Forgive Men Their Trespasses

The Lord's Elaboration on Forgiveness

0:03 Now, last week, we mentioned that we would omit the little phrase, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, until we could handle it in connection with verses 14 and 15. And we're going to do that with the Lord's help this morning. After the conclusion of the prayer in verse 13, our Lord then backtracks and elaborates on one of the petitions which He taught us to pray in the prayer itself. And it's interesting that the only petition upon which our Lord further elaborates is that petition which says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

0:47 Now, I would think, if I were laying out the instruction on prayer, that our Lord would have gone back and elaborated on the first petition. Hallowed be thy name, because as far as importance is concerned, there's nothing more important than that. In the name of God, be hallowed and sanctified. For this is the whole end of all that He does.

1:06 For of Him and through Him and unto Him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever. That's the way Peter closed his letter that we read today. After all, he's done telling the people all that he wants to tell them. It's as though he says, if you will embrace this truth and walk in the light of it, unto Him be glory forever.

1:26 But our Lord does not elaborate upon that petition, but only elaborates. And upon the petition, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And we come to verses 14 and 15. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

1:43 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

A Forgiven Man is a Forgiving Man

1:54 Our subject, as we come to these verses this morning, can be summed up in this little phrase, a forgiven man. A forgiven man will always be a forgiving man.

2:08 A forgiven man will always be a forgiving man. Now, at the outset, we should define the word forgive. The whole teaching of our Lord hinges on at least some measure of understanding of what the word forgive means. The dictionary tells us that the word forgive means to give up resentment or desire, to desire to punish another, to stop being angry with a person, to overlook or to forgive or cancel a debt.

2:45 And it's in this last sense that the word forgive is used in this passage. It's in the sense of the giving up or the canceling of a debt, the overlooking of an obligation. We come to God and we say to Him as His children, Father, forgive my debts. I have incurred debt by my sin.

3:08 And we're imploring God that on the basis of the mercy and merits of Jesus Christ, God would overlook the debt we owe to Him because in Christ that debt was fully paid. Now, when we come to this passage, at the very outset, we recognize the tremendous importance because our Lord indicates that because our Lord indicates that our being forgiven by God and our forgiving of others are inseparably united.

3:43 If we forgive, your Father will forgive. If you will not forgive, your Father will not forgive. In some way, and I hope God will help us to lay out in what way, but in some way, being forgiven by God and being forgiving to man are inseparably united. And if you have one, you have the other.

4:02 If you have not the one, you cannot have the other. Now, in order that we shall come with no mental sluggishness or spiritual indifference to this passage, let me ask you a question this morning. Do you want to go to the judgment of bar of God, a forgiven man or a forgiven woman?

4:26 Do you have hopes that in that day you shall stand having all your sins forgiven through the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ? Or do you want to go and have God deal with you in terms of what you deserve?

4:41 I, for one, don't want God to give me what I deserve. I want to be dealt with on the basis of His mercy and His forgiveness. Do you? I believe you do.

4:53 I trust you do. I trust there's no one here today so foolish as to want to go before God without the forgiveness of God being applied by the grace of God. All right, then. If you're concerned about God's forgiveness, and if you say, that you know that forgiveness and you continually want that forgiveness, mark what Jesus said, your forgiving others is inseparably united with God's forgiving of you.

5:22 So it's important that I understand what Jesus taught. For my very hopes of being a forgiven sinner hinge on whether or not I am a forgiving sinner. The two are inseparably united. Now, let us consider, first of all, what is this relationship between God's forgiveness of me and my forgiveness of my fellow man?

What the Relationship Between God's Forgiveness and Ours is NOT

5:48 And I always find it helpful to start by saying what it is not. And it is not a relationship, first of all, of merit. Jesus did not say, we are to pray, forgive us our debts, because we forgive our debtors. That isn't what He says.

