WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:02:28.000 My name's Phil Andrew, and I'm here to lead us as we open God's Word this morning and consider it together. Let's spend a minute in prayer before we do that. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. This morning we pray. O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. So, good morning once again. The Lord's Prayer is our topic, as you may know, and we're going to read through it in a minute. But as you may recall the last few weeks, we have read through the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of each of these sessions, these sermons. And at first we read it in English and then we'd been reading it in other languages. And that was Steve's idea, which would never have occurred to me, but occurred to Steve. And I thought it was a great idea because it has really added a dimension that I didn't expect. And it's a reminder that we're part of a global community and that we look forward to a time when people from every nation and tribe and language under heaven will gather before the throne of God. So it's a powerful. We found it a powerful thing to listen to the Lord's Prayer in other languages. So we had it in English, which obviously is our language, and the language of many continents around the world, many countries. Then we had it in Spanish. And although Spanish is a European language, you might think of it as a European language. The most of the Spanish speakers in the world today, actually not in Europe at all, but in Latin America, South America, Central America, Mexico. So it's a reminder. The Spanish language is a reminder of the continent of Latin America or South America. Then we had it with the Hausa language, which is one of many widely spoken languages in Africa. So that was the African continent. So today we're going to move to Europe, a real European language. So I'm going to invite Herrmann. Kommun Sie hieber. You probably guessed what language we're going to read it in. I don't know that name. 2 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:29.000 Harry's name. 3 00:02:29.000 --> 00:03:30.000 Bernard, but we'll call you Bernard. German is spoken in Germany, but it is also spoken in five other countries. It's an official language in. I hope I can remember this. What did I tell you? Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein. It's also an official language in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Belgium. So there's six countries in Europe where German is either the one official language or one of the official languages. So Bernard has agreed to read it in German and I'll do the English. So although it's a prayer, you're certainly welcome to close your eyes and do whatever you like to do to make prayer more meaningful. But you can also leave your eyes open and read or see what's on the screen. So let's go through the Lord's Prayer together. Our Father who art in heaven. 4 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:39.000 Father unser im him Himmel, Hallowed be your name, Geheilicht wer the dynamic. 5 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:50.000 Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 6 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:54.000 Wie im Himmel zo of 7 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:55.000 Give us 8 00:03:55.000 --> 00:04:08.000 this day our daily bread unde tekliches Brod keep uns heute and forgive us our debts und vergib uns unserschult as 9 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:10.000 we forgive our debtors. 10 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:14.000 We are wier vergiven unserenschuldigan. 11 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:21.000 And lead us not into temptation, 12 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:22.000 But 13 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:30.000 deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom. 14 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:37.000 Then dine istas Reich the power and the glory. Undie Kraft undie Heligkeit. 15 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.000 Forever and ever. 16 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:53.000 Amen in e wishkeit. Amen. 17 00:04:53.000 --> 00:33:10.000 So, the Lord's Prayer. This is the fourth in. I think it's a series of six. I better make sure I've got that right. Yes, four out of six. And just to recap, Steve has taken us through the first three. And we first looked at God as Father, our Father in heaven. Then we looked at God as king. Your kingdom come, your will be done, and what that means. And having reflected on that, God as father and God as king, we then looked at God as our provider in a physical sense. So that was last time. And then today we come to more of a spiritual aspect of forgiveness. So we're looking today at God as our forgiver and the implications for us. So our topic, forgiver, this is From Matthew, chapter 6, verse 12, is the one that says, forgive us our sins or our debts or our trespasses. We'll come to that in a minute. The different words that are used, but it's God as forgiver. Now, when you think about forgiveness, I'm not sure what comes to mind, but as I was preparing for this, for some reason, I was reminded of this family. Do you know who they are? Does that look familiar to you? This is the Abdullah family who live in Sydney, a Lebanese Australian family. In February 2020, a driver named Samuel Davidson mounted a footpath in the place where they live, which is Oatlands in Sydney's northwest, while he was speeding and under the influence of alcohol and drugs. And the result, the crash that resulted instantly killed the oldest of those three, Abdullah children, Anthony, who's age 13, Angelina, who was age 12, and Sienna, who was aged 8, along with their cousin Veronique, aged 11. With the four of them were killed instantly, I think, well, they were killed. The driver was jailed and later sentenced to 20 years in prison. And just a few days after this occurred, the mother, that's Leila, publicly stated that she forgave the driver, explaining that she chose compassion over consuming bitterness and hatred to protect her surviving children and her marriage. This was rooted deeply in their Christian faith. Both Danny and Leila turned their grief into a message of peace and later established the I Forgive Day