May 5, 2013
Matthew 18:21-35
Matt Rawlings
Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother
sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?"
·
I find myself often encouraged by Peter – because he asks
things that most of us probably would have asked. In this case, I am encouraged
by Peter’s question for a couple of simple reasons:
o
The first thing I am encouraged by is seeing that rivalry,
self-concern and sin occur naturally in any group of disciples living in close
community together. I am encouraged by this because we all sin and we are all
plagued by rivalry and self-concern and it is encouraging to know that this is
not a new or unexpected struggle or a struggle that just occurs because we are
dumb or something is unusually wrong with us.
o
The other reason I am encouraged is that it is expected
that people in the church will sin. It isn’t ok to sin against each other, but
it shouldn’t shock us – it is expected. It is also expected that people in the
church will need to be confronted and that those offended will also need to
forgive.
·
That is encouraging isn’t it? Because if you are honest,
all of us from time to time feel like something is unusual or something must be
really wrong when people in the church sin against us and each other. It is
encouraging to know that Jesus wasn’t chocked by sin and He wasn’t shocked that
there would be a need for forgiveness and it is even more encouraging to know
that Jesus has addressed how we should handle sin and how we should forgive
those who do sin.
·
At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has just
finished telling His disciples in verse 15, that "If your brother sins
against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he
listens to you, you have gained your brother.” And He proceeded to give them
directions about how to restore someone who does not repent to begin with when
they are confronted.
·
For us, in the church today, we can get hung up on the
details about how to confront someone and when we take one or two others and
when to take it to the church and we can wrestle with what it means to tell it
to the church and what that might look like.
·
But Peter isn’t stuck on that. Peter has been listening
closely. And when Jesus said, “If he listens to you, you have gained your
brother.”, Peter realizes the implications of this. He probably realizes that
there is a cost to forgiveness. He didn’t seem to be hung up on what to do when
someone didn’t respond well to confrontation. From his question, it would seem
that Peter was aware that it is difficult to forgive someone when they do
respond well to confrontation.
·
It is difficult to forgive someone because it costs
something. It is difficult to forgive when someone responds and asks our
forgiveness because some part of us wants justice. Perhaps some part of us
wants people to pay or some part of us wants people to hurt like they have hurt
us.
·
You see, sin is messy and relationships are messy. If you
are around fellow Christians long enough, you are going to sin against each
other and irritate each other.
·
How you and I respond to others when they sin against us
reveals whether or not we understand God’s mercy towards us to forgive us from
all of our sins. How we respond to people who sin against us reveals whether we
really understand not only God’s forgiveness but His rich grace.
·
Did you get that? According to Jesus, whether we forgive
others and how we forgive others is evidence of whether we have really been
born again and received God’s forgiveness ourselves.
Main Idea:
Understanding the Father’s forgiveness, forgiven sinners forgive sinners.
·
Peter is clearly listening closely and when Jesus says
that if your brother responds you’ve won your brother – Peter knows this is
difficult. The thing he wrestles with are "what are the limits?"
·
Maybe you’ve wrestled with the same questions – maybe you
find yourself asking today:
o
What are the limits to forgiveness? How many times do I
have to forgive my brother for the same thing?
o
Do we just keep forgiving? At what point is it too much?
At what point is someone else’s sin against us too much to forgive?
o
And is there a point when it is ok to stop forgiving
someone?
·
The reason why God has given this interchange to us in Scripture
is that these are all important questions for all of us to answer and not just
for Peter to know because he was one of the original 12.
·
But before we judge Peter for being stingy with
forgiveness, we need to understand that when he suggests forgiving someone
seven times for the same thing that he was being generous. Peter probably
thought he was suggesting a pretty great thing to Jesus in fact. Because according
to the Jewish customs and teaching of the day, the Rabbi’s would have said that
you forgive someone up to three times but after that they are no longer to be
forgiven. But Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with that.
Jesus said to him, "I do not say
to you seven times, but seventy times seven."
