166- The Power of the Gospel in Forgiveness - Matthew 18.21-35 (with Bill Holdridge)

166- The Power of the Gospel in Forgiveness - Matthew 18.21-35

Announcer: Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor, conversations with current senior pastors and leaders which will strengthen and help you in your pastoral ministry. And now here's your host, Bill Holdridge of Poimen Ministries. Welcome to podcast number 166.

Bill Holdridge Introduction: Today is going to be different. Something I don't usually do, in fact I can't remember ever doing this on this podcast network, but this is going to be a message that I delivered recently in Scotts Valley, California. It's close to my heart, it's near and dear to my heart, but more importantly, far more importantly, it's near and dear to the heart of Jesus.

And this is specifically for pastors. Not that the application is exclusively for pastors, but it is for pastors because we encounter forgiveness or the lack thereof often in our ministries. Again, this message delivered at Regeneration Church in Scotts Valley, California a couple of months ago.

Bill Holdridge Teaching on Forgiving Others: May the Lord bless you. I want to tell you a little bit of a story. A while back I was given a tremendous gift.

The gift was presented by a pastor by the name of Bruce Hebel who sat down with me and a number of other pastors that were gathering in East Texas where I was living at the time. And he explained his ministry that the Lord had called him to of teaching Christians how to forgive. And Bruce's commentary on the text that we're going to talk about this morning greatly intrigued me, the way he was breaking down the passage.

Therefore I got a hold of his book, a copy of the book Forgiving Forward. The latest or the second edition is entitled Forgiving Forward, Experience the Freedom of the Gospel Through the Power of Forgiveness. And I wanted to look more deeply into some of the ways he was breaking down the passage.

So I did as I read the book and I realized very quickly into the book that this was a gift to me as an answer to a long-term prayer that I'd been praying personally. And the truth of forgiveness, I have to say, as applied since that time in my life has radically changed my life. So this morning I do believe that the Lord has called me to give the same gift to you.

It's the gift of forgiveness. It's the gift of learning how to forgive others. C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying, you know, everybody thinks forgiveness is a good idea until they have someone to forgive.

But it is a really good idea and it's so liberating and we'll see what that's like. And if you will put this to work in your life, you will discover exactly what the title of this book suggests, that there is a tremendous freedom coming from the gospel through the power of forgiving others. So continuing a little bit of a story, I grew up with an alcoholic father.

And after I got saved and was filled with the Holy Spirit, I wanted to clear things up during our lifetimes to that point by forgiving him. And so I went to his home and I began telling him what I was forgiving him for. Okay, you know what was going on at that time.

And it didn't sound like a desire to forgive to him. It sounded like an indictment. Like I was the prosecuting attorney that had come into his home.

And so he was getting angry and thankfully I have the gift of discernment. I could see his face getting red. And I could see the veins on his neck beginning to pop out.

So I knew, because of the amazing gift of the discernment of spirits that the Lord has given me, that he was getting angry at me. But with divine help, that conversation did a 180-degree shift. I don't even understand to this day how it all happened.

But I ended up asking him to forgive me because of my failures as a son. And I said, Dad, I love you. Would you please forgive me for the way I've let you down as your son? And of course that pacified his anger and he calmed down and we embraced.

And that was the moment I forgave the Lord. But I didn't realize at that time, I hadn't learned this yet, that we're supposed to forgive others from our hearts and we do our forgiving as unto our Heavenly Father. We don't go to the person and read a list of offenses and then, you know, put our own lives in danger in the process.

We don't do that. And as I grew in the Lord, I later discovered Mark 11, 25 and 26. And this is the Lord Jesus speaking.

So, of course, we pay attention to it. It's the Lord of glory having something to say to all of us. He said, whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him.

That your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. This is an amazing passage for a number of reasons, but one reason is that this means that we're to forgive everything or anything that a person has done to wound us.

There is no exception here. Everything can and must be forgiven. And then another important part of this is that this all happens in the process of prayer.

We're talking to the Father about those transactions of forgiveness that we initiate by his invitation to forgive other people. Now, at this point, I know how it goes. A lot of people just turn the switch off and say, I'm not listening to another word because I can't forgive the person.

