The Parable of the Unfaithful Servant.

(Matthew 18: 23-35)

I. Introduction.

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

II. The Huge Debt is Forgiven.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a king, that’s an interesting way to start this parable, who wanted to settle accounts with his servants and a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. . That is an enormous sum of money, let me see if I can communicate just how big that is. All of the taxes for all of Palestine at that time was 8000 talents per year. This servant owed 10,000 talents that’s enormous it would take a man 20 years to earn one talent and this servant owned 10,000 talents. The estimates I read one estimate that said today’s that would amount to somewhere around £20 and £200 million. I read another statement that said that’s not even close it’s more like a billion pounds. So apart from the obvious hyperbole the point is there is this enormous sum tells us this servant of the king is probably meant to represent someone who was in charge of finances and perhaps even in charge of collecting taxes here. Don’t think in terms of this servant in the sense of a poor slave. Jesus in a parable makes the sum so enormous that it would be obvious he could never pay, and that is the point so it says in verse 25,

Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

(Matthew 18: 25)

The important thing was he was not able to pay, and so the king said sell my wife and children. This is in line with the practice of the day, if you were a debtor, you could sell yourself and if the debt were big enough you could sell your wife your children and everything you had to meet the debt. In other words, you and your family would become the indebted employee of the person you owed the money to and by working they would pay off the debt little by little. That’s sort of the idea and so he is willing to do that, so verse 26 says.

“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’

(Matthew 18: 26)

Now that’s absurd, he couldn’t pay it all back and he knew it, but it says the master of that servant was moved with compassion released him and forgave him the debt. Based on compassion he forgave him it was not anything the servant said that cleared the debt, it was the compassion of the king who said I will forgive you. He forgave him 10,000 talents and he didn’t even accept a small payment so clearing the debt would have cost the king an enormous sum. Anyone that understands the New Testament message can possibly read this passage without recognising we have an enormous debt before God for our sin, a debt which he paid, and it cost him the life of his son. At this point plot thickens.

III. The Unforgiven Insignificant Debt

(Matthew 18: 28-29)

Let me first say 100 silver coins was a relatively small amount of money, somewhere I read it was equivalent to approx several months work. It was certainly a tiny amount of debt compared to the huge amount that are forgiven servant had been indebted for. Now his fellow servant makes the exact same request he just did, and yet he does not forgive the fellow servant, in fact in verse 30 he says.

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.

(Matthew 18: 30)

The custom was if you couldn’t pay a small sum you went to jail. It was the custom of the day to sometimes throw someone into jail until the family comes up with the money to bail you out. What I want you to notice is he would not have forgiven him he wanted to punish him and his family until the debt would be paid. C.S. Lewis once said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive”.

When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as you experienced.’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

(Matthew 18: 31-34)

Don’t get wrapped up in interpreting this about torment and heaven or hell in the future. This is about being tormented till the day you die, the effect of not being willing to forgive other people. Notice he says you experienced forgiveness, but you did not extend it to your fellow servant and the king calls that wickedness. Think about it you’ve been forgiven a debt valued at least $20 million yet the same day you wouldn’t forgive somebody their debt of a pitiful amount of money that was owed you. But remember the debt of money is just a metaphor for forgiveness of sins. You’ve been forgiven and yet you don’t extend that to somebody else well here is the conclusion.

“So, My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”

(Matthew 18: 35)

The issue is if you do not forgive and harbour resentment in your heart, you are still in respect of your relationship with God.

IV. Forgiveness Without Limit.

OK, that the text, What I’d like to do is sum up everything I think this passage is saying and then I’d like to go beyond this passage and just explore the whole subject of forgiveness.

I think when you talk about forgiveness some issues need to be addressed.

I believe this passage is saying is if a fellow Christian sins against you are to forgive that brother or sister, without limit.

Firstly, because God has forgiven you, but also because Jesus says here that if you don’t you will be tormented by being left to the repercussions of that decision by your father in heaven. The father child relationship won’t change, God is still your father but the father will send you to the naughty step, so to speak. He will leave you to experience the consequences of living a life full of unforgiveness. So having said that, I feel we need to address the whole subject of forgiveness and I want to make four statements.

First Statement, we all have an enormous debt that we cannot pay, and one of these days you’re going to stand before God with the debt of sin still hanging around your neck. Do you understand do you appreciate that? Because if you don’t understand that everything else, I’m about to say will not mean anything to you. You may think you have sinned as much as somebody else, that’s not the issue, sin isn’t a list of things you have done it’s not transactional. sin is the fallen state in which you live. The issue is I/We have all sinned against God and I cannot pay that debt on our own. There is nothing I can possibly do to make up for the sins I’ve committed against God. There is nothing I do pay the debt for my sins. I am totally convinced and believe me I have wrestled with the subject for years and I’ve studied it a lot and this all really comes down to the fact that if you don’t understand you have a debt with God, and you cannot pay, the rest of this Gospel will not make sense.

Second statement, God has forgiven us our debt. In the parable Jesus told said that servant had a debt he could not pay, and the king forgave it himself. He did not defer it, he cancelled it at a great cost to himself. God did not brush our sin under the carpet, he did not defer it, God, paid it when he sent His only son Jesus Christ. If you don’t understand that what I’m about to say in a minute or two also will not make any sense to you . I have been forgiven for a debt I could not pay, but one that paid the cost for me was Jesus who died in my place and suffered the consequences of my sins instead of me. If you know that to be true for you also then we have in our grasp one of the greatest truths the world has ever known, and it all has to do with the unconditional love of God and the unfathomable grace of God, that I can be forgiven solely because Jesus Christ died and took my place and I got off, because he paid the debt.

