Forgive Us Our Debts...

Uriel and I want to take this opportunity to rejoice with you in the wonderful outcome of your search for a new pastor. We are so glad that God has led you so definitely and so clearly, and we want to commend the search committee. Being a pastor for 43 years, I've witnessed much in this way and your search committee deserves the highest commendation for the thoroughness with which they have gone about seeking God's will and also preparing you as a family of God for knowing God's leading in this matter, and we just rejoice with you. We believe from all that we have read and heard that God is in this, that Keith will prove to be God's man, and that the future under God is going to be a very blessed future for you as a congregation. Turn with me to Matthew 18 and verse 21 to the end of the chapter. When you've found the passage, you'll stand to read it, please. Matthew 18, verse 21. Then Peter came to him and said, 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 seventy times seven. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all. Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay you all. and he would not, and went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you? And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father also will do to you, if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. So reads the Word of God, the Lord by His Spirit, blessed to our understanding. Please be seated. We come this evening now to the fifth petition in the pattern prayer that Jesus gave us, namely, forgive us our debts. as we forgive our debtors, verse 12. The previous petition, which we looked at last Sunday night, was for the preservation of our body. Give us this day our daily bread. But Jesus also said, man shall not live by bread alone, for he is not just a body, he is a soul, and his soul has needs as much as his body. Our body can't live without food, and Jesus is saying here, our soul cannot live without the forgiveness of God. Before we became Christians and God forgave our sins, the Bible says we were dead in trespasses and sins. Our sins had separated us from God, who is the source of eternal and spiritual life. But when we come to Jesus Christ in faith as penitent sinners, God pardons us, He reconciles us to Himself, and by His Spirit He quickens us into newness of spiritual life. That is what justification is all about. We could have no spiritual life at all, if God's Son had not borne the penalty of our sins upon the cross and made it possible for God to forgive our sins and make it possible for us to be reconciled to Him. The problem, however, is that Christians still continue to sin, and forgiveness is needed every day. Thus Jesus follows the plea for daily bread with a plea for daily forgiveness. I'm sure that was the intention, though it is not the actual wording of the petition. But it was not something Jesus had to pray for for himself. And that's why we do not call this prayer the Lord's Prayer. For the Lord had no sin to confess. He could not pray a petition like this. Which of you convicts me or convinces me of sin? He challenged his critics. No, this petition was put here for us, and that's why we call it the pattern prayer, for it was a prayer Jesus could not use, but which we need to use. Indeed, you know, the closer you and I draw to Christ and to God the Father, the more we feel our need to pray this prayer. Forgive us our debts. as we forgive our debtors. Now, as we focus our thoughts on this fifth petition, I want you to consider in the first place our daily debt. How should a Christian see his or her sin? Well, the Bible describes sin in various ways. Lawbreaking, deviation, rebellion, shortcoming, and defilement. One facet may be more obvious to us at a certain time than the others, but sin is always, all of these things, in the sight of God. And therefore, it is good to pray, not forgive us our deviations, forgive us our shortcomings, forgive us our rebellion, forgive us our trespasses, but forgive us our debts. because God demands total and and unequivocal obedience and submission to Him. And when we do not give Him that total submission, then it is an unpaid debt. And this is obscured, of course, by our use in our churches in repeating the Lord's Prayer of using the word trespassers instead of the word debts. which is here in the Scriptures. And it's a pity that most Protestant churches have followed this version of the prayer which originated in the Church of England through Thomas Cranmer, who, for the benefit of the Church of England, composed the Book of Common Prayer in 1662. And he chose to use the word trespasses because it comes up again at the end of the prayer where Jesus amplifies this fifth petition, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now, by our sin, whether we see it as law-breaking, as deviation, as rebellion, as shortcoming or defilement, by our sin we have wronged God. And we cannot right or repay that wrong by ourselves. But there is something else that this word debts teaches us. And it speaks to us of another form of sin, and that is the sin of omission, the failure to do the good that we owe to God to do. And so, when Christians examine themselves, it is also for sins of omission that we should look. For our duty before God is not just to refrain from evil, but also to give ourselves wholeheartedly to doing the will of God and to glorify Him. Archbishop Usher, you know, whose chronology is used in the margin of the old King James Version, showed a true sense of spirituality when on his deathbed he prayed, Lord, forgive me most of all my sins of omission. Sin, our Lord is telling us here, is a debt which is incurred every day, and for which forgiveness ought to be sought every day. And as a consequence, he goes on in the second place to speak of our daily dependence upon God as debtors for His forgiveness. In this manner, therefore, pray, says Jesus, our Father in heaven, forgive us our debts God is not only the giver of our daily bread, He is also the forgiver of our sins, our daily debts. And only our divine creditor can cancel our unpaid debts, or our unpayable debts. Now, true, it's the very last thing that you and I deserve, but