6-7-26 - If You Forgive Others

And to preach. And I'm going to be preaching on the Lord's prayer, and then I think we're gonna sing that afterwards. Is that right, John? Right. Yeah.

But I'm not gonna be focusing on the whole prayer. I'm gonna be focusing just on one of the petitions. I've been working with my kids to try to memorize the petitions from the catechism. What what's the fifth petition? And, and then what do we ask for in that petition?

And so maybe at the end of today, we'll all be better at remembering this particular one, which is about forgiveness. And in particular, the element that says that we are to forgive, which is a strange little thing in a prayer, that it's easy for us to overlook.

So would

you please stand with me as I read Matthew six verses nine through 15.

Pray then in this way, Our father who is in heaven, hallowed

be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.

Four, if

you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions. This is the word of the Lord.

Thank you, Jesus.

Please be seated. I have a pet peeve about the way that people recite the Lord's Prayer. It's all separated out into these phrases. Right? And and they all just get disjointed and separated, and you don't really realize the connection that they have to one another.

And especially the your will be done, that petition, along with the next petition, on earth as it

is in heaven, which is not a petition.

It's your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's the petition. Right? When we and and you don't put those two things together, it's clear you're not paying attention to what you're saying. Right?

You're not you're not able to understand that these things go together. Well, in our text this morning that I'm gonna be focusing on, it's forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. They go together. Right? Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Now notice,

forgive us our debts. I'm gonna come back to this throughout the sermon.

But forgive us our debts focuses on our sin and our need

of washing, cleansing, forgiveness.

It focuses on the fact that we have debts that are owed that we cannot pay and that must be therefore forgiven if they're going to be dealt with in some other way. Otherwise, we will pay them. We will pay them. And so forgive us our debts focuses on our sins. And it is not the prayer is not forgive my brother his debts because he has sinned much.

It is forgive us our

debts.

Like the request that God would

give us our daily bread. This is a daily need that we have, forgiveness. And so tying them together again, seeing the connection between these phrases and petitions, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, is a is a request for something that we need daily. Just as we need to eat each day, we need meals day by day, so we also need forgiveness day by day. It's easy for us to, when we're filling out our prayer cards.

Right? Prayer requests or if you're in small group and you're asked, hey, is there anything we can pray for you about? It's it's always easy to point to other people and other people's needs. Oh, well, you know, so and so had surgery. Oh, that's that's wonderful.

We'll pray for your aunt Lucy. Right? And and also, my friend, Fred, he's going through a hard time right now. Okay. That's great.

We will certainly delight to pray for your friends and the difficulties that they are facing as well. But notice how this is in the first person. Forgive us our debts.

And so

don't begin immediately to look to others in this request. Forgive us our debts focuses first and foremost on our sins, on our needs, but it does then proceed into looking to others. But it does not look at others in precisely the same way. It doesn't say, please forgive me, my sins, and also please forgive him, his sins. It's two relationships here.

Two different relationships. Our relationship to God, our heavenly father, who we come to praying, our father who is in heaven. Right? We we come to this prayer being taught from the beginning that there is an intimate relationship that we have with God, and therefore we can come to him and make our needs and our requests known. But it goes beyond that when we come to this as we also have forgiven our debtors.

There's now another relationship that's brought in. And that relationship is with our fellow man. And so what we are seeing is a description of our need for reconciliation between god and us in this vertical relationship and also our need for reconciliation in these horizontal relationships that we have with one another. Forgiveness characterizes both. Forgiveness from God our father to us and then forgiveness going out from us to others.

Our debtors, those who have sinned against us. And so again, notice that the prayer is not, but please do not forget the forgive the man that I am angry at. Forgive me, but please punish them.

Forgive me, but I'm going to take my time forgiving her.

Now, there are places in Scripture that might make us feel justified in refusing forgiveness. Jeremiah eighteen twenty three says, yet you, oh, Lord, know all their deadly designs against me. Do not forgive their iniquity or blot out their sin from your sight, but may they be overthrown before you. Deal with them in the time of your anger.

That's that's pretty intense.

Or there are plenty of imprecatory psalms as well where you're gonna find similar language. There's different ways of dealing with this, and it's common today to try to set up the new testament as in contradiction to the old testament. It's common today to say, well, you know, that was the God of the old testament, was a God of wrath, a a God of anger and vengeance and but praise the Lord. Now we are under a God of grace. This is not an appropriate way to deal with the seeming contradiction

that we've got in our verse where we pray for forgiveness as we have forgiven our debtors. And this this verse in Jeremiah where the prayer is,

do not forgive their iniquity. Because I'm telling you, you must not pray, do not forgive their iniquity. That's essentially what what I'm saying. Right? You you you must pray, forgive me as I have forgiven them and forgive them.

