Sermon Central
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The Power Of Forgivness Series
Contributed by Scott Maze on Jun 12, 2021 (message contributor)
Summary: If you are a genuine Christian, you will be both willing and able to forgive others. According to Jesus, when you say, “I cannot or will not forgive,” you’re essentially saying, “I am thinking about going to hell.”
3) The king’s anger.
In the first scene the king forgives. In the second scene, the forgiven servant lacks compassion for his fellow servant. Instead of forgiving, the servant imprisons his fellow servant. And in the third scene, the king’s anger is quickly kindled when he learns of the servant’s lack of compassion. In response, the king revokes his forgiveness and punishes the unforgiving servant.
“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’” (Matthew 18:23-26).
To get some idea of the some of the amount of money this man owes – Herod the Great’s annual revenue from his entire kingdom was about 900 talents during this time. This amount also exceeded the taxes of Samaria, Judea, Syria and Phoenicia together. He would have had to work roughly 193,000 years to pay back what he owed. The amount of money he owed would have weighed 750,000 pounds. This is nine million ounces of gold. An ounce of gold was selling for $1,168 on the New York Mercantile Exchange earlier this week. Once you multiply this out, the man owes $10.5 billion.
“And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt” (Matthew 18:27).
This is an astronomical debt. For the king to be able to write off this loan, he must be loaded. In those days, bankruptcy was real simple. There was no chapter eleven. The king would just take the wife, the kids and sell them into slavery and put the man in prison. Simple! That's how they dealt with bankruptcy in those days. Yet, the King takes pity on the servant. We are astonished at the generosity of the king.
God is the king in the parable and you are the servant. The debt the servant owes represents the debt for sin that you owe God. Jesus works hard to tell us that all people have amassed AN UNPAYABLE DEBT TO GOD. Life has been loaned to you from God and He intended for you to use it for His purposes. You have taken your life from God, and, rather than returning it to Him in worship, you have squandered it on your own selfish desires. When we add up all the things we have done to fall short of God’s infinitely perfect and holy standards… combined with all the things we have not done that could have pleased Him… then we see our sins as enormous in God’s eyes as a multi-billion dollar debt. There is no way in the world we could repay Him. The work of Christ on the cross was God’s forgiveness of sinners. This is a crucial first scene in Jesus’ parable.
How you believe God forgives shapes how you forgive others. “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
