Power in the Pulpit | Matthew 18:21–35

Intro: Thank you Leighton for leading us in worship this morning. If you have a Bible with you this morning we are going to be in the book of Matthew. We are going to be looking at chapter 18 verses twenty-one through thirty five. If you have been with us at all over the last few weeks we have been going through what our core values are. And I would say that for the most part, they are things we forget, but that we understand are part of being followers of Christ. Saved people serve people. That seems pretty fair. Found people find people. We may not like the idea of talking to somebody about Jesus or going away on a mission trip, but we understand we are suppose to. We were created for community. We all know that from experience. Growing people change. Maybe something we don’t think about a whole lot, but that makes sense. But then we get to todays. Forgiven People forgive. You see this one hurts because it causes us to examine areas of our lives that are painful. It causes us to want to let go of the anger or pain we have become use to from when somebody did something wrong to us. You see, forgiven people do forgive. But not just because we have to. But because we have been changed by the forgiveness we have received. When we look at today’s text, we will see that it is by understanding how much we have been forgiven that believers forgive. If you would, would you please stand as we honor the reading of God’s Word.

Verses 21-22

Exposition: So the passage starts with Peter asking a question that I imagine all of us have asked something similar to at some point. Verse 21 says, “Matthew 18:21 “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?”” This is a question that all of us have asked at some points in our lives. How much are we expected to forgive? What is the line in which it just doesn’t make sense for us to forgive anymore. And what Peter says, seems somewhat reasonable for us and maybe more or less if we know what people are being forgiven of. But this was actually a large amount to someone in Peter’s shoes. Rabbis at this time taught the most you should forgive somebody was three times. But Peter, has been hearing Jesus talk about forgiving those that have wronged you, so he asks Jesus what is the number Jesus has in mind. And the number Peter suggests is more than twice what was being taught at this time. But Jesus answers and as he has the habit of doing throughout the gospels, particularly in the book of Matthew, he takes what the disciples thought they knew and completely changes it. Verse 22 says Matthew 18:22 “Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Some of your translations may say seventy times seven. The Greek on this is a bit confusing, but the best translation is seventy-seven.

Explanation: Now some of you are probably thinking, these numbers Peter and Jesus are giving are oddly specific. There’s two explanations for that. Seven was a number of completion. That was perhaps why Peter was suggesting that number. Jesus then puts a huge multiple of that number. But Jesus number may have had a little bit different meaning. In Genesis 4, Lamech who was the son of Cain, said that he would avenge himself seventy-seven times when somebody harmed him. It was known as Lamech’s law of revenge. Jesus then contrasts how much we should forgive with how much Lamech said he would obtain revenge. But it’s important what is not being said here. Jesus is not saying that if somebody is unrepentant in their habitual sin against you, you need to act like nothing ever happened. We know this because in the gospel of Luke we the words of Jesus where he says Luke 17:3–4 “Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”” If somebody is actively sinning against you, Jesus is not saying that you should just act like it never happened. He is very clear that this forgiveness comes when there is repentance. But, even if it is something that we know they are going to struggle with again, Jesus says we are to forgive them. Another thing this is not, is a hard set number of how many times we are suppose to forgive somebody. If you have forgiven somebody seventy-seven times already in life, it’s not like every time you start to get into an argument with that person you say, “Listen, I’ve already forgiven you 77 times so if I were you, I’d be very careful about what I say next.” No, this 77 number is outrageously high and there are few if any people who will ever hurt us that deeply that many times. In fact as we get to verses 23-27, it’s not about how much we have had to forgive, but about how much we have been forgiven.

Transition: Jesus then goes into a parable. Parables are stories that are not true, but are used to demonstrate a point.

Verse 23-27

Exposition: Jesus says starting in verse 23 Matthew 18:23–25 ““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 Jesus begins telling a story of a man who owed a king ten thousand talents. This was an outrageously hight amount of money. A talent was a unit of weight equaling about 75 pounds. It was also a unit of monetary reckoning. One talent was about twenty years wages. The man owed 10,000 of those. This wasn’t an amount that people heard and thought, man that would have taken the man a really long time to repay that. They would have understood right away how much money that was. Verse 25 tells us that it was such large debt that the man’s family was being sold into slavery to recoup some of the loss. This was a horrible, but normal practice during this time period.

