Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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To open them remains standing. Will
be going to the New Testament this morning,
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the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Eighteen. Matthew Eighteen, Matthew eighteen will
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begin our reading and Verse Twenty One. This is the word of the Lord.
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Let us give our attention to its
reading. Then Peter came up and
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said to him, him being Jesus
Lord, how often will my brother sin
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against me? And I forgive him
as many as seven times? Jesus said
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to him, I do not say
to you seven times, but seventy seven
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times. Therefore, the Kingdom of
Heaven may be compared to a king who
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wish to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one
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was brought to him who owed him
ten thousand talents and since he could not
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pay, his master ordained or ordered
him to be sold with his wife and
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children and all that he had,
and payment to be made. So the
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servant fell on his knees, imploring
him have patience with me, I will
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pay you everything, and out of
pity for him, the Master, sister
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of that servant, released him and
forgave him the debt. But when that
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same servant went out, he found
one of his fellow servants who owed him
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a hundred Dinari and seizing him,
he began to choke him, saying pay
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what you owe. So this fellow
servant fell down and pleaded with him,
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have patience with me, I will
pay you. He refused and went and
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put him in prison until he should
pay the debt. When his fellow servants
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saw what he had taken, what
had taken place, they were greatly distressed
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and they went and reported to their
master all that had taken place. Then
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his master summoned him and said to
him, you wicked servant, I forgave
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you all that debt because you pleaded
with me, and should not you have
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had mercy on your fellow servant,
as I had mercy on you. And
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in anger, his master delivered him
to the jailers until he should pay all
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his debt. So also, my
heavenly father will do to every one of
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you. If you do not forgive
your brother from your heart, you may
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be seated. Well, a bit
of a hard saying to end that parable
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this morning, isn't it? That's
it's shocking and a lot of a lot
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of ways. Well, this morning
will be talking obviously about forgiveness, certainly
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God's forgiveness for us, but what
it looks like to be called to be
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people of forgiveness, people ready to
offer forgiveness to others? Why? Way
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of introduction, I want to consider
some words from an English poet from seventeen
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eleven. Its name is Alexander Pope. You might be familiar with him,
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and Alexander Pope famously wrote an essay
in the form of a poem entitled an
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essay on Criticism Part two. He
had a lot to say about criticism,
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apparently, and in the poem he
speaks of the dangers of prideful and arrogant
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critique, on being too hard on
people, and in the end of one
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of the final stanzas of the poem, he remarks in a now famous line
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to air as human, to forgive
divine. That's a very long poem.
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It's very interesting. I would encourage
you to take a look at it at
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some point, but that's a line
that most of us are probably familiar with.
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To air is human, to forgive
divine. It's a profound truth,
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isn't it? One that doesn't take
long to put to the test, especially
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in our current culture, where everyone
airs everything on social media. where it
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looks like mass media has made it
whole industry on on journaling. The public
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foibles of public figures mean it does
not take long to understand that airing is
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indeed a common human capacity. But
equally so, it is very difficult to
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find forgiveness and the public sphere,
isn't it? We're really good at pointing
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fingers, but it is rare,
so rare to find displays of forgiveness,
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so rare indeed that when we see
them, if we've seen them, it
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causes us to stop. Perhaps pope
was right. Forgiveness, it seems,
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is a divine quality. Well,
in our passage this morning is we have
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heard, we find a command from
Jesus to forgive, to forgive extravagantly.
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But if pope is right, that
sets up a big of a bit of
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a problem for us, doesn't it? If forgiveness is indeed divine, how
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is it that we follow this command? Well, today we come to a
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passage and parable that that threatens the
listener with banishment from the Kingdom of God
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if we don't forgive, threatens withholding
of God's forgiveness if we are not people
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marked by forgiveness. Well, by
way of introduction. I want to consider
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the context this morning. This parable
comes right after a passage that we actually
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looked at in Sunday school last week, talking about the process of restoring a
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brother within the church who is in
sin, the passage that we develop a
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lot of our theology around church discipline
on. And you'll note in Matthew Eighteen,
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verse fifteen begins if a brother sends
against you, and then Jesus lays
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out this process for how to restore
this brother, a process that finally,
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if you find that this brother can
is continually not repentant, ends in excommunication
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of removing this individual from the body. So a horrible thing to think about,
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but it itself, as Paul will
explain later, is part of this
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process of restoration bringing someone in.
