The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

chapter 18.

Oh, well, loud.

There we go.

Mazzon said not the same thing about it being loud.

He's got it.

All right.

So we're going to be in the parable of the unforgiving servant.

And I know you might be thinking, why are we still in Matthew and not Revelation?

Because I messed up the preaching calendar last year.

So a couple passages that I have to get to before we get back into Matthew next year.

And so we're going to cover a couple of those, this one now, and then we'll hit some in January before we start again in Matthew.

And then we are going to get back into Revelation at the end of January next year.

And I put an end date on Revelation.

So for everybody wondering if we're going to be in Revelation for the entire time that I am here until I die,

the answer is no.

I put an end date on it.

It will end next year.

And then we're going to start another new Wednesday series, which I'll tell you about on the 18th.

But for now, Matthew chapter 18, and it's the parable of the unforgiving servant.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

And something funny happened last year because I think it was in September of last year.

I took my yearly one week vacation with the family to the beach and had my good friend, Dr. Gerald Rowe come and fill in.

Many of you probably remember Dr. Rowe, love him, a very animated guy.

And I was like, hey, you can preach whatever you want.

And he said, you sure you don't have a, I'm like, no, no, you preach whatever you want.

So he decided to preach Matthew 18.

And there was a joke that that was going to mess up our sermon series in Matthew because he preached.

And I said at the time when I got back, I was like, guys, listen, we're not even going to be in Matthew 18 for another year.

And turns out I was actually all five couple months.

It was like a year and some months.

So now we're finally coming back to Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

And it's a pretty familiar parable.

It's not as familiar as the parable of like the good Samaritan or the prodigal son.

But it is one that I think most of us are familiar with.

And if you really wanted to summarize the whole idea behind this parable,

it's that as Christians, we are too forgiven to be unforgiving.

That's the whole point of this parable.

As Christians, we are too forgiven to be unforgiving.

And I'm going to unpack that, but I want you to start with me in verse 21.

And notice what it says.

It says, then Peter came up and said to him, being Jesus,

Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times?

Now we do need a pause here, okay?

Because a lot of times people will just read a passage or a parable or a verse out of context.

And something I tell you all the time, they're probably going to put this on my gravestone at this point,

is context is king.

Okay, so we can't just read a Bible verse in isolation, can't just read a story in isolation.

We have to read it within its context.

And so I want you to look all the way back at the beginning of chapter 18 to just see what the context behind this parable actually is,

like why it came up in the first place.

And you remember the beginning of chapter 18, the disciples were bickering because they wanted to know who God's favorite child was.

Who's the greatest in the kingdom and probably each one of them thought that they had a pretty good chance of being picked.

And Jesus was saying, well, you don't need to worry about whether or not you're God's favorite child.

You should just be rejoicing that you're a child of God in the first place.

It doesn't matter if you're his favorite, you should just be thankful to be part of the family.

And he said, but to be a child of God, he goes on to explain it's a high calling.

Because he says you must not cause other people to sin and you need to make sure that you're killing sin

in your own life.

You have to have a commitment to personal holiness.

And so Jesus sets up this expectation that God's children don't sin and they don't cause other people to sin.

And the question is, well, what if they do?

What if we mess up?

What if other people mess up and Jesus says, well, don't worry, there's a whole process for that as well.

And you remember we talked about the church discipline process.

So that whole passage started with Peter or with Jesus saying this, if you look back at Matthew chapter 18 verse 15,

Matthew 18:15

Jesus actually says, if your brother sins against you, and now what was Peter's question in our passage?

Hey, Jesus, if my brother's going to sin against me, how often do I have to forgive him?

So you have to understand this parable is coming right after the lesson on church discipline because Jesus has just said, hey,

don't sin, don't cause other people to sin, but people are going to sin against you.

And when they do, here's the process that I'm giving the church.

And Peter says, I understand there's a process in place, but how often are we going to have to do this process?

Like, do we give them seven times?

