Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. Each week, I'll sit down with one of our preaching pastors to discuss their Sunday sermon. Cut for time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Hey, Joey. It's cover time. And Yeah. Tuesday morning, and you're on a farm?

I am. It's spring break. So we go where everybody goes for spring break. It's Iowa. Fun fact, I was in a T shirt shop yesterday, and I saw a T shirt that said, your mom says everyone's moving back to Iowa.

So there you go. Is the weather the same as it is here? Because it stinks. Oh, it is. It's currently 37 degrees and windy.

Is that unprepared? On Sunday, we drove through a little mini derecho in Illinois, and it flipped over a semi and blocked traffic for a couple of hours. Jenna was driving and as soon as the rain hit, she pulled off and we waited it out, and then when we got back on the road a mile later we got diverted, and then we were going along the freeway and just looking over at the parking lot of cars until we saw the the lights and everything. And just after it was a bridge and overpass so we turned and we drove up and over and stopped and just took pictures and watched it at because we could see the semi just flipped over and there was a jack there that was trying to get it at truck that was trying to get it right in so that they could drag it out of the way. Jeez.

It's pretty crazy. Okay. Duratio actual definition of what that would be? What a Duratio is. Yes.

So, Cedar Rapids here where we are, knows all about derechos because one came through a couple of years ago and just ripped the town apart. It is a long this is according to the Internet, a long lasting widespread windstorm that's associated with thunderstorms or showers. Derachos can cause extensive damage similar to tornadoes, but the damage is usually in a straight line. The term derecho comes from the Spanish word for straight. So, yeah, there were, like, 80 mile an hour straight line winds while we were driving.

Very Pretty cool. To see see, but not too soft. Yeah. To or to drive in, honestly. It's not the greatest.

Alright, Joey. So you preached the unforgiving servant. Yes. Which I I think I imagine, like, there are all sermons have their own unique challenges, but, like, I don't know. I just felt like this one would be a hard one for me to preach.

Not I mean, I mean, I would suck at anyone, honestly. I would be terrible. No one would want that. But, there are some that I'm like, oof, to have to deliver that personally was hard. I'm not saying it was hard for you, but I'm just curious.

Like, the prep work, requires the heart in way more, I imagine, in something like this than, like, some sermons you can just deliver. Right? I don't know. What's your thoughts? For sure.

Like, this is one of them where if it hasn't worked on you at all, like, what are you gonna say that's actually helpful? Right? If you if you can't confront your own heart's tendency to be unforgiving, then, yeah, then you're just repeating stuff you read somewhere else. And so, yeah, it was a tough one. You know?

You had to wrestle with I had to wrestle with my own heart in it, more than if I'm, you know, just, preaching some part of Paul's letters where he's talking about atonement theory or something like that. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, why don't you give us an overview from your sermon on Sunday?

So the parable of the unforgiving servant is one of Jesus' stories. It's one of the most extensive revealing compelling. And essentially, we have a Jesus is saying like, oh, imagine a kingdom. Right? You you talk about the kingdom of God.

Imagine the kingdom of God is like it's like a king who decided it was time to call in all of his debts. Everybody who owed him money. And a guy came to him and he owed him just 10,000 talents, like a trillion dollars. Anno wanted me to say a metric butt ton of money. Like, he just owed so much money.

And he tells the guy, alright. Time to pay up. And the guy is like, I can't. And he says, okay. Well, then I'm gonna sell you and your family and everything you own, and I'll take that as the payment.

And the guy just falls on his knees and begs him. He's like, just give me more time. And instead of just giving him more time, the king says, tell you what, because you asked, it's gone. The debt is gone. All you had to do was ask, and it's gone.

And you would expect that experience to just radically transform that guy's life, make him more generous and forgiving. But he immediately goes out, finds someone else who owes him a pittance in comparison and grabs him around the neck and just starts choking him, like, pay up. And when the guy falls on his knees and says, I just need a little more time, he's like, heck no. Throws him in debtors prison, has him arrested until he can pay the whole debt. The story could just end right there, but it goes on.

Jesus says some of the other servants who presumably had their own debts forgiven in this kingdom of incredible grace, saw what was happening, went back and told the king. And the king calls the servant back in and says, don't you get it? If I do this for you, it's required for you to do this for someone else, and then has him thrown in prison. It's even worse. And so that Jesus says, hey.

This is this is a picture of the kingdom of heaven. This is what my heavenly father will do to you if you don't forgive people from your hearts. And then in the sermon, we talked through, you know, what what does that mean? But the big takeaway was forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. If you can't show forgiveness, you don't really know the forgiveness that you've gotten from God already.

And what if someone was like, yeah, I do know it. Then, like, does that challenge what where does that place the burden? Does it place the burden on not showing it, or does it replace the burden on I don't think you actually know it? You know what I mean? Uh-huh.