6:05 He told us to pray, forgive us our debts, as we forgive ourselves. Or as you have it in this same parallel passage in Luke chapter 11, verse 4, forgive us our sins, for we forgive those who are indebted to us. So this is not a matter of merit. Now, it's a shame that some should think it's a matter of merit.

6:31 I quote now from the Schofield Bible a note at the bottom of this passage in Matthew 5. Quote, This is legal ground. Compare Ephesians, Ephesians 4.32, which is grace.

6:44 Under the law, forgiveness was conditioned upon a like spirit in us. But under grace, we are forgiven for Christ's sake and exhorted to forgive because we have been forgiven. Only one thing wrong with that statement is not an ounce of truth in it.

7:02 Not an ounce of truth in it.

7:05 This is legal ground. Under the law, forgiveness was conditioned upon a like spirit in us. Beloved, forgiveness was never conditioned upon any other grounds but the mercy of God in Christ. From the Garden of Eden until the last redeemed soul is brought into the body of Christ, God forgives on one basis alone.

7:30 Grace rooted in the mercy of God in Christ.

7:37 This is not a petition of merit. The relationship between God forgiving me and me forgiving someone else is not one. In which my forgiveness merits the forgiveness of God. The very word forgive contradicts that.

7:52 We're taught to pray, not Lord give me what I deserve because I forgive another. That would be legal. But we're praying forgive. And the very word forgive is a word of grace, isn't it?

8:03 It can't mean anything else but grace. And so I would take a decided stand against the teaching of Mr. Schofield and it's basically been the concept of most dispensationalists. Not because I delight, to pick on people, but because wherever divine truth is perverted even by good men, beloved, it must be exposed for what it is.

8:27 Now this doesn't mean you ought to throw out your Schofield Bible, but there's nothing there that can help you. There's much that can help you. But weigh every truth or every statement that purports to be truth in the light of the word of God.

8:44 This is not a relationship of merit. Forgive us because we forgive. Nor is it a relationship of a threat. It's not as though the Lord is saying you better forgive even if it kills you or you won't get forgiven.

8:57 Like the fellow whose dad says, look son, if you don't cut the grass by the time I get home from work at five o'clock tonight, you can't go swimming from six to seven down at the pool. So as the time draws near in the afternoon, I know this is so because I was once a boy. And it wasn't a pool. We lived right next to Long Island Shore up in Connecticut.

9:19 And I can remember those days when dad would say, son, if the lawn isn't cut by the time I come home, no swimming tonight in the evening. We used to go down with my dad in the evening and then come back and have our supper. And I can remember as the sun began to go down and I'd been out playing ball all afternoon, I began to think about that threat of my dad. And so with gritted teeth and with a grudging spirit, I went back and pushed that lawnmower.

9:41 We didn't have the nice kind to go by themselves, you know. It was all sweat and manpower then. And no matter how high the grass was, you either pushed the lawnmower to get it done or you didn't. And I can remember pushing the lawnmower with a deep spirit of discontent and a grudging attitude and mumbling under my breath all the while simply because I had a threat.

10:02 If you don't do this, you can't have that. Now is our Lord threatening us here saying if you won't forgive, even if it kills you, you won't be forgiven? No, this is not a relationship of threat. It's not a relationship of merit.

What the Relationship Between God's Forgiveness and Ours IS

10:15 Now what is the relationship? Well, I believe it's first of all this. It is a relationship of comparison.

10:23 And it's interesting that in the original this is the emphasis. We pray, forgive us our debts even as we, Lord, even we forgive our debtors. There's an extra we in there. So that the emphasis seems to be this.

10:43 Oh God, if I who by nature have no forgiveness in my heart, for by nature I am described in Titus 3.3, for we ourselves were one time foolish, disobedient, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. By nature we've all got a tight-fisted attitude of unforgiveness. Step on my toe and I'll burn until I can step on yours.

11:09 That's the way we're built by nature, aren't we?

