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Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Good morning, church.
[00:00:05] How we doing?
[00:00:07] You ever have one of those mornings where you're walking up front to preach in like 30 seconds as soon as the song is over and your kid takes off their diaper and children's ministry and refuses to put it back on so you have to go downstairs and coax her back into a diaper so that you can get on stage and preach? No. You guys never had a morning like that. Never.
[00:00:27] Me neither. It's just a hypothetical situation.
[00:00:32] Oh, man, what a day to be together and celebrate the gospel. Amen.
[00:00:37] I am excited. We are continuing our little mini series today on this idea of conflict and reconciliation being peacemakers. This is obviously pulled from Christ's word, Christ's own teaching in sermon on the mount. The peacemakers are blessed. Blessed are the peacemakers. And we really believe that. And we live in a unique cultural moment where that is just. Man, it is just extremely true. There is a need for people who don't just love peace but actively work to create peace around them. And I will tell you guys that. Previous hypothetical story included, I cannot believe how much God wants us to talk about this right now and what I mean by that, his heart for reconciliation.
[00:01:25] The reason I say that is because I can't believe how much seemingly Satan wants us to avoid this topic. And I know this is a weird way to say it, I don't normally kind of talk these kind of ways, but I do think it's helpful for us to remember that spiritual warfare is a real thing.
[00:01:40] And I have gotten continual feedback over the last seven days about how two things, how it was, for some reason just really easy and convenient to miss church last Sunday and how God has been really wrecking some people's hearts. And I'll tell you guys, I just. I, as a pastor, see that happen when a church says, hey, we're going to take a few minutes and we're going to talk about something that's important, that cuts deep to a cultural spiritual stronghold. All of a sudden, for those three weeks, it's just really easy to skip church. I don't know. I don't know what that is. This must be a coincidence, right? No, no, no. That's. I mean, guys like that really is the reality of spiritual warfare. The spirit of God is moving amongst us in power.
[00:02:24] But it's a heavy. It's a heavy gospel call. It's good, but it's heavy. And I'm telling you guys, as I've been praying these last few weeks, I just genuinely believe God wants to set some folk in our spiritual family, free, free from bitterness, free from the anger, the rot that goes with unforgiveness and lack of reconciliation and hurt and bitterness and anger. I believe that God wants to do a move in our midst. And so I want to challenge you guys, regardless of what state your soul seems to be in as you stepped in here with us today, I want to encourage all of us to just make a choice to be present today. Let's be here today. Let's be all in. Let's experience what God has for us and allow his spirit to speak to our heart today. Amen. Can we all do that? We're all in rock and roll. I love it. So last week, this all kind of, these three weeks kind of merged together, kind of one after the other. So last week we started this by talking about the story of Samson. If you weren't here last week, I'd strongly encourage you to go back and listen to the podcast. Not because I'm so awesome and you should go listen to me talk, but I do think it'll be helpful. And these thoughts flow one out of the other.
[00:03:35] What we talked about in our discussion last week was about Jesus teaching on loving your enemies. Over the course of the gospel, Jesus gives these really intense teachings about what it means to walk in radical forgiveness and to have this just posture that says, I am always seeking the betterment of the other, seeking peace, seeking reconciliation, seeking forgiveness. He says things like, the measure you use will be used against you. If you forgive, my father will forgive you. He uses really strong language.
[00:04:10] These teachings of Christ, they seem to communicate that we just can't fully experience the forgiveness of God if we ourselves are not people of forgiveness. Now that's heavy. That's a high stakes idea. If that is what Christ is teaching, if that is what he's saying, that plain reading of his text, man, we need to take that seriously, right? We need to explore what is meant by that. But I also, like, I also look at that and go, isn't that kind of disturbing to our good protestant sensibilities?
[00:04:49] Right? Isn't there a part of us that goes, I'm pretty sure salvation is by grace, through faith, not by works, so that no one can boast. And I think forgiveness seems like a work.
[00:05:01] So how does that work? Surely our decision to forgive or not forgive can't actually supersede God's salvific call on our heart. Right? Right.
[00:05:11] And there is some tension there, guys. I think when we hit that tension mentally, we tend to just kind of pull back and go, eh, I don't know. I don't think that works. I don't want to mess with it anyway. And I think a big reason why we don't pull back from that and don't want to mess with that and don't want to dig deep into that is because all of us have hearts that are bent toward unforgiveness and bitterness and vengeance, and holding on to records of wrongs and broken relationship. And man, if Christ is actually challenging me to live that radically in that area of my life, if I have an out by saying, well, that's not how salvation works, then I would sure love to take that out, right? We can be honest enough to kind of admit like that is some of where our heart goes with this.
