P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

CONNIE: How would you like to keep all your sins? Just imagine, keeping them all in a little box, and never letting them go! It’s really not such a good idea. In fact, we’ve got a better idea for you today.

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko, and we’re here to remind you that God’s kingdom is the kingdom of grace. A place where the focus is on getting rid of sins, not on keeping them or heaping them up.

CONNIE: Why would anyone ever want to keep their sins, anyhow?

LONNIE: Well, Connie, that’s a very good question, and I’m not sure I have a good answer for it. But we’re looking at one of Jesus’ parables today in which a man ends up keeping his problems even though he’d been offered the chance to have them forgiven.

CONNIE: Forgiveness is a very important part of the gospel message, and it’s also a very important part of life in general. Study after study has proven the importance of developing the ability to let bygones be bygones and to move on with the spirit of forgiveness. We have a wonderful story of forgiveness, and how it can change lives, for you today. You’ve probably heard Michael J. Harris’s music on our broadcast from time to time, and today we’re going to talk with Michael and his wife Amber about the part that forgiveness played in establishing the wonderful gospel ministry that they have today. Ken Wade Spoke with Michael and Amber.

KEN: I want to welcome both Michael and Amber Harris to our program today. Michael you’re on first! Now Michael, I know from reading your book that you come from a bit of a rough background.

MICHAEL: Yes. I’m from the South side of Chicago in a very drug and gang infested area, and I even used drugs for several years, and I finally met a wonderful woman from the Fiji Islands, though I continued to abuse drugs which I thought I was in control of, and this led to a very severe automobile accident.

KEN: …and a great tragedy in your life.

MICHAEL: Yes, it left my wife a paraplegic, from the waste down, and it just ripped our marriage to the core.

KEN: I’m sure it must have, now, and I have invited your wife, Amber, to be with us today. Hello Amber!

Amber: Hello Ken.

KEN: Now, Michael has told us a little bit about being responsible for the terrible accident that left you a paraplegic. How about yourself, did you harbor a little bit of that hatred in your own heart?

AMBER: Yes I did! Ken, I was so caught up in my hatred that I was not paying attention to what the Holy Spirit was telling me through the scriptures…

KEN: …noew, as I understand, you came back from the hospital after 51/2 months, is that right? You came home, and Michael wanted to take care of you, but there actually came a time when Michael actually asked you for money to go and get drugs. That kind of led to your realizing that you needed to go back to you’re family, which is where?

AMBER: Fiji.

KEN: Clear back in the Fiji Islands. How did you feel about Michael while you were there?

AMBER: The First couple of months I had a lot of hatred, and I was trying to except the fact that I may never walk again, and there were a lot of tears and a lot of anger within me.

KEN: But you told me that there came a time when you were ready for forgiveness.

AMBER: You know, I was reading my Bible and praying until I read the scripture in Matthew 23, which said if you bring you’re gift to the alter, remember that you have something against your brother, and I felt like such a hypocrite, because God forgave me but I was unwilling to forgive Michael. I wanted so badly to be forgiven from my sins, but I couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive the man that had destroyed my life.
KEN: So what changed?

AMBER: Well, the Lord showed me, don’t look at Michael, and look at who’s behind Michael and he was trapped by Satan. What happened had nothing to do with me.

KEN: Meanwhile back in California, Michael was going through some struggles of his own, and I understand that he came to a point where he believed that God had delivered him. He then made a phone call to you, when that phone call came he was inviting you to come back to California, what was going through your head and how did you respond.

AMBER: Well, the Lord showed me that God didn’t just die for me, but that he also died for Michael, and that’s when the lights went on, and then the Lord showed me that He would give me a new heart and a new spirit. I said Lord, I can’t do it, and you do it.

KEN: So during that call, you said yes I’ll come back, but not as a wife but as a friend. So now, through your testimony, you say that you actually see men crying, coming forward.

AMBER: Yes! In church, men being brought to tears in the presence of the Lord, and it’s important to forgive, because if you do not learn to forgive, God cannot forgive you. We tend to take that scritputre very lightly.

KEN: Thank you.

“There’s a Wideness”, Michael J. Harris, from There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy CD.

CONNIE: Amen! Thanks Michael and Amber for that wonderful story of forgiveness and for the wonderful music about it as well.

LONNIE: Michael and Amber’s story is told in the book Set Free, and we’d like to share the book with you. We’ll give you information about how you can receive a copy of this wonderful story at the close of our broadcast.

