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If you consider the hymn that we just sang, I hope that as you read it and sang it, you begin to see what the hymn writer was getting at. That the Christian life is full of endurance. The Christian life is not problems solved quickly, problems eliminated rapidly, but problems lead and leave with themselves with us for sometimes decades. That’s the Christian faith. It is a faith that endures through this world, through our sin and our sinfulness, and also the sin and sinfulness of others, especially those very close to us.
There is a surface meaning to these two texts, and there is a very deep meaning to these two texts that I wish to highlight. The deeper one is the main one. The first one is fairly obvious. In Matthew chapter 6, at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches his disciples and his beloved apostles the only prayer he ever taught his church. And in that prayer, in the fifth petition, does Jesus pray and move you to pray what the parable is all about and the Old Testament reading? Forgive us our trespasses or our sins as we forgive those who trespass or sin against us. That’s made obvious at the very end of the parable. Whoever does not forgive their brother from their heart, neither will the Lord their God forgive them.
But it’s really Peter’s question that gets at the problem you and I struggle with. And what problem is that? When you are married to someone, that person… hurt you. Sometimes willfully, sometimes inadvertently, but they hurt you. And it’s really asking that basic question. So when my brother or my sister sins against me, when a fellow believer sins against me, how often are they going to sin against me and I forgive them? Peter’s trying to set up this idea that, okay, there’s got to be a limit to forgiveness because you know what? You get hurt long enough; you get hurt long enough, you cut off that relationship.
And yet, isn’t it interesting? You give certain people limitless forgiveness compared to others. A discrepancy in God’s forgiveness. And if it’s not your spouse, then your children will surely hurt you, and they will hurt you over and over again. And you know that even after they’ve grown up and are adults. And your parents, though they love you, they also hurt you with words that they speak and expectations that they have. And you’re thinking, really, mom or dad, after all these years?
And the people with whom you sit in the pew around you hurt your feelings sometimes, and you theirs. That is the endurance of which that hymn writer was writing. Living out our faith with sinners as a sinner. Because notice, Peter doesn’t ask the question, how often should I forgive my neighbor? No. He’s very specific. How often should I forgive my fellow believer when they sin against me? Peter says seven times. Jesus says limitless. Seventy times seven.
Before we go on, consider who’s asking this question. Peter. Remember Peter’s blindness? Oh Lord, I will never fall away even though they may. I’ll never deny you three times, even though they may. You and I have double standards. We hold someone else accountable for how they treat us, but we don’t always hold ourselves accountable for how we treat them. Interesting double standard. Peter exemplifies that.
He’s the one asking this question. Kind of profound, isn’t it? He is trying to make it very clear when Jesus says, the man who is forgiven in the parable is a man who owed the king nothing. 10,000 talents. That number has no connection to you, so let me explain. The average one of you, what you make in annual income per year, is one talent. Therefore, do the math, 10,000 talents is 10,000 years of wages. An impossible sin. A most heinous sin to forgive.
Put it in more graphic terms: you remember the people who have cut you deep with their sin, and you don’t forget it. You and I may claim we have forgiven them, but isn’t it interesting? Something will happen in our day, something will happen throughout our life, and all of a sudden, what sin they did to us is recalled to mind. Amen. In all of its glory. And we seethe on the inside. Jesus has this man owing 10,000 talents to make it clear that’s what we owe God. An unpardonable amount.
Here is the irony. Look at what comes out of the servant’s mouth. Oh, have mercy on me and I will and I will and I will pay it back? 10,000 years of wages? What an utterly ridiculous statement to make in the face of the king. Does he think the king is that dumb? That the king’s not going to go, dude, you are so mixed up that you think you can pay me back 10,000 years of wages? How dare you insult me? Does the king say that? No. No.
Do we say that to God? Lord, I won’t do it again, I promise. Lord, forgive me, I won’t do it. That sounds like Peter, doesn’t it? We do the same thing. I won’t do it again, Lord. I won’t do it again. Really? When the king gives him forgiveness, the king knows full and well he can’t pay it back. And you know what the king does? He still does this. He forgives him. He forgives him.
Does the king know what this servant’s going to do with the forgiveness? No. Does the king want the forgiveness to be believed in and trusted in by the servant? Does he? Absolutely yes. It is the same with Joseph and his brothers. The thing about the Joseph text that we don’t get is we don’t realize how much time has elapsed. This is very important and vital. From the day that Joseph revealed himself to his brothers that he really was Joseph, the one they had sold into slavery, the one they lied to their father and said a wild animal killed, the one they betrayed their own flesh and blood and treated worse than the most worst person, from that day, when Joseph meets them and gives them their first taste of his absolution or forgiveness.
Do you know how many years transpired between that first interaction between Joseph and his brothers and our text this morning when Jacob dies? Seventeen long years. And during those 17 long years, Joseph never wavered in how he treated his brothers. He never wavered how he treated his brother’s family. He never changed his posture toward them at all. This is the second deeper meaning. The first meaning is obvious. Forgive as you’ve been forgiven. You’ve been forgiven the great and inestimable debt… The most heinous of debts. Not, well, Lord, I have a few small sins in my life, but I am an adulterer and I am a murderer better than anyone else in this congregation. That kind of sin.
