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son.
Now, you know this girl is going to have a rough life the minute her parents named her Gomer. Gomer was also an Israelite and most probably worked at one of the pagan shrines (places of worship) Because Israel had fully embraced one of the pagan world’s favorite worship practices. That was to go to a house of “worship” (for a pagan god) where you would make a “donation” to that god then “consummate” your worship with a shrine Priestess. So it was prostitution in the name of worship and suddenly all the men in Israel were very interested in worshipping the pagan gods.
And so Gomer was a pagan shrine prostitute. And the prophet of God walks in and asks this prostitute named Gomer to marry him. And he rescues her from that lifestyle as a picture of God’s desire to rescue his people from their spiritual adultery.
So, after Hosea rescued Gomer from her life of prostitution, what did Gomer do? Well, she went back to being a prostitute. Just like God’s people so often go back to their spiritual adultery with the world. So, so what? Well, now we see the illustration of the depth of God’s divine forgiveness. In Chapter 2 there are consequences for Gomer’s sin.
But then we see in Hosea 3,
Hosea 3:1-2 (NLT)
1 Then the Lord said to me (Hosea), “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.”
2 So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine.
Hosea didn’t just allow Gomer to come back to him, he bought her back. And bought her back out of the sin she had returned to – after he had already bought her out of that sin, once. This is a picture, a real-life illustration of the extent of God’s forgiveness toward us. We have turned our back on God and committed spiritual adultery and God has bought us back, some of us many times. Though we never deserved it he has forgiven us and he restored us completely.
That is a picture of God’s divine forgiveness.
And God wants to bring that divine forgiveness into your life:
1) Because it is one of the most visible signs of God’s life – taking over your life.
2) Because unforgiveness is destroying your life.
Unforgiveness and the sins that come from it destroy you from the inside out and it is one of the enemy’s “most used” tools to bring bondage and destruction into a Christian’s life. But God loves you so much that he has given you a way to break the bondage and destruction of unforgiveness.
Now, let me say (before we continue) I know that some have had very serious and very traumatic events in their lives. And I am not saying this is easy or happens instantaneously. But I am saying God desires to free you from the bondage and destruction of unforgiveness in your life.
And so, I’d like you to ask God right now to show you that person you have not forgiven, or that situation you have not forgiven. And as we go on, please allow the Holy Spirit to continue to bring up that person or situation in your mind.
Today I want to give you three supernatural steps to experiencing divine forgiveness in your life. And can I just say again, these are supernatural steps? Divine forgiveness is the life of Jesus Christ in you doing what you could never do in yourself.
Three Supernatural Steps To Divine Forgiveness
1) We must make the comparison.
2) We must receive God’s mercy.
3) We must give out God’s grace.
These are the supernatural transforming steps to experiencing God’s divine forgiveness. And if you will commit to continually embracing them God will save you from the destruction that unforgiveness is currently causing in your life.
#1) We must make the comparison
Turn to Matthew 18. Jesus has just finished the section on how to “correctly” correct another believer. And then in verse 21 Peter as Jesus the question: “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
Jesus replies in verse 22, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven!”
And many of us have heard that but still, we refuse to do it. And so Jesus tells us an incredible parable to help us desire to bring God’s divine forgiveness into our lives. We must first desire it. We must truly want to experience God’s divine forgiveness in our life and that is what this parable is about. We call it, “Making the Comparison.”
I’ll use the New Living Translation and just read through it, commenting as I go.
Matthew 18:23–35 (NLT)
23 “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him.
24 In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.
An unpayable debt that in the original would be over 300 tons of silver.
25 He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt. (normal debt collection procedure)
26 “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’
27 Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
The master here is God and you are the servant with the unpayable debt. And if you are saved today, it is because God had compassion on you. He released you and he forgave your unpayable debt.
Now we move to a picture of you and the person who has wronged you.
28 “But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars . . .
It was pocket-change compared to what he had been forgiven.
28 . . . He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.
29 “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded.
30 But his creditor (the one who’d just been forgiven) wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.
31 “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened.
32 Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.
33 (our key verse) Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’
Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as (in the same way as) I had mercy on you?’
Shouldn’t we have mercy on others in the same way that God has had mercy on us? We must make this comparison because here is God’s response if we don’t. To the servant who would not forgive as he had been forgiven, verse 34 says:
Matthew 18:34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.
What do you mean, to be tortured? That’s pretty radical. Even more radical is the final verse.
35 “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”
Very often unforgiveness becomes mental and emotional torture in our lives. We want to control our “right” to not forgive, but our unforgiveness always ends up controlling us.
But God says, I’ve made a way and I’ve given you myself as the power to be freed from that torture. But you must choose to walk in it (live in it.)
We must choose to give over to God:
What we cannot FIX,
What we cannot HANDLE,
What we cannot CONTROL.
