Hank Smith: 00:00:01 Welcome to followHim, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come, Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:00:09 And I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:00:11 We love to learn.

John Bytheway: 00:00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you.

John Bytheway: 00:00:15 As together we follow Him.

Hank Smith: 00:00:20 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHim. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host and I am here with my 70 times seven co-host, John Bytheway. John, I’m not quite sure why I use that adjective to introduce you other than the fact that Jesus seems to think it’s a lot, and when I think of a lot, I think of John Bytheway. That’s kind of strange, but…

John Bytheway: 00:00:48 A lot of what?

Hank Smith: 00:00:49 A lot of good. A lot of good. 70 times seven comes up in our lesson today and we needed a scripture expert to come explain these things to us, John. Who’s joining us?

John Bytheway: 00:01:01 We are excited to welcome back Dr. Krystal Pierce. We’ve had her before and I just love reading this bio. It’s one of those that you read it and just go, “Wow.” So Krystal V. L. Pierce was born in Logan, Utah, raised in Taylorsville, Utah, but has also lived in California, Idaho, here’s where it gets really cool, Egypt and Israel. She received a PhD in Egyptian archeology and Near Eastern languages and cultures from UCLA and an MA and BA in Near Eastern studies from UC Berkeley. She’s taught classes in Egyptology and ancient Near Eastern studies at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies UCLA and UC Berkeley. She’s participated in archeological excavations and surveys at sites in Egypt and Israel. She’s currently the head registrar for the Tel Shimron Excavations in the Galilee region of Israel and the chair of archeology of Egypt session at ASOR. What’s ASOR, Krystal?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:02:04 So it is the American Society of Overseas Research. They changed it not too long ago to make it a little more updated.

John Bytheway: 00:02:14 Wow. That’s what I was going to say, yeah. Her most recent publications are co-edited volumes, excavations at the Seila Pyramid, and you’re going to have to help me pronounce this.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:02:25 Fag el-Gamous.

John Bytheway: 00:02:27 Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. And Approaching Holiness: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Old Testament. That’s a Religious Study Center and Deseret Book publication in 2021. So that’s Approaching Holiness: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Old Testament. And she and her husband, who’s also been on the podcast, Professor George Pierce, have two children and live in Vineyard, Utah. That’s such a scriptural sounding place to live. So welcome. We’re so glad to have you back.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:02:58 Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here.

Hank Smith: 00:03:00 Yeah, thank you Krystal for coming back. We always have a wonderful time when you’re here. Let’s jump right in to the lesson, Krystal. We have two chapters today, Matthew 18 and Luke 10. These are some action-packed chapters. Do you want to start in Matthew or Luke, or somewhere else?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:03:19 Let’s start with Matthew 18. I think that’s a good place to start. So maybe we can do a little bit of set up, a little bit of background to kind of remind us where we’re at. I think that’s always helpful. Just prior to this, we had the Transfiguration. We also had Peter’s confession that he believed Jesus was the Christ, he was the Messiah, and so His messiahship has been acknowledged. He has told them that they are on their way to Jerusalem and what’s going to happen there, that He is going to suffer and be killed and be resurrected, which they sort of struggled with that and we think about Peter, sort of his reaction to that was, “No, that’s not what we want.” There was a lot before this about really recognizing the identity of the Messiah. What does that mean?

  00:04:11 A lot of what Jesus is going to say in this chapter and in Luke 10 is to really show the people that the Messiah that they thought He was going to be based on the Old Testament and the law of Moses is a little bit different. He’s told them He’s not going to be there much longer. Matthew 18 is really His trying to set up the church or what He calls the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven so that it can continue on after He’s gone, after He leaves the people. He talks a lot about this is the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the Kingdom of God, the king is here and this is how we’re going to organize the church, this is how we’re going to treat each other in the church, this is expected behavior and that’s really what a lot of Matthew 18 is about, and then Luke 10 as well.

  00:04:59 So Matthew 18 is usually referred to as the discourse on the church or the ecclesiastical discourse because it’s sort of separated into three sections. It starts out with talking about the people in the Kingdom of God or the church, especially what do we do with new people in the church. So this is His reference to sort of little ones and how do we treat them, how do we help them, people who are new converts or still learning and growing and developing, how do we help them? And then He goes into those who are already part of the church and may have gotten a little bit lost. How do we help those who have lost their way? And then He ends with those who are in the church, what do we do if they have a disagreement, if they offend each other, hurt each other, and it’s all about reconciliation and forgiveness. How do we do that in the church?

Hank Smith: 00:05:56 And that never happens. It never happens with people in the church.

John Bytheway: 00:06:00 Has anyone ever used this idea?

Hank Smith: 00:06:02 Yeah, has anyone offended someone in the church? I can’t imagine that ever happens, but if it did, glad we have this contingency plan.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:06:11 Yeah, and I think He knew it would be a major issue. I think it already was sort of a major issue. He’s like, “I’m going to lay out some ground rules so we take care of each other and we can reconcile and help each other and be this kingdom.”

Hank Smith: 00:06:24 Okay, so this is kind of a when I’m gone, this is how my community is going to be ran. A discourse on how to behave.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:06:33 Yeah, once the king of the kingdom isn’t here anymore, what do we do? How do we continue on? This is Him trying to set that up as best as He can before He goes. So we can jump right into verse one because the disciples have a question for Him. This question says, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? Of course, Kingdom of Heaven, He’s been talking about this kingdom. He’s here, the king is here, He is building the kingdom. He wants the kingdom to continue, and it’s sort of supposed to be a reflection of what the kingdom in heaven will be like, like this kingdom on earth. They’re supposed to be very similar. They have this question, they’re concerned if it’s a kingdom, who is the best in the kingdom? Who’s the vizier, the vice president?

Hank Smith: 00:07:19 Who ranks the highest?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:07:21 Yeah, exactly. So like a worldly temporal… If we’re talking about a political government, we need to know the hierarchy of the government. It says at the beginning, at the same time. So this is coming right off of Peter being told he’s the rock of the church, he’s going to have the sealing priesthood keys of authority. They’re thinking maybe is it Peter? And so they ask this question. They’ve argued about this in several other places in the New Testament.

