[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints of God, the Lord Jesus Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom and
says, whatever you bind is bound, whatever you loose is loose.
Jesus extended that gift to the church earlier in Matthew chapter 18.
He says, whatever you all bind is bound, and whatever you loose is loose.
And so Peter is thinking about the right thing.
He’s thinking about the forgiveness of sins.
He’s wondering about his new office.
He knows that as a pastor in the Lord’s church,
as a disciple of Jesus,
his work will be forgiveness.
So he asked Jesus,
how often should I forgive?
How many times should I forgive
when someone sins against me?
Seven times?
Now, many Bible commenters have noted that that seven was generous.
The old Pharisees had a three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule.
Someone sins against you three times, and you’re supposed to forgive them.
But on the fourth time, that’s it.
They’ve maxed out forgiveness.
So Peter, you have to think, is trying to be generous here.
How many times should we forgive?
After all, we’re disciples of Jesus, the Merciful One, Jesus who talks about the Father’s
grace.
Maybe we’ll double it six times, add one for good measure, seven times.
And you think that maybe Peter hadâ¦
Well, I don’t maybe read too much into it, but we can wonder how Peter came to Jesus
with this number seven.
I mean, a little bit afraid that that actually might be how many times you have to forgive,
but proud that he thought of a number so big?
How many times, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
As many as seven?
And Jesus says, not seven, Peter, seventy times seven.
Now, if you are talking to your neighbor and you say something like this to them, you are
at 487, you’ve got three more chances, you’ve missed the point.
Mercy is supposed to be abundant.
Mercy is supposed to abound for the Christian and in the Christian life and in the Christian
church. If you’re keeping track, you’ve missed what Jesus says here. The mercy of
God knows no limits, and so the way we treat one another, the way we forgive one another
also should have no limits. Now, this is hard, but Jesus is going to press this into our
hearts, and He’s going to press it into our hearts with this parable that He tells
about the⦠about the forgiving king. There’s two scenes in the parable. The first scene,
when the servant comes before the king with his outrageous debt, 10,000 talents. A talent
would be a year’s wage. A denarii is a day’s wage. So to compare the debts, the
The first guy, the servant owes 10,000 talents.
You can just take your annual salary and multiply it, add four zeros to it to get the number.
The second guy owes 100 denarii.
But the first scene is a servant who owes so much, comes before the king and he can’t
pay, so he’s ordered to be sent to prison, but he falls on his knees and he begs for
mercy.
Well, he doesn’t beg for mercy.
He begs for time.
He begs for leniency.
He says, give me a couple more weeks.
I’ll scrape together the money.
I’ll pay you everything I owe you.
He asks for time.
But the king doesn’t answer his prayer, right?
He doesn’t give him more time.
Instead, he forgave the debt totally.
He just wiped it out.
I mean, someone had to pay.
The king had to absorb the loss.
But this servant is completely forgiven.
So, he goes out, and then you get to the second scene where this servant finds another servant
who owes him 100 denarii, 100 days’ work, and he wrings his neck, says, pay what you
owe, and this man gives the same exact prayer, asks for the same exact leniency that he just
asked of the king just a few minutes beforehand, but he doesn’t grant it.
He throws him in prison.
He demands what’s owed Him.
Now I want toâ¦
And I don’t know how to do this best, so I’m just going to ask for your imaginary
indulgence.
I want to isolate these two scenes in the parable from one another.
I want toâ¦
Okay.
I want us to pretend like we were outside, and we didn’t see what happened in the first
part of the parable, okay?
Okay, so you’ve got to pretend like you’re there and you know this guy is your fellow
servant and you know that he has this huge debt.
Maybe you’re next in line to go see the king and settle debts, and maybe your debt isn’t
quite as big, but you’re very interested in how it’s going to go with him when he gets
in there.
What’s going to happen when he goes before the judge?
It’s like when you’re sitting in a courtroom and you’re sort of anxious to see how the
judge rules on the cases that are in front of you, so you know maybe how it’s going to
go with you.
Well, you’re outside, and you see this man with 10,000 talents go in to see the king,
and you have no idea what happened, and then he comes out.
And you say to yourself, I’m going to watch what happens now.
I’m going to watch what he does.
I’m going to watch how he acts.
I’m going to look at his face, and I’m going to be able to guess what happened in
there.
Now, let’s pretend that happened, and you see him come out, and what’s the first
thing that he does?
He goes to his fellow servant who owes a hundred denarii, and he wrings his neck, and he demands
everything.
Now, let’s just guess from that, if that’s all you know, let’s guess how it went when
he went to see the king.
Maybe he went in, he asked for more time, and maybe that’s what the king said.
The king said, you’ve got some more time, but not much.
You’ve got two weeks, and I expect everything that you owe me to be paid in full, so you
better get out there and hustle and you better squeeze every last bit of money,
every debt that is owed to you, you better go find everything so that you
can pay me back.” In other words, if you saw the way this servant was acting, you
would guess that the king had not forgiven his debt, but had demanded that
he pay it in full. And that’s the problem. That’s the problem. It is this for us. If
If people don’t know what’s happening
in this room right now,
let’s just say they’re watching you.
