Matthew 18:23-27 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything. The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go.”

Let’s talk about the man’s debt. Sometimes it is hard to come up with modern dollar equivalents for biblical currency. Let’s look at it this way. This parable measures money with two terms: the talent and the denarius. A denarius was the amount of money you would pay an unskilled worker for a day’s work. One talent was worth 6000 denarii. That’s the equivalent of a little over 19 years of work. The servant in Jesus’ story was in debt to the tune of 10,000 talents, or the sum total of all his wages for the next 190,000 years. This is what you call a bad case of overextended credit.

The king in the parable was no fool. He realized a servant wasn’t going to be able pay off that kind of debt. He decided to cut his losses. “Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.” We deal with bankruptcy differently today, but you get the picture. The debt was immeasurably bigger than anyone could possibly pay.

So what is Jesus teaching us about our sin with the servant’s debt? Just about everyone agrees with the phrase, “Nobody’s perfect.” I have had a few brave (or arrogant) souls tell me that they had stopped sinning, but even they admitted that they had sinned in the past. Convincing people that they are sinners is no big deal.

The size of our problem is the thing no one understands until God reveals it to us. Every inclination of our hearts is evil from childhood, the Lord said at the time of Noah. “Dead in your trespasses and sins” is the way Paul describes our situation to the Ephesians. That’s not “mostly dead,” like Wesley, the hero of the movie The Princess Bride, waiting for Miracle Max to wake him up again. We are dead-dead. A Christian website once noted that non-religious people criticize faith in Jesus as a crutch for weak people. But the criticism understates the situation. Jesus is more like a defibrillator for dead people. There is nothing we can do. Our debt never stops growing as long as we live.

Even after God reveals this, it is hard for most people to accept. The servant in the story is holding on to some shreds of hope he will repay the debt himself. “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.” Right…with whose diamond mine? Our sin, my sin, leaves me no choice but to plead for God’s forgiving mercy.

And that’s exactly what God does. He forgives us in his mercy, over and over, until there is no sin left. “The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go.” There are all kinds of feelings the master could have had about his servant at this moment. He could have been hot with anger at the huge loss. He could have been cold and uninterested, like a driver at a stoplight trying not to make eye-contact with the panhandler holding the “will work for food” sign.

The king is moved to pity. When God looks at us in our sin, he sees how it has broken us, the misery we bring on ourselves. He doesn’t want to crush us. He wants to rescue us. Remember how Matthew once described Jesus? “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

He “canceled the debt.” He didn’t negotiate a lower figure and work out a payment plan with his servant. He simply canceled the entire debt at his own expense. That is how the God of the Bible forgives sin. He simply cancels the entire debt, one hundred percent at his own expense.

Then the master “let him go.” He let him walk away, as though he had never borrowed a single dime. There was no fine print. There was no stern warning. He was free. I don’t care what you have done. I’m sure it was terrible. Mine was. I don’t care how many times you have failed. I’m sure you have lost count long ago. I know that I have. The King has let you go. You are completely free. And we all agree–that’s a good thing, right? Because you know, you can never have too much forgiveness, especially when you need it yourself.

Matthew 18:21-22 “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”

“Too much of a good thing.” The application of those words is almost limitless. Food, money, technology, information, exercise, work, free time, vitamins, medicine, tender loving care, even oxygen–they are all good things, every one of them. But there comes a point where enough is enough. Too much starts to cause problems. Sometimes people suffer from too much of a good thing.

In these words, Jesus impresses on us a major exception. He had been teaching his disciples the principles for addressing a Christian brother or sister about his or her sin. We sometimes refer to them as “the steps of Christian discipline.” The goal is always to offer forgiveness and reconcile relationships. In some sad cases it ends with excommunication instead. It is an inescapable part of church life, life together in the family of God, if we faithfully love and care for each other and follow our Lord.

That naturally led Peter to wonder: “Forgiveness is good, yes. But there must be some kind of limit. How often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Is six times enough? Seven? If I keep forgiving, might I be encouraging them to hurt me? Might I be giving away too much of a good thing?”

Jesus answers Peter’s question with a number that puts to bed any thoughts of limits on forgiveness: “Seventy-seven times.” It may also be translated “Seventy times seven times.” Either way, Jesus is telling him, “Don’t worry about stopping, Peter. You just go on forgiving. You can never have too much forgiveness.”

We live in a world that is less and less enthusiastic about forgiveness. People say something unacceptable on social media, and a mob descends on them to shame them for their mistake and ban them from the platform for life. Maybe they go so far as to get the offenders fired from their jobs and driven from their homes. No apology, no act of penance, no attempt to make amends is enough. Such people must not be allowed to participate in public life ever again.

That would never be Jesus’ approach. None of us has ever offended each other a tiny fraction of the times, or with nearly the seriousness of the ways, we have offended him. That hasn’t stopped him from forgiving us for a lifetime of sins. More than personally pardoning us, he paid the price for our offenses with his blood. So the forgiveness from him to us keeps flowing in a never ending stream regardless of the size or number of our crimes.

