Includes a suggested introduction to the lesson, text highlights and outline, illustrations you can share, discussion questions for your group, and spiritual life applications you can make. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRODUCTION:

OPENING QUOTE: (and/or you may choose to close with it)  C.S. Lewis wrote:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable (in others), because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”   

???DISCUSSION QUESTION???

Can anyone share a time when you or someone you know, forgave someone when it was very difficult to do so?

(For example, I think of how Erika Kirk, how at her husband Charlie’s memorial service, she said of the young man who shot her husband, “I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did. . . . The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

Whatever example of forgiveness you use, you might then say that as difficult as it can be sometimes to forgive, it is what the Lord has called us to — and if we don’t forgive, it may demonstrate that we really don’t understand what Jesus did for us — as we see in our passage for today from Matthew 18. 

CONTEXT:

As we continue our study in the Book of Matthew this quarter, last time Jesus had His disciples on the “high mountain” (Hermon or Tabor …) to give them a glimpse of His glory that we will enjoy forever — and of the glory that by His grace, we will share with Him. 

But “mountaintop experiences” often don’t last long, do they? As soon as they came down from the mountain, Matthew 17 tells us that Jesus was hit by controversies: a man whose son was demon-possessed asked why Jesus’ disciples couldn’t cast it out, and then when they arrived back at Capernaum, there was more controversy over whether they were going to pay the temple tax. (Many of us understand the dreariness of dealing with taxes this time of year!)

That brings us to Matthew 18, our chapter for today. Matthew 18 begins a long teaching discourse of Jesus, the 4th of 5 major sermons or “discourses” Matthew is built around. It kicks off with the disciples asking who is the greatest in the Kingdom, and that’s when Jesus calls the child to Himself, and He tells the story of the man who had a lost sheep, and left the 99 to find it. 

Then in :15 Jesus gives us the procedure for how deal with someone if they sin: you go to them yourself first (which would eliminate 99% of problems if we would!) and then take someone with you, and finally bring it to the church (NOT the reverse order, where you tell everyone else and never confront the person!) 

So it’s in this context of talking about sin that Peter asks the question about forgiveness that introduces this lesson:

OUTLINE:

I.   The Depth of Forgiveness (:21-22)

II.  The Grace of Forgiveness (:23-27)

III. The Danger of Unforgiveness (:28-35)

TEXT:

I. The Depth of Forgiveness (: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.

A. Peter’s Question

Many of us have heard/been taught that Peter could have been referring to the Jewish tradition of being forgiven for something up to three times. There IS a mention of this in the Talmud (collection of Jewish traditions):

ILLUSTRATION:

The Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b, says:

“Rabbi Yosei bar Yehuda says: When a person commits a transgression the first time, he is forgiven; a second time, he is forgiven; a third time, he is forgiven; but the fourth time, he is not forgiven, as it is stated: “Thus said the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, but for four I will not reverse it” (Amos 2:6).”

(Now I think that’s a misinterpretation of Amos there at the end, but this is what they taught.)

Here’s a couple of applications from this passage. As followers of Jesus, many of us exhibit some of the same qualities as Peter does here:

— We tend to be very LEGALISTIC:  “How many times?”

It’s like how the Jews wanted to know, if they weren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath, just “how far could they walk” before it became work? That’s they the rabbis came up with their traditional pronouncements, that you could walk about 3000 feet on the Sabbath without it being “work,” and so on.

So Peter had that same spirit here: “How many times should I forgive my brother …”. He wanted a NUMBER. The problem with that is, genuine spirituality usually doesn’t have a “number” associated with it! 

Think of some things we want to put “numbers” on, that we should really just walk with God/be led by the Spirit on:

— How long should I spend reading my Bible or praying?

— How many times do I really need to go to church every week?

— How much should I give?

Do you see how it’s hard to put “numbers” on some these things? We want to count it up, and know when we’ve gotten there, and that’s it. But true religion of the heart, of the Spirit, is not about limiting things numericaly like that. (And as we shall see, thank God that He doesn’t do that to US!)