in New South Wales, which has become now recognised as a day of forgiveness in Australia. And many years after the accident, Danny, the father, visited Samuel Davidson face to face in a maximum security prison and shared an emotional meeting with him and gave him a hug after seeing the driver's deep remorse. So I guess as you think about that story, I wonder how would you respond in a situation like that? Now, maybe some of you have had experiences something like this where something terrible has happened because of what someone has done. How did you deal with it? How would you deal with it in that situation? Have you witnessed or experienced an episode of forgiveness like that in your own life? Have you seen it in someone else's life? As we think about forgiveness today, we're looking at Matthew 6:12. The NIV says, Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. If you look in the new living translation, it says, forgive us our sins as we've forgiven those who sin against us. And that's the translation that I'll be focusing on this morning because it seems to make a little more sense. But we'll talk about, about these words in a minute. Good News Bible says, forgive us the wrongs we've done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us. One thing to notice here is that particularly in the first two translations, it begins with the Word. And so that connects it to the phrase before, which was give us our daily bread and forgive us our sins. So it's like Jesus is saying, there's these two aspects, there's the physical, the provisions, the material provisions that God gives us, but there's also our spiritual needs. And one of those primary needs is for forgiveness. So it's give us our daily bread and forgive us our sins or forgive us our debts. So this word sins. There's many different words used in the New Testament. You know, New Testament was written originally in gre. So there's a number of different Greek words that can be translated as sin or sins, and I'm not going to go into all of those. And one of the reasons for that is I don't know much about Greek, so that's a good reason not to go into it. But I do know that the word used here has a particular sense of failing to fulfil our duty or obligations or dues. And that's why it's translated debts. It's translated trespasses in some translations as well. And there's interesting stories as to why that word cropped in, but I won't go into that. But it's this idea of there's a financial aspect to it. And the record that we have here in Matthew's Gospel is a record or an eyewitness account of Jesus life written by Matthew, who happened to be a tax collector. He worked for the ato. Whether he added credit card surcharges or not, I don't know. But he did collect taxes. So he would know very, very well what it was like to have a debt, what it was like for people to owe a debt, and what it was like to receive or to claim those debts and force people to pay. So this would have meant a lot to Matthew, the author of this record that we have of Jesus life in the book of Matthew. But it's not only a financial thing we're talking about here. Yes, there are financial debts, but there are much bigger debts. And that's why perhaps the word sins might convey better what is being talked about here. However, the word sin or sins is not a very popular topic in today's society. It's not considered politically correct to talk about sin very much, unless, of course, it's someone else's sins, particularly sins done against us by others. But as for our own personal sins against God particularly, it's not often discussed. In fact, most people today believe that unless you're a criminal or a murderer or in jail, if you're living a. A reasonably decent life, sin is not an issue, and God will be kind to you and you go to heaven. And yet we know that that is not the case from what we read in the Scriptures. So forgive us our sins. This, of course, is a prayer that Jesus is telling us to pray. But it's not a prayer that Jesus would have ever prayed, is it? Think about that. Would Jesus have said to God, forgive me my sins? We know that Jesus lived a sinless life. So this, although it's called the Lord's Prayer. As Steve has reminded us, it's not necessarily the best name for this prayer. This is not a prayer that Jesus prays or wants us to pray because he prays it. It's a model prayer for us to pray. So maybe the disciples prayer is a better way to look at it. But the phrase the Lord's Prayer is so entrenched that it's very difficult to call it anything else. Which is why I've called, why we've entitled this series the Lord's Prayer. But just to be reminded, it's not the best way to think of the Lord's Prayer, perhaps by that name. It's a prayer that Jesus has given us as a model for how we should pray. And seeking God's forgiveness for our sins is what he's talking about here. So let's focus on the word forgive. And that word here has the idea of dismissing or cancelling those debts, those debts or those obligations that we were talking about, those sins, they've been dismissed or cancelled or sent away or wiped away. And as we think about forgiveness, there's a couple of different aspects that would help us, I think, if we think about it. Firstly, one that I've called and many people call judicial forgiveness. This is like God as judge and how he forgives us once and for all when we believe in Jesus as our Savior, right? That's a once for all event. And this happens at salvation. And there are many scripture passages and I'm going to put quite a few of them up here just for interest and to prove to you that I'm not making this up in Psalm 86. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. Isaiah chapter one. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Isaiah 6. If this sounds familiar, it should, because we looked at it last week. Graham Poole took us through this. Verse 6 says, One of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he'd taken with tongs from the altar. And with it he touched my mouth. And he said, see, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for it's done. Isaiah 45. For I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. I will not remember your sins. Acts chapter three. This is Peter saying this repent Then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out. Do you like that phrase, wiped out? I once remember a patient I used to have when I was in general practice. I spent my working career as a GP in various countries. One of them was this one. And I do remember a patient who I found out was a Christian. And we got chatting and just talked together about what it meant to be a Christian. And he said to me, we talked about forgiveness. He said, it's great to have a clean slate. And I just remember him saying that, because he really meant it for him. It's like all those failures and sins that somebody might write with a piece of chalk on a slate or a blackboard. When we come to Christ, it's like they're all erased. It's like clean. It's gone. Wiped out. Romans chapter three says, but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Not to all, but to all who believe. We need to believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. Romans 8:1. One of my favorite verses sums it up. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What does it mean to be in Christ Jesus? Is this some sort of magical, mystical sort of sense of euphoria that you get in Christ? For some people, that might be true, but that's not really what it means. To be in Christ Jesus means to have believed in who he is and that he died on the cross for our forgiveness. That's what it means to be in Christ Jesus, to submit to him as the Lord of our lives. So if we have made that decision, if we have accepted him by faith, what his life and death and resurrection, then there is no condemnation for us. Ephesians 1 says, in him we have redemption. We've been bought back through his blood. We have forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. And Philippians 3, another one of my favorite passages, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness, but of my own that comes from the law, but a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness that comes from God is on the basis of faith. It's not the faith that produces the righteousness, the righteousness is from God. But it comes to us through faith in who Jesus is and his death and resurrection. It's pretty clear, isn't it? That's that forgiveness, that's a once and for all forgiveness. Is this what Jesus is talking about when he says forgive us our sins? In a sense it is, but in another sense, not so much. I don't think Jesus is saying here that every time we come to God in prayer, we have to go through the salvation experience again. We have to be saved over and over every time we pray. Salvation is a once only thing. So in that sense, that's probably not the forgiveness that Jesus might be focusing on here. Another way to look at it is perhaps he's focusing on a different type of forgiveness that some people call parental forgiveness. It's like a child and a father or a mother, just the day to day things that happen and the forgiveness that's needed. John says in the epistles, in his epistles, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and forgive us our sins and and purify us from all unrighteousness. That's like an ongoing thing. If we claim we've not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. Or later on he says if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous. So this is more of an issue of the judicial righteousness we talked about before is about our salvation. This is more about ongoing fellowship, our interaction, our relationship with God on a day by day basis. For that to be healthy, we need to be asking for forgiveness regularly. And there is a place for asking for that over and over again because we continue to fail over and over again. Or at least I do. Maybe you don't. So that judicial forgiveness we looked at before, that's how God has removed the penalty of sin from us. That penalty that belongs to us because of our sin that's been wiped away. So we're freed from the penalty of sin. This one is more about being freed from the power of sin on a day to day basis. But we also know there will come a time when we're actually freed from the actual presence of sin in the future when we go to be in God's kingdom in heaven. So there's three P's. How about that? Penalty, power, presence. Incidentally, those three words came to me from my high school science teacher who was also a committed Christian and mentored me a lot. And I remember hearing him say those in sermons when I was about 17, which was quite a while ago. And it stuck in my mind. The penalty, the power and the presence. So let's think about the next bit. Forgive us our sins. Well, before we do that, one more aspect about forgiveness is although we are forgiven, that doesn't necessarily mean that the responsibility or the consequences of our sin are taken away. And the example that I think is clearest about that is the example of David in the Old Testament. You know, King David and his sin, we won't go into the details, but his sin with Bathsheba and with Uriah, he committed adultery and then murder and a whole string of other things. And God did eventually forgive him. And yet the implications, the results of those errors, those mistakes in his life, are more than mistakes. They were atrocities almost that stuck with him. His family fell to pieces. You can read the story. I'm not going to get distracted by recounting it, but it's a fascinating story, but it demonstrates that when we sin, even if we're forgiven, it doesn't mean that the consequences are all removed. We still have to live with those. And David had to live with those for the rest of his life, but he had been forgiven. So we move on. Forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. So what does that mean? Does it mean that we've been forgiven our sins by God? So we've been granted salvation? Does it mean that we now grant salvation to others? That we absolve others of their sin, that we confer forgiveness on them on behalf of God? It doesn't mean that that would be counter to the rest of Scripture. We don't forgive others in as God has forgiven us in that sense of conferring salvation on people that is between them and God. So it doesn't mean. That doesn't mean that we earn our forgiveness from God by forgiving others. So when Jesus says forgive us our sins as we've forgiven those who sin against us, it means that we've earned that forgiveness by forgiving others. That also is counter to the rest of scripture. That's not the case either. So what does it mean? Well, we can say is at least forgiving others and receiving forgiveness are closely tied together. Let's say that much. Let's look a