REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain: moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Key verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14).
FLIP CHART: John Stott’s outline of SOM.
This then is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:7-13)
REVIEW:
As partners with the Triune God in governing the world he gave us the gift of prayer so that we can affect the outcome of events. He wants us to focus on three main areas in prayer: The honoring of the person of the Triune God, the advancement of His Kingdom and the doing of His will throughout the world.
God condescends to listen to our prayers and provides day by day according to our needs because He loves for us to come to Him in prayer and ask of him.
1. We are owned by our Creator. We are his and all that He gives us is given on loan as a trust. The misuse or lack of use of all or any of our facilities engenders moral debt.
2. Our sins, both sins of commission and omission, are a great accumulation of moral debt that is absolutely impossible for us to pay down.
3. God is a forgiving God but the debt of sin must be paid. In order to remain just while forgiving us our debt of sin, Christ bore our sin-debt on the cross.
4. We must be very careful and thoughtful when asking God to forgive us our sins. The privilege of us praying that prayer came at a great cost to the Triune God. Just being able to say, “God forgave me” should cause a deep sense of gratitude and awe to arise in our hearts.
INTRODUCTION
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Forgiveness is the Christians most unpopular virtue.”
The forgiveness talked about here is not “judicial forgiveness.” People who pray this prayer are assumed to have received “judicial forgiveness” for they are calling God “Father.” The forgiveness focused on here is “Parental Forgiveness,” the forgiveness needed to maintain an intimate relationship between parent and child.
Mt. 6:14-15 are the “footnotes” for Mt. 6:12. In fact the fifth request is the only one that is given a footnote.
ILL: There is a universal longing, a hunger in every human soul for forgiveness; both to be able to give it, and to receive it. In one of his stories, Ernest Hemingway tells about a young man who wrongs his father and he runs away from home to the city of Madrid. Out of great love for his son, the father takes out an ad in the Madrid newspaper, ‘Paco, meet me Hotel Montana, 12 noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa.’ Now Paco is a rather common name in Spain, and so when the father gets to the hotel, he finds eight hundred young men waiting for their fathers.” (The Web, Gary Stratman).
ILL: There is an epitaph on a large headstone in a cemetery outside of New York City. The headstone doesn’t have on it the name of a person in the grave, nor when he or she was born or died. Nor does it say “beloved mother,” “father,” “husband” or any such thing. Just one word stretches from one end of the headstone to the other and it’s the word, “Forgiven.” Somebody wanted it known that they could die in peace because that were forgiven. And that’s all that matters.
DEFINING FORGIVENESS:
QUESTION / FLIP CHART: How would you define forgiveness?
Aphiemi is used 146 times in the NT. 49 times it means forgiveness. The other times it means dismiss, release, leave, abandon, as loosing a ship from its mooring, discharging arrows, releasing a legal bond.
Some would say it means “letting go.” You clench your hand holding a pen and then open it, letting go. That is aphiemi.
OBJECT LESSON: In one secular Greek text the word aphiemi is used for “let the pot drop.”
The word is forgive. You are giving another person release from the wrong they have done to you.
ILL: The Eskimoes have no word for forgiveness. Finally the translators used an Eskimo word that means “not being able to think about it anymore.” Jeremiah 31:34 reads, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. Judicial Forgiveness & Parental Forgiveness
2. God’s Word Lays Great Stress on the Importance of Forgiveness
3. Forgiveness is Not Easy
4. People will Wound Us, will be Indebted to Us.
5. There Must Be No Limits on Forgiveness.
6. God’s Forgiveness of us; Our Motivation for Being Forgiving
7. An Unforgiving Heart Breaks Our Relationship with Our Father
8. God’s Forgiveness of Us is in Proportion to our Forgiveness of Others
9. A Forgiving Heart is the Mark of the Child of a Forgiving Father
FORGIVING OUR DEBTORS
I. JUDICIAL FORGIVENESS / PARENTAL FORGIVENESS
. . . as we also have forgiven our debtors. . . . For if you forgive
men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also
forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins your Father will
not forgive you
JUDICIAL FORGIVENESS
QUESTION: How would you define/describe ‘judicial forgiveness’?
FLIPCHART: Go over “salvation” chart carefully explaining “judicial forgiveness.”
QUOTE: Judicial forgiveness is the full, complete positional forgiveness granted by God as the moral judge of the universe and by it our sins past, present, and future are totally, completely forever forgiven. Thus we are justified, declared righteous eternally. That happens when you are saved. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ at that moment the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you and you who have sinned and come short of the glory of God are instantly made righteous in Christ. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to you, and God drops the gavel of His sovereignty. He hits the table with it and says, “Declared righteous in Christ.” . . . God is satisfied. That is settled. And that’s why Romans 8 says “No one will ever separate us from the love of Christ.” That’s why Romans 8 says “No one can ever lay any charge to God’s elect.” (John MacArthur, from the web)
Parental / Family Forgiveness
Here we are not dealing with God as a righteous judge but as a loving father.
