There are at least 11 times in the book of Matthew in which Jesus said “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” and then He told a story, what we call a parable, to illustrate or explain to us the nature of God’s kingdom. As I have been sharing, the only way to understand the nature of a kingdom is to know the heart of the king. This morning we are going to use one of those parables as our backdrop as we continue to ask the question “What kind of king is this?” God’s heart is vast, it is eternal, infinite and perfect; there is nothing missing in God, nothing that is out of place, there is nothing that is over or under emphasized; He is, as He told Moses “I AM”. A study of the heart of God can be daunting but in some ways if we are not careful it can also be approached with indifference because we regularly and familiarly use most of the biblical words that reveal God’s heart and character. We say, sing and pray words like holy, faithful, loving, joyful, gracious and merciful so much that as we hear them we don’t stop to consider them, we just mentally move on to whatever might come next. For some reason we have become a people looking for a new thought, idea, revelation or experience without realizing that we have yet to fully grasp the last one. It was this sort of thinking that caused Jesus to literally weep as He looked down upon Jerusalem saying “If only you had known on this day what would bring you peace!” Dr. Robert Smith said “We read the Bible too fast.” It is my hope to slow us down, to not try to get something done but rather to do whatever is necessary to let something sink in. I want us to, as we talked about a few weeks ago, learn how to internalize the Scripture rather than just memorizing it. This morning I want to begin talking about grace, a word we all use, a word we all love, a word that has even become a name and yet a word that seems to continually be just a bit out of the reach of our understanding. Now I must say to begin that I do believe that grace is one of those heavenly things that, no matter how hard we try we can only attempt to describe, that it is too large, too beautiful and too God-breathed for us to be able to simply define it. It is like predestination, the elect, God’s foreknowledge or even the fact that God, by being eternal, had no beginning and will have no end; just beyond our ability to define by our intellect but by faith perfectly within our grasp to believe. Today we will look at what is commonly called “The parable of the Unforgiving Servant” and rather than concentrating on what the servant did wrong we will focus on the character of a king that calls all of his accounts to be settled not because he wants us to give him what he deserves and not only so that He can show us mercy but he calls his accounts to be settled so that we can learn that He is a king that takes away the penalty of our sin so that He can then give us grace