Explanation: You see this is where we are in the parable. God is a perfect Holy God. He cannot tolerate sin. So our sin creates a huge debt for us. But once we have sinned, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves not sinners. No matter how many good things we do, there’s nothing that can make us not have committed that sin. That sin creates a debt that we have no way of repaying. It’s not the sin itself that creates the debt, but the holiness of the one that we have sinned against.

Exposition: So what does the servant do, well, he does what I think anybody would do in that situation. He gets on his knees and begins saying anything that may help his case. Verse 26 says Matthew 18:26 “So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’” The man is just talking at this point. He tells the King he will repay everything if the King will just have patience with him. But this debt is unpayable. Everybody already knows that. The King would have been well within his right to continue with what he had already started. But that’s not what he does. Verse 27 says, Matthew 18:27 “And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.” The master sees the man. And even knowing that the man can’t pay the debt, he has pity on the man and forgives his debt. What a story. And it’s easy to see where we fit into that. But there’s some things we need to look at. First, we have to understand how great our debt was to understand how great the forgiveness was.

Illustration: It is easy for us to sometimes hear we have been forgiven of our sins. But I don’t think we talk enough about how great that debt was. Think about this for a second. Say you are getting close to paying off your house. You had a thirty year mortgage, and you only have two payments left. Well one day you get a call from the company that has your loan and they say, hey we are forgiving the discrepancy in what you have been paying each month. You aren’t just going to be like, hey that’s great. Thanks so much. You’re going to either have some serious questions, or not take it seriously until you hear what they are talking about. But if they tell you, hey we haven’t been updating your property tax you paid into the escrow account each month and you actually have been paying an average of $50 a month less each month than you were suppose to. Then you are going to be a lot more thankful for what you have been forgiven. It is not until we understand that the debt that we owed God due to our sin was unpayable that we are going to be thankful for the grace that we have received.

Exposition: It is also important to remember, that as it was only the king’s pity that led him to forgive the man, it was totally God’s choice to make a way for us to be forgiven. There was nothing we did that showed we could repay the debt we owed. There was nothing that made God think he may be able to get back his investment. No he did it because he chose to do it. We cannot do anything to make ourselves right with God. There is nothing we can do that makes our sin go away. And that leads us to the next thing we need to see in this section. The kind forgave the man, but that doesn’t mean he got back his money. If the man owed the King 10,000 talents, it’s not like he just got that money back when he chose to forgive him that money.

Illustration: It’s kind of like this. You know how when you were a teenager, at about 16 everybody started getting their first jobs so they could pay for gas and doing things with friends. I shouldn’t say everybody. We all had that one friend or two, who never got jobs so they had no money. So you and all the other friends that had to work always drove them or paid for their food at places. And they always said they were going to pay you back, but never did. At some point you just have to accept that you aren’t ever getting that money back. You are forgiving that debt. Now, if you tried to go to some restaurant and tell them, hey I paid for my friend to eat here the other day, but I’m not making him pay me back, so I’m going to need that money back. There is zero chance that you are getting that money back. Why? Because the price still had to be paid. And the price still had to be paid for our sins to be forgiven. Romans 5:8, tells us that the wages of sin is death. We see in Genesis 3, that death was the price that mankind had to pay for sin. So when God decided that he was going to make a way for our sins to be forgiven, that did not just make the debt that we owed because of sin go away. No. But instead God sent Jesus into the world to die for our sins. He came and he paid the price for our sins so that we could be forgiven. You see, we had a debt that was unpayable. Only through death could sin be atoned for. But God took on that price. It was Jesus’ blood that would be the price for our sins. We must never forget how much we owed, and that somebody paid the price for us.

Transition: So the man has just been forgiven a debt that he could not repay. As we already stated, this means that the ruler just ate the cost. The man that was forgiven should have brought us a whole new appreciation for forgiveness right? Well, she should have. But he didn’t.

Verses 28-30

Exposition: Looking at verse 28 we read Matthew 18:28–30 “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.” So the man gets set free because his debt had been forgiven. And the first thing we read that he does is go and start telling someone that owes him money to pay up.

Explanation: It’s important to understand the currency and how much the man was owed. denarii was a day worth of wages this time period. So the man was owed 100 days wages. That’s not an insignificant amount of money. The average daily pay in the United States is $220. That means that in terms that we can understand a little bit better, it would be as if somebody owed $22,000 in our culture. That’s not nothing. There’s very few people that would just part with $22,000 and not think anything of it. But it’s not 100 talents either. It’s not millions or Billions.

