Luke 6:37c-38

Luke chapter 6, I want to read the last phrase of verse 37 and all of verse 38 for our text and study this morning. Forgive and ye shall be forgiven. Give and it shall be given unto you. Good measure, press down and shaken together and running over shall men give into your bosom. or with the same measure that ye meet with all, it shall be measured to you again. May God bless to us His sacred and holy word this morning. The salvation of God brings about great changes in the individual. In fact, the Bible indicates to us very clearly if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things are passed away, all things become new, as 2 Corinthians 517 indicates. So scripture speaks about the person being saved, being given a new heart. The person is a changed person. They’re not the same person that they used to be. Now our text indicates two people. evidences of someone being a new creature in Christ or a new person or having a new heart. And that is, number one, a willingness to forgive others. The harsh, unforgiving, vindictive spirit of the old man has been altered. The second thing is a willingness to give to others. The cold, miserly, miserly selfish spirit. of the old man has also been altered. So here are two areas that Jesus mentions. Forgiveness and giving. Now Christ’s sermon on the plane is quite different than the usual affair that the people heard from the scribes and the religious teachers of the day. It’s stunning. It’s amazing the type of teaching that they were receiving. And here you have the son of God giving you the direct uncorrupted untone down message from God the following it behooves you and I to carefully weigh what Jesus says and compare it to our lives then God’s truth is eternal it’s applicable to every generation it never becomes old it never becomes obsolete So give and forgive. Those are the two things that stand out in our text. I’ll begin by looking at the last part of verse 37, forgive and you shall be forgiven. Now in relation to this, I want you to look with me at Matthew chapter 6, if you would. Because Jesus says something similar to this in the sermon of the Mount. in verses 14 and 15 of Matthew 6, Jesus says here, 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. So the first question we need to address is this question. Is you’re forgiving others? The reason God forgives you. Is that what Jesus is teaching? There are those who will say yes to this particular question, but then that would undermine the Bible’s teaching elsewhere. You simply can’t earn God’s forgiveness, his pardon. There’s nothing meritorious in you forgiving others. The actual ground or basis on which God’s forgiveness is pardoned. forgives anyone is the blood atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to his riches of his grace, Ephesians 1.7. God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you, Ephesons 432. Be it known unto you that this man, through this man, Jesus Christ, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, Acts 1338. However, dispensationalists have greatly perverted this text. There’s a comment, a footnote in the Schofield Reference Bible here on Matthew 6, 14, and 15. I think that is worthy of our consideration because of its error. He says, this is legal ground. Compare Ephesians 432, which is grace. Under the law, forgiveness was conditioned upon a like spirit in us. Under grace, we are forgiven for Christ’s sake and exhorted to forgive because we have been forgiven. Is that what the Bible teaches about forgiveness? This is a corruption. This is a misleading explanation of the text. It implies that Christ’s teaching here on the sermon on the Mount does not contain, or pertain, I should say, to the New Testament Christian heir. This is all Old Testament law, is what Schofield is telling us. But let me say this. Under no dispensation, I don’t care what you want to call it, has God bestowed forgiveness on anyone who maintains a vindictive spirit? And forgiveness has always been based on God’s grace and the work of Christ on the cross. Always. It’s never based upon you forgiving someone else. Because if it was, if God was obligated to forgive you because you forgave someone else, then why does Christ have to die? You can be forgiven by forgiving someone else. You could merit your own. forgiveness. That’s absolutely absurd. That goes against all the teaching of the gospel, all that we find in the New Testament. So as you’re forgiving others, the reason God forgives you, no, that is not it. That is not it. And that’s not what Jesus is teaching in our text here in Luke 6. So let’s get that error out of our minds. God forgiving you is your motive for forgiving others. Now look at Ephesians, if you would, chapter 4 and verse 32. Chapter 4 and verse 32. Be ye kind one to another tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, have forgiven you. This is what Jesus is teaching. This is the, if you want the explanation here of this passage in Luke chapter 6, and verse 37, that last phrase. This is the explanation. Forgiveness is a godlike characteristic because the Bible talks about our God who forgiveth all thy in Psalm 103 and so forth. You are reminded that your new man is after God created. You’re supposed to reflect something of God’s character. in your life. You Christians bear the spiritual image of God. Do you know that your sins are forgiven? Do you know all the blackness has been washed away? Because unless you have known God’s forgiveness, you can never really forgive someone else, according to what the scripture demands of this. God’s mercy to you then becomes the moving cause of your forgiving someone else. The Jewish. Joining