SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/23/2023 11:17 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The
Example of Forgiveness”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 18:23-35
Message of
the verses: As mentioned in our last SD I will not be
putting all the verses on at the beginning of these Spiritual Diarys as it is
quite lengthy and also we will be looking at the verses as we move through what
will take many days to get through this important parable that Jesus spoke to
His disciples.
When we were looking at the 13th chapter of
Matthew we saw that much of the Lord’s teaching was about the kingdom of heaven,
and in that chapter He also used parables.
I have mentioned before that in the 22nd verse of the 12th
chapter of Matthew we see the turning point in the ministry of our Lord as
beginning with that verse Jesus cast a demon out of a man and then the Scribes
and Pharisees said that He did this in the power of Satan (Beelzebul) and so
Jesus told them that they could never be saved because they were saying that
the devil was the one doing this and actually it was the Holy Spirit working
through Jesus that did this. At Jesus’
baptism is when we see the Holy Spirit working through Jesus doing this. These
evil leaders of Israel did not understand it.
What Jesus was telling to them was what we call the unpardonable sin,
something we discussed when we went through that section in chapter
twelve. After that event Jesus began to
teach in parables so that those who were hearing would not understand, but He
did explain the parables to His disciples.
Ok back to looking at the parable that is in Matthew
18:23-35. Sometimes I start talking
about things that take me down a different road, but a road that does have
something to do with the passage that I am looking at. I guess that is because I listen to too many of
John MacArthur’s sermons.
In the parable we are looking at now our Lord is teaching
about forgiveness, and the certain king, represents the attitude of God
concerning forgiveness of and by His subjects, the slaves. Now the citizens of God’s kingdom are also
children in His heavenly family, and the parable speaks of Him both as Lord,
represented by the king, and as heavenly Father seen in verse 35.
MacArthur writes “Slaves is here used in the broadest
sense of those in submission to a sovereign, as all subjects of ancient
monarchies were, regardless of their rank or wealth. All citizens of an ancient kingdom were slaves
in the sense that they owed total allegiance to the king, who typically had
life and death power over them. In the
sense, noblemen were as much the king’s slaves as were the most menial
servants. Those extremes are suggested
in the parable, indicating that its truth applies to every believer, every
citizen of the kingdom of heaven. The
first slave was obviously of high rank and probably possessed considerable
personal wealth, whereas the fellow slave whom he refused to forgive the debt
was perhaps relatively poor.” I think
that this paragraph that I just quoted from MacArthur’s commentary gives us a
pretty good kind of introduction to these verses which consist of a parable.
In the book of Esther we see the kind of government that
Jesus is talking about in this parable as the king appointed governors, or
satraps, over the various provinces of his kingdom, and their primary responsibility
was to collect taxes on his behalf. Now
as we look at this parable we can see that it was probably in regard to such
taxes that the king…wished to settle accounts, and the man who owed the king ten
thousand talents may have been the taxes that were owed to the king. In any case, he was a person with great
responsibility who was the one who owed a great amount of money to the king. As we go along we will see that the number of
what was owed to the king is something that is impossible to pay.
We don’t really know as to why this man was brought to
the king to give an account, but perhaps it was the time that was set aside for
this kind of thing to happen, to settle accounts with all the king’s governors. MacArthur writes “The idea of an ultimate
end-of-life accounting, representing God’s final judgment, does not correspond to
the way a ruler normally collected taxes from his officials. Nor does it fit the fact that the forgiven
man went on with normal relationships with other men. The accounting could not represent God’s
final judgment, because, after he was judged, the man would have had no more
opportunity either to forgive or to be forgiven.
“Just as ‘seventy times seven’ (v.22) represents a
limitless number of times, ten thousand talents represents a limitless amount
of money.” In our next SD we will begin
to talk about how much money this ten thousand talents could represent.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: What I can see in
this parable is that the money, which represents my sins, are far too many for
me to ever pay for, and that is why I need forgiveness from God which comes
through grace.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
I want to get back to memorizing the
verse in Romans chapter six to help me in the battles I face.
1/23/2023 12:19 PM
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