Well, the last few weeks we've been in the Lord's Prayer
and we're actually now coming to the end
of our time in the Lord's Prayer
and wrapping up our time in Matthew for now
and we'll move into our Advent season starting next week.
So if you get excited about Christmas,
Christmas is coming.
For some of you, it already came,
you already decorated and you know, ugh.
How many of you guys decorate before Thanksgiving?
Anyone?
Oh, fewer people than I thought, okay.
We got a few here.
Yeah, okay, there's one right there.
I was over their house and I was like,
that's a Christmas tree right there, ugh.
Thanksgiving hasn't happened yet.
I think one year my wife might have used Halloween
as her like, okay, time for Christmas
and throw that thing up on Halloween.
That was way too early.
But next week here at the church,
things will be transformed, we'll be in our Christmas spirit
and we're gonna launch into our Advent series.
We're gonna talk about the,
the series will be called The Name Out of Isaiah,
chapter nine, that he is wonderful counselor,
almighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace.
And so, love for you to join us in our Advent March
to Christmas each Sunday coming up in December.
But right now we're wrapping up Matthew
and as we've done every week,
we recite the Lord's Prayer together,
reading off to the board.
And so if you'll join me in saying the Lord's Prayer,
but also we're gonna add two verses to it,
which are the two verses we'll be focusing on today.
So join me in saying this.
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their offenses,
your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.
But if you don't forgive others,
your Father will not forgive your offenses.
This is God's word.
So we've been looking at the Lord's Prayer
the last few weeks and we've been looking at it
as a model or a pattern of the kinds of prayers
that we as kingdom citizens adopted into the family of God
as children of God, Christ honoring disciples
ought to pray to Father God.
And not only is it a pattern,
not only is the Lord's Prayer a pattern for us,
but it is the reality of what it means
to be the people of God,
buried in each of those stances of the Lord's Prayer.
As NT Wright says, as we pray it's the Lord's Prayer,
we learn to be shaped by it.
We pray the prayer, we understand the prayer,
and then the prayer shapes us into the kind of people
that God intended.
The prayer itself and the principles and pattern
behind the prayer is itself a discipling mechanism,
a tool in our lives to shape us.
This prayer is both doxological,
and that's a big word that just basically means
praise or worship of God,
an act of praise or worship of God.
So it's doxological, but it's also theological,
meaning it tells us something about God and who he is,
and who we are in relation to him,
what he wants for us.
And so it is full of both praise as well as instruction,
and it teaches us and shapes and molds us.
The reformer John Calvin said,
the Lord's Prayer is the summary of all prayers.
It contains everything that is worthy of desire,
everything that is necessary for the soul.
It's a pretty big statement there
for that one little prayer, right?
But as we've seen and as we've dissected each line,
each line was full of so much meaning and depth
and drawing us back to what is true as we pray.
The late theologian J.I. Packer wrote a book
called Praying the Lord's Prayer.
In his closing chapter, he looked back over the prayer
and gave it a summary of meaning
that I believe will be helpful for us today.
We're gonna go ahead and look at that.
He outlines the pattern of the prayer like this.
Our Father, which is praise for our adoption,
praise for who we are as children of God,
that we've been brought into a family
once we were not God's people, now we are God's people.
When we say our Father, it is an act of praise
and acknowledgement that God has adopted us
to be in to his spiritual family.
Praise God, amen?
Amen.
In heaven, adoration for a God who is transcendent
in his greatness, that God has a much bigger view than us,
that God sees the circumstances of our life in situation.
He looks across all time and he's got a view
that is so much greater than us
that he is worthy to be praised
for his knowledge and his wisdom
from what he can see and he sees all and knows all.
And so we pray in our prayers,
our prayers are to be shaped and molded by the reality
that he is our Father and we are his children,
that he is in heaven and he is transcendent and great.
And then we pray, your name be honored as holy.
And J.I. Packer says, this is zeal for God's glory,
zeal for God's name, zeal that God would have what he wants
because God is good and if God gets what he wants,
it's good for everything.