[00:05:57] Well, guys, I want us to take time to really reflect on that challenge. I mean, what does the scripture teach us about grace, about forgiveness, about reconciliation? Can we allow the word to answer these questions for us before our own emotional sensibilities, even our own good thought out systematic theology? Can we allow the word to have primacy and defining this doctrine, this ethic for us? I think that's what's so important in this. So last week we spent time in judges. We talked about Samson's propensity for vengeance. We talked about how vengeance always escalates, how it always focuses on self over community, over others. We talked about how vengeance unavoidably terminates on destruction, right? That's the road it heads to. It always escalates. And in left unchecked, it results in death. That is how vengeance works. We talked about the reality of our own vengeful hearts. We talked about the different ways we seek our own justice in vengeance, both passive ways and active ways. We spent time talking about the ledger. You guys remember this? In the response time, we wrote out, like a physical ledger of those who have wronged us to look at the way we keep track and keep account of the hurts and the injustices we received. And ultimately, we landed in romans twelve when we talked about the gospel call of God. To leave vengeance to God, right? To allow God to be the just judge, to respond to our enemies with love in hopes that they too will repent and not be defined by their sins, right? So that's our starting point. Today we know that we have been given a hard gospel call by our sweet Jesus. Walk in radical forgiveness. Learn to offer love to your enemies rather than vengeance. Learn to genuinely desire that those who have done wrongs to you would walk in repentance and receive the same salvation you've received, that is a hard call. It's a hard call from the Lord. And many of you. I know. I know many of you in this room have received immense injustices in your life. You've been wounded deeply. You've had terrible things done to you. And to hear your pastor up front just go, oh, yeah. Well, you should love your enemies. You should pray to God would work in their heart and lead them to repentance. Like, I understand that, as I say that, like, that's a painful thing for many of us to hear and many of us to process.
[00:08:29] Guys, I think at the end of the day, think at the end of the day, when we consider the fact that God is just and ultimately all sin will be paid for that reality.
[00:08:43] That's a beautiful thing.
[00:08:46] All of us who've been wronged, right, are storing up wrath against themselves. Like, their sin will be accounted for. That's a just thing and a beautiful thing. That's also a terrible thing.
[00:08:59] Not terrible. Like, justice is right, right. Justice is right. But it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a wrathful God. And that is the faith that awaits those who do not repent of their sins, even the sins against you, the sins that have been stacked up against you, that person, unless someone intercedes on their behalf, will face the holy, just wrath of God. We give an account for that sin.
[00:09:27] That's terrifying to think of. Right? And I do think. I do think that when we consider this, when we genuinely have hearts that are able to consider to that reality, man, we can see how the call to love our enemies, to offer kindness to those who have hurt us, might allow them to see the mortal peril of their souls and turn to God in repentance and receive forgiveness for the wrongs they have done.
[00:09:56] There is something beautiful in that. But it leaves us, I think, with this terrible question. Okay, that's cool. I get that. In theory, that sounds really beautiful. That sounds like the kind of theology that wraps up this amazing, beautiful Christ, who I love and I follow with my life. But how the heck does that actually happen?
[00:10:13] How do you actually live that way? Because, let's be honest, there are some things that have been done to us that are just horrific. And it seems foolish to live your life as though those things didn't happen.
[00:10:28] Right?
[00:10:29] Some acts of wrong and some acts of hurt have broken trust and endangered you in such a way that you go, I can't just live like that didn't happen.
[00:10:37] I can't just go hang out with that person and be kind and laugh and smile.
[00:10:42] So what does this look like? What is that beautiful theological piece? What does that mean in practice? How do we actually respond to such a call from Christ? How do we actually give real, from the heart love to our enemies, the people who have wounded us, the people who have struck us and wronged us and don't even care about the pain they've caused us? How could any act of love for such people be anything beyond lip service? I'm doing this because I have to. Like, I think about when my boys fight. This happened, like, last night, probably 45 times between dinner and bedtime, right? And I'll look at him and go, Moses, go say somebody to your brother. And you guys who have kids, you know exactly what happens. He walks over and goes, I'm sorry.
[00:11:28] Say it like you mean it.
[00:11:31] Okay, dad. I'm sorry, Gavin, for hitting you when you deserved it. Right? Like, you know what I'm talking about. That's how little boys operate. How could our love of enemies be anything beyond that?
[00:11:47] How could we have hearts that actually love and care for those who've done such terrible things to us? I think we'll see in our text that that kind of heart, that kind of forgiveness, requires a fundamental shift in how we view the world and how we interact with it. And, guys, it primarily involves a willingness to absorb the weight of injustice upon ourselves, and ultimately is an expression of purely and simply thinking of ourselves less.
[00:12:23] Real forgiveness means a forgetfulness of self. It means thinking of yourself less.
[00:12:32] It's a real important biblical principle that we're going to process today. So turn in your bibles over to Matthew, chapter 18. We're going to look at one of Jesus parables today. It's a really good one. A hard one, but a good one. This is where Jesus addresses this exact issue with his followers. And it follows a really famous passage where Jesus talks about how to handle people in church who have sinned against you and wronged you. He gives us this really interesting parable. So, Matthew, chapter 18, you can go ahead and turn there. If you don't have a Bible with you today. We have house bibles around the room. Please feel free to grab one. We really believe importance in the importance of access to God's word here at Emmanuel. If you don't own a physical copy of the Bible, I'd strongly encourage you to take that pew Bible or talk to one of the pastors. I'll just give you a nicer one. Okay. Matthew 18. We're going to start in verse 21.
[00:13:20] And we read this.