11:13 And yet if the grace of God has put in my heart a spirit of forgiveness so that when someone wrongs me, I want, I want to forgive him, I even delight to forgive him, then when I come to God in prayer, there is this relationship of comparison. Lord, if I, a naturally tight-fisted, unforgiving sinner, if you have so worked in my heart, a sinner, that I gladly forgive my fellow man, then certainly, Lord, your heart must be infinitely more ready to forgive me, for the little forgiveness I have is just a little drop out of the ocean of the sea. So, Lord, as you've worked in me a spirit of forgiveness, forgive me as I forgive those who sin against me. It's a relationship of comparison.

12:05 It's the same thing you have further on in this Sermon on the Mount. We'll be studying it sometime in the future, the Lord willing, where Jesus said, if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in Heaven, give good gifts to those that ask Him. Now, here's the comparison. If we who are naturally unforgiving can, by the grace of God, forgive our fellow man, then there's hope that the God who worked this forgiveness in us will yet extend forgiveness to us as we come to Him, saying from the depths of our hearts, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

12:46 So it's, first of all, a relationship of comparison, but secondly, and I believe, more important, it's a relationship of constraint. The relationship between God's forgiveness and my forgiveness of others is one of comparison, but more it's one of constraint. Now remember, this is the prayer of a Christian. This is the prayer of someone who has been born of the Holy Spirit, who has believed on Jesus Christ through grace, who has been joined to Christ, and has become a child of God by the work of God's grace in his heart.

13:27 Now, such a person is one who, first of all, had to discover how bad he was by nature and practice. Jesus doesn't save any but bad sinners. Any good sinners here this morning? Jesus got no saving grace for you.

13:44 He's got none. For He said, I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. They that are well, have no need of a doctor, but they that are sick. And if you're a child of God this morning, you are because at one point in the history of your life, God the Holy Spirit opened your eyes so that you saw how bad you were.

14:08 So bad that you couldn't change your own heart or blot out the record of your sins that was against you. So bad that if you were ever to get help in terms of your sin and your wicked nature, the help was going to have to come outside of yourself. And then, and the same Holy Spirit who showed you your sins so that you could say, at least in substance as the hymn writer said, by God's word at last my sin I learned. Then I trembled at the law I spurned.

14:39 If you're a Christian, there's come a time when you trembled to think that you had broken the law of the Holy God. The time without number you had lived in disobedience and rebellion to the will and precepts of God. But the same Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit pointed you to a cross where the infinitely holy Son of God took upon Himself the sin of men and the Father punished the sins of mankind upon His own Son. And there at the cross, you learned the message of God's love to rebellious, wayward, sinful men and astounded and amazed that God should love the likes of you.

15:23 The Holy Spirit enabled you to embrace by faith the salvation offered in the Lord Jesus Christ crucified. And from that day to this, the greatest source of amazement to you has been that God could ever forgive the likes of you.

15:44 When you quote Galatians 2.20, it's always in the atmosphere of wonder, the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for the likes of me. Now, when you have been a recipient of God's forgiveness through the cross,

16:07 it's as natural as breathing for you then to long to express that forgiveness to your fellow man. For true forgiveness always breaks a man and a broken man will be a forgiving man.

16:26 If the infinitely holy God has canceled the debt of this life, this little creature that dared to defy Him, then certainly as a creature I can forgive a fellow creature. If the great God who could have blotted me out and sealed me up in hell, if that God would forgive me, then certainly as a forgiven creature I can forgive my fellow man. That's the relationship of constraint. Having received grace, I am constrained to extend grace, grace, and forgiveness to my fellow man.

17:05 The story is told of John Wesley who was on the boat with a man by the name of Oglethorpe who was one of the military leaders and political leaders of the early South. And Mr. Oglethorpe was quite upset and he said to Mr. Wesley, to John Wesley, he said, Mr. Wesley, I want you to forgive me.