And so I am zealous for his glory and his name.
And then we pray, your kingdom come,
which is a longing for his triumph,
a longing that the kingdom of God would break
into our lives, that the kingdom of God would break
into our lives in a way that shapes us,
molds us, shapes us.
Your will be done.
This is a self-dedication of us to him.
Lord, you have your will done in this world
and begin in me.
Start here.
And then from this first section,
we move to the last section of the prayer,
which says, give us today our daily bread.
We pray for a reliance on God for our material needs
that he will provide for us what we need.
Give us our necessary bread, our daily bread,
that which we need.
You define what we need.
You know what we need before we even ask.
You guys know that we have a lot of wants, right?
A lot of desires.
And sometimes we mistaken those for needs.
But God, who is transcendent and great, he knows our need.
And so we ask him to meet our daily needs,
whatever those are, and forgive us,
repentance over failures in faithfulness
and our renouncing of mercilessness as a way of life.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us.
This prayer is our sense of our weakness
in the face of the foes,
the face of the forces of our spiritual foes.
And that's what we looked at last week.
My prayer is that as we have examined the model
and the pattern of prayer,
that we have begun to pray the pattern in our own lives.
I don't know about you over the last few weeks,
but I know I catch myself almost daily
jumping into a prayer and leading off
with my needs or my requests.
And as I've done that, as we've studied this,
I've been reset, I've been brought back to the idea
that this pattern reminds me to remember first,
God, my Father.
To remember my adoption as his son
and to thank him for it, to not forget it
and hold it before me ever when I pray.
To remind myself of his transcendent view
of my life and my circumstances.
And to pray that, pray that I remember that
and say that out loud.
God, you see what I don't see.
You know what I don't know.
I'm gonna ask you for some things,
but they may not be best for me.
And so you do what you will do
according to your goodness in my life.
According to your goodness in my life.
And while I pray, will you stir up zeal
for your glory and your name?
I believe I understood and used properly
this prayer and this pattern of prayer
will transform your attitudes and your desires
and will help to align you with what is of greatest worth
and will reshape not only your prayer life,
but your life itself.
But then we find right there after the prayer,
there were two more verses we added in today,
verse 14 and 15.
And they read, for if you forgive others their offenses,
your heavenly father will forgive you as well.
But if you don't forgive others,
your father will not forgive your offenses.
And what you have here in verse 14 and 15,
you have is a commentary.
Matthew has inserted Jesus's words as a commentary
on the prayer, the Lord's Prayer.
And what's interesting is of all the lines
of the Lord's Prayer that he could have chosen
to comment on, he chose the one to say
the lines about forgiving, forgiving our debts
as we forgive others.
And he goes into verse 14 and 15 to say,
for if you forgive others their offenses,
your heavenly father will forgive yours.
But if you don't forgive others,
your father will not forgive your offenses.
So today we're gonna dig in a little bit.
We're gonna do that under three verses.
We're gonna do that under three points.
If you're taking notes,
the first point I'll have you write down
is the principle of forgiveness.
The principle of forgiveness.
The Lord's Prayer emphasizes our dependence
on God's forgiveness.
Forgive us our debts.
However, Jesus ties receiving forgiveness
to the act of forgiving others.
And he highlights that there's some sort
of reciprocal relationship between the two.
These verses reinforce that forgiving others
is not optional in the Christian life.
Forgiving others is not an option.
It's a crucial aspect of living as one
who has received God's mercy.
It is the natural fruit of our sincerity of repentance
and our relationship with God.
This is what comes out.
The entire scripture and message of the scripture
centers on reconciliation and particularly
reconciliation with God through for his forgiveness of us.
This is the center.
This is the center of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Just a couple of verses that I'll highlight
or pull out of the Old Testament Psalm,
chapter 103, verse 12 says,
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
God is a forgiving God who removes them
as far as the east is from the west.
In Micah chapter seven, verse 18 through 19 says,
who is a God like you, forgiving iniquity
and passing over rebellion
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not hold on to his anger forever,
but he delights in faithful love.
