Will you turn with me in your Bibles this morning, please, to Matthew chapter 6, verse number 9. Matthew chapter 6 and verse 9. Something very interesting and unusual is to be learned about the instructions of our Lord in this seminal prayer that we have known and memorized and prayed through the years. Will you read it with me, please, beginning in verse 9 through 13. All right, let's go. After this manner, therefore, pray ye, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debt, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. Now, keep reading. The next two verses are critical. Together, For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. The Lord's Prayer is the best -known portion of all the Bible. And yet, there is only one part of it that Jesus paused to amplify. As though to make dead certain that we've comprehended the importance of one little phrase in there. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Forgive us of our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And he says, Make dead sure that ye have understood facts. For it is critical at the point of forgiveness. Now, may we turn again to Matthew chapter 18. And you follow along as I shall read, beginning in the 21st verse. Matthew 18, verse 21. Having given us the model prayer, and emphasized the imperative of forgiving our fellow men that we should be forgiven, he now gives us a tremendously powerful story illustrating that great truth. There is no finer story, nor teaching in the Bible, or out, on the subject of forgiveness than this. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Tell seven times. Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a certain king, which would take account of his servants. Now when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But for as much as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold in his wife and children, and all that he had in payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him a hundred pence. And he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison, so he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their Lord all that was done. Then his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me. Couldst not not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow -servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his Lord was rocked, and delivered him to the tormentor, so he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your heart forgive not everyone his brother their trespasser. I confess that the study of the doctrine of forgiveness in the Bible, particularly that of our Lord Jesus, is some of the most fascinating and intriguing, in my mind, of all of the scriptures that are to be found. The words of Jesus Christ, when he prayed on the cross, as men were actually nailing nails into his hand, and rejecting him, Father forgive them, they know not what they do, is to me the very epitome of the death of God's relationship to man. The very heart of Christianity is a forgiving message, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. That God came teaching to man, with the message of forgiveness of God. That the pardon had been signed, and sealed, and delivered, and verified by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. Indeed, the message of Christianity is a message of forgiveness. As I announced earlier this week that I would speak on the subject today, how to forgive people, and I began to study and to prepare, it occurred to me that no one single thought would cover all that there is to say on the subject of forgiveness. And so three things arose. And I would suggest to you today that briefly, we need to give a serious look at three areas of forgiveness, not just one. First of all, how to forgive ourselves. And then secondly, how we forgive other people. And finally, how one is able to experience the forgiveness of God. At first glance, it might seem that a message on the subject of how we can forgive ourselves would be a very foolish one. For we love ourselves. And most of us have never thought that we need to forgive ourselves. That we do hold things against ourselves. But in reality, it is one of the great problems of life. I refer to the matter of guilt. Well, the practice and the problem of being unable to forgive ourselves is very intricately involved in, if not identical with, the matter of our own guilt. Well, Graham Blaine Jr., the eminent Radcliffe and the Harvard psychologist, has said that the vast majority of America's guilt problems may be nothing but unconfessed things. And so the preacher would address himself to the matter of being able to deal with the problems of guilt that cause depression and despair and deceit and holding things against ourselves, not forgiving ourselves, that drive us down. And indeed, they can have serious ramifications. Many a person can drive himself and does drive himself to despair because he does not know how to handle the feelings of self -resentment that he has against his own self. But when I study the problem, it occurs to me that in reality, there are two kinds of guilt. And so the first thing that I suggest to you in being able to forgive yourself, and many of us hold self -induced guilt and resentment against our own self that can ultimately destroy us. And so the first thing we need to do to be able to forgive ourselves and have a self that we can accept and live with, have a normal, healthy self in me that will not destroy us is to discern between just guilt and unjust guilt, between proper guilt and improper guilt. Remember that everything God does, the devil counterfeits. He has a counterfeit curse, a counterfeit plan of salvation, a counterfeit theology. He has a counterfeit plan of salvation and a counterfeit trinity. He has a counterfeit plan for the end of the world. And he certainly has a counterfeit guilt. The Bible says that Satan is the accuser of the brethren. And he takes no little delight in goading us in two areas. One, into thinking that we have not been forgiven of sins that we have been forgiven of. And the other is to making us think that things are sin for which we should feel guilty that are not sin at all and for which we should have no guilt. Satan is the arch deceiver. Satan is a liar. He is the master of deception, the accuser of the brethren. And it is with no little difficulty that most people are able to discern