Forgive Us Our Debts

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our visitors. Take just a moment here to get everything set up and ready to go.

All right, we have the technology. Well, good to see everyone. I know it's always perilous to dim the lights on an afternoon like this, with the sun shining outside and the warm breezes starting to blow. But hopefully you can sit back and relax. We'll have all the scriptures and everything up on the screen and hopefully have some useful things to bring to you today. So many of you know I work as an accountant, so the idea of financial things are always interesting to me. People have encouraged me to talk about the financial area a little bit, so today I'm going to do that by way of analogy as we tackle the topic that I've called Forgive Us Our Debts. And today, of course, debt is part of our everyday life, some ways good, some ways bad. I had a friend back when I lived in Denver a few years ago who taught in the evenings as a professor teaching personal and family finance in a community college. And he told me just some amazing stories in terms of 22, 23-year-olds that were in his class and the tens of thousands of dollars of debt that those people, those students in that case had, and even people at that age group that had declared bankruptcy at least one time at that point in life. And so debt is actually a very pervasive thing in our society today, and for some people a very difficult thing to deal with as well.

And in addition, people's attitudes towards debt, the requirements to pay that debt, or perhaps what happens if you don't pay that debt, have changed pretty dramatically over time. Let me read you just a couple of examples from days gone by in terms of how debt was treated.

For centuries in ancient Greece, and this is from an article called A Very Brief History of Bankruptcy and Debt in the West, written by an attorney named John Brooks, for centuries in ancient Greece, if an individual was unable to pay his debts, then he, along with his wife, children, and servants, could be forced into servitude as debt slaves of the creditor until the debt was paid off.

However, this punitive approach toward the bankruptcy debtor eventually led to civil instability. As more and more ancient Athenians became debt slaves to their fellow Athenians, unrest rose to such a level that in 594 B.C., those concessions were made to the people, including the discharge of debts and the abolition of debt slavery. In ancient Rome, if one became insolvent and unable to pay his debts, Roman law permitted the debtor's creditors to dismember and distribute a debtor's body to the creditors in proportion to the amounts of debts owed to each. It's rather hard to see how such harsh punishment helped to compensate these ancient Roman creditors for their loss.

Other accounts that I've read said that rather than literally dismembering the person, they would divide the person's labors, and the different people who were owed money would receive the proceeds of that labor. In either case, fairly extreme. The term bankruptcy itself likely derives from late medieval and reticentance Italy. The Italian word, banca rota, supposedly came from the term broken bench.

Merchants in the Italian city-states of the time worked from a market stall or a bench. According to folklore, if a merchant became insolvent, his creditors would literally break his bench. While some question remains whether this actually happened, it's clear that the societal attitude towards the insolvent debtor that prevailed in Europe at the time was one that viewed bankrupt as deserving punishment for his financial failure. This last one will fall into the category of don't try this at home. According to Collier's Encyclopedia, the medieval Italians did offer some form of debt relief for those who could not pay all their debts if they exposed their naked bodies in public and then banged their backsides on a public post while loudly proclaiming, I am bankrupt, three times.

While certainly shaming, this was preferable to the dismemberment of their Roman forebears. I'll agree to that. In France, around the same time, debtors were required to wear a green cap at all times so that others would know that they had not paid their debts.

So, a little bit funny in some situations. I can imagine the people who made up some of these punishments had a little bit of fun doing it.

But the key point that I want to bring out is the fact that debt was treated in other societies and in times in history before today in a much more serious way, to the point where it caused, in many cases, servitude. The Bible, of course, uses elements of our daily lives to teach us lessons.

If we think back to different parables and stories in the Bible, we can think about things like, I am the vine and you are the branches. We heard in one of the sermons or sermonettes yesterday about the sheep and the goats, as people were being talked to who had a lot of experience as shepherds. So, many different examples that are used in the Bible that deal with everyday things that we deal with all the time. And the treatment of debt is a good example. Debt has been part of human society, whether we like it or not, pretty much all the way through as far back as you can go. And the lessons that are taught in the Bible related to the subject are debt, are critical as we move forward now from this Passover season.

Of course, those who are familiar with the things that we do and observe know that we keep the Passover at this time of year as a commemoration of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins as laid out in the New Testament. And we move forward now as we look towards the next Holy Days to the day of Pentecost, the day that I think all Christianity sees as the start of the Church when the Holy Spirit was given to the people of God.

So, what I'd like to do today is take a look and take a walk through the Bible and look at debt and how debt is treated. And I think we'll see some things that we might not have thought about before and some things that are very instructive to how we live our spiritual lives. So, let's start with debt and the Mosaic Civil Law. So, as we know, God has dealt with people throughout time.

