Erasing the Debt: Matt. 18:21-35
“Your Kingdom Come”; July 20, 2003
Intro:
A pastor’s son and his mom had been to a shopping mall and the boy had acted badly, wanting this and that, running off, etc. As they were driving home, he could sense her displeasure and said, "When we ask God to forgive us when we are bad, He does, doesn’t He?" His mother replied, "Yes, He does." The boy continued, "And when he forgives us, He buries our sins in the deepest sea, doesn’t He?" The mom replied, "Yes, that’s what the Bible says." The boy was silent for awhile and then said, "I’ve asked God to forgive me, but I bet when we get home, you’re going to go fishing for those sins, aren’t you?"
DL Moody once said, “God has cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He’s even put a “No Fishing” sign over the spot.
Context:
As we continue our summer look at what the Kingdom of God is like, we come to another parable of Jesus in Matt. 18:21-35. It tells us first that the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of incredible forgiveness – of grace beyond what we could ever imagine. But there is an edge to the parable, which takes it one step further: our forgiveness from God is contingent upon our forgiving others. Let’s read the parable:
Peter’s Question:
The parable is Jesus’ response to Peter’s question. You might be interested to know that the rabbis around Jesus taught that you should forgive a person for the same offense three, or at the most, four times – then you were free to act however you wanted towards the persistent offender. So Peter is starting to get that Jesus’ message takes things to a higher level, and he suggests maybe seven times is appropriate. If I could paraphrase Jesus’ response, I think He is saying, “Seven!?! Ha! You think that is complete?? How about this: seventy times seven” and then He tells the parable. In its simplest form, Jesus’ response is this: “don’t keep track.” Seventy times seven is a lot – 490 – which if we were to put it into perspective is someone sinning against you, the same sin, every single day for one year and four months. Hurting you, asking for forgiveness, then doing the same thing the next day, every day, for 16 months. Jesus says keep forgiving, and don’t keep track.
That sounds a little crazy. I mean, how many of us would put up with that kind of thing from someone else? How many of us would even put up with that kind of thing happening to someone else we knew and cared about?? We would likely pull them aside, tell them to stick up for themselves, tell them to fight back, put an end to this situation, walk away. Jesus says, in the Kingdom of God, we keep forgiving. Grace doesn’t wear out. Forgiveness is not a finite thing, in danger of being used up. And I’m not here talking about God’s grace to us, or God’s forgiveness to us – though the statement is true of that also – but rather of the grace we are to have for one another and the forgiveness we are to have for one another. If we take the parable seriously, I can assert that our salvation depends on it.
Why?
That is pretty radical, don’t you think? Why would we do such a thing – continually forgiving one another time after time after time? Why would Jesus expect such a thing as that from us – doesn’t He understand what it is like down here, doesn’t He understand how difficult it is to live with some of the people around us?
This is the question the parable answers – the “why” question.
The Kingdom of God is like…
Act One:
It is basically a three act play. In act one, the King decides to settle some accounts. One of the servants brought before Him owes an absolutely huge sum. Jesus says, “ten thousand talents.” A “talent” was the highest denomination of currency, and “ten thousand” the highest number in their language. It is a story, and Jesus is clearly using hyperbole in describing how much is owed. The exact amount would be roughly sixty million days wages – if (for simplicity sake) we set an average day’s wage in today’s currency at $100, that would make 6 billion dollars. Obviously, the point is that this servant owed an incredible debt that he could never, ever repay. So the king did what was right, and ordered that all the assets of this servant be sold, and that he and his family be sold into slavery, to recoup as much as possible. Act one ends with the servant begging for mercy, making a rather silly and impossible promise to pay back the entire amount, and hearing the amazing, incredible, unimaginable response of the king: “oh, all right. I will have mercy on you and forgive you the entire debt. It is cancelled. Go a free man, owing nothing.”
Already it is an incredible, feel-good story. The King is merciful, the servant – who was completely undeserving (after all, how could he have ever gotten that deep into debt without making a lot of really, really bad choices??), walks away a free man. Owing nothing, debt erased, completely forgiven. This part, act one, is the Gospel. We recognize the extravagant nature of our King, God, and we recognize ourselves as having been forgiven an incredible debt which we could never, ever repay.
I like this part of the parable. I like preaching it! Good news, for me, for you, for our whole world! Forgiveness, wild and free and scandalous, is available to everyone who asks. This, as I said, is the Gospel. Whatever burden you carry, whatever wrong you have done, as sure as you hear these words at this moment I declare to you that in Jesus there is forgiveness. You can walk away free, forgiven, owing nothing.
For some of you sitting here, that offer sounds too good to be true. You are thinking, “But I did the same thing again. I’m too embarrassed to ask God to forgive me, how could He forgive me? Some of you are thinking, “If the person next to me knew what I was really like, if they knew what I watch or read, or how I treat my spouse, or how I’m greedy and angry and lustful and prideful, how I’ve sinned sexually, then everyone would know that I cannot be forgiven.” I know you have those thoughts – and they are lies of the devil. The truth – the Gospel of God for you – is in verse 27: “The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” God will hear your cry for forgiveness, and will cancel your debt. The word translated “cancel” is actually the word for “forgive”.
I know that promise almost sounds too good to be true. I know it in my head, and I know it in my heart. There are times I think those same things, times I think “oh, God must really be fed up with me now… I blew it again… I must have exhausted His supply of grace and forgiveness.” But every time, when I listen to Him and not to the other voices, I hear this: “I love you. I forgive you!! I accept you!!! You are my child.” And every time, God surprises me with His lovingkindness and His faithfulness and His incredible goodness. And He forgives me, and restores me, and it blows me away. He wants you to hear and experience that same thing, right now.