So you're saying, like, if somebody's like, no. I I know I've been forgiven. I'm just really struggling to forgive this other person for this thing they did. Is it that they don't actually know the forgiveness, or is it they're just struggling to show? And it's probably a sense of a little bit of both.

I mentioned at the end of the sermon that the the problem the unforgiving servant had was a problem of proportion. He saw his own sin and debt as minor, and just needed a little more time and ingenuity and work, and he saw the other guy's offense to him, his sin, his debt as so momentous that he could not rest until it was settled. Mhmm. And so it's just that the little one was so much bigger than the big one. So that's probably a a part of it is a sense of proportion.

And that's why I, you know, I quoted, or referenced Dallas Willard's book, The Scandal of the Kingdom, because he has some really good, just practical help on learning to forgive in there. And he says, don't just try to forget the other person's debt. He says, don't empty your mind of the other person's debt. Fill your mind with the forgiveness of your own debt that you've received from Jesus. So I thought that was really helpful.

And, you know, normally, we're just like, oh, just try to forget it. Right? Just move on. And that sort of negative approach doesn't particularly help, but a positive approach of focus instead, meditate on, think about how much you've been forgiven is much more helpful. It helps us to know the forgiveness so we can show the forgiveness.

Mhmm. Okay. Thank you for that, Joey. Yeah. We've got a question that I'm really intrigued, to hear your response to.

Mhmm. And it says, since Matthew is the only one who told this parable, could it be that he was affected by this parable as a reformed tax collector? Mhmm. Yeah. I think that's a great question.

Yeah. And it it it, the question is in a category of questions that we sometimes call, redaction criticism in, theological circles when we're dealing with texts like the gospels. It's the question of why do particular authors include particular parts of the story, you know, when they're because everybody knows more than they include. So why include this particular thing? And Matthew's the only one who includes it.

So I think this question is a really good one because it kinda gets at that idea of, like, why would Matthew include it? Is it because of something he experienced in his own life as a reformed tax collector? And I think that's that's a really good, theory because you remember when when Jesus, talked to it was Zacchaeus. Right? Zacchaeus, the tax collector, he paid back he said, I will pay back everything I've taken and donate whatever it was fourfold of everything else to right.

There was a really clear tie between forgiveness of sins and economic restoration, economic justice. And, so, yeah, I imagine that this particular, story impacted Matthew in that way. And, one of the theories about this king and how he could have had a guy who owed him so much money, even though, obviously, it was a hyperbolic, hyperbolically large amount of money. But, the theory is that this guy was what's called a tax farmer, which is basically the middleman who goes and collects the taxes and then pays up. And he'd been collecting taxes, but never paying up.

And so now he owed this huge amount and couldn't pay it. So, yeah. So Matthew might have, felt a little bit of his own story in this story. Interesting. Okay.

Yeah. This question was submitted within the context of this person, I think, watching The Chosen. Maybe that's why why it was on their mind. Is that something that you've been tracking with the last few years, Joey? I have seen, like, previews and stuff, but, no, I have I have actually, I've only seen one episode of The Chosen, and this is not prescriptive or anything, but I've personally chosen, not to to watch, The Chosen at all.

Well, okay. Well, follow-up question. Easy follow-up question. Why? Yeah.

No. It's a good question. And it's kind of like the classic, you know, the book is always better than the movies kind of thing. Yeah. And I I think the The Chosen is probably really good from what I've heard people say.

It's really good for making the story of Jesus aesthetically compelling in a medium that we're all used to. Right? Visual medium versus reading. But for me, my my job is to know the text, to to know the scriptures. And if I if I'm gonna read the gospels and I'm gonna start seeing Dallas Jenkins' interpretation in my head, in a, you know, in a compelling visual way, I I think that for me is, you know, this is my job.

That that could cause problems. If I start accidentally interpreting passages based on what I remember seeing in an episode, It's not the influence you always want reading into your study of the text? Or Right. Right. It's I mean, it's a bad analogy, but, like, when I read the Lord of the Rings, now I see Ian McKellen is Gandalf instead of the Gandalf that was in my head before the movies.

Mhmm. Right? And I wanna make sure yeah. It changes it. So I just wanna make sure that when I'm reading the gospels, I'm reading what's in the text and not what's extra.

I still remember when I was a gosh, when I was in middle school maybe watching one of the Jesus films or something in a Sunday school class and there were extra characters and something added and it took years of reading the gospels before I realized, oh, that particular story that I saw in the movie wasn't in here anywhere. Right? But it it was this whole, you know, extra story that was in my head because of seeing the movie before I'd read the gospels very many times. So The Yeah. So for me, it's just because I'm responsible to the script to the text.

I have to I have to make sure I don't let other things get bigger than that. Mhmm. No. I respect that. I get that.