Forgiving our iniquities.
By emphasizing forgiveness in the comments
on the Lord's Prayer, what Jesus is doing
is he's highlighting it as the important,
it is so important to our relationship with God
and our relationship to others.
Forgiveness is paramount, fundamental,
foundational to those things.
Romans chapter five, verse 10 says,
for if while we were enemies,
while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of his son,
then how much more having been reconciled
will we be saved by his life?
Forgiveness embodies the essence of grace,
mercy and restoration, which are central themes
to God's kingdom come.
See, Jesus repeatedly taught that the kingdom of God
operates on principles that are contrary to the world.
How many of you guys know or have ever heard
that the kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom?
It doesn't play by the rules of this kingdom.
It doesn't have the values or principles
of the kingdom of this world.
It is an upside down kingdom
because it's nothing like we would naturally see around us.
Instead, it's a kingdom of mercy, a kingdom of humility,
a kingdom of love.
And what we find is that forgiveness
is a tangible demonstration
of the principles of the kingdom of God.
Forgiveness is a non-negotiable practice
for the kingdom citizens.
Forgiveness is a non-negotiable practice
for the kingdom citizens.
Without forgiveness, relationships,
both with God and with others, are broken.
How many of you guys know that in your friendships
or your relationships, that the closer the relationship is,
the more chance there is of offending one another?
The more chance there is of offending one another.
I love my wife.
She's offended me the most.
Right?
Out of all relationships,
because she's always there.
Can't get away.
Don't want to get away.
Can't get away though.
That relationship, the most intimate relationship
in my life is the one filled with the most offenses.
And if forgiveness was not a part of our relationship,
our relationship would be broken and would end.
Right?
In the kingdom of God, it is a non-negotiable
for the kingdom citizens.
The issue of forgiveness.
It's not up for debate.
Yeah, but, yeah, but, do you don't know?
You don't understand?
Nope.
Let's look at what Jesus says.
Jesus knew that forgiving others would be one of the most
challenging aspects of our discipleship.
And so when he laid out the Lord's Prayer,
guess what he looped back on?
Yeah, and that forgiveness thing, that's real.
That's legit.
It's something you actually need to be very concerned about.
Because it might be the very,
the most challenging thing that you face.
If you're taking notes again,
write down the second point, which is forgiveness
as evidence of faith.
Forgiveness as evidence of faith.
The Lord's Prayer assumes that forgiven people
forgive others.
Forgiven people forgive others.
And the verses 14 and 15 explain that our forgiveness
of others reveals whether we truly understand
and accept God's forgiveness in our own lives.
Unwillingness to forgive others undermines our personal
and our personal forgiveness, because it reflects a heart
that hasn't grasped the depths of God's grace.
You might say, isn't forgiveness a gift of salvation
that God gives us, and not something that we earn
through good works, right?
Not even through forgiving others can we earn
our salvation with God.
And that is absolutely true.
See, the scripture also says in Ephesians chapter two,
verse eight, that forgiveness is a gift of salvation.
That we are saved by grace through faith,
and this is not from ourselves, it is a gift of God,
not by works, so that no one can boast.
And so forgiveness can't earn our way into heaven.
What Matthew chapter six, verse 14 and 15 is saying
is not you have to forgive in order to earn God's favor.
But remember who he's talking to in Matthew six.
He's talking to those who have followed him,
those who have laid down their life to be with him,
and he's talking to his disciples,
and he's laying out the kingdom life,
the ideal in the kingdom among the kingdom citizens,
those who have already been saved.
And for them, oh, forgiveness is non-negotiable.
For those who have already received mercy,
for those who have already received forgiveness,
it's not a matter of question anymore.
Having placed our faith in Christ alone,
and having received his grace, we are promised
that the life of Christ, the very life of Christ,
the values and the works of the kingdom,
they will begin to bud and flower in us
who have been forgiven.
It is the necessary outcome, the necessary outflow
of what it means to have the spirit of God come live
within us as believers.
And one of the most essential base values
of the kingdom is forgiveness.
An illustration that my wife was sharing with me is this.
Imagine that you see two apple trees side by side.
Side by side, two apple trees,
and it's the peak of harvest season.
And as you approach these two apple trees,
you see one apple tree that's got this luscious fruit on it,
apples all over it, green leaves all over it.
Beautiful tree, beautiful fruit in the front,
and the fruit in the first service I said red apples,
and then I backtracked because red apples are disgusting.
And then we went to gold or green or something else,
but anything but red.
And I know this is like the war between Coke and Pepsi,
the apple wars.
Whatever your color in your minds, whatever is good,
imagine that on the tree.
It's there.
A tree that's beautiful and flourishing.
Right next to it is another apple tree.
And this tree has zero leaves, none.
It has no fruit whatsoever.
Its branches are rickety and old looking
and cracked and dried.
Nothing appealing about it.
Which one would you think is alive and healthy?
I think it's pretty obvious, right?
Lush fruit, green leaves.
But here's the question.
Is the fruit what makes it healthy and alive?
Or on the other tree, is it the lack of fruit
that makes the other one dead?
And I think the answer is obvious.
No, it's not the fruit that makes it alive.
But the fruit, whether it's the fruit or the dead branches,
they are evidence of something going on
in the heart of the tree at the place
where the tree derives its life from.
Something's gone wrong in the tree
and therefore it's not producing anything and it has died.
Or something has gone right in the tree.
It has gotten everything that it needed.
And guess what just happens for apple trees
when it's healthy and getting everything that it needs?
Boop, bears fruit.
Can't help but bear fruit.
That's what it does.
Forgiving others is the fruit of a heart
that has received the gift of forgiveness itself
and has come alive.
It can't help bear the fruit of forgiveness.
Another way that you might think of it
is that forgiveness is a gift
that has been given to you by grace.
But you know what, we oftentimes think of the gifts
that God gives us by grace?
We think they were all for us.
We think, oh, he gave it to me
and it stops, it terminates with me.
It ends with me.
But you know something that's true of God's gifts?
God's gifts transform us.
God's gifts aren't just something that he gives us,
material things or emotional things
or spiritual things that he gives us
and they have no effect.
His gifts transform us.
And you know what they transform us into?
They transform us from merely being receivers.
They transform us into regifters.
You guys ever regifted a gift on Christmas or birthday?
You've done it, you've done it.
Thank God to that person who gave you that book
or that fruit cake thing.
And you just wrap that thing up
and you get it on its way, right?
You're just a conduit, that's all you are.
It wasn't for you.
It's the same in the faith.
God wants to give gifts,
but those gifts don't terminate with us.
They don't end with us.
What they do is they produce a kind of life in us
so that we bud and burst out with flowers and fruit,
the same kind of fruit that we've received,
the same kind of grace that we received
begins to come out of us, all around us,
to the people who love us and the people who hate us,
the people who are enemies and the offenses,
those who commit offenses against us.
The fruit of God begins to burst out
if it's in here first, if we've received it,
if we've understood this grace that has been given.
We become regifters.
We wrap that up and pass it on
because we've tapped into God,
who is our infinite source of good and grace,
and it's never gonna run out for us.
We don't have to hoard it, we don't have to store it.
We can give it away and we create a pathway,
a stream, a flow of God's grace
that comes into us and through us and out of us.
This is the nature of the Christian life.
This is what it means to be kingdom citizens.
This is what you and I are invited into, that kind of life,
where streams of living water flow out of us
to others to bring life, to bring glory to God.
The life of Christ reaches further and further
through his forgiven children to others.
The last final point, if you're taking notes,
is forgiveness and community.
Forgiveness and community.
The Lord's Prayer is inherently communal.
We talked about that as we went through it.
It's our Father in heaven.
It's give us our daily bread.
And those keys in the Lord's Prayer
are to remind us when we go to pray
that we pray not just for ourselves,
but even in our prayers,
we remember our brothers and sisters in the faith
that they too have needs,
that they too need to be reminded of who God is.
