Kingdom Parables: The Unforgiving Servant

Text: Matthew 18:15-35

Theme: Forgiving each other their faults is a two-way street. It requires the sinner to desire genuine forgiveness and it requires the sinned against to offer genuine forgiveness.

Does God forgive utterly and completely the sins committed by Christians? The answer is an unqualified “Yes!” In Christ, our pardon is full, our justification is complete, and our redemption is sure. In Christ, God has buried our sin and refuses to mark the grave.

Of all the parables Jesus tells, this one is really interesting to me, because it’s directed at the disciples in general and Peter in particular. It begins in Matt. 18:1 when Jesus uses a child as an illustration. Only those who can humble themselves and come to God and a child comes to his or her father, can enter the Kingdom of God. Then, in vs. 15, he addresses the issue of forgiveness. It’s at that point Peter comes and asks the question, “ ... “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”” (Matthew 18:21, NIV84). It gives Jesus the perfect opportunity to tell a story about two debtors. (Matthew 18:23-35)

The first debtor in our story is a man who owed a great debt, a huge dept, a colossal debt, an unimaginable debt to his king – 10,000 talents of precious metal. If we’re talking silver, the amount is equal to $165,000,000. If we’re talking talents of gold, at today’s price per ounce of $1,253, the amount is equal to $12,500,000,000. This is not a debt you can roll over onto your VISA! This man is unable to pay off his debt when the king comes to settle his accounts. The king ordered that the man, his wife, his children and all his possessions be sold in order to repay the debt. This was within the king’s right at that time. But the debtor flings himself at the king’s feet and pleads – and please note this – not for mercy, but simply for more time to straighten out his accounts. Instead, the king graciously canceled the debt altogether. He did not have to do it, but the Bible tells us that the king looked on this man with pity and called off the debt.

If this were the end of the story, we could all shout amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord, and go home marveling at the grace of God. But the story that Jesus tells does not end with the first debtor being cleared of his debt. There is a second debtor. He does not owe the king anything, but he does owe a debt to the first debtor. He owes about one-third of a year’s pay – about $10,000 in our culture. Compared to the sum the first debtor owed, this is a pittance. But the first debtor violently accosts his fellow servant and demands payment right then and there. The second debtor also pleads for more time, but the first debtor will hear nothing of it and has the man thrown into prison until the debt can be paid.

When the king finds this out, he is enraged. He summons the first debtor before him and calls him a wicked servant who is undeserving of the mercy he had been shown earlier. He hands the first debtor over to the tormentors until all the debt has been paid. Jesus concludes the story on a somber note:

““This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”” (Matthew 18:35, NIV84)

Peter is by now regretting having every asked the question!

When God forgives us, He expects us to develop a forgiving heart and to extend His mercy toward those indebted to us. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches us that if we are unwilling to accept the confession and repentance of another and forgive them, chances are good that we’ve never truly been forgiven since our unwillingness to offer forgiveness indicates a heart that has itself never truly repented and confessed to our Heavenly Father.

Jesus seemed very clear about this principle. In His Sermon on the Mount, he taught:

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’” (Matthew 6:12–13, NIV84) It’s in the past tense—Jesus assumes that if we ask God for forgiveness, we’ve already forgiven others.

We all know that passage as the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer. But listen to what Jesus say in vv. 14-15:

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14–15, NIV84)

Those are potent words folks!

If you’ve been born from above by the Most High God, you have been completely and totally forgiven by God. Your sin has been atoned for by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Your are white as snow in God’s eyes though your sins be as scarlet. That same blood has also purchased the atonement for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

I. TRUE REDEMPTION MAKES GENUINE RECONCILIATION POSSIBLE

ILLUS. Was it for crimes that I had done

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity, grace unknown,

And love beyond degree!

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,

And the burden of my heart rolled away

It was there by faith I received my sight,

And now I am happy all the day!

1. when God forgives us in Christ, He gives us the greatest gift that a person can ever hope to receive – grace

a. He goes beyond what we would ever expect Him to do and He cancels all of the sin-dept we owe Him because of our iniquity and trespass.

b. listen to what the Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Colossian Christians:

“When you were spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were not free from the power of your sinful self, God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave all our sins. He canceled the debt, which listed all the rules we failed to follow. He took away that record with its rules and nailed it to the cross.” (Col 2:13-14, NCV)

A. OUR LORD’S DEATH ON THE CROSS MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

1. Jesus’ Christ – who was absolutely sinless – died on the cross and paid the penalty for my sin and your sin and restored our broken relationship with God

“For it pleased the Father that in him [Christ] should all fulness dwell; 20And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. 21And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled 22In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:” (Col. 1:19-22, KJV)

a. we need reconciliation because our sin separates us from God

2. the liability of the first servant is astounding

a. for Jesus to use a figure of 10,000 talents in that day would be like us using the term gazillion

b. that incalculable, unpayable debt represents the debt for sin that every man owes God

1) it’s a debt that no matter how hard we work or how long we have, we cannot pay off the debt of sin

c. when the Holy Spirit convicts a person of his sin that person is faced with the fact that the extent of his sin is beyond comprehension and humanly unpayable

3. we must never underestimate the exceeding sinfulness of our sin

4. and in spite of our great sin, we have a great God who forgives us our sin and cancels our debt

“The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” (Matthew 18:27, NIV84)

a. here is a picture of a God who is rich in mercy

b. He cancels the debt because He pays for it Himself

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Romans 5:8–9, NIV84)

c. God reaches into His storehouse of grace and says, “You can’t pay the debt? That’s OK. Let me pay it for you.”

