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March 9/10, 2013
Jason Meyer | Matthew 18:21-35
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?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 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. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 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.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 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. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. —Matthew 18:21–35
Introduction
Last week we looked at the storm of suffering. We learned that the storm of suffering becomes an opportunity for Jesus to show us his glory. We learned that suffering whittles away all other hopes around us or in us, so that we must look to our only hope in suffering: Jesus’ suffering for us.
This week we pause to consider the firestorm of conflict, which can be a form of great suffering and anguish. It is one thing to have something impersonal, like a physical storm, destroy your house; it is quite a different thing to have a person devastate your life. We live in a fallen world and so this personal devastation takes on many different forms: an abusive husband, a rebellious, mean-spirited teenager, a colleague who slanders your reputation, a close friend who deserts you in your time of need.
It is incredibly painful when relationships come apart at the seams. The reason for this rending pain is that some relationships are woven into the fabric of our lives. Therefore, they leave a terrible tear when they come apart at the seams. It is not just the particular offense that you feel. The offense and the hurt are compounded by the loss of a relationship. The closer that relationship—the sharper the pain is. In other words, part of the pain of conflict is mourning the loss of what you used to have in that relationship.
Relational pain can be devastating. I have often told my wife that I feel like I can almost go through anything as long as we are on the same page. I don’t care how many bullets are fired at us while we are together in the sanctuary of our relationship, but when we turn on each other and start shooting at each other, I lose all hope. It is disorienting, discouraging, and frankly a little depressing. We go out of our way to fight for each other and our relationship—not to fight against each other.
And I mean what I am about to say in all sincerity. Sometimes it brings me to the verge of tears as I think about some of your stories throughout the day. It brings me to tears to think about what some of you are living in. Please hear compassion, not condemnation from me at this point. Yes, I want to see God change those marriages and those relationships. But I am not angry at you—I feel broken for some of you. It must feel like there is no earthly place you can turn to find peace. I would take a stormy sea to a stormy marriage any day.
For some it is not a marriage, but a close family member or friend or colleague. Many of you carry deep, personal wounds from being attacked and hurt by someone else. It is easier to stay mad at a person, than it is to stay mad at a storm—but it is also more devastating. What can you do?
Some would simply state the solution as the need to forgive. “You need to forgive. You need to let go of the pain which is gnawing at you inside and slowly destroying you like a cancer.” Forgiveness is a good word, a biblical word, and it would be wrong to speak against forgiveness. It should happen in the family of God. Jesus said so very clearly.
The prayer he taught us to pray says: “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Think about the words that come right after the Lord’s Prayer: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15). The command is clear. The warning is also clear. Living with an unforgiving spirit flirts with the danger of damnation.
But we do not help people if all we give them is demand. If we rip commands out of the context of the biblical story, all we have left are duties, demands, and dangers. Those are real things, but they are in desperate need of context because they are only half the story. As an example, let me read one version of Ephesians 4:31–5:2.
“Do not be bitter or full of wrath or angry or clamorous or slanderous. Put them away from you together with all malice. You must be kind, you must have tender hearts, and you must forgive one another. You must imitate God. You must walk in love.” That is how we sometimes read Scripture. That was a twisted version of Ephesians 4:31–5:2 in which I took some phrases out and brought more emphasis to bear on some aspects. Now let me read it as it is actually written:
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.—Ephesians 4:31–5:2
Those phrases that I highlighted can become practically invisible to us in conflict. We give them the proverbial nod, but we can move on from them to go to the real issue in our mind: the conflict. But don’t you see, the cross is the real issue—it is supposed to be the place where we dwell and live and rest. When conflict becomes where we live, we start to look at life through its windows and it becomes the place where we live and move and think and feel.
This takes us right to the problem of Peter’s question. He said, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” (Matthew 18:21). Then he gives a preliminary answer (perhaps to impress Jesus): “As many as seven times?”
Do you see what Peter is asking? The previous story asks what happens if someone sins against you. If that sin is never confessed and forgiveness is never requested, there is a process by which one’s profession of Christianity is called into question and they are cast out of the church. Jesus now turns to the danger of not repenting.
Peter now asks about how the rules change if someone repents and asks for forgiveness. How many times are we required to forgive? In other words, he is asking: “What are the rules of the game?” It is often mentioned in commentaries that the rabbis had a rule of three times: a kind of three strikes and you are out of the community. Perhaps that is common knowledge and Peter is going to go even further in a feat of spiritual athleticism. Peter says, “Jesus, I give people seven strikes before they are out.” Jesus’ response shows the folly of this way of thinking.