·
And Jesus says, “No, Peter, not seven times but seventy
times seven” – or some versions interpret the phrase as seventy seven. But
Jesus’ point is not for Peter to do math or keep a checklist of how many times
he has forgiven his brother – Jesus gives Peter a number that was hyperbole –
He wasn’t giving Peter or you or me a figure to do the math for when we can
stop forgiving
·
The reason we know that is because of the example that
Jesus gives in the parable is of the vast, unlimited forgiveness of the king
compared to the unforgiveness of the servant. Jesus is telling Peter and all of
His disciples to forgive like the king and not like the wicked servant.
“The opening exhortation to forgive without limit is undergirded
by a parable which compares God’s forgiveness and ours; it is because there is
no limit to God’s generosity to His undeserving people that they in their turn
cannot claim the right to withhold forgiveness from their fellow disciples. A
community of the forgiven must be a forgiving community.” -France, R. T.
·
So, Jesus tells Peter and the disciples a parable and He
tells them that the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wished to
settle accounts with his servants
Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to
settle accounts with his servants.
·
This king had servants and he was sovereign over them.
This story is meant to explain how the kingship of God works.
·
In the passage, it mentions servants four times and when
you see the word servants, it is a word that has been softened or changed to
suit American and English ears. The word is really either slave or bondservant
– someone who belongs to someone else. But because the word is so open to misunderstanding,
we have the word servant. The word is used four times to show that the
bondservants belong to the King – He has authority over them.
·
In the parable we see how God handles His authority over
His servants.
·
So the king went to fairly and justly settle accounts
with them, he found a servant who owed him an unimaginably large amount of
money.
When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 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.
·
Now, what we need to understand is that a talent was
somewhere between 15 and 20 years worth of wages. So, 10,000 talents would have
represented 10,000 time 20 years worth of wages. It is an amount that no one
person could possible ever repay.
·
When Jesus was telling this parable, the talent was the
largest known amount of money and in Greek, ten thousand was the largest number
that the language had a term for. So in combining the two, Jesus intends for
His hearers to understand that it was the largest amount of money imaginable
that the bondservant owed.
·
So, we have this slave who owes more than anyone could
possibly repay in several lifetimes. (And if you remember Jesus said the
kingdom of heaven could be compared to this parable.) The king orders him to be
sold along with his family. This was a very common punishment in that day when
someone owed so much that they couldn’t repay. So, the king is going to sell
him and his wife and children and then accept whatever payment was made from
that – even though the payment would never cover all of the debt.
·
It wasn’t fair to the king because the king didn’t get
back everything that was owed. But at least there was some justice for the king
and the slave would still keep his life. But the story doesn’t end there.
So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, "Have
patience with me, and I will pay you everything."
·
The servant is clearly distraught and falls on his knees
and begs the king for patience. But in doing so, the servant says something
absurd – something that Peter and the other listeners would have scoffed at. He
says “Have patience with me and I will pay you everything.”
·
Yeah, right! There was no way that the slave could ever
repay the king – it was an impossible debt for the slave to repay the king. There
was no amount of patience that the king could have that would ever allow the
slave to make enough money to repay the debt.
·
But then, just as astounding to the first listeners,
Jesus tells them...
And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.
·
Peter and everyone else who heard Jesus say this must
have thought, “What! That is unreal – there is no way any master, any king
would ever release a servant just because he asked and then forgive him such an
unimaginably huge debt.”
·
The master in this story is like no other master – no
other king. The master in this story is unbelievably merciful to a clearly
wrong servant who just asks for patience and then says he will do something he can't
ever do. The master didn’t forgive the man because he thought he would actually
get paid. He didn’t say, ok, I will let you work off the debt. He didn’t even
agree to the man’s terms, the master did more than the slave was asking for.
The master went far beyond what the slave could ever hope for – the master
introduces an idea that the slave knew he didn’t deserve and didn’t even ask
for.
·
The master doesn’t say pay me and he didn’t hand him a
bill – the master freely forgave the man’s debt. He forgave the man and he
forgave the man out of pity.
·
Can you imagine if this was you? Maybe you’ve owed a huge
amount of money before or maybe you currently owe a lot of money. Or imagine if
you owed this much money to someone – so much that you could never hope to ever
repay in thousands of years of working if you could live that long. Then
imagine that the one you owed the debt to said he would forgive you all of your
debt and you don’t ever have to repay it!