And so we pray in private and we pray in public
to remind one another of who God is.
And we pray to God and intercede
that he would supply the needs not just of us,
but those that we love and those that we know
and that we care for.
A lack of forgiveness, though, disrupts the unity
that Jesus himself has bought with his precious blood.
When we harbor unforgiveness,
especially against a brother or sister in the faith,
then what we're doing is we're creating a blockage
in the family.
God's life can't flow in us and through us
and to those around us.
And so those in the faith begin to be starved
of the life of God because we're refusing
to pass on the forgiveness we've received.
And they get choked out and they get malnourished
and they begin to fall into a lack of health
because the life isn't flowing anymore
and that disunity begins to affect all of us.
And so forgiveness is not simply merely a personal thing.
When we harbor unforgiveness, it's not simply
that I can hide that unforgiveness away in my heart,
right, and just stash it away so that it doesn't
affect anyone.
Our forgiveness affects our community.
Beginning here at the church with those who we love
and those who we call brother and sister,
when we harbor unforgiveness,
we've put a blockage in the artery of our life here
and we're going to be sick as a result of it.
To withhold forgiveness, we kind of go through a process
as humans.
To withhold forgiveness, we have to first remove our enemy
from the community of humanity and our hearts and our minds.
We take them out of the community of humanity.
We have to view them as less than.
You have to view them in a way that they're undeserving
of grace and mercy.
You have to set aside what you know about human weakness,
what you know about human frailty,
what you know about human sin,
what you've experienced in your own life,
you set that aside and you say,
well, that doesn't apply to them
because they're not even like me.
They're something wholly different than I am.
And so unforgiveness begins by taking them out
of the community of humanity,
but the next step of unforgiveness is
that we then take ourselves out of the community of sinners.
You must view yourself as not that bad.
You have to see yourself superior to other sinners,
that you are not in need of at least the same kind
of forgiveness and grace that they're in need of.
Maybe God just needed to clean you up a little bit
or wipe you down.
Maybe you've been in the faith your whole life
and you think that your righteous life
has earned you something in the sight of God,
but they haven't been in the faith all their life
and that makes them rude and crude and kind of not like me
and they need a different kind of forgiveness than I need.
And so when we take them out of the community of humanity
and view them as less than,
then we take ourselves out of the community of sinners
and put ourselves on a high horse
and think that we can look down on other people,
that we're superior,
we're not in need of forgiveness or grace.
Then we hold judgment.
We don't give forgiveness.
But you know what the Lord's Prayer does?
The Lord's Prayer snaps us out of it.
When we pray, forgive us our debts
as we also have forgiven our debtors,
we're being launched right back
into the community of sinners.
We're being reminded once again
that we belong right there among all the rest of the sinners
because we have things that need forgiving.
Forgive us as we forgive others.
We need the same thing that other people need.
We need God's mercy.
As C.S. Lewis put it,
to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable
because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
But we don't like forgiveness
because forgiveness always includes suffering.
We don't like forgiveness
because forgiveness always includes suffering.
And how many of us don't usually sign up for suffering?
Hey?
That was Canadian, right?
A little, hey?
I love the way Tim Keller kind of frames
this idea of suffering and forgiveness.
Dr. Tim Keller passed away a little while ago,
but he put out a book called The Reason for God.
And in it, he talks about forgiveness
and he can say it a lot better than I,
so I'm gonna read some of it.
It won't be up on the screen,
so just listen to the words that I'm gonna say.
Listen to the words of Tim Keller.
Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay
for what they did.
Let's say that one again.
That right there, we just end it.
Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay
for what they did.
However, to refrain from lashing out at someone
when you want to do so with all your being is agony.
It's agony.
It is a form of suffering.
You not only suffer the original loss of happiness
or reputation and opportunity,
but now you forego the consolation
of inflicting the same thing on them.
You are absorbing the debt,
taking the cost of it completely on yourself
instead of taking it out on the other person.