Third, statement. We should forgive others because we have first been forgiven. God for Jesus’ sake forgave us, he bore the cost and he didn’t count the offense. God has forgiven me, and forgiven me, and forgiven me over and over and over again. If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t be sitting here today.

I want to read a quote by a Christian writer called David Augsburger. He wrote a book forgiveness, in this quote he is actually talking about forgiveness within a marriage but listen carefully for I believe it is one the greatest statement I have read concerning the whole principle of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is hard especially in a marriage, a marriage may be tense with past troubles, tormented by fears of rejection and humiliation and torn by submission and mistrust. Forgiveness hurts especially when it must be extended to a husband or wife who doesn’t deserve it, where the who hasn’t earned it who may have misused it. It hurts to forgive forgiveness costs, it means accepting instead of demanding repayment for the wrong done, it means releasing instead of exacting revenge. where it means reaching out in love instead of relinquishing resentments. It costs to forgive... Forgiveness takes place when the person who was offended and justly angered by the offender bears his own anger and lets the other go free. Anger cannot be ignored, denied, it must be dealt with responsibly, honestly, in a decisive act of the will.

(David Augsburger, Cherishable: Love and Marriage, pp. 141-144 Edit)

Forgiveness is a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit; it takes the grace of God to do it. But the other issue that cannot be ignored is what do you do with the relationship afterwards. Some people sin so grievously that you feel we just can’t trust them anymore, what do you do with that. Does God’s forgiveness mean that you must trust them again, and my answer is, not necessary. It depends on the circumstances, it depends on the situation and every situation is different.

Forgiveness does not say you’re going to be able to immediately be free of emotion, and forgiveness does not say I’m going to immediately trust the other person and assume they won’t sin against me again. Forgiveness simply means, I’m going to relinquish the right to hurt you, because you hurt me. Think of these emotions like a a church bell you pull on the bell and let the rope go the clanger bangs on the bell and it slowly, slowly, slowly, bangs less and less as the emotion overtime subsides.

Ok that’s the emotion but what about the relationship afterwards. There’s nothing in this story that says he forgave him and then turned around and lent him another 10,000 talents. The offender will needs to earn trust again and that can take time.

Fourth statement, if you don’t forgive others, you will remain angry and conflicted. God will deal with the offense of the other person regardless of what you do. I think there are eternal consequences of allowing those who have offended against you to be unforgiven. In the New Testament book of James, in chapter 2, James says that when you stand before the judgment seat of Christ, if you have shown mercy, you will receive mercy and if you don’t then he says mercy will triumph over judgement, but God will apply the same level of grace as you showed other people. You see my point is you’re going to be tormented in this life by remaining angry and resentful against the individual who has sinned against you but although Jesus is going to wipe away all tears at the end of all things, but at the judgment seat of Christ and we’re going to weep that we didn’t do what he said we should do. Forgiving other people is one of those things we should have done. so if you don’t forgive you will be tormented. Are you somebody who believes that forgiveness only benefits the one forgiven, it only a gift for the one who has done something wrong.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking if you forgive someone that your ‘goodness’ will only benefit that person. That may be true, if they accept their need of forgiveness and turn to God in repentance, but it might not be the case. They may never know or care that you have forgiven them, and God will still deal with that at the appropriate time. Forgiveness only has an effect on the other person if they recognise their need of forgiveness, but it will always have a positive effect on us and in our relationship with the Lord, and the benefit of living a life of peace instead of being tormented by feelings of hostility and revenge. The mountain of life before you are steep enough without carrying the weight of resentment and unforgiveness on your back.

Hungarian Karl Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, (Me-Hi, Check-Zem–Hi) one of the world most influential living psychiatrists wrote in 1996.

“If I could convince the patients of the psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven 75% of them would walk out the next day.

(Quoted from 50 Psychology Classic – Tom Butler-Bowden)

I don’t have time to pursue this, but I’ve alluded to some of the consequences of unforgiveness go way beyond what we can imagine. It clearly affects our relationship people around us, it affects you, it affects you friends and family it affects your relationship with God but it may very well have no effect on the person who has sinned against you. I think unforgiveness affects you mentally emotionally and physically. As someone once said the mid and the body can catch each other’s diseases. You can’t have something toxic in your mind without it affecting your body. Medicine is discovering that more and more every day. You have to learn to forgive, you cannot spend all of your energy rehearsing the offenses against you as it will suck out of all of the zest for life.The world’s worst prison is the prison of an unforgiving heart, if we refuse to forgive others, then we’re only imprisoning ourselves and causing our own torment it teaches here. Some of the most miserable people in the world are those who won’t forgive other people. But they are really only punishing themselves. If we live our lives only calling out for the justice of God, always seeking to call down the judgement of God upon those who have sinned against us, always seeking to get what is ours by right, we will find ourselves in a prison of our own making. But if we live according to the divine principle of forgiveness, sharing with others what God is shared with us, then we will enjoy freedom and joy.

Peter here in a sense asked for a measuring rod for forgiveness, and Jesus told him to just practice forgiveness and forget the measuring rod. I say to you need to forgive and set the prisoner free and if you do that you will discover that the prisoner who was really in need of being released was you.