Act Two:
Act one is the gospel, but it is not the whole gospel. You see, in Jesus’ parable something scary happens next. The forgiven servant leaves his Master’s presence a free, forgiven man, and comes across a servant who owes him a much smaller amount. And his reaction is not good…
How much did this second servant owe? Jesus chooses the number 100 denarii. This is a much, much smaller amount, and the main point of Jesus’ story is the contrast between the amounts owed – how the first servant owed the King an impossibly large debt, and this second servant owed the first servant a tiny amount in comparison. 100 denarii is almost nothing compared to ten thousand talents. But wait: it is still a significant amount. It is still 100 days wages – or about four months pay working 6 days a week. The NIV footnote is wrong when it says “a few dollars,” The Message is wrong when it says, “$10”. The New Living Translation gets it right when they say “several thousand dollars.” One hundred day’s pay is nothing compared to sixty thousand day’s pay, but it is still a significant amount of money. It is still “several thousand dollars.”
So what? I know most of you have little interest in currency conversion from 1st Century Palestine to today… Here is why I think it is significant: Jesus is not belittling the “debts” we owe one another. The parable is not at all saying that what we owe to each other is piddly, insignificant, minute. Jesus is not minimizing our pain at the hurt we feel from others – on the contrary, He is recognizing it as a significant thing. He could have chosen one denari, or even the same “small copper coins worth a fraction of a penny” that He commended the widow for putting in the offering box in Mark 12. But He didn’t – He chose a figure that represented a significant amount – about 4 months’ pay.
We heard the story – the first servant, having just experienced the incredible forgiveness of an unbelievable sum, reacts the opposite way to this other servant who was in debt to him. He gets violent, demands full and immediate repayment of the debt, and even when this second servant makes the identical plea, when he “fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back,’” he receives condemnation and harsh treatment.
Now listen carefully: most of us happily identify with the first servant in Act One. But in Act Two, we make a sudden shift and want to identify with the second servant. We don’t want to be the first servant anymore, not like we did in the first part of the story. We want to think that everyone else is the first servant and we are the second servant, and now the parable is about how other Christians are to treat us. That is not true. Hear me closely – the parable does not allow us to make that shift: we are still the first servant, and the parable is now about how we will treat others. We have received the forgiveness of our King, now we turn and face one another. Now we must turn and face the pain and hurt we experience from others, and make a choice. Will we act according to the parable, and demand complete repayment of the debt owed us, or will we reflect the character of our King and forgive?
Ouch. This is an unpleasant place to be, an unpleasant thing to hear. Especially having read Act Three, in which we see the King revoke the previous forgiveness and reinstate the debt because of our refusal to forgive. We don’t like to hear this – we have a debt owed to us, a significant debt. It hurts, we have been wronged, we deserve to be paid in full. The first servant was completely within his legal rights to do what he did to the second – he did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, for the truth was undisputed: the other owed him. The same is true for us. We might not be as confrontational as this first servant, in fact I think more of us would prefer to sever the relationship and walk away angry, knowing we have been wronged and feeling justified in harbouring the resentment and anger. We walk away from the business angry. We refuse to talk to the sister. We get a divorce, or we leave and go to a new church. Though we might not be as confrontational as this servant, make no mistake: unless we forgive – unless we cancel the debt completely – we are in the same situation as this first servant. That is us.
Act Three:
The most unpleasant part of the parable is the final act. The other servants witness this second act, and report back to the King, who is justifiably angry (vs. 34). And so He revokes the forgiveness and sends the first servant off to be tortured until the debt is paid in full – in other words, forever.
What does this tell us about the Kingdom of God?
This is the key question. Here is my answer: it tells us that the Kingdom of God is a place where the servants must reflect the character of the King. I’ll say that again: the Kingdom of God is a place where the servants must reflect the character of the King. This is the truth in vs. 33: “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” That “just as I had on you” is the critical point. Jesus’ point is that the Kingdom of God is a place of grace and forgiveness, extended first from God to us, and second it must be extended from us to others. Without limit, without count, without grudge. How many times? “Seven whole times?”, Peter asked. No, more than that. We must forgive others as much as God has forgiven us. That is the standard, that is the point of the parable.
And that is an empowering way to look at it. It changes our focus, from how much we have been hurt by others to how much to how much we have been forgiven by God. That perspective helps us to see that we owed God $6 billion and He forgave us; we can reflect His character and forgive the several thousand others owe us.
Who “owes” you?
Let’s take this one more step. I want you to think about who has hurt you. Who you are justifiably angry at – who you deserve to be able to grab by the neck and choke because of what they owe you. Think of that person or those people, allow yourself to feel the hurt. Maybe you have buried it deep, and don’t want to admit that it is there, you think it is too painful to acknowledge and so you deny that you have been wronged. Dig it up, admit the hurt and bitterness, recognize that there is a debt there, and that you are justified in feeling angry and in demanding repayment.
And now think of this: how much has God forgiven you? What is the scope of your debt that has been cancelled by your King?
And so I leave you with the choice: to follow the way of the servant in the parable, which leads to the tortured life of living with bitterness and unforgiveness, and which comes with the warning of vs 35: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart” – OR, to choose to forgive as you have been forgiven. Let me pray that God would give you the strength to choose what is right.