[00:13:23] Then Peter approached him, him being Jesus, and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times, I tell you, not as many as seven, Jesus replied, but 70 times seven, verse 23. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, one who owed 10,000 talents was brought before him. Since he did not have the money to pay back his master, or he did not pay back his master commanded that he, his wife, and his children everything he had be sold to pay the debt. At this, the servant fell face down before him and said, be patient with me. I will pay you everything. Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him and forgave him the loan. That servant went out, found one of his fellow servants, who owed him 100 denarii. He grabbed him, started choking him, and said, pay what you owe. At this, the fellow servant fell down and began begging him, be patient with me and I will pay you back. But he wasn't willing. Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what he owed. When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed. They went and reported to their master everything that had happened. Then, after he had summoned him, his master said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me.
[00:14:46] Shouldn't you have also had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?
[00:14:51] Because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that he was owed. So also my heavenly father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.
[00:15:08] And this, beloved, is the word of the Lord for us today. Well, dang.
[00:15:13] Wow.
[00:15:15] I was kind of vibing till that last verse, and I was like, well, okay, Jesus, that's a little intense, but that's what we're left with. That's the text.
[00:15:24] We need to wrestle with this. Pray with me, church, and we'll jump into this. Lord, we ask today as we take a few minutes to consider this text, to consider your call in our lives. Lord, I pray that you would illuminate your word to us, God, for each and every one of us. I pray that you would. You would just give us fresh conviction today. Lord, I'm thinking of myself when I say this, but I know this is true for so many in our church family. God, for those of us who have built calluses around our hearts who have wounds that have festered, enemies that have hurt us and we've not dealt with them. And we have rebuilt our lives around this wound, around this hurt, around this injustice. We have numbed ourselves to your gospel call, Lord. I pray that you would convict us afresh today.
[00:16:13] Lord, give us brand new eyes, fresh conviction, fresh challenge to hear your voice to us today. Your call to us today, Holy Spirit, we cannot live this out without your help.
[00:16:26] Be our discipler. Be our helper. Guide us, Lord. We pray this in your name. Amen.
[00:16:33] Okay, so there's a lot of story here. Let's walk back through it bit by bit and just see what comes to the surface. So the setup of this story is that Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who's wronged him for the same thing, the same offense, right? Peter comes up to him and says, hey, if someone sins against me and they keep doing it, same thing, how many times should I forgive them? Now remember the context. Jesus just described the passage directly before this. He just talked about what we call biblical church discipline. He talked about the process by which christians challenge each other to engage in repent of their sin. When you see a fellow Christian operating in unrepentant sin, they have some area of their life they're not submitting to the Lord, and it is damaging to them and those around them. As a brother or sister in Christ, what do you do for that person? Jesus outlines it very clearly in Matthew 18. You involve as few people as possible, but you challenge them to repentance. So you go and talk to them one on one. If they don't respond, you go and you bring one or two brothers and sisters who have witnessed the same pattern in their life. All three of you challenge them. If they refuse to respond, you involve your pastors, the authorities of your local church. And at the end of the day, if a person will not repent of their sin when confronted by their spiritual family and their spiritual leaders, the church is left with no option but to say, I'm not sure you're a Christian.
[00:17:55] I think you need to leave our fellowship until you can operate in real repentance and show evidence of faith.
[00:18:02] It's a terrible thing. And by the way, that last bit almost never happens. You guys have actually experienced church discipline dozens of times over the course of your faith. I guarantee it. It just didn't involve standing before the church and some terrible thing and someone being voted out of the church. Church discipline happens every single time a brother or sister in Christ comes to you and says, hey, I love you, but I just. I want to talk to you about this. We were hanging out the other day and I saw you do this. I don't know, it's maybe uncomfortable. And I really think you need to, like, think about that. That's church discipline. That's a brother sister in Christ challenging you to walk in repentance. And it's something we should all do for each other all the time because, spoiler alert, we're all sinners, right? We're all sinners, and we all have areas of sin that we are blind to or areas of sin that we're fully aware of but just don't want to deal with. Right? Church discipline is a gift from the Lord to help us grow in holiness. So Jesus finishes this teaching, and then Peter comes up to him and he goes, okay, okay, okay, that's good. But say you challenge this person and they repent, but then they do the same thing over and over again. How many times should you keep forgiving them? And you notice. You notice Peter has this bit where he goes, like, seven times. Now, here's the thing we miss in that, because there was actually established doctrine amongst the Jews at this point for this exact issue. Established, accepted doctrine. It was this, if a brother sins against you in the same way three times and you forgive him all three times and he does it a fourth time, you're done. You break relationship with him and you move on. That was the established doctrine. So Peter shows Jesus, look how spiritual I am. Look how mature I am. Jesus, everyone else, I mean, you already know how mature I am. But anyway, seven times, right? Like that holy complete number seven times. That's how many times I should forgive someone the same thing. He's putting himself out there as just being like, I'm really forgiving. And Jesus's response is so good, he goes, no, that's not enough. That's not enough. And your different translations here will either say 77 or seven times. Seven. Because the Hebrew there is or the Greek there is actually a little unclear. But here's the thing. The point isn't the number. What Jesus is saying by this number is he's saying, hey, Peter, if you are counting the number of times you forgive your brother, you're doing it wrong. Stop counting. That's not how it works.
