This is Robert Jeffress. In response to the horrific attack on Israel, I've written a brand new book called Are We Living in the End Times?
Go to ptv.org to order your copy. The greatest need is the need for forgiveness. Hear what Jesus is saying. We cannot truly forgive others until we have been forgiven by God. And we cannot be forgiven by God unless we are willing to forgive others. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. We all know what it's like to feel snubbed by a co-worker at the office or hurt by a friend's careless comment.
And while forgiving an offense is rarely easy, the cost of holding grudges is even greater. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress warns that refusing to forgive could have dire spiritual consequences. Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Before we tackle another topic in our series, I'm eager to draw your attention to a special offer from Pathway to Victory. A few years ago, we stepped out in faith and started publishing a magazine for you, and it's been highly successful. We've had lots of folks in the publishing business try to convince us that printing a magazine was a bad idea, but we felt God was leading us to minister in this way. Gratefully, Pathway Magazine has been one of the most popular branches of our ministry, and today I'm eager to get you started. I'm confident you'll love what others have enjoyed as well, such as the feature articles on life issues, the devotional readings, the interviews, and so much more.
When you go to ptv.org, you'll find a place to request a complimentary edition of Pathway Magazine. And then, in addition, I'm thrilled to offer you a brand new children's book, written by my daughter, Julia Jeffress Sadler. It's an exclusive storybook for your children and grandchildren, and it's called You Can Pray Big Things.
Kids are fully capable of having a chat with God, but sometimes they need a little guidance and prompting from the grownups in their lives. With illustrations and creativity, Julia gives you a tool to sit and guide your children or grandchildren in a meaningful lesson on how to pray. Right after my message today, I'll explain how you can be among the first to receive a copy of Julia's new book, You Can Pray Big Things. But right now, let's turn our attention to Matthew chapter 6, where we find the quintessential lesson on prayers that really work.
I titled today's message, Our Greatest Need. Jesus said, pray in this manner. He said, first of all, our need to pray for is that for provision.
Give us this day our daily bread, material provision. But then we've come to verse 12, the need we have not only for provision, but for pardon. And forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors.
Now even though this request is second, it's not secondary. In fact, I say this is our greatest need because Jesus elaborated more on this request than any other request in the Lord's Prayer. He elaborates in verses 14 to 15, look at this, for if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Jesus said, our greatest need in life is forgiveness, receiving it from God, extending it to others.
Let's look at the first request, forgive us our debt. That is our need to receive God's forgiveness. He's not talking about a judicial, legal kind of forgiveness. We receive that when we trust it in Christ.
When we trusted Christ as our Savior in the great throne room above heaven, God brought down the gavel and He said, not guilty. When we pray, Father forgive us of our debts, our sins, we're asking for God's parental, His fatherly forgiveness. As Christians, we need God's fatherly forgiveness, parental forgiveness, and that's why Jesus said to pray, forgive us of our debts.
But I want you to notice here the second part of this request. This request is dependent upon this other request, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Think about what that prayer is saying. Father, we want you to forgive us in the very same way that we forgive other people. You're saying, I want you to forgive me, God, to the extent that I am willing to forgive other people. The second part of this prayer relates to our need to extend forgiveness. There is an inseparable link in the Bible between receiving God's forgiveness and being willing to forgive other people. And nowhere is that relationship seen more clearly than this parable that Jesus told a few chapters over in Matthew 18.
I've looked at it before, so I'm not going to go into depth about it. But remember the story, Peter asked the question, Lord, how many times should I forgive? Three times? Seven times? Jesus said, no, 70 times seven. An unlimited amount of time.
And to answer the question, well, why should I forgive people who continually wrong me? Jesus told this story beginning in verse 23. Now, here's the summary of the story. A king was having some cash flow problems, so he needed some quick money, and so he took a list of everybody who owed him money, and he started with the person who owed him the most money, and it happened to be one of his slaves who owed him 10,000 talents. Now, a talent was 70 pounds of gold in Jesus' day.
So I got my calculator out and tried to figure this out. Now, if we're talking about 10,000 talents of gold, one talent is 70 pounds, I calculated that to be $16 billion. That's how much this lowly slave owed the king $16 billion in today's dollars. You have to wonder, how did he get into that kind of debt? You know, did he play the horses too much, you know, too many trips to Las Vegas? I don't know what the problem was, but he was owing a debt he could not pay in a thousand lifetimes.
