Then was CHRISTIAN glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart, "He hath given me rest by his sorrow, And life by his death.".

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1 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS (Matthew 6:12; 18:23-35) INTRODUCTION The petition we are looking at today is Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. C. S. Lewis said about this prayer, To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. Forgiveness is something every Christian has received because forgiveness is the entrance way into the Christian life. It is through God s forgiveness in Christ that we are saved. Forgiveness is a source of great joy. John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim s Progress, gives us a picture of the great joy of forgiveness. Recall that pilgrim, whom Bunyan calls Christian, was going from the City of Destruction (this world) to the Celestial City (heaven). He starts with a heavy burden on his back, his sin. He has the burden on his back fall off when he came to the cross. Bunyan describes the scene this way: Now I saw in my dream, that the highway up which CHRISTIAN was to go was fenced on either side with a wall; and that wall was called "Salvation". Up this way, therefore, did burdened CHRISTIAN run; but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream, that just as CHRISTIAN came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was CHRISTIAN glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart, "He hath given me rest by his sorrow, And life by his death.". Then CHRISTIAN gave three leaps for joy, and went on singing: Thus every Christian has experienced the joy of forgiveness when he has come to the cross and looked to Jesus in faith and has the burden of his sin fall off and tumble in the grave! But forgiveness is not only needed at the entrance to the road to heaven, but forgiveness is needed each day along the way. Thus Jesus instructs us to pray: March 5, 2017 Corntassel CP Church Page 1

2 Mat 6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. WE NEED TO ASK FOR FORGIVENESS OF DEBTS AND TRESPASSES It is interesting that it is our debts we are to ask forgiveness. For those of you who may have a Methodist upbringing, as I did, the Methodist and others pray the Lord s Prayer using trespasses" instead of debts. A four-year-old fashioned his prayer after what he thought he heard in church. "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets." The Methodist uses the word trespasses instead of debts, not because Presbyterians are more interested in having their debts forgiven, but because of the different words used in the earliest English translations of Matthew s account. In 1395 John Wycliffe translated the word as debt and in 1526 William Tyndale translated it as trespasses. The Anglican Church in 1549 in their Common Book of Prayer chose to go with Tyndale s version. The Methodist descended from the Anglicans. The Presbyterian and Reformed churches went with Wycliffe s version. Both words mean sins. All the versions of the Luke s account of this prayer uses the word sin. Now you know the rest of the story! Both debt and trespasses shed some light on the nature of sin. Scriptures present sin as a violation of God s law or missing the mark lawbreaking, a deviation, a shortcoming, a rebellion, etc. To see sin as a trespass is to see sin as violating the rights of another. Just as a sign saying, no trespassing means keep out, God has given us His law to show us where not to go. Sin as a trespass means stepping over the line and doing something God has told us not to do. Seeing sin as a debt is helpful in seeing sin is not giving to God what we owe Him. There are two broad categories of sins. One is the sin of omission and the other the sin of commission. The sin of commission is doing what God tells us not to do. Example, breaking the 10 Commandments. These are trespasses. The sin of omission is not doing what God tells us to do, like loving God with all our hearts, minds, and souls. It is not doing God s will of loving our neighbor or forgiving others. Sins of omission is omitting to do what we owe God. These are debts. We need to pray each day And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Forgive us for not doing what we ought to do that we owe you as a way of loving You. We also need to pray forgive us our trespasses, forgive us for doing what we shouldn t, for stepping over the line and doing what You told us not to do. March 5, 2017 Corntassel CP Church Page 2

3 THIS PRAYER CALLS FOR SELF-EXAMINATION Why do we need to pray this prayer asking forgiveness each day? It is because we sin each day. This calls for the discipline of daily self-examination and acknowledging before God how grievous our sins are to Him. J. I Packer writes, When Christians examine themselves, it is for omissions that they should first look for, and they will always find that their saddest sins take the form of good left undone. Sin against God is serious. Sin in our lives always is a concern to our heavenly Father. Unconfessed sin or unacknowledged sin makes our heavenly Father very unhappy; it grieves Him greatly to see His children sin. Someone has said that God is unhappier with his children sinning than those who don t claim to know the Lord. Think of it this way, which sin would grieve you more, to see a neighbor being unfaithful to their husband or wife, or to see your husband or wife being unfaithful to you? In the same way God is more deeply outraged when his own people are unfaithful to Him, than when those who do not know the Lord is unfaithful. Therefore we need to take seriously the practice of daily self-examination and ask God to forgive us of our debts. I find that it is helpful for me to do this when I go to bed and have my final prayer of the day. I try to review the day and thank God for His mercies that day and then seek to repent for my failures. I try to think of specific situations of mercies and specific situations of failures and ask forgiveness. THIS FORGIVENESS IS TO MAINTAIN A FILIAL RELATIONSHIP Someone may say, Since Jesus paid the debt for all my sins and since I have been justified before God by his mercy, do I really need any more forgiveness than that? Isn t God s forgiveness eternal? Put another way: If God s verdict justifying the believer is eternally valid, why does the Christian need to mention his daily sins to God as all? The answer lies in distinguishing between God as Judge and as Father. Justification is a legal or forensic term and concept. It has to do with our legal standing before a holy God. When God put our sins on Jesus at the Cross and accounts Jesus righteousness as ours, this satisfied the verdict of guilt and condemnation that our sins called for before God as our Judge. It is a blessed truth that we are there now under no condemnation as Romans 8:1 states it. I believe that the Lord s Prayer is coming to God from the viewpoint of God as our heavenly Father and we as his children. It is not speaking about our initial March 5, 2017 Corntassel CP Church Page 3