And so as we think of this passage
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in Matthew About Church discipline, we
should remember that this whole thing is really
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about forgiveness and and how is it
that we treat sin within the body?
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Well, Peter, who is often
the disciple to speak up and situations like
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this, comes to the Lord after
he is outlined this process of restoration and
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says, Lord, how often do
I need to forgive a brother if he
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sends against me. Seven Times.
Seems Fair and it's easy to point a
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finger at Peter here. But actually, if you look at rabbinical tradition around
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this time, the writing say,
well, three times is enough if someone
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commits the same sin over and over
again. So Peter here is actually being
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quite generous doubling it and then some. But Jesus response is interesting. He
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says actually, seventy seven times.
For those of you married here you might
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be saying, well, my spouse
has gotten there. But I don't think
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Jesus is giving us a particular amount
of times to forgive, but is speaking
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of a culture of forgiveness which he
will lay out for us in this parable
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that will look at this morning under
three headings. One, a time to
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forgive, to a time to collect
and three, a time of reckoning.
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A time to forgive, a time
to collect in a time of reckoning.
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Let's look at this parable a little
bit closer. This first section a time
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to forgive. Jesus Begins Teaching and
Response to Peter's question and he tells of
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a King and it has come time
for this king to settle accounts with his
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servants and and one servant in particular
is brought to him. The passage says
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he owes ten thousand talents. Now
to think about this number, a talent
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is the largest monetary unit in the
Greek language and ten thousand is the highest
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Greek numeral. So if you think
about that, what what this guy is
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saying is he owes like a billion
dollars. Not to say that Jesus e
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exaggerating, but he is very,
very poignantly bringing out the fact that this
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guy owes a debt that is insurmountable, it's unimaginable. I mean think for
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a minute. What's a number that
you could never save in your lifetime?
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Okay, that's how much this cios
a lot of money, and when he
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doesn't have the cash, the king
says, well, sell him and his
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wife and his children and all that
he has and collect the proceeds. Well,
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we find here is that this debt
held against him as not only related
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to his pocket book, but his
entire life and that of his family.
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What's probably implied here is that this
king would sell this man into slavery,
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as well as his generations of children, which was not an uncommon practice in
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Roman law at this time, and
children born into slavery would be the possession
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of the master unless they were somehow
able to buy themselves out of that.
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And we know that this debt will
not soon be paid off. Well,
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the man pleads with the king.
The text says he falls on his knees
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and he begins to beg verse.
Twenty six, have patience with me.
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I will pay you everything now.
This is kind of a humiliating scene,
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but there's also some comedy to it, because there is no way this man
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could ever repay this debt. This
is an empty promise in a lot of
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ways. The king would do well, if he was thinking fiscally, to
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sell this guy off, to cut
his losses and to collect what he could.
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But the king's response is interesting,
isn't it? It says that he
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has pity on the man. Some
translations say he has compassion, and this
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is a good translation. It brings
out this quality that we often see Jesus
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having when he comes upon the destitute, the poor, the needy. He
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has compassion on them. And so
the master forgives the debt and releases him.
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It's easy to miss this, but
there's two things going on here.
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One is this guy is a servant
or bond servant of the king. He
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is the king's possession and it would
take much for him, debt excluded,
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to buy himself out of this relationship. But the king not only forgives this
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incredible ount of money, but he
gives him his life. He frees him,
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the text says, and his wife
and his children. This man goes
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free to air. Is Human to
forgive divine. If that is true,
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then this king has certainly showed divine
forgiveness, hasn't he? This is no
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small transaction. You can imagine this
guy walking into the king's court, not
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sure what's going to go down,
and walking out free, truly a new
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man. His future in the future
of his wife, the future of his
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children, has changed and a moment
it's amazing to think about. Well,
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if our parable begins with a time
to forgive, it quickly and jarringly moves
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to a second section, a time
to collect. So this man, who
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has just been released from his debt, who has been given his life back,
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seemingly use his uses his first moments
of freedom to track down a fellow
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servant who owes him a hundred Denari. Now, a hundred denari is no
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small amount. Of this would probably
be several months money for a a regular
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day labor of this time. And
yet, in light of what this man
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has just been forgiven, there really
is no comparison, is there? So
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the Texas he finds his fellow servant, he seizes him and he he grabs
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him and he begins to choke him, demanding pay what you owe. It
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seems ridiculous from our vantage point,
doesn't it, that this man immediately would
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go out and it would seem,
forget about this incredible debt that has just
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been paid on his behalf and be
so unforgiving almost immediately. It's incomprehensible to
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think about, isn't it? Well, Matthew here, in retelling this story,
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is careful to show that the second
servants response to the call for repayment
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is precisely like the first servants.