If I forgive the person, that means I have to be reconciled. Don't let that stop you because forgiveness and reconciliation are two completely different planets and completely different solar systems. Forgiveness does not guarantee that a reconciliation will occur, and forgiveness certainly doesn't mandate that we have to do all the work of reconciling.

Reconciliation is a two-person or a two-party transaction, and it requires both sides. And just as much as I might want to be reconciled to someone else, and I'm willing to do whatever is reasonable and necessary to reconcile with someone else, that other person has to be in the same place for reconciliation to take place. So don't let that stop you.

You can turn the switch back on right now and start listening again because this is an important message for us to all hear. But the journey of learning how to forgive began in my life. So as you've seen, the title of this message is The Power of the Gospel and Forgiveness.

Now, we owe it to God to forgive others because through the gospel, he has forgiven everyone who believe in Jesus Christ of everything. So we owe it to God to forgive others because this is, of course, a lesser requirement upon us than that which costs God the life of his own son. We also owe it to the ones who wounded us to forgive them because the wounds by which they have wounded us have also been paid for by Jesus Christ at the cross.

That doesn't mean that they have personally received eternal life. That comes through believing the gospel message. But that wound by which they wounded me and you has been paid for at Calvary.

It's already been paid for. And so it's applied to the cross. This forgiveness of others is applied to the cross of Christ because that's where it all happened.

So we owe it to the ones who wounded us because of that fact. We also owe it to ourselves to forgive others because refusing to forgive is like drinking poison for our souls. And like the saying goes, we sometimes harbor forgiveness.

And we think that by drinking the poison of unforgiveness, we're hoping our enemy will die. But that's insanity. It doesn't do anything to the other person.

Actually, many times the person that we are withholding forgiveness from is oblivious to whether or not we even should forgive them. And they're oblivious of the thing that they did to wound us. So it has no bearing at all, whatever.

We don't want to be drinking poison in our souls, which is what unforgiveness does. It's like drinking poison in our souls. And we've met with people over the years and counseled people over the years, many, many hundreds of people who have been bound by the sin of unforgiveness and have been embittered by it.

Because unforgiving people eventually become bitter. Bitter people are bitter. And bitter people, you can smell them.

You can taste them when they open their mouths. You can feel them when you interact with them. And it's poison to others as well.

In fact, if a bitter person leaves the church because of unforgiveness and goes to another church and hasn't learned to forgive and hasn't done the forgiving, what are they going to do? They're going to bring their bitterness and their poison to the next church. And these are the causes of almost every church split that has ever happened in church history, is bitter people and the bitterness is almost always rooted in the sin of unforgiveness. So we need to understand these things.

But let's not forget, as we think about these ideas of what we owe in terms of forgiveness, we can't forget about what is often referred to as the need for us to forgive ourselves. Now just to give a clarification, I don't personally favor that way of phrasing it. You may use that phrasing and that's fine.

That's between you and the Lord and all that. But I don't prefer that way of putting it because God is the only one that can forgive sins. But I do believe this with all my heart and I'm sure you do too as well, that we must accept the forgiveness that God has provided in the gospel and believe it for ourselves and embrace it as being true and live in the reality we are forgiven because of Christ.

The debt has been paid and we are reconciled to God through the gospel, period. And we sang so well about that this morning, didn't we? Were you celebrating your forgiveness as we worshiped this morning? I sure was because I'm still astonished by it after all these years of walking with the Lord. The author of this book that I was referring to has this to say, hurting people hurt people.

He's not the only one that ever said this, of course, but it's a true thing. If I've been wounded by someone, I must remember that that person who wounded me also has been wounded somehow. And that helps quite a bit, I think, in terms of compassion.

What is forgiveness? I'm again quoting Bruce Hebel, the author of Forgiving Forward. He said, forgiveness is applying the blood of Jesus as payment in full for every wound I ever have or will suffer. Applying the blood of Jesus in full for every wound I have ever suffered or I ever will suffer.

Now this is a gospel truth here. So because of the fact that when Jesus said it is finished, it actually was finished. The debt was paid in full.

