GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD | Unmerciful Servant | Nathan Strecker

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, as Pastor Ben said, my name is Nathan Strecker. I've had the honor of being the youth director here for five years now. And one thing you gotta know about me, if we haven't met before, is that I love stories. Stories is one of the most important parts of my personality. I would love to engage in stories in any shape or form, whether that be watching movies, reading books, playing some good video games that have nice stories in them, watching plays or musicals, TV shows, whatever. If it's got a good story, I want to participate in it. And in fact, this has been a part of my whole life. Back when I was in high school, I competed on the speech team in a category called storytelling. And I even made the state twice. No big deal. It's whatever, it's fine. And I'm still engaging in stories today. Actually, one of the things I've been doing with my free time is I've been writing a book because I just love telling stories. It's not ready to be read yet, so I'll let you know when that happens. You don't want to read it yet, it's not done yet. Um But I love stories because stories are a great way to get ideas to stick, right? We can remember the stories that we heard years ago, the movie we saw when we were a kid, that play we saw with our friends, right? We remember these characters, these plots, these moments because stories stick in our mind. But we don't remember some things that we probably should have remembered from school or that our parents told us. But we do remember that one TV show episode from when we were a kid, right? The stories stick with us. And Jesus knew this. Jesus understood the importance of stories. And so that's why he told stories as a part of his teaching. And we call those stories parables. And so we've been walking through these parables during this series because great stories always have three things in common. First, they reveal truth. Second, they challenge our hearts, and third, they invite us into something better. And so I'm going to tell one of those parables today. But before I do, I want to set up the context. Why was Jesus telling this specific parable what was going on at the moment? You see, Jesus was with his disciples, his closest followers, his twelve, and he had been teaching them about what to do when someone sins against you. What do you do when someone wrongs you? So he gave them a nice step-by-step process. First, you go to them one-on-one and have a conversation, try to deal with it that way. If they don't listen, then you bring on another person as kind of like a witness to be a part of that conversation. If that doesn't work, you bring them to a leader figure, maybe an authority in the church. And if that doesn't work, then you kick them out of your group. It's a really nice step-by-step process. It would make a great sermon. It's not what we're talking about today. After he shares this, Peter, one of the disciples, always wanting to, you know, learn more or kind of be the leader, asks, Well, Jesus, how many times should we do this? How many times should I forgive someone? Seven times, he says. He's like, I'm not just gonna do it one or two times. God, how about seven times? I'm really forgiving. And Jesus says, No, not seven. How about seventy-seven times, or in some translations, seven times seventy times? Basically, don't keep count. Constantly always be forgiving people. But why? Why should we be forgiving people this often? So to help teach that, Jesus shares this parable. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read the parable in full. It's not gonna be on the screen, so you just have to like listen and imagine it with me. And we're just gonna read the whole story as Jesus said it, and then we'll go back and break it apart. This parable is found in Matthew chapter 18, verses 23 through 35. Jesus said, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him. 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. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything. The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go. But when the 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. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, Be patient with me, and I will pay it back. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 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 canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? In anger. His master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed. This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. As we can see, this parable deals a lot with forgiveness. That's kind of the whole point. And forgiveness is one of those words that we all know, we've all said it, we've all used it in conversation. But I think everybody in this room might have different definitions of what forgiveness is or isn't. So I want to make sure we're all on the same page before we dive deeper into what Jesus is saying about forgiveness. First, let's talk about what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not forgetting. You can forgive someone and still remember what they did. For example, if someone cheated