Matthew 18:23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

People don’t get mercy these days.  All you have to do is watch the nightly news and you see the wicked servant wanting his pound of flesh. Retribution. Revenge.  Justice on their terms.  People ripping each other apart because they don’t understand the Kingdom idea of mercy.

Or maybe they don’t want to understand.

Mercy is a Kingdom idea.  We might refer to heaven as Club Mercy because it will belong to those who showed mercy to others.  They didn’t dwell in the flesh or in selfishness, greed, hatred or even envy of their fellow man.  They didn’t resent another’s privilege or feel as though they were gypped in life. When they were wronged, they turned the other cheek.  When they were insulted, they remembered the insults they hurled at their fellow man not realizing it was Jesus who felt every one of them.  When someone asked for forgiveness, they granted it–not because it was easy–but because it was the only right response of those who have been forgiven.

Eternal residents of Club Mercy have this in common: All of them know that any debt they may be owed by their fellow man is nothing compared to what has been forgiven them by the King of Kings.

Jesus is not some nicey-nice whitewashed pansy when He says,

This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”  

He didn’t say that to a “good and faithful servant” who had shown mercy to others, but to a WICKED one who refused to be merciful.  Where are you today?  Do you know the meaning of mercy?

Matthew 13:47 “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied.

In Jesus’ day, fishing was a common livelihood.  Boats went out into a lake or a sea with nets attached.  The nets would have weights at the bottom and corks at the top to keep the nets extended.  The two boats worked together to take the half-circle of net and using its long ropes, drag the net ashore.  The net would have all kinds and sizes of different fish in it.  Only the very smallest of fish would be able to swim through the openings in the nets.

When the fishermen arrived on the beach with their catch, they’d begin sorting the fish into categories:  good fish and bad fish.  Good fish were put into stone or clay basins.  The unclean fish (those without scales or fins, see Deuteronomy 14:9-10) would be thrown away.

Jesus says that this kingdom likeness refers to the end of earthly time.  There will be a gathering of the visible church (like a net filled with all kinds of fish), but then there will also be a purifying.  Jesus does not look at the net and see a bunch of dud-fish that are only worth throwing out.  Just like the story about the field with wheat and weeds, there is a sorting that goes on at the end of time.  The good are kept.  The bad are thrown out.

In every church, there are those who have every evidence of being genuine Christ-followers. 

But in every church there are also those who present no true evidence of belonging to God at all. 

They may sit in the same pews.  Sing the same songs.  Bow their heads to pray the same prayers.  They may give every external clue that they’re just like believers…except…they are unclean.  They are missing the seal of the Holy Spirit because their faith was never genuine, heartfelt, or truly submitted to the Father.  Maybe they went through all the motions for other people to see, but willingly abandoned Jesus on all the time outside of the public display.

Jesus is not interested in your Sunday best.  He’s interested in your everyday best. 

The net doesn’t do the sorting.  The net is for gathering.  But we must bear in mind that the Kingdom of heaven will be purified by the hand of God, sorting each of us according to what we did with Jesus.

Matthew 13:44 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

In the second installment of Jesus’ parables saying “The Kingdom is worth giving your all”, we see a merchant who is always on the lookout for the very best pearls.  Just like yesterday’s hidden treasure in the field, today’s pearl merchant gets it: this pearl is worth total sacrifice to have it.

The other day, the family and I went to Cold Stone Creamery where the sizes of ice cream are known as Like It, Love It, and Gotta Have It.  While we were there, I found myself thinking about this parable.

Would the fine pearl of great value be known as Really Gotta Have It, Drop Everything&Get It or Kingdom of Heaven Su-Pearl-ative?  Well, it doesn’t really matter because irrespective of what we might call it, Jesus says “The Kingdom of Heaven is worth giving your all.”

Do you Like It, Love It, Gotta Have It or are you willing to give up absolutely everything for it?

Matthew 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Do you view salvation to eternal life in Jesus Christ as the greatest treasure you could ever encounter?  Once you found it, would you give up everything to preserve it and to take ownership of it?  That’s what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

How many of us, however, just go about our daily routines

as if Jesus merely accessorizes our lives? 

If we were to lose what we paid no price to gain,

would we think, “Oh well.  Easy come.  Easy go?” 

Or would we be in a panic, desperate to get it back?

Money—you can’t take it with you.   Lake houses and fancy cars—they’ll get passed on or sold when we leave this earth.  Stocks and bonds and gold and silver will all be left behind.  But salvation is different.  The martyred missionary to the Auca people in Ecuador, Jim Elliot (1927-1956), said it this way,

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Do you view the Kingdom as that kind of treasure?

Matthew 13:33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Baking homemade bread is kind of a lost art.  Even with the advent of bread machines (like the one I bought at a Christian thrift store), bread baking doesn’t mean today what it would have meant to those hearing Jesus’ parable.  Bread was a staple and baking bread was a daily occurrence.

Many kids grow up these days not even knowing what yeast dough smells like or the way the dough ball grows and puffs.  One of my fondest memories was when my grandmother would come to visit and would bake homemade bread.  There is no better sensory experience to communicate home and hearth than bread…made from scratch.

I love baking bread.  I love the feel of warm yeast dough as it rises.  I love how it’s heavy and yet, in another sense, very light.  What’s heavy is the flour and the water and depending on the recipe, sometimes eggs or butter.  What’s light is the air created by yeast, Click the yeast article to see how it works.

Here’s something you didn’t expect in a devotional:  Recipes!

Try these yummy dinner rolls:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-Dinner-Rolls/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Thumb&e11=cinnamon%20rolls&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe%20Search%20Results

Or these lovely cinnamon rolls…aaaah….so light and fluffy you’ll want to kiss the cook.  Don’t let the picture throw you off.  Just make the dough, fill them, roll them, bake them and they’ll look too good to photograph.  Maybe that’s what happened here–someone kept baking them and then eating them right away before the shutter could snap them in all their beauty.  The recipe is nothing short of amazing.  My son will attest to that.  http://www.food.com/recipeprint.do?rid=50722

Yes, I love to bake.  Yeast, it turns out, can be one of God’s greatest gifts.  It’s a helpful additive to food, but here in our parable (yes, I do have a point), it’s also a wonderful illustration of the Kingdom of Heaven.  What starts out as small and really not all that interesting–it smells funny and it’s brown–yeast, when mixed in with flour and other ingredients does miraculous things.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast.  The yeast of a well-lived Christian life can permeate everything we do and turn something kind of funky into something that seems just like heaven.  Let this yeast work throughout your life and let it yield airy, beautiful, fragrant results…yeah.  Yeast, tiny powerful yeast–that’s what the Kingdom of Heaven is like!

Matthew 13:31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Ever felt insignificant?  I do all the time.  I wonder what I’m really doing or what I’m actually accomplishing for the Kingdom.

Little bits of faithfulness here and there, but it seems like it doesn’t make a difference in this world.  Yet, Jesus tells us that this is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  It’s like a mustard seed.  So my eyes are fixed on the horizon for the mustard tree and perching birds that God will bring as He grows the Kingdom of Heaven through my little mustard seed.

Evidence of God’s work:  From small beginnings, something spectacular!

Matthew 13:24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ 28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ 29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'”

As a person who loves to garden, this parable hits home.  I do my best to prepare the soil to have a weed-free garden and then it seems like overnight, an enemy comes and plants a bunch of weeds.  In the Kingdom of Heaven parable above, the wheat sprouted and grew and everything was fine!  Until…

Until that critical moment when the wheat formed heads. 

Heads of what? 

The next generation of wheat–fruit from his hard work.

Isn’t that what always seems to happen in our spiritual lives?  We’re just about ready to have a spiritual breakthrough or make a Kingdom impact in someone else’s life and then thud.  Problems.  Obstacles.  Weeds!

Not just weeds growing around the outside edges or in select clumps of total weediness.  Nope.  They’re spread throughout.  The owners servants didn’t see the good seed he planted. It seems they only saw the weeds.  To the owner, there was probably disappointment and frustration.  I experience this all the time in ministry.  Nothing ever seems to go as I plan it.  To the servants, they were analyzing the situation for its problems and not seeing the presence of the wheat.  It was still there.

Is the field half-wheat or is it half-weeds?  Plenty of bystanders are satisfied pointing out our shortcomings or failures to produce sufficient fruit.  Ministry partners will tell us we ought to give up.  Too many weeds to be worth it.  Stop wasting your time for so little visible reward!  But we must not give in to these voices.

In our spiritual journey, let’s not forget that when we encounter obstacles and frustrations as we’re nearing a breakthrough or a tipping point,

 There is still wheat. 

