Preached · March 1, 2015
Series · The Cure
Text · Matthew 18; Matthew 18.21-35
Review: The Cure
We are in the middle of a series called The Cure, and this series is kind of an extension of what we've been talking about for years: emotional maturity, growing up, maturing in Christ, and what that means for how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive God. Because, believe it or not, we believe some lies about God, and we believe some lies about ourselves. So we want to confront those lies for the untruth that they are, and learn what Scripture has to say about who we are and who God is.
Let me do a little bit of review. So far we've made some very important choices. We've decided that we want to trust God rather than attempt to please God, because what we're trusting is that God has always loved us anyway. And because we believe that, we believe we don't need to cover up, we don't need to put on masks to hide who we really are, but rather can reveal who God has made us to be. Because we worship a God of love, not a God of shame. And because of all this — this is what we talked about last week — when we do mess up, when we do screw up (because we do, and we will), we need to learn to tell on ourselves rather than hide ourselves. Last week we talked about the importance not only of confessing our sins, the times when we fail, but also of confessing, of telling others, when we're tempted to. It's in that way that we can have a community together, a community that reflects God together.
Now, last week we focused on the communal aspect: what happens when I sin in terms of the community? We talked about the importance of caring, of bearing one another's burdens. But this week I want to change focus from the community to the individual. This still applies either way, but: what happens specifically when I'm the one sinned against? When someone's failing is against me, how do I respond?
How Do We Handle Forgiveness?
Our question is: how do we handle forgiveness? This is a question we've asked for thousands of years. To what extent do I forgive? How many times do I forgive? What does it, or doesn't it, mean to forgive? The Jewish rabbis who lived in and before the time of Jesus, known for their sage wisdom, suggested that forgiveness should happen up to three times.
So if you have your Bibles, or your smartphones, or your iPads, head to the book of Matthew chapter 18. Last week we looked at Paul's understanding of what happens when someone in the community messes up; this week we want to focus on a parable of Jesus. Peter, one of Jesus's disciples, is asking some of the very same questions we still ask today: if someone sins against me, what am I supposed to do? And Jesus responds in a surprising, unexpected way. Let's stand for the reading of the Gospel:
Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since the servant was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' And the servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go. "But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me,' he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused. Instead he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. "When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything. Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said. 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?' And in his anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back all he owed. "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart." — Matthew 18:21-35
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, for the truth you have put into your Scriptures. Now, God, we ask humbly: illuminate them for us. Show us your truth. Where we have blinders that make it difficult to see what you are saying, would you remove those blinders to help us see, understand, and become who you want us to be. Father, I humbly ask that you would use these lips and this tongue not to speak my agenda but to speak your truth, and that you would open up the ears and the hearts of your congregation that they might hear, know, and be. We pray all these things in unity with the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus. Amen. You may be seated.
A Whopper of a Question
Okay, so we've got a whopper of a question and a parable here — especially this conclusion. What does it all mean? Am I supposed to keep a journal of how many times I've forgiven someone, and once I hit 78, hire an assassin? Does God have torturers on retainer if I insist that my brother pay back the five dollars I lent him, like a mob scene — "Where's my money, bro? Where's my money?" Seriously, though: how far is too far when it comes to forgiveness? What's realistic? What's the difference between grace and stupidity?
So, like we did last week, I want to go through this passage phrase by phrase and try to explain what's going on.
"Up to Seven Times?"
Peter goes to Jesus and asks, "Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" Now, Peter thinks he's being over-the-top generous, because the rabbinical consensus of the day was that you should forgive someone maybe up to three times if you were particularly mature and gracious. So Peter goes to Jesus all la-di-da: "How about seven? That's a perfect number. Bet Jesus will think a lot of me then." And Jesus responds, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Now, some get caught up on whether this is seven times seven or seventy-seven, depending on your translation. But clearly that's not the point. If you're counting, you're probably not forgiving — you're just postponing revenge. The point is not the number but the attitude. Essentially, what Jesus is saying is: if the forgiveness were real in the first place, you're not going to be keeping score.
Now, I deleted this image and put it back, and deleted it and put it back. This is an Aston Martin One-77 — a really nice car. They only made 77 of them. James Bond hasn't even driven one of these; that's how rare they are. If you can't forgive more than the number of these cars Aston Martin made, you're doing it wrong. Okay? Peace, I'm out of here. No, no, no.
"The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like..."
So Peter asks the question, Jesus gives a response — but clearly this is a difficult thing to say. Seventy-seven times? That's impossible. So Jesus launches into a parable: "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like..." When Jesus uses this language, we know some stuff is about to go down; we know a parable is coming.