·
Not only is the penalty removed but there is no
punishment and you are free. What relief you would feel – what joy – what
gratitude and what freedom! What an amazingly king – what an extremely merciful
and overly generous king.
·
And Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like this – God
is like this. God forgives His servants who have unpayable debts like this. God
initiates and it is God’s idea to forgive.
·
And God doesn’t forgive because there is any hope of
earnings to be paid – God forgives his bondservants – those He has bought with
a price – and He forgives them out of pity – out of mercy, not because there is
any deserving or earning. God forgives completely the unimaginably huge debt
that we could never repay in thousands of lifetimes. What mercy – what grace –
what kindness, what a good God, what a good master.
·
Peter and the other disciples must have wondered, what
will this man do now? What will this servant do now that he is forgiven all of
the debt? So Jesus says...
But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him,
saying, "Pay what you owe."
·
What! The same servant – the one who had just been forgiven
the unpayable debt when he didn’t deserve it – the one who had just received
the unmerited mercy of his master goes out and chokes one of his fellow
servants! The outrage. Peter and the others must have felt a righteous anger
towards this character.
·
Then, it only gets worse. His fellow slave did the same
thing he did with his king.
So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, "Have patience
with me, and I will pay you."
·
This time, the fellow slave actually could have repaid
him. The amount that he owed wasn’t unimaginable. It wasn’t more than one could
ever hope to repay. His fellow slave owed him a hundred denarii. Since one denarii
was a day's wage for a worker, he owed him about a third of a year’s wages. It
wasn’t an insignificant amount – it really would have cost the man something to
forgive a debt like this.
·
Jesus could have said a day's wage or even a few days'
wages – or perhaps a week or two’s worth of wages and most people would have
been able to fathom forgiving this amount easily. But although Jesus is
contrasting the extravagant forgiveness of the king with this man, he still
uses a significant amount of money.
·
There was a real cost and there was a significant debt –
even though the debt paled in comparison and in comparison was nothing. But in
terms of their subsistence, largely agrarian economy in that day, the debt was
real and the man would have felt it.
·
The thing we are meant to keep in mind though, was that
regardless of whether the debt was real – the man had just been forgiven an
unimaginably huge debt and shown extreme mercy. But instead of learning mercy
and showing mercy – he showed that he was unaffected by the king’s mercy and he
refuses what was a reasonable request to repay the debt. He not only chokes his
fellow slave but puts him in prison.
He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.
·
Like Peter probably reacted, and like we are meant to
react, his fellow servants were astounded that someone could do this and be so
unaffected by such great mercy and forgiveness.
When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly
distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken
place.
·
They were greatly distressed. The NASB puts it well when
it say they were deeply grieved.
·
This was wrong. So they told their master everything. And
the master wasn’t pleased. Jesus tells us...
Then his master summoned him and said to him, "You wicked servant! I
forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me."
·
You didn’t even ask me to forgive the debt you just
pleaded with me and you couldn’t even repay like you said you could, but I
forgave you all that debt. I forgave not just a part but all of it….
"And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant,
as I had mercy on you?"
·
You see, the master expected the servant to learn from
him. He expected the servant to be like him. He expected that his merciful
forgiveness would have an effect on his slave.
·
But there wasn’t any real effect in his life – there was
no difference – he hadn’t been greatly affected by the forgiveness he had
received. So, Jesus tells us that...
And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he
should pay all his debt.
·
If you are reading the ESV version, you may notice that
there is a footnote for the word jailor and the footnote just says simply,
“Greek = torturers”. I’m not sure why they chose to soften the word to jailor
because it has a very different connotation, but instead of jailer here, the NASB and other
major English translations get it right when they say that he delivered him
over to the torturers.
·
Not only was he imprisoned until he could repay but he
was delivered over to be tortured until he would repay. Everyone knows though,
that you can’t repay debts from prison.
·
My cousin was in jail and he got a job working for about 50
cents an hour. Let's say though that this man somehow got a great paying job
while in prison – there was still no hope for release ever because there would
be no way to repay thousands of years worth of debt in one lifetime. This was a
life sentence to jail and not just jail but imprisonment where there would be
torture for the rest of his life.
·
I imagine that Peter and the other disciples would have
been saying – “good, that’s what he deserved – that is justice” that guy
deserved to be thrown in jail for life.