God, in His grace and in His mercy, has promised He will do so. David cries to God for mercy in Psalm 130 because he says, there is forgiveness with you. He's sure of that. Micah says, who is a God like you who pardons iniquity? Why? Because he delights in mercy. Forgiveness is always more of a problem to the forgiver than it is to the forgiven. Forgiveness is not an easy thing for God, for while He is loving, He is also holy. The Bible says that God is as much light as He is love, as much holy as He is merciful and compassionate. And he cannot just turn a blind eye to our sin and lightly dismiss it. For that would leave him open to the charge of being morally indifferent to our sin. And there would no longer be anyone in the universe to uphold true justice. No, God's moral indignation against sin has to be expressed somehow, either against the sinner, the one who has incurred the debt, or God to take that penalty upon an innocent substitute. God's moral indignation against sin is revealed to us in Scripture by His willingness to give His only Son to be our sin-bearer upon the cross. Because instead of inserting his indignation by judging us according to the law, God expressed his anger at sin by punishing Jesus in our place. That's the only reason why we are able to pray this prayer and look to God to forgive our debts. That was what was going on on the cross. God was demonstrating his justice in exactly the same way, friends, I don't know if you're aware of this, but in exactly the same way as God would have demonstrated his justice against us in throwing us forever into hell. Jesus is not making a token payment. but a full deposit and down payment and payment complete. No wonder Jesus cried out from the cross, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? Because in that moment when He took the guilt, the judgment and the punishment of our sin upon Him so that God could forgive us, God had to turn His back upon His Son. For three hours in total darkness, Jesus experienced the God-forsakenness of hell and the utter darkness of hell. He who is eternal light and had always lived in the light in a spiritual sense, symbolized by the darkness that covered the brightness of the sun, Jesus endured your hell and my hell. for us. Without the shedding of blood, the scripture says, there is no remission of sins. And that is why Jesus took the cup at the last supper, you remember, and said, this cup is shed for many for the remission of sins. To remit, of course, means to cancel a debt. And that's why the Bible sometimes uses the word remit rather than the word forgive, even though the NIV insists on translating the Greek word for remittance as forgiveness. But there is a definite reason for the Holy Spirit using that word remit. because it is the cancellation of a debt. In modern terms, it's like God pressing the cancel button of the computer in his mind that has recorded all our sins and removing every trace of them. Listen to how God Himself describes His perfect and complete forgiveness in the Bible. Psalm 103 verse 12, As far as the east is from the west, so far has the Lord removed our transgressions from us. Because in space, east is infinitely going one way. And West is infinitely going the opposite way. So no one can measure how far God puts our sins away from us. In Isaiah 44 verse 22, God says, I have blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions or your sins. Micah 7 verse 19 says, you will cast all our sins into the depth of the sea. In other words, God will cover our sins so completely, like a cloud covers the sun, so that no one can see them anymore. And God will put them into the depths of the sea, so that no one will ever be able to find them again. All these pictures are different ways of saying the same thing, that through Christ, God can not only forgive our sins, but forget them. In Jeremiah he says, I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more. Though we may remember them, God never will. Though the devil may raise them up as the accuser of the brethren, God never will. Now that raises a problem. I've laid that foundation under this second point that that we are debtors to God for our forgiveness. But it raises this problem. If Christ's death has perfectly atoned for all our sins, past, present, and future, as it has, and if God's verdict in declaring the believer to be absolutely righteous, as it does, For that is the meaning of justification. Why does the Christian need to pray for daily forgiveness at all? And the answer lies in distinguishing between God as our judge and God as our father. Between being a justified sinner and an adopted son or daughter. You see, we must not forget this pattern prayer is a family prayer which we pray to our Father as His adopted children through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And though our daily failures do not overturn our justification, until we say we are sorry for our daily sins, our fellowship and our communication with God is marred. Jesus, you know, taught this in a very vivid way. On the last night he spent with his disciples before dying as an atoning sacrifice upon the cross, when after they had finished eating, he took a basin and a towel, and he washed the disciples' feet. And you remember, Peter's immediate response was, Lord, you shall never wash my feet. And Jesus replied, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. Hearing that, Peter then said to him in his typical blusterous way, Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head. No, says Jesus, he who has bathed, or is it bathed, needs only to wash his feet and is completely clean. In other words, conversion and being born again is like a bath. All our sins are forgiven and we are made clean so that we can enter into full fellowship with God, permanent fellowship with God. But like Peter, that day, that Thursday before Good Friday, had washed himself thoroughly, or perhaps he may have had the luxury of a full bath, but after trudging through the streets of Jerusalem and coming to the upper room at six in the evening, his feet were dirty. So we get spiritually dirty as we go about our daily business, and we need God's forgiveness afresh. We don't