Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] In Matthew chapter six, we are given the gift of being taught how to pray by Jesus.
[00:00:10] He gives us the prayer. The Lord's Prayer is what we call it.
[00:00:14] And I want to read through his instructions on prayer from Matthew 6, beginning in verse 9 through 15, and also then simply focus in on one of those requests that we make.
[00:00:34] Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. And in that particular request, there is much for us to study, much for us to grow in understanding of so that we can live according to the commands of Jesus. So would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Matthew 6, Nine, 15.
[00:01:19] Pray then in this Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.
[00:01:25] Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:01:30] Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
[00:01:38] And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
[00:01:47] Amen.
[00:01:48] For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father also will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:04] Please be seated.
[00:02:09] So this request, forgive us our debts, You notice that it's a request on behalf of ourselves, right?
[00:02:25] Jesus is teaching believers to pray, essentially, right?
[00:02:30] This is not instruction to the world on how to pray. This is instruction to the followers of God.
[00:02:39] And the starting point is not I am righteous. The starting point is I am unrighteous. I have debts that need to be paid. I have transgressions that must be forgiven.
[00:02:58] Trespasses.
[00:03:01] This is one of those funny places where different traditions have different words of the Lord's Supper that they use. And debts and trespasses is one of those places. So when you're saying it in a big group of people, forgive us our you hear this sort of just because it's some people saying debts and some people saying trespasses. And then you got to wait for.
[00:03:24] But the point is that there is something wrong with us.
[00:03:29] There's something that is broken that needs to be fixed in us forgiving of our debts.
[00:03:40] What are our debts?
[00:03:42] We know that they are our sins, the things that we have done against God's commands or things that we have not done that he has required, right?
[00:03:59] But the word debt actually gets at part of this meaning in a way that is hard for sin alone to communicate.
[00:04:14] Because when we sin, as King David says, against you and you alone have I Sinned, O Lord. Right?
[00:04:24] And when we sin against God, that sin actually puts us in a position of owing something.
[00:04:34] This is why the word debt is a good translation here. It puts us.
[00:04:41] It communicates part of what's going on here. And part of what's in the Greek is this owing.
[00:04:50] And what is it that we owe?
[00:04:53] Well, we owed obedience, and then we didn't give it, right? And so now we owe the debt of the penalty that our disobedience requires.
[00:05:09] So if you think about what our debts are, okay, and how they are forgiven, it is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that our debt is paid.
[00:05:21] It is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that we have forgiveness of our trespasses, forgiveness of our sins, forgiveness of our debts. And this is the taking away of the burden of our sin, as Christian has in Pilgrim's Progress, but it's also the taking away of not just that crushing weight at the cross, right? But also the this must be satisfied element.
[00:05:54] This debt must be paid.
[00:05:59] And so when we pray, forgive us our debts, we do not start by saying, father, forgive my brother his debts.
[00:06:09] We start by saying, forgive us our debts. Forgive me my sins.
[00:06:19] If you look at the prayer and you notice the order of these requests, give us this day, our daily bread flows immediately into, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
[00:06:38] This is because daily we need this forgiveness.
[00:06:43] Just like daily bread, we need daily forgiveness because we daily violate God's requirements, His law.
[00:06:52] And so our debts constantly compile and add up, and we need them constantly to be wiped away, removed from us. And that is the forgiveness that we're requesting from God, that He would wipe the slate clean so there is no more debt owed.
[00:07:16] And then we are clean, we are righteous, we are holy, we are forgiven.
[00:07:28] But there is a difficulty here, and that is normally when we say, father, forgive me for I have sinned, we are so stuck on our own sins that we forget that the next part is as we also have forgiven our debtors. So if you make it past looking at your neighbor's sin, right, and you realize, ah, what I really need is I need to think about my own sin.
[00:08:03] You've made a big step.
[00:08:08] Because our neighbor's sins are what bother us.
[00:08:13] So when we finally focus on our own sins, we've made a big step. But the next big step is actually forgiving them as we have forgiven them. So we are forgiving.
[00:08:34] There are many things that we might be tempted to pray.
[00:08:42] It's forgive us our debts, as we forgive Our debtors not forgive us our debts, but please do not forgive that man that I'm angry at right now. Would anybody be really so terrible as to pray that?
[00:09:06] Well, actually, there are places in Scripture that might make us feel justified in praying that way, in refusing forgiveness to others.