17:25 He said, I'm a bit disturbed and upset because this wretch of a man, and then he pointed to the man who was his valet, a foreign man, who stood there shivering, cringing, wondering what was going to come next. He said, this man is taking my choice wines. I only drink a certain type of wine and I had so many bottles of it there in my private stateroom in the ship and this man has assumed to take this and because of it I'm going to bind him hand and foot in the next ship, the man of war that comes by, I'm going to consign him to that ship and get rid of him. For he said, Mr. Wesley, you know I never, I never forgive.

18:03 This man should have known better. John Wesley turned and said very quietly to Mr. Oglethorpe, Sir, I hope you never sin.

18:17 Mr. Oglethorpe got the rebuke.

18:21 He got the message. So he turned to the cringing man and threw him the keys to his stateroom again and said, I hope you've learned your lesson. I'll still keep you with me. But you see the principle?

18:34 A man who can say, I don't forgive is the man who's never seen himself in need of forgiveness. That's right. And whenever I meet someone who says, I can't forgive, I know that person has never bowed in brokenness before Calvin.

18:57 For when I see that God in Christ has forgiven me and that it was my sin that pressed the nails into his quivering flesh, it was my sin that caused him to tremble, to groan, to bleed upon that cross, then no matter what any creature does to me, it can never begin to come to the measure of what I did to him. And because he's forgiven me, I can forgive my fellow man.

19:27 And I meet the person who harbors unforgiveness in the heart and I know I'm meeting the man or woman who's never been broken by the forgiveness of God. Never has been. And frankly, dear ones, this is what, this is what frightens me as I move amongst churches. And I can't forget what I saw for five years as an evangelist.

19:51 For in church after church, if I was there any length of time, whatever, there would begin to emerge the spirit of unforgiveness.

20:04 Professing brethren in Christ who would not speak to one another, people in whose veins coursed the same source of blood, blood brothers and spiritual brothers, deep roots of unforgiveness. Beloved, they can't be men and women who bow daily with wonder before Calvary amazed that God would ever forgive them. For if you and I are amazed at His forgiveness, we are constrained to extend forgiveness.

20:37 Aren't we? And so when our Lord said, when ye pray, say, forgive us our debts, as we forgive, He was bringing into focus that relationship that relationship of the constraint of the love of God. As one servant of God has said, there are none so tender to others as they who have received mercy and who know how gently God has dealt with them. It's a precious statement in its simplicity, isn't it?

21:15 There are none so tender to others as they who've received mercy and know how gently God has dealt with them. God hath dealt with them.

A Forgiving Spirit: A Sure Sign of God's Forgiveness

21:28 That's the relationship. We've considered so far what the relationship is not. It's not one of merit, Mr. Schofield notwithstanding.

21:38 It's not a relationship of threat, but it is a relationship of comparison and of constraint. Now that being the basic principle, let us apply this principle as our Lord does in verses 14 and 15. The first application is very obvious, verse 14. For if ye do not forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father, or for if ye forgive, your heavenly Father will forgive you.

22:11 But if ye forgive not, neither will your Father forgive. The first principle we encounter is this, that a spirit of forgiveness is a sure sign that we are forgiven by God.

22:26 Now the ground of our forgiveness is the blood of God. The blood of Jesus Christ. The merit of Jesus Christ. That's the ground upon which God forgives us.

22:38 The conditions by which we are forgiven, repentance and faith. We're told that we must repent and believe the gospel and then the ground of forgiveness becomes our ground. No man is ever planted on the grounds of God's mercy except he gets there by the two feet of repentance and faith. And those feet are created and moved by the Spirit of God.

23:04 For true repentance and true faith are His gifts. I don't have time to quote the many verses which indicate it. But, now listen carefully, though the ground of forgiveness is the blood of Christ, the conditions of forgiveness, repentance and faith, the fruit of forgiveness will be a forgiving spirit. And so all our Lord is saying is this, if you find in your heart, that attitude of desire to extend forgiveness, this is a sure sign that you yourself are forgiven for a spirit of forgiveness is one of the primary fruits of the work of grace in the soul of man.