together of your forgiving others with God’s forgiving you is to show that this is a duty that’s incumbent upon pardon sinners. When you pray forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, aren’t you saying, aren’t you promising, Lord, forgive me and I will be willing to forgive others? Isn’t that what you’re saying? When you request forgiveness, then you were binding yourself to a corresponding duty that you will forgive somebody else. To whomsoever much is given, much is required. So that if we’re forgiven much, we need to be willing to forgive much. Now forgiveness involves here suppressing any spirit of revenge. As Proverbs 2429 says, Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me. I will render to the man according to his work. It involves a genuine pardoning of the person who has wronged you, burying the sin, no longer holding it against him. Jeremiah 31, 34, God says, I will forgive their iniquity. I will remember their sin no more. It means you perform all the duties of love toward this person so that they’re restored to normal relationships with you. Or a normal relationship with you. Arthur W. Pink’s comments on the sermon, his sermon on the mild passage, I think are appropriate here as well. But are we required to forgive offenders absolutely and unconditionally whether they express contrition or not? Certainly not. A holy God does not require us to condone evil doing and countenance sin. The teaching of our Lord on this point is crystal clear. First, we are bidden to seek out the offender, privately and meekly, and expostulate. with him, endeavoring to make him see that he has displeased the Lord and wrong his own soul more than he has us. Second, if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. And if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day and seven times in a day, turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him. Luke 17. three and four. But suppose the offender gives evidence is no sign of repentance. Even then, we must not harbor any malice or revenge, yet we are not to act as freely and familiarly as before. Third, we were to pray for it. I think those are pretty good words to go by. Now, when someone violates the law of the land, This person has committed a serious public offense. Suppose someone robs your house and in the process of robbing your house kills your wife. He’s apprehended by the police. He’s going to have to face a trial for the evil doing that he has done. The public courts are for the purpose of redressing the wrongs done in society. Now, Even if the criminal shows remorse, even if he would plead with you to forgive him, the course of justice still has to be played out, even if you would personally forgive the person of the wrong that’s done. You could forgive him privately, but publicly he’s still going to have to answer to the state for what he’s done. He’s taken a life. And thus for the public good in order to prevent such crimes in society, there is a sense in which sometimes people must be punished even if we would forgive them. But again, we don’t do the punishing. The state would have to do that. Ultimately, God is the one who will meet out the ultimate justice in this situation. You know, you have people that sometimes do tremendous crimes and the family member will forgive them. I forgive them. I forgive the person. and we hear that on the news sometimes. Well, that doesn’t mean the guy gets to walk away from what he’s done wrong. He’s still going to have to answer for that. But we don’t have to seek revenge against them. And we should. So God forgiving you is your motive for forgiving others. Notice this. Thirdly, unless you forgive others, you will have no proof of your own forgiveness. Your forgiving of others is a mark or something. sign that you have been forgiven by God. If you’re not a forgiving person, then how can you claim that you have been forgiven by God? Do you remember the parable of the unforgiving servant? There was this royal servant who owed an unpayable debt to the king who was completely forgiven by the monarch because he couldn’t pay it. And, you know, he could have thrown him in jail. and punished him and had the tormentors, you know, extract a pound of flesh from him. But the king decided he would just forgive the man of what he had done wrong. So here’s a guy, had this unpayable debt, and he enjoys the benefit of being forgiven, this huge debt by the king. This is a picture of… salvation because God who is the king of the universe forgives the sinner. He’s the servant in debt. The sin debt. Forgive us our debts. However, the sad part of this parable as Jesus lays out for us here, is that the forgiven man then went to a fellow servant, co-worker I guess, and demanded he pay him a minor debt that he owed. When the fellow servant couldn’t pay the minor debt, well, this man is going to ruthlessly have him thrown into prison. There’s no sense of, boy, you know, maybe I could show mercy. I know, I got shown mercy. That seems to be lost on this man. So the one who eagerly accepted this massive, comprehensive forgiveness by the king, would not forgive even a small debt, easily repayable at some point, by a fellow servant. The unevenness of his action, the wickedness of a heart that will not forgive another person, but desires forgiveness himself, is what is being shown by this parable of Jesus. And in Matthew 18, when Jesus’ when Jesus ends this parable, in verse is the 32 and 33, we read this. Then his Lord, after he had called him and said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desirest me. Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? If you claim to be forgiven by God and you refuse to forgive others than your profession isn’t genuine why you’re still in your sins is what the indication is. The king demanded repayment of his original debt and turned him over to the tormentors till it was paid. Verse 35 says, so likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also unto you if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses. My friends, if you don’t have you, if you don’t have have a forgiving nature, then you have no proof you’ve ever tasted of God’s forgiveness. Because if you’ve ever really tasted of God’s forgiveness, you’d have more tenderness, more willingness to forgive others. Because you could look at that great debt that was forgiven you and say, okay, you know, I can forgive this small offense that’s been done against me. The person who knows he has been forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ must forgive others. It’s part of him to forgive. give others. It’s part of his makeup as a new creature in Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism beautifully captures the spirit of all this. Be pleased for the sake of Christ’s blood, not to impute to us miserable sinners, any of our transgressions, nor the evil which always cleaves to us, as we also find this witness of thy grace in us, that it is our full purpose. heartily to forgive our neighbors. So ultimately, the unforgiving person shows himself to be outside of the kingdom of Christ. So forgive, and you shall be forgiven. Second, give, and it shall be given to you. Verse 38, back here in Luke chapter 6. He says, give, and it shall be given unto you, good major, pressed down. and shaken together running over shall men give under your into your bosom for with the same measure that ye meet with all it shall be measured to you again. The idea here is you are to give liberally or freely, if you would, to those who are in need. It’s the will of God that those who have been given an abundance in this life by God’s good providence, should be willing to look at those who may be in need around them and need help. Remember what John the Baptist said, and we looked at earlier, if you have two coats, well, then give one to someone who doesn’t have one if you need to. You know, if someone doesn’t have one, you have two, help them out. And so we should be willing to supply what is lacking in others. Those who are rich with this world’s goods must not. shut up their compassion against their brothers in need. 1. John 317, but whosoever hath this world’s good and see if his brother hath need and shuteth up his boughs of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? Knowing that God has provided you with many good things in this life, you ought to be generous when helping those in need. And we’ve already talked in the past about, you know, you have to use some discernment in helping others and so forth. I don’t want to reiterate that all over again, but obviously it’s not just anybody who says they need something that you’re supposed to supply their need. But you see someone genuinely in need, and if you have the means wherewith, and God moves you to do so, then go ahead, help the person out. What this does is it combats this spirit of selfishness, that what’s mine is mine is mine. somebody else can have it. What we’re looking at is, hey, we’re supposed to be stewards of what God has given us and see what we would have us do with the good things that he’s given us in this life. It was a rich man that once asked his friend, why am I criticized for being a miser? Everybody knows when I die, I’m going to leave everything to charity. His friend said, well, let me tell you about the pig. who was lamenting to the cow about how unpopular he was. And the pig says, you know, people are talking about your gentleness and your kind eyes. Sure, you give milk and cream, but I give more. I give bacon, ham, bristles. They even pickle my feet. Still, nobody likes me. Why is this? It’s baffling to me. The cow thought for a few moments and then said, Well, maybe it’s because I give while I’m still living. We’re to give liberally. As we see people in need. I say, well, you know, when I die, maybe, you know, the money can. I’ll use it here while I’m on this earth. I won’t give anybody anything until I’m ready to pass on. The idea is that if we go along and we see the need, we help people. So you’re to give liberally to those in need. If you are generous in helping those in need, God says he will richly repay you. And this is what Jesus is emphasizing in this passage of Scripture. You give liberally or freely of your worldly substance to the needy, as you have opportunity according to your ability, and God will see to it that somehow or other gets returned to you. In other words, God would somehow or other repay you. Is what Jesus is saying here. Now, what’s interesting is the idea that God will abundantly pay you back. In other words, you get more in return than you actually gave out in the first place. Christ uses this visual image. If you could take us to the grain market. He’s using this kind of picture for us. A good measure is an honest measure. It’s the real measure. right amount. It’s full content. It’s filled to the top, so to speak. And then he says, press down, shaking together. Now, if you’re putting grain in a sack or something of that nature, you may, like, shake it, get the air out between the pieces of grain or whatever it is. And so you can pack it down more and then put more in it. Remove all the air pockets. And so God says, I’ll make sure it’s pressed down. I’ll get all the air pockets out. I’ll make sure, you know, I’ll give you more that way. It’s running over. It’s heaped up. Even