Matthew 18: 21-35 (read 21,22)

Leonardo Da Vinci was a great painter, engineer, draftsman and thinker.  The story is told that before he painted the LAST SUPPER, he had a violent argument with a fellow painter.  Davinci was so mad that he decided to paint the face of his enemy into the face of Judas Iscariot, Jesus’ betrayer.  He painted it in so everyone could recognize him.

But when he came to paint the face of Jesus, he couldn’t do it.  Something seemed to hold back the best efforts of this skilled painter.  Do you know what it was? Davinci did.  It was the face of his enemy that he painted in anger.  So Davinci painted out the face of Judas and started again with the face of Jesus.  This time he succeeded.

You see, you cannot paint the face of Jesus into your life , while you paint the face of another with hatred and an ugly refusal to forgive.  To follow Jesus is to forgive our neighbor.  And in this parable, Jesus comes with a compelling reason.

FORGIVE AS YOU HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN

I. See the mercy of your King

II.  Have mercy on one another.

Jesus had just finished explaining how we are to forgive that person who sins against us and repents.  That made Peter wonder.  How often? He may have thought to himself.  There needs to some kind of limit.  Otherwise people will take advantage. So Peter asked Jesus this question that you or I might have asked:  “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Peter thought he was being generous because the Jewish writings teach no more than three.

Jesus answer must have shocked Peter and the others.  But he doesn’t stop there.  Our good Lord and Teacher draws us in with this parable.    ²³ “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As Jesus tells it, this was a king who obviously gave his servants a lot of responsibility for his treasury.  Big sums of money passed through their hands.  ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.

In todays terms, the servant owed his king, millions of dollars.  Millions of dollars he could not repay.  The only thing he could do was get down on his knees and beg for more time.  Yet this was nothing but an act of desperation.  For this was a debt he could never hope to repay.

It’s pretty obvious where Jesus is taking us here.  The King is the Lord and Peter, the disciples you and I  are the servant.  We owed a tremendous debt to our King.

Have you ever heard of the Bureau of Public Debt?  It keeps track of how much debt our Federal Government has accumulated.  I check it just the other day.  Our country’s debt was this:

$14, 865,329, 647,749.39

On some web sites, that number changes before you in real time.  It shocks you. Right before you, each minute, each hour that debt increases  not by hundreds but by millions.

Well just imagine there was a website with your name on it that gave a constant read out.  So that each time you sinned, each time you lost your patience, each time you failed to love , each time you were arrogant or gossiped or put someone or something before the Lord, the total went up. Just imagine the number, our personal debt of sin that we could never repay.

But what are we told about our King?  This King had every right to lower the boom on this man.  Yet what did he do?  He took pity on this helpless man.  His heart went out to him.  And he did more than give his servant more time.  Instead, he erased the debt from his books.  He absorbed the loss.  In effect, he paid the man’s debt himself.

This is your King, dear friends.  This is your God.  He’s paid our debt,  hasn’t he?  But in our case, it took more than the stroke of a pen. It took more, much more to erase our monstrous debt of guilt that condemned us.   It took a payment like no other – the suffering and death of God’s one and only Son for you.  The Lord laid on him the guilt of us all. See the mercy of your King.

Think about it.  God’s Word says this about Jesus in Colossians 1: 16,17.  By him, all things were created…He is before all things and by him all things hold together.  Yet this King, who created the universe, this King of kings, bowed his head in shame to wear a crown of thorns for you and me.  This King who’s got the whole world in his hands, stretched out his hands on a cross for you. For there he took our debt on himself and paid an awful price.  So that now he says to you in this Word.  He says to you through his called servant.  Take heart, my son.  Take heart my daughter.  Your sins are forgiven. Even those who memory troubles you now.   Look at the cross and see the mercy of your King.

But Jesus is not done with us here.  God intends his mercy his forgiveness to have an effect on us.  People who have experienced God’s forgiveness are to be forgiving people.  We are to be like Joseph in our Old Testament lesson.  His brothers had sold him into slavery.  They had broken their father’s heart by telling him that his son  was eaten by wild animals.  But when the time came when Joseph had the  power to get revenge on his brothers, what did he do?  Mercy welled up in his heart and he forgave them.  Mercy that Joseph had experienced in the LORD.  So have you.  More than you can know. So forgive as you have been forgiven. See the mercy of your King and then have mercy on one another.

What a sad, pathetic example we have in this servant.  Jesus intentionally makes it sound outrageous. No sooner than he was forgiven, no sooner released from his terrible debt, he goes out.  He finds his fellow servant who owed him very little.

Yet he takes him by the throat and demands:  Pay back what you owe me. The servant begs for more time just like he did.  But he gets a much different response.  Not mercy, not pity, not forgiveness. This servant who was forgiven so much could not bring himself to forgive very little. Instead he has the man thrown in prison.

This servant betrayed a terrible ingratitude, didn’t he?  His king expected much better from him.  ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? This servant betrayed a terrible ingratitude and so do we, so do we when we refuse to forgive someone from our heart.  So do we when we hold that grudge, refusing to let it go.  We betray a terrible ingratitude to God.

For what are we called upon to forgive?  Most of the time little things like that remark that hurts our feelings.  But even when it is something that hurts deep down like Joseph’s brothers, here’s the point.  It doesn’t even come close to what the Lord has forgiven you. There’s just no comparison.  There’s just no comparison when you look up to your Savior’s cross and see his face contorted in pain.  There’s no comparison to what you have been forgiven and the price God paid to make it so.

So look there.  Look to God’s mercy and forgiveness for you and find the power to forgive.  Find the power to put that hurt away.  Find the power to forgive not just once or twice, but again and again as Jesus told  Peter.

Back in 1946 when Germany was decimated, a certain young man joined a gang.  The gang went through the country side stealing whatever they could, showing no mercy.  One night on an isolated farm, they  gunned down ten members of the Wilhelm Hammelman family.  All of them died except one man who survived four gunshot wounds.

Twenty years went by, The once young gang member had finished his prison term.  “But the state would not release him because he had nowhere to go.  Do you know what Mr Hammelman did when he learned of his situation.  He asked the authorities to release the man to his custody.  This is what he wrote in his request.  Christ died for my sins and forgave me. Should I not forgive this man?

We know the answer.  We find it here . Forgive as you have been forgiven.  Amen