And in the Old Testament, He took the children of Israel, He brought them out of Egypt, out of the slavery and the bondage that they were in, in Egypt. And it was right around this time of year, the time of the Passover. And laws were laid out at that point in time then in terms of how this society of people who were following God and led by God out of Egypt, how they should arrange their affairs.

So, let's look a little bit at how debt was treated under the provisions of that law. The Mosaic Civil Law shouldn't surprise us, did have provisions for debt. And as we read through it, I think you'll be perhaps a little bit surprised how much is said about the topic. And these laws were meant to balance out justice and mercy. To me, one of the interesting things, you know, we hear a lot said popularly these days about the fact we don't want to have anything to do with the God of the Old Testament.

He was mean, he was harsh, he was full of retribution, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

But the other thing we'll see as we look through this is that one of the things that's embedded actually in the Old Testament law, in this case in the Levitical laws that were given to Israel, is the undertone of mercy. And so let's look at that as we look through these provisions. So, first of all, under debt and the Mosaic Civil Law, let's talk about servitude.

We read about how in different societies throughout history servitude could result from debt. This was also the case in the Old Testament law. If you want to turn to it, otherwise, like I said, the Scriptures are up here. If you can read them, if your eyes are a little better than mine, you can probably still read them from the back. Second Kings 4 and verse 1, a verse that we've probably read over a few times before, in this case, the prophet of Elijah in the time of the kings. And a certain woman of the wives of the son of the prophets cried out to Elisha in 2 Kings 4 verse 1 and said, Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know your servant feared the Lord, and the creditor is coming to take away my two sons to be his slaves. So what we see here is the fact that at this point in time, as we've read about in other societies in the past, the idea of debt slavery was not unusual in this case because this person owed money after he died and was unable to pay, his sons would be taken as payment for that debt. Let's look at Leviticus 25. Leviticus, of course, is an area in the Bible where many of these Mosaic laws were given. And even there, it gives provisions that account for these things. Leviticus 25 and verse 39, If one of your brethren who dwells by you becomes poor and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a slave. So even in these laws that were given to Israel as they came out of Egypt, the idea that somebody could become poor and sell themselves into servitude to another person was contemplated within that law and exactly how that person should be treated and the fact that they should not be treated as a slave. So what are the other limitations when we look at this part of the law on how debtors were to be treated? We'll walk through several of those now. The law given to ancient Israel had a number of provisions that were put in there in order to protect people.

Again, we often think of the laws being full of retribution, but there were actually a lot of protections given and a common attitude, an attitude of mercy and a way to look out for other people that permeates these rules. Let's start again in Leviticus 25 and this time we'll read verses 35 through 38. So as a starting point, what's laid out here is if there's someone in need and we're talking here to the nation of Israel, so a nation of people that were following God's way and then were taken into the land of Canaan and given the land, and they were told that if there's someone in need among them, they're not to lend the money, rather they're to give to them.

Leviticus 25 and verse 35, if one of your brethren becomes poor and falls into poverty among you, you shall help him like a stranger or sojourner, that he may live with you. Take no usury or interest from him, but fear your God that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money for usury nor lend him your food at a profit. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. So the first injunction that's laid out here is that somebody becomes needy, they're to give to them. And there's actually two different words that are used here in verse 36 in terms of not taking usury and not taking interest.

And so we see also from a financial point of view that there's a difference laid out here between those two concepts. Usury is actually sort of an old word that we don't think about a lot today, but the fact is most states actually still have usury laws on the books. And what those do is they make it illegal to charge unconscionable or extreme amounts of interest to people for borrowing money.

Now any of you who've made payments on a credit card before would probably find it odd that that doesn't go against usury laws because the rates of interest on credit cards are just astronomical and unbelievable that somehow those don't fall within those statutes. But in this case it said don't take usury, no extreme interest, but don't even take regular interest from somebody who's in need, but rather give them what they need and treat them as a brother because they were to think back on the fact that God had brought them out of slavery and brought them out of Egypt. Let's turn next to Deuteronomy 15. Here we'll read in verses 1 through 3. Now a lot of people will say, and you've probably heard some people espouse this, that according to the Bible you're not allowed to charge interest or loan money at all. But if you read Deuteronomy 15 verses 1 and 3, that's clearly not the case because provision here is made for the release of debts. And if it was wrong to loan money to people and to have debt, you'd have no need for laws about the release of debts.