So what did you have to cut from your sermon on Sunday? You know, the the main thing that I cut, I kinda already did in this recording. I wanted to retell the parable kind of in modern language and sort of pulling out the emphasis of it. So, you know, imagine a king who wanted to call and all, you know, and and kinda do that, but I didn't have time. So I sort of cut that, retelling of it, in order to spend a little more time explicating the the story itself.

Yeah. So if someone was going to go through the process of, reminding themselves and retelling to themselves their debt that's been forgiven. In the same way, like, what Dallas Willard challenges us to do in in what you've shared is just, like, focus more on your the debt that's been forgiven for you than on this other debt. Right? Mhmm.

How would what's, like, the process? Are you, like, you know, what would you suggest that even looks like or, practically, how does somebody go about that? It is. Yeah. It's a really good question.

I think there's a couple things that come to mind, and I'm not sure what order I would put these in. But there is the contemplation of the cross, just looking to Jesus' suffering, and what he was willing to go through because of our sin. Second is looking into our own hearts and confessing what we find there. You know, the the one of the Anglican confessions begins, you know, begins every morning with almighty and most merciful God, I confess that I've sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what I have done and by what I have left undone. Right?

That's a lot of categories to think through. What what where have I thought wrongly? What have I done? What have I said? What have I not said that I should have, not done that I should have, not thought that I should have.

Right, that's at least six, categories right there. And to take a clear eyed look at ourselves and then confess, find forgiveness, rest in that forgiveness, not feel like we have to keep earning the forgiveness. Mhmm. I think those two things are are pretty key. Seeing ourselves, seeing what it costs, and then learning how to look to the offense against us and see it both for how small it actually is comparatively.

How big it is in reality, but small it is comparatively. But then also with some charity thinking trying to think through the other person's like, trying to charitably interpret their their actions. Like, okay. Why did they think that was a good idea, the right thing to do, all of those things like that. And then, and then Willard says, the other things to do, of course, is to learn how to pray for their good, the good of the person that hurt you, even in just small ways.

It's like, don't force yourself. It's an act of the will, but it's more than just the will. So you don't have to force yourself to have these long drawn out prayers for the good. Just say, Lord, bless them. It's all I can muster right now.

And then he also suggests that you just go out and experience joy and nature and things like that. He says, it's really hard to be angry at other people when you're, joyfully in the presence of God. So I recommend that or pick up the scandal of the kingdom and read his his chapter on this parable. Okay. Okay.

Thanks, Joey. I appreciate that. It's I'm like, this is really fitting for the season that we're in. Like, everything, like, you look great. Lenten practice.

Let's, you know, let's all do this. And I think it's, what I hear you saying is, like, it's a regular practice. It's not like you just do it once and you're like, I will contemplate my sin and my debt one time. It's like this is continuous just being aware, holding your debt without the shame that could come of it, but being aware, which would then prompt and, bring about the forgiveness and the mercy that we can show others in day in and day out. Mhmm.

Yeah. And, actually, you reminded me of one other thing I I chose to cut from the sermon, which was spending a couple of minutes actually doing that, looking at, what Jesus did for us. I made the conscious choice of letting the music that surrounded the sermon do that. So someone's listening to just the sermon, you know, they might feel like, oh, it's a little, like, empty. You you didn't do that.

Like Yeah. Yeah. I actually didn't need to because we had three songs leading up to it and a song coming out of it that focused us in that direction. So it's kinda nice, you know, a sermon doesn't have to entirely stand alone and contain everything, when it's in the context of the weekly worship where we look at our own sinfulness and we look at the the grace of God for us and the sacrifice of Jesus. Yeah.

And for somebody who isn't aware, like, there's a lot of intentionality that goes into planning the entire worship service on a Sunday. You and Carl don't work independently from one another. There is a lot of back and forth between, like, here's, you know, here's what we need to draw out in the worship songs and that kind of thing. And so I don't know. For somebody who doesn't know the intentionality that goes into that space, it's always purposeful, and it's every every week.

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And twice on Sundays. Yes.

Alright, Joey. Thanks for your time on cup for time. And Of course. We are, halfway through Lent and season and, you know, roughly, at this point, if someone is feeling over it, you know, that initial it's like that New Year motivation, and it's, like, worn off, and you're like, I just want it to be Easter now. This is too long.

How would you encourage us to stay be willing to stay in an uncomfortable season or be willing to stay in this heart posture longer to get to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. How would I encourage us? Yeah. I would say Lent is not a sprint It's a marathon. So if you treat it like a sprint and you go out of the blocks real fast, you're gonna burn out real quick, you know, you're not gonna have enough, gas in the tank to finish.

So maybe slow down a little bit, Find some time to just sit in it in the season and take even that sense of, god, why? I wanna just I just want it to be Easter. Why do I have to contemplate this for so long and offer that up, and ask God to help you stay in the season. Thanks, Joan. Patient E.

Alright. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcast@faith,liveitout.org or text them into our faith church texting number. And we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode.

If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.