The Unforgiving Servant Part 1

Matthew 18:23-27

Turn with me to Matthew Chapter 18, we are going to look at our next parable. The parable of the unforgiving servant which teaches about forgiveness and gives us a clue about how much God forgave us. This parable is at the end of chapter 18, so I want to start at the beginning of 18 to give us a brief understanding of the context of this chapter, because it is very important when reading a section of Scripture to know the context in which it is in.

Matthew 18:1 We have the disciples asking, who will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Then Jesus uses a child from the crowd as an object lesson to illustrate that unless one becomes like a child, he cannot enter the kingdom. Jesus is saying that you must be like a child in that you must realize you have no rights, no say in any matters, and you must fully depend on another person for survival. In this case you must fully rely on Jesus for your salvation. This is the idea of full submission to Christ Jesus in order to be saved.

Then He answers their question and says that anyone who is humble like a child will be the greatest in the kingdom.

Jesus uses this child as a reference like I said, but the point is not just children. The child represents children of God, the elect, the chosen, anyone and everyone who has put their faith in Christ. So, the child represents all of us. Once you become a child of God, God’s attention is now focused on you, on all His children. And just like a loving, caring father, God protects and looks after His children.

Jesus explains in verse 7 and on down, He says woe to the world for its stumbling blocks. If anyone causes a child of God to stumble, that is a serious offense, and it will not go unpunished. We see in verse 10 that God assigns angels to us to guard and protect us as well. In verse 12-14 is a short parable talking about how God will not let one of His children be lost, then in verses 15-20 we have Jesus explaining the steps of church discipline.

So, all of chapter 18 is about believers. And we must keep that in mind when looking at the rest of chapter 18, the context is Jesus talking about believers in the church. This is important to understand because people commonly misinterpret this parable because they don’t understand the context.

Verse 21. Jesus is speaking to His disciples, and then Peter asks a question. Because the disciples knew and Jesus knew that even though we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, and we need to have unity and love, we are still in a fallen human nature so quarrels and offenses and transgressions are not completely gone. We are all going to dwell with one another in heaven but right now we are all still human and we all still sin.

In verse 21, Peter asks this question. Matthew 18:21 Read

Peter thought 7 times was being very generous because the rabbinical teaching of that time was you were to only forgive a person twice. They got this from the book of Amos in Amos 1:3 “This is what the Lord says, for three sins of Damascus, even for four, I will not relent.” (6,9,11,13). So, their teaching was since God forgave Israel’s enemies only twice, it was unnecessary to forgive anyone more than twice. The Pharisees of course liked to pride themselves with their self-made righteousness so they added that if you wanted to go above and beyond the law, you could forgive a person 3 times, but no more.

So, I can only imagine Peter thinking to himself, you know what, I’m going to impress Jesus here and say 7 times, that should get me a pat on the back.

Matthew 18:22 Some translations might have 77 or 7 x 70 and there are debates on which one it is. But the number is not the point. Whether its 77 or 490, Jesus’ point is that you forgive a person an innumerable number of times. No one is going to keep a book with them and say, well, you did this for the 78th time, I can’t forgive you now. Or ewe, 491, sorry. We forgive, we forgive, and we forgive some more unconditionally, without keeping track.

Why do we forgive an infinite number of times? Because that is what God does to us. And this is the exact point Jesus brings up in the parable of the unforgiving servant which starts in verse 23.

Matthew 18:23-25 We are going to stop there, and we are going to take our time on these verses. The point of this parable is a believer forgiving another believer or an unbeliever. Humans forgiving other humans. But to really ingest this concept, Jesus adds this profound reality to the parable: God’s forgiveness toward us. Again, not the point of the parable as a whole, but we are going to take our time this morning and look at just these few verses talking about the doctrine of total depravity and how much God actually forgave when He saved each and every one of us. Then next week, we will look at the rest of the parable and why it is so important to forgive one another.

In most of the parables, there are two main characters, God and you.