Look at verse 22. “Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.’” Commentators debate whether he said “seventy times seven” or seventy-seven times.” The point is clear either way—he extends the number of completeness far beyond Peter’s spiritual accounting equation. It is like he is saying, the problem here Peter is that you are still counting. When you keep count, you are not really forgiving. You are only giving a model of delayed revenge. You are saying, “I am willing to delay revenge up to seven times.” In this model, “I forgive you” means (as the self-appointed relational umpire) I am not going to say you are “out”… yet. That is the good news. The bad news is that I added another strike and you have five more left. How do you close a conversation like that? You just got a speeding ticket and now you hear: “Have a nice day.” Jesus shows us a more excellent way.
He shows Peter a different world through a parable. Why a parable? Some used to think that a parable had only one main point. In this case, someone would read the parable and turn it into a proposition. Jesus has already done that for us in verse 35, which is the main point of the parable. “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matthew 18:35). Notice that it is cast in the form of a warning—almost a threat. We are in grave danger when we live with an unforgiving spirit.
This way of looking at things makes all the other details incidental and only necessary in as much as they add to the main point. Now readers of Scripture are realizing that a parable does something different than merely make a propositional point. A parable provides a picture or story in which we are supposed to live, and think, and feel. Smell the air, hear the conversations, feel the tension, look out at the world through the windows of this house. We are transported somewhere else in which we learn not just a lesson, but we receive a new perspective, a new way to look at life at life that we then take with us back to our own life.
This is exactly what happens in a famous parable in the Old Testament. The prophet Nathan tells King David (the former shepherd) a parable about a rich man and a poor man and their conflict over a sheep. Nathan gives David a story in which he can live and feel and react. When David casts judgment against the rich man in the story, he is really judging himself—because the story is about his sin. In Jesus’ parable we see three things: (1) The King’s Compassion (vv. 23–27), (2) The Debtor’s Callousness (vv. 28–30), and (3) the King’s Condemnation (vv. 31–35).
Let us pray that we will see them rightly.
Pray
Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 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. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything." And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.—Matthew 18:23–27
It is no accident that the kingdom of heaven would be pictured with a king. God has absolute authority over his subjects.
Here the king is going to settle accounts. It sounds ominous. This looks like judgment time. When one servant suffered from a nearly unbelievable debt, the king decided to sell everything the man had (family and possessions). The servant begged for mercy. Shockingly, the king granted the forgiveness of the debt. It makes us think of God’s merciful bent.
Debts don’t just go away, by the way. They have to be absorbed. If someone borrows something expensive from you, and then accidentally breaks it, there are three options. They can pay for it, you each could pay for part, or you could forgive the person and absorb the loss. Either you buy a new one or learn to live without whatever it was.
This is an amazing debt to absorb. It is difficult to calculate figures from ancient currency to a modern equivalent. A talent was not a coin, but a unit of monetary reckoning equaling 6000 denarii. The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background commentary says that 10,000 talents would equal about 2.5 billion dollars in today’s currency (ESV Study Bible says 6 billion). The best Greek dictionary for this word recommends the English word “zillions” to get the right point across.
By contrast the debt someone owed him was about $4000 in today’s currency. Just to show how high the number is, compare it to what the Jewish historian Josephus tells us about taxes collected at the death of Herod the Great by his sons. The taxes collected in Perea, Galilee, Batanaea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, Judea, Idumea, and Samaria equaled 900 talents (or 220 million dollars in modern currency). This person owed at least 10 times as much! It is an unthinkable amount.
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." So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you." He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.—Matthew 18:28–30
The servant went out and on the same day he treated a fellow servant in a callous way. What is striking is that the servant found his fellow servant. This showed initiative. He went looking for him and seized him. He became judge, jury, and torturer when he passed judgment and began to choke the fellow servant. We don’t really have that today. We would have legal protection against getting choked. Maybe the closest thing is what debt collectors do to people when they are hired to basically harass people. I have not had that happen, but I have heard some horror stories.
The fellow servant pleaded for mercy in nearly identical terms as the other had done, but to no avail. The words spoken by the servant who had already been forgiven that very day are chilling: “He refused.” The plea for mercy fell on deaf ears and a hard heart. This makes us think of humanity’s judicial bent.
This is the point in the story where our feelings are supposed to turn against this servant. Can you believe that kind of callousness? Be careful lest, like King David, you hear the words: “You are the man.” After all, we may not physically choke someone, but we all have ways of trying to pressure people into paying up. Maybe it is the silent treatment (which is like a form of bloodless murder in which you just pretend that the person does not exist). Maybe it is angry words. I don’t want to skate around the issue of abuse in marriages. Some of you may actually be verbally or physically abusing others to try to get them to pay their relational debts to you.