Two things we need to talk about before we get into it. One, parables are notoriously difficult to interpret. Sometimes they're clear and obvious and make sense, and sometimes we just scratch our heads: "What are you getting at, Jesus?" Parables function in different ways depending on the type. Sometimes they're allegories, where each point corresponds to some part of reality. And sometimes there's just one main point you're supposed to get. So there's a danger in over-interpreting, or under-interpreting, what it's trying to say. A parable is basically a story with truth. One poet said it's "an imaginary garden with real toads in it." Not every metaphor or allegory, by definition, has a one-to-one correlation with real life. So we enter this parable cautiously.
The second thing to keep in mind: what does Jesus mean by "the kingdom of heaven"? The way I was raised in the church, in my faith, I substituted the phrase "kingdom of heaven" for just "heaven" — as if Jesus was trying to explain some truth about the afterlife. Now, this is going to be the refrain of today's sermon: the kingdom of heaven is not the afterlife. The kingdom of heaven is what Jesus is inaugurating, instituting, bringing about by his presence, by his ministry on earth. The kingdom of heaven is the place where God's will and our actions and our character meet together. We pray this in the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come" — how? — "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." So when Jesus says "the kingdom of heaven is like," do not automatically put into your mind that this is an explanation of what heaven is like. No — this is an explanation of what it's like when God's will is done here, by us, by you and me, this community of Jesus.
Ten Thousand Talents
So the parable begins: "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him." Let's talk about talents and numbers. A denarius — plural, denarii — was about a day's wage, roughly twenty to sixty dollars. (A lot of caution here: these numbers are super, super rough. When you're translating numbers from 2,000 years ago, there's no direct correlation; I can't just call up the Congressional Budget Office.) A talent is 6,000 days' wages — it was also a measurement of weight, fifty to seventy-five pounds of precious metal, gold or silver. So we're talking about twenty years' worth of work, somewhere between $120,000 and $360,000.
So this servant owes the king not a denarius, not a talent, but ten thousand talents — not twenty years' worth of work, but 200,000 years' worth of work. He's in this king's debt for $1.2 to $3.6 billion. But we're still not really getting the point. Ten thousand — the Greek word is myrios, where we get the word "myriad" — and for the Greek language, that was the largest denomination around. We have millions and billions and trillions; for them it was the myrios, ten thousand of something. And a talent was the largest possible measurement you could have. They had minas and shekels; we have ounces and pounds; they had talents. So Jesus squishing these two words together is basically the equivalent of someone saying "a kajillion" — just an impossibly high amount of money. That's how much debt this servant is in.
So, "since the servant was not able to pay" — obviously — "the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt." There's no chance in 200,000 years he could possibly pay. So what's our meaning so far? I think we can fairly safely say God is meant to represent the king, and the servants are meant to represent God's people. And remember, this is not about the afterlife, so this settling of accounts does not equal final judgment — because we see later on that forgiveness is offered, and we know we can experience forgiveness now, today, in this moment. God doesn't wait until the end of time to offer forgiveness. Rather, we're getting a picture of how things are today: we are impossibly indebted to God. No matter what kinds of sins we've committed, the fact remains that they are all sins against a perfectly holy God — not to mention that we owe our very existence to him. Our rebellion, in reality, really does demand death.
Now, I want you to note this. When we talk about forgiveness, forgiveness has to actually mean something. It has to be willing to admit that pain, hurt, debt has occurred. To appreciate God's forgiveness, we must be willing to admit our own sin. And the same is true for us: if we want to be people of forgiveness, we must be willing to acknowledge that we have been hurt in order to forgive. Forgiveness is not the same thing as saying, "Ah, it's no big deal." It's not the same as saying we'll tolerate the wrong or excuse the person. Forgiveness acknowledges the truth that hurt has happened, pain has occurred, and we don't pretend otherwise.
The Debt Canceled
"At this the servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.'" Now, the servant is clearly being ridiculous. "And the servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go." We're getting an image of God's mercy and forgiveness and compassion here. God didn't make a payment plan. He didn't consolidate and lower the interest rate. He didn't do a credit card transfer. The debt is canceled. It's forgiven. The debt is no more.
Paul talks about this in Colossians 2:
When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
Jesus became human in the flesh, became sin in the flesh, and was crucified, pierced, nailed down on our behalf. So we don't have to earn this cancellation of debt. It is done. It won't happen someday in the future — it's already atoned for, forgiven, and canceled. It's not a new transaction when we get saved; it's been done.
The Unforgiving Servant
"So when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me,' he demanded." Now, a hundred denarii would be about a hundred days' pay — two hundred to six hundred dollars. When Jesus's listeners hear this, they're shocked on multiple levels. One, the amount is so much smaller than what has been forgiven. Two, you're probably shocked that this guy is asking for the money at all. And three, most of all, you're shocked by the manner in which he demands it: he grabs, he chokes, he yells. This guy is not looking for justice; he's looking for vengeance.