It's Deuteronomy 15 verses 1 and 3. At the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release of debts. And this is the form of the release. Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it. He shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother because it is called the Lord's release. Of a foreigner, you may require it, but you shall give up your claim to what is owed by your brother. Now, if you're not allowed to loan money to people who are needy, how could debts like this arise? Well, at that point in time, there was a lot of trading going on. So if you remember, for example, the account of Joseph, when his brothers threw him down in the well, what did they do? They were near a trade route and a group of traders, a caravan of traders, came by and they took their brother out of the well and they sold him to this caravan of traders that was coming along. So one of the things we know that was that at that time there was a robust trade going on across this part of the world. So it wouldn't be unusual at that point in time for people to work as merchants. So to be in a city and they might buy goods from traders who came in, they might need to go into debt to buy those goods, and then over the course of the next six months, nine months, whatever period of time, they would have those goods in their store and they would sell those goods at a profit over the course of time. It might require taking out debt ahead of time. Likewise, people built houses in cities, people had other types of businesses, so it was not unusual that people would go into debt. So these provisions were made for that purpose.

The other thing that's interesting to note here is that they were allowed here to continue to require the debt of foreigners, but not of fellow Israelites. And we'll talk more about that in terms of why that differentiation was made as we move forward. Let's look at another one. Again, thinking about the idea of mercy and how we treat other people that's brought into the idea of debt in the Old Testament. Exodus 22. We'll read verses 26 and 27. If you ever take your neighbor's garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down. For that's his only covering. It's his garment for his skin. What's he going to sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to me, I will hear, for I am gracious. So a pledge is something like today we would consider collateral for a debt, right? So if you go to the bank and you need a personal loan, they're often going to ask you to pledge one of your assets against that money so that if there's a problem with repaying the loan, they would come back and they would take that collateral or that pledge in exchange for the debt. And what it's saying in a situation like this is, if you're loaning money to a brother, don't take their warm tunic as a pledge. And if that person does not pay, you still have to have mercy on them. You can't take them and let them freeze to death at night because they haven't paid you. But rather, you should give them that that tunic back and have concern first about the fact that this is a fellow human being that has to live and stay warm for the night before you think about the money that you need to recoup from that person. Further, in Deuteronomy 24, Deuteronomy 24 verse 6, no man shall take the lower or the upper millstone in pledge, for he takes one's living in pledge. So in this case, if somebody's lending money, what it's talking here about millstones, back then you've probably seen that, you know, mills look the same in most parts of the world, right? You had a round stone at the bottom, you had another stone at the top, and usually you had some way of pouring grain inside of there, and then you had either a person or a horse or a donkey that would turn these stones around, the stones grinding against each other would grind down the meal, the meal, or maybe it was oil if you're making olive oil, would come out because of the pressure of those two stones together, and that's how you would generate food, right? So if you had grain, you would be generating meals so you could make bread. If you had olives, you would be generating olive oil for the many uses that they had back then for olive oil.

Again, being told, don't take away the productive assets of your neighbor in exchange for debt, because what are you going to do that person? You're going to leave them without the means to feed themselves, without the means to produce things, to earn money. So again, a specific attitude to be held towards people, even when they were not repaying the money. And then lastly, Deuteronomy 24 verses 10 and 11. When you lend your brother anything, you should not go into his house to get his pledge. You should stand outside in the man to whom you lend shall bring the pledge out to you. So there's an element of dignity here that's involved, right? And there's a message being sent. Just because somebody owes you money does not mean that you own that person. Okay, you can't just go and barge into that house and say, you owe me money. I'm going to go in and I'm just going to take whatever it is that you pledged to me. It says very specifically here, you wait outside, you ask the person to give you what's been pledged, and you wait outside for the person to bring that to you. Again, an element of dignity of the individual and the fact that you've not gained the power to just go in and barge into someone else's house, even though that person might own you, owe you money. So let's look a little bit further then in the laws. Like we talked about earlier, the Bible does make provision for the fact that you can go into servitude to another person because of unpaid debt. Now, I realize obviously that the topic of slavery and human trafficking and all those things is a real topic today and it happens, and I'm not going to go deep into explanation of it, but let me be perfectly clear that the Bible does not condone slavery, does not condone human trafficking in the way that we've seen it in our country's history and in the way that it's talked about today. And if you want to talk further about that, I'd certainly be happy to talk with you about that offline. But let me make it perfectly clear that's way outside the bounds of anything that's contemplated by the Bible. And to try to use the Bible to defend practices like that is just plain wrong. However, the Bible does make provision for the fact, like we talked about before, that because of unpaid debt you could end up in servitude or as a servant of another person for a period of time. Let's look at Leviticus 25. Leviticus 25 verses 39 through 41. If one of your brethren who dwells by you becomes poor and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a slave. So in the first instance, what this is contemplating is situations where somebody might fall into poverty so deep that it's better for them to live under someone else's roof as their servant rather than to live off the charity of other people for a period of time. In verse 40, as a hired servant and as a sojourner, he shall be with you and shall serve you until the year of Jubilee. And then he shall depart from you, he and his children with him, and shall return to his own family, and shall return to the possession of his fathers. So we see two types of release that were laid out here in the Bible. We saw one referred to earlier where every seven years debts were released. So at the end of seven years, if you owed somebody money, that debt was released. It was erased. It was wiped out. And in this situation, this Jubilee that's referred to is less frequent. It's every 50 years. And at that point in time, anyone who's fallen into servitude, anyone who's lost their inheritance in terms of the land, would actually go back to that land.

And so we won't turn to those verses, but there are other provisions in the Bible at that time because God had brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. He had brought them into the promised land, and he had granted that land to them as a nation. What he built into this system was a self-correcting valve every 50 years where if somebody made bad decisions, if they were bad harvests, if the father died and the family was not able to farm the land, whatever the events might have been, at the end of the 50 years, even if that person fell into debt servitude, that family would be freed. They would go back to their plot of land, back to the productive assets that had been given to them as a nation, and they would get a reset, and they would get a restart every 50 years. Protections are also applied to Israelites who might have fallen into servitude to non-Israelites. So we talked before about the fact that there was some differentiation made between the Israelites and the strangers or the other people, and that was because, again, God called the Israelites out, and He specifically gave the land of Canaan to the Israelites.

Not to the others, but to the Israelites. Let's read verses 47 through 54.

Now if a sojourner or stranger close to you becomes rich, and one of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner close to you, or to a member of that stranger's family, after he is sold he may be redeemed again. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his uncle's son may redeem him, or anyone who is near akin to him and his family may redeem him, or if he's able he may even be able to redeem himself.

Thus he shall reckon with him who bought him. The price of his release shall be according to the number of years from the year he was sold to him until the year of Jubilee. It shall be according to the time of a hired servant for him, so not as a slave but as a hired servant. And if there are still many years remaining according to them, he shall repay the price of his redemption from the money with which he was bought. And if there remain but a few years until the year of Jubilee, then he shall reckon with him, and according to his years he shall repay him the price of his redemption. He shall be with him as a yearly hired servant, and he shall not rule with him with over him with rigor in your sight. And if he is not redeemed in those years, then he'll be released in the year of Jubilee, he and his children with him. So again, even if you fell into servitude to a non-Israelite, you'd be freed. The other thing, and I apologize if I'm just being a financial geek here, but the other thing that I find really interesting that's laid out here, there's a form of valuation that's used very frequently today when you're valuing a business, and it's called discounted cash flow analysis. So when you're doing a discounted cash flow analysis on a business, you look at it and you say, how much cash flow is this business going to generate in the next x number of years, say 10 years? And the value that's ascribed to that business is equal to the cash flow that that business can generate. What I find really interesting in this passage, and you'll find it in other Old Testament passages that talk, for example, about the value of land, it lays out that same theory. Because when you go back in these earlier verses, what does it say in terms of how much it costs to redeem a person? It's all based on the amount of labor that that person has to offer between that point in time and the next Jubilee. If they're close to the next Jubilee, the amount of the redemption will be low. If you're far away, if you're 48 years from the next Jubilee, the amount will be much higher. Why is that? Because of the productive labor that that person can offer between that point in time and the Jubilee. So it's intriguing to me as you peel back some of these layers of what's written in the Bible and how much it really does parallel with things that we even use today and recognize in terms of ways to value things, whether that's assets or people's labor. So what are the foundational principles? Hopefully I haven't put anyone to sleep yet. I find this stuff interesting. Not everyone always does quite as much, but let's look at these two foundational principles that are back here. Nonpayment of debt had consequences. Specifically, in this case, could have the consequence of servitude.

But while there were those consequences for falling into debt or poverty, there was a requirement — hopefully we've seen that in the passages that we looked at — a requirement to treat people with mercy. And just because somebody went into debt to you did not mean that you owned them. It didn't mean you could do whatever you wanted to to them. There were very specific safeguards built into the system in terms of how people would be treated and the way that they would need to view their brothers and sisters as fellow human beings regardless of the situation that they'd fallen into. So mercy was central to the system, as we see in the different elements that we talked about in terms of no usury or interest charged to those in need, not taking essential assets and pledge from people, properly treating people who might have fallen into servitude because of debt, the ability to redeem them, and freedom from debt and servitude via the Jubilee.

So what are the reasons that are laid out there for mercy, even in the Old Testament law? I think if you think about them, we've already covered them, and we saw them in the verses that we looked at.

First of all, the recognition of where the children of Israel had come out of.

In many of these passages, and we'll look at one or two of them again in a moment, the ideas brought out, remember that you came out of Egypt. Remember that I took you out of Egypt.