There is still wheat so persevere until the harvest.  The fruit–the next generation of wheat–is growing there.  It’s all about the next generation and it matters greatly.  It is still worth harvesting.  Kingdom work is always worth doing.  And we’ll always have an enemy coming against us and sometimes fellow workers who don’t see the wheat for the weeds.  They’ll do the enemy’s work of discouragement.  But the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed and harvested, irrespective of what enemies and obstacles and weeds arose.

One of the most remarkable exchanges in the Bible is from a controversial passage.  It is debated because it is missing from some of the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John.  I’m glad those who compiled our Bibles included it because it’s so beautiful.

John 8:1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. 9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

It’s perfectly consistent with the rest of Scripture and for that reason, I find it encouraging.  God doesn’t desire to punish people.  He wants for us to turn from our sins and to pursue righteous living.

So it is consistent that Jesus doesn’t look for excuses to condemn people, to point out their failings, and dwell on their wrongs.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees, the hyper-religious sorts rushed to judgment.  They looked for ways to point out problems with other people’s lives.

Jesus was different.  Even when confronted with someone whose failings were plain, Jesus’ response was to offer no condemnation, just forgiveness and an admonition to leave sins behind.

I’ve been thinking on hypocrisy, forgiveness, and Paula Deen.

Let me see if I have the situation right:   Paula Deen swore to tell the truth in a deposition for a lawsuit.  In her telling the truth, she admitted that she had used the “N word” at some point in her life.   She told the truth, then her world came crashing down.  The Food Network dumped her.  Her sponsors dumped her.  Some of her fans have dumped her.  Anchors on news shows and pundits are all dumping on her for telling the truth.

Would they rather that she’d lied?  After all, in America, lies are the new truth.  Or so it seems when you’ve done something you can’t go back and undo.  She spoke the word so she had two choices: tell the truth or lie about it.  There was no going back.

Consider the hypocrisy, though, of what has been going on by all the people talking about it.  Those who ought to respond with forgiveness to her truth and her apology are refusing to forgive,  because apparently to them, the “N word” is the unforgivable sin.

When the truth is told before the Judge of the Universe, I wonder how the anchors and the fans and the sponsors and the Food Network executives will answer these questions regarding their entire life:

1. Have you ever used the word faggot for any reason other than describing decorative stitching or bundles of sticks?
2. Have you ever said, “That’s gay” but not in reference to something very cheerful?
3. Have you ever called someone a “cracker” or a “geezer” or “ho”?
4. Have you ever used words that aren’t fit for me to print in regard to someone, besmirching his or her character, referring to one of several body parts?

Or the one that will probably be most important to the Judge of the Universe who said this:

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7)

Deposition time, anchors and fans and sponsors and executives and Paula Deen and you and me.  Time to tell the truth:

Have you ever said “Jesus Christ” as an exclamation of frustration or said “Oh my God” without reference to Him at all?

The Judge will look at each of us, knowing the truth.

So here’s the question each of us should be asking ourselves:

Someday will I want the forgiveness that I am so unwilling to extend to Paula Deen?

So whether the “N word” is an insult or a word beneath your consideration; whether you’re tired of being called a ho and take it to heart or let it pass by, the person who spoke these will be accountable for his or her words.

But what about you? 

Your real question will be whether you will extended forgiveness to those who apologized

or whether in your hypocrisy, you withheld it. 

Matthew 6:12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Forgiveness is one of the most lacking things in American culture.  We—in our proud independence—do not want to believe that we must forgive others for their offenses against us.  Grudges are easier than forgiveness.

Many people will never apologize for the wrongs they’ve done to others.   They’ll withhold remorse when remorse is due.  They’d feel better for being honest with themselves and asking for forgiveness.

Sometimes people go half-way.  They’ll say they’re sorry.  The words are there, but it’s a veneer of regret.  We’ve seen it in testimony before Congress or in tweets or e-mails.  It’s as if saying the words is all it ought to require.  But forgiveness is something more.  It’s deeper than mere words.  It needs to be a heart attitude that we adopt for ourselves and our benefit, every bit as much as we do it for others and for making peace with them.

We need to understand forgiveness and the high standard we’re called to observe.

Jesus tells a story in Matthew 18: 21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. 23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Verse 35 is a scary revelation from the lips of Jesus.  He’s completely serious that forgiveness needs to be from your heart—it’s a heart attitude.  And forgiving others as Jesus has forgiven us is a high standard indeed.  What do you need to forgive today?