You're listening to audio from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now here's the teaching. Alright. Good morning, everyone.

My name's Joey. I'm excited to jump into this with you. You know, during this season of Lent, as a church, we're we're spending our time together on Sundays walking through different parables. Each week we're looking at one of Jesus's parables, different parable each week. Parables are, stories with a point.

Stories that describe God, describe the kingdom of God, they use analogies to make their point. And these parables are giving us glimpses into the kingdom of God, or or they're inviting us into a new way of living since we're living in God's kingdom, not in the kingdoms of this world. And this week, we're tackling what, one author called the the most revealing and compelling of all of Jesus's parables, the parable of the unforgiving servant. Father, as we open your word and read these words of Jesus for us, we pray that they would impress themselves on our hearts, that we, receiving that we receiving forgiveness from you may become the kind of people who freely give forgiveness to one another. And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. So I have a friend, right now who really needs me to, to show up for him with compassion, but I've I've been really struggling with it. It's not anyone here at faith or connected, with Faith Church in in any way, so you can stop looking around at each other and try to figure out who I'm talking about. But my friend is suffering under the consequences of his his own decisions. Horrible decisions I could never get behind, but they're decisions that have hurt his wife, his kids, his church.

Almost everyone he knows has walked away from him, except for a few of us who are trying to stay in contact. And and to be honest, I've really been struggling with staying in contact. This week, while I was reading and studying this parable, I got, pretty convicted about it. Not because he sinned against me and I'm being unforgiven, unforgiving like the servant in this story, but because I've been shown compassion by God, and he needs me to show him compassion. And I don't really want to.

But I've been reading and studying this parable all week and realizing, okay, if God has shown me mercy, then I need to show mercy to others. If God has shown me compassion, then I'm called to show compassion to others. If God has forgiven me, then I'm obligated to forgive others. It's not a fun message, is it? But that's the point that the parable of the unforgiving servant is trying to get across.

Because it's true. We haven't really learned compassion or let compassion transform our hearts until we're able to pass that compassion on to someone else, to express it to someone else. The same is true with grace, or with mercy, or with kindness, or love, or peace, or forgiveness. You know, if we can't pass it on to someone else, or if we don't think that that we're obligated to pass it on to someone else, then maybe we haven't really learned or experienced it in the first place. That's what this parable is teaching.

As we walk through it, we're gonna keep bumping into that kind of same main idea all the way through. In this particular case, because it's the parable of the unforgiving servant, it's forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. Did you catch that? Forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. And by the way, full disclosure, putting it that way is not original with me.

I ran across that line this week while I was doing the research, and I was like, that is so good. I am using that on Sunday. Forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. Alright. Let's let's jump into the parable itself.

It picks up the parable proper picks up in verse 23. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven could be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. But actually, before we get too far into it, I want to back up a couple of verses. In my Bible, verses twenty one and twenty two are considered part of the same unit that the parable falls into. Back it up to verse 21.

Then Peter came up and said to Jesus, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? In other words, if somebody keeps doing the same thing over and over again and they keep asking for forgiveness, like, how many times is reasonable to forgive them before I'm being taken advantage of? Seven? Seven seems like a pretty good number.

Yeah. Actually, at the time, the general idea, sort of like the folk theology floating around, was that if you confessed a particular sin to God and asked for forgiveness, the first time he forgave you. Same sin, second time he forgave you. Same sin, third time he forgave you. Fourth time, you're out.

No more forgiveness. So offering to forgive seven times I mean, besides the fact that seven is like a big round number in the Jewish way of thinking, like, that's complete, that's whole, that's everything. That's twice as many times as God does. So Peter's being really magnanimous. Of course, you know how Jesus responds in verse 22.

Jesus said to him, I'm not gonna say seven times, but 77 times. Or 70 times seven times depending on how you translate it. Because Jesus is pushing on the legalistic, okay, how many times do I have to forgive, you know, so I can do it correctly? Jesus is pushing on the legalistic idea of keeping a logbook of forgiveness. Because he's pushing back on that idea, he jumps right into this illustrative story.

It's a parable that only Matthew has recorded. And like I said, it picks up the parable proper in verse 23. Then Peter or sorry, verse 23. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven could be compared to a king who decided it was time to call in everyone who owed him money and settle up. Now to understand what's going on in this, we have to remember, of course, that the ancient world worked very differently than ours does.

When you or I, you know, sign up for a credit card or we get a loan from the bank, it comes with a contract. Right? I mean, none of us read the contract, but it's there. If it's a a bank loan for a a card or a house or something, you know, you agree to an interest rate, you agree to a minimum loan payment, you you agree to the terms of the loan, you agree you're gonna pay back a certain amount each month and get charged a certain amount of interest, and in return, they agree to not come to you out of the blue and demand everything back all at once. When I bought my first car, I borrowed $800, from my dad.