Remember you were slaves in Egypt. The recognition of where they had come from and the condition they were taken out of was to make the children of Israel treat their brothers and sisters and other people differently. They would remember that they were given a free gift. They were given grace by God in being taken out of slavery. And the Promised Land that they lived in, the productive assets that they had, were a direct gift from God. Not something they developed from themselves, not something where they could stand back and say, I got this through my hard work, and I'm going to bear down on you and treat you differently because you weren't willing to work that hard. No, they were supposed to recognize the fact that God came and gave them this inheritance as a nation to all of them and that they were all equal in that sense as people in the eyes of God.

Let's look at a couple of these things as we wrap up this section. Deuteronomy 8 verses 2 through 18.

This case, the fact that God gave them the land and gave them their productive assets.

In verse 2, you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you and to test you to know what was in your heart and whether you would keep his commandments or not. And in verse 18, remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant, which he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you remember these sections in Deuteronomy, these are sections where the the law of God is being reiterated to the children of Israel right before they come into the promised land. And the proviso that's given here is, look guys, you're about to go into the promised land, you're not going to be wandering through the desert anymore, you're going to establish your own homes, you're going to be living on your fields, and these are things that you need to remember.

And one of the key things that they were told to remember, and it was to inform the way that they lived their lives, was that all of the plenty that they had around them, all of the productive assets that they were given, were gifts from God. And the way that they used those things and the way that they treated other people were all to spring out of that acknowledgement that they were gifts given to them by God. Deuteronomy 15 verses 12 through 15. If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.

And when you send him away free from you, you shall not let him go away empty-handed.

This I find interesting. Verse 14, you shall supply him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your wine press. From what the Lord your God has blessed you with, you shall give it to him. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you, and therefore I command you this thing today.

So we talked before about the fact that the Jubilee was every 50 years. In this case, it talks about every seven years, releasing people who had fallen into servitude. And not only that, recognizing the fact that the plenty that these people had brought in, the harvest, everything they had accomplished, they had accomplished in part through the labor of these people who were working for them. And as they freed them, they were supposed to give them liberally of their own things in order to set them back up on their feet. A very different example, a different attitude towards other people and how you treat them than you would typically expect. So in summary, God expected Israel to remember the condition he had taken them from and the ability he had given them to lead a free and productive life. And it was supposed to impact the way that they treated other people. He expected this understanding of the way that God had treated them and the gifts that he had given them to result in mercy in the way that he treated them. All right, so you should be asking the question, so what? Why does all this matter? Well, let's take this to the next section and talk about debt and the teachings of Jesus Christ. I think many of you can already anticipate some of the things coming up now, but debt and the teachings of Jesus Christ will actually see a lot of parallels here as we turn into the New Testament, teachings of Jesus, and how he speaks about debt.

Debt is equated with sin throughout the New Testament. Now, we often talk in terms of debt when someone wrongs us, right? Now, I don't know how many of you grew up with siblings, but did anyone ever have situations where you made a deal with a sibling because you broke one of their toys or something? You know, you'd give them half of your dessert for the next month or something because of some infraction that you had to pay for, right? We think about being wronged in terms of debt, don't we? From the time that we're little kids, really, we do. We have all of these different phrases that we use, colloquialisms, right? Like, you owe me. I'm going to get payback.

I'm going to get even with you. We're going to settle the score. We talk about wrongs that are committed as though they were debts, don't we? Things that deserve to be paid back one way or another.

But that's also a biblical concept. You can probably think of a few passages yourself, but let's turn to a couple of them. Matthew 6. Write in the Lord's Prayer, probably the most common one that most people can think of, equating debt with sin. Here in the Lord's Prayer, it says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And we know, of course, from the context of that passage, it's not talking about 20 bucks that you borrowed so you could have dinner.

Right? It's talking about sins and the fact that we should want our sins forgiven just as we forgive others their sins. Colossians 2, another place where this is brought out. This one from the New American Standard Bible. Verse 13, when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. And in verse 14, he canceled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he's taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. So the forgiveness of our sins is talked about in terms of forgiving debt, canceling the debt that we had.

What about unpaid debt and servitude? We saw the connection between the two and some of the passages that we were looking at in the Old Testament. Slavery as a result of unpaid debt, though, is not only an Old Testament concept. We also see it referred to in the New Testament, as we're talking about sins. Let's look in Romans 6 and verse 6. Knowing this, it says in Romans 6, our old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. And when you think about what people would have experienced at that time in life under Roman rule and debt and slavery, they probably understood this in a very deeper way, in a very different way than we do. Romans 7 and verse 14, the same analogy used. We know the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. And we know that sin in so many different ways is slavery, isn't it? There's been a lot of research done in past years now related, for example, to addiction and the chemical connection to addiction. I found an interesting article from the Harvard Medical School on their website from June of 2009. It's called The Addicted Brain. I'll just read a couple of sections from it. It talks really about the fact that chemically, even, the way we fall into addictions can really enslave us and be difficult to break free from if we don't have the proper help to do that. Drug addiction, it says here, has been a stubborn problem for thousands of years, but only in the last generation.