[00:09:16] Jeremiah 18:23 says, yet you, O Lord, know all their deadly designs against me.
[00:09:24] 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.
[00:09:35] Okay, so which is it, right? Do we have to forgive? Or can we just pray like this?
[00:09:42] Pray like Jeremiah.
[00:09:44] Now, Jeremiah is not the only place where you can find prayers like that. The imprecatory psalms are similar. And it's easy for us to either use those to justify lack of forgiveness in our lives or sit in judgment on the imprecatory psalms and sit in judgment on Jeremiah and sort of sit in judgment on the Old Testament.
[00:10:17] On the Old Testament, God.
[00:10:20] So there's two different ways of going wrong is what I want you to see in thinking about these kinds of verses. We're going to come back to forgiving our debts as we forgive our debtors. Right, that requirement.
[00:10:36] But first we've got to deal with these imprecatory prayers. Imprecatory psalms.
[00:10:45] Now, remember, Jeremiah is praying under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
[00:10:52] We cannot simply dismiss Jeremiah's prayer and say, well, that was wrong, that was clearly wicked, that was clearly evil.
[00:11:02] And David likewise, is under the inspiration of the Spirit as he writes the imprecatory psalms, so he cannot simply say they were wicked.
[00:11:11] But the emphasis in these passages is on God's righteous judgment against sin.
[00:11:23] When you think about your own anger and your own refusal to forgive others. And by the way, refusal to forgive is a constant temptation.
[00:11:35] It's not something that just. You finally realize after 10 years, oh, I've been holding a grudge.
[00:11:41] No, refusal to forgive is something that happens in 30 seconds of bickering between two siblings.
[00:11:53] Right? It just. It happens just like that.
[00:11:57] So as you're thinking about your normal anger, your normal refusal to forgive, that's more normally connected to feeling personally offended.
[00:12:10] Right?
[00:12:12] Personally offended rather than like Jeremiah or King David, prophetically speaking the words of God to his people.
[00:12:26] So there is an easy distinction to be made just right off the bat in understanding when Jeremiah is praying this way, when David is praying this way, writing this way, what we are seeing is a call for the ultimate judgment of God on those who have rejected God and the constant Connection between those who have rejected God and the fact that they have also persecuted God's people is what you're seeing in these imprecatory psalms and in this prayer from Jeremiah.
[00:13:07] So listen to that again, O Lord, you 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. What was Jeremiah proclaiming to the world? He was proclaiming the necessity of people coming to God, of people repenting and no longer living in rejection of God's commandments, no longer living in rejection of God's covenant for his people. This is what Jeremiah was calling. And so when they are persecuting him, it's not just a personal thing. It is an attack on God. It is a complete and utter rejection of God himself that's going on.
[00:14:00] Whereas often when we are dealing with our personal offenses with one another, that's generally not what's going on.
[00:14:08] It's not like you have called your brother to repentance and then he began punching you.
[00:14:17] Right? What typically is happening instead is that we are simply in bickering mode.
[00:14:30] We're simply picking on one another or being impatient with one another, and tempers flare. And there's nothing about a rejection of God going on when we're sinning against one another in these circumstances, it's simply sinning in a normal way. Right?
[00:14:54] Whereas what Jeremiah is dealing with is a complete and utter rejection of God on the part of God's people.
[00:15:05] That sin will ultimately be punished.
[00:15:11] If the people of God refuse, like they did in the time of Jeremiah, to listen to the word of the Lord, they will be judged.
[00:15:24] If the wider world refuses the gospel, they will be judged and there is no forgiveness.
[00:15:39] So here we are. We've got the prayer of Jeremiah on the one part, and then we've got this.
[00:15:45] If you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
[00:15:54] I hope that you can see that we've got transgressions man to man, and we've got transgressions man to God.
[00:16:12] Right?
[00:16:15] Jeremiah is essentially dealing with transgressions against God on the part of others where they have totally rejected him.
[00:16:25] When we pray, we are also dealing with transgressions against God that we have made.
[00:16:31] And then we're talking about the transgressions of others against us.
[00:16:40] When we say, as we Also have forgiven our debtors.
[00:16:50] So Jeremiah says, do not forgive their iniquity.
[00:16:57] May they be overthrown before you.
[00:17:00] And C.S. lewis says, David, Jeremiah, they were just being wicked at that point.