A king wishes to settle accounts with his slaves. This was common with kings as the king taxed his nation, his officials would be in charge of gathering the money and bringing it to the king. By the way, anyone under the king was considered a slave. Even the king’s highest officials were slaves, they were just higher slaves. Since the king wishes to settle accounts, this suggests an error has occurred in the numbers, and we see one of the slaves has embezzled some of the king’s money for himself.

Verse 24. 10,000 talents. A talent was a unit of measurement, and depending on the time period and culture, it was anywhere from 60-120 pounds in today’s weight. We normally see this weight of a talent associated with silver or gold in Scripture. That is how they measured or weighed their precious metals. Just imagine 60-120 pounds of silver or gold in today's value. (Good chunk of change). That’s just one talent. Now imagine 10,000 talents of silver or gold. That’s a lot of money that this one slave has embezzled.

Biblical scholars have tried to estimate this number in today’s economic value and there are many opinions on it. I’ve seen anywhere from a couple million to hundreds of millions, even getting up to the billion range. But they miss the point that Jesus is making. The greek word for 10,000 is “myrias”which literally meant 10,000, but it was also the largest number in the greek language, so it was used figuratively to represent a vast, uncountable number. Today we would use the word, zillion. A Zillion of them. That’s not a real number, but if someone says that to you, you know that’s an uncountable          number. So, big, we make up a word that is incalculable. A talent was the largest unit of measurement the ancient cultures had. So, Jesus' point is that this slave owed the king and incalculable and unplayable debt.

This slave represents you and I before we were saved. And this debt of an incomprehensible number represents the sin debt that you and I had before God forgave us and saved us. It represents the debt of sin that every single person owes God. This is the clearest example of total depravity in all of Scripture.

People today want to put themselves on a made-up scale of some sorts. Every human on the planet likes to think of themselves as somewhat of a good person. I’m not a murderer or a child molester, I’m not hitler, so I have to be higher on the scale. I’m not the nicest person so I won’t put myself at the top, but I’m probably pretty close. This scale we make up in our minds, is biblically inaccurate. You know how I know this? Hitler killed 6 million Jews. Hitler goes to Hell for eternity. You know where sweet old grandma who only ever told one little white lie, and is the best, nicest person we know, but never excepted Christ as Lord goes? To hell for eternity. The same punishment.

There is no scale that exist among humans in terms of how good you are. In fact, there is no one on this planet that is good. People want to say, he’s a good person. I’m sorry to tell you, he is not, just as much under the curse of sin as anybody else.

Romans 3:9-12 Are we better than they? Paul is saying are we putting ourselves on a scale and placing ourselves higher than them? Not at all. All people are under sin, all people are totally depraved. Total depravity means you are not as bad as you could be, but every part of you is diseased, is corrupted by sin. Your conscious, your mind, every member of your body is plagued by the curse of sin, just like every other human being that ever existed. Just because you sin differently than someone else does not mean you are better than they. You sin, they sin, we are all in the same boat. No one is righteous, no one is good.

Luke 18:18-19 No one is good but God alone. Jesus wasn’t saying He wasn’t good, because He is God, but we don’t have time to go down that road today. But Jesus shatters this idea of any scale that us humans want to make up. Jesus says in this verse, you are either as good as God, 100% good or you are 100% bad. There is no one in between. Sorry if this is a shock to you but you are 100% bad, just like me and everyone else. Now we are seen as good through Christ, but we will talk about that later.

Go back with me to Matthew 18:24. To further illustrate this point. The slave has embezzled and incalculable currency from the king. We know we represent the slave, and the embezzled currency represents something we have stolen from God. Each one of us, before God saved us, had embezzled God’s glory. God’s glory as we know is something very precious, we as Christians are to guard it, we are to do everything for God’s glory and His alone.

1 Corinthians 10:31 “Wether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

You might get asked or you might have wondered before: Why is hell eternal? Infinite?