The debts incurred here are by people who have sinned against us. The forgiveness referred to in this request and the two footnote verses has nothing to do with salvation. It is talking about relational matters with other people. This fifth prayer request in “The Disciples Prayer” has nothing to do with salvation and everything to do with our relationship with our Heavenly Father.
QUOTE: “This has nothing to do with that eternal forgiveness which the believing sinner receives when he comes to Christ. It is the Father’s forgiveness of an erring child, which must of necessity take into account the attitude of the failed one toward other members of the family” (H. Ironside as quoted by J. Boice, 197).
If this fifth petition referred to salvation there would be no security for the believer. We would always be wondering if we have forgiven every body and fearful we have missed someone. Also we would be earning our salvation by the act of forgiving others. Salvation would no longer be of grace.
ILL: In John 13 Peter first refused to let Jesus wash his feet. Jesus said, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (vs. 8). Peter responded asking Jesus to wash his head and his hands too. Jesus answered, “A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean” (vs. 10). We are judicially forgiven, cleansed by Christ and thus enjoy the security of eternal salvation. But we need to experience parental forgiveness for the misdeeds we do on a daily basis, as we walk in this fallen body through a fallen world. Our feet get dirty and thus we need cleansing/forgiveness in order to maintain our relationship with our spiritual family and our heavenly Father.
II. GOD’S WORD LAYS GREAT STRESS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FORGIVENESS.
QUESTION: Why is forgiveness so important that it deserves a place as the fifth request in this model prayer and in fact deserves its own footnote?
THE MASTER KEY TO ALL HUMANS RELATIONSHIPS
“Forgiving as Jesus forgives is the Master Key of All Human Relationship. You cannot live in the house of life with all its varied rooms without a master key, and the master key of the house of life is forgiveness.” (Quoted from the web)
The only way to live happily in a broken world where imperfect people come up short every day is by exercising the spirit of forgiveness.
READING: Why is forgiveness so important? Why is forgiveness the master key of all human relationships? Why is forgiveness absolutely necessary in order for you and me to live with any degree of happiness at all? The answer is obvious. … In order to live with normal people like you and me, normal people who are irritable, moody, sassy, angry, imperfect, selfish, and impertinent, you need the gift of divine forgiveness to live with each other. O, you can live in conflict, frustration and anger with all those normal and imperfect people around you, but you cannot live happily with imperfect people without the divine gift of forgiveness. People do not change: that is, people will always be imperfect. People will always be irritable, moody, sassy, angry, selfish and impertinent. People will always be imperfect, and the only way to live with imperfect people like you and me is through forgiveness. … Forgiveness is as necessary for life as is air, water and bread. You cannot live without air, water and bread and so also, you cannot live life happily or effectively in this world of ours without the gift of God’s forgiveness. (From the Web – “Forgiveness is for Heroes”)
ILL: Robert Louis Stevenson in his Picturesque Notes of Edinburgh tells the story of two unmarried sisters who shared a single room. As people are apt to do who live in close quarters, the sisters had a falling out, “on some point of controversial divinity.” In other words, they disagreed over some aspect of theology. The controversy was so bitter that they never spoke to one another again! Yet, possibly because of a lack of means or because of the innate Scottish fear of scandal, they continued to live together in a single room. They drew a chalk line across the floor to separate their two domains. It divided the doorway and the fireplace, so that each could go in and out and do her cooking without stepping into the territory of the other. For years they coexisted in hateful silence. Their meals, their baths, the family visitors were continually exposed to the other’s unfriendly silence. And at night they went to bed listening to the heavy breathing of her enemy. Thus two sisters, (ostensibly daughters of the church!) continued the rest of their miserable lives. (Hughes, 187).
The Living Bible paraphrases Job 5:2 to read, “To worry yourselves to death with resentment would be a foolish, senseless thing to do!”
FORGIVENESS IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
QUESTION: Apart from these verses, what does the Sermon on the Mount have to say about forgiveness?
“Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy” (5:7).
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God” (5:9).
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (5:23-24)
The context here is that there was anger between brothers due to demeaning words (5:22).
“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him in the way …” (5:25).
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” (6:44)
Romans 12:18 sums it up: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
Forgiveness expresses the highest virtue of man. We are more like God than at any other time when we are forgiving. “It is a man’s glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11).
Phil Yancey said: There is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world [when we forgive someone].
QUESTION: Why didn’t Jesus make the fifth request in this model prayer to say, “Help us love our neighbors as we love ourselves”? It seems like the first three requests are about loving God, His name, His Kingdom, His will. Shouldn’t the second three have something to do with loving the neighbor?