4 entrance into salvation. The Lord s Prayer is in the context of already being in the family of God, being a child of God. So the answer to the question of why do I need daily forgiveness if I am already forgiven lies in distinguishing between God as Judge and as Father, and between being a justified sinner and an adopted son. Our sins as a justified believer will not condemn us to hell but they will affect our fellowship with God. We need daily forgiveness to keep short accounts with our heavenly Father. It is like a story I read. Johnny had to try out his new slingshot. He perched tin cans on the farm fence, but missed every shot. John shot at a bird in the tree, and missed. He shot at a rabbit and missed. Johnny was getting more frustrated by the minute. Grandmother called him for dinner. On the way to the house, he shot at grandmother's favorite duck--and this time he hit his target. The missile hit the duck in the head, instantly killing it. No one was in the yard. Johnny looked both ways to be sure that no one saw him. Quickly, he grabbed a shovel and ran behind the barn to bury the duck. After dinner Grandmother asked Sally to wash the dishes. Sally said her brother, Johnny, wanted to wash dishes. Then she whispered to him, "Remember the duck." Apparently, Sally had seen what happened, and blackmailed her brother. Johnny washed the dishes. Next morning when Grandmother asked Sally to sweep the porch, she said Johnny wanted to sweep. Then she whispered to Johnny again, "Remember the duck." All that week Sally blackmailed her brother into doing her work around the house. Every time she wanted Johnny to do a chore, she whispered, "Remember the duck." When Johnny could not stand any more guilt, he finally confessed to his grandmother that he had killed her favorite duck. She replied, "I was washing dishes at the window and saw you hit the duck. I know you didn't mean to do it. I could see fear in your face." She explained to Johnny, "I forgave you the moment you did it, but I wondered how long you would live with your guilt before you told me." March 5, 2017 Corntassel CP Church Page 4

5 I believe that God wonders how long we are going to wait to confess to Him our failures and sins and ask His forgiveness so that our unconfessed sins will not separate us from the joy of our fellowship with God. AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS Someone may ask why Jesus linked our daily forgiveness from God to our forgiveness of others. Is God s forgiveness conditioned on our forgiving others? Is God s forgiveness by grace or works? God s forgiveness is by grace as the Bible teaches: Eph 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace God s forgiveness is not conditioned on our forgiving, but when God forgives us of our sins something should happen to us. We are changed. We become new creations in Christ. We are now free to live as God created us to live. This is where the story Jesus told about the wicked or unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 comes in. The king forgave his servant an impossible debt that he could never repay. Then that servant went out and demanded payment by a fellow servant and threw him into jail. The king was furious, because he expected the wicked servant to become like him and have a forgiving heart. Jesus concludes that this is how God expects us to forgive each other. God expects us to become more like him when he forgives us and takes us into his family. It is a matter of having a merciful heart. As the king says to the unmerciful servant, Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' Matthew 18:33. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall see mercy. A changed heart is a merciful, forgiving heart. The Holy Spirit cannot dwell in an unmerciful heart! CONCLUSION Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. This is a prayer Jesus that taught us to pray. May we pray it each day. We need to be cleansed each day from the daily pollution we gather on our souls by our sins of commission and omission which hinders our relationship and fellowship with our heavenly Father. We need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb each day that we may have forgiveness and seek to please our Heavenly Father. And as our hearts are melted by God s mercy to us, we are to show that mercy to others. Or as C. S. Lewis put it, To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. As we come to the Lord s Table this morning, come thanking God for forgiving you of your debts and trespasses because they have been paid for by the March 5, 2017 Corntassel CP Church Page 5

6 Blood of the Lamb. Come expressing your surrender to Christ. Come confessing your daily sins and seeking His cleansing. It is the Blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. This is what we are celebrating in the Lord s Supper. Amen? Amen! March 5, 2017 Corntassel CP Church Page 6