Join Pastor Jack Hibbs as he expounds on one of the Bible’s impactful parables, the Unmerciful Servant. This sermon explores the immense depths of God’s forgiveness toward humanity, illustrated through a king’s compassion towards his servant. Listeners are invited to reflect on their own experiences and examine how embracing forgiveness can lead to immense spiritual growth, peace of mind, and a deeper connection with God despite past grievances.
I don’t care what you say or what books you write or what things you preach or what this you’re on or what big audience you’ve got or what group you’re in or whatever it is or what your name is or what your status is. You can’t listen. You and I can’t do this. Then listen, we are not even worthy to bear the name of Jesus. He is forgiving and he forgives. He’s awesome.
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This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible. Did you know there’s an easy way to stay informed on the latest biblical events shaping our world today? Check out the Happening Now section at jackhibbs.com. Now, these live events feature Pastor Jack Hibbs alongside special guests diving into current events, cultural shifts, and how they align with biblical prophecy. It’s a unique blend of Bible teaching and real-time analysis that helps you make sense of today’s headlines through the lens of Scripture. Happening now is not just about information. It’s about equipping you with the truth and encouraging you to stand firm in your faith, no matter what’s happening around you. Now, these discussions are eye-opening, they’re thought-provoking, and they’re a great way to stay spiritually grounded in a rapidly changing world. Whether you watch live or catch up on past events, Happening Now will help keep you connected to God’s Word and what’s going on in the world today. Visit jackhibbs.com and click on Happening Now. Don’t just watch the news. Understand it from a biblical perspective. On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues in his series now called The Parables of Jesus and a message titled Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Part One. Now, whenever Jesus spoke to the crowds, he often spoke in parables that are relatable stories illustrated in full color, if you will, but with common themes. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that Jesus wants us to know that forgiveness is a liberator. It has the power to not only change lives, it makes us more like Jesus in that he forgave when it made no possible sense at all so that we could do the same. Now, with his message called Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Part One, here’s pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
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If we decide to obey God in this thing, which I believe personally is one of the greatest hindrances to the advancement of the church in our age today, is that the church is full of unrecognized sin, if that’s even possible to say. Because we have either said things or we’ve done things or someone has done something against us and we’ve not handled it rightly. And verse 21, look at it now. I just gave you the setting. Here’s the question. Thank God, Peter’s so cute. I love this guy. Jesus is teaching what he’s teaching and Peter’s still hung up on verse 15. He’s what, wait, what, what, what? That’s great. He says, remember verse 15 says, more of your brother’s sins against you, go and tell him his fault privately. Peter never heard anything after that. We know so much. about how we ought to walk because of Peter. Isn’t he great? I love that guy, I can’t wait to meet him. It’s gonna be great to meet him. Look at verse 21. Then Peter came to him and said, notice the other guys didn’t, they’re all acting like they knew what Jesus was talking about. Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times. This is huge, because first of all, there’s no doubt about it, Peter is thinking, I’m gonna be very generous now, and I’m gonna look real good in front of these disciples and Jesus. So if I know someone, Jesus, who sins against me, do I forgive him up to seven times? Here’s the answer, verse 22. And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven.
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490.
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Some of you are doing the math already. Okay, I’m really thinking. I forgave that guy probably about 489 times. Therefore the kingdom of heaven, here’s the parable begins, verse 23. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. when he had begun to settle accounts, by the way, this speaking about the end of the age, who was brought to him, who owed him 10,000 talents. What does that mean? It simply means this. It is an amount, and it doesn’t matter what culture. If it’s Roman, if it’s 2,000 years ago, if it’s Roman, or if it’s Jewish, in the context, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the culture is, the math is multiple lifetimes. What is owed is multiple lifetimes of giving back. It’s impossible. Do you understand that? You can’t, in the scenario Jesus is painting, there’s no way that this guy can get out of his debt. Verse 25. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold… and his wife and children and that all that they had and that the payment be made. Wow. Sounds like the American economy. Sounds like our debt. The servant therefore fell down before him saying, master, have patience with me. Now this is kind of stupid that this guy’s even thinking this way. Have patience with me like about 100 lifetimes worth. It’s beyond my ability to pay. I will pay you all. That’s impossible. The whole situation’s impossible. Verse 27, then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, his buddies that he knew, who owed him 100 denarii, four bucks. And he laid his hands on him and took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down, sound familiar? At his feet and begged him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you all. And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what he had done, they were very grieved and came and told their master all that had been done. Verse 32, then his master, this is the generous one you know in the beginning, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all of the debt because you begged me. And should you not have also had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you? And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly father also will do to you Each, if you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses. This is one of the longest parables. It is certainly, in my opinion, if you could put a priority on them, at least in our culture and our age, one of the most important for sure. Listen, mark this down if you would. Our view and our value of forgiveness, church… as an individual or as a church, is inseparably tied to our hatred and our disdain for sin. If you and I do not hate and disdain sin and understand what sin did to God, then you and I will not have a very big high value or estimation of forgiveness. Does that make sense? Listen. When we meditate, and I know we don’t often do that anymore, but we need to do that, we need to nurture that. When we meditate on what God has done for us, when we really take it in, stop and pause, and begin to saturate yourself in what God has done for us at the cross, Jesus, the brutality, the torture, the mutilation of innocence at the cross, What he did for us was of such great expense because sin is so hideous and so bad that God endured the punishment because of his great love for you and for me. Can I put it this way in the human term? He tolerated the abuse to gain salvation for you. That’s how valuable you are. Now watch, when you and I begin to realize Our part. And I think this is the only way that you and I can truly experience salvation. That may be a tough thing to say, but hear me out. Jesus Christ is our personal Lord and Savior. I mean, for crying out loud, I heard the other day passing through a radio station, even the band, the rock band from the 90s, Depeche Mode, said that Jesus was a personal Jesus. If a rock band knows that, you better know that too. He died for the sins of the world, that’s true. But that doesn’t give you eternal life. That doesn’t give you anything until you understand, until I understand that it’s my sin that put him on the cross. Forget about everybody else. Forget about the husband or the wife or the stranger sitting next to you right now. Your sin put Jesus on the cross. My sin put him on the cross. Look, I’m glad he died for you, but I’m very, very glad he died for me. And until you understand that he died for you, not in some massive collective sense, but he went to the cross, theologically accurate, if you would have been the only child of Adam and Eve and sinned, he would have gone to the cross for you. Well, pastor, I don’t know. You know, you may be really alluding to some ginormous sins of your own, but I’m not that bad of a person. You’re probably lost, right? You probably don’t get it. How can you experience salvation when you’ve not appreciated the Savior? I put him there. That’s what my Bible teaches me. And listen, that’s what my conscience bears witness to. I’m a sinner saved by the grace of God. And Jesus is saying… this man who had been forgiven such a vast amount of an impossible magnitude of debt, then goes out and chokes his co-servant, someone who is a peer, and violently grabs him by the throat and shakes him and says, give me my four bucks! Yes! See, listen, here’s the danger. In this parable, we are gonna learn that how God has forgiven us, we are mandated by God to forgive others. And this is now, you feel it already. This is where this begins to get us. Because the temptation for you and I tonight and the following Wednesday nights together is the temptation is to not follow God in this one because we’ll emotionally think, I know better. I’ve been hurt so bad. That person beat me. That person molested me. That person robbed me. That person took my child or took, what, fill in the, doesn’t matter. You have to understand something. If you hang with me these next few weeks, you have to understand, there may be, you may be on the brink of a radical change. spiritual explosion in your life because maybe up until now you’ve completely misunderstood what forgiveness is all about. Forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness is a power. Forgiveness is a liberator. And for any of us who, and we’ve all been tempted to fold up our arms and build up that wall and say, I will not forgive that person. We have missed it. God has given us the ability to forgive that we might be freed from the power of that person’s sin against us.
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You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. And for now, let’s get back to our teaching. Once again, here’s Pastor Jack.
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Now, listen, I have to say this. This is some house cleaning here tonight. There are people, and I know, there are people who attend this church and they come every week. And they live in sin. He has his affairs going on or she’s got her affairs going on. Then they turn, the one who is having an affair turns and says, you heard him tonight, you heard the sermon, didn’t you? You have to forgive me. And by the way, you’ll have to forgive me next week when I go out with her again or with him again, and you’ll have to forgive me the week after that. This happens in people’s lives who say they’re Christians. The Bible says they are not Christians, but they have, in fact, deceived themselves. That’s housecleaning tonight. That’s church family stuff. I can do whatever I want and you have to forgive me. Listen, this is not the context of what we’re talking about. We’re talking about believers here. And by the way, this parable has nothing to do with salvation and having it and losing it. It has to do with fellowship and relationship between brothers or sisters in the family of God. Don’t read into this parable what’s not to be read into it. This is serious stuff. So we’ve made it to now point number one. And at this pace, we’ll be here for a month. The parable of the unmerciful servant, verses 22 to 25 is this, church. Be like Jesus. That’s what Jesus is inviting us to do. Be like Jesus and be forgiving. Will you write that down, please? Be forgiving. Christians are to be forgiving. We are unlike all other people on earth. The Christian is mandated to be forgiven. Not because God bends our arm and says, forgive them, forgive them, because I told you to. But the Christian obeys this command to forgive because we lean back upon, listen, even when our emotions say, I’d rather see that person who hurt me rot in hell and be run over by a truck. That’s what your emotions say. The Bible, Jesus said, we are to pray for those who spitefully use us. There’s no other religion on the planet, there’s no other faith in the world that has that standard because God, what’s going on? Jesus Christ, God manifested in the flesh says, listen, you want to follow me? Then you forgive like I forgive. And you say, I can’t do it. I agree with you. I can’t do it either. It’s impossible for us to do it without, listen, without the Holy Spirit. It’s impossible. But let me tell you, oh, please hear me. If you tonight begin to have this at least, Lord, I have unforgiveness in my heart toward that person or toward those people or toward that whatever. And I’m asking you, I’m hearing this message and I’m asking you, God, because it just grinds my teeth. I hear their name and I just seethe and I just get angry. And Lord, you know I’m justified. They really did this to me. They really hurt me. That if I could, I’d grab them by the neck. And I would shake them. In Jesus’ name, I would lay hands on them. Right? That’s how you feel. But God, I’m asking you, listen, can we all do this? This is where we begin. God, I’m asking you, will you make my heart willing to be like Jesus and be forgiving? Corrie ten Boone, read about her life. Her sister, during the German rise, the Nazi rise in World War II, her sister, when the Nazis came into their town, beat them all up, by the way, and molested them all, but raped her sister to death, the SS. And Corrie… wound up meeting up years later with some of the abusers. It was in a church service in Europe. Can you believe that? The plan of God. And she writes about how she was incredibly filled with the love of God for those SS officers and forgiveness. That’s impossible without the work of God. And that’s the joy and the beauty of what we’re talking about tonight. I can’t forgive that person. I can never let that go. Listen, that’s true in your humanity. That’s right. But listen, God, the Holy Spirit, will give you the power to forgive. And at the same very time that he does that, he will open your eyes to the understanding of how much he has forgiven you. You see, that’s the thing. When I begin to understand how much God has forgiven me, now I find that I can turn to those who have offended me and hurt me. This is discipleship, church. I don’t care what you say or what books you write or what things you preach or what this you’re on or what big audience you’ve got or what group you’re in or whatever it is or what your name is or what your status is. You can’t, listen, you and I can’t do this, then listen, we are not even worthy to bear the name of Jesus. He is forgiving and he forgives. He’s awesome. He refers to himself as a certain king. He answers