Hank Smith: 00:07:50 Yeah, other passages.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:07:51 Mm-hmm. What does he do? He calls a little child to them, sets the child in the middle of them, so that’s verse two, and then He tells them, “Except you be converted and become as little children, you can’t even enter the Kingdom of Heaven, let alone be the greatest,” and then He says, “If you’re humble like this child, then you’re the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven,” and I think this would be a shock to them. If you were to ask someone who’s the greatest in the kingdom, it’s the king, it’s Jesus. That’s the answer, but He brings out a child and doesn’t say Peter, doesn’t say John the Beloved. Children in this time period had no status, had no responsibility, no power, no authority.

Hank Smith: 00:08:41 Kind of like today, children are there, but we don’t ask them for advice usually or we don’t look at them and say, “That’s who should be the leader.” We mostly just wait for them to become adults before we I don’t want to say talk to them.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:08:53 But there’s this whole seen and not heard. They’re just there and they’re sort of seen as, in this time period, property of their parents. So this would’ve been a shock to say this child who doesn’t have education or power or wealth or even really a separate identity, independence, things like that, this is who’s the greatest, and I think this was sort of meant to shock them a little bit. We see this all over in the scriptures in the Book of Mormon. King Benjamin says, “You got to become like a child,” and then he lists all these qualities of children that are really good. I have this list here. He says, “Children are submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to the Lord. They easily forgive people. They’re very trusting of people. They easily love people.” You can think of all these great qualities that we know about kids.

John Bytheway: 00:09:48 On their best days they’re in a state of innocence.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:09:53 Yeah. And I think, to me, all of these different characteristics of children are good, but to me, when we’re told to be born again or become as a child, like you referenced the state of innocence, going back to that state of innocence. We know we’re told children cannot sin because they cannot be tempted. So it says that in the Doctrine and Covenants, and to me, when He says, “Be like this child or go back to this childlike state,” it’s because get to the spot where you’re not even tempted by sin. Maybe you’ve sinned, you’ve repented, you’ve moved on. You don’t even think about that sin anymore. You’ve become like a child. You’ve gone back to that state of innocence where you’re not even tempted by that sin anymore, and I like this idea of getting back to that point where you’re in that special innocent spot and then you have to work on the next sin and then maybe that sin becomes not a temptation anymore. So I like this idea too of this is who’s the greatest, the unexpected, which is what Jesus did all of the time.

John Bytheway: 00:10:58 All the time. And they seem, like we have said, that there’s other places in the scriptures, “Hey, who’s going to sit on your right hand and who’s going to sit on your left?” And the mother of the Sons of Thunder, doesn’t she ask that too? And they have this idea about that that… I don’t know. I think that so often we’re seeing Jesus say, “Okay, you’re thinking Gentile. You need to think this way. You’re thinking Gentile leadership, but actually the greatest among you will be the servant of all,” and it’s like you said, kind of turns things upside down a lot.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:11:33 Yeah, He definitely loved to make people think, shock people, but really make people think and not just here’s the expected response and what they think I’m going to say, and let’s say something a little bit different.

Hank Smith: 00:11:48 President Nelson once told a story way back in 2003 of a little boy who’s laying on an operating table. He’s eight years old, he has an appendicitis, he’s laying on the operating table. He looked at the surgeon and said, “Doctor, before you operate, will you pray for me?” The surgeon looked at the boy in amazement, “I can’t pray for you.” Then the little fellow said, “If you can’t pray, please wait while I pray.” Then on the operating table, the boy got on his knees, folded his hands and began to pray, “Heavenly Father, I’m only a little boy. I’m awful sick and these doctors are going to operate. Will you please help them that they will do it right? Heavenly Father, if you’ll make me well, I’ll be a good boy. Thank you for making me well.” He then laid on his back, looked up at the tear-filled eyes of the doctors and nurses and said, “Now I am ready.” Like you said, faith.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:12:41 Yeah, I think they’re more recently close to God, I think, physically. As we get older, we have more life experience. We lose some of that I think a little bit. So it’s beautiful when you think of a child and how just they get things sometimes more than we do. It’s amazing.

Hank Smith: 00:13:00 Yeah, and are quick to believe.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:13:01 Yeah. He does say you have to be converted. It’s interesting because if you look at the Greek word here, the root, the literal meaning of converted means to turn in the opposite direction. Oh, wow. That really makes me think about how do I need to turn in the opposite direction of what I’m doing right now and go back towards God or go back towards Jesus Christ. It’s such a great definition of what it means to actually be converted.

Hank Smith: 00:13:28 Yeah, that’s good.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:13:30 It’s interesting here because in verse six, He switches from little child to little ones. So He’s kind of trying to transition from not just talking about children, but also talking about those who are children, who have the nature of children, and this is sort of this concept of new ones in the church, new converts or those who are still learning and growing no matter what age they are, and He says, “Whoever offends these,” and this word, offend, means to trap or trip or obstruct, put an obstacle in front of them. So He is really trying to say, “We need to be really careful in the church with children, newly baptized children, or people who have just joined the church are sort of looking into the church that we do not put obstacles in their path. We have to be really careful with that.”

  00:14:24 He says it’s serious. It would be better to have a millstone tied around His neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea. And of course, these millstones are these enormous stones. They could be six feet wide, I mean, huge and turned by an animal usually in turning grain into flour. We do have records that Josephus, who’s this first century Roman Jewish historian, he says this was a real punishment that the Romans inflicted, and he says the worst part was not the drowning. The worst part was that they wouldn’t be able to recover the body for burial. That was the worst part. So that’s why it says, “Drowned in the depth of the sea,” because of course, having the body, preparing it, making sure that it’s ready for burial, a proper burial, maybe some things put into the burial people could visit, that was really important to them, and so the punishment was that you were just gone, not recovered, and it’s meant to shock us and the disciples who are listening that that’s how serious it is, we need to take care of those who are new believers.

