Last Sunday, June 25, 2017, the house church of God is Good Christian Ministries in Santa Rosa, Laguna invited me to preach God’s Word. It is nice to speak once in a while to a local church outside of my own denomination, the Grace Communion International in the Philippines. I spoke about forgiveness from the heart. My message focused on the topic of forgiveness based on the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant found in Matthew 18:21-35.

I shared to this local church the teaching of Christ on the need to forgive others coming from one’s heart. In this parable, the servant owed his Master a huge debt. All his property could be confiscated and even his wife and children could be sold for slavery. But the Master forgave him all his debt. He was now debt-free. The Master released his servant from his huge debt. The servant of course was very grateful to his Master and thanked him profusely.

Unforgiving, Umerciful Heart

But this same servant refused to forgive the small amount of debt that  his fellow servant owed him. Something was wrong with his heart and attitude forgetting that he was once forgiven and released from debt. Christ condemned this unforgiving heart. In the heat of our anger against those who offend us, we sometimes — or usually — forget just how much we have been forgiven by God of our offenses and sins against him.

In this parable, Christ is teaching us to have a forgiving heart. Because God has forgiven us, we ought to forgive as well — from the heart.

Here’s the video recording of that message. My wife did the recording using my iPhone 5 without a tripod — just handheld. I did not plan to have this recorded but since the video is available anyway, may I share it here with everyone: