Saturday, 10 September 2011 06:15 Written by Jim Denison

When Robert Louis Stevenson was a young child, he stood one evening at the window watching a lamplighter at work. One by one, the man lit the streetlamps as he walked down the street. The boy was fascinated and silent. His nurse asked him what he was doing. He answered, "I am watching a man make holes in the darkness."

There is much darkness in our world today. Tomorrow we will remember that day ten years ago when we watched in horror as 19 terrorists killed nearly 3,000 innocent civilians. But the good news is that God redeems all he allows.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we are focused on this biblical statement:

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

We are facing droughts, locusts, and plague. God is calling us to humble ourselves before him as our King, pray for our nation, seek his face personally, and turn from our wicked ways. When we do, he promises God's people that he will "hear from heaven," and then to "forgive their sins." "Forgive" translates callach ("saw-lakh"), to spare, forgive, blot out, remove, pardon, refuse to punish. "Sin" translates chattaah ("shat-tah-aw"), referring to habitual offense.

What must we do to experience this promise personally?

Believe that God will forgive you

Scripture repeatedly declares that ours is a forgiving God:

• When his people repented of their sins, God promised, "I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me" (Jeremiah 33:8).

• David, a man who knew something about sin and forgiveness, could say, "You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you" (Psalm 86:5).

• God's people could say to him, "You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love" (Nehemiah 9:17).

• Daniel could declare, "The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him" (Daniel 9:9).

What does his word teach about his forgiveness?

• God wipes the slate clean: "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness" (Psalm 130:3-4).

• There is no sin beyond his grace: he "forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases" (Psalm 103:3).

• He removes our sins from us: "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Ps. 103:12).

• He will "hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19).

• He forgets all he forgives: "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (Jeremiah 31:34).

To understand better this forgiveness and its life-transforming implications for our lives and nation, let's consider one of Jesus' most surprising parables. Our text opens with an honest question, and an astonishing answer. First Peter's query: "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" (Matthew 18:21).

Peter was being generous. The rabbis recommended that we forgive not more than three times. They deduced the limit of three from the book of Amos, where God repeatedly cites condemnations of the various nations "for three transgressions and for four" (cf. Amos 1:3, "For three sins of Damascus, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath . . ."). It was thought that man could not be more gracious or forgiving than God.

So the fisherman thought he was being gracious, but we wonder what prompted his question. Earlier in Matthew 18 Jesus taught his disciples to go directly to the brother who sins against them (v. 15). Perhaps these words prompted in Peter's mind an unresolved conflict. We don't think of him as an abstract philosopher given to speculative inquiry. Probably he had someone in mind for his question.

Whether he did or not, we do. With whom are you at odds today? Who comes to mind first when the subject of forgiveness is mentioned? What person is to be the focus of your response to this parable?

Your first step in forgiving that individual is to realize how much God has forgiven you. Jesus answered Peter's question: "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times" (v. 22). The Greek can be translated as "seventy times seven," but "seventy-seven" is more likely the correct rendering.

Jesus' meaning is clear: we are never to stop forgiving. There is to be no limit. No loopholes. No contingencies. But this seems an impossible request, so Jesus showed us why it is not. What follows is the most famous parable on forgiveness in all of literature.

Claim his forgiving grace

The hero of our story is the king. The king has vast holdings, and is owed a vast debt: "ten thousand talents" (v. 24). A talent was the highest unit of currency in the ancient world, and ten thousand the highest Greek numeral. As a result, this would be the largest financial amount Jesus could name. The Attic talent was $1,200 in our currency; the larger Roman talent was worth $500; the Hebrew, Assyrian, and Babylonian talent ran from $1,550 to $2,000. If Jesus had in mind the Hebrew talent, this figure would range from $15 million to $20 million.

As large as this amount seems, it grows astronomically when compared with typical revenues in the first century. The total income of the province containing Idumaea, Judea and Samaria was only 600 talents; the total revenue of Galilee was only 300 talents (Josephus, Antiquities 11.4). By comparison with incomes of the day, the debtor in Jesus' parable owed more than America's entire national debt!

Was such a debt even possible in Jesus' day? Or are we to take the story as intended fiction? Historians believe that one of the richest Oriental despots could rule such a large province that his finance minister could owe tax returns of this size over time. Whether Jesus alluded here to a fact of history or not, the spiritual implication is clear.

In the parable, the king is God. Jesus stated that his parable concerns the "kingdom of heaven" (v. 23), where God is king. Only a king of great power could have such debtors. And only a king of great grace could forgive such a debt. No human being could or would do what Jesus' king did. And what he still does.

The king was well within his rights to sell the servant to pay the debt (v. 25). Exodus 22:3 specifies: "A thief must certainly make restitution, but if he has nothing, he must be sold to pay for his theft." It was illegal to sell a man for a sum greater than his debt, but nothing prevented the king from selling the man for a sum less than what he was owed. In Jesus' story the king also resolved to sell "his wife and his children" (v. 25).

So the servant "fell on his knees before him" (v. 26a), continuous action in the original Greek, indicating an ongoing act of homage and supplication. "Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything" (v. 26b), the man begged. He was foolish to think so. No person could pay back such a huge debt. But still we try. Still we make religion a way to repay the debt we owe to God. Still we worship, and give, and serve out of obligation, to earn the righteousness God can only give.

Then comes the shocking turn: "The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go" (v. 27). He was "filled with compassion" for his woeful servant. He "forgave the loan," as the Greek puts it. In v. 32 the master made clear that this was a "debt"; here he chose to see it as a loan he could forgive.

Think of it: a debt you could never possibly repay, forgiven with a word. Completely cancelled. How much has God forgiven you? Take Peter's suggestion of seven sins as a start, per day. This comes to 2,555 per year. Over 70 years, a person who sinned at this rate would have committed 178,850 transgressions against God. Be honest—do you sin against God by omission and commission, thought and action, less than seven times a day? More?

Today is your day to believe that God forgives all you confess to him, and then to claim that grace for yourself.

Conclusion

A priest in the Philippines carried in his soul the burden of a secret sin he had committed many years before. He had confessed this sin to God but still had no peace about it. In his parish was a woman who deeply loved God and claimed to have visions in which she spoke directly with her Lord. The priest was skeptical. To test her he said, "The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary." The woman agreed.

A few days later the priest asked her, "Did Christ visit you?" "Yes, he did," she replied. "And did you ask him what sin I committed in the seminary?" "Yes." "Well, what did he say?" "He said, 'I don't remember.'"

On my last trip to England we visited a church which John Newton pastored for many years. You remember his story: a slave trader who was converted to faith in Christ, worked to abolish slavery, and wrote the best-known hymn in the England language, Amazing Grace.

While in his village, I visited his gravesite. On the back of his raised marble tomb I found inscribed these words:

John Newton--Clerk.
Once an infidel and libertine
a servant of slaves in Africa, was
by the rich mercy of our
Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ
preserved, restored, pardoned
and appointed to preach the faith he
had long labored to destroy.

His life motto said it well: "I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I want to be; I am not what I hope to be; but by the grace of God, I am not what I was." Amazing grace, indeed.

Now that grace can be yours. Is God waiting on you?

 

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