above the rim of the container. So you get more than expected. I mean, the container’s there, but he’s heaping it up over. Sort of like the ice cream cone. You know, the cone gets filled up with ice cream, and then they put something on top. Give it into your bosom here, into your lap or the fold of your garment. Sometimes people would use the garment and hold it out, and they used that as a means of holding the grain. You remember when Ruth was with Boaz there and requested him to be her husband, her kinsman redeemer, Boaz says, bring the veil that thou hast upon thee, that sheet or apron, that loose covering you have, and hold it. And when she has, she has it, and when she has, outed it, he measured six measures of barley and laid it on her. Use some type of cloth that put it in. Or you remember one of the sons of the prophets in seeking something edible for the stew, went into the field, gathered some herbs, and he found this wild vine, and he picked some things off this wild vine, these gourds, and he filled his lap full of them, according to scripture. In other words, he used that garment and held it out. filled his lap up with it and used that to carry all these wild gourds to where the cooking was taking place. Well, the liberal soul devises liberal things, and Christ indicates to you that whatever measure you use and giving to others, God will use a like measure and repaying you. He that so with sparingly, shall reap sparingly, scripture says. He which so with bountifully shall reap also bountifully 2, Corinthians 9, 6. I was reading the story about C.H. Spurgeon, he was at one point journeying through the countryside of England, and he was preaching in different locations. And for several years, whenever he passed by this one area, he stopped at the house of this old English farmer and he stayed with him. And he always ate dinner with the man. And Spurgeon said the farmer would have this enormous piece of beef on the table for dinner. And Spurgeon finally asking me one day, he said, why is it? When I ever come here, you have such enormous joints. Do you think I’m a giant that I can eat this much meat? He said, if I took this to eat this much meat? He says, if I took this home, it would last me a month before I could eat all this meat. The farmer says, well, if I could get a bigger bit, I would. For I am glad to see you. And if you could eat it all, you would be heartily welcome. I want everyone who comes here today to feel that I will do my very best for you. Spurgeon concluded, he did not make. my necessities by a half ounce. But he provided a lavish scale. This is an example of giving heartily, giving liberally, you see. Not miserly to the needy person. So if you use a skimpy measure, well, God will use a skimpy measure return. But if you use a generous portion, God’s going to grant you a generous return. Notice your attitude toward helping others stands out. in the type of measure you use to aid the poor here. If you begrudge the needy requiring your help, you unhappily use a miserly measure. You begrudge them the money or the help that they need. You give just enough, count it down to the penny, so to speak, to satisfy your obligation. But if you give hardly with the joy of knowing it’s more blessed to give than receive according to your ability you will generously help your brother also you should give as God has prospered you not how much you give which is considered a man with a hundred thousand dollars in the bank could give a person in need a hundred dollars and think he’s being generous but we look at it in comparison to the hundred thousand dollars we consider his overall wealth, you’d say, well, that’s kind of miserly. You have all this money and you’re going to give him $100. A man with $200 in the bank, however, and who also gives the person $100, is giving generously because he’s given half his money to the person. It was unique. That’s very generous, you see. Scripture says this in 2 Corinthians 812. If there be first of all a willing mind, it is accepted according to what a man hath and not according to what a man hath not. That means the average Christian can give and help someone who is in need. Maybe they can’t meet the whole need of the person. Perhaps you can help in some fashion. And God’s going to take that into account. According to what you can do, you do. So let’s labor working with, let him labor working with his hands, the thing that is good, that he may give to him that need it. Ephesians 428. You see, he the average working person. Not the rich guy, you know, he’s got money galore, and he’s got all this money stored up for who knows how long. We’re talking about the average worker. Here’s a guy who makes a living working with his hands in some capacity. And yet as he’s provided for by God, and God gives him a little increase and enables him to do better. He sees this brother in need, and he says, well, you know, I can help him. I can do this much. I can give him this much. So consider carefully the spirit in which you give. What type of measure do you use? Because your giving actually requires faith. You know, that you give with the idea of, well, God will repay me. God will take care of me. That’s faith. You see, that’s exercising faith. when you give. You can’t be more generous than God. It’s impossible. That’s what Christ is telling us here. So great changes take place when God grants a person, salvation. You’re a new creature. Here are two areas. One, you must be willing to forgive others, and you must be willing to give to others. Do you have these traits of which Jesus speaks? May God bless to it. His sacred word this morning. This morning we also need to consider.