He falls to his knees, he takes
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the same posture and he says be
patient with me, I will repay you.
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What's different about this servant, though, is he actually probably could have
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repaid I mean it's not a small
amount, but it's something he could save
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up and repay. Nothing in comparison
to the amount that the first servant was
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forgiven, and that is a vivid
contrast that we should note in this passage.
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But instead of releasing the man,
like the gracious King did, he
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does quite the opposite, has him
thrown into prison until the payment is able
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to be made to air. Is
Human to forgive divine, apparently, it's
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true. In this man's case,
he is unable to forgive even right after
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this great forgiveness has been given to
him, and the text says that he's
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brazen about it. He does it
in front of other servants. He doesn't
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even wait until, you know,
nightfall comes, other folks are watching.
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He humiliates this fellow servant and his
unforgiveness, and these other servants are,
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I mean understandably shaken by this and
disturbed by it and go and tell the
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master. And so this time of
collection then turns to the final section of
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the parable, a time of reckoning. The man's indiscretion comes back to bite
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him, doesn't it? The other
servants who saw what happened report the whole
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thing to the king and the Master
Summons this servant and he declares, you,
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wicked servant. I forgave you all
the debt because you pleaded with me.
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You should therefore have mercy on your
fellow servant, just as I had
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mercy on you. And then,
his anger, this master turns the servant
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over to the jailers until his debt
should be repaid. We know how long
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that will take. This word for
jailer's here is is kind of a disturbing
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one. It's not a common one
used. Some translations say tortures, and
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this would rightly fit this, this
interesting word. This is not a pleasant
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sentence. Cell that this man is
going to serve and he's not going anywhere
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soon. And then Jesus ends this
parable with this statement that likely caused us,
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made us a little bit uncomfortable as
we heard it read so also,
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and then the stomach turns a little
bit, doesn't it? So also,
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my heavenly father will do to every
one of you if you do not forgive
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your brothers from your heart. Jesus
can't mean this right. There's no way.
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We have theological categories that get us
out of this. I mean,
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we know that we are saved by
grace through faith, right. We are
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not saved by work, certainly not
saved on the merit of our ability to
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forgive. We know that. And
yet here it is right in front of
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us, and it's not the only
time that Jesus has said this, is
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it? Fact, a few chapters
prior at the end of the Lord's prayer,
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how does Jesus in the prayer?
He says for if you forgive their
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trespasses, your heavenly father will also
forgive you, but if you do not
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forgive others trespasses, neither will your
father forgive your trespasses. As James and
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his epistle summarizes it, for judgment
is without mercy to one who has shown
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no mercy. This parable, unlike
some others that we encounter, is not
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that difficult to understand, and yet
we will go to great intellectual lengths to
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veil the obvious implications that God's word
has for us. Forgive of or you
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will not be forgiven. Why is
this so difficult? Well, because forgiveness
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is hard, some of you might
be thinking right now. You have no
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idea what I've been through. You
have no idea how difficult it is to
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forgive a specially when the trespass is
sourced and someone close to us, like
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brothers and sisters within the church,
which is precisely what this text is aimed
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at and its context. Right,
people really wrong us. People truly do
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wicked things. Brothers and sisters in
the church disappoint us, they neglect us,
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they don't meet with our expectations and
it is hurtful and it is difficult
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to forgive. If you were to
go out and pole people who have left
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the church, my guess is nine
out of ten times you would find that
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they left because they were hurt by
someone, perhaps even a pastor or a
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leader in the church, and they've
removed themselves from this earthly manifestation of the
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Kingdom of God because they were unable
to forgive. Forgiveness is hall art,
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it is costly, but here we
have fairly clearly that Jesus is asking us
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to own the debt of others,
to forgive them, and not only that,
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but threatening to withhold forgiveness if we
don't. Well, perhaps this morning
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Jesus, in this text is is
calling us to reorient ourselves just a bit.
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Perhaps God is calling on us who
struggle with unforgiveness to shift our view
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just a bit. Perhaps you are
familiar with the story of Corey Tin Boon.
