The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant — Matthew 18

0:00 Good morning. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. It's nice to have my family here. Think it's been a while since I brought my family along.

0:19 That's who those who those people are who are sitting next to me, my wife and three kids. It's about the only thing which would, it's a good thing they're family. I used to think I was, you know, a moderately patient person. And all hopes for that are gone. I'd like to start off do I need to do anything with this microphone?

0:50 No, I'm good. Okay. I'd like to start off this morning with a little bible trivia. You don't need to respond out loud but just in your mind. Just a simple fill one question, simple fill in the blank.

1:05 It's a bible verse. The Lord Jesus said, If you blank, your Father in heaven will not forgive you your trespasses. If you, your Father in heaven will not forgive you your trespasses. You might think, what could possibly go in that blank? What sin could be so heinous, so awful that the Lord Jesus would take it this seriously to say that if you do it, your Father in heaven will not forgive you your trespasses?

2:04 He is talking about the horrible sin of unforgiveness. As the Lord Jesus concluded the, what's traditionally known as the Lord's Prayer. He said, If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you, your trespasses. Perhaps the strongest teaching in Scripture regarding the topic of forgiveness can be found in Matthew 18. So go ahead and turn there.

2:36 I'm taking a break from your series to discuss this passage which has been on my mind a lot lately. I trust that the Lord will use this beautiful passage, this difficult and hard passage as well. But Matthew 18 powerfully illustrates the rationale and the necessity of forgiveness as well as the consequences of unforgiveness. We'll spend most of our time looking at the parable of the unforgiving servant but with a decent amount of attention paid to the preceding context since this has important information about the topic and sets the scene for what's going to follow. The parable is strategically placed in the context of the mission of the Church, a society which is in the forgiveness business.

3:27 The unit on forgiveness begins in verse 12. What do you think? If a man has a 100 sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the 99 and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the 99 that did not go astray. Even so, it is not the will of your father who is in heaven that any one of these little ones should perish or be lost.

4:17 The... There's another document from history, perhaps you've heard of it, called the Gospel of Thomas, which purports to record sayings of the Lord Jesus. And it's interesting that it also has a version of this little parable, but it's different. According to the Gospel of Thomas, the story goes something like this. There was a shepherd who had not...

4:38 Had a 100 sheep and he lost one of them. And so he left the 99. He went and he found the one sheep that was missing and he threw his arms around it because it was big and fat and said, You are my favorite sheep. That's not the idea of Matthew chapter 18. The Father loves all of his sheep.

4:56 They're all equally important to him and he doesn't want any single one of them to perish. And in fact if you were actually a shepherd this is bad shepherding advice. Just leave the sheep. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense but that's kind of the idea isn't it? That he's just so overcome with emotion that he can't stand it any longer and so it's almost like he irrationally acts and goes to search for the one that's missing.

5:24 Now this unit functions like a hinge. On the one hand it summarizes what proceeds, the church must take whatever action it can, cutting off our hands and our feet and plucking out our eyes, if you look a little bit before, so that it does not cause someone to perish. Perishing is a big deal to God. But on the other hand, the responsibility goes beyond doing all that we can to stop from sin occurring. We also need to be in the job of prevention.

6:26 It's more of the idea of like Jesus' followers. But the idea is that the Lord Jesus is talking to His own. It says that they must be about forgiveness. They must extend reconciliation and forgiveness even if the person who sinned is a sin against you. At this point, someone might be whispering, Who is this who speaks such blasphemies?

6:53 Who can forgive sin but God alone? What do you mean the church is supposed to forgive, extend forgiveness? And, if you look down a little bit farther, he says, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. How can mere mortals, sinners themselves be given such an important task? Well verses 19 to 20 provide the answer.

7:23 It says, again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Now the point of this verse goes way beyond the way that it's often used, which is as long as there's two or three warm bodies in the seats, can continue on with prayer meeting or whatever it is we're doing, and we can count it as a church meeting if there's at least two of us. This probably plays on a Jewish law that was likely in effect at this time which the rabbis insisted on three judges to decide a case in small matters. Assuming that if there were three judges that the Shekinah glory would rest between those three judges.