— We tend to think we are very MAGNANIMOUS

The traditional “number” to forgive was three. So Peter thought he was really going “above and beyond” to say “seven.” We’re often very proud of ourselves like that: doing “more” than we feel like we need to. But like Peter, we might be disappointed in Jesus’ response!

B. Jesus’ Response

If Peter was expecting Jesus to congratulate him, he was seriously disappointed! Even to Peter’s “seven,” Jesus said that was not enough. “I do not say to you up to 7 times, but up to 70 times seven”! 

Given that the number “seven” is the Jewish number for completeness, it means something beyond our imagination. He’s really saying, don’t put a “number” on this; you forgive as many times as someone will repent and ask forgiveness.

ILLUSTRATION:

To me it’s like when kids are arguing about whose bike is fastest, and one says, “My bike can go 100 miles an hour.” The other replies, “Mine can go 1000 miles an hour!” The first says, “Well mine can go a MILLION miles an hour!” It’s not uncommon these days for kids to say, “Mine can go to INFINITY”! (And then they get into the whole “infinity plus one” thing …)

But I think this is the basic point Jesus is making here: There’s no “number” that we are supposed to put on our forgiveness of others. We are to forgive to INFINITY!  

NOW: a person might ask, “BUT HOW CAN THAT BE? HOW AND WHY SHOULD WE FORGIVE TO ‘INFINITY’?” This is what Jesus gets into in the next section, when He tells the story of the slave who owed the king a great debt.  

Here’s one thing that I think should be very comforting to us. This occurred to me one day while I was meditating on this passage: If God commands US to forgive that often, how much more will HE not forgive US the same way? That should really comfort us!

You might ask your group a ???RHETORICAL QUESTION???

“Have you had a sin that you just keep going back to God, asking forgiveness for, and you’ve had to do it so many times, that you’re tempted to think, “Surely God is tired of me asking forgiveness for this; can He forgive me again?” Sometimes we may feel like, I just don’t know how many times God can forgive me for this! I imagine we’ve all felt this way sometimes, with our own particular sins. 

To all of us who have ever felt this way, this scripture should be very encouraging. Jesus’ words here are not just an admonition to us, as to the way we are to forgive others; it should also encourage us about the way that God will forgive US! He will not do less than He expects us to! Pile our sins to the heavens, but we will never exceed the heights of God’s ability to forgive. 

And in this next section, we see the grace of His forgiveness highlighted:

II. The Grace of Forgiveness (:23-27)

23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 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 So the slave fell to the ground and 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. 

It’s significant that Jesus illustrates forgiveness here, with a story about debt. He makes the same connection in Matthew 6, in the Model Prayer, doesn’t He, equating sin and debt. He says “forgive us our debts,” and “debt” there is an allegory for our sin. Our sin causes a spiritual “debt” for us with God. We owe Him obedience that we have not given Him. And we are all great debtors to Him in sin. 

The word “slave” is “doulos,” one who belonged to another, either unwillingly or who has sold himself to serve another. This slave owed the king 10,000 “talents.” A “talent” is NOT what we might think of as a “talent/gift/ability,” but instead it was the highest denomination of currency in the Roman Empire. 

ILLUSTRATION
The highest currency bill in the U.S. right now is just the $100 bill. (We’ve had larger ones in history: $500-10,000 but they’ve been discontinued.) There was a $100,000 gold certificate printed in 1934, for bank transactions only. So we might think of something like that.

One way of measuring it, is that a talent in the Bible was about 20 years of daily wages for a working man (which was a denarius, which we’ll talk more about in a minute) — so around $600,000!  So $600,000 times TEN THOUSAND would be somewhere around 6 BILLION dollars that this slave owed!  

I don’t know that the exact amount matters. The point is, this slave owed more than he could ever possibly hope to pay back. He was totally impoverished. 

ILLUSTRATION
Perhaps the most indebted man in history is Jerome Kerviel, a rogue French trader who ended up owing 6.3 BILLION dollars to his French employer, Societe Generale. A court ruled that this was such a great amount, that he would never be able to pay it back!

What’s interesting is that that Kerviel’s $6 billion is astoundingly close to estimates of what the king’s servant owed here in Matthew 18! And I think Jesus is basically making the same point the French court later did: that this was a debt so large the man would NEVER be able to pay it back. 