John Bytheway: 00:15:39 Thank you for that, Krystal, because I had never thought of this as new believers or maybe children in their gospel growth or something. That adds a whole new dimension to how welcoming we are when somebody walks in to the church that we’ve never met or seen or that is new. I thank you for that.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:15:59 Sometimes we can come on a little strong with, I think, new people in the church. We just want them to know everything all at once, and sometimes it’s like a fire hose and put any obstacles in their path. Give them time to learn and to grow and to develop and really get their own personal testimony and understanding of Jesus Christ before we start bringing in, as Joseph Smith says, all the appendages, all the things outside Jesus Christ that can be hard to understand sometimes.

John Bytheway: 00:16:31 I was on a writing committee for the church a long time ago, and I’ll never forget what they told us. They said that the majority of the people that would be reading these manuals and teaching from them would’ve been members. Most of the people using them will have only been members for a couple years. I was just like, “Whoa,” and I think that’s why the basics are reiterated in general conference and things like that. We’re not talking about appendages, it’s faith in Christ and it’s repentance and it’s keeping the covenant of baptism and the covenant path. When you think of it that way, you think this is why we have to emphasize first principles over and over again.

Hank Smith: 00:17:14 Yeah.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:17:15 Yeah, if we can build that foundation, they can add to it.

Hank Smith: 00:17:21 I like what you brought up here, gentle with new members. I also thought of being gentle with my own children. President Hinckley said, “There’s much need for discipline within families, but discipline with severity, discipline with cruelty inevitably leads not to correction, but rather to resentment and bitterness. It cures nothing and only aggravates the problem. It’s self-defeating.” He talks about Doctrine and Covenants 121 and then he says, “I need not remind you that your example will do more than anything else in impressing upon their minds the pattern of life.” So just a call for parents, be gentle.

John Bytheway: 00:17:57 In that same place, Hank, 121, reproving betimes with sharpness. I remember Presiding Bishop H. Burke Peterson saying, “Sharpness means clarity. It doesn’t mean clenched teeth and harshness. It means with sharpness means with clarity.” I love that way of thinking of sharpness as clarity.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:18:20 Yeah, that’s perfect because in verse five, He says, “If you receive one such little child in my name, you receive me.” So the way we treat children is almost as the way we’re treating the Savior because His nature and what He tells us about Himself is very much like a child in terms of humility and these things. So that’s perfect.

Hank Smith: 00:18:44 I need to go tell my kids I’m sorry.

John Bytheway: 00:18:47 If you’ll excuse me for a minute.

Hank Smith: 00:18:50 Yeah, I need to run over to the school and tell them. Can I get them out of class? They’re looking at me. What are we going to do next, Krystal? So Jesus has said to this question, “Who’s going to rank the highest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” He flips it around and says, “You have to be humble and gentle like a child.” You said He introduced the idea of little ones, meaning new members and children, anyone. You have to be very gentle and very caring with these people. What’s He do next?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:19:21 Okay, so in verses eight and nine, he makes a comment on why the burden of sinning is so heavy and why it might be worth it to sacrifice some things to stop sinning, kind of going along with this idea of how we treat the… This is the transition between treating children and new converts and then getting into those who are already have been in the church for a while. So He makes some shocking statements here in verses eight and nine. He says, “If your hand or your foot offends you, then cut it off and get them away from you. Throw them away from you,” and then He says the same thing about the eye, your eye, “If your eye offends you…” And remember this word, offend, means is a stumbling block or a trap or a snare or something like that, “Then get rid of that,” because He says, “It’s better to remove these temptations or stumbling blocks from your life and be sort of temporarily have some discomfort than to have sort of eternal judgment for these sins.” It’s better to do that.

  00:20:30 So if you have bad eyesight and it’s actually literally causing you to stumble, you would go take care of it. You would go to a doctor, you’d get an exam, you’d get medication or glasses or something like that. So this is what He’s saying, get rid of the temptations out of your life, even if it’s as bad as sacrificing a limb is kind of what He’s saying here.

John Bytheway: 00:20:53 Elder Walter F. González in October of 2007 commented on this teaching that also appears in Mark 9, and this is what Elder González said, “Fortunately, the Savior Himself taught the meaning of cutting off our hand. It’s not about self-mutilation, but rather about removing from our lives today those influences that keep us from preparing for tomorrow’s times of adversity. If I have friends who are bad influences for me, the advice is clear. It is better for thee to enter into life without thy brother than for thee and thy brother to be cast into hell,” and that’s the Mark 9:41 JST, that last part that I quoted, but I love that he emphasized influences. What are we letting influence us and influences may need to be removed.

Hank Smith: 00:21:40 Yeah. John, I have that same talk in front of me. He says, “It follows that cutting off refers not only to friends, but to every bad influence, inappropriate television shows, internet sites, movies, literature, games, music. Engraving in our souls this principle will help us to resist the temptation to yield to any bad influence,” and then he says, “Today is the time to be valiant and decide to give our souls a serious profound exposure to the Savior’s teachings.” Great talk.

John Bytheway: 00:22:10 Okay.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:22:12 So we just finished the first section of the discourse on the church where He talks about taking care of new members and comparing them to becoming as a child, and now He’s going to talk about those who have been in the church and may have been lost. And we have this verse 11, which is one of the most beautiful verses I think in this chapter. He says, “For the son of man has come to save that which was lost,” and it’s short, but it’s succinct and it covers so many aspects of who Jesus Christ is, who He is. What’s fascinating about this is this title, son of man, usually refers to a human being, a son of man, but one of the things He’s referencing here with this title is the Old Testament sort of prophecies about the Messiah, and specifically Daniel. Daniel had a vision where he saw the Messiah who was like the son of man, but he came with the clouds of heaven.

