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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Rev. Sjirk Bajema > When We Owe What We’ve Been Given | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
MATTHEW 6:12
(Readings: Matthew 18:21-35; 6:9-15)
When We Owe What We’ve Been Given
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
Many of us would be familiar with the saying, "To err is human; but to forgive is divine."
Well, our text proves it.
The beginning shows this clearly.
In our prayer we offer the request, "and forgive us our debts…"
We ask God to forgive us.
We show that our being forgiven is from the Divine.
But then we may well become somewhat confused by the second part of the text.
That has us praying, "…as we also have forgiven our debtors."
And then, added to this, there's the clarifying note in the verses 14 and 15: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
So we might wonder how can forgiveness be completely divine when we are told we have to do it first of all?
And aren't we supposed to be saved by grace - not by what we ourselves have to do?
Good questions.
Questions which can be answered by considering this fifth request in the Lord's model for prayer, in connection with the others, especially the fourth request just before it.
You see, praying "Give us this day our daily bread" has recognised our basic need to physically survive.
Now the forgiving of debts speaks of spiritual life and its sustenance.
If we don't know this in our own hearts we're just as dead spiritually as we would starve to death physically without our daily bread!
In the words of our first aspect … WHAT WE DO PROVES WHAT WE SAY.
This is the point of 'The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant' in Matthew 18.
In that story our Lord spoke of a servant who proved how much he was dead spiritually.
He who had been forgiven so much by the greater master.
For let's recognise that the amount he had been pardoned for would be millions of dollars!
And then he couldn't forgive his fellow servant a few lousy bucks!
Putting him back in jail was only confirming his total lack of faith.
He had already effectively locked himself away from God’s blessing.
It's interesting, in this light, that Matthew uses in his version of the Lord's Prayer the word "debts".
Luke in his version uses the different word "sins".
And it's interesting, congregation, for Matthew uses a word that was targeted at his Jewish audience.
Remember that Matthew as a Gospel is especially about 'The King' - so it's about proving Jesus Christ to be the Jewish Messiah.
Then to use the word "debt", which means "a failure to pay that which is due", makes sense.
For the Old Testament history of Israel would have made this concept of "debt" very clear for those Jews.
The longer that history went on, the more it they showed how much debt they were building up with their continual sinfulness.
The sin even became so bad God declared a point of no return!
Later on the writer to the Hebrews shows this, as he wrote to the Jewish early Christians.
In comparing Jesus with the Old Covenant, he says in chapter 7, the verses 26 till 28, "Such a high priest meets our need - one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.
“Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people.
“He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
“For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever."
If there was any race of people which knew about when anyone failed to do their duty it just had to be the Jewish people!
But much as some of their religious leaders may have made a fine art of doing their so-called religious duty, Jesus showed several times during his ministry that that only made it more apparent how sinful they were, and how much they were far from the Kingdom of God.
Jesus even pointed out that as much as they failed to obey just the one small part of the Law they had failed to follow it all!
WHAT WE DO PROVES WHAT WE SAY!
Who could forget the way Christ addressed the rich young ruler, that man who seemed to have it all, yet when it came to living it from his heart he had the greatest fall?
One commentator says that this is why of all the petitions of the Lord's Prayer this is the most frightening.
You see, this phrase literally means "Forgive us our debts in proportion as we forgive those who have sinned against us."
Matthew, by adding his footnote to this prayer in verses 14 and 15, makes that quite clear.
He tells us the words of Jesus in the plainest possible language that if forgive others, God will forgive us; but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us.
Dear friends, if any of us is praying this request with an unhealed split in fellowship, an unsettled quarrel in our lives, we are asking God not to forgive us.
If we say, "I'll never forgive so-and-so for what he or she has done to me"; or if we say, "I'll never forget what that person did to me"; or even if we claim very piously, "It's clear in my conscience between me and God, I've forgiven them, but I won't have anything anymore to do with them!", we are deliberately asking God not to forgive us.
And he won't!
Then human forgiveness and divine forgiveness are inextricably interlinked.
What we do proves what we say.
And the proof will become more than evident - sooner or later!
With the unmerciful servant it showed straight away as he came across his colleague while leaving the palace of the king who had just released him from his burden of millions of dollars.
And we really wondered with that story, didn't we - I mean, how stupid can you be, how so blatantly ungrateful!
And then just think: That's me!
I mean, this Lord's Prayer is how I should pray; in fact, if I'm genuine in my faith it's how I do pray.
But how often don't I pray this way.
How many times haven't I lied as I pray this request?
And you think that doesn’t have an impact.
But you know it does.
Things are not good.
We absolutely need the forgiveness of our sins - also the sin we may just have committed in praying this request!
If there is something which characterises a person when they come to faith in the first place, isn't it this very thing of having that huge debt of their sin taken away?