[00:20:22] You should live your life with the kind of heart of forgiveness that you don't realize you've forgiven your brother for the same thing seven times. Because you're the kind of person who just offers forgiveness we haven't even gotten to the parable yet. We could stop right there. Amen. That's such a stinking challenge. But the story goes on. We just did this short series on parables. One of the things we talked about as we were going through Jesus parables in the Bay of Parable series was this kind of interpretive lens where you read a parable, and first you ask, what would this parable mean if Jesus was the main character? Then you come back and you ask, what would this parable mean if the church was the main character? You guys remember that bit? Well, in this parable, this is actually one of Jesus longest parables. He kind of. Does that work for us? He kind of puts it all in the telling of the story. A lot of his parables are like two or three sentences. This one's several paragraphs. Right. And so he kind of. He kind of gives us that peace. What is Christ's role in this parable? And what is the church's role in this parable? It's. It's fleshed out for us pretty well. And so let's. Let's consider Christ first and ourselves afterward. We're following kind of that same, that same flow as we look at this. And, man, I think you'll. Just, as we follow through this, I think you'll see exactly what we're getting at here. So Jesus tells the story of a king who decides to settle his accounts. This is a relatively normal thing. If you had a regional king, they would have their hands in all sorts of business interests. Most of them in that region would have been agricultural in nature. They're giving out loans for different farmers to go and grow different crops and those sorts of things. Relatively normal thing. For whatever reason, this king says, I need to settle all my accounts. I haven't been keeping my own books. Let's bring everyone in. Let's get everything taken care of. And as the story progresses, they bring in this guy, and by the, the phrasing of that, seems to indicate that he did not come willingly. But they bring in this guy who, it turns out, owes the king 10,000 talents. Now, we can all guess from context clues that that sounds like a lot of money, but let me go ahead and give us really quick a picture of kind of exactly what Jesus is saying here. Now, a talent is not actually a unit of measurement for money. It's a unit of measurement of weight. And in this time in first century Palestine in general, when a talent was used in reference to money, it usually meant a talent of roman silver denarius. I think I have a picture of a denarius. So you guys can see, these are the standard silver coins used in this region of the roman empire. And a talent of Denarius is a whole stinking lot of Denarius. It's a lot, a lot, a lot. By the way, the way this worked out is the way Denarius was measured. A talent would have about 6000 of them. This was a measurement that is used for kings collecting taxes of entire cities. This is the kind of measurement that was used to reflect that this guy owes 10,000 talents to his king. Now, Denarius represents a single day's wages for a laborer. This is the way the roman government organized their monetary system. One denarius was one day's wages for an unskilled labor. But you have to keep in mind, in this day and in this culture, you didn't have factory work weeks like we do. A worker could not expect to actually earn a denarius a day because there usually wasn't five or six days of work to do in agricultural cultures. I mean, you know, harvest time comes and. Yeah, but, absolutely. But you spread out, average it over the year, and the average worker could expect to earn two or three denarius a week over the course of a year. So if an average worker could expect around twelve Denarius a month, a talent represented 40 years of wages, which means this guy owes the king about 400,000 years of wages.
[00:24:19] Woof.
[00:24:21] We're talking lots of money. I did this calculation on my cell phone this weekend and it gave me the e. And I'm just not smart enough to do the math at that point. When the calculator gives me a letter e mixed in with the other numbers, my only takeaway from that is this is a big number, right? This is too big. We're talking lots and lots and lots of money. This is a ludicrous amount of money, guys. This is more money than history tells us. The entire region of Judea paid in taxes to Caesar annually.
[00:24:58] This is lots of money. You guys are familiar with the term hyperbole, right? Jesus is giving an amount of money that is ludicrously large. It's beyond the point of being comical, to the point of being ridiculous. Because the point here isn't about the money. The point here is that the debt is ludicrously large. Imagine someone telling a story today and they said, oh, you know, he owed like a billion, trillion dollars, right? Like it's that level of hyperbole. So the king looks at his books. He sees this disparity. That's a ludicrous amount of money. And he orders that this man, his family, everything he has, be sold his stuff on the market, him into slavery to pay toward the debt. Now, it's important to note, this is a punishment, right? This is not the king recouping his losses. There's no possible way that all those sales could come close to touching this debt. This is a punishment for the wrong this man has done to the king. It's also merciful. It's significantly more merciful than him sending to debtors prison, because roman debtors prison essentially just said, you're held captive until your friends and family pay your debt. You're stuck in prison with no ability to work on your own, but your debt stands until people who love you pay it on your behalf. Right? And so debtors prison is a pretty awful scenario here. And so the sale into slavery at least. At least gives space for him to work toward his debt, right?
[00:26:25] At this. Look at the guy's response at this. The servant fell face down before him and said, be patient with me. I will pay you everything.
[00:26:35] Sky tells the king to be patient, and he'll pay the debt back. Really?
[00:26:40] Like, this is delusion out of desperation, right? Like, there's no stinking world. How hundreds of lifetimes could not allow this guy to pay back the debt. But look what the text says. Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him and forgave him the loan.