At Calvary he said that. Because that is true, what that means for you and what that means for me is that I can put this unjust wound that has affected my life, I can put it somewhere, knowing that justice has been satisfied. It's not just carte blanche, let people off scot-free, not a problem, no problema, not a big deal.

It's not that type of a thing at all. It's taking the wound, forgiving the wound, and applying the injustice of that wound to the cross because that's where justice was satisfied at Calvary. God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

That's justice. But there's also truth there, of course, and there's also an abundance of grace as well. So these are the things we know.

So now we're getting into Matthew 18. The first part of the chapter tells us a lot about Jesus' heart as he explains the greatest of all in God's kingdom are the ones who humble themselves just like a little child humbles himself or herself. In the heart of Jesus, the gospel goes on to say, is never to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

That's the heart of our Lord. And then in this chapter, the Lord taught his disciples about dealing with personal grievances that take place among the family of God and what to do about them. And it was after that that Peter came to Jesus in verse 21 of Matthew 18 and asked Jesus this question.

And so now I'm reading in our passage, Matthew 18:21. Then Peter came to Him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” So Jesus responds to his question in verse 22.

He says, “I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven.” Now you may be holding a translation on your device or in your Bible that says up to 77 times. That's an unfortunate translation because the actual Greek text clearly says 70 times seven.

So it's there. So it's 490 times. How far must we go in forgiving others? If we're counting, we haven't forgiven.

So that's one thing to say. Well, let's see, I'm at 483. I only got seven more times that I got to forgive this guy and then I'll have to forgive him anymore.

It's not like that at all. It has no connection to that. It's an unlimited number of times really is what this would be insinuating and suggesting.

But how far must we go in forgiving others and how does it work? So I'm going to give you a few bullet points here. First of all, forgiveness when we forgive someone else should be instant at the very moment or the time that we realize that we have something to forgive. We should forgive instantly.

We don't wait. We don't chew on it. We don't try to work through all the emotions involved and then when we feel like we're emotionally ready, we go ahead and pull the trigger and forgive.

It's a transaction. It's not a process. Forgiveness is not a process.

It doesn't take months. It doesn't take years. It doesn't even take days.

It is a transaction that happens the moment I make the decision to forgive. In my conversation with the Father, I'm standing. I'm praying.

I remember that I have something against someone. That's the moment. That's the time to do it.

Father, I forgive so and so for such and such. I apply what so and so did to me to the cross of Christ who paid for that transgression and then I move through what we're going to look at as the forgiveness protocols. Secondly, we must forgive everyone of everything and we've already referred to that point in Mark chapter 11 verses 25 and 26.

If you have anything against anyone, forgive him. That your Father in heaven may forgive you your trespasses but if you do not do this, your Father in heaven won't forgive you yours. Now that's a hard passage.

I'm not going to try to explain it away. I'm not going to try to reinterpret it. I'm going to let Jesus be his own author of his own comment.

This is what he said. If we don't forgive others, the Father doesn't forgive us. If we do, he does.

But what does it mean practically? Are we talking about eternal life here? Are we talking about the question of going to heaven or going to hell? No, that's not the issue. That's not the issue in this particular verse as it also shows up in the Lord's Prayer. It's the only part of the Lord's Prayer that Jesus comes back on and adds further comment.

In the Lord's Prayer it says forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That's not a request asking God to forgive us. It's a statement.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We are saying to the Father, “We forgive our debtors, You forgive us” (and so on and so forth). What it is, as explained by Jesus, if that if you forgive men their trespasses, your Father will forgive you.

If you do not, He will not. So what is that actually practically referring to? It's referring to the way the Father will work with us and deal with us either in a forgiving manner or in an unforgiving manner. I'll give you an illustration.

My son, he's now a pastor. He has fully repented of what I'm going to tell you  . It was not a big deal.

He was 13 years old. He was junior high age. We were playing basketball in the front yard in the driveway.

I'm dribbling the ball and he starts being snarky like middle school aged students have a propensity toward that. He was being snarky and I was getting upset. In fact, as I was dribbling the ball, getting ready to drive on the hoop and all that, I'm plotting his demise.

What am I going to do to get back at him for his snarkiness? As I'm dribbling, the Lord speaks to me. He says, “Bill, do you want me to be as merciful to you right now as you are considering treating your son?” I said, “No, Father. I want You to be kind and merciful and gracious to me and all those things that You are.”