Right? This is the the reconciliation that's happening. So what's going on? Is there is there a way to reconcile? Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors and do not forgive them, do not forgive their iniquity?

The answer is yes. If I were to fast forward instead of reverse I'm gonna try to tighten this because I think, Dan, you you messed it up.

Keeps falling off me now. Okay.

If I were to fast forward instead of rewind in history, when we go forward, ultimately, we end up at the judgement, Right? And at the judgment,

it's it's a time of terrible wrath

being poured out on God's enemies. And we look forward to that day not simply because it is a day of completion, of pouring out grace on God's people. But we look forward to that day also because it is a day of wrath and vengeance on God's enemies. And so what I want you to see is that the same thing that happened back in Jeremiah is happening today and will happen in the future, and that is calling God to punish the wicked, to pour out his wrath on the evil, to to execute vengeance for the innocent, for the righteous, for his people. So when Jeremiah is praying, he's praying under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that we have been given today.

There's not some giant disconnect between the God of the Old Testament and the God of today. Similarly, David was also writing under the inspiration of the spirit as well. So we cannot simply say, well, those prayers were wicked. This is a very common response. As a matter of fact, I believe that's CS Lewis's response to the Psalms, to the imprecatory Psalms, to simply say, well, those are subrighteous.

Though though that is an inappropriate way for us to pray, an inappropriate way for us to respond. He's wrong. The emphasis in these passages, Jeremiah and, other imprecatory Psalms and other places in the New Testament, I might add, especially in Revelation. The emphasis in these passages is on God's righteous judgment against sin.

Our anger and refusal to forgive

is more normally connected to feeling personally offended rather than as a prophet speaking the words of God to his people like Jeremiah and being rejected, it being a rejection of God and his righteousness and his call to repentance and obedience.

So if you think about the connection

between these passages that seem difficult to reconcile and and this passage, what I want you to see, what I want you to realize is that the common thread is the need for justice to be done. Justice must be served.

Forgiveness, asking for forgiveness, is

an acknowledgment of our need for our sin to be dealt with in some way. There are only two ways for it to be dealt with. One is God's gracious forgiveness to

be poured out. The other is for the penalty to be paid by the sinner.

One is for the penalty to be paid by Christ, which is how we are able to be forgiven and made righteous in the sight of God. The other is for us to simply bear the punishment ourselves. And this is precisely where our passage goes. It's very interesting that after we pray this short prayer that Jesus gives us, the lord's prayer. Right?

Just a few verses, just a few petitions. The prayer concludes, and immediately, Jesus gives explanation, just of one part. And the explanation that he gives is of this petition, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And what does he say? If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions. Now this is very transactional sounding, isn't it? If this, then this. If not this, then not that.

The warning here is that if you are feeling the contrast between Jeremiah and Matthew,

between the words of Jeremiah and the words of our Lord Jesus Christ here, and you can't make sense of how they come together, what I want you to I I I want you to work towards reconciling them. But if you can't figure out how to reconcile them, if if you're stuck in anger, if you're stuck in wrath, and and and you're trying to figure out what you're supposed to do, and and here's what I want you to do. I want you to, if you have if you have to choose, choose to forgive. If you have to choose, choose to forgive. And the reason is because if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions. Now one more notice. Notice that it is not forgive me as I have forgiven those who ask my forgiveness. Forgive me as I forgive those who have acknowledged their sin already and have come to me and humbled themselves and said, I'm sorry. No.

It's just forgive me as I have forgiven those who sinned against me, not who sinned against me and then repented,

not those who sinned against me and then came and requested that I forgive them. There's a common

idea that you may have heard people preach that you cannot forgive the sins of somebody who hasn't asked for your forgiveness. This is not true. What we pray here is simply forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. They've sinned against you, you forgive them.

That's it. They've sinned against you, you forgive them.

When Jesus was crucified, he cried out, father, forgive them for they know not what they do, and also they asked me for for forgiveness already. No. They hadn't, had they? They were still insistent on their sin. They were still running headlong into persecution and violence.

And Jesus says, forgive them

for they know not what they do. Similarly, Stephen, when he's being stoned as the first

martyr. Imitates our Lord when he says.

Do not hold this sin against them. You see how similar that is to what Jesus says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Do not hold this against them. Stephen has clearly already forgiven. While they are still sinning against him, Stephen has already forgiven.

