Episode 1681: Grace

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 1,681 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Paul Zolman: I'm Paul Zolman. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find the way of showing love every day is the key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

Scott Maderer: of community and justice and fairness and grace and yes, indeed forgiveness. It's not that forgiveness doesn't work, it's that we don't work. The world that we have made doesn't work. [00:01:00] But we can change that with God's help. Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling.

In the Inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence

so that you can impact the world

In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Matthew 18:21-35. I share about why the call to forgive is so hard, and I also talk about why that's n- a call not to change forgiveness, but to change us and to change the world Matthew chapter 18, verses [00:02:00] 21 through 35 says, "Then Peter came and said to him, 'Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?

As many as seven times?' And Jesus said to him, 'Not seven times, but I tell you, 77 times.' For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. And as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made.

So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denari, and seizing him by the throat, said, 'Pay what you owe.'

Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' But he refused. Then he went and threw him into [00:03:00] prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place.

Then his lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked slave. I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do ev- to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

Oh, one of those uncomfortable passages in the Gospel. Here's Peter coming to talk to Jesus, and you can just imagine him wanting to get another gold star, wanting to show Jesus, "I've been paying attention. I, I've understood it. We're supposed to be leaning on grace and forgiveness and mercy and love and all of those things.

I finally got it." just a few passages [00:04:00] ago, he'd gotten a pat on his back from Jesus for understanding that he was the Messiah. And Peter kind of takes what is a standard teaching of the rabbis of the time, and he takes it further. Because, see, at that time, the law of mercy was to forgive four times.

So you would try it four times, and four times, you gotta admit, is pretty lenient. I think most people would think that. You know, we have the three strikes and you're out thought, right? So four times is going beyond that, and here Peter goes even further and says seven times. I get it. We should forgive one another even more than four.

Waiting for Jesus to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The four- four is enough. You don't need to go so far." But instead, Jesus doesn't hit the brakes, he hits the gas. He says, "Seven? How about 77?" Or some translations [00:05:00] say 70 times seven. What-- Regardless of the number, it's not a math problem, the idea isn't about keeping score or counting the number of times.

In fact, Jesus seems to be saying, "No, don't count, just forgive." That should be your default mode. That should be the lead. Start with forgiveness. Lead with grace But it doesn't feel very practical, does it? I've been around a few churches where somebody has led a sermon on the Sermon on the Mount that's listed in Matthew, and afterwards I've seen the conversation that happens.

I've even preached on some of these topics myself and had the-- somebody come up to me afterwards and demand where I got all of this woke nonsense. And my reply was, "From Jesus." And oftentimes I then get pushed [00:06:00] and so told, "Well, yeah, that may have worked then, but it doesn't work anymore." I mean, blessed are the peacemakers.

That doesn't work anymore. Blessed are the meek. That doesn't work anymore. Forgiving 77 times, that doesn't work anymore. And I don't know about you, but I have a hard time believing that the gospel the good news that Jesus spread doesn't work anymore Jesus actually leans into it a little bit.

He tells a story that if you really pay attention to it, it's kind of absurd. He says there's a slave who owed his master 10,000 talents. 10,000 talents. A, a slave, a servant, somebody who is lower down. Now, there's a lot of debate about exactly how much a talent was worth, but regardless, it was at [00:07:00] least several years, maybe as many as 20 years' worth of what a day laborer got.

So that's one talent, and here he says 10,000 talents. That would be like owing 200,000 years of your salary in debt. This is like the amount of debt that countries have, that the United States and other countries have. This isn't the debt that a person gets. And what does the debtor say? What does the slave say?

"Have patience with me, and I'll pay you everything." How? How is that even possible? There's 200,000 years' worth of patience here. That's not going to happen. And the master seems to recognize this and has pity or compassion. His heart went out to him. He felt empathy. He felt the pain that this slave was feeling.

He knows that there's no way this [00:08:00] person could ever repay the debt, and instead of holding him accountable, which under the law, by the way, was perfectly acceptable, throwing him into prison was perfectly acceptable. That was the legal thing to do. He forgives him. He wipes it away. He says, "Never mind. It's like it never happened."

But then this slave, this man who was just forgiven this debt, grabs up a fellow person, a fellow slave, who owes him 100 denari. Now, 100 denari is not an insubstantial amount of money. A, a denari is about a day's wage, so this is several months' worth of your salary. This is at least three or four months' worth of what you got paid, and that's pretty significant, but not in comparison to 10,000 talents The servant had been forgiven a debt that would bankrupt a [00:09:00] nation, so surely he's gonna turn around and be generous to this person who owes him so little.

He's up, right? He just got a debt forgiven. Instead, he prosecutes that person to the full extent of the law. Remember, this is not breaking the law. This is not being unreasonable under the biblical law. He's doing-- He has every right to do what he did. He has the man thrown in prison.

After all, that's the consequences, right? You borrowed money, you can't pay it back. To forgive the debt would be benefiting people, and it would d- it would just destroy the economic system as it works, right? We can't do this

The idea here maybe is that commerce is coming before humanity, and that systems matter more than people. After all, forgiveness doesn't work anymore, right? [00:10:00] But then how does the story end? What is the ending, the moral that Jesus leaves the hearers with? And it's hard not to hear these final verses as a warning, a threat.

The things crashing down over us like the sea upon the Egyptian army during the Exodus. This seems to be the God who destroys, who punishes, who seeks judgment against enemies and oppressors. But no, the, the judgment's not actually about breaking the law. It's not about not showing mercy. It's about learning how to show mercy, how to forgive.

Look at this story again. It's the moment where Jesus seems to say, "Yes, even those Egyptians that I have destroyed, I still have sorrow for because they were my children, too." This is where Jesus says, "It's all of us that need this." [00:11:00] We all need forgiveness. We all need grace. We all don't deserve it. We all have the debt that cannot be paid.

It's not that forgiveness no longer works in our world, it's that our world needs to change. We need to change the way we live in community. We need to v- values that place people over systems, that no longer just do the thoughts and prayers approach to poverty and injustice and pain. To lead like Christ is to lead with grace.

It is to walk alongside those who are oppressed by debt, by generational poverty, by any sort of marginalization or outsiderness. Whatever it is that's causing them to be treated as the other, it's to go to them and say, "You are God's child, too." This isn't a zero-sum game where some have to lose so that others can win.

[00:12:00] We live in a world of abundance, but the current system favors few over many. And we're lead-- we're led to live with grace and to partner with the Spirit to bring people together into the kingdom of community and justice and fairness and grace and yes, indeed, forgiveness. It's not that forgiveness doesn't work, it's that we don't work.

The world that we have made doesn't work. But we can change that with God's help. Thanks for listening.

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