Is that going to be sufficient?

Or do we need to just keep on going and going?

And you might wonder why the number seven?

Why does he suggest seven in the first place?

Nobody really knows.

Some people say it could be based on some verses in the book of Amos where God says for three sins of this nation,

I won't overlook this, but for four, you know, and so there's this whole concept of maybe God will overlook three sins,

but he won't overlook four sins.

And so they're saying, well, Peter is doubling that number three and he's adding one.

I don't know, maybe it's a bit of a stretch to me.

I think Peter being classic Peter just thought of a number.

It could have been any number for Peter, but he just thought of seven and he's like, hey, Jesus, all right,

I've got a number in my head.

If I forgive someone seven times, we're good, right?

Like after that point, I don't have to forgive them anymore.

But the thing you have to understand here is Peter is trying to set the rules for God's kingdom.

Do we see that?

Peter is saying, Jesus, I'm going to think of a number seven and as long as I hit that number, then we're good.

But we don't get to make the rules of God's kingdom.

We don't get to come up with a number and put that on God.

And here's the thing I want you to understand is that when we set the rules for God's kingdom,

we're always going to set that level at the easiest level and whatever is most comfortable for us.

That's one of the problems with us trying to create the rules of God's kingdom and come up with our number.

Yours might not be seven, yours might be three or five or whatever.

But I guarantee whatever number you pick is going to be whatever is easiest for you and whatever is most comfortable for you.

And Peter's mind, he was saying, Jesus, I can forgive people seven times.

Seven times, that's what I'm comfortable with, but don't ask me to do eight because that's too much.

And we see this with a number of things in the world today.

And it's common to hear Christians today say, well, I can come to the Sunday service and that's good enough for God.

Right?

My question is, is it?

I mean, you see a lot of Christians do this today.

Hey, I come to Sunday service, therefore I must be a Christian and therefore God must be pleased with me.

I'm like, well, if you can defend that with scripture, then sure.

But ultimately we come back to the word of God. Do we not?

Because we're not the ones who get to set the standard.

You can't say I come to Sunday service, therefore God's okay with me.

You should be saying, what does God expect of me as a Christian?

And if I'm not living up to that, then I have no reason to believe that God's pleased with me.

We don't come up with the rules, God does.

And we'll see Christians today say, hey, I can be a Christian and not go to church.

Or I can be a Christian and not be a member of a local church.

Or I can be a Christian and not serve in the local church.

God's fine with all that.

And again, my question is, is he?

What makes you think that God is okay with that?

Because you're not going to find any of those things in scripture.

You're not going to see any place in scripture where God says, hey, you can be a Christian and live in total isolation from the Christian community.

You can be a Christian and not be plugged into a local church.

You can be a Christian and not serve in the local church.

You're not going to find that in scripture.

That comes from within us.

It comes back to us wanting to set the rules and the standard for God's kingdom.

Or you can think about giving.

I know this is one that makes everybody tense up.

And this actually, alright, so this December, this will be my fifth year here.

This is the first time I've ever talked about giving.

Can you believe that?

In five years, Jordan did it this past Sunday.

I didn't ask him to, but he did it.

This is my first time talking about giving.

But when you think about giving, you'll see some Christians who will say, well, hey, you don't see the 10% tithe anywhere commanded in the New Testament.

Therefore, I don't have to give anything.

It's like, well, actually, you're right.

The New Testament doesn't say anything about 10%.

Jesus says I want all of it.

Give me everything.

So yeah, you're right. Jesus doesn't want 10%.

Jesus wants 100%.

Jesus wants us to give sacrificially.

But what people do with the 10% is many people use the 10% as a cop out.

Because for some people, giving 10%, it's nothing.

Right?

There's some pretty financially well-off families, and they could give 10%, and they would never even know it's gone.

But for other people, giving 10%,

that's real sacrifice for them.

It's like the lady in the Bible who gave two coins, and to other people, it didn't look like a lot.