23:49 Do you find a spirit of forgiveness within your breast this morning? Then, dear, when you have reason to believe that your hope that you're a Christian is not a false hope, if you find that when at times someone wrongs you and your first reaction is one of wanting to retaliate, but it isn't long when you're in the closet or even before you get to the closet when, like David, your heart smites you and you go down before God pleading for the grace of His forgiving spirit to work in your heart, dear one, if that's the habit in the bent of your life, you have grounds to believe that you're a forgiven man for the spirit of forgiveness is a, a proof, an indication, and sign that you yourself have been forgiven. But now the opposite is true and our Lord states it in verse 15. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Just as surely as the presence of the spirit of forgiveness is a sure sign that we are forgiven, so the absence of a spirit of forgiveness is a sure sign that we have never truly repented.

The Absence of Forgiveness: A Sure Sign of Impenitence

25:11 Now notice the emphasis of our Lord's words. If ye are not forgiving men, your Father will not forgive you. Why? Simply because you're impenitent.

25:24 You haven't really repented.

25:27 So my question this morning as I face you as a congregation is this. I'm not asking you if you believe that Christ died for sinners. I'm not asking you if you believe that what He did for sinners has been applied to you. I want to ask you a very pointed and simple question.

25:46 Do you forgive those who wrong you?

25:52 There's the question. Do you forgive men their trespasses against you?

25:59 What about you fellas and girls? You've got brothers and sisters in the home. Do you nurse a grudge for days?

26:05 What about you husbands and wives? When a little spat comes in the home, do you begin to drag up a whole list of things from past years? That's proof you've never forgiven. All you've done is sweep it under the rug waiting for the right time to drag out all the skeletons again.

26:21 God's forgiveness is always identified with His forgetting.

26:26 What God forgives, He forgets. Though we're not God and can't forget in an absolute sense, one of the real proofs that we've forgiven is that we don't sit that thing back in a file ready to drag it out again when we want to get even with the one who's wronged us. You know what I'm talking about? Hmm?

26:44 You know what that attitude is?

26:49 Do you have the spirit of forgiveness? If not, dear one, you have reason to question whether or not you've ever truly been brought to repentance and true faith in Jesus Christ. Our Lord gave a very long parable on this very subject. We don't have time to expound it, but we do want to look at it for just a moment.

27:08 In Matthew chapter 18, will you turn please for a moment to Matthew 18.

27:22 Beginning with verse 21, we have the account of how Peter came to the Lord Jesus asking Him a question. Now, the rabbinical teachers of our Lord's day taught that you had to forgive a man up to three times, but after that you could turn around and shoot him if you needed to. If you went three times, that was far enough. Maybe they were hog wild on Bible numerics.

27:43 They thought three was the number of perfection or something, and so they said, well, if we get three, everything will be well. So Peter was really, really expressing his virtue when he came up and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Till seven times? Boy, that was a little more than twice what the rabbis taught.

28:01 And he probably thought, boy, surely maybe five times is all, but I'll say seven. I'll shoot high. I'll shoot high. And the Lord turned to Peter and said, oh, no, Peter.

28:12 I say not unto thee until seven times, but until 70 times seven. What was our Lord saying? He says, Peter, you don't count the times you forgive your brother waiting for them to get to the limit so then you can take revenge, forget about revenge. Forget about retaliation.

28:29 Forget about unforgiveness. Peter, don't sit around counting the times because when a man is counting the times, he's just waiting till that last one so he can give vent to what's in his heart. Right? So he hasn't really forgiven all the preceding seven times.

28:44 Has he? No, he really hasn't. Else he wouldn't be counting. See?

28:49 And our Lord said, oh, it's my followers, Peter, you're to have the attitude of continuous unremitting forgiveness. And then our Lord gave the parable about the man whose great debt was forgiven and he went around and found a friend of his who just had a little debt and he grabbed him by the throat and says, pay what you owe or to the prison you go. And he threw him in the prison. Then our Lord says, and I want you to see this, verse 32, then his Lord, after he had called him, said unto him, oh, thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because you asked me.