So what did the slave do? He had no means of paying back his debt, just like Kerviel, so when the king ordered him to be sold, along with his family, verse 26 says he just fell to the ground and asked the king to be merciful. And amazingly, HE DID! It says the king felt compassion on him and forgave him the debt! 

Can you imagine what it would feel like to be forgiven an enormous debt like that? We should be able to imagine it — because this is exactly what the Lord has done for US! 

As I mentioned, Sin is often pictured in scripture as a “debt.” Remember in the Model Prayer Jesus taught us to pray daily, “Forgive us our DEBTS” (“opheilema,’ which means something owed.) This word originally refers to a person who had a monetary debt, and whose debt was wiped away. So when we ask God to “forgive our debts”, we are asking Him to “clean the slate” of the debt of our sins that we have before Him.

And the debt of our sin is very great. Just like the man in this story, our sin debt is more than we could every hope to pay back:

— Psalm 49:7-8, “No man can by any means redeem his brother
Or give to God a ransom for him— For the redemption of his soul is costly, And he should cease trying forever.” That Psalm says that the price for our redemption is more than we can pay — just like the slave in Matthew 18. 

— Ephesians 2 says “And you were DEAD in your transgressions and sins” — we had no hope of paying our sin debt! The only hope of our salvation is that God had mercy on us — which is exactly what Ephesians 2 goes on to say: “BUT GOD, being rich in mercy …”. Just like the king forgave that slave because he had mercy on him when he asked, so God forgives ALL our sins, NOT because of anything good in us, but just because of His mercy and grace in Christ.

We’ve got to realize personally as Christians, and emphasize to our people, that this is the ONLY way we are saved: We have to realize that we are morally and spiritually bankrupt before God because of our sin (which is what “poor in spirit” means in Matthew 5:3, we realize we are “bankrupt” spiritually before God) so we ask Him to wipe out our spiritual debt because of what Jesus paid at the cross. Colossians 2:14 says when Christ died for us, He “canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us.” His death wiped out the “debt” of our sins. On the cross, Jesus proclaimed: “It is finished,” (tetelestai) which was a Greek business word which means “the debt is paid in full.” The “debt” that He was talking about paying was the debt of OUR SIN. The enormous debt of all the sins of our lives: every evil thought, every crooked deed, every harmful word, every bad attitude — ALL our sin debt — was NAILED to the cross and paid for by Jesus’ death. 

So when we hear the gospel of what Jesus did for us, and like the Publican in Luke 18:13, we pray, “God be merciful to me, a sinner,” then like the king in Jesus’ story God DOES forgive our sins, and He wipes away that debt. 

Challenge your class members: if you have never done this, you need to do it today: stop trying to be “good enough” to get into heaven, and admit your “spiritual bankruptcy” before God, and ask Him to wipe out the debt of your sins in Jesus’ name! 

Many of our members would likely say they have already done this.  But here’s a second application: if you have, you need to make sure that you never lose the appropriate attitude of awe for how God freely forgave your sin. I’ve mentioned before how Jerry Bridges famously said that even as Christians, we need to “preach the gospel to ourselves every day” — remember how you were a sinner, but God forgave you when you asked in Jesus’ name. NOT because we need to be saved again every day, but just to remind ourselves that we were only saved by God’s grace. It’s not only a good reminder of how grateful we should be to God, but it also serves as a constant guard against being “holier than thou” or unforgiving towards other people  (which we’ll talk about some more here in just a minute!).

This story of the king forgiving the slave when he asked, is a reminder to us all of how freely and graciously God forgives us, just because we ask. But sadly, it’s not the end of this story …

III. The DANGER of Unforgiveness (:28-35)

: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 to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 30 But he was unwilling and 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 pleaded with me. 33 Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that 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. 35 My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from [g]your heart.”

So after this slave was forgiven all that debt, what did he do? 

You might even ask your group, 

??? “How do you think you would respond if you had been forgiven 5 billion dollars?”??

Then point out: Jesus shows us in :28 and following how this slave responded. A couple of things here:

— It says his response was that he “went out and found” a fellow slave. It doesn’t say “he happened across him,” no, he purposefully “went out and found him.” He went after him!