And they watch you come into this room
and they have no idea what happens in here.
And then you leave this place
and they are guessing what happened here
by what you do out there.
And what do they guess happened?
That you came before your king with a debt
and he demanded that you pay.
That you came before your king with a debt
it, and he insisted on his right. He demanded justice. He wants every last ounce of goodness
out of you. That you came here before your king, and that he did not forgive you your
sins, but rather told you how bad you were, how you have to be better, and how you have
to make everyone else act better, or what? What is it that happened in here? If your
neighbors don’t know it, what will they guess by how you treat them?” That’s why
the king is so mad, because he wants his mercy to be known. He wants his
generosity to be praised. He wants to be the gossip of the
town. He wants everyone to look with awe about how much he was willing to
suffer for the sake of His servants.
He wants to be known.
Now listen, the King of the universe,
the King of kings and the Lord of lords,
wants to be known for His blood.
He wants to be known for His generosity.
He wants to be known for
the lavishness with which He takes
sinners and forgives all of their sins.
Jesus does not demand every ounce of justice.
Jesus does not give you what you deserve.
Jesus does not sit here and insist on His right as King
and squeeze you so that you can now give Him what you owe.
No, He forgives your sins completely.
Just wipes out the debt.
He pays it Himself so that you owe Him nothing.
You have passed from death to life.
All of your sins are forgiven, every single one of them.
There’s not a single thing left to atone for.
There’s not a single thing that you’ve done wrong that Jesus did not completely suffer
for, completely absorb into His own self that He did not carry on His own back.
It’s all done, and there’s nothing that you can do to pay Him back for it.
In fact, even the thought of paying Him back is offensive because of what He’s done is
so great and so merciful.
It’s the best news ever that God, who should demand life and justice and righteousness,
who should condemn us, has not.
He has set us free, truly set us free.
He in fact has set us so free that we are now free to forgive our neighbors, to not
demand the justice that is rightly our due.
Forgive us our trespasses.
Jesus teaches us to pray, forgive us our trespasses so that we forgive those who trespass against
us.
But the only way you can do this is if you know by faith that God in Christ has forgiven
you.
In fact, it’s kind of wonderful.
Martin Luther when he’s writing in the large catechism says, how do I know that I’m a Christian?
He’s always wondering, you know, how do I have assurance that I’m a Christian?
And, of course, our main assurance that we’re Christians is that we come to the Lord’s
Supper.
We eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus, that we come and we’re baptized, and we know
that we’re baptized, that we hear the Word of God, and the Lord Jesus says, I forgive
you all your sins.
So the main assurance that we have is that we are⦠that we come to church and we have
the sacraments.
But Luther also says, if you want another bit of assurance, look at it, it’s that the
Holy Spirit is present and you see it in the fact that you forgive your neighbor.
The only way we forgive our neighbors is by the presence of the Holy Spirit working in
our own hearts, strengthening our own conviction that God has forgiven us.
And that shows up in our love and kindness also to one another.
Now this is a hard text.
We’ll finish with this reflection.
This is a hard text, and it’s meant by Jesus to be a hard text, it’s meant by the Holy
Spirit to be a hard text, because forgiveness is hard.
Have you ever noticed this?
And I’m still not quite sure why this is the case, but have you noticed how much more
difficult it is to say, I forgive you, than it is to say, don’t worry about it, or that’s
no big deal, or water under the bridge. It’s a weird thing. It’s a very strange thing.
Someone will come to you, and they’ll apologize, and they’ll confess their sins, and you might
even think to yourself, well, I should forgive them, but that’s just⦠those are hard words
to say.
Now, why they’re such difficult words to say, I’m not a hundred percent sure. I think
I have an idea. It’s because whenever you say forgiveness, you know there was a price
to be paid.
If you’re forgiving someone, you’re admitting that what they did actually hurt you, that
they wounded you in some way, that you were vulnerable to them, and they could probably
do it again if they wanted to.
Forgiveness involves always pain, but we should recognize that.
Whenever Jesus says, I forgive you all of your sins, whenever you hear the absolution
In the stead of Jesus Christ, I forgive you all of your sins.”
That involves pain.
It involves suffering on the one who is sinned against, God Himself on the cross who suffered
for our sins.
This is a hard text because forgiveness is difficult, but that difficulty was carried
by Jesus in His cross.
It was suffered by Jesus in His crucifixion, so that the One who created you, the One who
knows you, who knows everything about you, the One who is offended by your sins, this
One has truly carried your sins, suffered your sorrows.
He has truly forgiven you all of your sins, so that on the last day He will welcome you
into His eternal life.
And this, dear saints, gives us our life, and our peace, and our joy, and it also gives
shape to how we talk and treat one another.
Father. May God grant us His Holy Spirit so that this would be true among us. Amen. And
the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
