Aug 18 - Psalm 6:2

Have compassion on me,

LORD, for I am weak.

Psalm 6:2

Did you hear the story about the poor man who ran up a bunch of bad debts?

That story is all over the news all of the time.

The story that is not all over the news – did you hear about this? – is the story about the rich man who’s been forgiving huge debts.

The accumulated debt that’s been forgiven by this tycoon is billions upon billions of dollars. At least, that’s the latest estimate I’ve heard of this man’s generosity.

Who is this rich man?

The rich man is God. In Matthew 18:23-35, Jesus tells a parable about the magnificence of God’s generosity.

A king calls in his debts. A poor servant falls down and essentially echoes our verse for today, “Have compassion on me, Lord, for I am weak.” And the king generously forgives the debt.

Leaving the king’s home, the poor servant encounters an even poorer servant. Though he’s recently been forgiven of a great debt, he won’t forgive the poor man a smaller debt. He callously ignores pleas like, “Have compassion on me … for I am weak.”

When I’ve heard the accounting of these debts in Jesus’ parable, I’ve always been led to believe that the debt that God forgives is big and the debt that the first servant refused to forgive is small. That’s not true.

• According to Jesus’ parable, the poorer servant owed the first servant 100 denarii. A denarii was equal to a normal day’s wage. Thus, 100 denarii was about a half a year’s salary. In modern American wages, imagine someone owing you twenty to thirty thousand dollars. That’s a big debt. 
• Which means what? Jesus is acknowledging the true cost of sin. Sometime people really do hurt us. They incur big debts. Thus Jesus is saying that he understands completely that sins are big, hurts are real, and forgiveness is not easy.
• If the debt owed to us by others is big, then what’s the debt owed by us to God? HUGE!

The poor man, we are told, owed the king 10,000 talents. Now do some math: If just one talent was worth twenty years’ wages, that means 10,000 talents was worth 200,000 years of wages.

Here’s another way to put it. When Jesus was telling this parable, the entire gross national product of the entire roman empire was less than 1000 talents. Thus, Jesus was saying, humans owe a debt to God that is ten times all the money that was being traded in the entire Western world!

In modern American terms, if our current GDP is about $14 trillion dollars, that means your debt to God is about $140 trillion dollars.

That’s the cost of Jesus’ death to you.

I think I’d better put on knee pads!

I need to fall on my knees and pray, “Have compassion on me, LORD, for I am weak” … and needy … and desperate … and willful … and sinful … proud.

And then I need to fall on my face and beg for compassion for another weakness. I need to confess that I’m unforgiving too.

“Lord, you’ve forgiven me for so very much.

Help me forgive the real but lesser debts

that others have incurred with me.

Help me reflect your grace.”

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who after subtracting

his entire net worth

still owes $140,000,000,000,000

, however, falls before the recently forgiven servant, he won’t extend the same generosity.

In this parable, he tells about a servant who owes a king ten thousand talents. A talent was worth ________. That adds up to _________.

Jesus’ point? He’s saying that’s how much every single one of us owes God. The Son of God died on a cross for you. How much do you owe him? Billions!

Or let’s put that another way: How much do you owe him? Everything.

In the parable, the poor man “fell down before the king and begged him, 'Oh, sir, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.'” The result? “The king was filled with pity for him … and forgave his debt.”

That’s our verse for today. It is King David … and you … and me … falling down on our knees and saying, “Have compassion on me, LORD, for I am weak.”

But here’s another weakness that you, me, and King David have – though we’ve been forgiven much, we still have trouble forgiving others.

As a pastor, perhaps a quarter of the counseling I do boils down to the inability to forgive a “debt.” Imagine … something bad has happened. It is legitimately bad. In the parable, Jesus goes on to tell of the servant who’s been forgiven much, encountering another servant who owes him money. I’d always heard that this debt was a tiny pittance. For example, if the first slave owed the king a million dollars. The second slave owed the first one a few bucks. That’s not the way Jesus told the story.

The second debt was a major debt too. One hundred denarii was a half year’s wage.

Imagine! What’s a half year’s wages to you and your family? In America, that’s tens of thousands dollars. If someone – figuratively or literally – refused to repay me that kind of a debt, I’d be financially hurt. I would be angry, surely. I would probably be tempted to never forgive.

And that’s my weakness. Indeed, that’s a weakness that’s common to most all of us. Indeed, that’s why this story is one of the most powerful of the parables. Though we’ve been forgiven much, we still have trouble forgiving others. And that’s why every one of us needs to fall on our knees and pray, “Have compassion on me, LORD, for I am weak.”

Remember, it’s not just that you owe Jesus for dying in order to forgive you for a long list of sins.

It’s that you owe him for giving you another chance to forgive those who’ve offended you – even in big ways.

Who do you know who “owes” you a great debt. Start praying today for the ability to forgive them.

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who knows

that if he’s going to look like Jesus,

he’d better start imitating

his greatest trait: forgiveness.