Application: You see, this is true in our lives too. When Jesus tells us to forgive, he’s not making light of whatever we have experienced in our lives. He’s not saying we should act like it’s no big deal and just go on with our lives. No, by what Jesus is saying in this parable, he is acknowledging the hurt and the pain some of us have felt from those who have wronged us. We all have different stories. I’m not going to even go through examples of people that have hurt us. The reality is that those of us in here today who are holding back forgiveness don’t have to be given an example, because right now you already have the person and what they did going through your head. Forgiveness is a hard thing. But we don’t need to look at the debt that is owed us and just think we are going to want to forgive. No, the ability to forgive does not come from focusing on the debt that is owed to us. No, the desire to forgive comes from looking at the debt that was forgiven us. What the man was owed was a lot less than what he owed the King. But yet when he went before the King, the King forgave. When those who have wronged you come before you and ask for forgiveness, do not focus on what they have done. Instead focus on the cross. Think about what our savior went through on the cross. Think about the fact that we sinned against a Holy God who cannot even tolerate sin, yet he found it in his heart to forgive us. When we focus on what God has done for us, it is easier to act likewise.

Transition: So what was the reaction of the master from the beginning of the parable. It wasn’t good.

Verses 31-35

Reading in verse 35 we see Matthew 18:31–35 “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.””

Exposition: So people are sitting there watching all this unfold, and they are like, hey wait a second. This isn’t right. This is the epitome of hypocrisy. So they go to the master or king, the words are used interchangeably and rat the guy out. The King is furious and has him thrown in jail until he could pay his debt. Then we read the final verse which can be troubling for those of us who are believers. Verse 35 says Matthew 18:35 “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”” This is troubling because those of us who are believers who are struggling with forgiveness start to wonder a little bit, am I or have I lost my salvation over this. The answer to that question is no. If we can’t earn our salvation, we can’t unearn it. Romans 8:1 says Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So we can’t lose our salvation. But what Jesus is saying, is that moments like this reveal a lot about our hearts.

Explanation: Remember, when the King first went to sell the man and his family into slavery as restitution for what was owed, the man fell down before him and begged for it not to happen. He was saying he was going to work to repay all that was owed. The master then forgave him. But this did not change the man. It does not seem that the man had a true concept of what this meant, because he then withheld his forgiveness. Since he was not truly changed, he was not truly forgiven.

Application: Many churches today are filled today with people who did not want to go to hell. And because they didn’t want to go to hell they walked an aisle, went to the pastor and asked to pray to receive Christ and be baptized. And this happened. And they considered and called themselves, “Christians.” But not wanting to go to hell is not what saves us. We have to understand the depths of our sins and repent from those sins and ask that God forgive us from our sins. And if you are someone that holds grudges and refuses forgiveness without any conviction from the Holy Spirit, then there is a chance that you never truly understood the debt we owed and that was forgiven. And if you were not transformed then you probably did not establish a real relationship with Jesus, which means that your sins were never actually forgiven. Listen, this isn’t everybody who has somebody they haven’t forgiven. And the difference is that those of us who won’t forgive, probably feel the Holy Spirit telling you you should. And you just ignore it. But if withholding forgiveness is part of your life and you feel no remorse from doing that. I encourage you to spend some time before the Father, and see if you have truly ever repented and been forgiven of your sins. Remember, as we say here at Maynard, Forgiven people, forgive people.

Conclusion: As we close this morning, I want to ask you, do you see yourself anywhere in this passage. Are you Peter wondering how many times you must forgive? Are you withholding forgiveness from somebody who has asked for it? If so, why? Is it because you realize that you are ignoring the voice of the Holy Spirit telling you to forgive? Are you ignoring the forgiveness you have received so that you don’t have to forgive? You may be somewhere different. Maybe today you hear this parable and you realize, you have never asked God for forgiveness of your sins. Maybe you have never really thought about the depths of your sins and so because of that you have never asked God to forgive you your sins. If that is you today, and you are ready to receive the eternal hope that comes with that forgiveness of sins, don’t hesitate. Make today the day. But maybe you are here, and you realize that you have asked God for forgiveness at some point. Maybe you have even gone before the church and been baptized, but you realize you didn’t mean it. You realize that you wanted to be forgiven of sins, but you didn’t want to repent from your sins. If that’s you, is today the day you truly ask for forgiveness? If so, don’t let this moment pass. I will be at the front, and we will have people in the back at the next steps table. Come pray with somebody.