Matthew 18:21-35 - A Reconciling Community - Part 2

So I hope you have your Bible open to Matthew 18 now.

A couple weeks ago we began our journey into this chapter, and I said that chapter 18 starts for us, the fourth of five teaching episodes in the Gospel of Matthew.

We saw the first in Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus talks about the characteristics of his kingdom.

And then in chapter 10, we see him speaking, commissioning the messengers of the kingdom.

And then in chapter 13, he gives the parables or what you might call the clues of the kingdom in all the mysteries of those parables.

And then here we see him speaking about predominantly the community of the kingdom, the community of the kingdom.

We looked at the first nine verses a couple weeks ago, and we looked at verses 10 to 20, or verses 1 to 14, and then 15 to 20 last week.

And now we'll be looking through the rest of the chapter.

In the first section there, we see Jesus speaking about the characteristics of his children: being humble, being loving, being careful, and doing so under the wonderful protection of their father, who acts like a good shepherd and goes after the wandering sheep.

In verses 15 to 20, we saw Jesus talking about the accountability of the body of Christ, of taking up that same pursuit of restoration for those who are still caught up in their sin, and doing so with confrontation and care mingled together in the hope that that person might repent of their iniquity and return to the kind of consistent lifestyle that God's children are called to.

And here in this last section, as we'll begin to look at it, we'll see that Jesus speaks predominantly about the importance of a merciful heart, the importance of a merciful heart.

And he wraps it around the topic of forgiveness.

Forgiveness.

Last time Matthew talked about forgiveness was all the way back in chapter 12.

And this section here in chapter 18 leaps us all the way back to chapter 5 and 6, where Jesus makes some statements about mercy and forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount.

There and here we'll see a connection between and relationship between God's forgiveness and our own, between God's mercy and our own.

And as we dive into this passage and as we go through the movements of this passage, I want us to see the implications of that.

The implications of God's calling us to be people of mercy and people of forgiveness, just like He is a God of mercy and a God of forgiveness.

There is a connection.

So let's go right into this passage.

And the first thing we're going to do as we trace these movements is to see the measure of forgiveness that's brought out here.

As I said, this fourth teaching section is broken up into four different questions that arise.

And the second of those four questions comes when Peter asks a question in verse 21.

Peter came to Jesus and he asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?

Up to seven times.

So he's looking for a measure of forgiveness there, isn't he?

He's looking for some clearly defined limit of the obligations that he'll have to forgive someone else.

What's the number, Jesus?

Up to seven?

And he asked this question.

I don't think Peter's being sort of narrow and closed-hearted in this.

I think Peter thinks he's actually being quite generous and magnanimous.

Because the teaching of Judaism at that time would have said that three was enough.

Three was enough.

Rabbinic Judaism recognized that repeat offenders may not really be repenting at all.

And I think that's a valid statement.

People do repent, or and there are other people who just keep asking sorry and aren't repented at all.

So some wisdom needs to be made about which is which.

But rabbinic Judaism would say if a man commits a transgression, he'll be forgiven the first, the second, the third, but not the fourth time.

So Peter's here, Mike, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

How about that, Jesus?

See how generous I am?

I'm doubly generous than the rest of the people around me.

And so he offers to forgive a person seven times.

But Jesus quickly replies in verse 22 the measure is not seven, Peter.

Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Now, some translations say 70 times seven, 490.

So which is it, 77 or 490?

Well, numbers are difficult to understand in expressions, and it could be taken one of two ways.

It could be 77 times like the NIV does and the ESV does, or it could be 70 times seven like a couple other versions do, the CSB and the NLT.

In any case, Jesus is not actually giving him a tally.

He's doing something different here.

He's trying to break through Peter's sort of numbering system.

He's trying to tell him: look, that's the wrong way to think about it.

This phrase that Jesus uses is identical to a phrase in Genesis chapter 4 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where Lamech talks about vengeance that's going to be returned upon him, and he said, it's going to be returned on him 70 times, seven times or 77 times, that vengeance is going to be exacted on him.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

And Lamech uses that phrase to talk about ultimate vengeance.

And here Jesus is using that phrase to talk about ultimate forgiveness.

So Jesus is not pointing to a number so much as he's trying to say that forgiveness and the inner relationship of forgiveness in our relationships with one another is so incredibly high you can't count them.

