Sermon for Pentecost 16, September 17, 2023
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he gave us a new birth
into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Amen.
Matthew 18:21-35 21Then Peter came up and asked
Jesus, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my
brother when he sins against me? As many
as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “Not seven
times, but I tell you as many as seventy-seven times. 23For this reason the
kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his
servants. 24When he began to
settle them, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25Because the man was not able to
pay the debt, his master ordered that he be sold, along with his wife,
children, and all that he owned to repay the debt. 26“Then the servant fell down on
his knees in front of him, saying, ‘Master, be patient with me, and I will pay
you everything!’ 27The master
of that servant had pity on him, released him, and forgave him the debt. 28“But when that servant went out,
he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began choking him, saying,
‘Pay me what you owe!’ 29“So
his fellow servant fell down and begged him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I
will pay you back!’ 30But he
refused. Instead he went off and threw
the man into prison until he could pay back what he owed. 31“When his fellow servants saw
what had happened, they were very distressed.
They went and reported to their master everything that had taken
place. 32“Then his master
called him in and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt when you begged
me to. 33Should you not have
had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?’ 34His master was angry and handed
him over to the jailers until he could pay back everything he owed. 35“This is what my heavenly Father
will also do to you unless each one of you forgives his brother from his heart.”
(EHV)
Show the mercy God has
shown to all.
Dear fellow redeemed,
It became
common in the last couple decades to have young children play their ballgames
without keeping score. The idea was that
way they could learn the game without anyone getting hurt feelings for being
the loser of the game. Funny thing
happened, however, even though there was no scorekeeper, nor even the parents
keeping score, yet the kids often kept score in their heads. They all readily recognized which team had
really won or lost.
By nature, we tend to keep score. In our games, we keep score for the joy of
winning. In business, we keep score by
tallying up the profits earned. In our
daily lives, we may keep a running tally of the favors a friend has done for
us, so that we can return the favor sometime in the future. Yet, far too often in our sinful nature, we
find ourselves keeping score of all the times another person has hurt us, and
as that tally grows, so does our desire for revenge, or at least, to separate
ourselves from that hurtful person, often even from a spouse.
Now, in this sinful world, it is sometimes
necessary for the protection of the innocent to separate ourselves from those
who would hurt us. The government has
prisons and jails to protect the public from those who would flaunt the laws or
be a danger to others. God allows
divorce primarily to protect spouse and children from abusive mates. We have hospitals to separate from the
public, and with the hope to help heal, those whose mental illnesses have made
them a danger to the public or themselves even.
At the same time, however, imagine the disaster
we would face if God completely separated Himself from us when the tally of our
sins becomes too high. You might say
that is what happened to mankind at the time of the great flood. However, even then, God was mostly locking
away the disobedient. Though sin put a
wall between us and God when Adam and Eve fell, He continues to provide for our
needs and bless us in so many ways. If
God really separated Himself from sinners, there would be no good thing on earth—no
sunshine or air, no food, water, heat, or light. There would be no peace or harmony at
all. In fact, there would be no
life. Truly, that is a description of
hell.
At the time of our sermon text, Jesus was
teaching His followers about forgiveness and He promised that the sins we
forgive here on earth are likewise forgiven in heaven. Peter then spoke up asking, “Lord, how
many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me? As many as seven times?” To many in the crowd, this likely seemed
rather generous, because some of the rabbis of that time were teaching that you
need only forgive a person three times. Sounds
a little like our tendency to say, “Three strikes and you’re out!” right?
Jesus then told His parable showing the
greatness of God’s love for us. God
doesn’t keep track of how much or how often He forgives us. That king in the parable forgave a debt that
could never have been repaid. It would
be comparable to you or me owing as much debt as the Minnesota state
budget. Billions of dollars owed with no
possible means of recovery. Yet, the
king willingly made the decision to cover the cost himself. The debt did not go unpaid, it just wasn’t
paid by the one who owed it.
Likewise for you and me and the debt of sin
that weighed us down in the economy of the Kingdom of God. For all the world, God had declared, “The
soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezekiel 18:20) God had warned Adam that to eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil would mean death for him. St. Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is
death.” (Romans 6:23) No matter what
era or place in time one has lived, every sin we have ever committed earned us
the sentence of death. It earned us
eternal separation from God.
Think about that for a minute—can you think of
a single day in your life when you did not commit a sin? Did you ever go even one hour, even an hour
at church on Sunday morning, when your every thought was absolutely pure and
focused on the love of God, both His for you and yours for Him? For every one of those times we fail, for
every moment of our sin-afflicted lives, the debt we owed to God was piling
up. Not one of us could ever repay the
cost, so God said, in effect, “I will bear the cost.” To Adam and Eve God promised a Son of the
woman who would crush the tempter’s head.