8:12 The actual quote from the Jewish literature from the Mishnah is, quote, But if two sit together and words of the law are spoken between them, the divine presence or the Shekinah rest between them. Now if this saying goes all the way back to the first century and I think it's likely that it does, then what the Lord Jesus is saying is that if two or three of his followers are together and they make a decision for the case of the Church, the Lord Jesus, the Shekinah glory rests there between them, granting or withdrawing forgiveness. And of course when I say that the Church is in the forgiveness business empowered by the divine presence of the Shekinah glory of the Lord Jesus, this could be misunderstood. Like, we're actually the ones who create or affect the forgiveness. For those of you who are familiar with Roman Catholicism, that's the direction that they take this passage of scripture.

9:08 They're the ones who bind and loose. But we see how the keys of the kingdom are used, how forgiveness happens, for example, the book of Acts. They go out and they proclaim forgiveness and Peter does things like talk about the Lord Jesus and then he concludes his message with words like ten forty three, Whoever, to him give all the prophets witness that whoever believes in him will receive the forgiveness of sins. And as he said these things, the Holy Spirit fell on the people. So we extend forgiveness to people when it's between them and God by talking about the Lord Jesus, by presenting the offer forgiveness found in Christ alone.

10:20 God didn't just sit around with his arms crossed and say, well, if they want to come back, I'll be here waiting. That wasn't God's posture at all. He went out and searched for what was lost and the church also is to go out and search for those who are missing, even if it's someone who used to be one of their numbers. But this is a lot easier said than done. The church is messy business.

10:48 It's been well said that, you know, the business of the church would be pretty pretty easy if it weren't for all the people. But it is all these people. Now of course when I say that I recognize that I make mistakes and we all make mistakes. It does seem like some people they pass their allotted quota though. You know, you're allowed to make this much and then they go beyond that.

11:14 Peter anticipates this and he says, Lord, how many times shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Well, there's good reason to think that Peter probably sees himself as being quite gracious. Later on in history we can read of a Jewish law from the Babylonian Talmud, it actually goes like this, If a man sins a transgression, the first, second and third time he is forgiven, the fourth time he is not. Maybe that idea was around at the time of Jesus and Peter.

11:55 But if it does go back that early it seems like what Peter has done is taken the allotted quota, doubled it, and shoot, let's add one to get it up to the number of perfection. And you're at seven. I just imagine Peter with maybe his chin raised high and his chest puffed out. It's a pretty good number. Seven times is an awful lot.

12:20 But the question itself is misguided and misses the significance of God's desire to rescue the perishing. As the commentator R. T. France says, quote, Peter's question was misconceived as one is if one is still counting however generously one is not forgiving, end quote. Peter's question comes from a place of the way I see it is overly identifying with God and his mission, forgetting that he's also the mission field and not just a missionary.

12:52 How easily Christians, how easily I can fall into a Peter like mentality. How often should we go around forgiving people? Forgetting that I'm the one that's been forgiven. So this leads the Lord Jesus to tell one of the most vivid and graphic parables of his earthly ministry. It's not entirely clear by the way when he says up, when the Lord Jesus responds, let's read those words.

13:20 He says in verse 22, I do not say to you up to seven times but up to 70 times seven. The Greek is difficult here, it could be 77 times. But either way, the point is the same, it's a lot. It's unlimited. And even if you take the bigger number, 70 times seven, four ninety, that number is going be really, really small compared to the kinds of numbers that are used in the parable.

14:27 One was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. He was not able to pay. His master commanded that he be sold with his wife, children, and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him saying, master, have patience with me and I will pay you all. Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt.

15:03 As with so many parables, the king represents God himself. The other character is this guy described as a debtor. He was a man who owed 10,000 talents. The Greek is literally a debtor of 10,000 talents. Can you think of any famous verse and...