But to her, it was everything that she had.

And so something that I try to tell people is that God doesn't expect us to give the same amount,

but he does expect us all to give the same sacrifice.

So your amount might look different than mine,

but both of us are called to make the same kind of sacrifice.

So if 10% is sacrificial for you, then give 10% and give it cheerfully.

But if giving 10% is not a sacrifice for you, I want to tell you, God wants you to be sacrificial in your giving.

So you should give 12% or 15% or whatever is going to be sacrificial for you,

but you can't try to set the rules and the standard of God's kingdom and say,

God's pleased with 10% when God wants everything.

He calls us to live according to his rules and his standards.

Or you can think about forgiveness, the topic for tonight.

There are so many Christians who haven't even made it to seven times, right?

They say, look, I forgave this person once, and then they immediately hurt me again.

I forgave this person. We had a great talk.

He said he was going to do better, and then he did the exact same thing again.

And we say, so I did my part. I forgave him one time. I'm good with God.

And Jesus is going to go on to address that here.

Notice what he says in verse 22.

Jesus said to Peter, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times or 70 times.

It's dependent on which part you're reading. So some versions will say 77.

Other accounts will say 70 times seven.

I was the smart alec growing up who did the math the first time I heard that.

And I was like 490. That's it.

Once I forgive people 490 times, God's good with me,

and I don't have to offer forgiveness anymore.

But you have to understand Jesus is not saying that you should only forgive people

77 times or 490 times.

What he's doing is putting a number out there that's so large

that no one is going to want to keep track of it.

So imagine if everyone did this, and you've got your forgiveness checklist,

and you're like, all right, one, done, two, done.

Eventually, you're going to give up on that list because you're like,

I really don't have the time or the patience to even mark all the way up to 490.

So I'm just going to stop keeping a list. And that's the whole point.

Jesus is like, yeah, I'm giving you a large number because you're not supposed to keep a list.

That's what the whole point of him saying this is that God isn't keeping a list of our sins.

And so we shouldn't be keeping a list of other people's sins as well.

In fact, Jesus calls us to follow the example of God.

The Bible says in Hebrews 10, 17,

I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.

In Colossians 2, 13, 3, 14 says,

In you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,

God made alive together with him,

having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt

that stood against us with its legal demands,

this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

So what did God do for us when we were in sin?

He took our record of debt and he canceled it. He didn't just wave it away.

He nailed it to the cross and he forgave us of all of our sins.

And the Bible says in Hebrews that God chooses not to remember our sins anymore.

So God is not up in heaven with his notepad and everybody's name.

And he's going, all right, one time, two times, three times,

as soon as I get to 490, that's it. They're done.

God's not keeping a list of all of our sins.

If you were in Christ, he chooses not to remember your sins.

And as a Christian, he calls you to imitate him in that and saying,

if he doesn't keep a record of all our sins,

you shouldn't be keeping a record of other people's sins.

It's a high calling to be a Christian.

This is the beauty of grace. And listen, it's very easy for us to rejoice.

I mean, how good is it as a Christian for me to stand here and tell you

that God does not have a record of your sins in heaven because he has put that aside.

He's nailed it to the cross.

And now, even though you are a sinful person, just like I am,

and you've got a whole past that is filled with sin, God chooses not to remember that.

How good is that for you? Okay? Not good for you?

It's great for me. I've got a lot of sins.

Okay? Apparently, you all are holy. Not me.

I'm a sinful person, and I tell you that.

It's good for me to hear.

So it's great when it's us and God.

Here's where it gets difficult. It's when it's me and my neighbor.

Right? It's great to hear God doesn't remember your sins.

It's hard to hear so you don't remember your neighbor's sins.

You don't have a list. You don't keep a record.

You put that away just as God put your sins away.

And you choose to extend the same mercy and grace and forgiveness that he extended to us and Christ.

So all of this is the setup to the parable, which we will actually get into.