But I got the point. Immediately the passage came into my mind: “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.”

Merciful people obtain mercy. Forgiving people are treated in a forgiving manner by the Father. Unforgiving people will see what happens with them and it's a form of discipline because the Father loves us too much to allow us to remain in this state of unforgiveness toward others because He has, like we sang, so much more for us, so much better for us than to stew in our unforgiveness, which creates the poison of bitterness.

Wow, that just kind of rolled off my tongue. That was pretty good. Thank you, Lord. TJ prayed for me before the service, so I give credit to that. 
Anyway, another point along the lines of forgiveness. We must forgive vertically.

We've already talked about that. We forgive from our hearts and we express it to the Father. Again, Mark 11:25-26.

And then how do we forgive others going on? We must live out our forgiveness horizontally. We live it out. We forgive vertically, we live it out horizontally. 
We pray blessings upon those that we've forgiven that have wounded us. And oftentimes we pray for a blessing in the very area in which they were wounded if we have wisdom in that situation.

We want people to have a good life. We want people to have a life that is before the Lord that receives his blessings and they can therefore live accordingly. Don't we want that for other people? I don't want anybody to have a bad... I don't want anybody to go to hell.

I hope you don't want anybody to go to hell. I mean, that would be a bad thing, obviously. But I also don't want anybody to have a fractured, pained, bitter, destroyed, destructive kind of a life.

So we live out our forgiveness horizontally. We want good for people. We pray for them.

And we also pray for reconciliation, if possible. Now I asked Pastor Eric if he would have the protocols (that you were handed when you walked in) printed out so everybody could have their own copy. I have a bookmark that has the seven protocols of forgiveness as given in the book Forgiving Forward.

You have them on a half sheet of paper. I want to just review them really quickly. The seven protocols of forgiveness work this way.

Now, when I read the book, I put these protocols to the test. I thought, well, the book is profound. The concept is amazing.

It sounds right. I'm going to do a deep dive to see if I can find biblical justification for his conclusions. So, I did that kind of study. I looked into it. But I got to the point where I thought, well, I might as well do what the practical suggestions in the book are giving me. And that has to do with the seven protocols. 
THE 7 PROTOCOLS OF FORGIVENESS
BY DR. BRUCE HEBEL
AUTHOR OF FORGIVING FORWARD 
1. We thank the Father for His forgiveness of us.
2. We repent of our sin of unforgiveness.
3. We ask the Father in heaven who we need to forgive. 
4. We forgive each offense from our heart.
A. “Lord, I choose to forgive ___________________ from my heart for ___________________________.”
B. “Lord, is there anything else I need to forgive ___________________ for?”
C. “I declare ___________________ is no longer in my debt. 
5. Ask God to bless them and then look for ways to bless them whenever possible. 
6. Commit to not remember the offense. When the memory comes: 
A. “I specifically remember forgiving that.”
B. Praise God for the freedom forgiveness brought you.
C. Bless the person you forgave, again.
D. Pray for reconciliation.
7. Make pre-forgiveness a lifestyle.
© 2010 Regenerating Life
www.forgivingforward.com

So the first one is to thank God for forgiving you. Of course, that puts us into a whole different frame of mind and frame of spirit, doesn't it? When we think of all the things that we've done, the multitude of sins, and I've been walking with the Lord now and having been filled with the Spirit in 1973, so it's been over 51 years. But I'm quite sure in 51 years I've committed more sins than I did in the 20 years before I started walking with the Lord.

Sins as a believer, you know, envy and strife and arguing and pride and these kinds of things. But the Lord's forgiven all of them. And I'm amazed that he's forgiven all of these things.

And so I thank God for that. So that puts me in the position of a very grateful debtor who doesn't owe anything anymore. Very, very grateful.

The second protocol, repent of your sin of unforgiveness. If I am harboring unforgiveness, I need to realize it's not just a bad idea not to forgive somebody else. It's a sin not to forgive someone else.

So I repent of the sin, which means to change my mind. I'm not going to do it again. I don't want to do it anymore.