Has scientists come to understand clearly one of the reasons? It causes lasting changes in brain function that are difficult to reverse. That means that many altered brains, nearly 2 million heroin and cocaine addicts, perhaps 15 million alcoholics, and tens of millions of cigarette smokers in the United States alone. No simple solution is in sight, but we know much more than we did 20 or even five years ago about how the brain responds to addictive drugs, and that knowledge is beginning to affect treatment and prevention. The next section I find interesting. Why does the brain prefer opium to broccoli? There's one to contemplate sometime. The question of addiction has never been put that way by Stephen Hyman, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

The answer involves the nucleus acumens, a cluster of nerve cells that lies beneath the cerebral hemispheres. When a human being or other animal performs an action that satisfies a need or fulfills a desire, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released into the nucleus acumens and produces pleasure. It serves as a signal that the action promotes survival or reproduction directly or indirectly. The system is called the reward pathway. When we do something that provides this reward, the brain records the experience and we're likely to do it again.

Damage to the nucleus acumens and drugs that block dopamine release in the region make everything less rewarding. And it goes on to talk about the fact then that things that usually produce this feeling of reward as a result of hard work or effort gets shortcut by the use of whether it's drugs or other addictive substances to produce the same chemical reaction in the brain and reduces that same effect that you get from a normal result of, for example, work or working at something.

And so again, in these different ways, as we're built and wired as human beings, there are ways that we can become even literally enslaved to sin in a way that can become very difficult to break free from. Let's move on. I'd like to spend a little bit of time now talking about a specific parable that brings all of this together in the New Testament. It's called the parable of the unforgiving servant. I'm not sure how many of you recall this parable, but let's look at it together.

The parable of the unforgiving servant ties together all of these ideas of debt and sin and forgiveness and mercy, and it takes the idea of giving mercy to debtors to an entirely different level. So let's look at it in Matthew 18. It's passages in Matthew 18 verses 21 through 35.

So this all starts in verse 21 by Peter coming to Jesus Christ and saying, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?

And Jesus said to him, I don't say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Now, when you read in the different commentaries kind of what brings rise to this, there was an idea at that point in time that if somebody wrongs you, you should forgive him two or three times.

And Peter trying to show how he understands that it's even much bigger than that, says, I'm going to go twice that. It's seven times, isn't it, Jesus? I should forgive somebody seven times.

And Jesus Christ is saying with his answer, not literally keep a tally, and once you get to 490, 490, you're all done, you don't have to forgive anymore. He's saying, look, it's a multiple of that. We need to be forgiving to other people as a part of our nature. It's not a count. It's not a certain number of times. And then he goes into this story to explain exactly what he means.

Verse 23, therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants, and when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed 10,000 talents. So let's pause there for a moment. According to Clark's commentary, the word servant here means probably petty princes or more likely collectors of the revenue or taxes.

So among the ancient kings, it was not unusual to farm out or sell for a certain sum the taxes of a particular district or province. So when Judea, for example, was subject to Egypt or Rome, the kings frequently sold to the high priest the taxes to be raised from Judea on condition of a much smaller sum being paid to them. And this secured them a certain sum but gave occasion to much oppression in the collection of the taxes. It's probable that some such persons are intended here by the word servants. So what does that mean? So if we're living here, we're living in Grafton, the king who's in charge of Ohio could simply say to somebody living in Grafton, I'll tell you what, a lot of people making a lot of money off of farming in Grafton, you get to take however much in taxes that you want to for those people. But in exchange for that privilege, you're going to pay me a million bucks. So once a year, you pay me a million bucks, and you get to go to the people of Grafton, and you get to exact as many taxes from those people as you want to in my name as king. Okay, that's the example that he's giving here. And the fact that this person, then this servant, was called to account, because obviously if you're going to make that deal, then every year you've got to have a million bucks to give to the king. So in verse 24, when he talks about him owing 10,000 talents, what does that mean? Looking at the same commentary, it talks about the term being used here being myriad, so a myriad of talents, the largest number known in Greek arithmetical notation. So it's like saying today that somebody owed a billion dollars.