He charged 8% interest, which I did not know at the time was a large number. And for every day I was late on my payments, it was a $10 fine. I know. I think he was trying to teach me the a lesson, and the lesson was the bank of dad is exploitative. Do not borrow money from relatives.

Anyway, back then, the way it worked, if you indebted yourself to someone, there wasn't much protection for you if the person you indebted yourself to decided, hey, I'm done waiting. I want it all back now, or I need it all back now. It wasn't a contract or terms you could appeal to. You just had to take the risk that at any moment they may ask for everything back. And if you couldn't pay it all back or negotiate some deal, it didn't end well.

So in the story Jesus is telling, we have this king who decided to settle his accounts. He's going to call everybody in, each of his servants, employees, and say, Hey, I've lent you all money or we've been in these business arrangements. I want you to pay up. It's time to pay up. I'm going to settle everything.

So verse 24, we hear about the first servant who comes. When when he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. 10 thousand talents. I'm guessing if you've heard this story before, you know that 10,000 talents is a lot of money. Right?

It's an obscenely large amount of money. Like, this is Scrooge McDuck money we're talking about here. Right? Swimming in the gold coin vault. How many of you have no idea what I'm talking about?

Okay. Alright. Okay. That's good. It went over great in first hour.

Everybody knew. I grew up with these cartoons. But anyway, there's a lot of money. It'd be impossible to pay back. In fact, I did the math.

10,000 talent talents. A talent is is a a unit of weight. So 10,000 talents is approximately the weight in gold of 48 full grown adult male African elephants. I know. Right?

If you've ever been to the zoo and you've seen one of those, imagine four dozen golden elephants. It's how much this guy owes. Obviously, Jesus is being hyperbolic. It is an impossibly large amount. He owed him trillions of dollars, we might say.

But this kind of story, even though it's an impossible to pay back amount, the story is all too common. The people hearing Jesus tell it knew what impress what oppressive and impossible debt felt like in Jesus's time. Losing your land, your farmland to taxation was all too common. So how's the guy gonna respond back to the story, verse, 25? And since he could not pay, obviously, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and payment to be made.

It was a pretty common practice. If your debt was called in and you couldn't pay, the person servicing your debt could sell you into slavery, your family, sell everything you owned, and take all of the income from that and say, okay. This makes satisfaction. I'm not gonna get any more, but I'll take what I can get. Now imagine how this guy is is feeling.

Imagine that on your drive home today, you you're checking your email. Maybe someone else is driving and you're checking your email. Right? And, and there's just a string of emails from every car loan, credit card, and your mortgage, and they all say pay up today, or it's prison tomorrow. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me.

I promise I will pay it all back. He's like, look, I've been making the minimums. Okay? I've been making the minimums. Just give me more time.

I will pay it back. Given an an average day's wage, right? You can make 1 denarius in a day, six thousand denarius in a talent, 10,000 talents. So at 1 denarius a day, it only takes one hundred and sixty four thousand years. I will pay you back.

Just be patient. Verse 27, out of pity for him, or compassion is another way we translate that word, out of compassion for him, the master of that servant, the king, released him and said, alright. You got more time. Go ahead. Figure it out.

Pay me back when you can. No. Actually, the way Jesus tells the story, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt, Forgave an impossible debt. Now, if you or I were a first century Jewish person living in Israel at the time that Jesus was walking around and teaching and preaching and we heard him tell this parable, we would automatically, instinctually think of Jubilee. Jubilee, it doesn't just mean any old celebration.

In Jewish culture, it was the every fifty year celebration in which all debts were canceled, All land was returned to its ancestral family. All slaves were set free. It's an extravagant and amazing and just super abundant grace. It was a ritualized forgiveness for impossible debts, relief from incredible burdens. And it's just normal in the kingdom of God.

And if we were first century Jewish people listening to the story, we would now expect Jesus to continue the story by telling us of more incredible acts of forgiveness. After all he said at the beginning, the king wanted to settle accounts with all of his servants. So what what more forgiveness is there to come? Is there someone who owed 20,000 talents, or 30,000 talents, or a hundred thousand talents? Tell me more about a king like this who would declare the start of jubilee, everything we've been waiting for.

But Jesus doesn't take the story in that direction. Pick it up in verse 28. Now, in the English translation, it starts with the word but, so you know something's about to change. But it could also be translated and. The master of that servant released him forgave him the debt, and when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, 1 6 thousandth of the debt.

And what do you think that guy did, living in a kingdom like this? A hundred denarii is not 10,000 talents, but it's not nothing. It's 10,000, 15 thousand dollars, something like that. And this guy is well within his rights to demand repayment. Hey, you you owe me.

I've given you plenty of time. Like, pay me back. But there's a tension built into this story. This same servant who just received this extraordinary grace, he went out and he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a pittance in comparison. And how is he gonna act?