  00:23:19 So we have this interesting duality. Jesus Christ is mortal, the son of man, but he is also immortal, the son of God, and He comes with the clouds of heaven. And then Daniel went on to see the son of man, this Messiah, would have dominion, glory, a kingdom over all nations, all would serve him, the kingdom could not be destroyed, and this is a lot of where they got these expectations of a warrior king. So when they read save, they thought save Israel from its enemies, from the Romans, from corrupt leadership, and He’s saying, “I’m coming to save that which was lost in another way. I am saving those who have gone astray or are confused about things or have lost their identity of who they are as a child of God.” So there’s this beautiful spiritual saving that goes on here.

John Bytheway: 00:24:14 I love that because that’s where we get the name Savior. That’s what He does, He saves.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:24:19 He’s definitely saying, “I am fulfilling this prophecy of these Old Testament prophets, but maybe not in exactly the way you think I am,” just like exactly in the way you might not think children are the greatest in the kingdom. So He is sort of turning things around like we talked about.

Hank Smith: 00:24:35 Yeah, He does that a lot, doesn’t He? He’s often saying the exact opposite of what you think He’s going to say.

John Bytheway: 00:24:42 I love the sermon on the mount. Well, actually blessed are the poor in spirit, and actually blessed are the meek. What?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:24:51 I love that too. He’s like, “You may have heard it said or written, now we’re going to elevate it to something much better.” He’s like, “You still have to do that, but now there’s more.” So He then goes and shares a metaphor about… I could see He says this and they’re trying to process, maybe thinking about Daniel’s prophecy and what does this mean He’s going to save those who are lost? And then he uses this metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep, and He starts out with, “If a man has 100 sheep,” and that’s a typical size of a flock during this period, so this wasn’t an outrageous thing. They’re probably thinking, “Okay, this is a realistic… I get this.”

  00:25:31 And He says, “If one of them has gone astray, He would leave the 99 others and go into the mountains and search for this sheep, and he would rejoice finding this sheep even more than the 99 that are still back, that are still safe.” And we have other scriptures, other verses that mention shepherds going off and finding lost sheep and how important it was. So they definitely would’ve thought, “Okay. Yes, that’s true. Even if one was lost, I know a shepherd, it would be valuable enough for this shepherd to go find that one sheep,” and this is where He is really referencing if there’s a lost sheep in the church, in the kingdom, you got to go and find it. It’s important. That person individually is important.

Hank Smith: 00:26:22 Whenever I hear this scripture of this, leave the 99 and find the one, Heidi Swinton tells this story of President Monson, who was 22 years old when he was called to be the bishop. One Sunday morning. He noticed that a young man named Richard was missing. That was not unusual because Richard often missed church, but Bishop Monson decided to try to find him first. He went to Richard’s home. When Richard’s mother answered the door, she said he was working at the gas station. So Bishop Monson drove to the gas station. He looked everywhere, but couldn’t find Richard. Then he felt inspired to look down in the grease pit at the side of the building. As he looked down into the dark pit, he saw a pair of shining eyes looking back at him, and he heard Richard say, “You found me, Bishop. I’ll come up.”

  00:27:05 Bishop Monson told Richard how much the Priest Quorum missed him and needed him. Richard nodded and promised to come to church the next Sunday. He came to church the next week and the weeks after that, then he and his family moved away. One evening, Bishop Monson got a phone call from the bishop in Richard’s new ward. He asked Bishop Monson to give a talk in the ward before Richard left to serve a mission. Richard served as a valiant missionary and he also later served as a bishop. He said the turning point in his life was when Bishop Monson found him in the grease pit that Sunday morning and encouraged him to come back to church. Isn’t that great? You found me, Bishop.

John Bytheway: 00:27:43 The grease pit.

Hank Smith: 00:27:44 When I try to explain this to my students, because most of them haven’t been shepherds, but quite a few of them have lost a pet before, a dog runs away or something and they’re out looking, and I say, “How many of you are that worry, that concern? You’re out there searching for this lost pet.” I’ve done this a number of times as a dad, searched for a lost dog saying, “Man, we’ve got to find this dog or everyone in the family’s going to be devastated.” And then when you find it, “I found her,” and everybody’s so happy that you found her. Maybe that’s not the exact same experience, but it is something similar where you can say, “You remember how we lost our little dog Esme? When we found her, that’s kind of bringing someone back to the gospel.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:28:27 Yeah, it’s in the same way pets are like family members, we would do anything to help a family member and we’re all family members when you think about it. There’s this definition of love by G.K. Chesterton, who is this philosopher, and he said, and this is paraphrasing, “The way to love anything is to realize that it could be lost, and what would you do to save that person or that thing?” This is what He’s talking about. He says, “This is the will of your Father in heaven,” in verse 14, “That no one is lost. No one perishes.”

  00:29:05 And I think sometimes when we look at verse 13, it actually says, “He rejoices more in the one that was lost and comes back than the 99 who were never lost,” sometimes I think we get a sort of prodigal son type thing where we’re like, “Wait. Aren’t the ones who were never lost, aren’t they the ones he’s most happy with?” But when you think about it, we will all be lost at some point. Every single one of us will be that one lost sheep at some point, and I think we all hope that when we are, that someone will come get us, someone will come find us and do the will of the Father. When He says He’s rejoicing in the one, that’s everybody because everybody’s going to be the one at some point in their life and you want to be saved.

Hank Smith: 00:29:53 Yeah. That’s wonderful.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:29:54 So now we’ve gone through how in the kingdom, in the church, new converts and children should be taken care of, how we should take care of those who have been lost or make sure that people don’t get lost who are part of the kingdom, and then He goes to what happens when there are disagreements in the kingdom, people have maybe hurt each other or offended each other, and then He gives some instructions about reconciliation and forgiveness. He gives some pretty specific things here that almost seem just self-explanatory, but He says, “If somebody has trespassed against you,” and in Greek this word trespassed, it literally means missed the mark. If somebody has missed the mark with you, and this could be a range of many things, like actually hurt you or just offended you. If this is happening, He says, “Go and talk to them privately. Try to work it out with the person,” and we think, “Well, yeah. Of course,” but do we do that?