But the king had every legal right to ask for it. It was a real debt. So he said, pay up.
If you don't pay up, I'm going to throw you, your wife, and your children into prison until you pay everything. Verse 26 says, the slave fell down before the king and started begging him for mercy. And this pagan heathen king, when he saw this slave bowing down before him saying, have mercy on me and I will repay you everything. Look at what verse 27 says, the king, the lord of that slave, felt compassion and he released him and he forgave him his debt. That word forgive means to let go of.
And that's exactly what the king did. He let go of that debt. What a tremendous picture of our relationship with God. You and I, because of our sin, we talked about, we owe God a debt, a payment for our sin that we could never, never repay.
And how foolish it is for some people who think they have this enormous 16 billion dollar debt with God, a sin debt that they could never repay, and they say, well, no, Lord, I'll get back with you on that. Let me tell you how I'm planning to repay my sin debt. I think I'll get up into this baptistry at the First Baptist Church in Dallas and splash a little water on me.
And surely you ought to be happy with me for that. Doesn't that take care of it? Do you think getting wet in that baptistry is going to satisfy the enormous debt you owe? Other people, well, I'm going to join the church.
Whoop-de-doo. Okay? I'm going to tithe, okay? I'm going to give some of my income and maybe that will take care of my sin problem. Or I'm going to do the best I can, God, surely that's good enough. The fact is we don't have the capacity to repay our debt to God.
We have to beg for mercy. And what the king did is a picture of what God did for us. You know what the king did?
He took the loss himself. He affectionately paid off that debt himself. And that's what God did for us.
He sent Christ to pay the debt for us. But the story doesn't end here. Here's where it takes an interesting turn. Here's the turn. There's this slave that's been forgiven a $16 billion debt and he goes out and he finds a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii.
That's $16 in today's dollars. He finds this slave who owes him $16, grabs him by the nape of the neck, starts to shake him, and says, pay me everything or I will have you and your family put into prison. And the second slave begs for mercy.
Please have mercy on me and I'll repay you everything. But unlike the king, this first slave said, no mercy today for you. And he threw him into prison until he should repay everything.
When the king heard about this, his blood pressure went through the ceiling. When he heard what this first slave had done, he had him hauled back to the palace. He said, how could you, who have been forgiven so much, how could you refuse to forgive so little?
And the king ordered that this first slave be turned over to the torturers until he should repay everything. And then Jesus adds the zinger, so shall my heavenly Father do to each one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. What's Jesus saying to us about the relationship between receiving God's forgiveness and extending it to others?
Jot down these two truths you see in this parable and in the Lord's Prayer. First of all, forgiveness is granted, not earned. Forgiveness is granted.
It's not earned. I've done a lot of writing, speaking, and preaching on the subject of forgiveness. And I will tell you, hands down, the greatest misconception about forgiveness is we have to make people earn our forgiveness. We can't forgive somebody until they earn it.
That is, they have to ask for it. They have to be repentant. They have to make restitution. They have to rebuild the trust relationship. Until somebody does that, I cannot forgive them.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We forgive unconditionally, unilaterally. And that's what the first king did. This king, he forgave this slave his $16 billion debt without ever demanding repayment.
Why did he do that? Why did he forgive this debt without making the servant repay him anything? First of all, the king recognized that the debt he was holding was uncollectible to begin with. I mean, here's a slave who owes $16 billion. Exactly how is he going to repay that kind of debt? You know, take it out of his check every week? You know, is that going to repay the debt?
Of course not. This king realized this slave could never repay him anyway, so what profit is there in waiting to forgive until he repaid him? I think one reason we have a difficult time letting go of people who hurt us, releasing those offenses, is we want to hold on until that person pays us back what they owe us.
We think, in our minds, there's something that other person could do to make us feel better. But often, our offender is powerless to do anything to make up for what they've done to us. I mean, for example, what could somebody do to make up for a child killed by a drunk driver? How many years would they have to serve in prison until you felt better and got over the death of your child? I mean, what could somebody do to make up for a marriage destroyed by adultery?