Don't ever let anybody convince you that you cannot forgive somebody until they ask for your forgiveness. Remember Jesus. Remember Stephen. You can and must forgive those that have not asked for your forgiveness. What a sad thing to be stuck unable to forgive because the other person is unrepentant.

So that you can't say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors because they haven't come to you yet. You're stuck unable to pray the Lord's prayer. No. You can pray the Lord's prayer at any time because you can forgive at any time, and indeed, you must. But how can this be?

Isn't forgiveness free? How can there be a transactional nature to forgiveness from our heavenly father? How can it be that the free offer of grace, the gospel, is now suddenly conditioned on if we do this, then we can be forgiven. If we don't do this, then we can't be forgiven.

Well, the answer is fairly simple. This is a fruit of the spirit as opposed to a payment to earn forgiveness. I mean, this is a

this is something that flows out of the fact that we have been forgiven. Remember, he who has been forgiven much loves much. And so this is something that flows out of the fact that we have already been forgiven. The moment that you have been forgiven, the moment that you see your sins and you you realize the the great wickedness, the great debt that you have, that's the moment that you turn. If you have been forgiven, that is the moment that you turn to your brother and you say, I forgive you.

I don't hold this against you any more than god has held my sins against me. Now, again, there are plenty of people, even pastors, who preach sermons that try to change this into some other kind of forgiveness. They try to solve the problem of this this threat. If you do not forgive your brother, your heavenly father will not forgive you.

And they're like, woah. That has

to be talking about something besides forgiveness the way we normally think about it because that's that's too scary. And so they they try to change forgiveness into some other thing that's, it's this, well, if if you're not completely at peace with your brothers, then you will not be able to be completely at peace with God, and there'll be these consequences. And he will discipline you and push you to be in in better relationship with your brothers so that you can be in better relationship with him. And all of that is actually true. It's just not what this is talking about.

God does allow us to suffer consequences in discipline of our sin of unforgiveness. If you are in the sin of bitterness and gall and unforgiveness, then, yes, there will be consequences in your life because God loves you, and he will discipline you and seek to draw you to repentance. But we must not fall into the trap of trying to do away with the intensity of this warning.

It's really

not at all hard to verify that this is actually what Jesus meant because he teaches an entire parable on this exact thing. Now I want you to not look at your Bibles, and I don't think I gave it to them so they can't put it up on the screen. I want you to just listen to this because this is how Jesus taught. He taught in parables. He told stories.

And so I'm just gonna tell you the story using his words. I'm gonna read it. Alright? From Matthew 18 verses 21 to 35. Then Peter came and said to him, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive

him? Up to seven times?

Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you everything.

And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But

the slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a 100 denarii and seized him and began to choke him saying, pay back what you owe. So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you. But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord said to him, you wicked slave.

I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on you? And his lord moved with anger handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart. I don't understand why anybody could possibly think that it's something else that Jesus is talking about in the Lord's prayer.

It's crystal clear there. But if it was if you were inclined to say that it's unclear and try to wiggle your way out of it, this story drives the point home in such a way that it is absolutely inescapable. And so this is actually talking about forgiveness. This is actually talking about whether we are saved or whether we are damned, whether we will be in glory with our lord or whether we will be with the torturers. And so anybody that is inclined to take unforgiveness, the sin of grudge holding, the sin of bitterness, and to and to somehow say, well, you know, those can't actually condemn you.

Once you're a Christian, I mean, it's like, no. This is just a sin like many other sins. If we are unrepentant of that sin, it will condemn us. When God says adulterers and the greedy and and many others, god will judge and will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

You can just clearly add unforgivers to that list. And so all sins that we are unrepentant of will separate us from God. They will condemn us. And now I wanna return to this understanding of our own sin being at the forefront of understanding this request.

When we cry out, father, forgive me, when we cry out, forgive us our debts, the emphasis is on our need because of our sin. Hypocrisy is something that the world loves to point to the church of Jesus Christ and say, well, yeah, I don't. I'm not interested in going. That's just a place full of hypocrisy. Right?

When we act as Christians, we are acting in the name of Christ, and we are declaring his character. The greatest hypocrisy there can possibly be is this hypocrisy of requiring our brother to pay back what we owe, what he owes us. Right? On the one hand. And on the other hand, turning to God with expectation of blanket forgiveness.

That is the greatest hypocrisy. We must acknowledge our own sins before we can be forgiven. And when we acknowledge our own sins, what we find is the debt that has been forgiven on our behalf is 10,000 talents. It's a million dollars. And even if her brother owes us 40,000, what of it?