·
But then, Jesus says the third shocking thing. Now,
remember, he is telling this parable to Peter and his disciples. This parable
isn’t being told to the masses who don’t know Him. Jesus turns to Peter and the
disciples and says...
"So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not
forgive your brother from your heart."
·
At this moment, Peter must have felt like King David when
he was confronted by the prophet Nathan. The prophet Nathan told King David a
story about a man who had so many of his own sheep and went and stole a lamb
from a man who had only one sheep and David was outraged and asked who is this
man and then Nathan says, “you are the man”.
·
Jesus is saying to His disciples and to you and me now,
“by the way, you are the one”. You are the servant who owes your king a debt
that can never be repaid or hope to be repaid with countless years of working. You
had a debt so large that there was no hope, no way, no possibility for getting
out of it. Your debt was hopelessly unforgiveable and it is absurd that you
would ever even think that you could make up for it or pay God back – there is
no way. But you have a king that is astoundingly merciful. You have a king who
has had pity on you and chosen to forgive you not because you earned it or
because you are somehow attractive to Him on your own. You have a king who
takes pity on those with unpayable debt and your king is the kind of king that
forgives completely."
·
You have been set free from having to repay. The penalty
for your debts has been removed completely. You are forgiven! And this
forgiveness is meant to change you – it is meant to have an effect on you.
·
And Peter – or Sally, or Joan or Jim or Bob or Matt or
Julie or whoever you are - when you are faced with having someone who owes you
a debt – the only appropriate response is to forgive.
·
The main idea is that because our King has forgiven us,
forgiven disciples are meant to be forgiving disciples. But if you aren’t
affected by the king’s forgiveness – if you don’t get it and if you don’t
forgive, even real debts, then the king takes it very seriously.
·
You see, the punishment we deserve is to be thrown into
jail and imprisoned for eternity and tortured to pay for our debts forever. But
our King has forgiven all who plead with Him for mercy. And His forgiveness is
meant to change us – to change who we are and to change what we live for and
how we live.
·
Jesus looked at Peter and it is like He is looking at
each of us today and saying, “you are the servant who has been forgiven an
unpayable debt – will you forgive?”
·
In answer to Peter’s question – Jesus says, "Peter,
there is no number of times when it is no longer ok to forgive – Peter if you
think this way then you don’t get God’s
forgiveness for you. There is no limit to God’s forgiveness of you and so, you
can forgive whatever your fellow bondservant owes you because it will never,
ever compare to what you owe and what you have been forgiven of. There is not
meant to limit to the number of times we forgive others."
·
This is hard. It is hard for a few reasons – because like
the evil servant, we have evil desires for vengeance. We have wicked desires to
make someone else pay.
·
But Jesus will have none of it. He says something
frightening that is meant to be frightening. He says, "So also my heavenly
Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from
your heart."
·
He is talking to His disciples. And we can’t quickly
dismiss this as thinking it doesn’t apply to us. Jesus said “So also my
heavenly Father will do to every one of you.”
·
In this parable there are four simple points that we
should all take away.
1. Every one of us has an unpayable debt to
the King
·
Jesus is talking to every one of His disciples. He was
saying to Peter and He is saying to each of us through this parable that every
one of us has an unpayable debt to the King.
·
I want you to think for just a moment about every bad
thing you’ve ever done.
o
Every thought you’d ever had that didn’t honor God and
was full of hate or lust or envy, coveting, bitterness, resentment, jealousy or
pride.
o
Everything you’ve ever done that wasn’t completely holy
and righteous.
o
Everything you’ve ever done to disobey your parents,
disobey God, rebel, break man’s laws and break God’s law.
o
Every act of unkindness, every small act of rudeness,
every unkind or harsh word.
o
Every half-truth told, every little white lie – every big
lie, every time you hurt someone else.
o
Every time you have been unfaithful. Every time you’ve
been lazy or indulged in gluttony.
o
Every time you’ve failed to do what you should have done.
o
Every time you’ve not loved God with your whole heart,
mind and soul
o
Every time you’ve not loved your neighbor as yourself.
·
Every one of us has an unpayable debt to the king. None
of us can throw stones and say we’ve not sinned far too many times to count.