bit further at it. Jesus goes on to explain this right after the Lord's Prayer section that we just read. And it's the only one of the phrases in the Lord's Prayer that he does expand on. Interestingly, he. He goes through the Lord's Prayer that we just read a little while ago in English and German. But there's only one thing he picks out to expand on. And that's this one that we're looking at today. He says, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Not only does he expand on it here, but he expands on it even more in Matthew chapter 18, which is the reading that Fiona read for us. And it's tempting to get distracted with that story and start going into all the details. And I'm going to resist that, or I'm going to try to resist it. You may want to read that passage in more detail later. But all I'll say is to think about, perhaps to put it in perspective, I think bags of gold was the currency that was mentioned in that translation. Others talk about talents and denarii. Let's say the 10,000 talents or 10,000 bags of gold. A talent was equivalent to about 20 years wages. You got that? So 10,000 talents is 200,000 years of wages. How much? Some of you are not retired, like me. I think there are still people out there working. I'm told your salary multiplied by 200,000. That's a rough idea of how much this guy owed and was forgiven. 100 denarii was roughly the equivalent of three months wages. This is how much he was owed by the other guy that he didn't forgive. So that helps to put it in perspective. That debt that the first servant was, was released from was an unfathomable amount of money, billions and billions of dollars more than we can ask or imagine. And yet the smaller debt that he refused to forgive was perhaps about three months wages, perhaps a few several thousand dollars at the most in today's currency. So what does that mean? Does it mean. Well, what we know it doesn't mean is that we don't forgive others in order to be forgiven. We don't earn our forgiveness by forgiving others. We've already established that by all those passages we looked at earlier. But the connection I think is best described in this verse from Ephesians 4:32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, and as God in Christ forgave you, I think that's the essence of it. We have been forgiven a massive debt that we can't get our heads around. To be forgiven and to be granted a relationship with God and to have fellowship with God is an incredible gift. Because of that, we should forgive others. It's as simple as that. We have been fully forgiven through Christ's work on the cross and because of that, we are called to receive his forgiveness and extend that same forgiveness to those who've sinned against us. Our forgiveness is not something we earn. It flows from that grace, that love and that mercy that we've received through Christ. So forgiving others, how do we do that? Do you struggle with forgiving others? Can you think of people that even now you might be harboring some thoughts about that have wronged you in the past or have maybe hurt you in some way, finding it hard to be tender hearted and forgiving towards those people? Well, there's no easy way to do, to learn to forgive, I don't think. But there's a few suggestions that I came across first. One being that we start with being honest with ourselves and with God. It doesn't mean, if you forgive someone, that we're pretending that that hurt didn't hurt. The hurt is still there. That doesn't mean ignoring that, it just means handing it to God. We need to make a choice and that's our choice. We don't necessarily need to wait for someone to come and ask for forgiveness or to apologize. It is possible to forgive without waiting for that, just like Leila Abdullah did. Pray for the person that we are seeking to forgive. Pray for those who hurt you. Jesus told us to do that. Not because they deserve it necessarily, but just because of the grace that we've been shown. Let it go. Whenever I hear that, I think of Frozen and my granddaughters dancing around the room saying, let it go, let it go. But this is a different let it go. Beyond whatever Disney could have imagined. This means leaving revenge to God, letting that go, choosing not to carry that role of judge, not holding onto resentment, entrusting justice to God. And finally, rely on God's strength, not your own strength. Because if it feels impossible, it probably is in your own strength. So we don't have to do this on our own. We have God there to help us. So as we conclude, I think it's helpful to think about receiving forgiveness and extending forgiveness to others. If we don't receive forgiveness from God, if we don't seek forgiveness from him, the result is guilt. And I can tell you, having been a GP for many years, there's a lot of people struggling with guilt. And you might be feeling that way yourself at the moment. Guilt can be oppressive and without that forgiveness from God, the result is guilt. But if we don't extend that forgiveness to others, the result can be bitterness. And you probably know, as I do, that there are many people consumed by bitterness and there Might even be some here today who are feeling that bitterness about some things or some people, because we haven't yet reached that point of extending forgiveness. So in conclusion, you have been forgiven once and for all. If you have put your faith in Christ. If you have not done that, I would urge you to do that even today and receive that forgiveness, that freedom. Have that slate wiped clean. Having been forgiven once, you can be forgiven day by day for your failures, my failures. That is something that God is offering to us. And Jesus tells us to ask God to forgive us our sins day by day. And finally you can begin to forgive others with God's help. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for this prayer that Jesus gave us as a model. Thank you especially for the forgiveness that is ours because of Christ, who lived a sinless life, died on our behalf and was raised to life. And you have shown mercy to us and forgiveness in wiping our slate clean. Thank you for that. And thank you that we can come to you day by day for our ongoing failures and sins and the ways in which we fall short of your standards. Help us, each of us, to extend that forgiveness to others, to be kind and tender hearted towards one another, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.