[00:27:00] The image here, guys, is this king sitting on his throne, and he's got his big ledger in front of him, and he's looking at this number, and it arouses this anger in him, this injustice of what this wicked servant has done to him, and he's about to punish him for that wickedness. And then he sees the servant there on his face. He sees his tears. He sees his desperation, and it arouses compassion in him.
[00:27:25] His heart is drawn to compassion.
[00:27:29] And you see the king there with his ledger and with the servant, and he's got both of them. And in order to engage the servant, he closes the ledger, and he values the servant. He doesn't just have compassion on him. He forgives him the debt.
[00:27:48] That's some compassion, right?
[00:27:51] He forgives him the debt. This is already a beautiful story. We can see the gospel in this story, right? And we have this massive debt before God through our sin, through our rebellion, that we could never pay back because we're just not holy enough to pay for our own sins.
[00:28:09] But God, in his love and his mercy and his compassion, he chooses to eat the debt to forgive our loan. What a wonderful story. Our gospel, the gospel of Jesus is such good news. Amen.
[00:28:23] We're stuck. We're shackled to a debt we can never pay. And our king has compassion on us. Oh, my goodness, what a gospel.
[00:28:32] But unfortunately, that's not the end of the story, right? It goes on. The servant is shaken by this event, and so he goes and finds someone who owes him money, about 100 denarii. Now, remember, this is not an insignificant debt, right? If you're talking about someone who expects to get two, three denarius a week, we're talking about three, six months of salary, right? You could be talking about $25 to $40,000 in today's money, right? That's a big debt. It's not small. It's small in comparison to the debt this guy had. But in terms of, like, just dudes working their job, that's a lot of money. If you had a friend who owed you $40,000, that's a lot of stinking money, right? And so this servant finds his friend who owes him that money, and begins choking him and demands the money. And this other servant does something that sounds really familiar. At this, the fellow servant fell down and begged him, be patient with me and I will pay you back everything.
[00:29:25] This is the exact language the first servant used with the king, with the master. But look at the servant's response. He looks at his books, he sees that debt. He looks at his fellow servant on the ground, begging him for mercy, and he has him thrown into debtors prison, which again, it's a real cruelty. There's no way for you to work in debtors prison. Rome in debtors prison and pay off your debt. You are at the mercy of your friends and family to ransom you back to freedom. It's a very cruel thing to do. Couldn't be released until you paid the last penny. At least if you were sold into slavery, you could work toward your freedom and work to pay off the debt. But no, he has him thrown in prison. It's a message to all those who wouldn't pay their debts back to him, right? Because this part of the story is disturbing to read, because we intrinsically sense the injustice of this.
[00:30:20] This guy's co workers did as well, right? They report this atrocious behavior directly back to the king, and he's called back to face him again. And look at the language the master has for the servant. Now, you wicked servant, I, forgave you all that debt because you begged me.
[00:30:39] I had compassion on you. Shouldn't you have also had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?
[00:30:48] It's hard words from the master, you wicked servant. You should have shown the mercy you were shown. And what does he do? He says that's how you want to live your life. Fine, you can go join him in debtors prison.
[00:31:06] He sends him off responsible for his entire debt.
[00:31:12] On the one hand, there is, like, a sweet justice here. And you go, yeah, okay. I mean, that makes sense. That dude is super wicked. But then Jesus doesn't give us that satisfaction because he ends this text by bringing it straight back to us and just saying so. Also, will my heavenly father do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from his heart? Well, wait just a second. Hold on now. Let's back the strain up. I didn't like that story, but I got the ending of it. But I don't like that story being about me.
[00:31:43] Right?
[00:31:44] And there's something here. It's such sharp language, and I'm not gonna lie. Like, I don't want to dull this language for us in my heart, like, as a pastor, as, like, someone who loves you guys. Like, I want to reassure you. I want to, like, calm you and tell you how you shouldn't be worried about this passage. But here's the thing, guys. Jesus purposefully made these words sharp, and we would do this text an injustice if we did not allow them to cut us.
[00:32:16] They're supposed to challenge us. They're supposed to be painful. They're supposed to be a little scary to read.
[00:32:23] Jesus is challenging you with something that is important.
[00:32:26] Beloved, do you see the difference in the response of the two main characters in this parable, the king and the wicked servant?
[00:32:38] Do you see the difference? They're both put in a very similar situation.
[00:32:43] They're reconciling their ledgers. They find a debt. They are faced with their debtor.
[00:32:50] They both are put in very similar situations.
[00:32:54] The servant, he looks at his ledger, he looks at his co worker, and he demands justice.
[00:33:02] You incurred the debt, so you must pay it. This is on you, not on me. This is your fault. Not my fault. You put yourself in this situation. You made your bed. You can sleep with it, right?
[00:33:15] But the Lord, the king, sees the debt and then sees the person, and he chooses the value of humanity. He chooses the value of relationship. He chooses the person over balanced scales and money.
[00:33:34] The servant sees the debt and the person and chooses the satisfaction of getting what is rightfully his. The Lord takes his ledger and casts it aside for the sake of the debtor.
[00:33:47] The servant has to grasp tightly to his ledger. He has to hold to it, he has to reconcile it. And in that, he casts aside the person.