require a complete bath. We don't require another justification. But we do need our feet, as it were. to be washed. Sin is not eradicated from our lives when we are born into God's family and we become partakers of a new nature, divine nature. The new nature exists side by side with the old nature until eventually it is ultimately killed the day that we die. And while we hate sin as never before, and its power is broken to an extent, we do sin every day. And so, although we do not lose our salvation, we do forfeit the joy of unspoiled fellowship and communion with God. And the only way to have that fellowship restored, friends, is to seek daily forgiveness. The Christian then is to keep short accounts with God. We must be willing to examine ourselves and listen. We must be also willing to allow others to examine us who see our faults before we do. The Puritans, you know, valued preachers. who had this commitment, who would wake up a person's conscience as they preached the Word of God and drive them to repentance. And I'm sure many of you here tonight will agree with me that there desperately needs to be more preaching like that in our churches today. Though it is distasteful to our pride, self-examination is very necessary if we are to enjoy true and full communion with God as His adopted sons and daughters. It's not a good thing to turn a blind eye, as so many parents do, to their children's faults. Our Heavenly Father never does that. So, my Christian brothers and sisters, do let's take this seriously, because our sins offend God more than we can ever understand. They offend Him especially because we have the best reason not to sin. Christ died for us. And the greatest resources not to sin, God's Spirit dwells within us. Those who think that because all their sins are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, they need not bother to studiously keep short accounts with God, squaring their debts with God by repentance and faith, are seriously confused. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound, asks Paul in Romans 6 verse 1, and the answer is certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer therein? Just as it upsets a man more to learn that his wife is sleeping around than the girl next door is doing it, so God is most deeply outraged when he sees his own adopted children sinning with impunity. This is the will of God, says Paul, your sanctification. How concerned are we as the sons and daughters of God that our lives should be as free of sin as possible. The true Christian, I say, will not only seek to find and face his sins through self-examination, but he will seek by the power of the Holy Spirit to forsake them. That is what repentance means. It involves a daily turning from sin to God, and asking Him to forgive us afresh, to cleanse us afresh, and make us as white as snow in His sight. And friends, only the atoning blood of Christ can do that. As Thomas Watson, the Puritan, says in his commentary on the Lord's Prayer, and it's a wonderful commentary, Repentance is a condition, not a cause. God will not pardon for repentance, nor yet without it. The daily forgiveness we need then is the sole prerogative of God to impart, and this He does when our appeal for mercy is mixed with our repentance and determination by the help of God to forsake our sin. Only on condition of repentance and faith can we receive God's pardon, even as Christians. It is a blessing that a proud heart of stone cannot observe. It only seeps into what the Bible calls a broken and a contrite spirit. So blessed are those whose daily bread is accompanied by the daily forgiveness of their sins. We depend upon God's mercy for both, don't we? Daily forgiveness is as necessary, I repeat, as daily bread. Well, that's the second lesson, and I've drawn it out because it needs to be spelled out. It's not just the case of a Christian coming to God and saying, oh, I'm sorry, forgive me. We have to constantly remember, even for Christians, God can only do it because of the great sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. our daily dependence upon God for the forgiveness of our sins. And the third lesson is our daily duty to pardon our debtors. For Jesus says that we are not just to pray, forgive us our debts, period, or full stop. as we say in English, but forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We can't expect mercy from God if we are unwilling to show mercy to others. And though this is difficult for our sinful hearts to accept, we dare not minimize the second half of the fifth petition. For it's the only petition in this patterned prayer which Jesus chose to amplify. And so when he finished the prayer, he immediately goes on in verse 14 to say, For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Now, I don't know about you, but I can empathize with Augustine in the fourth century when he said, this is the terrible petition. For experience shows sad to say that we do not always take the second half of the petition to heart. We are quick to claim the first part, but not to obey the second part. Now once again, we must be very careful here. Our Lord is not saying that our forgiving others is a good work that puts God into the position where he has to forgive our debts. We can never put God in our debt. Rather, it is to be thought of as the removal of an obstacle, an unforgiving spirit that prevents God from forgiving us. Our forgiveness of others is not a cause of God forgiving us, but it is a condition as Thomas Watson said, for God to forgive us. And so, this is for a good reason that Christ went on to amplify this fifth petition. Our willingness to forgive others who have sinned against us, you see, is evidence of the genuineness of our change of heart. that we are partakers of the divine nature, that we do feel as God feels, and that we are merciful like our Father in heaven is merciful. Because repentance is a change of heart and mind in which the mercy and forbearance of God become central to our whole style of Christian living. To squeeze pardon out of a haughty, self-righteous man is like trying to extract blood out of a stone. It's not in him or her to forgive. They are too absorbed with the supposed