You are never more loving to your neighbor when you are releasing him/her from their debt of sin, setting them free. The first fruit of loving your neighbor is a forgiving spirit towards your neighbor. And of course your closest neighbor is your wife.
III. FORGIVENESS IS NOT EASY
ILL: “In 1944, a young pole named Simon Wiesenthal was a prisoner of the Nazis. He had looked on helpless as Nazi soldiers killed his grandmother on the stairway of her home, and as they forced his mother into a freight car crammed with elderly Jewish women. All together, 89 of his Jewish relatives would die at the hands of the Nazis. Wiesenthal himself tried without success to commit suicide when first captured.
On a bright sunny day as Wiesenthal’s prison detail was cleaning rubbish out of the hospital for German casualties, a nurse approached him. ‘Are you a Jew?’ she asked hesitantly, then signaled him to accompany her. Apprehensive, Wiesenthal followed her up a stairway and down a hallway, until they reached a dark musty room, where a lone soldier lay, swathed in bandages. White gauze covered the man’s face, with openings cut out for mouth, nose, and ears. The nurse disappeared closing the door behind her to leave the young prisoner alone with the spectral figure. The wounded man was an SS officer, and he summoned Wiesenthal for a deathbed confession. ‘My name is Karl,’ said a raspy voice that came from somewhere within the bandages. ‘I must tell you of this horrible deed; tell you because you are a Jew.’
Karl began his story by reminiscing about his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had lost while in the Hitler Youth Corp. He later volunteered for the SS, and served with distinction and had only recently returned, badly wounded, from the Russian front. Three times as Karl tried to tell his story, Wiesenthal pulled away as if to leave. Each time the officer reached out to grab his arm with a white, nearly bloodless hand. He begged him to listen to what he had just experienced in the Ukraine.
In a certain town abandoned by the retreating Russians, Karl’s unit stumbled upon a booby-trap that killed 30 of their soldiers. As an act of revenge, the SS rounded up 300 Jews, herded them into a three-story house, doused it with gasoline, and fired grenades at it. Karl and his men encircled the house, their guns drawn to shoot anyone who tried to escape. ‘The screams from the house were horrible,’ he said, reliving the moment. ‘I saw a man with a small child in his arms. His clothes were afire. By his side stood a woman, doubtless the mother of the child. With his free hand, the man covered the child’s eyes, and then he jumped into the street. Seconds later the woman followed. Then from the other windows fell burning bodies. We shot. Oh God.’
All this time, Simon Wiesenthal sat in silence letting the German soldier speak. Karl went on to describe other atrocities, but he kept circling back to the scene of that young boy with the black hair and dark eyes falling from a building, target practice for the SS rifles.
‘I am left here with my guilt,’ he concluded at last. ‘In the last hours of my life, you are with me. I do not know who you are. I know only that you are a Jew, and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again, I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.’
Simon Wiesenthal, an architect in his early 20’s, now a prisoner dressed in a shabby uniform marked with a yellow star of David, felt the immense crushing burden of his race bear down on him. He stared out the window at the sunlit courtyard. He looked at the eyeless heap of bandages lying in the bed. He watched a bluebottle fly buzzing the dying man’s body, attracted by the smell. ‘At last I made up my mind,’ Wiesenthal writes. ‘And without a word I left the room.’ (Phil Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?)
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Everybody thinks forgiveness is a good idea until they have something serious to forgive.”
“No part of his teaching is clearer: and there are no exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated“. (C.S. Lewis)
ILL: In his book, Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis writes these words, “Last week in prayer, I discovered, or at least I think I did, that I suddenly was able to forgive someone that I had been trying to forgive for over thirty years.”
QUESTION: Why is forgiveness so difficult?
If forgiveness was easy it would not be the centerpiece of this model prayer. You don’t need to pray too much about things that are easy.
A number of things make offering forgiveness a long and difficult process. It is hard to forgive people who do not admit that they are wrong. And what about people who don’t want your forgiveness? Who say, “Keep your forgiveness. I don’t need it or want it.” It is difficult to forgive a person who won’t speak with you or even look at you.
ILL: How to catch a monkey. You drill a hole the size of a monkey’s hand in coconuts and then place the coconuts under trees were monkeys are. They will put their hands inside the coconut and grab the sweet coconut meat. Then they will put in the other hand and finally even their feet. Their hands and feet are clutching the coconut meat. The only way the monkey can get free is to let go of the coconut meat. But that is difficult to do because he loves coconut meat.
Letting go can be very, very difficult!!!!
SO WHAT???
1. Judicially we have been totally forgiven of all sins when we trusted Christ as our Savior. But we need parental forgiveness of the slips and falls we experience in our daily walk.
2. Forgiveness means “letting go,” “releasing,” “dropping the pot.”
3. Living in this world, mixing with the human race, both Christian and non-Christian, means that our hearts will often be wounded and injured.