[00:33:58] You see the contrast here, right?
[00:34:02] Do not want to dull the sharpness of Jesus words, because this story so, it so starkly highlights how insanely out of sync the Lord is from his servant.
[00:34:18] They are functioning in the world in two fundamentally conflicting ways. The Lord has chosen relationship over good business. Because here's the thing, guys, here's the thing. Any of you guys who've worked in business world, you understand this, there's no such thing as forgiving a debt.
[00:34:35] That's not a thing.
[00:34:37] Someone pays it.
[00:34:39] Someone pays it. The money doesn't cease to exist when a debt is forgiven. It just means the person who loaned the money is paying the debt.
[00:34:48] It doesn't mean the debt goes away when the king forgives the loan, the king is saying, I'll just take this one. I'll take it. I'll take responsibility for that money. I'll pay it out of my own coffers.
[00:35:02] That's how it works.
[00:35:05] The Lord has chosen relationship over good business.
[00:35:09] It's not a wise decision when you have 400,000 years worth of wages out on loan and you decide just to eat it.
[00:35:17] That's not good business. But it is humanity over justice.
[00:35:24] It's an interesting choice. The servant has chosen the material goods over humanity.
[00:35:32] He's chosen what is his versus who is in front of him.
[00:35:37] The image in the story is the Lord's anger, sending the servant to jail as a punishment. I guess I don't want to diminish. There's a picture here of this final divine judgment. But you also have to remember, this whole story is given to us. It's hyperbolic for the purpose of piercing with its sharpness. We're not supposed to read the story and get this picture of a God who is spiteful and wants to get back at us when we're selfish. That defeats the whole purpose of the parable. Rather, we're to be struck. We're to be struck by the reality that when a heart grasps so tightly to its ledger that is so out of alignment with the heart of God, that that heart is just unable to experience the heart of God, to grasp so tightly to the ledger, to put yourself so out of alignment with the king, is to put yourself in a place where you just can't experience life like that. King does, you're setting yourself up to be fundamentally divided.
[00:36:43] And so when we see that our Lord, our Lord chooses humanity over the justice of the dead, and we choose the justice of the debt over humanity, we should not be surprised when we cannot experience and understand the heart of our Lord.
[00:37:01] We've set ourselves up to have a fundamentally different worldview than our God.
[00:37:05] That is a destructive thing, beloved. When we approach injustice and conflict and sin, a broken relationship, from this perspective of getting back and balancing the scales and getting what's ours, we should be greatly alarmed at how starkly out of sync this is with the God of the Bible, the God of the Bible who responded to our own sinfulness with such mercy.
[00:37:37] Remember the words of the king is king is hurt by this decision. You wicked servant.
[00:37:44] I showed you mercy. Should you not have shown the same mercy?
[00:37:49] It's a harsh rebuke, beloved. If you find yourself clutching to your ledger with a desperate desire for justice, for balance scales, this person did me wrong, and that matters.
[00:38:04] Something should be done about that. That person shouldn't just get away with it because they hurt me that way. They'll hurt others that way. And so I have to hold on to this. I have to remember this. I have to clutch to this because I deserve it, because this is mine.
[00:38:22] The scales are out of balance.
[00:38:25] Debt is owed to me for this. Wrong.
[00:38:28] When we clutch to that. Guys, listen, I'm telling you, I get it.
[00:38:36] It's a very natural response. When evil things are done to you, it's a very natural response.
[00:38:41] But I would ask you to give pause when you find yourself in that place. I would ask you to pause.
[00:38:48] How can you possibly experience the gospel goodness of our Jesus while you clutch so tightly to your ledger?
[00:38:55] How can you possibly experience it? It's not to say that God's grace is not bigger than you, but I'm telling you, you may not experience it.
[00:39:05] You may miss out on the reality that's present, and therefore you may miss out on the life that Christ won for you.
[00:39:11] Living your life clutching so tightly to a ledger, desiring for scales to be balanced that you can't actually balance.
[00:39:20] So then what do we do?
[00:39:22] What do we do with that? Like, if you're in this space and you go, okay, I get that. I get that's true, I get I should do that. But I can't just, like, tell my heart not to deal with this. Like, I don't want to be, I don't want to be the two, you know, the four year old boys who go I'm sorry. I don't really mean it.
[00:39:37] I can't change what I feel. So what do I do with this?
[00:39:41] How do I actually walk in this?
[00:39:44] Guys, look at Jesus.
[00:39:46] Look to the king, look to the Lord and our story.
[00:39:49] See, he has to cast aside the ledger in favor of the person.
[00:39:54] It's the only way it works. He's got the ledger. He sees the person and he has to choose.
[00:40:00] And he chooses the person.
[00:40:02] He has to set aside the ledger. He's not going to get both in that moment.
[00:40:07] So he sets aside the ledger and he chooses the person. Beloved, we have to acknowledge a painful truth here. A painful truth. In order to cast aside the ledger, the Lord of the story had to absorb the weight of the servant's huge debt. He had to accept the loss.
[00:40:26] Romans five tells us this.