We may hear and read of the simple story of when someone became a Christian that they asked Jesus to come into their heart.
But surely someone coming to faith does so with that tremendous awareness of how sinful they are and yet how holy God is, and how much they have fallen short of God's righteous standards?
Didn't we know that debt which we could never pay the hour we first believed?
That’s why John Newton wrote the words, "Amazing grace - how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!"
Congregation, it couldn't be further than the middle-class lifestyle decision that some make Christianity today.
For them the Gospel becomes a kind of anaesthetised optional extra; the word Gospel is a particular type of modern music after all!
Somehow the guts gets taken out of the faith.
And people could really begin to wonder - what is so different about being a Christian after all?
But here is where we should show that this is the furtherest from any kind of choice.
For to have our sins forgiven is the last thing we really ever naturally wanted!
In contrast to the Pharisee whom Jesus describes in Luke 18; the Pharisee who so much valued the choice he had made for his life and the kind of lifestyle he followed; in complete contrast to that way of the world you are the sinner there – you are the one from the totally dysfunctional background, you are the one whose environment should really have condemned you to permanent addiction difficulties, and you have been the one who’s in continual battle with the authorities!
That Pharisee may have even felt that he had forgiven those who had sinned against him - his conscience is clear, he would say - but we're not receiving forgiveness because we forgive others, rather it's because we cast ourselves on the mercy of God.
WHAT WE DO PROVES WHAT WE SAY - FOR THEN WE TRULY DO PRAY.
We come to our second point.
FOR THEN WE TRULY DO PRAY.
The way of that tax-collector is the only way we can truly pray.
For until we have felt the weight of our own debt to God we cannot properly forgive others either.
This is the lesson of that unmerciful servant.
And, further congregation, this grace of God is what we need to draw upon as we need it - day by day, week by week.
Just as we need that physical bread every day, so we need to be spiritually renewed each day too.
At the end of this chapter 6 of Matthew Jesus points out that each day has enough trouble of its own.
So let's deal with that trouble on that day.
For if God's grace is the great deposit the Heavenly Father has put to our account, let's use it by writing the cheques for when we need it.
Prayer, you see, is signing and presenting those cheques for payment.
Prayer is going to God and asking him to honour it.
Seems simple - doesn't it?
So - who does it?
Which one of us is drawing from God's account all the instalments that they need?
How many of us right now are really realising the truth of the apostle John in his first letter, chapter 1 verse 9: "If we confess our sins, Jesus is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness"?
In fact, dear believer, if these words in the Lord's Prayer haven't sometimes stuck in our throats, if they haven't sometimes made us feel very guilty, if they haven't sometimes even made us stop right there and then and fix up matters with a neighbour, we haven't prayed at all!
Think of Robert Louis Stevenson.
When he couldn’t continue on in his family prayer, because he was struck with what he was praying, he was truly praying.
And he was a great man.
The Samoans even made him one of their chiefs because of the immense good he did for them.
Oh, you may have recited these words thousands upon thousands of times, but they haven't been alive in you!
You see, if we haven't shown the evidence of God's grace in us by forgiving our neighbours, to use the words of the Catechism, what are we doing here?
You've got no use worshipping now, when, in the words of Jesus, you've still got a brother who's got something against you.
To not be reconciled with those around you could show you don't know reconciliation with the One above you either!
Dear friend, only God knows your heart.
And if you really are sorry in your heart please know that the Lord sees that too.
He will forgive you.
But let's know too that he forgives us then because the sorry heart we have underneath makes it up with others too.
Perhaps we really struggle to do that – it is such hard work!
Note, though, we do struggle.
Just like prayer itself is a struggle, one of the hardest of all human endeavours.
You see, learning the heavenly language doesn't come naturally.
And if we have enough trouble learning another earthly language, and we never get that exactly perfect, just think of how much God's Spirit has to be busy with us to pray his language.
But let's learn it.
Then, congregation, heaven will become more and more the place we're going to - and that's in everything we say and do!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let's pray…
O Lord Jesus,
We owe you the greatest debt of all, the debt of thankfulness for all you have done, and for everything you continue to do for your own chosen and precious children.
What did we deserve?
How could we repay?
But we can pray!
We're talking with you right now by faith.
And we know the way faith forgives.
We can forget when we've forgiven; we can be free indeed from the terrible burdens we've put on ourselves.
Maybe those people we forgive Lord don't mean it.
Perhaps they aren't really sorry.
But who are we to talk?
And haven't you so many times still forgiven us?
Not just seven times seventy - always!
Even what we've done wrong in our worship now.
If we've lived for you, no matter how many times we've tripped up and fallen; if our heart means it, we're forgiven.
What release!
What inner joy!
The peace that passes all understanding!
Oh Prince of Peace, Matthew's Messiah, rule in our hearts even more!
Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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