This servant, who's been forgiven such an incredible debt, now that he's discovered that his King's kingdom is one in which graciousness and forgiveness reigns, that it's a kingdom in which impossible debts are forgiven, a kingdom in which grace is lavished upon undeserving people for no other reason than that they ask and that the king is compassionate. How do you act if you live in that kind of kingdom? How does one live in a kingdom ruled by that kind of king? Well, it's not called the parable of the unforgiving servant for nothing. So you already know the ending.

This guy's experienced the gift of forgiveness, but has he really received it? If forgiveness not shown, is forgiveness not known? He's discovered that he lives in a kingdom ruled by grace and forgiveness, but he acts as if he still lives in a kingdom ruled by looking out for number one. A kingdom ruled by self interest, by getting what's owed me. Kingdom of the bottom line.

Verse 27. Out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. And when that same servant went out and he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, he seized him and began to choke him, saying pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down, pleaded with him. Have patience with me.

I'm I'm making the minimums, man. Give me more time. I just need a couple more months. I'll pay it off. Be patient.

And he refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. Now if if the only part of the story Jesus had told was, hey. This guy went and he found another guy who owed him money, and he said, hey. It's time to pay up. Pay up.

And he and he didn't, so he threw him in prison. He'd be like, alright, that's a standalone parable. And the guy would have been well within his rights. He didn't break any laws. But that action coming immediately after what he just experienced shows that what he experienced had no effect on him.

He's acting completely opposite to the character of the kingdom and its king. And other servants have noticed. Presumably, these are other servants who have also had their debts forgiven. And for them, it's changed the way they perceive their world and the kingdom that they live in now that they know they live in a kingdom ruled by forgiveness. To see someone else who has received that gift and then acted in such a way.

So they go report to the king what happens. Verse 32, and then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant. I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you? Dial in on verse 33 there.

And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you. That's the way we translate it. But the force of it is a little stronger. It's it's it's like this was necessary. Right?

It's along the lines of, don't you realize that in this kingdom, we don't live like that? I showed you mercy. Your job is to go show the same mercy to others. How could you not? Growing up, did you ever have a parent tell you, hey, you're a Weestman.

Weestmans don't act like that. Except they used your last name and not mine. Because if you use mine, you would be like, I don't understand. Maybe someday I will, but right now I don't. Yeah.

That's what's going on here. We don't live like that. Not in this family. Not in this kingdom. This kind of behavior won't stand.

It can't be tolerated. So in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all of his debt. And verse 35 is Jesus' sort of application of the parable. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you don't forgive your brother from your heart. Tough words.

Right? And somewhat tough to understand too, like, what what exactly are we supposed to understand from this Jesus? It's tough to understand because parables are analogies. They're not road maps. Right?

If you pull out a road map and you unfold the whole thing, you know, if like if you stopped at a rest rest area and you picked up one of those old school paper maps, you know, this is great. I needed some, you know, kindling for the firewood. But but you open one of those up, you know, or you're looking at driving directions on your phone, whatever it is, that that map is trying to be a 100% completely accurate representation of reality. Right? Every feature on the map, like roads and parks and rivers and rest stops and all of that, they all have an exact correspondence to the real world.

It's a one for one or one to a thousand, whatever the scale is. But you know what I mean. Right? One city, one city. The same thing.

If it didn't, the map would be worthless if it did not represent reality. Parables are not maps. There are not one for one comparisons or or correlations of every detail. Parables are analogies. They reflect reality.

They capture an aspect of reality, a little bit of it, but they don't map it exactly for one for one correspondence. For example, when I was in high school in youth group, we would play, this youth group game where the youth pastor would come out with, like, a bucket of random things, and you had to reach your hand in blindly, pull one out, and then whatever that thing was, you had to come up with some analogy based on that thing, for God. Right? He must have found it in a book of, like, Baptist party games. So you would reach in and you'd pull out, you know, a triple a battery or something like that, and you'd be like, God is like a battery.

He's the secret power on the inside or something like that. Right? And then it this is how we passed our time before the Internet. Okay? This is what youth pastors had to do when you had to buy books with games in them and you couldn't just find stuff on Facebook.

Anyway, that's an analogy. If the battery were a a map, meaning there's a one to one correspondence, every detail of that battery also applies to God, then I'd have to pull that battery out and say, this battery is like God. It comes in all shapes and sizes to fit your needs. Right? And you're like, I don't think that's true.

I think you might be pushing the analogy a little too far. Or This battery is like God. Eventually, it will run out and you'll have to go to Walmart and get another one. Like, definitely not true about God. Right?

You see the difference between an analogy and a map? You can push the analogy too far. You can push parables a little too far as well. See, in the world of the story so inside the story Jesus is telling, the king needs other people to report on his servant's behavior. He doesn't know what they're doing unless other people report.