— Why did he do this? It says because he “owed him a hundred denarii.” How much is this? Very simply put, a denarius is one days wage for a common working man. In the parable of the workers in Matthew 20, :2 says the landowner agreed with each worker for a denarius for a day’s work. So a denarius is one day’s working wage. 

SO: this “fellow slave” owed the first slave 100 denarii. That IS a little bit; it’s roughly 3 months wages, right? Not a totally inconsequential sum. But on the other hand, it was NOTHING compared to the 5 BILLION dollars that he had just been forgiven! You might think the first slave would be so grateful that he was forgiven, that he would either:

— totally forgive the other slave his debt, or

— at minimum, at least be very patient with him about the debt.

But that’s not what he did. After the fellow slave asked for patience in :29, :30 says the first slave was not willing, but threw him into prison until he should pay it all back! 

You might ask your group here:

“What’s your response to this? What do you think about what this man did?”

(Most would probably say something like, he didn’t seem very grateful for what he had been forgiven; he was not understanding towards his fellow slave, etc.)

Then point out: :31-34 show us how the King responded. The other slaves were grieved when they saw what he did, and told the King, and the King called him in, and called him to account. He said, I forgave you all that debt just because you ASKED — and then he makes a key statement: “Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you?” And in his anger he gave him to the torturers until he should pay back the debt (which he never could).

We can see the point Jesus is making, right? It’s kind of like when Nathan the prophet told King David the story of the rich man who took another man’s beloved pet sheep, and David said that man deserves to die, and Nathan told him, “YOU are the man!” In the same way, when you and I hear the story about what this slave did, we immediately exclaim, “What an ungrateful, wicked person, who would treat his fellow slave like that when he had been forgiven so much!” But don’t we see, like David: WE ARE THE MAN! WE ARE THAT MAN whenever we do not forgive someone who has offended us in some way, after all that God has forgiven us! 

That’s the point Jesus is making here. God has forgiven us our “5 billion dollar debt” of every sin we ever committed,” out of pure mercy, because we asked. How in the world can we not forgive someone else, of anything that they have done to us? It is the height of ingratitude, and it shows that like that slave, we really don’t appreciate the depth of what our King has done for us.  

You might ask your group: (and this is just a silent question for them to ponder in their heart, we aren’t asking for any answers here) “Is there anyone in your life that you have not forgiven, or against whom you are holding a grudge?” And make the point: don’t you see what Jesus is saying here? How can you not forgive that person, in light of all that Jesus has done for you?  

You may want to share something like this at this point: 

In the Model Prayer Jesus taught us to ask forgiveness from Him: “AS we also have forgiven our debtors.” So He makes the point, that we are to forgive others, in the same way that God forgives us! That tells us a lot, doesn’t it? Let’s think for a minute about what that means. How how God has forgiven us? 

1. He has forgiven us GRACIOUSLY: 

That is, we did not deserve it. Romans 5:8 says it was “while we were yet sinners” that “Christ died for us.” He gives us grace, and forgives us when we didn’t deserve it.

2. He has forgiven us FREELY:

God didn’t make us “earn” our forgiveness by doing some great deed. Forgiveness isn’t cheap; it cost the unfathomable price of Christ’s death on the cross. But it’s totally free to us; we don’t have to “pay” anything for it. God forgives us freely.

3. He has forgiven us DEEPLY:

No matter what our sin is, God forgives us. King David was an adulterer and a murderer and a liar, and God forgave him. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 6, of adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, and drunkards, and said “such were some of you, but you were washed.” ALL these sins can be forgiven, and washed away. 

I John 1:9 says “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from ALL sin.” We can take comfort that no matter what our sin, God forgives it. He forgives us deeply. 

4. Not only that, He has also forgiven us REPEATEDLY: Just like we talked about, we can bring that same sin back to God again and again, and claim I John 1:9, and know that He will forgive us, Every. Single. Time. “70 x7” and more! Thank God! 