That's the idea.

This is a figure of speech.

This is not a tally on a chalkboard.

This is not, you know, someone sins against you and you kind of go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seventy-eight.

It's not that.

It's not that at all.

This isn't a tally on a chalkboard.

Lamech was saying there's no limit to hatred and vengeance.

Moses says you need to limit it, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

Jesus is saying there's no limit to love.

There's no limit to mercy.

There's no limit to forgiveness.

Now, Jesus is not giving us a cold, dry dissertation on forgiveness as a subject.

He's not going to say, let me present the definition of forgiveness, let me present the extent of forgiveness, let me discuss the ramifications of forgiveness, let me discuss the qualifications of forgiveness.

So he's not trying to answer every single question we might have about the type of forgiveness here.

He's trying to drive something into the heart of us.

What is it?

We'll find out.

But this measure of forgiveness is what starts it off.

And in order to explain his comment and to give the thrust of his point, Jesus introduces a story to us in the same way that he introduced the stories of the parables in Matthew 13.

The kingdom of heaven is like, he says.

Take a look at that in verse 30 23.

The kingdom of heaven is like.

Some people, because of that, and because it sounds and looks exactly like the parables in Matthew 13, people call this a parable.

And it is just somewhat, is somewhat a parable.

It's an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, of course.

And that is the basic root idea of what a parable is.

But a parable usually takes a conglomerate of an earthly story to tell one point.

And you're not to sort of extrapolate all the little aspects of it and tease them out.

This is more than a parable, if that's our definition of a parable.

But it's also less than an allegory because not everything in it is meant to be teased out.

So we have this interesting way of communicating that Jesus does here that's outside of our normal thoughts of what allegories are and metaphors are and all that other stuff.

He's telling a story.

And he's telling a story about his kingdom, about his rule, about what it's like being under his authority.

And he's using all kinds of things to bring out little symbols and ideas and thoughts.

Yes, the king here represents God.

There is that connection.

But in this, he uses exaggeration.

In this, he speaks almost with fairy tale-like exaggeration.

He goes to the extremes with things, as we'll see.

So not every little thing is meant to be pressed one for one in correlation with each other.

We recognize he's using embellishment and he's using exaggeration.

And while the king is like the heavenly father, not everything the king does here is like our heavenly father.

For one, the king threatens to sell this guy into slavery.

And the word of God tells us that we're not to sell people into slavery.

Jesus is not teaching us that God is like some Assyrian despot who's going to sell a man's children into slavery to get back the money of their father.

Jesus is exaggerating these points.

And everything in here, all the major points of this, are exaggerated to the extreme.

No servant is ever going to get the kind of debt that we're going to talk about in a minute.

No king would ever loan his servant, the kind of money that's about to be talked about.

No king would ever unconditionally release the size of the debt that we're about to talk about.

These are all exaggerated figures.

And so that question, as it's hanging in the air, what is the measure of forgiveness?

Now gets put into a story as Jesus speaks.

So let's move through this story.

And notice, first of all, the standard of forgiveness.

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wants to settle accounts with his servants.

As he began to settle the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him.

So Jesus introduces us to a king who, for some unknown reason, has doled out some of his money, a lot of his money, to his servants.

And they have continued to be in debt to him.

And he's finally got to the point where he wants to settle up those accounts.

And as he's going through the process of settling up the accounts, and there's probably a line of people that have been talking to him and settling those accounts, this one guy shows up.

And the scriptures here tell us that he owed him 10,000 talents.

Well, what is a talent?

Well, a single talent is worth about 20 years worth of wages.

All right.

So I figured I'd do a little check to see what that was like.

Because this man owes not one talent, not 20 years of wages, but 10,000 talents.

10,000 times 20 years.

Payscale.com said the average yearly income for a New Yorker is$88,000.

Don't you wish, right?

$88,000.

So$88,000 times$20 times$10,000 is$17 billion and$600 million.

That's how much this guy owes.

He's in debt for nearly$18 billion to this king.

What does that mean?

This man would have to work for 60 million days in order to pay this debt off.

He would have to work for 200,000 years to pay off this debt.

And if he was able to work for 50 years in his lifetime, he would have to live 4,000 lifetimes to pay off this debt.