15:26 Or any famous passage in the Gospel of Matthew which talks about a debtor? I'll give you a clue. It's probably the most well known verse in all of Matthew. Probably the most... Arguably one of the most well known verses in all the Bible.

15:46 From this very passage... Very famous passage of scripture that I referred to earlier. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us...

16:06 Well, there's some translation differences. But forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So Matthew has already told us, what are we supposed to do with debtors? You forgive them. That's been laid out already so we can anticipate what the king is gonna do.

16:29 But he's a debtor of quite a big amount. 10,000 talents. That's huge. The, some have tried to explain this large amount by saying, well maybe this servant was like a real estate manager and he had some bad business deals that fell through. And that's how he ended up owing so much money.

16:55 But that's not the way parables work. Parables can be outlandish and huge without any explanation. It's just a simple story to get you into the point, to get you to understand that this man is in a lot of trouble. So remember that a a a talent is about 6,000 denarii. And a denarius is about a day's wage.

17:18 So it would take around two hundred thousand years of man labor to make this much money. Assuming like... I mean, people make a different amount, but like a normal minimum wage job, it would take you about 2.5. This would be about $2,500,000,000. The commentator Craig Keener explains, the combined annual tribute of Galilee and Perea just after the death of the rep...

17:50 Repressive Herod the Great came to only 200 talents. The tribute of Judea, Samaria and Idumea came to 600 talents. This fact starkly reveals the laughably hyperbolic character of the illustration. The poor man owes the king more money than existed in circulation in the whole country at the time. Jesus' hearers would have scoffed at the man who was a fool to get so far in debt and that the king would have been such a fool to let him get so far in debt.

18:24 End quote. But in any case, calculating the amount as interesting as it is into our modern currency really isn't the point. In Greek, 10,000 is the highest number there is, with one word. One leading dictionary for Greek suggests that here we actually translate this word zillions. The idea just means, it's an incredible amount.

18:51 So I can't help but wonder if there is some humor in the next line when Jesus says, so there's a debtor who owed him zillions of dollars and guess what? He couldn't pay it. Well, yeah, of course. The next line is in keeping with ancient practices in the Old Testament in the first century. There was no such thing as like a bankruptcy law where you could just kind of hang your head and say, sorry, I don't have it.

19:14 You had to pay it back and so you could be sold with all that you possess including your family. So what the man does is he falls down and he prostrates himself before the king. And his response is ridiculous. Isn't it? Just give me a little bit more time and I can come up with the $2,500,000,000.

19:58 Remember he's feeding the pigs and then he comes to his senses and he says, okay. Here's what I'm going to do. Go back home. I'm going talk to dad and I'm going to say, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you and I'm no longer worthy to be called to your son. Make me like one of your hired slaves.

20:15 And he goes back and he sees his dad and he just his memorized speech and the dad just says, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he completely dismisses the plan with grace that the person thought was unimaginable. Just a free forgive... Free and full forgiveness. It's not difficult to see how this represents the believer in Christ.

20:40 Paul says in Colossians two thirteen, God has made us alive together with him, forgiving us all trespasses. We cannot simply begin to imagine the magnitude of our sin debt. What if God was so gracious that he came to you in a dream or a vision or something like that and he said, I'll make a deal with you. You take this piece of paper and you write out every sin you want me to forgive and I'll forgive those sins. We'd be in a world of hurt, wouldn't we?

21:27 I have no idea how many times I've actually committed an overt sin physically. Let alone all the times that there was good for me to do and I didn't do it. Let alone all the sins of the mind. God alone knows our massive sin debt. And to be precise, it is in the zillions.

21:54 And what God has done for us in Christ is he has paid for all of our sin and he offers us a free and full complete forgiveness. Our response should be like David, oh the happiness of the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin, whose sin is covered, whose transgression is forgiven. We should be full of songs like the one written by Horatio Spafford. My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole is nailed to his cross and I bear it no more.

22:37 Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. The story does not give us the immediate response of this servant. What it does do is it says that the guy eventually walks out, he describes his actions in verse 28. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a 100 denarii and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat and said, Pay me what you owe.