And yet with each sin, each time we’ve sinned, we accrued a massive debt
against a holy, eternal God that has to be paid for.
·
But here is the good news from this parable, the second
thing I want us to see...
2. The King mercifully forgives unpayable debts
·
We need only ask Him for forgiveness and God
will have pity on us and forgive us of all – all- of our debts – all of our
sins against Him.
·
If we ask Him and trust in the fact that Jesus
died to take the penalty for all our sins on Himself, the King of all mercifully
forgives our unpayable debts.
3. Receiving forgiveness is meant to affect
the way we live
·
If we have new life, we will be growing and we
will be forgiving others.
·
If we have been truly affected by the father’s
forgiveness, it will affect how we live.
4. If we don’t forgive, it is dangerous
·
Jesus was talking to those who He had called in person
and He was giving them a stern warning. So this warning also applies to every
one of you – every one of us who have been called by Jesus.
·
We shouldn’t try to quickly soften the blow or explain it
away as not applying to us – no, Jesus IS speaking to all of His disciples –
every one of us when He says this.
·
So, what does this mean? Does this mean we can lose our
salvation if we don’t forgive? No – but it means that if we are the kind of
person who doesn’t forgive, God doesn’t take it lightly and God is not ok with
it.
·
It also means we should be concerned if we really have
been affected by His mercy and grace – because if we have received His
unlimited, extreme forgiveness, then it should have an effect and if it doesn’t
have an effect, we should be very concerned.
·
And the effect that Jesus says God’s forgiveness of us is
meant to have is that we are to forgive our brothers and sisters from the
heart.
·
We aren’t just to give them lip service and say we
forgive them – we are to really and truly actually forgive them at the core of
who we are – at the core of our desire and emotion, we are to release and free
others from the debt that they owe us and not make them repay in the way we
think about them or feel about them. We are to forgive for real and not just go
through the motions.
·
This is hard – because this means that we will no longer
treat our brother or sister as if they have any debt against us if we forgive
from the heart. We will no longer think of them as if they owe us.
·
This means not harboring bitterness or resentment any
more.
·
This means not saying anything negative or insinuating
anything negative about someone else to subtly make them pay in their
reputation and punish them even if they don’t know it.
·
This means having the same, God-kind of mercy towards
someone else that doesn’t hold their debts- their sins against them...even when
they are real debts.
·
You see, Jesus used a real amount of 100 denarii because
Peter as a fisherman would have felt that a third of a year’s wage was
significant.
·
Someone else may have sinned against you significantly. Jesus
isn’t saying the debt isn’t real or it isn’t significant. But He is saying that
it can never compare to the debt you’ve been forgiven.
·
Yes, there will be a cost to forgive and yes, you will really
feel it and experience a loss of
some type. But doesn’t the overwhelming mercy of our King, who forgives us
and then also adopts us as His children – the One who we can now call
Father - doesn’t our Father’s
forgiveness enable us to forgive others?
·
In the parable, the slave didn’t need to be so upset
about what he was owed, because he didn’t have to repay a debt to the king any
more.
·
Our unforgiveness won’t earn us anything. Making someone
else pay for how they’ve sinned against us won’t benefit us in any way either. Jesus
is calling all of us who have been forgiven as His disciples to be forgiving
disciples. And we can do this because God has forgiven us.
·
His forgiveness doesn’t just serve as a motive to forgive;
His forgiveness frees us from our sin and enables us to forgive fellow sinners.
·
Who do you need forgive? What debt do people owe you? How
have you been sinned against?
·
Jesus doesn’t minimize how we’ve been sinned against –
the sins of others are real and it really costs to let them go unpunished. Jesus
acknowledges the sins against us and says, I know it is real and I know it
costs you to forgive. I know it hurts, but I want you to know the Father’s
forgiveness and forgive from the heart like Him.
·
We are called to a radical kind of living and loving that
forgives from the heart because we have been forgiven.
·
I believe God wants us all to understand His forgiveness
of us more deeply – because if we are not forgiving others, it is likely
because we really don’t get how much we’ve been forgiven. Let’s pray and ask
God to reveal His mercy to us and change our hearts – to free us from sinful
desires for vengeance and be set free as we set others free by forgiving them.
