The Forgiveness of Heaven

The Forgiveness of Heaven.
Matthew 18: 21 – 35.

I. Introduction.
Abraham Joshua Heschel is a world renowned theologian and Old Testament scholar. Several years ago, Heschel had the opportunity to deliver a series of lectures at the University of California on the relationship between religion and ethics. As you already know, the University of California is not a religious school, so the room was filled with a mixture of different religions and some people who professed no religious beliefs whatsoever.
At the end of one lecture, Heschel gave the audience an opportunity to respond and to ask questions. One of the respondents was a university faculty member. The professor stood and asked, “Why do I need religion? I am a good person. I treat others decently. I lead an honest and ethical life. What does religion have to offer me?”
Heschel responded, “That is the difference between you and me. You are a good person. I am not.”

Read Matthew 18: 21 – 35.

This Scripture occurs in the context of three teachings on Reconciliation…

1. Shepherd with 100 sheep will leave 99 to search for 1.
2. Recalling sinners back into the church.
3. Forgiveness in personal relationships…

As is normally the case, the disciples have questions about what Jesus is teaching them, so Peter speaks up and asks Jesus to explain himself…And Jesus gives 2 answers…A principle and a story…Or a teaching and an illustration…

Peter’s question shows both his wisdom and his ignorance…

Wisdom…Because Peter is willing to forgive even more than the most righteous of the Jews…The Rabbis taught that a person was to forgive the same person three times for the same offense…But do not forgive four…And Peter knew that Jesus wanted them to go beyond the best that Judaism had to offer…

Ignorance…Because Peter wanted to fix a number on forgiveness…Granted seven is a high number to forgive a person for the same offense…But any time we fix a limit on forgiveness, we are not going far enough…So Jesus increased the limit…Not seven times, but seventy times seven…Or as NIV says seventy-seven times…

Now it doesn’t matter how we translate this numerical value…The term can legitimately go either way…It doesn’t matter how we translate it, because this is a figure of speech known as hyperbole. Jesus did not place a numerical limit on forgiveness…Jesus did not say forgive a person 77 times but not 78…Or 490 times but not 491…Either way, the number is so ridiculously high that Jesus is stressing unlimited forgiveness…Forgiveness that will never reach its maximum…

Then Jesus told a story about the Kingdom of Heaven…I want my own preaching to imitate the preaching of Jesus…Jesus did not give principles only…He taught principles and then related those principles to stories that his congregation could understand…The parables (or stories) of Jesus gave the disciples something they could put their hands on…Something they could remember when they left the church…

In the very first verse of the parable (23), Jesus told us that the Parable was about the Kingdom of God…

Since it is obviously about the Kingdom of God, then we can assume that the King in the story refers to God…And the servants of the King can be compared to us, followers of Jesus, servants of the Lord…

One day the King decided it was time to settle his accounts…He had loaned money to his servants and for some reason or another he felt it was time to collect the money…This concept of “settling accounts” is a common image used to describe the final Judgment…One day, we will all have the opportunity to “settle accounts” with God…We will have to give an account for the way we have spent our lives…

The particular servant that Jesus focused on had borrowed a lot of money from the King…The Bible says that he owed 10,000 Talents…Exactly how much money do you think that is?

A Talent is the highest denomination of money known in Jesus’ day and 10,000 is the highest number for which the Greek language has a word…In other words, the servant owed the maximum that anyone could possibly owe the King…

But we could also describe it this way…A Talent was roughly the equivalent to 20 YEARS’ SALARY for the average worker! This servant owed his master the equivalent of 200,000 YEARS OF SALARY!

Last Tuesday, minimum wage increased from $5.15 per hour to $5.85 per hour. For forty hour work week, that totals a little over $12,000.00 per year. If you worked for 200,000 years at minimum wage, you could earn $2.4 Billion. In “inflation adjusted dollars,” this servant owed $2.4 Billion dollars.