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Cory was a Christian arrested for hiding
Dutch Jews under the Nazi regime during
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the Holocaust, she herself being thrown
into concentration camps, and Corey writes about
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this experience and it's horrifying. If
you've if you've read any of her books,
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it's it's quite striking the suffering that
she's gone through. And yet cory
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is constantly talking about how God has
forgiven her sense. She seems to make
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little of the offenses of others,
constantly thinking about how she is offended a
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holy God, but how God in
Christ has shown her great forgiveness. Well,
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one of the things cory did,
in addition to writing books, that
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she would go and speak in different
venues and one evening at a church in
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Munich, after she had talked,
a balding man in a gray overcoat came
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walking toward her and she froze because
she immediately recognized him as one of the
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more brutal guards and camp raise at
Ravensbrook, one of these concentration camps,
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specifically the camp that her best friend
had died in at the hands of guards
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like this one, and he began
walking toward her. She she doesn't know
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it hurt to do her. Her
mind is is flooded with images of the
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injustice that this man had committed against
her and her friends. And he walks
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up to her and and he says, thank you for being here, thank
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you for speaking. You know,
you mentioned Ravensbrook in your testimony. I
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was a guard there, and he
says, but I've I've since come to
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faith in Jesus and I've experienced his
forgiveness. He says, Oh, how
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I would love to hear that forgiveness
come from Your Lips. And she froze
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again. All this she could think
about was the great injustice done to her.
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Well, she writes about this experience
in one of her books. It
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says I pray to Jesus help me. I can lift my hand, I
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can do that much, but you
must supply the feeling. And Corey lifted
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up her hand and she says,
as I did, an incredible thing took
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place. The current started in my
shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang
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into our joined hands, and then
this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole
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being. I forgive you, brother, with all my heart. I cried,
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she writes. For a long moment
we grasped each other's hands. The
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former guard and the former prisoner.
I had never known God's love so intensely
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as I did then, but even
so I realized it was not my love.
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I had tried, but I did
not have the power. It was
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the power of the Holy Spirit.
As Corey continues to write, she talks
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about how God's grace allowed her to
look past this man and his great injustice
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toward her, to a God who
is holy and Cory's great injustice toward him,
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but also to a rugged cross that
stood between her and the wrath of
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God. And as she looked to
the broken body and shed blood of Christ
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for a sinner like her, she
was able, by the power of the
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Holy Spirit, to extend forgiveness to
this man who had done her so wrong.
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It is very difficult for us to
stare down the Cross of Christ,
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in all of its brutality and all
of its beauty, and continue to withhold
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forgiveness. The power to forgive is
not found in our own ability to muster
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up a heart of forgiveness, but
to consider afresh God's heart of forgiveness shown
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to us in Jesus Christ, and
as we shift our orientation, our focus
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to the great redemption that is in
Christ, the debts owe to US grow
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strangely dim as we focus on a
payment that has been made on our behalf
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by the blood of a crucified savior
and his lavish forgiveness offered to us.
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We grow in the ability to forgive
by the power of the spirit. The
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power to forgive others is truly divine, but given to us as we reflect
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on the divine forgiveness offer to us
in Jesus Christ. So, this morning,
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is we conclude, I want to
consider a few of the Apostle Paul's
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words. Church it Coloss A,
was struggling with some different issues, returning
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to habits that did not reflect the
freedom that they had found in Christ.
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But interestingly enough, Paul does not
tell them to muster up enough will to
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act like Jesus, but he calls
them to reflect on the great debt that
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was paid on their behalf. And
this morning I want to conclude by reflecting
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on those words together. From Colossians
chapter two, beginning in verse thirteen,
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Paul writes to the Colossians. He
says in you, who were dead in
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your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, God made alive, together with
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him having forgiven all your trespasses by
canceling the record of debt that stood against
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us, with its legal demands.
This he set aside, nailing it to
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the cross. Our life was gone, Paul says, dead in the depths
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of our debt were we imprisoned by
our own sin. But God, rich
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in love and mercy, came to
us in Christ, giving us life by
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uniting us to his son. And
how did he do this, Paul Answers,
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by canceling the record of our debt
that stood against us, with all
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of its legal demands. God took
that bill that we could never repay and
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he nailed it to a Roman cross
alongside his son. And now that notice
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of debt that was insurmountable is stamped
in the blood of Jesus, paid and
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for. He has paid our debt
and he has set us free from what
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held US captive and he has given
us life. And now we stand free,
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free to love, free to show
mercy and, yes, free to
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even forgive, because he first loved, showed mercy and forgave us. Amen.
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Let's pray together.