23:20 So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying, Have patience with me and I will pay you all. That sound familiar? And he would not but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. Now there's some fascinating similarities and contrast here with the first interaction. Servant number one is now in the position of the king.

23:49 Yet the way the story is told, are reminders that he's not exactly like the king. After all, he doesn't find one of his servants, he just finds a fellow servant. If the king had condescended to show such grace to someone beneath him, his man finds somebody just like him. But the most obvious contrast is in the amount owed. Now again, a denarius is a day's wage.

24:23 This number is, I calculated out, is point zero zero zero zero zero two of the previous amount. It's very small. From this perspective of the 10,000 talents, this is nothing. But without that frame of reference, if you're not thinking about the 10,000 talents, this is a big number and that's the point. If you're not thinking about the talents, the denarii is a big number.

25:04 It's around maybe $10,000 today. If someone owed you $10,000 how easily would you just forget about it? Forgiving a $10,000 debt is hard. It seems to me like this is the point of the parable. Forgiving someone 77 times is a lot.

25:32 It is hard. It is costly. I don't have a testimony where I've been severely and deeply wronged, or I was talking with a Christian of someone who's been sent to jail, or something like that. But there are people who have gone through horrible tragedies and terrible cruelties from other people. And for God to just say, you must forgive them, It's hard.

26:09 I like this quote, it's attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He says, if you've ever really forgiven somebody, forgiven some real wrong, all forgiveness is suffering. If you say I forgave and I didn't suffer, it wasn't really that serious a wrong. But if you have ever really truly been wronged and you have forgiven it, then you have suffered because all forgiveness is a form of suffering. If someone has wronged you deeply, there is an indelible sense of debt and injustice, a feeling you just can't shrug off.

26:49 And once you sense this deep injustice, this debt, there are only two things you can do. One is you can make the perpetrator pay you, you can find ways to make the perpetrator suffer and pay down the debt or two, you can forgive. I like that. Forgiveness is suffering. It is difficult, it is hard, it is something, it is costly.

27:15 It can feel like just forgetting about a $10 debt. And yet a 100 denarii is nothing if you look at it the right way. But Jesus says we must. And we'll see how even hard, how important it is to forgive in these circumstances with the conclusion of this parable. Before moving on, let me just say a word though about what forgiveness is since I brought up emotionally difficult and hard cases of forgiveness.

27:55 The Bible doesn't give us a mathematically precise watertight definition, But it does give us some guidelines and some illustrations. It's not the same thing as trust, it's not the same thing as not having any consequences. Forgive my children but that doesn't mean they're not going get spanked. David comes to mind as someone whom God forgave. That doesn't mean you're not wise or careful about the situations you put yourself into in the future.

28:26 Instead forgiveness is about the restoration of fellowship. The barrier in our communication is removed and the forgiver releases the person so that the process of restoration can begin. Alright, let's move on to the rest of this parable. Verse 31, So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master after he had called him said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me.

30:13 You know what it means to forgive, but it's just the words and not the reality. Saw my kids here earlier and we're trying to teach them correct behavior. We're trying. Sometimes exceeding, sometimes less so. We teach them the regular things you're supposed to say.

30:33 I'm sorry. I forgive you. Please. Thank you. It happens often where one of them, let's say my littlest, Frida, will...

30:48 She will want something and then Bonnie, the middle one, will give it to her. And I'll prompt Freda and I'll say, Freda, what do you say? And she'll say, I'm sorry. And to make matters worse, Bonnie turns to her and says, I forgive you. They know that the words are right.

31:13 The words aren't right but they know that there's something they're supposed to say in this situation. And sometimes we, it's not maybe that obvious but we know that in this situation, in this context, I've been caught and so I'm supposed to say, I'm sorry and you're supposed to say, it's okay, I forgive you. Or it's not that big of a deal. But we must forgive actually from our heart and attempt the process of reconciliation. Get things moving in that direction.