Hank Smith: 00:30:56 We tell everyone else except for the person. We do the exact opposite of what Jesus says.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:31:03 And this word, tell, in Greek, it’s a legal term. It means properly explain things with evidence. So when you talk to the person, you be assertive and you say, “I feel this way, or this has hurt me,” and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to just automatically agree or repent, but you need to approach the person first.

Hank Smith: 00:31:26 Man, there’s so many great things in this chapter. Krystal, I’ve noticed in these verses that the Savior kind of gives an order. He says, “Look, if someone has really hurt you, go and talk to them and hopefully you two can work it out and you’ve gained a brother, but if he will not hear thee, then you can take other people with you to go and try to reconcile. And if he still doesn’t hear you, then you can go to a church leader and ask a church leader to work it out.” I’ve noticed that the Savior’s saying, “Look, you’re very likely going to offend each other. Hopefully you can work it out between the two of you, but if you can’t, you can involve the church to help you work this out.” In my mind, He’s introducing boundaries here, that if someone’s hurt you and they are not stopping, then you don’t really have to be alone with that person ever again because you can involve now other people and you can involve the church. I like the boundaries the Lord is setting up.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:32:24 Yeah. So there’s this great protection here. I do like that this is all about reconciliation too. When He says, “If they hear you,” which kind of makes it sound like if they’re just listening to you, but this word here in Greek is akouo, which is where we get acoustics from. So if they listen to you, surround sound, they really comprehend what you’re saying, and not even that they agree with you, but they really are taking in what you’re saying and listening completely, then you gain a brother. And this word gain here, this is a commerce word. It means to avoid loss, to come out of the situation with more than you had before. You don’t even get back to status quo with this person, you are maybe even closer to this person.

Hank Smith: 00:33:09 In a better place.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:33:10 Yeah, exactly.

Hank Smith: 00:33:10 I like that.

John Bytheway: 00:33:13 In the Come, Follow Me manual for individuals and families, there’s a quotation from Elder David E. Sorensen, which our listeners will recognize as the sponsor of our podcast. This was in your April of 2003 general conference. He gave a talk called Forgiveness Will Change Bitterness to Love, and this excerpt is in the manual from that talk, “Although, we must forgive a neighbor who injures us, we should still work constructively to prevent that injury from being repeated. Forgiveness does not require us to accept or tolerate evil, but as we fight against sin, we must not allow hatred or anger to control our thoughts or actions.” So I think what you guys are talking about boundaries, and I’m always intrigued with there came a point where Nephi in the Book of Mormon just had to leave. He couldn’t fix things with his brothers and just had to go. It’s a sad thing, I’m sure, for Nephi, but there came a time when we have to go, we just got to go.

Hank Smith: 00:34:11 Yeah. Sometimes I think we get confused at being a Christian means just turning the other cheek and-

John Bytheway: 00:34:18 Being a doormat to a degree.

Hank Smith: 00:34:21 Yeah, but the Lord has established boundaries in this chapter and you can think of other times where Nazareth tried to kill Him and He never went back, or when Peter said something that was out of line, He corrected him swiftly. To say that Jesus didn’t have boundaries would be incorrect. He definitely has boundaries of things you can say and do to Him or around Him that He’s going to say, “Nope, that’s not okay.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:34:47 Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s great. He says, “Try to work it out yourself, then get witnesses,” and we know the witnesses were not necessarily to witness that this person had hurt you, but they were a witness for you, that you had attempted reconciliation and they were supposed to sort of give an outside perspective because they could come in and be like, “Oh, wait. We see things from a new point of view.”

Hank Smith: 00:35:15 Yeah, add some new eyes to the…

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:35:16 Yeah, and then if they’re still not hearing, and again, this idea of full complete acoustical type hearing, then you go to the church and you get help there. So there are so many avenues of help in your process of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Hank Smith: 00:35:33 Very good now, which is what we’re after. Our goal should be righteousness and reconciliation. That should be the hope. So then Peter says… Let’s do this.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:35:45 So at this point you can think of the disciples, the apostles, sort of processing what He’s saying about reconciliation and forgiveness, and Peter has a question. Peter says, “If someone sins against me,” and this is that same sort of idea of misses the mark, “And he hears me, he listens, and I forgive him and then he does it again, do I continue to forgive him, or what’s the limit on forgiveness? Let’s put a limit here.” And at this point in time, the Jewish rabbis sort of interpreted the law as you could forgive someone adequately three times and then after that, no more forgiveness. That was the limit. I can see Peter’s thinking, “I’m going to say more than double because clearly this is a law. I’m going to say seven times. That’s over double the amount that traditionally they thought you should forgive.”

  00:36:39 Jesus, He comes back and says, “I say not unto thee seven times, but until 70 times seven,” and so He says 490 times. Of course there’s more to this and these numbers, of course. We know the number seven has a lot of importance in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Hebrew word is related to the root for completeness, wholeness, fullness, all these things, being satisfied. So Jesus is saying, “You forgive completely. You forgive wholly.” He is not saying chalk up 490 forgivenesses and then 491 is where to stop.

Hank Smith: 00:37:21 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:37:23 You’ve reached your limit.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:37:25 He’s saying you just keep forgiving. You just keep forgiving until it’s done. And the word for forgive in Greek means to let go or release. Well, forgiveness many times I think we think is about the other person, but more often I think it’s about us not necessarily letting them go or releasing them, but releasing ourselves from the pain that comes from holding onto things that people have done to us.

Hank Smith: 00:37:53 That’s well said, Krystal. So if I’m hearing you right, Peter is thinking he’s going to be over the top generous because the Pharisees are like, “Three times is a lot,” and he’s like, “What about seven times?” Thinking Jesus is going to say something like, “Well, that’s a little much,” but Jesus says 70 times seven. The group of them I can see them going, “I thought Peter was being generous.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:38:18 Yeah, that’s infinity pretty much is what He’s saying.