And if you do not think that of yourself, His forgiveness has no deep meaning to you. It’s dust to you because you don’t need it or I don’t need it. Now we’re getting at the deeper meaning of the parable and Joseph and his brothers. So in the parable, whose problem is it that the servant who’d been forgiven this debt of 10,000 years of wages, when he goes out and grabs the servant, why does this servant not get it that he’s been forgiven? Why does this servant not grasp the fact that he’s been forgiven of all this debt, and he acts as if he hasn’t been forgiven, because he acts like he can’t forgive his fellow servant for a hundred days’ wages? A hundred days’ wages compared to 10,000 years of wages. You’re putting the perspective together, I hope. Minuscule drop in the ocean.
You and I cry out for mercy to God. Lord, forgive me. Why is it certain things for which we confess we seem to have no trouble saying, I know the Lord forgives me? And why is it certain things in your life haunt you like they haunt me? And we’re always reminded of them, and Satan keeps poking and prodding and picking that wound that we’ve self-inflicted or that was inflicted upon us. Why is that? Whose fault is it? Is it Jesus’ fault because He’s not making His forgiveness clear to us? Was it the king’s fault because He didn’t make it clear to the servant? Was it Joseph’s fault because he didn’t, through 17 years of repeated interaction with his other 11 brothers, didn’t make it clear? Why?
The fault lies in the servant. The fault lies in Joseph’s brothers. The fault lies in you and me. We struggle with it. That’s the point. Being forgiven by God and believing that is a miracle. It is not an intellectual assessment. It does not intellectually make sense to forgive someone 10,000 years of wages. That is bad business. It does not make sense for your heart to forgive someone who inflicted willful pain in your life, and it is not rational for them to forgive you either, for what we’ve said and what we’ve done, and we’ve seen it on their faces. Forgiveness is a divine miracle that only He does within you.
Why then does that servant not get it? And the question would be asked, why then do you think you really get it? Because if you really did get it, you wouldn’t be haunted by the things that I know you’re haunted about in your life. None of us live through this life without being haunted by something, and you know those things that haunt you. Because I know the things that haunt me. Even though I know God has forgiven me, they haunt me. Why do they haunt me?
Why did Joseph’s brothers, after 17 years of receiving forgiveness from Joseph, when Jacob dies, all of a sudden are in a dither and go back and lie to Joseph, saying, Daddy said you’re supposed to forgive us? Because those brothers thought the only reason Joseph acted like forgiving them was because who was still alive? Jacob. Once Jacob’s dead… Because in their minds they know, I sure as shootin’ would not forgive my brother if he sold me into slavery. So if this is what Joseph would have done to me, I wouldn’t forgive him. So why would my brother Joseph forgive me now that dad’s dead? No one’s going to hold him to account. He’s second in command of all Egypt. He just says the words, and I’m a dead man and my family. Why is it those moments in your life haunt you?
It is a miracle that you and I believe that God is gracious to us because of Christ Jesus. We read and confessed. We know it’s His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death for us. Because God isn’t, oh, no big deal. He’s like the king. He shows mercy because He wants to be known as merciful. Justice had to be paid. It’s not as if you and I got a get out of jail free card. All of us are damned. All of us owe the king 10,000 talents. All of us have sold him into the slavery that binds us. Sin. And all of us know he paid the penalty for the bounds that we put upon him. Sin. And died. Was damned. And rose again.
That’s a divine miracle to grasp that. That is not rational or reasonable. Right? We need to hear God’s forgiveness daily. Those brothers needed to hear it daily, and I am sure that they did, if not daily, but often, and they struggled with it. Do you think you’re any better than they? Do you think at life’s last hour you’re not going to be a little frightened as well? Do you think that you’re going to struggle with your own forgiveness and not think that you’re going to go through the throes of death without any worry or concern? You’re going to feel the same thing you and I feel now. And Satan’s going to try his you-know-what to try to get you to despair.
The point of Joseph with his brothers, what did Joseph say? Am I in the place of God? He’s saying, I’m not God, but I’m speaking to you as if I am your God. What did those brothers do with that absolution that Joseph gave them when he first revealed himself to them 17 years earlier? Well, let’s think about this. Every Sunday morning, you hear from my lips, not my forgiveness, but God’s. I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What do you do with that forgiveness?
Is that just a formality of liturgy? Is that just a tradition? Or is it God giving you forgiveness as God gave that gentleman who owed 10,000 talents? And if that forgiveness doesn’t get through to your head and your heart, what else does? Because the only other things left are that font that reminds you you have been called by God. Don’t despair. That word read and preached to you is you’ve been called by God. Don’t despair. And then you eat the very flesh and blood of the sacrifice of the Lamb for you. Don’t despair. Don’t despair.
Despair is of Satan and of pride. God does crush you. Consider what Joseph was saying to his brothers. I know you meant evil to me. What did God do through that evil you meant for me? God worked a mighty miracle. Could Joseph have forgiven his brothers had he not been thrown into prison? Twice. Probably not. He would have been so pompous and proud. He would have said, yes, die. But because God shaped him as well, allowed him to forgive. Why do you think you can have the power to forgive unless God also humbles you and me?
Humbling us gets us to realize we have nothing except God’s mercy and forgiveness. We don’t despair when we’re humbled. We despair when we come into terms with that we don’t have the ability. It is not a reasonable or logical thing for our God to forgive us, and yet He does. And it’s not reasonable or logical that we need to keep hearing it, but we do because it is not an intellectual thing, but a spiritual thing. And if it took Joseph’s brother 17 years and on to the grave, do you think we’re better than they? That we don’t need to hear it regularly and often? So that we don’t treat our brother like the servant in the parable and act like nothing happened.
In the name of the one who gladly forgives you, not because of your excuse, but because you cry mercy, Jesus Christ, in his name, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