Every human being after Adam and Eve sinned, was born a sinner and had embezzled and incalculable amount of God’s glory. That is one of the main reasons the punishment for humanity is hell for eternity. God’s glory is so precious and so serious that it requires that punishment. Hopefully that puts in perspective how great God’s glory is.

Whenever someone does not fear God, or trust God, or have faith that He sacrificed His Son for us to live, if we worship something else or someone else, including ourselves, that is stealing His glory and is a serious offense.

Another reason for an eternal hell:

Analogy: From a pastor in Connecticut. Slap a person, slap a teacher, slap PD, slap a judge. What changes? The authority of the individual we sin against. Higher authority = higher punishment. It is not what you do, it is who you do it against. Every time we sin, we slap God in the face. Someone who has infinite authority. If you sin against a being that has infinite authority and He is perfectly just, guess how long your punishment is going to last. Infinite.

Whenever you are asked this question: How can a loving God send good people to hell? We need to tell them this. There is no one good, and it’s not what you do, it’s Who you do it against. God is loving but he is also perfectly just.  

So, we have an infinite debt against God we cannot pay back, even if we tried. Another false scale that people want to place in their minds is we have to outweigh the bad stuff we do with good stuff, and if we do more good stuff, we can tip the scale in our favor and earn heaven. This is as silly thinking as a slave repaying back 10,000 talents when he will only make a talent or two in his lifetime. This would be like us today being in debt trillions of dollars and trying to pay that back in our short lifetime. The interest alone would cripple us.

The 3rd main reason people have to go to hell for eternity is because they are in an infinite debt they cannot pay back, and they never will because they are still under the curse of sin and ever increasing their debt for eternity. This is kind of like the interest that keep adding on, adding on and we can never pay it back. This is why Christ salvation is so needed by every individual, that is what He saves us from, ever increasing sin, and the punishment it brings.

You have probably known that Christ sacrifice is the only way us sinners can be saved, and you probably knew that our sin debt was great! But this parable brings a whole new understanding, that our sin debt was not just great, but infinite and we realize how bad we really were. This knowledge and understanding also brings great applications and understanding for us Christians today. We can praise God even more when realizing how much He forgave us. But also, there is another application to today.

When we see on the news, tragic and horribly events that occur around the globe. A lot of people outside the church question God, how can God do something like that. We see tsunamis killing 300,000 people in Asia, earthquakes killing tens of thousands at a time, ripping apart homes and buildings, diseases rampaging across continents killing millions. I am not downplaying the severity or seriousness of these events. It is horrible and tragic when people lose their lives. But I want us to understand that these people are not innocent, good people that are dying. These are evil, absolutely depraved sinners. God does not owe any person to have a long, happy life on this earth. We don’t deserve our next breath. When God allows unbelievers who hate him to live a life on this earth, it is because of His great mercy.

Also, God had to bring a curse upon the earth because of us. It is our fault that horrible events on this cursed planet occur according to Genesis 3. And one more thing about this thought is that if true followers of Christ did die in those events above, then it is mercy as well, because to die is gain according to Paul, and they have entered into the presence of Christ.

Matthew 18:25 “Since he does not have the means to repay.” A person who does not receive the free gift of salvation in Christ will forever be in an increasingly infinite void of sin, therefore they can never come to heaven even after being in hell for eons. This is why in Isaiah it says our good deeds we do are like filthy rags. Since we are in an infinite debt with God, one or two righteous deeds does absolutely nothing to help tip that scale. Even a lifetime of righteous deeds does nothing to tip that scale. Even a lifetime of monthly payments will not pay back trillions upon trillions of dollars. That is why we need to trust in Christ to tip that scale for us and Christ alone.

Verse 25: His lord commanded he be sold along with his family in order for repayment to be made. This verse makes a lot of people think of hell when reading it. But again, context, Christ is talking about believers here, and once saved, always saved, you cannot lose salvation. So, it is not hinting toward hell, but an earthly life away from God, not being a child of God but sold into the world, sold to sin and the ways of the world. This is God’s wrath, letting people go to be slaves of the world as described in Romans 1:18-32.