John Bytheway: 00:38:21 This is a fullness of forgiveness, and I remember having Dr. S. Michael Wilcox with us before, and I heard him just make such a beautiful point out of this. He said that he didn’t think the Lord would ask us to do something that he wouldn’t also do, and that sometimes we may repeat the same dumb thing we did before and that the Lord will forgive us seven times 70, which I thought, “Oh, I’m so glad you said that.” If He’s asking us to do that, He will be that merciful with us as well, which is nice to hear.

Hank Smith: 00:38:55 Yeah, so it’s not a bad thing He said that. It’s a really good thing for us that He said that because He’ll be willing to be a delightful forgiver, I think Dr. Wilcox told us. A delightful forgiver. And of course at this point, Jesus says, “Let me tell you a story. “

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:39:11 So He has the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, and I like how he starts out in verse 23, “Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto a certain king.” He makes it pretty clear that even though He’s sharing this parable, it’s about the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what He expects. This is how He expects people to act. And then He says, “A certain king,” and the word used here for king is the one that’s also used to talk about Jesus as the King of Kings. So I think they also would’ve connected, “Okay, the Kingdom of Heaven and the king. This is about Jesus Christ,” and then the servants and the word for servants here, it’s sometimes used for followers of Jesus. So then they’re like, “Okay, we’re the servants, we’re the disciples.” They would be sort of figuring this out.

  00:39:57 And this king, he had some servants who probably worked for him or maybe were vassals or something like this, and so he was looking into the accounts, reckoning the accounts, and he found out that one of his servants owed him 10,000 talents. Now, this is probably one of the disciples would just be shocked. This amount of money is such an incredible amount of money. So 10,000 talents. One talent was equal to 6,000 days of work. One talent. So we times that by 10,000, we’re 60 million days of work. I mean, it’s incomprehensible. So they’re listening to this and thinking, “Okay. I get it, the king and the servants,” and then all of a sudden this number comes out and they’re supposed to say, “This debt is unpayable. It’s outrageous. I mean, you can’t even imagine that number.”

John Bytheway: 00:40:54 Just think of the national debt and there you go.

Hank Smith: 00:40:59 So Krystal, in my mind, I hear the Savior saying there was a man who owed this king a couple billion dollars.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:41:06 There’s no way to pay it back.

Hank Smith: 00:41:08 Especially he has nothing to pay. What’d you do with the money?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:41:12 Yeah, he’s in debt. What happens in verse 25, this is fairly typical. Someone would either sell off everything they have, including they could actually mortgage themselves or their family into servitude to try to pay off the debt, or they could be thrown into debtor’s prison. So he says, “Okay. Well, we’re going to sell you and your wife and your children and all of these things.” The servant, it says, falls down and worships him, and this is falling on his knees, and he says, “Have patience. I will pay thee all.” Listening to this, you think, “That’s ridiculous.” Patience? He’s asking for patience? That’s not what he needs. He doesn’t need time. He needs redemption. He needs forgiveness. He needs the person who he owes the debt to, to just say, “The debt is gone. I forgive the debt.”

Hank Smith: 00:42:09 Yeah, it’s impossible to pay back. I think it’s supposed to be, right?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:42:10 Yeah, it’s supposed to be a number that there would be no way, even mortgaging himself or his wife or these things. This was something common under the mosaic law. So someone didn’t have to go to prison, they could say, “I’ll work for you till I pay off the debt,” and this was really common, but many times the debt was so high they couldn’t pay it off on their own. Even if they worked 60 million working days, they couldn’t pay it off. A family member could come in who had more money, who didn’t have any debt and could pay it off for them, and this is where we get this, the goel, the kinsman redeemer.

Hank Smith: 00:42:49 Oh, yeah. We talked about that last year.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:42:49 Yeah, that’s what this family member would become. You would be redeemed from your debt, you would be taken out of servitude and it would be paid off basically with absolutely nothing you did. It was all somebody else who came in. And the king here in verse 27, it says, “He’s moved with compassion,” and I love the way this is actually said in Greek, it’s talking about his insides, his heart, lungs, liver, kidneys got all twisted up, which I think is sometimes we feel that way when we see someone who is begging for help.

Hank Smith: 00:43:25 They’re in a really bad place.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:43:27 Your stomach gets all twisted and turned and it says, “He loosed him. He forgave him,” and this is the same forgiving as the word before that meant to let go or release. So he looses him from servitude, from the debtor’s prison, from 60 million hours of work. All of these things are just gone, forgiven.

Hank Smith: 00:43:50 Wow. Just if you stop the parable right there, it’s a great story. It’s going to have more to go, but…

John Bytheway: 00:43:57 And this is like a contrasting, here’s how the Lord acts and here’s how one of us might act, and here’s the warning.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:44:04 They’re like, “Oh, this makes sense to me. The king is Jesus and we’re the servants,” and they get it because when you think about it, we all have an unfathomable amount of debt when we think about sin. 60 million working days of debt, and He comes in as our kinsman redeemer, our brother, our family member, and just releases it. He releases it for us. It’s incredible when you think about it. And if the parable stopped here, then it has a great message, but He continues on. This is not the only message.

Hank Smith: 00:44:41 Let me read this fairly recent Elder Holland, October 2017. He references this parable and he says, “As a personal debt, this is an astronomical number totally beyond our comprehension. Nobody can shop that much,” but he says, “For the purposes of this parable, it’s supposed to be incomprehensible. It’s supposed to be beyond our ability to grasp, to say nothing of beyond our ability to repay. That is because this isn’t a story about two servants arguing in the New Testament, it’s a story about us, the fallen human family.” He says, “Jesus uses an unfathomable measurement here because His atonement is an unfathomable gift given at an incomprehensible cost.” So this first part is, I think, teaching us about the Savior’s atonement, what we owe to Him and how He is so quick to forgive.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:45:35 It’s amazing because you think, “Well, how can anyone pay off an unfathomable debt?” And it’s because He had no debt. He had zero debt, He had zero sin. He was the only one who could do it. When you look at it that way, it makes sense He can come in and pay off the debt.