between what is false guilt and what is real guilt. Now guilt that is of God, guilt that is the conviction of the Holy Spirit is indeed one of our best allies. And we as Christians should rejoice and thank God that he has given us a consciousness of sin and evil and wrong. But when we sin against God, when we offend our fellow man, when we break the laws of God, and when we do deep spite to our fellow man, the Holy Spirit makes us feel guilty. Why? For our own good. That we might expurgate from our being that thing that has driven us into wrongness. That guilt must be made aware of. That we might confess our wrongs, find refreshing and cleansing and forgiveness and forgiveness and relief and go our way. And so we thank God for good, honest guilt of the Holy Spirit. People say to me sometimes, I've done this or that. I've committed a great sin. And they tell me about it. And they said, I just feel guilty. So which I say, thank God. You ought to feel guilty. You have sinned. But thank God there is grace and forgiveness in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Ah, but there are problems of guilt that we have for things for which we should not feel guilty. Basically, I would suggest to you that the difference can be identified by placing it against the standards of by whose standard do we consider ourselves to be guilty. If I feel guilty because I am not accepted by my fellow man, because I am not as wise, as socially acceptable, because I am not the color or the educational status or the financial status that society has set up that I ought to be, that doesn't make any difference. I don't care whether somebody likes the way I look or does not like the way I look. They may not like the way I walk or the way I talk or the part of the country that I am. But I have done nothing I am from. I've done nothing wrong. And we get all kinds of self -induced guilt when we place our actions alongside the standards of what other people expect from us rather than from what God commands of us. And so let us discern between real guilt and unreal guilt, between just guilt and unjust guilt, by comparing the feelings that are causing our frustration and our guilt and our depression and our lack of forgiveness of ourselves, not alongside of what people think or what people expect, but what God says. And there is a great difference. A man in California pulled up to a railroad track. He was first in the line. There were 18 or 20 cars in back of him. He was the only one that could see. This is a true story. And when the first train went by after it had stopped, everybody, supposing that the track was clear, began to honk. Everyone for a moment honked their horns loudly at him. So overcome was he with a panic -stricken feeling of guilt that he was not moving when everyone said move, that regardless of the fact that there was a second train coming, he drove ahead, ran into the train, and was killed. The man had a false standard for his actions, not what was right, but what other people thought was right. And there is a difference. A man talked to me some time ago, feeling guilty because of his appearance. People talk to me about feeling guilt because they're going to the doctor, because they're sick, because they do not make as much money as they think they should make. If you are doing the best you can with what you have, where you are under God, you have no reason to feel guilty. The old Moody, the great evangelist of another generation, literally spent 18 hours a day soul winning. He talked to everybody he saw about Jesus Christ. But he said, every time at midnight, I went home and went to bed and got up at six o 'clock the next morning to start soul winning again. I just pulled the covers over my head and went to sleep with a feeling that if the world went to hell in those six hours, it would just have to go to hell. He did not drive himself to insanity, feeling guilty about what he had not done. For many years, I've helped care for my parents. They are not in good financial status, nor are they in good health. But I'm not going to drive myself crazy after I have given all that I can and have done all that I can do if they starve to death. I say that in love, nor do I recommend that you do it. You are not responsible for the feelings of your parents. You are not responsible for the action of your children if under God you have done all that you can do. So I recommend to you that first of all, you learn to deal with the difference in just guilt and unjust guilt. Secondly, remember that a sin confessed to God is not only forgiven, but it is for God. Now I cannot comprehend it, but the Bible says he places our sins beneath the blood of Christ and removes them from himself as far as the east is from the west. I want a mathematician to stand and tell me the measurement of the distance from the east to the west. That, my friend, is where our forgiven, confessed, repented of sins are. Now, the Bible adds, and he remembereth them against us no more. I cannot comprehend how God has the capacity to blot out of his mind things that he does not want to remember. But he does. You say, I can't understand that. Well, we don't have to understand it. We live in a different world than God. We're not God. We do not have the capacity that God has. It's like a violin saying, I don't understand how that orange can play so well. And I'm saying, I don't understand how that fiddle can play so good. Well, they just don't have to. They never will. They're in two different worlds. Oranges have to talk orange talk, and fiddles have to talk fiddle talk. They live in a different realm. And I do not comprehend it. I could never explain it. But I rejoice in it that my God has forgiven what he has forgotten. And what he has forgotten is what he has forgiven. If I were to go to God and say, dear Lord, do you remember that sin that I confessed yesterday? If God were to speak back to me, do you know what he'd say? He'd say, no, I don't remember. What what sin was that? He literally does not recall. And when we simply establish that grand fact in our mind, it helps us to be able to forgive ourselves. And then I suggest to you that you remember that the basis of our sins, forgiveness, is not determined on reason or rationale or on feeling. I do not comprehend how God can do it. I told the folks in prayer meeting the other night, if you don't come to prayer