So verse 23, Jesus says,

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 10,000 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, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

So here are a couple things that you need to know.

First is a talent was the largest unit of currency that existed in Jesus's day.

So it's the biggest amount of currency that existed in 10,000.

You might be wondering, well, why 10,000?

That's actually the highest Greek numeral that they had.

Greek numerals did not go beyond 10,000.

So you have the largest Greek numeral with the largest sum of money,

and a talent was equal to about 20 years wages.

So this isn't some small amount of money.

And he owes him how many talents?

Did you see 10,000?

One talent's worth 20 years salary.

So he owes him 200,000 years salary.

You might be thinking, well, that's a ridiculous number.

Yeah, that's the point.

The point is to come up with the most ridiculous number you could possibly imagine,

because that's how bad this debt is.

If we were to put it in today's money, you'd say this person had 999 zillion with a z, dollars in debt.

And you're thinking, well, how's he ever going to pay it all?

He's not.

That's the point.

This is a debt that no person would ever be able to pay off in their lifetime.

And so the servant begs him for mercy, and it says that the master has pity on him,

because did you notice the servant said, hey, be patient with me and I'll pay it back.

And I think the master has pity on him because he's like, no, you won't.

It would take you 200,000 years in order to pay this.

You're not paying that back.

And so out of pity and mercy for him, he forgives him,

and you might be thinking, well, all's well that ends well, right?

But no, look at verse 28.

But when the servant came out or went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii.

And seizing him, he began to choke him.

Pay what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, and I will pay you.

This is the same thing that he just said to the master.

But he refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

When his fellow servant saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed,

and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

All right, so a denaris was worth one day's wage, and so he owes him 100 denarii.

So this guy owes him about a little over three months salary, right?

Now listen, I'm not discounting that three-month salary is a good bit of money.

I'm not just downplaying it and saying that's nothing, right?

But compared to 200,000 years of salary, three months is nothing, right?

And that's the point between these two numbers.

It's like, here you have the absolute most money possible that this one guy owed,

and here you've got basically nothing, and he was unwilling to forgive,

basically nothing right after he was forgiven, everything.

And then so the master in verse 32, it says,

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.

All right, so this parable, it teaches us a number of valuable lessons,

and the first thing it teaches us is that we all owe a debt to God that is beyond our ability to repay.

That's what we learned from this servant.

We're supposed to see ourselves in this parable and realize that just as he had this ridiculous,

enormous debt that he was never going to be able to repay in his lifetime in the exact same way.

Every single one of us have a debt with God that we are completely unable to repay.

It is beyond our ability, and it's worse than this guy's because this guy,

if somehow he was able to live 200,000 years, he could repay his debt.

You know, for one sin, you know how long it takes to pay off one sin?

An eternity, a literal eternity.

That's why one sin will send you to hell for all of eternity,

because every sin I've told you this before is an offense against an infinitely and eternal holy God,

and so the punishment is an eternity in hell.

And so our offense is even worse than this guy's.

We look at this and go, wow, this master is great.

He forgave a huge sum.

How much greater is God for what he has forgiven us?

And if you ever think, well, it's not that bad, I just want you to think back to maybe your teen years.

I don't know when your rough patch was in your life.

For me, it was my teen years, and you know, from the time I turned 13 until pretty much 21.

You don't want to go revisit those ages for me.

I've got 200,000 years worth of sins in there probably and much more.

Imagine if I were to just overlook that today and go, well, God's not really that great.

When I look back on that time in my life and say, man, God forgave all that,

and he chooses not to remember that, and he chooses to nail that to the cross,

and he chooses to view me as hidden in Christ.

That's an amazing God that we have.

And so we need to understand that when we're reading this parable, we're supposed to see that this debt that we owe,

we cannot pay it on our own.

We have to trust in Christ to pay this debt for us, and he did so on the cross.

The other lesson that this parable teaches us is that our offenses against God always outweigh someone else's offenses against us.