Hank Smith: 00:45:52 Who is this guy that he’s just paying off billion dollar debts? No big deal. I can take care of it. I love the first part of this parable. The second part is not my favorite, but the first part of this parable is fantastic.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:46:07 Yeah, so in the second part, that same servant who had been forgiven of his debt, released of this huge amount of debt, he goes to one of his servants who owes him money, and it says that he owes him 100 pence, and this was about equal to 100 days of work. So an amount of debt that’s not a small amount, but could be paid off. Three and a half months of work and it’d be paid off, and he takes him by the throat and he tells him to pay him, and his servant answers him and reacts in the exact same language and behavior that he had with the king, asking for patience and he can pay it, and this is believable.

  00:46:53 He could pay it. He could sort of mortgage himself into work and work for a few months and pay it off, but the other servant reacts and throws him into debtor’s prison, takes him into prison and doesn’t even give him a chance, doesn’t even give him the opportunity. The other servants see what happened, they go and tell the king and the king, the Lord, he’s upset, he’s angry, and he calls him wicked.

Hank Smith: 00:47:24 The wicked servant, yeah.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:47:25 Yeah, and this word wicked in Greek, this is related to the root for pain. So he’s saying, “You have caused pain to others and to yourself.” Many times our sins affect others and cause pain, but most of the time they cause us pain too, and this is what this word wicked means, you’ve caused pain. I forgave you of all the debt, shouldn’t you have compassion on your servant, as I had pity on you? And compassion and pity here, this is talking about mercy. This is what this means. The king is wroth. This word wroth here, this is a sort of a legal term that really reflects or stands for justice. He says, “So the Lord was wroth and the justice was to deliver him to the tormentors,” which sounds really scary.

John Bytheway: 00:48:17 I was thinking about this in preparation today. I thought, “How would you like that for a job?” What do you do? I’m a tormentor, I torment.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:48:26 Yeah. These are those jailers, the ones who work at the prison who sort of examine the prisoners sometimes not with the best tactics, we’ll say. When you think about it, he’s talking about mercy. All the first part of this is all about the law of mercy and compassion and forgiveness, but when we get these words wroth and delivered and tormentors, this is the law of justice. The law of mercy comes first always. If we refuse that mercy through our actions, then the law of justice comes in, and that’s consequences, and our sins torment us. That’s part of the consequences of sin.

Hank Smith: 00:49:06 Yeah. Delivered him to the Dementors, it sounds like, in Azkaban. I say that in my class. I’m reading it and I’m like, “And he delivered them to the Dementors,” and I’m like, “Wait. Sorry. Wrong book. Tormentors,” but it sounds just as bad.

John Bytheway: 00:49:25 Very succinctly in section 64, verse 10, “I, the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive”, about all of their debts, “but of you, it is required to forgive all men.” Seems like the same lesson here.

Hank Smith: 00:49:38 I’ve noticed in this parable. The Lord doesn’t call him wicked when he owes Him money. He doesn’t call him wicked when he can’t pay it. He calls him wicked when he won’t forgive. I think that’s an important piece here, and I also think He said in verse 33, “Should you not have had compassion on my fellow servant even as I had pity on thee?” It sounds to me like when the Lord forgives us, we’re not only supposed to be grateful, but we’re also supposed to learn that’s how to forgive.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:50:11 Yeah, follow His example.

Hank Smith: 00:50:12 Follow that same example. And lastly, I thought, “Oh, goodness. Was it worth it? Was it worth going after your friend there that owed you a little bit of money because now you’ve got to payback all of it. The 10,000 talent debt has returned.”

John Bytheway: 00:50:30 I have a longer version of the Elder Holland statement. He was doing a training for CES teachers back in 1992, and he said, “The teacher noted the 100 pence forgiveness, which we were all expected to give one another and acknowledged was a pretty fair amount of money was now preciously little to ask in light of the 10,000 talent forgiveness Christ had extended to us. That latter debt, our debt, was an astronomical number, the teacher reminded us, almost incapable of comprehension, but that, he said, was exactly the Savior’s point in this teaching and essential part of the parable. Jesus had intended his heirs sense just a little of the eternal scope and profound gift of His mercy, His forgiveness, His atonement,” and then Elder Holland said this, “For the first time in my life, I remember feeling something of the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice for me, a gift bordering to this day on incomprehensibility, but a gift that made me for the first time seriously consider my need to forgive other people and to be unfailingly generous regarding their feelings and their needs and their circumstances.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:51:43 We find the conclusion here right at this last verse, verse 35, and He says, “So likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also unto you if you from your hearts forgive not everyone, his brother, their trespasses.” So the conclusion is how many times should we forgive? As many times as we want to be forgiven by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. That’s how many times. I love He kind of puts it in your hands, right? Forgiveness is a power you have. You can’t necessarily change the other person or force them to do anything, but you have the power to release yourself from that pain or whatever that came from through forgiveness, and you want your Heavenly Father to forgive you unlimited times. So it kind of puts things in perspective here right at the end.

John Bytheway: 00:52:35 When I was in junior high school, my family moved from one part of Salt Lake City to another, and I remember in my English class having this buzz around that, “Hey, Barbara was coming back,” and I didn’t know who that was because I was new, and finally Barbara joined a class after being gone for, I don’t even know how long, but she had a really noticeable limp and she had a prosthetic leg and I heard just asking people, somebody jumped a curb and hit her and they finally had to amputate her leg and everything. And I had heard that story. Well, it’s interesting how life unfolds. She ended up being in my mom’s ward and then in my mom’s relief society presidency, this Barbara, and she talks about how she just figured when she was young, “Nobody would ever want to marry someone like me,” and things like that early, some heart-wrenching things she went through, but things worked out beautifully.

  00:53:38 There was actually an article in the New Era about her in December of 1977, so this is how old I am, Hank, but about her young women’s group rallying around her and her leaders and everything, and Barbara married a great guy and everything, and she started thinking about this woman that hit her. She had been prevented from talking to her by her lawyers and her family. She didn’t get that as a kid. Why didn’t this lady apologize? And she didn’t get why she couldn’t and come and just say, “I’m sorry that my car hit you,” but one day she started thinking about this woman whose name was Anne, and she thought, “I should look her up,” and she got in the phone book and found this woman and gave her a call and said, “Could I come and talk to you?” And she said, “The phone just went silent,” and finally, this elderly woman, half-heartedly agreed, and then I’m going to read exactly from Barbara’s account.