God has made a supernatural way to heal you and to free you from the torture of unforgiveness. The first step is to truly and earnestly desire it.
Let me give you just one cross-reference for motivation. Forgiveness is such a huge deal to God that he has put serious warnings in scripture about it. When Jesus finished what we call the Lord’s Prayer, of all the truths he could’ve gone back and commented on, Jesus only commented on one truth from that prayer. That commentary can be found in Matthew 6.
Matthew 6:14–15 (NLT)
14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
What? Does that mean if I haven’t forgiven somebody that I am not saved? No. This is not referring to “positional” forgiveness. This is referring to “relational” forgiveness. It means that the sin of unforgiveness keeps you from a right relationship with God. Just write Isaiah 59:1-2 down and read it later. The sin of unforgiveness separates you from a right relationship with God.
So the first step is to “Make the Comparison” and truly desire to experience divine forgiveness in your life.
#2) We must receive God’s mercy
When I say receive, I don’t mean (so much) receive it for our own benefit. I mean receive it as in receiving the nature of God to take over your sin nature allowing God’s mercy to “take over” our unforgiveness. As Christians, we must allow God’s nature to begin to take over our nature. To experience divine forgiveness you must allow the mercy of God to take over your unforgiveness.
The definition of mercy is “not giving someone what they deserve.” That is exactly what God has done for you and that is exactly what God calls you to do to someone else. The word means literally, to tear up the note (the debt.) And again back in Matthew 18:33, Jesus said, Shouldn’t YOU show Mercy to that person because I have shown Mercy to you?
Again, Jesus turns it around as both a blessing and a warning in the Beatitudes.
Matthew 5:7 (ESV)
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
And so what about when we do not show mercy, then what do we receive? Guys, God calls us to forgive in the same way as he has forgiven us.
Colossians 3:13 says We must forgive one another JUST AS the Lord has Forgiven US (“Just As” means in the same WAY)
Because (listen closely)
It is God doing the forgiving inside us.
It is God showing mercy inside us.
It is God giving grace inside us.
This is not something we do. This is something God does, in us. And once we truly recognize our need to experience divine forgiveness in our life, the next step is to allow God’s supernatural mercy to take over the pain of our unforgiveness.
How, Dave, how?
How do we allow the mercy of God to take over our unforgiveness?
We do it by Giving Up. By giving up, giving in, and giving over?
We do it by giving over
The things we can’t fix
The things we can’t handle
The things we can’t control
Releasing those things to God and trusting him to replace them with his mercy, and not just asking once this must become a lifestyle of asking, seeking, and knocking.
And just like Jesus said in Luke 11:9-10
Ask and Keep on Asking
Seek and Keep on Seeking
Knock and Keep on Knocking
(verse 10) For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened (Luke 11:9-10)
God wants to transform you into forgiving as Christ forgave you. (2 Corinthians 3:18) But you must surrender full control to him. You must give over your unforgiveness to God and receive his mercy toward others.
And finally, after we’ve made the comparison and after we begin to allow God to replace our unforgiveness with his mercy, we come to step three.
#3) We must give out God’s grace
Not our grace, God’s grace that he plants in us. We’re talking about the life of Jesus Christ in you, truly transforming your heart and your actions. And when that begins to truly happen, you will begin to see God’s grace truly showing in your life.
Grace is giving someone what they don’t deserve.
Mercy is not giving someone what they do deserve.
Grace is giving someone what they don’t deserve.
Grace is giving someone what they don’t deserve, and grace changes everything. But his grace, the grace of God, you don’t have it in yourself. This grace must be poured into your life.
Romans 5:5 (ESV)
5 . . . God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
You can’t work this up. God’s love and grace must be poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit who has been given to you. When you truly give up and begin to receive God’s mercy and his love, God will begin to transform your heart into his heart. You will begin to give out his grace.
It requires a transformed life to truly live the character traits of God, especially divine forgiveness. It requires full surrender of all that we hold on to.
Ephesians 4:31–32 (NLT)
31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.
32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
Just as in the same way that God has forgiven you, so you are called to forgive. But what God does not say is, you have to work this up or you have to figure this out. What God says is you have to earnestly desire it and wholeheartedly receive it. And if you will truly begin to do that, God will begin to pour his mercy and his grace into your heart. And it will change you at, and at some point, you will experience in your life – divine forgiveness.
God wants to free you from the bondage and destruction of your unforgiveness. He wants you to surrender it; he wants you to give up. He wants you to earnestly seek him to create in you a new heart, a clean heart – his heart.
Listen carefully to three verses from Psalm 51.
Psalm 51:10–12 (NLT)
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.
11 Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.
What God wants is a surrendered and willing heart and if you have a surrendered and willing heart and if you will earnestly seek it… God will bring the miracle of divine forgiveness into your life.
Mark 11:25 (ESV)
25 And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”