You disagree, Tommy?

No, no, Tommy was shaking his head.

Do what?

Yeah, that's right.

So the whole point is that anytime I think someone has wronged me and hurt me and done me dirty,

I've done much worse things to God.

And here's why this is so hard for us, because I know that we do have people in our lives who do legitimately hurt us,

and they betray us, and they sin against us, and they're people that we love, and they're people in our families,

and they're people that we have tried to reconcile with, and they're people that we have tried to forgive,

and we say, listen, I'm forgiving you, and I'm hoping for a new leaf on life,

and then all of a sudden that person sins against us again.

And it's like, did we not just have a conversation?

Did you not say you were going to do better?

How could you do this thing again?

And I know that it feels like they have done something terrible to us.

Every single time we think that, we need to remember, I've done much worse things to God.

I mean, if you were to just think about it in terms of one person,

let's say you have one person in your life who's caused you all sorts of trouble,

a person that's hurt you repeatedly, a person that's sinned against you repeatedly,

a person that you've tried to forgive, and you just maybe have, and then you resent them for a time,

and then you try to forgive them again, think about it like this,

every time they hurt you, they're hurting you,

but every single time you sin, you were sinning against God.

That's why David said, against you and you alone, Lord, have I sinned.

So every single sin in my life has offended God, has revolted against God, has rebelled against God,

and that piles up.

I mean, just think about it like this.

What if our number was 490?

Okay?

How many days are there in a year?

365.

Let's say you sin once a day, which you do.

So that's just a given, right?

And most of us sin more than once a day, okay?

So let's say that number was 490.

We would have exhausted God's forgiveness and mercy before I ever even made it to what?

Age four?

Probably?

Two?

Yeah, that's probably fair.

Two.

Ezra's hit 490 for sure.

So it happens early on, right?

Like if that number was 490, all of us would be in a lot of trouble

because we would have already exhausted God's forgiveness and mercy and grace a long time ago.

And so I think that we need to remember this when we're dealing with other people.

We need to remember that no matter how badly they have hurt me,

no matter how many times they sin against me,

my sins against God are far worse than what did he do?

He forgave us.

He nailed all those offenses to the cross.

He chooses not to remember them.

And so my question is, if God forgives us like that,

then why are we not called to forgive other people like that?

And the answer is we are.

And the book of Colossians says that we're to forgive others as God in Christ has forgiven us.

And here's what I know.

When God forgave me, I didn't deserve it.

Did you deserve it?

No.

Yeah, Don's right.

Still don't deserve it.

And so you don't have to wait on a person to be worthy of your forgiveness to forgive them.

You don't have to wait on a person to be deserving of your forgiveness to forgive them.

You don't have to wait on a person to come and beg you for forgiveness or ask for your forgiveness for you to give it.

You should cancel the record of wrongs just as God did towards you and extend your forgiveness.

And you might say, well, Pastor, do I forgive this person?

And everybody, you might could think of someone in your life right now.

I don't know who your this person is.

But you might be thinking of someone who's hurt you repeatedly, someone you've got a grudge against or just don't really like.

And you say, well, am I called to forgive that person?

The answer is yes.

He said, but you don't know what they did to me.

You don't know how badly they hurt me.

No.

Are you called to forgive them?

Yes.

But what if they didn't ask for my forgiveness?

You still forgive them.

What if they don't deserve my forgiveness?

You still forgive them.

We are called to imitate God's forgiveness and God does not withhold his forgiveness until we are worthy and praise the Lord for that because I would have never been forgiven in the first place.

The Bible says that he forgave us even while we were still sinners.

And so God has forgiven you more times than you can even count to.

And as a Christian, you are called to extend that same forgiveness to others.

And the final thing I want you to see in this parable is that if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us.

I mean, that's what happens at the end of the parable, right?

That the master comes to the servant and he says, hey, shouldn't you have forgiven your fellow servant just as I forgave you?