And the king is more than willing to grant forgiveness and then take it back. And the king has jailers, torturers is the word there, where people are sent to the torturers until they can pay off an impossible debt. Okay, that's not God. But those details are in there by analogy to shock us into realizing the grievousness of taking God's forgiveness and refusing to give it to anyone else. Because also in the world of the story, the king displays incredible grace, just lavishly abundant forgiveness, And that is God.

See, the analogy works as far as it's intended to, but like all analogies, it breaks down when you take it too far. And so Jesus tells this story, uses the analogy, and then says, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you don't forgive your brother from your heart. Remember, Jesus is pushing back on the legalistic idea that I should keep a logbook of people I've forgiven with check marks next to it. And once I get up to three or seven or 78, right? That's one too many or four ninety one depending on, right, whether it's 77 or 70 seven.

We don't know. Okay. Alright. 400 488489490. I'm done.

I've done what God requires. I say, No. No. No. No.

No. You don't forgive from the logbook. You forgive from your heart. So Jesus is not saying God will forgive you but then if you don't forgive others, he's going to take his forgiveness back, just like the king in this story. He's saying, if you've been transformed by the king's if you haven't sorry.

If you haven't been transformed by the king's forgiveness, you haven't really known the king's forgiveness. The forgiveness that God gives us is a free gift, a gift that's freely given. When God gives you that gift, as far as he's concerned, it is yours. But what this parable teaches is that if we don't extend the forgiveness we've received to others, if we don't act towards others with the mercy and the grace that we've received, we haven't really received it ourselves. We haven't taken the gift to heart.

Because forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. So the parable is a warning. Right? It's a warning against spurning the grace of God because forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. If you're not willing to show it, you don't really know it.

But the parable is also an invitation. It's an invitation into life in the kingdom of God, a kingdom that's ruled by grace and mercy and compassion. It's a kingdom where forgiveness known becomes forgiveness shown. But I know forgiveness, when others have wronged us, it does not come easily. It's not the way of human nature, at least not the way of my human nature.

And assuming we share the same human nature, human nature isn't to forgive, it's to get even, or I prefer getting ahead. But an experience of being forgiven, of being forgiven and understanding the great cost of that forgiveness, freely given, that experience should work itself into our hearts and transform us from the inside out until we become people who naturally forgive from the heart, not from the logbook. But it's not an automatic overnight thing. It even takes some effort as we cooperate with God in learning to forgive. When when pastor Jeff was putting this sermon series together, he found a great book by Dallas Willard called The Scandal of the Kingdom, where Dallas Willard, comments on on almost all the parables, that Jesus gave.

And Willard gives some great advice for those of us struggling to pass on the forgiveness we've received from God. And he gives lots of great suggestions. I highly recommend the book. But there's just one I want to focus on, because the problem of the unforgiving servant, the problem he faced, was a problem of proportion. In his eyes, this other servant's minor debt to him was so much bigger in his vision than his own impossibly major debt was to the king.

He looked at his own debt, his own sin, and said, well, that's a manageable problem. I could solve that with ingenuity and effort and a little bit of time. But he looked at the other servant's debt and said, that is an unforgivable offense that must be punished before I can be at peace. So Dallas Willard suggests, if we're if we're trying to learn how to pass on the forgiveness we've received, Of course, pray, acknowledge to God that we can't forgive others without his help. Just as we need grace to be forgiven, we need grace to be forgiving.

But then he suggests, understand we're not transformed simply by trying to purge our our minds from the offense. Like, I just need to forget it. If I could just forget it and move on, I'd be able to forgive it. He says, don't just try to purge your mind from the offense, but fill your mind with the forgiveness that you've received. The unforgiven servant had or unforgiving servant had filled his mind with what was owed to him, not with what he had been forgiven of.

If we want to live in the kingdom of God, the kingdom ruled by grace and mercy and compassion and forgiveness, we can't keep our eyes focused on what has been done to us, but on what has been done for us, so that forgiveness known becomes forgiveness shown, which isn't to say I'm not still struggling with my buddy who needs compassion. And I'm praying that god will make his compassion on me real so that I can be compassionate to someone else. What about you? I'm gonna pray, but in the silence before I do, let's just close our eyes for a moment. Picture that person or persons whose offense to you has become so much bigger than the grace that you've received from God.

And ask God for the grace to be forgiving. Let's pray. Father, it is your grace that we need. Without your grace, we can do nothing. There is nothing in us and nothing can come out of us that you have not first given to us.

So whatever situation we're in, if it calls for grace or mercy or kindness or love or peace or compassion or forgiveness, we pray. Make real to us what you have already given to us. May we, in the season of Lent, be so focused on what Jesus did for us that we are able to extend that same gift to others. Make us, we pray, a forgiving people who live like the king in the king's kingdom. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.