29:25 Should you not have had compassion on your 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 do to you if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses. Our Lord knew that as long as we're in the flesh we would trespass against one another, that we would infringe on each other's rights, that we would do that which would cause grief to one another.

30:03 Our Lord knew as long as we were in the flesh there would be these circumstances. And he said, every time that someone wrongs you and there's the temptation for you not to forgive, remember, remember the debt that God forgave you in Christ. And as I think of that debt, I cannot help but forgive. You see, the problem, with this man whose debt of great amount was forgiven, but who would not forgive the little debt of his friend, the spirit of true forgiveness had never really gripped his heart.

30:39 He had never been broken by forgiveness. He'd never been broken by it. And our Lord said, if you've never been broken by forgiveness, then the Father will meet judgment upon you and give you what you deserve. As I said earlier, I don't want God to give me what I deserve, but I want Him to deal with me in grace.

31:04 That's the second principle. The absence of this spirit of forgiveness is a sure sign that we've never repented. Then there's a third principle that I trust God will burn into our hearts. Why did Jesus go back and elaborate on this one petition?

True Prayer Has Moral Implications

31:19 He's teaching us how to pray. And yet, when He finishes that prayer, that model prayer, He goes back and touches on the one petition that has to do with my fellow man. Why? And here's the third principle.

31:33 True prayer has moral implications.

31:38 Not everybody can pray.

31:42 Oh, you say, wait a minute, even a little child can pray. Yes, a little child can pray. But not everybody can pray. Oh, everybody can say prayers.

31:52 But not everybody can truly pray. For Jesus makes clear in this example that for me to come to God and truly pray, there are certainly, there are certain demands in the attitude of my heart that must be faced. And you can't pray in just any old frame of heart and really pray. You can say prayers, but you can't truly pray.

32:16 For Jesus said, if I come and cannot honestly say that the heart out of which my petitions flow to God is a heart emptied of resentment and ill will and bitterness and rancor to my brethren, then He says, you better stop your praying. And He said precisely the same thing in the 11th chapter of Mark. He gave that wonderful prayer promise, whatsoever thing you desire when you pray, believe you have received them and you shall have them. But He said, when you stand praying, forgive.

32:47 He put it right in with the whole subject of prayer. It's almost as though He lost His outline and His mind went blank and He took up another subject altogether. But He didn't. After giving that wonderful promise on the efficacy of believing prayer, He immediately says, and when you stand praying, you must pray with an attitude of forgiveness.

33:08 Now, my question then is, did you pray this morning when Mr. Doxey led us in prayer and we had a period of silent prayer? Did you pray? Oh, you said, I sure did.

33:20 Not if you have any ill will in your heart to your fellow man, you didn't. You couldn't. You couldn't. For if you do not forgive, your Heavenly Father will not forgive.

33:32 And when I stand before God as His child unforgiven, I'm regarding iniquity in my heart and the Lord will not hear me. My fellowship is broken. My relationship is not severed, but my fellowship is broken.

33:49 Do we really believe that prayer has moral implications? If so, I think, I think we'd spend a little more time preparing ourselves to pray and maybe a little less time actually praying, but I'm sure our prayers will be much more effectual.

God's Purpose in Redemption: Two Directions

34:07 Then the fourth principle that I find in these verses is this, that the purpose of God in redemption has two directions and we can't ever forget it.

34:17 Jesus said, When you come with your mind and heart filled with such wonderful thoughts as the glory of God, hallowed be thy name, the extension of His kingdom, thy kingdom come, the doing of His will, thy will be done in us as it is in heaven. Jesus said, When you come occupied with such great and noble and lofty concepts about God, you can't forget that you're a creature who's related to your fellow man. And if you can't come praying about my glory and my kingdom and my will and at the same time at any point in your prayer look out toward your fellow man and say, Father, forgive, even as I forgive those who sin against me. Jesus said, You can't really pray.

