Bible Text: Matthew 18:21-35 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
The purpose of a parable is to give you a story and get you to agree with the obvious point of the story, and then, when you agree, you’re fully committed, then to show you that the point applies to you. The famous example of this in the Old Testament is the story the prophet Nathan tells to King David. David, you remember, committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and then killed Uriah to cover up his sin, and took Bathsheba as his own wife. Nathan comes to him and tells him a story, a parable. A rich man had thousands of sheep, and his poor neighbor had only one. And he loved that sheep, fed it by hand, it drank from his cup, played with his children, it was like a daughter to him. When the rich man had friends come over, he didn’t want to slaughter any of his sheep, so he took the poor man’s sheep and butchered it and served it to the guests. David hears the story, gets angry, agrees completely with the obvious point, that this rich guy is evil, and David says that man should be put to death. And Nathan says, “You are the man.” And David has to agree. He is the man. It’s obvious. He did this to Uriah.
Jesus does the same thing here. That man who owed his master ten thousand talents, an impossibly enormous debt, who can’t pay it, who is ordered to be sold as a slave along with his wife and children and all he has so the debt can be paid: you are the man. You owe a debt to God you can’t possibly pay. The punishment is more than you can bear. And the only thing left for you is to plead for mercy from God. You are the man.
The wonder is that God actually has mercy. He eats the debt Himself. Ten thousand talents can’t be forgiven without harm to the master. It’s a ridiculous amount of money, billions of dollars. This is basic economics. If the federal government forgives billions of dollars of college loans, someone has to pay for that. If you print more money to pay for it, then everyone pays for it because money is now less valuable. But you can’t just forgive it without consequences.
The consequence for God if He wants to forgive your debt is that He has to pay your debt Himself. Because no one else can. And He does. Jesus takes it on Himself. The Eternal Father places it entirely on His eternal Son. Your Creator is sold to death, handed over to the torturers, punished with the anger of God against your sin. He pays their price with His blood and His agony on the cross. God dies to pay your debt.
So you are the man. Not only the man who owes an impossible debt to God for all the wicked things you have said and done and been, but also the man who gets all that debt forgiven. God takes it on Himself.
Now the rest of the parable might be you and might not be. That’s the question. Are you the man? You can choose not to forgive those who sin against you. You can stew in your own bitterness and think how could she say that about me or how could he do that to me. But if you do that, Jesus says very clearly, you’re going to go to hell. And it’s not just that you’re going to go to hell, it’s that you are making your life a living hell now. That’s the point. Hell is where there is no forgiveness. It’s where you aren’t forgiven and you won’t forgive. Where bitterness and pride reign. That’s the devil, that’s his nature, that’s his kingdom.
Jesus shows you this man to make it very obvious. He’s an absolutely horrible person. Jesus makes you not want to be him. He’s clearly the bad guy. He’s mean. He chokes his fellow servant, demands payment for a tiny debt, won’t listen to pleas for mercy, throws the poor guy in prison, and that’s after he’s just been forgiven a monstrous debt himself. The message here is very obvious. You don’t want to be that man. You don’t want to hold on to grudges and demand people pay for their sins against you.
But it won’t be obvious to you unless it’s first obvious that you are the man in the first place, that you did, you do, owe God an unpayable debt. The debt is to God. It’s not to others. You owe God. When David confesses his sin in Psalm 51 he says to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” He sinned against Uriah, against Bathsheba! Why’s he saying it’s against God he’s sinned, Him alone? Who does your neighbor belong to? To you? You didn’t make him. God did. You sin against your wife, grow bitter, lose your temper, and you’re losing your temper with God. He gave her to you. You talk back to your parents, you’re talking back to God, they stand in His place. You refuse to submit to your husband, you’re refusing to submit to God. You lust after someone not yours by marriage, you’re lusting after God’s child, offending His honor. We belong to Him, all of us. That’s why in the parable we’re all slaves, who belong to the master. When the one slave demands payment from the other slave, all the other slaves tell the master, because they all belong to him. So everyone in your life belongs to God and when you strike out and hurt them you are striking at God. The debt you owe should be very obvious and that’s just with the second table of the law. What about the first? What about thinking your life belongs to you and all the things you have to do are so important that you forget the God who gave life to you and don’t thank him but take for granted everything He gives and then worry and complain when he doesn’t give you more? You are the man.