If every single dollar he earned went to paying the debt off, and his paycheck for 4,000 lives of 50 years was always zero because they garnished his wages.

That's what Jesus just said here.

This king wants to settle up his debts with his servants, and he's been dealing with people, and then here comes this guy.

And Jesus uses the term 10,000 because that's the largest numer number that can be written in Greek in a single word.

So it may, and it was often used just to speak of some indescribable number, some incalculable number.

Now, when I was young, I think we would have called that a trillion.

We don't do that anymore.

Now we'd have to say, what?

What's after a trillion?

Gazillion.

There you go.

A gazillion.

That'll work.

What is a gazillion?

I don't know.

You can't count it.

That's kind of the point Jesus is making here.

This guy comes to him and he's got a debt so large you can't even count it.

And so he makes this claim upon this man.

As he begins to make the settlement, a man who owed him a gazillion was brought to him.

And since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had was sold to repay the debt.

Is that going to pay for it?

Not in 4,000 lifetimes.

Not even close.

It's not even the tiniest fraction of what was old.

Everything he has, all that are dear and close to him, he, his own life itself, it can't pay it back.

It just can't pay it back.

This man will never be free again.

Ever.

So what happens?

Slave.

He knows he's in trouble.

And he thinks about what it's like for him to be sold into slavery and his family to be sold into slavery and all of his goods to be sold and given to the king.

What does he do?

He makes this absurd appeal.

The servant fell on his knees, verse twenty-six.

Be patient with me.

You mean like four thousand lifetimes patient?

Two hundred thousand years patient?

Be patient with me.

And I will pay back everything.

This man should have resorted to begging.

But what does he do?

He reduces himself to bargaining.

Just give me some time.

This is outrageous of a response.

His helpless plea is for patience.

And it's a desperate, dishonest, despicable appeal.

His debt is so astronomically high there's no patience in the world that could wait for that repayment.

And he knows it.

And he knows the king knows it.

This is a slap in the face of the king.

It grossly and blatantly underestimates the severity of the problem.

Jesus is telling this story to his disciples.

And there's gasp after gasp after gasp as they listen to these extravagant figures and this insane appeal.

But Jesus isn't done causing the air to break with gasps.

Because look at what happens?

The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go.

How much do you owe me?

What was that again?

Sixteen billion, six hundred million?

How long will you think how much patience do you need?

Sixty million days of work.

That's about two hundred thousand years, yeah?

Yep.

Okay.

And if 44,000 people live their whole life to help you out, they would have to give you 50 years of their wages, every bit of it.

So you could pay me back.

You don't owe me a thing.

Can you believe that?

Can you believe that a king would do that?

We'll talk about that more in a minute.

This king, who demanded what was due him, shows compassion on this faithless servant who had just mocked him to his face with this plea for patience.

He doesn't let him go to try raise the money.

He doesn't put him on a time payment plan.

He doesn't garner his wages.

He lets him go.

The debt of four thousand lifetimes is now a gift to this man.

No strings attached, it seems.

The man has just been released of this incalculable amount.

More than he can ever even imagine.

This man has just tried to bargain his way out of it.

But the king is moved with compassion.

The king cares more about the man than the money.

The king is willing to take the price that he was owed.

And he lets him go.

And just imagine hearing this inch by inch as Jesus lets it out, as he tells it.

But when that man went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.

He's gone out.

He's just walked away from this meeting that he was in.

And he leaves free of any burden.

Obviously, this man's life has been totally transformed, yeah.

But a situation's about to reveal whether it has or not.

This man's face was still flush with the shock, with the with the horror of embarrassment and embarrassment of being caught and the and the flush of the plea.

And the bargaining that he thought, and the sort of wondering if he's getting away with it, and then to find out he's released of it all, and he's still breathless and flushed, and he runs across the guy that owns him a hundred denarii.

A hundred days' wages, about four months.

And everybody's listening to the story goes, here's the moment when this guy's going to act like Zacchaeus, where Zacchaeus climbs down from the sycamore tree and he says, If I've owed any man anything, I'll pay him back fourfold.

You can just, they're just waiting for Jesus to finish the story by saying, and this guy did just like the king did.

But that's not what happens.

This man meets, maybe finds, I'm not sure which, but he comes across the guy who owes him not 4,000 lifetimes worth of debt, but four months worth of debt.