By faith we follow Jesus. The grace of forgiveness has moved us to do so. Following him implies that we will forgive as he forgives as well. Don’t put a number on grace to your neighbor. Just keep forgiving.

Romans 8:36 “For from him, and through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Everything is from God. When my children were little, there were sometimes gifts under the Christmas tree from them for me or my wife. How did that happen? The money with which they paid for the gift–that came out of our pockets. We took them shopping and guided them in the selection. They were only giving us back what we had provided to them, and they needed a good deal of our help to make it happen. An old commercial features a little boy dumping out some change and a few dollars on the jewelry store counter to get his mom a gift. Behind him stands his father, making sure the sales lady sees the credit card he is holding in his hand. You know who is really paying for this.

It’s the same for us with our Lord. Everything we have, everything we are, everything we give comes from him. Nothing about my life or existence isn’t a gift. He is the source of all things. Such generosity, far beyond me and my humble ability to give, deserves my adoration.

Even more, “through him… are all things.” Our Lord makes everything happen. I may think that my careful diet, supplements, and exercise program are keeping me healthy. The Lord may genuinely use those things in the process. But unless he touches it all with his blessing and power, it’s useless.

For most of human history, people have been bent on climbing into heaven on their own power. They believe they can qualify on their own good record. It’s not possible. Only through God’s work can any of us be reconciled with God. Only his life pays for sin. Only his blood washes it away. Only his Spirit can change doubters and deniers into believers in our Lord Jesus Christ. All of this lies far beyond me and my meager efforts. Through him are all things, especially salvation, and that makes him worthy of praise.

Finally, “to him are all things.” Everything that is, everything that happens, is for God and his own purpose. He intends all of it to lead us home to him. That is the goal of all history.

It is easy for us to lose sight of this. We may think the world is all about our present happiness. We are here to make the world a better place or enjoy ourselves for a while. But that’s not right. We are here so that he can gather us and others to faith in him now, then come home to him when our short life is done. The purpose of this world, this life, extends far beyond me. But it sure serves and blesses me, and that makes God and his ways worthy of my thanks and praise.

We don’t always need to understand something to benefit from it. I don’t understand how long strings of zeroes and ones in computer code become the beautiful music that comes out of my iPhone or music system. But it wouldn’t sound any better if I did. I don’t understand exactly how water, dirt, and sunlight become the food that nourishes my body. But it wouldn’t taste or feed me any better if I did. I don’t understand all the why’s and how’s of God’s love that rescued and redeemed me. But I would be no more loved as his child, no more bound for heaven if I did. Sometimes, many times, his ways are beyond me. That’s just reason to praise him all the more.

Romans 11:34-35 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him?”

We know very little compared to the Lord who assembled this whole universe out of nothing and devised a way to redeem his fallen creatures from their rebellion against him. Let’s talk about ways we have been blessed by this difference.

Maybe you are the kind of person who had a severe crush on someone when you were in school, only to have that person turn around and crush your heart later on. “Why do I have to go on living?” you think to yourself. “How can I ever be happy without him, or without her?” “Why did God let this happen to me?” Years later you meet the real love of your life, the mother or father of your children. You realize that the happiness of that relationship would not be possible if you had gotten what you thought you wanted.

We don’t know what the Lord has planned for our future, how everything fits together in the end, so we aren’t qualified to question his ways or give him advice. Those issues are above our pay grade as his creatures. He is above our interrogation.

Let’s raise the stakes. A three-year-old girl cuts her finger, and the cut is so bad that she needs stitches. Instead of an emergency room, her parents take her to one of these “doc-in-a-box” places, an “urgent care” center, one of those emergency rooms without a hospital attached. It so happens that they have run out of Novocain on this day. So as the doctor begins to stitch, the little girl begins to sing “Jesus loves me this I know.” The tears roll down her cheeks, but she bravely holds still while the doctor finishes up his work. The attending nurse is so impressed by the little girl’s faith and courage that she just has to visit the church and find out about the Jesus the little girl was singing about. This actually happened according to an article in Forward In Christ magazine several years ago.

Now if you were running the universe, would you have been able to figure that out–how a severe cut and a shortage of Novocain could make it possible for a little girl to introduce her nurse to Jesus? The Lord has millions and billions of these interactions worked out across millennia of history. And I think that I am going to give him my wise counsel? Who do I think I am? Time after time the Lord proves that he is above questioning by someone like me.

Nor does he owe us any explanations. “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” These words seem to be a reference to words the Lord spoke to Job near the end of his story. Yes, God had made Job’s life miserable for a while. He let the devil take away just about everything–his wealth, his health, his family. But once Job started to suggest that maybe he would like his day in court with God, maybe he would like to put God up on the witness stand and cross examine him about the way he treated Job, the Lord shuts that kind of suggestion right down.

The Lord wasn’t in any debt to Job. He isn’t in debt to us either. He owes us nothing. We owe him everything–our existence, our salvation, our eternity. It has all been his gift. Trust him. Let him do his work. But don’t think we are in any place to question his decisions.