35:02 You see, God's purpose in redemption is two directives. To bring me into right relationship with Himself, but to bring me into right relationship with my fellow man. And I can't ever forget that. Paul said, I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense to God and toward man.

Forgiveness Governed by Other Passages

35:23 And then the last principle with which we'll deal is that the outworking of this principle here of praying that God will forgive us as we forgive our fellow man must always be governed by the other passages which deal with this same problem. What should I do when somebody wrongs me? What should you do when someone wrongs you? Does this verse mean that while we forgive we just act as though it isn't there and forget it?

35:50 Oh, no. No, no. That would contradict some other passages. Notice carefully Matthew chapter 18 and verse 15.

36:00 Matthew 18 and verse 15. Our Lord said, If thy brother trespass against thee, just forgive him. Forget it. Oh, no.

36:10 Go, tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he won't hear thee, take with thee one or two more. That in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word be established.

36:25 If he'll neglect to hear them, tell it to the church. You see, our Lord says that the attitude when my brother sins against me is to be one of extending forgiveness. I hold no malice, no ill will. That does not mean I simply overlook his sin.

36:41 I'm to go and tell him his fault between thee, between myself and him alone. If he won't acknowledge his fault and repent, I'm to take some witnesses. If he won't listen to the witnesses, he's to be brought before the church. If he won't hear the church, we're to treat him as a heathen man and a publican man.

36:57 Now, how do we treat the heathen and publican? We don't throw stones at them. We don't hate them. We love them, but we don't treat them as brethren.

37:04 We don't include them in our fellowship. We don't invite them to the table of the Lord. We don't get on our knees and pray with unregenerate men except to pray that God will save them. We don't give them any impression that we are one.

37:20 That's what our Lord said we're to do.

37:24 Now, what our Lord says in the 6th of Matthew should not contradict what He says in the 18th of Matthew. Or what He says in the 17th of Luke where He says, If thy brother sinned against thee and he come and say, I repent. If he comes seven times a day saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him, the Lord Jesus said. And so, as we study this passage, we must recognize that though we are to extend forgiveness to the Lord, to those that wrong us, this does not nullify our responsibility to one another to actually confess our sins to each other.

37:58 How can I forgive my brethren and say, Father, forgive as I forgive if nobody's asking my forgiveness? Our Lord implied that His people would be continually asking each other's forgiveness.

38:11 Isn't that the implication? Father, you know that today brother so-and-so came to me and he did something or said something about me. He shouldn't. Lord, it was my delight to forgive him.

38:22 Father, forgive me as I forgave my brother. Our Lord implied that this would be common practice amongst the people of God to live in a climate of conferred forgiveness through confession of our sins one to another.

Application to Home and Church

38:39 Do you husbands and wives live in that climate?

38:43 If not, one of two things is true. Either both of you is so sanctified that I envy you, you never have to ask each other's forgiveness,

38:54 or your home's a little bit of hell on earth and I'm not going to forgive you. And I wouldn't trade it to you for a million dollars. One or the other.

39:03 One or the other. If you as a husband and wife do not live in a climate of mutually confessing your sins to each other, either you're so sanctified that I envy you, and I'm not being funny, I mean that.

39:18 Because I haven't attained that degree of sanctification yet where I don't have to confess the hasty word,

39:27 the overlooking of my wife's needs in pursuit of my own selfishness.

39:35 Either you've attained a degree of sanctification which I envy,

39:40 or I wouldn't live in your home for a million dollars.

39:45 If you husbands and wives cannot confess and seek each other's forgiveness,

39:53 you fellows and girls, you can't do this with each other. When you've had a spat in the home,

40:01 you and I can't in the climate of the church fellowship. Beloved, I'm going to do things that are going to be thoughtless, not deliberately, I'm going to say things that are going to hurt, not deliberately.