CONNIE: But right now, let’s turn our attention to Lonnie’s message for today, “How to Keep Your Sins.”

How to Keep Your Sins
There’s a wonderful passage in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where the hero of the story wakes up the morning after he and Huckleberry Finn have first caught a glimpse of the fantastic treasure that will eventually change their lives forever.

The morning after, Tom can’t quite decide whether the thousands of dollars in silver and gold were real or just a dream. Finally, as his mind clears, he concludes that it must have been only a dream. Mark Twain explains it this way:

There was one very strong argument in favor of this idea—namely; that the quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to “hundreds” and “thousands” were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in actual money in anyone's possession. If his notions of hidden treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars.

So you see, poor Tom Sawyer can’t even imagine that so much money exists anywhere in the world, let alone someplace where he might be able to lay hands on it.

I wonder if the people who first heard Jesus tell the parable of the unjust steward weren’t in about the same boat. The story begins this way: “‘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 ten thousand talents was brought to him;’ ” (Matthew 18:23, 24, NRSV).

Ten thousand talents! How could anyone in Jesus’ audience imagine so much money? How much was a talent? You ask. Well, a talent originally referred to about as much weight as man could carry fully loaded. It amounted to nearly a hundred pounds. So, whether you were talking about 10,000 talents of silver or 10,000 talents of gold, it really didn’t matter. The point was that it was way beyond what anyone could imagine.

In Jesus’ day, a talent represented about 6,000 days’ wages for a common laborer. In other words about twenty years’ worth of work. And that was just one talent. 10,000 talents would represent what a man could earn in 200,000 years!

In other words, in today’s terms, 10,000 talents would represent several billion dollars.

How could a mere servant ever run up that kind of a bill with his master? Well, in Jesus’ day he probably couldn’t. King Herod was probably the wealthiest man any of Jesus’ listeners had ever heard of, and at his death, Herod’s will make provision for the distribution of only 1,500 talents to his various family members.

So why would Jesus choose to use such a huge number in His story?

Well, it probably got people’s attention for one thing. For another thing, He’s talking about the grace of God here. And when you talk about God’s willingness to forgive, a billion dollars isn’t even dust on the scales.

But the story is intended to have shock value. To shake people up and make them think. And that it does. The slave’s circumstances were not unfamiliar to Jesus’ listeners. They had no doubt seen people from their own village hauled away to court and sold into slavery for their debts. This was not something that was supposed to happen under biblical law, but under Greek and Roman law it was a common occurrence.

But what was a fellow who was already a slave supposed to do about his debts? Here’s where the story takes a humorous turn. I can picture Jesus’ audience starting to chuckle, and then bursting out into laughter when they heard how the slave responded to his master’s charges: “So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ ” (Matthew 18:26 NRSV).

Picture the crowd around Jesus. Can you see them nudging each other, smiling, laughing, commenting—“What’s this fellow think he’s going to do to pay off that kind of debt!”

But then, as things quiet down, Jesus has an even bigger surprise for them. Here it is in verse 27: “And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.”

Whoa! How is that possible? Who could possibly ever afford to forgive a debt like that?

It’s more money than any of the people can even imagine—and now Jesus is saying that the master just out and out forgave it.

Instantly the lesson must have dawned on anyone who had followed Jesus and listened to His stories before. Jesus is talking about God, and God’s willingness to forgive people. End of story.

But no, not end of story. The story goes on.

Now the slave who has been forgiven a debt that he could never repay leaves his master’s presence and immediately bumps into a fellow-slave who owes him a sizable debt. A hundred days’ wages. Now, admittedly, that’s pretty small potatoes compared to what he’s just been forgiven. But it’s still a hefty chunk of change. And of course you’d expect that this fellow who’s just been forgiven so much would have learned something from the experience—would have absorbed some of the goodness that had just come his way—and would want to share his good fortune with others.

But not this guy! He immediately seizes his debtor by the throat and demands instantaneous payment, and when he can’t get it, he throws the poor fellow into prison.

By this time Jesus’ listeners must have been appalled. Is the unforgiving slave going to get away with such brazen misbehavior?

Of course not. Jesus brings the story to a satisfying conclusion this way: “‘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’ ” (verses 31-34).

Wow! That’s severe.

In fact it’s a life sentence. There’s absolutely no way this poor fellow is ever going to get out of jail—and notice—it doesn’t say he was merely sent to jail. It says he was handed over to be tortured until he could pay it all!