meeting on Wednesday night services, you'll really miss something at First Baptist Church. I said, I do not comprehend how God could keep me safe. I cannot understand eternal security. But I'll tell you something a lot harder than that to figure out. And that is how God could have ever forgiven me in the first place how he ever amazingly saved a wretch like me to start off with that's harder to figure out and how he is able to keep me safe no there's no way you can understand it there's no way we can leave it and our our forgiveness of sin that is on and through with and over and finished is not based on our ability to understand and comprehend nor is it based on our own feelings sometimes i feel saved and sometimes i don't sometimes i feel forgiven and sometimes i don't sometimes i feel guilty for a sin already under the blood sometimes i don't but i know this the unalterable fact of the gospel of christ is that because of the word of the lord which says if we confess he forgives they are gone under the blood cleansed forgiven finished and forgotten not because i feel like they are but because he says they are you have problems at the point of recurring memory and guilt of yourself unable to forgive yourself of things in the past you will make great progress when you understand that it is not our ability to feel forgiven but the fact of god's word that makes us forgiven and another thing is that we apply the power in faith of the blood of jesus christ would you be free from your burden of sin there's wonderful power in the blood the burden of sin has driven so many to insanity because they could never comprehend that they had forgiven themselves i learned a little something that helped me long ago if a sin is is burdening me down the memory of a sin and uh it is impossible for me to get it from my mind it is good for us the bible says confess your false one to another it is good for us to talk out our problems to verbalize to visualize any way we can the solution of that thing that is destroying us and i have found that if one can take a piece of paper and write out on that paper that's sin and go to the sink and turn on the water and strike a match and hold it there and say just as the fire burns this paper in that same way i am claiming the blood of christ oh god to burn up my sin you will find that in claiming that simple little help and praying the power of the blood that you will begin to find forgiveness for yourself and something else there is great power in the blood of the christ to cleanse even the the memory of mere forgotten sins which haunt us in a hundred different ways i am saying simply to you that you can pray like this dear lord i want you to cleanse even my subconscious mind in the blood of christ keep under the very memory of those things again and again until they are gone and expelled from my entire personality that are driving me to insanity it is possible there is unpeakable power in the blood to deal with the problems of the mind of which self -induced guilt is a major portion now the second thought is this how then do we forgive other people of their sins against us the bible says a hundred things i will not belabor you with all of them i do not know what the psychologist's answer or what your own experience might suggest let me tell you in a nutshell what the essence of a biblical revelation is at the question and the point of how to forgive other people it is very simple it is simply by comprehending how much has been forgiven me the entire essence of the new testament revelation is in simplicity is in simplicity that the main way we understand how we can forgive other people is by almost putting it to shame to ridicule to stopping in light of the relationship of how much has been forgiven unto us, and our Lord has given us a classic illustration of it. We owe much to the impetuosity and quickness of Peter's tongue. Peter was always starting off, but he evoked from our Lord in so doing some of his grandest insight into life. One day he came to Jesus and said, how many times shall a man forgive his brother? Till seven times? No, it was not by chance that he said seven times. And he had good reason for so thinking, because the rabbis had a saying which was based partially on an inference from the book of Amos, that a man should forgive his brother three times. They had a saying that said, if a man sins against you once, forgive him. If he sins against you twice, forgive him. If he sins against you three times, forgive him. If he sins against you the fourth, do not forgive. And self -sufficient Peter thought that I will simply double the traditional recipe and throw in one for good measure and impress my Lord. And he said, how many times shall a man forgive his brother? Seven times? And Jesus said, no. Not just seven times, but seventy times seven. And he was not saying that four hundred and ninety is the limit. He was speaking of limitlessness. And he was saying, man, you cannot comprehend how much you should forgive your brother. And he illustrates it as he always does a great truth with a good story. He said once upon a time, there was a man who had a Lord, a master. Now, this is very important. These words servant, Lord and master, through this story. He said he went to the master and pled with him to forgive him the ten thousand talent debt that he had, and he forgave him. Now, when he was forgiven, he turned again to, listen closely, his fellow servant, another who was on the same status as he, and said, you pay me what you owe me. And he could not do so, and he robbed him, and he beat him, and hated him. And constraining him to pay, his master heard what the servant forgiven had done against his fellow servant, was filled with wrath and with anger. Why? Because he had been forgiven of a sin against deity. It was against a Lord that he had been forgiven. But there is no sin in the world that anyone can commit against us. And as a fellow servant of God, a fellow human that can in any way, shape, or form compare with what spiritually has been forgiven of us by our God. Now, the essence of this story is simply this. That his Lord was angry with him, because in light of the very worst thing that a fellow human being could do to me, it is absolutely nothing, in spite, in, in, alongside of the very least thing that I have done against God. Why? Because to sin against perfection