[00:40:28] While we were still helpless at just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person, though for a good person perhaps someone might dare to die. But God, this is verse eight, proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
[00:40:48] Jesus saw the weight of your debt and he chose to absorb the wrong, chose to let it stop with him.
[00:40:59] He didn't pick up the jawbone and seek vengeance.
[00:41:02] Instead, he let the wrong, the injustice, the hurt, stop with him.
[00:41:08] He absorbed it. Beloved, on the cross, Jesus absorbed the weight of our sin. He took the brunt of the injustice. He looked at his ledger. He looked at us and he chose us.
[00:41:21] Come on, church.
[00:41:23] And that choice required Christ to eat the loss.
[00:41:28] This is the wonderful news of the gospel, that Christ absorbs the wrong on our behalf. Colossians two says it like this.
[00:41:36] When you were dead, in trespasses, in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses. Verse 14. He erased the certificate of debt with its obligations that was against us and opposed to us and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities. He disgraced them. He triumphed over them. Beloved, our debt is paid.
[00:42:05] Our sin has been fully paid for on the cross by Christ. But it didn't just disappear.
[00:42:13] It wasn't some magic thing. No, Jesus paid for it.
[00:42:17] He bore the brunt. He absorbed the wrong. Your sin nailed to the cross, and it had to go through his hands and feet to get there.
[00:42:28] Beloved, reconciliation takes two. This is true, right? When there's a wrong, an injustice, a broken relationship, it takes two, you can't force reconciliation to happen.
[00:42:41] But it's also true that reconciliation is only possible when at least one party is willing to drop the jawbone and stop the cycle of vengeance is willing to say, I'm going to stop being happy when I hear bad things happen to this person.
[00:42:58] I'm going to stop talking bad about them every opportunity I get. I'm going to stop commiserating with others, talking about how much of a dirt bag that person is. I'm going to stop the cycle. I'm going to drop the jawbone. Because this vengeance, this back and forth, this is only going to escalate.
[00:43:17] Reconciliation will never happen until one party is willing to say, you know what? None of this should have happened, but I'll eat the loss on this one.
[00:43:27] It's the only way it ever happens, guys.
[00:43:30] It's the only way it ever happens. Someone has to bear the weight of the injustice.
[00:43:37] And as long as you clutch to your ledger, as long as you demand what is rightfully yours, you will never experience reconciliation.
[00:43:46] Period.
[00:43:47] Now, guys, listen, as I say that, I know that that is a big thing for some of you in this room.
[00:43:54] Some of you have some big wounds, some big injustices that you are holding on to.
[00:44:01] But beloved, we must die to the entire system of ledgers, the entire system of tit for tat. We must kill the unmerciful part of ourselves that wants to see those around us pay the price for their sin.
[00:44:18] Because, guys, ultimately we must confess that we don't actually want justice.
[00:44:25] Those of you guys who justify your ledger with a heart for justice, I'm just a black and white person. I really believe strongly in the idea of justice. I mean, that's awesome and that's important to have that heart. But you have to understand, you don't actually want justice.
[00:44:41] You want justice for others.
[00:44:44] You want other people to pay for their sin, but you want your sins passed over and forgotten and forgiven. Correct.
[00:44:52] You want to receive the mercy of the Lord and walk in reconciliation and restoration and become a new person or new creation in Christ and see the old pass away and see your old man of flesh and sin killed by sanctification. You want to see change happen in your heart and walk in redemption and walk into your eternity with Christ forever. Beloved, that is not justice.
[00:45:11] That's you skipping out. That's someone else paying your debt.
[00:45:16] We want the justice for others. We want the mercy for us.
[00:45:22] If you want reconciliation, the kind of gospel forgiveness you've received, if you want to live a life that actually has that you must forget yourself. And, guys, I don't mean this kind of, like self deprecating, like self hatred that many of us think. Oh, I'm just thinking. No, no, that's not what I'm talking about. That's destructive. That's foolish. That's how people remain in abusive situations. No, no, no. The self forgetfulness, I mean, self forgetfulness the scripture talks about means that you must think of yourself less, that your own person, your own justification, your own glory, your own success, your own advancement, just comes across your mind less often.
[00:46:07] You guys, when you are secure in Christ's love and work and care for you, when you know and experience the grounding of his care for your soul, his love and sacrifice on your behalf, then you are freed to think of yourself less.
[00:46:25] Because you know that Jesus himself considers you, that you don't have to keep track of your ledger and the wrongs done to you. You don't have to take the weight of balancing the scales because Christ considers you and loves you and knows the wrongs done to you. And that Jesus himself will make sure an account is given for every injustice that's ever been done to you.
[00:46:49] Beloved, at the end of time, Christ will stand as judge and every sin that has ever been committed against you, because Christ loves you and because he is just, every sin, every wrong ever done to you will be accounted for.
[00:47:03] And so you just don't have to keep the ledger because Christ is.
[00:47:08] Because he loves you and cares for you, and he is doing exactly that work.
[00:47:14] You are freed to forget self and consider others.