And he's unwilling to extend the same forgiveness he's just received.

And he wants his money immediately, paid in full.

And he wants it so immediately and so paid in full, he grabs the guy by the throat and says, Give it to me now.

He's just been forgiven a debt that's six hundred thousand times greater than the one he's clutching the guy's throat over.

Sixty million days worth of debt has been let go, and now he's grabbing the throat of a guy over a hundred days worth of debt.

The debtor makes a plea.

Verse 29.

Fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me, and I will pay you back.

You know what should have been ringing in the ears of this man?

These are the exact same things I I just said.

Except for one word.

They're exactly the same thing.

The pleas of this man who's calling for patience for a hundred days worth of wages ought to have just flooded back into the mind's the man's mind.

I I just said the same thing, and I had sixty million days released.

Because the king was compassionate.

The king thought about me and not the money.

The king took the cost and didn't lay it on me.

This man makes an honest plea, not a dishonest bargain like the first guy did.

He says, Be patient with me and I'll pay you back.

He doesn't go to this everything phrase like the other guy did in the face of 60 million days worth of debt.

This man can realistically repay it, and he's determined to do so.

He's going to find a way forward.

But that's not good enough to this guy.

In verse 30, he refuses.

And the Greek puts it this way: this is not what he wanted.

He did not want that.

He didn't want the repayment.

He wanted the vengeance.

Out of compassion, the king set aside what he wanted.

But now this man is not going to set aside what he wants.

And he takes this helpless debtor to court and has him cast into prison.

And that leads us into the next movement, the judgment upon unforgiveness.

In verse 31, other servants are looking at what's going on and they're greatly distressed.

They don't feel any power to do anything about it, but it troubles them.

And so they go to the king and they speak to the king.

And the king hears about it, and he can do something about it.

The master's heard everything that's happened.

And the master calls the servant in and begins to rebuke him.

Even though the debt's been canceled, he's still the master.

This man's still the servant.

And he's able to still call him into account for what he's done.

And he's reminded of the conversation.

I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.

Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?

This enormous debt had been released.

And the question the king asks him is calling for only one answer.

Yes.

Shouldn't you have had the same kind of compassion I had on you?

Yes.

Shouldn't you have released the debt that I released on you?

Yes.

Shouldn't you have thought more about the person than the money like I did?

Yes.

Should you have laid the cost on yourself instead of laying it on the one that owed you it?

Yes.

Yes.

You see, there might have been a legal challenge here that this man could have rightly brought against the person who owed him money, but there was a moral, moral aspect to this as well, that overlaid any of the legal aspect of it at all.

This man had been shown mercy, and mercy triumphs law here.

This first servant should have had a life so impacted by the release that he had just had from all of his debt that now his whole life and all the values of his life have been upended, and now he's determined to be a person of mercy and care.

But instead, he's not only selfishly taken advantage of the master's mercy, he's now turned his vengeance on others, and he's about to receive the recompense of his evil heart.

The king here in this story.

In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed.

Which was never, which means the torture was never going to end.

The imprisonment was never going to end.

He was going to suffer continually, ongoing, excruciating torments that would go on without end, without end, without end, without end.

And Jesus stops.

What do we make of this story?

Well, if we know the gospel of Matthew at all, it should sound familiar to us.

It should sound familiar to us ringing in our ears ought to be blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

That ought to be ringing in our ears.

Or forgive us our debts as we forgive those.

Forgive us our debts as we've forgiven our debtors in the Lord's Prayer.

Or the statement Jesus made right after the Lord's Prayer that Banu preached about some weeks ago, months ago now.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

For if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

What is all of this?

What are we to make of this?

Just like the statements in the Beatitudes and the statements in and just after the Lord's Prayer, Jesus is once again linking the forgiveness of God with a heart of forgiveness toward others.

He's making an inseparable link between the two.

Now, obviously, he's not telling us we can get to heaven by forgiving people, because this man is released of a debt he can never pay.

But what he's saying is, is those who have experienced forgiveness are now people that also need to express forgiveness.

Those people who have received mercy are to be those people who show mercy.

And he said, if you don't show mercy and you aren't a forgiving person, there's a great cause to question whether or not you've ever had mercy or ever been forgiven.

That's the point he's making.

What he's telling us here is that remember, this is a story about the kingdom of God is like.