What could somebody pay you to make up for that innocence destroyed by incest? The fact is, our offenders are powerless to repay us for the debt they owe to us. The king recognized that, so he said the better thing is to let go of that offense. But even more importantly, the reason the king forgave this slave was so that he could be free to get on with his life. I mean, he didn't want to keep holding on to this debt, going down to the treasury every day and saying to the chief treasurer, does 16 cents come in today to apply to that $16 billion debt?
I mean, that's a lousy way for a king to spend his time. He knew the better thing to do was just to let it go, take the loss himself, and move on with his life. Now, listen to me. When you make your forgiveness of another person dependent upon what that person does or doesn't do, you're making yourself a prisoner to the person who's already hurt you. You can go no further in life than he or she is willing to go. And if they choose not to ask for your forgiveness or die before they ask for your forgiveness, that means you have sentenced yourself to a lifetime of bitterness.
Why would you do that to yourself? You see, forgiveness is the process by which you say to God, what this person did was wrong. They deserve to pay for what they've done to me. But today I'm giving up, I'm letting go of my right to hurt them for hurting me so that I can be free to get on with my life. That's what forgiveness is. Forgiveness isn't about denying that you were wrong. It's not rationalizing, minimizing to hurt your experience. Forgiveness is the process by which I let go of that offense so that I can move on with my life. Does it help the offender?
Well, maybe, maybe not, but that's not the issue. It's like somebody said, you know, letting go of a poisonous rattlesnake you've been holding on to, when you let go of it, yeah, the snake benefits, but it also helps you a lot. It's the same way with bitterness. You know, somebody said refusing to forgive is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. Joseph Smith said, when we forgive, we set the prisoner free, and the prisoner we set free is us. Forgiveness is something that's granted, not earned.
But notice also what Jesus taught. He said, forgiveness is the obligation of the forgiven. Forgiveness is the obligation of the forgiven. In this story, the slaves of the king, when they heard about this first slave being unwilling to forgive the dead, they went and tattled to the king.
Now, there's no evidence that they were Christians. They were heathen slaves, but even these heathen slaves knew there was something inherently wrong with a man who had been forgiven so much, refusing to forgive so little. And God says the same thing to us. The reason we forgive and let go is because of the forgiveness we have received. Forgiveness is the obligation of those who have been forgiven.
There's some of you here this morning, some of you watching on television. You have been deeply hurt by another person. Please understand this. Jesus is not minimizing the hurt you've experienced. He understands it. He knows what it's like to be betrayed by those closest to you, to be deserted by friends.
He understands all of those emotions. Jesus is not minimizing the hurt you've experienced. What he's asking you to do is to put that hurt in perspective. You see, we always focus on what other people have done to us without focusing on the hurt we have caused God through our sin. And Jesus said, before you get all hung up on this wrong that's been committed against you, remember the hurt that you have caused a holy God. Jesus is saying the difference between how much somebody has hurt you and how much you have hurt God is the difference between $16 and $16 billion. And that's why there is this relationship between receiving forgiveness and extending that forgiveness to other people. In Ephesians 4, 32, Paul said, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. But Jesus said it negatively in verses 14 to 15.
Look at this. For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
It's interesting to me that people say they take the Bible literally somehow want to spiritualize this truth. They want to say, well, you know, Jesus really didn't mean what He said here. He didn't really mean that if you don't forgive other people, God will not forgive you. Well, if He didn't mean that, then what did He mean?
Could it have been more plain? Jesus said your forgiveness from God depends upon your willingness to forgive other people. Well, what is Jesus saying here? Is He saying that we earn God's forgiveness by forgiving other people? Of course not. We've just seen there's nothing we can do to make up for the debt of sin that we owe God. We don't earn it by forgiving other people. Was Jesus saying that if I refuse to forgive somebody, God takes away my salvation, I lose my salvation?
Of course not. Romans 11, 29 says, The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Well, then what is Jesus saying?
Simply this. If you keep saying about a person who has hurt you, I will not forgive. I will not forgive. I refuse to forgive. It doesn't mean you lose your salvation.
It means you never had it to begin with. Because a person who truly understands and accepts the payment that God made for their sin cannot help but forgive other people. Forgiveness is the result.