you in a business deal, you can forgive them and then remember I'm not doing a business deal with you in the future, right? That's just wisdom, that's just good stewardship of what you have. Forgiveness is not acting like it never happened. You can forgive someone but still acknowledge the trauma or the pain or the brokenness that might have resulted from that moment. Again, you can forgive them and still acknowledge those situations, right? It still happened in the past. Forgiveness is not reconciliation, it's not a healing of the relationship. Now that often can lead to that, but sometimes when you forgive someone, the right thing to do is to keep those relationships apart or at least different from how they were before. But they can be related a lot of the time too. Forgiveness is not justice, right? You can forgive someone and there is no justice in that moment. Maybe you choose to still seek justice, but a lot of the times when you forgive someone, you're giving up that right to seek the justice as well. Forgiveness is not merely words we say, I forgive you, right? Lighthearted, meaningless. No, forgiveness comes from the heart. It means something, it has to matter. Forgiveness is not a response to an apology. You can forgive someone who has not apologized. In fact, sometimes you need to do that because you don't see that person anymore or they might have passed away. So, what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is giving up the right to get even or seek revenge. You're no longer requesting payback for the wrong that they did. You're no longer saying you have to do this for me or give me this or make it right somehow. You're saying, no, I forgive you. You don't have to pay it back. And especially I'm not gonna try to hunt it down and get revenge and do wrong against you. Forgiveness is getting rid of all of that. Forgiveness is letting go of your anger. You have every right to be angry at the person who has wronged you, but when you forgive them, you let go of that right. You say, I'm no longer gonna hold this anger against you, and I'm gonna let that emotion go. Forgiveness is healing for you. See, the main thing I want us to learn today is that forgiveness frees you. Forgiveness frees you. A lot of time when we talk about forgiveness, we think it's good for the person that we're forgiving. And that's true. It is good for the person you are forgiving. But it is most important for you. Forgiveness frees you. So, what we're gonna do today is we're gonna walk through this parable and see three different ways that forgiveness can free you. The first is that forgiveness frees you from debt. Forgiveness frees you from debt. Let's go back into the parable, um, starting with verse 24. Jesus is talking about the king. He says, as he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 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. At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay you back everything. The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go. Two weeks ago, Pastor Ben talked to us about what these bags of gold represent. Because I don't know about you, but I'm like a bag of gold, what does that mean? I don't have bags of gold at home, you know, it's in my closet. If I did, that'd be great. Um, so what does a bag of gold mean? Well, that's the NIV's translation of the Greek word of a talent. Now, a talent has nothing to do with your skills or abilities, it was a unit of money. Um, and it was a big unit of money. In fact, one talent represented 20 years worth of wages. So if you worked consistently for 20 years in a row, you would earn one talent. So if you owed somebody a talent, that would be a lot of money, right? That is about$600,000 in today's wages on average. So again, one talent, a lot of money. But this servant didn't owe one talent. He owed 10,000 talents, which if you do the math, that is about six billion dollars that he owed him. Now, I don't know about you, but billion is a meaningless number to me. You could say billion and million, and I'm like, big number. They're the same thing, just one is B and one is M. So it is meaningless to me. So let me try to make it a little bit more understandable. In order to pay back this debt, this servant would have had to have worked nonstop for 200,000 years. Yeah, you can't do that. There is no amount of penny pinching or managing the budget, or I'm not going out to eat. That's gonna save up that much money. When the servant said, Be patient with me, I'll pay you back. He is lying, he is wrong, he cannot do it. There is no amount of works or good deeds or or hard effort that he can do to pay back this eternal debt. You see, these 10,000 bags of gold, these 10,000 talents represent our debt against God. All the sins that we have done against him. Now you might be thinking, well, Nathan, I haven't sinned against God that many times. But the truth is, every time you sin, you sin against God. Because every human being is made in God's image, and every sin is disobeying God. So every single sin you've done is a debt that you have piled up against God that you can never repay. There's no amount of good deeds, there's no amount of work, there's no amount of praying hard enough or giving enough or smiling