[00:17:08] He's wrong.
[00:17:10] Even in the New Testament, in the time of Revelation, you have the saints crying out who have been persecuted and who have been martyred, okay? Crying out for God to finish his judgment, to pour out his wrath on those who have killed them.
[00:17:30] So we can't simply dismiss the Old Testament. Say there's this Old Testament God, and he was judgmental and angry and mean headed, right? And then there's this New Testament God of grace and love and grace and love and grace and love, right?
[00:17:50] God has not changed.
[00:17:53] God has not changed.
[00:17:57] Old and New Testament.
[00:18:00] We've got to deal with the fact that ultimately God's wrath will come upon the wicked.
[00:18:10] So if you can't make sense of Matthew 6 and Jeremiah 18, all right, and you're inclined to say, well, I've got to pick between them, I hope you can see that you're wrong.
[00:18:30] But if I haven't shown you yet, then I want to leave you with this.
[00:18:36] You're not Jeremiah.
[00:18:38] So go with Matthew 6.
[00:18:42] You need to understand the necessity of forgiving others yourself before you can understand Jeremiah is what it comes down to.
[00:18:56] And so how do we pray? Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.
[00:19:17] There's a difficulty in dealing with forgiveness.
[00:19:23] And that difficulty is that often people do not ask for forgiveness.
[00:19:29] They sin against us and they're unrepentant.
[00:19:32] They sin against us and they don't care.
[00:19:38] What are we to do when people have sinned against us and refuse to ask for forgiveness?
[00:19:52] The answer is simple. We are to forgive them.
[00:19:57] We are to forgive even those who do not ask for our forgiveness.
[00:20:04] Now, at this point, you might say, but, Pastor, God doesn't do that.
[00:20:13] God only forgives those who actually ask for forgiveness.
[00:20:21] Those who cast themselves on his mercy are forgiven. And my brother has not cast himself on my mercy.
[00:20:31] And so why do I have to forgive him when God doesn't have to forgive him?
[00:20:37] And my answer to you is, you are not God.
[00:20:43] But if you want a deeper answer, God has loved his enemies.
[00:20:51] And so if you want to know how you are to be like God, you are also required to love your enemies. Even while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God loved us and sent his only begotten Son so that we might be forgiven.
[00:21:07] So if you think along the lines of the way that God acts Towards his enemies, there is a free offer of forgiveness, and it comes from his love, even for his enemies. In fact, we're all exclusively starting out that way.
[00:21:41] Now, I am out on a limb here because it is very common for people to say, for preachers to say that you cannot forgive the sins of somebody who hasn't asked for your forgiveness. And typically the reasoning is connected to God not forgiving, except those who repent and ask for forgiveness.
[00:22:13] But what I want you to see is that there is still a mistake in that.
[00:22:23] And it's connected with a.
[00:22:26] It's connected with something that can, that can wrap us up and trip us up and make us anxious, I guess is probably the best way to put it. It goes along with the Roman Catholic view of sin and last rites.
[00:22:44] Okay.
[00:22:46] It used to be very common in the Roman Catholic Church to wait to get baptized until, like, you were about to die.
[00:22:56] And the reason was because of this view that you couldn't be fully forgiven for certain kinds of sins, except for by baptism. Your conversion was what could get rid of those kinds of sins. But then if you continued, if you did any of them afterwards, well, then there was, you know, you were kind of tough luck, man.
[00:23:22] And so although it's not common anymore to put off baptism, there's still a real emphasis on last rites. And the idea being that you're getting all of your leftover, like last minute sins confessed and taken care of before you die, because otherwise you. Mmm, that's a problem.
[00:23:50] You have some sins that you aren't forgiven of.
[00:23:57] I know I already said, forgive us our debts is a daily prayer for the Christian right.
[00:24:08] But we are constantly caught in sin.
[00:24:14] We don't want to fall into the mistake of thinking like Luther did at the time of the Reformation, before the Reformation. Right. Well, unless I actually specifically repent and ask forgiveness for that sin, that one's still on my account.
[00:24:34] When we repent, God wipes the slate clean.
[00:24:39] And in a very real sense, that is, of all your sins, past, present and future.
[00:24:48] This does not require you to list them all out or to make sure that you ask for it at the end, right before you die. So you can't commit any other sins otherwise that one's left on your slate, right?
[00:25:04] No.