So now let’s apply this. Jesus says we are forgiven “JUST AS” we forgive others, so that means that we are to forgive others in ALL these same ways. We are to forgive them:

1. Graciously: even when they don’t deserve it; just like we didn’t!

2. Freely: we don’t make them “earn” it, or “pay for it” in some way; just like we didn’t!

3. Deeply: no matter how great the hurt is, you still forgive; just like God forgave all of your worst sins! 

4. Faithfully (that is, you do it EVERY time: 70 x 7, “JUST AS” God forgives those sins you commit over and over — you forgive them that same way!

But what if we FAIL to forgive like that? This passage shows there is a cost to it: Jesus said the king gave that slave to the torturers, until he should pay everything back. So what’s the meaning, the application of this? Does it mean that God takes back His forgiveness? Does it mean He sends you to hell if you don’t forgive? Well, there’s an old theological expression that “you don’t make a parable stand on all four legs” — in other words, don’t press every point, because it IS just a parable, an illustration and not everything in it applies to the point. BUT I do think Jesus is purposefully making the point here that there is a danger to not forgiving others. 

Someone once asked a former pastor of ours, Bill Elliff, what he thought Jesus meant when He said after the Model Prayer, that if we forgive the sins of others the Lord will forgive us, but if we don’t forgive others, the Lord will not forgive us. Pastor Elliff took a very studious pose and said, Well, I think He meant something like this: that if we forgive others for their transgressions against us, that God would forgive our transgressions — but if we don’t forgive others, then God would not forgive our transgressions! In other words, Jesus meant just what He said there! 

Now to clarify a bit, I believe there are two senses to this:

1. The context in Matthew 6 is that Jesus is speaking about our daily sins. He’d just taught that we should confess our sins daily. So I don’t think it refers to not being forgiven in the sense of salvation, but that our daily sins will remain unforgiven and it will block our daily fellowship with God, if we don’t forgive others — not that it will make us lost for eternity. So we need to understand that there are many Christians today who do not have a closeness to God right now because they are harboring resentment and unforgiveness towards someone. And their daily sins will continue to “clog up” their relationship with God until they learn to forgive.

2. But the second sense is an even greater danger. If we are not willing to forgive others, it may very well indicate that we have never truly understood the grace of God in the first place, and that we ourselves are not saved. How could we not forgive others, when God has so freely forgiven us, by grace alone, when we didn’t deserve it? So not forgiving others may be the best indication that your own sins have never truly been forgiven. Thus a state of unforgiveness towards others is an extremely dangerous spiritual state to be in! Admonish your members: show that you truly understand the grace that God has given YOU, by showing that same grace to others, and forgiving them, the same way that God has forgiven you.  

Craig Blomberg summarizes this lesson in a very succinct way:“God eternally and unconditionally forgives those who repent of so immense a debt against Him, that it is unconscionable for believers to refuse to grant forgiveness to each other for sins that remain trivial in comparison.” 

That puts it so well. God’s forgiven us everything, because we asked. If we’ve truly received and understand that, HOW then can we not forgive any sins, of anyone who’s offended us?

CONCLUSION/ILLUSTRATION:

Marie Beth Jones was a local historian in Angleton, where Cheryl & I served at First Baptist until we had to retire. In her book, Tales of the Brazos, she writes of “George Wetmore Colles, who arrived in Brazoria County about 1900, was the kind of character beloved of newspaper feature writers and historians. … He left teaching to purchase the Harrison Tankersly property … He called the property, which had a natural fence of Cherokee rose hedge, the ‘Rose of Sharon Garden Ranch.’ (Rosharon, Texas, is named for this nearby ranch.) … In a history of Rosharon, L.R. Hunt reported that Colle’s last request prior to his death was that no one from Angleton be allowed to attend his funeral.” (pp. 245-248)

What a dangerous way to face eternity: by expressing bitterness and unforgiveness against people like that! Admonish your group members not to be like that, but to forgive others the same way that God has forgiven you. If you don’t use the C.S. Lewis quote in the Introduction, or even if you did, you might repeat it as a good closing summary:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable (in others), because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”   

THAT is the message of this parable in Matthew 18. It reminds us that we should take our forgiveness of others, as seriously as we take our own forgiveness from God. 

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