Back up in verse 23, to settle an account with the king. This is not the final judgement because you can receive no forgiveness after judgement occurs. Hebrews 9:27 says once death occurs then comes judgement. No second chances. Settling an account with the king represents you and I receiving the gospel message and you come into account with the living God. Just like the slave in the parable, we had no idea of the massive, limitless debt we were collecting and probably would have gone right on collecting debt without being warned of it.

When God decides to save an individual, the Holy Spirit makes them realize their enormous sin debt they have with God, and then the account has to be settled. Once the person realizes their debt and understands the enormity of it, that they stole precious glory from the Holy Creator, they feel great remorse.

Matthew 18:26 Everybody’s salvation experience is different, but at some point, that person is convicted of their sin, they feel great remorse and grief and will do anything to reconcile themselves with God.

This is opposite the second soil in the parable of the sower right. The 2nd soil is all joyful and happy about the truth of Christ and the gospel. But it’s a non saving faith, and they fall away because they never felt that remorse and guilt from sin that the Spirit shows us.

In my experience, my sin debt was realized, and it literally dropped me to my knees, it was an emotional experience, and I knew I had to give God all I had which included my entire life. I wanted salvation so bad, that I gave God everything I had. This is just like the slave saying have patience with me and I will repay you everything. But look at the king's response in verse 27.

Matthew 18:27 God knows the debt cannot be repaid, the sinner is helpless, and God has compassion on that individual, and He forgives that person of the entire infinite debt. What’s the only thing that can tip your scale that on one side has an infinite amount of weight? Infinite grace. God’s grace. Why can God forgive every individual who comes to know Him with a limitless debt? Because God has limitless grace.

Here is the wonderful picture of God’s compassionate love for the genuinely repentant sinner who throws himself on His mercy. The king forgave him his whole debt and that is what God does with the sin debt of those who come to Him in humble and sincere penitence.

Psalm 103:11 Those who fear God and come to Him in humility, His loving kindness is limitless.

Psalm 103:12 God has removed are transgressions, our sins, from us. As far as the east is from the west. Why that term? Why not north or south? Look at the globe.

Hebrews 8:12 Our sins are forgotten, forever. If they weren’t infinitely separated from us, we could not dwell in heaven for eternity.

Remember one of the last things Christ said on the cross before He died? “Tetelestai.” Meaning the debt is paid in full. Christ is the only person who can pay off your infinite sin debt. And I’ve said it before but that is why it is so insulting and offensive to God when you try to add any merit of your own toward your salvation, and if you try to add anything, you will never receive salvation, you need to accept all of Christ and Him alone.

Also, I heard Pastor Steve mentioned this last week and I want to bring it up again, there is a false thinking out there that we now have to repay God, we now owe Him something or we have to pay Him back for His great salvation. This is false thinking. The sad news is that you were 100% bad, but if you have genuinely accepted Christ as Lord, then through Christ, God sees you as 100% good. You went from the bottom to the top. We aren’t 100% good, we still sin, but we are justified and seen as good in God’s eyes. We don’t owe God anything, he forgave everything.

Hebrews 10:17-18 The writer of Hebrews says it plainly here, stop trying to offer God repayment for your sins. It has already been done by Him.

We now do good deeds and good works because we have been saved and because we are a new creation. We do them out of a love for God, not because we owe him. If you are one who thinks this way, stop trying to repay God, that mindset is only going to hurt you as a Christian and stunt your growth in Christ, and do good deeds just because you love Him.

One final thought: If you have never felt this great remorse for your sins, if your experience sounds more like the 2ndsoil individual, I would invite you to seek Christ immediately and understand your massive sin debt, realize you cannot pay it back on your own, repent and ask forgiveness for your sins, throw yourself at the mercy of God, give Christ your life and accept Him as Lord or your life.

Next week we will pick up here in the parable and continue this thought. We now know how much God forgave when he forgave us and we will look at what happens when we choose not to forgive another person. Let’s pray.