[00:25:07] You might sin right before you die.
[00:25:13] I can imagine myself doing that.
[00:25:22] Now. Why do I focus so much on this?
[00:25:27] Well, because I want us to have faith that when we ask forgiveness, we are forgiven.
[00:25:38] I don't want you to feel like, oh, I need to make sure I get this one Wiped clean. Oh, I need to make sure I get that day wiped clean.
[00:25:48] No, the reason that our prayer for forgiveness is a daily prayer is simply because we have daily sins.
[00:26:01] And there is a very real sense in which our understanding of that, our knowledge of that, drives us to our Father day by day, saying, I need you. Oh, I need you every hour. I need you.
[00:26:30] And then people sin against us.
[00:26:37] And what we find is that we are quick to hold a grudge, we're quick to get angry, we are slow to forgive.
[00:26:52] And we have this wonderful instruction in how to pray.
[00:26:59] Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
[00:27:04] He's in the middle of the prayer, and when our Lord finishes the prayer, he gives a little bit of explanation about the prayer. And the only thing that he explains is that request.
[00:27:17] And the reason is because it's weird.
[00:27:20] It's the only place in the prayer where we say something contingent, right, Forgive me as I have forgiven.
[00:27:37] And so he gives some explanation. If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will. Will not forgive your transgressions.
[00:27:49] This is very difficult because it essentially makes it sound like you're earning your salvation, you're earning your forgiveness by having forgiven others first.
[00:28:08] And so people will ask, how can this be? Isn't forgiveness free?
[00:28:13] Isn't our justification free? Isn't God offering us forgiveness? If we simply repent, do we have to earn it?
[00:28:28] And so because of that, people are tempted to say, this is some other kind of forgiveness that's being talked about in this prayer.
[00:28:38] When God forgives us in this way, it's some other kind of. It's just like this when you've got sort of like a broken relationship, but it's, you know, it's just not complete peace. And so you're looking for restoration of complete peace between yourself and God the Father.
[00:29:00] Well, it's true we are looking for restoration and complete peace, but this is also precisely what we need at justification.
[00:29:10] And so there's no different kind of forgiveness being discussed here that we can somehow make contingent.
[00:29:25] Like we're not able to be at complete peace with God until we are at complete peace with our brothers.
[00:29:37] And then, of course, the not forgiving part has to be reinterpreted if you're going to make this mean something else. Because to be not forgiven somehow means like God is disciplining you in some unique way.
[00:29:53] Well, none of this works. It doesn't make any sense.
[00:30:01] When God disciplines us.
[00:30:03] That doesn't mean that he hasn't forgiven us. In some sense, when we discipline our children, we might have complete forgiveness in our hearts for their sins, but we still discipline them.
[00:30:21] So we can't change this into some other kind of forgiveness. But we also have to be careful that we don't say, okay, I guess we do earn our salvation.
[00:30:37] Now it becomes very clear that it's impossible to interpret it that way when you read the parable that Christ gives us later on in Matthew. So I'm just going to read you this parable from Matthew 18.
[00:30:52] And it says, then Peter came and said to him, lord, how often shall my brother sin against me? And I forgive him up to seven times.
[00:31:02] Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to 7 times, but up to 70 times 7.
[00:31:08] For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.
[00:31:14] When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him.
[00:31:20] 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.
[00:31:30] So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.
[00:31:38] And the Lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.
[00:31:44] But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denarii and seized him and began to choke him, saying, pay back what you owe.
[00:31:56] So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, have patience with me, and I will repay you.
[00:32:02] 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.
[00:32:17] 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?
[00:32:32] And his Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.
[00:32:39] My Heavenly Father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.
[00:32:49] This is why we always interpret Scripture with Scripture, the unclear, with the clear. And this parable makes abundantly clear that we can't somehow twist the Lord's prayer and instructions on the Lord's prayer up to mean, oh, he's got to be talking about something else.
[00:33:09] Oh, this parable, and the explanation of it is quite simple.
[00:33:16] But what I want you to see is the order that we have in this parable.
[00:33:21] The one who owes 10,000 talents, maybe a couple million dollars, okay.
[00:33:33] Is forgiven by the master.
[00:33:38] Then the one who owes him $30,000 asks the same thing.
[00:33:47] Be patient, right?
[00:33:51] And he refuses.
[00:33:56] When the Lord calls the first one back, he says, should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on.