Right now I'm repenting of it. And then I ask God the question, who do I need to forgive and for what? Now this was a tricky one for me. And I'll tell you why.

I had a number of what I call big picture forgiveness situations in my life. And up to that point, since I had been learning how to forgive, I'd forgiven all of them. I didn't think there was anybody else that I needed to forgive.

But to sort of humor myself and follow the directions and the protocols, I decided to ask the Lord sincerely, “Is there anyone else I need to forgive and for what?” I went ahead and did it. I asked it of the Lord, believing that he would answer me. If there was an answer to it, he would talk to me because we as his sheep hear his voice, right? He does talk to us.

To my surprise, over the next three days, names and faces and situations started coming into my mind that I hadn't thought about for quite some time that I didn't even know I'd forgotten that they were forgiveness related issues. So one at a time, I went through the protocols for each one of those wounds. And you know what happened to me? I can tell you it was good.

And it's going to be good for you too. I began to experience joy that was deeper than I had experienced in some time. And peace like I had not experienced in some time.

And we're going to look at why that is the case. But it was amazing. And I got set free from stuff I didn't even know I needed to be freed from.

And I'm still walking in that same freedom years later. It hasn't abated. It hasn't gone away.

The Lord is good. He wants us to live in this freedom of the gospel through the power of forgiveness. He does.

It's his will. It's his plan. So that's the next protocol.

And then I forgive each offense from my heart. Now, my father, he was an alcoholic for 40 years. And it split the family.

And eventually, thankfully, he got sober when he was 56 years old. And it was wonderful. In the last 27 years of his life, he lived like a man that I wanted to be like.

And when I preached at his memorial service, I said, you know, he wasn't anywhere near a list of heroes in my mind. But when he got sober and got his life right with the Lord and so on, he's in my top three list of heroes in life. I'm proud to have known him.

And this is the prayer that I prayed, that I believe that this message that I'm sharing with you this morning was an answer to. I prayed, Father, I want to be more like my dad. I could not have imagined a universe that I could live in that would have me praying that prayer when he was drinking.

But I didn't just forgive my dad, overall. I needed to forgive specific parts of the 40 years of alcoholism, the specific wounds, I needed to forgive those.

And so I did. I went back with a deeper dive and I forgave those things. And they were just gone.

They were lifted from me. They were applied to the blood of Jesus that had already paid for it. And that's where the liberty comes from.

So we go through these. Lord, I choose to forgive so-and-so from my heart for such-and-such. I'm looking at number four, letter B. Lord, is there anything else I need to forgive so-and-so for? And He'll answer that prayer as well.

We follow that through. And then I declare that so-and-so is no longer in my debt. I transfer their debt to the cross by faith.

That's what we do. And then we ask God to bless that person, number five, look for ways to bless them when possible. And then we commit to not remember the offense.

We don't want to remember it. We're not going to dredge it up. We're not going to intentionally go there in our memory banks and bring up the wound and stew on it for a while.

But we will remember it. I mean, parts of the wound will come back to our memory. But when that happens, and it will happen, we say, “Father, I specifically remember having forgiven that.”

Because I already had. And then I praise God for the freedom that forgiveness has brought me. Now, here's what happens on a spiritual warfare level when this forgiveness process, or not process, but transaction takes place.

I'm committing not to remember that offense that I had already forgiven the person for. But the devil's the one that hassles us with fiery darts, putting these memories into our minds, trying to get us to live there again in the past or in the middle of that wound. But when we say, no, I specifically remember having forgiven that, and we remember that we already transferred that to the cross where it belongs, what's happening? We are resisting the devil at that moment.

What happens when Christians resist the devil? That's right. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like having to face the effects of the cross.

He doesn't like being resisted. He doesn't like being defeated by Jesus Himself who is the one that said it is finished. He doesn't like it.

So he'll stop trying to put those ideas into our mind eventually, and they will go away. Eventually, we won't have the memory any longer. It's because of resisting the devil that he might flee from us.

It's a very powerful thing, this forgiveness activity. It's just, how else can I say it? It's just a very, very powerful thing. And then we bless the person that we forgave one more time.

We pray for reconciliation. We want it to happen. It may not be as deep a relationship as we had before, but it will be something.