It hurts terribly.
Many people would say it feels like a kind of death.
Forgiveness is a kind of death.
I'll insert a little Dietrich Bonhoeffer right here.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that forgiveness
is the Christ-like suffering
which it is the Christian's duty to bear.
Forgiveness is the Christ-like suffering
which it is the Christian's duty to bear.
We all know that we're supposed to suffer for Christ
and suffer for the cross just as Christ suffered
and that no servant is better than his master.
And if our master suffered, so should we suffer, right?
But did you know that part of the suffering,
a major part of the suffering,
is when you forgive other people
and you absorb the debt that they owe you.
When you let the agony fall on you
instead on the other person.
Ascended on them.
Keller continues, God in Christ absorbed the debt himself.
He bore the penalty for sin
so we could be forgiven and reconciled to him.
Likewise, when we forgive,
we bear the cost of the wrong done to us
instead of demanding others pay it.
When you forgive, you release not only the other person
but also yourself from the coercive,
a corrosive effects of resentment and bitterness.
You let go of the right to seek repayment
and in doing so, you reflect the grace of God.
You let go of the right to seek repayment
and in doing so, you reflect the grace of God.
Forgiveness is paramount, it's foundational
because it is the gospel.
I'm gonna invite the worship team to come on up
and join me on stage as we wrap up the word.
I just want to remind us,
if you are in Christ but you're going, you know what?
I have harbored bitterness and resentment,
be it in a relationship or against an enemy or something,
I have harbored resentment and bitterness in my heart.
I haven't released that but I know I'm in Christ,
I'm His child.
I think what the scripture is bearing down on us
is a call for you to move toward Christlikeness.
Yes, you are a child and you've been walking with Christ
but can you move toward Christlikeness in your forgiveness?
Can you forgive in such a way as Christ has forgiven you?
Can you gaze into God's amazing grace?
Can you see what He has forgiven you of?
The rebellion, the sinfulness, the rejection of Him,
the times that you did not give thanks to Him or praise Him,
give Him is just due, that all of those are sins
that piled up and for all of those,
the Bible says that the wages of sin is death.
If you sin, do you know what the paycheck looks like
at the end of the week?
The Bible says death, that's your wage, that's your paycheck.
But the gift of God in Christ Jesus
is forgiveness of our sins, restoration to God.
And anytime we begin to drift away from that
or we begin to harbor resentment,
we have to turn our eyes back to the cross.
We have to look again at God's amazing grace shown to me,
not general sinners.
Me, a sinner, you, a sinner.
And let God's amazing grace begin to melt the resentment
and hurt and pain.
Yes, it will be agony, it will be all kinds of suffering
to absorb that pain that someone has inflicted on you.
But I would rather partner with Christ in His suffering
by absorbing that than be out on my own
holding my resentment and taking it away
from me, and let that resentment and pain and anger
and let that build up and eat away at me
until I become nothing.
Let me partner with Christ in His suffering.
Paul said that he would count it joy,
he would count it an honor
to partner with Christ in His suffering.
And we get that chance every time
someone commits an offense against us.
Will we forgive and partner with Christ in His suffering?
How many times should I remember and reflect
the forgiveness I've received?
Is it seven times?
Seven times 70, 70 times seven, 700,
how many times should I remember and reflect
the forgiveness I've received?
Is there a number on it?
How great have I been forgiven in Christ
and how wretched was my condition before,
how hopeless my plight, how dim my future,
how corrupt my heart, but how loving my Savior.
And when I was far away,
He was standing out there waiting for me to return.
And when He saw, He came and ran and put a robe on
and called me Son and welcomed me in.
That amazing grace, that forgiveness is the fuel
that's needed to begin to spread that forgiveness
and love to others.
Yes, I know.
No, no, no, John, you don't understand this situation.
This is the exception.
No, no, you don't understand what they did to me.
Again, look to the cross.
Let that bear down.
Look what we did to Him, the perfect, spotless, holy one.
It was our sin that put Him there.
Look what we did to Him and let that begin to change.