40:13 You with each other and with me, there are going to be occasions where we're going to need each other's forgiveness. Let's be men and women enough to ask it of each other. And then together bow before a forgiving God as revealed at the cross, and God will even overrule our sin against each other to admit our hearts all the more to the plate. Those times when it's been my privilege to be where God has broken in with power by His grace, His Spirit, and Christians have begun to confess their ill will to one another, their bitter words, their suspicion, jealousy, and all the rest.

40:53 It has never, never failed to my own limited experience that when such a season of melting before God is over, the people of God are more closely knit and inseparably tied together than ever they were before. And God even overruled their sin to bring about the blessedness of spiritual unity. But they had to be willing to confess their sin one to another. Not to seek the absolution of another, but to ask His forgiveness as a fellow creature.

41:28 And that principle is taught by our Lord and in conjunction with Matthew 18 and Luke 17, it shows the pattern for the church. Now see, this is the problem. A pastor doesn't live in your home, and all he can do is stand up here and ask you and try to force you to reflect. I can't, I can do no more.

41:45 But I do apply this to every husband, every mother, every wife today. Do you live in that climate of mutual forgiveness?

41:55 If so, it's a precious thing, isn't it? To bow your stubborn head and tell your wife, honey, I was wrong. And to have her take your hand and squeeze it and say, dear, if I'd been a little more patient, you wouldn't have done that. I was wrong.

42:10 No, let's together ask the Lord to forgive us. We're done. That's precious, dear one. That's precious.

42:18 To live in that climate.

42:21 It's precious in the church fellowship. When, apart from a big to-do, the brother or sister goes to the one they were a little bit quick with in that board meeting, and they know it, and they went home and it troubled them, and they couldn't pray, Lord, forgive as I forgive. And so they get that little thing right. In that constant openness, God would and man would, there's a climate in which the Spirit can do His work of exalting.

42:47 Exalting the Lord Jesus.

42:50 A forgiven man will be a forgiving man. Are you a forgiving person today?

Call to Forgiveness and Prayer

42:58 If you are, then you have reason to believe you are forgiven. But if you're not forgiven, dear one, what you need is such a revelation of the blackness of your heart and the heinousness of your sins in the light of God's infinite grace on Calvary until your pride and unforgiving heart is broken by God's forgiveness and you will become a forgiving person. Let us pray. Lord, we thank Thee for the forgiveness which is so freely offered to us in the Lord Jesus.

43:53 We are amazed that You should ever extend forgiveness to little worms of the dust such as we are. We who dared to defy Thy laws and Thy precepts and live according to the dictates of our own corrupt hearts, caring not whether we broke Thy laws or grieved Thee, O God, we marvel that You bore so long with so many of us and that You sent Your Son to die for the likes of us and that You offer Him freely to all men, on the condition that they repent and believe in Him. O Lord, break us anew today before Thy forgiving grace that we may have the grace of forgiveness for those in our midst who may have deeply buried within their hearts pockets of rebellion to this truth, deep seeds of resentment. O God, search them out today. May Thy Word be indeed a two-edged sword, that shall lay bare and cut into the deepest recesses of the heart and bring out anything contrary to the grace of Thy forgiveness.

45:21 Lord, we want to be forgiven, men and women. We desire to be able to say daily, forgive us our debts, even as we forgive those who trespass against us. Grant, Lord, that as an assembly of Thy people this may be true. Grant that it may be true in every home that names Thy name, with father and mother, husbands and wives and children.

45:47 O God, deliver us from the terrible blight that comes to a life, to a home, to a church that is not constantly bathed in the grace of forgiveness. Help us to be kind one toward another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as Thou in Christ hast forgiven us. Make this to be true, Lord, to the end that Thy name shall be glorified and Thy work and Thy kingdom extended through lives that do not quench nor grieve Thy Spirit.

46:26 We ask through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.