Peter, listen, no, not seven times, but 70 times seven. And he begins now to illustrate by saying there was a certain king. As I relate to you regarding the kingdom of heaven, there’s a certain king. And he’s saying here that there came time to settle the accounts. By the way, the word implies a king of overwhelming wealth. Beyond. Well, how do you know? Because, watch this, you even hear the gospel. You hear the gospel in the parable. The man owes the king, the servant owes the master, the king, so much that it would take him 100 lifetimes to pay him back. That’s big bucks. And the master says, look, I forgive the debt. That means that we’re looking at and we’re considering the grace of God. How rich is Jesus concerning his ability to forgive? The answer is unlimited. You think Bill Gates has got a lot of money? Listen, what Bill Gates thinks he has in money, God has in forgiveness a billion times innumerable numbers more. Amen. There is no sin, hear me out, there is no sin that you and I could have ever committed or commit that is unable to be washed by the blood of Jesus if we repent. Now I’m not saying go out and sin because his blood will cover. No, no, no, you can’t do that. But he’s that rich in forgiveness. So there’s no doubt Peter is thinking, and this is beautiful. Mark this down. You can kind of get inside Peter’s mind. Listen, Peter’s Jewish. He knows the scriptures. And so you think Peter pulled that number out of nowhere, seven? Oh, no, no, no. This is a big deal. Are you listening? This is fun stuff. In Amos chapter two, verse six, the Bible tells us, this is what the Lord says. The people of Israel have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished. In the Hebrew, it’s three times. The children of Israel have sinned against me three times, and I will not let them go unpunished. Why? Because Israel is God’s chosen people. And he disciplines his chosen. Are you a child of God tonight? Then listen, you step out of line and God will speak to you. He’ll say, don’t do that. And you’ll say, well, whatever. And then you step out of line again and he’ll say, I’m telling you, don’t do that. And you say, well, you know, I got away with it once. It appears I’m getting away with it again. And then you do it a third time and God says, all right. I mean, I know I’m not supposed to say this, because it’s like, I think against the law in California, but he’s gonna pull out a paddle, and he’s gonna thump you. What’s the old saying? He’s gonna apply the board of education to the seat of knowledge? Is that what it is? He loves us. If you don’t get disciplined by God, the Bible says you are illegitimate. That means you may be religious, but you don’t belong to God. God punishes his kids.
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Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Part One. Thank you for being here today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s new series called The Parables of Jesus. It’s a series highlighting the teachings of Jesus while he was walking around here on this earth. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
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You know, the Apostle Peter in his letters to the church urged his fellow Christians to keep on learning and growing in the faith, in spite of their suffering and pain. Unlike today, however, resources were scarce. Still, they persevered, and Christ followers were growing in both strength and numbers. Now, there’s no limit of ways to access quality materials on Christian living, including Pastor Jack’s website. When you go to jackhibbs.com and click the media icon, you’ll find not only real-life radio episodes, but real-life podcasts, real-life TV, real-life basics for Christian growth, and even news updates. There’s also specific verse-by-verse studies from books of the Bible and so much more. So, head on over to our website at jackhibbs.com and click on the media tab. That’s jackhibbs.com.
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Did you know that along with the radio program, Pastor Jack also has a TV show with more of the Pastor Jack Hibbs content that you like. It’s called Real Life TV. If you enjoy Pastor Jack on the radio, you’re going to love him on TV. So check out your local listings or visit jackhibbs.com and catch the latest episodes. That’s jackhibbs.com. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
Join Pastor Jack Hibbs as he expounds on one of the Bible’s impactful parables, the Unmerciful Servant. This sermon explores the immense depths of God’s forgiveness toward humanity, illustrated through a king’s compassion towards his servant. Listeners are invited to reflect on their own experiences and examine how embracing forgiveness can lead to immense spiritual growth, peace of mind, and a deeper connection with God despite past grievances.