  00:54:39 She says, “After she rang the doorbell, the woman I knew as Anne, only now much older, came to the door. She did not invite me in. Instead, she invited me to sit on the front porch. I instantly realized she was very nervous and scared of me. She wanted to know what I wanted from her. I reassured her I was only there to tell her something I’d wanted to say for many years. I told her, ‘I want you to know that what happened that day in January 1975 was an accident.’ I said I had no hard feelings for her and that my life was great, and I was very happy. I really was fine. She told me of her hard life. Her husband had died young, leaving her with only one child, a son who was mentally disabled. The accident had practically destroyed her.

  00:55:24 She and I talked and talked, and we both cried. At some point in the conversation, I asked her why she had never come to see me or even call me after the accident. I told her, as a child, I had been taught when you hurt someone, you should tell them, ‘I’m sorry.’ It had been hard for me to understand why she never did that. She told me she had been told by her attorneys not to speak to me that that would imply an admission of guilt. She told me she had called the hospital many times and asked how I was doing. When we finished our conversation, Anne looked me in the eye and said, ‘Now I can die. I feel content with my life.’ I told her I didn’t want her to die, but I felt such a lift as well. I had spent about an hour enveloped in some of the most tender feelings of my life. It was the closest thing to the pure love of Christ I had ever felt. I have since come to realize and appreciate that feeling as charity.

  00:56:20 I will never forget that experience sitting on a bench in a little front porch with a woman who really I had never known yet who had occupied my thoughts for so many years. Walls had come down, barriers had been broken for both of us. Could Anne’s life have been happier had I come long before now? What if she had passed away before I finally got around to calling? As a young girl, all I could think about was why didn’t she come and say she was sorry? As an adult, my heart ached for the pain, suffering and guilt she most certainly had been feeling for so many years. Why did it take me so long?” Barbara’s one of my heroes. I love that they both could go on that porch, and she said, “Some of the most beautiful feelings of my whole life came from that.”

Hank Smith: 00:57:08 John, I love that story. It’s from, if I remember right, it’s from your book Born This Happy Morning. It’s a little Christmas book, right?

John Bytheway: 00:57:15 Mm-hmm. Yeah, and Barbara allowed me to share that very personal story, but she’s amazing.

Hank Smith: 00:57:23 I brought my own story as well, if that’s okay. I remember this one. I remember sitting in general conference hearing this in October of 2005. It was a Sunday morning session, and President Hinckley stood up and he just said he wanted to talk about forgiveness, and he says, “There are so many in our day who are unwilling to forgive. Children cry and wives weep because fathers and husbands continue to bring up little shortcomings that are of no importance. There are many women who would make a mountain out of every little offending molehill or word or deed.”

  00:57:59 Then he says, “I clipped a column from Deseret Morning News written by Jay Evanson,” and then he quotes the article, “How would you feel toward a teenager who decided to toss a 20 pound frozen turkey from a speeding car headlong into the windshield of the car you were driving? How would you feel after enduring six hours of surgery using metal plates and other hardware piece your face back together, and after learning you still face years of therapy before returning to normal and that you ought to feel lucky you didn’t die or suffer permanent brain damage? And how would you feel after learning that your assailant and his buddies had the turkey in the first place because they had stolen a credit card and gone on a senseless shopping spree just for kicks? This is the kind of hideous crime that propels politicians to office on promises on getting tough on crime. It’s the kind of thing that prompts legislatures to climb all over each other and a struggle to be the first to introduce a bill that would enhance penalties for the use of frozen fowl in the commission of a crime.

  00:59:04 The New York Times quoted the district attorney as saying that this is the sort of crime for which victims feel no punishment is harsh enough. ‘Death doesn’t even satisfy them,’ he says. Which is what makes what really happened so unusual. The victim, Victoria Ruvolo, a 44-year-old former manager of a collections agency, was more interested in salvaging the life of her 19-year-old assailant Ryan Cushing than in exacting any sort of revenge. She pestered prosecutors for information about him, his life, how he was raised, than she insisted in offering him a plea deal. Cushing could serve six months at the county jail and be on probation for five years if he pleaded guilty to second degree assault. Had he been convicted of first degree assault, the charge more fitting for the crime, he would’ve served 25 years in prison, finally thrown back into society as a middle-aged man with no skills or prospects.

  00:59:59 But that’s only half the story. The rest of it, what happened the day this played out in court is the truly remarkable part. According to the account in the New York Post, Cushing carefully and tentatively made his way to where Ruvolo sat in the courtroom and tearfully whispered an apology, ‘I’m so sorry for what I did to you.’ Ruvolo then stood and the victim and her assailant embraced, weeping. She stroked his head, patted him as he sobbed, and witnesses, including a reporter, heard her say, ‘It’s okay. I just want you to make your life the best it can be.’ According to the accounts, hardened prosecutors and even reporters were choking back tears.”

  01:00:44 President Hinckley goes on to say, “What a great story that is. Who can feel anything but admiration for this woman who forgave the young man who might have taken her life?” And he goes on to say, “I know this is a delicate and sensitive thing, but the great Atonement was the supreme act of forgiveness. The magnitude of that atonement is beyond our ability to completely understand. I know only that it happened and that it was for me and for you. The suffering was so great, the agony so intense that none of us can comprehend it when the Savior offered himself a ransom for all the sins of mankind. May God help us to be a little kinder, showing forth greater forbearance to be more forgiving, more willing to walk the second mile, to reach down and lift up those who have sinned, but have brought forth fruits of repentance to lay aside old grudges and nurture them no more.” Man, isn’t that good?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 01:01:36 It’s beautiful.

Hank Smith: 01:01:37 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 01:01:41 Please join us for part two of this podcast.