We can be in the same room together. We can see him in the grocery store. We don't have to hide and go to the produce session when we see him over in the dairy section, that kind of stuff.

We can walk into the same room. We can be genteel. We can be gracious.

We can speak that way. That would be minimal reconciliation. Full reconciliation is possible if both parties are involved with it where a couple could get remarried after a divorce, or an estranged son could be reconciled to a full relationship with his father or mother.

That would be full reconciliation. But just we pray for reconciliation to take place. Both parties need to be involved with that, of course.

Both parties must absolutely be a part of that. So those are the protocols of forgiveness that are in on your sheet of paper and on this bookmark that I have. Actually this has become part of my regular spiritual devotion.

Not every day, but very frequently I go through these protocols just to make sure that I've not missed anybody, or I'm not accumulating offenses for wounds that maybe I felt. Of course there's another side of all of this coin, and I've often thought about this, and that is how many people have I wounded that I don't know anything about? So I talk to the Lord about that as well, and pray for reconciliation in that area too. Okay, so we're back in our text, Matthew 18, verses 23-27.

Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king, he's going to give a parable now, who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children, and all that he had in the payment be made.

The servant therefore fell down before him saying, Master have patience with me, and I will pay you all. Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. So obviously a huge debt, we haven't learned yet what 10,000 talents represents, but a huge debt that he's unable to pay, and so the master demands payment, immediate payment, and the servant says, forgive me of the debt.

No he didn't, he didn't say that. He said have patience with me and I'll pay you all. I just need more time.

If I have more time, I'll pay it all back to you. That's what the servant said. So what was the size of the servant's debt? Now this I had to look up, and my research confirmed it.

One talent, there were 10,000 of them, equals 60 minas. One mina equals three months wages. One talent therefore is 15 years of wages, and he owed 10,000 of them.

150,000 years of wages. At today's possible median income of 50 grand a year, let's just use that as a figure, that equals seven and a half billion dollars that was owed by the servant. Have patience with me and I'll pay you all.

No you won't. I computed it would take 3,000 lifetimes, if he lived to be 75 years old, 3,000 lifetimes to pay down seven and a half billion dollars. Anybody have that kind of time? Nobody has that kind of time.

We're not given it. We may get our 75, 80 years or more, but not that kind of time. Most people think that they can pay for their own sins given enough time.

No you can't. There aren't enough lifetimes to pay for all of our own sins. That's why Jesus came.

So what did forgiveness cost the king? He forgave the debt. He was owed seven and a half billion, so that's a liability that he can look at from an accounting perspective and say, it's going to come back into my account. But he forgave the debt.

It's never coming back into his account. He loses seven and a half billion and the other guy's forgiven seven and a half billion. That's pretty cool, but that's what it cost the king in this particular story.

What did it cost our king, our father in heaven, to forgive us of all our sins? It cost him the sacrifice of his only begotten son at the cross of Calvary. That's what it costs our father. What's the greater debt and what's the greater act of forgiveness? Certainly the forgiveness of sins.

He gave his only begotten son, John 3.16, that we would not perish but have everlasting life. Romans 8.32 says he delivered, the father delivered the son of God up for us all. We've already quoted 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

So that's the forgiveness of this seven and a half billion from this king who was owed that amount. Now you'd think at this point that this servant would be dancing a dance that would never end, just celebrating and inviting everybody to enjoy the celebration. He's not on the hook for seven and a half billion anymore.

He's been freed and he doesn't have to go to debtor's prison or any such thing. But what did he do? Verses 18, or 28 through 30, says that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying, let's see if you remember this phrase, have patience with me and I will pay you all. He wouldn't, wouldn't forgive him. He wouldn't have patience for him.

But he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. So the forgiven servant went out and found one of his own debtors and that debtor owed him far less than he had owed the king himself. He owed him a hundred denarii.

That's the equivalent of about 16,000, $17,000 in today's money. That's not even a truck payment. He could have paid it off.

Even if he's got to go down to Chase Bank and get a loan, he could have paid it off. But the forgiven servant wouldn't let him off the hook, wouldn't forgive him the debt, wouldn't give him more time. He asked the same thing of the forgiven servant that the forgiven servant had asked of the king.

