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- Before we get into the sermon, we need to take a few moments and review the context of the conversation that Jesus had with his disciples as Matthew's 18th chapter presents it.
- So the disciples first come to Jesus
and ask him who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and Jesus tells them
they must turn and become humble like little children.
- Then Jesus talks about how terrible
it is to be the cause of sin in someone else's life or even in your own life.
- He spoke of not despising little ones
because their angels are always in the presence of God and how God is unwilling
to let even one little one parish illustrating with the parable of the lost
sheep.
- He talks then about the significance
of forgiveness between brothers and of the importance of witnesses and
agreement when dealing with sin in the Christian community.
- Then Peter asks how often you should
forgive, thinking that seven is a generous amount.
- Really, Peter's question is about the
limits of forgiveness.
- To which Jesus replies 77 times or 70x7 the Greek could
be taken either way, but what Jesus was saying is that forgiveness knows no
limits.
- Then Jesus launches into our parable.
- In this parable, the first servant
owes the King 10,000 talents and the second servant owes the first servant 100
denarii (the plural of denarius which was the daily wage paid to a labor).
- The king is settling his accounts &
the first servant is brought before him. Because he cannot repay his debt, the
king orders that his possessions and his family be sold so that at least a
portion of the debt could be recovered and make an example of this servant.
- While it was against the law for a
wife to be sold, and the law allowed no
practice of slavery for debt and torture was also illegal, that does not mean
that these things were not practiced in Israel at the time of Jesus and before.
- The Old Testament records a number of
examples where people were sold for debt. Herod the Great was known to have
torturers in his employ.
- It was also common for whole families
to be sold into slavery and torture because of debt in the Greco-Roman world of
the first century A.D.
- In light of this information, while
we understand on one level that the king may be seen as God because of his
compassionate forgiveness, on another level the king reflects the oppressive
rulers of the day.
- One of the things that we really need
to connect with in this parable is the overwhelming size of the debt of the
first servant.
- A talent was a measure of weight for
gold, silver, or copper which varied between 60 and 90 pounds.
-10,000
talents would weigh over 200 metric tons.
- Depending on the metal used, a talent was worth about 6000 denarii, so the first servant's
debt was 60 million denarii.
- At a denarius a day, it would take 164,000 years for a day laborer to
repay that debt.
- "The annual salary of Herod the
great was reportedly 900 talents: 200 talents being the tax revenue for Galilee
and Perea, 100 talents the tax revenue from the regions assigned to his son
Philip, and 600 talents the tax revenue for the areas controlled by Archelaus" (Snodgrass,
Stories with Intent, p. 66).
- Let's take this information from the first
century and translate it to today for the average Canadian wage, this is what
we would find.
- $46,000
is the average Canadian yearly wage. If we were in the same shoes as the
first servant, multiplying that wage by 164,000 years, that would put our personal
debt to the King at $7.544 billion.
- That kind of money would put one in
the ranks of the 10 wealthiest people in Canada, on par with the Irving's. It
is simply incredible. Now imagine you owe this amount.
- The sale of this servant's belongings
and his family could not even begin to recover the unbelievably huge amount of
money the first servant owed the king.
- About the highest price paid for a slave was 1 talent, but the average was much less, between 500 & 2000 denarii, which is less than 1/10 of one percent of
what the servant owed his Master.
- Do
you know what 1/10 of one percent of $7.5 billion is? It's $7.5 million.
- You probably wouldn't get that if you
put together all our earthly wealth (@MBC) let alone the first servant's family and
possessions.
- So without any hope of being able to
repay the debt, he did the only thing he could do.
- He begged for his Master's patience,
promising to repay the whole debt which he surely could not do. Certainly, this was
overconfidence on the part of the first slave.
- To repay the whole debt would have
been impossible, completely insurmountable.
- Unbelievably, his Master forgives him
the debt.
- Here is where the parable begins to
get sticky because we need to see ourselves in the shoes of the first servant
as far as our sin, our debt to God for everything that we have done wrong, is
concerned.
- That
debt represents our sin in this parable. There is only one Aramaic word for sin and debt, 'hoba.
- No amount of good works can ever
repay our sin-debt.
- This is the point that Jesus is
making in this parable and this is what Matthew is trying to teach his readers:
To forgive from the heart, I must
appreciate the grace for me in God's heart.
- Can you hear the voice of Jesus in
this parable? Is God speaking to you today?
- The first servant ought to have
realized the immensity of the debt that he had been forgiven and appreciated
it. How? ...By extending the same grace to others.
- Is that what happens in the parable?
No, quite the opposite in fact.
- This same slave goes out and finds a
fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, a
hundred days wages.
- While this amount is not small, it is
microscopic compared to the debt the first slave was forgiven, 164,000 years.
- The actions of the first servant are
hypocritical. Clearly, he had not
understood that because he had been forgiven of so great a debt he ought to
have forgiven his fellow servant.
- His actions do not make any sense of
his experience. He grabs his fellow servant by the throat, demanding to be paid
what is owed to him and refused to listen to his fellow servants cries for
patience and has him thrown into prison.
- And we are left with the same
question the king later asks him: "should
not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?"
- To
forgive from the heart, I must appreciate the grace for me in God's heart.
- Remember that we need to put
ourselves in the shoes of the first servant. How are we at showing mercy to others?
- Can you hear the voice of Jesus in
this parable? Is God speaking to you today?
- When the other servants heard about
the hypocrisy of the first servant, the parable tells us they were greatly
distressed.
- In fact, the wording reveals that
they were so grieved and angered by the first servant's action so greatly that
they reported it to the king.
- And if were really getting into the
story we start thinking, "He's going to
get what's coming to him."
- What we don't realize is, so will we, unless we
forgive.
- Because of that first servant's
unwillingness to forgive, the King does not merely hand him over to the
jailors, but to the torturers as the Greek reveals.
- While God in his infinite mercy
forgives those who seek his forgiveness, God is also infinite in justice and
those who refuse to show mercy and forgiveness will receive the wrath of God's
judgment.
- To
forgive from the heart, I must appreciate the grace for me in God's heart.
- We are all very comfortable with the
notion that God is a forgiving God, but the idea that God is a God of justice
and that he will take revenge on those who do not live justly and love mercy makes us very
uncomfortable.
- We don't like to think of God as
being vengeful or punitive.
- But is God's kingdom truly present if
evil goes tolerated and unpunished forever? That day shall surely come.
- What else can we expect God to do
after having received his mercy if we refuse to extend his mercy to others?
- Judgment is as much a part of the
message of God's kingdom as mercy.
- Forgiveness and mercy are absolutely
essential parts of the lives of people who claim to belong to the kingdom of
God.
- God shows us that his kingdom comes
with limitless grace in this parable, but God also shows us that limitless
grace requires a limitless demand.
- "Mercy
is not effectively received unless it is shown, for God's mercy
transforms" (Snodgrass, Stories
with Intent, p. 75).
- Can you hear the voice of Jesus in
this parable? Is God speaking to you today?
- To
forgive from the heart, I must appreciate the grace for me in God's heart.
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