Archive for the ‘Weekend Experience’ Category

Title	Speaker	Date	video
Week 1	Pastor Mark	July 3rd
Week 2	Pastor Mark	July 10th
Week 3	Pastors Justin & Janae Klatt	July 17th
Week 4	Pastor Angie Barker	July  24th
Week 5	Pastor Jill Shaver	July 31st
Week 6	Pastor Mark	August 7th

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Title	Date	Video	audio
Brave	5/19
Bold	6/5
Beautiful	6/12

Week 2 – There’s Nobody Here

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I have found the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 to be very instructive about the magnitude of God’s forgiveness and how that should affect my relationships with others.  The first servant owed his master 10,000 talents.  A talent was equivalent to at least 1,000 denarii (some sources estimate the talent may actually be as high as 6,000 denarii).  Based on some of the other parables (e.g. Matt. 20:1-16) we take the denarius as a day’s wages for a laborer.  So, if we work out the math, we find that the first servant owed his master 10,000,000 (ten million) denarii.  So when the servant begs his master to be patient and he will pay off the debt, how long will it take him to make this much money?  Well, if we divide the 10 million denarii by 365 days in the year (we’ll assume the servant never takes a day off because he’s working so hard to pay off his debt), we find that it will take him 27,397 years!  If we assume that he has 80 working years in his life, then it will take him over 342 lifetimes to earn this much money!!  (And this is assuming that he saves everything he makes… no spending on food, clothes, housing, etc).  Clearly there is no way that this servant or his family can ever pay this debt.  To me, this indicates that we are supposed to laugh at this servant when he begs for patience until he can pay his debt.  This is an impossible debt that cannot ever be repayed.  And yet, isn’t this just how we often approach Christ and His offer of forgiveness to us?  How pitiful must it seem to Him when we offer to earn our salvation or in any sense try to repay Him for His sacrifice on the cross?

It is also instructive to look at the amount of money the second servant owed the first servant.  The debt of 100 denarii would be about four months wages (100 denarii divided by a 6-day working week gives 16.67 weeks).  To get a modern equivalent for this number, let’s take a 7.50/hr minimum wage and a 40 hour working week gives the salary of a modern “laborer” at around $300 per week, which means the second servant owed the first servant a sum roughly equivalent to about $5000 in today’s currency!  This is quite a substantial sum of money and not something that can just be brushed under the rug!  To me, I hear Jesus saying in this passage that even when we have serious grievances against others, when they have hurt us terribly, when they owe us a significant debt, we are to remember that we have been forgiven an impossible debt and show the same mercy and kindness to others that Christ has showed to us.  In this regard, Colossians 3:13 speaks volumes to me: “forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if any one has a complaint (or quarrel) against another, as Christ has forgiven you, so you must forgive.”  Too often I find myself needing to forgive others for petty offenses and things that really are not significant complaints, but this verse reminds me that even when I have a serious complaint against someone, I should remember the magnitude of Christ’s forgiveness to me and extend the same to others.

By Daniel Barr

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