To Abraham, God promised a seed of his flesh through whom all the world
would be blessed. And from the mouth of
our dearest Friend, our Savior, we hear, “God so loved the world that he
gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but
have eternal life. For God did not send
his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through
him.” (John 3:16-17)
It certainly looks like the king in the parable
forgave a lot of debt, but no one has ever forgiven a debt like God did in His
Son. “God made him, who did not know
sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in
him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) God’s Son
took our debt, and the debt of the whole world, on Himself because of love, and
now, having purchased our souls with His blood, Jesus expects us to be just as
merciful to those others He has set free as He has been to us. And that is the key here; truly, Jesus has
already assumed the debt of sin for everyone, even for those who still hurt
us. So, how could we possibly keep score
of that?
“Lord, how many times must I forgive my
brother when he sins against me? As many
as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not
seven times, but I tell you as many as seventy-seven times.” The way this is
written in the Greek, it could also be translated seventy times seven, or four
hundred ninety times, but regardless, the point is that God doesn’t want us
keeping score. He wants us to Show
the mercy God has shown to all. Now
granted, it sometimes feels hard to forgive others when they hurt us, but do
you suppose the Man, Christ Jesus, enjoyed suffering on the cross for sins He
didn’t commit? Do you suppose He enjoyed
being torn from His Father’s loving care as He gave up His life in place of all
of us who owed God this huge debt. Jesus
didn’t live for us, suffer for us, and die for us, because it felt good to His
human flesh. Our Savior did it, because
this was God absorbing our debt in Himself, because He loves us beyond all
measure.
Now, the forgiven servant in our text acted so
much in accord with what our sinful flesh wants to do. Maybe he was afraid the king would change his
mind and decide to return to collect the debt after all. Maybe he just didn’t like this one servant,
so he just couldn’t bring himself to forgive the debt. Maybe he was just a bully and liked to make
others suffer. Notice the king didn’t
ask him why he refused to forgive his fellow debtor. He just said, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt when you begged
me to. Should you not have had mercy on
your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?” God wants us to show the same mercy to other
forgiven sinners that He showed to us.
The night He was betrayed, Jesus told His
followers, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you are to
love one another.” (John 13:34) Now,
we can never measure up to the love Jesus showed for us. Jesus went to that cross of shame bearing the
sins of the whole world. He didn’t ask
if we were truly repentant. He didn’t
weigh our lives in a balance scale to check whether we deserved to be
forgiven. Instead, God chose to bear the
cost for our guilt right there on Golgotha, and to send those who have received
His forgiveness for Jesus’ sake out into the world with the message of
reconciliation. By the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, St. Paul wrote, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to
himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has entrusted to us the message of
reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
Why does Jesus ask us to Show the mercy God
has shown to all? Simply, because
the debt for all people has been paid.
God’s just anger for sin has been satisfied by the blood of the Holy Christ
who died for everyone. Consequently, because
we have been united with Jesus through faith, God asks us to live with the same
kind of love and mercy He has shown to us.
No matter what sins have weighed on your conscience, they are forgiven
because Jesus paid the price. No matter
how badly you have struggled to forgive as we are commanded to do, Jesus paid
the penalty for that too.
No one ever said being a Christian is
easy. At the same time, forgiving a
repentant fellow sinner shouldn’t be so hard.
Yes, those hurts do indeed hurt our flesh. The wrong thing said, the betrayal that
catches us off guard, the fist to the gut or the nose, all those things and
many others give us pain. Yet, Jesus
teaches us to seek repentance from those who hurt us, not so we can lord it
over them, nor so that we can even the scales.
Instead, Jesus wants us to share His love with other sinners. He wants them to know His mercy so that they
too might believe in Him and live.
Unforgiven sin is damnable sin, so we have the
command and authority to call those who sin against us to repent. For the impenitent, recalcitrant sinner, it
is commanded that we bind his conscience to that sin, but we are not to hold a
grudge or seek vengeance on that person for God has declared, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” (Romans 12:19) On
the other hand, whenever a sinner repents, and as many times as repentance is
found, we are to gladly, willingly, lovingly share the mercy God has shown to
us.
Just before He told this
parable, Jesus taught His followers, “Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on
earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed
in heaven.” (Matthew 18:18) Our
Savior paid the debt for the whole world.
His Father wants the whole human population to experience the greatness
of that reconciliation, so He offers that mercy and grace though humble,
sometimes hurting, souls like you and me.
God grant that you always know and remember the greatness of God’s love
for you, a love so great and wide that He paid the whole sin debt for every
moment of your life, so that you may live in glory with Him forever in the
palace of His heaven. Walking always
with Jesus at your side, Show the mercy God has shown to all. Amen.
The Lord of
peace Himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with you all. Amen.
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