It is the obligation of those who have been forgiven. Years ago, I pulled this story from the Dallas Morning News because it made such a profound impression upon me. It was about a newlywed couple, Laurie and Douglas White, who were taking a stroll at a nearby junior college on the athletic track after work. As they were walking around the track, they were talking about the things that newlyweds talk about, buying a new home in the future, their career, the possibility of children, when suddenly out of nowhere an unknown stranger appeared, a stranger who would change their lives forever. The man accosted them and asked them for their money.
And now I read from the Morning News. Until the man showed them his gun, neither of the Whites believed they were in danger because they had encountered panhandlers before, Laurie White said. But when he showed the gun, they immediately began praying, which irritated the gunman and prompted him to command, Yeah, you better pray. Where's your God now? Despite the man's taunts, Mrs. White said she and her husband kept praying.
We were just asking God for forgiveness. Doug said, Please don't let him hurt Laurie. Mrs. White said her husband could have easily overpowered the smaller man, but he didn't try.
He even offered to return to the truck for his wallet, though he had left it at home. Behaving real cold, Mrs. White said, the man ordered them to lie on the ground. He told us not to turn around, and Doug turned toward him. The guy said, You looked at me.
You shouldn't have done that, she said. He told us to just lay down. He was right behind Doug.
I was just a step or two from him. As she walked toward the grass, she said her husband abruptly shouted to her, Run, Laurie. She refused. I told him I wasn't leaving him. The guy said, If you run, I'll blow his blanking head off.
I told Doug I wasn't going to leave him. Mrs. White said the first of two shots came as a surprise. I heard my husband say, Oh God, I'm bleeding.
Mrs. White declined to discuss the details of her attack. She remembers the man pointing the gun at the back of her head, sometimes in her ear, as he assaulted her about 60 feet from where her husband lay dying. While I was praying, Laurie said, I had a thought. Forgive him.
I couldn't understand then why I had that thought, but I understand now. Jesus forgave the world when he was crucified so that I could forgive my attacker. The greatest need you and I have is the need for forgiveness.
Hear what Jesus is saying. We cannot truly forgive others until we have been forgiven by God, and we cannot be forgiven by God unless we are willing to forgive others. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. God is extending his open arms toward you right now, ready to forgive you if you'll only allow him to do so. And this is the message we declare every day on Pathway to Victory. It's called the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Just as God forgives you and me, we in turn are ready to forgive others. Well, tragically, sometimes the contemporary church fails to teach this truth. Recently I heard from a student on the West Coast who said, Pastor Jeffress, unfortunately, the churches in my city deliver a watered-down version of Christian doctrine. They don't teach solid theology.
In fact, they deviate from it. So thanks for teaching the truth of the Bible on Pathway to Victory. Friends, when you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory, you're providing the truth of the Gospel to longing hearts. Partner with Pathway to Victory, and God will channel your gift toward creating children of God. Today I'm prepared to thank you for your gift by providing a creative teaching tool for your young children or grandchildren. And if you're an aunt or an uncle or a schoolteacher, this will become a favorite with the young people in your life as well. I'm referring to a brand-new illustrated children's book written by my daughter, Julia Jeffress Sadler, and called You Can Pray Big Things. It's engaging, it's fun, and it will help you fulfill one of your greatest duties as a parent or grandparent, and that is to teach the children in your life how to talk with God. Again, when you give a generous gift today, be sure to ask for Julia's new book for families, You Can Pray Big Things.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. When you support the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you a copy of You Can Pray Big Things. That's the brand-new children's book by Julia Jeffress Sadler. Plus, you'll also receive Julia's best-selling book for adults called Pray Big Things. Ask for both books when you call 866-999-2965 or visit our website that's at ptv.org. Now, when you give an especially generous gift of $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete CD and DVD sets for this month's teaching series, Prayers That Really Work.
This would be an excellent resource for a small group Bible study or maybe a Sunday school class. One more time, our phone number, 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could write to us, here's the address, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.
Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins.
Wishing you a great weekend? Then join us Monday when Dr. Jeffress continues his series called Prayers That Really Work, here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. In response to the alarming war in the Middle East, Dr. Robert Jeffress has written a brand new book for you. It answers pressing questions like, are we living in the end times? In this time-sensitive book, Dr. Jeffress answers seven questions about the future, such as what are the major events of the end times? Request a copy right now by going to ptv.org. It's called Are We Living in the End Times? To receive your pre-release copy, go to ptv.org.