And the response was horrible. I computed it using a little formula. The forgiven servant of the king had been forgiven many times more than his debtor owed him.

How many more times? The forgiven servant of the king had been forgiven 468,750 times more the amount than he was owed. Wow. I was surprised when I looked at that number.

And so therefore, there was a refusal to forgive. And what that did was expose how wicked that forgiven servant's heart was. The king would hear about it.

Others would hear about it. It would grieve them to hear this. You are kidding me.

You were forgiven $7.5 billion and you won't forgive $16,000? Oh. So the king would hear about it. Oh, grievous.

But that's what unforgiveness is like when we don't forgive from our heart, our brother, his trespasses. So in verse 31 we go on and read, so when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me.

Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you? And his master, who was the king, was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. Oh, the injustice of the whole situation. It drew the ire of this king.

And so he determined, you are going to pay. He delivered him to the torturers until he should pay what was due the king. What does it mean to be delivered to the torturers? The word for torture here is the same word used in Luke 16 in the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

You'll remember that story. And Lazarus, the poor beggar, was in Abraham's house. And the rich man, Abraham's bosom, after he died, he had nothing but he was a man of faith.

So he was in a place of paradise, a place of blessing, Abraham's bosom. The rich man, however, was a miserly man, a wicked man, and he found himself in Hades. And he was begging Abraham in this story that Abraham would send Lazarus to him with just a little bit of water on his finger and touch it on his hot burning tongue because he was being tormented in this flame.

That's the word used here. Delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due him. That's what the idea is.

A very strong form of punishment. Much more than just being put in a debtor's prison. And this torture was to continue until the entire debt was paid.

Again, unforgiveness imprisons us to our past. Why should we let that happen? Why should I let my past determine my present and my future? Why should I give my past, when Jesus has already dealt with my past, why should I give my past that much authority or power in my life? I shouldn't. None of us should.

The past is the past because it passed. That's why they call it the past. It's back there.

It's not here. It's not there. It's back there somewhere.

We sang about that this morning. What did the forgiven wicked servant owe the king, by the way? He was being delivered to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to the king. He did not owe him the seven and a half billion.

That had been forgiven. That was a legal contract, a legal arrangement. He was forgiven of that debt.

He didn't owe seven and a half billion. So what did the king, what was he owed from this debtor's unforgiving servant that the king was waiting for him to pay that and then he'd be released from the torturers? What he owed was the forgiveness of his own servant. The moment he forgave his own servant, the king releases him from the torturers.

And that's what was happening to me when I said, Father, is there anyone that I need to forgive? And for what? Each single offense that I was forgiving was releasing me from some level or some degree of torture that I didn't even know I was experiencing. And that's why the peace was happening. And that's why the joy was happening.

And that's the way it always works when we forgive as we should because what we owe the father is the forgiveness of those that have wounded us. So that's the end of the parable, but it's not the end of the chapter. There's one more verse.

Jesus is now looking into the eyes of his disciples who were the ones receiving this parable. And look what he says in verse 35 to his disciples. He says, so my heavenly father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses.

What will the heavenly father do to you or to me as a child of God if we do not forgive our brother from our heart his or her trespasses? He will deliver us to the torturers. That's the only possible way to understand his statement in the context of this parable. He had delivered the unforgiven servant to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him, what was due to him, the forgiveness of his own servant.

Once he did, he released him. So also my heavenly father will do to you if you from your heart do not forgive his brother, your brother his trespasses. The father, yes indeed he will.

He will deliver us to the torturers for our unforgiveness. So that may mess with your concept of God. It doesn't mess with mine, and I'll tell you why.

I know that God is loving. He's merciful. He's gracious.

He sent his son. He proved it. He'll give us everything that we need.

This delivering me to the torturers if I refuse to forgive is an act of his fatherly love. It's a form of his discipline in our lives. And remember Hebrews chapter 12, whom the Lord loves he chastens, and he disciplines every son whom he receives.

If you are without chastisement, among which all of us are partakers, then we are like illegitimate children and not sons. But having received this discipline, it's for our growth. It's for our blessing.

It's for our benefit. It's not just for the purpose of being punitive in our direction. It's to be restored.