Now, before we go too far in applying the meaning of this parable, let’s remember that in the biblical system given by God, ongoing torture was not part of the criminal justice system. In fact there was a strict limit put on the number of blows that could be inflicted for punishment. In Deuteronomy 25 God set the limit at 40 blows: “‘if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, the judge will cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence, according to his guilt, with a certain number of blows. Forty blows he may give him and no more’ ” (verse 2, 3, NKJV).

So I don’t think we should use this parable to imply that God wants to torture people interminably. But the story does have some very important lessons for us.

For starters, consider how the king first responded when the servant asked for a little time to repay his debt. He forgave him the whole thing! Who in the world could afford to forgive a $6 billion debt? King Herod couldn’t. Even Caesar probably couldn’t. And so we sense intuitively that Jesus must be talking about God here…. And that he’s talking about God’s grace, not God’s justice.

There’s something more we’re supposed to learn here as well of course. Because by the end of the story we discover that even God’s grace has its limits.

Remember that in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And after the prayer He appended this little reminder: “‘for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ ” (Matt 6:14, 15, NKJV).

Forgiveness is a very important part of Jesus’ gospel message. Both being forgiven and forgiving others. The two must go hand in hand. Why is God so stubborn about this? Is forgiving others a work we must do in order to earn forgiveness?

Well, for one thing, consider the effect of not forgiving. A recent study conducted by that Kaiser Permanente medical group in Oakland, California found that people who score high on a scale measuring anger and hostility suffered far more hardening of the arteries than people who had low levels of anger and hostility. And another study found that those who are prone to anger have three times the probability of having a heart attack as those who are less angry.

I don’t know if you heard the series of programs we did a while back on our daily broadcast titled “I’ve Got To Nurse This Grudge Because it’s Sick,” but judging from the responses we got, many of our listeners found it an especially compelling series. It seems there are a lot of people out there who need to find ways to forgive effectively in order to get the anger and hostility out of their lives.

Jesus didn’t speak this parable in order to threaten people with the consequences of not forgiving, but merely to reinforce in their minds the importance of forgiveness. Just before He told the story, Peter had come to Him and asked how to handle the situation when a brother sinned more than once and came and asked for forgiveness. And Jesus gave His famous reply that we should forgive our brother up to seventy times seven times.

Forgiveness is the reason Jesus came to earth in the first place…. To provide forgiveness for all of us.

On the cross, with the excruciating pain of nails driven through His hands and feet, He could still cry out to God, “Father, forgive them!”

Jesus came to earth not only to provide forgiveness, but to provide an example and teach us how to be like our Father in heaven. And that is why that parable of the unjust slave who fails to pass on the forgiveness he has received is so important. It’s at the very core of what Jesus came to earth to teach us.

Friend, I’m not sure how it his with you. I don’t know whether you are one of those people who find it natural and easy to forgive, but I know that I am sometimes tempted to hold hard feelings in my heart. To seek ways to get to revenge. To nurse a sick grudge! Jesus appeals to my heart, and to yours: “Don’t do it!” “Don’t hang on to those hard feelings. They won’t do you any good. And if you let your heart be hardened by hostility, it will eventually make a separation between you and your God. A separation that will ultimately become permanent.”

I don’t want that for my life, and I'm sure you don’t want it for yours, either.

Think if it. Just think of how many things God is willing to forgive us for, and how much it cost Him to be able to do that—more than the gold 10,000 men could carry on their backs. Because Jesus bore the weight of all the world’s sins on His back.

Dare we then hold any misdeed injustice against another man or woman? Dare we be like that unjust slave?

If we do dare, then Jesus’ warning at the end of the parable is for us. Referring to the harsh treatment given to the unjust slave, Jesus warned: ‘“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart’ ” (Matthew 18:35, NRSV). He’s saying—if you want to hang onto your sins and pay the penalty for them, you’re welcome to them. I won’t force you to be either forgiving OR forgiven! But remember, the two go hand in hand.

This parable calls us to remember the extreme importance of forgiveness in the Christian’s life. Both being forgiven and being forgiving. It’s what being a Christian all is about, and if you, like me, find it hard to be forgiving sometimes, then we need to pray and ask God to give us the power to forgive—so that we can receive the gift of forgiveness.

Because I don’t want to keep my sins—do you?

“What Sin”, Michael J. Harris, from There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy C