We have a lengthy scripture reading this morning. o This parable about the kingdom is a little more elaborate than some of the others. It is a story that unfolds in 3 distinct scenes o or, if it was a play, you might say 3 acts. Matthew 18:23-35 Scene 1 23 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. 24 And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. 25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 27 Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. Scene 2 28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. 29 And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. Scene 3 31 So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. 32 Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: 33 Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? 34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. Application 35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. Today s parable has to do with our conduct. o How should we, as member of His kingdom, live from day to day?
The parable teaches a core principle o that resounds throughout the New Testament: Love like you have been loved. Have mercy like you have received mercy. The focus of the parable is on forgiveness. o It follows a discussion between Jesus and Peter where Peter asked how many times he was obligated to forgive a brother o and received the famous response: seventy times seven. Forgiveness is a good barometer o by which to measure the conduct of a child of God because Forgiveness is a critical part o of living in a fallen world. We all need forgiveness o and we will all have plenty of occasions to forgive others as we have been forgiven. The point of the parable is that o we have been forgiven to forgive! Scene 1: A Massive Debt 23 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. Our story starts with a king. o This king has many officials working under him, his servants, who handle money in various departments of his kingdom. These men are subordinate to the king. o The money that they handle is not their own, it is his. Our story takes place on a particular day o when the king has decided that it is time to see how they had managed his money. 1 1 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 472.
It was a day of reckoning, o a day when accounts were to be settled. There are many life applications in this parable. o One of those lessons is found in the very beginning of the story. There will always be a day of reckoning. o The servant who has been entrusted with the king s resources may do with them as he pleases. o He may even abuse the king s resources and discover that he answers to no one, that nobody noticed o the money he lost or spent frivolously. o However, there is coming a day when the accounts will be settled. In this parable the king is the Lord o and we, all of us, identify with the role of the servant. Every good thing in our lives, o is a gift from our heavenly father. And we may spend our lives o doing whatever we want to do, with impunity. It may seem as if we will never o be held accountable. But mark my words, o there is a day of reckoning coming. 24 And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. Once the king began to look into the accounts, o Jesus said, there was a man brought to him, which owed him a massive debt. The amount that Jesus gives is 10,000 talents. o This is an astonishingly large amount of money. A talent was probably worth o around six thousand denarii, and a laborer, in that time period, earned about a denarius a day. To put that in perspective, o this man would have to work sixty million days, and give all that he earned
to repay the debt. To further simplify the problem, o lets assume a laborer works 310 days a year (we will generously give him 46 days a year off). o He would have to work 193,000 years just to pay off the debt. 2 When the day of reckoning arrived, o the man did not have the money to repay the debt. There is no indication, in the story, o as to whether the failure was due to incompetence, dishonesty o or just plain bad luck. It doesn t matter. o The point is that he owed a debt he could never repay. 3 25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. When the king learned of the huge debt, o and the servants inability to repay the debt, he became very angry. He issued a command o that all of his property was to be seized and, when that was nowhere near enough to repay the huge debt, that the debtor be sold into slavery. o However, even that didn t satisfy the wrath of the king so he commanded that o the unfaithful servant s wife and his children also be sold into slavery. There are a couple of points to be made here. 2 David L. Turner, Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 450. 3 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 473.
o First of all, there was no way this man would ever be able to repay the debt. Even after all his earthly goods o are seized and sold, and he, along with his entire family, is sold into slavery, the amount of money that the king would receive o would be far, far, below the amount that was owed. What that tells us o is that the king s judgment was punitive. He knew the debt could not be paid so he was punishing the servant. It wasn t about how much o his wife and children would bring on the auction block of slavery, o it was about punishing the man who had lost the kings money. The sale was a gesture, not a settlement. 4 o The man had run up a huge debt, therefore, he must pay a huge penalty. 5 26 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. For the servant, everything was lost. o There was no need to demand justice. Justice would not help him. He legally owed the debt. So, instead of appealing to justice, o he appealed to mercy. With no other option before him, he wholeheartedly threw himself o into an appeal for mercy. He fell down, prostrate before the king, 4 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 473. 5 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 474.
o in the humble position of a worshipper and he pleaded with the king, saying, Lord, have patience with me, o and I will repay everything! 6 The verb here is in the imperfect tense, o which indicates that he kept on pleading. This was no half-hearted plea. He begged the king, o over and over again, have mercy on me! 27 Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt Jesus tells us that the lord of the servant o was moved with compassion. The verb indicates o that he was deeply moved in his pity for the man. 7 And the king, in his compassion, o acts just as forcefully as he did in his previous anger. In his wrath he demanded o that everything be taken from the man, even his wife and children. Now, in his mercy, o he goes far beyond anything the servant could have ever expected. All the man was begging for o was more time to pay the impossible debt. But the king, o recognizing that the debt was too big to ever be repaid, had mercy on the man o and forgave the debt. Again, to put that in perspective, 6 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 474. 7 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 474.
o we are saying that the man owed the king a billion dollars, or something like that. It is not small thing, o for the king to forgive this huge debt. Yet, the mercy of the king o compels him to do just that. He writes it off and sets the man free. Now we begin to understand o the life application of the story. The mercy of the king o speaks of the compassion of Jesus. 8 The king set no conditions. o The man had asked for forbearance and volunteered to repay the debt (even though it was so large o that there was no possibility of his ever doing so). But the king ignored all this. o He freely forgave. There were no conditions and no hesitation. o It was an act of pure grace. 9 Each of us is the servant. o You and I, as sinners, owed a debt that we could never repay. It would have taken the debtor in the parable o thousands of lifetimes to repay the debt. The astonishing size of his debt o emphasizes the great debt that we each owe for our sins. It is more than we could ever repay. o And there is a day of reckoning coming. On that day, however, 8 David L. Turner, Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 450. 9 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 474 475.
o those who have thrown themselves at the mercy of the king will receive that mercy. What an incredible picture of the grace of God! o The debtor simply asked for more time to repay the debt, but the king forgave him o all that he owed. This is what the Lord has done for us. o We owed a debt that we could not pay, but Jesus paid a debt that he did not owe. He canceled our debt! That sets the stage for the second scene. o This scene is a virtual reenactment of the first scene, except on a smaller scale and with a dramatically different outcome. Although the debtor s tremendous debt o has been forgiven him, he refuses to forgive a fellow servant o of a much smaller debt. Scene 2: A Much Smaller Debt 28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. Just as the servant owed a debt to the king, o others owed debts to him. Perhaps this is why o he had amassed such a massive debt in the first place. He had debtors, himself, o who were unable to repay their debts. The language that Jesus uses in the parable o leads us to believe that when the huge debt was forgiven and the servant was set free, he left the presence of the king and sought out a man o who owed him some money. However, the debt that this man owed to the servant
o was just a small fraction of the size of the debt that had just been forgiven. Once again, to put the debt in perspective, o the man owed a hundred denarii. That s one hundred days wages or roughly four months of labor. In no way is that an insignificant amount, o it is, indeed, a substantial debt. However, it was 600,000 times smaller than the debt that had o just been forgiven by the king. The servant, who has just received o such tremendous mercy, shows no evidence of such mercy in his dealing with his fellow servant. He takes him by the throat, o throttling him, and demands payment of the much smaller debt. Ironically, Jesus uses the same verbs in this scene o as he did in the previous scene. The parallel is obvious. o The servant is treating his fellow servant in the same way that the king, initially treated him. 29 And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. The fellow servant responds the same way o that the original debtor responded to the king. He falls on his face, o prostrate before the man, and begs him, in the same language as the previous request, o have patience with me and I will repay the debt. The only difference here o is that this debt is small enough that it might actually be possible for the man to repay it o if he is given some time
to work it out. There are two principles at work here: o (1) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and o (2) Do unto others as the King has already done unto you. The forgiven debtor ignores these principles. o He who has received such tremendous mercy is completely unwilling to grant the same mercy, o on a much lesser scale, to his fellow servant. He doesn t treat him the way o he wanted to be treated, nor does he treat him the way the king ultimately treated him. However, even though the man is asking o the exact same thing that the servant had previously asked of the king, the response is dramatically different. There is no compassion here, o there is no mercy at all. 30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. Jesus said, He would not. o The verb here refers to the action of the will and the imperfect tense of it points to continuing action. In other words, o his will was set against mercy. His ears refused to hear the plea. Over and over again, o he chose judgment over mercy. He threw the man into prison until he could pay off the debt. In this servant who was the debtor in the first scene, o and the one to whom a debt was owed in the second scene, we discover the height of ingratitude and injustice. 10 10 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 475 476.
The second scene of this parable o is a parallel to the first scene, but its focus is not on the similarities of the story. o Rather, the focus is on the differences. The one who received mercy o refused to give mercy. He, who was forgiven of so much, refused to forgive another o for so little. This brings us to the third and final scene. Scene 3: Another Day Of Reckoning 31 So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. In the third scene, other servants of the same king o heard how that the man who had been forgiven of so much, refused to forgive so little. They were horrified o at the hypocrisy of the man. It seemed reasonable to them o that the forgiven debtor should have shown the same degree of mercy that he received. He had been forgiven a debt o that would take untold lifetimes to repay; yet he refused to forgive a debt that could be repaid in a few months. So the other servants tell the king what has happened. 32 Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: The king calls for the ungrateful servant o and, calling him wicked, says to him, after all I have done for you The word order in the Greek
o is all that debt I forgave you, which puts the emphasis on all. 11 It was an immense amount, o and it had ALL been forgiven. 33 Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? The king asks the servant a question: o Shouldn t you have had compassion on your fellow servant, even as I had compassion on you? The question is rhetorical. o An affirmative answer is implied in the question. Yes, a forgiven man should act like a forgiven man, o particularly when dealing with others who need forgiveness. The king says that the man o should have shown mercy just like he received mercy! 12 34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. Now the anger of the king returns, o and he reverses his earlier compassionate decision. The wicked servant o is turned over to the tormentors, to be tortured until the king is repaid. There is some irony here o in that the unforgiving servant, in the end, is treated exactly the same way o he treated his fellow servant. 13 11 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 476. 12 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 476 477.
And in his punishment o we get a glimpse of the horror of hell. The man will never, o in thousands of lifetimes, be able to repay the debt. The torture of his punishment o will be unending much like the eternal abyss of hell. Application 35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. Jesus does not always make o an application of the truth taught in his parables, but on this occasion he does. 14 The point of the parable o is that the heavenly Father will do the same to us, if we do not forgive o as we have been forgiven. God has forgiven us of so much. o There is no way we could ever calculate the amount of mercy that we have each received. For some strange reason o we are comfortable with not enumerating the debt that we owed o but we have a tendency to track the debts that are owed to us, by others, o down to the very penny. And we have the incredible ability o to hold a grudge, 13 David L. Turner, Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 451. 14 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Press, 1992), 477.
to demand repayment for every perceived slight o and every wrong that was committed against us. The message of the parable o is that a forgiven man or woman should act like they have been forgiven. The debt that is owed to you o is much, much, smaller than the debt that you owed for your sins. To whom much mercy has been given, o much mercy is expected! Those who have received extraordinary grace o should act in accordance with the grace they have received. It should affect the way you live. o It should govern how you treat your fellow man! Indeed, the parable goes beyond o simply telling us how we should act. It serves as a warning o that when we refuse to forgive, we invite the Lord to withhold his forgiveness from us! That is an important message. o Because, just like we all have needed, and will need, the Lord s forgiveness, o we all will be treated wrongly or injured by another and will be in the position o of the one who needs to issue the forgiveness. And the same measure that you use o to measure out forgiveness will be employed when you need forgiveness. What you have freely received, o you should freely give! What a challenge. o Forgive like you have been forgiven! But I was wronged
Close o I was hurt o I was wounded in the house of a friend Yes. o The offenses against you are real. The debt that is owed you is substantial. But it pales in comparison o to your offenses against the Lord and the debt that you owed for your sins. He has already forgiven you, o All that he demands from you is that you forgive, like you have been forgiven! Let's face it: o human beings are messy and hurtful. We don't mean to be that way. We don't intend harm. o But most of us have caused and received many injuries. We have all been insulted o and injured by people we loved. The point of the parable o is not to whitewash those wrongs, but rather to recognize that there is healing in forgiveness. We tend to hold grudges, o we bury our hurts and our pain in our broken spirits. And they fester there, o becoming more and more poisonous, until the root of bitterness begins to choke the joy out of our lives. When we forgive others o we do more to free ourselves than we will ever do to free them! You ve been forgiven, o its time to forgive some debts that are owed to you! To forgive is to give up all hope o for a better past and embrace a better future!
When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, o he told them to make this request a part of their prayer: Forgive us our trespasses o as we forgive them that trespass against us. In light of today s parable, o that admonition takes on a new character: Forgive us as we forgive others. Lord, help me to forgive like I have been forgiven!