ILLUS. Maybe that’s why Isaac Watts called it Amazing Grace!

5. when we repent of sin, when we confess our sin to Him, Jesus takes our sinful nature, our depraved mind, our broken being, our shame-filled soul, and puts it to death with Him on the cross

a. then, from that moment on, Christ begins the work of transforming us back into Him image

B. OUR RECONCILIATION WITH GOD MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER BELIEVERS

ILLUS. Pastor and radio preacher, Chuck Swindoll, says that among Christians: “Forgiveness is a required course.”

ILLUS. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a permanent attitude.”

1. forgiveness is not natural to man

a. because it is so foreign to fleshly human nature, people find it very difficult to forgive others

ILLUS. King Louis XII of France articulated the feeling of many people when he said, “Nothing smells so sweet as the dead body of your enemy.”

2. yet nothing so characterizes the new nature of Christians as forgiveness, because nothing so characterizes the nature of their Lord

ILLUS. In 1996 a 20-year-old parishioner fatally stabbed to death two elderly priests in the rectory of St. Leander Catholic Church in Pueblo, CO. The other priests at the church, close friends of the victim, made an immediate public statement of forgiveness. The public was aghast, but the priests’ explanation was simple: “We are Christians. This is what Christians do.”

a. Jesus’ most striking and humanly incomprehensible words from the cross were,

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34)

3. just as our Lord’s death makes it possible for us to be reconciled with God, so our Lord’s death also made possible right relationships between God’s children

a. the Apostle John tells us plainly that our love for God is reflected by how much we love one another

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:12, NIV84)

4. we are to love our fellow Christian in word and deed, but sin sometimes interrupts and hinders fellowship between Christians

a. broken relationships sometimes develop because of deliberate acts of jealousy, anger, boasting pride, gossip, or even greed

b. more often than not, relationships are broken because of non-deliberate acts of bitterness, insensitivity, impatience, tactlessness, or misunderstanding

c. within the Body of Christ, differences of opinions, personality clashes, and power struggles can also damage the love relationship between fellow believers

1) even Jesus’ disciples had to deal with the struggle of loving one another

“Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. 21 “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” 22 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered. 23 Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.” 24 When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers.” (Matthew 20:20–24, NIV84)

d. I have no doubt that there were many times that the disciples themselves had to practice forgiveness and reconciliation

5. when you are unable – or unwilling – to forgive, you become an imprisoned soul

ILLUS. Lorne Sanny, former general director of The Navigators’, once said, “Bitterness destroys more Christian workers than immorality.”

a. the moment you start to resent a person, you become their slave

1) they control your dreams, absorb your digestion, rob you of peace of mind and good will and take away the pleasure of your work

2) they ruin your spirituality and nullify your prayers

3) you cannot take a vacation without them going along

4) they destroy your freedom of mind and hound you wherever you go

5) there is no way to escape the person you resent, they are with you when you are awake and they invade your privacy when you sleep

b. so, if you want to be a slave, harbor resentments, but if you want to be free, then God says you must forgive

ILLUS. Corrie Ten Boom once wrote: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that this prisoner was you.”

II. RECONCILIATION IS A RESPONSIBILITY OF ALL BELIEVERS

1. fortunately, our relationship with Christ makes restored relationships possible

a. Jesus teaches us that when we become aware of a relationship problem, we must take steps to correct it

1) whether you have been the wronger or the wrongee – and the Scriptures speak to both – the Bible tells us that you have a responsibility in reconciliation

2) that responsibility is to seek peace

“Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14, NIV84)

b. quick action is needed for three reasons:

1) wrong relationships with fellow Christians affects our relationship with God –

“If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20–21, NIV84)

2) wrong relationship negatively affect our worship –

““Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23–24, NIV84)

3) we are to restore right relationships because of our witness to the unsaved world

““A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”” (John 13:34–35, NIV84)

5. why are we to make such extraordinary efforts at reconciliation in the church?

a. because God’s church and God’s glory is more important than your rights or your feelings

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1–3, NIV84)

This a story about da Vinci’s life. We don’t know if it’s true or if it’s apocryphal, but whichever, it make a point. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Last Supper, he had an intense, bitter argument with a fellow painter. Leonardo was so enraged the he decided to paint the face of his enemy into the face of Judas. That way the hated painter’s face would be preserved for ages in the face of the betraying disciple. When Leonardo finished Judas, everyone easily recognized the face of the painter with whom Leonardo quarreled. Leonardo continued to work on the painting. But as much as he tried, he could not paint the face of Christ. Something was holding him back. Leonardo decided his hatred toward his fellow painter was the problem. So he worked through his hatred by repainting Judas’ face, replacing the image of his fellow painter with another face and reconciled with the man. Only then was he able to paint Jesus’ face and complete the masterpiece.