It's basically making an exaggerated statement, right? So he's saying, look, there was this guy, he was the king of Grafton, and he owed the king a billion dollars. So much money you can't even conceive of it. Another place I read about equated this to 60 million working days of wages. Okay, so the idea that's being put out here is this person owed so much money it was going to be impossible to ever repay it. But as he was not able to pay in verse 25, and anyone in that time period who listened to this would have clearly understood, of course, there's no way you're going to repay this billion dollars, his master commanded that he be sold, okay, not unusual from what we've read, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment would be made. And the servant, therefore, fell down before him saying, master, have patience with me and I'll pay you all. And the master of that servant was moved with compassion, and he released him, and he forgave him the debt.

Pretty amazing when you think of it, the amount of money, and that's the point of the parable.

But that servant then went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and he laid his hands on him, and he took him by the throat, and he said, pay me what you owe.

So what's a hundred denarii? Still a significant amount. A hundred denarii would be three to four months' wages, okay? So not a small amount, but theoretically an amount that could be repaid.

And when compared to a billion dollars, really a drop in the bucket. But this servant who was just forgiven of those sins, of that debt that was way beyond even reckoning, could not forgive this finite amount to his fellow servant. So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, have patience with me, and I will pay you all. But he wouldn't, and he went and he threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servant saw what had been done, they were grieved, and they came and told their master everything that had been done.

And his master, after he called him, said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all of that debt, because you begged me. Should you not also have 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 will do to you, if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Frightening words, aren't they? And it opens up the door to an area that's talked about a lot in the New Testament, in the teachings of Jesus Christ. We think about forgiveness as being unconditional, and many respects it is. But as we'll see in a few minutes, there are actually some conditions placed on forgiveness. And one of the biggest conditions is how we treat other people.

How we extend to other people forgiveness in light of what was done for us. So very similar to what we read in the parables, when we look back, we think about our lives, we think about the things that we've done. We realize, when we reflect on it clearly, the fact that we're as sinful, every one of us as individuals, as the next person sitting next to us. And what we've been forgiven of is immeasurable. When we recognize our sin, we recognize what we are as human beings, our inability to live the right way of life. But Jesus Christ and his sacrifice was applied to us. We were forgiven those sins. What are the other trespasses, much smaller in nature of other people, that we're still unwilling to forgive or unwilling to forget about, despite everything that's been forgiven us? You know, one of the great teachers, I think, in our daily lives today is how we behave in traffic, isn't it? So when I drive to work in the mornings, I go down, what is it, Somme Center Boulevard, and I head down towards 422. And there's two lanes there. There's a right-hand lane and there's a left-hand lane. The right-hand lane tends to get pretty backed up, right, because people are getting into that lane early and there's a big entrance onto 422 and they want to get set. But invariably, there are people who decide, I don't want to wait in line on the right-hand side, I'm going to get in the left-hand lane. And by getting in the left-hand lane, I can leapfrog past a whole bunch of cars and I'm sure I can catch an opening and cut into the right lane just before the entrance onto 422. Now, I've been known to do that a few times myself. And what is really revealing, and I'll admit that I've done it myself, what's really revealing is to watch people's behavior, because you'll see a car that got in there about a block before the turn. And what do they do at that point in time? Eyes forward, one foot away from the bumper of the car in front of them.

They're not going to look to the left to the next person who's trying to get cut in, and they're not going to let another person in. And I'll admit that I've been in that situation myself. But how self-aware is that? Right? After somebody just let us into traffic, what's the next thing we're going to do? We're going to make certain nobody's going to cut me off. Right? Because none of those bums in the left-hand lane are going to come and cut me off. Forgetting, of course, of the fact that what somebody just in the car behind me did. And it's just wired into us as human beings, isn't it? And that's why we have to sit back and we have to think about it. And so, just as we see you saw debt treated in the Old Testament, we see it treated again here in the New Testament, the fact that God is saying, look, there are things that I did for you. I did them freely. And you are to treat other people in the same way because of recognizing those things that were done for you. And the other thing I want to focus on, too, is it's a recurring event. You know, we look at the parable that we just read. What was the preamble to it again? It was Peter saying, how many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times? And Jesus Christ said, no, I said, 70 times seven. And so, when we think of that parable, how many times we fall into it, it's like this soap opera, right? This recurring thing that happens over and over again as we forget about what's been done for us, as we don't extend that level of mercy to other people as we need to. And then we realize what we've done, we come back to God, and we beg Him for forgiveness.

And what does He do? He forgives us again. Isn't that the fantastic thing about it? He forgives us again, and we have another opportunity. And of course, being human beings, we tend to blow it, but He gives us another chance as we strive to learn and as we have the opportunity to give mercy to other people. So we put it all together. There's a great deal of commonality between the treatment of debt under the Mosaic law and sin and how it's treated in the New Testament.

So like delinquent debtors before conversion, we're in slavery. We don't have any hope of freedom.