enough or doing anything like that that you could ever do to pay back this eternal debt. So thank God that he has mercy on us. The king in this parable, seeing the servant, seeing the weight upon him and loving him, chooses to forgive him completely of his debt. Not just partially, so it's more manageable, not in nice little payment plans. No, he completely and utterly forgives all of his debt. It's gone. And this is freeing for both the king and the servant. You see, it frees the king of this debt because he no longer has to keep track of it. He no longer has to hunt down the servant or keep this debt in the back of his mind. No, it's gone for him. This is no longer a worry he has to manage. And I think it shows something about this king that he can forgive six billion dollars and it's not an issue. I think that shows how good and powerful and gracious and loving our God is. And of course, this was very freeing for the servant who no longer had to pay back this debt. He was freed from a life of debt and servitude against this king. So that's the first thing that forgiveness frees us from. But forgiveness also frees you from anger. Forgiveness frees you from anger. Let's jump back into the parable starting in verse 28. But when the 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. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, Be patient with me, and I will pay it back. Where have we heard that line before? That's the exact same thing the first servant said to the king. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. You see, this first servant was clearly angry. He rushes out and finds the fellow servant, and Jesus uses some pretty uh emotional words, right? He grabs him, he chokes him, he demands, right? He's shouting, give me back this money. And that would make sense if he still had to pay back the 10,000 bags of gold. Because he would need every little bit of money that he could get, but he doesn't need to do that. He's been forgiven. So why is he demanding this man pay him back? And how much did he really owe him? How much is a hundred silver coins? See, again, the NIV is translating the word uh denarius into silver coin. And so a denarius was another uh unit of money that was equal to about one day's worth of wages. So if you worked hard all day, you'd be paid a fair wage of one denarius. And so this guy owed him a hundred denariis. That's about three months' worth of wages. So that's not chump change, right? That is a good chunk of money, right? If someone owed me three months of wages, I'd be like, hey, can I get that money, please, right? Uh if you know, job hadn't paid me or a friend borrowed out that much money, right? I would like that money back at some point. And this wage represents, this debt represents the sins that we do against each other. All right, when I sin against someone, when someone sins against me, it does hurt, right? That is meaningful, that does have an impact, just like three months of wages is a meaningful amount of money. But when I compare that to the debt that I've been forgiven from God, it's nothing. It's pennies on the dollar. It's less than that, right? We hurt each other all the time, and that matters, but we've been forgiven of so much more. So then why is it that those sins against each other are the ones we care about the most? The ones that we demand repayment, the ones that we need them to give us back what we are owed. You see, I have been spending a lot of time talking about forgiveness. The past you know, five years that I've been here, that has been a core focus of what we've talked about. Two and a half years ago, I actually gave a message right here on this stage on Sunday morning about forgiveness. To the youth and at summer camps, I've talked about forgiveness many times. In fact, that book that I'm actively writing is all about forgiveness. The whole plot is about the main character learning to forgive his enemies and himself. And so you'd think, having spent all this time talking about forgiveness, I would have nobody left that I need to forgive. You're laughing because you know the truth. Uh I have not forgiven everyone, or I'm still actively working on that. You see, uh, a couple months ago, something happened here in the Twin Cities. You might have been aware of it if you had the TV on or a phone or opened your door. Uh, you see, some federal agents came to town, and as a result, there were some protests that rose up and there was tension in our cities. And I don't know about you, but I felt a lot of emotions during that time. One of them was anger. In fact, I felt anger towards an entire group of people. Now, I'm not gonna say which group that was because that's not the point of this message. So just take the group that you were angry at, and that's the one I was angry at. Let's just say that, right? We are on the same side here, all right? Um, so I was angry at a whole group of people, and I felt like I was on the right side, right? The thing I was supporting was love and justice, and this side was supporting, you know, bad things and evil and injustice, and I was on the right side. And as a result, I was having a conversation with one of my youth pastor friends about what should we do as youth pastors, you