In other words, there was no possible way for this man to repay his debt to the King…He owed an incalculable debt…There was only one thing he could do…Beg for mercy…And the King showed mercy…He forgave the man his debt…

(verse 28) But notice what the servant did when the King forgave him…He went out and found someone who owed him money…100 Denarii…Exactly how much money are we talking about here?

According to another parable Jesus told in Matthew 20, a denarius was what the average working man made for one day of work…Again, if you make $5.85 per hour and work for 8 hours a day, then you make $46.80 per day…In 100 days, you would make $4,680.00…

The servant grabbed the other man and began to choke him, demanding that the debt be paid immediately…When the man could not pay, the ungrateful servant had the other servant thrown into prison for failure to repay…

I want you to notice the difference between the two debts…The ungrateful servant had been forgiven a debt that was 500,000 times greater than the debt that was owed him…

Jesus’ parable illustrates for us the different ways we can respond when someone sins against us…Ultimately there are three ways we can respond…


II. Fairness.

We might call this “punish the criminal”…The ungrateful servant treated his fellow servant with Fairness…He did what the law allowed him to do…When the servant couldn’t pay, he had to go to debtor’s prison…You do the crime…You do the time…

But what does Fairness really solve? There is satisfaction in doing what is Fair…There is a good feeling that goes with knowing that all is Fair in the world…Criminals go to jail…

Fairness does nothing to restore the person…It only focuses on the crime, not the person…

When we treat others with Fairness…We give them what they deserve, but our relationships are destroyed…


III. Forgetfulness.

A second choice is that we could respond with Forgetfulness…This is what our world calls Forgiveness…But Forgetfulness is actually a perversion of Forgiveness…

Forgetfulness is to ignore the problem…To allow the crime (sin) to continue…It is to actually condone the sinful activity…What you are doing is OK…I am just going to look the other way, while you keep doing whatever you want to do.

Forgetfulness also destroys the relationship…It allows the other person to continue to sin against you…

There is only one way to effectively deal with sin and relationship…
IV. Forgiveness.
We can respond with Forgiveness…That was the response of the King… That is the response of Heaven…God has responded to our sins with Forgiveness…

If our world has perverted Forgiveness to mean nothing but Forgetfulness, then we must define what Forgiveness really is…

Forgiveness is not Forgetfulness…Forgiveness is “costly remembering.”

The king did not look the other way and ignore the servant’s debt…He called him to account for it…When the servant could not pay the debt, the King responded with Fairness by selling the servant and his family… But then something interesting happened, the servant Repented and begged for mercy…At this point, the King had the freedom to do any of these three responses…And the King chose to Forgive…

Forgiveness is not Forgetfulness…Forgiveness is “costly remembering”

The King paid the price himself…He didn’t forget the debt, he paid the debt himself…Sin ALWAYS costs someone something…There is a price to pay…And Forgiveness ALWAYS costs the innocent person more than the sinner…Forgiveness is not fair. Innocent people suffer the consequences of someone else’s behavior.

And that is the meaning of the Cross of Jesus…Your sin costs someone something…God could give you what you deserve and respond with Fairness…God could look the other way and respond with Forgetfulness…And everyone gets to go to heaven…Or God could pay the price himself and respond with Forgiveness…


V. Conclusion.

But that is not how the parable ended…The parable ended in tragedy…

(Read verse 31 – 35) Does this mean that God can Forgive us and then if we don’t act right he can take back his Forgiveness? NO!

Does this set up a legalistic formula that says God can only forgive us if we forgive others? NO!

What this illustrates is that Forgiveness can be given but not received.

Did the King offer Forgiveness? YES! Did the servant receive Forgiveness? NO!

There are three ways you can take a gift…You can take it with guilt…You can take it with gratitude…You can take it for granted…Don’t take God’s Forgiveness for granted…Don’t take the Cross of Christ for granted…In the crucifixion of Jesus, God has responded with Forgiveness…He has given his Forgiveness…Will you receive it?