So that's where I understood the nature of the father. I'm glad that my father disciplines me, and I hope you are too, because sometimes I need it. And just like Mr. Sisquick, my old PE teacher in the seventh grade, when I got caught spitting water through my teeth to another student, and he saw the whole thing, he just did this to me.

Come here. I had to go into the locker room, and he pulled out his paddle that had holes in it to cut down on wind resistance, and it was good for creating welts as well. And so he had me grab my ankles, pull my jeans down so it was just my tighty-whities being exposed in a nice little tight target, and he did a full swing with that paddle.

Right on the target he intended to hit. He hit it very well. Wow.

You know what? I never spat water on a fellow student again in my entire academic career. I was cured. I needed that discipline.

And so ever since then, when the father disciplines me, I just realize I have one job. Bend over and receive the paddle. And thank God that he's given it to me.

That's what he's done. That's the application. So this delivering us to the torturers if we refuse to forgive doesn't send the believer to hell.

It's simply a discipline that he does in our lives so that we will experience the grace of forgiveness toward another as we decide to go through the protocols and do what we're supposed to do in forgiving someone else. This is the message. What do we do with it? Well, do it.

That's what we do with it. That's why I've handed you the list of protocols. I encourage you, go home and spend time with this this week.

Now, I'm going to warn you. If you do not spend time with anything the Lord teaches you in his word, you'll lose it. To him who has, Jesus said, more will be given.

But to him who has not, even that which he seems to have will be taken from him. So you don't want to lose this. This is going to be embedded in your soul for the rest of your lives if you begin to use this and begin to do this forgiveness transaction regularly, forgiving everyone of everything.

It's freeing. One of the things I don't want to be when I grow up is a curmudgeon. It's one of my favorite words, a word I want to definitely avoid.

A curmudgeon is the old complaining sourpuss that's got so many things wrong with everybody else. You don't want to be around a curmudgeon because you're just going to get a good, healthy gripe session. I don't want to be that guy.

My father wasn't that guy. My father woke up every day thankful that he had one more day of sobriety. He did that for 27 years.

He didn't believe he deserved anything because he knew what his life was like. So everything the Lord gave him, he was grateful for it. That's what I want to be.

I want to be a grateful, thankful, pleasant person to interact with anybody that I find. I think all of you fellow potential curmudgeons feel the same way. We're just potential curmudgeons.

It doesn't mean it's inevitable, but this is the way to avoid it. This is really a major way to avoid it. It's our responsibility, and as we do, we're walking right in the steps of the Lord Jesus.

All right, let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for your word, and thank you again for the grace that has come to us in the gospel, and for the ongoing expression of grace in how you favor us and how you treat us as we do what you do in forgiving others, and we thank you for the cross that has made it all possible. We are, of course, eternally indebted to you for it all.

Thank you for making us forgiving people. Ahead of time, we thank you for this, and those that have started this journey of learning how to forgive. Keep us at it, Lord, and for those that are just going to be learning to start it today.

Lord, thank you for your wisdom and the help of the Spirit. We trust you. In Jesus' name, and all God's people said, amen, amen.

Hey, thanks for listening to this broadcast. I would encourage you to reach out to Dr. Bruce Hebel and his wife, Toni, through their website, ForgivingForward.com. Bruce and Toni, of course, authored the book, Forgiving Forward. It's in its second edition now.

It's been super helpful all over the world in enabling believers to be liberated from the torture of unforgiveness and into the power of the gospel in forgiveness. So reach out to them and take advantage of those resources. You're going to find a healthier church, a stronger church, a healed church, and a body of believers that is going to be much more full of the joy of the Lord.

Again, thanks for listening to Strength for Today's Pastor, and may the Lord guide, lead, and direct you in your ministry to Jesus, for Jesus, and by Jesus. Amen. Strength for Today's Pastor is sponsored by Pointman Ministries.

You can find us at poimenministries.com. That's spelled P-O-I-M-E-N ministries.com. If something in today's program prompts a question or comment, or if you have a topic idea for a future episode, just shoot us an email at strongerpastors@gmail.com. That's strongerpastors@gmail.com. May the Lord bless you as you serve Him, His pastors, and His church.