[00:47:18] Okay, so we've talked about this a little bit, but there is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, right? A heart of forgiveness, a heart that releases someone and trusts Christ and doesn't walk in bitterness. That can happen by yourself. And reconciliation takes two. It only happens if someone else is able to walk in repentance and forgiveness. And, guys, the reality is that some of you guys have been in situations where the injustice and the wrong was literally endangering to you. Right? And forgiveness in that situation can be unique. And please, please, please don't hear me telling you to, like, let go of your boundaries and walk into unhealthy and dangerous situations. That's not what I'm describing. It's not what I'm describing.
[00:47:59] But I will tell you this. The gospel of Jesus means you can forgive those who've wronged you, even if you can't reconcile, even if you still have to have really strict and safe boundaries, even if you can't live in daily relationship with that person, you can walk in forgiveness.
[00:48:17] You can trust them over to Christ. You can release your ledger to Christ and trust him to care about your justice. You can. It's the power of the gospel.
[00:48:30] Because I understand our stories are all complex. I understand that. But here's the thing, guys.
[00:48:36] I'm not going to back off this one.
[00:48:39] There does not exist a conflict, hurt or wrong or injustice, where we cannot find a way to show the Jesus kind of love that we've been shown. It may be messy. It may be complex. You may need help to navigate through it. But I promise you, you can.
[00:48:54] You can live a different kind of way instead of living consumed and owned by that hurt and that bitterness and that injustice.
[00:49:02] The love you show or refuse to show in the face of conflict, guys, it declares your gospel to the world around you, period.
[00:49:11] The love you choose to show or not show in the face of hurt and conflict declares the gospel you believe.
[00:49:18] Will your declaration of the gospel be accurate? Will you proclaim the gospel of our sweet Jesus, who bore our sins, who forgave our trespasses? Or will you declare the false gospel that demands retribution and justification?
[00:49:33] It's a very real question.
[00:49:36] One of my all time favorite passages, we're going to land out with this, Chris, if you want to come back up.
[00:49:41] One of my all time favorite passages in all the Bible, Jesus has this interaction with a prostitute who's trying to show him love and honor him, but he doesn't really know how, and it's very inappropriate and very awkward. It's a really weird text. You can read about it in Luke seven.
[00:49:55] And while it's happening, there's this religious leader who just starts scoffing at Jesus, and he's like, oh, my gosh, if this guy knew what a fool he's making of himself, he has no idea what he's doing. Here, here. And there's this moment where Jesus presents him, the religious leader, with just this wonderful and simultaneously terrible spiritual question. And he presents it as a little parable that will seem familiar, because what we just read, he says, a creditor has two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, the other 50, since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them both. Which of them will love him more?
[00:50:27] I love the image.
[00:50:28] A guy's owed money, 500 denarii, 50 denarii, neither of them can pay back. He forgives both the debts. Who's gonna love him more for that?
[00:50:38] And the religious leader responds, the one who has forgiven the larger debt will love more.
[00:50:43] And Jesus says this of this young woman, in the midst of her being really publicly kind of shamed and mocked, he says, therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven.
[00:50:55] That's why she loves so much.
[00:51:00] But the one who's forgiven little loves little.
[00:51:05] What he says to this religious leader is he just goes, look, dude, you're missing this because she just loves me more than you do.
[00:51:13] She just gets it better than you do.
[00:51:16] That's why you're being such a jerk right now.
[00:51:20] I love that text.
[00:51:22] Beloved, as you consider your own testimony, as we land out today, as you consider your own story, your own time before Christ, I want to challenge you with this.
[00:51:31] You have been forgiven much.
[00:51:34] I don't know all the skeletons in your closet, but I know that if you are a human on this earth and you know Christ, you've been forgiven very much.
[00:51:43] Ought you not? Shouldn't you love as you've been loved, forgive as you've been forgiven?
[00:51:52] It's not a worthwhile endeavor to engage, to actually consider the world the way you've been considered.
[00:51:59] So here's what I want to do.
[00:52:01] I want to give some space for us to respond to Christ. I want to give some space for you to pray and connect with Jesus. I want to encourage you guys to do something a little weird and tactile, but I think it's actually helpful. If you were here last week, I asked you guys to take a note card and actually write down names of people who've wronged you. If you weren't here last week, I put note cards out so you could do this. I'd strongly encourage you to do this.
[00:52:26] Be brutally honest with you and Jesus. Write out some names of people who've done you dirty, of wounds that stick in your heart, ones that are just hard to move past.
[00:52:36] I'd love for you to actually look at that ledger, like actually look at it in your prayer.
[00:52:41] Talk to Jesus. Talk to him about those wounds, remind him of the injustice.
[00:52:48] I'd love for you to consider what it might look like for you to do for those what have been done to you.
[00:52:55] Christ looked at you and saw your debt and saw your ledger, and in his compassion, in his mercy, chose you over the debt and absorbed the wrong and adopted you into his family, church. What might it look like for you to do the same through the power of Christ, to love as you've been loved, to choose person, to choose relationship, to choose humanity, choose community over and above your ledger?
[00:53:26] Take a few minutes to think about that. And decide what you might want to do with that ledger. If you need prayer, any of the pastors would love to grab you and pray with with you. We can even go outside if you'd like a little bit of privacy. Or we can figure out a time this week later up later to meet up and chat. But do the work you need to do with Christ and then we'll continue on.