So what? Yeah. I'm not denying that he had sinned against you. We're not pretending here.

Not being like, oh, I'm I'm the only sinner. I've

sinned against God and and and, you know, nothing else bad has ever happened to me. Nobody's ever sinned against. No. We are honest, but we are honest first about our own sin, our own debt, what we need forgiveness for. And then the little that has happened to us compared to the violation of the law

of God and his character. Right? It's nothing. It's nothing. Forgiveness is fundamental to Christianity.

It is the basis of the gospel. Remember I said you you you're living out

Christ's character to the world. When you when you forgive those who have sinned against you, what you are doing is you are declaring to the world that our heavenly father is a forgiving, loving heavenly father. When you are unrepentant in your unforgiveness, you are declaring on the basis of the Lord's Prayer. God must judge me.

That's what you're declaring. Forgive us

our debts as we forgive our debtors includes the necessity of if we do not forgive, we call down his wrath upon ourselves. So adulterers will be judged.

Yes. If they are unrepentant. Those who are unforgivers,

God will judge if they are unrepentant. Now I say unrepentant. And and and you say, well, yeah. I mean, I I just asked God to forgive me. And I say, no, no, no.

What does repentance look like

when you're greedy? Think of

Zacchaeus. He gives his money. What he's stolen, he says, I'll I'll give back more. Right? His his actions change to demonstrate his repentance.

Now right here, you're probably running through your mind other people's sins, at least if you're anything like me. You're you're thinking, yeah. I don't see I don't see that repentance. And wait a minute. We're asking ourselves, are we forgiving, not whether they are repentant.

We're asking ourselves whether we are repentant of our anger, our bitterness, our wrath, our dissension, our lack of forgiveness because that's the umbrella in which all of those things stand. This will lead repentance will lead to you changing your attitude towards others such that you are now willing to forgive and not just willing to if they come to you. Right? But you you simply are a forgiving person. You simply have forgiven those who have sinned against you.

That's repentance when you have been unforgiving. Yes, we also ask God to forgive us for our unforgiveness.

Right? But repentance always includes

a change of behavior. That's why the adulterers can't just say, Well, you know, I know it's a sin. I'm gonna do it anyway because and God will have to forgive me because I'll pray, God forgive me, and that'll be

that. No. I'm sorry.

No. You are forgiven when you repent, and repentance is turning away from the sin. So if you've been caught in bitterness, if you've been caught in anger at somebody and by the way, that somebody may have sinned against you in a terrible way because there are terrible sins that are perpetrated against God's people in this life by so called brothers, By the Gentiles, the heathen, the unbelievers. By our own family. And sometimes the hardest thing to forgive is not the person who has sinned against us,

but rather the person who has sinned against the one we love.

We feel so much more justified in remaining angry when it's not sin directly against us,

but against somebody we love. Right?

Anger against sin can be holy. It can be righteous. But forgiveness is necessary for our own forgiveness. Like I said, it is fundamental to Christianity because we see our own sin. And without forgiveness, there would be no salvation from our sins.

So to refuse to forgive, and you all have I know you all have sins, but you also all have people who have sinned against you.

You kids, I I know your brothers and sisters, and they're just like you.

Selfish,

They have tempers. They're greedy. They steal. They lie. They hit.

They cheat. Just like you.

And so you have to forgive them, don't you? To refuse that forgiveness is to deny the necessity of forgiveness in your own life. To refuse forgiveness is anti Christian. It strikes at the very heart of the gospel. It's a denial of the character of God as a loving heavenly father who forgives our sins.

It's to live out the lie that our master is a harsh taskmaster who's never forgiving. And, therefore, what I want you to see is that as you refuse to forgive, the result is that you reject God. You you have rejected his character. You have rejected him. You have rejected his grace.

Anger at others that we hold on to in our bitterness becomes anger and bitterness at God. Forgive us our debts changes the whole picture because it starts from an understanding that we are, like Paul says, foremost of sinners. And now suddenly, what everybody else has done or not done in their unrighteousness is small potatoes. The gospel reconciles us to God and reconciles us to our brothers. The moment that it's not doing one of those things, it's not the gospel anymore.

So when Jesus

explains this request,

this petition, and he says, for if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions.

He means it.

And, no, that doesn't make it transactional. That doesn't mean that you're earning your forgiveness by forgiving other people. It just means you have believed the gospel. You have received forgiveness, and therefore, it flows out of you.