He has stopped seeing his fellow servant as a human and has instead dehumanized this person into merely the debt they owe, the pain they've caused, the hurt they've inflicted. And he wants vengeance. Vengeance wants to make others not only suffer, but to make sure they know they've suffered because of what they did to us. Vengeance sees people not as people but only as the sum of their mistakes. "He didn't just lie to me — he's a liar." "She didn't just steal from me — she's a thief." "They didn't just fire me — they're self-righteous pricks." And so on.
"And his fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.' But he refused. Instead he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt." Notice: the second servant fell to his knees and begged — the exact same words used of the first servant toward the king. And here's a point of contrast. The king at least had the sense to sell off the slave to at least partially repay the debt. But this first servant is so shortsighted. In what possible way is throwing someone into prison going to help them pay off their debt? They're never going to make an income again.
And when we refuse to forgive, when we hold on to our pain, hold grudges, we are doing nothing to actually bring healing to our pain. We're essentially throwing the person who hurt us into a prison of our own heart, demanding that they pay back the debt against us, but at the same time robbing them of the power and opportunity to do so.
"You Wicked Servant"
"And when the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything. And the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said. 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?'" Notice: the debt is still canceled. That fact hasn't changed. It happened.
To me, the way I read this, the primary sin of this servant boils down to the fact that he failed to appreciate, to fully understand, to realize, to live into the depth, the power, the mercy, the hugeness of the forgiveness he had been given. His biggest mistake was that he continued to live as if he had never experienced forgiveness himself. Because of this king, he is now $1.2 billion richer than he was before — he has a net worth he didn't have before — and yet he lived as if that weren't the case and demanded his two hundred dollars back.
Forgiveness can never be something we force out of ourselves. We can't just scrape it up or make it happen. Forgiveness can only ever be a reflection of the forgiveness God has already given us. So the answer to the king's question — "Shouldn't you have had mercy?" — is, of course, yes.
Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians chapter 5:
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us this message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
If we desire to be people of forgiveness, the goal is not just to sit and think really, really hard about how to forgive this person we really don't like, that we really don't want to forgive, who has hurt us so much — because it'll never work, it'll never happen. But when we grow and mature and open up our realization to the hugeness of what God has done, that transforms us so that we have the ability to forgive others.
Who Ends Up Tortured?
"And in his anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart." Now, remember: is this passage about the afterlife? No. This is not about going to hell. Let's clear that up — this parable is not about going to hell. And, just to talk parable for a moment: do we know from other passages of Scripture that God has torturers under his employment, that he has Jack Bauer on retainer? Of course not.
If this parable is about life here and now, then what we see is that when we refuse to forgive, when we hold on to our pain, when we dehumanize, when we seek vengeance — then the one who ends up tortured is us. The one who ends up imprisoned is us. When we read this final sentence of Jesus's — "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you" — we read it with shock or dismay. "I thought this passage was about forgiveness. God doesn't sound very forgiving, does he?" But wait — this cycle can be broken. That torture can stop. The road to the healing of our pain can begin when we forgive our brother or sister from our hearts.
This is not a statement about who's going to hell and who's not. This is not a statement about whether or not God has forgiven you — because, remember, "Didn't I cancel your debt?" Yes, the answer is yes. But if you insist on living as if my forgiveness never happened, God says, "Well then, okay, that's the way you want to have it." The biggest fear any of us should ever have is when God says, "Okay, thy will be done." C.S. Lewis put it this way: hell is a door locked from the inside. God isn't holding that door closed. When we insist on living as if God's forgiveness never happened, then, yeah — the little Jack Bauers that live in our hearts start turning the screws.
Response
I want to show you a video. It's a little long, but it's about some friends of Emily's and mine — we've sat at their table, we've dined with them, back in Indiana where Emily and I are from. It's a powerful story about forgiveness that I want you to experience. I don't show you this to invoke guilt — as if to say, "Well, she forgave the guy who killed her husband, so you have no excuse." I think she said it best. Sherry said, "I can't explain it, except that we were given an extra measure of grace." Because, remember, forgiveness doesn't ultimately come from conjuring it out of ourselves. It comes from realizing the depth of the Father's forgiveness, focusing on that, and then living in response to it.
I'm going to invite the worship team forward. Forgiveness is not forgetting. It's not putting yourself back into harm's way. It's freeing yourself from the expectation of vengeance, allowing the person you need to forgive to be human again in your sight. Because once you recognize their humanity, then you can, with God's help, even wish God's best for them.
So we're going to spend a little extended time in response this morning, and Lisa will explain a little bit more. But as we think about forgiveness and how to respond, I just want to remind you: this is not an event. It's not something that just happens because it happens to be ten o'clock on Sunday. So what I want to invite you to do is just seek God right now. If you need to forgive yourself, or someone in your life, seek God. Contemplate his forgiveness for you as we respond to his word.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