But more, much more, you are the man on whom God has mercy, whom He loves, whose debts He takes on Himself and pays with a price our feeble minds can’t fully grasp, because to grasp it would be to grasp God, His eternity, His righteousness, His life, which He gives for you a sinner. How dearly God must love you. Beyond comprehension.
And when this is obvious, then it is obvious too that you are not going to be that man who chokes his neighbor, demands payment for the sin committed against you, who dreams of vengeance. You will forgive from the heart those who sin against you.
The objection Christians bring against Jesus is that I can’t just excuse sins against me, I can’t, they were horrible, they hurt me too much, they were evil, I can’t pretend they weren’t. Good. Don’t. Jesus doesn’t want you excusing sin. He wants you forgiving it.
Forgiveness isn’t excusing. Actually they’re opposites. When God forgives your sin, does He say, “Don’t worry. It wasn’t that bad. It’s fine.” No! That’s the modern liberal view of sin, and God is no liberal. Nothing could be thought up more silly, more unbiblical. That sin is nothing, that God just winks at fornicating and sodomy and abortion and breaking the marriage vows and drunkenness and greed and any other clear violation of his commandments. No, God when it comes to your sin, calls it the evil that it is, shows you the debt you owe, and then shows you where He put it, on the innocent head of His only begotten Son, who became a curse for you. There’s no excusing sin with God. There’s dealing with it.
So you don’t excuse the sins committed against you. Don’t be the parents that excuse the sin of their kids, because if my kids are doing it it must not be that bad. But you do forgive. You have to, as water has to be wet, and the sun has to give off heat, so the Christian has to forgive. It is by nature who we are. Forgivers. That means calling evil evil, and then returning again and again to the very foundation of your life, what has formed your heart and mind and soul, that all evil, your sin, your neighbor’s sin against you, all of it, has been placed on your Savior.
There is the only source of forgiveness. The only place where evil is finally dealt with. Your sins, the sins against you, all sin, placed on the eternal Son of God. Because in the end all sin is against Him, and if He takes it, if He does away with it, if He suffers for it, then it ends with Him and He speaks a true and sure forgiveness that applies to you and to everyone.
The reason you forgive those who sin against you is because you have looked at your own sin, taken it seriously, wished you hadn’t done it, thought it, said it, been it, wanted never to do it again, and found your joy and peace in knowing that God takes it all away. That’s repentance. [Sorrow over sin and trust in God’s mercy.]
The problem with the unforgiving servant is obviously not that his master wasn’t merciful. It obviously isn’t that his master hasn’t forgiven him. It’s that he doesn’t care. He had this ridiculous debt, the master pays it, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even understand how bad it was, because he says, “be patient with me, and I’ll pay you all.” He can’t pay it all. How does a slave even think he can pay billions of dollars to his master? It’s absurd. He thinks he can pay it because absurdly he thinks ten thousand talents is nothing. And this is a picture of unbelief. So common in every time but especially ours. “I don’t owe God much, my debt is small, I’m a good person.” There’s the problem. Forgiveness is universal. Jesus died for all, the whole world’s sin. And God declared the world righteous in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead. But faith is the only thing that grasps forgiveness from God, realizes how precious it is, and holds on to it as the greatest treasure in heaven and on earth. Because faith says, I am the man, I owed that debt, and I need God to take it from me.
That’s why Jesus says what He says at the end of the parable. So will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not each forgive your brother from your hearts. It’s amazing that He says this, from your hearts, because what else does He say of the human heart? That from it flow all evils, adultery, murder, hatred. It is the source of all wickedness. But now He says that from His Christians’ hearts flow forgiveness, mercy, this divine quality. Because this is what controls us, as St. Paul says, the love of God controls us, forms us, make us new. God places the divine heart in our heart. Constantly we take from that inexhaustible source of forgiveness and constantly we give it. Forgiveness is that thing, like love, that if you don’t give it away you won’t have it anymore, and the more you give it away the more you have. You cannot give what you don’t first receive. So receive it. See what is obvious. See that you are the man, the woman, the child, whose enormous debt your God has paid, see it in His body and blood given for you, His name placed on you, His glory given to you. And the forgiveness that forms your heart will flow from you to others to the glory of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.