When a judicial bent reigns in our relationships, debts remain and judgment falls. Human callousness to mercy really is a horrible thing. The debtor showed that he didn’t really believe in grace. There was a mercy misfire. Though he wanted grace and had received grace, his heart was still bent in a judicial direction, not a merciful direction. He liked the grace principle when in debt, but he practiced the pay what you owe principle.
Debt based relationships are consumed with conflict. There is no telling when the indebted person will be required to pay up. The offended party may make a withdrawal whenever he or she chooses. Living with an ethos of demand and the uncertainty of calling for an account is a miserable way to live. Neither person is happy or ever satisfied in this system.
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. Then his master summoned him and said to him, "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.—Matthew 18:31–35
Jesus’ story does not pull any punches. The king calls the servant “wicked.” The word “all” is pointed. “I forgave you all that debt.” His mercy should have become the measure with which he related to other servants. The next verse is a horror story: “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.” The word “jailers” has the overtone of “torturer.” He handed over the servant to be tortured until “all” the debt was paid. This is a terrifying verse once the greatness of the debt is taken into account. This is a debt that someone would never be able to pay back.
We don’t like to think about God’s holy anger. We are in danger of pretending that God only has a merciful bent. When God sets his merciful bent upon you, the result is the sweetest thing in life.
But, God has a judicial bent as well for people who reject his mercy. Scorning the king’s compassion should scare you more than anything else in the universe. We need to look long and hard at what happens when someone wants to relate to God on the basis of law and not grace. The law is unleashed and condemnation comes decisively.
Jesus’ warning is palpable at this point. If you want to relate to God on the basis of law (what we owe), think about what you will happen when God’s uses your unit of measure. You cannot absorb the debt and ever hope to satisfy it. The person had to work at hard labor until he paid all his debt—such a large debt would never be repaid. Here you have the echoes of an eternal debt and eternal punishment.
The backdrop of anger makes love pack a greater punch. If you water down God’s holy anger, you water down God’s love as well. It does not seem all that amazing. We start to think that we deserve it.
I am not sure how Jesus’ point could be more poignant or powerful. If God chooses to relate to us one way, why would we spurn it in our other relationships? What is the most defining relationship? What relational principle will reign in your life?
Application
We must put up some guard rails here so that we do not drive into two different ugly ditches here. One set of guard rails on one side of this text will prevent us from explaining this text in a legalistic way such that we think forgiving others earns God’s forgiveness. Our forgiveness never makes us worthy of God’s forgiveness.
However, we also need guard rails against the ugly ditch of license. The first danger is to explain it in a legalistic way; the second danger is to explain it away altogether. Here we say, “Well we know that we don’t earn our forgiveness and thus we are not really in danger if we fail to forgive others.”
I like the way that D.A. Carson explains this text in his book Love in Hard Places. He says, “People disqualify themselves from being forgiven if they are so hardened in their own bitterness that they cannot or will not forgive others. In such cases they display no brokenness, no contrition, no recognition of the great value of forgiveness, no understanding of their own complicity in sin, no repentance” (p. 78).
This bitter and unforgiving spirit can leave you so hardened that you do not see your own need for repentance and forgiveness. God will always forgive those who come to him with repentance. The danger of a bitter and unforgiving spirit is that it will lead you away from coming to God at all.
The saddest factor of all is that it is not as if grace has not been modeled. His encounter with grace never really stuck. It came and left without any change coming with it. This is a big danger in the church. We say we believe in grace, but the way we treat people reveals how are hearts are truly bent. The tree bends as the wind blows. Such a hurricane of grace should have bent the tree towards being merciful, not judicial.
Grace made us alive and then it gave us a way to live. Through the gospel, God chose to relate to us in such a way that we are not under law, but under grace. That principle should apply in the way that we now relate to one another. Through the gospel, choose to put your relationships under grace, not under law. Not Capital “L” law, but lowercase “l” law.
I am talking about relating to others in which you make them live under an ethos of demand. An ethos that is quick to point out when they fall short and disappoint. It does not make sense to relate to God one way and then relate to others a different way. We don’t want law with God, but we want law with one another. An ethos of demand kills relationships between sinners. We cannot live up to each other’s expectations, let alone God’s perfect law.
You do not know want to go down that path! Life together plus law will eventually kill life together because the law kills. It highlights debts and deficiencies. You cannot even live up to your own sense of law.