is to sin in deed. There is nothing a sinful man can commit and sin against his fellow sinful man that will even compare with the tiniest sin that we have committed against a sinless, loving, perfect God. And the story is like this. The 10 ,000 talents was so much that had been forgiven him that all of the tribute and income of Jerusalem, of Judea, and Galilea, and Samaria, three major provinces, was only 900 talents a year. Now, what had been forgiven him was 10 ,000 talents, which is about the equivalent of $14 ,000 ,000 today. Now, what he had not forgiven against his fellow man was the equivalent of about $8 ,000 today. I'm sorry. $8 ,000 ,000 against $14 ,000 today. In other words, it was about 500 ,000 times as much. Jesus is going to a great length to get across to that man in a language he could comprehend that the worst your fellow man does to you is nothing against the least you have done to a perfect master holy god and in light of that how can we hold a grudge against someone when god who has more reason to hold off against us has forgiven us in totality of what we have done for him and may i illustrate it another way ten thousand talents if placed sixty pounds of silver to a sack and placed over the back of a man would take eight thousand six hundred men carrying sixty pounds each a yard apart three feet apart eight miles to march out and the amount of the one hundred denarii was only about as much as one man could carry in his pocket the lord seems to say to us that the main way for us to comprehend to forgive other people is to belittle how anything should offend us in comparison how even the most trivial sin we have committed has offended a holy god and if he can forgive us how much more ought we to forgive others and the last thought of this simply and briefly how may we experience the forgiveness of god well let me suggest to you that it is not simply by wanting forgiveness not simply by an attitude that wishes we were forgiven some people always live kind of half dejected and sort of always sigh for their sin we say well the lord knows i am sinful and he knows i'm sorry and i know i don't do my best not subtle the bible says in first john 1 9 if we confess our sin he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins now listen the unsaved person does not need to confess his sins plural it does no good for a catholic to go to a priest or a baptist to go to the preacher and enumerate his sins and think that will make him saved not at all he only needs to confess his sin his guilt that i am a sinner the very totality of the of the my approach of my way my being to life is in opposition to the will of god everything about me is against god conversely when the christian sin it does him no good to go to god and say lord forgive me my sins they are to be named they are to be enumerated and don't say lord forgive us of those sins we have committed and those that we committed we don't remember and don't know anything about and didn't know that we're sinned you take a moment on your knees and pray and the holy spirit of god will begin to recall to your memory those sins you won't have to face you won't have to pray that way take time it would amaze many a christian to know how many unforgiven unreleased sins were stacked up against him through the years because he has not taken the time to name his sins to god and to repent of them individually keep the unbroken fellowship intact every time you do something immediately dear god forgive me of that and name it claim the blood of christ for cleansing and in this word when we confess our sins we need to repent of them it's not enough to go out and steal a car and keep driving on down i -45 saying lord forgive me for stealing this car you need to take it back in other words where at all possible restitution is to be made brother knizel told me this week that his father also harvey knizel senior of john elk roma received a few days ago in the mail a check for 35 or 35 it came from a neighbor of 30 some years ago he said sir you will probably not remember me but you may remember the incident when some of your chickens were missing several years ago he said i am said chicken feet but i want you to know that last week in a little Baptist church, I found Christ as my Savior. I was saved. I was forgiven. I'm doing all I can to make amends for what I've done wrong. Now that old boy got a good dose. And I'll tell you something else. He's going to have a good dose of peace of mind and a heart and a self you can live with. Forgive yourself if God has forgiven you. Don't let the devil conjure up in your mind guilt over things you have no control or which you could do absolutely nothing about and which are paper tigers. But come clean and be honest with God and confess everything that is wrong. Claim the blood of Christ and above all forgive your fellow man and remember that nothing that one sinful man can do against another sinful man can in any way shape or form compare with the tiniest sin that we commit against a sinless God. Sin against grace, sin against love is the worst of all. Come clean with God. Confess every sin in your heart. Keep it up to date daily. Walk in fellowship with him. The blood of Jesus Christ the Bible says his son cleanseth us from all unrighteousness. Forgive others. Enumerate, confess, repent, and as much as possible make rest of Jesus. And the God of all grace keep your heart in peace and poise and composure and gladness and mental health because you live in a state of unbroken compassion, fellowship with him who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Share a phrase, I am the true way to life. And whom to know is to have life everlasting. Let us bow our heads and close our eyes together, please, as we pray. Our Father, as we have looked this morning at the doctrine of forgiveness, we stand amazed that God that God could forgive us. And not only forgive us, but of his own volition, guilty man rejecting him and despising him, send his son to die on the cross. And to say, here's your pardon. For we know that no pardon is good until the pardon comes to accept him. Thank thee most of all for the forgiving grace of our Lord. He says, him that cometh unto me, I'll in no wise cast out. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Thank you for your forgiveness to us. In Jesus' name. Heads are bowed and eyes are closed.