But then Jesus talks to them about forgiveness. And I mean
real forgiveness, not that thing where adults make you say “sorry” and you kind
of mumble it under your breath because you don’t really mean it. No, real
forgiveness is when you are actually sorry for doing something mean to someone,
and then that person says that they forgive you - that they aren’t going to
hold that mean thing you did against you.
Forgiveness can be a tough thing to do, though, and
forgiving someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you will stop feeling sad or
hurt when mean things are done to you. But God still wants us to forgive others,
just like He’s willing to forgive all of us for all the bad things we’ve done
when we ask.
Anyways, Jesus is just about to move on to a new topic when,
all of a sudden, Peter says, “Hold on there, Jesus. I get that forgiveness is
important and all, but what happens if someone keeps on being mean to us over
and over! How many times am I supposed to forgive that person? Up to 7 times?”
Now Peter probably thought that he was being pretty generous.
7 times! If we listen to what Peter was saying, this would mean that you’re
supposed to forgive someone 7 times for bullying you on the playground or
taking the toy you wanted to play with or deleting your Minecraft server
AGAIN!!!
So imagine the look on Peter’s face when Jesus says back, “I
tell you, not 7 times, but 77 times” (Matthew 18:22, NIrV). Peter’s eyes probably widened. His face went white. 77 times?
That’s a whole lot of times!
But let’s get one thing clear. This doesn’t mean that Jesus
wants you to start making a list of every single time you forgive someone. He
doesn’t want you to sit there and say, “That’s it, buddy! You’ve crossed the
line! You have now officially done 78 different mean things to me, and the
Bible says that I don’t have to forgive you anymore!”
No, Jesus chooses a big number like 77 to explain that we
should ALWAYS be willing to forgive others. After all, God is willing to
forgive us for every single bad thing we’ve
ever done! And I’m sure that we’ve all done way more than 77 bad things in
our lives.
So to prove this point, Jesus tells His disciples a parable,
one of His famous stories. He tells them about this king – let’s call him Jerome
– who has lent a bunch of money to some of his servants. One of these servants
– let’s call him Jake – had raked up a pretty big debt over the years. 10 000
bags of gold worth! Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any bags of gold lying around my house, let
alone the 10 000 that Jake owed! That’s a ton of money!
To make matters worse, every time Jerome would try to get
his money back from Jake, Jake always had some excuse for why he couldn’t pay
Jerome back right then. “Oh, the price of bread went up, so I used the money to
pay for that.” “My donkey broke his leg, so I couldn’t get to the castle.” “My
roof started to leak, so can I actually have a little more gold to fix it
please?”
This had been going on for months, and eventually King Jerome
got tired of waiting. “I’ve given you plenty of time to pay me back,” Jerome
said, so he commanded that everything Jake owned be sold and Jake’s family be
made into slaves to pay off Jake’s debt!
Jake was terrified. Tears came into his eyes as he thought
about his family. Jake fell to his knees and begged, “Please King Jerome, have
mercy! I know I don’t deserve it, but give me more time! I’ll pay it all back,
I promise!”
Never let it be said that King Jerome was a mean man. He
looked at Jake and felt sorry for him. “I’ll do you one better,” Jerome said.
“Your debt is forgiven. You don’t owe me anything anymore! Go home to your
family.”
Now I can imagine that this made Jake super happy. He
probably ran up to the king, gave him a big hug, and thanked him over and over.
10 000 bags of gold was worth so much money that Jake would probably never have
been able to pay King Jerome back! But Jerome had decided that he wasn’t going
to hold this massive debt against Jake anymore! Instead, Jerome decided to
forgive Jake’s debt!
In this first part of the story, then, Jesus is trying to
teach that God’s forgiveness is a lot like King Jerome’s. All of the sin – all
of the bad things we do in our lives – is like that huge debt of 10 000 gold
bags. Our debt of sin is so big that we could never pay it back, no matter how many
things we do, meaning we would be separated from God forever! But when we come
to God truly sorry and ask Him to forgive us, God always will, no matter how
many bad things we do. And that’s great news!
But unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. It seems
that Jake hadn’t really learned his lesson yet. You see, as Jake was leaving
the castle – probably laughing and skipping a little bit – he saw another
servant – let’s call him Billy – at the gate.
Hey! Jake thought,
suddenly forgetting everything King Jerome had just done for him. That leak in my roof still isn’t fixed, and
Billy owes me 100 silver coins. That’s
more than enough to fix my roof!
So Jake ran up to Billy, and without even giving Billy a
chance to say or do anything, Jake grabbed Billy’s shirt and started shaking
him! “Pay back what you owe me!” Jake yelled.
“Give me time, please!” Billy cried. “I’ll pay it back, I promise!”
Sound familiar?
But Jake was so angry that he called over some of the castle
guards to have Billy thrown into jail. “Keep him there until he pays back every
cent he owes me,” Jake grumbled, and then went off to find some new way to pay
for his leaky roof.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking… What a jerk! Billy
asked Jake for more time to pay back his debt, just like Jake asked King
Jerome. And Billy’s debt was so small compared to Jake’s – 100 silver coins vs.
10 000 bags of gold! But unlike Jerome, Jake didn’t show Billy any forgiveness.
Which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. Jerome had just forgiven Jake
for a huge debt, so you’d think that Jake would be quick to show Billy
forgiveness in return!
And yet, that’s exactly why Jesus told this story. It’s not
easy to forgive others. We would often rather stay mad at someone for being
mean to us, just like Jake stayed mad at Billy instead of forgiving him. But
Jesus told this story because He wanted His disciples to realize that
forgiveness doesn’t just work one way.
When Jesus died on the cross and came back to life, this
made it possible for God to forgive us for everything bad we have ever done or ever
could do. And because our debt of sin is so big – like 10 000 bags of gold big
– we should be extremely thankful for that forgiveness. But part of that
thankfulness means showing the same forgiveness to others. God doesn’t want us
to be like Jake and stay mad every time someone is mean to us. Instead, Because God forgives us, He wants us to
forgive others too.
And to drive this point home, we see that Jesus’ story
doesn’t end well for Jake. See, some of the other servants saw how Jake had
treated Billy, and they went straight to King Jerome. And when Jerome heard
about what Jake had just done, Jerome became really angry. So angry that he
demanded Jake be thrown into prison and punished until he could pay back
everything he owed!
Now please understand this. This doesn’t mean that if you
don’t forgive someone, then God will stop forgiving you. If you believe in
Jesus and have asked God to forgive you, there is no bad thing you can ever do
that will take that forgiveness away from you.
But Jesus ends His story this way because He wanted His disciples
and us to understand that forgiveness matters to God. Only forgiving sometimes
isn’t enough. It doesn’t matter if someone has been really mean to you or only
a little mean. It doesn’t matter if someone has been mean 1 time or 1000 times.
What matters is that God forgives again and again, so He wants us to forgive
that way too.
That’s not easy. People are going to do mean things to you. And,
sadly, you’ll find that this doesn’t stop as you get older. But if you ask for
God’s help now to forgive others, no matter what they do or how many times they
do it, you’ll soon find that you’re willing to forgive way more than 77 times. You’ll
be able to forgive for always, just like God.
________________________
That's it for today. Next week, we're going to be jumping way back in time to talk about one of the Judges. Don't know who those guys are? Well then make sure you come back to find out next Thursday!
~Brentagious
No comments:
Post a Comment