Okay, when you think of somebody who is in debt slavery, unless they had a relative that was rich and could redeem them out of it, they were going to be stuck in that situation until the next seven year cycle was up and they would be freed. And they were freed then by someone else's actions, and they realized it wasn't by anything that they'd done themselves. And recognizing then how they were treated and how they were freely given liberty was to inform them and impact how they treat other people. So the other underlying theme is mercy. We know that has to come from God's Holy Spirit. As human beings, there's only so much that we can do in order to truly be merciful and grant forgiveness to other people. And it's laid out as the essential action, not an option, but the essential action that people who've been forgiven of their sins and realize the greatness of the sacrifice that's been given to them, it's the essential action that comes out of their lives.

And it's something we have to think about as we look at the way that we live our lives. Because the fact is, if the Holy Spirit is working within us, there are things that aren't optional. You know, the fruit of the Holy Spirit is talked about in the Bible. The fact is, if you plant a good apple tree, that tree is going to bear apples. It's just going to happen. It's not going to be strawberries, it's not going to be grapes, it's not going to be thorns, it's going to be apples. And why is that going to happen? It's because it's an apple tree, right? That's the sap that's running through the branches of that tree, and that's what it's wired to do. And when we've been called by God and we've been given His Holy Spirit, the fruit that comes out of our lives cannot help but be the fruit of God's Spirit. And if that's not coming out of our lives, if mercy and forgiveness is not coming out of our lives, we have to look deep and we have to question what is it that's working within us?

Is His Spirit working within us? Is it coming out in the things that we do in our lives?

Let's look to Matthew 6. We talked briefly about this passage before in the Lord's Prayer. Matthew 6, verse 12. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Verse 14. If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses. None of us want to be in that situation. None of us do. Luke 6, laying out the same thing, verse 36 and 37. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not and you won't be judged. Condemn not and you won't be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Again, we see this equation working its way out, the fact that in order to receive forgiveness, we must grant forgiveness. So what is it then, at the end, that stops us from exercising mercy towards others that we should look at in our lives?

I think it's two things. One, forgetting that it's the mercy and grace of God that gave us a new life that we enjoy. And secondly, forgetting that each of us is only one part, one part of the people who are being brought to salvation. Again, this ties together very closely with what we read about in the Old Testament, as it was talking about debt, the fact that the children of Israel were to look at the fact that God brought them out of the land of Egypt. And He didn't bring them out singularly.

He brought them out as a people, and He gave them as a people an inheritance in that land.

So let's look at the first point briefly, forgetting about our former state.

Luke 18 verses 9 through 14, another familiar parable. Luke 18 starting in verse 9, Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. As we saw before, that equation is not something that can live with God's Holy Spirit.

Two men went to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. And in verse 11, the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank You that I'm not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this guy over here, this tax collector.

Greatest gift in the world is I'm not like that bum over there. Thank You. I fast twice a week.

I give a tenth of all that I earn. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He wouldn't even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and he said, God, have mercy on me, for I'm a sinner.

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God, for those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

We see the same heart here, don't we? The same understanding, the fact that what the tax collector had, the fact that he was a free recipient of God's forgiveness, something that in this parable, the Pharisee had forgotten. As he was glorying in what he had and how he looked and the things that he did, he forgot that essential of what had been given to him by God in the exact way that it was being given to the tax collector next to him. We're all heirs of the same promise.

Philippians 2, verses 1 through 3 and verses 5 through 7, again underscoring the same concept.

If there's any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having that same love, being of one accord and of one mind, and let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit.

But in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of man. So even Jesus Christ set this example for us, right? Where he, even though as the Son of God sitting there on the throne next to God, was willing to give all of that up, to come down to earth to give his life for us so that we might have life much more abundantly and have true life.

And that same example that Jesus Christ set for us is the example, or the life that we should be living out in the way that we do things, the way that we exercise mercy and forgiveness towards others. So as we wrap up for today thinking about debt and how it's treated in the Bible, through the Mosaic laws related to debt and servitude, despite what we might expect, God was laying out a pattern of mercy, a pattern of mercy in the way that the Old Testament laws were laid out.

The treatment of others was to result from the understanding of what God had done, in that case, for the Israelites and taking them out of Egypt. And likewise, when we looked at the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus Christ, we see that our sins will be forgiven, according to his words, in the measure that we forgive others. And the attitude then stems from an ongoing understanding of our sinfulness, our need for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the fantastic gift that he's given to us that we have the opportunity to offer to other people. So as we look forward from the time of Passover, when we think about the sins that we've been forgiven of, as we look forward to the day of Pentecost, a time when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church of God, we have to remember that the story doesn't end with us receiving forgiveness from our sins, but it continues. And as we live our lives, we have to let God's Holy Spirit live within us and extend that same mercy and that same forgiveness to others as we go forward and we live our lives.