Nov. 6, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 17 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

The Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount

In the preaching this afternoon in the Lord's Prayer, or in the Sermon on the Mount, excuse me. And this afternoon, with God's help and blessing, we'll finish the Lord's Prayer, the Disciples' Prayer that we've spent so many weeks on.

We're gonna go from 12 through 15. The last two petitions we'll take together this afternoon. And then verses 14 and 15, we will seek application of it the way Jesus says his model prayer, the prayer that he gave to the disciples to give us the way of our prayer.

We will apply it his way. So in Matthew chapter six, beginning at verse nine, pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And the next two verses, these next words added by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ are this.

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. This last petition is lead us not into temptation.

I'm not preaching that one separately as I did all the other petitions. I want to say though that we know God cannot be tempted by evil. Lead us not into temptation. James covers this, I'll read it in a moment.

God is not tempted by evil. He may test us in various ways. He may expose our hearts to ourselves. His goodness is meant to lead us to repentance. We know this, God in his kindness, he providentially exposes our sin to us.

But he never is its cause. And James makes it clear that our collapse into sin comes from our own willful surrender. We allow ourselves to be tempted. James 1, 13 through 15 says, let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted, being tempted by God.

For God cannot be tempted with evil. And he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Steve, recently going through the book of James, he preached on this, and the verse really makes perfect sense just on its own merits, just on the face of it. I want us to think this afternoon about why this ends the prayer.

Why does Jesus Christ end the prayer this way? We've gone through, give us this day our daily bread, and now forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, we will deal with this at some length.

And then lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. This is the application of the prayer. So let us be sure we attend to it, find out what Jesus has in mind. In verses 14 to 15, where Jesus gives us the sum and total of the matter, we have this promise.

Your father will forgive as you forgive. We have a threatening, do we not? Your father will forgive as you forgive. Now you notice I didn't change the way I quoted that. I added nothing to it. The promise, your father will forgive as you forgive, the threat.

Your father will forgive as you forgive. What does it mean to call God our father? It means that our sins have been forgiven. It means we come to him with a clean slate. He's our father, as Abraham is our spiritual father.

He's our father as we follow the faith of Abraham, believing God, trusting his promises, and God in his mercy, counting that to us, imputing to us righteousness. Righteousness enough to be able to stand before him.

What does it mean that God the father is in heaven? It means that his residence is where there is neither sin nor offense. God dwells in this perfect sphere where there is no dross, where there's no iniquity, where there's nothing that happens except the will of God perfectly, constantly, always being enacted.

What does it mean to hallow his name? To be like him. It means to be like him. It means to spread abroad our good works that will give glory to him. What does it mean to desire his kingdom here on earth for his will to be done?

To rely upon him, that's what it means. To rely upon him, to show our utter dependence, to live out this abject need for his constant sustenance of us. Constantly seeking his forgiveness. It means to forgive those who seek ours.

What temptation is the foremost that we must be led away from? Why does Jesus put these two together? He says, forgive us as we forgive and lead us not into temptation. I didn't preach those separately, I brought them together because I believe this greatest temptation, the foremost thing that we need to be led away from, one of the areas, if not the thing where our pride gets most in the way is right here.

It's forgiveness. You know, we have no warning quite like this one in scripture, where Jesus says, if you forgive, your father will forgive. If you do not forgive, neither will your father forgive you.

It's very, very unique. We don't have anything like, if you do not behave in a holy manner, neither will your God grant you holiness. He never says, therefore, if you do not stop extorting others, you will be extorted by your father or anything like that.

It's this one, the correlation. It's the only one that correlates our relationship with each other to how God will deal with us. So it's forgiveness this afternoon. It's about forgiveness. I've preached often on this subject.

And you might ask, why? Why has this come up so much? I mean, I've been committed as a preacher to take topics as the scripture presents them to us, as we're going through the whole counsel of God. It just comes up a lot.

This comes up a lot. Read the Psalms. Read Amos. Oh, Lord, forgive. Israel is so small. Always going to God for forgiveness of sins. And also in the Psalms, this forgiveness that we must have on our own level.

This comes up a lot. There's nothing like this that knits us so closely together to the action of God the Father. Ephesians 4 .32, all in the imperative voice, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

As God in Christ forgave you. These words need to ring in our souls. As God in Christ forgave you. Our redemption is our forgiveness. In Jesus, he says in Ephesians 1 .7, we have redemption through his blood, which is the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

Redemption is forgiveness. This is how high this ranks in the cardinal doctrines of our faith. It's of no less consequence than the precious blood of our Savior, by which redemption, which is forgiveness, was purchased.

The Weight of Forgiveness and the Call to Apply the Prayer

So the Lord's Prayer ends here for us. Our ESV rightly leaves out, for yours is the kingdom and the rest. And if you look at it, not only is the manuscript evidence for those words very poor, so the ESV is right to leave it out.

But the flow of thought is better without it, as we go from the verses that I read into Jesus's application of it. We speak of takeaways. We speak of takeaways. A lot of preachers are held accountable by their churches.

You know, when I leave, I better have three things that I know what to do on Monday. I need my takeaways. I need my what's in it for me. Now, we don't do that here. I'm not put under that sort of pressure and constraint.

Praise God. But let's speak just for a moment about takeaways, what's in it for me. What do we wanna take from this prayer? The fifth petition, forgive us our debts, and debts equals trespasses or sins.

Forgive us as we have forgiven our debtors. Some translations, those who have trespassed against us. It might actually be the most crucial because it's the one that Jesus repeats at the end. And if you don't get this application, this clear as a bell takeaway, this easy to understand but so hard to do imperative, then I think we really don't understand this prayer at all.

Maybe the entire sermon. It's all about forgiveness. It's about forgiveness. In chapter seven, verses 21 to 23, Jesus says to those whose works were their own, basically, get away from me. He says, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

But he means just get out of here. You do not belong here. Don't think of one of those medieval effeminate Jesuses, those statues with the two fingers in the air, that Cub Scout pledge kind of look to him.

This is the king of glory. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory. Who is this king of glory? The church can say Jesus Christ is that king of glory. He's saying, and we'll get to this in several weeks when we get to chapter seven, depart, practitioner of evil.

So important is this that in Matthew 5, 24, rather than worship with an offense between you and another, leave your gift at the altar, go get yourself forgiven, not by God, but we do have to do that. But what is Jesus saying?

Say stop and repent and have a moment with God, go to your prayer closet. What do you call it, tag, time alone with God and all those things, they're wonderful. And we should do them always. But Jesus, the imperative is so great.

He says, leave your gift and go. Now, the gift at the altar would be a peace offering, perhaps a sin offering, looking for forgiveness from God for a particular sin. And you say, no, no, no, no. God's not interested in that when you're harboring this in your heart.

This is how important this is. And it comes up so often. Matthew 18, 15 says, if your brother sins against you, go to him and tell him his fault just between the two of you. Jesus would not have these offenses remain between us, so much so that he correlates what we do with each other to what the Father will do with us.

And we can memorize great swaths of scripture. A lot of us can go through the systematics. We can quote Calvin and Birkhoff and we know who Beezer really was and things like that. And that's wonderful.

We should know our history. We should know our theology, our doctrines. We should know the history of where things came from. That's all wonderful. But can we forgive? Can we simply forgive? We hide God's word in our hearts so that we might not sin against him.

And then we ignore this most fundamental building block. We know the scriptures, but as Jesus says, why do you call me Lord and do not do the things that I tell you? No other command that we have correlates so closely to how God will treat us than this one.

You know, we need building blocks. We need fundamentals. My parents used to own a cabin up in Oregon and it was just across the street from the Siletz River. It was a nice big river, about four miles inland.

It was a beautiful spot and it had a big yard and a creek running through it that ran into the river. And so my son and I could go out in the backyard and we could build these huge bonfires. And every summer before we left, we'd make sure there's plenty of wood piled up that would get seasoned and we would do it.

And I would show him how to build up the foundation and how to get the wood working its way up so that you'd have a fire that would build and build and build and the smaller would catch and it would get hotter and hotter.

Just all the Boy Scout kind of things. And shaving the limbs and all that sort of stuff. We just had a wonderful time. We would get these huge bonfires. Didn't have to worry about it going anywhere because the area it was in, it was a lot of fun.

Forgiveness. You see, we want to have this Holy Spirit fire in us, burning in us, marking us out as a beacon for others to follow. And we do the big things. We memorize chapters and like I was saying about the systematics, we go through all that.

But have we started with the twigs and built it up so that one match might start the whole thing? Jesus has given us this fundamental building block, this base place to start. This is as it were when you build up the bonfire and get it ready to go.

This is the newspaper, I guess, crumbled up and stuffed in the right places so that one match will get the newspaper going, get the twigs going, get the sticks going, the branch, you understand the point.

This is basic. This is Christian living. Forgiveness comes from the Greek word aphiemi. You don't have to memorize that. It's aphiemi. It's a very common word. It can mean to permit something. This is a word that was translated in the Septuagint when Cain said his punishment was more than he could bear.

It's more than should be permitted to him, something like that. In Mark 118, the disciples left their nets, aphiemi. They left their nets behind. They went elsewhere to follow Jesus. And many times, Jesus, he aphiemi a house.

And all it meant is he left. He opened the door, went outside, and left. He aphiemi the house. When it's used, when it's properly translated as forgiveness, we have this picture of ourselves leaving something behind.

It's the idea of going elsewhere, getting away from the grudges, permitting yourself a different attitude, leave behind and move away from the bitterness. Forgive, be elsewhere, be elsewise. But forgiveness has to do with moving away from something.

They left their nets. Jesus would leave a house. We must leave behind the bitterness and the grudges. If forgiveness is a muscle, then it's the heart. So often, we're the one who has forced the others to exercise this spiritual muscle.

It's great to be sanctified, but how many of us are that one that causes the one to exercise their patience all the time to always use this forgiveness muscle? There's no Christian life we have where there are only found harsh but doctrinally sound theologians.

Human wisdom, which means it's necessarily, it doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, only that it must be double-check or triple-check or let's quadruple-check human wisdom and let's take it warily when we do so.

But human wisdom tells us the lack of forgiveness is a starting point of most of our difficulties. When I cancel in my office, when I have a couple before me, you can almost always trace it back. Human wisdom again, so I have to use the word almost.

But what's the base level? What starts the bad water under the bridge? What begins the history that roils and roils along and next thing you know, you're so wound up and so angry, you don't even know how to take it all apart.

It begins right here. It's forgiveness. That's both ways. You sin but refuse to admit it. That's a lack of forgiveness, not self-forgiveness. That's one of the silliest things I've ever heard of. But self-acknowledgement that I have sinned, I must be forgiven, I have to be forgiven.

In fact, if this isn't my lifeblood for the moment, I've been confronted by my faults, Jesus wants nothing to do with me. I mean, is that serious? Is that serious? Forgiveness doesn't stand alone. It's only meaningful when it's seen in relation to that which makes forgiveness necessary, which of course is sin.

So we can't get away with claiming to be a forgiving sort if we do not just as much claim to be in need of the same. I ask, do you want to be like God? Therefore, you shall be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

Be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy. Want to be like Jesus. Do you want to see Christ formed in you? I shy away from formulations. They make the hard work involved in sanctification just seem so easy, which it's not.

It's like a bonfire. It's not just a pile of wood and a match, but here's a formula. Here's one. Do you want to have your best life now? Do you want to start a journey into the purposes God has for you?

Maybe we can have 40 days of it. How would you like to start accelerating your growth into the image of Christ? And here it is for you, right here, right now, this afternoon. Today you get the secret that's been hidden from the eyes of the over-intellectualized and the too-academic believer, and here it is.

Are you ready for it? Forgive, forgive. Whenever this comes up, the question is always, what about confession and repentance? Aren't those necessary? Of course they are necessary. I've never been able to turn it, though, into a process beyond what Jesus says in Matthew 18, 15 to 22.

If your brother sins against you, you go to him and show him his fault just between the two of you. Jesus tells us what to do. Be like Jesus. As I said, Amos chapter seven, verse one, two, he hears what's coming, and he doesn't say, you know, they deserve it.

Boy, did they mess up. And you know, I didn't hear confession. There wasn't repentance. Of course, there was none of that with Israel, but you take my point, and he hears all that, and what's his cry?

Oh, Lord, forgive. Israel, he is so small. Do we wanna be like Jesus? It's forgiveness. There's so much to Jesus. Remember how he ends this prayer, this disciple's prayer that he, our Lord, gives us. You know, in Luke chapter seven, verses 36 to 48, maybe I should, I was just gonna tell you what it says, but let me read it.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him and went into the Pharisee's house and took, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table, and behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she had learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment.

Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him. For she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you.

A certain money lender had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii and the other 50. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now, which one will love him more? Simon answered, the one I suppose for whom he canceled the large debt.

And he said to him, you have judged rightly. Then turning to the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house and you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.

But he who's forgiven little, loves little. See, this is the Lord that we have to imitate. This is the Lord who says, as you forgive, you will be forgiven. As you withhold, God, my father, will withhold.

The God at the very beginning we called our father. Some might say, but you don't know what I've endured. You don't know how hard it's been. My answer is, yes, I do. Not perfectly, not in detail, not like Jesus does, but we know how hard this is.

We know how hurtful we can be to each other. We know how much hurt we've had, and the best way to ameliorate that is to think of how much we've hurt others. That doesn't mean that we don't need to receive confession and repentance.

I'm not saying that. I'm trying to drive us all towards forgiving hearts that are ready to bestow this godly kindness upon someone else. Do you believe that Jesus is with us by his spirit? Do you remember in Matthew 18, 22, it always strikes me that when Jesus gives that promise, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them, it's in the context of repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation.

Now, I believe that that promise is a very wide-ranging promise. It has many, many applications, not just that one specific and particular one, but that is the context where Jesus makes the promise. When we're doing that most difficult thing, which is to set aside our hurt and to follow his command and seek this out, this requires so much of us.

It requires that we hope the best. First Corinthians 13, seven, love hopes all things. An offense needs first to be considered inadvertent. That's what it means to hope all things, to think the best of someone.

They didn't mean it. They stumbled over their words for a moment. I might have misunderstood. Consider maybe that the person didn't know all the facts, but proceeded with good intent on what they did know.

If we think only of the offense rather than the person, if we don't think the best of the person, this becomes harder and harder and harder. We're almost sure to simply recount the harm that we endured, and then we tend to make repentance so onerous as to make it almost certain to be avoided.

And the offenses just roll on and on and on, and Jesus says, offenses must come, but woe to him by whom the offense comes. I mean, how else do we join in 1 Timothy 2, eight? I desire then that in every place that men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

He's speaking about amongst us. He's speaking about our prayer meetings when we pray together. There should be this purity of relationship because all things resolve between us. Can Ephesians 4, 32 make any sense otherwise be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

It cuts to the heart of the matter as God in Christ forgave you. If this doesn't cut us to the heart, like in Acts 2, verse 37, the men heard Peter's first sermon. And what does the scripture say? They were cut to the heart, men and brothers, what shall we do?

Words like what Paul commands us in Ephesians 4, 32, 1 Timothy 2, eight, Jesus, Matthew 6, 14, 15, they have to tear our hearts apart. I mean, the unforgiving steward, of course, in Matthew 18, he's the place preachers always go for this and that's good reason.

The parable is a stark one, it exposes us. Why did he not forgive us smattering after he had been released an incalculable fortune? Of course, I didn't read the parable, it's a fairly long one, but I think you all know it.

Ask ourselves, why do I not forgive? Because I, in all my glory, I, because of the rarity of my errors, I, whose sense of sin is so finely tuned I can sniff it out anywhere, I deserve the forgiveness the Lord bestowed on me.

That's really what it's saying. So do you hear this? Do we seek solace in the fact that we can repent of our unforgiving spirit? Are we running right now for cover? Though in 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I mean, if we're on a verse like that, if we're withholding forgiveness, we say, okay, 1 John 1, 9 says if I withhold my forgiveness I can confess that sin and I'll be okay. What confession are we offering?

Oh Lord, forgive me this intentional? I don't think we can do that. We can say, forgive me for my refusal here, my willful refusal. Even if you, by right use of scripture and reason can prove to me that your eternal soul is not what is at stake here, then are we not better off if we acted as though it was?

I don't think Jesus is saying lack of forgiveness from God will result in a lack of forgiveness because of our lack of forgiveness with each other to us losing salvation. I don't believe he's saying that.

And that's maybe for another day. And I'm preaching this sort of harshly because what I want us to do is take Jesus just plainly at his word. If you forgive others, your father in heaven will forgive you.

If you do not forgive others, neither will your father in heaven forgive you. Let's just take it plain right there. Let's just take it as what he's trying to say. What if our forgiveness with each other was sought out as if eternity was in the balance?

I ask us, I was asking myself as I prepared this, what sort of Christian would I be if I really followed this? What sort of family would we have? What sort of church would this be if we demanded of ourselves that we take Jesus just plainly at his word, if we acted as though everything from here to the end of eternity, which of course is oxymoron, there's no end to it, depended upon this?

This is the hardest teaching I think we have to obey. Jesus in Matthew 18, 20, he promises his presence in just this scenario. I say to us, trust him. He knows forgiveness better than we ever will. He knows the price of forgiveness better than we ever will.

Trust him by faith in his word. You see, if he promises to be with us when we reconcile, then he will be with us. And what will he do? How will he accomplish this? Honestly, I don't know. I know he will because his word says he will.

I know his spirit will work and accomplish this because his word promises it. Now it might seem like I've only set guilt before us. That's not my intent. I can only plead that our Lord makes this of paramount importance.

And think of what's soon to come in this sermon. I mean, judge not that you be not judged. We're gonna have the golden rule. I mean, can we even begin to enter the teaching there if we pass by this too quickly?

If great violence is not done to our souls by Jesus' word of application? Christ died for our sins. We come to the table for the memorial of that in a few moments. He died so that we might be forgiven.

He rose from the dead for our justification. And as Augustine said so well, what he commands, he provides. The first thing we need for this application is for we ourselves to know God's forgiveness. And then by the powerful working of his might in us, we are able according to the power he works toward us, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, to follow his command and example and be a forgiving people just as we have been by him.

Amen? Amen. Yeah.