Put your relationships under grace. How do you do that? Relate to people only through Jesus and put them under his grace, not your law. Listen to Bonhoeffer (Life Together, p. 35–36):
Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes. This is the meaning of that proposition that we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ. Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men.
Worldly relationships are the ones we get to choose because we try to be sovereign over what we want. Life together in the body of Christ must come to grips with God’s sovereignty. He put us into the family. His sovereignty is the chief factor. He chose to forgive some so that they would be part of his family for all eternity. Beware of saying: I see no reason for this God. The fact that you don’t see a reason does not mean that there is no reason. Do you really want to say: "God, why did you choose that person?"
As I argued in the sermon on Mark, the Gospel writers always intend us to keep reading. Peter asked a question about the limits of his forgiveness because he had not yet seen the “unlimited” forgiveness that would happen at the cross. Of course Peter was missing something. He had not seen it yet because it had not happened yet. That paradigm or perspective would change everything.
You see the entire gospel gives us a perspective or a paradigm in which we live, and move, and think, and feel. The gospel is the gift of life and the gift of a place to have life. We live by it and then we live in it. Our Father builds a house for his family not away from the cross, but around the cross, so that it is always in the center of the house. It should never receive a proverbial nod. The love of our Father should never be just “background noise.” The love of God in Christ is our life. It is where we live. I am praying right now that God will do a work in your heart to make the cross your permanent home and resting place where your soul will find rest.
Preaching the Cross: Not (just) the mind, not (just) the will, but the heart is the aim.
Many of you in this room and many that will hear this sermon are Christians. Why do we preach the gospel to Christians? I do not preach on the cross because some of you have never heard of it or understood it with the mind. That is not the fundamental problem (though it is among the unreached peoples—but that will come out in the next couple of weeks). Some assume that the problem is then with the will. People are lazy or weak-willed. What they need is someone to shout at them and whale away at the will. I do not agree with that assessment. Sure, I believe in laziness and having weak wills. But you don’t fix them with guilt trips. The heart must be reached. Preaching does not just address the mind or the will—it addresses the heart. The heart is the command center of your whole life. The gospel has to lay claim to it so that it controls us. This is 2 Corinthians 5:14 “For the love of Christ [i.e., the gospel] controls us.”
Let me talk about this another way. Tim Keller asks when “change” should happen—during the sermon or after the sermon. Some assume that the real change happens after the sermon. You spend time giving them biblical principles and a little bit of application so that they can go home and start doing it and change.
Let me tell you a secret. There is a reason why I give application questions for you after the sermon. I include some application in the sermon, but I try to include more after the sermon. Here is why. The real change must happen in the sermon in order for there to be any hope for application after the sermon through the rest of the week. The sermon itself is the tipping point for the heart. Jonathan Edwards said people know honey is sweet, but it is a very different thing to taste honey and experience its sweetness. It becomes tangible—it sends shockwaves of sweetness through your body. That is what we need. We need the cross to send shockwaves of sweetness through the body of Christ so that forgiveness flows from our mouths and fingers.
Let me talk in closing to both non-Christians and Christians. First, there are some non-Christians I hear who are not Christians because they believe that they can’t be forgiven. They think their sin is too strong for the cross. The cross is a greater love than you can imagine! The wrath that your sins deserve is real and that may be what you are feeling. That is a good thing. It tells you that your conscience is functioning rightly. Some have a seared conscience that does not even feel the danger of God’s wrath. But do not shortchange the love of God or underestimate the power of the cross. No sin is too great for the cross. Check your feelings against the fact of the cross and experience the wonder of forgiveness. God loves you. His love is expressed in that He stands ready in Christ to absorb your debt. You can experience the King’s compassion instead of the King’s condemnation.
Let me speak to Christians. There are some of you today that struggle with forgiving someone else. I do not hesitate to tell you that you are in danger. Here is the danger. The bitter, unforgiving heart believes that someone else’s sin is stronger than the cross. Check your feelings against the facts. Do not base forgiveness on how you feel. Take your feelings to the grand truth of the cross. Do not look at that other person without looking at them through the One who is the mediator for you both: the Lord Jesus. That person is a brother or sister to you not based on what they have done, but based on what Jesus did for them. The debt against you may feel big, but when compared with the debt you used to owe, it is very small. Forgiving one another our small debts serves to highlight the supremacy of God displayed in God’s forgiveness of our great debt. Keep your eyes fixed on his grace at the cross. Do not ask: am I strong enough to forgive? Ask: Is the cross strong enough to keep us together?
Closing Song: Stronger