indignity that has been done to their supposed great selves to think that such a thing could be forgiven. The offender does not deserve to be forgiven in their jaundiced eyes. The willingness to forgive others, then, is a clear indication that we have been born again, that we have had a radical change of heart, and have become partakers of the divine nature, and that is all involved in repentance. We may still find it hard to forgive and to forget some particularly hurtful thing that has been done to us. Some of you may never have had that experience. Others of us here tonight have. But, in the light of our own sin against God, all such severely hurtful actions are as nothing. Do as you would be done by is the rule Jesus has left us for our new life. And the Christian who refuses to forgive the others brands himself as a hypocrite. To quote Thomas Watson again, he that cannot forgive, his grace is counterfeit, his faith is fancy, his devotion is hypocrisy. And our Lord told that telling parable in our Bible reading tonight to illustrate this condition of God's forgiveness. One of the king's servants owed him ten thousand talents, which in today's financial terms would be the equivalent of seven and a half million dollars. And because he was not able to pay this enormous sum, the master demanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had in order to recoup some of his loss. But when the servant fell down before him, saying, Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all, Jesus says, then the master was moved with compassion and forgave him the debt. But no sooner had he been released, when, Jesus says, he went out. It was already firmly in his mind. and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, that is a sum equivalent to fifteen dollars today. And Jesus says that he took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe. And his fellow servant likewise fell on his knees and begged him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you all. And he would not, says Jesus, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. Well, when the other servants saw what had happened, they reported the matter immediately to their master, who called for the forgiven man to come back into his presence. You wicked servant, he said, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you? And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. And then Jesus concluded the parable by saying, So my Heavenly Father will also do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Forgiven much, you and I can also forgive, no matter how costly. since we will never have to forgive others as much as God has forgiven us, nor at such a supreme cost. My friends, this is a timely truth for us to take home tonight. One of the major hindrances of blessing in our churches is what Keith alluded to in his reply to your invitation to become the pastor of this church. And that is an unforgiving spirit in the home between a husband and a wife, or parents and children, or in the church family, in every realm of our Christian relationships. But how can we refuse to forgive others when our own need of forgiveness is so much greater? That's what Jesus is saying in this fifth petition. So let's heed the exhortation of the Apostle Paul, which comes in many of his letters. But in Colossians, it is, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Now, as I conclude, I have a few minutes left, I take it. We'll finish at five past, but I need to make a point of clarification which is very important. It is an exception, the one exception to this divine rule. Because as with God, so with us, forgiveness is conditional upon repentance. That's why I spend so much time upon it. Our Lord is not saying here that we are to forgive our debtors willy-nilly, without any acknowledgement of wrongdoing on their part. There are many today, psychologists, psychiatrists, Christian counsellors, who are presenting this message as a Christian message. I do not believe it is a biblical requirement. God does not forgive like that. And he certainly doesn't hold you or me to a higher standard than he holds himself to. Of course, we are not to hold grudges against those who have sinned against us and wronged us, or try to get even, or rejoice when something bad happens to them. Jesus says we are to love our enemies even when they don't want to admit their wrong and put it right. And we are to seek their good by praying for them, by asking God to bring them to repentance so that they can be reconciled first to Him and then to us. Let me also make it clear that the forgiveness our Lord is specifying in this fifth petition has to do with real wrongs, with actual sins, and not with imaginary slights. Only when those who sin against us ask for our forgiveness, Are we required to give it to them and receive them back into full favor and fellowship with us? Not just one time, or two times, or three times, or if we want to go as far as Peter and say seven times. You know our Lord's answer. Not to do so is to show that we have not become partakers of the divine nature, which is love, and that we are not the children of God. And if this last application fits your particular spiritual condition, then let me say to you this evening, that you are still an impenitent sinner and your first requirement is to come to God in humility, confess your sin, cast yourself upon his mercy to forgive you, and to claim by faith his forgiveness through the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I pray you will do so. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this fifth petition of Jesus. It is, in a sense, a terrible petition because it's the one that challenges us most and convicts us most, where we fall down the most. We pray that as your word has been opened up to us tonight, we will take it into our hearts, let it sink deep down into our souls, and apply it as Jesus intended it to be applied. That, oh God, we might continually, day by day, walk in the light as you are in the light. And when we sin, help us to confess our sin immediately, knowing that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. And Father, help us to be eternally grateful. For Jesus' sake, Amen.