This life that Jesus is inaugurating here and about to bring into a fuller flourishing after the resurrection and what we enjoy and part of are part of today.

That a person who's truly experienced the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ are going to be transformed people who live life in a fundamentally different way, experiencing that transformation in a changed way of life, including how they deal with their relationships and the obligations that are there, and even the hurts and sins that happen.

That our words and our actions mesh together.

At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Is it Peter?

Is it James?

Is it John?

Is it me?

Who's the greatest?

Jesus is still answering their issue.

And he goes through these three movements of this chapter as he talks about being like a child in humility.

And he talks about being active and restoring the wayward like the shepherd.

Here he talks about being merciful, like the king.

And he's answering these men in their silly way of thinking about what the kingdom is going to be like.

Because they are what?

They're so full of pride that they think they can number each other as better and best.

Top dog or least one.

They think that they have a right to argue with each other about it.

And as they're arguing with each other, they're breaking each other apart and they're not caring for each other.

They're adding fire to fire and fuel to fuel as they angrily talk about who's better than who.

Acting independent as well as prideful.

And then losing the argument sometimes and getting bitter.

Or do you remember what he said to me?

I can't believe he just said he was better than I was.

I'm going to get him back for that.

And they're not only prideful and independent, they're vengeful and they're bitter.

And they're asking Jesus, who's the greatest in the kingdom?

Not a one of you.

Not a one of you.

Because God's children are humble.

God's children are in a restoration project.

God's children are merciful.

Are you that, guys?

And so Jesus lays out for them the aspects of his kingdom: humility and accountability and mercy.

These are what they need.

To turn away them from being so proud and independent and bitter and vengeful.

He's telling them, you need to be humble, you need to be loving, you need to be caring, you need to carefully restore.

You need to forgive and show mercy.

Enough of this unhealthy competition.

Enough of this comparison one against the other.

Enough of this trying to elbow each other out of the best spots so you can have it.

Wonderfully, these men, these apostles, will continue to see Jesus' life, and they will begin to experience what seems to be the failure of his mission as he comes to the cross.

And they'll be puzzled, bewildered by the empty tomb as they can't figure out what's just happened.

But then the day will come when the awakening will happen and their thoughts and hearts will blaze with the wonderful understanding that truly Christ did bring his rule to bear on earth, and it reigns in the hearts of men and in their hearts.

And a transformation will occur to these men, so they will be so glad to give their life as they share the gospel around the world.

Glad to say to the unforgiving, God can forgive you in Christ.

A transformation where these things are not just gasps and surprises, but the very center of what we believe and experience.

A king who's given up an insurmountable debt because he's taken an insurmountable cost for us.

And he calls us to be people of mercy and forgiveness, just like he is.

And so Peter writes, You're a chosen people, you're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that you may declare the praises of him that called you out of darkness into his eternal light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.

And once you had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy.

You are mercy receivers, and now we are to be mercy sharers with one another.

This world is still full of pride.

It's still full of independence.

It's still full of bitterness.

It's still full of vengeance, and it's on the front pages of our papers every day.

But there ought to be, and there is, a community of people in this world that show that there's a different way to life.

There is a life of humility.

We don't have to argue about who's best anymore.

There's a life of accountability.

We care for the wayward and we go after them.

We care about mercy and we show it even taking cost to ourselves.

We care about forgiveness because at the heart of it all, there's one who's done all of that for us.

Who was so humble to leave the environs of heaven to take up a place in a form of a servant and go to the cross and to give it up for us.

Who was so willing to call us and to come after us, and the hound of heaven, the Holy Spirit to chase us down until we said, I'm yours, Jesus.

And for us to receive at the end of it all an insurmountable release of an unpayable debt to God.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus and what He's told us here, and what He's done to give us a different perspective.

Lord, it's too often we're caught up in the pattern and mold of this world and thinking that we have to live our life in the way that it sort of presses us into.

We thank you that we have a means by which we are transformed into a new way of thought and life, and that is the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ that comes to us undeserving, comes to us and frees us of our iniquity, comes to us with the transforming work of the Word and the Spirit, to make us what we never were, to make us humble when we were proud, to make us care when we were only selfish, to make us merciful when we were only bitter and vengeful.

We thank you for your work of deliverance and salvation in Christ, and we praise you as we remember you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.