31:50 You know there's in this concluding section, a strange mixture of motivation, of grace and judgment. Both are there. The perspective of what the king has done should influence everything else that the servant did for the rest of his life. He should have went out of that courtroom elated, overcome with awe. I can't believe I got out of that.

32:28 I actually owed him 10,000 talents and he just forgave me. But his sin is so terrible because he just whistles his way out of the courtroom. No big deal, life goes on another day like nothing big just happened. And our unforgiveness is so morally reprehensible, so wicked because it's like we visited the cross and we just whistle our way out of there. Yep.

33:06 God forgave me. That's his job. Instead of being overcome that we escaped unimaginable consequences because he had compassion on us. But this section also ominously presents before us the motivation of judgment. His master was angry and he delivered him to the torturers until he should pay him all that was due him.

33:38 It would have taken a long time. You don't make much money being tortured. And you wonder what was the that has been a practice for a long time that this would actually happen where people who were in debt like this, in debtors prison, would be tortured. The idea is that like if my brother is in prison, let's say, but I know that he's just in there watching TV, well maybe I'll get to the money, maybe I won't. But if I know that he's being tortured, then friends and family will be all the more motivated to come up with the funds and pay the debt.

34:17 The torturers. You know, there's part of me that thinks, well maybe this is just in there to make the story work. You know, there are parts like that. There are there are parts of parables that are just like that, know. Just gotta make the story finish.

35:01 And once saved, always saved. But Jesus isn't giving us a lesson on systematic theology. He's giving us a lesson on forgiveness. And that's one of the things that's so fascinating about this parable. He doesn't give this parable and say, Now, let me just give you a few caveats.

35:25 Just comfort you and just assure you of certain other things that you know. Instead this parable comes along and it punches us in the gut and then it just walks away. And you're left kind of reeling and staggering. What did I just read there? Jesus makes his pronouncement and then he drops the mic and he's done.

35:49 And he forces us to just think about it. So I don't want to preach this message in a way that steals that punch. The person is handed over to the torturers, the forgiveness is withdrawn. Some translations have tried to mute the text here by translating the word torturers as jailers, but it comes from the normal root that means torment. For example the root is used in Matthew eight twenty nine where Legion, the demon says, have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?

36:32 It's used in Luke sixteen twenty three with the rich man who's in hell and he was being in torment in this flame. It's used in Revelation 14, of those who worship the beast that they also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb. And so on. Now as far as the parable goes, this means that Jesus has in mind something like a Gentile court because Jews weren't allowed to punish people like this.

37:16 One ancient writer describes this as involving whipping instruments like rods and goads and iron chains and hot tar and burning clothes and restraining collars and so on. This is a frightful, scary image that Jesus paints. Now, the point is not to give us a description of hell per se. It's not necessarily to describe hell. But it is to say, in very graphic terms that forgiveness is withdrawn.

37:53 The king reverses his earlier decision. Jesus' parable not only answers Peter's question with the answer, Peter, it's an unlimited number of times. But it warns Peter to think carefully about the spiritual condition indicated by the desire to count. Love keeps no record of wrongs. We read that this morning.

38:24 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. To keep such a record is to forget the unconditional grace of God bestowed through the cross. This vividly illustrates what Jesus had said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Or be careful, because at the judgment you judge, you will be judged, and the measure you measure will be measured to you. The purpose of this whole story is to emphasize in flaming letters.

39:53 You are a God who is not willing that any should perish. And so you you found us where we were, on the mountains bleak and bare. You sent the Lord Jesus to die for us. We see so clearly on the cross what forgiveness truly looks like as he cried, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, the very ones who put them there... Put him there.

40:36 We pray that we would be more like our savior, the Lord Jesus, that our lives and our outlook would be transformed by the gospel. So we pray, Lord, that you would renew our minds. Help us to be more like the Lord Jesus. Forgive us for counting sins and forgetting what you've done. And impress upon us the seriousness of this topic to let others go, to release the debt, to forgive one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us.

41:27 And we pray these things in his name. Amen.