know, in our ministries to prepare for things that could come up. And this youth pastor friend of mine is a very godly man, full of the Holy Spirit, and so he often says things in conversations that call me out, even though he doesn't mean to. He'll just say something and I'm like, that hit me like a ton of bricks. And what he said that day was like, Nathan, but before we come up with policies or or programming, what we need to do as leaders is we need to forgive. You see, if we have anger in our hearts, Jesus says that's as good as murder. And then we're no better than anybody else involved in this situation. And so if we have anger, we need to forgive these people before we can lead anybody else to Jesus, because that's our ultimate goal is to point people to Jesus. And to do that, we need to forgive. And again, he wasn't calling me out specifically, but the Holy Spirit did. And after that, I realized that I had an entire group of people, which is a lot of people, by the way, that I needed to forgive. And the reason I had to do that is because it was impacting my life, it was impacting the relationships I had with friends and family and the way that I interacted with the world and was treating others. This anger was a problem in my heart, and I wasn't going to be able to solve any issues while that anger was still there. I don't know about you, but if you have anger in your heart and you want to get rid of it, the best way to do that is to forgive the people that you're angry with. Because anger is a sign of unforgiveness. The Apostle Paul talks about this in his letter to Ephesians in chapter 4, verse 31 and 32. He says, Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. You see, anger and forgiveness are opposites. Right? You cannot forgive someone while you're still angry with them. And so if you want to be freed from anger, you gotta forgive them. You gotta forgive them. And that's what we see in this story. The servant did not forgive. And so he had this anger in him that blew up at his other servant. And what we're gonna see later on, because he wasn't forgiven or forgiving, the king took away his forgiveness and was also angry at him. So forgiveness frees you from anger. Last thing forgiveness frees you from is judgment. Forgiveness frees you from judgment. Let's wrap up the parable, going to verse 32. Then the master called the servant in, you wicked servant, note that unforgiveness is wicked. You wicked servant, he said, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? In anger. His master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. See that last verse is I think the toughest one of this whole parable. Because Jesus is saying, if you don't forgive, God won't forgive you. And a lot of times when we read verses like that, we either skip over it, move on to the next one, or we say, Well, Jesus is just being hyperbolic. He's just exaggerating to, you know, prove the point, because you know, parables are exaggerated stories. And so Jesus doesn't literally mean that. He's just saying, you know, you should probably go forgive people. It's okay. If I if I don't forgive, God will still forgive me, right? Well, if that was the only time Jesus said that, then maybe I could I could get behind that interpretation. But Jesus said it earlier in Matthew in chapter 6, verse 14 and 15, he says this, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Well, then you might say, Well, that's just Matthew. Matthew had a you know thing about forgiveness, you know. It's just this one book of the Bible. I'm gonna skip it, and I'll be fine. I don't have to forgive people. Well, let's go to Jesus' brother. The book of James, chapter 2, verses 12 to 13 in the NLT translation says, So whatever you say or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law that sets you free. There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you. I think the Bible makes it pretty clear. Forgiveness is not optional. See, there's a lot of times when Jesus tells parables and just kind of leaves it open for interpretation. Very rarely does he tell us the meaning, but this is one of those few parables where he gives us the thesis, he gives us the punchline. He says, This is what you need to understand. You have to forgive people. Everyone, you gotta forgive them. See, there are a lot of sermons where you can hear it and it, you know, it will be good for your life. It might be recommended, it might be helpful, but you know, if you don't do it, you'll be all right. But this is not one of them. If you don't forgive people, the Bible says that God won't forgive you. So that means this is the most important thing that you could do with your time. Today is forgiving people. And this is not a light conversation. This is not something that we should brush off. Please take this seriously. We need to forgive people. So that leads us to a really important question that you've got to ask yourself. Who do you need to forgive? Who do you need to forgive? This is not hypothetical. I genuinely want you to think about this in your mind. Who is it that you need to forgive right now? Let me give you some examples to maybe help get your mind stirring. Maybe the person you need to forgive is someone who hurt you recently. They did something wrong to you yesterday or this morning. They cut you off on the way into church, or something that happened last week that is still pretty fresh in your mind. And maybe they haven't had a chance to apologize or they're never going to do it. They're not that kind of person. But it's something that happened recently. You got to forgive them. Maybe it's something that happened a long time ago, back when you were in school or when you were younger at a previous job, something that a family member or an old friend or a previous coworker did, something that happened a long time ago, and you should have forgotten, but it still comes back to your mind. Or whenever you see a picture of that person or revisit that place or it's that time of year, it comes back to mind, and all those emotions, the hurt, the anger, the bitterness, it comes welling back up, and it's clear that you have never forgiven that person. You gotta forgive them. Maybe it's a stranger, you know, a celebrity, a politician, someone in a different country, someone that you just saw online that posted a comment or a thing that you disagreed with. You gotta forgive them too. Maybe it's an entire group of people like it was for me. A group of people that voted this way or supported that thing or buy this thing or live in this place or dress this way or look like that or say this thing, whoever it is. You need to forgive that group of people too, all of them, even if you don't know their individual names, because you are still holding that anger and that judgment against them. You need to forgive them. Maybe you need to forgive yourself. Maybe there's something that you did that in your mind is just so terrible you'll never let yourself let it go. You'll never forget about it, you'll never move past it. And even though you've repented of it or asked God to forgive you, you haven't forgiven yourself for it. You gotta forgive yourself too. Maybe you gotta forgive God. Something so terrible happened in your life that you blame God for it. Maybe it was the death of a spouse or a child or a family member or a friend. Maybe it was a loss of a home or a job or a change in life seasons. Maybe it was a diagnosis or just you're looking around the world and seeing everything going on and you blame God for it. Maybe you need to forgive God too. And I'm not saying that God did do something wrong, but in your heart, in your mind, that's how you view it. That's who you put the blame on. So you need to forgive God too. You see, forgiveness is not optional, and so we need to take this seriously. And I need you to answer that question. Who do you need to forgive and then do it? You got to forgive them. You see, great stories always have three things in common. First, they reveal truth, like forgiveness sets you free. Second, they challenge our hearts. Maybe that's how you've been feeling today. You've been challenged in that debt and that weight in your heart, or that anger, or that judgment that you've been carrying has been challenged. Great stories also invite us into something better. This story has invited us into a life that is free. A life free of that weight. A life free of anger. A life free from judgment against other people and for yourself. Isn't that something that we all want? We want that free life. To get access to that, all you gotta do is forgive. And we're only able to do this because we were first forgiven by God Himself. You see, we can't extend this amazing forgiveness without receiving it first. And so I've got two challenges for us today, for everyone in the room and those watching online. The first is if you've never received that forgiveness from God, start with that. Maybe you've never considered yourself a Christian, or you've said you're a Christian, but it doesn't really mean anything to you, you're just going through the motions. Receive the free gift of God's forgiveness today. What a perfect time to do that as we are in Lent, approaching Easter, remembering the moment that gave us this forgiveness, this freedom, Jesus' death on the cross. Receive that forgiveness so that the second challenge, which is for all of us, we can extend that forgiveness to everyone around us. And I don't know how many people you need to forgive. Could be one, could be everybody. You've got to forgive them. And I know it's hard, I know it's not easy, but it is good. It is good for you, it is good for them, it is good for the kingdom of God. Forgive everyone to receive that free gift of free of forgiveness and freedom for yourself. Let's pray. Holy Father, we thank you that you have forgiven us. You have given us that grace of for of forgiveness and freedom. I pray that you give us the chan the courage to extend that forgiveness freely to others. No matter how long ago it was, no matter how bad it was, God, help us to forgive. Because we can't do that without you. Lord, we are so grateful you have given us this forgiveness freely. And we are excited to live into that free life that you have given us, free from debt and anger and judgment. Lord, again, empower us to give that forgiveness to everyone we meet, not just today, but for the rest of our lives, so we can show them your love and your grace. In your name we pray. Amen.