But because you didn't, now I'm going to put you in prison and you're going to stay there until you can pay back what you owe me.

Spoiler, this dude would have never paid it off because again, 200,000 years is what he owed.

And so the Bible is teaching us there that if we are withholding forgiveness from others and if we are refusing to forgive others, in the end, God is going to refuse to give us.

Now, let me just issue a word of caution here.

This does not mean that we go around forgiving people in order to be forgiven by God.

That's getting the cart before the horse there, okay?

It's the other way around.

It's having been forgiven so much by God, we are then called to extend that same forgiveness to others.

And so one of the key characteristics of a Christian, one of the main ways you can tell that someone is a Christian is by looking at how forgiving they are of other people.

Because if they're the type of person who's going to forgive others freely and not hold a record of death against others, not keep a list of all their sins, not have a magical number that they create in their head.

If a person is going to forgive freely from the heart, it is a clear indication that they've been forgiven by Christ.

It's a clear, yeah.

I have not.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, every other religion makes you work in order to receive something.

Yeah, yeah.

Their whole system is if I do these things, hopefully by the end of my life, I will have done enough in order to make it into their version of heaven.

When you see that with Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and all these other types of religions and the beauty of Christianity is first and foremost, it's true.

And we serve the God who is actually there, but the beauty is in the fact that God says, even while you're dirty and sinful, even when you're undeserving, and even though you could never do anything to actually get to where I'm at, I'm going to do everything that's needed for you.

I'm going to forgive your sins.

I'm going to clothe you in the righteousness of Christ.

I'm going to spend your entire life making you more and more into the image of Christ.

And then when you get here and you see me face to face, I'm going to glorify you.

You're going to be in a glorified body and you're going to be perfect and you're going to be without sin for all of eternity.

And you're going to stand there knowing I did nothing to get here.

And that's the beauty of it.

Everybody in heaven will stand there together knowing that I have done nothing to be here. Jesus did everything.

No one will ever be able to say, I deserve to be here.

And so if you are the type of person who is forgiving others from the heart, it's a clear indication that you've been forgiven by Christ, because that means that your heart's been changed.

It means that you have had your heart of stone removed, it's been replaced with that heart of flesh, and now you've got a solved heart that is eager to forgive others as Christ has forgiven you.

And so that's why this parable is so challenging for so many of us, I think, is because I know that forgiveness is a big struggle for so many of us, because we live in a world where people hurt us all the time.

And unfortunately, very often it is those who are closest to us who hurt us.

It's our family members, our friends, people betray us.

I remember the first time, one of the first times as an adult I was ever betrayed, felt like I was stabbed in the back.

I was in a church, and I was a brand new Christian. I've been a Christian for about six months, and I was like, this doesn't make sense.

I thought we all love Jesus. What is this person doing stabbing me in the back?

And it's the first time I realized, oh, just because someone goes to church doesn't mean they're actually a Christian. I didn't realize that, you know, six months into it.

But this is the type of world we live in, and it's easy for us to hang on to resentment, and it's easy for us to withhold forgiveness and withhold grace and withhold mercy.

And every single time we do that, I just want you to remember, God has forgiven me more.

No matter what they did, no matter how badly they've hurt me, God has forgiven me of much worse sins than what they have done to me.

And because he has forgiven me, I'm now free to forgive others, trusting that Jesus is going to do something in their lives.

And maybe it's your forgiveness of that person that shows them the love of Christ and the forgiveness of Christ, and it actually makes them interested in learning more about Jesus.

When they see, hey, I know I did this to you. How can you forgive me of something like this when I've done nothing to deserve it?

And you say, let me tell you what Jesus did to me. Let me tell you how much he's forgiven me in my life.

And so this is the heart of a Christian. We are called to imitate the forgiveness that God has shown us.

So your question is tonight, should I forgive this person? The answer is always yes.

Not because they deserve it, but because Jesus has forgiven you.

All right, Gene, you want to give us a word of wisdom?