[00:34:09] We forgive because we are forgiven.
[00:34:13] Does this make sense?
[00:34:16] We forgive because we are forgiven, not, we are forgiven because we forgive.
[00:34:27] But if we do not forgive, we cannot be forgiven.
[00:34:35] And so unforgiveness in this sense where I say, you cannot be forgiven, right. That sounds like in our ears, like, whoa, that's like the unforgivable sin. What do you mean? But no, that's not what I'm saying.
[00:34:50] Unforgiveness is like any other unrepentant sin.
[00:34:56] The evidence of unrepentance is the fact that you won't forgive when you have been forgiven.
[00:35:05] So unforgiveness is just like adultery and greed and fornication. All of which it says, God will judge the adulterers, the greedy, the fornicators, right?
[00:35:21] Those are sins that if we are unrepentant, they will be the cause of our condemnation.
[00:35:36] We will be judged by the measure we judge others with.
[00:35:42] And so we must acknowledge our own sins before we can be forgiven.
[00:35:50] The moment that we are forgiven, we understand the great debt that has been forgiven on our behalf, and the small debts that our brothers owe to us are nothing in comparison.
[00:36:10] Let us not be hypocrites.
[00:36:13] This is the ultimate hypocrisy that the world hates.
[00:36:18] Rightfully so.
[00:36:21] When Christians don't have any true knowledge of their own sin, and when we see ourselves only as righteous, the result is that we are self important, look down on others who are sinners and are unforgiving.
[00:36:48] But if we see the great debt that has been paid on our behalf, then we don't hold ourselves up higher than everybody else. We simply say, I have been forgiven much and so I am quick to forgive others.
[00:37:09] This is why forgiveness is fundamental to Christianity.
[00:37:15] Without forgiveness, there would be no salvation from our sins.
[00:37:23] Without forgiveness of us to our brothers, there would be no forgiveness of sins.
[00:37:37] To refuse to forgive, in other words, is to deny the necessity of forgiveness in your own life.
[00:37:50] Refusing to forgive is ultimately a rejection of God's forgiveness.
[00:38:02] And it leads directly to rejecting God. When you stay angry at your fellow man, when you hold onto your bitterness, can you do anything other than end up being angry at God?
[00:38:29] God is the one who has allowed you to face persecution.
[00:38:35] He's the same one who says, pray for those who persecute you. God is the one who says, blessed are you when you are reviled and slandered and all kinds of evil happens to you for my sake. Right?
[00:38:54] And so when we become bitter and angry about what has happened to us, we ultimately will reject God being angry at Him. This is again why lack of forgiveness of others leads to lack of forgiveness of ourselves. Because our anger at others becomes anger at God.
[00:39:16] You can't hold on to anger at your brother without becoming angry at God. And likewise, you cannot be thankful for his forgiveness. You cannot be grateful for his love without that flowing out into forgiveness and love for others.
[00:39:41] So this is not somehow some special kind of forgiveness that we're talking about that's like a lower kind.
[00:39:49] Nor is this somehow a way that we earn our own salvation.
[00:39:56] The order matters here.
[00:39:59] The love of God is poured out on us in forgiveness. And it flows out of us, therefore, in forgiveness to others.
[00:40:09] And if we claim to have that forgiveness for him, but then we are unforgiving towards others, that is hypocrisy. It means we are not children of God, and that is why we will not be forgiven.
[00:40:26] Now, what does forgiveness accomplish when it says that we are to Forgive our brother 70 times, 7 times?
[00:40:34] Or when it says if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions?
[00:40:47] Here's what I want to what I want you to see at the end.
[00:40:51] Forgiving others, whether they have requested your forgiveness or not, frees you.
[00:41:03] When you forgive others, it frees you from your anger.
[00:41:13] Forgiving is not simply ignoring.
[00:41:23] Forgiving is doing away with your anger.
[00:41:30] And so you are able, whether they have asked for forgiveness or not, whether they have seen their sin or not, you are now able to live out from under the brokenness of sin in their life.
[00:41:56] This is so helpful for us because if we're stuck until they ask for forgiveness from us, then we are liable to ultimately simply be angry all the time.
[00:42:21] And who wants to live without peace? Who wants to live with anger?
[00:42:26] So instead, let us be like Jesus Christ, who, as he was dying, said, father, forgive them.
[00:42:34] They know not what they do.
